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It was this eternal gabble about rules of art, this blindness to the truth that the living power of Shakspere had its own organization, that set the metre-mongers of that day upon the task of improving Shakspere. Dennis was himself one of the great improvers. Poetical justice was one of the rules for which they clamoured. Duncan and Banquo ought not to perish in Macbeth, nor Desdemona in Othello, nor Cordelia and her father in Lear, nor Brutus in Julius Cæsar, nor young Hamlet in Hamlet. So Dennis argues :

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"The good and the bad perishing promiscuously in the best of Shakespear's tragedies, there can be either none or very weak instruction in them." In this spirit Dennis himself sets to work to remodel Coriolanus: "Not only Aufidius, but the Roman tribunes Sicinius and Brutus, appear to me to cry aloud for poetic vengeance; for they are guilty of two faults, neither of which ought to go unpunished." Dennis is not only a mender of Shakspere's catastrophes, but he applies himself to make Shakspere's verses all smooth and proper, according to the rules of art. One example will be sufficient. He was no common man who attempted to reduce the following lines to classical regularity:

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"Boy! False hound!
If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there,
That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I

Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli.

Alone I did it -Boy!"

John Dennis has accomplished the feat: — "This boy, that, like an eagle in a dovecote, Flutter'd a thousand Volsces in Corioli,

And did it without second or acquittance,

Thus sends their mighty chief to mourn in hell." The alteration of "The Tempest" by Davenant and Dryden was, as we have mentioned, an attempt to meet the taste of the town by music and spectacle. Shadwell went farther, and turned it into a regular opera; and an opera it remained even in Garrick's time, who tried his hand upon the same experiment. Dennis was a reformer both in comedy and tragedy. He metamorphosed The Merry Wives of Windsor into "The Comical Gallant," and prefixed an essay to it on the degeneracy of the taste for poetry. Davenant changed Measure for Measure into "The Law against Lovers." It is difficult to understand how a clever man and something of a poet should have set about his work after this fashion. This is Shakspere's Isabella:

"Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder.
Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle."

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As great Jove does, Jove ne'er would quiet be;

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For every choleric petty officer,

Would use his magazine in heaven for thunder:
We nothing should but thunder hear.

Sweet Heaven!

Thou rather with thy stiff and sulph'rous bolt
Dost split the knotty and obdurate oak,
Than the soft myrtle."

"The Law against Lovers" was in principle one of the worst of these alterations; for it was a hash of two plays-of Measure for Measure, and of Much Ado about Nothing. This was indeed to destroy the organic life of the author. But it is one of the manifestations of the vitality of Shakspere that, going about their alterations in the regular way, according to the rules of art, the most stupid and prosaic of his improvers have been unable to deprive the natural man of his vigour, even by their most violent depletions. His robustness was too great even for the poetical doctors to destroy it. Lord Lansdowne actually stripped the flesh off Shylock, but the anatomy walked about vigorously for sixty years, till Macklin put the rauscle's on again. Colley Cibber turned King John into "Papal Tyranny," and the stage King John was made to denounce the Pope and Guy Faux for a century, till Mr. Macready gave us back again the weak and crafty king in his original truth of character. Nahum Tate deposed the Richard II. of Shakspere wholly and irredeemably, turning him into "The Sicilian Usurper." How Cibber manufactured Richard III. is known to all

men.

Durfey melted down Cymbeline with no

slight portion of alloy. Tate remodelled Lear,— and such a Lear! Davenant mangled Macbeth; but we can hardly quarrel with him for it, for he gave us the music of Locke in company with his own verses. It has been said, as a proof how little Shakspere was once read, that Davenant's alteration is quoted in "The Tatler" instead of the original. This is the reasoning of Steevens; but he has not the candour to tell us, that in "The Tatler," No. 111, there is a quotation from Hamlet, with the following remarks: "This admirable author, as well as the best and greatest men of all ages and of all nations, seems to have had his mind thoroughly seasoned with religion, as is evident by many passages in his plays, that would not be suffered by a modern audience." Steevens infers, that Steele, or Addison, was not a reader of Shakspere, because Macbeth is quoted from an acted edition; and that, therefore, Shakspere was not read generally. If a hurried writer in a daily paper (as "The Tatler" was) were to quote from some acted editions at the present day he might fall into the same error; and yet he might be an ardent student of Shakspere, in a nation of enthusiastic admirers. The early Essayists offer abundant testimonies, indeed, of their general admiration of the poet. In No. 68 of "The Tatler," he is "the great master who ever commands our tears." In No. 160 of "The Spectator" Shakspere is put amongst the first class of great geniuses, in com

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pany with Homer; and this paper contains a remarkable instance of a juster taste than one might expect from the author of "Cato: "-"We are to consider that the rule of observing what the French call the bienséance in an allusion has been found out of later years, and in the colder regions of the world; where we could make some amends for our want of force and spirit, by a scrupulous nicety and exactness in our compositions.' In "The Spectator,” 419, amongst the papers on "The Pleasures of the Imagination," Shakspere's delineations of supernatural beings are thus mentioned: "Among the English, Shakspeare has incomparably excelled all others. That noble extravagance of fancy, which he had in so great perfection, thoroughly qualified him to touch this weak superstitious part of his reader's imagination; and made him capable of succeeding where he had nothing to support him besides the strength of his own genius. There is something so wild, and yet so solemn, in the speeches of his ghosts, fairies, witches, and the like imaginary persons, that we cannot forbear thinking them natural, though we have no rule by which to judge of them; and must confess, if there are such beings in the

* Mr. De Quincey is certainly mistaken when he says, that "Addison has never in one instance quoted or made any reference to Shakspear." No. 160 bears the signature of C., and immediately follows "The Vision of Mirza," bearing the same signature.

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