lowed nature. In this kind Sophocles and Euripides have more excelled among the Greeks than Eschylus; and Terence more than Plautus among the Romans. . . . . The present French poets are generally accused, that, wheresoever they lay the scene, or in whatsoever age, the manners of their heroes are wholly French. Racine's Bajazet is bred at Constantinople, but his civilities are conveyed to him by some secret passage from Versailles into the Seraglio. But our Shakespear, having ascribed to Henry the Fourth the character of a king and of a father, gives him the perfect manners of each relation, when either he transacts with his son or with his subjects. Fletcher, on the other side, gives neither to Arbaces, nor to his king in The Maid's Tragedy,' the qualities which are suitable to a monarch.

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return once more to Shakespear: no man ever drew so many characters, or generally distinguished them better from one another, excepting only Jonson. I will instance but in one, to show the copiousness of his invention; it is that of Caliban, or the monster, in 'The Tempest.' He seems there to have created a person which was not in nature-a boldness which at first sight would appear intolerable; for he makes him a species of himself, begotten by an incubus on a witch; but this, as I have elsewhere proved, is not wholly beyond the bounds of credibility, at least the vulgar still believe it. We have the separated notions of a spirit and of a witch-(and spirits,

monster.

according to Plato, are vested with a subtle body; according to some of his followers, have different sexes); therefore, as from the distinct apprehensions of a horse and of a man, imagination has formed a Centaur, so from those of an incubus and a sorceress Shakespear has produced his Whether or no his generation can be defended I leave to philosophy; but of this I am certain, that the poet has most judiciously furnished him with a person, a language, and a character which will suit him, both by father's and mother's side: he has all the discontents and malice of a witch and of a devil, besides a convenient proportion of the deadly sins-gluttony, sloth, and lust are manifest; the dejectedness of a slave is likewise given him, and the ignorance of one bred up in a desert island. His person is monstrous, as he is the product of unnatural lust; and his language is as hobgoblin as his person: in all things he is distinguished from other mortals. The characters of Fletcher are poor and narrow in comparison of Shakespear's: I remember not one which is not borrowed from him, unless you will except that strange mixture of a man in the King and no King.' So that in this part Shakespear is generally worth our imitation; and to imitate Fletcher is but to copy after him who was a copier.

"Under this general head of manners, the passions are naturally included as belonging to the characters. I speak not of pity and of terror,

which are to be moved in the audience by the plot, but of anger, hatred, love, ambition, jealousy, revenge, &c., as they are shown in this or that person of the play. To describe these naturally, and to move them artfully, is one of the greatest commendations which can be given to a poet. To write pathetically, says Longinus, cannot proceed but from a lofty genius. A poet must be born with this quality; yet, unless he help himself by an acquired knowledge of the passions, what they are in their own nature, and by what springs they are to be moved, he will be subject either to raise them where they ought not to be raised, or not to raise them by the just degrees of nature, or to amplify them beyond the natural bounds, or not to observe the crisis and turns of them in their cooling and decay: all which errors proceed from want of judgment in the poet, and from being unskilled in the principles of moral philosophy.

"It is necessary therefore for a poet, who would concern an audience by describing of a passion, first to prepare it, and not to rush upon it all at once. .

"The next necessary rule is, to put nothing into the discourse which may hinder your moving of the passions. Too many accidents, as I have said, encumber the poet as much as the arms of Saul did David; for the variety of passions which they produce are ever crossing and justling each other out of the way. He who treats of joy

and grief together is in a fair way of causing neither of those effects. There is yet another obstacle to be removed, which is pointed wit, and sentences affected out of season; these are nothing of kin to the violence of passion. No man is at leisure to make sentences and similes when his soul is in agony.

"If Shakespear be allowed, as I think he must, to have made his characters distinct, it will easily be inferred that he understood the nature of the passions; because it has been proved already that confused passions make undistinguishable characters. Yet I cannot deny that he has his failings; but they are not so much in the passions themselves as in his manner of expression: he often obscures his meaning by his words, and sometimes makes it unintelligible. I will not say of so great a poet, that he distinguished not the blown puffy style from true sublimity, but I may venture to maintain that the fury of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgment, either in coining of new words and phrases, or racking words which were in use into the violence of a catachresis. It is not that I would explode the use of metaphors from passion, for Longinus thinks them necessary to raise it; but to use them at every word, -to say nothing without a metaphor, a simile, an image, or description,-is, I doubt, to smell a little too strongly of the buskin. I must be forced to

give an example of expressing passion figuratively; but that I may do it with respect to Shakespear, it shall not be taken from anything of his; it is an exclamation against fortune, quoted in his Hamlet, but written by some other poet:

'Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! all you gods,
In general synod, take away her power,

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven
As low as to the fiends.'

And immediately after, speaking of Hecuba, when Priam was killed before her eyes:

The mobbled queen,' &c.

"What a pudder is here kept in raising the expression of trifling thoughts! Would not a man have thought that the poet had been bound prentice to a wheelwright for his first rant? and had followed a ragman for the clout and blanket in the second? .... But Shakespear does not often thus; for the passions in his scene between Brutus and Cassius are extremely natural, the thoughts are such as arise from the matter, and the expression of them not viciously figurative. I cannot leave this subject before I do justice to that divine poet, by giving you one of his passionate descriptions: it is of Richard the Second, when he was deposed and led in triumph through the streets of London by Henry Bullingbrook. The painting of it is so lively and