Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And in their summer beauty kissed each other!" Dr this delicious description of concealed love, into that of a regretful and moralizing parent. "But he, his own affections Counsellor, Is to himself so secret and so close, As is the bud bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun." And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are, than we feel at once their beauty and their effect; and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and atractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen, into the mouth of one who is not even a lover. "It is her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus! the flame o' th' taper Bows towards her! and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heaven's own tinct breast on her left A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip!" His remarks on Macbeth are of a higher and bolder character. After noticing the wavering and perplexity of Macbeth's resolution, "driven on, as it were, by the violence of his Fate, and staggering under the weight of his own purposes," he strikingly observes, "This part of his character is admirably set off by being brought in connection with that of Lady Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and masculine firmness give her the ascendancy over her husband's faltering virtue. She at once seizes on the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment of their wished-for greatness; and never flinches from her object till all is over. The magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate. She does and Gonnerill. She is only wicked to gain a great not excite our loathing and abhorrence like Regan end; and is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding presence of mind and inexorable selfwill, which do not suffer her to be diverted from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or want of natural affections."—pp. 18, 19. But the best part perhaps of this critique, is the comparison of the Macbeth with the Richard of the same author. "The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking enough, and they form what may be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with other characters of the same author we shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which is observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events. Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III. as it is possible hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, to imagine, though these two characters in common would have been a repetition of the same general But we must break at once away from these manifold enchantments-and recollect that our business is with Mr. Hazlitt, and not with the great and gifted author on whom he is employed: And, to avoid the danger of any further preface, we shall now let him speak a little for himself. In his remarks on Cymbeline, which is the first play in his arrange-idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are ment, he takes occasion to make the following observations on the female characters of his author. "It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakespeare's heroines, that they seem to exist only in their attachment to others. They are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves; because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespeare-no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguiseno one else ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant: For the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their sex; scrupulous of being false to their vows or truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. Cibber, in speaking of the early English stage, accounts for the want of prominence and theatrical display in Shakespeare's female characters, from the circumstance, that women in those days were not allowed to play the parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a good deal in the back ground. Does not this state of manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting themselves in public. and confined them to the relations and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of the matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage heroines."pp. 3, 4. tyrants, usurpers, murderers,-both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of "the milk of human kindness," is frank, sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid' conspire against his virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary needs no prompter; but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his ambition, from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the success of his villanies: Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit; and of remorse after its perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or posterityhe owns no fellowship with others; he is himself alone.' Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of sympathy, is accessible to pity, is even made in some measure the dupe of his uxoriousness; ranks the loss of friends, of the cordial love of his followers, and of his good name, among the causes which have made him weary of life; and regrets that he has ever seized the Crown by unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his posterity. There are other decisive differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the world, a plotting hardened knave, wholly regardless of everything but his own ends, and the means to secure them.-Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to his character From the of the moral and political relect ons which this author has intermixed with his criticisms. strangeness of the events that surround him, he is full of amazement and fear; and stands in doubt between the world of reality and the world of fancy. He sees sights not shown to mortal eye, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and dis-shown the same penetration into political character "Shakespeare has in this play and elsewhere order within and without his mind; his purposes and the springs of public events as into those of recoil upon himself, are broken and disjointed; he every-day life. For instance, the whole design to is the double thrall of his passions and his destiny. liberate their country fails from the generous temRichard is not a character either of imagination or per and overweening confidence of Brutus in the pathos, but of pure self-will. There is no conflict goodness of their cause and the assistance of others. of opposite feelings in his breast. In the busy tur-Thus it has always been. Those who mean well bulence of his projects he never loses his self-pos- themselves think well of others, and fall a prey to session, and makes use of every circumstance that their security. The friends of liberty trust to the happens as an instrument of his long-reaching de- professions of others, because they are themselves signs. In his last extremity we regard him but as sincere, and endeavour to secure the public good a wild beast taken in the toils: But we never en- with the least possible hurt to its enemies, who tirely lose our concern for Macbeth; and he calls have no regard to any thing but their own unback all our sympathy by that fine close of thought-principled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish ful melancholy. My way of lite Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; In treating of the Julius Cæsar, Mr. H. ex- Brutus. I will do so; but look you, Cassius- Antony. Cæsar? Cesar. Let me have men about me that are fat, them. Cassius was better cut out for a conspirator. His heart prompted his head. His habitual jealousy made him fear the worst that might happen, and his irritability of temper added to his inveteracy of purpose, and sharpened his patriotism. The mixed nature of his motives made him fitter to contend with bad men. The vices are never so well employed as in combating one another. Tyranny and servility are to be dealt with after their own fashion: otherwise, they will triumph over those who spare them, and finally pronounce their funeral panegyric as Antony did that of Brutus. "All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar: He only in a general honest thought Of common good to all, made one of them. pp. 38, 39. The same strain is resumed in his remarks on Coriolanus. "Shakespeare seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question; perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true; But he dwells less upon it. The cause of the people is indeed but little calculated as a subject for poetry: it admits of rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, the mind. The imagination is an exaggerating and but it presents no immediate or distinct images to exclusive faculty. The understanding is a dividing and measuring faculty. The one is an aristocrati Antony. Fear him not, Caesar, he's not danger-cal, the other a republican faculty. The principle ous: He is a noble Roman, and well given. [not: of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It aims at effect, and exists by contrast. It is every thing by excess. It puts the individual for the species, the one above the infinite many, might before right. A lion hunting a flock of sheep is a more poetical object than they; and we even take part with the lordly beast, because our vanity or some other feeling makes us disposed to place ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. There is nothing heroical in a multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they are like to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their pusillanimity. We had rather, in short, be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: But the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave." "We know hardly any passage more expressive-pp. 69-72. of the genius of Shakespeare than this. It is as if he had been actually present, had known the different characters and what they thought of one another, and had taken down what he heard and Baw, their looks, words, and gestures, just as they nappened."-pp. 36, 37. We may add the following as a specimen There are many excellent remarks and several fine quotations, in the discussions on Troilus and Cressida. As this is no longer an acted play, we venture to give one extract, with Mr. H.'s short observations, which por fectly express our opinion of its merits. "It cannot be said of Shakespeare, as was said of some one, that he was without o'erflowing full.' He was full, even to o'erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger of losing distinction in his thoughts' (to borrow his own expression) "As doth a battle when they charge on heaps . The enemy flying." "There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, showing him the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness of illustration than the former. "Ulysses. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, [present, with him the c.ouded brow of reflection, and though himself too much i' th' sun;' whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank, with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes;' he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady; who has had his hope blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought; he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play, as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life, by a mock-representation of them. This is the true Hamlet. We have been so used to this tragedy, that we hardly know how to criticise it, any more than we should know how to describe our own faces. But we must make such observations as we can. It is the one of Shakespeare's plays that we think of oftenest because it abounds most in striking reflec. tions on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity, Whatever happens to him, we apply to ourselves; because he applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moralizer, and what makes him worth attending to is, that he moralizes on his own feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear shows the greatest depth of passion, HAMLET is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of character. There is no attempt to force an interest: every thing is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort; the incidents succeed each other as matters of course; the characters think, and speak, and act, just as they might do if left entirely to themselves. There One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The ob That all, with one consent, praise new born gauds, servations are suggested by the passing scene--the Though they are made and moulded of things past." gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music "The throng of images in the above lines is borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact digious; and though they sometimes jostle against transcript of what might be supposed to have taken one another, they everywhere raise and carry on place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period the feeling, which is metaphsically true and pro-in morals and manners were heard of. It would of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements found."-pp. 85-87. That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand, pro have been interesting enough to have been admitThis Chapter ends with an ingenious paral-ted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such a time, lel between the genius of Chaucer and that of Shakespeare, which we have not room to insert. The following observations on Hamlet are very characteristic of Mr. H.'s manner of writing in the work now before us; in which he continually appears acute, desultory, and capricious-with great occasional felicity of conception and expression-frequent rashness and carelessness-constant warmth of admiration for his author-and some fits of extravagance and folly, into which he seems to be hurried, either by the hasty kindling of his zeal as he proceeds, or by a selfwilled determination not to be balked or baffled in any thing he has taken it into his head he should to have heard and seen something of what was sion of genius. It is not a character marked by His account of the Tempest is all pleasingly written, especially his remarks on Caliban; but we rather give our readers his specula tions on Bottom and his associates. "Bottom the Weaver is a character that has not had justice done him. He is the most romantic of mechanics; He follows a sedentary trade, and he is accordingly represented as conceited, serious, and fantastical. He is ready to undertake any thing and every thing, as if it was as much a matter of course as the motion of his loom and shuttle. He is for play ing the tyrant, the lover, the lady, the lion. He will roar that it shall do any man's heart good to hear him; and this being objected to as improper, he still has a resource in his good opinion of himself, and will roar you an 'twere any nightingale.' Snug the Joiner is the moral man of the piece, who proceeds by measurement and discretion in all things. You see him with his rule and compasses in his hand. Have you the lion's part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study. You may do it extempore,' says Quince, for it is nothing but roaring. Starveling the Tailor keeps the peace, and objects to the lion and the drawn sword. I believe we must leave the killing out when all's done.' Starveling, however, does not start the objections himself, but seconds them when made by others, as if he had no spirit to express his fears without encouragement. It is too much to suppose all this intentional: but it very luckily falls out so."-pp. 126, 127. Mr. H. admires Romeo and Juliet rather too much-though his encomium on it is about the most eloquent part of his performance: But we really cannot sympathise with all the conceits and puerilities that occur in this play; for instance, this exhortation to Night, which Mr. H. has extracted for praise !— "Give me my Romeo-and when he shall die, We agree, however, with less reservation, in his rapturous encomium on Lear-but can afford no extracts. The following speculation on the character of Falstaff is a striking, and, on the whole, a favourable specimen of our author's manner. never see him at table. He carries his own larder about with him, and he is himself a tun of man.' His pulling out the bottle in the field of battle is a joke to show his contempt for giory accompanied with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epi curean philosophy in the most trying circumstances. Again, such is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not seem quite certain whether the account of his hostess' bill, found in his pocket, with such an out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack with only one half-penny-worth of bread, was not put there by himself, as a trick to humour the jest upon his favourite propensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. "The secret of Falstaff's wit is for the most part a masterly presence of mind, an absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his self-love; instine. tive evasions of every thing that threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out of all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance, of itself makes light of objections, and provokes the most extravagant and licentious answers in his own justification. His indifference to truth puts no check upon his invention; and the more improbable and unexpected his contrivances of them, the anticipation of their effect acting as a are, the more happily does he seem to be delivered stimulus to the gaiety of his fancy. The success of one adventurous sally gives him spirits to undertake another: he deals always in round numbers, and his exaggerations and excuses are open, palpable, monstrous as the father that begets them.' pp. 189-192. It is time, however, to make an end of this. We are not in the humour to discuss points of learning with this author; and our readers now see well enough what sort of book he has written. We shall conclude with his remarks on Shakespeare's style of Comedy, introduced in the account of the Twelfth Night. spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the follies of mankind; not despise them, and still less bear any ill-will towards them. Shakespeare's comic genius resembles the bee rather in its power of extracting sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a geration of the prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a way that they themselves, instead of being offended at, would almost join in to humour; he rather contrives opportunities for them to show themselves off in the happiest lights, than renders them contemptible in the perverse construction of the wit or malice of others. "Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasure- "This is justly considered as one of the most deable sensation; an effusion of spleen and petty lightful of Shakespeare's comedies. It is full of spite at the comforts of others, from feeling none in sweetness and pleasantry. It is perhaps too gooditself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine con-natured for comedy. It has little satire, and no stitution; an exuberance of good-humour and good nature; an overflowing of his love of laughter, and good-fellowship; a giving vent to his heart's ease and over-contentment with himself and others. He would not be in character if he were not so fat as he is; for there is the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination and the pam-sting behind it. He gives the most amusing exag. pered sell .ndulgence of his physical appetites. He anures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his jokes, as he would a capon, or a haunch of venison, where there is cut and come again: and lavishly pours out upon them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain it snows of meat and drink.' He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, and we live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and dozen. Yet we are not left to suppose that he was mere sensualist. All this is as much in imagination as in reality. His sensuality does not engross and stupify his other faculties, but ascends me into the brain, clears away all the dull, crude vapours that environ it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.' His imagination keeps up the ball long after his senses have done with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoy. ment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal and exaggerated descriptions which he gives of them, than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with allusions to eating and drinking; but we "There is a certain stage of society, in which people become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible and denying to those, who would impose on us for what they are not, even the merit which they have This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and sa tire, such as we see in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, &c. But there is a period in the progress of manners anterior to this, in which the foibles and follies of individuals are of nature's planting, not the growth of art or study; in which they are therefore anconscious of ther themselves, or care not who knows them, if they can but have their whim out; and in which, as there is no attempt at imposition, the spectators rather receive pleasure from humouring the inclinations of the persons they laugh at, than wish to give them pain by exposing their absurdity. This may be called the comedy of nature; and it is the comedy which we generally find in Shakespeare.-Whether the analysis here given be just or not, the spirit of his comedies is evidently quite distinct from that of the authors above mentioned; as it is in its essence the same with that of Cervantes, and also very frequently of Molière, though he was more systematic in his extravagance than Shakespeare. Shakespeare's comedy is of a pastoral and poetical cast. Folly is indigenous to the soil, and shoots out with native, happy, unchecked luxuriance. Absurdity has every encour-cups! how they rouse the night-owl in a catch, agement afforded it; and nonsense has room to flourish in. Nothing is stunted by the churlish, icy hand of indifference or severity. The poet runs riot in a conceit, and idolizes a quibble. His whole object is to turn the meanest or rudest objects to a pleasurable account. And yet the relish which he has of a pun, or of the quaint humour of a low character, does not interfere with the delight with which he describes a beautiful image, or the most refined love. The clown's forced jests do not spoil the sweetness of the character of Viola. The same house is big enough to hold Malvolio, the Countess Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. For instance, nothing can fall much lower than this last character in intellect or morals: yet how are his weaknesses nursed and dandled by Sir Toby into something high fantastical;' when on Sir Andrew's commendation of himself for dancing and fencing, Sir Toby answers,- Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? Are they like to take dust, like Mrs. Moll's picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a galliard, and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig! I would not so much as make water but in a cinque-pace. What dost thou mean? Is this a world to hide virtues in? I did think by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was framed under the star of a galliard!'-How Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and the Clown afterwards chirp over their able to draw three ouls out of one weaver!' What can be better than Sir Toby's unanswerable answer to Malvolio, Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?'In a word, the best turn is given to everything, instead of the worst. There is a constant infusion of the romantic and enthusiastic, in proportion as the characters are natural and sincere: whereas, in the more artificial style of comedy, everything gives way to ridicule and indifference; there being noth. ing left but affectation on one side, and incredulity on the other."-pp. 255-259. (February, 1822.) Sardanapalus, a Tragedy. The Two Foscari, a Tragedy. Cain, a Mystery. By LORD BYRON. 8vo. pp. 440. Murray. London: 1822.* passion and profligacy of Antony and Cleopatra -or intrudes on the enchanted solitude of Prospero and his daughter, with the tones of worldly gallantry, or the caricatures of affected simplicity. Otway, with the sweet and mellow diction of the former age, had none of its force, variety, or invention. Its decaying fires burst forth in some strong and irregular flashes, in the disorderly scenes of Lee; and sunk at last in the ashes, and scarcely glowing embers, of Rowe. Ir must be a more difficult thing to write a | scenity, or deforms with rant, the genuine good play-or even a good dramatic poemthan we had imagined. Not that we should, a priori, have imagined it to be very easy: But it is impossible not to be struck with the fact, that, in comparatively rude times, when the resources of the art had been less carefully considered, and Poetry certainly had not collected all her materials, success seems to have been more frequently, and far more easily obtained. From the middle of Elizabeth's reign till the end of James', the drama formed by far the most brilliant and beautiful part of our poetry,-and indeed of our literature in general. From that period to the Revolution, it lost a part of its splendour and originality; but still continued to occupy the most conspicuous and considerable place in our literary annals. For the last century, it has been quite otherwise. Our poetry has ceased almost entirely to be dramatic; and, though men of great name and great talent have occasionally adventured into this once fertile field, they have reaped no laurels, and left no trophies behind them. The genius of Dryden appears nowhere to so little advantage as in his tragedies; and the contrast is truly humiliating when, in a presumptuous attempt to heighten the colouring, or enrich the simplicity of Shakespeare, he bedaubs with ob * I have thought it best to put all my Dramatical criticisms in one series: and, therefore, I take the tragedies of Lord Byron in this place-and apart from his cer poetry. Since his time-till very lately-the school of our ancient Aramatists has been deserted: and we can scarcely say that any new one has been established. Instead of the irregular and comprehensive plot-the rich discursive dialogue-the ramblings of fancy-the magic creations of poetry-the rapid succession of incidents and characters-the soft, flexible, and ever-varying diction-and the flowing, continuous, and easy versification, which char. acterised those masters of the golden time, we have had tame, formal, elaborate, and stately compositions-meagre stories-few personages-characters decorous and consist ent, but without nature or spirit—a guarded, timid, classical diction-ingenious and me thodical disquisitions-turgid or sententious declamations-and a solemn and monotonous strain of versification. Nor can this be as cribed, even plausibly, to any decay of genius among us; for the most remarkable failures have fallen on the highest talents. We have already hinted at the miscarriages of Dryden |