love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart.

When the devout religion of mine eye

Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!

Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun.

The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class, just as in describing one larchtree, you generalize a grove of them, so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the child-like fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors!

Yes, madam!-Yet I can not choose but laugh, &c.

In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. 0! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,-these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common copula of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellences and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio!

Act i. sc. 5.

Tyb. It fits when such a villain is a guest;

I'll not endure him.

Cap. He shall be endur❜d.

What, goodman boy !-I say, he shall:-Go to ;

Am I the master here, or you ?-Go to.

You'll not endure him!-God shall mend my soul-
You'll make a mutiny among my guests!

You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man!
Tyb. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.

Cap. Go to, go to,

You are a saucy boy! &c.—

How admirable is the old man's impetuosity at once contrasting, yet harmonized, with young Tybalt's quarrelsome violence! But it would be endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on an oak-tree; but still we can only say-our tongues defrauding our eyes- This is another oak-leaf!'

Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene:

Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo's love with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination.

Ib.

Jul. Well, do not swear; although I joy in thee,

I have no joy in this contract to-night:

It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, &c.

With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with act iii. sc. 1, of the Tempest. I do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakspeare's mastery in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air, than in the transporting love confessions of Romeo and Juliet and Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and more dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and busy movement of Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of Miranda, might easily pass into each other.

The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakspeare's representations of the great professions, is very delightful and tranquillizing, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to the carrying on of the plot.

Ib. sc. 4.

Rom. Good-morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you? &c.

Compare again, Romeo's half-exerted, and half real, ease of mind with his first manner when in love with Rosaline! His will had come to the clenching point.

Ib. sc. 6.

Rom. Do thou but close our hands with holy words,

Then love-devouring death do what he dare,

It is enough I may but call her mine.

The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is well marked in this short scene of waiting for Juliet's arrival.

Act iii. sc. 1.

Mer. No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough: 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man, &c.

How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mercutio, even struggling with his pain, give to Romeo's following speech, and at the same time so completely justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt!

Ib. Benvolio's speech:

But that he tilts

With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast.

This small portion of untruth in Benvolio's narrative is finely

oonceived.

Ib. sc. 2.

Juliet's speech:

For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night

Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.—

Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained to the highest; and observe the blessed effect on the purity of the mind. What would Dryden have made of it?—

Ib.

Nurse. Shame come to Romeo.

Jul. Blister'd be thy tongue

For such a wish!

Note the Nurse's mistake of the mind's audible struggles with itself for its decision in toto.

Ib. sc. 3.

Romeo's speech :-

'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven's here,
Where Juliet lives, &c.

Х

All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no fu

Cap. Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife—
How! will she none? &c.

A noble scene!

Don't I see it with my own eyes?—Yes! but not with Juliet's. And observe in Capulet's last speech in this scene his mistake, as if love's causes were capable of being generalized.

Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet's speech :—

O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:-Stay, Tybalt, stay!—
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

Shakspeare provides for the finest decencies. It would have been too bold a thing for a girl of fifteen ;-but she swallows the draught in a fit of fright. (s.)

Ib. sc. 5.

As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene is, perhaps, excusable. But it is a strong warning to minor dramatists not to introduce at one time many separate characters agitated by one and the same circumstance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether that of pity or of laughter, Shakspeare meant to produce ;-the occasion and the characteristic speeches are so little in harmony! For example, what the Nurse says is excellently suited to the Nurse's character, but grotesquely unsuited to the occasion.

Act v. sc. 1. Romeo's speech :

O mischief! thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!
I do remember an apothecary, &c.

This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified; yet, in addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb scene! Ib. sc. 3. Romeo's speech :

Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man,

Fly hence and leave me.

The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softer ed by

love; and now it is doubled by love and sorrow and awe of the place where he is.

How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death. O, how may I

Call this a lightning?-O, my love, my wife! &c.

Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at once increase and modify passion!

Ib. Last scene.

How beautiful is the close! The spring and the winter meet; winter assumes the character of spring, and spring the sadness of winter.

SHAKSPEARE'S ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS.

THE first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which may be stated as the successive in events and characters. This must be distinguished from narration, in which there must always be a narrator, from whom the objects represented receive a coloring and a manner;—whereas in the epic, as in the so-called poems of Homer, the whole is completely objective, and the representation is a pure reflection. The next form into which poetry passed was the dramatic;-both forms having a common basis with a certain difference, and that difference not consisting in the dialogue alone. Both are founded on the relation of providence to the human will; and this relation is the universal element, expressed under different points of view according to the difference of religion, and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it instrumental to the accomplishment of its designs :

Διὸς δὲ τελείετο βουλή.

In the drama, the will is exhibited as struggling with fate, a great and beautiful instance and illustration of which is the Prometheus of Eschylus; and the deepest effect is produced, when the fate is represented as a higher and intelligent will, and the opposition of the individual as springing from a defect.