glorious John is here mistaken. Mercutio is killed precisely in' the part of the drama where his death is requisite. Not an incident, scarcely a sentence, in this most skilfully-managed play of Romeo and Juliet, can be omitted or misplaced. But I do think that Shakespeare was unwilling to hazard the reputation of Falstaff by producing him again in connection with his old companion, Hal, on the stage. The dancer in the epilogue of the Second Part of Henry IV. promises the audience, that "if you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France; where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions." The audience was not cloyed with fat meat, Sir John was not killed with their hard opinions; he was popular from the first hour of his appearance: but Shakespeare never kept his word. It was the dramatist, not the public, who killed his hero in the opening scenes of Henry V.; for he knew not how to interlace him with the story of Agincourt. There Henry was to be lord of all; and it was matter of necessity that his old master should disappear from the scene. He * I consider this epilogue to be in blank-verse :— "First my fear, then my courtesy, then my speech," &c. but some slight alterations should be made; the transposition of a couple of words will make the passage here quoted metrical. "One word more I beseech you. If you be not Too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author The story will continue with Sir John in't, And make you merry with fair Kate of France. Where (For anything I know) Falstaff shall die of A sweat, unless already he be killed with Your hard opinions; Oldcastle died a martyr, My tongue is weary, when my legs are too, I'll bid you good-night; and kneel down before you, But indeed to pray for the queen.”—W. M. parted therefore even just between twelve and one, e'en at turning of the tide, and we never shall see him again until the waters of some Avon, here or elsewhere-it is a good Celtic name for rivers in general—shall once more bathe the limbs of the like of him who was laid for his last earthly sleep under a grave-stone bearing a disregarded inscription, on the north side of the chancel in the great church at Stratford.* * Dr. Ulrici, the German critic, in his work on Shakespeare's Dramatic Art," commences his opinion of Falstaff by declaring that Shakespeare has evidently handled his character with a decided partiality, and has worked it out with more detail and care than he has bestowed upon any other of his dramatic creation. After repeating the old praise of Falstaff's wit and humor, with the drawback of "as great if not greater store of sensuality and love of enjoyment," Ulrici says that the character evidently borders on caricature without, however, over-stepping the boundary line of reality, and that "his individuality becomes, in short, the immediate expression of the comic view of life."-M. NO. II.-JAQUES. As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around him—'Ye,' said he, are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you burthened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity, for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated. Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.' "With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life from a consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with which he bewailed them."-RASSELAS, Chap. II. THIS remark of Dr. Johnson on the consolation derived by his hero from the eloquence with which he gave vent to his complaints is perfectly just, but just only in such cases as those of Rasselas. The misery that can be expressed in flowing periods can not be of more importance than that experienced by the Abyssinian prince enclosed in the Happy Valley. His greatest calamity was no more than that he could not leave a place in which all the luxuries of life were at his command. but, as old Chremes says in the Heautontimorumenos, "Miserum? quem minus credere 'st? Quid reliqui 'st, quin habeat, quæ quidem in homine dicuntur bona? Atque hæ perinde sunt ut illius animus qui ea possidet; On which, as "Plain truth, dear Bentley,† needs no arts of speech," I can not do better than transcribe the commentary of Hickie, or some other grave expositor from whose pages he has transferred it to his own: ""Tis certain that the real enjoyment arising from external advantages depends wholly upon the situation of the mind of him who possesses them; for if he chance to labor under any secret anguish, this destroys all relish; or, if he know not how to use them for valuable purposes, they are so far from being of any service to him, that they often turn to real misfortunes." It is of no consequence that this profound reflection is nothing to the purpose in the place where it appears, because Chremes is not talking of any secret anguish, but of the use or abuse made of advantages according to the disposition of the individual to whom they have been accorded; and the anguish of Clinia was by no means secret. He feared the perpetual displeasure of his father, and knew not whether absence might not have diminished or alienated the affections of the lady on whose account he had abandoned home and country; but the general proposition of the sentence can not be denied. A "fatal remembrance"-to borrow a phrase from one of the most beautiful of Moore's melodies-may render a life, apparently abounding in pros * It may be thus attempted in something like the metre of the original, which the learned know by the sounding name of Tetrameter Iambic Acatalectic: "Does Clinia talk of misery? Believe his idle tale who can? What hinders it that he should have whate'er is counted good for manHis father's home, his native land, with wealth, and friends, and kith and kin? But all these blessings will be prized according to the mind within: Well used, the owner finds them good; if badly used, he deems them ill. Cl. Nay, but his sire was always stern, and even now I fear him still," &c. W. M. † This paper first appeared in Bentley's Miscellany of June.-M. perity, wretched and unhappy, as the vitiation of a single humor of the eye casts a sickly and unnatural hue over the gladsome meadow, or turns to a lurid light the brilliancy of the sunniest skies. To Rasselas and Jaques have no secret anguish to torment them, no real cares to disturb the even current of their tempers. get rid of the prince first :— - His sorrow is no more than that of the starling in the Sentimental Journey. He can not get out. He is discontented, because he has not the patience of Wordsworth's nuns, who fret not in their narrow cells; or of Wordsworth's muse, which murmurs not at being cribbed and confined to a sonnet. He wants the philosophy of that most admirable of all jail-ditties-and will not reflect that "Every island is a prison, Close surrounded by the sea; And as his calamity is, after all, very tolerable as many a sore heart or a wearied mind, buffeting about amid the billows and breakers of the external world, would feel but too happy to exchange conditions with him in his safe haven of rest—it is no wonder that the weaving of the sonorous sentences of easily-soothed sorrow should be the extent of the mental afflictions of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. Who or what Jaques was before he makes his appearance in the forest, Shakespeare does not inform us any farther than that he had been a roué of considerable note, as the Duke tells him when he proposes to "Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine. Duke. Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do. |