sighted to the merits of others; it is no wonder that the envy, which his transcendent genius would naturally have provoked, gave place to the love which his gentle and generous spirit inspired. With a form and countenance moulded by the very genius of manly beauty; with the smiles of intellectual grace gushing through his features and manners; with the fascinations of wit and poetry dancing in his eyes and dropping from his tongue; in a word, himself t "A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, it is far from strange that woman, weaponless against his manifold attractions of mind and person, "To hear him speak, and see him smile, She felt in paradise the while, And eye, and ear, and every thought Were with the sweet perfections caught." In his twenty-eighth year, while yet almost a stranger in London, a rival contemporary assures us, that “divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, which approves his art." The integrity, indeed, of his life, and the blandness and benignity of his deportment, are spoken of by his dramatic competitors as almost proverbial. Jonson, his constant rival for the dramatic palm, says of him, with noble simplicity, after his death, "I loved the man, and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions." Besides, the patronage of the generous, the high-souled, chivalrous Earl of Southampton, and the deep, lasting friendship that accompanied it, are of themselves proof, that Shakspeare had as much to invite affection as to engage respect; and that his head and heart "strove which should express him goodliest." And the playful tenderness of the titles, "My gentle Shakspeare," and the "Sweet swan of Avon," by which he was generally known, show how deeply the sweetness of his disposition had sunk into the hearts of those who best knew him, and what a rich gushing tide of human-heartedness nature had poured along the life-channels of his being. Assuredly, if there be any one thing which, more than all others, ought to endear to us the gentle, the judicious, and the thousand-souled Shakspeare, as Jonson, Hooker, and Coleridge, have successively and most appropriately called him, it is the fact, that as he was the wisest and wittiest, so he was also one of the noblest and gentlest of men. THEATRICAL LABOURS. That Or Shakspeare's labours during his connection with the stage, we have no record except his works. he was keenly and habitually industrious, is evident from the fruits, and was, indeed, an almost inevitable result of his sleepless activity of mind. The frequent occurrence of his name on the programmes of theatrical representations shows the extent of his histrionic labors; while his cares and duties as assistant manager and proprietor could have been neither few nor small. Uniting, indeed, the offices of actor, manager, and writer, his labors must necessarily have been both constant and severe; and this twenty years, so dark and blank to us, was doubtless alive with the most intense and varied exertion. His quick, sure discernment, his ready infallible tact, his boundless fertility of expedients, and his irresistible grace of manners would naturally make him the soul of the establishment; and the turbulent, chaotic elements, of which it was composed, could hardly choose but wait for the call of his creative voice to bring them into harmony and order. It is well known, moreover, that at the time of his entering on the boards, the profession of actor was in exceedingly ill repute. To separate the vocation of player from the practice of rowdyism or scoundrelism, into which it is so apt to run, and to raise it up to respectability, or even decency, would seem a hard enough task at any time; at that time it could hardly have failed to require the utmost efforts even of his commanding genius; and the moderate respectability, to which it rose during his connection with the stage, was doubtless owing in a great measure to the efficiency of his exertions, the influence of his example, and the power of his name. Besides, the accuracy and exten siveness of information displayed in his works, prove him to have been, for that age, a profound and voluminous reader of books. Portions of classical and of continental literature were accessible to him in translations, if not in the originals. Chaucer, too, "the day-star," and Spenser, "the sunrise," of English poetry, the former two centuries, the latter a few years before, had poured forth their rich treasures of melodious wisdom 1 into the broad, deep bosom of the national mind. From all these and from the growing richness and abundance of contemporary literature, Shakspeare's all-gifted and all-grasping mind of course greedily devoured and speedily digested whatever could please his taste, or enrich his intellect, or assist his art. It will very much aid us in appreciating both the art and the industry of Shakspeare, to contemplate, for a few moments, his precise relation to the English drama. Public theatres were first licenced in England by Elizabeth, "as well for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our own solace and pleasure," in 1574, the tenth year of Shakspeare's age. Previously, however, a taste for theatrical amusements had been excited by companies of strolling players, who, under the title of rogues and vagabonds, were silenced by act of government in 1572. The enthusiasm for play-going being intense, the legal establishment of public theatres of course afforded a crisis for the bursting forth of dramatic genius, and, as it unfortunately proved, for its ruin. A wild tornado of “fiery emanations," restless and reckless, rushed into the metropolis, to supply the already famishing and clamorous market. This fierce insurrection of artless and unprincipled genius, as if embarked in a desperate adventure for chaos and hell; goaded on by need, and greed, and vainglory; writing for the day without expecting, or perhaps even wishing to survive it; poured forth their clap-traps for the groundlings, and soon deluged the stage with lawless and shapeless effusions, "lewd enough to corrupt a saint, and profane enough to shame the devil." Jonson, severe, indeed, and somewhat morose as a critic, but a nobly-gifted and pure-minded man, speaking of these writers, says, that "not only their manners, but their natures were inverted;" that "nothing remained with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name;" and that "especially in dramatic, or, as they termed it, stage poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence both to God and man," were practised. Again he characterizes their productions as "miscelline interludes, wherein nothing was uttered but the filth of the time; and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brothelry able to corrupt the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy to turn the blood of a Christian to water." This fierce, scorching eloquence of noble old Ben, is doubtless somewhat extravagant; but the truth is, his feelings had been stretched on the rack by their triumphant licentiousness; and if it seem strange that virtue should have charged his heavy artillery with such loads of fiery indignation, we should recollect that she had been outraged and exasperated by no less a crime than the desecration of art and the prostitution of genius. That he waxed furious at seeing genius thus developed only to be destroyed, and, like funeral torches, at once consuming itself and lighting others to death, is creditable alike to his mind and his morals. That this loathsome accumulation of rubbish and offal was altogether without redeeming elements, is not to be supposed. The monstrous brood of a race of Titans, these productions betrayed at least a giant strength, far preferable indeed of itself to the creeping effeminacy, the frozen rhetoric, and the apish etiquette of a |