arrives ;-and the good fall with the bad. One generation is swept away, and another shoots up." After a pause, during which they looked at one another, Serlo broke silence: "In exalting the poet, (said he,) you pay Providence no great compliment; and then in honour of your poet, (as others do in honour of Providence,) you attribute to him a plan of which he never once dreamed.” "Let me," said Aurelia, " in my turn, ask a question. I have again referred to Ophelia's part. I am satisfied with it; and under certain circumstances could venture to undertake it:-but, I pray you, should not the poet have put different songs into her mouth during her madness? Could he not have chosen fragments out of melancholy ballads? Why provide a noble virgin with double entendres, and scraps of indecent ditties?" "In this, my dear friend, (rejoined William,) I cannot abate a tittle. In these singularities, and in this seeming indecorum, there is profound meaning. We know at the outset with what idea the mind of the poor girl is occupied. She lived quietly to herself, but scarcely hid her wishes and her longings. The tones of wantonness secretly sounded in her soul; and how often, like an improvident nurse, may she have tried to lull her feelings to rest with songs that only served to rouse them the more? At last, when she had lost all command over herself, and her heart dwells upon her tongue, that tongue becomes her betrayer; and, in the innocence of insanity, she diverts herself, in the presence of the king and queen, with the echo of her beloved amatory airs; of the maid who was won; of the maid who steals to her lover's chamber." In illustration of this theory of Hamlet, we are presented with a plan for amending the play: of which we shall subjoin the outline, not fearing to be tedious where SHAKSPEARE is the text, and GOETHE the commentator. The fictitious occasion for the proposal is furnished by a design to bring Hamlet on the German stage. The alterations are proposed by Meister, and criticised by the manager; who, in opposition to his judgment, but in conformity to his interest, had been much in the habit of garbling dramatic productions. At the conference, Meister observes that, on the most mature deliberation, he had been led to distinguish two things in the composition of Hamlet: "First, the great internal relations of persons and events; 2dly, the powerful effects arising from the characters and actions of the chief figures. These are singly excellent; and the series in which they follow each other is incapable of improvement. They could scarcely by any management be destroyed, scarcely be disfigured. These every one desires to see, and with these no one dares to inter. fere; they sink deep into the soul, and have, I understand, been almost all introduced on our stage. Only, I conceive, a great error has been committed in regarding the second set of circumstances observable in Hamlet as too insignificant, in speaking of it only inci Pp 3 dentally, dentally, or entirely omitting it. I mean the external relations of the persons by which they are carried from place to place, or are connected in this or that way by certain casual occurrences. These threads are indeed small and loose, but they run through the piece, holding together what would otherwise fall asunder. "Among these external relations, I reckon the troubles in Nor way; the war with young Fortinbras; the embassy to the old uncle; the settlement of the dispute; the expedition of young Fortinbras to Poland, and his return at the end: also, the return of Horatio to Wittenberg, Hamlet's wish to go thither, the journey of Laertes to France, his return, the dispatching of Hamlet to England, his being captured by the pirates, and the death of the two courtiers in consequence of the treacherous letter; all these are matters which may furnish out a novel without end, but extremely injure the unity of a play in which the principal character has no plan." "I like your ideas, for once," said Serlo. "No interruption," replied William, you may not like them to the end. These faults are what props are to a building. They cannot be taken away without raising a solid wall. My proposal therefore is, not to touch the great situations, but to spare them as much as possible singly and conjointly: but to get rid all at once of these extraneous, unconnected, confused, and confusing motives, and to substitute a single motive in their place-" "And that?" said Serlo, quitting his composed attitude— "Is already in the piece," returned Williain: "only I make the proper use of it-I mean the troubles in Norway. Here is my project, for your opinion. On the death of the elder Hamlet, the newly conquered Norwegians grow troublesome. The governor dispatches his son Horatio, an old school-fellow of Hamlet, (superior to his companions in valour and knowlege of the world,) to Denmark, in order to press the equipment of the fleet, which goes on slowly under the new debauched king. Horatio knows the old king, having attended him in his last battles, and gained favour with him. The first ghost-scene will not lose by this. The new king then gives Horatio audience, and dispatches Laertes to Norway with intelligence of the speedy arrival of the fleet. Horatio has the charge of hastening its equipment:-but the mother will not consent that Hamlet should accompany him to sea, as he himself wishes." "God be praised!" cried Serlo; "we shall thus get rid of Wittenberg and its university, which has ever been a sad stumbling-block in my way. I greatly approve your design; for, except those two remote images, Norway and the fleet, the spectator has no occasion for conceiving any thing, he sees all the rest. Every thing passes in his view; whereas, before, his imagination was forced to run a rig round the world," "You easily perceive how I can connect the remainder," continued William. When Hamlet discovers to Horatio the crime of his stepfather, Horatio advises him to go with him to Norway, in order to secure the army and return in force. Hamlet appearing too formidable to the king and queen, they have no other way of getting rid of him than that of sending him on board the fleet, and setting Rosen His Rosencrantz and Guildenstern over him as spies ;-and Laertes returning at this juncture, this young man, enraged so as to be capable of assassination, is sent after him. The fleet being detained by contrary winds, Hamlet comes on shore, and perhaps some adequate motive for his ramble across the church-yard may be devised. meeting with Laertes in Ophelia's grave is a great and indispensable moment. On this the king may think that it is better to get rid of Hamlet on the spot. The festival of his departure is now celebrated; and a solemn reconciliation with Laertes takes place. Sports are held, and Hamlet and Laertes fight. I cannot close the piece without four corpses. Not one must be left alive. A new election by the people now taking place, Hamlet, in dying, gives his voice for Horatie." We leave the admirers of our great dramatist to examine this hypothesis, and to criticise the proposed simplification. If the madness of Hamlet be totally assumed, it is evident not only that it is going too far to represent him as having no plan, but that the supposition of our author is untenable. For the rest, we ought to observe that the style of the romance before us is classical, and that the colouring is chaste. The writer discovers none of that attachment to the extravagant and the monstrous, which has so extensively infected the modern literature of his country. ART. XVIII. Memorias da Acad. R. das Sciencias de Lisboa, &c. i. e. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY and NATURAL HISTORY, continued. Observations on Natural History and Chemistry. By Professor VANDELLI. THIS paper contains the account of two curious observations relative to the natural history of the Brazils, and of three chemical operations which are the result of the author's experiments. The first observation respects the fossil bones of a cetaceous animal found at S. João del Rey in the Brazils, at the depth of 27 feet in the ground, in an argillaceous scil Both the bones and the argilla were white when first dug up, but, when exposed to the air, became perfectly blue. From the experiments which the author made on them, it seems that they are a natural Prussiate, like those of which Wallerius, Bergman, and Kirwan, had before taken notice in other in stances. The second observation relates to a wonderful mass of native copper, found in a valley two leagues from Cachoeira, and fourteen from Bahia. Its size is three Parisian feet and two inches in length, two feet and a half in width, ten inches PP 4 in in thickness, and its weight is two thousand six hundred andsixty-six Portuguese pounds, of sixteen ounces each. The details of its description are very interesting; and indeed all the masses of native copper formerly known are trifles in comparison of this. That which exists in the collection of Freyberg, and which, according to M. Monnet, was reckoned the largest as well as the most beautiful specimen, weighs only ten pounds *. The chemical operations related in this memoir will not satisfy the chemical reader; and the author having barely reported them, without furnishing the public with the details which determined his opinion, leaves in full force all the doubts which they excite. The first is an alledged method of increasing the strength of gunpowder, by dissolving purified nitre in water impregnated with hydrogene, and sprinkling the mixture of brimstone and charcoal with this solution proceeding afterward to make gunpowder in the common way. Is it easy to conceive that water might be impregnated with a greater quantity of hydrogene, than that which already forms a constituent part of it? Does the author prove that this superabundant hydrogene is combined with the dissolved nitre, and afterward remains united to the other materials with which it is mixed? We are disposed to believe that, if any superiority exists in the gunpowder thus manipulated, it is probably owing to the more equal mixture of the nitre so dissolved, with the other ingredients. In the following observation, the Professor tells us that, by making the vapours of quicksilver pass through a red-hot iron tube full of nails, he obtained, attached to the nails, little globules of quicksilver, of a silver colour, and of the consistency of tin. He calls this a method of fixing quicksilver. Does he not know that iron and mercury amalgamate in some instances? The third operation discussed in this paper, the author calls a method of changing iron into perfect steel. We shall give it in his own words, and leave it to the judgment of our readers. In the decomposition of water, the iron plates or nails contained in the red-hot iron tube, in which the decomposition is made, were changed into perfect steel: but afterward this steel was changed into mineral æthiops.' Memoirs, 1st and 2d, on the Magnetic Force. By Mr. DAL LABELLA. We have here two very laborious and apparently very exact series of experiments, designed to ascertain the laws of magnetic attraction; which the author states to be in the duplicate inversed ratio of the distances, when these are smaller than Nouveau Systeme de Mineralogie, p. 314. two two inches, but that many anomalies are observed in greater distances. These two memoirs, though containing much valuable information, being rendered less important by the celebrated Memoirs of M. Coulomb on the same subject, we shall decline giving a copious abstract of them: but some mention of the loadstone used in the experiments may not, perhaps, be unacceptable to many of our readers. This stone was a present from the Emperor of China to the King of Portugal, John V. Its volume is very nearly 263 cubic inches, its weight 38 pounds 7 ounces and a half, its specific gravity 4055; and it sustained, on the 21st February 1781, the weight of 202 pounds 7 ounces. Meteorological Observations made at Rio Janeiro in the Years 1781, 1782, 1783. By Mr. SANCHES DORTA. Few observations on this subject have afforded us so much satisfaction as the present, by extensiveness of views, and apparent accuracy of observation. The author, who is an astronomer in the Portuguese service, shews himself deeply skilled in meteorology; and he never loses sight of the natural rela tion which exists between the state of the atmosphere and the astronomical circumstances which may influence it. The result of the meteorological diary is given in tables, which are compared with other tables of the declination of the magnetic needle, and of the influence of the lunar points. The country, also, in which the observations were made, renders them peculiarly interesting. It is impossible to give an abstract of papers of this kind: but we will present our readers with the general results of heat and rain, in which these warm regions more widely differ from those which are extra-tropical. In 1782. Greatest degree of heat 89 degrees, Fahrenheit. 8th February. Lowest Difference 56/1/2 324 4th July. |