languages, teaches no more; learning, in its best sense, is only nature at the rebound; it is only the discovery of what is; and he who looks upon nature with a penetrating eye derives learning from the source. Rules of poetry have been deduced from examples, and not examples from rules: as a poet, therefore, Shakspeare did not need books; and in no instance in which he needed them as a philosopher or historian does he appear ignorant of what they teach. "His language, like his conceptions, is strongly marked with the characteristic of nature; it is bold, figurative, and significant; his terms, rather than his sentences, are metaphorical; he calls an endless multitude a sea, by a happy allusion to the perpetual succession of wave to wave; and he immediately expresses opposition by taking up arms, which, being fit in itself, he was not solicitous to accommodate to his first image. This is the language in which a figurative and rapid conception will always be expressed this is the language both of the prophet and the poet, of native eloquence and divine inspiration. "It has been objected to Shakspeare that he wrote without any moral purpose; but I boldly reply that he has effected a thousand. He has not, indeed, always contrived a series of events from the whole of which some moral precept may be inferred; but he has conveyed some rule of conduct, some principle of knowledge, not only in almost every speech of his dialogue, but in every incident, character, and event." We would attempt to deprive no man of his fame; but the passage which we have just transcribed appears to us so contrary to the habits of thought which Garrick must have acquired from his theatrical practice, so opposed to the recorded opinions to which he was in the habit of looking up almost with slavish reverence, that we cannot receive the records of the Stratford Jubilee as evidence that he wrote it. What was the manufacturer of Shakspere's plays into farces, and operas, and tragedies with moral endings, to be the first man in England to discover that Shakspere was a creator; that he lived in a world of his own creation; that the | practice of art went before the rules; that the question of his learning was to be settled contrary to the way in which the pedants of criticism had settled it, by the proof that his knowledge was all-abundant; that his judgment was sufficient to rein his imagination; that he worked upon system, and was therefore an artist in the highest sense of the word; that what has been called the confusion of his metaphors was the language both of the prophet and the poet; that his moral purpose was to be collected incidentally, not only through informal speeches, but in every character and event? The beginning and the end of Garrick's oration is commonplace. Here is a flood of light shed upon the English opinion of Shakspere. Was there any man in England, at that time, whose philosophy was large enough, whose knowledge was comprehensive enough, to allow him to think thus? Was there any man in England who dared so to express himself, in the face of authorities who had so recently propounded a totally different system? There was but one man that we can dream of, and he was Edmund Burke. We cannot think that Garrick wrote these sentences. We can hardly think that he knew the full force of what he was uttering. It would be a dreary task to attempt to trace all that was published about Shakspere from the date of Johnson's first edition to the close of the eighteenth century. A few out of the heap of these forgotten emanations of the critical mind, the multitude of which proves the strong direction of the national admiration, may not be unprofitably noticed. Johnson, when he has dismissed Shakspere from the shackles of the unities, says, "I am almost frighted at my own temerity." He dreaded the advocates of a contrary opinion, "as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy when he saw Neptune shaking the wall." A Neptune arrived from Scotland in the shape of 'Cursory Remarks on Tragedy.' This work, though it dropped into oblivion, was the performance of W. RICHARDSON, "Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow." A small specimen will suffice:-" with an impartiality which becomes every man that dares to think for himself, let us allow him (Shakspere) great | and inferring all the rest." The 'Remarks merit as a comic writer, greater still as a on some of the Characters of Shakespeare,' poet, but little, very little, as a tragedian. by Thomas Whately, published in 1785, is And is, then, poor Shakespeare something different from the performance of to be excluded from the number of great the Scotch professor. What could induce tragedians? He is; but let him be banished, his eminent relation, who republished it in like Homer from the republic of Plato, with 1839, to write thus?" Mr. Whately, it marks of distinction and veneration; and should be observed, is merely pointing out may his forehead, like the Grecian bard's, be that such and such speches do indicate chabound with an honourable wreath of ever- racter; not that they were, in each case, blooming flowers." There can be no doubt written with that design. If, then, they of the paternity of this production. The really are characteristic, the criticism is fully same Professor of Humanity in the Uni- borne out, whatever may have been the versity of Glasgow produced, in the same design of Shakespeare. I doubt whether year, 'A Philosophical Analysis and Illus- Shakespeare ever had any thought at all of tration of some of Shakespeare's Characters;' making his personages speak characterand this book has gone, with the appendage istically. In most instances, I conceiveof new characters, through many editions; probably in all—he drew characters correctly, and is allied, moreover, to Essays on this and becouse he could not avoid it, and would that Shaksperean thing, and a "perilous never have attained, in that department, shot" indeed in 'An Essay on the Faults of such excellence as he has, if he had made Shakespeare.' We shall give no more than any studied efforts for it. And the same, a sentence :-"I am inclined to believe, and probably, may be said of Homer, and of those shall now endeavour to illustrate that the other writers who have excelled the most in greatest blemishes in Shakespeare have pro- delineating characters." Was the " Paul ceeded from his want of consummate taste. preaching at Athens,' with the Apostle chaHaving no perfect discernment, proceeding racterised in his majesty, the sceptic in his from rational investigation, of the true cause doubt, and the enthusiast in his veneration, of beauty in poetical composition, he had (characters marked as deeply as the Richard never established in his mind any system of and Macbeth upon which the relation of the regular process, or any standard of dramatic Archbishop of Dublin writes,)—was this proexcellence." Yet this solemn person, who duced by Raffaelle because he could not thinks that Shakspere had never established avoid it? We would willingly give an in his mind any system of regular process, extract or two from this clever book, but had no perfect discernment of the true cause its republication renders such unnecessary. of beauty, has the temerity to write a book There is one more work, and one only, to of four hundred pages on his dramatic which we may point as being superior to the characters. Something of a very different ordinary criticism of that age-" the butterdescription was produced three years after: woman's rank to market." It is Mr. Whiter's 'An Essay on the Dramatic Character of 'Specimen of a Commentary on Shakspeare,' Sir John Falstaff.' The author was MAURICE published in 1794. MORGANN, once Under Secretary of State. The book is far above the age. The author is a thinker, and one who has been taught to think by Shakspere. Take an example: "In the groups of other poets, the parts which are not seen do not, in fact, exist. . . . Those characters in Shakespeare, which are seen only in part, are yet capable of being unfolded and understood in the whole; every part being, in fact, relative, Amidst the crowd of writers, from the middle to the end of the eighteenth century, who were adding to the mass of comment upon Shakspere, whether in the shape of essay, letter, poem, philosophical analysis, illustration, there was one who, not especially devoting himself to Shaksperean criticism, had a considerable influence in the gradual formation of a sound national taste. The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,' by THOMAS PERCY, originally published in 1765, | kept possession of the English stage; which showed to the world that there was something in the early writers beyond the use to which they had been applied by Shakspere's commentators. In these fragments it would be seen that England, from the earliest times, had possessed an inheritance of real poetry; and that he who had breathed a new life into the forms of the past, and had known how to call up the heroes of chivalry,-to "Enlive their pale trunks, that the present age Joys in their joy, and trembles at their rage," was not without models of earnest passion and noble simplicity in the ancient ballads. The publication of these 'Reliques' led the way, though slowly, to the study of our elder poets; and every advance in this direction was a step towards the more extended knowledge, and the better understanding, of Shakspere himself. Percy, in one part of his first volume, collected "such ballads as are quoted by Shakespeare, or contribute in any degree to illustrate his writings." He did this with his usual good taste; and every one knows with what skill he connected in the tale of 'The Friar of Orders Grey' those "innumerable little fragments of ancient ballads" which we find dispersed through the plays of Shakspere. In his introduction to this division of his work he gives some very sensible observations upon the origin of the English stage. In the following remarks on the Histories of our poet he takes a different, and we think a juster, view of their origin and purpose than Malone and the other commentators. Although Percy puts his own opinions cautiously, if not timidly, it is clear that he had higher notions of Shakspere as an artist than those who were arrogating to themselves the merit of having made him "popular." He who holds that it is "the first canon of sound criticism to examine any work by whatever rule the author prescribed for his own observance" is not far from a right appreciation of Shakspere :-"But, while Shakespeare was the favourite dramatic poet, his Histories had such superior merit, that he might well claim to be the chief, if not the only, historic dramatist that gives a strong support to the tradition mentioned by Gildon, that, in a conversation with Ben Jonson, our bard vindicated his historical plays, by urging that, as he had found the nation in general very ignorant of history, he wrote them in order to instruct the people in this particular.' This is assigning not only a good motive, but a very probable reason, for his preference of this species of composition, since we cannot doubt but his illiterate countrymen would not only want such instruction when he first began to write, notwithstanding the obscure dramatic chroniclers who preceded him, but also that they would highly profit by his admirable Lectures on English History so long as he continued to deliver them to his audience. And, as it implies no claim to his being the first who introduced our chronicles on the stage, I see not why the tradition should be rejected. "Upon the whole, we have had abundant proof that both Shakespeare and his contemporaries considered his Histories, or Historical Plays, as of a legitimate distinct species, sufficiently separate from Tragedy and Comedy; a distinction which deserves the particular attention of his critics and commentators, who, by not adverting to it, deprive him of his proper defence and best vindication for his neglect of the unities and departure from the classical dramatic forms. For, if it be the first canon of sound criticism to examine any work by whatever rule the author prescribed for his own observance, then we ought not to try Shakespeare's Histories by the general laws of tragedy or comedy. Whether the rule itself be vicious or not, is another inquiry: but, certainly, we ought to examine a work only by those principles according to which it was composed. This would save a deal of impertinent criticism." "The History of English Poetry,' by THOMAS WARTON, published in 1774, was another of those works which advanced the study of our early literature in the spirit of elegant scholarship as opposed to bibliographical pedantry. Warton was an ardent lover of Shakspere, as we may collect from several little poems; but he was scarcely cal Essayists' are many papers on Shakout of the trammels of the classical school. His education had taught him that Shakspere worked without art, and indeed he held that most of the Elizabethan poets so worked:" It may here be added that only a few critical treatises, and but oneArt of Poetry,' were now written. Sentiments and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition; nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception. And this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction; a circumstance, by the way, that greatly contributed to give the flowing modulation which now marked the measures of our poets, and which soon degenerated into the opposite extreme of dissonance and asperity. Selection and discrimination were often overlooked. Shakespeare wandered in pursuit of universal nature. The glancings of his eye are from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. We behold him breaking the barriers of imaginary method. In the same scene he descends from his meridian of the noblest tragic sublimity to puns and quibbles, to the meanest merriment of a plebeian farce. In the midst of his dignity he resembles his own Richard II., the skipping king, who sometimes, discarding the state of a monarch, 'Mingled his royalty with carping fools.' He seems not to have seen any impropriety in the most abrupt transitions, from dukes to buffoons, from senators to sailors, from counsellors to constables, and from kings to clowns. Like Virgil's majestic oak 'Quantum vertice ad auras Ethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.'" All this is prettily said; but it would not have been said if Warton had lived half a century later. Scattered about the periodi spere, worth consulting by the student, which, if not very valuable in themselves, indicate at least the progress of opinion. Joseph Warton, in 'The Adventurer,' where he reviews 'The Tempest' and 'Lear,' is a great stickler for the unities. Mackenzie, in 'The Mirror,' has a higher reverence for Shakspere, and a more philosophical contempt for the application of the ancient rules to works having their own forms of vitality. Cumberland, in "The Observer,' contrasts 'Macbeth' and 'Richard III.;' and he compares Shakspere with Eschylus in a way which exhibits the resources of his scholarship and the elegance of his taste. All the fragmentary critical opinions upon Shakspere, from the time of Johnson's Preface to the end of the century, exhibit some progress towards the real faith; some attempt to cast off not only the authority of the ancient rules of art, but the smaller authority of that lower school of individual judgment, which the Shaksperean commentators had been propping up, as well as they could, upon their own weak shoulders. Coleridge has well described their pretensions to authority :"Every critic, who has or has not made a collection of black-letter books,-in itself a useful and respectable amusement,-puts on the seven-league boots of self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme judge, and, blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of Niagara ; and determines positively the greatness of the cataract to be neither more nor less than his three-ounce phial has been able to receive." Such a critic was Mr. Francis Douce; who has been at the pains of making a formal essay 'On the Anachronisms and some other Incongruities of Shakspeare.' The words by which Mr. Douce describes these are, of course, "absurdities," "blunders," "distortions of reality," "negligence,” "absurd violations of historical accuracy." Some concessions are, however, made by the critic" His bestowing the epithet of gipsy on Cleopatra is whimsical; but may, perhaps, admit of defence." It is perfectly clear that a man who talks thus has not the slightest philosophical comprehension of the objects of Art, and the mode in which Art | Art changes the very nature of those eleworks. The domain of the literal and the ideal is held to be one and the same. It is truly said of the formative arts, by a living painter who knows the philosophy of his own art as much as he excels in its practice, that "a servile attention to the letter of description, as opposed to its translateable spirit, accuracy of historic details, exactness of costume, &c., are not essential in themselves, but are valuable only in proportion as they assist the demands of the art, or produce an effect on the imagination. This may sufficiently explain why an inattention to these points, on the part of great painters (and poets, as compared with mere historians), has interfered so little with their reputation." One of the critics upon Shakspere has sought to apologize for his anachronisms or "absurdities" by showing the example of the greatest of painters, that of Raffaelle, in the Transfiguration :'-" The two Dominicans on their knees are as shocking a violation of good sense, and of the unities of place, of time, and of action, as it is possible to imagine." It is clear that Martin Sherlock, who writes thus, did not understand the art of Raffaelle. This was the spirit of all criticism upon painting and upon poetry. The critic never laboured to conceive the great prevailing idea of "the maker" in either art. He had no central point from which to regard his work. The great painters, especially in their treatment of religious compositions, had their whole soul permeated with the glory and beauty of the subjects upon which they treated. Their art was in itself a worship of the Great Infinite Idea of beauty and truth. The individual forms of humanity, the temporary fashions of human things, were lifted into the region of the universal and the permanent. The Dominicans on their knees in the Transfiguration' were thus the representatives of adoring mortality during the unfolding to the bodily sense of heavenly glory. Who can see the anachronism, as it is called, till a small critic points it out? ments by which the imagination is affected. She touches them, and the things are propertied for her use. What is mean, separately considered, is harmonised by her into greatness; what is rude, into beauty; what is low, into sublimity. We fear that it was a want of comprehending the high powers and privileges of Art, whether in poetry or | painting, that made the ‘Shakspere Gallery,' which, towards the end of the last century, was to raise up an historic school of painting amongst us, a lamentable failure. The art of painting in England was to do homage to Shakspere. The commercial boldness of a tradesman built a gallery in which the Reynoldses, and Wests, and Romneys, and Fuselis, and Northcotes, and Opies, might consecrate, by the highest efforts of painting, the inspiration which was to be borrowed from Shakspere. The gallery was opened; the works were munificently paid for; they were engraved; the text of Shakspere was printed in larger type than the world had ever seen, to be a fit vehicle for the engravings. People exclaimed that Italy was outdone. With half a dozen exceptions, who can now look upon those works and not feel that the inspiration of Shakspere was altogether wanting? It is not that they violate the pro prieties of costume, which are now better understood; it is not that we are often shocked by the translation of a poetical image into a palpable thing-like the grinning fiend in Reynolds's 'Death of Beaufort;' but it is that the Shaksperean inspiration is not there. Lord Thurlow is reported to have said, in his coarse way, to one not wanting in talent, "Romney, before you paint Shakspere, do, for God's sake, read him." But the proper reading of Shakspere was not the fragmentary reading which Thurlow probably had in his mind. The picturesque passages are to be easily discovered by a painter's eye; but these are the things which most painters will literally translate. Shakspere is always injured by such a literal translation. Deeply meditated upon, his scenes and characters float before the mind's eye in forms which no artifices of theatrical illusion, no embodiments of painting and sculpture, have ever |