our author has founded entirely on passion: having therefore no superior object to thwart his attention from Nature, it may be easily supposed that a writer who could so eminently convey to our ideas the uncontaminated feelings of the heart, would here display the full meridian of his powers. When we consider too that the passion of love, the grand mover of the human soul, is for ever confounded with approximate impressions, a drama, calculated to evince its genuine principles, must be of infinite service to mankind. It is one of those few occasions on which tragedy may be employed with propriety to aid domestic virtue, and to which end Shakspeare has successfully employed it in the drama before us. But this is not the only moral in the play; the quarrels between the Montagues and the Capulets, which he has made the source of his catastrophe, form an interesting warning against the folly and injustice of hereditary prejudice and injury; at the same time that they instruct us how unjustly liable the public tranquillity is to be molested by private broils, in countries where a well regulated police does not interpose between the public and individuals. Nothing of the kind can exceed the chaste refinement of these lovers' passion, sustained throughout by a sublimity of thought in the poet, which adds a highly becoming brilliancy and dignity to virtue. The garden scene stands unrivalled as a proof of this, in which a passion, at once drawn so purely, and coloured so highly from nature, discovers itself in both the lovers, that though the mind is absorbed in the tenderest interest, we cannot determine to which side it preponderates. But though the poet has been thus successful in the main object of his drama, there are inferior points in which we have to lament the want of his usual attention. There certainly can be no necessity for the origin of the passion being presented in the play; but, on the contrary, its source is thereby rendered too abrupt, which makes it not retain all that interest, upon reflection, which a matured faith would acquire: nor, for the same reason, was there any necessity, by the mention of Rosaline, to apprize us that Juliet is not Romeo's first love, or that she had been affianced to Tybalt. Though the distraction of the Capulets on Juliet's supposed death is finely marked, yet it certainly is an omission that none of them should ask, or trouble themselves about the cause of a dissolution in every respect so sudden and extraordinary. It would have been natural that some, if not all of them, should have suspected her of suicide; and it is not probable that any paroxysm of grief should render them all, especially Paris, her intended husband, unmindful of some enquiry. A neglect somewhat similar to this occurs when Romeo is informed of her decease. The author has here left too much to be filled up by the actor, if with consistency much can be done. Immediately that Balthazar tells him she is dead, he says, Is it even so?-then I defy you stars !-- Thou know'st my lodging; get me ink and paper; And hire post-horses;-I will hence to-night." The two last of these three lines prove that the first is not exclamation enough. As they stand, he receives the information much too calmly; nor could he, on so momentary an impulse, have determined on the poison; of which determination, however, the last two lines are evidently the result. Had his grief been such as to deprive him of utterance, then he could not have given these immediate directions to his servants. Upon the whole, therefore, either a total stupefaction, or a longer phrenzy, succeeding such a shock, would have been more naturally characteristic. Next to the hero and heroine, Mercutio is the best drawn character in the play; yet, though his courage, gaiety, and wit, are all of a superior cast, we perfectly agree with Dr. Johnson in scouting the literal adoption of the tradition handed down by Dryden, that Shakspeare was known to say, that be was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him!' There are no characters on the stage more accurately drawn or more highly coloured than those of the Nurse and the Friar. Modern authors too frequently bestow great pains on some prominent character, while the rest are totally neglected: on the contrary, one of Shakspeare's greatest excellencies is, that every personage he introduces, from the monarch to his meanest attendant, has a consequence and consistency assigned him. After all, the finest idea in this play is not Shakspeare's. Juliet's waking before Romeo dies, and the latter, therefore, in excess of joy, forgetting he has taken the poison, is one of the grandest conceptions the whole range of the drama can produce. POETRY. CHARACTER OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM PITT, PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN. OF orators the first, that fame records Blest Minister! his country born to save, To square the curve! a probleın tried in vain, For PITT, they swear, ne'er was the Muse's friend. Exalted Genius must be lov'd by PITT. Burke, Jervis, Duncan, Trollope, Nelson, Hood, Who dignifies the heroes of his time; The oldest pilots mourn their vessels lost, [40] While the controul of Eolus disdain'd, PITT triumphs at the helm, and mocks the storm: MINIATURE PORTRAIT OF THE RIGHT HON. HENRY DUNDAS, ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE, &C. A Front that shews a temper clear from blame, A soul, where Virtue reigns; a godlike heart, The British Flag. BIOGRAPHICAL, LITERARY, AND SCIENTIFIC MAGAZINE, FOR MARCH 1799. CONDUCTED BY ROBERT BISSET, L L. D. WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF OTHER LITERARY GENTLEMEN, THIS NUMBER IS EMBELLISHED WITH A PORTRAIT OF STANISLAUS AUGUSTUS, LATE KING OF POLAND. LONDON: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY GEORGE CAWTHORN, BRITISH LIBRARY, NO, 132, STRAND; OLD ALSO BY MESSRS, RICHARDSON, ROYAL-EXCHANGE; W. WEST, PATERNOSTERROW; J. HATCHARD AND J. WRIGHT, PICCADILLY; P. HILL, EDINBURGH; AND ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. |