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C  LIBRARY  ^1 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

CALIrORNIA 
M         SAN    DIEGO  ! 


.36 


BOUN'S    STANDARD    LIBRARY. 


COLERIDGE'S 

LECTURES     AND    NOTES     ON    SHAKSPERE 
AND  OTHER  ENGLISH  POETS. 


GEORGE   BELL  &   SONS 

tONDON  :    YORK  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN 
NEW    YORK  :      66,     FIFTH     AVENUE,      AND 

BOMBAY:      53,     ESPLANADE     ROAD 
CAMBRIDGE  :    DEIGHTON,    BELL    &    CO. 


LECTURES   AND    NOTES   ON 
SHAKSPERE 

AND 

OTHER   ENGLISH   POETS 

BY 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE 

NOW  FIRST  COLLECTED  BY 

T.  ASHE,  B.A. 


LONDON 

GEORGE   BELL   AND  SONS 
1900 


CHISW1CK    PRESS:— CHARLES   WHITT1NGHAM   AND  CO. 
TOOKS   COURT,    CHANCERY   LANE,    LONDON 


PREFACE. 

ALL  the  extant  criticism  of  Coleridge  on  the  English 
Dramatists  is  collected,  for  the  first  time,  in  this  volume, 
and  numerous  criticisms  of  his,  on  other  English  Poets, 
have  in  it  been  rescued  from  obscurity,  in  the  form  of 
notes  or  otherwise. 

Our  thanks  are  especially  due  to  Mr.  Collier,  for  allowing 
us  to  reprint  his  transcripts ;  to  Messrs.  Macmillan,  for 
the  privilege,  willingly  accorded,  of  making  free  use  of 
Crabb  Robinson's  Diary ;  and  to  Mr.  George,  of  Bristol, 
without  whose  friendly  and  invaluable  co-operation  we 
should  not  have  recovered  the  reports  of  the  Bristol 
Lectures. 

Sept.,  1883. 

%*  Mr.  Collier  has  passed  beyond  reach  of  our  thanks,  in  his  ninety- 
fifth  year.  (Sept.  18,  1883). 


A2 


CONTENTS. 


I.  LECTURES  ON  SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON.  1811-12. 

INTRODUCTORY —  PAOR 

§  1.  Mr.  Collier's  Transcripts        ......  3 

§  2.  Criticisms  by  Coleridge  from  Mr.  Collier's  Diary    .         .  8 
§3.  Coleridge  on  his  own  Mode  of  Lecturing         .         .         .19 

§  4.  Extracts  from  H.  Crabb  Robinson's  Diary      ...  20 

§  5.  Lectures  before  1811-12 29 

LECTUKE  I. 33 

Report  of  the  First  Lecture.    From  the  "  Times"          .        .42 

LECTURE  II. 44 

Report    of    the    Third    Lecture.      From    the     "  Morning 

Chronicle" 55 

Report    of    the    Fourth    Lecture.      From    the    "  Morning 

Chronicle" 07 

Note  of  Mr.   Collier  on  the  Fourth   Lecture.     From  his 

.Preface 59 

LECTURE  VI 61 

LBCTURE  VII 80 

Report    of   the    Seventh    Lecture.      From    the    "  Dublin 

Correspondent"      .........  100 

LECTORE  VIII.,  in  part        .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .  103 

Report  of  the  latter  portion  of  the  Eighth  Lecture.     From 

the  "Morning  Chronicle" 118 

LECTURE  IX 120 

LECTURE  XII 1-17 

Note  on  the  Subjects  of  the  remaining  Lectures      .        .        .101 


VH1  CONTENTS. 


II.  THE  LECTURES  AND  NOTES  OF  1818. 

INTRODUCTORY —  PAGE 

§  1.  Two  Letters  and  a  Prospectus 169 

§  2.  The  Lectures  of  1818 174 

§3.  The  matter  published  in  the  "  Remains"         ...  175 
§  4.  Mr.  H.  H.  Carwardine's  Memoranda      .         .        .         .178 

SECTION  I.     POETRY,  THE  DRAMA,  AND  SHAKSPERE. 

Definition  of  Poetry 183 

Greek  Drama         .         . 187 

Progress  of  the  Drama 195 

The  Drama  generally  and  Public  Taste          ....  208 

Shakspere  as  a  Poet  generally 218 

Shakspere's  Judgment  equal  to  his  Genius      ....  223 
Recapitulation,  and  Summary  of  the  Characteristics  of  Shak- 
spere's  Dramas   .        .         .        .         .        .         .         .         .231 

SECTION  II.     ORDER  OF  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS      ....  243 

SECTION  III.     NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS  FROM  ENGLISH 

HISTORY 252 

King  John      ..........  255 

Richard  II 255 

Henry  IV.     Parti 268 

„             Part  II 270 

Henry  V 271 

Henry  VI.     Parti 272 

Richard  III 273 

SECTION  IV.    NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE. 

The  Tempest 274 

Love's  Labour's  Lost      ........  282 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream 289 

Comedy  of  Errors 292 

As  You  Like  It 293 

Twelfth  Night        .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  295 

All's  Well  that  Ends  Well 297 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor       .......  298 

Measure  for  Measure 299 

Cymbeline 301 

Titus  Andronicus  .........     304 

Troilus  and  Cressida 305 


CONTENTS.  IX 

SKCTION  IV.  continued —  IAGE 

Coriolanus  ..........  309 

Julius  Caesar .311 

Antony  and  Cleopatra  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .313 

Timon  of  Athens 318 

Romeo  and  Juliet  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .321 

Lear 329 

Hamlet 342 

Macbeth .368 

The  Winter's  Tale 380 

Othello .  384 

SECTION  V.     JONSON,  BEAUMONT,  FLETCHER,  AND  MASSINOEU  .     395 

SECTION  VI.  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON 408 

VVhalley's  Preface  ........  409 

Whalley's  Life  of  Jonson 410 

Every  Man  out  of  His  Humour  .  .  .  .  .  .411 

Poetaster 412 

¥  all  of  Sojanus «...  41J 

Volpone  ..........  414 

Epicaene ,  .  ,415 

The  Alchemist 417 

Catiline's  Conspiracy  .  .  „ 417 

Bartholomew  Fair  .  .  .  .  .  .  ..  418 

The  Devil  is  an  Ass 421 

The  Staple  of  News ,  .  422 

The  :low  l,i.i 423 

SECTION  VII.  NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  .  .  425 

Seward's  Preface.  1750 .  425 

Harris's  Commendatory  Poem  ou  Fletcher  ....  426 
Life  of  Fletcher  in  Stockdale's  Edition.  1811  .  .  .  427 
Maid's  Tragedy  ....  ^  ....  428 

A  King  and  no  King 430 

The  Scornful  Lady 430 

The  Custom  of  the  Country 431 

The  Elder  Brother 433 

The  Spanish  Curate 434 

Wit  Without  Money 434 

The  Humorous  Lieutenant 436 

The  Mad  Lover 436 

The  Loyal  Subject 437 

Rule  a  Wife  and  have  a  Wife  ...,,.  438 
The  Laws  of  Candy 438 


*  CONTENTS. 

SECTION  VII.  continued—  PAGE 

The  Little  French  Lawyer     .......  -139 

Valentinian 440 

Hollo 443 

The  Wildgoose  Chase 444 

A  Wife  for  a  Month 445 

The  Pilgrim 445 

The  Queen  of  Corinth             .        • 446 

The  Noble  Gentleman 446 

The  Coronation 447 

Wit  at  several  Weapons          .......  448 

The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn       . 449 

The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen       .         .         .        .        .         .         .  -150 

The  Woman  Hater .451 


III.  LECTURES  ON  SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL. 
1813-14. 

INTRODUCTORY      465 

LECTURE  I.    General  Characteristics  of  Shakspere        .        .        .  458 

LECTURE  II.     Macbeth 468 

LECTURE  III.     Hamlet 471 

LECTURE  IV.     Winter's  Tale.     Othello 476 

LECTURE  V.     Historical  Plays.     Richard  II 478 

LECTURE  VI.     Richard  III.     Falstaff.     Iag<~>.     Shakspere  as  a 

Poet  generally 486 


IV.  APPENDIX. 

I.  The  Specific  Symptoms  of  Poetic  Power  elucidated  in  a 
Critical  Analysis  of  Shakspere's  Venus  and  Adonis,  and 
Rape  of  Lucrece.  Chapter  XV.  of  the  "Biographia 

Literaria" 493 

II.  Shakspere's  Method.     From  the  "  Friend "    .         .         .         .501 

III.  Notes  on  Chaucer  and  Spenser.     Remains  of  Lt-cture  III.  of 

the  Course  of  1818 509 

IV.  Notes  on  Milton.     Remains  of  Lecture  X.  of  the  Course  of 

1818  .     517 


CONTENTS.  XI 

PAGE 

V.   Extracts  from  the  "Table  Talk" 529 

Othello 529 

Hamlet 531 

Polonius 531 

Hamlet  and  Ophelia 531 

Measure  for  Measure         „        .         .         .         .         .         .531 

The  Fox 532 

The  Little  French  Lawyer         ...  .         .  532 

Shakspere  and  Milton 532 

Women 533 

The  Style  of  Shakspere  compared  with  that  of  Jonson  and 

others 533 

Plays  of  Massinger    ........  534 

Shakspere's  Villains 535 

Love's  Labour's  Lost 535 

A  Dramatist's  Artifice       .......  536 

Bertram 536 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Tragedies   ......  537 

Milton's  Egotism 537 

Milton's  Method  in  "  Paradise  Lost "         .        .         .         .538 

Chaucer     ..........  539 

Shakspere  of  no  Age         .        .        .        .        .        .        .540 


I. 

LECTURES   ON  SHAKSPERE   AND 
MILTON. 

1811-12. 


INTRODUCTORY. 
§   1. — Mr.  Collier's  Transcripts. 

/^OLERIDGrE,  then  in  his  fortieth  year,  delivered  a  course 
of  lectures  in  the  winter  of  1811-12,  in  the  Hall  of  the 
London  Philosophical  Society.1  The  lectures  mainly  dealt 
with  Shakspere,  bnt  two  or  three  were  on  Milton,  and  the 
first  discussed  the  general  principles  of  poetry ;  as,  indeed, 
did  they  all,  more  or  less.  They  were  given  on  Monday 
and  Thursday  evenings,  and  were  to  have  been  fifteen  in 
number.  The  course  extended,  however,  to  seventeen,  and 
allowing  for  a  probable  interval  at  Christmas,  must  have 
been  little  interrupted ;  for  the  first  duly  came  off  on  the 
18th  of  November,  as  announced,  and  the  last  on  January 
27th. 

As  any  remains  of  this  course  are  valuable,  it  is  unfor- 
tunate we  have  so  few.  These,  such  as  they  are,  consist  of 
•contemporary  newspaper  notices,  of  some  interesting  memo- 
randa in  H.  Crabb  Robinson's  Diary,  and  of  transcripts 
from  shorthand  notes,  by  Mr.  J.  Payne  Collier,  of  the  1st, 
2nd,  6th,  7th,  Oth,  and  12th  lectures,  and  part  of  the  8th. 

Mr.  Collier  published  these  transcripts  in  1856,  having1 
•discovered,  a  few  years  before,  a  portion  of  his  notes,  all  of 
which,  whatever  they  had  been  originally,  up  to  that  time 
liad  been  mislaid.  The  transcripts  must  be  somewhat 

1  This  Society  was  dissolved  in  1820. 


4  LECTURES    ON   SHAKSPKKE   AND   MILTON. 

meagre.  The  first  lecture,  for  instance,  as  given  by  Mr. 
Collier,  could  be  read  aloud  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour.1  The 
later  ones  are  more  complete.  It  would,  however,  be  most 
unnatural  not  to  feel  a  deep  sense  of  gratitude  to  Mr. 
Collier ;  for,  apart  from  the  fact  that  his  transcripts  con- 
tain much,  precious  matter,  they  are  practically  all  the 
lectures  we  possess.  Only  a  small  portion  of  the  second 
division  of  our  book  can  correctly  be  called  lectures. 

The  volume  in  which  Mr.  Collier's  transcripts  first 
appeared  in  a  complete  form,  contains  much,  other  matter. 
We  proceed  to  extract,  with  his  kind  permission,  such  por- 
tions of  his  preface  a8  illustrate  our  subject. 

Mr.  Collier  recounts  the  history  of  his  transcripts  as 
follows : — 

"  The  lectures  are,  as  nearly  as  possible,  transcripts  of  my  own 
short-hand  notes,  taken  at  the  close  of  the  year  1811,  and  at  the 
opening  of  the  year  1812. 

"  I  am  fully  aware  that  my  memoranda,  of  forty-five  years 
standing,  are  more  or  less  imperfect :  of  some  of  the  lectures  I 
appear  to  have  made  only  abridged  sketches ;  of  others  my  notes 
are  much  fuller  and  more  extended  ;  but  I  am  certain,  even  at 
this  distance  of  time,  that  I  did  not  knowingly  register  a  sentence, 
that  did  not  come  from  Coleridge's  lips,  although  doubtless  I 
missed,  omitted,  and  mistook  points  and  passages,  which  now  I 
should  have  been  most  rejoiced  to  have  preserved.  In  completing 
my  transcripts,  however,  I  have  added  no  word  or  syllable  of  my 
own. 

"  I  was  a  very  young  man  when  I  attended  the  lectures  in 
question  ;  but  I  was  not  only  an  enthusiast  in  all  that  related  to 
Shakspere  and  his  literary  contemporaries,  but  a  warm  admirer  of 
Coleridge,  and  a  firm  believer  in  his  power  of  opening  my  faculties 

1  And  Coleridge's  lectures  were  not  short.  Dr.  Dibdin,  in  "  Eemi- 
niscences  of  a  Literary  Life,"  relates  that  he  attended  one  at  the  Hoyal 
Institution,  and  states  that  "  for  nearly  two  hours  he, "  Coleridge,  "  spoke 
with  unhesitating  and  uninterrupted  fluency." 


INTRODUCTORY.  5 

to  the  comprehension,  and  enjoyment  of  poetry,  in  a  degree  beyond 
anything  that  I  had  then  experienced.  I  had  seen  something  of 
him,  and  had  heard  more  about  him  ;  and  when  my  father  pro- 
posed that  all  his  family,  old  enough  to  profit  by  them,  should 
attend  the  lectures  advertised  in  1811,1  seized  the  opportunity 
with  eagerness.  The  series  was  delivered  extemporaneously 
(almost  without  the  assistance  of  notes)  in  a  large  room  at  what 
was  called  the  Scot's  Corporation  Hall,  in  Crane  Court,  Fleet 
Street ;  and  on  applying  for  tickets,  Coleridge  sent  us  a  copy  of 
his  prospectus,  which,  many  years  afterwards,  I  was  glad  to  see  I 
liad  accidentally  preserved,  and  which  was  in  the  following  form: — 

LONDON   PHILOSOPHICAL   SOCIETY, 

SCOT'S  CORPORATION  HALL, 

CRANE    COURT,  FLEET   STREET, 

(ENTRANCE  FROM  FETTER  LANE.) 


MR.    COLERIDGE 

WILL    COMMENCE 

ON  MONDAY,  NOV.  18th, 
A  COURSE  OF  LECTURES  ON  SHAKESPEAR  AND  MILTON, 

IN   ILLUSTRATION   OF 

THE  PRINCIPLES   OF  POETRY, 

AND    THEIR 

Application  as  Grounds  of  Criticism  to  the  most  popular  Works  of 
later  English  Poets,  those  of  the  Living  included. 


AFTER  an  introductory  Lecture  on  False  Criticism,  (especially  in  Poetry,)  and 
on  its  Causes:  two  thirds  of  the  remaining  course,  will  be  assigned,  1st,  to  a  philo- 
sophic Analysis  and  Explanation  of  all  the  principal  Characters  of  our  great  Dramatist, 
&s  OTHELLO,  FALSTAFF,  RICHARD  3d,  IAQO,  HAMLET,  &c.  :  and  2nd,  to  a  critical 
Comparison  of  SHAKESPEAK,  in  respect  of  Diction,  Imagery,  management  of  the 
Passions,  Judgment  in  the  construction  of  his  Dramas,  in  short,  of  all  Unit,  belongs  to 
dim  as  a  Poet,  and  as  a  dramatic  Poet,  with  his  contemporaries,  or  immediate  suc- 
cessors, JOXSON,  BEAUMONT  and  FLKTCHEB,  FORD,  MASSINGKR,  &c.  in  the  endeavour 
to  determine  what  of  HHAKESPEAR'S  Merits  and  Defects  are  common  to  him  with 
other  Writers  of  the  same  age,  and  what  remain  peculiar  to  his  own  Genius. 

The  Course  will  extend  to  fifteen  Lectures,  which  will  be  given  on  Monday 
•nd  Thurs.lay  evenings  successively.  The  Lectures  to  commence  at  £  past  7  o'clock. 

Single  Tickets  for  the  whole  Course,  2  Guineas  ;  or  3  Guineas  with  the  pri- 
vilege of  introducing  a  Lady:  may  be  procured  at  J.  Hatchard's,  190,  Piccadilly; 
J.  Murray's,  Fleet  Street;  J.  and  A.  Arch's,  Booksellers  and  Stationers,  CoruhiU  ; 
Oodwin's  Juvenile  Library,  Skinner  Street  ;  W.  Pople's,  67,  Chancery  Lane  ;  or  by 
Letter  (post  paH)  to  Mr.  8.  T.  Coleridge,  J.  J.  Morgan's,  Esq.  No.  7,  Pwtltud 
Place,  Hammersmith. 

W.  I'ople,  Printer,  Ctiunccry  Lane,  London. 


0  LECTURES  OX  SHAK3PERE  AND  MILTON. 

After  expressing  a  doubt  about  the  number  of  weeks  the 
delivery  of  Coleridge's  lectures  actually  covered — a  point 
the  dates  we  have  given  above  from  the  "  Times"  set  at  rest 
— Mr.  Collier  makes  declaration,  in  reply  to  an  anonymous 
writer,1  who  had  charged  him  with  inventing  them,  that 
his  short-hand  notes  were  taken  at  the  time.  There  seems 
no  reason  whatever  to  doubt  this.  The  contemporary 
notices  in  the  papers  fairly  establish,  by  their  resemblance, 
the  genuineness  of  the  transcripts. 

"  My  original  notes  (he  continues)  were  taken  at  the  close  of 
1811  and  at  the  opening  of  1812.  I  endeavoured  in  the  interval 
between  each  lecture  to  transcribe  them ;  but,  from  other 
avocations,  I  was  unable  to  keep  pace  with  the  delivery,  and  at 
the  termination  of  the  course  I  must  have  been  considerably  in 
arrear :  while  I  am  writing  I  have  two  of  my  short-hand  books 
(sheets  of  paper  stitched  together)  before  me,  which  remained 
undeciphered  from  1812  until  1854, — a  period  of  forty-two 
years.  During  the  whole  time  I  did  not  know  what  had  become 
of  any  of  them.  I  attended  another  course  by  the  same  lecturer 
in  1818,  of  which  I  had  taken  and  preserved  only  a  few  scattered 
excerpts  ;  and  I  cannot  call  to  mind  whether,  even  at  that  date, 
my  notes  of  the  previous  lectures  of  1811-12  were  forthcoming. 

1  know  that  I  afterwards  searched  for  them  several  times  unsuc- 
cessfully;   and  with  great  diligence  about  the  year  1842,  when  I 
was  engaged  in  preparing  a  new  edition  of  Shakspere,  to  which  I 
apprehended  the  opinions  of  Coleridge  on  the  different  plays  would 
have  been  an  important  recommendation.8     I  again  failed  to  find 
them,  and  in  1850  I  took  up  my  residence  in  the  country,  carry- 
ing with  me  only  such  furniture  as   I  required,  and  among  it  a 
double  chest  of  drawers,  in  the  highest  part  of  which  I  subsequently 
discovered  some  of,  but,  I  lament  to  say,  by  no  means  all,  my  lost 


1  In  a  brochure  entitled  "  Literary  Cookery,"  which  was  withdrawn. 
Mr.  Collier  had  supplied  some  portions  of  his  transcripts  to  "  Notes  and 
Queries,"  before  their  publication  in  1856. 

2  The  second  portion  of  this  volume  was,  however,  already  published 
at  that  date. 


INTRODUCTORY.  7 

notes.  Even  these  were  not  brought  to  light  until  I  was  prepar- 
ing to  remove  to  my  present  residence,  and  was  employing  myself 
in  turning  out  waste  paper  and  worthless  relics  from  every 
receptacle. 

"  As  doubt,  however  unfairly  and  unjustifiably,  has  been  cast  on 
my  re-acquisition  of  these  materials,  I  will  just  state,  with  some 
particularity,  of  what  they  consist. 

1.  Several  brochures   and  fragments  of  a  Diary   in  my  own 
handwriting,  not  at  all  regularly  kept,  and  the  earliest  entry  in 
which  is  10th  October,  without  the  year,  but  unquestionably  1811. 

2.  Five  other  small  brochures,  containing  partial  transcripts, 
in   long-hand,    of  Coleridge's    first,   second,   sixth,    and    eighth 
lectures. 

3.  Several  brochures,  and  parts  of  brochures,  of  my  original 
short-hand  notes,  two  of  which  (those  of  the  ninth  and  twelfth 
lectures)  were  complete,  but  entirely  untranscribed. 

"  On  turning  out  these  papers  from  the  upper  drawer,  where 
they  must  have  been  deposited  for  many  years,  I  looked  anxiously 
for  the  rest  of  the  series  of  lectures,  but  in  vain,  and  to  this  day  I 

have  recovered  no  more The  early  transcripts  were  not  in  the 

first  person :  they,  as  it  were,  narrated  the  observations  and 
criticisms  of  Coleridge,  with  constant  repetitions  of  "he  said," 
"he  remarked,"  "he  quoted,"  &c.  On  the  other  hand,  my 
original  notes,  taken  down  from  the  lips  of  the  lecturer,  were,  of 
course,  in  the  first  person, — "  I  beg  you  to  observe,"  "  it  is  my 
opinion,"  "  we  are  struck,"  &c.  I  therefore  re-wrote  the  whole, 
comparing  my  recovered  transcripts  with  my  short-hand  notes 
(where  I  had  them)  as  I  proceeded,  and  putting  the  earliest 
lectures  as  well  as  the  latest,  in  the  first  instead  of  the  third 
person ;  thus  making  them  consistent  with  each  other,  and  more 
conformable  to  the  very  words  Coleridge  had  employed. 

"  These  are  what  are  now  offered  to  the  reader.  I  cannot  but 
be  sensible  of  their  many  and  great  imperfections:  they  are, 
I  am  sure,  full  of  omissions,  owing  in  some  degree  to  want  of 
facility  on  my  part ;  in  a  greater  degree,  perhaps,  to  a  mistaken 
estimate  of  what  it  was,  or  was  not,  expedient  to  minute  ;  and  in 
no  little  proportion  to  the  fact,  that  in  some  cases  I  relied  upon  my 
recollection  to  fill  up  chasms  in  my  memoranda.  A  few  defects 
may  be  attributed  to  the  inconvenience  of  my  position  among 
other  auditors  (though  the  lectures  were  not  always  very  fully 
attended),  and  others  to  the  plain  fact,  that  I  was  not  un- 


8  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE   AND   MILT01T. 

frequently  so  engrossed,  and  absorbed  by  the  almost  inspired  look 
and  manner  of  the  speaker,  that  I  was,  for  a  time,  incapable  of  per- 
forming the  mechanical  duty  of  writing.  I  present  my  notes  merely 
as  they  are,  doing,  I  know,  great  injustice  to  the  man  and  to  the 
subject,  but  at  the  same  time  preserving  many  criticisms,  obser- 
vations, and  opinions,  well  worthy  of  attention  from  their  truth, 
their  eloquence,  and  their  originality." 

§  2. — Criticisms  by  Coleridge  from  Mr.  Collier's  Diary. 

Mr.  Collier  furnishes  numerous  extracts  from  the  Diary 
which  he  kept  in  1811.  Such  portions  of  them  as  fall 
•within  our  scope,  are  here  given.  A  few  are  rescued  from 
forgetfulness,  which  hardly  do  so. 

"  Sunday,  13th  Oct. — In  a  conversation  at  my  father's,  a  little 
while  since,  he  gave  the  following  character  of  Falstaff,  which  I 
wrote  down  very  soon  after  it  was  delivered. 

"  Falstaff  was  no  coward,  but  pretended  to  be  one  merely  for 
the  sake  of  trying  experiments  on  the  credulity  of  mankind :  he 
was  a  liar  with  the  same  object,  and  not  because  he  loved  false- 
hood for  itself.  He  was  a  man  of  such  pre-eminent  abilities,  as 
to  give  him  a  profound  contempt  for  all  those  by  whom  he  was 
usually  surrounded,  and  to  lead  to  a  determination  on  his  part,  in 
spite  of  their  fancied  superiority,  to  make  them  his  tools  and 
dupes.  He  knew,  however  low  he  descended,  that  his  own 
talents  would  raise  him,  and  extricate  him  from  any  difficulty. 
\V~hile  he  was  thought  to  be  the  greatest  rogue,  thief,  and  liar,  he 
still  had  that  about  him  which  could  render  him  not  only  respect- 
able, but  absolutely  necessary  to  his  companions.  It  was  in 
characters  of  complete  moral  depravity,  but  of  first-rate  wit  and 
talents,  that  Shakspere  delighted;  and  Coleridge  instanced  Richard 
the  Third,  Falstaff,  and  lago. 

"  Coleridge  was  recently  asked  his  opinion  as  to  the  order  in 
which  Shakspere  had  written  his  plays.  His  answer  was  to  this 
effect,  as  well  as  I  can  remember: — that  although  Malone  had 
collected  a  great  many  external  particulars  regarding  the  age  of 
each  play,  they  were  all,  in  Coleridge's  mind,  much  less  satisfac- 
tory than  the  knowledge  to  be  obtained  from  internal  evidence. 
If  he  were  to  adopt  any  theory  upon  the  subject,  it  would  rather 


INTRODUCTORY.  9 

be  physiological  and  pathological  than  chronological.  There  ap- 
peared to  be  three  stages  in  Shakspere's  genius  ;  it  did  not  seem 
as  if  in  the  outset  he  thought  his  ability  of  a  dramatic  kind,  ex- 
cepting perhaps  as  an  actor,  in  which,  like  many  others,  he  had 
been  somewhat  mistaken,  though  by  no  means  so  much  as  it  was 
the  custom  to  believe.  Hence  his  two  poems,  '  Venus  and 
Adonis,'  and  '  Lucrece,'  both  of  a  narrative  character,  which  must 
have  been  written  very  early  :  the  first,  at  all  events,  must  have 
been  produced  in  the  country,  amid  country  scenes,  sights  and 
employments;  but  the  last  had  more  the  air  of  a  city,  and  of 
society." 

Mr.  Collier  produces  a  note  here,  of  doubtful  date,  of  some 
remarks  of  Coleridge  on  Shakspere  as  an  actor : — 

"  It  is  my  persuasion — indeed  my  firm  conviction — so  firm  that 
nothing  can  shake  it — the  rising  of  Shakspere's  spirit  from  the 
grave,  modestly  confessing  his  own  deficiencies,  could  not  alter  my 
opinion — that  Shakspere,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word,  was  a  very 
great  actor  ;  nothing  can  exceed  the  judgment  he  displays  upon 
that  subject.  He  may  not  have  had  the  physical  advantages  of 
Burbage  or  Field;  but  they  would  never  have  become  what  they 
\vere  without  his  most  able  and  sagacious  instructions ;  and  what 
would  either  of  them  have  been  without  Shakspere's  plays  ?  Great 
dramatists  make  great  actors.  But  looking  at  him  merely  as  a 
performer,  I  am  certain  that  he  was  greater  as  Adam,  in  '  As  you 
Like  It,'  than  Burbage,  as  Hamlet,  or  Richard  the  Third.  Think 
of  the  scene  between  him  and  Orlando;  and  think  again,  that  the 
actor  of  that  part  had  to  carry  the  author  of  that  play  in  his  arms  ! 
Think  of  having  had  Shakspere  in  one's  arms  !  It  is  worth  having 
died  two  hundred  years  ago  to  have  heard  Shakspere  deliver  a 
single  line.  He  must  have  been  a  great  actor." 

The  entry  of  the  13th  Oct.  thus  continues  : — 

"  With  regard  to  his  dramas,  they  might  easily  be  placed  in 
gioups.  'Titus  Andronicus'  would,  in  some  sort,  stand  alone, 
because  it  was  obviously  intended  to  excite  vulgar  audiences  by 
its  scenes  of  blood  and  horror — to  our  ears  shocking  and  disgusting. 
This  was  the  fashion  of  plays  in  Shakspere's  youth  ;  but  the  taste, 
if  such  indeed  it  were,  soon  disappeared,  as  it  was  sure  to  do  with 
a  man  of  his  character  of  mind  ;  and  then  followed,  probably,  that 


10  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON. 

beautiful  love-poem  '  Romeo  and  Juliet,'  and  '  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,'  made  up  entirely  of  the  same  passion.  These  might  be 
succeeded  by  'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  not  an  agreeable 
story,  but  still  full  of  love;  and  by  'As  You  Like  It,'  not 
Shakspere's  invention  as  to  plot,  but  entirely  his  own  as  to 
dialogue,  with  all  the  vivacity  of  wit,  and  the  elasticity  of  youth 
and  animal  spirits.  No  man,  even  in  the  middle  period  of  life,  he 
thought,  could  have  produced  it.  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream' 
and  '  Twelfth  Night'  hardly  appeared  to  belong  to  the  complete 
maturity  of  his  genius  :  Shakspere  was  then  ripening  his  powers 
for  such  works  as  '  Troilus  and  Cressida,'  '  Coriolanus,'  '  Julius 
Caesar,'  '  Cymbeline,'  and  '  Othello.'  Coleridge  professed  that  he 
could  not  yet  make  up  his  mind  to  assign  a  period  to  '  The 
Merchant  of  Venice,'  to  '  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,'  nor  to 
'  Measure  for  Measure ;  '  but  he  was  convinced  that  '  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,'  '  Hamlet,'  '  Macbeth,' '  Lear,'  '  The  Tempest,'  and 
'  The  Winter's  Tale,'  were  late  productions, — especially  '  The 
Winter's  Tale.'  These  belonged  to  the  third  group. 

"  When  asked  what  he  would  do  with  the  historical  plays,  he 
replied  that  he  was  much  at  a  loss.  Historical  plays  had  been 
written  and  acted  before  Shakspere  took  up  those  subjects  ;  and 
there  was  no  doubt  whatever  that  his  contributions  to  the  three 
parts  of  'Henry  VI.'  were  very  small ;  indeed  he  doubted,  in  op- 
position to  Malone,  whether  he  had  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
first  part  of  '  Henry  VI. : '  if  he  had,  it  must  have  been  extremely 
early  in  his  career.  'Richard  II.'  and  'Richard  III.' — noble 
plays,  and  the  finest  specimens  of  their  kind — must  have  preceded 
the  two  parts  of  '  Henry  IV. ; '  and  '  Henry  VIII.'  was  decidedly  a 
late  play.  Dramas  of  this  description  ought  to  be  treated  by  them- 
selves ;  they  were  neither  tragedy  nor  comedy,  and  yet  at  times 
both.  Though  far  from  accurate  as  to  events,  in  point  of  cha- 
racter they  were  the  essential  truth  of  history.  '  Let  no  man 
(said  Coleridge)  blame  his  son  for  learning  history  from 
Shakspere.' 

"  He  did  not  agree  with  some  Germans  (whom  he  had  heard 
talk  upon  the  subject)  that  Shakspere  had  had  much  to  do  with 
the  doubtful  plays  imputed  to  him  in  the  third  folio  :  on  the  con- 
trary, he  was  sure  that,  if  he  had  touched  any  of  them,  it  was 
only  very  lightly  and  rarely.  Being  asked  whether  he  included 
'  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  '  among  the  doubtful  plays,  he  an- 
swered, '  Decidedly  not :  there  is  the  clearest  internal  evidence 


INTRODUCTORY.  11 

that  Shakspcre  importantly  aided  Fletcher  in  the  composition 
of  it.  Parts  are  most  unlike  Fletcher,  yet  most  like  Shakspere, 
while  other  parts  are  most  like  Fletcher,  and  most  unlike  Shak- 
spere. The  mad  scenes  of  the  Jailor's  daughter  are  coarsely 
imitated  from  '  Hamlet ;'  those  were  by  Fletcher,  and  so  very 
inferior,  that  I  wonder  how  he  could  so  far  condescend.  Shak- 
spere  would  never  have  imitated  himself  at  all,  much  less  so 
badly.  There  is  no  finer,  or  more  characteristic  dramatic  writing 
than  some  scenes  in  'The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen.'  " 

"  Thursday,  17th  Oct. — Yesterday,  at  Lamb's,  I  met  Coleridge 
again.  I  expected  to  see  him  there,  and  I  made  \;p  my  mind  that 
I  would  remember  as  much  as  possible  of  what  he  said. 

"  He  said  that  Shakspere  was  almost  the  only  dramatic  poet, 
who  by  his  characters  represented  a  class,  and  not  an  individual : 
other  writers  for  the  stage,  and  in  other  respects  good  ones  toor 
had  aimed  their  satire  and  ridicule  at  particular  foibles  and  par- 
ticular persons,  while  Shakspere  at  one  stroke  lashed  thou- 
sands :  Shakspere  struck  at  a  crowd ;  Jonson  picked  out  at> 
especial  object  for  his  attack.  Coleridge  drew  a  parallel  between 
Shakspere  and  a  geometrician  :  the  latter,  when  tracing  a  circle, 
had  lu's  eye  upon  the  centre  as  the  important  point,  but  included 
also  in  his  vision  a  wide  circumference  ,•  so  Shakspere,  while  his 
eye  rested  upon  an  individual  character,  always  embraced  a  wide 
circumference  of  others,  without  diminishing  the  separate  interest 
he  intended  to  attach  to  the  being  he  pourtrayed.  Othello  was  a 
personage  of  this  description ;  but  all  Shakspere's  chief  cha- 
racters possessed,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  this  claim  to  our 
admiration.  He  was  not  a  mere  painter  of  portraits,  with  the 
dress,  features,  and  peculiarities  of  the  sitter ;  but  a  painter  of 
likenesses  so  true  that,  although  nobody  could  perhaps  say  they 
knew  the  very  person  represented,  all  saw  at  once  that  it  was- 
faithful,  and  that  it  must  be  a  likeness. 

"  Lamb  led  Coleridge  on  to  speak  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher : 
he  highly  extolled  their  comedies  in  many  respects,  especially  for 
the  vivacity  of  the  dialogue,  but  he  contended  that  their  tragedies 
were  liable  to  grave  objections.  They  always  proceeded  upon 
something  forced  and  unnatural  ;  the  reader  never  can  reconcile 
the  plot  with  probability,  and  sometimes  not  with  possibility. 
One  of  their  tragedies  was  founded  upon  this  : — A  lady  expresses 
;i  wish  to  possess  the  heart  of  her  lover,  terms  which  that  lover 
understands,  all  the  way  through,  in  a  literal  sense  ;  and  nothing 


12  LECTURES  ON    SHAKSPERE  AND   MILTON. 

din  satisfy  him  but  tearing  out  his  heart,  and  having  it  presented 
to  the  heroine,  in  order  to  secure  her  affections,  after  he  was  past 
the  enjoyment  of  them.1  Their  comedies,  however,  were  much 
superior,  and  at  times,  and  excepting  in  the  generalization  of 
humour  and  application,  almost  rivalled  those  of  Shakspere. 
The  situations  are  sometimes  so  disgusting,  and  the  language  so 
indecent  and  immoral,  that  it  is  impossible  to  read  the  plays  iu 
private  society.  The  difference  in  this  respect  between  Shak- 
spere and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  (speaking  of  them  in  their 
joint  capacity)  is,  that  Shakspere  always  makes  vice  odious  and 
virtue  admirable,  while  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  do  the  very  re- 
verse— they  ridicule  virtue  and  encourage  vice:  they  pander  to 
the  lowest  and  basest  passions  of  our  nature. 

"  Coleridge  afterwards  made  some  remarks  upon  more  modern 
dramatists,  and  was  especially  severe  upon  Dryden,  who  could 
degrade  his  fine  intellect,  and  debase  his  noble  use  of  the 
English  language  in  such  plays  as  '  All  for  Love,'  and '  Sebastian,' 
down  to  'Limberham,'  and  'The  Spanish  Friar.'  He  spoke  also 
of  Moore's  '  Gamester,'  and  applauded  warmly  the  acting  of  Mrs. 
Siddons.  He  admitted  that  the  situations  were  affecting,  but 
maintained  that  the  language  of  the  tragedy  was  below  criticism  : 
it  was  about  upon  a  par  with  Kotzebue.  It  was  extremely 
natural  for  any  one  to  shed  tears  at  seeing  a  beautiful  woman  in 
the  depths  of  anguish  and  despair,  when  she  beheld  her  husband, 
who  had  ruined  himself  by  gambling,  dying  of  poison  at  the  very 
moment  he  had  come  into  a  large  fortune,  which  would  have  paid 
all  his  debts,  and  enabled  him  to  live  in  affluence  and  happiness. 
*  This  (said  Coleridge)  reminds  one  of  the  modern  termination  of 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet," — I  mean  the  way  in  which  Garrick,  or 
eomebody  else,  terminated  it, — so  that  Juliet  should  revive  be- 
fore the  death  of  Romeo,  and  just  in  time  to  be  not  in  time,  but 
to  find  that  he  had  swallowed  a  mortal  poison.  I  know  that  this 
conclusion  is  consistent  with  the  old  novel  upon  which  the  tragedy 
is  founded,  but  a  narrative  is  one  thing  and  a  drama  another,  and 
Shakspere's  judgment  revolted  at  such  situations  on  the  stage. 
To  be  sure  they  produce  tears,  and  so  does  a  blunt  razor  shaving 
the  upper  lip.' 

"  From  hence  the  conversation  diverged  to  other  topics ;  and 


1  The  tragedy  here  referred  to  by  Coleridge  is  "  The  Mad  Lover." — 

j.  r.  c. 


INTRODUCTORY.  13 

Southey's  '  Curse  of  Kehama '  having  been  introduced  by  one  of 
the  company,  Coleridge  admitted  that  it  was  a  poem  of  great 
talent  and  ingenuity.  Being  asked  whether  he  could  give  it  no 
higher  praise,  he  answered,  that  it  did  the  greatest  credit  to  thq 
abilities  of  Southey,  but  that  there  were  two  things  in  it  utterly 
incompatible.  From  the  nature  of  the  story,  it  was  absolutely 
necessary  that  the  reader  should  imagine  himself  enjoying  one  of 
the  wildest  dreams  of  a  poet's  fancy  ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  was 
required  of  him  (which  was  impossible)  that  he  should  believe 
that  the  soul  of  the  hero,  such  as  he  was  depicted,  was  alive  to, 
all  the  feelings  and  sympathies  of  tenderness  and  affection.  The 
reader  was  called  upon  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of  the  exis- 
tence of  an  almighty  man,  who  had  extorted  from  heaven  the 
power  he  possessed,  and  who  was  detestable  for  his  crimes,  and 
yet  who  should  be  capable  of  all  the  delicate  sensibilities  subsist- 
ing between  parent  and  child,  oppressed,  injured,  and  punished. 
Such  a  being  was  not  in  human  nature.  The  design  and  purpose 
were  excellent,  namely,  to  show  the  superiority  of  moral  to 
physical  power. 

"  He  looked  upon  '  The  Curse  of  Kehama'  as  a  work  of  great 
talent,  but  not  of  much  genius  ;  and  he  drew  the  distinction  be- 
tween talent  and  genius  by  comparing  the  first  to  a  watch  and 
the  last  to  an  eye  :  both  were  beautiful,  but  one  was  only  a 
piece  of  ingenious  mechanism,  while  the  other  was  a  production 
above  all  art.  Talent  was  a  manufacture ;  genius  a  gift  that 
no  labour  nor  study  could  supply :  nobody  could  make  an 
eye,  but  anybody,  duly  instructed,  could  make  a  watch.  It 
was  suggested  by  one  of  the  company,  that  more  credit  was 
given  to  Southey  for  imagination  in  that  poem  than  was  due  to 
him,  since  he  had  derived  so  much  from  the  extravagances  of 
Hindu  mythology.  Coleridge  replied,  that  the  story  was  the  work 
of  the  poet,  and  that  much  of  the  mythology  was  his  also  :  having 
invented  his  tale,  Southey  wanted  to  reconcile  it  with  probability, 
according  to  some  theory  or  other,  and  therefore  resorted  to 
oriental  fiction.  He  had  picked  up  his  mythology  from  books,  aa 
it  were  by  scraps,  and  had  tacked  and  fitted  them  together  with 
much  skill,  and  with  such  additions  as  his  wants  and  wishe.s 
dictated. 

"  The  conversation  then  turned  upon  Walter  Scott,  whose 
'Lady  of  the  Lake'  has  recently  been  published,  and  I  own  that 
there  appeared  on  the  part  of  Coleridge  some  disposition,  if  not  to 


14  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE  AND    MILTON. 

disparage,  at  least  not  to  recognize  the  merits  of  Scott.  He  pro- 
fessed himself  comparatively  ignorant  of  Scott's  productions,  and 
stated  that '  The  Lady  of  the  Lake'  had  been  lying  on  his  table 
for  more  than  a  month,  and  that  he  had  only  been  able  to  get 
through  two  divisions  of  the  poem,  and  had  there  found  many 
grammatical  blunders,  and  expressions  that  were  not  English  011 
this  side  of  the  Tweed — nor,  indeed,  on  the  other.  If  (added 
be)  I  were  called  upon  to  form  an  opinion  of  Mr.  Scott's  poetry, 
the  first  thing  I  should  do  would  be  to  take  away  all  his  names  of 
old  castles,  which  rhyme  very  prettily,  and  read  very  picturesquely ; 
then,  I  would  remove  out  of  the  poem  all  the  old  armour  and 
weapons ;  next,  I  would  exclude  the  mention  of  all  nunneries, 
abbeys,  and  priories,  and  I  should  then  see  what  would  be  the 
residuum — how  much  poetry  would  remain.  At  present,  having 
read,  so  little  of  what  he  has  produced,  I  can  form  no  competent 
opinion ;  but  I  should  then  be  able  to  ascertain  what  was  the 
story  or  fable  (for  which  I  give  him  full  credit,  because,  I  dare 
say,  it  is  very  interesting),  what  degree  of  imagination  was  dis- 
played in  narrating  it,  and  how  far  he  was  to  be  admired  for  pro- 
priety and  felicity  of  expression.  Of  these,  at  present,  others 
must  judge,  but  I  would  rather  have  written  one  simile  by 
Burns, — 

'•' '  Like  snow  that  falls  upon  a  river, 
A  moment  \\liite,  then  gone  for  ever," — • 

than  all  the  poetry  that  his  countryman  Scott— as  far  as  I  am  yet 
able  to  form  an  estimate — is  likely  to  produce. 

"  Milton's  '  Samson  Agonistes '  being  introduced  as  a  topic, 
Coleridge  said,  with  becoming  emphasis,  that  it  was  the  finest 
imitation  of  the  ancient  Greek  drama  that  ever  had  been,  or  ever 
would  be  written.  One  of  the  company  remarked  that  Steevens 
(the  commentator  on  Shakspere)  had  asserted  that  '  Samson 
Agonistes '  was  formed  on  the  model  of  the  ancient  Mysteries, 
the  origin  of  our  English  drama ;  upon  which  Coleridge  burst 
forth  with  unusual  vehemence  against  Steevens,  asserting  that  he 
was  no  more  competent  to  appreciate  Shakspere  and  Milton,  than 
to  form  an  idea  of  the  grandeur  and  glory  of  the  seventh  heavens. 
He  would  require  (added  Coleridge)  a  telescope  of  more  than 
J  lerschellian  power  to  enable  him,  with  his  contracted  intellectual 
vision,  to  see  half  a  quarter  as  far :  the  end  of  his  nose  is  the 


INTRODUCTORY.  15 

utmost  extent  of  that  man's  ordinary  sight,  and  even  then  he 
cannot  comprehend  what  he  sees." 

"  29th  October. — Coleridge  told  vis  (though  I  fancy,  from  his 
indecision  of  character,  that  it  may  turn  out  a  mere  project — I 
hope  not)  that  he  means  very  soon  to  give  a  series  of  lectures  at 
Coachmakers'  Hall,  mainly  upon  Poetry,  with  a  view  to  erect 
some  standard  by  which  all  writers  of  verse  may  be  measured  and 
ranked.  He  added,  that  many  of  his  friends  had  advised  him  to 
take  this  step,  and  for  his  own  part  he  was  not  at  all  unwilling  to 
comply  witli  their  wishes.  His  lectures  would,  necessarily,  em- 
brace criticisms  on  Shnkspere,  Milton,  and  all  the  chief  and  most 
popuhir  poets  of  our  language,  from  Chaucer,  for  whom  he  had 
great  reverence,  down  to  Campbell,  for  whom  he  had  little  admira- 
tion. He  thought  that  something  of  the  kind  was  much  needed, 
in  order  to  settle  people's  notions  as  to  what  was,  or  was  not  good 
poetry,  and  who  was,  or  was  not  a  good  poet.  He  talked  of  carry- 
ing out  this  scheme  next  month. 

"  He  mentioned,  as  indeed  we  knew,  that  last  year  he  had 
delivered  Lectures  upon  Poetry  at  the  lloyal  Institution:  for  the 
first  of  the  series  he  had  prepared  himself  fully,  and  when  it  was 
over  he  received  many  high-flown,  but  frigid  compliments,  evi- 
dently, like  his  lecture,  studied.  For  the  second  lecture  he  had 
prepared  himself  less  elaborately,  and  was  much  applauded.1  For 
the  third  lecture,  and  indeed  for  the  remainder  of  the  course,  he 
made  no  preparation,  and  was  liked  bettor  than  ever,  and  vocifer- 
ously and  heartily  cheered.  The  reason  was  obvious,  for  what 
came  warm  from  the  heart  of  the  speaker,  went  warm  to  the  heart 
of  the  hearer;  and  although  the  illustrations  might  not  be  so  good, 
yet  being  extemporaneous,  and  often  from  objects  immediately 
before  the  eyes,  they  made  more  impression,  and  seemed  to  have 
more  aptitude." 

These  lectures,  Mr.  Collier  here  explains,  were  actually 
our  lectures  of  1811-12,  which  were  delivered,  however,  at 
the  Scot's  Corporation  Hall,  Crane  Court,  Fleet  Street. 

"  1st  November. — Again  I  saw  Coleridge,  and  again  I  was  an  at- ' 
tt-ntive  listener.     He  once  more  quoted  his  favourite  simile  from 
1  turns,  in  order  to  establish  the  position,  that  one  of  the  purposes 


Coleridge  repeats  this  in  the  Sixth  Lecture. 


Jtf  LECTURES   OX    SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTOJf. 

and  tests  of  true  poetry  was  .the  employment  of  common  objects 
in  uncommon  ways — the  felicitous  and  novel  use  of  images  of  daily 
occurrence.  Everybody  had  seen  snow  falling  upon  a  river,  and 
vanishing  instantly,  but  who  had  applied  this  result  of  ordinary 
experience  with  such  novelty  and  beauty? 

"  Shakspere  (said  Coleridge)  is  full  of  these  familiar  images 
and  illustrations  ;  Milton  has  them  too,  but  they  do  not  occur  so 
frequently,  because  his  subject  does  not  so  naturally  call  for  them. 
He  is  the  truest  poet  who  can  apply  to  a  new  purpose  the  oldest 
occurrences  and  most  usual  appearances:  the  justice  of  the  images 
can  then  always  be  felt  and  appreciated. 

"  Adverting  to  his  contemporaries,  he  told  us  that,  of  course, 
he  knew  nearly  every  line  Southey  had  written,  but  he  repeated 
that  he  was  far  from  well  read  in  Scott,  whom  he  now  said  he 
personally  liked,  adding  that  he  had  just  finished  Campbell's 
'  Gertrude  of  Wyoming : '  though  personally  he  did  not  much 
relish  the  author,  he  admitted  that  his  poem  contained  very 
pretty  stanzas.  He  disclaimed  all  envy  :  each  of  the  three  had 
met  with  more  success  than  he  should  ever  arrive  at ;  but  that 
success  was  quite  as  much  owing  to  their  faults  as  to  their  excel- 
lences. He  did  not  generally  like  to  speak  of  his  contemporaries, 
but  if  he  did  speak  of  them,  he  must  give  his  fair  opinion,  and 
that  opinion  was,  that  not  one  of  the  three — neither  Southey, 
Scott,  nor  Campbell — would  by  their  poetry  survive  much  beyond 
the  day  when  they  lived  and  wrote.  Their  works  seemed  to  him 
not  to  have  the  seeds  of  vitality,  the  real  germs  of  long  life.  The 
two  first  were  entertaining  as  tellers  of  stories  in  verse ;  but  the 
last  in  his  'Pleasures  of  Hope  '  obviously  had  no  fixed  design, but 
when  a  thought  (of  course,  not  a  very  original  one)  came  into  his 
head,  he  put  it  down  in  couplets,  and  afterwards  strung  the  disjecta 
membra  (not  poetof)  together.  Some  of  the  best  things  in  it  were 
borrowed  :  for  instance,  the  line — 

"  '  And  Freedom  shriek'd  when  Kosciusko  fell ' — 
was  taken  from  a  much  ridiculed  piece  by  Dennis,  a  pindaric  on 
William  III., 

"  '  Fair  Liberty  shriek'd  out  aloud,  aloud  Religion  groan'd." 
It  is  the  same  production  in  which  the  following  much-laughed-at 
specimen  of  bathos  is  found  : — 

"  '  Nor  Alps  nor  Pyreneans  keep  him  out, 
Nor  fortified  redoubt.' 


INTRODUCTORY.  1 7 

Coleridge  had  little  toleration  fbr  Campbell,  and  considered  him, 
as  far  as  he  had  gone,  a  mere  verse-maker.  Southey  was,  in  some 
sort,  like  an  elegant  setter  of  jewels ;  the  stones  were  not  his  own  : 
he  gave  them  all  the  advantage  of  his  art — the  charm  of  his  work- 
manship (and  that  charm  was  great),  but  not  their  native  brilliancy. 
Wordsworth  was  not  popular,  and  never  would  be  so,  for  this 
reasoii  among  others — that  he  was  a  better  poet  than  the  rest. 
Yet  Wordsworth  liked  popularity,  and  would  fain  be  popular,  if 
he  could." 

Lastly  we  have  extracts  from  a  second  entry  of  doubtful 
date: — 

"  We  talked  of  dreams,  the  subject  having  been  introduced  by 
a  recitation  by  Coleridge  of  some  lines  he  had  written  many  years 
asfo  upon  the  building  of  a  Dream-palace  by  Kubla-Khan :  he  had 
founded  it  on  a  passage  he  had  met  with  in  an  old  book  of  travels. 
Lamb  maintained  that  the  most  impressive  dream  he  had  ever 
read  was  Clarence's,  in  '  Richard  III.,'  which  was  not  now  allowed 
to  form  part  of  the  acted  play.  There  was  another  famous  dream 
in  Shakspere,  that  of  Antigonus  in  '  The  Winter's  Tale,'  and  all 
illustrated  the  line  in  Spenser's  '  Fairy  Queen,'  Book  iv.  c.  5 : 

"  '  The  things  which  day  most  minds  at  night  do  most  appear;' 

the  truth  of  which  every  body's  experience  proved,  and  therefore 
every  body  at  once  acknowledged.  Coleridge  observed  that  there 
was  something  quite  as  true,  near  the  same  place  in  the  poem, 
which  was  not  unlikely  to  be  passed  over  without  remark,  though 
founded  upon  the  strictest  and  justest  (his  own  superlative)  obser- 
vation of  nature.  It  was  where  Scudamour  lies  down  to  sleep  in 
the  cave  of  Care,  and  is  constantly  annoyed  and  roused  by  the 
graduated  hammers  of  the  old  smith's  men.  He  called  for  a  copy 
of  the  F.  Q.,  and,  when  it  was  brought,  turned  to  the  end  of  the 
Canto,  where  it  is  said  that  Scudamour  at  last,  weary  with  his 
journey  and  his  anxieties,  fell  asleep  :  Coleridge  then  read,  with 
his  peculiar  intonation  and  swing  of  voice,  the  following  stanza:  — 

" '  With  that  the  wicked  carle,  the  master  smith, 
A  paire  of  red-hot  iron  tongs  did  take 
Out  of  the  burning  cinders,  and  therewith 
Under  his  side  him  nipp'd  j  that,  forc'd  to  wake, 

C 


18  LECTUUES   ON   SHAKSPEKE   AND   MILTON 

lie  felt  his  hart  for  very  paine  to  quake, 
And  started  up  avenged  for  to  be 
On  him,  the  which  his  quiet  slomber  brake : 
Yet  looking  round  about  him  none  could  see ; 
Yet  did  the  smart  remain,  though  he  himself  did  flee. 

"  Having  read  this,  Coleridge  paused  for  a  moment  or  two,  and 
looked  round  with  au  inquiring  eye,  as  much  as  to  say,  '  Are  you 
aware  of  what  I  refer  to  in  this  stanza  ? '  Nobody  saying  a  word, 
lie  went  on  :  'I  mean  this — that  at  night,  and  in  sleep,  cares  are 
not  only  doubly  burdensome,  but  some  matters,  that  then  seem  to 
us  sources  of  great  anxiety,  are  not  so  in  fact ;  and  when  we  are 
thoroughly  awake,  and  in  possession  of  all  our  faculties,  they  really 
seem  nothing,  and  we  wonder  at  the  influence  they  have  had  over 
us.  So  Scudamour,  while  under  the  power  and  delusion  of  sleep, 
seemed  absolutely  nipped  to  the  soul  by  the  red-hot  pincers  of 
Care,  but  opening  his  eyes  and  rousing  himself,  he  found  that  he 
could  see  nothing  that  had  inflicted  the  grievous  pain  upon  him : 
there  was  no  adequate  cause  for  the  increased  mental  suffering 
Scudamour  had  undergone.' 

"  The  correctness  of  this  piece  of  criticism  was  doubted,  because 
in  the  last  line  it  is  said, 

"  'Yet  did  the  smart  remain,  though  he  himself  did  flee.' 

"  Coleridge  (who  did  not  always  answer  objectors,  but  usually 
went  forward  with  his  own  speculations)  urged  that  although 
some  smart  might  remain,  it  had  not  the  same  intensity :  that 
Scudamour  had  entered  the  cave  in  a  state  of  mental  suffering, 
and  that  what  Spenser  meant  was,  that  sleep  much  enhanced  and 
exaggerated  that  suffering ;  yet  when  Scudamour  awoke,  the 
cause  of  the  increase  was  nowhere  to  be  found.  The  original 
source  of  sorrow  was  not  removed,  but  the  red-hot  pincers  were 
removed,  and  there  seemed  no  good  reason  for  thinking  worse  of 
matters,  than  at  the  time  the  knight  had  fallen  asleep.  Coleridge 
enlarged  for  some  time  upon  the  reasons  why  distressing  circum- 
stances always  seem  doubly  afflicting  at  night,  when  the  body  is 
in  a  horizontal  position :  he  contended  that  the  effort  originated 
in  the  brain,  to  which  the  blood  circulated  with  greater  force  and 
rapidity  than  when  the  body  was  perpendicular. 

"  The  name  of  Samuel  Rogers  having  been  mentioned,  a  question 
arose  how  far  he  was  entitled  to  the  rank  of  a  poet,  and  to  what 


INTRODUCTORY.  19 

rank   as  a  poet  ?     My  father  produced  a  copy  of  '  The  Plea- 
sures of  Memory.' 

"  Coleridge  dwelt  upon  the  harmony  and  sweetness  of  many  of 
the  couplets,  and  was  willing  to  put  the  versification  about  on  a 
par  with  Goldsmith's  '  Traveller.'  " 

§  3.  Coleridge  on  his  own  mode  of  Lecturing. 
Here  end  our  excerpts  from  Mr.  Collier's  Preface.    We 
subjoin  two  interesting  passages  from  a  letter  of  Coleridge, 
written  in  the  year  1819,  in  which  he  discusses  himself  as 
a  lecturer : — 

"  I  would  not  lecture  on  any  subject  for  which  I  had  to  acquire 
the  main  knowledge,  even  though  a  month's  or  three  months' 
previous  time  were  allowed  me ;  on  no  subject  that  had  not  em- 
ployed my  thoughts  for  a  large  portion  of  my  life  since  earliest 
manhood,  free  of  all  outward  and  particular  purpose." 

"During  a  course  of  lectures,  I  faithfully  employ  all  the  inter- 
vening days  in  collecting  and  digesting  the  materials,  whether  I 
have  or  have  not  lectured  on  the  same  subject  before,  making  no 
difference.  The  day  of  the  lecture,  till  the  hour  of  commence- 
ment, I  devote  to  the  consideration,  what  of  the  mass  before  me 
is  best  fitted  to  answer  the  purposes  of  a  lecture,  that  is,  to  keep 
the  audience  awake  and  interested  during  the  delivery,  and  to 
leave  a  sting  behind,  that  is,  a  disposition  to  study  the  subject 
anew,  under  the  light  of  a  new  principle.  Several  times,  however, 
partly  from  apprehension  respecting  my  health  and  animal  spirits, 
partly  from  the  wish  to  possess  copies  that  might  afterwards  be 
marketable  among  the  publishers,  I  have  previously  written  the 
lecture ;  but  before  I  had  proceeded  twenty  minutes,  I  have  been 
obliged  to  push  the  MS.  away,  and  give  the  subject  a  new  turn. 
Nay,  this  was  so  notorious,  that  many  of  my  auditors  used  to 
threaten  me,  when  they  saw  any  number  of  written  papers 
on  my  desk,  to  steal  them  away ;  declaring  they  never  felt  so 
secure  of  a  good  lecture  as  when  they  perceived  that  I  had  not  a 
single  scrap  of  writing  before  me.1  I  take  far,  far  more  pains 

'"Revant  de  grands  ouvrages  de  po&ie  et  de  philosophic,  laissnnt 
&happer  parfois  de  magnifiques  aperc.us  litt£raires,  causant  surtnut  de 
nidtaphysique  allemande,  il  emerreilluit  les  auditeurs  de  sea  cblmiis- 


20  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON. 

than  would  go  to  the  set  composition  of  a  lecture,  both  by  varied 
reading  and  by  meditation  ;  but  for  the  words,  illustrations,  &c., 
I  know  almost  as  little  as  any  one  of  the  audience  (that  is,  those 
of  anything  like  the  same  education  with  myself)  what  they  will 
be  five  minutes  before  the  lecture  begins.  Such  is  my  way ;  for 
such  is  my  nature  ;  and  in  attempting  any  other,  I  should  only 
torment  myself  in  order  to  disappoint  my  auditors — torment  my- 
self during  the  delivery,  I  mean,  for  in  all  other  respects  it  would 
be  a  much  shorter  and  easier  task  to  deliver  them  from  writing." 

These  extracts  are  taken  from  a  letter  to  "  J.  Britton, 
Esq.,"  on  his  request  that  Coleridge  would  deliver  a  course 
of  lectures  at  the  Russell  Institution.  Coleridge's  object  is 
to  remove  the  impression  that  he  kept  certain  written  lec- 
tures by  him,  which  could  be  delivered  anywhere  at  a 
moment's  notice. 

Mr.  Gillman,  in  his  "  Life  of  Coleridge,"  speaking  of  the 
course  of  lectures  delivered  in  1818,  observes  : — "  He  lec- 
tured from  notes,  which  he  had  carefully  made ;  yet  it  was 
obvious  that  his  audience  was  more  delighted  when,  putting 
his  notes  aside,  he  spoke  extempore."  l 

§  4. — Extracts  from  H.  Crabb  Robinson's  Diary. 
We  append  Mr.  H.  C.  Robinson's  notes  of  the  course,  so 
far  as  they  appear  in  his  Diary,  as  published.  Others,  no 
doubt,  his  editor  omitted,  for  the  diarist  tells  us  he  missed 
none  of  the  lectures.  The  extracts  from  the  manuscript 
Diary  which  are  printed,  though  numerous,  we  know  to  be 
merely  a  selection. 

sants  monologues ;  esprit  prodigieux,  plus  6tonnant  par  les  esperance* 
qu'il  a  donnees  qne  par  ses  reuvres,  il  a,malgre  ses  faiblesses,  exerce  une 
reelle  influence  sur  son  temps." — VAFEREAU'S  Dictionnaire  Universeldes 
Litttratures. 

1  See  Coleridge's  observations  to  the  same  effect,  in  tlie  extract  from 
Mr.  Collier's  diary,  under  date  Oct.  29,  and  in  the  Sixth  Lecture. 


INTRODUCTORY.  21 

"II.  C.  R.  TO  MRS.  CLARKSOJ*. 

"56,  Hatton  Garden, 

"Nov.ZVth,  1811. 
"My  dear  Friend, 

li  Of  course  you  have  already  heard  of  the  lectures  on  poetry 
which  Coleridge  is  now  delivering,  and  I  fear  have  begun  to  think 
me  inattentive  in  not  sending  you  some  account  of  them.  Yester- 
day he  delivered  the  fourth,  and  I  could  not  before  form  anything 
like  an  opinion  of  the  probable  result.  Indeed,  it  is  hardly 
otherwise  now  with  me.  but  were  I  to  wait  till  I  could  form  a 
judgment,  the  very  subject  itself  might  escape  from  observation, 
lie  has  about  150  hearers  on  an  average.  The  lectures  have 
been  brilliant,  that  is,  in  passages  ;  but  I  doubt  much  his  capacity 
to  render  them  popular.  Or  rather,  I  should  say,  I  doubt  any 
man's  power  to  render  a  system  of  philosophy  popular,  which 
supposes  so  much  unusual  attention  and  rare  faculties  of  thinking 
oven  in  the  hearer.  The  majority  of  what  are  called  sensible  and 
thinking  men  have,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  Coleridge,  "  the 
passion  of  clear  ideas ; "  and  as  all  poets  have  a  very  opposite 
passion — that  of  warm  feelings  and  delight  in  musing  over  con- 
ceptions and  imaginings  beyond  the  reach  of  the  analytic  faculty 
— no  wonder  there  is  a  sort  of  natural  hostility  between  these 
classes  of  minds.  This  will  ever  be  a  bar  to  Coleridge's  extensive 
popularity.  Besides  which,  he  has  certain  unfortunate  habits, 
which  he  will  not  (perhaps  c««not)  correct,  very  detrimental  to 
Lis  interests — 1  mean  the  vices  of  apologizing,  anticipating,  and 
repeating.  We  have  had  four  lectures,  and  are  still  in  the  Pro- 
legomena to  the  Shaksperian  drama.  When  we  are  to  begin 
Milton,  f  have  no  idea.  With  all  these  defects,  there  will  always 
be  a  small  circle  who  will  listen  with  delight  to  his  eloquent 
effusions  (for  that  is  the  appropriate  expression).  I  have  not 
missed  a  lecture,1  and  have  each  time  left  the  room  with  the 
satisfaction  which  the  hearkening  to  the  display  of  truth  in  a 
beautiful  form  always  gives.  I  have  a  German  friend  who  attends 
also,  and  who  is  delighted  to  find  the  logic  and  the  rhetoric  of 
lu's  country  delivered  in  a  foreign  language.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  Coleridge's  mind  is  much  more  German  than  English.  My 


1  The  first  note  to  be  found  in  t!ic  Diary,  as  printed, —  that  of  Dec. 
6,— is  on  the  Sixth  Lecture. 


22  LECTURES    ON    SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTON. 

friend  has  pointed  out  striking  analogies  between  Coleridge  and 
German  authors  whom  Coleridge  has  never  seen.  .  .  .  ." 

"  December  5th. — Accompanied  Mrs.  Rutt  to  Coleridge's 
lecture.  In  this  he  surpassed  himself  in  the  art  of  talking  in  a  very 
interesting  way,  without  speaking  at  all  on  the  subject  announced. 
According  to  advertisement,  he  was  to  lecture  on  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet,'  and  Shakspcrc's  female  characters.  Instead  of  this  he 
began  with  a  defence  of  school-flogging,  in  preference  at  least  to 
Lancaster's  mode  of  punishing,  without  pretending  to  find  the 
least  connection  between  that  topic  and  poetry.  Afterwards  he 
remarked  on  the  character  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I., 
as  compared  with  that  of  Charles  I. ;  distinguished  not  very  clearly 
between  wit  and  fancy ;  referred  to  the  different  languages  of 
Europe ;  attacked  the  fashionable  notion  concerning  poetic  diction ; 
ridiculed  the  tautology  of  Johnson's  line,  '  If  observation,  with 
extensive  view,'  &c. ;  and  warmly  defended  Shakspere  against  the 
charge  of  impurity.  While  Coleridge  was  commenting  on  Lan- 
caster's mode  of  punishing  boys,  Lamb  whispered :  '  It  is  a  pity 
he  did  not  leave  this  till  he  got  to  "  Henry  VI.,"  for  then  he  might 
say  he  could  not  help  taking  part  against  the  Lancastrians/ 
Afterwards,  when  Coleridge  was  running  from  topic  to  topic, 
Lamb  said,  '  This  is  not  much  amiss.  He  promised  a  lecture  on 
the  Nurse  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  and  in  its  place  he  has  given  us 
one  in  the  manner  of  the  Nurse.' " 


"Mas.  CLARKSON  TO  H.  C.  R. 

"Dec.  5th,  1811. 

"  Do  give  me  some  account  of  Coleridge.  I  guess  you  drew 
up  the  account  in  the  '  Times '  of  the  first  lecture.  I  do  hope  he 
will  have  steadiness  to  go  on  with  the  lectures  to  the  end.  It 
would  be  so  great  a  point  gained,  if  he  could  but  pursue  one 
object  without  interruption I  remember  a  beautiful  ex- 
pression of  Patty  Smith's,  after  describing  a  visit  at  Mr.  Wilber- 
force's  :  '  To  know  him,'  she  said,  '  all  he  is,  and  to  see  him  with 
such  lively  childish  spirits,  one  need  not  say, "  God  bless  him ! " — 
he  seems  already  in  the  fulness  of  every  earthly  gift.'  ....  Of 
all  rnen,  there  seems  most  need  to  say  '  God  bless  poor  Coleridge! ' 
One  could  almost  believe  that  an  enchanter's  spell  was  upon  him, 


INTRODUCTORY.  23 

forcing  him  to  be  what  he  is,  and  yet  leaving  him  the  power  ot' 
showing  what  he  might  be." 

"  December  9th. — Accompanied  Mrs.  Rough  to  Coleridge's 
seventh  and  incomparably  best  lecture.  He  declaimed  with  great 
eloquence  about  love,  without  wandering  from  his  subject, '  Romeo 
and  Juliet.'  He  was  spirited,  methodical,  and,  for  the  greater 
part,  intelligible,  though  profound.  Drew  up  for  the  '  Morning 
Chronicle '  a  hasty  report,  which  was  inserted." 

"  December  \2th. — Tea  with  Mrs.  Flaxman,  who  accompanied 
me  to  Coleridge's  lecture.  He  unhappily  relapsed  into  his  desul- 
tory habit,  and  delivered,  I  think,  his  worst  lecture.  He  began 
with  identifying  religion  with  love,  delivered  a  rhapsody  on 
brotherly  and  sisterly  love,  which  seduced  him  into  a  dissertation 
on  incest.  I  at  last  lost  all  power  of  attending  to  him." 


"II.  C.  R.  TO  MRS.  CLARKSON. 

"  56,  Halton  Garden, 

"Dec.  13th,  1811. 
"  My  dear  Friend, 

" .  .  .  .  Yesterday  I  should  have  been  able  to  send  you  a 
far  more  pleasant  letter  than  I  can  possibly  furnish  you  with  now; 
for  I  should  then  have  had  to  speak  of  one  of  the  most  gratifying 
and  delightful  exertions  of  Coleridge's  mind  on  Monday  last ;  and 
now  I  am  both  pained  and  provoked  by  as  unworthy  a  sequel  to 
his  preceding  lecture.  And  you  know  it  is  a  law  of  our  nature, 

" '  As  high  as  we  have  mounted  in  delight, 
In  our  dejection  do  we  sink  as  low.' 

"  You  have  so  beautifully  and  exactly  expressed  the  sentiment 
that  every  considerate  and  kind  observer  of  your  friend  must 
entertain,  that  it  is  quite  needless  to  give  you  any  account  of  his 
lectures  with  a  view  to  direct  any  judgment  you  might  wish  to 
form,  or  any  feeling  you  might  be  disposed  to  encourage.  You 
will,  I  am  sure,  anticipate  the  way  in  which  he  will  execute  his 
lectures.  As  evidences  of  splendid  talent,  original  thought,  and 
rare  powers  of  expression  and  fancy,  they  are  all  his  ad'  .irers  can 
wish  ;  but  as  a  discharge  of  his  undertaking,  a  fulfil.nent  of  his 
promise  to  the  public,  they  give  his  friends  great  uneasiness.  As 
you  express  it,  "  an  enchanter's  spell  seems  to  be  upon  him," 


24  LECTURES    ON    SHAKSPERE    AND   MILTON. 

which  takes  from  him  the  power  of  treating  upon  the  only  subject 
his  hearers  are  anxious  he  should  consider,  while  it  leaves  him 
infinite  ability  to  riot  and  run  wild  on  a  variety  of  moral  and 
religious  themes.  In  his  sixth  lecture  he  was,  by  advertisement, 
to  speak  of  '  Romeo  and  Juliet '  and  Shakspere's  females ;  un- 
happily, some  demon  whispered  the  name  of  Lancaster  in  his  ear: 
and  we  had,  in  one  evening,  an  attack  on  the  poor  Quaker,  a 
defence  of  boarding-school  flogging,  a  parallel  between  the  ages 
of  Elizabeth  and  Charles,  a  defence  of  what  is  untruly  called 
nnpoetic  language,  an  account  of  the  different  languages  of 
Europe,  and  a  vindication  of  Shakspere  against  the  imputation  of 
Crossness ! ! !  I  suspect  he  did  discover  that  offence  was  taken  at 
this,  for  his  succeeding  lecture  on  Monday  was  all  we  could  wish. 
He  confined  himself  to  '  Romeo  and  Juliet'  for  a  time,  treated  of 
the  inferior  characters,  and  delivered  a  most  eloquent  discourse 
on  love,  with  a  promise  to  point  out  how  Shakspere  had  shown 
the  same  truths  in  the  persons  of  the  lovers.  Yesterday  we  were 
to  have  a  continuation  of  the  theme.  Alas !  Coleridge  began  with 
a  parallel  between  religion  and  love,  which,  though  one  of  his 
favourite  themes,  he  did  not  manage  successfully.  Romeo  and 
Juliet  were  forgotten.  And  in  the  next  lecture  we  are  really  to 
hear  something  of  these  lovers.  Now  this  will  be  the  fourth 
time  that  his  hearers  have  been  invited  expressly  to  hear  of  this 
play.  There  are  to  be  only  fifteen  lectures  altogether  (half  have 
been  delivered),  and  the  course  is  to  include  Shakspere  and 
Milton,  the  modern  poets,  &c. !  ! !  Instead  of  a  lecture  on  a 
definite  subject,  we  have  an  immethodical  rhapsody,  very  delight- 
ful to  you  and  me,  and  only  offensive  from  the  certainty  that  it 
may  and  ought  to  offend  those  who  come  with  other  expectations. 
Yet,  with  all  this,  I  cannot  but  be  charmed  with  these  splendida 
vitia,  and  my  chief  displeasure  is  occasioned  by  my  being  forced 
to  hear  the  strictures  of  persons  infinitely  below  Coleridge,  without 
any  power  of  refuting  or  contradicting  them.  Yet  it  is  lucky  he 
has  hitherto  omitted  no  lecture.  Living  with  the  Morgans,  they 
force  him  to  come  with  them  to  the  lecture-room,  and  this  is  a 
great  point  gained." 

"  December  16th. — Took  Miss  Flaxman  to  Coleridge's  lecture. 
Very  desultory  again  at  first,  but  when  about  half  way  through, 
he  bethought  himself  of  Shakspere ;  and  though  he  forgot  at  last 


IXTRODUCTORT.  25 

what  we  had  been  four  times  iu  succession  to  hear,  viz.  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet  as  lovers,  yet  he  treated  beautifully  of  the  '  Tempest,' 
and  especially  Prospero,  Miranda,  Ariel,  and  Caliban.  This  part 
most  excellent." 

"  December  30th. — Attended  Coleridge's  lecture,  in  which  he 
kept  to  his  subject.  He  intimated  to  me  his  intention  to  deliver 
two  lectures  on  Milton.  As  he  had  written  to  me  about  his 
clilemina,  having  so  much  to  do  in  so  little  time,  I  gently  hinted 
in  my  reply  at  his  frequent  digressions — those  splcndida  peccattt 
•which  his  friends  best  apologized  for  by  laying  the  emphasis  on 
the  adjective." 

"II.  C.  R.  to  MRS.  CLARKSON. 

';  56,  Hatton  Garden, 

"3rd  January,  1812. 
"  My  dear  Friend, 

"I  received  your  letter  last  night,  and  will  write  the 
answer  immediately,  though  I  cannot  forward  It  till  I  have  seen 
your  brother  for  your  address.  I  have  a  better,  much  better, 
account  to  give  of  Coleridge's  lectures  than  formerly.  His  last 
three  lectures  have,  for  the  greater  part,  been  all  that  his  friends 
<:ould  wish — his  admirers  expect.  Your  sister  heard  the  two 
last,  and  from  her  you  will  learn  much  more  than  I  could  put 
into  a  letter,  had  I  all  the  leisure  I  now  want,  or  the  memory  I 
never  had.  His  disquisitions  on  the  characters  of  Richard  III., 
lago,  Falstaff,  were  full  of  paradox,  but  very  ingenious,  and  in 
the  main  true.  His  remarks  on  Richard  II.  and  Hamlet  very 
excellent.  Last  night  he  concluded  his  fine  development  of  the 
Prince  of  Denmark  by  an  eloquent  statement  of  the  moral  of  the 
play.  'Action,'  he  said,  'is  the  great  end  of  all;  no  intellect, 
however  grand,  is  valuable,  if  it  draw  us  from  action  and  lead  us 
to  think  and  think  till  the  time  of  action  is  passed  by,  and  we 
can  do  nothing.'  Somebody  said  to  me,  '  This  is  a  satire  on 
himself.' — 'No,'  said  I,  'it  is  an  elegy.'  A  great  many  of  his 
remarks  on  Hamlet  were  capable  of  a  like  application.  1  should 
add  that  he  means  to  deliver  several  lectures  beyond  the  pro- 
mised number." 

"  January  9th. — Evening  at  Coleridge's  lecture  on  Johnson's 
*  Preface.'  Though  sometimes  obscure,  his  many  palpable  hits 
must  have  given  general  satisfaction." 


20  LECTURES    0>    SHAKSPEKE    AND    MILTON. 

"January  \2th. — Accompanied  Mrs.  C.  Aikin  to  Coleridge's 
lecture.  A  continuation  of  remarks  on  Johnson's  '  Preface,'  but 
feeble  and  unmeaning  compared  with  the  last.  The  latter  part  of 
the  lecture  very  excellent.  It  was  on  '  Lear,'  in  which  he  vin- 
dicated the  melancholy  catastrophe,  and  on  '  Othello,'  in  which 
he  expressed  the  opinion  that  Othello  is  not  a  jealous  character."  ' 

"  January  16th. — At  Coleridge's  lecture.  He  reviewed  John- 
son's 'Preface,'  and  vindicated  warmly  Milton's  moral  and 
political  character,  but  I  think  with  less  than  his  usual  ability. 
He  excited  a  hiss  once  by  calling  Johnson  a  fellow,  for  which  he 
happily  apologized  by  observing  that  it  is  in  the  nature  of  evil  to 
beget  evil,  and  that  we  are  thus  apt  to  fall  into  the  fault  we 
censure.  He  remarked  on  Milton's  minor  poems,  and  the  nature 
of  blank  verse.  The  latter  half  of  the  lecture  was  very  good." 

"  January  20th. — In  the  evening  at  Coleridge's  lecture.  Con- 
clusion of  Milton.  Not  one  of  the  happiest  of  Coleridge's  efforts. 
Rogers  was  there,  and  with  him  was  Lord  Byron.  He  was 
wrapped  up,  but  I  recognized  his  club  foot,  and.  indeed,  his 
countenance  and  general  appearance." 

"H.  C.  R.  TO  MRS.  CLARKSON. 

"  Gray's  /««,  28th  January,  1812. 

"You  will  be  interested  to  hear  how  Coleridge's  lectures 
closed:  they  ended  with  eclat.  The  room  was  crowded,  and  the 
lecture  had  several  passages  more  than  brilliant — they  were 
luminous,  and  the  light  gave  conscious  pleasure  to  every  person 
who  knew  that  he  could  both  see  the  glory  and  the  objects  around 
it  at  once,  while  (you  know)  mere  splendour,  like  the  patent 
lamps,  presents  a  flame  that  only  puts  out  the  eyes.  Coleridge's 
explanation  of  the  character  of  Satan,  and  his  vindication  of 
Milton  against  the  charge  of  falling  below  his  subject,  where  he 
introduces  the  Supreme  Being,  and  his  illustration  of  the  difference 
between  poetic  and  abstract  truth,  and  of  the  diversity  in  identity 
between  the  philosopher  and  the  poet,  were  equally  wise  and 
beautiful.  He  concluded  with  a  few  strokes  of  satire ;  but  I 
cannot  forgive  him  for  selecting  alone  (excepting  an  attack  on 
Pope's  '  Homer,'  qualified  by  insincere  eulogy)  Mrs.  Barbauld. 
She  is  a  living  writer,  a  woman,  and  a  person  who,  however  dis- 


1  See  "  Othello,"  in  Appendix,  V.,  "  Table  Talk,"  June  24,  1827. 


INTRODUCTORY.  27 

cordant  with  himself  in  character  and  taste,  has  still  always  shown 
him  civilities  and  attentions.     It  was  surely  ungenerous." 

"  February '  27M. — Coleridge's  concluding  lecture." 

There  are  only  two  or  three  other  available  notes  in 
H.  C.  Robinson's  Diary,  on  the  subject  of  Coleridge.  They 
may  conveniently  be  inserted  here. 

"  December  23n7,  1810. — Coleridge  dined  with  the  Colliers, 
talked  a  vast  deal,  and  delighted  every  one.  Politics,  Kantian 
philosophy,  and  Shakspere  successively — and  at  last  a  playful 
exposure  of  some  bad  poets.  His  remarks  on  Shakspere  were 
singularly  ingenious.  Shakspere,  he  said,  delighted  in  portraying 
characters  in  which  the  intellectual  powers  are  found  in  a  pre- 
eminent degree,  while  the  moral  faculties  are  wanting,  at  the 
same  time  that  he  taught  the  superiority  of  moral  greatness.  Such 
is  the  contrast  exhibited  in  lago  and  Othello.  lago's  most  marked 
feature  is  his  delight  in  governing  by  fraud  and  superior  under- 
standing the  noble-minded  and  generous  Moor.  In  llichard  III. 
cruelty  is  less  the  prominent  trait  than  pride,  to  which  a  sense  of 
personal  deformity  gave  a  deadly  venom.  Coleridge,  however, 
asserted  his  belief  that  Shakspere  wrote  hardly  anything  of  this- 
play  except  the  character  of  Kichard :  he  found  the  piece  a  stock 
play  and  re-wrote  the  parts  which  developed  the  hero's  character : 
he  certainly  did  not  write  the  scenes  in  which  Lady  Anne  yielded 
to  the  usurper's  solicitations.  lie  considered  '  Pericles '  as- 
illustrating  the  way  in  which  Shakspere  handled  a  piece  he  had 
to  refit  for  representation.  At  first  he  proceeded  with  indifference,, 
only  now  and  then  troubling  himself  to  put  in  a  thought  or  an 
image,  but  as  he  advanced  he  interested  himself  in  his  employ- 
ment, and  the  last  two  acts  are  almost  entirely  by  him. 

"  Hamlet  lie  considered  in  a  point  of  view  which  seems  to  agree 
very  well  with  the  representation  given  in  '  Wilhehn  Meister.' 
Hamlet  is  a  man  whose  ideal  and  internal  images  are  so  vivid  that 
all  real  objects  are  faint  and  dead  to  him.  This  we  see  in  his 
soliloquies  on  the  nature  of  man  and  his  disregard  of  life  :  hence 
also  his  vacillation,  and  the  purely  convulsive  energies  he  dis- 


1  This  note  is  misplaced,  and  Friruary  a  misprint  for  January. 


28  LECTURES    ON   SHAKSPERE   AND  MILTON. 

played.  He  acts  only  by  fits  and  snatches.  He  manifests  a 
etrong  inclination  to  suicide.  On  my  observing  that  it  appeared 
etrange  Shakspere  did  not  make  suicide  the  termination  to  his 
piece,  Coleridge  replied  that  Shakspere  wished  to  show  how  even 
such  a  character  is  at  last  obliged  to  be  the  sport  of  chance — a 
salutary  moral  doctrine.  But  I  thought  this  the  suggestion  of 
the  moment  only,  and  not  a  happy  one,  to  obviate  a  seeming 
objection.  Hamlet  remains  at  last  the  helpless,  unpractical  being, 
though  every  inducement  to  activity  is  given  which  the  very 
appearance  of  the  spirit  of  his  murdered  father  could  bring  with  it. 
,  "  Coleridge  also  considered  FalstafF  as  an  instance  of  the  pre- 
dominance of  intellectual  power.  He  is  content  to  be  thought 
both  a  liar  and  a  coward,  in  order  to  obtain  influence  over  the 
minds  of  his  associates.  His  aggravated  lies  about  the  rob- 
bery are  conscious  and  purposed,  not  inadvertent  untruths.  On 
my  observing  that  this  account  seemed  to  justify  Cooke's  repre- 
sentation, according  to  which  a  foreigner  imperfectly  understand- 
ing the  character  would  fancy  Falstaff  the  designing  knave  who 
does  actually  outwit  the  Prince,  Coleridge  answered  that,  in  his 
own  estimation,  Falstaff  is  the  superior,  who  cannot  easily  be 
convinced  that  the  Prince  has  escaped  him ;  but  that,  as  in  other 
instances.  Shakspere  has  shown  us  the  defeat  of  mere  intellect  by 
a  noble  feeling :  the  Prince  being  the  superior  moral  character, 
who  rises  above  his  insidious  companion. 

"  On  my  noticing  Hume's  obvious  preference  of  the  French 
tragedians  to  Shakspere,  Coleridge  exclaimed,  '  Hume  compre- 
hended as  much  of  Shakspere  as  an  apothecary's  phial  would, 
placed  under  the  falls  of  Niagara.' 

"  We  spoke  of  Milton.  He  was,  said  Coleridge,  a  most  deter- 
mined aristocrat,  an  enemy  to  popular  elections,  and  he  would 
have  been  most  decidedly  hostile  to  the  Jacobins  of  the  present 
day.  He  would  have  thought  our  popular  freedom  excessive. 
He  was  of  opinion  that  the  government  belonged  to  the  wise, 
and  he  thought  the  people  fools.  In  all  his  works  there  is  but 
one  exceptionable  passage — that  in  which  he  vindicates  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  members  from  the  House  of  Commons  by  Cromwell'. 
Coleridge  on  this  took  occasion  to  express  his  approbation  of  the 
death  of  Charles. 

"  Of  Milton's  '  Paradise  Regained,'  he  observed  that  however 
inferior  its  kind  is  to  '  Paradise  Lost,'  its  execution  is  superior. 
This  was  all  Milton  meant  in  the  preference  he  is  said  to  have 


INTRODUCTORY.  29 

given  to  his  later  poem.  It  is  a  didactic  poem,  and  formed  on  tha 
model  of  Job." 

"January  29th,  1811. — I  walked  with  Coleridge  to  Rickman's, 
where  we  dined.  He  talked  on  Shakspere,  particularly  his  Fools. 
These  he  regarded  as  supplying  the  place  of  the  ancient  chorus. 
The  ancient  drama,  he  observed,  is  distinguished  from  the  Shak- 
sperian  in  this,  that  it  exhibits  a  sort  of  abstraction,  not  of  cha- 
racter, but  of  idea.  A  certain  sentiment  or  passion  was  exhibited 
in  all  its  purity,  unmixed  with  anything  that  could  interfere  with 
its  effect.  Shakspere,  on  the  other  hand,  imitates  life,  mingled  as 
we  find  it  with  joy  and  sorrow.  We  meet  constantly  in  life  with 
persons  who  are,  as  it  were,  unfeeling  spectators  of  the  most  pas- 
sionate situations.  The  Fool  serves  to  supply  the  place  of  some 
such  uninterested  person,  where  all  the  other  characters  are 
interested.  The  most  genuine  and  real  of  Shakspere' s  Fools  \s 
in  '  Lear.'  In  '  Hamlet '  the  fool  is,  as  it  were,  divided  into  several 
parts,  dispersed  through  the  play." 

"  February  1st,  1836. — In  Coleridge  there  was  a  sort  of  dreami- 
ness,1 which  would  not  let  him  see  things  as  they  were.  He  would 
talk  about  his  own  feelings,  and  recollections,  and  intentions,  in  a 
way  that  deceived  others,  but  he  was  first  deceived  himself.  '  I 
am  sure,'  said  "Wordsworth,  '  that  he  never  formed  a  plan  of 
Christabel,  or  knew  what  was  to  be  its  end,  and  that  he  merely 
deceived  himself  when  he  thought,  as  he  says,  that  he  had  the  idea 
quite  clearly  in  his  mind.'  " 

"  May  24th,  1843. — Looked  over  some  letters  of  Coleridge  to 
Mrs.  Clarkson.  I  make  an  extract  from  one  of  a  part  only  of  a 
parenthesis,  as  characteristic  of  his  involved  style: — '  Each,  I  say 
(for,  in  writing  letters,  I  envy  dear  Southey's  power  of  saying  one 
thing  at  a  time,  in  short  and  close  sentences,  whereas  my  thoughts 
bustle  along  like  a  Surinam  toad,  with  little  toads  sprouting  out  of 
back,  side,  and  belly,  vegetating  while  it  crawls)  ;  each,  I  say — '  " 

§  5. — Lectures  before  1811-12. 
In  a  letter  of  February,  1818,  to  one  who  attended  his 

1  "  His  eyes  were  large  and  soft  in  their  expression,  and  it  was  by  the 
peculiar  appearance  of  haze  or  dreaminess  which  mixed  with  their  light 
that  I  recognized  their  object." — DK  QUIXCET.  That  is,  the  owner  of  the 
eyes,  whom  he  had  not  seen  before,  De  Quincey  concluded,  must  b» 
Coleridge. 


30  LECTURES    ON   SIIAESPERE   AND   MILTON. 

course  of  that  year,  Coleridge  says  :  "  Sixteen  or  rather 
seventeen  years  ago,  I  delivered  eighteen  lectures  on  Shak- 
spere  at  the  Royal  Institution."  We  frequently  find  him 
alluding  elsewhere  to  these  "eighteen  lectures  on  Shak- 
epere,"  generally  in  connection  with  the  charge  against 
him  of  borrowing  from  Schlegel. 

No  trace  of  any  course  so  early  in  the  century  can  be 
discovered. 

In  1801  Coleridge  settled  at  Keswick.  During  the  years 
immediately  succeeding,  his  health  much  distressed  him. 
Ee  insured  his  life.  He  developed  a  dangerous  habit 
of  opium-taking,  to  relieve  rheumatic  pains.  At  last,  in 
1804,  he  fled  from  Keswick  to  Malta.  Yet  the  course, 
if  there  was  one,  must  have  been  delivered  during  this 
period. 

It  has  been  plausibly  suggested  that  "  16  or  rather  17  ", 
• — written,  as  we  print  it,  with  figures, — is  misprinted  or 
zniscopied  for  "  10  or  rather  11." 

Coleridge  gave  a  course  of  lectures  at  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion in  1806-7,  "  On  the  Principles  of  the  Fine  Arts." 
J3hakspere  would  inevitably  find  his  way  into  it.  In 
1807-8,  he  commenced  there  "Five  courses,  of  five  Lectures 
•each,  oil  Distinguished  English  Poets."  From  various 
reasons,  this  series  of  lectures  was  not  completed  ;  but  the 
first  five,  advertised  to  be  on  Shakspere,  were  certainly  de- 
livered, and  probably  the  rest  that  were  delivered  were  on 
Shakspere,  also. 

Is  it  not  a  reasonable  conjecture  that  it  is  to  these  two 
courses  that  Coleridge  refers  ?  He  holds  persistently  to 
the  "  eighteen,"  and  this  is  a  more  serious  difficulty  than 
the  "  sixteen  or  rather  seventeen; "  yet,  is  it  not  conceivable 
that,  putting  the  two  series  together,  he  did  deliver  eighteen 


INTRODUCTORY.  31 

lectures  on  Sliakspere  ?  There  is  a  passage  in  Gillman's 
"  Life,"  which  gives  countenance  to  such  a  conjecture.  In 
it  Coleridge  speaks  of  "the  substance  of  the  Lectures  given, 
and  intended  to  have  been  given,  at  the  Koyal  Institution, 
on  the  Distinguished  English  Poets,  in  illustration  of  the 
general  principles  of  Poetry,  together  with  suggestions  con- 
cerning the  affinity  of  the  Fine  Arts  to  each  other,  and  the 
principles  common  to  them  all :  Architecture ;  Gardening ; 
Dress;  Music;  Painting;  Poetry."  The  two  series,  in  this 
passage,  clearly  run  together  in  Coleridge's  mind.  Nor 
was  it  long  after  the  lectures  that  he  wrote  it.  It  occurs 
in  a  Prospectus  to  the  "  Friend,"  dated  1809. 

In  a  note  to  Chapter  II.  of  the  "  Biographia  Literaria," 
Coleridge  speaks  of  these  "eighteen  lectures  on  Shakspere" 
as  his  "  first  course; "  and  they  were  delivered,  he  tells  us, — 
in  a  statement  prefixed  to  the  notes  on  "  Hamlet,"  in  tne 
second  portion  of  our  volume, — in  "the  same  year  in  which 
Sir  Humphry  Davy,  a  fellow  lecturer,  made  his  great  revo- 
lutionary discoveries  in  chemistry."  Sir  Humphry  Davy 
was  only  four-and-twenty  in  1802.  "  He  made,"  says  Mrs. 
H.  N.  Coleridge,'  "  his  great  discovery,  the  decomposition 
of  the  fixed  alkalies  and  detection  of  their  metallic  bases,  in 
October  of  1807."  He  also  seems  to  have  baen  the  means 
of  inducing  Coleridge  to  give  lectures  about  this  time. 

The  argument  is  strong.  Mrs.  H.  N.  Coleridge  thinks  it 
conclusive.  We,  also,  are  convinced ;  but  the  conclusion  is 
not  quite  made  out.  For  Davy  was  appointed  Lecturer  on 
Chemistry,  Director  of  the  Laboratory,  &c.,  at  the  lloyal 
Institution  in  1801,  and,  after  previous  lectures,  which  gave 
great  sati&faction,  delivered  one  on  January  21,  1802,  "  to 

1  In  a  note  to  her  edition  (Pickering,  1849)  of  the  "  Notes  and  Lec- 
tures on  Shakspere,"  from  her  husband's  "  Kemuins  of  S.  T.  Coleridge.'' 


32         LECTURES  ON  SHAKSPEKE  AND  MILTON. 

a  crowded  and  enlightened  audience,"  which  was  afterwards 
printed  by  request,  and  produced  an  "  extraordinary  sensa- 
tion," causing  Sir  Harry  Englefield  to  speak  of  him  as 
"  covered  with  glory  ;  "  l  and  in  the  second  portion  of  this 
volume,  we  find  a  classification  of  the  plays  of  Shakspere, 
described  as  "attempted  in  1802." 

However,  observe  that,  in  the  statement  prefixed  to  the 
notes  on  "  Hamlet,"  Coleridge,  speaking  of  these  eighteen 
lectures,  says  of  Schlegel's,  that  they  "were  not  given 
orally  till  two  years  after  mine." 

Now  Schlegel's  lectures  were  given  orally  in  1808. 
The  point  is  proved. 

In  the  note  from  the  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  alluded  to 
above,  Coleridge  supplies  a  piece  of  information,  which — : 
speaking,  as  he  is,  of  our  lectures  of  1811-12, — is  too  conso- 
latory to  be  omitted.  He  informs  us  that  his  "  first  course" 
"  differed  from  the  following  courses  only  by  varying 
the  illustrations  of  the  same  thoughts." 

Coleridge  lectured  on  Poetry  at  the  Royal  Institution  in 
1810.  See  extract  from  Mr.  Collier's  Diary,  under  date, 
October  29th,  1811,  and  a  statement  in  the  sixth  Lecture. 

It  is  to  a  later  period  than  1811-12,  that  Dr.  Dibdin 
alludes  in  his  "  Reminiscences,"  when  he  thus  speaks  of 
Coleridge :  "  I  once  came  from  Kensington  in  a  snow- 
storm, to  hear  him  lecture  upon  Shakspere.  I  might  have 
sat  as  wisely  and  comfortably  by  my  own  fireside — for  no 
Coleridge  appeared.2  And  this  I  think  occurred  more  than 
once  at  the  Royal  Institution." 

1  "Life  of  Sir  Humphry  Davy,"  by  J.  A.  Paris,  1831. 

2  See  the  conclusion  of  II.  C.  Robinson's  letter  to  Mrs.  Glaikson,  on 
[1.24; 


LECTURES    ON    SHAKSPERE 
AND  MILTON. 

1811-12. 

LECTURE  I. 

I"  CANNOT  avoid  the  acknowledgment  of  the  difficulty 
of  the  task  I  have  undertaken ;  yet  I  have  undertaken 
it  voluntarily,  and  I  shall  discharge  it  to  the  best  of  my 
abilities,  requesting  those  who  hear  me  to  allow  for  de- 
ficiencies, and  to  bear  in  mind  the  wide  extent  of  my 
subject.  The  field  is  almost  boundless  as  the  sea,  yet  full 
of  beauty  and  variety  as  the  land:  I  feel  in  some  sort 
oppressed  by  abundance  ;  inopem  me  copia,  fecit. 

What  I  most  rely  upon  is  your  sympathy  ;  and,  as  I 
proceed,  I  trust  that  I  shall  interest  you :  sympathy  and 
interest  are  to  a  lecturer  like  the  sun  and  the  showers  to 
nature — absolutely  necessary  to  the  production  of  blossoms 
and  fruit. 

May  I  venture  to  observe  that  my  own  life  has  been  em- 
ployed more  in  reading  and  conversation — in  collecting  and 
reflecting,  than  in  printing  and  publishing  ;  for  I  never  felt 
the  desire,  so  often  experienced  by  others,  of  becoming  an 
author.  It  was  accident  made  me  an  author  in  the  first 
instance :  I  was  called  a  poet  almost  before  I  knew  I  could 
write  poetry.1  In  what  I  have  to  offer  I  shall  speak  freely, 

1  Some  remiirka  of  Coleridge  on  himself  as  a  poet  may  be  given  here 
from  Mr.  Collier's  Diiiry,  November  1st,  1811  : — 

D 


3-t  LECTURES    ON  [1811-12 

whether  of  myself  or  of  my  contemporaries,  when  it  is 
necessary  :  conscious  superiority,  if  indeed  it  be  superior, 
need  not  fear  to  have  its  self-love  or  its  pride  wounded ; 
and  contempt,  the  most  absurd  and  debasing  feeling  that 
can  actuate  the  human  mind,  must  be  far  below  the  sphere 
in  which  lofty  intellects  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being. 

On  the  first  examination  of  a  work,  especially  a  work  of 
fiction  and  fancy,  it  is  right  to  inquire  to  what  feeling  or 
passion  it  addresses  itself — to  the  benevolent,  or  to  the  vin- 
dictive ;  whether  it  is  calculated  to  excite  emulation,  or  to 
produce  envy,  under  the  common  mask  of  scorn ;  and,  in 
the  next  place,  whether  the  pleasure  we  receive  from  it  has 
a  tendency  to  keep  us  good,  to  make  us  better,  or  to  reward 
us  for  being  good. 

It  will  be  expected  of  me,  as  my  prospectus  indicates, 
that  I  should  say  something  of  the  causes  of  false  criticism 

* "  For  my  part  (said  Coleridge,)  I  freely  own  that  I  have  no  title  to 
the  name  of  a  poet,  according  to  my  own  definition  of  poetry.  (He  did 
not  state  his  definition.)  Many  years  ago  a  small  volume  of  verses  came 
out  with  my  name  :  it  was  not  my  doing,  but  Cottle  offered  me  £20, 
when  I  much  wanted  it,  for  some  short  pieces  I  had  written  at  Cam- 
bridge, and  1  sold  the  manuscripts  to  him,  but  I  declare  that  I  had  no 
notion,  at  the  time,  that  they  were  meant  for  publication  ;  my  poverty, 
and  not  my  will,  consented.  Cottle  paid  my  poverty,  and  I  was  dubbed 
poet,  almost  before  I  knew  whether  I  was  in  Bristol  or  in  London.  I  met 
people  in  the  streets  who  congratulated  me  upon  being  a  poet,  and  that 
was  the  first  notice  I  had  of  my  new  rank  and  dignity.  I  was  to  have 
had  £20  for  what  Cottle  bought,  but  I  never  received  more  than  £15,  and 
for  this  paltry  sum  I  was  styled  poet  by  the  reviewers,  who  fell  foul  of 
me  for  what  they  termed  my  bombast  and  buckram.  Nevertheless  500 
copies  were  sold,  and  a  new  edition  being  called  for,  I  pleaded  guilty  to 
the  charge  of  inflation  and  grandiloquence.  But  now,  only  see  the  con- 
trast! Wordsworth  has  printed  two  poems  of  mine,  but  without  my 
name,  and  again  the  reviewers  have  laid  their  claws  upon  me,  and  for 
what?  Not  for  bombast  and  buckram — not  for  inflation  and  grandilo- 
quence, but  for  mock  simplicity  ;  and  now  I  am  put  down  as  the  master 
of  a  school  for  the  instruction  of  grown  children  in  nursery  rhyme*. '" 


.  L]  SHAKSPEEE   AND    MILTON.  35 

particularly  as  regards  poetry,  though.  I  do  not  mean  to 
confine  myself  to  that  only :  in  doing  so,  it  will  be  neces- 
sary for  me  to  point  out  some  of  the  obstacles  which  im- 
pede, and  possibly  prevent,  the  formation  of  a  correct 
judgment.  These  are  either — 

1.  Accidental  causes,  arising  out  of  the  particular  circum- 
stances of  the  age  in  which  we  live  ;  or — 

2.  Permanent  causes,  flowing  out  of  the  general  principles 
of  our  nature. 

Under  the  first  head,  accidental  causes,  may  be  classed — 
1.  The  events  that  have  occurred  in  our  own  day,  which, 
from  their  importance  alone,  have  created  a  world  of 
readers.  2.  The  practice  of  public  speaking,  which  en- 
courages a  too  great  desire  to  be  understood  at  once,  and 
at  the  first  blush.  3.  The  prevalence  of  reviews,  magazines, 
newspapers,  novels,  &c. 

Of  the  last,  and  of  the  perusal  of  them,  I  will  run  the 
risk  of  asserting,  that  where  the  reading  of  novels  prevails 
as  a  habit,  it  occasions  in  time  the  ent-L  e  destruction  of  the 
powers  of  the  mind  ;  it  is  such  an  utter  loss  to  the  reader, 
that  it  is  not  so  much  to  be  called  pass-time  as  kill-time. 
It  conveys  no  trustworthy  information  as  to  facts  ;  it  pro- 
duces no  improvement  of  the  intellect,  but  fills  the  mind 
with  a  mawkish  and  morbid  sensibility,  which  is  directly 
hostile  to  the  cultivation,  invigoration,  and  enlargement  of 
the  nobler  faculties  of  the  understanding. 

Reviews  are  generally  pernicious,  because  the  writers 
determine  without  reference  to  fixed  principles — because 
reviews  are  usually  filled  with  personalities  ;  and,  above  all; 
because  they  teach  people  rather  to  judge  than  to  consider, 
decide  than  to  reflect :  thus  they  encourage  superficiality, 
and  induce  the  thoughtless  and  the  idle  to  adopt  sentiments 
conveyed  under  the  authoritative  WE,  and  not,  by  tha 
working  and  subsequent  clearing  of  their  own  minds,  to 
iorm  just  original  opinions.  In  older  times  writers  were 


36  LECTDBES   ON  [1811-12 

looked  up  to  almost  as  intermediate  beings,  between  angels 
and  men ;  afterwards  they  were  regarded  as  venerable  and, 
perhaps,  inspired  teachers;  subsequently  they  descended 
to  the  level  of  learned  and  instructive  friends ;  but  in 
modern  days  they  are  deemed  culprits  more  than  bene- 
factors :  as  culprits  they  are  brought  to  the  bar  of  self- 
erected  and  self-satisfied  tribunals.  If  a  person  be  now 
seen  reading  a  new  book,  the  most  usual  question  is — 
"  What  trash  have  you  there  ?  "  I  admit  that  there  is 
Borne  reason  for  this  difference  in  the  estimate ;  for  in 
these  times,  if  a  man  fail  as  a  tailor,  or  a  shoemaker,  and 
can  read  and  write  correctly  (for  spelling  is  still  of  some 
consequence)  he  becomes  an  author.1 

The  crying  sin  of  modern  criticism  is  that  it  is  overloaded 
with  personality.  If  an  author  commit  an  error,  there  is 
no  wish  to  set  him  right  for  the  sake  of  truth,  but  for  the 
sake  of  triumph — that  the  reviewer  may  show  how  much 
wiser,  or  how  much  abler  he  is  than  the  writer.  Reviewers 
are  usually  people  who  would  have  been  poets,  historians, 
biographers,  &c.,  if  they  could  :  they  have  tried  their  talents 
at  one  or  at  the  other,  and  have  failed  ;  therefore  they  turn 
critics,  and, 'like  the  Roman  emperor,  a  critic  most  hates 
those  who  excel  in  the  particular  department  in  which  he, 
the  critic,  has  notoriously  been  defeated.  This  is  an  age 
of  personality  and  political  gossip,  when  insects,  as  in 
ancient  Egypt,  are  worshipped  in  proportion  to  the  venom 
of  their  stings — when  poems,  and  especially  satires,  are 
valued  according  to  the  number  of  living  names  they  con- 
tain ;  and  where  the  notes,  however,  have  this  comparative 
excellence,  that  they  are  generally  more  poetical  and 
pointed  than  the  text.  This  style  of  criticism  is  at  the 

1  Here,  Mr.  Collier  says,  Coleridge  made  a  quotation  from  Jeremy 
Taylor,  and  observed,  that  "  although  Jeremy  Taylor  wrote  only  in 
prose,  according  to  some  definitions  of  poetry  he  might  be  considered 
one  of  our  noblest  poets." 


LEG!.  I.]  6HAK3PERE  AND   MILTON.  37 

present  moment  one  of  the  chief  pillars  of  the  Scotch 
professorial  court ;  and,  as  to  personality  in  poems,  I  re- 
member to  have  once  seen  an  epic  advertised,  and  strongly- 
recommended,  because  it  contained  more  than  a  hundred 
names  of  living  characters. 

How  derogatory,  how  degrading,  this  is  to  true  poetry  I 
need  not  say.  A  very  wise  writer  has  maintained  that 
there  is  more  difference  between  one  man  and  another, 
than  between  man  and  a  beast :  I  can  conceive  of  no 
lower  state  of  human  existence  than  that  of  a  being  who, 
insensible  to  the  beauties  of  poetry  himself,  endeavours  to 
reduce  others  to  his  own  level.  What  Hooker  so  elo- 
quently claims  for  law  I  say  of  poetry — "  Her  seat  is  the 
bosom  of  God,  her  voice  the  harmony  of  the  world;  all 
things  in  heaven  and  on  earth  do  her  homage."  It  is  the 
language  of  heaven,  and  in  the  exquisite  delight  we  derive 
from  poetry  we  have,  as  it  were,  a  type,  a  foretaste,  and  a 
prophecy  of  the  joys  of  heaven. 

Another  cause  of  false  criticism  is  the  greater  purity  of 
morality  in  the  present  age,  compared  even  with  the  last. 
Our  notions  upon  this  subject  are  sometimes  carried  to 
excess,  particularly  among  those  who  in  print  affect  to 
enforce  the  value  of  a  high  standard.  Far  be  it  from  me 
to  depreciate  that  value ;  but  let  me  ask,  who  now  will 
venture  to  read  a  number  of  the  "  Spectator,"  or  of 
the  "  Tatler,"  to  his  wife  and  daughters,  without  first 
examining  it  to  make  sure  that  it  contains  no  word  which 
might,  in  our  day,  offend  the  delicacy  of  female  ears, 
and  shock  feminine  susceptibility  ?  Even  our  theatres, 
the  representations  at  which  usually  reflect  the  morals 
of  the  period,  have  taken  a  sort  of  domestic  turn,  and 
while  the  performances  at  them  may  be  said,  in  some 
sense,  to  improve  the  heart,  there  is  no  doubt  that  they 
vitiate  the  taste.  The  effect  is  bad,  however  good  tho 
cause. 


38  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  compose  and  adapt  systems 
of  education  ;  but  it  appears  to  me  something  like  putting 
Greek  and  Latin  grammars  into  the  hands  of  boys,  before 
they  understand  a  word  of  Greek  or  Latin.  These 
grammars  contain  instructions  on  all  the  minutiae  and  re- 
finements of  language,  but  of  -what  use  are  they  to  persons 
who  do  not  comprehend  the  first  rudiments  ?  Why  are 
you  to  furnish  the  means  of  judging,  before  you  give  the 
capacity  to  judge  ?  These  seem  to  me  to  be  among  the 
principal  accidental  causes  of  false  criticism. 

Among  the  permanent  causes,  I  may  notice — 

First,  the  great  pleasure  we  feel  in  being  told  of  the 
knowledge  we  possess,  rather  than  of  the  ignorance  we 
suffer.  Let  it  be  our  first  duty  to  teach  thinking,  and 
then  what  to  think  about.  You  cannot  expect  a  person  to 
be  able  to  go  through  the  arduous  process  of  thinking, 
who  has  never  exercised  his  faculties.  In  the  Alps  we  see 
the  Chamois  hunter  ascend  the  most  perilous  precipices 
without  danger,  and  leap  from  crag  to  crag  over  vast 
chasms  without  dread  or  difficulty,  and  who  but  a  fool, 
if  unpractised,  would  attempt  to  follow  him  ?  It  is  not 
intrepidity  alone  that  is  necessary,  but  he  who  would 
imitate  the  hunter  must  have  gone  through  the  same  pro- 
cess for  the  acquisition  of  strength,  skill,  and  knowledge  : 
he  must  exert,  and  be  capable  of  exerting,  the  same 
muscular  energies,  and  display  the  same  perseverance  and 
•ourage,  or  all  his  efforts  will  be  worse  than  fruitless : 
they  will  lead  not  only  to  disappointment,  but  to  destruc- 
tion. Systems  have  been  invented  with  the  avowed  object 
of  teaching  people  how  to  think ;  but  in  my  opinion  the 
proper  title  for  such  a  work  ought  to  be  "  The  Art  of 
teaching  how  to  think  without  thinking."  Nobody  en- 
deavours to  instruct  a  man  how  to  leap,  until  he  has  first 
given  him  vigour  and  elasticity. 

Nothing   is  move    essential — nothing  can  be  more  im- 


LEG!.  I.]  SHAKSPERB   AND   MILTON.  i$9 

portant,  than  in  every  possible  way  to  cultivate  and  im- 
prove the  thinking  powers :  the  mind  as  much  requires 
exercise  as  the  body,  and  no  man  can  fully  and  adequately 
discharge  the  duties  of  whatever  station  he  is  placed  in 
without  the  power  of  thought.  I  do  not,  of  course,  say 
that  a  man  may  not  get  through  life  without  much  think- 
ing, or  much  power  of  thought;  but  if  he  be  a  carpenter, 
without  thought  a  carpenter  he  must  remain :  if  he  be  a 
weaver,  without  thought  a  weaver  he  must  remain. — On 
man  God  has  not  only  bestowed  gifts,  but  the  power  of 
giving  :  he  is  not  a  creature  born  but  to  live  and  die  :  he 
has  had  faculties  communicated  to  him,  which,  if  he  do 
his  duty,  he  is  bound  to  communicate  and  make  beneficial 
to  others.  Man,  in  a  secondary  sense,  may  be  looked  upon 
in  part  as  his  own  creator,  for  by  the  improvement  of  the 
faculties  bestowed  upon  him  by  God,  he  not  only  enlarges 
them,  but  may  be  said  to  bring  new  ones  into  existence. 
The  Almighty  has  thus  condescended  to  communicate  to 
man,  in  a  high  state  of  moral  cultivation,  a  portion  of  his 
own  great  attributes. 

A  second  permanent  cause  of  false  criticism  is  con- 
nected with  the  habit  of  not  taking  the  trouble  to  think  : 
it  is  the  custom  which  some  people  have  established  of 
judging  of  books  by  books. — Hence  to  such  the  use  and 
value  of  reviews.  Why  has  nature  given  limbs,  if  they 
are  not  to  be  applied  to  motion  and  action ;  why  abilities, 
if  they  are  to  lie  asleep,  while  we  avail  ourselves  of  the 
eyes,  ears,  and  understandings  of  others  ?  As  men  often 
employ  servants,  to  spare  them  the  nuisance  of  rising  from 
their  seats  and  walking  across  a  room,  so  men  employ 
reviews  in  order  to  save  themselves  the  trouble  of  exer- 
cising their  own  power  of  judging:  it  is  only  mental 
slothfulness  and  sluggishness  that  induce  so  many  to 
adopt,  and  take  for  granted  the  opinions  of  others. 

I  may  illustrate  this  moral  imbecility  by  a  case  which 


40  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

came  within  my  own  knowledge.  A  friend  of  mine  had 
seen  it  stated  somewhere,  or  had  heard  it  said,  that 
Shakspere  had  not  made  Constance,  in  "King  John," 
speak  the  language  of  nature,  when  she  exclaims  on  the 
loss  of  Arthur, 

"  Grief  fills  the  room  up  of  my  absent  child, 
Lies  in  his  bed,  walks  up  and  down  with  me  j 
Puts  on  his  pretty  looks,  repeats  his  words, 
Remembers  me  of  all  his  gracious  parts, 
Stuffs  out  his  vacant  garments  with  his  form : 
Then  have  I  reason  to  be  fond  of  grief." 

King  John,  Act.  iii.  Scene  4. 

Within  three  months  after  he  had  repeated  the  opinion, 
(not  thinking  for  himself)  that  these  lines  were  out  of 
nature,  my  friend  died.  I  called  upon  his  mother,  an 
affectionate,  but  ignorant  woman,  who  had  scarcely  heard 
the  name  of  Shakspere,  much  less  read  any  of  his  plays. 
Like  Philip,  I  endeavoured  to  console  her,  and  among 
other  things  I  told  her,  in  the  anguish  of  her  sorrow,  that  she 
seemed  to  be  as  fond  of  grief  as  she  had  been  of  her  son. 
What  was  her  reply  ?  Almost  a  prose  parody  on  the  very 
language  of  Shakspere — the  same  thoughts  in  nearly  the 
same  words,  but  with  a  different  arrangement.  An  attesta- 
tion like  this  is  worth  a  thousand  criticisms. 

As  a  third  permanent  cause  of  false  criticism  we  may 
notice  the  vague  use  of  terms.  And  here  I  may  take  the 
liberty  of  impressing  upon  my  hearers  the  fitness,  if  not 
the  necessity,  of  employing  the  most  appropriate  words 
and  expressions,  even  in  common  conversation,  and  in  the 
ordinary  transactions  of  life.  If  you  want  a  substantive 
do  not  take  the  first  that  comes  into  your  head,  but  that 
which  most  distinctly  and  peculiarly  conveys  your  mean- 
ing ;  if  an  adjective,  remember  the  grammatical  use  of 
that  part  of  speech,  and  be  careful  that  it  expresses  some 
quality  in  the  substantive  that  you  wish  to  impress  upon 


.  I.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  41 

your  hearer.  Reflect  for  a  moment  on  the  vague  and  un- 
certain manner  in  which  the  word  "  taste  "  has  been  often 
employed ;  and  how  such  epithets  as  "  sublime,"  "  majestic," 
*' grand,"  "striking,"  "picturesque,"  &c.,  have  been  mis- 
applied, and  how  they  have  been  used  on  the  most  un- 
worthy and  inappropriate  occasions. 

I  was  one  day  admiring  one  of  the  falls  of  the  Clyde ; 
and  ruminating  upon  what  descriptive  term  could  be  most 
fitly  applied  to  it,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
epithet  "  majestic "  was  the  most  appropriate.  While  I 
was  still  contemplating  the  scene  a  gentleman  and  a  lady 
came  up,  neither  of  whose  faces  bore  much  of  the  stamp  of 
superior  intelligence,  and  the  first  words  the  gentleman 
uttered  were  "  It  is  very  majestic."  I  was  pleased  to  find 
such  a  confirmation  of  my  opinion,  and  I  complimented 
the  spectator  upon  the  choice  of  his  epithet,  saying  that 
he  had  used  the  best  word  that  could  have  been  selected 
from  our  language:  "Yes,  sir,"  replied  the  gentleman, 
"I  say  it  is  very  majestic:  it  is  sublime,  it  is  beautiful, 
it  is  grand,  it  is  picturesque." — "Ay  (added  the  lady),  it 
is  the  prettiest  thing  I  ever  saw."  I  own  that  I  was  not  a 
little  disconcerted. 

You  will  see,  by  the  terms  of  my  prospectus,  that  I 
intend  my  lectures  to  be,  not  only  "  in  illustration  of  the 
principles  of  poetry,"  but  to  include  a  statement  of  tho 
application  of  those  principles,  "as  grounds  of  criticism 
on  the  most  popular  works  of  later  English  poets,  those 
of  the  living  included."  If  I  had  thought  this  task 
presumptuous  on  my  part,  I  should  not  have  voluntarily 
undertaken  it ;  and  in  examining  the  merits,  whether 
positive  or  comparative,  of  my  contemporaries,  I  shall 
dismiss  all  feelings  and  associations  which  might  lead  me 
from  the  formation  of  a  right  estimate.  I  shall  give  talent 
and  genius  its  due  praise,  and  only  bestow  censure  where, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  truth  and  justice  demand  it.  I  shall,  of 


42  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

course,  carefully  avoid  falling  into  that  system  of  false 
criticism  which  I  condemn  in  others ;  and,  above  all, 
whether  I  speak  of  those  whom  I  know,  or  of  those  whom 
I  do  not  know,  of  friends  or  of  enemies,  of  the  dead  or  of 
the  living,  my  great  aim  will  be  to  be  strictly  impartial. 
No  man  can  truly  apply  principles,  who  displays  the 
slightest  bias  in  the  application  of  them ;  and  I  shall  have 
ranch  greater  pleasure  in  pointing  out  the  good,  than  in 
exposing  the  bad.  I  fear  no  accusation  of  arrogance  from 
the  amiable  and  the  wise:  I  shall  pity  the  weak,  and 
despise  the  malevolent. 

Report  of  the  First  Lecture. 

It  is  instructive  to  compare  with  Mr.  Collier's  version  a 
report  of  this  first  Lecture,  which  appeared  in  "  The  Times." 
It  was  inserted  the  morning  after  delivery  (November  19, 
1811),  and  is  stated  to  be  "  From  a  Correspondent."  It 
appears  to  have  been  written  by  H.  C.  Robinson.  See 
Diary,  quoted,  page  22,  above.  A  brief  report  may  also 
be  found  in  "  Notes  and  Queries,"  August  4th,  1855,  from 
the  "  Dublin  Correspondent."  "  The  Times  "  report  is  as 
follows : — 

"  Mr.  Coleridge  commenced  yesterday  evening  his  long 
announced  lectures  on  the  principles  of  poetry.  To  those 
who  consider  poetry  in  no  other  light  than  as  a  most 
entertaining  species  of  composition,  this  gentleman's  mode 
of  inquiring  into  its  principles  may  want  attraction. 
Unlike  most  professional  critics  on  works  of  taste,  his 
great  object  appears  to  be  to  exhibit  in  poetry  the  principles 
of  moral  wisdom,  and  the  laws  of  our  intellectual  nature, 
which  form  the  basis  of  social  existence.  In  the  intro- 
ductory lecture  delivered  last  night  Mr.  C.  deduced  the 
causes  of  false  criticism  on  works  of  imagination,  from  cir- 
cumstances which  may  hitherto  have  been  thought  to  stand 
in  no  very  close  connection  with  our  literary  habits,  viz.,  the 


LECT.  I.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  43 

excessive  stimulus  produced  by  the  wonderful  political 
events  of  the  age  ; — the  facilities  afforded  to  general  and 
indiscriminate  reading ; — the  rage  for  public  speaking,  and 
the  habit  consequently  induced  of  requiring  instantaneous 
intelligibility  ; — periodical  criticism,  which  teaches  those  to- 
fancy  they  can  judge  who  ought  to  be  content  to  learn ; — 
the  increase  of  cities,  which  has  put  an  end  to  the  old- 
fashioned  village-gossiping,  and  substituted  literary  small 
talk  in  its  place ;  and  the  improved  habits  of  domestic  life, 
and  higher  purity  of  moral  feelings,  which  in  relation  to 
the  drama  have  produced  effects  unfavourable  to  the 
exertion  of  poetic  talent  or  of  judgment.  From  such  topics 
it  will  be  seen  that  Mr.  Coleridge  is  original  in  his  views. 
On  all  occasions,  indeed,  he  shows  himself  to  be  a  man  who 
really  thinks  and  feels  for  himself ;  and  in  the  development 
of  his  moral  philosophy,  something  may  be  expected  from 
him  very  different  from  critics  in  general  on  Shakspere, 
Milton,  and  our  other  national  poets.  However  serious  th» 
design  of  Mr.  C.'s  lectures,  in  the  execution  he  shows 
himself  by  no  means  destitute  of  talents  of  humour,  irony, 
and  satire." 


44  LECTURES  ON  [1811-12 


LECTURE  II.1 

"D  EADERS  may  be  divided  into  four  classes  : 

1.  Sponges,  who  absorb  all  they  read,  and  return 
it  nearly  in  the  same  state,  only  a  little  dirtied. 

2.  Sand-glasses,  who  retain  nothing,  and  are  content  to 
get  through  a  book  for  the  sake  of  getting  through  the 
time. 

3.  Strain-bags,  who  retain  merely  the  dregs  of  what  they 
read. 

4  Mogul  diamonds,  equally  rare  and  valuable,  who 
profit  by  what  they  read,  and  enable  others  to  profit  by  it 
also.2 

I  adverted  in  my  last  lecture  to  the  prevailing  laxity  in 
the  use  of  terms  :  this  is  the  principal  complaint  to  which 
the  moderns  are  exposed  ;  but  it  is  a  grievous  one,  inas- 
much as  it  inevitably  tends  to  the  misapplication  of  words, 
and  to  the  corruption  of  language.  I  mentioned  the  word 
"  taste,"  but  the  remark  applies  not  merely  to  substantives 

1  Compare  this  lecture  with  Coleridge's  note  on  "  The  Drama  gene- 
rally, and  Public  Taste."     Lectures  and  Notes  of  1818,  Section  I. 

2  The  following  passage  is  extracted  from  theMishna  (Cap.  Patrutn, 
r.  s.  15): 

"  Quadruplices  conditiones  (inveniunt)  in  his  qui  scdent  coram  sapien- 
tibus  (audiendi  causa)  videlicet  conditio  spongise,  clepsydrae,  sacci 
fecinacei,  et  cribri.  Spongia  sugendo  attrahit  omnia.  Clepsydra,  quod 
ex  una  parte  attrahit,  ex  altera  rursum  effundit.  Saccus  fecinaceus 
effundit  vinum,  et  colligit  feces.  Cribrum  emittit  farinam,  etcolligit 
eimilam." 


LEG!.  II.]  SHAKSPERE   AJJD   MILTOX.  45 

and  adjectives,  to  things  and  their  epithets,  but  to  verbs : 
thus,  how  frequently  is  the  verb  "  indorsed  "  strained  from 
its  true  signification,  as  given  by  Milton  in  the  expression — 
"  And  elephants  indorsed  with  towers."  Again,  "  virtue  " 
has  been  equally  perverted :  originally  it  signified  merely 
strength  ;  it  then  became  strength  of  mind  and  valour,  and 
it  has  now  been  changed  to  the  class  term  for  moral 
excellence  in  all  its  various  species.  I  only  introduce  these 
fis  instances  by  the  way,  and  nothing  could  be  easier  than 
to  multiply  them. 

At  the  same  time,  while  I  recommend  precision  both  of 
thought  and  expression,  I  am  far  from  advocating  a  pedantic 
niceness  in  the  choice  of  language :  such  a  course  would 
only  render  conversation  stiff  and  stilted.  Dr.  Johnson 
used  to  say  that  in  the  most  unrestrained  discourse  he 
always  sought  for  the  properest  word, — that  which  best  and 
most  exactly  conveyed  his  meaning :  to  a  certain  point  he 
was  right,  but  because  he  carried  it  too  far,  he  was  often 
laborious  where  he  ought  to  have  been  light,  and  formal 
where  he  ought  to  have  been  familiar.  Men  ought  to 
endeavour  to  distinguish  subtly,  that  they  may  be  able 
afterwards  to  assimilate  truly. 

I  have  often  heard  the  question  put  whether  Pope  is  a 
great  poet,  and  it  has  been  warmly  debated  on  both  sides, 
some  positively  maintaining  the  affirmative,  and  others 
dogmatically  insisting  upon  the  negative ;  but  it  never 
occurred  to  either  party  to  make  the  necessary  preliminary 
inquiry — What  is  meant  by  the  words  "poet"  and! 
"  poetry  ?  "  Poetry  is  not  merely  invention  ;  if  it  were, 
Gulliver's  Travels  would  be  poetry ;  and  before  you  can 
arrive  at  a  decision  of  the  question,  as  to  Pope's  claim,  it  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  ascertain  what  people  intend  by  the 
words  they  use.  Harmonious  versification  no  more  makes- 
poetry  than  mere  invention  makes  a  poet ;  and  to  both 
these  requisites  there  is  much  besides  to  be  added.  la 


4C  LECTURES   OH  [1811-12 

morals,  politics,  and  philosophy  no  useful  discussion  can  be 
entered  upon,  unless  we  begin  by  explaining  and  under- 
standing the  terms  we  employ.  It  is  therefore  requisite 
that  I  should  state  to  you  what  I  mean  by  the  word 
u  poetry,"  before  I  commence  any  consideration  of  the  com- 
parative merits  of  those  who  are  popularly  called  "  poets." 
Words  are  used  in  two  ways  : — 

1.  In  a  sense  that  comprises  everything  called  by  that 
name.     For  instance,  the  words  "  poetry  "  and  "  sense  " 
are  employed  in  this  manner,  when  we  say  that  such  a  line 
is  bad  poetry  or  bad  sense,  when   in  truth  it  is  neither 
poetry  nor  sense.     If  it  be  bad  poetiy,  it  is  not  poetry ;  if 
it  be  bad  sense,  it  is  not  sense.     The  same  of  "  metre  :  " 
bad  metre  is  not  metre. 

2.  In  a  philosophic  sense,  which  must  include  a  defini- 
tion of  what  is  essential  to  the  thing.     Nobody  means  mere 
metre  by  poetry ;  so,  mere  rhyme  is  not  poetry.     Some- 
thing more  is  required,  and  what  is  that  something  ?     It  is 
not  wit,  because  we  may  have  wit  where  we  never  dream 
of  poetry.     Is  it  the  just  observation  of  human  life  ?     Is  it 
a  peculiar  and  a  felicitous  selection  of  words  ?     This,  in- 
deed, would  come  nearer  to  the  taste  of  the  present  age, 
when  sound  is  preferred  to  sense ;  but  I  am  happy  to  think 
that  this  taste  is  not  likely  to  last  long. 

The  Greeks  and  Romans,  in  the  best  period  of  their 
literature,  knew  nothing  of  any  such  taste.  High-flown 
epithets  and  violent  metaphors,  conveyed  in  inflated 
language,  is  not  poetry.  Simplicity  is  indispensable,  and  in 
Catullus  it  is  often  impossible  that  more  simple  language 
could  be  used ;  there  is  scarcely  a  word  or  a  line,  which  a 
lamenting  mother  in  a  cottage  might  not  have  employed.1 
That  I  may  be  clearly  understood,  I  will  venture  to  give 
the  following  definition  of  poetry. 

1  Mr.  Collier  notes  that  Coleridge  here  named  some  particular  poem 
by  Catullus. 


LEG!.  II.]  SHAKSPEEE   AND    MILTON.  47 

It  is  an  art  (or  whatever  better  term  our  language  may 
afford)  of  representing,  in  words,  external  nature  and 
human  thoughts  and  affections,  both  relatively  to  human 
affections,  by  the  production  of  as  much  immediate  pleasure 
in  parts,  as  is  compatible  with  the  largest  sum  of  pleasure 
in  the  whole. 

Or,  to  vary  the  words,  in  order  to  make  the  abstract 
idea  more  intelligible  : — 

It  is  the  art  of  communicating  whatever  we  wish  to 
communicate,  so  as  both  to  express  and  produce  excitement, 
but  for  the  purpose  of  immediate  pleasure ;  and  each  part 
is  fitted  to  afford  as  much  pleasure,  as  is  compatible  with 
the  largest  sum  in  the  whole. 

You  will  naturally  ask  my  reasons  for  this  definition  of 
poetry,  and  they  are  these  : — 

"  It  is  a  representation  of  nature ; "  but  that  is  not 
enough :  the  anatomist  and  the  topographer  give  repre- 
sentations of  nature  ;  therefore  I  add  : 

"  And  of  the  human  thoughts  and  affections."  Here 
the  metaphysician  interferes  :  here  our  best  novelists  inter- 
fere likewise, — excepting  that  the  latter  describe  with  more 
minuteness,  accuracy,  and  truth,  than  is  consistent  with 
poetry.  Consequently  I  subjoin  : 

"  It  must  be  relative  to  the  human  affections."  Here 
my  chief  point  of  difference  is  with  the  novel-writer,  the 
historian,  and  all  those  who  describe  not  only  nature,  and 
the  human  affections,  but  relatively  to  the  human  affec- 
tions :  therefore  I  must  add  : 

"  And  it  must  be  done  for  the  purpose  of  immediate 
pleasure."  In  poetry  the  general  good  is  to  be  accom- 
plished through  the  pleasure,  and  if  the  poet  do  not  do 
that,  he  ceases  to  be  a  poet  to  him  to  whom  he  gives  it 
not.  Still,  it  is  not  enough,  because  we  may  point  out 
many  prose  writers  to  whom  the  whole  of  the  definition 
hitherto  furnished  would  apply.  I  add,  therefore,  that 


48  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

it  is  not  only  for  the  purpose  of  immediate  pleasure, 
but— 

"  The  work  must  be  so  constructed  as  to  produce  in 
each  part  that  highest  quantity  of  pleasure,  or  a  high 
quantity  of  pleasure."  There  metre  introduces  its  claim, 
where  the  feeling  calls  for  it.  Our  language  gives  to 
expression  a  certain  measure,  and  will,  in  a  strong  state  of 
passion,  admit  of  scansion  from  the  very  mouth.  The  very 
assumption  that  we  are  reading  the  work  of  a  poet  supposes 
that  he  is  in  a  continuous  state  of  excitement ;  and  thereby 
arises  a  language  in  prose  unnatural,  but  in  poetry  natural. 

There  is  one  error  which  ought  to  be  peculiarly  guarded 
against,  which  young  poets  are  apt  to  fall  into,  and  which 
old  poets  commit,  from  being  no  poets,  but  desirous  of  the 
end  which  true  poets  seek  to  attain.  No :  I  revoke  the 
words ;  they  are  not  desirous  of  that  of  which  their  little 
minds  can  have  no  just  conception.  They  have  no  desire 
of  fame — that  glorious  immortality  of  true  greatness — 

44  That  lives  and  spreads  aloft  by  those  pure  eyes, 
And  perfect  witness  of  all  judging  Jove  ; " 

MILTON'S  Lycidas. 

but  they  struggle  for  reputation,  that  echo  of  an  echo,  in 
whose  very  etymon  its  signification  is  contained.  Into  this 
error  the  author  of  "  The  Botanic  Garden "  has  fallen, 
through  the  whole  of  which  work,  I  will  venture  to  assert, 
there  are  not  twenty  images  described  as  a  man  would 
describe  them  in  a  state  of  excitement.  The  poem  is 
written  with  all  the  tawdry  industry  of  a  milliner  anxious 
to  dress  up  a  doll  in  silks  and  satins.  Dr.  Darwin  laboured 
to  make  his  style  fine  and  gaudy,  by  accumulating  and 
applying  all  the  sonorous  and  handsome-looking  words  in 
our  language.  This  is  not  poetry,  and  I  subjoin  to  my 
definition — 

That  a  true  poem  must  give  "  as  much  pleasure  in  each 


.  II.]  SHAFSPEEE   AND   MILTON.  49 

part  as  is  compatible  with  the  greatest  sum  of  pleasure  in 
the  whole."  We  must  not  look  to  parts  merely,  but  to  the 
whole,  and  to  the  effect  of  that  whole.  In  reading  Milton, 
for  instance,  scarcely  a  line  can  be  pointed  out  which, 
critically  examined,  could  be  called  in  itself  good :  the 
poet  would  not  have  attempted  to  produce  merely  what  is 
in  general  understood  by  a  good  line  ;  he  sought  to  produce 
glorious  paragraphs  and  systems  of  harmony,  or,  as  he 
himself  .expresses  it, 

"  Many  a  winding  bout 
Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out." 

I?  Allegro. 

Such,  therefore,  as  I  have  now  defined  it,  I  shall  con- 
sider the  sense  of  the  word  "  Poetry  :  "  pleasurable  excite- 
ment is  its  origin  and  object ;  pleasure  is  the  magic  circle 
out  of  which  the  poet  must  not  dare  to  tread.  Part  of  my 
definition,  you  will  be  aware,  would  apply  equally  to  the 
arts  of  painting  and  music,  as  to  poetry :  but  to  the  last 
are  added  words  and  metre,  so  that  my  definition  is  strictly 
and  logically  applicable  to  poetry,  and  to  poetry  only,  which 
produces  delight,  the  parent  of  so  many  virtues.  When  I 
was  in  Italy,  a  friend  of  mine,  who  pursued  painting  almost 
with  the  enthusiasm  of  madness,  believing  it  superior  to 
every  other  art,  heard  the  definition  I  have  given,  acknow- 
ledged its  correctness,  and  admitted  the  pre-eminence  of 
poetry. 

I  never  shall  forget,  when  in  Rome,  the  acute  sensation 
of  pain  I  experienced  on  beholding  the  frescoes  of  Raphael 
and  Michael  Angelo,  and  on  reflecting  that  they  were  in- 
debted for  their  preservation  solely  to  the  durable  material 
upon  which  they  were  painted.  There  they  are,  the  per- 
manent monuments  (permanent  as  long  as  walls  and  plaster 
last)  of  genius  and  skill,  while  many  others  of  their  mighty 
works  have  become  the  spoils  of  insatiate  avarice,  or  the 
victims  of  wanton  barbarism.  How  grateful  ought  man- 
ic 


50  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

kind  to  be,  that  so  many  of  the  great  literary  productions 
of  antiquity  have  come  down  to  us — that  the  works  of 
Homer,  Euclid,  and  Plato,  have  been  preserved — while  we 
possess  those  of  Bacon,  Newton,  Milton,  Shakspere,  and 
of  so  many  other  living-dead  men  of  our  own  island. 
These,  fortunately,  may  be  considered  indestructible  :  they 
shall  remain  to  us  till  the  end  of  time  itself — till  time,  in 
the  words  of  a  great  poet  of  the  age  of  Shakspere,  has 
thrown  his  last  dart  at  death,  and  shall  himself  sub- 
mit to  the  final  and  inevitable  destruction  of  all  created 
matter.1 

A  second  irruption  of  the  Goths  and  Vandals  could  not 
now  endanger  their  existence,  secured  as  they  are  by  the 
wonders  of  modern  invention,  and  by  the  affectionate 
admiration  of  myriads  of  human  beings.  It  is  as  nearly 
two  centuries  as  possible  since  Shakspere  ceased  to  write, 
but  when  shall  he  cease  to  be  read  ?  When  shall  he  cease 
to  give  light  and  delight  ?  Tet  even  at  this  moment  he  is 
only  receiving  the  first-fruits  of  that  glory,  which  must 
continue  to  augment  as  long  as  our  language  is  spoken. 
English  has  given  immortality  to  him,  and  he  has  given 
immortality  to  English.  Shakspere  can  never  die,  and 
the  language  in  which  he  wrote  must  with  him  live  for 
ever. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  some  prejudices  have  attached 
themselves  to  the  name  of  our  illustrious  countryman, 
which  it  will  be  necessary  for  me  first  to  endeavour  to  over- 
come. On  the  continent,  we  may  remark,  the  works  of 

1  He  alludes  to  Ben  Jonson's  epitaph  on  the  Countess  of  Pembroke  : 

"  Underneath  this  sable  herse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse, 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother. 
Death  !  ere  thou  hast  slain  another, 
Learn'd,  and  fair,  and  good  as  she, 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee." 


LEG!.  II.]  SHAKSPERE  AND   MILTON.  51 

Shakspere  are  honoured  in  a  double  way — by  the  admiration 
of  the  Germans,  and  by  the  contempt  of  the  French. 

Among  other  points  of  objection  taken  by  the  French, 
perhaps,  the  most  noticeable  is,  that  he  has  not  observed 
the  sacred  unities,  so  hallowed  by  the  practice  of  their  own 
extolled  tragedians.  They  hold,  of  course,  after  Corneille 
and  Racine,  that  Sophocles  is  the  most  perfect  model  for 
tragedy,  and  Aristotle  its  most  infallible  censor ;  and  that 
as  Hamlet,  Lear,  Macbeth,  and  other  dramas  by  Shakspere, 
are  not  framed  upon  that  model,  and  consequently  not 
subject  to  the  same  laws,  they  maintain  (not  having  im- 
partiality enough,  to  question  the  model,  or  to  deny  the 
rules  of  the  Stagirite)  that  Shakspere  was  a  sort  of 
irregular  genius — that  he  is  now  and  then  tasteful  and 
touching,  but  generally  incorrect ;  and,  in  short,  that  he 
•was  a  mere  child  of  nature,  who  did  not  know  any  better 
than  to  write  as  he  has  written. 

It  is  an  old,  and  I  have  hitherto  esteemed  it  a  just, 
Latin  maxim,  Oportet  discentem  credere,  edoctum  judicare ; 
but  modern  practice  has  inverted  it,  and  it  ought  now 
rather  to  stand,  Oportet  discentem  judijare,  edoctum  credere. 
To  remedy  this  mistake  there  is  but  one  course,  namely,  the 
acquirement  of  knowledge.  I  have  often  run  the  risk  of 
applying  to  the  ignorant,  who  assumed  the  post  and 
province  of  judges,  a  ludicrous,  but  not  inapt  simile  :  they 
remind  me  of  a  congregation  of  frogs,  involved  in  darkness 
in  a  ditch,  who  keep  an  eternal  croaking,  until  a  lantern  is 
brought  near  the  scene  of  their  disputation,  when  they 
instantly  cease  their  discordant  harangues.  They  may  be 
more  politely  resembled  to  night-flies,  which  flutter  round 
the  glimmering  of  a  feeble  taper,  but  are  overpowered  by 
ihe  dazzling  splendour  of  noon-day.  Nor  can  it  be  other- 
wise, until  the  prevalent  notion  is  exploded,  that  knowledge 
is  eas'ly  taught,  and  until  the  conviction  is  general,  that 
ihe  hardeet  thing  learned  is  that  people  are  ignorant.  All 


52  LECTUKJES  ON  [1811-12 

are  apt  'enough  to  discover  and  expose  the  ignorance  of 
their  friends,  but  their  blind  faith  in  their  own  sufficiency 
is  something  more  than  marvellous. 

Some  persons  have  contended  that  mathematics  ought  to 
be  taught  by  making  the  illustrations  obvious  to  the  senses. 
Nothing  can  be  more  absurd  or  injurious  :  it  ought  to  be  our 
never-ceasing  effort  to  make  people  think,  not  feel ;  and  it 
is  very  much  owing  to  this  mistake  that,  to  those  who  do 
not  think,  and  have  not  been  made  to  think,  Shakspere  has 
been  found  so  difficult  of  comprehension.  The  condition  of 
the  stage,  and  the  character  of  the  times  in  which  our  great 
poet  flourished,  must  first  of  all  be  taken  into  account,  in 
considering  the  question  as  to  his  judgment.  If  it  were 
possible  to  say  which  of  his  great  powers  and  qualifications 
is  more  admirable  than  the  rest,  it  unquestionably  appears 
to  me  that  his  judgment  is  the  most  wonderful ;  and  at  this 
conviction  I  have  arrived  after  a  careful  comparison  of  his 
productions  with  those  of  his  best  and  greatest  contempo- 
i-aries.1 

i  "  Pope  was  tinder  the  common  error  of  his  age,  an  error,  far  from 
being  sufficiently  exploded  even  at  the  present  day.  It  consists  (as  I 
explained  at  large,  and  proved  in  detail,  in  my  public  lectures)  in  mis- 
taking for  the  essentials  of  the  Greek  stage  certain  rules,  which  the  wise 
poets  imposed  upon  themselves,  in  order  to  render  all  the  remaining  parts 
of  the  drama  consistent  with  those  that  had  been  forced  upon  them  by 
circumstances  independent  of  then:  will ;  out  of  which  circumstances  the 
drama  itself  arose.  The  circumstances  in  the  time  of  Shakspere,  which 
it  was  equally  out  of  his  power  to  alter,  were  different,  and  such  as,  in 
my  opinion,  allowed  a  far  wider  sphere,  and  a  deeper  and  more  human  in- 
terest. Critics  are  too  apt  to  forget,  that  rules  are  but  means  to  an  end  ; 
consequently,  where  the  ends  are  different,  the  rules  must  be  likewise  so. 
We  must  have  ascertained  what  the  end  is,  before  we  can  determine 
what  the  rules  ought  to  be.  Judging  under  this  impression,  I  did  not 
hesitate  to  declare  my  full  conviction,  that  the  consummate  judgment  of 
Shakspere,  not  only  in  the  general  construction,  but  in  all  the  detail  of 
his  dramas,  impressed  me  with  greater  wonder,  than  even  the  might  of 
his  genius,  or  the  depth  of  his  philosophy." — S.  T.  COLERIDGE,  note 
to  chap.  ii.  of  the  Biographia  Literaria. 


T.  II.]  SIIAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  J»3 

If  indeed  "  King  Lear  "  were  to  be  tried  by  the  laws 
•which  Aristotle  established,  and  Sophocles  obeyed,  it  must 
be  at  once  admitted  to  be  outrageously  irregular  ;  and^sup- 
posing  the  rules  regarding  the  unities  to  be  founded  on  man 
and  nature,  Shakspere  must  be  condemned  for  arraying  his 
works  in  charms  with  which  they  ought  never  to  have  been 
decorated.  I  have  no  doubt,  however,  that  both  were  right 
in  their  divergent  courses,  and  that  they  arrived  at  the  same 
conclusion  by  a  different  process. 

Without  entering  into  matters  which  must  be  generally 
known  to  persons  of  education,  respecting  the  origin  of 
tragedy  and  comedy  among  the  Greeks,  it  may  be  observed, 
that  the  unities  grew  mainly  out  of  the  size  and  construction 
of  the  ancient  theatres  :  the  plays  represented  were  made  to 
include  within  a  short  space  of  time  events  which  it  is  im- 
possible should  have  occurred  in  that  short  space.  This  fact 
alone  establishes,  that  all  dramatic  performances  were  then 
looked  upon  merely  as  ideal.  It  is  the  same  with  us :  no- 
body supposes  that  a  tragedian  suffers  real  pain  when  he  is 
stabbed  or  tortured ;  or  that  a  comedian  is  in  fact  trans- 
ported with  delight  when  successful  in  pretended  love. 

If  we  want  to  witness  mere  pain,  we  can  visit  the 
hospitals  :  if  we  seek  the  exhibition  of  mere  pleasure,  we  can 
find  it  in  ball-rooms.  It  is  the  representation  of  it,  not  the 
reality,  that  we  require,  the  imitation,  and  not  the  thing 
itself ;  and  we  pronounce  it  good  or  bad  in  proportion  as 
the  representation  is  an  incorrect,  or  a  correct  imitation. 
The  true  pleasure  we  derive  from  theatrical  performances 
arises  from  the  fact  that  they  are  unreal  and  fictitious.  If 
dying  agonies  were  unfeigned,  who,  in  these  days  of  civili- 
sation, could  derive  gratification  from  beholding  them  ? 

Performances  in  a  large  theatre  made  it  necessary  that 
the  human  voice  should  be  unnaturally  and  unmusically 
stretched  ;  and  hence  the  introduction  of  recitative,  for  the 
purpose  of  rendering  pleasantly  artificial  the  distortion  of 


54  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

the  face,  and  straining  of  the  voice,  occasioned  by  the  mag- 
nitude of  the  building.  The  fact  that  the  ancient  choruses 
were  always  on  the  stage  made  it  impossible  that  any  change 
of  place  should  be  represented,  or  even  supposed. 

The  origin  of  the  English  stage  is  less  boastful  than  that 
of  the  Greek  stage :  like  the  constitution  under  which  we 
live,  though  more  barbarous  in  its  derivation,  it  gives  more 
genuine  and  more  diffused  liberty,  than  Athens  in  the  zenith 
of  her  political  glory  ever  possessed.  Our  earliest  dramatic 
performances  were  religious,  founded  chiefly  upon  Scripture 
history ;  and,  although  countenanced  by  the  clergy,  they 
Avere  filled  with  blasphemies  and  ribaldry,  such  as  the 
most  hardened  and  desperate  of  the  present  day  would  not 
dare  to  utter.  In  these  representations  vice  and  the  principle 
of  evil  were  personified  ;  and  hence  the  introduction  of  fools 
and  clowns  in  dramas  of  a  more  advanced  period. 

While  Shakspere  accommodated  himself  to  the  taste  and 
spirit  of  the  times  in  which  he  lived,  his  genius  and  hie 
judgment  taught  him  to  use  these  characters  with  terrible 
effect,  in  aggravating  the  misery  and  agony  of  some  of  his 
most  distressing  scenes.  This  result  is  especially  obvious 
in  "King  Lear:"  the  contrast  of  the  Fool  wonderfully 
heightens  the  colouring  of  some  of  the  most  painful  situa- 
tions, where  the  old  monarch  in  the  depth  and  fury  of  his 
despair,  complains  to  the  warring  elements  of  the  ingratitude 
of  his  daughters. 

" Spit,  fire  !  spout,  rain  ! 

Nor  rain,  wind,  thunder,  fire,  are  my  daughters : 
I  tax  not  you,  you  elements,  with  unkindness, 
I  never  gave  you  kingdom,  call'd  you  children ; 
You  owe  me  no  subscription  :  then,  let  fall 
Your  horrible  pleasure ;  here  I  stand,  your  slave, 
A  poor,  infirm,  weak,  and  despis'd  old  man." 

King  Lear,  Act  iii.,  Scene  2. 

Just  afterwards,  the  Fool  interposes,  to  heighten  and 
inflame  the  passion  of  the  scene. 


LECT.  III.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  55 

In  other  dramas,  though,  perhaps  in  a  less  degree,  our 
great  poet  has  evinced  the  same  skill  and  felicity  of  treat- 
ment ;  and  in  no  instance  can  it  be  justly  alleged  of  him, 
as  it  may  be  of  some  of  the  ablest  of  his  contemporaries, 
that  he  introduced  his  fool,  or  his  clown,  merely  for  the 
sake  of  exciting  the  laughter  of  his  audiences.  Shakspere 
had  a  loftier  and  a  better  purpose,  and  in  this  respect 
availed  himself  of  resources,  which,  it  would  almost  seem, 
he  alone  possessed. 


Report  of  the  Third  Lecture. 

The  following  report  of  the  third  lecture  is  taken  from 
the  "  Morning  Chronicle  "  : — 

"  Last  night  Mr.  Coleridge  delivered  his  third  lecture. 
He  commenced  by  resuming  his  definition,  or  rather,  as  he 
expressed  it,  his  description  of  poetry.  He  said  that  the 
proper  antithesis  of  poetry  was  not  prose,  but  science,  and 
that  the  former  was  distinguished  from  the  latter  by  having 
intellectual  pleasure  for  its  object,  and  attaining  its  end  by 
the  language  natural  to  us  in  a  state  of  powerful  excitement. 
It  was  different  from  other  kinds  of  composition  by  pro- 
ducing pleasure  from  the  whole,  in  consistency  with  tho 
subordinate  pleasure  from  the  component  parts ;  and  the 
design  of  it  was  to  communicate  as  much  im mediate 
pleasure  as  is  consistent  with  the  largest  sum  of  pleasure 
from  the  whole.  It  is  not  enough  that  the  poet  renders 
more  grateful  what  is  already  pleasing,  but  he  must  perform 
the  more  difficult  duty,  by  the  magic  of  his  art,  of  oxti*act- 
ing  pleasure  from  pain.  The  lecturer  having  much  ampli- 
fied in  this  portion  of  his  address,  deeming  it  absolutely 
necessary  that  it  should  be  correctly  understood,  in  order 
that  what  he  should  in  future  offer  might  be  intelligible ; 
he  next  adverted  to  some  passages  in  the  Psalms,  and  Isaiah, 


56  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

to  show  the  numerous  hexameters  with  which  the  sacred 
writings  abound,  as  the  poetical  form  in  which  we  express 
ourselves  under  the  strong  impulses  of  passion.  Having 
disposed  of  this  introductory  matter,  he  advanced  to  the 
consideration  of  the  wonderful  powers  of  Shakspere,  which 
lie  prefaced  with  some  remarks  on  the  Unities,  particularly 
those  of  time  and  place,  the  neglect  of  which  he  justified  in 
our  great  poet,  pointing  out  the  reasons  which  made  it  ne- 
cessary that  by  the  Greek  dramatists  they  should  be  atten- 
tively regarded.  Among  these  were  the  constant  presence 
of  the  chorus,  and  the  extent  of  the  theatres  adapted  to  receive 
the  entire  state  within  the  inclosure.  Among  the  objections 
to  Shakspere,  he  observed,  that  it  had  been  said  that  he  was 
not  a  close  copyist  of  nature.  Mr.  Coleridge  contended 
that  such  a  transcript  of  nature,  instead  of  being  a  beauty, 
'would  be  a  blemish  ;  that  his  business  was  not  to  copy,  but 
to  imitate.  It  was  not  the  Nurse  in  '  Romeo  and  Juliet,' 
not  the  Dogberry  in  another  of  his  productions,  we  admired, 
but  it  was  the  poet  himself,  assuming  these  shapes,  and  ex- 
hibiting under  these  forms  all  the  force  and  magnitude  of 
his  own  powers.  It  reminded  him,  said  the  lecturer,  of  the 
Proteus  in  the  elegant  mythology  of  the  Ancients,  who  be- 
came a  sea,  or  a  lion  ;  but  under  these  and  the  multitudinous 
resemblances  he  assumed  retaining  always  the  awful  charac- 
ter of  the  divinity.  Mr.  Coleridge  concluded  with  remark- 
ing that  in  his  future  addresses  he  should  perhaps  shock  the 
i'eelings  of  many  of  his  auditors  by  differing  in  sentiment 
from  those  whom  he  had  long  venerated,  but  he  must  make 
every  other  consideration  yield  to  the  paramount  authority 
of  truth,  whatever  might  be  the  consequences  to  himself  and 
others." 


IjECI.  IV. 1  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  57 


Report  of  the  Fourth  Lecture. 

In  the  "  Morning  Chronicle"  we  find  the  following  report 
of  the  fourth  lecture  : — 

"  The  Lecturer  commenced  his  address  with  adverting 
to  the  period  when  Shakspere  wrote,  and  the  discourage- 
ments of  the  poet  from  the  prejudices  which  prevailed 
against  his  divine  art.  He  conceived,  with  Malone,  that 
Shakspere  began  his  public  career  about  1591,  when  he  was 
twenty-seven  years  of  age.  From  the  rank  his  father  sus- 
tained, he  did  not  credit  the  stories  of  the  humble  situation 
of  the  poet,  whose  earliest  productions  he  considered  to  be 
*  Venus  and  Adonis,'  and  '  Lucrcce,'  and  from  these  it  was 
easy  to  predict  his  future  greatness.  '  Poeta  nascitur  non 
fit.'  With  these  models  we  could  discern  that  he  possessed 
at  least  two  indications  of  his  character — he  was  not 
merely  endowed  with  a  thirst  for  the  end,  but  he  enjoyed 
an  ample  capability  of  the  means  ;  and  in  the  selection  of 
his  subject  he  distinguished  one  that  was  far  removed  from 
his  private  interests,  feelings,  and  circumstances.  A  third 
was  that  the  '  Venus  and  Adonis '  is  immediate  in  its  im- 
pulse on  the  senses;  everything  is  seen  and  heard,  as  if 
represented  by  the  most  consummate  actors.  The  poet, 
not  as  Ariosto,  not  as  Wieland,  speaks  to  our  sensual  appe- 
tites ;  but  he  has  by  his  wonderful  powers  raised  the  stu- 
dent to  his  own  level,  a  thousand  exterior  images  forming 
his  rich  drapery,  and  all  tending  to  profound  reflection,  so 
as  to  overpower  and  extinguish  everything  derogatory  and 
humiliating.  As  little  can  the  mind,  thus  agitated,  yield  to 
low  desire,  as  the  mist  can  sleep  on  the  surface  of  our 
northern  Windermere,  when  the  strong  wind  is  driving  the 
lake  onward  with  foam  acd  billows  before  it.  There  are 
three  requisites  to  form  the  poet :  1.  Sensibility ;  2.  Imagi- 
nation ;  3.  Power  of  Association.  The  last  and  least  is 


58  LECTURES  ON  [1811-12 

principally  conspicuous  in  this  production ;  but  although 
the  least,  it  is  yet  a  characteristic  and  great  excellence  of 
his  art.  The  Lecturer  having  read  the  description  of  the 
horse  and  the  hare  in  the  same  piece,  next  proceeded  to 
discuss  the  merits  of  the  '  Lucrece,'  in  which,  he  said,  we 
observe  the  impetuous  vigour  and  activity,  with  a  much 
larger  display  of  profound  reflection,  and  a  perfect  dominion 
over  the  whole  of  our  language — but  nothing  deeply 
pathetic. 

"  Shakspere  was  no  child  of  nature,  he  was  not  possessed, 
but  he  was  in  possession  of  all.  He  was  under  no  exterior 
control,  but  early  comprehending  every  part  and  incident 
of  human  being,  his  knowledge  became  habitual,  and  at 
length  he  acquired  that  superiority  by  which,  obtaining  the 
two  golden  pillars  of  our  English  Parnassus,  he  gave  the 
second  to  Milton,  preserving  for  himself  the  first. 

"  In  examining  the  dramatic  works  of  Shakspere,  Mr. 
Coleridge  said  he  should  rather  pursue  the  psychological 
than  the  chronological  order,  which  had  been  so  warmly 
disputed.  To  the  first  stage  he  should  refer  '  Love's 
Labour's  Lost,'  'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  '  Romeo  and 
Juliet,'  'A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,'  'As  You  Like  It,' 
'  Twelfth  Night,'  which  was  produced  when  the  genius  of 
the  poet  was  ripening.  Then  he  should  follow  him  through 
'  Troilus  and  Cressida,'  '  Cymbeline,'  '  The  Merchant  of 
Venice,'  and  '  Much  Ado  about  Nothing.'  Last,  to  the 
grandest  efforts  of  his  pen,  'Macbeth,'  'Lear,'  'Hamlet,' 
and  '  Othello.'  These  interesting  subjects  were  reserved 
for  the  next  and  the  ensuing  lectures.  After  some  short 
comparative  observations,  principally  in  vindication  of  the 
great  dramatists,  Mr.  Coleridge  concluded  with  a  single 
passage  from  Burns,  to  show  the  capacity  of  the  poet  to 
give  novelty  and  freshness,  profundity  and  wisdom,  enter- 
tainment and  instruction,  to  the  most  familiar  objects. 
This  is  eminently  conspicuous,  when  the  transient  cha- 


LECT.  IV.] 


SHAKSPERE   AND  MILTON. 


59 


racter  of  his  subject  is  thus  beautifully  expressed  by  the 
Scottish  bard  : — 

"  '  Like  snow  that  falls  upon  a  river, 
A  moment  white,  then  gone  for  ever.' " 


Note  of  Mr.  Collier  on  the  Fourth  Lecture,  from  his  Preface. 

"  I  have  no  note  of  my  own  of  Coleridge's  fourth  Lec- 
ture, but  among  my  mother's  papers  I  met  with  a  memo- 
randum by  her which  she  had  made  after  that  Lecture, 

from  which  I  learn,  that  in  it  Coleridge  especially  treated 
of  the  order  in  which  Shakspere  had  written  his  dramas. 
There  they  stand  thus — 

Love's  Labour's  Lost. 

Romeo  and  Juliet.  /    Youthful  Plays. 

All's  Well  that  Ends  Well.       ) 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 

As  You  Like  It. 

Twelfth  Night.  Manly  Plays. 

Measure  for  Measure. 

Much  Ado  about  Nothing. 

Merchant  of  Venice. 

Troilus  and  Cressida. 

Cymbeline. 

Macbeth. 

King  Lear.  Mature  Plays. 

Hamlet. 

Othello. 

Tempest. 

Winter's  Tale. 

"He  proposed  to  speak  of  the  historical  dramas  separately, 
but  it  is  not  stated  in  what  order  he  meant  to  take  them. 
We  see  above,  that  '  As  You  Like  It '  he  placed  among 


60  LECTURES  ON  [1811-12 

the  plays  written  in  manhood,  and  there  is  no  mention  of 
'Titus  Andronicus,'  'The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,' 
'  Coriolanus,'  '  Timon  of  Athens,'  '  Julius  Caesar,'  and 
some  others.  As  above,  Coleridge  might  not  intend  to 
enumerate  all." 

Compare  with  this  the  remarks,  in  the  second  division  of 
this  volume,  on  the  order  of  Shakspere's  plays. 


LEG!.  VI.  J  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  61 


LECTURE  VI. 

*  I  "HE  recollection  of  what  has  been  said  by  some  of  his 
•*•  biographers,  on  the  supposed  fact  that  Milton  re- 
ceived corporal  punishment  at  college,  induces  me  to  ex- 
press my  entire  dissent  from  the  notion,  that  flogging  or 
caning  has  a  tendency  to  degrade  and  debase  the  minds  of 
boys  at  school.  In  my  opinion  it  is  an  entire  mistake; 
since  this  species  of  castigation  has  not  only  been  inflicted 
time  out  of  mind,  but  those  who  are  subjected  to  it  are  well 
aware  that  the  very  highest  persons  in  the  realm,  and  those 
to  whom  people  are  accustomed  to  look  up  with  most 
respect  and  reverence,  such  as  the  judges  of  the  land,  have, 
quietly  submitted  to  it  in  their  pupilage. 

I  well  remember,  about  twenty  years  ago,  an  advertise- 
ment from  a  schoolmaster,  in  which  he  assured  tender- 
hearted and  foolish  parents,  that  corporal  punishment  was 
never  inflicted,  except  in  cases  of  absolute  necessity  ;  and 
that  even  then  the  rod  was  composed  of  lilies  and  roses, 
the  latter,  I  conclude,  stripped  of  their  thorns.  What,  let 
me  ask,  has  been  the  consequence,  in  many  cases,  of  the 
abolition  of  flogging  in  schools  ?  Reluctance  to  remove  a 
pimple  has  not  unfrequently  transferred  the  disease  to  the 
vitals :  sparing  the  rod,  for  the  correction  of  minor  faults, 
has  ended  in  the  commission  of  the  highest  crimes.  A  man 
of  great  reputation 1  (I  should  rather  say  of  great  notoriety) 
sometimes  punished  the  pupils  under  his  care  by  suspend- 
ing them  from  the  ceiling  in  baskets,  exposed  to  the  deri~ 

1  See  H.  C.  Robinson's  Diary,  Dec.  5,  pp.  22,  24. 


62  LECTURES   OK  [1811-12 

sion  of  their  school-fellows  ;  at  other  times  he  pinned  upon 
the  clothes  of  the  offender  a  number  of  last  dying  speeches 
and  confessions,  and  employed  another  boy  to  walk  before 
the  culprit,  making  the  usual  monotonous  lamentation  and 
outcry. 

On  one  occasion  this  absurd,  and  really  degrading,  punish- 
ment was  inflicted  because  a  boy  read  with  a  tone,  although, 
I  may  observe  in  passing,  that  reading  with  intonation  is 
strictly  natural,  and  therefore  truly  proper,  excepting  in 
the  excess.1 

Then,  as  to  the  character  and  effect  of  the  punishment 
j  ust  noticed,  what  must  a  parent  of  well  regulated  and  in- 
structed mind  think  of  the  exhibition  of  his  son  in  the 

1  "  This  was  the  Lecturer's  own  mode  of  reading  verse,  and  even  in 
prose  there  was  an  approach  to  intonation.  I  have  heard  him  read 
Spenser  with  such  an  excess  (to  use  his  own  word)  in  this  respect,  that 
it  almost  amounted  to  a  song.  In  blank  verse  it  was  less,  but  still  appa- 
rent. Milton's  4  Liberty  of  unlicensed  Printing '  was  a  favourite  piece 
of  rhetorical  writing,  and  portions  of  it  I  have  heard  Coleridge  recite, 
never  without  a  sort  of  habitual  rise  and  fall  of  the  voice." — J.  P.  C. 

This  method  of  reading  verse,  one,  at  least,  of  Coleridge's  hearers  dis- 
approved of — Mr.  H.  II.  Carwardine.  He  knew  Coleridge  personally, 
aiid  took  notes  of  his  lectures  in  1818,  which  notes  we  shall  produce 
later  on.  "  Mr.  C.,"  he  remarks,  "  has  a  solemn  and  pompous  mode  of 
delivery,  which  he  applies  indiscriminately  to  the  elevated  and  the 
familiar  ;  and  he  reads  poetry,  I  think,  as  ill  as  any  man  I  ever  heard." 
gee  "Notes  and  Queries,"  April  2,  1870. 

Emerson,  speaking  of  his  visit  to  Coleridge  in  1833,  records  :  "  When 
I  rose  to  go,  he  said, '  I  do  not  know  whether  you  care  about  poetry, 
but  I  will  repeat  some  verses  I  lately  made  on  my  baptismal  anniver- 
sary,' and  he  recited  with  strong  emphasis,  standing,  ten  or  twelve  lines, 
beginning, 

'  Born  unto  God  in  Christ — 

The  quotation  will  be  found  in  chap.  i.  of  "English  Traits." 

Gillman's  opinion  of  Coleridge's  reading  characteristically  differs  from 
those  of  these  critics.  "  His  quotations,"  he  says,  "  from  the  poets,  of 
toigh  character,  were  most  feelingly  and  most  luminously  given,  as  by 
one  inspired  with  the  subject."— GILLMAN'S  Life  of  Coleridge,  p.  336. 


LECT.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTON.  63 

manner  I  have  described  ?  Here,  indeed,  was  debasement 
of  the  worst  and  lowest  kind ;  for  the  feelings  of  a  child 
were  outraged,  and  made  to  associate  and  connect  them- 
selves with  the  sentence  on  an  abandoned  and  shameless 
criminal.  Who  would  not  prefer  the  momentary,  but  use- 
ful, impression  of  flogging,  to  this  gross  attack  upon  the 
moral  feelings  and  self-respect  of  a  boy  ?  Again,  as  to  the 
proper  mode  of  reading :  why  is  a  tone  in  reading  to  be 
visited  as  a  criminal  offence,  especially  when  the  estimate 
of  that  offence  arises  out  of  the  ignorance  and  incompetence 
of  the  master  ?  Every  man  who  reads  with  true  sensi- 
bility, especially  poetry,  must  read  with  a  tone,  since  it 
conveys,  with  additional  effect,  the  harmony  and  rhythm  of 
the  verse,  without  in  the  slightest  degree  obscuring  the 
meaning.  That  is  the  highest  point  of  excellence  in  read- 
ing, which  gives  to  everything,  whether  of  thought  or 
language,  its  most  just  expression.  There  may  be  a  wrong 
tone,  as  a  right,  and  a  wrong  tone  is  of  course  to  be 
avoided  ;  but  a  poet  writes  in  measure,  and  measure  is  best 
made  apparent  by  reading  with  a  tone,  which  heightens 
the  verse,  and  does  not  in  any  respect  lower  the  sense. 
I  defy  any  man,  who  has  a  true  relish  of  the  beauty  of 
versification,  to  read  a  canto  of  "  The  Fairy  Queen," 
or  a  book  of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  without  some  species  of 
intonation. 

In  various  instances  we  are  hardly  sensible  of  its  exis- 
tence, but  it  does  exist,  and  persons  have  noi  scrupled  to 
say,  and  I  believe  it,  that  the  tone  of  a  good  reader  may  be 
set  to  musical  notation.  If  in  these,  and  in  other  remarks 
that  fall  from  me,  I  appear  dogmatical,  or  dictatorial,  it  is 
to  be  borne  in  mind,  that  every  man  who  takes  upon  him- 
self to  lecture,  requires  that  he  should  be  considered  by  his 
hearers  capable  of  teaching  something  that  is  valuable,  or 
of  saying  something  that  is  worth  hearing.  In  a  mixed 
audience  not  a  few  are  desirous  of  instruction,  and  some 


64  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

require  it ;  but  placed  in  my  present  situation  I  consider 
myself,  not  as  a  man  who  carries  moveables  into  an  empty 
house,  but  as  a  man  who,  entering  a  generally  well  furnished 
dwelling,  exhibits  a  light  which  enables  the  owner  to  see 
what  is  still  wanting.  I  endeavour  to  introduce  the  means 
of  ascertaining  what  is,  and  is  not,  in  a  man's  own  mind. 

Not  long  since,1  when  I  lectured  at  the  Royal  Institution, 
I  had  the  honour  of  sitting  at  the  desk  so  ably  occupied  by 
Sir  Humphry  Davy,  who  may  be  said  to  have  elevated  the 
art  of  chemistry  to  the  dignity  of  a  science ;  who  has  dis- 
covered that  one  common  law  is  applicable  to  the  mind  and 
to  the  body,  and  who  has  enabled  us  to  give  a  full  and  per- 
fect Amen  to  the  great  axiom  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  know- 
ledge is  power.  In  the  delivery  of  that  course  I  carefully 
prepared  my  first  essay,  and  received  for  it  a  cold  suffrage 
of  approbation :  from  accidental  causes  I  was  unable  to 
study  the  exact  form  and  language  of  my  second  lecture, 
and  when  it  was  at  an  end,  I  obtained  universal  and  heart- 
felt applause.  What  a  lesson  was  this  to  me  not  to  elaborate 
my  materials,  nor  to  consider  too  nicely  the  expressions  I 
should  employ,  but  to  trust  mainly  to  the  extemporaneous 
ebullition  of  my  thoughts.  In  this  conviction  I  have  ven- 
tured to  come  before  you  here  ;  and  may  I  add  a  hope,  that 
what  I  offer  will  be  received  in  a  similar  spirit  ?  It  is  true 
that  my  matter  may  not  be  so  accurately  arranged :  it  may 
not  dovetail  and  fit  at  all  times  as  nicely  as  could  be  wished ; 
but  you  shall  have  my  thoughts  warm  from  my  heart,  and 
fresh  from  my  understanding :  you  shall  have  the  whole 
skeleton,  although  the  bones  may  not  be  put  together  with 
the  utmost  anatomical  skill. 

The  immense  advantage  possessed  by  men  of  genius  over 
men  of  talents  can  be  illustrated  in  no  stronger  manner, 

1  In  1810.  See  the  extract  from  Mr.  Collier's  Diary,  dated  October 
29,  in  the  introductory  matter,  in  which  also  Coleridge  relates  this 
experience. 


.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  65 

than  by  a  comparison  of  the  benefits  resulting  to  mankind 
from  the  works  of  Homer  and  of  Thucydides.  The  merits 
and  claims  of  Thucydides,  as  a  historian,  are  at  once  ad- 
mitted ;  but  what  care  we  for  the  incidents  of  the  Pelo- 
ponnesian  War  ?  An  individual  may  be  ignorant  of  them, 
as  far  as  regards  the  particular  narrative  of  Thucydides ; 
but  woe  to  that  statesman,  or,  I  may  say,  woe  to  that  man, 
who  has  not  availed  himself  of  the  wisdom  contained  in 
"  the  tale  of  Troy  divine  !  " 

Lord  Bacon  has  beautifully  expressed  this  idea,  where  he 
talks  of  the  instability  and  destruction  of  the  monuments 
of  the  greatest  heroes,  and  compares  them  with  the  ever- 
lasting writings  of  Homer,  one  word  of  which  has  never 
been  lost  since  the  days  of  Pisistratus.  Like  a  mighty  ship, 
they  have  passed  over  the  sea  of  time,  not  leaving  a  mere 
ideal  track,  which  soon  altogether  disappears,  but  leaving  a 
train  of  glory  in  its  wake,  present  and  enduring,  daily  acting 
upon  our  minds,  and  ennobling  us  by  grand  thoughts  and 
images  :  to  this  work,  perhaps,  the  bravest  of  our  soldiery 
may  trace  and  attribute  some  of  their  heroic  achievements. 
Just  as  the  body  is  to  the  immortal  mind,  so  are  the  actions 
of  our  bodily  powers  in  proportion  to  those  by  which,  inde- 
pendent of  individual  continuity,  we  are  governed  for  ever 
and  ever ;  by  which  we  call,  not  only  the  narrow  circle  of 
mankind  (narrow  comparatively)  as  they  now  exist,  our 
brethren,  but  by  which  we  carry  our  being  into  future 
ages,  and  call  all  who  shall  succeed  us  our  brethren,  until 
at  length  we  arrive  at  that  exalted  state,  when  we  shall 
welcome  into  Heaven  thousands  and  thousands,  who  will 
exclaim — "To  you  I  owe  the  first  development  of  my 
imagination ;  to  you  I  owe  the  withdrawing  of  my  mind 
from  the  low  brutal  part  of  my  nature,  to  the  lofty,  the  pure, 
and  the  perpetual." 

Adverting  to  the  subject  more  immediately  before  us,  I 
may  observe  that  I  have  looked  at  the  reign  of  Elizabeth, 

F 


G(>  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

interesting  on  many  accounts,  with  peculiar  pleasure  and 
satisfaction,  because  it  furnished  circumstances  so  favour- 
able to  the  existence,  and  to  the  full  development  of  the 
powers  of  Shakspere.  The  Reformation,  just  completed, 
had  occasioned  unusual  activity  of  mind,  a  passion,  as  it 
were,  for  thinking,  and  for  the  discovery  and  use  of  words 
capable  of  expressing  the  objects  of  thought  and  invention. 
It  was,  consequently,  the  age  of  many  conceits,  and  an  age 
when,  for  a  time,  the  intellect  stood  superior  to  the  moral 
«ense. 

The  difference  between  the  state  of  mind  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  and  in  that  of  Charles  I.  is  astonishing.  In  the 
former  period  there  was  an  amazing  development  of  power, 
but  all  connected  with  prudential  purposes — an  attempt  to 
reconcile  the  moral  feeling  with  the  full  exercise  of  the 
powers  of  the  mind,  and  the  accomplishment  of  certain 
practical  ends.  Then  lived  Bacon,  Burghley,  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  a  galaxy  of  great  men, 
statesmen,  lawyers,  politicians,  philosophers,  and  poets ; 
and  it  is  lamentable  that  they  should  have  degraded  their 
mighty  powers  to  such  base  designs  and  pui'poses,  dis- 
solving the  rich  pearls  of  their  great  faculties  in  a  worth- 
less acid,  to  be  drunken  by  a  harlot.  What  was  seeking 
the  favour  of  the  Queen,  to  a  man  like  Bacon,  but  the  mere 
courtship  of  harlotry  ? 

Compare  this  age  with  that  of  the  republicans :  that 
indeed  was  an  awful  age,  as  compared  with  our  own. 
England  may  be  said  to  have  then  overflowed  from  the  ful- 
ness of  grand  principle — from  the  greatness  which  men  felt 
in  themselves,  abstracted  from  the  prudence  with  which 
they  ought  to  have  considered  whether  their  principles 
were,  or  were  not,  adapted  to  the  condition  of  mankind  at 
large.  Compare  the  revolution  then  effected  with  that  of 
a  day  not  long  past,  when  the  bubbling-up  and  overflowing 
•was  occasioned  by  the  elevation  of  the  dregs — Avhen  there 


LSCT.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  G7 

was  a  total  absence  of  all  principle,  when  the  dregs  had 
risen  from  the  bottom  to  the  top,  and  thus  converted  into 
scum,  founded  a  monarchy  to  be  the  poisonous  bane  and 
misery  of  the  rest  of  mankind. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  to  recollect,  that  the  age  in 
which  Shakspere  lived  was  one  of  great  abilities  applied  to 
individual  and  prudential  purposes,  and  not  an  age  of  high 
moral  feeling  and  lofty  principle,  which  gives  a  man  of 
genius  the  power  of  thinking  of  nil  things  in  reference  to 
all.  If,  then,  we  should  find  that  Shakspere  took  these 
materials  as  they  were  presented  to  him,  and  yet  to  all 
effectual  purposes  produced  the  samo  grand  result  as  others 
attempted  to  produce  in  an  age  so  much  more  favourable, 
shall  we  not  feel  and  acknowledge  the  purity  and  holiness 
of  genius — a  light,  which,  however  it  might  shine  on  a 
dunghill,  was  as  pure  as  the  divine  effluence  which  created 
all  the  beauty  of  nature  ? 

One  of  the  consequences  of  the  idea  prevalent  at  the 
period  when  Shakspere  nourished,  viz.,  that  persons  must 
be  men  of  talents  in  proportion  as  they  were  gentlemen, 
renders  certain  characters  in  his  dramas  natural  with  refe- 
rence to  the  date  when  they  were  drawn  :  when  we  read 
them  we  are  aware  that  they  are  not  of  our  age,  and  in  one 
sense  they  may  be  said  to  be  of  no  age.  A  friend  of  mine 
well  remarked  of  Spenser,  that  he  is  out  of  space :  the 
reader  never  knows  where  he  is,  but  still  he  knows,  from 
the  consciousness  within  him,  that  all  is  as  natural  and 
proper,  as  if  the  country  where  the  action  is  laid  were  dis- 
tinctly pointed  out,  and  marked  down  in  a  map.  Shakspere 
is  as  much  out  of  time,  as  Spenser  is  out  of  space ;  yet  we 
feel  conscious,  though  we  never  knew  that  such  characters, 
existed,  that  they  might  exist,  and  are  satisfied  with  the 
belief  in  their  existence. 

This  circumstance  enabled  Shakspere  to  paint  truly, 
and  according  to  the  colouring  of  nature,  a  vast  number 


G8  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

of  personages  by  the  simple  force  of  meditation :  lie  had 
only  to  imitate  certain  parts  of  his  own  character,  or  to 
exaggerate  such  as  existed  in  possibility,  and  they  were 
at  once  true  to  nature,  and  fragments  of  the  divine  mind 
that  drew  them.  Men  who  see  the  great  luminary  of  our 
system  through  various  optical  instruments  declare  that  it 
seems  either  square,  triangular,  or  round,  when  in  truth  it  is 
still  the  sun,  unchanged  in  shape  and  proportion.  So  with 
the  characters  of  our  great  poet :  some  may  think  them  of 
one  form,  and  some  of  another ;  but  they  are  still  nature, 
still  Shakspere,  and  the  creatures  of  his  meditation. 

When  I  use  the  term  meditation,  I  do  not  mean  that  our 
great  dramatist  was  without  observation  of  extei-nal  cir- 
cumstances :  quite  the  reverse ;  but  mere  observation  may 
be  able  to  produce  an  accurate  copy,  and  even  to  furnish  to 
other  men's  minds  more  than  the  copyist  professed ;  but 
what  is  produced  can  only  consist  of  parts  and  fragments, 
according  to  the  means  and  extent  of  observation.  Medi- 
tation looks  at  every  character  with  interest,  only  as  it 
contains  something  generally  true,  and  such  as  might  be 
expressed  in  a  philosophical  problem. 

Shakspere's  characters  may  be  reduced  to  a  few — that  is 
to  say,  to  a  few  classes  of  characters.1  If  you  take  his 
gentlemen,  for  instance,  Biron  is  seen  again  in  Mercutio,  in 
Benedick,  and  in  several  others.  They  are  men  who  com- 
bine the  politeness  of  the  courtier  with  the  faculties  of  high 
intellect — those  powers  of  combination  and  severance  which 
only  belong  to  an  intellectual  mind.  The  wonder  is  how 

1  "  Say  not  that  I  am  recommending  abstractions,  for  these  class- 
characteristics  which  constitute  the  instructiveness  of  a  character  are  so 
modified  and  particularized  in  each  person  of  the  Shaksperian  drama, 
that  life  itself  does  not  excite  more  distinctly  that  sense  of  individuality 
which  belongs  to  real  existence." — From  the  "Friend." 

See  remark  on  Kent,  in  the  notes  on  Lear,  Act  i.,  Sc.  1,  in  the  fourth 
section  of  the  second  division  of  this  volume:  also,  notes  on  Chaucer j 
Appendix,  IIL 


I/ECT.  VI.]  SHAKSPEEE    AND    MILTON.  69 

Shakspere  can  thus  disguise  himself,  and  possess  such 
miraculous  powers  of  conveying  what  he  means  without 
betraying  the  poet,  and  without  even  producing  the  con- 
sciousness of  him. 

In  the  address  of  Mercutio  regarding  Queen  Mab,  which 
is  so  well  known  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  repeat  it,  is  to  be 
noted  all  the  fancy  of  the  poet ;  and  the  language  in  which 
it  is  conveyed  possesses  such  facility  and  felicity,  that  one 
would  almost  say  that  it  was  impossible  for  it  to  be  thought, 
unless  it  were  thought  as  naturally,  and  without  effort,  as 
Mercutio  repeats  it.  This  is  the  great  art  by  which  Shak- 
spere combines  the  poet  and  the  gentleman  throughout, 
borrowing  from  his  most  amiable  nature  that  which  alone 
could  combine  them,  a  perfect  simplicity  of  mind,  a  delight 
in  all  that  is  excellent  for  its  own  sake,  without  reference 
to  himself  as  causing  it,  and  by  that  which  distinguishes 
him  from  all  other  poets,  alluded  to  by  one  of  his  admirers 
in  a  short  poem,  where  he  tells  us  that  while  Shakspere 
possessed  all  the  powers  of  a  man,  and  more  than  a  man, 
yet  he  had  all  the  feelings,  the  sensibility,  the  purity,  inno- 
cence, and  delicacy  of  an  affectionate  girl  of  eighteen. 

Before  I  enter  upon  the  merits  of  the  tragedy  of  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet,"  it  will  be  necessary  for  me  to  say  something  of 
the  language  of  our  country.  And  here  I  beg  leave  to 
observe,  that  although  I  have  announced  these  as  lectures 
upon  Milton  and  Shakspere,  they  are  in  reality,  as  also 
stated  in  the  prospectus,  intended  to  illustrate  the  principles 
of  poetry :  therefore,  all  must  not  be  regarded  as  mere 
digression  which  does  not  immediately  and  exclusively  refer 
to  those  writers.  I  have  chosen  them,  in  order  to  bring 
under  the  notice  of  my  hearers  great  general  truths;  in 
fact,  whatever  may  aid  myself,  as  well  as  others,  in  deciding 
upon  the  claims  of  all  writers  of  all  countries. 

The  language,  that  is  to  say  the  particular  tongue,  in 
which  Shakspere  wrote,  cannot  be  left  out  of  consideration. 


70  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

It  will  not  be  disputed,  that  one  langunge  may  possess 
advantages  which  another  does  not  enjoy  ;  and  we  may 
state  with  confidence,  that  English  excels  all  other  lan- 
guages in  the  number  of  its  practical  words.  The  French 
may  bear  the  palm  in  the  names  of  trades,  and  in  military 
and  diplomatic  terms.  Of  the  German  it  may  be  said,  that, 
exclusive  of  many  mineralogical  words,  it  is  incomparable 
in  its  metaphysical  and  psychological  force :  in  another 
respect  it  nearly  rivals  the  Greek, 

"  The  learned  Greek,  rich  in  fit  epithets, 
Blest  in  the  lovely  marriage  of  pure  words;"1 

I  mean  in  its  capability  of  composition — of  forming  com- 
pound words.  Italian  is  the  sweetest  and  softest  language  ; 
Spanish  the  most  majestic.  All  these  have  their  peculiar 
faults  ;  but  I  never  can  agree  that  any  language  is  unfit  for- 
poetry,  although  different  languages,  from  the  condition 
and  circumstances  of  the  people,  may  certainly  be  adapted 
to  one  species  of  poetry  more  than  to  another. 

Take  the  French  as  an  example.  It  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  perspicuous  and  pointed  language  in  the  world,  and 
therefore  best  fitted  for  conversation,  for  the  expression  of 
light  and  airy  passion,  attaining  its  object '  by  peculiar 
and  felicitous  turns  of  phrase,  which  are  evanescent,  and, 
like  the  beautifully  coloured  dust  on  the  wings  of  a 
butterfly,  must  not  be  judged  by  the  test  of  touch.  It 
appears  as  if  it  were  all  surface  and  had  no  substratum, 
and  it  constantly  most  dangerously  tampers  with  morals, 
•without  positively  offending  decency  As  the  language 
for  what  is  called  modern  genteel  comedy,  .'ill  others  must 
yield  to  French. 

Italian  can   only  be   deemed    second    to    Spanish,    and 

1  From  Act  i.,  Scene  1,  of  "  Lingua,  or  the  Combat  of  the  Tongue  and 
the  Five  Senses."  This  drama  is  reprinted  in  Dodsley's  Old  1'lays, 
vol.  v.  (last  edition),  and  the  lines  may  be  found  on  p.  107  of  thai 
volume. — J.  P.  C. 


LEG1!.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTON.  71 

Spanish  to  Greek,  which  contains  all  the  excellences  of  all 
languages.  Italian,  though  sweet  and  soft,  is  not  deficient 
in  force  and  dignity ;  and  I  may  appeal  to  Ariosto,  as  a 
poet  who  displays  to  the  utmost  advantage  the  use  of  his 
native  tongue  for  all  purposes,  whether  of  passion,  sen- 
timent, humour,  or  description. 

But  in  English  I  find  that  which  is  possessed  by  no 
other  modern  language,  and  which,  as  it  were,  appropriates 
it  to  the  drama.  It  is  a  language  made  out  of  many,  and 
it  has  consequently  many  words,  which  originally  had  the 
same  meaning  ;  but  in  the  progress  of  society  those  words 
have  gradually  assumed  different  shades  of  meaning.  Take 
any  homogeneous  language,  such  as  German,  and  try  to 
translate  into  it  the  following  lines  : — 

"  But  not  to  one,  in  this  benighted  age, 

Is  that  diviner  inspiration  given, 
That  burns  in  Shakspere's  or  in  Milton's  page, 

The  pomp  and  prodigality  of  heaven." 

GRAY'S  Stanzas  to  Bentley. 

In  German  it  would  be  necessary  to  say  "the  pomp 
and  spendtliriftness  of  heaven,"  because  the  German  has 
not,  as  we  have,  one  word  with  two  such  distinct  meanings, 
one  expressing  the  nobler,  the  other  the  baser  idea  of  the- 
same  action. 

The  monosyllabic  character  of  English  enables  us,  be- 
sides, to  express  more  meaning  in  a  shorter  compass  than 
can  be  done  in  any  other  language.  In  truth,  English 
may  be  called  the  harvest  of  the  unconscious  wisdom  of 
various  nations,  and  was  not  the  formation  of  any  par- 
ticular time,  or  assemblage  of  individuals.  Hence  the 
number  of  its  passionate  phrases — its  metaphorical  terms, 
not  borrowed  from  poets,  but  adopted  by  them.  Our 
commonest  people,  when  excited  by  passion,  constantly 
employ  them  :  if  a  mother  lose  her  child  she  is  full  of 


72  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

the  wildest  fancies,  and  the  words  she  uses  assume  a 
tone  of  dignity  ;  for  the  constant  hearing  and  reading 
of  the  Bible  and  Liturgy  clothes  her  thoughts  not  only 
in  the  most  natural,  but  in  the  most  beautiful  forms  of 
language. 

I  have  been  induced  to  offer  these  remarks,  in  order  to 
obviate  an  objection  often  made  against  Shakspere  on 
the  ground  of  the  multitude  of  his  conceits.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  justify  every  conceit,  and  a  vast  number  have 
been  most  unfairly  imputed  to  him  ;  for  I  am  satisfied  that 
many  portions  of  scenes  attributed  to  Shakspere  were 
never  written  by  him.  I  admit,  however,  that  even  in 
those  which  bear  the  strongest  characteristics  of  his  mind, 
there  are  some  conceits  not  strictly  to  be  vindicated.  The 
notion  against  which  I  declare  war  is,  that  whenever  a 
conceit  is  met  with  it  is  unnatural.  People  who  entertain 
this  opinion  forget,  that  had  they  lived  in  the  age  of 
Shakspere,  they  would  have  deemed  them  natural. 
Dryden  in  his  translation  of  Juvenal  has  used  the  words 
"  Look  round  the  world,"  which  are  a  literal  version  of  the 
original ;  but  Dr.  Johnson  has  swelled  and  expanded  this 
expression  into  the  following  couplet : — 

"  Let  observation,  with  extensive  view, 
Survey  mankind  from  China  to  Peru  ;  " 

Vanity  of  Human  Wishes. 

mere  bombast  and  tautology ;  as  much  as  to  say,  "  Let 
observation  with  extensive  observation  observe  mankind 
extensively." 

Had  Dr.  Johnson  lived  in  the  time  of  Shakspere,  or 
even  of  Dryden,  he  would  never  have  been  guilty  of  such 
an  outrage  upon  common  sense  and  common  language ; 
and  if  people  would,  in  idea,  throw  themselves  back  a 
couple  of  centuries,  they  would  find  that  conceits,  and  even 
puns,  were  very  allowable,  because  very  natural.  Puns 


LEGIT.  VI.  j  SHAKSPEUE   AND   MILTON.  73 

often  arise  out  of  a  mingled  sense  of  injury,  and  contempt 
of  the  person  inflicting  it,  and,  as  it  seems  to  me,  it  is  a 
natural  way  of  expressing  that  mixed  feeling.  1  could 
point  out  puns  in  Shakspere,  where  they  appear  almost 
as  if  the  first  openings  of  the  mouth  of  nature — where 
nothing  else  could  so  properly  be  said.  This  is  not 
peculiar  to  puns,  but  is  of  much  wider  application :  read 
any  part  of  the  works  of  our  great  dramatist,  and  the 
conviction  comes  upon  you  irresistibly,  not  only  that  what 
he  puts  into  the  mouths  of  his  personages  might  have  been 
said,  but  that  it  must  have  been  said,  because  nothing  so 
proper  could  have  been  said. 

In  a  future  lecture  I  will  enter  somewhat  into  the  history 
of  conceits,  and  show  the  wise  use  that  has  heretofore  been 
made  of  them.  I  will  now  (and  I  hope  it  will  be  received 
with  favour)  attempt  a  defence  of  conceits  and  puns,  taking 
my  examples  mainly  from  the  poet  under  consideration. 
I  admit,  of  course,  that  they  may  be  misapplied ;  but 
throughout  life,  I  may  say,  I  never  have  discovered  the 
wrong  use  of  a  thing,  without  having  previously  discovered 
the  right  use  of  it.  To  the  young  I  would  remark,  that  it 
is  always  unwise  to  judge  of  anything  by  its  defects  :  the 
first  attempt  ought  to  be  to  discover  its  excellences.  If  a 
man  come  into  my  company  and  abuse  a  book,  his  invectives 
coming  down  like  water  from  a  shower  bath,  I  never  feel 
obliged  to  him  :  he  probably  tells  me  no  news,  for  all 
works,  even  the  best,  have  defects,  and  they  are  easily 
seen ;  but  if  a  man  show  me  beauties,  I  thank  him  for  his 
information,  because,  in  my  time,  I  have  unfortunately 
gone  through  so  many  volumes  that  have  had  little  or 
nothing  to  recommend  them.  Always  begin  with  the 
good — a  Jove  principium — and  the  bad  will  make  itself 
evident  enough,  quite  as  soon"  as  is  desirable. 

I  will  proceed  to  speak  of  Shakspere's  wit,  in  con- 
nection with  his  much  abused  pans  and  conceits  ;  because 


74  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

an  excellent  writer,  who  has  done  good  service  to  the  public 
taste  by  driving  out  the  nonsense  of  the  Italian  school,  has 
expressed  his  surprise,  that  all  the  other  excellences  of 
Shakspere  were,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  possessed  by 
his  contemporaries  :  thus,  Ben  Jonson  had  one  qualification, 
Massinger  another,  while  he  declares  that  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  had  equal  knowledge  of  human  nature,  with  more 
variety.  The  point  in  which  none  of  them  had  approached 
Shakspere,  according  to  this  writer,  was  his  wit.  I  own,  I 
was  somewhat  shocked  to  see  it  gravely  said  in  print,  that 
the  quality  by  which  Shakspere  was  to  be  individualized 
from  all  othei-s  was,  what  is  ordinarily  called,  wit.  I  had 
read  his  plays  over  and  over,  and  it  did  not  strike  me 
that  wit  was  his  great  and  characteristic  superiority.  In 
reading  Voltaire,  or  (to  take  a  standard  and  most  witty 
comedy  as  an  example)  in  reading  "  The  School  for 
Scandal,"  I  never  experienced  the  same  sort  of  feeling  as 
in  reading  Shakspere. 

That  Shakspere  has  wit  is  indisputable,  but  it  is  not  the 
same  kind  of  wit  as  in  other  writers :  his  wit  is  blended 
with  the  other  qualities  of  his  works,  and  is,  by  its  nature, 
capable  of  being  so  blended.  It  appears  in  all  parts  of  his 
productions,  in  his  tragedies,  comedies,  and  histories :  it  is 
not  like  the  wit  of  Voltaire,  and  of  many  modern  writers, 
to  whom  the  epithet  "  witty  "  has  been  properly  applied, 
whose  wit  consists  in  a  mere  combination  of  words  ;  but  in 
at  least  nine  times  out  of  ten  in  Shakspere,  the  wit  is  pro- 
duced, not  by  a  combination  of  words,  but  by  a  combination 
of  images. 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  distinguish  between  wit  and 
fancy.  When  the  whole  pleasure  received  is  derived  from 
surprise  at  an  unexpected  turn  of  expression,  then  I  call  it 
wit ;  but  when  the  pleasure  is  produced  not  only  by  sur- 
prise, but  also  by  an  image  which  remains  with  TIS  and 
gratifies  for  its  own  sake,  then  I  call  it  fancy.  I  know  of 


LEG!.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE    AND   MILTON.  75 

no  mode  so  satisfactory  of  distinguishing  between  wit  and 
fancy.  I  appeal  to  the  recollection  of  those  who  hear  me, 
whether  the  greater  part  of  what  passes  for  wit  in 
Shakspere,  is  not  most  exquisite  humour,  heightened  by 
a  figure,  and  attributed  to  a  particular  character  ?  Take 
the  instance  of  the  flea  on  Bardolph's  nose,  which  Falstaff 
compares  to  a  soul  suffering  in  purgatory.  The  images 
themselves,  in  cases  like  this,  afford  a  great  part  of  the 
pleasure. 

These  remarks  are  not  without  importance  in  forming 
a  judgment  of  poets  and  writers  in  general  :  there  is  a 
wide  difference  between  the  talent  which  gives  a  sort  of 
electric  surprise  by  a  mere  turn  of  phrase,  and  that  higher 
ability  which  produces  surprise  by  a  permanent  medium, 
and  always  leaves  something  behind  it,  which  satisfies  the 
mind  as  well  as  tickles  the  hearing.  The  first  belongs  to 
men  of  cleverness,  who,  having  been  long  in  the  world, 
have  observed  the  turns  of  phrase  which  please  in  com- 
pany, and  which,  passing  away  the  moment,  are  passed  in 
a  moment,  being  no  longer  recollected  than  the  time  they 
take  in  utterance.  Wo  must  all  have  seen  and  known 
each  people  ;  and  I  remember  saying  of  one  of  them  that 
he  was  like  a  man  who  squandered  his  estate  in  farthings  : 
he  gave  away  so  many,  that  he  must  needs  have  been 
wealthy.  This  sort  of  talent  by  no  means  constitutes 
genius,  although  it  has  some  affinity  to  it. 

The  wit  of  Shakspere  is,  as  it  were,  like  the  flourishing 
of  a  man's  stick,  when  he  is  walking,  in  the  full  flow  ot 
animal  spirits  :  it  is  a  sort  of  exuberance  of  hilarity  which 
disburdens,  and  it  resembles  a  conductor,  to  distribute  a 
portion  of  our  gladness  to  the  surrounding  air.  While, 
however,  it  disburdens,  it  leaves  behind  what  is  weightiest 
and  most  important,  and  what  most  contributes  to  some 
direct  aim  and  purpose. 

I  will  now  touch  upon  a  very  serious  charge  against 


76  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

Shakspere — that  of  indecency  and  immorality.  Many  have 
been  those  who  have  endeavoured  to  exculpate  him  by 
saying,  that  it  was  the  vice  of  his  age  ;  but  he  was  too 
great  to  require  exculpation  from  the  accidents  of  any  age. 
These  persons  have  appealed  to  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  to 
Massinger,  and  to  other  less  eminent  dramatists,  to  prove 
that  what  is  complained  of  was  common  to  them  all. 
Oh  !  shame  and  sorrow,  if  it  were  so :  there  is  nothing 
common  to  Shakspere  and  to  other  writers  of  his  day — not 
even  the  language  they  employed. 

In  order  to  form  a  proper  judgment  upon  this  point,  it 
is  necessary  to  make  a  distinction  between  manners  and 
morals ;  and  that  distinction  being  once  established,  and 
clearly  comprehended,  Shakspere  will  appear  as  pure  a 
writer,  in  reference  to  all  that  we  ought  to  be,  and  to 
all  that  we  ought  to  feel,  as  he  is  wonderful  in  reference  to 
his  intellectual  faculties. 

By  manners  I  mean  what  is  dependent  on  the  particular 
customs  and  fashions  of  the  age.  Even  in  a  state  of  com- 
parative barbarism  as  to  manners,  there  may  be,  and  there  is, 
morality.  But  give  me  leave  to  say  that  we  have  seen  much 
worse  times  than  those — times  when  the  mind  was  so  ener- 
vated and  degraded,  that  the  most  distant  associations,  that 
could  possibly  connect  our  ideas  with  the  basest  feelings, 
immediately  brought  forward  those  base  feelings,  without 
reference  to  the  nobler  impulses ;  thus  destroying  the  little 
remnant  of  humanity,  excluding  from  the  mind  what  is 
good,  and  introducing  what  is  bad  to  keep  the  bestial  nature 
company. 

On  looking  through  Shakspere,  offences  against  decency 
and  manners  may  certainly  be  pointed  out;  but  let  us 
examine  history  minutely,  and  we  shall  find  that  this  was 
the  ordinary  language  of  the  time,  and  then  let  us  ask, 
where  is  the  offence  ?  The  offence,  so  to  call  it,  was  nofc 
committed  wantonly,  and  for  the  sake  of  offending,  but  for 


LEO!.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTOK.  77 

the  sake  of  merriment;  for  what  is  most  observable  in 
Shakspere,  in  reference  to  this  topic,  is  that  what  he  says  is 
always  calculated  to  raise  a  gust  of  laughter,  that  would,  as 
it  were,  blow  away  all  impure  ideas,  if  it  did  not  excite  ab- 
horrence of  them. 

Above  all,  let  ns  compare  him  with  some  modern  writers, 
the  servile  imitators  of  the  French,  and  we  shall  receive  a 
most  instructive  lesson.  I  may  take  the  liberty  of  reading 
the  following  note,  written  by  me  after  witnessing  the  per- 
formance of  a  modern  play  at  Malta,  about  nine  years 
ago  : — "  I  went  to  the  theatre,  and  came  away  without 
waiting  for  the  entertainment.  The  longer  I  live,  the  more 
I  am  impressed  with  the  exceeding  immorality  of  modern 
plays :  I  can  scarcely  refrain  from  anger  and  laughter  at 
the  shamelessness,  and  the  absurdity  of  the  presumption 
which  presents  itself,  when  I  think  of  their  pretences  to 
superior  morality,  compared  with  the  plays  of  Shakspere."" 

Here  let  me  pause  for  one  moment ;  for  while  reading  my 
note  I  call  to  mind  a  novel,  on  the  sofa  or  toilet  of  nearly 
every  woman  of  quality,  in  which  the  author  gravely  warn* 
parents  against  the  indiscreet  communication  to  their  chil- 
dren of  the  contents  of  some  parts  of  the  Bible,  as  calculated 
to  injure  their  morals.  Another  modern  author,  who  has; 
done  his  utmost  to  undermine  the  innocence  of  the  young- 
of  both  sexes,  has  the  effrontery  to  protest  against  the  ex- 
hibition of  the  bare  leg  of  a  Corinthian  female.  My  note 
thus  pursues  the  subject : — 

"  In  Shakspere  there  are  a  few  gross  speeches,  but  it  is 
doubtful  to  me  if  they  would  produce  any  ill  effect  on  an» 
unsullied  mind ;  while  in  some  modern  plays,  as  well  as  in 
Borne  modern  novels,  there  is  a  systematic  undermining  of 
all  morality  :  they  are  written  in  the  true  cant  of  humanity,, 
that  has  no  object  but  to  impose ;  where  virtue  is  not  placed 
in  action,  or  in  the  habits  that  lead  to  action,  but,  like  the' 
title  of  a  book  I  have  heard  of,  they  are  '  a  hot  huddle  of 


78  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

indefinite  sensations.'  In  these  the  lowest  incitements  to 
piety  are  obtruded  upon  us ;  like  an  impudent  rascal  at  a 
masquerade,  who  is  well  known  in  spite  of  his  vizor,  or 
known  by  it,  and  yet  is  allowed  to  be  impudent  in  virtue  of 
his  disguise.  In  short,  I  appeal  to  the  whole  of  Shakspere's 
writings,  whether  his  grossness  is  not  the  mere  sport  of  fancy, 
dissipating  low  feelings  by  exciting  the  intellect,  and  only 
injuring  while  it  offends  ?  Modern  dramas  injure  in  conse- 
quence of  not  offending.  Shakspere's  worst  passages  are 
grossnesses  against  the  degradations  of  our  nature  :  those  of 
our  modern  plays  are  too  often  delicacies  directly  in  favour 
of  them." 

Such  was  my  note,  made  nine  years  ago,  and  I  have 
since  seen  every  reason  to  adhere  firmly  to  the  opinions  it 
expresses. 

In  my  next  lecture  I  will  proceed  to  an  examination  of 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet ;  "  and  I  take  that  tragedy,  because  in 
it  are  to  be  found  all  the  crude  materials  of  future  excellence. 
The  poet,  the  great  dramatic  poet,  is  throughout  seen,  but 
the  various  parts  of  the  composition  are  not  blended  with 
such  harmony  as  in  some  of  his  after  writings.  I  am 
directed  to  it,  more  than  all,  for  this  reason, — because  it 
affords  me  the  best  opportunity  of  introducing  Shakspere  as 
a  delineator  of  female  character,  and  of  love  in  all  its  forms, 
mid  with  all  the  emotions  which  deserve  that  sweet  and 
man-elevating  name. 

It  has  been  remarked,  I  believe  by  Dryden,  that  Shak- 
eperc  wrote  for  men  only,  but  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  (or 
rather  "  the  gentle  Fletcher'*)  for  women.  I  wish  to  begin 
by  showing,  not  only  that  this  is  not  time,  but  that,  of  all 
writers  for  the  stage,  he  only  has  drawn  the  female 
character  with  that  mixture  of  the  real  and  of  the  ideal 
which  belongs  to  it ;  and  that  there  is  no  one  female 
personage  in  the  plays  of  all  his  contemporaries,  of 
whom  a  man,  seriously  examining  his  heart  and  his  good 


.  VI.]  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  79 

sense,  can  say  "  Let  that  woman  be  my  companion  through 
life  :  let  her  be  the  object  of  my  suit,  and  the  reward  of  my 

success." 1 

1  See  Notes  on  the  "  Tempest,"  in  "  Lectures  and  Notes  of  18 IS," 
Section  IV. 


80  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 


LECTURE   VII. 

T  N"  a  former  lecture1 1  endeavoured  to  point  out  the  union 
•^  of  the  Poet  and  the  Philosopher,  or  rather  the  warm 
embrace  between  them,  in  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis  "  and 
"  Lucrece  "  of  Shakspere.  From  thence  I  passed  on  to 
"Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  as  the  link  between  his  character  as 
a  Poet,  and  his  art  as  a  Dramatist ;  and  I  showed  that,  al- 
though in  that  work  the  former  was  still  predominant,  yet 
that  the  germs  of  his  subsequent  dramatic  power  were 
easily  discernible. 

I  will  now,  as  I  promised  in  my  last,  proceed  to  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet,"  not  because  it  is  the  earliest,  or  among  the 
earliest  of  Shakspere's  works  of  that  kind,  but  because  in  it 
are  to  be  found  specimens,  in  degree,  of  all  the  excellences 
which  he  afterwards  displayed  in  his  more  perfect  dramas, 
but  differing  from  them  in  being  less  forcibly  evidenced,  and 
less  happily  combined :  all  the  parts  are  more  or  less  present, 
but  they  are  not  united  with  the  same  harmony. 

There  are,  however,  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet "  passages 
where  the  poet's  whole  excellence  is  evinced,  so  that  nothing 

1  Judging  from  the  report  of  the  "  Morning  Chronicle  "  of  the  fourth 
lecture,  itmust  be  to  the  fourth  and  fifth  that  Coleridge  alludes.  Happily 
we  have  another  quarry  in  •which  to  discover  his  ideas  on  this  subject. 
The  fifteenth  chapter  of  the  "Biographia  Literaria"  is  entirely  de- 
voted to  an  examination  of  "  the  specific  symptoms  of  poetic  power 
elucidated  in  a  critical  analysis  of  Shakspere's  '  Venus  and  Adonis '  and 
'  Rape  of  Lncrece.' "  The  "  Biographia  "  was  published  in  1816. — See 
Appendix. 


LECT.  TIL]          SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTOK.  81 

superior  to  them  can  be  met  with  in  the  productions  of  his 
after  years.  The  main  distinction  between  this  play  and 
others  is,  as  I  said,  that  the  parts  are  less  happily  combined, 
or  to  borrow  a  phrase  from  the  painter,  the  whole  work  is 
less  in  keeping.  Grand  portions  are  produced  :  we  have 
limbs  of  giant  growth ;  but  the  production,  as  a  whole,  in 
which  each  part  gives  delight  for  itself,  and  the  whole,  con- 
sisting of  these  delightful  parts,  communicates  the  highest 
intellectual  pleasure  and  satisfaction,  is  the  result  of  the 
application  of  judgment  and  taste.  These  are  not  to  be 
attained  but  by  painful  study,  and  to  the  sacrifice  of  the 
stronger  pleasures  derived  from  the  dazzling  light  which  a 
man  of  genius  throws  over  every  circumstance,  and  where 
we  are  chiefly  struck  by  vivid  and  distinct  images.  Taste 
is  an  attainment  after  a  poet  has  been  disciplined  by  expe- 
rience, and  has  added  to  genius  that  talent  by  which  he 
knows  what  part  of  his  genius  he  can  make  acceptable,  and 
intelligible  to  the  portion  of  mankind  for  which  he  writes. 

In  my  mind  it  would  be  a  hopeless  symptom,  as  regards 
genius,  if  I  found  a  young  man  with  anything  like  perfect 
taste.  In  the  earlier  works  of  Shakspere  we  have  a  profu- 
sion of  double  epithets,  and  sometimes  even  the  coarsest 
terms  are  employed,  if  they  convey  a  more  vivid  image ; 
but  by  degrees  the  associations  are  connected  with  the 
image  they  are  designed  to  impress,  and  the  poet  descends 
from  the  ideal  into  the  real  world  so  far  as  to  conjoin  both 
— to  give  a  sphere  of  active  operations  to  the  ideal,  and  to 
elevate  and  refine  the  real. 

In  "  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  the  principal  characters  may  be 
divided  into  two  classes :  in  one  class  passion — the  passion 
of  love — is  drawn  and  drawn  truly,  as  well  as  beautifully  ; 
but  the  persons  are  not  individualized  farther  than  as  the 
actor  appears  on  the  stage.  It  is  a  very  just  description 
and  development  of  love,  without  giving,  if  I  may  so  express 
myself,  the  philosophical  history  of  it — without  showing 


82  LECTURES   ON  [1.811-12 

how  the  man  became  acted  upon  by  that  particular  passion, 
but  leading  it  through  all  the  incidents  of  the  drama,  and 
rendering  it  predominant. 

Tybalt  is,  in  himself,  a  common-place  personage.  And 
here  allow  me  to  remark  upon  a  great  distinction  between 
Shakspere,  and  all  who  have  written  in  imitation  of  him. 
I  know  no  character  in  his  plays  (unless  indeed  Pistol  be 
an  exception),  which  can  be  called  the  mere  portrait  of  an 
individual :  while  the  reader  feels  all  the  satisfaction  arising 
from  individuality,  yet  that  very  individual  is  a  sort  of  class 
character,  and  this  circumstance  renders  Sbakspere  the  poet 
of  all  ages. 

Tybalt  is  a  man  abandoned  to  his  passions — with  all  the 
pride  of  family,  only  because  he  thought  it  belonged  to  him 
as  a  member  of  that  family,  and  valuing  himself  highly, 
simply  because  he  does  not  care  for  death.  This  indifference 
to  death  is  perhaps  more  common  than  any  other  feeling : 
men  are  apt  to  flatter  themselves  extravagantly,  merely 
because  they  possess  a  quality  which  it  is  a  disgrace  not  to 
have,  but  which  a  wise  man  never  puts  forward,  but  when 
it  is  necessary. 

Jeremy  Taylor,  in  one  part  of  his  voluminous  works, 
speaking  of  a  great  man,  says  that  he  was  naturally  a 
coward,  as  indeed  most  men  are,  knowing  the  value  of  life, 
but  the  power  of  his  reason  enabled  him,  when  required,  to 
conduct  himself  with  uniform  courage  and  hardihood.  The 
good  bishop,  perhaps,  had  in  his  mind  a  story,  told  by  one 
of  the  ancients,  of  a  Philosopher  and  a  Coxcomb,  on  board 
the  same  ship  during  a  storm :  the  Coxcomb  reviled  the 
Philosopher  for  betraying  marks  of  fear:  "Why  are  you 
so  frightened  ?  I  am  not  afraid  of  being  drowned  :  I  do  not 
care  a  farthing  for  my  life." — "You  are  perfectly  right," 
said  the  Philosopher,  "for  your  life  is  not  worth  a  farthing." 

Shakspere  never  takes  pains  to  make  his  characters  win 
your  esteem,  but  leaves  it  to  the  general  command  of  the 


LECT.  VII.]  SliAKSPEEE   AKD   MlLTON.  83 

passions,  and  to  poetic  justice.  It  is  most  beautiful  to 
observe,  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,**  that  the  characters  prin- 
cipally engaged  in  the  incidents  are  preserved  innocent 
from  all  that  could  lower  them  in  our  opinion,  while  the 
rest  of  the  personages,  deserving  little  interest  in  themselves, 
derive  it  from  being  instrumental  in  those  situations  in  which 
the  more  important  personages  develop  their  thoughts  and 
passions. 

Look  at  Capulet — a  worthy,  noble-minded  old  man  of 
high  rank,  with  all  the  impatience  that  is  likely  to  accom- 
pany it.  It  is  delightful  to  see  all  the  sensibilities  of  our 
nature  so  exquisitely  called  forth ;  as  if  the  poet  had  the 
hundred  arms  of  the  polypus,  and  had  thrown  them  out  in 
all  directions  to  catch  the  predominant  feeling.  "We  may 
see  in  Capulet  the  manner  in  which  anger  seizes  hold  of 
everything  that  comes  in  its  way,  in  order  to  express  itself, 
as  in  the  lines  where  he  reproves  Tybalt  for  his  fierceness  of 
behaviour,  which  led  him  to  wish  to  insult  a  Montague,  and 
disturb  the  merriment. — 

"  Go  to,  go  to ; 

You  arc  a  saucy  boy.     Is't  so,  indeed  ? 
This  trick  may  chance  to  scath  you ; — I  know  what. 
You  must  contrary  me  !  marry,  'tis  time. — 
Well  said,  my  hearts  .' — You  are  a  princox :  go : 
Be  quiet  or — More  light,  mor«  light ! — For  shame  ! 
I'll  make  you  quiet. — What !  cbeerly,  my  hearts !  " 

Act  I. ,  Seme  5. 

The  line 

"  This  trick  may  chance  to  scath  you ; — I  know  what," 

•was  an  allusion  to  the  legacy  Tybalt  might  expect ;  and 
then,  seeing  the  lights  burn  dimly,  Capulet  turns  his  anger 
against  the  servants.  Thus  we  see  that  no  one  passion  is 
so  predominant,  but  that  it  includes  all  the  parts  of  the 
character,  and  the  reader  never  has  a  mere  abstract  of  a 


84  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

passion,  as  of  wrath  or  ambition,  but  the  whole  man  is 
presented  to  him — the  one  predominant  passion  acting,  if 
I  may  so  say,  as  the  leader  of  the  band  to  the  rest. 

It  could  not  be  expected  that  the  poet  should  introduce 
such  a  character  as  Hamlet  into  every  play ;  but  even  in 
those  personages  which  are  subordinate  to  a  hero  so 
eminently  philosophical,  the  passion  is  at  least  rendered  in- 
structive, and  induces  the  reader  to  look  with  a  keener 
eye,  and  a  finer  judgment  into  human  nature. 

Shakspere  has  this  advantage  overall  other  dramatists — 
that  he  has  availed  himself  of  his  psychological  genius  to 
develop  all  the  minutiae  of  the  human  heart :  showing  us 
the  thing  that,  to  common  observers,  he  seems  solely  intent 
upon,  he  makes  visible  what  we  should  not  otherwise  have 
seen  :  just  as,  after  looking  at  distant  objects  through  a 
telescope,  when  we  behold  them  subsequently  with  the 
naked  eye,  we  see  them  with  greater  distinctness,  and  in 
more  detail,  than  we  should  otherwise  have  done. 

Mercutio  is  one  of  our  poet's  truly  Shaksperian 
characters;  for  throughout  his  plays,  but  especially  in 
those  of  the  highest  order,  it  is  plain  that  the  personages 
were  drawn  rather  from  meditation  than  from  observa- 
tion, or  to  speak  correctly,  more  from  observation,  the 
child  of  meditation.  It  is  comparatively  easy  for  a  man  to 
go  about  the  world,  as  if  with  a  pocket-book  in  his  hand, 
carefully  noting  down  what  he  sees  and  hears  :  by  practice 
he  acquires  considerable  facility  in  representing  what  he 
has  observed,  himself  frequently  unconscious  of  its  worth, 
or  its  bearings.  This  is  entirely  different  from  the  observa- 
tion of  a  mind,  which,  having  formed  a  theory  and  a 
system  upon  its  own  nature,  remarks  all  things  that  are 
examples  of  its  truth,  confirming  it  in  that  truth,  and, 
above  all,  enabling  it  to  convey  the  truths  of  philosophy, 
as  mere  effects  derived  from,  what  we  may  call,  the  out- 
ward watchings  of  life. 


.  VII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  85 

Hence  it  is  that  Shakspere's  favourite  characters  are 
full  of  such  lively  intellect.  Mercutio  is  a  man  possessing 
all  the  elements  of  a  poet :  the  whole  world  was,  as  it 
were,  subject  to  his  law  of  association.  Whenever  he 
wishes  to  impress  anything,  all  things  become  his  servants 
for  the  purpose  :  all  things  tell  the  same  tale,  and  sound  in 
unison.  This  faculty,  moreover,  is  combined  with  the 
manners  and  feelings  of  a  perfect  gentleman,  himself 
utterly  unconscious  of  his  powers.  By  his  loss  it  was 
contrived  that  the  whole  catastrophe  of  the  tragedy  should 
be  brought  about :  it  endears  him  to  Borneo,  and  gives  to 
the  death,  of  Mercutio  an  importance  which  it  could  not 
otherwise  have  acquired. 

I  say  this  in  answer  to  an  observation,  I  think  by 
Dryden  (to  which  indeed  Dr.  Johnson  has  fully  replied), 
that  Shakspere  having  carried  the  part  of  Mercutio  as  far 
as  he  could,  till  his  genius  was  exhausted,  had  killed  him 
in  the  third  Act,  to  get  him  out  of  the  way.  What  shallow 
nonsense  !  As  I  have  remarked,  upon  the  death  of  Mer- 
cutio the  whole  catastrophe  depends ;  it  is  produced  by  it. 
The  scene  in  which,  it  occurs  serves  to  show  how  indiffe- 
rence to  any  subject  but  one,  and  aversion  to  activity  on  the 
part  of  Borneo,  may  be  overcome  and  roused  to  the  most 
resolute  and  determined  conduct.  Had  not  Mercutio  been 
rendered  so  amiable  and  so  interesting,  we  could  not  have 
felt  so  strongly  the  necessity  for  Borneo's  interference, 
connecting  it  immediately,  and  passionately,  with  the  future 
fortunes  of  the  lover  and  his  mistress. 

But  what  am  I  to  say  of  the  Nurse  ?  We  have  been 
told  that  her  character  is  the  mere  fruit  of  observation—- 
that it  is  like  Swift's  "  Polite  Conversation,"  certainly  the 
most  stupendous  work  of  human  memory,  and  of  un- 
ceasingly active  attention  to  what  passes  around  us,  upon 
record.  The  Nurse  in  "  Borneo  and  Juliet "  has  some- 
times been  compared  to  a  portrait  by  Gerard  Dow,  in 


80  LECTDRES   OX  [1311-12 

which  every  hair  was  so  exquisitely  painted,  that  it  would 
bear  the  test  of  the  microscope.  Now,  I  appeal  con- 
fidently to  my  hearers  whether  the  closest  observation  of 
the  manners  of  one  or  two  old  nurses  would  have  enabled 
-Shakspere  to  draw  this  character  of  admirable  generaliza- 
tion ?  Surely  not.  Let  any  man  conjure  up  in  his  mind 
all  the  qualities  and  peculiarities  that  can  possibly  belong 
to  a  nurse,  and  he  will  find  them  in  Shakspere's  picture  of 
the  old  woman :  nothing  is  omitted.  This  effect  is  not 
produced  by  mere  observation.  The  great  prerogative  of 
genius  (and  Shakspere  felt  and  availed  himself  of  it)  is 
now  to  swell  itself  to  the  dignity  of  a  god,  and  now  to 
subdue  and  keep  dormant  some  part  of  that  lofty  nature, 
and  to  descend  even  to  the  lowest  character — -to  become 
everything,  in  fact,  but  the  vicious. 

Thus,  in  the  Nurse1  you  have  all  the  garrulity  of  old- 
age,  and  all  its  fondness  ;  for  the  affection  of  old-age  is  one 
of  the  greatest  consolations  of  humanity.  I  have  often 
thought  what  a  melancholy  world  this  would  be  without 
children,  and  what  an  inhuman  world  without  the  aged. 

You  have  also  in  the  Nurse  the  arrogance  of  ignorance, 
with  the  pride  of  meanness  at  being  connected  with  a 
great  family.  Yon  have  the  grossness,  too,  which  that 
situation  never  removes,  though  it  sometimes  suspends  it ; 
and,  arising  from  that  grossness,  the  little  low  vices 
attendant  upon  it,  which,  indeed,  in  such  minds  are 
scarcely  vices. — Romeo  at  one  time  was  the  most  delight- 
ful and  excellent  young  man,  and  the  Nurse  all  willingness 
to  assist  him  ;  but  her  disposition  soon  turns  in  favour  of 

1  "In  a  poem,  still  more  in  a  lyric  poem  (and  the  Nurse  in  Shnlv- 
spere's  '  Romeo  and  Juliet '  alone  prevents  me  from  extending  the  re- 
mark even  to  dramatic  poetry,  if,  indeed,  the  Nurse  itself  can  be 
deemed  altogether  a  case  in  point),  it  is  not  possible  to  imitate  truly  a 
dull  and  garrulous  discourser,  without  repeating  the  effects  of  dulnesa 
«md  garrulity." — Biographia  Literaria,  chap.  xvii. 


LEG!.  VII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND  51ILTON.  87 

Paris,  for  whom  she  professes  precisely  the  same  admira- 
tion. How  wonderfully  are  these  low  peculiarities  con- 
trasted with  a  young  and  pure  mind,  educated  under 
different  circumstances  ! 

Another  point  ought  to  be  mentioned  as  characteristic 
of  the  ignorance  of  the  Nurse : — it  is,  that  in  all  her 
recollections,  she  assists  herself  by  the  remembrance  of 
visual  circumstances.  The  great  difference,  in  this  respect, 
between  the  cultivated  and  the  uncultivated  mind  is  this — 
that  the  cultivated  mind  will  be  found  to  recall  the  past  by 
certain  regular  trains  of  cause  and  effect ;  whereas,  with 
the  uncultivated  mind,  the  past  is  recalled  wholly  by 
coincident  images,  or  facts  which  happened  at  the  same 
time.  This  position  is  fully  exemplified  in  the  following 
passages  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Nurse  : — 

"  Even  or  odd,  of  all  days  in  the  year, 

Come  Lammas  eve  at  night  shall  she  be  fourteen. 

Susan  and  she — God  rest  all  Christian  souls ! — 

Were  of  an  age. — Well,  Susan  is  with  Gnd  ; 

She  was  too  good  for  me.     But,  as  I  said, 

On  Lammas  eve  at  night  shall  she  be  fourteen } 

That  shall  she,  marry  :  I  remember  it  well. 

'Tis  since  the  earthquake  now  eleven  years ; 

And  she  was  wean'd, — I  never  shall  forget  it, — 

Of  all  the  days  of  the  year,  upon  that  day  ; 

For  I  had  then  laid  wormwood  to  my  dug, 

Sitting  in  the  sun  under  the  dove-house  wall : 

My  lord  and  you  were  then  at  Mantua. — 

Nay,  I  do  bear  a  brain : — but,  as  I  said, 

When  it  did  taste  the  wormwood  on  the  nipple 

Of  my  dug,  and  felt  it  bitter,  pretty  fool, 

To  see  it  tetchy,  and  fall  out  with  the  dug ! 

Shake,  quoth  the  dove-house :  'twas  no  need,  I  trow. 

To  bid  me  trudge. 

And  since  that  time  it  is  eleven  years ; 

For  then  she  could  stand  alone." 

Act  /.,  Scene  3. 


88  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

She  afterwards  goes  on  with  similar  visual  impressions, 
so  true  to  the  character. — More  is  hero  brought  into  one 
portrait  than  could  have  been  ascertained  by  one  man's 
mere  observation,  and  without  the  introduction  of  a  single 
incongruous  point. 

I  honour,  I  love,  the  works  of  Fielding  as  much,  or 
perhaps  more,  than  those  of  any  other  writer  of  fiction  of 
that  kind :  take  Fielding  in  his  characters  of  postillions, 
landlords,  and  landladies,  waiters,  or  indeed,  of  anybody 
who  had  come  before  his  eye,  and  nothing  can  be  more 
true,  more  happy,  or  more  humorous  ;  but  in  all  his  chief 
personages,  Tom  Jones  for  instance,  where  Fielding  was 
not  directed  by  observation,  where  he  could  not  assist 
himself  by  the  close  copying  of  what  he  saw,  where  it  is 
necessary  that  something  should  take  place,  some  words 
be  spoken,  or  some  object  described,  which  he  could  not 
have  witnessed  (his  soliloquies  for  example,  or  the  inter- 
view between  the  hero  and  Sophia  Western  before  the 
reconciliation)  and  I  will  venture  to  say,  loving  and 
honouring  the  man  and  his  productions  as  I  do,  that 
nothing  can  be  more  forced  and  unnatural :  the  language 
is  without  vivacity  or  spirit,  the  whole  matter  is  incon- 
gruous, and  totally  destitute  of  psychological  truth. 

On  the  other  hand,  look  at  Shakspere :  where  can  any 
character  be  produced  that  does  not  speak  the  language  of 
nature  ?  where  does  he  not  put  into  the  mouths  of  his 
dramatis  personce,  be  they  high  or  low,  Kings  or  Constables, 
precisely  what  they  must  have  said  ?  Where,  from  observa- 
tion, could  he  learn  the  language  proper  to  Sovereigns, 
Queens,  Noblemen,  or  Generals  ?  yet  he  invariably  uses  it. 
• — Where,  from  observation,  could  he  have  learned  such 
lines  as  these,  which  are  put  into  the  mouth  of  Othello, 
when  he  is  talking  to  lago  of  Brabantio  ? 

"  Let  him  do  his  spite : 
My  services,  which  I  have  done  the  signiory, 


LEG!.  VII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  89 

Shall  out-tongue  his  complaints.     "Tis  yet  to  know, 
Which,  when  I  know  that  boasting  is  an  honour, 
I  shall  promulgate,  I  fetch  my  life  and  being 
From  men  of  royal  siege ;  and  my  demerits 
May  speak,  unbonneted,  to  as  proud  a  fortune 
As  this  that  I  have  reach'd  :  for  know,  lago, 
But  that  I  love  the  gentle  Desdemona, 
I  would  not  my  unhoused  free  condition 
Put  into  circumscription  and  confine 
For  the  sea's  worth." 

Act.  I.,  Scene  2. 

I  ask  where  was  Shakspere  to  observe  such  language  as 
this  ?  If  he  did  observe  it,  it  was  with  the  inward  eye  of 
meditation  upon  his  own  nature  :  for  the  time,  he  became 
Othello,  and  spoke  as  Othello,  in  such  circumstances,  must 
have  spoken. 

Another  remark  I  may  make  upon  "  Romeo  and  Juliet " 
is,  that  in  this  tragedy  the  poet  is  not,  as  I  have  hinted, 
entirely  blended  with  the  dramatist, — at  least,  not  in  the 
degree  to  be  afterwards  noticed  in  "  Lear,"  "  Hamlet," 
"Othello,"  or  "Macbeth."  Capulet  and  Montague  not 
unfrequently  talk  a  language  only  belonging  to  the  poet, 
and  not  so  characteristic  of,  and  peculiar  to,  the  passions 
of  persons  in  the  situations  in  which  they  are  placed — a 
mistake,  or  rather  an  indistinctness,  which  many  of  our 
later  dramatists  have  carried  through  the  whole  of  their 
productions. 

When  I  read  the  song  of  Deborah,  I  never  think  that  she 
is  a  poet,  although  I  think  the  song  itself  a  sublime  poem : 
it  is  as  simple  a  dithyrambic  production  as  exists  in  any 
language  ;  but  it  is  the  proper  and  characteristic  effusion 
of  a  woman  highly  elevated  by  triumph,  by  the  natural 
hatred  of  oppressors,  and  resulting  from  a  bitter  sense  of 
wrong :  it  is  a  song  of  exultation  on  deliverance  from,  these 
evils,  a  deliverance  accomplished  by  herself.  When  she 
excl.ums,  "  The  inhabitants  of  the  villages  ceased,  they 


90  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

ceased  in  Israel,  until  that  I,  Deborah,  arose,  that  I  arose  a 
mother  in  Israel,"  it  is  poetry  in  the  highest  sense :  we 
have  no  reason,  however,  to  suppose  that  if  she  had  not  been 
agitated  by  passion,  and  animated  by  victory,  she  wonld  have 
been  able  so  to  express  herself ;  or  that  if  she  had  been 
placed  in  different  circumstances,  she  would  have  used  such 
language  of  truth  and  passion.  We  are  to  remember  that 
Shakspere,  not  placed  under  circumstances  of  excitement, 
and  only  wrought  upon  by  his  own  vivid  and  vigorous 
imagination,  writes  a  language  that  invariably,  and  in- 
tuitively becomes  the  condition  and  position  of  each 
character. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  language  not  descriptive  of 
passion,  nor  uttered  under  the  influence  of  it,  which  is  at 
the  same  time  poetic,  and  shows  a  high  and  active  fancy, 
as  when  Capulet  says  to  Paris, — 

"  Such  comfort  as  do  lust}7  young  men  fed, 
When  well-apparell'd  April  on  the  heel 
Of  limping  wipter  treads,  even  such  delight 
Among  fresh  female  buds,  shall  you  this  night 
Inherit  at  my  house." 

Act  /.,  Scene  2. 

Here  the  poet  may  be  said  to  speak,  rather  than  the 
dramatist ;  and  it  would  be  easy  to  adduce  other  passages 
from  this  play,  where  Shakspere,  for  a  moment  forgetting 
the  character,  utters  his  own  words  in  his  own  person. 

In  my  mind,  what  have  often  been  censured  as  Shak- 
spere's  conceits  are  completely  justifiable,  as  belonging  to 
the  state,  age,  or  feeling  of  the  individual.  Sometimes, 
when  they  cannot  be  vindicated  on  these  grounds,  they  may 
well  be  excused  by  the  taste  of  his  own  and  of  the  preceding 
age ;  as  for  instance,  in  Romeo's  speech, 

"  Here's  much  to  do  with  hate,  but  more  with  love  : — 
Why  then,  O  brawling  love!  O  loving  hate  ! 


LSCT.  VII.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTOX.  1)1 

O  anything,  of  nothing  first  created ! l 

O  heavy  lightness !  serious  vanity  ! 

Misshapen  chaos  of  well-seeming  forms! 

Feather  of  lead,  bright  smoke,  cold  fire,  sick  health ! 

Still-waking  sleep,  that  is  not  what  it  is  1 " 

Act  I.,  Scene  1. 

I  dare  not  pronounce  such  passages  as  these  to  he 
absolutely  unnatural,  not  merely  because  I  consider  the 
author  a  much  better  judge  than  I  can  be,  but  because  I 
can  understand  and  allow  for  an  effort  of  the  mind,  when 
it  would  describe  what  it  cannot  satisfy  itself  with  the 
description  of,  to  reconcile  opposites  and  qualify  contra- 
dictions, leaving  a  middle  state  of  mind  more  strictly 
appropriate  to  the  imagination  than  any  other,  when  it  isr 
as  it  were,  hovering  between  images.  As  soon  as  it  is  fixed 
on  one  image,  it  becomes  understanding ;  but  while  it  is 
unfixed  and  wavering  between  them,  attaching  itself  per- 
manently to  none,  it  is  imagination.  Such  is  the  fine 
description  of  Death  in  Milton  : — 

"  The  other  shape, 

If  shape  it  might  be  call'd,  that  shape  had  none 
Distinguishable  in  member,  joint,  or  limb, 
Or  substance  might  be  call'd,  that  shadow  seem'd. 
For  each  seem'd  either  :  black  it  stood  as  night ; 
Fierce  as  ten  furies,  terrible  as  hell, 
And  shook  a  dreadful  dart :  what  seem'd  his  head 
The  likeness  of  a  kingly  crown  had  on." 

Paradise  Lost,  Book  II. 

The  grandest  efforts  of  poetry  are  where  the  imagination 
is  called  forth,  not  to  produce  a  distinct  form,  but  a  strong 
working  of  the  mind,  still  offering  what  is  still  repelled,  and 
again  creating  what  is  again  rejected  ;  the  result  being  what 
the  poet  wishes  to  impress,  namely,  the  substitution  of  a  sub- 
lime feeling  of  the  unimaginable  for  a  mere  image.  I  have 

1  Eead  "  create." 


92  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

sometimes  thought  that  the  passage  just  read  might  be 
quoted  as  exhibiting  the  narrow  limit  of  painting,  as  com- 
pared with  the  boundless  power  of  poetry :  painting  cannot 
go  beyond  a  certain  point;  poetry  rejects  all  control,  all 
confinement.  Yet  we  know  that  sundry  painters  have 
attempted  pictures  of  the  meeting  between  Satan  and 
Death  at  the  gates  of  Hell ;  and  how  was  Death  repre- 
sented ?  Not  as  Milton  has  described  him,  but  by  the 
most  defined  thing  that  can  be  imagined — a  skeleton,  the 
dryest  and  hardest  image  that  it  is  possible  to  discover ; 
which,  instead  of  keeping  the  mind  in  a  state  of  activity, 
reduces  it  to  the  merest  passivity, — an  image,  compared 
with  which  a  square,  a  triangle,  or  any  other  mathematical 
figure,  is  a  luxuriant  fancy. 

It  is  a  general  but  mistaken  notion  that,  because  some 
forms  of  writing,  and  some  combinations  of  thought,  are 
not  usual,  they  are  not  natural ;  but  we  are  to  recollect 
that  the  dramatist  represents  his  characters  in  every  situa- 
tion of  life  and  in  every  state  of  mind,  and  there  is  no  form 
of  language  that  may  not  be  introduced  with  effect  by  a 
great  and  judicious  poet,  and  yet  be  most  strictly  according 
to  nature.  Take  punning,  for  instance,  which  may  be  the 
lowest,  but  at  all  events  is  the  most  harmless,  kind  of  wit, 
because  it  never  excites  envy.  A  pun  may  be  a  necessary 
consequence  of  association :  one  man,  attempting  to  prove 
something  that  was  resisted  by  another,  might,  when 
agitated  by  strong  feeling,  employ  a  term  used  by  his 
adversary  with  a  directly  contrary  meaning  to  that  for 
which  that  adversary  had  resorted  to  it :  it  might  come 
into  his  mind  as  one  way,  and  sometimes  the  best,  of 
replying  to  that  adversary.  This  form  of  speech  is  generally 
produced  by  a  mixture  of  anger  and  contempt,  and  punning 
is  a  natural  mode  of  expressing  them. 

It  is  my  intention  to  pass  over  none  of  the  important 
Bo-called  conceits  of  Shakspere,  not  a  few  of  which  are 


LlfCT.  VII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  93 

introduced  into  his  later  productions  with  great  propriety 
and  effect.  We  are  not  to  forget,  that  at  the  time  he  lived 
there  was  an  attempt  at,  and  an  affectation  of,  quaintnesa 
and  adornment,  which  emanated  from  the  Court,  ami 
against  which  satire  was  directed  by  Shakspere  in  tho 
character  of  Osrick  in  Hamlet.  Among  the  schoolmen  of 
that  age,  and  earlier,  nothing  was  more  common  than  the 
use  of  conceits  :  it  began  with  the  revival  of  letters,  and  the 
bias  thus  given  was  very  generally  felt  and  acknowledged. 

I  have  in  my  possession  a  dictionary  of  phrases,  in  which 
the  epithets  applied  to  love,  hate,  jealousy,  and  such  abstract 
terms,  are  arranged ;  and  they  consist  almost  entirely  of 
words  taken  from  Seneca  and  his  imitators,  or  from  the 
schoolmen,  showing  perpetual  antithesis,  and  describing 
the  passions  by  the  conjunction  and  combination  of  thinga 
absolutely  irreconcilable.1  In  treating  the  matter  thus, 
I  am  aware  that  I  am  only  palliating  the  practice  in  Shak- 
epere :  he  ought  to  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  merely 
temporary  peculiarities  :  he  wrote  not  for  his  own  only,  but 
for  all  ages,  and  so  far  I  admit  the  use  of  some  of  his/ 
conceits  to  be  a  defect.  They  detract  sometimes  from  his 
universality  as  to  time,  person,  and  situation. 

If  we  were  able  to  discover,  and  to  point  out  the  peculiar 
faults,  as  well  as  the  peculiar  beauties  of  Shakspere,  it 
would  materially  assist  us  in  deciding  what  authority  ought 
to  be  attached  to  certain  portions  of  what  are  generally 
called  his  works.  If  we  met  with  a  play,  or  certain  scenes- 
of  a  play,  in  which  we  could  trace  neither  his  defects  nor 
his  excellences,  we  should  have  the  strongest  reason  for 
believing  that  he  had  had  no  hand  in  it.  In  the  case  of 

1  Thomas  Watson,  a  contemporary  of  Shakspere,  much  praised  in  his 
day,  fills  forty  Latin  lines  with  a  description  of  love  in  the  manner 
Coleridge  speaks  of.  He  styles  it,  mora  vivida,  mortua  vita,  dementia  pru- 
dent, dolosa  voluptas,  inermis  bellator,  amara  dulcedo,  morspracvia  mortit 
Mid  so  on  ad  nauseam.  Compare  Romeo's  description  of  love  on  p.  91, 


9-i  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

scenes  so  circumstanced  we  might  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  they  were  taken  from  the  older  plays,  which,  in  some 
instances,  he  reformed  or  altered,  or  that  they  were  in- 
serted afterwards  by  some  under- hand,  in  order  to  pleass 
the  mob.  If  a  drama  by  Shakspere  turned  out  to  be  too 
heavy  for  popular  audiences,  the  clown  might  be  called  in 
to  lighten  the  representation  ;  and  if  it  appeared  that  what 
was  added  was  not  in  Shakspere's  manner,  the  con- 
clusion would  be  inevitable,  that  it  was  not  from  Shak- 
gpere's  pen. 

It  remains  for  me  to  speak  of  the  hero  and  heroine,  of 
Ilomeo  and  Juliet  themselves ;  and  I  shall  do  so  with 
unaffected  diffidence,  not  merely  on  account  of  the  delicacy, 
but  of  the  great  importance  of  the  subject.  I  feel  that  it 
is  impossible  to  defend  Shakspere  from  the  most  cruel  of 
fill  charges — that  he  is  an  immoral  writer — without  enter- 
ing fully  into  his  mode  of  portraying  female  characters, 
and  of  displaying  the  passion  of  love.  It  seems  to  me, 
that  he  has  done  both  with  greater  perfection  than  any 
other  writer  of  the  known  world,  perhaps  with  the  single 
exception  of  Milton  in  his  delineation  of  Eve. 

When  I  have  heard  it  said,  or  seen  it  stated,  that  Shak- 
spere wrote  for  man,  but  the  gentle  Fletcher  for  woman,  it 
has  always  given  me  something  like  acute  pain,  because  to 
me  it  seems  to  do  the  greatest  injustice  to  Shakspere: 
•when,  too,  I  remember  how  much  character  is  formed  by 
what  we  read,  I  cannot  look  upon  it  as  a  light  question,  to 
be  passed  over  as  a  mere  amusement,  like  a  game  of  cards 
or  chess.  I  never  have  been  able  to  tame  down  my  mind 
to  think  poetry  a  sport,  or  an  occupation  for  idle  hours. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  sure  criterion  of  refinement  in 
moral  character,  of  the  purity  of  intellectual  intention,  and 
of  the  deep  conviction  and  perfect  sense  of  what  our  own 
nature  really  is  in  all  its  combinations,  than  the  different 
definitions  different  men  would  give  of  love.  I  will  not 


.  VII.]  SHAKSPEIIE   AND   MILTON.  95 

detain  you  by  stating  the  various  known  definitions,  some 
of  which  it  may  be  better  not  to  repeat :  I  will  rather  give 
you  one  of  my  own,  which,  I  apprehend,  is  equally  free 
from  the  extravagance  of  pretended  Platonism  (which, 
like  other  things  which  super-moralize,  is  sure  to  demoralize) 
and  from  its  grosser  opposite. 

Considering  myself  and  my  fellow-men  as  a  sort  of  link 
between  heaven  and  earth,  being  composed  of  body  and 
soul,  with  power  to  reason  and  to  will,  and  with  that 
perpetual  aspiration  which  tells  us  that  this  is  ours  for 
a  while,  but  it  is  not  ourselves  ;  considering  rnau,  I  say,  in 
this  two-fold  character,  yet  united  in  one  person,  I  conceive 
that  there  can  be  no  correct  definition  of  love  which  does 
not  correspond  with  our  being,  and  with  that  subordination 
of  one  part  to  another  which  constitutes  our  perfection.  I 
would  say  therefore  that — 

-  •'  Love  is  a  desire  of  the  whole  being  to  be  united  to 
some  thing,  or  some  being,  felt  necessary  to  its  completeness, 
by  the  most  perfect  means  that  nature  permits,  and  reason 
dictates." ' 

It  is  inevitable  to  every  noble  mind,  whether  man  or 
woman,  to  feel  itself,  of  itself,  imperfect  and  insufficient, 
not  as  an  animal  only,  but  as  a  moral  being.  How  wonder- 
fully, then,  has  Providence  contrived  for  us,  by  making 
that  which  is  necessary  to  us  a  step  in  our  exaltation  to  a 
higher  and  nobler  state  !  The  Creator  has  ordained  that 
one  should  possess  qualities  which  the  other  has  not,  and 
the  union  of  both  is  the  most  complete  ideal  of  human 
character.  In  everything  the  blending  of  the  similar  with 
the  dissimilar  is  the  secret  of  all  pure  delight.  Who  shall 
dare  to  stand  alone,  and  vaunt  himself,  in  himself,  sufficient  ? 
In  poetry  it  is  the  blending  of  passion  with  order  that 

1  See  Lecture  VIII.,  and  note,  containing  extract  from  letter  to 
II.  C.  Kobiuson. 


96  LBCTURES   ON  [1811-12 

constitutes  perfection  :  this  is  still  more  the  case  in  morals, 
and  more  than  all  in  the  exclusive  attachment  cf  the 
sexes. 

True  it  is,  that  the  world  and  its  business  may  be  carried 
on  without  marriage  ;  but  it  is  so  evident  that  Providence 
intended  man  (the  only  animal  of  all  climates,  and  whose 
reason  is  pre-eminent  over  instinct)  to  bo  the  master  of  the 
world,  that  marriage,  or  the  knitting  together  of  society  by 
the  tenderest,  yet  firmest  ties,  seems  ordained  to  render  him 
capable  of  maintaining  his  superiority  over  the  brute 
creation.  Man  alone  has  been  privileged  to  clothe  himself, 
and  to  do  all  things  so  as  to  make  him,  as  it  were,  a 
secondary  creator  of  himself,  and  of  his  own  happiness  or 
misery :  in  this,  as  in  all,  the  image  of  the  Deity  is  im- 
pressed upon  him. 

Providence,  then,  has  not  left  us  to  prudence  only ;  for 
the  power  of  calculation,  which  prudence  implies,  cannot 
have  existed,  but  in  a  state  which  pre-supposes  marriage. 
If  God  has  done  this,  shall  we  suppose  that  He  has  given  us 
no  moral  sense,  no  yearning,  which  is  something  more  than 
animal,  to  secure  that,  without  which  man  might  form  a 
herd,  but  could  not  be  a  society  ?  The  very  idea  seems  to 
breathe  absurdity. 

From  this  union  arise  the  paternal,  filial,  brotherly  and 
sisterly  relations  of  life ;  and  every  state  is  but  a  family 
magnified.  All  the  operations  of  mind,  in  short,  all  that 
distinguishes  us  from  brutes,  originate  in  the  more  perfect 
state  of  domestic  life. — One  infallible  criterion  in  forming 
an  opinion  of  a  man  is  the  reverence  in  which  he  holds 
women.  Plato  has  said,  that  in  this  way  we  rise  from 
sensuality  to  affection,  from  affection  to  love,  and  from 
love  to  the  pure  intellectual  delight  by  which  we  become 
worthy  to  conceive  that  infinite  in  ourselves,  without  which 
it  is  impossible  for  man  to  believe  in  a  God.  In  a  word, 
the  grandest  and  most  delightful  of  all  promises  has  been 


.  VII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  97 

expressed  to  us  by  this  practical  state — our  marriage  with 
the  Redeemer  of  mankind. 

I  might  safely  appeal  to  every  man  who  hears  me,  who 
in  youth  has  been  accustomed  to  abandon  himself  to  his 
animal  passions,  whether  when  he  first  really  fell  in  love, 
the  earliest  symptom  was  not  a  complete  change  in  his 
manners,  a  contempt  and  a  hatred  of  himself  for  having 
excused  his  conduct  by  asserting,  that  he  acted  according 
to  the  dictates  of  nature,  that  his  vices  were  the  inevitable 
consequences  of  youth,  and  that  his  passions  at  that  period 
of  life  could  not  be  conquered  ?  The  surest  friend  of 
chastity  is  love :  it  leads  us,  not  to  sink  the  mind  in  the 
body,  but  to  draw  up  the  body  to  the  mind — the  immortal 
part  of  our  nature.  See  how  contrasted  in  this  respect  are 
some  portions  of  the  works  of  writers,  whom.  I  need  not 
name,  with  other  portions  of  the  same  works :  the  ebulli- 
tions of  comic  humour  have  at  times,  by  a  lamentable  con- 
fusion, been  made  the  means  of  debasing  our  nature,  while 
at  other  times,  even  in  the  same  volume,  we  are  happy  to 
notice  the  utmost  purity,  such  as  the  purity  of  love,  which 
above  all  other  qualities  renders  us  most  pure  and  lovely. 

Love  is  not,  like  hunger,  a  mere  selfish  appetite :  it  is  an 
associative  quality.  The  hungry  savage  is  nothing  but  an 
animal,  thinking  only  of  the  satisfaction  of  his  stomach : 
what  is  the  first  effect  of  love,  but  to  associate  the  feeling 
with  every  object  in  nature  ?  the  trees  whisper,  the  roses 
exhale  their  perfumes,  the  nightingales  sing,  nay  the  very 
skies  smile  in  unison  with  the  feeling  of  true  and  pure  love. 
It  gives  to  every  object  in  nature  a  power  of  the  heart, 
•without  which  it  would  indeed  be  spiritless. 

Shakspere  has  described  this  passion  in  various  states 
and  stages,  beginning,  as  was  most  natural,  with  love  in 
the  young.  Does  he  open  his  play  by  making  Borneo  and 
Juliet  in  love  at  first  sight — at  the  first  glimpse,  as  any 
ordinary  thinker  would  do  ?  Certainly  not :  he  knew  what 

H 


08  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

he  was  about,  and  how  lie  was  to  accomplish  what  he  was 
about :  he  was  to  develop  the  whole  passion,  and  he  com- 
mences with  the  first  elements — that  sense  of  imperfection, 
that  yearning  to  combine  itself  with  something  lovely. 
Romeo  became  enamoured  of  the  idea  he  had  formed  in 
his  own  mind,  and  then,  as  it  were,  christened  the  first 
real  being  of  the  contrary  sex  as  endowed  with  the  per- 
fections he  desired.  He  appears  to  be  in  love  with  Rosa- 
line ;  but,  in  truth,  he  is  in  love  only  with  his  own  idea. 
He  felt  that  necessity  of  being  beloved  which  no  noble 
mind  can  be  without.  Then  our  poet,  our  poet  who  so 
•well  knew  human  nature,  introduces  Romeo  to  Juliet,  and 
makes  it  not  only  a  violent,  but  a  permanent  love — a  point 
for  which  Shakspere  has  been  ridiculed  by  the  ignorant 
and  unthinking.  Romeo  is  first  represented  in  a  state 
most  susceptible  of  love,  and  then,  seeing  Juliet,  he  took 
and  retained  the  infection. 

This  brings  me  to  observe  upon  a  characteristic  of 
Shakspere,  which  belongs  to  a  man  of  profound  thought 
and  high  genius.  It  has  been  too  much  the  custom,  when 
anything  that  happened  in  his  dramas  could  not  easily  be 
explained  by  the  few  words  the  poet  has  employed,  to  pass 
it  idly  over,  and  to  say  that  it  is  beyond  our  reach,  and 
beyond  the  power  of  philosophy — a  sort  of  terra  incognita 
for  discoverers — a  great  ocean  to  be  hereafter  explored. 
Others  have  treated  such  passages  as  hints  and  glimpses  of 
something  now  non-existent,  as  the  sacred  fragments  of 
an  ancient  and  ruined  temple,  all  the  portions  of  which  are 
beaiutiful,  although  their  particular  relation  to  each  other 
is  unknown.  Shakspere  knew  the  human  mind,  and  its 
most  minute  and  intimate  workings,  and  he  never  intro- 
duces a  word,  or  a  thought,  in  vain  or  out  of  place :  if  we 
do  not  understand  him,  it  is  our  own  fault  or  the  fault  of 
copyists  and  typographers ;  but  study,  and  the  possession 
of  some  small  stock  of  the  knowledge  by  which  he  worked 


VII.]  SHAKSPEKE    AND   MILTON.  99 

•will  enable  us  often  to  detect  and  explain  his  meaning. 
He  never  wrote  at  random,  or  hit  upon  points  of  character 
and  conduct  by  chance ;  and  the  smallest  fragment  of  his 
mind  not  unfrequentlj  gives  a  clue  to  a  most  perfect, 
regular,  and  consistent  whole. 

As  I  may  not  have  another  opportunity,  the  introduction 
of  Friar  Laurence  into  this  tragedy  enables  me  to  remark 
upon  the  different  manner  in  which  Shakspere  has  treated 
the  priestly  character,  as  compared  with  other  writers.  In 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  priests  are  represented  as  a  vulgar 
mockery ;  and,  as  in  others  of  their  dramatic  personages, 
the  errors  of  a  few  are  mistaken  for  the  demeanour  of  the 
many  :  but  in  Shakspere  they  always  carry  with  them  our 
love  and  respect.  He  made  no  injurious  abstracts  :  he 
took  no  copies  from  the  worst  parts  of  our  nature ;  and, 
like  the  rest,  his  characters  of  priests  are  truly  drawn  from 
the  general  body. 

It  may  strike  some  as  singular,  that  throughout  all  his 
productions  he  has  never  introduced  the  passion  of  avarice. 
The  truth  is,  that  it  belongs  only  to  particular  parts  of  our 
nature,  and  is  prevalent  only  in  particular  states  of  society ; 
Lence  it  could  not,  and  cannot,  be  permanent.  The  Miser 
of  Moliere  and  Plautus  is  now  looked  upon  as  a  species  of 
madman,  and  avarice  as  a  species  of  madness.  Elwes,  of 
whom  everybody  has  heard,  was  an  individual  influenced 
by  an  insane  condition  of  mind  ;  but,  as  a  passion,  avarice 
has  disappeared.  How  admirably,  then,  did  Shakspere 
foresee,  that  if  he  drew  such  a  character  it  could  not  be 
permanent !  he  drew  characters  which  would  always  be 
natural,  and  therefore  permanent,  inasmuch  as  they  were 
not  dependent  upon  accidental  circumstances. 

There  is  not  one  of  the  plays  of  Shakspere  that  is  built 
•upon  anything  but  the  best  and  surest  foundation  ;  the 
characters  must  be  permanent — permanent  while  men 
-continue  men, — because  they  stand  upon  what  is  abso- 


100  1ECTUKES  ON  [1811-12 

lately  necessary  to  our  existence.  This  cannot  be  said 
even  of  some  of  the  most  famous  authors  of  antiquity. 
Take  the  capital  tragedies  of  Orestes,  or  of  the  husband, 
of  Jocasta :  great  as  was  the  genius  of  the  writers,  these 
dramas  have  an  obvious  fault,  and  the  fault  lies  at  the 
very  root  of  the  action.  In  CEdipus  a  man  is  represented 
oppressed  by  fate  for  a  crime  of  which  he  was  not  morally 
guilty ;  and  while  we  read  we  are  obliged  to  say  to  our- 
selves, that  in  those  days  they  considered  actions  without 
reference  to  the  real  guilt  of  the  persons. 

There  is  no  character  in  Shakspere  in  which  envy  is 
pourtrayed,  with  one  solitary  exception — Cassius,  in  "  Julius 
Caesar ;  "  yet  even  there  the  vice  is  not  hateful,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  counterbalanced  by  a  number  of  excellent  qualities 
and  virtues.  The  poet  leads  the  reader  to  suppose  that  it 
is  rather  something  constitutional,  something  derived  from 
his  parents,  something  that  he  cannot  avoid,  and  not  some- 
thing that  he  has  himself  acquired ;  thus  throwing  the  blame 
from  the  will  of  man  to  some  inevitable  circumstance,  and 
leading  us  to  suppose  that  it  is  hardly  to  be  looked  upon 
as  one  of  those  passions  that  actually  debase  the  mind. 

Whenever  love  is  described  as  of  a  serious  nature,  and 
much  more  when  it  is  to  lead  to  a  tragical  result,  it 
depends  upon  a  law  of  the  mind,  which,  I  believe,  I  shall 
hereafter  be  able  to  make  intelligible,  and  which  would  not 
only  justify  Shakspere,  but  show  an  analogy  to  all  his  other 
characters. 

Report  of  the  Seventh  Lecture. 

The  following  Report  of  the  Seventh  Lecture,  delivered* 
on  December  9,  appeared  in  the  "  Dublin  Correspondent," 
December  17,  1811.  We  borrow  it  from  "Notes  and 
Queries,"  Augusjt  4,  1855  : — 

"Dec.  17,  1811. 
"  Mr.  Coleridge,  having  concluded  the  preliminary  dis- 


LECT.  VII.]  SHAKSPEEE   AND    MILTON.  101 

cussions  on  the  nature  of  the  Shaksperian  drama,  and  the 
genius  of  the  poet,  and  briefly  noticed  '  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,'  as  the  link  which  connected  together  the  poet  and 
the  dramatist,  proceeded,  in  his  seventh  lecture,  to  an  ela- 
borate review  of  '  Borneo  and  Juliet,'  a  play  in  which  are 
to  be  found  all  the  individual  excellences  of  the  author, 
but  less  happily  combined  than  in  his  riper  productions. 
This  he  observed  to  be  the  characteristic  of  genius,  that 
its  earliest  works  are  never  inferior  in  beauties,  while  the 
merits  which  taste  and  judgment  can  confer  are  of  slow 
growth.  Tybalt  and  Capulet  he  showed  to  be  represen- 
tatives of  classes  which  he  had  observed  in  society,  while 
in  Mercutio  he  exhibited  the  first  character  of  his  own  con- 
ception ;  a  being  formed  of  poetic  elements,  which  medi- 
tation rather  than  observation  had  revealed  to  him ;  a 
being  full  of  high  fancy  and  rapid  thought,  conscious  of 
his  own  powers,  careless  of  life,  generous,  noble,  a  perfect 
gentleman.  On  his  fate  hangs  the  catastrophe  of  the 
tragedy.  In  commenting  on  the  character  of  the  Nurse, 
Mr.  Coleridge  strenuously  resisted  the  suggestion  that  this 
is  a  mere  piece  of  Dutch  painting  ;  a  portrait  in  the  style 
of  Gerard  Dow.  On  the  contrary,  her  character  is  exqui- 
sitely generalized,  and  is  subservient  to  the  display  of  fine 
moral  contrasts.  Her  fondness  for  Juliet  is  delightfully 
pathetic.  *  What  a  melancholy  world  would  this  be  with- 
out children,  how  inhuman  without  old  age.'  Her  loqua- 
city is  characteristic  of  a  vulgar  mind,  which  recollects 
merely  by  coincidence  of  time  and  place,  while  cultivated 
minds  connect  their  ideas  by  cause  and  effect.  Having 
admitted  that  these  lower  persons  might  be  suggested  to 
Shakspere  by  observation,  Mr.  Coleridge  reverted  to  his 
ideal  characters,  and  said,  '  I  ask,  where  Shakspere  ob- 
served this  ?  '  (some  heroic  sentiments  by  Othello)  '  1 1 
was  his  inward  eye  of  meditation  on  his  own  nature.  He 
became  Othello,  and  therefore  spoke  like  him.  Shakspere 


102  •  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

became,  in  fact,  all  beings  but  the  vicious ;  but  in  drawing 
his  characters  he  regarded  essential  not  accidental  relations. 
Avarice  he  never  pourtrayed,  for  avarice  is  a  factitious 
passion.  The  Miser  of  Plautus  and  Moliere  is  already 
obsolete.'  Mr.  Coleridge  entered  into  a  discussion  of  the 
nature  of  fancy ;  showed  how  Shakspere,  composing  under 
a  feeling  of  the  unimaginable,  endeavouring  to  reconcile 
opposites  by  producing  a  strong  working  of  the  mind,  was 
led  to  those  earnest  conceits  which  are  consistent  with 
passion,  though  frigidly  imitated  by  writers  without  any. 
He  illustrated  this  part  of  his  subject  by  a  reference  to 
Milton's  conception  of  Death,  which  the  painters  absurdly 
endeavour  to  strip  of  its  fanciful  nature,  and  render  definite 
by  the  figure  of  a  skeleton,  the  dryest  of  all  images,  com- 
pared with  which  a  square  or  a  triangle  is  a  luxuriant  fancy. 

"  Mr.  Coleridge  postponed  the  examination  of  the  hero 
and  heroine  of  the  piece,  but  prefaced  his  inquiry  by  re- 
marks on  the  nature  of  love,  which  he  defined  to  be  'a 
perfect  desire  of  the  whole  being  to  be  united  to  some 
thing  or  being  which  is  felt  necessary  to  its  perfection, 
by  the  most  perfect  means  that  nature  permits,  and  reason 
dictates  ; '  and  took  occasion  with  great  delicacy  to  contrast 
this  link  of  our  higher  and  lower  nature,  this  noblest 
energy  of  our  humane  and  social  being,  with  what,  by  a 
gross  misnomer,  usurps  its  name ;  and  asserted,  that  the 
criterion  of  honour  and  worth  among  men  is  their  habit  of 
sentiment  on  the  subject  of  love. 

"  We  are  compelled  to  omit  the  partial  illustration  of  his  * 
in  the  characters  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  continuation  of 
which  we  are  promised  in  the  succeeding  lecture." 

Mr.  H.  C.  Robinson  inserted  a  report  of  this  lecture  in 
the  "  Morning  Chronicle."  See  Diary,  quoted  above,  Intro- 
ductory matter,  §  2. 

1  Read  "  this." 


.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    J1ILTOX.  103 


LECTURE   V11I. 

T  T  is  impossible  to  pay  a  higher  compliment  to  poetry, 
than  to  consider  the  effects  it  produces  in  common 
with  religion,  yet  distinct  (as  far  as  distinction  can  be, 
where  there  is  no  division)  in  those  qualities  which  re- 
ligion exercises  and  diffuses  over  all  mankind,  as  far  as 
they  are  subject  to  its  influence. 

I  have  often  thought  that  religion  (speaking  of  it  only 
as  it  accords  with  poetry,  without  reference  to  its  more 
serious  impressions)  is  the  poetry  of  mankind,  both  having 
for  their  objects  : — 

1.  To   generalize    our   notions ;  to   prevent   men   from, 
confining  their  attention  solely,   or  chiefly,  to  their  own 
narrow   sphere   of   action,  and   to   their   own   individual 
circumstances.     By  placing  them  in  certain  awful  rela- 
tions it  merges  the  individual  man  in  the  whole  species, 
and  makes  it  impossible  for  any  one  man  to  think  of  his 
future  lot,  or  indeed  of  his  present  condition,  without  at 
the  same  time  comprising  in  his  view  his  fellow-creatures. 

2.  That  both  poetry  and  religion  throw  the  object  of 
deepest  interest  to  a  distance  from  us,  and  thereby  not 
only  aid  our  imagination,  but  in  a  most  important  manner 
subserve   the  interest  of  our   virtues ;  for  that    man   is 
indeed  a  slave,  who  is  a  slave  to  his  own  senses,  and  whose 
mind  and  imagination  cannot  carry  him  beyond  the  distance 
which  his  hand  can  touch,  or  even  his  eye  can  reach. 

3.  The  grandest  point  of  resemblance  between  them  is, 


104  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

that  both  have  for  their  object  (I  hardly  know  whether 
the  English  language  supplies  an  appropriate  word)  the 
perfecting,  and  the  pointing  out  to  us  the  indefinite  im- 
provement of  our  nature,  and  fixing  our  attention  upon 
that.  They  bid  us,  while  we  are  sitting  in  the  dark  at  our 
little  fire,  look  at  the  mountain-tops,  struggling  with 
darkness,  and  announcing  that  light  which  shall  be 
common  to  all,  in  which  individual  interests  shall  resolve 
into  one  common  good,  and  every  man  shall  find  in  his 
fellow  man  more  than  a  brother. 

Such  being  the  case,  we  need  not  wonder  that  it  has 
pleased  Providence,  that  the  divine  truths  of  religion 
should  have  been  revealed  to  us  in  the  form  of  poetry ;  and 
that  at  all  times  poets,  not  the  slaves  of  any  particular 
sectarian  opinions,  should  have  joined  to  support  all  those 
delicate  sentiments  of  the  heart  (often  when  they  were 
most  opposed  to  the  reigning  philosophy  of  the  day) 
which  may  be  called  the  feeding  streams  of  religion. 

I  have  heard  it  said  that  an  undevout  astronomer  is 
mad.  In  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  every  being  capable 
of  understanding  must  be  mad,  who  remains,  as  it  were, 
fixed  in  the  ground  on  which  he  treads — who,  gifted  with 
the  divine  faculties  of  indefinite  hope  and  fear,  born  with 
them,  yet  settles  his  faith  upon  that,  in  which  neither 
hope  nor  fear  has  any  proper  field  for  dicplay.  Much 
more  truly,  however,  might  it  be  said  that,  an  undevout 
poet  is  mad :  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  an  undevout 
poet  is  an  impossibility.  I  have  heard  of  verse-makers 
(poets  they  are  not,  and  never  can  be)  who  introduced 
into  their  works  such  questions  as  these : — Whether  the 
world  was  made  of  atoms  ? — Whether  there  is  a  universe  ? 
— Whether  there  is  a  governing  mind  that  supports  it? 
As  I  have  said,  verse-makers  are  not  poets  :  the  poet  is 
one  who  carries  the  simplicity  of  childhood  into  the 
powers  of  manhood  ;  who,  with  a  soul  unsubdued  by  habit, 


LECT.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON.  105 

unshackled  by  custom,  contemplates  all  things  -frith  the 
freshness  and  the  wonder  of  a  child ;  and,  connecting  with 
it  the  inquisitive  powers  of  riper  years,  adds,  as  far  as  he 
can  find  knowledge,  admiration ;  and,  where  knowledge 
no  longer  permits  admiration,  gladly  sinks  back  again 
into  the  childlike  feeling  of  devout  wonder. 

The  poet  is  not  only  the  man  made  to  solve  the  riddle 
of  the  universe,  but  he  is  also  the  man  who  feels  where 
it  is  not  solved.  What  is  old  and  worn-out,  not  in  itself, 
but  from  the  dimness  of  the  intellectual  eye,  produced  by 
worldly  passions  and  pursuits,  he  makes  new :  he  pours 
upon  it  the  dew  that  glistens,  and  blows  round  it  the 
breeze  that  cooled  us  in  our  infancy.  I  hope,  therefore, 
that  if  in  this  single  lecture  I  make  some  demand  on  the 
attention  of  my  hearers  to  a  most  important  subject,  upon 
which  depends  all  sense  of  the  worthiness  or  unworthiness 
of  our  nature,  I  shall  obtain  their  pardon.  If  I  afford 
them  less  amusement,  I  trust  that  their  own  reflections 
upon  a  few  thoughts  will  be  found  to  repay  them. 

I  have  been  led  to  these  observations  by  the  tragedy  of 
*'  Borneo  and  Juliet,"  and  by  some,  perhaps,  indiscreet 
expressions,  certainly  not  well  chosen,  concerning  falling 
in  love  at  first  sight.  I  have  taken  one  of  Shakspere's 
earliest  works,  as  I  consider  it,  in  order  to  show  that  he, 
of  all  his  contemporaries  (Sir  Philip  Sidney  alone  excepted), 
entertained  a  just  conception  of  the  female  character. 
Unquestionably,  that  gentleman  of  Europe — that  all- 
accomplished  man,  and  our  beloved  Shakspere,  were  the 
only  writers  of  that  age  who  pitched  their  ideas  of  female 
perfection  according  to  the  best  researches  of  philosophy  : 
compared  with  all  who  followed  them,  they  stand  as 
mighty  mountains,  the  islands  of  a  deluge,  which  has 
swallowed  all  the  rest  in  the  flood  of  oblivion.1 

1  ::  I  remember,  in  conversing  on  this  very  point  at  a  subsequent 


106  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

I  certainly  do  not  mean,  as  a  general  maxim,  to  justify 
so  foolish  a  thing  as  what  goes  by  the  name  of  love  at  first 
sight;  but,  to  expi^ess  myself  more  accurately,  I  should 
say  that  there  is,  and  has  always  existed,  a  deep  emotion 
of  the  mind,  which  might  be  called  love  momentaneous — 
not  love  at  first  sight,  nor  known  by  the  subject  of  it  to  be 
or  to  have  been  such,  but  after  many  years  of  experience.1 

I  have  to  defend  the  existence  of  love,  as  a  passion  in 
itself  fit  and  appropriate  to  human  nature ; — I  say  fit  for 
human  nature,  and  not  only  so,  but  peculiar  to  it,  un- 
shared either  in  degree  or  kind  by  any  of  our  fellow 
creatures :  it  is  a  passion  which  it  is  impossible  for  any 
creature  to  feel,  but  a  being  endowed  with  reason,  with 
the  moral  sense,  and  with  the  strong  yearnings,  which, 
like  all  other  powerful  effects  in  nature,  prophesy  some 
future  effect. 

If  I  were  to  address  myself  to  the  materialist,  with 
reference  to  the  human  kind,  and  (admitting  tine  three 
great  laws  common  to  all  beings, — 1,  the  law  of  self- 
preservation  ;  2,  that  of  continuing  the  race ;  and  3,  the 
care  of  the  offspring  till  protection  is  no  longer  needed), — 
were  to  ask  him,  whether  he  thought  any  motives  of 
prudence  or  duty  enforced  the  simple  necessity  of  pre- 
serving the  race  ?  or  whether,  after  a  course  of  serious 
reflection,  he  came  to  the  conclusion,  that  it  would  be 
better  to  have  a  posterity,  from,  a  sense  of  duty  impelling 
us  to  seek  that  as  our  object  ? — if,  I  say,  I  were  to  ask  a 

period, — I  cannot  fix  the  date, — Coleridge  made  a  willing  exception  in 
favour  of  Spenser ;  but  he  added  that  the  notions  of  the  author  of  the 
'Faery  Queen'  were  often  so  romantic  and  heightened  by  fancy,  that 
he  could  not  look  upon  Spenser's  females  as  creatures  of  our  world ; 
whereas  the  ladies  of  Shakspere  and  Sidney  were  flesh  and  blood,  with 
their  very  defects  and  qualifications  giving  evidence  of  their  humanity  j 
hence  the  lively  interest  taken  regarding  them." — J.  P.  C. 

1  "Coleridge  here,"  says  Mr.  Collier,  "made  a  reference  to,  anJ 
cited  a  passage  from,  Hooker's  '  Ecclesiastical  Polity.'" 


LEG!.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE    AXD    MILTOX.  107 

materialist,  whether  such  was  the  real  cause  of  the  pre- 
servation of  the  species,  he  would  laugh  me  to  scorn ;  he 
would  say  that  nature  was  too  wise  to  trust  any  of  her 
great  designs  to  the  mere  cold  calculations  of  fallible 
mortality. 

Then  the  question  comes  to  a  short  crisis: — Is,  or  is 
not,  our  moral  nature  a  part  of  the  end  of  Providence  ?  or 
are  we,  or  are  we  not,  beings  meant  for  society  ?  Is  that 
society,  or  is  it  not,  meant  to  be  progressive  ?  I  trust 
that  none  of  my  auditors  would  endure  the  putting  of  the 
question — Whether,  independently  of  the  progression  of 
the  race,  every  individual  has  it  not  in  his  power  to  bo 
indefinitely  progressive  ? — for,  without  marriage,  without 
exclusive  attachment,  there  could  be  no  human  society ; 
herds,  as  I  said,  there  might  be,  but  society  there  could 
not  be  ;  there  could  be  none  of  that  delightful  intercourse 
between  father  and  child ;  none  of  the  sacred  affections ; 
none  of  the  charities  of  humanity ;  none  of  all  those  many 
and  complex  causes,  which  have  raised  us  to  the  state  we 
have  already  reached,  could  possibly  have  existence.  All 
these  effects  are  not  found  among  the  brutes ;  neither  are 
they  found  among  savages,  whom  strange  accidents  have 
sunk  below  the  class  of  human  beings,  insomuch  that 
a  stop  seems  actually  to  have  been  put  to  their  pro- 
gressiveness. 

We  may,  therefore,  safely  conclude  that  there  is  placed 
within  us  some  element,  if  I  may  so  say,  of  our  nature — 
something  which  is  as  peculiar  to  our  moral  nature  as- 
any  other  part  can  be  conceived  to  be,  name  it  what  you 
will, — name  it,  I  will  say  for  illustration,  devotion, — name 
it  friendship,  or  a  sense  of  duty ;  but  something  there  is, 
peculiar  to  our  nature,  which  answers  the  moral  end ;  as 
we  find  everywhere  in  the  ends  of  the  moral  world,  that 
there  are  proportionate  material  and  bodily  means  of 
accomplishing  them. 


108  LECTURES   Oil  [1811-12 

We  are  born,  and  it  is  our  nature  and  lot  to  be  com- 
posed of  body  and  mind ;  but  when  our  heart  leaps  up  on 
hearing  of  the  victories  of  our  country,  or  of  the  rescue  of 
the  virtuous,  but  unhappy,  from  the  hands  of  an  oppressor ; 
when  a  parent  is  transported  at  the  restoration  of  a 
beloved  child  from  deadly  sickness ;  when  the  pulse  is 
quickened,  from  any  of  these  or  other  causes,  do  we 
therefore  say,  because  the  body  interprets  the  emotions  of 
the  mind  and  sympathizes  with  them,  asserting  its  claim 
to  participation,  that  joy  is  not  mental,  or  that  it  is  not 
moral?  Do  we  assert,  that  it  was  owing  merely  to 
fulness  of  blood  that  the  heart  throbbed,  and  the  pulse 
played  ?  Do  we  not  rather  say,  that  the  regent,  the 
mind,  being  glad,  its  slave,  its  willing  slave,  the  body, 
responded  to  it,  and  obeyed  the  impulse  ?  If  we  arc 
possessed  with  a  feeling  of  having  done  a  wrong,  or  of 
having  had  a  wrong  done  to  us,  and  it  excites  the  blush 
of  shame  or  the  glow  of  anger,  do  we  pretend  to  say  that, 
by  some  accident,  the  blood  suffused  itself  into  veins  un- 
usually small,  and  therefore  that  the  guilty  seemed  to 
evince  shame,  or  the  injured  indignation  ?  In  these 
things  we  scorn  such  instruction ;  and  shall  it  be  deemed 
a  sufficient  excuse  for  the  materialist  to  degrade  that 
passion,  on  which  not  only  many  of  our  virtues  depend, 
but  upon  which  the  whole  frame,  the  whole  structure  of 
human  society  rests  ?  Shall  we  pardon  him  this  debase- 
ment of  love,  because  our  body  has  been  united  to  mind  by 
Providence,  in  order,  not  to  reduce  the  high  to  the  level  of 
the  low,  but  to  elevate  the  low  to  the  level  of  the  high  ? 
We  should  be  guilty  of  nothing  less  than  an  act  of  moral 
suicide,  if  we  consented  to  degrade  that  which  on  every 
account  is  most  noble,  by  merging  it  in  what  is  most 
derogatory :  as  if  an  angel  were  to  hold  out  to  us  the 
welcoming  hand  of  brotherhood,  and  we  turned  away  from 
it,  to  wallow,  as  it  wore,  with  the  hog  in  the  mire. 


LlCT.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTOX.  109 

One  of  the  most  lofty  and  intellectual  of  the  poets  of 
the  time  of  Shakspere  has  described  this  degradation  most 
•wonderfully,  where  he  speaks  of  a  man,  who,  having  "been 
converted  by  the  witchery  of  worldly  pleasure  and  passionr 
into  a  hog,  on  being  restored  to  his  human  shape  still  pre- 
ferred his  bestial  condition  : — 

"  But  one,  above  the  rest  in  special, 
That  had  a  hog  been  late,  bight  Grill  by  name, 
Repined  greatly,  and  did  him  miscall, 
That  from l  a  hoggish  form  him  brought  to  natural. 

"  Said  Guyon,  See  the  mind  of  beastly  man  ! 

That  hath  so  soon  forgot  the  excellence 

Of  his  creation,  when  he  life  began, 

That  now  he  chooseth,  with  vile  difference, 

To  be  a  beast  and  lack  intelligence. 

To  whom  the  Palmer  thus  : — The  dunghill  kind 

Delights  in  filth  and  foul  incontinence  : 

Let  Grill  be  Grill,  and  have  his  hoggish  mind  ;  a 
But  let  us  hence  depart,  whilst  weather  serves  and  wind." 

Fairy  Queen,  Book  IL,  c.  12,  s.  86-7, 

The  first  feeling  that  would  strike  a  reflecting  mind, 
•wishing  to  see  mankind  not  only  in  an  amiable  but  in  a 
just  light,  would  be  that  beautiful  feeling  in  the  moral 
world,  the  brotherly  and  sisterly  affections, — the  existence 
of  strong  affection  greatly  modified  by  the  difference  of 
Bex  ;  made  more  tender,  more  graceful,  more  soothing  and 
conciliatory  by  the  circumstance  of  difference,  yet  still  re- 
maining perfectly  pure,  perfectly  spiritual.  How  glorious/ 

1  Read—"  That  had  from  .  .  .  ." 

'  The  mysterious  obliquity  of  our  moral  nature  touched  on  here,  has 
been  sorrowfully  recognized  by  higher  natures  than  Grill's.  The  me- 
ilucval  legend  of  Tannhauser  and  the  hill  of  Venus  admirably  embodies- 
this  trait  of  humanity,  as  the  legend  of  Prometheus  does  a  nobler  one. 
The  legend,  clearly  enough  ihe  invention  of  an  ascetic  age,  enshrines  a 
truth  and  a  warning  for  all  time. 


110  LECTURES  ON  [1811-12 

we  may  say,  would  be  the  effect,  if  the  instances  were  rare ; 
but  how  much  more  glorious,  when  they  are  so  frequent  as 
to  be  only  not  universal.  This  species  of  affection  is  the 
object  of  religious  veneration  with  all  those  who  love  their 
fellow  men,  or  who  know  themselves. 

The  power  of  education  over  the  human  mind  is  herein 
exemplified,  and  data  for  hope  are  afforded  of  yet  un- 
realized excellences,  perhaps  dormant  in  our  nature.  When 
we  see  so  divine  a  moral  effect  spread  through  all  classes, 
what  may  we  not  hope  of  other  excellences,  of  unknown 
quality,  still  to  be  developed  ? 

By  dividing  the  sisterly  and  fraternal  affections  from  the 
conjugal,  we  have,  in  truth,  two  loves,  each  of  them  as 
strong  as  any  affection  can  be,  or  ought  to  be,  consistently 
with  the  performance  of  our  duty,  and  the  love  we  should 
bear  to  our  neighbour.  Then,  by  the  former  preceding  the 
latter,  the  latter  is  rendered  more  pure,  more  even,  and 
more  constant :  the  wife  has  already  learned  the  discipline 
of  pure  love  in  the  character  of  a  sister.  By  the  discipline 
of  private  life  she  has  already  learned  how  to  yield,  how  to 
influence,  how  to  command.  To  all  this  are  to  be  added 
the  beautiful  gradations  of  attachment  which  distinguish 
human  nature ;  from  sister  to  wife,  from  wife  to  child,  to 
uncle,  to  cousin,  to  one  of  our  kin,  to  one  of  our  blood, 
to  our  near  neighbour,  to  our  county-man,  and  to  our 
countryman. 

The  bad  results  of  a  want  of  this  .variety  of  orders,  of 
this  graceful  subordination  in  the  character  of  attachment, 
I  have  often  observed  in  Italy  in  particular,  as  well  as  in 
other  countries,  where  the  young  are  kept  secluded,  not 
only  from  their  neighbours,  but  from  their  own  families — 
all  closely  imprisoned,  until  the  hour  when  they  are  ner 
cessarily  let  out  of  their  cages,  without  having  had  the 
opportunity  of  learning  to  fly — without  experience,  re- 
strained by  no  kindly  feeling,  and  detesting  the  control 


LeCT.  VIII.]  SHA.KSPERK    AND   MILTON.  Ill 

which  so  long  kept  them  from  enjoying  the  full  hubbub  of 
licence. 

The  question  is,  How  have  nature  and  Providence  se- 
cured these  blessings  to  us  ?  In  this  way : — that  in  general 
the  affections  become  those  which  urge  us  to  leave  the 
paternal  nest.  We  arrive  at  a  definite  time  of  life,  and 
feel  passions  that  invite  us  to  enter  into  the  world ;  and 
this  new  feeling  assuredly  coalesces  with  a  new  object. 
Suppose  we  are  under  the  influence  of  a  vivid  feeling  that 
is  new  to  us  :  that  feeling  will  more  firmly  combine  with 
an  external  object,  which  is  likewise  vivid  from  novelty, 
than  with  one  that  is  familiar. 

To  this  may  be  added  the  aversion,  which  seems  to  have 
acted  very  strongly  in  rude  ages,  concerning  anything 
common  to  us  and  to  the  animal  creation.  That  which 
is  done  by  beasts  man  feels  a  natural  repugnance  to 
imitate.  The  desire  to  extend  the  bond  of  relationship, 
in  families  which  had  emigrated  from  the  patriarchal  seed, 
would  likewise  have  its  influence. 

All  these  circumstances  would  render  the  marriage  of 
brother  and  sister  unfrequent,  and  in  simple  ages  an 
ominous  feeling  to  the  contrary  might  easily  prevail. 
Some  tradition  might  aid  the  objections  to  such  a  union ; 
and,  for  aught  we  know,  some  law  might  be  preserved  in 
the  Temple  of  Isis,  and  from  thence  obtained  by  the  pa- 
triarchs, which  would  augment  the  horror  attached  to  such 
connections.  This  horror  once  felt,  and  soon  propagated, 
the  present  state  of  feeling  on  the  subject  can  easily  be 
explained. 

Children  begin  as  early  to  talk  of  marriage  as  of  death, 
from  attending  a  wedding,  or  following  a  funeral :  a  new 
young  visitor  is  introduced  into  the  family,  and  from 
association  they  soon  think  of  the  conjugal  bond.  If  a 
boy  tell  his  parent  that  he  wishes  to  marry  his  sister,  ho 
is  instantly  checked  by  a  stern  look,  and  he  is  shown  the 


112  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

impossibility  of  such  a  union.  The  controlling  glance  of 
the  parental  eye  is  often  more  effectual  than  any  form  of 
words  that  could  be  employed  ;  and  in  mature  years  a 
mere  look  often  prevails  where  exhortation  would  have 
failed.  As  to  infants,  they  are  told,  without  any  reason 
assigned,  that  it  could  not  be  so  ;  and  perhaps  the  best  se- 
curity for  moral  rectitude  arises  from  a  supposed  necessity. 
Ignorant  persons  recoil  from  the  thought  of  doing  any- 
thing that  has  not  been  done,  and  because  they  have  always 
been  informed  that  it  must  not  be  done. 

The  individual  has  by  this  time  learned  the  greatest  and 
best  lesson  of  the  human  mind — that  in  ourselves  we  are 
imperfect ;  and  another  truth,  of  the  next,  if  not  of  equal, 
importance — that  there  exists  a  possibility  of  uniting  two . 
beings,  each  identified  in  their  nature,  but  distinguished  in  , 
their  separate  qualities,  so  that  each  should  retain  what 
distinguishes  them,  and  at  the  same  time  each  acquire  the 
qualities  of  that  being  which  is  contradistinguished.  This 
is  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  part  of  our  nature  :  the  man 
loses  not  his  manly  character :  he  does  not  become  less 
brave  or  less  resolved  to  go  through  fire  and  water,  if 
necessary,  for  the  object  of  his  affections  :  rather  say,  that 
he  becomes  far  more  brave  and  resolute.  He  then  feels 
the  beginnings  of  his  moral  nature  :  he  then  is  sensible  of 
its  imperfection,  and  of  its  perfectibility.  All  the  grand 
and  sublime  thoughts  of  an  improved  state  of  being  then 
dawn  upon  him  :  he  can  acquire  the  patience  of  woman, 
which  in  him  is  fortitude  :  the  beauty  and  susceptibility  of 
the  female  character  in  him  becomes  a  desire  to  display  all, 
that  is  noble  and  dignified.  In  short,  the  only  true  re- 
semblance to  a  couple  thus  united  is  the  pure  blue  sky  of 
heaven  :  the  female  unites  the  beautiful  with  the  sublime,. 
und  the  male  the  sublime  with  the  beautiful. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  his  plays  Shaksperc  has  evi- 
dently looked  at  the  subject  of  love  in  this  dignified  light  i 


LlCT.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON  113 

ho  has  conceived  it  not  only  with  moral  grandeur,  but  with 
philosophical  penetration.  The  mind  of  man  searches  for 
something  which  shall  add  to  his  perfection — which  shall 
assist  him  ;  and  he  also  yearns  to  lend  his  aid  in  com- 
pleting the  moral  nature  of  another.  Thoughts  like  these 
will  occupy  many  of  his  serious  moments :  imagination 
will  accumulate  on  imagination,  until  at  last  some  object 
attracts  his  attention,  and  to  this  object  the  whole  weight 
and  impulse  of  his  feelings  will  be  directed. 

Who  shall  say  this  is  not  love  ?  Here  is  system,  but  it 
is  founded  upon  nature :  here  are  associations ;  here  are 
strong  feelings,  natural  to  us  as  men,  and  they  are  directed 
and  finally  attached  to  one  object : — who  shall  say  this  is 
not  love  ?  l  Assuredly  not  the  being  who  is  the  subject  of 

1  Coleridge,  who  wrote  the  poem  which  commences — 
"  All  thoughts,  all  passions,  all  delights,1' 

and  letters  to  their  sweethearts  and  wives  for  his  comrades  in  the  Light 
Dragoons  (if  we  only  had  a  few  of  these  letters  !),  thus  discourses  on 
love,  in  a  letter  to  H.  C.  Kobinson,  in  1811,  before  the  delivery  of  these 
lectures : — 

"  Hassan's  love" — hois  criticizing  a  romance  — "for  Amina  is  beauti- 
fully described  as  having  had  a  foundation  from  early  childhood.  And 
this  I  many  years  ago  planned  as  the  subject-matter  of  a  poem,  viz.  long 
and  deep  affections  suddenly,  in  one  moment,  flash-transmuted  into  love. 
In  short,  I  believe  that  love  (as  distinguished  both  from  lust  and  that 
habitual  attachment  which  may  include  many  objects  diversifying  itself 
by  degrees  only),  that  that  feeling  (or  whatever  it  may  be  more  aptly 
(ailed),  that  specific  mode  of  being,  which  one  object  only  ran  possess, 
and  possess  totally,  i<  always  the  abrupt  creation  of  a  moment,  though 
years  of  dawning  may  ha»e  preceded.  I  said  dawning,  for  often  as  I 
have  watched  the  sun  rising  from  the  thinning,  diluting  blue  to  the 
whitening,  to  the  fawn-coloured,  the  pink,  the  crimson,  the  glory,  yet 
still  the  sun  itself  has  always  started  up  out  of  the  horizon !  Between 
the  brightest  hues  of  the  dawning,  and  the  first  rim  of  the  sun  itself, 
tkere  is  a  chasm — all  before  were  differences  of  degrees,  passing  and 
dissolving  into  each  other — but  this  is  a  difference  of  kind — a  chasm  of 
kind  in  a  continuity  of  time  ;  and  as  no  man  who  had  never  watched  for 

I 


114  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

these  sensations. — If  it  be  not  love,  it  is  only  known  that 
it  is  not  by  Him  who  knows  all  things.  Shakspere  has 

the  rise  of  the  sun  could  understand  what  I  mean,  so  can  no  man  who 
has  not  been  in  love  understand  what  love  is,  though  he  will  be  sure  to 

imagine  and  believe  that  he  does.  Thus, is  by  nature  incapable 

of  being  in  love,  though  no  man  more  tenderly  attached  ;  hence  he  ridi- 
cules the  existence  of  any  other  passion  than  a  compound  of  lust  with 
esteem  and  friendship,  confined  to  one  object,  first  by  accidents  of  asso- 
ciation, and  permanently  by  the  force  of  habit  and  a  sense  of  duty. 
Now  this  will  do  very  well — it  will  suffice  to  make  a  good  husband ;  it 
may  be  even  desirable  (if  the  largest  sum  of  easy  and  pleasurable  sen- 
sations in  this  life  be  the  right  aim  and  end  of  human  wisdom)  that  we 
should  have  this,  and  no  more, — but  still  it  is  not  love — and  there  is 
such  a  passion  as  love — which  is  no  more  a  compound  than  oxygeji, 
though  like  oxygen  it  has  an  almost  universal  affinity,  and  a  long  and 
finely  graduated  scale  of  elective  attractions.  It  combines  with  lust- 
but  how?  Docs  lust  call  forth  or  occasion  love?  Just  as  much  as  the 
reek  of  the  marsh  calls  up  the  sun.  The  sun  calls  up  the  vapour — 
attenuates,  lifts  it — it  becomes  a  cloud — and  now  it  is  the  veil  of  the 
divinity ;  the  divinity,  transpiercing  it  at  once,  hides  and  declares  his 
presence.  We  see,  we  are  conscious  of  light  alone  ;  but  it  is  light  em- 
bodied in  the  earthly  nature,  which  that  light  itself  awoke  and  sublimated. 
What  is  the  body,  but  the  fixture  of  the  mind —  the  stereotype  impression  ? 
Arbitrary  are  the  symbols— yet  symbols  they  are.  Is  terror  in  my 
soul? — my  heart  beats  against  my  side.  Is  grief? — tears  pour  in  my 
eyes.  In  her  homely  way,  the  body  tries  to  interpret  all  the  movements 
of  the  soul.  Shall  it  not,  then,  imitate  and  symbolize  that  divinest 
movement  of  a  finite  spirit — the  yearning  to  complete  itself  by  union? 
Is  there  not  a  sex  in  souls  ?  We  have  all  eyes,  cheeks,  lips — but  in  a 
lovely  woman  are  not  the  eyes  womanly — yea,  every  form,  in  every 
motion  of  her  whole  frame,  womanly  1  Were  there  not  an  identity  in 
the  substance,  man  and  woman  might  join,  but  they  could  never  unify  ; 
were  there  not  throughout,  in  body  and  in  soul,  a  corresponding  and 
adapted  difference,  there  might  be  addition,  but  there  could  be  no  com- 
bination. 1  and  1=2;  but  1  cannot  be  multiplied  into  1  :  1  X  1  =  1. 
At  best,  it  would  be  an  idle  echo,  the  same  thing  needlessly  repeated,  as 
the  idiot  told  the  clock—one,  one,  one,  one,  &c." 

Notwithstanding  these  astute  observations,  Crabb  Robinson  ended  his 
long  life  a  bachelor: — possibly,  to  some  extent,  because  of  them. 

Mr.  H.  N.  Coleridge,  in  a  note  to  the  "  Table  Talk,"  remarks  of  his 
father-in-law,  that  he  "  was  a  great  master  in  the  art  of  love,  but  he  had 


LECT.  VIIL]         SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON.  115 

therefore  described  Romeo  as  in  love  in  the  first  instance 
with  Rosaline,  and  so  completely  does  he  fancy  himself  in 
love  that  he  declares,  before  he  has  seen  Juliet, 

"  When  the  devout  religion  of  mine  eye 

Maintains  such  falsehood,  then  turn  tears  to  fires ; 

And  these,  who,  often  drown'd,  could  never  die, 
Transparent  heretics,  be  burnt  for  liars. 

One  fairer  than  my  love  ?  the  all-seeing  sun 

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

Act  /.,  Scene  2. 

This  is  in  answer  to  Benvolio,  who  has  asked  Romeo  to 
compare  the  supposed  beauty  of  Rosaline  with  the  actual 

not  studied  in  Ovid's  school ;  "  and  he  quotes  a  passage,  that  may  well 
be  inserted  here,  from  "  Coleridge's  Poetical  Works  "  : — 

"  Love,  truly  such,  is  itself  not  the  most  common  thing  in  the  world, 
and  mutual  love  still  less  so.  But  that  enduring  personal  attachment, 
so  beautifully  delineated  by  Erin's  sweet  melodist,  and  still  more  touch- 
ingly,  perhaps,  in  the  well-known  ballad,  '  John  Anderson,  my  Jo, 
John,'  in  addition  to  a  depth  and  constancy  of  character  of  no  every-day 
occurrence,  supposes  a  peculiar  sensibility  and  tenderness  of  nature ;  a 
constitutional  communicativeness  and  utterance  of  heart  and  soul ;  a  de- 
Jight  in  the  detail  of  sympathy,  in  the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  the 
sacrament  within, — to  count,  as  it  were,  the  pulses  of  the  life  of  love. 
But,  above  all,  it  supposes  a  soul  which,  even  in  the  pride  and  summer- 
tide  of  life,  even  in  the  lustihood  of  health  and  strength,  has  felt  oftenest 
and  prized  highest  that  which  age  cannot  take  away,  and  which  in  all 
our  lovings  is  the  love ;  I  mean,  that  willing  sense  of  the  unsufficingness 
of  the  self  for  itself,  which  predisposes  a  generous  nature  to  see,  in 
the  total  being  of  another,  the  supplement  and  completion  of  its  own  ; 
that  quiet  perpetual  seeking  which  the  presence  of  the  beloved  object 
modulates,  not  suspends,  where  the  heart  momently  finds,  and,  finding 
again,  seeks  on ;  lastly,  when  '  life's  changeful  orb  has  passed  the  full,'  a 
confirmed  faith  in  the  nobleness  of  humanity,  thus  brought  home  and 
pressed,  as  it  were,  to  the  very  bosom  of  hourly  experience ;  it  supposes, 

say,  a  heartfelt  reverence  for  worth,  not  the  less  deep  because  divested 
of  its  solemnity  by  habit,  by  familiarity,  by  mutual  infirmities^  and  even 
by  a  feeling  of  modesty  which  will  arise  in  delicate  minds,  when  they  are 

j list-ions  of  possessing  the  same,  or  the  correspondent  excellence  in  their 


116  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

beauty  of  other  ladies  ;  and  in  this  full  feeling  of  confidence 
Romeo  is  brought  to  Capulet's,  as  it  were  by  accident :  he 
sees  Juliet,  instantly  becomes  the  heretic  he  has  just  before 
declared  impossible,  and  then  commences  that  complete- 
ness of  attachment  which  forms  the  whole  subject  of  the 
tragedy. 

Surely  Shakspere,  the  poet,  the  philosopher,  who  com- 
bined truth  with  beauty  and  beauty  with  truth,  never 
dreamed  that  he  could  interest  his  auditory  in  favour  of 
Romeo,  by  representing  him  as  a  mere  weathercock,  blown 
round  by  every  woman's  breath ;  who,  having  seen  one, 
became  the  victim  of  melancholy,  eating  his  own  heart, 
concentrating  all  his  hopes  and  fears  in  her,  and  yet,  in  an 
instant,  changing,  and  falling  madly  in  love  with  another. 
Shakspere  must  have  meant  something  more  than  this,  for 
this  was  the  way  to  make  people  despise,  instead  of  ad- 
miring his  hero.  Rorneo  tells  us  what  was  Shakspere's 
purpose :  he  shows  us  that  he  had  looked  at  Rosaline  with 
a  different  feeling  from  that  with  which  he  had  looked  afc 
Juliet.  Rosaline  was  the  object  to  which  his  over-full 
heart  had  attached  itself  in  the  first  instance :  our  imper- 
fect nature,  in  proportion  as  our  ideas  are  vivid,  seeks  after 
something  in  which  those  ideas  may  be  realized. 

So  with  the  indiscreet  friendships  sometimes  formed  by 
men  of  genius :  they  are  conscious  of  their  own  weakness, 
and  are  ready  to  believe  others  stronger  than  themselves, 
when,  in  truth,  they  are  weaker :  they  have  formed  an 

own  characters.  In  short,  there  must  be  a  mind,  which,  while  it  feels 
the  beautiful  and  the  excellent  in  the  beloved  as  its  own,  and  by  right 
of  love  appropriates  it,  can  call  goodness  its  playfellow  ;  and  dares  make 
sport  of  time  and  infirmity,  while,  in  the  person  of  a  thousand-foldly  en- 
deared partner,  we  feel  for  aged  virtue  the  caressing  fondness  that  be- 
longs to  the  innocence  of  childhood,  and  repeat  the  same  attentions  and 
tender  courtesies  which  had  beon  dictated  by  the  same  affection  to  the 
same  object  when  attired  in  feminine  loveliness  or  in  manly  beauty." 


LEG!'.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE    AND   MILTON.  117 

ideal  in  their  own  tainds,  and  they  -want  to  see  it  realized  ; 
they  require  more  than  shadowy  thought.  Their  own  sense 
of  imperfection  makes  it  impossible  for  them  to  fasten  their 
attachment  upon  themselves,  and  hence  the  humility  of  men 
of  true  genius  :  in,  perhaps,  the  first  man  they  meet,  they 
only  see  what  is  good  ;  they  have  no  sense  of  his  deficiencies, 
and  their  friendship  becomes  so  strong,  that  they  almost 
fall  down  and  worship  one  in  every  respect  greatly  their 
inferior. 

What  is  true  of  friendship  is  true  of  love,  with  a  person 
of  ardent  feelings  and  warm  imagination.  What  took  place 
in  the  mind  of  Borneo  was  merely  natural ;  it  is  accordant 
with  every  day's  experience.  Amid  such  various  events, 
such  shifting  scenes,  such  changing  personages,  we  are 
often  mistaken,  and  discover  that  he  or  she  was  not  what 
we  hoped  and  expected :  we  find  that  the  individual  first 
•chosen  will  not  complete  our  imperfection ;  we  may  have 
suffered  unnecessary  pangs,  and  have  indulged  idly-directed 
hopes,  and  then  a  being  may  arise  before  us,  who  has  more 
resemblance  to  the  ideal  we  have  formed.  We  know  that 
we  loved  the  earlier  object  with  ardour  and  purity,  but  it 
was  not  what  we  feel  for  the  later  object.  Our  own  mind 
tells  us,  that  in  the  first  instance  we  merely  yearned  after 
an  object,  but  in  the  last  instance  we  know  that  we  have 
found  that  object,  and  that  it  corresponds  with  the  idea  wo 
had  previously  formed.1 

1  "  Here  my  original  notes  abruptly  break  off:  the  brochure  in  which 
I  had  inserted  them  was  full,  and  I  took  another  for  the  conclusion  of  the 
Ix?cture,  which  is  unfortunately  lost." — J.  i*.  C. 


118  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

Report  of  the  latter  portion  of  the  Eighth  Lecture. 

The  conclusion  of  the  Eighth  Lecture,  as  reported  in  the 
Morning  Chronicle  of  December  13,  1811,  is  as  follows : 

"  The  origin  and  cause  of  love  was  a  consciousness  of 
imperfection,  and  an  unceasing  desire  to  remedy  it ;  it  was 
a  yearning  after  an  ideal  image  necessary  to  complete  the 
happiness  of  man,  by  supplying  what  in  him  was  deficient, 
and  Shakspere  throughout  his  works  had  viewed  the  passion 
in  this  dignified  light ;  he  had  conceived  it  not  only  with 
moral  grandeur,  but  with  philosophical  penetration.  Borneo 
had  formed  his  ideal ;  he  imagined  that  Rosaline  supplied 
the  deficiency ;  but  the  moment  he  beheld  Juliet  he  dis- 
covered his  mistake  ;  he  felt  a  nearer  affinity  to  her,  he  be- 
came perfectly  enamoured,  and  the  love  he  felt  formed  the 
foundation  of  the  tragedy.  The  feeling  of  Borneo  towards 
Juliet  was  wholly  different,  as  he  himself  expressed  it,  from 
that  he  had  experienced  towards  Bosaline. 

The  Lecturer  went  on  to  notice  the  analogy  between  the 
operations  of  the  mind  with  regard  to  taste  and  love,  as 
with  the  former  an  ideal  had  been  created  which  the  reason 
was  anxious  to  realize.  Other  passions  distort  whatever 
object  is  presented  to  them.  Lear  accused  the  elements  of 
ingratitude,  and  the  madman  imagined  the  straws  on  which 
he  trampled  the  golden  pavement  of  a  palace :  but,  with 
love,  everything  was  in  harmony,  and  all  produced  natural 
and  delightful  associations.  In  Mr.  Coleridge's  opinion  the 
conceits  put  into  the  mouths  of  Borneo  and  Juliet  were 
perfectly  natural  to  their  age  and  inexperience.  It  was 
Shakspere's  intention  in  this  play  to  represent  love  as  exist- 
ing rather  in  the  imagination,  than  in  the  feelings,  as  was 
shown  by  the  imaginative  dialogue  between  the  hero  and 
heroine  in  the  parting  scene  in  the  third  act.  The  passion 
of  the  youthful  Borneo  was  wholly  different  from  that  of 
.the  deliberate  Othello,  who  entered  the  marriage  state  with 


LEG!.  VIII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  119 

deep  moral  reflections  on  its  objects  and  consequences.  The 
Lecturer  insisted  that  love  was  an  act  of  the  will,  and 
ridiculed  the  sickly  nonsense  of  Sterne  and  his  imitators, 
French  and  English,  who  maintained  that  it  was  an  in- 
voluntary emotion.  Having  adverted  to  the  trueness  to 
nature  of  the  tragic  parts  of  Borneo  and  Juliet,  Mr.  Coleridge 
concluded  by  referring  to  Shakspere's  description  of  the 
Apothecary,  too  often  quoted  against  those  of  unfortunate 
physiognomy,  or  those  depressed  by  poverty.  Shakspere 
meant  much  more ;  he  intended  to  convey  that  in  every 
man's  face  there  was  either  to  be  found  a  history  or  a 
prophecy ;  a  history  of  struggles  past,  or  a  prophecy  of 
events  to  come.  In  contemplating  the  face  of  the  most 
abandoned  of  mankind,  many  lineaments  of  villany  would 
be  seen,  yet  in  the  under  features  (if  he  might  so  express 
himself)  would  be  traced  the  lines  that  former  sufferings 
and  struggles  had  impressed,  which  would  always  sadden, 
and  frequently  soften  the  observer,  and  raise  a  determina- 
tion in  him  not  to  despair,  but  to  regard  the  unfortunate 
object  with  the  feelings  of  a  brother." 


120  LECTURES  OH  [1811-12 


LECTURE   IX. 

T  T  is  a  known  but  unexplained  phenomenon,  that  among 
the  ancients  statuary  rose  to  such  a  degree  of  perfec- 
tion, as  almost  to  baffle  the  hope  of  imitating  it,  and  to 
render  the  chance  of  excelling  it  absolutely  impossible  ;  yet 
painting,  at  the  same  period,  notwithstanding  the  admira- 
tion bestowed  upon  it  by  Pliny  and  others,  has  been  proved 
to  be  an  art  of  much  later  growth,  as  it  was  also  of  far  in- 
ferior quality.  I  remember  a  man  of  high  rank,  equally 
admirable  for  his  talents  and  his  taste,  pointing  to  a 
common  sign-post,  and  saying  that  had  Titian  never  lived, 
the  richness  of  representation  by  colour,  even  there,  would 
never  have  been  attained.  In  that  mechanical  branch  of 
painting,  perspective,  it  has  been  shown  that  the  Romans 
•were  very  deficient.  The  excavations  and  consequent  dis- 
coveries, at  Herculaneum  and  elsewhere,  prove  the  Roman 
artists  to  have  been  guilty  of  such  blunders,  as  to  give 
plausibility  to  the  assertions  of  those  who  maintain  that 
the  ancients  were  wholly  ignorant  of  perspective.  How- 
ever, that  they  knew  something  of  it  is  established  by 
Vitruvius  in  the  introduction  to  his  second  book. 

Something  of  the  same  kind,  as  I  endeavoured  to  explain 
in  a  previous  lecture,  was  the  case  with  the  drama  of  the 
ancients,  which  has  been  imitated  by  the  French,  Italians, 
and  by  various  writers  in  England  since  the  Restoration. 
All  that  is  there  represented  seems  to  be,  as  it  were,  upon 
one  flat  surface  :  the  theme,  if  we  may  so  call  it  in  reference 


LECT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MELTON.  121 

to  music,  admits  of  nothing  more  than  the  change  of  a 
single  note,  and  excludes  that  which  is  the  true  principle 
of  life — the  attaining  of  the  same  result  by  an  infinite 
variety  of  means. 

The  plays  of  Shakspere  are  in  no  respect  imitations  of 
the  Greeks  :  they  may  be  called  analogies,  because  by  very 
different  means  they  arrive  at  the  same  end  ;  whereas  the 
French  and  Italian  tragedies  I  have  read,  and  the  English 
ones  on  the  same  model,  are  mere  copies,  though  they  can- 
not be  called  likenesses,  seeking  the  same  effect  by  adopt- 
ing the  same  means,  but  under  most  inappropriate  and 
adverse  circumstances. 

I  have  thus  been  led  to  consider,  that  the  ancient  drama 
(meaning  the  works  of  ^schylus,  Euripides,  and  Sophocles, 
for  the  rhetorical  productions  of  the  same  class  by  the 
Romans  are  scarcely  to  be  treated  as  original  theatrical 
poems)  might  be  contrasted  with  the  Shaksperian  drama. — 
I  call  it  the  Shaksperian  drama  to  distinguish  it,  because 
I  know  of  no  other  writer  who  has  realized  the  same  idea, 
although  I  am  told  by  some,  that  the  Spanish  poets,  Lopez 
de  Vega  and  Calderon,  have  been  equally  successful.  The 
Shaksperian  drama  and  the  Greek  drama  may  be  compared 
to  statuary  and  painting.  In  statuary,  as  in  the  Greek 
drama,  the  characters  must  be  few,  because  the  very  essence 
of  statuary  is  a  high  degree  of  abstraction,  which  prevents 
a  great  many  figures  being  combined  in  the  same  effect. 
In  a  grand  group  of  Niobe,  or  in  any  other  ancient  heroic 
subject,  how  disgusting  even  it  would  appear,  if  an  old 
nurse  were  introduced.  Not  only  the  number  of  figures 
must  be  circumscribed,  but  nothing  undignified  must  be 
placed  in  company  with  what  is  dignified  :  no  one  person- 
age must  be  brought  in  that  is  not  an  abstraction  :  all  the 
actors  in  the  scene  must  not  be  presented  at  once  to  the 
eye ;  and  the  effect  of  multitude,  if  required,  must  be  pro- 
duced without  the  intermingling  of  anything  discordant. 


J22  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

Compare  this  small  group  with  a  picture  by  Raphael  or 
Titian,  in  which  an  immense  number  of  figures  may  be 
introduced,  a  beggar,  a  cripple,  a  dog,  or  a  cat ;  and  by  a 
less  degree  of  labour,  and  a  less  degree  of  abstraction,  an 
effect  is  produced  equally  harmonious  to  the  mind,  more 
true  to  nature  with  its  varied  colours,  and,  in  all  respects 
but  one,  superior  to  statuary.  The  man  of  taste  feels 
satisfied,  and  to  that  which  the  reason  conceives  possible,  a 
momentary  reality  is  given  by  the  aid  of  imagination. 

I  need  not  here  repeat  what  I  have  said  before,  regarding 
the  circumstances  which  permitted  Shakspere  to  make  an 
alteration,  not  merely  so  suitable  to  the  age  in  which  he 
lived,  but,  in  fact,  so  necessitated  by  the  condition  of  that 
age.  I  need  not  again  remind  you  of  the  difference  I 
pointed  out  between  imitation  and  likeness,  in  reference  to 
the  attempt  to  give  reality  to  representations  on  the  stage. 
The  distinction  between  imitation  and  likeness  depends 
upon  the  admixture  of  circumstances  of  dissimilarity ;  an 
imitation  is  not  a  copy,  precisely  as  likeness  is  not  sameness, 
in  that  sense  of  the  word  "  likeness  "  which  implies  diffe- 
rence con  joined  with  sameness.  Shakspere  reflected  manners 
in  his  plays,  not  by  a  cold  formal  copy,  but  by  an  imitation  ; 
that  is  to  say,  by  an  admixture  of  circumstances,  not  abso- 
lutely true  in  themselves,  but  true  to  the  character  and  to 
the  time  represented. 

It  is  fair  to  own  that  he  had  many  advantages.  The 
great  of  that  day,  instead  of  surrounding  themselves  by 
the  clievaux  de  frise  of  what  is  now  called  high  breeding, 
endeavoured  to  distinguish  themselves  by  attainments,  by 
energy  of  thought,  and  consequent  powers  of  mind.  The 
stage,  indeed,  had  nothing  but  curtains  for  its  scenes,  but 
this  fact  compelled  the  actor,  as  well  as  the  author,  to 
appeal  to  the  imaginations,  and  not  to  the  senses  of  the 
audience :  thus  was  obtained  a  power  over  space  and  time, 
which  in  an  ancient  theatre  would  have  been  absurd,  be-  / 


LEG!.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTON.  123 

cause  it  would  have  been  contradictory.     The  advantage  is 

I  vastly  in  favour  of  our  own  early  stage  :  the  dramatic  poet 
there  relies  upon  the  imagination,  upon  the  reason,  and 
upon  the  noblest  powers  of  the  human  heart ;  he  shakes  off 
the  iron  bondage  of  space  and  time  ;  he  appeals  to  that 
which  we  most  wish  to  be,  when  we  are  most  worthy  of 
being,  while  the  ancient  di^amatist  binds  us  down  to  the 
meanest  part  of  our  nature,  and  the  chief  compensation  is 
a  simple  acquiescence  of  the  mind  in  the  position,  that  what 
is  represented  might  possibly  have  occurred  in  the  time 
and  place  required  by  the  unities.  It  is  a  poor  compliment 
to  a  poet  to  tell  him,  that  he  has  only  the  qualifications  of  fi 
historian. 

In  dramatic  composition  the  observation  of  the  unities 
of  time  and  place  so  narrows  the  period  of  action,  so  im- 
poverishes the  sources  of  pleasure,  that  of  all  the  Athenian 
dramas  there  is  scarcely  one  in  which  the  absurdity  is 
not  glaring,  of  aiming  at  an  object,  and  utterly  failing 
in  the  attainment  of  it :  events  are  sometimes  brought 
into  a  space  in  which  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  have 
occurred,  and  in  this  way  the  grandest  effort  of  the  drama- 
tist, that  of  making  his  play  the  mirror  of  life,  is  entirely 
defeated. 

The  limit  allowed  by  the  rules  of  the  Greek  stage  was 
twenty -four  hours  ;  but,  inasmuch  as,  even  in  this  case, 
time  must  have  become  a  subject  of  imagination,  it  was 
just  as  reasonable  to  allow  twenty-four  months,  or  even 
years.     The  mind  is  acted  upon  by  such  strong  stimulants, 
that  the  period  is  indifferent ;  and  when  once  the  boundary 
possibility  is  passed,  no  restriction  can  be  assigned.     Irii 
,ding  Shakspere,  we  should  first  consider  in  which  of  his! 
lays  he  means  to  appeal  to  the  reason,  and  in  which  to  the  j 
agination,  faculties  which  have  no  relation  to  time  and  I 
lace,  excepting  as  in  the  one  case  they  imply  a  succession  | 
I  cause  and  effect,  and  in  the  other  form  a  harmonious 


124  LECTURES   OH  [1811-12 

picture,  so  that  the  impulse  given  by  the  reason  is  carried 
on  by  the  imagination. 

We  have  often  heard  Shakspere  spoken  of  as  a  child  of 
nature,  and  some  of  his  modern  imitators,  without  the 
genius  to  copy  nature,  by  resorting  to  real  incidents,  and 
treating  them  in  a  certain  way,  have  produced  that  stage  - 
phenomenon  which  is  neither  tragic  nor  comic,  nor  tragi- 
comic, nor  comi-tragic,  but  sentimental.  Thio  sort  of 
writing  depends  upon  some  very  affecting  circumstances, 
and  in  its  greatest  excellence  aspires  no  higher  than  the 
genius  of  an  onion, — the  power  of  drawing  tears  ;  while  the 
author,  acting  the  part  of  a  ventriloquist,  distributes  his 
own  insipidity  among  the  characters,  if  characters  they 
can  be  called,  which  have  no  marked  and  distinguishing 
features.  I  have  seen  dramas  of  this  sort,  some  translated 
and  some  the  growth  of  our  own  soil,  so  well  acted,  and  so 
ill  written,  that  if  I  could  have  been  made  for  the  time 
artificially  deaf,  I  should  have  been  pleased  with  that  per- 
formance as  a  pantomime,  which  was  intolerable  as  a  play. 

Shakspere's  characters,  from  Othello  and  Macbeth  down 
to  Dogberry  and  the  Grave-digger,  may  be  termed  ideal 
realities.  They  are  not  the  things  themselves,  so  much  as 
abstracts  of  the  things,  which  a  great  mind  takes  into  itself, 
and  there  naturalizes  them  to  its  own  conception.  Take  j 
Dogberry :  are  no  important  truths  there  conveyed,  no 
admirable  lessons  taught,  and  no  valuable  allusions  made 
to  reigning  follies,  which  the  poet  saw  must  for  ever  reign  ? 
He  is  not  the  creature  of  the  day,  to  disappear  with  the 
day,  but  the  representative  and  abstract  of  truth  which 
must  ever  be  true,  and  of  humour  which  must  ever  be 
humorous. 

The  readers  of  Shakspere  may  be  divided  into  two 
classes : — 

1.  Those  who  read  his  works  with  feeling  and  under- 
standing ; 


LKCT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERB   AND    MILTON.  125 

2.  Those  who,  without  affecting  to  criticize,  merely  feel, 
and  may  be  said  to  be  the  recipients  of  the  poet's  power. 

Between  the  two  no  medium  can  be  endured.  The 
ordinary  reader,  who  does  not  pretend  to  bring  his  under- 
standing to  bear  upon  the  subject,  often  feels  that  some 
real  trait  of  his  own  has  been  caught,  that  some  nerve  has 
been  touched ;  and  he  knows  that  it  has  been  touched  by 
the  vibration  he  experiences — a  thrill,  which  tells  us  that, 
by  becoming  better  acquainted  with  the  poet,  we  have  be- 
come better  acquainted  with  ourselves. 

In  the  plays  of  Shakspere  every  man  sees  himself,  with- 
out knowing  that  he  does  so  :  as  in  some  of  the  phenomena 
of  nature,  in  the  mist  of  the  mountain,  the  traveller  be- 
holds his  own  figure,  but  the  glory  round  the  head  dis- 
tinguishes it  from  a  mere  vulgar  copy.  In  traversing  the 
Brocken,  in  the  north  of  Germany,  at  sunrise,  the  brilliant 
beams  are  shot  askance,  and  you  see  before  you  a  being 
of  gigantic  proportions,  and  of  such  elevated  dignity, 
that  you  only  know  it  to  be  yourself  by  similarity  of 
action.  In  the  same  way,  near  Messina,  natural  forms, 
at  determined  distances,  are  represented  on  an  invisible 
mist,  not  as  they  really  exist,  but  dressed  in  all  the  pris- 
matic colours  of  the  imagination.  So  in  Shakspere : 
every  form  is  true,  everything  has  reality  for  its  founda- 
tion ;  we  can  all  recognize  the  truth,  but  we  see  it  decorated 
with  such  hues  of  beauty,  and  magnified  to  such  propor- 
tions of  grandeur,  that,  while  we  know  the  figure,  we  know 
also  how  much  it  has  been  refined  and  exalted  by  the 
jioet. 

It  is  humiliating  to  reflect  that,  as  it  were,  because 
heaven  has  given  us  the  greatest  poet,  it  has  inflicted  upon 
that  poet  the  most  incompetent  critics  :  none  of  them  seem 
to  understand  even  his  language,  much  less  the  principles 
upon  which  he  wrote,  and  the  peculiarities  which  dis- 
tinguish him  from  all  rivals.  I  will  not  now  dwell  upon 


126  LECTURES    ON  [1811-12 

this  point,  because  it  is  my  intention  to  devote  a  lecture 
more  immediately  to  the  prefaces  of  Pope  and  Johnson. 
Some  of  Shakspere's  contemporaries  appear  to  have  under- 
stood him,  and  imitated  him  in  a  way  that  does  the  original 
no  small  honour ;  but  modern  preface-writers  and  com- 
mentators, while  they  praise  him  as  a  great  genius,  when 
they  come  to  publish  notes  upon  his  plays,  treat  him  like  a 
schoolboy ;  as  if  this  great  genius  did  not  understand  him- 
eelf,  was  not  aware  of  his  own  powers,  and  wrote  without 
design  or  purpose.  Nearly  all  they  can  do  is  to  express 
the  most  vulgar  of  all  feelings,  wonderment — wondering  at 
what  they  term  the  irregularity  of  his  genius,  sometimes 
above  all  praise,  and  at  other  times,  if  they  are  to  be 
trusted,  below  all  contempt.  They  endeavour  to  reconcile 
the  two  opinions  by  asserting  that  he  wrote  for  the  mob ;  as 
if  a  man  of  real  genius  ever  wrote  for  the  mob.  Shakspere 
never  consciously  wrote  what  was  below  himself :  careless 
he  might  be,  and  his  better  genius  may  not  always  have 
attended  him ;  but  I  fearlessly  say,  that  he  never  penned  a 
line  that  he  knew  would  degrade  him.  No  man  does  any- 
thing equally  well  at  all  times ;  but  because  Shakspere 
could  not  always  be  the  greatest  of  poets,  was  he  therefore 
to  condescend  to  make  himself  the  least  ?  l 

Yesterday  afternoon  a  friend  left  a  book  for  me  by  a 
German  critic,  of  which  I  have  only  had  time  to  read  a 
small  part ;  but  what  I  did  read  I  approved,  and  I  should 
be  disposed  to  applaud  the  work  much  more  highly,  were  it 
not  that  in  so  doing  I  should,  in  a  manner,  applaud  myself. 

1  "  It  is  certain  that  my  short-hand  note  in  this  place  affords  another 
instance  of  mishearing  :  it  runs  literally  thus — '  but  because  Shakspere 
could  not  always  be  the  greatest  of  poets,  was  he  therefore  to  condescend 
to  make  himself  a  beast  ?  '  For  '  a  beast,'  we  must  read  the  least,  the 
antithesis  being  between  '  greatest'  and  '  least,'  and  not  between  '  poet ' 
and  '  beast.'  Yet  '  beast '  may  be  reconciled  with  sense,  as  in  Macbeth  : 
*  Notes  and  Emend.'  420."— J.  P.  C. 


LEO!.  IX.]  SHAKSPEEB   AND    MILTON.  127 

The  sentiments  and  opinions  are  coincident  with  those  to 
which  I  gave  utterance  in  my  lectures  at  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion.1 It  is  not  a  little  wonderful,  that  so  many  ages  have 
elapsed  since  the  time  of  Shakspere,  and  that  it  should 
remain  for  foreigners  first  to  feel  truly,  and  to  appreciate 
justly,  his  mighty  genius.  The  solution  of  this  circumstance 
must  be  sought  in  the  history  of  our  nation  :  the  English 
have  become  a  busy  commercial  people,  and  they  have 
unquestionably  derived  from  this  propensity  many  social 
and  physical  advantages :  they  have  grown  to  be  a 
mighty  empire — one  of  the  great  nations  of  the  world, 
whose  moral  superiority  enables  it  to  struggle  successfully 

1  Compare  with  these  remarks  an  extract  from  a  letter  written  by 
Coleridge  in  February,  1818,  to  a  gentleman  who  attended  his  lectures 
of  that  year : — 

"  .  .  .  .  Sixteen  or  rather  seventeen  years  ago,  I  delivered  eighteen 
lectures  on  Shakspere  at  the  Royal  Institution  ;  three-fourths  of  which 
appeared  at  that  time  startling  paradoxes,  although  they  have  since  been 
adopted  even  by  men,  who  then  made  use  of  them  as  proofs  of  my  nighty 
and  paradoxical  turn  of  mind  ;  all  tending  to  prove  that  Shakspere's  judg- 
ment was,  if  possible,  still  more  wonderful  than  his  genius ;  or  rather, 
that  the  contra-distinction  itself  between  judgment  and  genius  rested  on 
an  utterly  false  theory.  This,  and  its  proofs  and  grounds,  have  been — 
I  should  not  have  said  adopted,  but  produced  as  their  own  legitimate 
children  by  some,  and  by  others  the  merit  of  them  attributed  to  a  foreign 
writer,  whose  lectures  were  not  given  orally  till  two  years  after  mine, 
rather  than  to  their  countryman:  though  I  dare  appeal  to  the  most 
adequate  judges,  as  Sir  George  Beaumont,  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  Mr. 
Jiotheby,  and  afterwards  to  Mr.  Rogers  and  Lord  Byron,  whether  there 
is  one  single  principle  in  Schlegel's  work  (which  is  not  an  admitted  draw- 
back from  its  merits),  that  was  not  established  and  applied  in  detail  by 
me." 

Quoted  by  II.  N.  Coleridge,  in  his  "Literary  Remains"  of  S.  T. 
•Coleridge,  with  a  reference  to  the  "  Canterbury  Magazine,"  September, 
1834.  Coleridge  again  and  again  returns  to  this  subject.  See,  particu- 
larly, a  formal  statement,  with  formal  date,  prefixed  to  his  notes  on 
41  Hamlet,"  in  "the  Lectures  and  Notes  of  1818  ; "  also  §  5  of  the  Intro- 
ductory matter  to  the  present  course. 


128  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

against  him,  who  may  be  deemed  the  evil  genius  of  our 
planet.1 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Germans,  unable  to  distinguish 
themselves  in  action,  have  been  driven  to  speculation  :  all 
their  feelings  have  been  forced  back  into  the  thinking  and 
reasoning  mind.  To  do,  with  them  is  impossible,  but  in 
determining  what  ought  to  be  done,  they  perhaps  exceed 
every  people  of  the  globe.  Incapable  of  acting  outwardly, 
they  have  acted  internally :  they  first  rationally  recalled 
the  ancient  philosophy,  and  set  their  spirits  to  work  with 
an  energy  of  which  England  produces  no  parallel,  since 
those  truly  heroic  times,  heroic  in  body  and  soul,  the  days 
of  Elizabeth. 

If  all  that  has  been  written  upon  Shakspere  by  English- 
men were  burned,  in  the  want  of  candles,  merely  to  enable 
us  to  read  one  half  of  what  our  dramatist  produced,  we 
should  be  great  gainers.  Providence  has  given  England 
the  greatest  man  that  ever  put  on  and  put  off  mortality, 
and  has  thrown  a  sop  to  the  envy  of  other  nations,  by  in- 
flicting upon  his  native  country  the  most  incompetent 
critics.  I  say  nothing  here  of  the  state  in  which  his  text 
has  come  down  to  us,  farther  than  that  it  is  evidently  very 
imperfect :  in  many  places  his  sense  has  been  perverted,  in 

1  When  this  lecture  was  delivered,  Napoleon  was  on  the  ere  of  his 
invasion  of  Russia. 

The  dislike  of  Culeridge  for  Napoleon  was  reciprocated.  While 
Coleridge  still  lingered  in  Italy,  in  1806,  an  order  for  his  arrest  arrived 
from  Paris.  The  Pope  himself  sent  him  a  passport,  and  hurried  him 
away.  He  hastily  sailed  from  Leghorn  in  an  American  vessel,  and 
n  French  ship  pursued  them.  The  captain  of  the  former  was  thoroughly 
frightened,  and  compelled  Coleridge  to  throw  all  his  manuscripts  into 
the  sea ; — an  irreparable  loss,  affording  confirmation  of  the  statement 
in  the  text,  that  Napoleon  was  "  the  evil  genius  of  our  planet." 

Later,  Napoleon  made  an  attempt  to  bribe  Coleridge,  through  the 
French  Ambassador  at  the  English  Court.  See  Gillman's  "  Life  ol 
Coleridge." 


.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  129 

others,  if  not  entirely  obscured,  so  blunderingly  represented, 
as  to  afford  us  only  a  glimpse  of  what  he  meant,  without 
the  power  of  restoring  his  own  expressions.  But  whether 
his  dramas  have  been  perfectly  or  imperfectly  printed,  it  is 
quite  clear  that  modern  inquiry  and  speculative  ingenuity 
in  this  kingdom  have  done  nothing ;  or  I  might  say,  without 
a  solecism,  less  than  nothing  (for  some  editors  have  multi- 
plied corruptions)  to  retrieve  the  genuine  language  of  the 
poet.  His  critics,  among  us,  during  the  whole  of  the  last 
century,  have  neither  understood  nor  appreciated  him ;  for 
how  could  they  appreciate  what  they  could  not  understand  ? 
His  contemporaries,  and  those  who  immediately  followed 
him,  were  not  so  insensible  of  his  merits,  or  so  incapable 
of  explaining  them  ;  and  one  of  them,  who  might  be  Milton, 
when  a  young  man  of  four  and  twenty,  printed,  in  the 
second  folio  of  Shakspere's  works,  a  laudatory  poem,  which, 
in  its  kind,  has  no  equal  for  justness  and  distinctness  of 
description,  in  reference  to  the  powers  and  qualities  of  lofty 
genius.  It  runs  thus,  and  I  hope  that,  when  I  have 
finished,  I  shall  stand  in  need  of  no  excuse  for  reading  the 
whole  of  it. 

"  A  mind  reflecting  ages  past,  whose  clear 
And  equal  surface  can  make  things  appear, 
Distant  a  thousand  years,  and  represent 
Them  in  their  lively  colours,  just  extent : 
To  outrun  hasty  time,  retrieve  the  fates, 
Roll  back  the  heavens,  blow  ope  the  iron  gates 
Of  death  and  Lethe,  where  confused  lie 
Great  heaps  of  ruinous  mortality : 
In  that  deep  dusky  dungeon  to  discern 
A  royal  ghost  from  churls ;  by  art  to  learn 
The  physiognomy  of  shades,  and  give 
Them  sudden  birth,  wondering  how  oft  they  livej 
What  story  coldly  tells,  what  poets  feign 
At  second  hand,  and  picture  without  brain, 
Senseless  and  soul-less  shows  :  to  give  a  stage 
(Ample  and  true  with  life)  voice,  action,  age, 
K 


130  LECTURES  ON  [1811-12 

As  Plato's  year,  and  new  scene  of  the  world, 
Them  unto  us,  or  us  to  them  had  hurl'd  : 
To  raise  our  ancient  sovereigns  from  their  herse, 
Make  kings  his  subjects  ;  by  exchanging  verse, 
Enlive  their  pale  trunks ;  that  the  present  age 
Joys  at  their  joy,  and  trembles  at  their  rage  : 
Yet  so  to  temper  passion,  that  our  ears 
Take  pleasure  in  their  pain,  and  eyes  in  tears 
Both  weep  and  smile ;  fearful  at  plots  so  sad, 
Then  laughing  at  our  fear ;  abus'd,  and  glad 
To  be  abus'd ;  affected  with  that  truth 
Which  we  perceive  is  false,  pleas'd  in  that  ruth 
At  which  we  start,  and,  by  elaborate  play, 
Tortur'd  and  tickl'd ;  by  a  crab-like  way 
Time  past  made  pastime,  and  in  ugly  sort 
Disgorging  up  his  ravin  for  our  sport : — 
— While  the  plebeian  imp,  from  lofty  throne, 
Creates  and  rules  a  world,  and  wo  rks  upon 
Mankind  by  secret  engines  ;  now  to  move 
A  chilling  pity,  then  a  rigorous  love  ; 
To  strike  up  and  stroke  down,  both  joy  and  ire 
To  steer  th'  affections;  and  by  heavenly  fire 
Mold  us  anew,  stol'n  from  ourselves :  — 

This,  and  much  more,  which  cannot  be  express'd 
But  by  himself,  his  tongue,  and  his  own  breast, 
Was  Shakespeare's  freehold ;  which  his  cunning  brain 
Improv'd  by  favour  of  the  nine-fold  train ; 
The  buskin'd  muse,  the  comick  queen,  the  grand 
And  louder  tone  of  Clio,  nimble  hand 
And  nimbler  foot  of  the  melodious  pair, 
The  silver-voiced  lady,  the  most  fair 
Calliope,  whose  speaking  silence  daunts, 
And  she  whose  praise  the  heavenly  body  chants ; 
These  jointly  Avoo'd  him,  envying  one  another; 
(Obey'd  by  all  as  spouse,  but  lov'd  as  brother) 
And  wrought  a  curious  robe,  of  sable  grave, 
Fresh  green,  and  pleasant  yellow,  red  most  brave, 
And  constant  blue,  rich  purple,  guiltless  white, 
The  lowly  russet,  and  the  scarlet  bright; 
Branch 'd  and  embroider'd  like  the  painted  spring; 
Each  leaf  match'd  with  a  flower,  and  each  string 
Of  golden  wire,  each  line  of  silk  :  there  run 


LiECT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  131 

Italian  works,  whose  thread  the  sisters  spun ; 
And  these  did  sing,  or  seem  to  sing,  the  choice 
Birds  of  a  foreign  note  and  various  voice  : 
Here  hangs  a  mossy  rock  ;  there  plays  a  fair 
But  chiding  fountain,  purled:  not  the  air, 
Nor  clouds,  nor  thunder,  but  were  living  drawn ; 
Not  out  of  common  tiffany  or  lawn, 
But  fine  materials,  which  the  Muses  know, 
And  only  know  the  countries  where  they  grow. 
Now,  when  they  could  no  longer  him  enjoy, 
In  mortal  garments  pent,— death  may  destroy, 
They  say,  his  body ;  but  his  verse  shall  live, 
And  more  than  nature  takes  our  hands  shall  give : 
In  a  less  volume,  but  more  strongly  bound, 
Shakespeare  shall  breathe  and  speak  ;  with  laurel  crown'd, 
Which  never  fades  ;  fed  with  ambrosian  meat, 
In  a  well-lined  vesture,  rich,  and  neat. 
So  with  this  robe  they  clothe  him,  bid  him  wear  it ; 
For  time  shall  never  stain,  nor  envy  tear  it." 

This  poem  is  subscribed  J.  M.  S.,  meaning,  as  some  have 
explained  the  initials,  "  John  Milton,  Student :  "  the  in- 
ternal evidence  seems  to  me  decisive,  for  there  was,  I 
think,  no  other  man,  of  that  particular  day,  capable  of 
writing  anything  so  characteristic  of  Shakspere,  so  justly 
thought,  and  so  happily  expressed.1 

It  is  a  mistake  to  say  that  any  of  Shakspere's  characters 
strike  us  as  portraits :  they  have  the  union  of  reason  per- 
ceiving, of  j  udgment  recording,  and  of  imagination  diffusing 

1  The  startling  fact  that  Coleridge  sees  "  decisive  "  internal  evidence 
in  this  poem,  that  it  is  Milton's,  may  lessen  the  regret  of  some  that  his 
lectures  on  Milton  are  missing.  That "  J.  M.  S."  should  stand  for  "  John 
Milton,  Student,"  may  be  satisfactory  to  those  who  hit  upon  the  idea.  The 
second  folio  appeared  in  1632,  the  year  that  Milton  left  Cambridge  for 
llorton,  after  taking  his  M.A.  degree.  He  had  already  written  his  two 
poems  on  Hobson,  and  his" Epitaph  on  the  admirable  dramatic  poet,  W. 
Shakespeare,"  without  name  or  initials,  appeared  in  the  second  folio,  along 
with  the  verses  in  the  text.  All  these  three  poems,  moreover,  are  in  the 
same  metre  as  the  verses  in  the  text,  and  can  easily  be  compared  with 
(hem. 


132  LECTURES   ON  [1811-1'J 

over  all  a  magic  glory.  While  the  poet  registers  -what  is 
past,  he  projects  the  future  in  a  wonderful  degree,  and 
makes  us  feel,  however  slightly,  and  see,  however  dimly, 
that  state  of  being  in  which  there  is  neither  past  nor 
future,  but  all  is  permanent  in  the  very  energy  of  nature. 

Although  I  have  affirmed  that  all  Shakspere's  characters 
are  ideal,  and  the  result  of  his  own  meditation,  yet  a  just 
separation  may  be  made  of  those  in  which  the  ideal  is  most 
prominent — where  it  is  pat  forward  more  intensely — where 
we  are  made  more  conscious  of  the  ideal,  though  in  truth  they 
possess  no  more  nor  less  ideality :  and  of  those  which, 
though  equally  idealized,  the  delusion  upon  the  mind  is  of 
their  being  real.  The  characters  in  the  various  plays  may 
be  separated  into  those  where  the  real  is  disguised  in  the 
ideal,  and  those  where  the  ideal  is  concealed  from  us  by  the 
real.  The  difference  is  made  by  the  different  powers  of 
mind  employed  by  the  poet  in  the  representation. 

At  present  I  shall  only  speak  of  dramas  where  the  ideal 
is  predominant:  and  chiefly  for  this  reason — that  those 
plays  have  been  attacked  with  the  greatest  violence.  The 
objections  to  them  are  not  the  growth  of  our  own  country, 
but  of  France — the  judgment  of  monkeys,  by  some  wonder- 
ful phenomenon,  put  into  the  mouths  of  people  shaped  like 
men.  These  creatures  have  informed  us  that  Shakspere  is 
a  miraculous  monster,  in  whom  many  heterogeneous  com- 
ponents were  thrown  together,  producing  a  discordant 
mass  of  genius — an  irregular  and  ill-assorted  structure  of 
gigantic  proportions. 

Among  the  ideal  plays,  I  will  take  "  The  Tempest,"  by 
way  of  example.  Various  others  might  be  mentioned,  but 
it  is  impossible  to  go  through  every  drama,  and  what  I 
remark  on  "  The  Tempest "  will  apply  to  all  Shakspere's 
productions  of  the  same  class. 

In  this  play  Shakspere  has  especially  appealed  to  the 
imagination,  and  he  has  constructed  a  plot  well  adapted  to 


LSCT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  133 

the  purpose.  According  to  his  scheme,  he  did  not  appeal 
to  any  sensuous  impression  (the  word  "  sensuous "  is 
authorized  by  Milton)  of  time  and  place,  but  to  the  imagi- 
nation, and  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind,  that  of  old,  and  as 
regards  mere  scenery,  his  works  may  be  said  to  have  been 
recited  rather  than  acted — that  is  to  say,  description 
and  narration  supplied  the  place  of  visual  exhibition :  the 
audience  was  told  to  fancy  that  they  saw  what  they 
only  heard  described ;  the  painting  was  not  in  colours,  but 
in  words. 

This  is  particularly  to  be  noted  in  the  first  scene — a 
storm  and  its  confusion  on  board  the  king's  ship.  The 
highest  and  the  lowest  characters  are  brought  together,  and 
with  what  excellence  !  Much  of  the  genius  of  Shakspere 
is  displayed  in  these  happy  combinations — the  highest  and 
the  lowest,  the  gayest  and  the  saddest ;  he  is  not  droll  in 
one  scene  and  melancholy  in  another,  but  often  both  the 
one  and  the  other  in  the  same  scene.  Laughter  is  made  to 
swell  the  tear  of  sorrow,  and  to  throw,  as  it  were,  a  poetic 
light  upon  it,  while  the  tear  mingles  tenderness  with  the 
laughter.  Shakspere  has  evinced  the  power,  which  above 
all  other  men  he  possessed,  that  of  introducing  the  pro- 
foundest  sentiments  of  wisdom,  where  they  would  be  least 
expected,  yet  where  they  are  most  truly  natural.  Ono 
admirable  secret  of  his  art  is,  that  separate  speeches  fre- 
quently do  not  appear  to  have  been  occasioned  by  those 
which  preceded,  and  which  are  consequent  upon  each  other, 
but  to  have  arisen  out  of  the  peculiar  character  of  the 
speaker. 

Before  I  go  further,  I  may  take  the  opportunity  of  ex- 
plaining what  is  meant  by  mechanic  and  organic  regularity. 
In  the  former  the  copy  must  appear  as  if  it  had  come  out 
of  the  same  mould  with  the  original :  in  the  latter  there  is 
a  law  which  all  the  parts  obey,  conforming  themselves  to 
the  outward  symbols  and  manifestations  of  the  essential 


134  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

principle.  If  we  look  to  the  growth  of  trees,  for  instance, 
we  shall  observe  that  trees  of  the  same  kind  vary  consider- 
ably, according  to  the  circumstances  of  soil,  air,  or  position  ; 
yet  we  are  able  to  decide  at  once  whether  they  are  oaks, 
elms,  or  poplars. 

So  with  Shakspere's  characters  :  he  shows  us  the  life  and 
principle  of  each  being  with  organic  regularity.  The  Boat- 
swain, in  the  first  scene  of  "  The  Tempest,"  when  the  bonds 
of  reverence  are  thrown  off  as  a  sense  of  danger  impresses- 
all,  gives  a  loose  to  his  feelings,  and  thus  pours  forth  his 
vulgar  mind  to  the  old  Counsellor  : — 

"  Hence !  What  care  these  roarers  for  the  name  of 
King?  To  cabin  :  silence  !  trouble  us  not." 

Gonzalo  replies — "  Good ;  yet  remember  whom  thou 
hast  aboard."  To  which  the  Boatswain  answers — "  None 
that  I  more  love  than  myself.  You  are  a  counsellor  :  if 
you  can  command  these  elements  to  silence,  and  work  the 
peace  of  the  present,  we  will  not  hand  a  rope  more ;  use 
your  authority :  if  you  cannot,  give  thanks  that  you  have 
lived  so  long,  and  make  yourself  ready  in  your  cabin  for  the 
mischance  of  the  hour,  if  it  so  hap. — Cheerly,  good  hearts  I 
— Out  of  our  way,  I  say." 

An  ordinary  dramatist  would,  after  this  speech,  have  re- 
presented Gonzalo  as  moralizing,  or  saying  something  con- 
nected with  the  Boatswain's  language ;  for  ordinary 
dramatists  are  not  men  of  genius  :  they  combine  their 
ideas  by  association,  or  by  logical  affinity ;  but  the  vital 
writer,  who  makes  men  on  the  stage  what  they  are  in 
nature,  in  a  moment  transports  himself  into  the  very 
being  of  each  personage,  and,  instead  of  cutting  out  artifi- 
cial puppets,  he  brings  before  us  the  men  themselves. 
Therefore,  Gonzalo  soliloquizes, — "  I  have  great  comfort 
from  this  fellow  :  methinks,  he  hath  no  drowning  mark 
upon  him  ;  his  complexion  is  perfect  gallows.  Stand  fast, 
good  fate,  to  his  hanging  !  make  the  rope  of  his  destiny  our 


.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  135 

cable,  for  our  own  doth  little  advantage.  If  lie  be  not  bora 
to  be  hanged,  our  case  is  miserable." 

In  this  part  of  the  scene  we  see  the  true  sailor  with  his 
contempt  of  danger,  and  the  old  counsellor  with  his  high 
feeling,  who,  instead  of  condescending  to  notice  the  words 
just  addressed  to  him,  turns  off,  meditating  with  himself, 
and  drawing  some  comfort  to  his  own  mind,  by  trifling  with 
the  ill  expression  of  the  boatswain's  face,  founding  upon  it 
a  hope  of  safety. 

Shakspere  had  pre-determined  to  make  the  plot  of  this 
play  such  as  to  involve  a  certain  number  of  low  characters, 
and  at  the  beginning  he  pitched  the  note  of  the  whole. 
The  first  scene  was  meant  as  a  lively  commencement  of  the 
Btory  ;  the  reader  is  prepared  for  something  that  is  to  be 
developed,  and  in  the  next  scene  he  brings  forward  Prospero 
and  Miranda.  How  is  this  done  ?  By  giving  to  his 
favourite  character,  Miranda,  a  sentence  which  at  onco 
expresses  the  violence  and  fury  of  the  storm,  such  as  it 
might  appear  to  a  witness  on  the  land,  and  at  the  same 
time  displays  the  tenderness  of  her  feelings — the  exquisite 
feelings  of  a  female  brought  up  in  a  desert,  but  with  all  the 
advantages  of  education,  all  that  could  be  communicated  by 
a  wise  and  affectionate  father.  She  possesses  all  the  deli- 
cacy of  innocence,  yet  with  all  the  powers  of  her  mind 
nnweakened  by  the  combats  of  life.  Miranda  exclaims  : — 

"  O !  I  have  suffered 

With  those  that  I  saw  suffer  :  a  brave  vessel, 
Who  had,  no  doubt,  some  noble  creatures  l  in  her, 
Dash'd  all  to  pieces." 

The  doubt  here  intimated  could  have  occurred  to   no 

1  Read  "creature."  Miranda  evidently  came  to  this  conclusion,  be- 
cause of  the  "  bravery  "  or  superior  style  of  the  vessel.  Doubtless  she 
had  seen  many  others.  The  whole  of  Coleridge's  criticism  grows  out  of 
his  own  misreading  of  the  text,  and  perishes  with  it. 


136  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

mind  but  to  that  of  Miranda,  who  had  been  bred  up  in  the 
island  with  her  father  and  a  monster  only  :  she  did  not 
know,  as  others  do,  what  sort  of  creatures  were  in  a  ship ; 
others  never  would  have  introduced  it  as  a  conjecture. 
This  shows,  that  while  Shakspere  is  displaying  his  vast  ex- 
cellence, he  never  fails  to  insert  some  touch  or  other,  which 
is  not  merely  characteristic  of  the  particular  person,  but 
combines  two  things — the  person,  and  the  circumstances 
acting  upon  the  person.  She  proceeds  : — 

"  O  !  the  cry  did  knock 

Against  my  very  heart.     Poor  souls  !  they  perish'd. 
Had  I  been  any  god  of  power,  I  would 
Hare  sunk  the  sea  within  the  earth,  or  e'er 
Tt  should  the  good  ship  so  have  swallow'd,  and 
The  fraughting  sculs  within  her." 

She  still  dwells  upon  that  which  was  most  wanting  to 
the  completeness  of  her  nature — these  fellow  creatures 
from  whom  she  appeared  banished,  with  only  one  relict 
to  keep  them  alive,  not  in  her  memory,  but  in  her  imagi- 
nation. 

Another  proof  of  excellent  judgment  in  the  poet,  for  I 
am  now  principally  adverting  to  that  point,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  preparation  of  the  reader  for  what  is  to  follow. 
Prospero  is  introduced,  first  in  his  magic  robe,  which,  with 
the  assistance  of  his  daughter,  he  lays  aside,  and  we  then 
know  him  to  be  a  being  possessed  of  supernatural  powers. 
He  then  instructs  Miranda  in  the  story  of  their  arrival  in 
the  island,  and  this  is  conducted  in  such  a  manner,  that  the 
reader  never  conjectures  the  technical  use  the  poet  has 
made  of  the  relation,  by  informing  the  auditor  of  what  it  is 
necessary  for  him  to  know. 

The  next  step  is  the  warning  by  Prospero,  that  he 
means,  for  particular  purposes,  to  lull  his  daughter  to 
sleep ;  and  here  he  exhibits  the  earliest  and  mildest  proof 


LECT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  137 

of  magical  power.  In  ordinary  and  vulgar  plays  we  should 
have  had  some  person  brought  upon  the  stage,  whom 
nobody  knows  or  cares  anything  about,  to  let  the  audience 
into  the  secret.  Prospero  having  cast  a  sleep  upon  his 
daughter,  by  that  sleep  stops  the  narrative  at  the  very 
moment  when  it  was  necessary  to  break  it  off,  in  order  to 
excite  curiosity,  and  yet  to  give  the  memory  and  under- 
standing sufficient  to  carry  on  the  progress  of  the  history 
uninterruptedly. 

Here  I  cannot  help  noticing  a  fine  touch  of  Shakspere's 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  and  generally  of  the  great  laws 
of  the  human  mind  :  I  mean  Miranda's  infant  remembrance. 
Prospero  asks  her — 

"  Canst  tbou  remember 
A  time  before  we  came  unto  this  cell  ? 
I  do  not  think  thou  canst,  for  then  thou  wast  not 
Out  three  years  old." 

Miranda  answers, 

"  Certainly,  sir,  I  can." 
Prospero  inquires, 

"  By  what  ?  by  any  other  house  or  person  ? 
Of  any  thing  the  image  tell  me,  that 
Hath  kept  with  thy  remembrance." 

To  which  Miranda  returns, 

"  Tis  far  off; 

And  rather  like  a  dream  than  an  assurance 
That  my  remembrance  warrants.     Had  I  not 
Four  or  five  women  once,  that  tended  me  ?  " 

Act  /.,  Scene  2. 

This  is  exquisite  !  In  general,  our  remembrances  of  early 
life  arise  from  vivid  colours,  especially  if  we  have  seen 
them  in  motion  :  for  instance,  persons  when  grown  up  will 
remember  a  bright  green  door,  seen  when  they  were  quite 
young ;  but  Miranda,  who  was  somewhat  older,  recollected 


138  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

four  or  five  women  who  tended  her.  She  might  know  men 
from  her  father,  and  her  remembrance  of  the  past  might 
be  worn  out  by  the  present  object,  but  women  she  only 
knew  by  herself,  by  the  contemplation  of  her  own  figure  in 
the  fountain,  and  she  recalled  to  her  mind  what  had  been. 
It  was  not,  that  she  had  seen  such  and  such  grandees,  or 
such  and  such  peeresses,  but  she  remembered  to  have  seen 
something  like  the  reflection  of  herself :  it  was  not  herself, 
and  it  brought  back  to  her  mind  what  she  had  seen  most 
like  herself. 

In  my  opinion  the  picturesque  power  displayed  by  Shak- 
spere,  of  all  the  poets  that  ever  lived,  is  only  equalled,  if 
equalled,  by  Milton  and  Dante.  The  presence  of  genius  is 
not  shown  in  elaborating  a  picture  :  we  have  had  many 
specimens  of  this  sort  of  work  in  modern  poems,  where  all 
is  so  dutchified,  if  I  may  use  the  word,  by  the  most  minute 
touches,  that  the  reader  naturally  asks  why  words,  and  not 
painting,  are  used.  I  know  a  young  lady  of  much  taste, 
who  observed,  that  in  reading  recent  versified  accounts  of 
voyages  and  travels,  she,  by  a  sort  of  instinct,  cast  her 
eyes  on  the  opposite  page,  for  coloured  prints  of  what  was 
so  patiently  and  punctually  described. 

The  power  of  poetry  is,  by  a  single  word  perhaps,  to 
instil  that  energy  into  the  mind,  which  compels  the  imagi- 
nation to  produce  the  picture.  Prospero  tells  Miranda, 

"  One  midnight, 

Fated  to  the  purpose,  did  Antonio  open 
The  gates  of  Milan  ;  and  i'  the  dead  of  darkness, 
The  ministers  for  the  purpose  hurried  thence 
Me,  and  thy  crying  self." 

Here,  by  introducing  a  single  happy  epithet,  "  crying," 
in  the  last  line,  a  complete  picture  is  presented  to  the 
mind,  and  in  the  production  of  such  pictures  the  power  of 
genius  consists. 

Tn  reference  to  preparation,  it  will  be  observed  that  the 


.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON.  339 

storm,  and  all  that  precedes  the  tale,  as  well  as  the  tale 
itself,  serve  to  develop  completely  the  main  character  of 
the  drama,  as  well  as  the  design  of  Prospero.  The  manner 
in  which  the  heroine  is  charmed  asleep  fits  us  for  what 
follows,  goes  beyond  our  ordinary  belief,  and  gradually 
leads  us  to  the  appearance  and  disclosure  of  a  being  of  the 
most  fanciful  and  delicate  texture,  like  Prospero,  preter- 
naturally  gifted. 

In  this  way  the  entrance  of  Ariel,  if  not  absolutely  fore- 
thought by  the  reader,  was  foreshown  by  the  writer :  in 
addition,  we  may  remark,  that  the  moral  feeling  called 
forth  by  the  sweet  words  of  Miranda, 

"  Alack,  what  trouble 
Was  I  then  to  you !  " 

in  which  she  considered  only  the  sufferings  and  sorrows  of 
her  father,  puts  the  reader  in  a  frame  of  mind  to  exert  his 
imagination  in  favour  of  an  object  so  innocent  and  interest- 
ing. The  poet  makes  him  wish  that,  if  supernatural  agency 
were  to  be  employed,  it  should  be  used  for  a  being  so  young 
and  lovely.  "  The  wish  is  father  to  the  thought,"  and  Ariel 
is  introduced.  Here,  what  is  called  poetic  faith  is  required 
and  created,  and  our  common  notions  of  philosophy  give 
way  before  it :  this  feeling  may  be  said  to  be  much  stronger 
than  historic  faith,  since  for  the  exercise  of  poetic  faith 
the  mind  is  previously  prepared.  I  make  this  remark, 
though  somewhat  digressive,  in  order  to  lead  to  a  future 
subject  of  these  lectures — the  poems  of  Milton.  When 
adverting  to  those,  I  shall  have  to  explain  farther  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  two. 

Many  Scriptural  poems  have  been  written  with  so  much 
Scripture  in  them,  that  what  is  not  Scripture  appears  to 
not  true,  and  like  mingling  lies  with  the  most  sacred 
relations.     Now  Milton,  on  the  other  hand,  has  taken 
his  subject  that  one  point  of  Scripture  of  which  we 


140  LECTURES   OK  [1811-12 

have  the  mere  fact  recorded,  and  upon  this  he  has  most 
judiciously  constructed  his  whole  fable.  So  of  Shakspere's 
"  King  Lear :  "  we  have  little  historic  evidence  to  guide  or 
confine  us,  and  the  few  facts  handed  down  to  us,  and 
admirably  employed  by  the  poet,  are  sufficient,  while  we 
read,  to  put  an  end  to  all  doubt  as  to  the  credibility  of  the 
story.  It  is  idle  to  say  that  this  or  that  incident  is  im- 
probable, because  history,  as  far  as  it  goes,  tells  us  that  the 
fact  was  so  and  so.  Four  or  five  lines  in  the  Bible  include 
the  whole  that  is  said  of  Milton's  story,  and  the  Poet  has 
called  up  that  poetic  faith,  that  conviction  of  the  mind, 
which  is  necessary  to  make  that  seem  true,  which  otherwise 
might  have  been  deemed  almost  fabulous. 

But  to  return  to  "  The  Tempest,"  and  to  the  wondrous 
creation  of  Ariel.  If  a  doubt  could  ever  be  entertained 
whether  Shakspere  was  a  great  poet,  acting  upon  laws 
arising  out  of  his  own  nature,  and  not  without  law,  as  has 
sometimes  been  idly  asserted,  that  doubt  must  be  removed 
by  the  character  of  Ariel.  The  very  first  words  uttered 
by  this  being  introduce  the  spirit,  not  as  an  angel,  above 
man ;  not  a  gnome,  or  a  fiend,  below  man ;  but  while  the 
poet  gives  him  the  faculties  and  the  advantages  of  reason, 
he  divests  him  of  all  mortal  character,  not  positively,  it  is 
true,  but  negatively.  In  air  he  lives,  from  air  he  derives 
liis  being,  in  air  he  acts ;  and  all  his  colours  and  properties 
seem  to  have  been  obtained  from  the  rainbow  and  the  skies. 
There  is  nothing  about  Ariel  that  cannot  be  conceived  to 
exist  either  at  sun-rise  or  at  sun-set :  hence  all  that  belongs 
to  Ariel  belongs  to  the  delight  the  mind  is  capable  of  re- 
ceiving from  the  most  lovely  external  appearances.  His 
answers  to  Prospero  are  directly  to  the  question,  and  nothing 
beyond ;  or  where  he  expatiates,  which  is  not  unf  requently, 
it  is  to  himself  and  upon  his  own  delights,  or  upon  the  un- 
natural situation  in  which  he  is  placed,  though  under  a 
kindly  power  and  to  good  ends. 


LECT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  141 

Shakspere  has  properly  made  Ariel's  very  first  speech 
characteristic  of  him.  After  he  has  described  the  manner 
in  which  he  had  raised  the  storm  and  produced  its  harmless 
consequences,  we  find  that  Ariel  is  discontented — that  he 
has  been  freed,  it  is  true,  from  a  cruel  confinement,  but 
still  that  he  is  bound  to  obey  Prospero,  and  to  execute  any 
commands  imposed  upon  him.  We  feel  that  such  a  state 
of  bondage  is  almost  unnatural  to  him,  yet  we  see  that  it  is 
delightful  for  him  to  be  so  employed. — It  is  as  if  we  were 
to  command  one  of  the  winds  in  a  different  direction  to 
that  which  nature  dictates,  or  one  of  the  waves,  now  rising 
and  now  sinking,  to  recede  before  it  bursts  upon  the  shore  : 
such  is  the  feeling  we  experience,  when  we  learn  that  a 
being  like  Ariel  is  commanded  to  fulfil  any  mortal  behest. 

When,  however,  Shakspere  contrasts  the  treatment  of 
Ariel  by  Prospero  with  that  of  Sycorax,  we  are  sensible 
that  the  liberated  spirit  ought  to  be  grateful,  and  Ariel 
does  feel  and  acknowledge  the  obligation ;  he  immediately 
assumes  the  airy  being,  with  a  mind  so  elastically  corre- 
spondent, that  when  once  a  feeling  has  passed  from  it,  not 
a  trace  is  left  behind. 

Is  there  anything  in  nature  from  which  Shakspere  caught 
the  idea  of  this  delicate  and  delightful  being,  with  such 
child-like  simplicity,  yet  with  such  preternatural  powers  ? 
He  is  neither  born  of  heaven,  nor  of  earth ;  but,  as  it  were, 
between  both,  like  a  May-blossom  kept  suspended  in  air  by 
the  fanning  breeze,  which  prevents  it  from  falling  to  the 
ground,  and  only  finally,  and  by  compulsion,  touching 
earth.  This  reluctance  of  the  Sylph  to  be  under  the  com- 
mand even  of  Prospero  is  kept  up  through  the  whole  play, 
and  in  the  exercise  of  his  admirable  judgment  Shakspere 
has  availed  himself  of  it,  in  order  to  give  Ariel  an  interest 
in  the  event,  looking  forward  to  that  moment  when  he  wag 
to  gain  his  last  and  only  reward — simple  and  eternal 
liberty. 


142  LECTURES    05  [1811-12 

Another  instance  of  admirable  judgment  and  excellent 
preparation  is  to  be  found  in  the  creature  contrasted  with 
Ariel — Caliban ;  who  is  described  in  such  a  manner  by 
Prospero,  as  to  lead  us  to  expect  the  appearance  of  a  foul, 
unnatural  monster.  He  is  not  seen  at  once :  his  voice  is 
heard ;  this  is  the  preparation :  he  was  too  offensive  to  be 
seen  first  in  all  his  deformity,  and  in  nature  we  do  not  re- 
ceive so  much  disgust  from  sound  as  from  sight.  After  we 
have  heard  Caliban's  voice  he  does  not  enter,  until  Ariel 
has  entered  like  a  water-nymph.  All  the  strength  of  con- 
trast is  thus  acquired  without  any  of  the  shock  of  abrupt- 
ness, or  of  that  unpleasant  sensation,  which  we  experience 
when  the  object  presented  is  in  any  way  hatefnl  to  our 
vision. 

The  character  of  Caliban  is  wonderfully  conceived  : 
he  is  a  sort  of  creature  of  the  earth,  as  Ariel  is  a  sort 
of  creature  of  the  air.  He  partakes  of  the  qualities  of 
the  brute,  but  is  distinguished  from  brutes  in  two  ways : 
— by  having  mere  understanding  without  moral  reason  ; 
and  by  not  possessing  the  instincts  which  pertain  to 
absolute  animals.  Still,  Caliban  is  in  some  respects  a 
noble  being  :  the  poet  has  raised  him  far  above  contempt : 
he  is  a  man  in  the  sense  of  the  imagination  :  all  the  images 
lie  uses  are  drawn  from  nature,  and  are  highly  poetical ;  they 
fit  in  with,  the  images  of  Ariel.  Caliban  gives  ns  images 
from  the  earth,  Ariel  images  from  the  air.  Caliban  talks 
of  the  difficulty  of  finding  fresh  water,  of  the  situation  of 
morasses,  and  of  other  circumstances  which  even  brute 
instinct,  without  reason,  could  comprehend.  No  mean 
figure  is  employed,  no  mean  passion  displayed,  beyond 
animal  passion,  and  repugnance  to  command. 

The  manner  in  which  the  lovers  are  introduced  is  equally 
•wonderful,  and  it  is  the  last  point  I  shall  now  mention  in 
reference  to  this,  almost  miraculous,  drama.  The  same 
judgment  is  observable  in  every  scene,  still  preparing,  still 


IiECT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  143 

inviting,  and  still  gratifying,  like  a  finished  piece  of  music. 
I  have  omitted  to  notice  one  thing,  and  you  must  give  me 
leave  to  advert  to  it  before  I  proceed  :  I  mean  the  con- 
spiracy against  the  life  of  Alonzo.  I  want  to  show  you 
how  well  the  poet  prepares  the  feelings  of  the  reader  for 
this  plot,  which  was  to  execute  the  most  detestable  of  all 
crimes,  and  which,  in  another  play,  Shakspere  has  called 
the  murder  of  sleep. 

Antonio  and  Sebastian  at  first  had  no  such  intention : 
it  was  suggested  by  the  magical  sleep  cast  on  Alonzo  and 
Gonzalo ;  but  they  are  previously  introduced  scoffing  and 
scorning  at  what  was  said  by  others,  without  regard  to  age 
or  situation — without  any  sense  of  admiration  for  the  ex- 
cellent truths  they  heard  delivered,  but  giving  themselves 
up  entirely  to  the  malignant  and  unsocial  feeling,  which 
induced  them  to  listen  to  everything  that  was  said,  not  for 
the  sake  of  profiting  by  the  learning  and  experience  of 
others,  but  of  hearing  something  that  might  gratify  vanity 
and  self-love,  by  making  them  believe  that  the  person 
speaking  was  inferior  to  themselves. 

This,  let  me  remark,  is  one  of  the  grand  characteristics 
of  a  villain  ;  and  it  would  not  be  so  much  a  presentiment, 
as  an  anticipation  of  hell,  for  men  to  suppose  that  all  man- 
kind were  as  wicked  as  themselves,  or  might  be  so,  if  they 
were  not  too  great  fools.  Pope,  you  are  perhaps  aware, 
objected  to  this  conspiracy  ;  but  in  my  mind,  if  it  could  be 
omitted,  the  piny  would  lose  a  charm  which  nothing  could 
supply. 

Many,  indeed  innumerable,  beautiful  passages  might  be 
quoted  from  this  play,  independently  of  the  astonishing 
scheme  of  its  construction.  Everybody  will  call  to  mind 
the  grandeur  of  the  language  of  Prospero  in  that  divine 
speech,  where  he  takes  leave  of  his  magic  art ;  and  were  I 
to  indulge  myself  by  repetitions  of  the  kind,  I  should 
descend  from  the  character  of  a  lecturer  to  that  of  a  mere 


144  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

reciter.  Before  I  terminate,  I  may  particularly  recall  one 
short  passage,  which,  has  fallen  under  the  very  severe,  but 
inconsiderate,  censure  of  Pope  and  Arbuthnot,  who  pro- 
nounce it  a  piece  of  the  grossest  bombast.  Prospero 
thus  addresses  his  daughter,  directing  her  attention  to 
Ferdinand : 

"  The  fringed  curtains  of  thine  eye  advance, 
And  say  what  thou  seest  yond." 

Act.  I.,  Scene  2. 

Taking  these  words  as  a  periphrase  of — "  Look  what  is 
coming  yonder,"  it  certainly  may  to  some  appear  to  border 
on  the  ridiculous,  and  to  fall  under  the  rule  I  formerly  laid 
down, — that  whatever,  without  injury,  can  be  translated 
into  a  foreign  language  in  simple  terms,  ought  to  be  in 
simple  terms  in  the  original  language  ;  but  it  is  to  be  borne 
in  mind,  that  different  modes  of  expression  frequently  arise 
from  difference  of  situation  and  education :  a  blackguard 
would  use  very  different  words,  to  express  the  same  thing, 
to  those  a  gentleman  would  employ,  yet  both  would  be 
natural  and  proper ;  difference  of  feeling  gives  rise  to  dif- 
ference of  language  :  a  gentleman  speaks  in  polished  terms, 
with  due  regard  to  his  own  rank  and  position,  while  a  black- 
guard, a  person  little  better  than  half  a  brute,  speaks  like 
half  a  brute,  showing  no  respect  for  himself,  nor  for  others. 

But  I  am  content  to  try  the  lines  I  have  just  quoted  by 
the  introduction  to  them  ;  and  then,  I  think,  you  will  admit, 
that  nothing  could  be  more  fit  and  appropriate  than  such 
language.  How  does  Prospero  introduce  them  ?  He  has 
just  told  Miranda  a  wonderful  story,  which  deeply  affected 
her,  and  filled  her  with  surprise  and  astonishment,  and  for 
his  own  purposes  he  afterwards  lulls  her  to  sleep.  When  she 
awakes,  Shakspere  has  made  her  wholly  inattentive  to  the 
present,  but  wrapped  up  in  the  past.  An  actress,  who  un- 
derstands the  character  of  Miranda,  would  have  her  eyes 


I/ECT.  IX.]  SHAKSPERE   AND    MILTON.  145 

cast  down,  and  her  eyelids  almost  covering  them,  while  she 
was,  as  it  were,  living  in  her  dream.  At  this  moment 
Prospero  sees  Ferdinand,  and  wishes  to  point  him  out  to 
his  daughter,  not  only  with  great,  but  with  scenic  solemnity, 
he  standing  before  her,  and  before  the  spectator,  in  the  dig- 
nified character  of  a  great  magician.  Something  was  to 
appear  to  Miranda  on  the  sudden,  and  as  unexpectedly  as  if 
the  hero  of  a  drama  were  to  be  on  the  stage  at  the  instant 
when  the  curtain  is  elevated.  It  is  under  such  circumstances 
that  Prospero  says,  in  a  tone  calculated  at  once  to  arouse 
his  daughter's  attention, 

"  The  fringed  curtains  of  thine  eye  advance, 
And  say  what  thou  seest  yond." 

Turning  from  the  sight  of  Ferdinand  to  his  thoughtful 
daughter,  his  attention  was  first  struck  by  the  downcast 
appearance  of  her  eyes  and  eyelids ;  and,  in  my  humble 
opinion,  the  solemnity  of  the  phraseology  assigned  to 
Prospero  is  completely  in  character,  recollecting  his  pre- 
ternatural capacity,  in  which  the  most  familiar  objects  in 
nature  present  themselves  in  a  mysterious  point  of  view. 
It  is  much  easier  to  find  fault  with  a  writer  by  reference  to 
former  notions  and  experience,  than  to  sit  down  and  read 
him,  recollecting  his  purpose,  connecting  one  feeling  with 
another,  and  judging  of  his  words  and  phrases,  in  propor- 
tion as  they  convey  the  sentiments  of  the  persons  repre- 
sented. 

Of  Miranda  we  may  say,  that  she  possesses  in  herself  all 
the  ideal  beauties  that  could  be  imagined  by  the  greatest 
poet  of  any  age  or  country  ;  but  it  is  not  my  purpose  now, 
so  much  to  point  out  the  high  poetic  powers  of  Shakspere,  • 
as  to  illustrate  his  exquisite  judgment,  and  it  is  solely  with 
this  design  that  I  have  noticed  a  passage  with  which,  it 
Becms  to  me,  some  critics,  and  those  among  the  best,  have 
been  unreasonably  dissatisfied.  If  Shakspere  be  the  \vonderj 

L 


146  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

of  the  ignorant,  he  is,  and  ought  to  be,  much  more  the 
wonder  of  the  learned :  not  only  from  profundity  of 
thought,  but  from  his  astonishing  and  intuitive  knowledge 
of  what  man  must  be  at  all  times,  and  under  all  circum- 
stances, he  is  rather  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  prophet  than  aa 
a  poet.  Yet,  with  all  these  unbounded  powers,  with  all  this 
might  and  majesty  of  genius,  he  makes  us  feel  as  if  he  were 
unconscious  of  himself,  and  of  his  high  destiny,  disguising 
the  half  god  in  the  simplicity  of  a  child. 


LECT.  XIL]  SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON.  147 


LECTURE   XIL 

TN  the  last  lecture  I  endeavoured  to  point  out  in  Shak' 
•*•  spere  those  characters  in  which  pride  of  intellect,  with- 
out moral  feeling,  is  supposed  to  be  the  ruling  impulse, 
such  as  lago,  Richard  III.,  and  even  Falstaff.  In  Richard 
III.,  ambition  is,  as  it  were,  the  channel  in  which  this 
impulse  directs  itself ;  the  character  is  drawn  with  the 
greatest  fulness  and  perfection  ;  and  the  poet  has  not  only 
given  us  that  character,  grown  up  and  completed,  but  he 
has  shown  us  its  very  source  and  generation.  The  infe- 
riority of  his  person  made  the  hero  seek  consolation  and 
compensation  in  the  superiority  of  his  intellect ;  he  thus 
endeavoured  to  counterbalance  his  deficiency.  This  striking 
feature  is  portrayed  most  admirably  by  Shakspere,  who 
represents  Richard  bringing  forward  his  very  defects  and 
deformities  as  matters  of  boast.  It  was  the  same  pride  of 
intellect,  or  the  assumption  of  it,  that  made  John  Wilkes 
vaunt  that,  although  he  was  so  ugly,  he  only  wanted,  with 
any  lady,  ten  minutes'  start  of  the  handsomest  man  in 
England.  This  certainly  was  a  high  compliment  to  him- 
eelf  ;  but  a  higher  to  the  female  sex,  on  the  supposition 
that  Wilkes  possessed  this  superiority  of  intellect,  and  re- 
lied upon  it  for  making  a  favourable  impression,  because 
ladies  would  know  how  to  estimate  his  advantages. 

I  will  now  proceed  to  offer  some  remarks  upon  the 
tragedy  of  "  Richard  II.",  on  account  of  its  not  very  ap- 
parent, but  still  intimate,  connection  with  "Richard  III." 


148  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

As,  in  the  last,  Shakspere  has  painted  a  man  -where  am- 
bition is  the  channel  in  which  the  ruling  impulse  runs,  so, 
in  the  first,  he  has  given  us  a  character,  under  the  name  of 
Bolingbroke,  or  Henry  IV.,  where  ambition  itself,  conjoined 
unquestionably  with  great  talents,  is  the  ruling  impulse. 
In  Richard  III.  the  pride  of  intellect  makes  use  of  am- 
bition as  its  means  ;  in  Bolingbroke  the  gratification  of  am- 
bition is  the  end,  and  talents  are  the  means. 

One  main  object  of  these  lectures  is  to  point  out  the 
superiority  of  Shakspere  to  other  dramatists,  and  no  supe- 
riority can  be  more  striking,  than  that  this  wonderful  poet 
could  take  two  characters,  which  at  first  sight  seem  so  much 
alike,  and  yet,  when  carefully  and  minutely  examined,  are 
so  totally  distinct. 

The  popularity  of  "  Richard  II."  is  owing,  in  a  greai 
measure,  to  the  masterly  delineation  of  the  principal  cha- 
racter ;  but  were  there  no  other  ground  for  admiring  it,  it 
would  deserve  the  highest  applause,  from  the  fact  that  it 
contains  the  most  magnificent,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the 
truest  eulogium  of  our  native  country  that  the  English 
language  can  boast,  or  which  can  be  produced  from  any 
other  tongue,  not  excepting  the  proud  claims  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  When  I  feel,  that  upon  the  morality  of  Britain  ' 
-depends  the  safety  of  Britain,  and  that  her  morality  is  sup- 
ported and  illustrated  by  our  national  feeling,  I  cannot  read 
these  grand  lines  without  joy  and  triumph.  Let  it  be  re-.  • 
membered,  that  while  this  country  is  proudly  pre-eminent 
in  morals,  her  enemy  has  only  maintained  his  station  by 
superiority  in  mechanical  appliances.  Many  of  those  who 
hear  me  will,  no  doubt,  anticipate  the  passage  I  refer  to> 
and  it  runs  as  follows  : — 

"  This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  sceptcr'd  isle, 
This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 
This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise ; 

This  fortress,  built  by  nature  for  herself 

• 


L2CT.  XII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MIMON.  14'} 

Against  infection  and  the  hand  of  war  ; 

This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world  j 

This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea, 

Which  serves  it  in  the  office  of  a  wall, 

Or  as  a  moat  defensive  to  a  house, 

Against  the  envy  of  less  happier  lands  ; 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earih,  this  realm,  this  Englan.1, 

This  nurse,  this  teeming  womb  of  royal  kings, 

Feared  by  their  breed,  and  famous  by  their  birth, 

Henowned  for  their  deeds  as  far  from  home, 

For  Christian  service  and  true  chivalry, 

As  is  the  Sepulchre  in  stubborn  Jewry 

Of  the  world's  ransom,  blessed  Mary's  son : 

This  land  of  sucli  dear  souls,  this  dear,  dear  land, 

Dear  for  her  reputation  through  the  world, 

Is  now  leas'd  out,  I  die  pronouncing  it, 

Like  to  a  tenement,  or  pelting  farm. 

England,  bound  in  with  the  triumphant  sea, 

Whose  rocky  shore  beats  back  the  envious  siege 

Of  watery  Neptune,  is  now  bound  in  with  shame, 

With  inky  blots,  and  rotten  parchment  bonds." 

Act  II. ,  Scene  I. 

Every  motive  to  patriotism,  every  cause  producing  it,  is 
here  collected,  without  one  of  those  cold  abstractions  so 
frequently  substituted  by  modern  poets.  If  this  passage 
were  recited  in  a  theatre  with  due  energy  and  under- 
standing, with  a  proper  knowledge  of  the  words,  and  a  fit; 
expression  of  their  meaning,  every  man  would  retire  from 
it  secure  in  his  country's  freedom,  if  secure  in  his  own 
constant  virtue. 

The  principal  personages  in  this  tragedy  are  Richard  II., 
Bolingbroke,  and  York.  I  will  speak  of  the  last  first, 
although  it  is  the  least  important ;  but  the  keeping  of  all 
is  most  admirable.  York  is  a  man  of  no  strong  powers  of 
mind,  but  of  earnest  wishes  to  do  right,  contented  in  him- 
self alone,  if  he  have  acted  well :  he  points  out  to  Richard 
tLe  effects  of  his  thoughtless  extravagance,  and  the  dangers 
by  which  he  is  encompassed,  but  having  done  so,  he  is 


150  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

satisfied ;  there  is  no  after  action  on  his  part ;  he  does 
nothing ;  he  remains  passive.  When  old  Gaunt  is  dying, 
York  takes  care  to  give  his  own  opinion  to  the  King,  and 
that  done  he  retires,  as  it  were,  into  himself. 

It  has  been  stated,  from  the  first,  that  one  of  my  pur- 
poses in  these  lectures  is,  to  meet  and  refute  popular  ob- 
jections to  particular  points  in  the  works  of  our  great 
dramatic  poet ;  and  I  cannot  help  observing  here  npon  the 
beauty,  and  true  force  of  nature,  with  which  conceits,  as 
they  are  called,  and  sometimes  even  puns,  are  introduced. 
What  has  been  the  reigning  fault  of  an  age  must,  at  one 
time  or  another,  have  referred  to  something  beautiful  in 
the  human  mind ;  and,  however  conceits  may  have  been 
misapplied,  however  they  may  have  been  disadvantageonsly 
multiplied,  we  should  recollect  that  there  never  was  an 
abuse  of  anything,  but  it  previously  has  had  its  use.  Gaunt, 
on  his  death-bed,  sends  for  the  young  King,  and  Richard, 
entering,  insolently  and  unfeelingly  says  to  him  : 

"  What,  comfurt,  man  !  how  is't  with  aged  Gaunt  ?  " 

Act  II.,  Scene  1. 

and  Gaunt  replies : 

"  O,  how  that  name  befits  my  composition  I 
Old  Gaunt,  indeed  ;  and  gaunt  in  being  old  : 
Within  me  grief  hath  kept  a  tedious  fast, 
And  who  abstains  from  meat,  that  is  not  gaunt  ? 
For  sleeping  England  long  time  have  I  watched  ;. 
Watching  breeds  leanness,  leanness  is  all  gaunt  t 
The  pleasure  that  some  fathers  feed  upon 
Is  my  strict  fast,  I  mean  my  children's  looks; 
And  therein  fasting,  thou  hast  made  me  gaunt. 
Gaunt  am  I  for  the  grave,  gaunt  as  a  grave, 
Whose  hollow  womb  inherits  nought  but  bones." 

Richard  inquires, 

"  Can  sick  men  play  so  nicely  with  their  names  ?  " 


.  X1T.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTON.  ]  51 

To  which  Gaunt  answers,  giving  the  true  justification  of 
conceits : 

"  No ;  misery  makes  sport  to  mock  itself: 
Since  thou  dust  seek  to  kill  my  name  in  me, 
I  mock  my  name,  great  king,  to  flatter  thee." 

He  that  knows  the  state  of  the  human  mind  in  deep 
passion  must  know,  that  it  approaches  to  that  condition  of 
madness,  which  is  not  absolute  frenzy  or  delirium,  but 
which  models  all  things  to  one  reigning  idea  ;  still  it  strays 
from  the  main  subject  of  complaint,  and  still  it  returns  to 
it,  by  a  sort  of  irresistible  impulse.  Abruptness  of  thought, 
under  such  circumstances,  is  true  to  nature,  and  no  man 
was  more  sensible  of  it  than  Shakspere.  In  a  modern  poem 
a  mad  mother  thus  complains  : 

"  The  breeze  I  see  is  in  yon  tree  : 
It  comes  to  cool  my  babe  and  me." l 

This  is  an  instance  of  the  abruptness  of  thought,  so  natural 
to  the  excitement  and  agony  of  grief ;  and  if  it  be  admired 
in  images,  can  we  say  that  it  is  unnatural  in  words,  which 
are,  as  it  were,  a  part  of  our  life,  of  our  very  existence  ? 
In  the  Scriptures  themselves  these  plays  upon  words  are  to 
be  found,  as  well  as  in  the  best  works  of  the  ancients,  and 
in  the  most  delightful  parts  of  Shakspere ;  and  because 
this  additional  grace,  not  well  understood,  has  in  some 
instances  been  converted  into  a  deformity — because  it  has 
been  forced  into  places,  where  it  is  evidently  improper  and 
unnatural,  are  we  therefore  to  include  the  whole  appli- 
cation of  it  in  one  general  condemnation  ?  When  it  seems 
objectionable,  when  it  excites  a  feeling  contrary  to  the 
situation,  when  it  perhaps  disgusts,  it  is  our  business  to 
inquire  whether  the  conceit  has  been  rightly  or  wrongly 
used — whether  it  is  in  a  right  or  in  a  wrong  place  ? 

1  From  Words  worth's  pcero,  "  Her  Eyes  are  Wild." 


152  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

In  order  to  decide  this  point,  it  is  obviously  necessary  to 
consider  the  state  of  mind,  and  the  degree  of  passion,  of  the 
person  using  this  play  upon  words.  Resort  to  this  grace 
may,  in  some  cases,  deserve  censure,  not  because  it  is  a  play 
upon  words,  but  because  it  is  a  play  upon  words  in  a  wrong 
place,  and  at  a  wrong  time.  What  is  right  in  one  state  of 
mind  is  wrong  in  another,  and  much  more  depends  upon 
that,  than  upon  the  conceit  (so  to  call  it)  itself.  I  feel  the 
importance  of  these  remarks  strongly,  because  the  greater 
part  of  the  abuse,  I  might  say  filth,  thrown  out  and  heaped 
upon  Shakspere,  has  originated  in  want  of  consideration. 
Dr.  Johnson  asserts  that  Shakspere  loses  the  world  for  a 
toy,  and  can  no  more  withstand  a  pun,  or  a  play  upon 
words,  than  his  Antony  could  resist  Cleopatra.  Certain  it 
is,  that  Shakspere  gained  more  admiration  in  his  day,  and 
long  afterwards,  by  the  use  of  speech  in  this  way,  than 
modern  writers  have  acquired  by  the  abandonment  of  the 
practice :  the  latter,  in  adhering  to,  what  they  have  been 
pleased  to  call,  the  rules  of  art,  have  sacrificed  nature. 

Having  said  thus  much  on  the.  often  falsely  supposed, 
blemishes  of  our  poet — blemishes  which  are  said  to  prevail 
in  "  Richard  II "  especially, — I  will  now  advert  to  the 
character  of  the  King.  He  is  represented  as  a  man  not 
deficient  in  immediate  courage,  which  displays  itself  at 
his  assassination  ;  or  in  powers  of  mind,  as  appears  by  the 
foresight  he  exhibits  throughout  the  play  :  still,  he  is  weak, 
variable,  and  womanish,  and  possesses  feelings,  which, 
amiable  in  a  female,  are  misplaced  in  a  man,  and  altogether 
unfit  for  a  king.  In  prosperity  he  is  insolent  and  presump- 
tuous, and  in  adversity,  if  we  are  to  believe  Dr.  Johnson, 
he  is  humane  and  pious.  I  cannot  admit  the  latter  epithet, 
because  I  perceive  the  utmost  consistency  of  character  in 
Richard :  what  he  was  at  first,  he  is  at  last,  excepting  as 
far  as  he  yields  to  circumstances :  what  he  showed  himself 
at  the  commencement  of  the  play,  he  shows  himself  at  the 


LSCT.  XII.]  SHAKSPERE    AND    MILTON  153 

end  of  it.     Dr.  Johnson  assigns  to  him  rather  the  virtue  of 
&  confessor  than  that  of  a  king. 

True  it  is,  that  he  may  be  said  to  be  overwhelmed  by  the 
earliest  misfortune  that  befalls  him  ;  but,  so  far  from  his 
feelings  or  disposition  being  changed  or  subdued,  the  very 
first  glimpse  of  the  returning  sunshine  of  hope  reanimates 
his  spirits,  and  exalts  him  to  as  strange  and  unbecoming  a 
•degree  of  elevation,  as  he  was  before  sunk  in  mental 
•depression  :  the  mention  of  those  in  his  misfortunes,  who 
liad  contributed  to  his  downfall,  but  who  had  before  been 
liis  nearest  friends  and  favourites,  calls  forth  from  him 
«xpressions  of  the  bitterest  hatred  and  revenge.  Thus, 
"where  Richard  asks  : 

"  Where  is  the  Earl  of  Wiltshire  ?    Where  is  Bagot  ? 

What  is  become  of  Bushy  ?    Where  is  Green  ? 

That  they  have  let  the  dangerous  enemy 

Measure  our  confines  with  such  peaceful  steps  ? 

If  we  prevail,  their  heads  shall  pay  for  it. 

I  warrant  they  have  made  peace  with  Bolingbroke." 

Act  ///.,  Scene  2. 

Scroop  answers : 

"  Peace  have  they  made  with  him,  indeed,  my  lord." 
Upon  which  Richard,  without  hearing  more,  breaks  out : 

"  O  villains!  vipers,  damn'd  without  redemption! 
Dogs,  easily  won  to  fawn  on  any  man  ! 
Snakes,  in  my  heart-blood  warm'd,  that  sting  my  heart ! 
Three  Judases,  each  one  thrice  worse  than  Judas! 
Would  they  make  peace  ?  terrible  hell  make  war 
Upon  their  spotted  souls  for  this  offence !  " 

Scroop  observes  upon  this  change,  and  tells  tho  King 
bow  they  had  made  their  peace 

"  Sweet  love,  I  see,  changing  his  property, 
Turns  to  the  sourest  and  most  deadly  hate. 


154  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

Again  uncurse  their  souls  :  their  peace  is  made 
With  heads  and  not  with  hands  :  those  whom  you  curse 
Have  felt  the  worst  of  death's  destroying  wound, 
And  lie  full  low,  grav'd  in  the  hollow  ground." 

Richard  receiving  at  first  an  equivocal  answer, — "  Peace 
have  they  made  with  him,  indeed,  my  lord," — takes  it  in 
the  worst  sense  :  his  promptness  to  suspect  those  who  had 
been  his  friends  turns  his  love  to  hate,  and  calls  forth  the 
most  tremendous  execrations. 

From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  play  he  pours  out 
all  the  peculiarities  and  powers  of  his  mind  :  he  catches  at 
new  hope,  and  seeks  new  friends,  is  disappointed,  despairs, 
and  at  length  makes  a  merit  of  his  resignation.  He  scatters 
himself  into  a  multitude  of  images,  and  in  conclusion 
endeavours  to  shelter  himself  from  that  which  is  around 
him  by  a  cloud  of  his  own  thoughts.  Throughout  his 
whole  career  may  be  noticed  the  most  rapid  transitions — 
from  the  highest  insolence  to  the  lowest  humility — from 
hope  to  despair,  from  the  extravagance  of  love  to  the  agonies 
of  resentment,  and  from  pretended  resignation  to  the 
bitterest  reproaches.  The  whole  is  joined  with  the  utmost 
richness  and  copiousness  of  thought,  and  were  there  an 
actor  capable  of  representing  Richard,  the  part  would 
delight  us  more  than  any  other  of  Shakspere's  master- 
pieces,— with,  perhaps,  the  single  exception  of  King  Lear. 
I  know  of  no  character  drawn  by  our  great  poet  with  such 
unequalled  skill  as  that  of  Richard  II. 

Next  we  come  to  Henry  Bolingbroke,  the  rival  of 
Richard  II.  He  appears  as  a  man  of  dauntless  courage, 
and  of  ambition  equal  to  that  of  Richard  III.  ;  but,  as  I 
have  stated,  the  difference  between  the  two  is  most  admi- 
rably conceived  and  preserved.  In  Richard  III.  all  that 
surrounds  him  is  only  dear  as  it  feeds  his  inward  sense  of 
superiority  :  he  is  no  vulgar  tyrant — no  Nero  or  Caligula  : 
he  has  always  an  end  in  view,  and  vast  fertility  of  means  to 


LECT.  XII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MILTON.  155 

accomplish  that  end.  On  the  other  hand,  in  Bolingbroke 
we  find  a  man  who  in  the  outset  has  been  sorely  injured  : 
then,  we  see  him  encouraged  by  the  grievances  of  his 
country,  and  by  the  strange  mismanagement  of  the  govern- 
ment, yet  at  the  same  time  scarcely  daring  to  look  at  his 
own  views,  or  to  acknowledge  them  as  designs.  He  comes 
home  under  the  pretence  of  claiming  his  dukedom,  and  he 
professes  that  to  be  his  object  almost  to  the  last ;  but,  at 
the  last,  he  avows  his  purpose  to  its  full  extent,  of  which 
he  was  himself  unconscious  in  the  earlier  stages. 

This  is  proved  by  so  many  passages,  that  I  will  only 
select  one  of  them  ;  and  I  take  it  the  rather,  because  out  of 
the  many  octavo  volumes  of  text  and  notes,  the  page  on 
which  it  occurs  is,  I  believe,  the  only  one  left  naked  by  the 
commentators.  It  is  where  Bolingbroke  approaches  the 
castle  in  which  the  unfortunate  King  has  taken  shelter : 
York  is  in  Bolingbroke's  company — the  same  York  who  is 
still  contented  with  speaking  the  truth,  but  doing  nothing 
for  the  sake  of  the  truth, — drawing  back  after  he  has 
spoken,  and  becoming  merely  passive  when  he  ought  to 
display  activity.  Northumberland  says, 

"  The  news  is  very  fair  and  good,  my  lord 
Richard  not  fur  from  hence  hath  hid  his  head." 

Act  III.,  Scene  \ 

York  rebukes  him  thus  : 

"  It  would  beseem  the  Lord  Northumberland 
To  say  King  Richard  : — Alack,  the  heavy  day, 
When  such  a  sacred  king  should  hide  his  head ! " 

Northumberland  replies : 

"  Your  grace  mistakes  me  : '  only  to  be  brief 
Left  I  his  title  out." 

1  Omit "  me." 


156  LECTURES    ON  [1811-12 

To  whicli  York  rejoins  : 

"  The  time  hath  been, 

Would  you  have  been  so  brief  with  him,  he  would 
Have  been  so  brief  with  you,  to  shorten  you, 
For  taking  so  the  head,  your  whole  head's  length." 

Bolingbroke  observes, 

"  Mistake  not,  uncle,  farther  than  you  should ;  " 

And  York  answers,  with  a  play  upon  the  words  "take  " 
•and  "mistake :  " 

"  Take  not,  good  cousin,  farther  than  you  should, 
Lest  you  mistake.1    The  heavens  are  o'er  our  heads." 

Here,  give  me  leave  to  remark  in  passing,  that  the  play 
upon  words  is  perfectly  natural,  and  quite  in  character : 
the  answer  is  in  unison  with  the  tone  of  passion,  and  seems 
connected  with  some  phrase  then  in  popular  use.  Baling- 
broke  tells  York : 

"  I  know  it,  uncle,  and  oppose  not  myself 
Against  their  will." 

Just  afterwards,  Bolingbroke  thus  addresses  himself  to 
Northumberland : 

«  Noble  lord,* 

Go  to  the  rude  ribs  of  that  ancient  castle ; 
Through  brazen  trumpet  send  the  breath  of  parle  a 
Into  his  ruin'd  ears,  and  thus  deliver." 

Here,  in  the  phrase  "  into  his  ruin'd  ears,"  I  Lave  no 
doubt  that  Shakspere  purposely  used  the  personal  pronoun, 

1  1st  Fol.,  1623,  and  Globe  Shak.,  read, 

"  Lest  you  mistake  the  .  .  . 

»  The  1st  Fol.  reads  "lord"  and  "parle."  The  Globe  Edn.  1m 
"  lords  "  and  "  parley." 


IJECT.  XII.]  SHAKSPERE  AND   MILTON.  157 

"  his,"  to  show,  that  although  Bolingbroke  was  only 
speaking  of  the  castle,  his  thoughts  dwelt  on  the  king.  In 
Milton  the  pronoun,  "her"  is  employed,  in  relation  to 
"form,"  in  a  manner  somewhat  similar.  Bolingbroke  had 
an  equivocation  in  his  mind,  and  was  thinking  of  the  kingy 
while  speaking  of  the  castle.  He  goes  on  to  tell  Northumber- 
land what  to  say,  beginning, 

"  Henry  Bolingbroke," 

which  is  almost  the  only  instance  in  which  a  name  forms 
the  whole  line ;  Shakspere  meant  it  to  convey  Bolingbroke's- 
opinion  of  his  own  importance  : — 

"  Henry  Bolingbroke 

On  both  his  knees  doth  kiss  King  Richard's  hand, 

And  sends  allegiance  and  true  faith  of  heart 

To  his  most  royal  person ;  hither  come 

Even  at  his  feet  to  lay  my  arms  and  power, 

Provided  that,  my  banishment  repealed, 

And  lands  restor'd  again,  be  freely  granted. 

If  not,  I'll  use  th'  advantage  of  my  power, 

And  lay  the  summer's  dust  with  showers  of  blood, 

Rain'd  from  the  wounds  of  slaughter'd  Englishmen." 

At  this  point  Bolingbroke  seems  to  have  been  checked  by 
the  eye  of  York,  and  thus  proceeds  in  consequence : 

"  The  which,  how  far  off  from  the  mind  of  Bolingbroke 
It  is,  such  crimson  tempest  should  bedrcnch 
The  fresh  green  lap  of  fair  King  Richard's  land, 
My  stooping  duty  tenderly  shall  show." 

He  passes  suddenly  from  insolence  to  humility,  owing  ixr 
the  silent  reproof  he  received  from  his  uncle.  This  change 
of  tone  would  not  have  taken  place,  had  Bolingbroke  been 
allowed  to  proceed  according  to  the  natural  bent  of  his  own 
mind,  and  the  flow  of  the  subject.  Let  me  direct  attention 
to  the  subsequent  lines,  for  the  same  reason  ;  they  are  part 
of  the  same  speech : 


158  LECTURES  ON  [1811-12 

"  Let's  march  without  the  noise  of  threat'ning  drum, 

That  from  the  '  castle's  tatter'd  battlements 

Our  fair  appointments  may  be  well  perused. 

Methinks,  King  Richard  and  myself  should  meet 

With  no  less  terror  than  the  elements 

Of  fire  and  water,  when  their  thundering  shock 

At  meeting  tears  the  cloudy  cheeks  of  heaven." 

Having  proceeded  thus  far  with  the  exaggeration  of  his 
own  importance,  York  again  checks  him,  and  Bolingbroke 
adds,  in  a  very  different  strain, 

"  He  be  2  the  fire,  I  '11  be  the  yielding  water : 
The  rage  be  his,  while 3  on  the  earth  I  rain 
My  waters ;  on  the  earth,  and  not  on  him." 

I  have  thus  adverted  to  the  three  great  personages 
in  this  drama,  Richard,  Bolingbroke,  and  York  ;  and  of  the 
whole  play  it  may  be  asserted,  that  with  the  exception 
of  some  of  the  last  scenes  (though  they  have  exquisite 
beauty),  Shakspere  seems  to  have  risen  to  the  summit 
of  excellence  in  the  delineation  and  preservation  of 
character. 

We  will  now  pass  to  "  Hamlet,"  in  order  to  obviate  some 
of  the  general  prejudices  against  the  author,  in  reference 
to  the  character  of  the  hero.  Much  has  been  objected  to 
which  ought  to  have  been  praised,  and  many  beauties  of  tho 
highest  kind  have  been  neglected,  because  they  are  some- 
what hidden. 

The  first  question  we  should  ask  ourselves  is — What  did 
Shakspere  mean  when  he  drew  the  character  of  Hamlet  ? 
He  never  wrote  anything  without  design,  and  what  was 
his  design  when  he  sat  down  to  produce  this  tragedy  ?  My 
i)elief  is,  that  he  always  regarded  his  story,  before  he  began 
to  write,  much  in  the  same  light  as  a  painter  regards  his 

1  Read  «  this."  »  Read  <;  Be  ho." 

»  So,  1st  Fol.     The  Globe  Edn.  has  "  whilst." 


LECT.  XII. J  SHAKsrERE  AND  MILTON  159 

canvas,  before  lie  begins  to  paint — as  a  mere  vehicle  for  his 
thoughts — as  the  ground  upon  which  he  was  to  work. 
What  then  was  the  point  to  which  Shakspere  directed 
himself  in  Hamlet  ?  He  intended  to  portray  a  person, 
in  whose  view  the  external  world,  and  all  its  incidents  and 
objects,  were  comparatively  dim,  and  of  no  interest  in 
themselves,  and  which  began  to  interest  only,  when  they 
were  reflected  in  the  mirror  of  his  mind.  Hamlet  beheld 
external  things  in  the  same  way  that  a  man  of  vivid  imagi- 
nation, who  shuts  his  eyes,  sees  what  has  previously  made 
an  impression  on  his  organs. 

The  poet  places  him  in  the  most  stimulating  circum- 
stances that  a  human  being  can  be  placed  in.  He  is  the 
heir  apparent  of  a  throne  ;  his  father  dies  suspiciously ; 
his  mother  excludes  her  son  from  his  throne  by  marrying 
his  uncle.  This  is  not  enough  ;  but  the  Ghost  of  the  mur- 
dered father  is  introduced,  to  assure  the  son  that  he  was 
put  to  death  by  his  own  brother.  What  is  the  effect  upon 
the  son  ? — instant  action  and  pursuit  of  revenge  ?  No : 
endless  reasoning  and  hesitating — constant  urging  and 
solicitation  of  the  mind  to  act,  and  as  constant  an  escape 
from  action  ;  ceaseless  reproaches  of  himself  for  sloth  and 
negligence,  while  the  whole  energy  of  his  resolution  evapo- 
rates in  these  reproaches.  This,  too,  not  from  cowardice, 
for  he  is  drawn  as  one  of  the  bravest  of  his  time — not  from 
want  of  forethought  or  slowness  of  apprehension,  for  he 
sees  through  the  very  souls  of  all  who  surround  him,  but 
merely  from  that  aversion  to  action,  which  prevails  among 
such  as  have  a  world  in  themselves. 

How  admirable,  too,  is  the  judgment  of  the  poet ! 
Hamlet's  own  disordered  fancy  has  not  conjured  up  tho 
spirit  of  his  father ;  it  has  been  seen  by  others  ;  he  is  pre- 
pared by  them  to  witness  its  re -appearance,  and  when 
ho  does  see  it,  Hamlet  is  not  brought  forward  as  having 
long  brooded  on  the  subject.  The  moment  before  the 


ICO  LECTURES   ON  [1811-12 

Ghost  enters,  Hamlet  speaks  of  other  matters  :  he  men- 
tions the  coldness  of  the  night,  and  observes  that  he  has 
not  heard  the  clock  strike,  adding,  in  reference  to  the 
custom  of  drinking,  that  it  is 

"More  honour'd  in  the  breach  than  the  observance." 

Act  I.,  Scene  4. 

Owing  to  the  tranquil  state  of  his  mind,  he  indulges  in 
some  moral  reflections.  Afterwards,  the  Ghost  suddenly 
enters. 

"  Hor,  Look,  my  lord  !  it  comes. 

Ham.  Angels  and  ministers  of  grace  defend  us ! " 

The  same  thing  occurs  in  "  Macbeth  :  "  in  the  dagger- 
gcene,  the  moment  before  the  hero  sees  it,  he  has  his  mind 
applied  to  some  indifferent  matters;  "Go,  tell  thy  mis- 
tress," &c.  Thus,  in  both  cases,  the  preternatural  appear- 
ance has  all  the  effect  of  abruptness,  and  the  reader  is- 
totally  divested  of  the  notion,  that  the  figure  is  a  vision  of 
a  highly  wrought  imagination. 

Here  Shakspere  adapts  himself  so  admirably  to  the 
situation — in  other  -words,  so  puts  himself  into  it — that 
though  poetry,  his  language  is  the  very  language  of  natur.e. 
No  terms,  associated  with  such  feelings,  can  occur  to  us  so 
proper  as  those  which  he  has  employed,  especially  on 
the  highest,  the  most  august,  and  the  most  awful  subjects 
that  can  interest  a  human  being  in  this  sentient  world. 
That  this  is  no  mere  fancy,  I  can  undertake  to  establish 
from  hundreds,  I  might  say  thousands,  of  passages.  No 
character  he  has  drawn,  in  the  whole  list  of  his  plays,  could 
so  well  and  fitly  express  himself,  as  in  the  language  Shak- 
spere has  put  into  his  mouth.  ' 

There  is  no  indecision  about  Hamlet,  as  far  as  his  own, 
sense  of  duty  is  concerned ;  he  knows  well  what  he  ought. 
to  do,  and  over  and  over  again  he  makes  up  his  mind  to  do 
it.  The  moment  the  players,  and  the  two  spies  set  upon 


.  XII.]  SHAKSPERE  AND    MILTON.  161 

him,  have  withdrawn,  of  whom,  he  takes  leave  with  a  line 
so  expressive  of  his  contempt, 

"  Ay  so ;  good  bye  you.1 — Now  I  am  alone," 

he  breaks  out  into  a  delirium  of  rage  against  himself  for 
neglecting  to  perform  the  solemn  duty  he  had  undertaken, 
and  contrasts  the  factitious  and  artificial  display  of  feeling 
by  the  player  with  his  own  apparent  indifference  ; 

'•  What's  Hecuba  to  him,  or  he  to  Hecuba, 
That  he  should  weep  for  her  ?  " 

Yet  the  player  did  weep  for  her,  and  was  in  an  agony  of 
grief  at  her  sufferings,  while  Hamlet  is  unable  to  rouse 
himself  to  action,  in  order  that  he  may  perform  the  com- 
mand of  his  father,  who  had  come  from  the  grave  to  incite 
him  to  revenge  : — 

"  This  is  most  brave  ! 
That  I,  the  son  of  a  dear  father  murder'd, 
Prompted  to  my  revenge  by  heaven  and  hell, 
Must,  like  a  whore,  unpack  my  heart  with  words, 
And  fall  a  cursing  like  a  very  drab, 
A  scullion."  Act  II.,  Scene  2. 

It  is  the  same  feeling,  the  same  conviction  of  what  is 
his  duty,  that  makes  Hamlet  exclaim  in  a  subsequent  part 
of  the  tragedy : 

"  How  all  occasions  do  inform  against  me, 
And  spur  my  dull  revenge  !    What  is  a  man, 
If  his  chief  good,  and  market  of  his  time, 
Be  but  to  sleep  and  feed  ?    A  beast,  no  more. 

I  do  not  know 

Why  yet  I  live  to  say — '  this  thing's  to  do,' 

Sith  I  have  cause  and  will  and  strength  and  means 

To  do't."  Act  IV.,  Scene  4. 

Yet  with  all  this  strong  conviction  of  duty,  and  with  all 
this  resolution  arising  out  of  strong  conviction,  nothing  is 

1  1st  Fol.,  "  God  buy'  ye  " ;  Globe  Shak.  «  God  be  wi'  ye." 

M 


162  LECTURES   01?  [1811-12 

done.  This  admirable  and  consistent  character,  deeply 
acquainted  with  his  own  feelings,  painting  them  with  such 
wonderful  power  and  accuracy,  and  firmly  persuaded  that 
a  moment  ought  not  to  be  lost  in  executing  the  solemn 
charge  committed  to  him,  still  yields  to  the  same  retiring 
from  reality,  which  is  the  result  of  having,  what  we  express 
by  the  terms,  a  world  within  himself. 

Such  a  mind  as  Hamlet's  is  near  akin  to  madness. 
Dry  den  has  somewhere  said,1 

"  Great  wit  to  madness  nearly  is  allied," 

and  he  was  right ;  for  he  means  by  "  wit  "  that  greatness 
of  genius,  which  led  Hamlet  to  a  perfect  knowledge  of  his 
own  character,  which,  with  all  strength  of  motive,  was  so 
weak  as  to  be  unable  to  carry  into  act  his  own  most  obvious 
duty. 

With  all  this  he  has  a  sense  of  imperfectness,  which 
becomes  apparent  when  he  is  moralizing  on  the  skull  in 
the  churchyard.  Something  is  wanting  to  his  complete- 
ness— something  is  deficient  which  remains  to  be  supplied, 
and  he  is  therefore  described  as  attached  to  Ophelia.  His 
madness  is  assumed,  when  he  finds  that  witnesses  have 
been  placed  behind  the  arras  to  listen  to  what  passes,  and 
when  the  heroine  has  been  thrown  in  his  way  as  a  decoy. 

Another  objection  has  been  taken  by  Dr.  Johnson,  and 
Shakspere  has  been  taxed  very  severely.  I  refer  to  the 
scene  where  Hamlet  enters  and  finds  his  uncle  praying, 
and  refuses  to  take  his  life,  excepting  when  he  is  in  the 
height  of  his  iniquity.  To  assail  him  at  such  a  moment  of 
confession  and  repentance,  Hamlet  declares, 

"  Why,5  this  is  hire  and  salary,  not  revenge." 

Act  III.,  Scene  3. 

"  Great  wits  are  sure  to  madness  near  allied, 
And  thin  partitions  do  their  bounds  divide." 

Absalom  and  Acfiifophel,  163-4, 
»  Read"O." 


CT.  XII.]  SHAKSPERE   AND   MIL10N.  103 

He  therefore  forbears,  and   postpones  his  uncle's  death, 
until  he  can  catch  him  in  some  act 

"  That  has  no  relish  of  salvation  in't." 

This  conduct,  and  this  sentiment,  Dr.  Johnson  has  pro- 
nounced to  be  so  atrocious  and  horrible,  as  to  be  unfit  to 
be  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  human  being.1  The  fact,  how- 
ever, is  that  Dr.  Johnson  did  not  understand  the  character 
of  Hamlet,  and  censured  accordingly:  the  determination 
to  allow  the  guilty  King  to  escape  at  such  a  moment  is 
only  part  of  the  indecision  and  irresoluteness  of  the  hero. 
Hamlet  seizes  hold  of  a  pretext  for  not  acting,  when  he 
might  have  acted  so  instantly  and  effectually :  therefore, 
he  again  defers  the  revenge  he  was  bound  to  seek,  and  de-, 
clares  his  determination  to  accomplish  it  at  some  time, 

"  When  he  is  drunk,  asleep,  or  in  his  rage, 
Or  in  th'  incestuous  pleasures  of  his  bed." 

This,  allow  me  to  impress  upon  you  most  emphatically, 
was  merely  the  excuse  Hamlet  made  to  himself  for  not 
taking  advantage  of  this  particular  and  favourable  moment 
for  doing  justice  upon  his  guilty  uncle,  at  the  urgent  in- 
stance of  the  spirit  of  his  father. 

Dr.  Johnson  farther  states,  that  in  the  voyage  to  Eng- 
land, Shakspere  merely  follows  the  novel  as  he  found  it, 
as  if  the  poet  had  no  other  reason  for  adhering  to  his 
original ;  but  Shakspere  never  followed  a  novel,  because 
he  found  such  and  such  an  incident  in  it,  but  because  he 
saw  that  the  story,  as  he  read  it,  contributed  to  enforce,  or 
to  explain  some  great  truth  inherent  in  human  nature. 
He  never  could  lack  invention  to  alter  or  improve  a  popular 
narrative ;  but  he  did  not  wantonly  vary  from  it,  when  he 
knew  that,  as  it  was  related,  it  would  so  well  apply  to  his 

'  See  Malme's  Shakspere  by  Boswell,  yii.  382,  for  Johnson's  note 
upon  this  part  of  the  scene. — J.  P.  C. 


164  LECTCEES   ON  [1811-12 

own  great  purpose.  He  saw  at  once  how  consistent  it  was 
with  the  character  of  Hamlet,  that  after  still  resolving, 
and  still  deferring,  still  determining  to  execute,  and  still 
postponing  execution,  he  should  finally,  in  the  infirmity  of 
his  disposition,  give  himself  up  to  his  destiny,  and  hopelessly 
place  himself  in  the  power,  and  at  the  mei'cy  of  his  enemies. 

Even  after  the  scene  with  Osrick,  we  see  Hamlet  still 
indulging  in  reflection,  and  hardly  thinking  of  the  task  he 
Las  just  undertaken  :  he  is  all  despatch  and  resolution,  as 
far  as  words  and  present  intentions  are  concerned,  but  all 
hesitation  and  irresolution,  when  called  upon  to  carry  his 
words  and  intentions  into  effect ;  so  that,  resolving  to  do 
everything,  he  does  nothing.  He  is  full  of  purpose,  but 
void  of  that  quality  of  mind  which  accomplishes  purpose. 

Anything  finer  than  this  conception,  and  working  out  of 
a  great  character,  is  merely  impossible.  Shakspere  wished 
to  impress  upon  us  the  truth,  that  action  is  the  chief  end 
of  existence — that  no  faculties  of  intellect,  however  brilliant, 
can  be  considered  valuable,  or  indeed  otherwise  than  as 
misfortunes,  if  they  withdraw  us  from,  or  render  us  re- 
pugnant to  action,  and  lead  us  to  think  and  think  of  doing, 
•until  the  time  has  elapsed  when  we  can  do  anything  effec- 
tually. In  enforcing  this  moral  truth,  Shakspere  has  shown 
the  fulness  and  force  of  his  powers :  all  that  is  amiable 
and  excellent  in  nature  is  combined  in  Hamlet,  with  the 
exception  of  one  quality.  He  is  a  man  living  in  medita- 
tion, called  upon  to  act  by  every  motive  human  and  divine, 
but  the  great  object  of  his  life  is  defeated  by  continually 
resolving  to  do,  yet  doing  nothing  but  resolve. 


Note  on  the  Subjects  of  the  Eemahung  Lectures. 

The  Twelfth  Lecture,  as  advertised  in  the  Times,  was  to 
be  on  "  Shakspere  and  Milton ;  "  but  Milton  does  not  appear 


LECT.  XII.  ]          SHAKSPEBE  AND  MILTON.  165 

in  Mr.  Collier's  transcript.  We  learn  from  the  same  Journal 
that  Lecture  Thirteen  (which  covered  eventually  two  even- 
ings) was  to  be  on  the  same  subject,  with  "  strictures  on 
the  commentators  of  Shakspere,  and  especially  on  Dr. 
Johnson's  Preface ; "  that  Lecture  Fourteen  was  to  be  a 
continuation  of  "  the  review  of  Dr.  Johnson's  Preface ;  " 
the  fifteenth  to  be  "  the  commencement  of  a  series  of 
lectures  on  Milton ; "  the  sixteenth  to  conclude  "  tho 
Lectures  on  Milton,"  and  the  seventeenth  was  to  be  "  the 
last  lecture  in  illustration  of  the  principles  of  poetry,"  and 
to  consist  of  "strictures  on  the  modern  English  poets." 
It  would  seem  that,  towards  the  end,  at  least,  promise  and 
performance  varied,  and  that  Milton  was  all  but  passed 
over. 

See  Appendix.  Also  compare  the  allusions  to  these  later 
lectures  in  the  extracts  from  H.  C.  Robinson's  Diary, 
which  are  given  above. 


II. 

LECTURES   AND   NOTES  OF 

1818. 


LECTURES  AND  NOTES  OF  1818. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

§  1.  Two  Letters  and  a  Prospectus. 

A /TR.    COLLIER,  in   his   Preface   to   the  Lectures  of 
1811-12,  supplies  two  letters,  from  Wordsworth  and 
Lamb,  which  he  received  near  the  end  of  1817. 

"  Wednesday.1 
"  MY  DEAR  SIR, 

"Coleridge,  to  whom  all  but  certain  reviewers  wish 
well,  intends  to  try  the  effect  of  another  course  of  Lectures  in 
London  on  Poetry  generally,  and  on  Shakspere's  Poetry  particu- 
larly. He  gained  some  money  and  reputation  by  his  last  effort 
of  the  kind,  which  was,  indeed,  to  him  no  effort,  since  his  thoughts 
as  well  as  his  words  flow  spontaneously.  He  talks  as  a  bird 
sings,  as  if  he  could  not  help  it :  it  is  his  nature.  He  is  now  far 
from  well  in  body  or  spirits :  the  former  is  suffering  from  various 
causes,  and  the  latter  from  depression.  No  man  ever  deserved 
to  have  fewer  enemies,  yet,  as  he  thinks  and  says,  no  man  lias 
more,  or  more  virulent.  You  have  long  been  among  his  friends  ; 
and  as  far  as  you  can  go,  you  will  no  doubt  prove  it  on  this  as  on 
other  occasions.  We  are  all  anxious  on  his  account.  He  means 
to  call  upon  you  himself,  or  write  from  Highgate,  where  he 
now  is. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"  \V.  WORDSWORTH," 

1  "  Near  the  end  of  181 7."— J.  P.  C. 


170  LECTURES   AND   NOTES  OF  1818. 

"  The  Garden  of  England,  Wth  Deer.1 
"  DEAR  J.  P.  C. 

"  I  know  how  zealously  you  feel  for  our  friend  S.  T. 
Coleridge,  and  I  know  that  you  and  your  family  attended  his 
Lectures  four  or  five  years  ago.  He  is  in  bad  health,  and  worse 
mind,  and  unless  something  is  done  to  lighten  his  heart,  he  will 
soon  be  reduced  to  his  extremities ;  and  even  these  are  not  in 
the  best  condition.  I  am  sure  that  you  will  do  for  him  what  you 
can,  but  at  present  he  seems  in  a  mood  to  do  for  himself.  He 
projects  a  new  course,  not  of  physic,  nor  of  metaphysic,  nor  a 
new  course  of  life  ;  but  a  new  course  of  lectures  on  Shakspere 
and  Poetry.  There  is  no  man  better  qualified  (always  excepting 
number  one)  but  I  am  pre-engaged  for  a  series  of  dissertations 
on  India  and  India-pendence,  to  be  completed  at  the  expense 
of  the  Company,  in  I  know  not  (yet)  how  many  vols.  foolscap 
folio.  I  am  busy  getting  up  my  Hindu  mythology,  and  for  the 
purpose  I  am  once  more  enduring  Southey's  curse  (of  Kehama). 
To  be  serious,  Coleridge's  state  and  affairs  make  me  so ;  and 
there  are  particular  reasons  just  now  (and  have  been  any  time 
for  the  last  twenty  years)  why  he  should  succeed.  He  will  do 
so,  with  a  little  encouragement.  I  have  not  seen  him  lately,  and 
he  does  not  know  that  I  am  writing. 

"  Yours  (for  Coleridge's  sake)  in  haste, 

"C.  LAMB." 

These  letters  were  probably  called  forth  by  the  following 
Prospectus,2  which  was  issued,  as  Grillman  tells  us,  in  the 
autumn  of  1817. 

"  There  are  few  families,  at  present,  in  the  higher  and  middle 
classes  of  English  society,  in  which  literary  topics  and  the  pro- 
ductions of  the  Fine  Arts,  in  some  one  or  other  of  their  various 
forms,  do  not  occasionally  take  their  turn  in  contributing  to  the 
entertainment  of  the  social  board,  and  the  amusement  of  the 
circle  at  the  fire-side.  The  acquisitions  and  attainments  of  the 

1  "  Doubtless  written,  as  Wordsworth's  letter,  in  1817."     Lamb  now 
lived  at  the  corner  of  Bow  Street  and  Russell  Street,  and  "  The  Garden 
of  England  "  was  Covent  Garden. 

2  Printed  in   Gillman's   "  Life,"   and  previously  in    vol.    i.  of  the 
"  Remains." 


INTRODUCTORY.  171 

intellect  ought,  indeed,  to  hold  a  very  inferior  rank  in  our  esti- 
mation, opposed  to  moral  worth,  or  even  to  professional  and 
specific  skill,  prudence,  and  industry.  But  why  should  they  be 
opposed,  when  they  may  be  made  subservient  merely  by  being 
subordinated  ?  It  can  rarely  happen  that  a  man  of  social  dis- 
position, altogether  a  stranger  to  subjects  of  taste  (almost  the 
only  ones  on  which  persons  of  both  sexes  can  converse  with  a 
common  interest),  should  pass  through  the  world  without  at  times 
feeling  dissatisfied  with  himself.  The  best  proof  of  this  is  to  be 
found  in  the  marked  anxiety  which  men,  who  have  succeeded  in 
life  without  the  aid  of  these  accomplishments,  show  in  securing 
them  to  their  children.  A  young  man  of  ingenuous  mind  will 
not  wilfully  deprive  himself  of  any  species  of  respect.  He  will 
wish  to  feel  himself  on  a  level  with  the  average  of  the  society  in 
which  he  lives,  though  he  may  be  ambitious  of  distinguishing 
himself  only  in  his  own  immediate  pursuit  or  occupation. 

"  Under  this  conviction,  the  following  Course  of  Lectures  was 
planned.  The  several  titles  will  best  explain  the  particular 
subjects  and  purposes  of  each ;  but  the  main  objects  proposed, 
as  the  result  of  all,  are  the  two  following: — 

"  I,  To  convey,  in  a  form  best  fitted  to  render  them  impressive 
at  the  time,  and  remembered  afterwards,  rules  and  principles  of 
sound  judgment,  with  a  kind  and  degree  of  connected  informa- 
tion, such  as  the  hearers,  generally  speaking,  cannot  be  supposed 
likely  to  form,  collect,  and  arrange  for  themselves,  by  their  own 
unassisted  studies.  It  might  be  presumption  to  say,  that  any 
important  part  of  these  Lectures  could  not.  be  derived  from 
books ;  but  none,  I  trust,  in  supposing,  that  the  same  informa- 
tion could  not  be  so  surely  or  conveniently  acquired  from  such 
books  as  are  of  commonest  occurrence,  or  with  that  quantity  of 
time  and  attention  which  can  be  reasonably  expected,  or  even 
wisely  desired,  of  men  engaged  in  business  and  the  active  duties 
of  the  world. 

"  II.  Under  a  strong  persuasion  that  little  of  real  value  is  de- 
rived by  persons  in  general  from  a  wide  and  various  reading ;  but 
still  more  deeply  convinced  as  to  the  actual  mischief  of  uncon- 
nected and  promiscuous  reading,  and  that  it  is  sure,  in  a  greater 
or  less  degree,  to  enervate  even  where  it  does  not  likewise  inflate  : 
I  hope  to  satisfy  many  an  ingenuous  mind,  seriously  interested 
in  its  own  development  and  cultivation,  how  moderate  a  number 
of  volumes,  if  only  they  be  judiciously  chosen,  will  suffice  for  the 


172  LECTURES   AND   NOTES   OF   1818. 

attainment  of  every  wise  and  desirable  purpose :  that  is,  in 
addition  to  those  which  he  studies  for  specific  and  professional 
purposes.  It  is  saying  less  than  the  truth  to  affirm,  that  an 
excellent  book  (and  the  remark  holds  almost  equally  good  of  a 
Raphael  as  of  a  Milton)  is  like  a  well-chosen  and  well-tended 
frnit-tree.  Its  fruits  are  not  of  one  season  only.  With  the  clue 
and  natural  intervals,  we  may  recur  to  it  year  after  year,  and  it 
will  supply  the  same  nourishment  and  the  same  gratification,  if 
only  we  ourselves  return  with  the  same  healthful  appetite. 

"  The  subjects  of  the  Lectures  are  indeed  very  different,  but 
not  (in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term)  diverse  :  they  are  various, 
rather  than  miscellaneous.  There  is  this  bond  of  connection 
common  to  them  all, — that  the  mental  pleasure  which  they  are 
calculated  to  excite  is  not  dependent  on  accidents  of  fashion, 
place  or  age,  or  the  events  or  the  customs  of  the  day ;  but  com- 
mensurate with  the  good  sense,  taste,  and  feeling,  to  the  cultiva- 
tion of  which  they  themselves  so  largely  contribute,  as  being  all 
in  kind,  though  not  all  in  the  same  degree,  productions  of 
GENIUS. 

"  What  it  would  be  arrogant  to  promise,  I  may  yet  be  permitted 
to  hope, — that  the  execution  will  prove  correspondent  and 
adequate  to  the  plan.  Assuredly  my  best  efforts  have  not  been 
wanting  so  to  select  and  prepare  the  materials,  that,  at  the  con- 
clusion of  the  Lectures,  an  attentive  auditor,  who  should  consent 
to  aid  his  future  recollection  by  a  few  notes  taken  either  during 
each  Lecture  or  soon  after,  would  rarely  feel  himself,  for  the 
time  to  come,  excluded  from  taking  an  intelligent  interest  in  any 
general  conversation  likely  to  occur  in  mixed  society. 

"  S.  T.  COLERIDGE." 


Syllabus  of  the  Course. 

"LECTURE  T.  Tuesday  Evening,  January  27,  1818. — On  the 
manners,  morals,  literature,  philosophy,  religion,  and  the  state  of 
society  in  general,  in  European  Christendom,  from  the  eighth  to 
the  fifteenth  century  (that  is,  from  A.D.  700  to  A.D.  1400),  more 
particularly  in  reference  to  England,  France,  Italy,  and  Germany: 
in  other  words,  a  portrait  of  the  (so  called)  dark  ages  of  Europe. 

"  II.  On  the  tales  and  metrical  romances  common,  for  the  most 
part,  to  England,  Germany,  and  the  North  of  France ;  and  on 


INTRODUCTORY.  173 

the  English  songs  and  ballads ;  continued  to  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  First. — A  few  selections  will  be  made  from  the  Swedish, 
Danish,  and  German  languages,  translated  for  the  purpose  by  the 
Lecturer. 

"  III.  Chaucer  and  Spenser ;  of  Petrarch ;  of  Ariosto,  Pulci, 
smd  Boiardo. 

"  IV.  V.  and  VI.  On  the  Dramatic  Works  of  SHAKSPERE.  In 
these  Lectures  will  be  comprised  the  substance  of  Mr.  Coleridge's 
former  Courses  on  the  same  subject,  enlarged  and  varied  by  sub- 
sequent study  and  reflection. 

"VII.  On  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Massinger; 
with  the  probable  causes  of  the  cessation  of  Dramatic  Poetry  in 
England  with  Shirley  and  Otway,  soon  after  the  Restoration  of 
Charles  the  Second. 

14  VIII.  Of  the  Life  and  all  the  Works  of  CERVANTES,  but 
-chiefly  of  his  Don  Quixote.  The  Ridicule  of  Knight-Errantry 
shewn  to  have  been  but  a  secondary  object  in  the  mind  of  the 
Author,  and  not  the  principal  Cause  of  the  Delight  which  the 
Work  continues  to  give  in  all  Nations,  and  under  all  the  Revolu- 
tions of  Manners  and  Opinions. 

"  IX.  On  Rabelais,  Swift,  and  Sterne :  on  the  Nature  and 
Constituents  of  genuine  Humour,  and  on  the  Distinctions  of  the 
Humorous  from  the  Witty,  the  Fanciful,  the  Droll,  the  Odd,  &c. 

"  X.  Of  Donne,  Dante,  and  Milton. 

"  XI.  On  the  Arabian  Nights  Entertainments,  and  on  the 
romantic  use  of  the  supernatural  in  Poetry,  and  in  works  of 
fiction  not  poetical.  On  the  conditions  and  regulations  under 
which  such  Books  may  be  employed  advantageously  in  the  earlier 
Periods  of  Education. 

"  XII.  On  tales  of  witches,  apparitions,  &c.  as  distinguished 
from  the  magic  and  magicians  of  Asiatic  origin.  The  probable 
sources  of  the  former,  and  of  the  belief  in  them  in  certain  ages 
.and  classes  of  men.  Criteria  by  which  mistaken  and  exaggerated 
facts  may  be  distinguished  from  absolute  falsehood  and  im- 
posture. Lastly,  the  causes  of  the  terror  and  interest  which 
.stories  of  ghosts  and  witches  inspire,  in  early  life  at  least,  whether 
believed  or  not. 

"  XIH.  On  colour,  sound,  and  form,  in  nature,  as  connected 
with  POESY  :  the  word  '  Poesy  '  used  as  the  generic  or  class 
term,  including  poetry,  music,  painting,  statuary,  and  ideal 
-architecture,  as  its  speciei.  The  reciprocal  relations  of  poetry 


174  LECTURES   AND   NOTES   OF   1818. 

and  philosophy  to  each  other;  and  of  both  to  religion,  and  the 
moral  sense. 

"  XTV.  On  the  corruptions  of  the  English  language  since  the 
reign  of  Queen  Anne,  in  our  style  of  writing  prose.  A  few  easy 
rules  for  the  attainment  of  a  manly,  unaffected,  and  pure  language, 
in  our  genuine  mother-tongue,  whether  for  the  purposes  of 
writing,  oratory,  or  conversation.  Concluding  Address." 


§  2.  The  Lectures  0/1818. 

The  series  of  lectures,  of  which  the  prospectus  has  been 
given  in  §  1,  duly  commenced  on  Jan.  27,  1818,  and  ended 
on  March  13. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  lectures 
only  are  on  Shakspere ;  but  the  seventh  is  on  Ben  Jonson, 
and  other  English  Dramatists,  chiefly  as  contrasted  with 
Shakspere ;  and  the  tenth  includes  Milton,  and  probably 
contains  the  substance  of  the  missing  lectures  of  1811-12. 

Coleridge,  looking  back  on  these  lectures,  was  wont  to 
consider  them  the  most  satisfactory  he  had  delivered  ;  al- 
though the  lecture-room,  Gillman  says,  was  in  "  an  un- 
favourable situation,"  "near  the  Temple."  They  "were 
delivered,"  Allsop  tell  us,  in  his  "  Recollections,"  "  in  Flower 
de  Luce  Court,1  and  were  constantly  thronged  by  the  most 
attentive  and  intelligent  auditory  I  have  ever  seen." 

Crabb  Robinson  was  absent  from  London  during  a  por- 
tion of  this  course.  His  few  notes  of  it  are  meagre.  Such 
is  they  are,  we  give  them. 

1  A  lecture  on  Romeo  and  Juliet,  at  the  "  Crown  and  Anchor,"  is 
alluded  to  by  Coleridge  in  his  letter  to  J.  Britton.  It  could  not  have 
formed  part  of  the  course  of  1818.  The  "  Crown  and  Anchor  "  was  in 
Arundel  Street,  Strand.  It  was  a  favourite  place  for  lectures  and 
meetings. 


INTRODUCTORY.  175 

"  January  17 tli,  1818. — I  went  to  the  Surrey  Institution,  where 
I  heard  Hazlitt  lecture  on  Shakspere  and  Milton. 

"  From  hence  I  called  at  Collier's,  and  taking  Mrs.  Collier  with 
me,  I  went  to  a  lecture  by  Coleridge  in  Fleur-de-lis  Court,1  Fleet 
Street.  I  was  gratified  unexpectedly  by  finding  a  large  and 
respectable  audience,  generally  of  superior-looking  persons,  in 
physiognomy  rather  than  dress.  Coleridge  treated  of  the  origin 
of  poetry  and  of  Oriental  works ;  but  he  had  little  animation, 
and  an  exceedingly  bad  cold  rendered  his  voice,  scarcely  audible. 

"  February  10th. — The  conversation  was  beginning  to  be  very 
interesting,  when  I  was  obliged  to  leave  the  party  to  attend 
Coleridge's  lecture  on  Shakspere.  Coleridge  was  apparently  ill. 

"  February  20th. — I  dined  at  Collier's,  and  went  to  Coleridge. 
Coleridge  was  not  in  one  of  his  happiest  moods  to-night.  His 
subject  was  Cervantes,  but  he  was  more  than  usually  prosy,  and 
his  tone  peculiarly  drawling.  His  digressions  on  the  nature  of 
insanity  were  carried  too  far,  and  his  remarks  on  the  book  but 
old,  and  by  him  often  repeated. 

"  February  27th. — I  took  tea  with  Gurney,  and  invited  Mrs. 
Gurney  to  accompany  me  to  Coleridge's  lecture.  It  was  on 
Dante  and  Milton — one  of  his  very  best.  He  digressed  less  than 
usual,  and  really  gave  information  and  ideas  about  the  poets  he 
professed  to  criticize." 


§.  3.  The  Matter  published  in  the  "Remains." 

As  we  have  pointed  out  in  §  2,  the  lectures  of  1818 
treated  of  many  things  besides  dramatists ;  but  it  is  with 
these  we  are  mainly  concerned. 

1  Coleridge  himself,  and  Allsop,  write  "Flower  de  Luce."  The  locality, 
in  any  case,  must  have  been  the  "Fleur  de  Lis  Court,"  at  present  to  be 
found  in  Fetter  Lane.  (First  passage  to  the  right  from  Fleet  Street.) 

With  this  first  note  of  Crabb  Robinson's,  compare  Coleridge's  letter  to 
Allsop,  of  the  28th  :  "  Your  friendly  letter  was  first  delivered  to  me  at  the 
lecture-room  door  on  yesterday  evening,  ten  minutes  before  the  lecture, 
and  my  spirits  were  so  sadly  depressed  by  the  circumstance  of  my  hoarse* 
ness,  that  I  was  literally  incapable  of  reading  it." 


176  LECTURES   AND   NOTES   OF 

Gillman  says,  Coleridge  "  lectured  from  notes,  which  lie 
had  carefully  made,"  and  that  "  many  of  these  notes  were 
preserved,  and  have  lately  been  printed  in  the  '  Literary 
Remains.' "  He  alludes,  of  course,  to  H.  N.  Coleridge's 
u  Literary  Remains  of  S.  T.  Coleridge,"  4  vols.,  1836-39. 

But  it  is  difficult  to  make  out  what  the  matter  really  is, 
which  H.  N.  Coleridge  printed.  It  is  "confusion  worse 
confounded."  If  the  original  papers  are  still  in  existence, 
it  would  be  well  lo  search  for  any  dates  there  may  be  on 
them.1 

Let  us  see  what  we  have  in  the  "  Remains." 

The  editor  gives,  in  vol.  i.,  what  notes  and  the  like  he 
has  on  all  the  lectures  of  the  course,  and  on  the  subjects  of 
those  lectures,  except  the  three  on  Shakspere, — the  fourth, 
fifth,  and  sixth.  In  the  second  volume  he  puts  together, 
like  beads  on  a  string,  a  number  of  notes,  and  portions  of 
lectures,  written  down  before,  or  written  down  after 
delivery  (hardly,  in  any  case,  reported),  on  poetry,  Shak- 
epere,  and  the  drama.  He  heads  them,  "  Shakspere,  with 
introductory  matter  on  Poetry,  the  Drama,  and  the  Stage." 
One  long  note  is  professedly  written  by  Mr.  Justice  Cole- 
ridge, the  editor's  brother.  These,  by-and-by,  without  any 
warning,  become  a  series  of  notes  on  Ben  Jonson,  and  on 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher ;  whereas,  Coleridge's  general 
remarks  on  these  poets  (though  quite  as  much  on  Shakspere 
as  on  them)  were  left  in  the  first  volume  (Lee.  VII.). 

Now,  what  are  these  fragments  and  notes  ?  We  will 
state  our  conclusion  plainly,  without  circumlocution.  They 
by  no  means  merely  belong  to  1818.  They  are  all  the 

1    '   Such,  for  instance,  as  the  two  we  find  in  the  notes  on  "  As  You  Like 
Jt,''  and  those  in  Section  II. 


INTRODUCTORY.  177 

manuscript  notes,  and  written  portions  of  lectures,  accumu- 
lated by  Coleridge  through  years ;  often  altered,  often 
added  to,  from  time  to  time ;  rearranged,  and  conned  over 
anew,  for  each  new  course  ;  some  used  now,  some  then  ; 
possibly,  left  in  the  order  in  which  Coleridge  arranged 
them  for  the  lectures  of  1818  ;  possibly,  altered,  added  to, 
rearranged,  even  later.1  The  earlier  portion,  on  the  drama 
and  so  on,  could  have  been  little  used  in  that  course,  in 
which  only  three  lectures  were  devoted  to  Shakspere. 
Accordingly,  we  find  little  trace  of  it  in  Mr.  Carwardine's 
memoranda  (see  §  4).  On  the  other  hand,  we  see,  from 
the  same  memoranda,  that  Coleridge  treated  of  the  plays  in 
three  divisions,  handling  the  historical  plays  in  the  second  ; 
which  would  account  for  the  editor's  arrangement,  or  no 
arrangement,  to  which  we  shall  allude  presently. 

1  Coleridge,  in  a  letter  to  Allsop,  of  Jan.,  1821,  speaking  of  a  great 
work  he  had  in  contemplation  (the  opering  sentence  is,  probably,  a 
marvel  of  self-deception)  writes  : — 

"  I  have  already  the  written  materials  and  contents,  requiring  only  to 
be  put  together,  from  the  loose  papers  and  commonplace  or  memorandum 
books,  and  needing  no  other  change,  whether  of  omission,  addition,  or 
correction,  than  the  mere  act  of  arranging,  and  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
the  whole  collectively,  bring  with  them  of  course, — I.  Characteristics  of 
Shakspere's  Dramatic  Works,  with  a  Critical  Review  of  each  Play ; 
together  with  a  relative  and  comparative  Critique  on  the  kind  and  degree 
of  the  Merits  and  Demerits  of  the  Dramatic  Works  of  Ben  Jonson, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  nnd  Massinger.  The  History  of  the  English 
Drama  ;  the  accidental  advantages  it  afforded  to  Shakspere,  without  in 
the  least  detracting  from  the  perfect  originality  or  proper  creation  of  the 
Shaksperian  Drama;  the  contradistinction  of  the  latter  from  the  Greek 
Drama,  and  its  still  remaining  uniqueness,  with  the  causes  of  this,  from 
the  combined  influences  of  Shakspere  himself,  as  man,  poet,  philosopher, 
and  finally,  by  conjunction  of  all  these,  dramatic  poet;  and  of  the  age, 
events,  manners,  and  state  of  the  English  language.  This  work,  with 
every  art  of  compression,  amounts  to  three  volumes  of  about  five  hundred 
pages  cadi." 

K 


178  LECTURES   AND   KOTES   OF   1818. 

In  the  letter  to  J.  Britton,  Coleridge  explains  how  he 
occasionally  wrote  a  lecture,  or  part  of  a  lecture ;  how  he 
made  many  notes  ;  how,  previous  to  lecturing,  he  studied 
"  the  mass  of  material  "  he  had  before  him  ;  and  then 
lectured  extempore.  Thus  is  reconciled  his  statement  in 
one  place,  that  his  lectures  were  always  different,  with  that 
in  others,  that  they  were  in  substance  the  same.  (See 
Introductory  Matter  to  the  Collier  series,  §  5.)  The 
prospectus  of  1818  itself  announces,  that  lectures  four,  five, 
and  six  will  comprise  "  the  substance  of  Mr.  Coleridge's 
former  courses  on  the  same  subject,  enlarged  and  varied  by 
subsequent  study  and  reflection." 

Such  being  really  the  nature  of  the  materials  published 
in  the  "Remains,"  as  it  seems  to  us,  it  will  hardly  be  a 
liberty,  if  we  put  into  them  a  little  arrangement.  We 
will  state  clearly,  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  what  we  have 
ventured  to  do. 

They  have  been  divided  into  sections,  with  appropriate 
headings.  The  portion  treating  of  the  Historical  Plays, 
which  will  be  found,  in  the  "Remains,"  between  the  notes  on 
*'  Romeo  and  Juliet"  and  those  on  "Lear,"  has  been  allotted 
a  separate  section.  The  general  remarks  on  Jonson  and 
others,  left  by  the  editor  in  his  first  volume,  have  been  in- 
serted before  the  notes  on  those  authors.  That  is  all. 

The  criticisms  on  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton,  in  vol.  i. 
are  included  in  our  Appendix,  for  reasons  there  stated. 

§  4. — Mr.  H.  H.  Carwardine's  Memoranda. 

We  subjoin  the  memoranda  of  the  course,  so  far  as  they 
refer  to  the  Shakspere  lectures,  of  Henry  Holgate 


INTRODUCTORY.  179 

Carwardine,  Colne  Priory,  Essex,  who  was  personally 
known  to  Coleridge.  They  were  found  among  his  papers, 
in  1867,  and  published  in  "Notes  and  Queries,"  April 
2nd,  1870,  whence  we  extract  them. 

"  Coleridge,  6  Feb.  '  On  Shakspere.'  His  predecessors,  the 
poets  of  Italy,  France,  and  England,  &c.,  drew  their  aliment  from 
the  soil ;  there  was  a  nationality ;  they  were  of  a  country,  of  a 
genus,  grafted  with  the  chivalrous  spirit  and  sentiment  of  the 
North,  and  with  the  wild  magic  imported  from  the  East.  He 
bore  no  direct  witness  of  the  soil  from  whence  he  grew  ;  compare 
him  with  the  mountain  pine. 

"  Self- sustained,  deriving  his  genius  immediately  from  heaven, 
independent  of  all  earthly  or  national  influence.  That  such  a 
mind  involved  itself  in  a  human  form  is  a  problem  indeed  which 
my  feeble  powers  may  witness  with  admiration,  but  cannot  explain. 
My  words  are  indeed  feeble  when  I  speak  of  that  myriad-minded 
man,  whom  all  artists  feel  above  all  praise.  Least  of  all  poets, 
ancient  or  modern,  does  Shakspere  appear  to  be  coloured  or 
affected  by  the  age  in  which  he  lived — he  was  of  all  times  and 
countries. 

"  He  drew  from  the  eternal  ot  our  nature. 

"  When  misers  were  most  common  in  his  age,  yet  he  has  drawn 
no  such  character;  and  why?  because  it  was  mere  transitory 
character.  Shylock  no  miser,  not  the  great  feature  of  his 
character. 

"  In  an  age  of  political  and  religious  heat,  yet  there  is  no 
sectarian  character  of  politics  or  religion. 

"  In  an  age  of  superstition,  when  witchcraft  was  the  passion  of 
the  monarch,  yet  he  has  never  introduced  such  characters.  For 
the  weird  sisters  are  as  different  as  possible. 

"  Judgment  and  genius  are  as  much  one  as  the  fount  and  the 
stream  that  flows  from  it ;  and  I  must  dwell  on  the  judgment  ot 
Shakspere. 

"  When  astrological  predictions  had  possession  of  the  mind,  ho 
has  no  such  character.  It  was  a  transient  folly  merely  of  tho 
time,  and  therefore  it  did  not  belong  to  Shakspere ;  and  in  com- 
pany with  Homer  and  Milton  and  whatever  is  great  on  earth,  he 
invented  the  Drama. 

"  The  Greek  tragedy  was  tragic  opera  differing  only  in  this 


180  LECTURES   AND   NOTES  OF  1818. 

that  in  Greek  the  scenery  and  music  were  subservient  to  the! 
poetry.  In  modern  opera  the  poetry  is  subservient  to  the  music 
and  decoration. 

"  A  mere  copy  never  delights  us  in  anything.  Why  do  we  go 
to  a  tragedy  to  witness  the  representation  of  the  woe  which  we 
may  daily  witness  ?  The  ancient  tragedians  confined  their  subjects 
to  gods  and  heroes,  and  traditional  people.  Shakspere — a  more 
difficult  task — in  drawing  not  only  from  nature,  but  from  the 
times  as  well  as  things  before  him,  and  so  true  to  nature  that  you 
never  can  conceive  his  characters  could  speak  otherwise  than  they 
do  in  the  situation  in  which  they  are  placed. 

" common  expression — '  How  natural  Shakspere  is ' — and 

yet  so  peculiar  that  if  you  read  but  a  few  detached  lines  you  im- 
mediately say,  '  this  must  be  Shakspere.' 

"  Such  peculiar  propriety  and  excellence,  and  truth  to  nature, 
that  there  is  nothing  in  any  man  at  all  like  him — a  research  for 
that  felicity  of  language  current  in  the  courts  of  Elizabeth  and 
James,  but  so  was  Massinger,  B.  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
&c.,  but  yet  they  are  not  like  Shakspere's  language.  Divide  his 
works  into  three  great  classes  ;  no  division  can  be  made  that 
applies  to  tragedy  and  comedy,  for  nature  acknowledges  none  of 
these  distinct  sharp  lines,  and  Shakspere  is  the  Poet  of  Nature, 
portraying  things  as  they  exist.  He  has,  as  it  were,  prophesied 
what  each  man  in  his  different  passions  would  have  produced. 

"  1.  His  Comedies  and  Romantic  Dramas. 

:"  2.  His  Historical  Plays. 

"  3.  His  Great  Tragedies. 

"  There  is  a  character  of  observation,  a  happiness  of  noticing 
whatever  is  external,  and  arranging  them  like  a  gallery  of  pictures, 
representing  passions,  which  no  man  appropriates  to  himself,  and 
yet  acknowledges  his  share. 

"  Character  of  his  mind,  depth,  and  energy  of  thought.  No 
man  was  ever  a  great  poet  without  being  a  great  philosopher. 
In  his  earliest  poems  the  poet  and  philosopher  are  perpetually 
struggling  with  each  other  till  they  found  a  field  where  they  were 
blended,  and  flowed  in  sweetest  harmony  and  strength. 

"  Love's  Labour  Lost,  I  affirm,  must  have  been  the  first  of  hi» 
plays — firstly,  it  has  the  least  observation,  and  the  characters  are 
merely  such  as  a  young  man  of  genius  might  have  made  out  him- 
self. But  it  has  other  marks ;  it  is  all  intellect.  There  is  little 
to  interest  as  a  dramatic  representation,  yet  affording  infinite 


INTRODUCTORY.  181 

matter  of  beautiful  quotation.  King  and  Biron, 'Light  seeking 
light  blinds  us,'  no  instance  in  which  the  same  thought  so  happily 
expressed.  In  the  character  of  Biron  he  has  the  germ  of  Benedict 
and  Mercutio ;  it  was  the  first  rough  draft,  which  he  afterwards 
finished  with  Ben.  and  Mer. 

"  In  Holofernes  is  contained  the  sketch  of  Polonius.  He  never 
on  any  occasion  spares  pedantry — 

'  remunerative. 
Nathaniel.  I  praise  God  for  your  sin,'  &c. 

"Much  of  this  wordiness  (here  ridiculed)  shown  in  modern 
poetry ;  words  nicely  balanced  till  you  come  to  seek  the  meaning, 
when  you  are  surprised  to  find  none. 

"  His  blank  verse  has  nothing  equal  to  it  but  that  of  Milton. 
Such  fulness  of  thought  gives  an  involution  of  metre  so  natural  to 
the  expression  of  passions,  which  fills  and  elevates  the  mind,  and 
gives  general  truths  in  full,  free,  and  poetic  language. 

"  Lear,  Macbeth,  &c. 

"  Shakspere,  the  only  one  who  has  made  passion  the  vehicle  of 
general  truth,  as  in  his  comedy  he  has  made  even  folly  itself  the 
vehicle  of  philosophy.  Each  speech  is  what  every  man  feels  to 
be  latent  in  his  nature  ;  what  he  would  have  said  in  that  situation 
if  he  had  had  the  ability  and  readiness  to  do  it,  and  these  are 
multiplied  and  individualized  with  the  most  extraordinary  minute- 
ness and  truth. 

"  Of  the  exquisite  judgment  of  the must  conceive  a 

stage  without  scenery — acting  a  poor  recitation.  He  frequently 
speaks  to  his  audience.  If,  says  he,  you  will  listen  to  me  with 

your  minds  and  not  with  your  eyes  to and  assist  me  with 

your  imaginations,  I  will  do  so  and  so. 

"  Characteristic  of  his  comedy  and  romantic  drama. 

"  1st.  His  characters  never  introduced  for  the  sake  of  his  plot, 
but  his  plot  arises  out  of  his  characters,  nor  are  all  these  involved 
in  them.  You  meet  people  who  meet  and  speak  to  you  as  in 
real  life,  interesting  you  differently,  having  some  distinctive 
peculiarity  which  interests  you,  and  thus  the  stor^  is  introduced 
which  you  appear  casually  made  acquainted  with,  yet  still  y  au  feel 
that  it  excites  an  interest — that  there  is  something  that  is  applic- 
able to  certain  situations,  &c. 

"Again,  his  characters  have  something  more  than  a  mere 
amusing  prop erty. 


182  LECTURES   AND   NOTES    OF   1818. 

"  For  example,  in  The  Tempest,  the  delight  of  Trinculo  at 
6nding  something  more  sottish  than  himself  and  that  honours  him 
— the  characteristic  of  base  and  vulgar  minds  which  Shakspere  is 
fond  of  lashing  and  placing  in  a  ridiculous  light  [read  scene 
between  Trinculo  and  Caliban]  ;  but  Shakspere  can  make  even 
rude  vulgarity  the  vehicle  of  profound  truths  and  thoughts. 
Prospero,  the  mighty  wizard,  whose  potent  art  could  not  only 
call  up  all  the  spirits  of  the  deep,  but  the  characters  as  they  were 
and  are  and  will  be,  seems  a  portrait  of  the  bard  himself.  No 
magician  or  magic,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word — a  being  to 
excite  either  fear  or  wonder — nothing  in  common  with  such 
characters  as  were  brought  from  the  East. 

"  If  there  be  any  imitation  in  Shakspere,  of  what  is  it  imitation  ? 
What  so  earthly  as  Caliban,  so  aerial  as  Ariel,  so  fanciful,  so  ex- 
quisitely light,  yet  some  striving  of  thought  of  an  undeveloped 
power. 

"  I  know  no  character  in  Shakspere  to  which  he  has  given  a  pro- 
pensity to  sneer,  or  scoff,  or  express  contempt,  but  he  has  made 
that  man  a  villaiu." 


SECTION  I. 
POETRY,   THE    DRAMA,    AND    SHAKSPERB. 

Definition  of  Poetry.1 

TDOETRY  is  not  the  proper  antithesis  to  prose,  but  to 
•••  science.  Poetry  is  opposed  to  science,  and  prose  to 
metre.  The  proper  and  immediate  object  of  science  is  the 
acquirement,  or  communication,  of  truth ;  the  proper  and 
immediate  object  of  poetry  is  the  communication  of  im- 
mediate pleasure.  This  definition  is  useful ;  but  as  it  would 
include  novels  and  other  works  of  fiction,  which  yet  we  do 
not  call  poems,  there  must  be  some  additional  character  by 
which  poetry  is  not  only  divided  from  opposites,  but  like- 
wise distinguished  from  disparate,  though  similar,  modes  of 
composition.  Now  how  is  this  to  be  effected  ?  In  animated 
prose,  the  beauties  of  nature,  and  the  passions  and  accidents 
of  human  nature,  are  often  expressed  in  that  natural  lan- 
guage which  the  contemplation  of  them  would  suggest  to  a 
pure  and  benevolent  mind  ;  yet  still  neither  we  nor  the 
writers  call  such  a  work  a  poem,  though  no  work  could 
deserve  that  name  which  did  not  include  all  this,  together 
with  something  else.  What  is  this  ?  It  is  that  pleasurable 

1  See  chap.  xir.  of  the  Biographia  Literaria,  and  the  first  lecture  of 
the  course  of  1811-12. 


184  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

emotion,  that  peculiar  state  and  degree  of  excitement,  which 
Arises  in  the  poet  himself  in  the  act  of  composition ; — and 
in  order  to  understand  this,  we  must  combine  a  more  than 
ordinary  sympathy  with  the  objects,  emotions,  or  incidents 
contemplated  by  the  poet,  consequent  on  a  more  than 
common  sensibility,  with  a  more  than  ordinary  activity  of 
the  mind  in  respect  of  the  fancy  and  the  imagination. 
Hence  is  produced  a  more  vivid  reflection  of  the  truths  of 
nature  and  of  the  human  heart,  united  with  a  constant 
activity  modifying  and  correcting  these  truths  by  that  sort 
of  pleasurable  emotion,  which  the  exertion  of  all  our 
faculties  gives  in  a  certain  degree ;  but  which  can  only  be 
felt  in  perfection  under  the  full  play  of  those  powers  of 
mind,  which  are  spontaneous  rather  than  voluntary,  and  in 
which  the  effort  required  bears  no  proportion  to  the  activity 
enjoyed.  This  is  the  state  which  permits  the  production  of 
a  highly  pleasurable  whole,  of  which  each  part  shall  also 
communicate  for  itself  a  distinct  and  conscious  pleasure ; 
and  hence  arises  the  definition,  which  I  trust  is  now  in- 
telligible, that  poetry,  or  rather  a  poem,  is  a  species  of 
composition,  opposed  to  science,  as  having  intellectual 
pleasure  for  its  object,  and  as  attaining  its  end  by  the  use 
of  language  natural  to  us  in  a  state  of  excitement, — but 
distinguished  from  other  species  of  composition,  not  ex- 
cluded by  the  former  criterion,  by  permitting  a  pleasure 
from  the  whole  consistent  with  a  consciousness  of  pleasure 
from  the  component  parts ; — and  the  perfection  of  which 
is,  to  communicate  from  each  part  the  greatest  immediate 
pleasure  compatible  with  the  largest  sum  of  pleasure  on 
the  whole.  This,  of  course,  will  vary  with  the  different 
modes  of  poetry  ; — and  that  splendour  of  particular  lines, 
which  would  be  worthy  of  admiration  in  an  impassioned 
elegy,  or  a  short  indignant  satire,  would  be  a  blemish  and 
proof  of  vile  taste  in  a  tragedy  or  an  epic  poem. 

It  is  remarkable,  by  the  way,  that  Milton  in  three  inci- 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHA.KSPEEE.  185 

dental  words  has  implied  all  which  for  the  purposes  of  more 
distinct  apprehension,  which  at  first  must  be  slow-paced  in 
order  to  be  distinct,  I  have  endeavoured  to  develop  in 
a  precise  and  strictly  adequate  definition.  Speaking  of 
poetry,  he  says,  as  in  a  parenthesis,  "  which  is  simple, 
sensuoujujjassionate.''  How  awful  is  the  power  oTworoTs  ! ; 
— fearful  often  in  their  consequences  when  merely  felt,  not 
understood;  but  most  awful  when  both  felt  and  under- 
stood ! — Had  these  three  words  only  been  properly  under- 
stood by,  and  present  in  the  minds  of,  general  readers,  not 
only  almost  a  library  of  false  poetry  would  have  been 
either  precluded  or  still-born,  but,  what  is  of  more  con- 
sequence, works  truly  excellent  and  capable  of  enlarging 
the  understanding,  warming  and  purifying  the  heart,  and 
placing  in  the  centre  of  the  whole  being  the  germs  of  noble 
and  manlike  actions,  would  have  been  the  common  diet 
of  the  intellect  instead.  For  the  first  condition,  sim- 
plicity,— while,  on  the  one  hand,  it  distinguishes  poetry 
from  the  arduous  processes  of  science,  labouring  towards 
an  end  not  yet  arrived  at,  and  supposes  a  smdoth  and 
finished  road,  on  which  the  reader  is  to  walk  onward 
easily,  with  streams  murmuring  by  his  side,  and  trees  and 
flowers  and  human  dwellings  to  make  his  journey  as  de- 
lightful as  the  object  of  it  is  desirable,  instead  of  having 
to  toil  with  the  pioneers  and  painfully  make  the  road  on 
which  others  are  to  travel, — precludes,  on  the  other  hand, 
every  affectation  and  morbid  peculiarity ; — the  second  con- 
dition, sensuousness,  insures  that  framework  of  objectivity, 
that  definiteness  and  articulation  of  imagery,,  and  that 
modification  of  the  images  themselves,  without  which 
poetry  becomes  flattened  into  mere  didactics  of  practice,  or 
evaporated  into  a  hazy,  unthoughtful,  day-dreaming ;  and 
the  third  condition,  passion,  provides  that  neither  thought 
nor  imagery  shall  be  simply  objective,  but  that  the  passio 
vera  of  humanity  shall  warm  and  animate  both. 


186  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

To  return,  however,  to  the  previous  definition,  this  most 
genera]  and  distinctive  character  of  a  poem  originates  in 
the  poetic  genius  itself ;  and  though  it  comprises  whatever 
can  with  any  propriety  be  called  a  poem,  (unless  that  word 
be  a  mere  lazy  synonyme  for  a  composition  in  metre,)  it 
yet  becomes  a  just,  and  not  merely  discriminative,  but  full 
and  adequate,  definition  of  poetry  in  its  highest  and  most 
peculiar  sense,  only  so  far  as  the  distinction  still  results 
from  the  poetic  genius,  which  sustains  and  modifies  the 
emotions,  thoughts,  and  vivid  representations  of  the  poem 
by  the  energy  without  effort  of  the  poet's  own  mind, — by 
the  spontaneous  activity  of  his  imagination  and  fancy,  and 
by  whatever  else  with  these  reveals  itself  in  the  balancing 
and  reconciling  of  opposite  or  discordant  qualities,  same- 
ness with  difference,  a  sense  of  novelty  and  freshness  with 
old  or  customary  objects,  a  more  than  usual  state  of 
emotion  with  more  than  usual  order,  self-possession  and 
judgment  with  enthusiasm  and  vehement  feeling, — and 
which,  while  it  blends  and  harmonizes  the  natural  and  the 
artificial,  still  subordinates  art  to  nature,  the  manner  to  the 
matter,  and  our  admiration  of  the  poet  to  our  sympathy 
with  the  images,  passions,  characters,  and  incidents  of  the 
poem : — 

"  Doubtless,  this  could  not  be,  but  that  she  turns 
Bodies  to  spirit  by  sublimation  strange, 

As  fire  converts  to  fire  the  things  it  burns 
As  we  our  food  into  our  nature  change! 

•*  From  their  gross  matter  she  abstracts  their  forms, 
And  draws  a  kind  of  quintessence  from  things, 

Which  to  her  proper  nature  she  transforms, 
To  bear  them  light  on  her  celestial  wings  ! 

"  Thiis  doth  she,  when  from  individual  states 

She  doth  abstract  the  universal  kinds, 
Which  then  reclothedin  diverse  names  and  fates 

Steal  access  thro*  our  senses  to  our  minds." l 

1  Sir  John  Davies  on  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  sect.  iv.     The 


SECT.   I.]  AND   SHAKSPERB.  187 


Greek  Drama. 

It  is  truly  singular  that  Plato, — whose  philosophy  and 
religion  "were  but  exotic  at  home,  and  a  mere  opposition  to 
the  finite  in  all  things,  genuine  prophet  and  anticipator  as 
he  was  of  the  Protestant  Christian  sera, — should  have  given 
in  his  Dialogue  of  the  Banquet  a  justification  of  our 
Shakspere.  For  he  relates  that,  when  all  the  other  guests 
had  either  dispersed  or  fallen  asleep,  Socrates  only,  to- 
gether with  Aristophanes  and  Agathon,  remained  awake, 
and  that,  while  he  continued  to  drink  with  them  out  of  a 
large  goblet,  he  compelled  them,  though  most  reluctantly, 
to  admit  that  it  was  the  business  of  one  and  the  same 
genius  to  excel  in  tragic  and  comic  poetry,  or  that  tho 
tragic  poet  ought,  at  the  same  time,  to  contain  within  him- 
self the  powers  of  comedy.  Now,  as  this  was  directly 
repugnant  to  the  entire  theory  of  the  ancient  critics,  and 
contrary  to  all  their  experience,  it  is  evident  that  Plato 
must  have  fixed  the  eye  of  his  contemplation  on  the  inner- 
most essentials  of  the  drama,  abstracted  from  the  forms  of 
age  or  country.  In  another  passage  he  even  adds  the 
reason,  namely,  that  opposites  illustrate  each  other's  nature, 
and  in  their  struggle  draw  forth  the  strength  of  the  com- 
batants, and  display  the  conqueror  as  sovereign  even  on  the 
territories  of  the  rival  power. 

Nothing  can  more  forcibly  exemplify  the  separative  spirit 
of  the  Greek  arts  than  their  comedy  as  opposed  to  their 
tragedy.  But  as  the  immediate  struggle  of  contraries 
supposes  an  arena  common  to  both,  so  both  were  alike 
ideal ;  that  is,  the  comedy  of  Aristophanes  rose  to  as  great 

words  and  lines  in  italics  are  substituted,  to  apply  these  verses  to  the 
poetic  genius.  The  greater  part  of  this  latter  paragraph  may  be  found 
adopted,  with  some  alterations,  in  the  Biographic,  Literaria,  chup.  14. 
— H.  N.  C. 


188  POETRY,    THE   DRAMA,  [1818 

a  distance  above  the  ludicrous  of  real  life,  as  the  tragedy  of 
Sophocles  above  its  tragic  events  and  passions : — and  it  is 
in  this  one  point,  of  absolute  ideality,  that  the  comedy  of 
•Shakspere  and  the  old  comedy  of  Athens  coincide.  In 
this  also  alone  did  the  Greek  tragedy  and  comedy  unite ; 
in  everything  else  they  were  exactly  opposed  to  each  other. 
Tragedy  is  poetry  in  its  deepest  earnest :  comedy  is  poetry 
'in  unlimited  jest.  Earnestness  consists  in  the  direction 
;and  convergence  of  all  the  powers  of  the  soul  to  one  aim, 
•and  in  the  voluntary  restraint  of  its  activity  in  conse- 
quence ;  the  opposite,  therefore,  lies  in  the  apparent 
abandonment  of  all  definite  aim  or  end,  and  in  the  removal 
of  all  bounds  in  the  exercise  of  the  mind, — attaining  its 
real  end,  as  an  entire  contrast,  most  perfectly,  the  greater 
the  display  is  of  intellectual  wealth  squandered  in  the 
•wantonness  of  sport  without  an  object,  and  the  more 
abundant  the  life  and  vivacity  in  the  creations  of  the 
'arbitrary  will. 

The  later  comedy,  even  where  it  was  really  comic,  was 
doubtless  likewise  more  comic,  the  more  free  it  appeared 
from  any  fixed  aim.  Misunderstandings  of  intention,  fruit- 
less struggles  of  absurd  passion,  contradictions  of  temper, 
,and  laughable  situations  there  were  ;  but  still  the  form  of 
-the  representation  itself  was  serious ;  it  proceeded  as  much 
according  to  settled  laws,  and  used  as  much  the  same 
means  of  art,  though  to  a  different  purpose,  as  the  regular 
tragedy  itself.  But  in  the  old  comedy  the  very  form 
itself  is  whimsical ;  the  whole  work  is  one  great  jest,  com- 
.prehending  a  world  of  jests  within  it,  among  which  each 
•maintains  its  own  place  without  seeming  to  concern  itself 
as  to  the  relation  in  which  it  may  stand  to  its  fellows.  In 
short,  in  Sophocles,  the  constitution  of  tragedy  is  mon- 
archical, but  such  as  it  existed  in  elder  Greece,  limited  by 
'laws,  and  therefore  the  more  venerable, — all  the  parts 
adapting  and  submitting  themselves  to  the  majesty  of  the 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  189 

heroic  sceptre  : — in  Aristophanes,  comedy,  on  the  contrary, 
is  poetry  in  its  most  democratic  form,  and  it  is  a  funda- 
mental principle  with  it,  rather  to  risk  all  the  confusion  of 
anarchy,  than  to  destroy  the  independence  and  privileges 
of  its  individual  constituents, — place,  verse,  characters, 
even  single  thoughts,  conceits,  and  allusions,  each  turning 
on  the  pivot  of  its  own  free  will. 

The  tragic  poet  idealizes  his  characters  by  giving  to  the 
spiritual  part  of  our  nature  a  more  decided  preponderance 
over  the  animal  cravings  and  impulses  than  is  met  with  in 
real  life  :  the  comic  poet  idealizes  his  characters  by  making 
the  animal  the  governing  power,  and  the  intellectual  the 
mere  instrument.  But  as  tragedy  is  not  a  collection  of 
virtues  and  perfections,  but  takes  care  only  that  the  vices 
and  imperfections  shall  spring  from  the  passions,  errors, 
and  prejudices  which  arise  out  of  the  soul ; — so  neither  is 
comedy  a  mere  crowd  of  vices  and  follies,  but  whatever 
qualities  it  represents,  even  though  they  are  in  a  certain 
sense  amiable,  it  still  displays  them  as  having  their  origin 
in  some  dependence  on  our  lower  nature,  accompanied  with 
a  defect  in  true  freedom  of  spirit  and  self-subsistence,  and 
subject  to  that  unconnectionby  contradictions  of  the  inward 
being,  to  which  all  folly  is  owing. 

The  ideal  of  earnest  poetry  consists  in  the  union  and 
Tiarmonious  melting  down,  and  fusion  of  the  sensual  into 
the  spiritual, — of  man  as  an  animal  into  man  as  a  power  of 
reason  and  self-government.  And  this  wo  have  represented 
to  us  most  clearly  in  the  plastic  art,  or  statuary  :  where  the 
perfection  of  outward  form  is  a  symbol  of  the  perfection  of 
an  inward  idea;  where  the  body  is  wholly  penetrated  by 
the  soul,  and  spiritualized  even  to  a  state  of  glory,  and  like 
a  transparent  substance,  the  matter,  in  its  own  nature 
darkness,  becomes  altogether  a  vehicle  and  fixture  of  light, 
a  means  of  developing  its  beauties,  and  unfolding  its  wealth 
of  various  colours  without  disturbing  its  unity,  or  causing 


190  POETET,  THE  DBAMi,  [1818 

a  division  of  the  parts.  The  sportive  ideal,  on  the  contrary, 
consists  in  the  perfect  harmony  and  concord  of  the  higher 
nature  with  the  animal,  as  with  its  ruling  principle  and  its 
acknowledged  regent.  The  understanding  and  practical 
reason  are  represented  as  the  willing  slaves  of  the  senses 
and  appetites,  and  of  the  passions  arising  out  of  them. 
Hence  we  may  admit  the  appropriateness  to  the  old 
comedy,  as  a  work  of  defined  art,  of  allusions  and  descrip- 
tions, which  morality  can  never  justify,  and,  only  with 
reference  to  the  author  himself,  and  only  as  being  the  effect 
or  rather  the  cause  of  the  circumstances  in  which  he  wrote, 
can  consent  even  to  palliate. 

The  old  comedy  rose  to  its  perfection  in  Aristophanes, 
find  in  him  also  it  died  with  the  freedom  of  Greece.  Then 
arose  a  species  of  drama,  more  fitly  called  dramatic  enter- 
tainment than  comedy,  but  of  which,  nevertheless,  our 
modern  comedy  (Shakspere's  altogether  excepted)  is  the 
genuine  descendant.  Euripides  had  already  brought  tragedy 
lower  down  and  by  many  steps  nearer  to  the  real  world  than 
his  predecessors  had  ever  done,  and  the  passionate  admira- 
tion which  Menander  and  Philemon  expressed  for  him,  and 
their  open  avowals  that  he  was  their  great  master,  entitle 
us  to  consider  their  dramas  as  of  a  middle  species,  between 
tragedy  and  comedy, — not  the  tragi-comedy,  or  thing  of 
heterogeneous  parts,  but  a  complete  whole,  founded  on 
principles  of  its  own.  Throughout  we  find  the  drama  of 
Menander  distinguishing  itself  from  tragedy,  but  not,  as 
the  genuine  old  comedy,  contrasting  with,  and  opposing  it. 
Tragedy,  indeed,  carried  the  thoughts  into  the  mythologic 
world,  in  order  to  raise  the  emotions,  the  fears,  and  the 
hopes,  which  convince  the  inmost  heart  that  their  final 
cause  is  not  to  be  discovered  in  the  limits  of  mere  mortal 
life,  and  force  us  into  a  presentiment,  however  dim,  of  a 
state  in  which  those  struggles  of  inward  free  will  with 
outward  necessity,  which  form  the  true  subject  of  the 


SECT.    I.]  AND    SHAKSPERE.  191 

tragedian,  shall  be  reconciled  and  solved ; — the  entertain- 
ment or  new  comedy,  on  the  other  hand,  remained  within 
the  circle  of  experience.  Instead  of  the  tragic  destiny,  it 
introduced  the  power  of  chance  :  even  in  the  few  fragments 
of  Menander  and  Philemon  now  remaining  to  us,  we  find 
many  exclamations  and  reflections  concerning  chance  andfor- 
tune,  as  in  the  tragic  poets  concerning  destiny.  In  tragedy, 
the  moral  law,  either  as  obeyed  or  violated,  above  all  con- 
sequences— its  own  maintenance  or  violation  constituting 
the  most  important  of  all  consequences — forms  the  ground  ; 
the  new  comedy,  and  our  modern  comedy  in  general  (Shak- 
spere  excepted  as  before)  lies  in  prudence  or  imprudence, 
enlightened  or  misled  self-love.  The  whole  moral  system 
of  the  entertainment  exactly  like  that  of  fable,  consists  in 
rules  of  prudence,  with  an  exquisite  conciseness,  and  at 
the  same  time  an  exhaustive  fulness  of  sense.  An  old  critic 
said  that  tragedy  was  the  flight  or  elevation  of  life,  comedy 
(that  of  Menander)  its  arrangement  or  ordonnance. 

Add  to  these  features  a  portrait-like  truth  of  character, 
not  so  far  indeed  as  that  a  bona  fide  individual  should  be 
described  or  imagined,  but  yefc  so  that  the  features  which 
give  interest  and  permanence  to  the  class  should  be  indi- 
vidualized. The  old  tragedy  moved  in  an  ideal  world, — 
the  old  comedy  in  a  fantastic  world.  As  the  entertainment, 
or  new  comedy,  restrained  the  creative  activity  both  of  the 
fancy  and  the  imagination,  it  indemnified  the  understand- 
ing in  appealing  to  the  judgment  for  the  probability  of  the 
scenes  represented.  The  ancients  themselves  acknowledged 
the  new  comedy  as  an  exact  copy  of  real  life.  The  gram- 
marian, Aristophanes,  somewhat  affectedly  exclaimed : — 
"  0  Life  and  Menander !  which  of  you  two  imitated  the 
other?  "  In  short,  the  form  of  this  species  of  drama  was 
poetry;  the  stuff  or  matter  was  prose.  It  was  prose 
rendered  delightful  by  the  blandishments  and  measured 
motiors  of  the  muse.  Yet  even  this  was  not  universal. 


192  POETRY,   THE   DRAMA,  [1818: 

The  mimes  of  Sophron,  so  passionately  admired  by  Plato, 
were  written  in  prose,  and  were  scenes  out  of  real  life 
conducted  in  dialogue.  The  exquisite  Feast  of  Adonis 
(ZvpaKovviai  ?)  'Aciwj'ta&wrai)  in  Theocritus,  we  are  told,  with 
some  others  of  his  eclogues,  were  close  imitations  of  certain 
mimes  of  Sophron — free  translations  of  the  prose  into 
hexameters. 

It  will  not  be  improper,  in  this  place,  to  make  a  few 
remarks  on  the  remarkable  character  and  functions  of  the 
chorus  in  the  Greek  tragic  drama. 

The  chorus  entered  from  below,  close  by  the  orchestra, 
and  there,  pacing  to  and  fro  during  the  choral  odes,  per- 
formed their  solemn  measured  dance.  In  the  centre  of  the 
orchestra,  directly  over  against  the  middle  of  the  scene, 
there  stood  an  elevation  with  steps  in  the  shape  of  a  large 
altar,  as  high  as  the  boards  of  the  logeion  or  moveable 
stage.  This  elevation  was  named  the  thymele  (Oi/juArj), 
and  served  to  recall  the  origin  and  original  purpose  of  the 
chorus,  as  an  altar-song  in  honour  of  the  presiding  deity. 
Here,  and  on  these  steps,  the  persons  of  the  chorus  sate 
collectively,  when  they  were  not  singing ;  attending  to  the 
dialogue  as  spectators,  and  acting  as  (what  in  truth  they 
were)  the  ideal  representatives  of  the  real  audience,  and  of 
the  poet  himself  in  his  own  character,  assuming  the  sup- 
posed impressions  made  by  the  drama,  in  order  to  direct 
and  rule  them.  But  when  the  chorus  itself  formed  part  of 
the  dialogue,  then  the  leader  of  the  band,  the  foreman  or 
coryphaeus,  ascended,  as  some  think,  the  level  summit  of  the 
thymele  in  order  to  command  the  stage,  or,  perhaps,  the 
whole  chorus  advanced  to  the  front  of  the  orchestra, 
and  thus  put  themselves  in  ideal  connection,  as  it  were, 
with  the  dramatis  personce  there  acting.  This  thymele  was 
in  the  centre  of  the  whole  edifice ;  all  the  measurements 
were  calculated,  and  the  semi-circle  of  the  amphitheatre 
was  drawn,  from  this  point.  It  had  a  double  use,  a  twofold 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPEKE.  193 

purpose ;  it  constantly  reminded  the  spectators  of  the 
origin  of  tragedy  as  a  religious  service,  and  declared  itself 
as  the  ideal  representative  of  the  audience  by  having  its 
place  exactly  in  the  point,  to  which  all  the  radii  from  the 
different  seats  or  benches  converged. 

In  this  double  character,  as  constituent  parts,  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  as  spectators,  of  the  drama,  the  chorus  could 
not  but  tend  to  enforce  the  unity  of  place ; — not  on  the 
score  of  any  supposed  improbability,  which  the  understand- 
ing or  common  sense  might  detect  in  a  change  of  place ; — • 
but  because  the  senses  themselves  put  it  out  of  the  power 
of  any  imagination  to  conceive  a  place  coming  to,  and 
going  away  from  the  persons,  instead  of  the  persons  chang- 
ing their  place.  Yet  there  are  instances,  in  which,  during 
the  silence  of  the  chorus,  the  poets  have  hazarded  this  bv 
a  change  in  that  part  of  the  scenery  which  represented  the 
more  distant  objects  to  the  eye  of  the  spectator — a  demon- 
strative proof,  that  this  alternately  extolled  and  ridiculed 
unity  (as  ignorantly  ridiculed  as  extolled)  was  grounded  on 
no  essential  principle  of  reason,  but  arose  out  of  circum- 
stances which  the  poet  could  not  remove,  and  therefore 
took  up  into  the  form  of  the  drama,  and  co-organized  it 
with  all  the  other  parts  into  a  living  whole. 

The  Greek  tragedy  may  rather  be  compared  to  our 
serious  opera  than  to  the  tragedies  of  Shakspere ;  never- 
theless, the  difference  is  far  greater  than  the  likeness.  In 
the  opera  all  is  subordinated  to  the  music,  the  dresses,  and 
the  scenery ; — the  poetry  is  a  mere  vehicle  for  articulation, 
and  as  little  pleasure  is  lost  by  ignorance  of  the  Italian 
language,  so  is  little  gained  by  the  knowledge  of  it.  But 
in  the  Greek  drama  all  was  but  as  instruments  and  acces- 
saries to  the  poetry ;  and  hence  we  should  form  a  better 
notion  of  the  choral  music  from  the  solemn  hymns  and 
psalms  of  austere  church  music  than  from  any  species  of 
theatrical  singing.  A  single  flute  or  pipe  was  the  ordinary 

0 


1f*4  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

accompaniment ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  supposed,  that  any 
display  of  musical  power  was  allowed  to  obscure  the  dis- 
tinct hearing  of  the  words.  On  the  contrary,  tho  evident 
purpose  was  to  render  the  words  more  audible,  and  to 
secure  by  the  elevations  and  pauses  greater  facility  of 
understanding  the  poetry.  For  the  choral  songs  are,  and 
ever  must  have  been,  the  most  difficult  part  of  the  tragedy  ; 
there  occur  in  them  the  most  involved  verbal  compounds, 
the  newest  expressions,  the  boldest  images,  the  most 
recondite  allusions.  Is  it  credible  that  the  poets  would, 
one  and  all,  have  been  thus  prodigal  of  the  stores  of  art 
and  genius,  if  they  had  known  that  in  the  representation 
the  whole  must  have  been  lost  to  the  audience, — at  a  time 
too,  when  the  means  of  after  publication  were  so  difficult, 
and  expensive,  and  the  copies  of  their  works  so  slowly  and 
narrowly  circulated  ? 

The  masks  also  must  be  considered — their  vast  variety 
and  admirable  workmanship.  Of  this  we  retain  proof  by 
the  marble  masks  which  represented  them  ;  but  to  this  in 
the  real  mask  we  must  add  the  thinness  of  the  substance 
and  the  exquisite  fitting  on  to  the  head  of  the  actor ;  so 
that  not  only  were  the  very  eyes  painted  with  a  single 
opening  left  for  the  pupil  of  the  actor's  eye,  but  in  some 
instances,  even  the  iris  itself  was  painted,  when  the  colour 
was  a  known  characteristic  of  the  divine  or  heroic  person- 
age represented. 

Finally,  I  will  note  down  those  fundamental  character- 
istics which  contradistinguish  the  ancient  literature  from 
the  modern  generally,  but  which  more  especially  appear  iii 
prominence  in  the  tragic  drama.  The  ancient  was  allied 
to  statuary,  the  modern  refers  to  painting.  In  the  first 
there  is  a  predominance  of  rhythm  and  melody,  in  the 
second  of  harmony  and  counterpoint.  The  Greeks  idolized 
the  finite,  and  therefore  were  the  masters  of  all  grace, 
elegance,  proportion,  fancy,  dignity,  majesty — of  whatever, 


SECT.  I.]  AND   SHAKSPERB.  195 

in  short,  is  capable  of  being  definitely  conveyed  by  defined 
forms  or  thoughts :  the  moderns  revere  the  infinite,  and 
affect  the  indefinite  as  a  vehicle  of  the  infinite ; — hence 
their  passions,  their  obscure  hopes  and  fears,  their  wander- 
ing through  the  unknown,  their  grander  moral  feelings, 
their  more  august  conception  of  man  as  man,  their  future 
rather  than  their  past — in  a  word,  their  sublimity. 


Progress  of  the  Drama. 

Let  two  persons  join  in  the  same  scheme  to  ridicule  a 
third,  and  either  take  advantage  of,  or  invent,  some  story 
for  that  purpose,  and  mimicry  will  have  already  produced 
a  sort  of  rude  comedy.  It  becomes  an  inviting  treat  to  the 
populace,  and  gains  an  additional  zest  and  burlesque  by 
following  the  already  established  plan  of  tragedy ;  and  the 
first  man  of  genius  who  seizes  the  idea,  and  reduces  it  into 
form, — into  a  work  of  art, — by  metre  and  music,  is  the 
Aristophanes  of  the  country. 

How  just  this  account  is  will  appear  from  the  fact  that  in 
the  first  or  old  comedy  of  the  Athenians,  most  of  the 
dramatis  personce  were  living  characters  introduced  under 
their  own  names ;  and  no  doubt,  their  ordinary  dress, 
manner,  person  and  voice  were  closely  mimicked.  In  less 
favourable  states  of  society,  as  that  of  England  in  the 
tniddle  ages,  the  beginnings  of  comedy  would  be  constantly 
taking  place  from  the  mimics  and  satirical  minstrels;  but 
from  want  of  fixed  abode,  popular  government,  and  the 
successive  attendance  of  the  same  auditors,  it  would  still 
remain  in  embryo.  I  shall,  perhaps,  have  occasion  to 
observe  that  this  remai-k  is  not  without  importance  in 
explaining  the  essential  differences  of  the  modern  and 
ancient  theatres. 

Phenomena,  similar  to  those  which   accompanied  the 


196  POETRY,   THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

origin  of  tragedy  and  comedy  among  the  Greeks,  would 
take  place  among  the  Romans  much  more  slowly,  and  the 
drama  would,  in  any  case,  have  much  longer  remained  in 
its  first  irregular  form  from  the  character  of  the  peopler 
their  continual  engagements  in  wars  of  conquest,  the 
nature  of  their  government,  and  their  rapidly  increasing 
empire.  But,  however  this  might  have  been,  the  conquest 
of  Greece  precluded  both  the  process  and  the  necessity  of 
it :  and  the  Roman  stage  at  once  presented  imitations  or 
translations  of  the  Greek  drama.  This  continued  till  the 
perfect  establishment  of  Christianity.  Some  attempts,  in- 
deed, were  made  to  adapt  the  persons  of  Scriptural  or 
ecclesiastical  history  to  the  drama ;  and  sacred  plays,  it  is 
probable,  were  not  unknown  in  Constantinople  under  the 
emperors  of  the  East.  The  first  of  the  kind  is,  I  believe, 
the  only  one  preserved, — namely,  the  Xpurroc  Ilao-yMj',  or 
"  Christ  in  His  sufferings,"  by  Gregory  Nazianzen, — pos- 
sibly written  in  consequence  of  the  prohibition  of  profane 
literature  to  the  Christians  by  the  apostate  Julian.1  In  the 
West,  however,  the  enslaved  and  debauched  Roman  world 
became  too  bai'barous  for  any  theatrical  exhibitions  more 
refined  than  those  of  pageants  and  chariot-races  ;  while  the 
spirit  of  Christianity,  which  in  its  most  corrupt  form  still 
breathed  general  humanity,  whenever  controversies  of 
faith  were  not  concerned,  had  done  away  the  cruel  combats 
of  the  gladiators,  and  the  loss  of  the  distant  provinces 
prevented  the  possibility  of  exhibiting  the  engagements  of 
wild  beasts. 

I  pass,  therefore,  at  once  to  the  feudal  ages  which  soon 
succeeded,  confining  my  observation  to  this  country;  though, 
indeed,  the  same  remark  with  very  few  alterations  will 
apply  to  all  the  other  states,  into  which  the  great  empire 

1  A.D.  363.  "  But  I  believe  the  prevailing  opinion  amongst  Scholar* 
now  is,  that  the  Xptoroc  nao^aiv  is  not  genuine." — H.  N.  C. 


SECT.  I.]  AND    SHAKSPERE.  197 

•was  broken.  Ages  of  darkness  succeeded ; — not,  indeed, 
the  darkness  of  Russia  or  of  the  barbarous  lands  nncon- 
quered  by  Rome ;  for  from  the  time  of  Honorins  to  the 
destruction  of  Constantinople  and  the  consequent  introduc- 
tion of  ancient  literature  into  Europe,  there  was  a  continued 
succession  of  individual  intellects ; — the  golden  chain  was 
never  wholly  broken,  though  the  connecting  links  were 
often  of  baser  metal.  A  dark  cloud,  like  another  sky, 
covered  the  entire  cope  of  heaven, — but  in  this  place  it 
thinned  away,  and  white  stains  of  light  showed  a  half 
eclipsed  star  behind  it, — in  that  place  it  was  rent  asunder, 
and  a  star  passed  across  the  opening  in  all  its  brightness, 
and  then  vanished.  Such  stars  exhibited  themselves  only  ; 
surrounding  objects  did  not  partake  of  their  light.  There 
Were  deep  wells  of  knowledge,  but  no  fertilizing  rills  and 
rivulets.  For  the  drama,  society  was  altogether  a  state  of 
chaos,  out  of  which  it  was,  for  a  while  at  least,  to  proceed 
anew,  as  if  there  had  been  none  before  it.  And  yet  it  is 
not  unJelightful  to  contemplate  the  eduction  of  good  from 
«vil.  The  ignorance  of  the  great  mass  of  our  countrymen 
was  the  efficient  cause  of  the  reproduction  of  the  drama ; 
and  the  preceding  darkness  and  the  returning  light  were 
alike  necessary  in  order  to  the  creation  of  a  Shakspere. 

The  drama  recommenced  in  England,  as  it  first  began  in 
Greece,  in  religion.  The  people  were  not  able  to  read, — 
the  priesthood  were  nnwilling  that  they  should  read ;  and 
yet  their  own  interest  compelled  them  not  to  leave  the 
people  wholly  ignorant  of  the  great  events  of  sacred  his- 
tory. They  did  that,  therefore,  by  scenic  representations, 
which  in  after  ages  it  has  been  attempted  to  do  in  Roman. 
Catholic  countries  by  pictures.  They  presented  Mysteries, 
and  often  at  great  expense :  and  reliques  of  this  system 
etill  remain  in  the  south  of  Europe,  and  indeed  throughout 
Italy,  where  at  Christmas  the  convents  and  the  great  nobles 
rival  each  other  in  the  scenic  representation  of  th0  birth 


198  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

of  Christ  and  its  circumstances.  I  heard  two  instances 
mentioned  to  me  at  different  times,  one  in  Sicily  and  the 
other  in  Rome,  of  noble  devotees,  the  ruin  of  whose  fortunes 
was  said  to  have  commenced  in  the  extravagant  expense 
which  had  been  incurred  in  presenting  the  prcesepe  or 
manger.  But  these  Mysteries,  in  order  to  answer  their 
design,  must  not  only  be  instructive,  but  entertaining;  and 
as,  when  they  became  so,  the  people  began  to  take  pleasure; 
in  acting  them  themselves — in  interloping, — (against  which 
the  priests  seem  to  have  fought  hard  and  yet  in  vain)  the 
most  ludicrous  images  were  mixed  with  the  most  awful  per- 
tonations  :  and  whatever  the  subject  might  be,  however  sub- 
lime, however  pathetic,  yet  the  Vice  and  the  Devil,  who  are 
the  genuine  antecessors  of  Harlequin  and  the  Clown,  were 
necessary  component  parts.  I  have  myself  a  piece  of  this 
l;ind,  which  I  transcribed  a  few  years  ago  at  Helmstadt,1  in 
Germany,  on  the  education  of  Eve's  children,  in  which  after 
Ihe  fall  and  repentance  of  Adam,  the  offended  Maker,  as  in 
proof  of  His  reconciliation,  condescends  to  visit  them,  and 
to  catechize  the  children, — who  with  a  noble  contempt  of 
chronology  are  all  brought  together  from  Abel  to  Noah.  The 
good  children  say  the  ten  Commandments,  the  Belief,  and 
the  Lord's  Prayer ;  but  Cain  and  his  rout,  after  he  had 
received  a  box  on  the  ear  for  not  taking  off  his  hat,  and 
afterwards  offering  his  left  hand,  is  prompted  by  the  devil 
so  to  blunder  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  as  to  reverse  the 
petitions  and  say  it  backward  !  a 

Unaffectedly   I    delare   I   feel    pain  at  repetitions   like 

1  Coleridge  was  in  Germany  from  September,  1798,  to  November, 
1799.  It  is  clear  that  these  remarks  were  written  long  before  1818. 
See  Introductory  Matter,  §  3. 

*  Some  remarks  on  this  subject,  to  be  found  in  the  notes  of  Lecture 
II.,  in  the  "  Remains,"  vol.  i.,  and  in  which  this  piece  is  described  more 
fully,  are  here  added  : — 

"  In  this  age  there  was  a  tendency  in  writers  to  the  droll  and  the 


SECT.  L]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  Iy9 

these,  however  innocent.  As  historical  documents  they 
are  valuable ;  but  I  am  sensible  that  what  I  can  read  with 
my  eye  with  perfect  innocence,  I  cannot  without  inward 
fear  and  misgivings  pronounce  with  my  tongue. 

Let  me,  however,  be  acquitted  of  presumption  if  I  say 
that  I  cannot  agree  with  Mr.  Malone,  that  our  ancestors 
did  not  perceive  the  ludicrous  in  these  things,  or  that  they 
paid  no  separate  attention  to  the  serious  and  comic  parts. 
Indeed  his  own  statement  contradicts  it.  For  what  purpose 
should  the  Vice  leap  upon  the  Devil's  back  and  belabour 
him,  but  to  produce  this  separate  attention  ?  The  people 
laughed  heartily,  no  doubt.  Nor  can  I  conceive  any  mean- 
ing attached  to  the  words  "  separate  attention,"  that  is  not 
fully  answered  by  one  part  of  an  exhibition  exciting  serious- 
ness or  pity,  and  the  other  raising  mirth  and  loud  laughter. 
That  they  felt  no  impiety  in  the  affair  is  most  true.  For  ifc 

grotesque,  and  in  the  little  dramas  which  at  that  time  existed,  there 
were  singular  instances  of  these.  It  was  the  disease  of  the  age.  It  is 
a  remarkable  fact  that  Luther  and  Mclancthon,  the  great  religious  re- 
formers of  that  day,  should  have  strongly  recommended  for  the  educa- 
tion of  children,  dramas,  which  at  present  would  be  considered  highly 
indecorous,  if  not  bordering  on  a  deeper  sin.  From  one  which  they  par- 
ticularly recommended,  I  will  give  a  few  extracts ;  more  I  should  not 
think  it  right  to  do.  The  play  opens  with  Adam  and  Eve  washing  and 
dressing  their  children  to  appear  before  the  Lord,  who  is  coming  from 
heaven  to  hear  them  repeat  the  Lord's  Prayer,  Belief,  &c.  In  the  next 
scene  the  Lord  appears  seated  like  a  schoolmaster,  with  the  children 
standing  round,  when  Cain,  who  is  behindhand,  and  a  sad  pickle,  comes 
running  in  with  a  bloody  nose  and  his  hat  on.  Adam  says, '  What,  with 
your  hat  on!'  Cain  then  goes  up  to  shake  hands  with  the  Almighty, 
when  Adam  says  (giving  him  a  cuff), '  Ah,  would  you  give  your  left 
hand  to  the  Lord  ?  '  At  length  Cain  takes  his  place  in  the  class,  and 
it  becomes  his  turn  to  say  the  Lord's  Prayer.  At  this  time  the  Devil  (a 
constant  attendant  at  that  time)  makes  his  appearance,  and  getting 
behind  Cain,  whispers  in  his  ear;  instead  of  the  Lord's  1'rayer,  Cain 
gives  it  so  changed  by  the  transposition  of  the  words,  that  the  meaning 
is  reversed  ;  yet  this  is  so  artfully  done  by  the  author,  that  it  is  exactly 
ft)  an  obstinate  child  would  answer,  who  knows  his  lesson,  yet  does  not 


200  POETRY",    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

is  the  very  essence  of  that  system  of  Christian  polytheism, 
which  in  all  its  essentials  is  now  fully  as  gross  in  Spain,  in 
Sicily  and  the  south  of  Italy,  as  it  ever  was  in  England  in 
the  days  of  Henry  VI. — (nay,  more  so ;  for  a  Wicliffe  had 
then  not  appeared  only,  but  scattered  the  good  seed  widely,) 
it  is  an  essential  part,  I  say,  of  that  system  to  draw  the 
mind  wholly  from  its  own  inward  whispers  and  quiet  dis- 
criminations, and  to  habituate  the  conscience  to  pronounce 
sentence  in  every  case  according  to  the  established  verdicts 
of  the  church  and  the  casuists.  I  have  looked  through 
volume  after  volume  of  the  most  approved  casuists, — ana 
still  I  find  disquisitions  whether  this  or  that  act  is  right, 
and  under  what  circumstances,  to  a  minuteness  that  makes 
reasoning  ridiculous,  and  of  a  callous  and  unnatural  im- 
modesty, to  which  none  but  a  monk  could  harden  himself, 
who  has  been  stripped  of  all  the  tender  charities  of  life, 
yet  is  goaded  on  to  make  war  against  them  by  the  unsub- 
dued hauntings  of  our  meaner  nature,  even  as  dogs  are 

choose  to  say  it.  In  the  last  scene,  horses  in  rich  trappings  and  car- 
riages covered  with  gold  are  introduced,  and  the  good  children  are  to 
ride  in  them  and  be  Lord  Mayors,  Lords,  &c. ;  Cain  and  the  bad  ones 
are  to  be  made  cobblers  and  tinkers,  and  only  to  associate  with  such. 

"  This,  with  numberless  others,  was  written  by  Hans  Sachs.  Our 
simple  ancestors,  firm  in  their  faith,  and  pure  in  their  morals,  were 
only  amused  by  these  pleasantries,  as  they  seemed  to  them,  and  neither 
they  nor  the  reformers  feared  their  having  any  influence  hostile  to  re- 
ligion. When  I  was,  many  years  back,  in  the  north  of  Germany,  there 
were  several  innocent  superstitions  in  practice.  Among  others  at  Christ- 
mas, presents  used  to  be  given  to  the  children  by  the  parents,  and  they 
•were  delivered  on  Christmas  day  by  a  person  who  personated,  and  was 
supposed  by  the  children  to  be,  Christ :  early  on  Christmas  morning  he 
called,  knocking  loudly  at  the  door,  and  (having  received  his  instructions) 
left  presents  for  the  good  and  a  rod  for  the  bad.  Those  who  have  since 
been  in  Germany  have  found  this  custom  relinquished ;  it  was  con- 
sidered profane  and  irrational.  Yet  they  have  not  found  the  children 
better,  nor  the  mothers  more  careful  of  their  offspring ;  they  have  not 
found  their  devotion  more  fervent,  their  faith  more  strong,  nor  their 
morality  more  pure." 


SECT.  L]  AND  SHAKSPEBB.  201 

said  to  get  the  hydrophobia  from  excessive  thirst.  I 
fully  believe  that  our  ancestors  laughed  as  heartily  as  their 
posterity  do  at  Grimaldi ; — and  not  having  been  told  that 
they  would  be  punished  for  laughing,  they  thought  it  very 
innocent ; — and  if  their  priests  had  left  out  murder  in  the 
catalogue  of  their  prohibitions  (as  indeed  they  did  under 
certain  circumstances  of  heresy,)  the  greater  part  of  them, 
' — the  moral  instincts  common  to  all  men  having  been 
smothered  and  kept  from  development, — would  have 
thought  as  little  of  murder. 

•  However  this  may  be,  the  necessity  of  at  once  instructing 
and  gratifying  the  people  produced  the  great  distinction 
between  the  Greek  and  the  English  theatres; — for  to  this 
we  must  attribute  the  origin  of  tragi-comedy,  or  a  repre- 
sentation of  human  events  more  lively,  nearer  the  truth, 
and  permitting  a  larger  field  of  moral  instruction,  a  more 
ample  exhibition  of  the  recesses  of  the  human  heart,  under 
all  the  trials  and  circumstances  that  most  concern  us,  than 
was  known  or  guessed  at  by  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  or  Euri- 
pides ; — and  at  the  same  time  we  learn  to  account  for,  and 
— relatively  to  the  author — perceive  the  necessity  of  the 
Fool  or  Clown  or  both,  as  the  substitutes  of  the  Vice  and 
the  Devil,  which  our  ancestors  had  been  so  accustomed  to 
see  in  every  exhibition  of  the  stage,  that  they  could  not  feel 
any  performance  perfect  without  them.  Even  to  this  day 
in  Italy,  every  opera — (even  Metastasio  obeyed  the  claim 
throughout) — must  have  six  characters,  generally  two  pairs 
of  cross  lovers,  a  tyrant  and  a  confidant,  or  a  father  and 
two  confidants,  themselves  lovers ; — and  when  a  new  opera 
appears,  it  is  the  universal  fashion  to  ask — which  is  the 
tyrant,  which  the  lover  ?  &c. 

It  is  the  especial  honour  of  Christianity,  that  in  its  worst- 
and  most  corrupted  form  it  cannot  wholly  separate  itself 
from  morality ; — whereas  the  other  religions  in  their  best 
form  (I  do  not  include  Mohammedanism,  which  is  only  an 


202  POETRY,  THE  DRAMA,  [1818 

anomalous  corruption  of  Christianity,  like  Swedenbor- 
gianism,)  have  no  connection  with  it.  The  very  imper- 
sonation of  moral  evil  under  the  name  of  Vice,  facilitated 
all  other  impersonations ;  and  hence  we  see  that  the 
Mysteries  were  succeeded  by  Moralities,  or  dialogues  and 
plots  of  allegorical  personages.  Again,  some  characters  in 
real  history  had  become  so  famous,  so  proverbial,  as  Nero 
for  instance,  that  they  wei*e  introduced  instead  of  the  moral 
quality,  for  which  they  were  so  noted ; — and  in  this  manner 
the  stage  was  moving  on  to  the  absolute  production  of 
heroic  and  comic  real  characters,  when  the  restoration  of 
literature,  followed  by  the  ever-blessed  Reformation,  let 
in  upon  the  kingdom  not  only  new  knowledge,  but  new 
motive.  A  useful  rivalry  commenced  between  the  metro- 
polis on  the  one  hand,  the  residence,  independently  of  the 
court  and  nobles,  of  the  most  active  and  stirring  spirits 
who  had  not  been  regularly  educated,  or  who,  from  mis- 
chance or  otherwise,  had  forsaken  the  beaten  track  of  pre- 
ferment,— and  the  universities  on  the  other.  The  latter 
prided  themselves  on  their  closer  approximation  to  the 
ancient  rules  and  ancient  regularity — taking  the  theatre  of 
Greece,  or  rather  its  dim  reflection,  the  rhetorical  tragedies 
of  the  poet  Seneca,  as  a  perfect  ideal,  without  any  critical 
collation  of  the  times,  origin,  or  circumstances  ; — whilst,  in 
the  mean  time,  the  popular  writers,  who  could  not  and 
would  not  abandon  what  they  had  found  to  delight  their 
countrymen  sincerely,  and  not  merely  from  inquiries  first 
put  to  the  recollection  of  rules,  and  answered  in  the  affir- 
mative, as  if  it  had  been  an  arithmetical  sum,  did  yet 
borrow  from  the  scholars  whatever  they  advantageously 
could,  consistently  with  their  own  peculiar  means  of 
pleasing. 

And  here  let  me  pause  for  a  moment's  contemplation  of 
this  interesting  subject. 

l^Te  call,  for  we  see  and  feel,  the  swan  and  the  dove  both 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  203 

transcendently  beautiful.  As  absurd  as  it  would  be  to 
institute  a  comparison  between  their  separate  claims  to 
beauty  from  any  abstract  rule  common  to  both,  without 
reference  to  the  life  and  being  of  the  animals  themselves, 
— or  as  if,  having  first  seen  the  dove,  we  abstracted  its  out- 
lines, gave  them  a  false  generalization,  called  them  the 
principles  or  ideal  of  bird-beauty,  and  then  proceeded  to 
criticize  the  swan  or  the  eagle ; — not  less  absurd  is  it  to 
pass  judgment  on  the  works  of  a  poet  on  the  mere  ground 
that  they  have  been  called  by  the  same  class-name  with 
the  works  of  other  poets  in  other  times  and  circumstances, 
or  on  any  ground,  indeed,  save  that  of  their  inappropriate- 
ness  to  their  own  end  and  being,  their  want  of  significancer 
as  symbols  or  physiognomy. 

0  !  few  have  there  been  among  critics,  who  have  followed 
with  the  eye  of  the  imagination  the  imperishable  yet  ever- 
wandering  spirit  of  poetry  through  its  various  metempsy- 
choses, and  consequent  metamorphoses; — or  who  have  re- 
joiced in  the  light  of  clear  perception  at  beholding  with 
each  new   birth,   with  each  rare   avatar,  the  human  race 
frame  to  itself  a  new  body,  by  assimilating  materials   of 
nourishment  out  of  its  new  circumstances,  and  work  for 
itself  new  organs  of  power  appropriate  to  the  new  sphere 
of  its  motion  and  activity  ! 

1  have  before  spoken  of  the  Romance,  or  the  language 
formed  out  of  the  decayed  Roman  and  the  Northern  tongues^ 
and  comparing  it  with  the  Latin,  we  find  it  less  perfect  in 
simplicity  and  relation — the  privileges  of  a  language  formed 
by  the  mere  attraction  of  homogeneous  parts ;  but  yet  more 
rich,  more  expressive  and  various,  as  one  formed  by  more 
obscure  affinities  out  of  a  chaos  of  apparently  heterogeneous 
atoms.     As  more  than  a  metaphor, — as  an  analogy  of  this,. 
I  have  named  the  true  genuine  modern  poetry  the   ro- 
mantic ;  and  the  works  of  Shakspere  are  romantic  poetry 
revealing  itself  in  the  drama.    If  the  tragedies  of  Sophocles 


-204  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

•are  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word  tragedies,  and  the  come- 
•dies  of  Aristophanes  comedies,  we  must  emancipate  our- 
selves from  a  false  association  arising  from  misapplied 
names,  and  find  a  new  word  for  the  plays  of  Shakspere. 
For  they  are,  in  the  ancient  sense,  neither  tragedies  nor 
•comedies,  nor  both  in  one, — but  a  different  genus,  diverse 
in  kind,  and  not  merely  different  in  degree.  They  may  be 
called  romantic  dramas,  or  dramatic  romances. 

A  deviation  from  the  simple  forms  and  unities  of  the 
•ancient  stage  is  an  essential  principle,  and,  of  course,  an 
•appropriate  excellence,  of  the  romantic  drama.  For  these 
unities  were  to  a  great  extent  the  natural  form  of  that 
•  •which  in  its  elements  was  homogeneous,  and  the  repre- 
sentation of  which  was  addressed  pre-eminently  to  the  out- 
ward senses  ; — and  though  the  fable,  the  language  and  the 
characters  appealed  to  the  reason  rather  than  to  the  mere 
•understanding,  inasmuch  as  they  supposed  an  ideal  state 
rather  than  referred  to  an  existing  reality, — yet  it  was  a 
reason  which  was  obliged  to  accommodate  itself  to  the  senses, 
and  so  far  became  a  sort  of  more  elevated  understanding 
"On  the  other  hand,  the  romantic  poetry — the  Shaksperian 
<drama — appealed  to  the  imagination  rather  than  to  the 
.senses,  and  to  the  reason  as  contemplating  our  inward 
nature,  and  the  workings  of  the  passions  in  their  most 
retired  recesses.  But  the  reason,  as  reason,  is  independent 
of  time  and  space ;  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  them ;  and 
hence  the  certainties  of  reason  have  been  called  eternal 
truths.  As  for  example — the  endless  properties  of  the 
circle  : — what  connection  have  they  with  this"  or  that  age, 
-with  this  or  that  country  ? — The  reason  is  aloof  from  time 
and  space  ; — the  imagination  is  an  arbitrary  controller  over 
both ; — and  if  only  the  poet  have  such  power  of  exciting 
our  internal  emotions  as  to  make  us  present  to  the  scene  in 
imagination  chiefly,  he  acquires  the  right  and  privilege  of 
using  time  and  space  as  they  exist  in  imagination,  and 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  205- 

obedient  only  to  the  laws  by  which,  the  imagination  itself; 
acts.  These  laws  it  will  be  my  object  and  aim  to  point 
ont  as  the  examples  occur,  which  illustrate  them.  But 
here  let  me  remark  what  can  never  be  too  often  reflected 
on  by  all  who  would  intelligently  study  the  works  either  of 
the  Athenian  dramatists,  or  of  Shakspere,  that  the  very 
essence  of  the  former  consists  in  the  sternest  separation  of 
the  diverse  in  kind  and  the  disparate  in  the  degree,  whilst- 
the  latter  delights  in  interlacing  by  a  rainbow-like  trans- 
fusion of  hues  the  one  with  the  other. 

And  here  it  will  be  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  on  the- 
stage  and  on  stage-illusion. 

A  theatre,  in  the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  is  the  general 
term  for  all  places  of  amusement  through  the  ear  or  eye,  in 
which  men  assemble  in  order  to  be  amused  by  some  enter- 
tainment presented  to  all  at  the  same  time  and  in  common.- 
Thus,  an  old  Puritan  divine  says : — "  Those  who  attend 
public  worship  and  sermons  only  to  amuse  themselves,, 
make  a  theatre  of  the  church,  and  turn  God's  house  into 
the  devil's.  Theatra  cedes  diabololatricce."  The  most  im- 
portant and  dignified  species  of  this  genus  is,  doubtless,  the; 
stage  (res  theatralis  histrionica) ,  which,  in  addition  to  the 
generic  definition  above  given,  may  be  characterized  in  its 
idea,  or  according  to  what  it  does,  or  ought  to,  aim  at,  as  a 
combination  of  several  or  of  all  the  fine  arts  in  an  har- 
monious whole,  having  a  distinct  end  of  its  own,  to  which 
the  peculiar  end  of  each  of  the  component  arts,  taken- 
separately,  is  made  subordinate  and  subservient, — that, 
namely,  of  imitating  reality — whether  external  things,, 
actions,  or  passions — under  a  semblance  of  reality.  Thusr 
Claude  imitates  a  landscape  at  sunset,  but  only  as  a  picture  : 
while  a  forest-scene  is  not  presented  to  the  spectators  as  n 
picture,  but  as  a  forest ;  and  though,  in  the  full  sense  of 
the  word,  we  are  no  more  deceived  by  the  one  than  by  the 
other,  yet  are  our  feelings  very  differently  affected ;  and 


206  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA, 

the  pleasure  derived  from  the  one  is  not  composed  of  ths 
fiame  elements  as  that  afforded  by  the  other,  even  on  the 
supposition  that  the  quantum  of  both  were  equal.  In  the 
former,  a  picture,  it  is  a  condition  of  all  genuine  delight 
that  we  should  not  be  deceived  :  in  the  latter,  stage-scenery 
(inasmuch  as  its  principal  end  is  not  in  or  for  itself,  as  is 
the  case  in  a  picture,  but  to  be  an  assistance  and  means  to 
an  end  out  of  itself),  its  very  purpose  is  to  produce  as  much 
illusion  as  its  nature  permits.  These,  and  all  other  stage 
presentations,  are  to  produce  a  sort  of  temporary  half -faith, 
which  the  spectator  encourages  in  himself  and  supports  by 
a  voluntary  contribution  on  his  own  part,  because  he  knows 
that  it  is  at  all  times  in  his  power  to  see  the  thing  as  it 
really  is.  I  have  often  observed  that  little  children  are 
actually  deceived  by  stage- scenery,  never  by  pictures ; 
though  even  these  produce  an  effect  on  their  impressible 
minds,  which  they  do  not  on  the  minds  of  adults.  The 
child,  if  strongly  impressed,  does  not  indeed  positively 
think  the  picture  to  be  the  reality ;  but  yet  he  does  not 
think  the  contrary.  As  Sir  George  Beaumont  was  show- 
ing me  a  very  fine  engraving  from  Rubens,  representing  a 
fitorm  at  sea  without  any  vessel  or  boat  introduced,  my 
little  boy,  then  about  five  years  old,  came  dancing  and 
fiinging  into  the  room,  and  all  at  once  (if  I  may  so  say) 
tumbled  in  upon  the  print.  He  instantly  started,  stood 
fiilent  and  motionless,  with  the  strongest  expression,  first  of 
•wonder  and  then  of  grief,  in  his  eyes  and  countenance,  and 
at  length  said,  "And  where  is  the  ship  ?  But  that  is  sunk, 
and  the  men  are  all  drowned !  " — still  keeping  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  print.  Now  what  pictures  are  to  little  children, 
stage-illusion  is  to  men,  provided  they  retain  any  part  of 
the  child's  sensibility ;  except,  that  in  the  latter  instance, 
the  suspension  of  the  act  of  comparison,  which  permits  this 
sort  of  negative  belief,  is  somewhat  more  assisted  by  the 
will,  than  in  that  of  a  child  respecting  a  picture. 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  207 

The  true  stage- illusion  in  this  and  in  all  other  things 
consists — not  in  the  mind's  judging  it  to  be  a  forest,  but, 
in  its  remission  of  the  judgment  that  it  is  not  a  forest. 
And  this  subject  of  stage-illusion  is  so  important,  and  so 
many  practical  errors  and  false  criticisms  may  arise,  and 
indeed  have  arisen,  either  from  reasoning  on  it  as  actual 
delusion  (the  strange  notion,  on  which  the  French  critics 
built  up  their  theory,  and  on  which  the  French  poets 
justify  the  construction  of  their  tragedies),  or  from  deny- 
ing it  altogether  (which  seems  the  end  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
reasoning,  and  which,  as  extremes  meet,  would  lead  to  the 
very  same  consequences,  by  excluding  whatever  would  not 
be  judged  probable  by  us  in  our  coolest  state  of  feeling, 
with  all  our  faculties  in  even  balance),  that  these  few  re- 
marks will,  I  hope,  be  pardoned,  if  they  should  serve  either 
to  explain  or  to  illustrate  the  point.  For  not  only  are  we 
never  absolutely  deluded — or  anything  like  it,  but  the 
attempt  to  cause  the  highest  delusion  possible  to  beings  in 
their  senses  sitting  in  a  theatre,  is  a  gross  fault,  incident 
only  to  low  minds,  which,  feeling  that  they  cannot  affect 
the  heart  or  head  permanently,  endeavour  to  call  forth  the 
momentary  affections.  There  ought  never  to  be  more  pain 
than  is  compatible  with  co-existing  pleasure,  and  to  be 
amply  repaid  by  thought. 

Shakspere  found  the  infant  stage  demanding  an  inter- 
mixture of  ludicrous  character  as  imperiously  as  that  of 
Greece  did  the  chorus,  and  high  language  accordant.  And 
there  are  many  advantages  in  this  ; — a  greater  assimilation 
to  nature,  a  greater  scope  of  power,  more  truths,  and  more 
feelings ; — the  effects  of  contrast,  as  in  Lear  and  the  Fool ; 
and  especially  this,  that  the  true  language  of  passion  be- 
comes sufficiently  elevated  by  your  having  previously  heard, 
in  the  same  piece,  the  lighter  conversation  of  men  under  no 
strong  emotion.  The  very  nakedness  of  the  stage,  too, 
was  advantageous, — for  the  drama  thence  became  some- 


208  POETRY,  THE  DRAMA,  [1818; 

thing  between  recitation  and  a  re-presentation;  and  the 
absence  or  paucity  of  scenes  allowed  a  freedom  from  the. 
laws  of  unity  of  place  and  unity  of  time,  the  observance  of, 
•which  must  either  confine  the  drama  to  as  few  subjects  as 
may  be  counted  on  the  fingers,  or  involve  gross  improba- 
bilities, far  more  striking  than  the  violation  would  have 
caused.  Thence,  also,  was  precluded  the  danger  of  a  false 
ideal, — -of  aiming  at  more  than  what  is  possible  on  the 
whole.  What  play  of  the  ancients,  with  reference  to  their 
ideal,  does  not  hold  out  more  glaring  absurdities  than  any 
in  Shakspere  ?  On  the  Greek  plan  a  man  could  more 
easily  be  a  poet  than  a  dramatist;  upon  our  plan  more 
easily  a  dramatist  than  a  poet. 


The  Drama  generally  and  Public  Taste. 
Unaccustomed  to  address  such  an  audience,  and  having 
lost  by  a  long  interval  of  confinement  the  advantages  of  my 
former  short  schooling,1  I  had  miscalculated  in  my  last 
lecture  the  proportion  of  my  matter  to  my  time,  and  by 
bad  economy  and  unskilful  management,  the  several  heads 
of  my  discourse  failed  in  making  the  entire  performance 
correspond  with  the  promise  publicly  circulated  in  the 
weekly  annunciation  of  the  subjects  to  be  treated.  It 
would  indeed  have  been  wiser  in  me,  and  perhaps  better  on 
the  whole,  if  I  had  caused  my  lectures  to  be  announced 
only  as  continuations  of  the  main  subject.  But  if  I  be,  as 
perforce  I  must  be,  gratified  by  the  recollection  of  whatever 
has  appeared  to  give  you  pleas-ure,  I  am  conscious  of  some- 
thing better,  though  less  flattering,  a  sense  of  unfeigned 
gratitude  for  your  forbearance  with  my  defects.  Like 
affectionate  guardians,  you  see  without  disgust  the  awk- 

1  This  would  seem  to  be  a  portion  of  a  pre-written  lecture  for  the 
course  of  1807-8.  Clearly,  "  in  my  last  address  I  defined  poetry  .  .  .'* 
does  not  refer  to  the  last  note,  on  the  -'Progress  of  the  Dranca.'' 


SlCT.  I.]  AND    SHAKSPERE.  209 

wardness,  and  witness  with  sympathy  the  growing  pains, 
of  a  youthful  endeavour,  and  look  forward  with  a  hope, 
which  is  its  own  reward,  to  the  contingent  results  of 
practice — to  its  intellectual  maturity. 

In  my  last  address  I  denned  poetry  to  be  the  art,  or 
whatever  better  term  our  language  may  afford,  of  repre- 
senting external  nature  and  human  thoughts,  both  rela- 
tively to  human  affections,  so  as  to  cause  the  production  of 
as  great  immediate  pleasure  in  each  part,  as  is  compatible 
with  the  largest  possible  sum  of  pleasure  on  the  whole. 
Now  this  definition  applies  equally  to  painting  and  music 
as  to  poetry  ;  and  in  truth  the  term  poetry  is  alike  applic- 
able to  all  three.  The  vehicle  alone  constitutes  the  diffe- 
rence ;  and  the  term  "  poetry  "  is  rightly  applied  by  eminence 
to  measured  words,  only  because  the  sphere  of  their  action 
is  far  wider,  the  power  of  giving  permanence  to  them 
much  more  certain,  and  incomparably  greater  the  facility, 
by  which  men,  not  defective  by  nature  or  disease,  may  be 
enabled  to  derive  habitual  pleasure  and  instruction  from 
them.  On  my  mentioning  these  considerations  to  a  painter 
of  great  genius,  who  had  been,  from  a  most  honourable 
enthusiasm,  extolling  his  own  art,  he  was  so  struck  with 
their  truth,  that  he  exclaimed,  "  I  want  no  other  arguments ; 
— poetry,  that  is,  verbal  poetry,  must  be  the  greatest ;  all 
that  proves  final  causes  in  the  world,  proves  this  ;  it  would 
be  shocking  to  think  otherwise  !  " — And  in  truth,  deeply, 
O !  far  more  than  words  can  express,  as  I  venerate  the 
Last  Judgment  and  the  Prophets  of  Michel  Angelo  Buona- 
rotti, — yet  the  very  pain  which  I  repeatedly  felt  as  I  lost 
myself  in  gazing  upon  them,  the  painful  consideration  that 
their  having  been  painted  in  fresco  was  the  sole  cause  that 
they  had  not  been  abandoned  to  all  the  accidents  of  a  dan- 
gerous transportation  to  a  distant  capital,  and  that  the 
same  caprice,  which  made  the  Neapolitan  soldiery  destroy 
all  the  exquisite  master-pieces  on  the  walls  of  the  church  of 

p 


210  POETRY,  THE  DRAMA,  [1818 

the  Trinitado  Monte  after  the  retreat  of  their  antagonist 
barbarians,  might  as  easily  have  made  vanish  the  rooms  and 
open  gallery  of  Baffael,  and  the  yet  more  unapprochablo 
wonders  of  the  sublime  Florentine  in  the  Sixtine  Chapel, 
forced  upon  my  mind  the  reflection :  How  grateful  tho 
human  race  ought  to  be  that  the  works  of  Euclid,  Newton, 
Plato,  Milton,  Shakspere,  are  not  subjected  to  similar  con- 
tingencies,— that  they  and  their  fellows,  and  the  great, 
though  inferior,  peerage  of  undying  intellect,  are  secured  ; 
— secured  even  from  a  second  irruption  of  Goths  and 
Vandals,  in  addition  to  many  other  safeguards,  by  the  vast 
empire  of  English  language,  laws,  and  religion,  founded  in 
America,  through  the  overflow  of  the  power  and  the  virtue 
of  my  country : — and  that  now  the  great  and  certain  works 
of  genuine  fame  can  only  cease  to  act  for  mankind,  when 
men  themselves  cease  to  be  men,  or  when  the  planet  on 
which  they  exist,  shall  have  altered  its  relations,  or  have 
ceased  to  be.  Lord  Bacon,  in  the  language  of  the  gods,  if 
I  may  use  an  Homeric  phrase,  has  expressed  a  similar 
thought : — 

"Lastly,  leaving  the  vulgar  arguments,  that  by  learning  man  excelleth 
man  in  that  wherein  man  exceileth  beasts;  that  by  learning  man 
ascendeth  to  the  heavens  and  their  motions,  where  in  body  he  cannot 
come,  and  the  like;  let  us  conclude  with  the  dignity  and  excellency  of 
knowledge  and  learning  in  that  whereunto  man's  nature  doth  most 
aspire,  which  is,  immortality  or  continuance  :  for  to  thistendeth  genera- 
tion, and  raising  of  houses  and  families  ;  to  this  tend  buildings,  founda- 
tions, and  monuments  ;  to  this  tendeth  the  desire  of  memory,  fame,  and 
celebration,  and  in  effect  the  strength  of  all  other  human  desires.  We 
see  then  how  far  the  monuments  of  wit  and  learning  are  more  durable 
than  the  monuments  of  power,  or  of  the  hands.  For  have  not  the  verses 
of  Homer  continued  twenty-five  hundred  years,  or  more,  without  the 
loss  of  a  syllable  or  letter  ;  during  which  time  infinite  palaces,  temples, 
castles,  cities,  have  been  decayed  and  demolished  ?  It  is  not  possible 
to  have  the  true  pictures  or  statues  of  Cyrus,  Alexander,  Caesar ;  no, 
nor  of  the  kings  or  great  personages  of  much  later  years ;  for  the 
originab  cannot  last,  and  the  copies  cannot  but  lose  of  the  life  and 


SECT.  I.]  AXD  SIIAKSPEKE.  211 

truth.  But  the  images  of  men's  wits  and  knowledges  remain  in  books, 
•exempted  from  the  wrong  of  time,  and  capable  of  perpetual  renovation. 
Neither  are  they  fitly  to  be  called  images,  because  they  generate  still, 
and  cast  their  seeds  in  the  minds  of  others,  provoking  and  causing 
infinite  actions  and  opinions  in  succeeding  ages :  so  that,  if  the  in- 
vention of  the  ship  was  thought  so  noble,  which  carrieth  riches  and 
•commodities  from  place  to  place,  and  consociateth  the  most  remote 
regions  in  participation  of  their  fruits;  how  much  more  are  letters  to  be 
magnified,  which  as  ships  pass  through  the  vast  seas  of  time,  and  make 
ages  so  distant  to  participate  of  the  wisdom,  illuminations,  and  inven- 
tions, the  one  of  the  other  ?  "' 

But  let  us  now  consider  what  the  drama  should  be.  And 
•first,  it  is  not  a  copy,  but  an  imitation,  of  nature.  This  is 
the  universal  principle  of  the  fine  arts.  In  all  well  laid  out 
grounds  what  delight  do  we  feel  from  that  balance  and 
antithesis  of  feelings  and  thoughts  !  How  natural !  we 
say ; — but  the  very  wonder  that  caused  the  exclamation, 
implies  that  we  perceived  art  at  the  same  moment.  We 
•catch  the  hint  from  nature  itself.  Whenever  in  mountains 
or  cataracts  we  discover  a  likeness  to  any  thing  artificial 
•which  yet  we  know  is  not  artificial — what  pleasure  !  And 
so  it  is  in  appearances  known  to  be  artificial,  which  appear 
to  be  natural.  This  applies  in  due  degrees,  regulated  by 
steady  good  sense,  from  a  clump  of  trees  to  the  "  Paradise 
Lost  "  or  "  Othello."  It  would  be  easy  to  apply  it  to  painting 
and  even,  though  with  greater  abstraction  of  thought,  and 
by  more  subtle  yet  equally  just  analogies — to  music.  But 
this  belongs  to  others  ; — suffice  it  that  one  great  principle  is 
common  to  all  the  fine  arts, — a  principle  which  probably  is 
the  condition  of  all  consciousness,  without  which  we  should 
feel  and  imagine  only  by  discontinuous  moments,  and  be 
plants  or  brute  animals  instead  of  men ; — I  mean  that  ever- 
varying  balance,  or  balancing,  of  images,  notions,  or  feel- 
ings, conceived  as  in  opposition  to  each  other ; — in  short, 
the  perception  of  identity  and  contrariety ;  the  least  degrco 

1  "  Advancement  of  Learning,"  book  i.  sub  fine.— S.  T.  C. 


212  POETRY,    THE    DttAMA,  [1818 

of  which  constitutes  likeness,  the  greatest  absolute  diffe- 
rence ;  but  the  infinite  gradations  between  these  two  form 
all  the  play  and  all  the  interest  of  onr  intellectual  and 
moral  being,  till  it  leads  us  to  a  feeling  and  an  object  more 
awful  than  it  seems  to  me  compatible  with  even  the  present 
subject  to  utter  aloud,  though  I  am  most  desirous  to  sug- 
gest it.  For  there  alone  are  all  things  at  once  different 
and  the  same ;  there  alone,  as  the  principle  of  all  things, 
does  distinction  exist  unaided  by  division ;  there  are  will 
and  reason,  succession  of  time  and  unmoving  eternity,  in- 
finite change  and  ineffable  rest ! — 

"  Return  Alpheus !  the  dread  voice  is  past 
Which  shrunk  thy  streams!  " 

"  Thou  honour'd  flood, 

Smooth-flowing  Avon,  crown'd  with  vocal  reeds, 
That  strain  I  heard,  was  of  a  higher  mood  ! — 
But  now  my  voice  proceeds." 

We  may  divide  a  dramatic  poet's  characteristics  before 
we  enter  into  the  component  merits  of  any  one  work,  and 
with  reference  only  to  those  things  which  are  to  be  the 
materials  of  all,  into  language,  passion,  and  character ; 
always  bearing  in  mind  that  these  must  act  and  react  on 
each  other, — the  language  inspired  by  the  passion,  and  the 
language  and  the  passion  modified  and  differenced  by  the 
character.  To  the  production  of  the  highest  excellencies  in 
these  three,  there  are  requisite  in  the  mind  of  the  author  ; 
— good  sense  ;  talent ;  sensibility ;  imagination  ; — and  to 
the  perfection  of  a  work  we  should  add  two  faculties  of 
lesser  importance,  yet  necessary  for  the  ornaments  and! 
foliage  of  the  column  and  the  roof — fancy  and  a  quick 
sense  of  beauty. 

As  to  language ; — it  cannot  be  supposed  that  the  poet 
should  make  his  characters  say  all  that  they  would,  or 


SECT.  I.]  AND   SHAKSPERE.  213 

that,  his  whole  drama  considered,  each  scene,  or  paragraph 
should  be  such  as,  on  cool  examination,  we  can  conceive  it 
likely  that  men  in  snch  situations  would  say,  in  that  order, 
or  with  that  perfection.  And  yet,  according  to  my  feel- 
ings, it  is  a  very  inferior  kind  of  poetry,  in  which,  as  in 
the  French  tragedies,  men  are  made  to  talk  in  a  style 
which  few  indeed  even  of  the  wittiest  can  be  supposed  to 
converse  in,  and  which  both  is,  and  on  a  moment's  reflec- 
tion appears  to  be,  the  natural  produce  of  the  hot-bed  of 
vanity,  namely,  the  closet  of  an  author,  who  is  actuated 
originally  by  a  desire  to  excite  surprise  and  wonderment  at 
his  own  superiority  to  other  men, — instead  of  having  felt 
so  deeply  on  certain  subjects,  or  in  consequence  of  certain 
imaginations,  as  to  make  it  almost  a  necessity  of  his 
nature  to  seek  for  sympathy, — no  doubt,  with  that  honour- 
able desire  of  permanent  action  which  distinguishes  genius. 
— Where  then  is  the  difference  ? — In  this,  that  each  part 
should  be  proportionate,  though  the  whole  may  be  perhaps 
impossible.  At  all  events,  it  should  be  compatible  with 
sound  sense  and  logic  in  the  mind  of  the  poet  himself. 

It  is  to  be  lamented  that  we  judge  of  books  by  books, 
instead  of  referring  what  we  read  to  our  own  experience. 
One  great  use  of  books  is  to  make  their  contents  a  motive 
for  observation.  The  German  tragedies  have  in  some 
respects  been  justly  ridiculed.  In  them  the  dramatist 
often  becomes  a  novelist  in  his  directions  to  the  actors,  and 
thus  degrades  tragedy  into  pantomime.  Yet  still  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  poet's  mind  must  be  diffused  over  that  of 
the  reader  or  spectator ;  but  he  himself,  according  to  his 
genius,  elevates  us,  and  by  being  always  in  keeping,  pre- 
vents us  from  perceiving  any  strangeness,  though  we  feel 
great  exultation.  Many  different  kinds  of  style  may  be 
admirable,  both  in  different  men,  and  in  different  parts  of 
the  same  poem. 

See  the  different  language  which  strong  feelings  may 


214  POETRr,  THE  DEAMA,  [1818 

justify  in  Shylock,  and  learn  from  Shakspere's  conduct  of 
character  the  terrible  force  of  very  plain  and  calm  diction, 
when  known  to  proceed  from  a  resolved  and  impassioned 
man. 

It  is  especially  with  reference  to  the  drama,  and  its 
characteristics  in  any  given  nation,  or  at  any  particular 
period,  that  the  dependence  of  genius  on  the  public  taste 
becomes  a  matter  of  the  deepest  importance.  I  do  not 
mean  that  taste  which  springs  merely  from  caprice  or 
fashionable  imitation,  and  which,  in  fact,  genius  can,  and 
by  degrees  will,  create  for  itself ;  but  that  which  arises 
out  of  wide-grasping  and  heart-enrooted  causes,  which  is 
epidemic,  and  in  the  very  air  that  all  breathe.  This  it  is 
which  kills,  or  withers,  or  corrupts.  Socrates,  indeed, 
might  walk  arm  and  arm  with  Hygeia,  whilst  pestilence, 
with  a  thousand  furies  running  to  and  fro,  and  clashing 
against  each  other  in  a  complexity  and  agglomeration 
of  horrors,  was  shooting  her  darts  of  fire  and  venom  all 
around  him.  Even  such  was  Milton ;  yea,  and  such,  in 
spite  of  all  that  has  been  babbled  by  his  critics  in  pretended 
excuse  for  his  damning,  because  for  them  too  profound, 
excellencies, — such  was  Shakspere.  But  alas  !  the  excep- 
tions prove  the  rule.  For  who  will  dare  to  forco  his  way 
out  of  the  crowd, — not  of  the  mere  vulgar, — but  of  the 
vain  and  banded  aristocracy  of  intellect,  and  presume  to- 
join  the  almost  supernatural  beings  that  stand  by  them- 
selves aloof  ? 

Of  this  diseased  epidemic  influence  there  are  two  forms 
especially  preclusive  of  tragic  worth.  The  first  is  the 
necessary  growth  of  a  sense  and  love  of  the  ludicrous,  and 
a  morbid  sensibility  of  the  assimilative  power, — an  inflam- 
mation produced  by  cold  and  weakness, — which  in  the 
boldest  bursts  of  passion  will  lie  in  wait  for  a  jeer  at  any 
phrase,  that  may  have  an  accidental  coincidence  in  the 
mere  words  with  something  base  or  trivial.  For  instance> 


SECT.  I.]  AND    SHAKSPERE.  215 

— to  express  woods,  not  on  a  plain,  but  clothing  a  hill, 
which  overlooks  a  valley,  or  dell,  or  river,  or  the  sea, — the 
trees  rising  one  above  another,  as  the  spectators  in  an 
ancient  theatre, — I  know  no  other  word  in  our  language, 
(bookish  and  pedantic  terms  out  of  the  question,)  but 
hanging  woods,  the  sylvce  super  imp  endentes  of  Catullus ; l 
yet  let  some  wit  call  out  in  a  slang  tone, — "  the  gallows  ! " 
and  a  peal  of  laughter  would  damn  the  play.  Hence  it  is 
that  so  many  dull  pieces  have  had  a  decent  run,  only  be- 
cause nothing  unusual  above,  or  absurd  below,  mediocrity 
furnished  an  occasion, — a  spark  for  the  explosive  materials 
collected  behind  the  orchestra.  But  it  would  take  a  volume 
of  no  ordinary  size,  however  laconically  the  sense  were  ex- 
pressed, if  it  were  meant  to  instance  the  effects,  and  unfold 
all  the  causes,  of  this  disposition  upon  the  moral,  intellec- 
tual, and  even  physical  character  of  a  people,  with  its  in- 
fluences on  domestic  life  and  individual  deportment.  A 
good  document  upon  this  subject  would  be  the  history  of 
Paris  society  arid  of  French,  that  is,  Parisian,  literature 
from  the  commencement  of  the  latter  half  of  the  reign 
of  Louis  XIV.  to  that  of  Buonaparte,  compared  with 
the  preceding  philosophy  and  poetry  even  of  Frenchmen 
themselves. 

The  second  form,  or  more  properly,  perhaps,  another 
distinct  cause,  of  this  diseased  disposition  is  matter  of 
exultation  to  the  philanthropist  and  philosopher,  and  of 
regret  to  the  poet,  the  painter,  and  the  statuary  alone,  and 
to  them  only  as  poets,  painters,  and  statuaries  ; — namely, 
the  security,  the  comparative  equability,  and  ever  increasing 
sameness  of  human  life.  Men  are  now  so  seldom  thrown 
into  wild  circumstances,  and  violences  of  excitement,  that 
the  language  of  such  states,  the  laws  of  association  of  feel- 

1  "  Confestim  Penios  adest,  viridantia  Tempe, 
Tempe,  quse  sylvse  cingunt  superimpendentes." 

Efith.  Pel.  et  Th.  286-7. 


21G  POETET,   THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

ing  with  thought,  the  starts  and  strange  far-flights  of  the 
assimilative  power  on  the  slightest  and  least  obvious  like- 
ness presented  by  thoughts,  words,  or  objects, — these  are 
all  judged  of  by  authority,  not  by  actual  experience, — by 
what  men  have  been  accustomed  to  regard  as  symbols  of 
these  stales,  and  not  the  natural  symbols,  or  self-manifes- 
tations of  them. 

Even  so  it  is  in  the  language  of  man,  and  in  that  of 
nature.  The  sound  sun,  or  the  figures  s,  u,  n,  are  purely 
arbitrary  modes  of  recalling  the  object,  and  for  visual  mere 
objects  they  are  not  only  sufficient,  but  have  infinite  advan- 
tages from  their  very  nothingness  per  se.  But  the  language 
of  nature  is  a  subordinate  Logos,  that  was  in  the  beginning, 
and  was  with  the  thing  it  represented,  and  was  the  thing 
it  represented. 

Now  the  language  of  Shakspere,  in  his  "Lear  "for  instance, 
is  a  something  intermediate  between  these  two  ;  or  rather 
it  is  the  former  blended  with  the  latter, — the  arbitrary,  not 
merely  recalling  the  cold  notion  of  the  thing,  but  express- 
ing the  reality  of  it,  and,  as  arbitrary  language  is  an  heir- 
loom of  the  human  race,  being  itself  a  part  of  that  which  it 
manifests.  What  shall  I  deduce  from  the  preceding 
positions  ?  Even  this, — the  appropriate,  the  never  to  be 
too  much  valued  advantage  of  the  theatre,  if  only  the 
actors  were  what  we  know  they  have  been, — a  delightful, 
yet  most  effectual,  remedy  for  this  dead  palsy  of  the  public 
mind.  What  would  appear  mad  or  ludicrous  in  a  book, 
when  presented  to  the  senses  under  the  form  of  reality, 
and  with  the  truth  of  nature,  supplies  a  species  of  actual 
experience.  This  is  indeed  the  special  privilege  of  a  great 
actor  over  a  great  poet.  No  part  was  ever  played  in  per- 
fection, but  nature  justified  herself  in  the  hearts  of  all  her 
children,  in  what  state  soever  they  were,  short  of  absolute 
moral  exhaustion,  or  downright  stupidity.  There  is  no 
time  given  to  ask  questions  or  to  pass  judgments  ;  we  are 


.  I.]  AlfD    SHAKSPEEB.  217 

taken  by  storm,  and,  though  in  the  histrionic  art  many  a 
clumsy  counterfeit,  by  caricature  of  one  or  two  features, 
may  gain  applause  as  a  fine  likeness,  yet  never  was  the  very 
thing  rejected  as  a  counterfeit.  0  !  when  I  think  of  the 
inexhaustible  mine  of  virgin  treasure  in  our  Shakspere, 
that  I  have  been  almost  daily  reading  him  since  I  was 
ten  years  old, — that  the  thirty  intervening  years l  have 
been  unintermittingly  and  not  fruitlessly  employed  in  the 
study  of  the  Greek,  Latin,  English,  Italian,  Spanish,  and 
German  belle  lettrists,  and  the  last  fifteen  years  in  addition, 
far  more  intensely  in  the  analysis  of  the  laws  of  life  and 
reason  as  they  exist  in  man, — and  that  upon  every  step  I 
have  made  forward  in  taste,  in  acquisition  of  facts  from 
history  or  my  own  observation,  and  in  knowledge  of  the 
different  laws  of  being  and  their  apparent  exceptions,  from 
accidental  collision  of  disturbing  forces, — that  at  every 
new  accession  of  information,  after  every  successful  exer- 
cise of  meditation,  and  every  fresh  presentation  of  experi- 
ence, I  have  unfailingly  discovered  a  proportionate  increase 
of  wisdom  and  intuition  in  Shakspsre  ; — when  I  know  this, 
and  know  too,  that  by  a  conceivable  and  possible,  though 
hardly  to  be  expected,  arrangement  of  the  British  theatres, 
not  all,  indeed,  but  a  large,  a  very  large,  proportion  of  this 
indefinite  all — (round  which  no  comprehension  has  yet 
drawn  the  line  of  circumscription,  so  as  to  say  to  itself, 
"  I  have  seen  the  whole  ") — might  be  sent  into  the  heads 
and  hearts — into  the  very  souls  of  the  mass  of  mankind,  to 
whom,  except  by  this  living  comment  and  interpretation,  it 
must  remain  for  ever  a  sealed  volume,  a  deep  well  without 
a  wheel  or  a  windlass ; — it  seems  to  me  a  pardonable  en- 
thusiasm to  steal  away  from  sober  likelihood,  and  share  in 

1  This  brings  us  to  the  lectures  of  1811-12.  There  is  much  in  Mr. 
Collier's  second  lecture  identical  with  the  matter  in  this  note,  and  poetry 
was  defined  in  his  first  lecture.  But  the  note  and  the  lecture  are  not  the 
same. 


218  POKTRT,  THE  DRAMA,  [1818 

BO  rich  a  feast  In  the  faery  world  of  possibility  !  Yet  even 
in  the  grave  cheerfulness  of  a  circumspect  hope,  much, 
very  much,  might  be  done ;  enough,  assuredly,  to  furnish 
a  kind  and  strenuous  nature  with  ample  motives  for  the 
attempt  to  effect  what  may  be  effected. 


ShaJispere  as  a  Poet  generally. 

Clothed  in  radiant  armour,  and  authorized  by  titles  sure 
and  manifold,  as  a  poet,  Shakspere  came  forward  to  de- 
mand the  throne  of  fame,  as  the  dramatic  poet  of  England. 
His  excellencies  compelled  even  his  contemporaries  to  seat 
him  on  that  throne,  although  there  were  giants  in  those 
days  contending  for  the  same  honour.  Hereafter  I  would 
fain  endeavour  to  make  out  the  title  of  the  English  drama 
as  created  by,  and  existing  in,  Shakspere,  and  its  right  to 
the  supremacy  of  dramatic  excellence  in  general.  But  he 
had  shown  himself  a  poet,  previously  to  his  appearance  as 
a  dramatic  poet ;  and  had  no  "  Lear,"  no  "  Othello,"  no 
"  Henry  IV.,"  no  "  Twelfth  Night  "  ever  appeared,  we  must 
have  admitted  that  Shakspere  possessed  the  chief,  if  not 
every,  requisite  of  a  poet, — deep  feeling  and  exquisite  sense 
of  beauty,  both  as  exhibited  to  the  eye  in  the  combinations  of 
form,  and  to  the  ear  in  sweet  and  appropriate  melody ;  that 
these  feelings  were  under  the  command  of  his  own  will ; 
that  in  his  very  first  productions  he  projected  his  mind  out 
of  his  own  particular  being,  and  felt,  and  made  others  feel, 
on  subjects  no  way  connected  with  himself,  except  by  force 
of  contemplation  and  that  sublime  faculty  by  which  a 
great  mind  becomes  that  on  which  it  meditates.  To  this 
must  be  added  that  affectionate  love  of  nature  and  natural 
objects,  without  which  no  man  could  have  observed  so 
steadily,  or  painted  so  truly  and  passionately,  the  very 
minutest  beauties  of  the  external  world : — 


SECT.  I.]  AND    SHAKSPEKE. 

"  And  wlien  thou  hast  on  foot  the  purblind  hare, 
Mark  the  poor  wretch ;  to  overshoot  his  troubles, 
How  he  outruns  the  wind,  and  with  what  care 
He  cranks  and  crosses  with  a  thousand  doubles ; 
The  many  musits  through  the  which  he  goes 
Are  like  a  labyrinth  to  amaze  his  foes. 

"  Sometimes l  he  runs  among  the l  flock  of  sheep, 
To  make  the  cunning  hounds  mistake  their  smell  j 
And  sometime  where  earth -delving  conios  keep, 
To  stop  the  loud  pursuers  in  their  yell ; 
And  sometime  sorteth  with  a  herd  of  deer : 
Danger  deviseth  shifts,  wit  waits  on  fear. 

44  For  there  his  smell  with  others'  being  mingled, 
The  hot  scent-snuffing  hounds  are  driven  to  doubt, 
Ceasing  their  clamorous  cry,  till  they  have  singled. 
With  much  ado,  the  cold  fault  cleanly  out, 
Then  do  they  spend  their  mouths ;  echo  replies, 
As  if  another  chase  were  in  the  skies. 

"  By  this  poor  Wat,  far  off,  upon  a  hill, 
Stands  on  his  hinder  legs  with  listening  ear, 
To  hearken  if  his  foes  pursue  him  still : 
Anon  their  loud  alarums  he  doth  hear, 
And  now  his  grief  may  be  compared  well 
To  one  sore-sick,  that  hears  the  passing-bell. 

"  Then  shall  thou  see  the  dew-bedabbled  wretch 
Turn,  and  return,  indenting  with  the  way  : 
Each  envious  briar  his  weary  legs  doth  scratch, 
Each  shadow  makes  him  stop,  each  murmur  stay. 
For  misery  is  trodden  on  by  many, 
And  being  low,  never  relieved  by  any." 

Venus  and  Ad  on**. 

And  the  preceding  description  : — 

"  But,  lo!  from  forth  a  copse  that  neighbours  by, 
A  breeding  jennet,  lusty,  young  and  proud,  &c.!* 


1  Read  "  sometime  "  and  "  a  ". 


220  POETRY,    THE   DRAMA,  [1818 

is  much  more  admirable,  but  in  parts  less  fitted  for  quota- 
tion. 

Moreover  Shakspere  had  shown  that  he  possessed  fancy, 
•considered  as  the  faculty  of  bringing  together  images 
dissimilar  in  the  main  by  some  one  point  or  more  of  likeness, 
as  in  such  a  passage  as  this : — 

"  Full  gently  now  she  takes  him  by  the  hand, 

A  lily  prisoned  in  a  jail  of  snow, 

Or  ivory  in  an  alabaster  band ; 

So  white  a  friend  ingirts  so  white  a  foe !  " — Ib. 

And  still  mounting  the  intellectual  ladder,  he  had  as  un- 
•equivocally  proved  the  indwelling  in  his  mind  of  imagina- 
tion, or  the  power  by  which  one  image  or  feeling  is  made 
to  modify  many  others,  and  by  a  sort  of  fusion  to  force 
many  into  one ; — that  which  afterwards  showed  itself  in 
*uch  might  and  energy  in  "Lear,"  where  the  deep  anguish  of 
.a  father  spreads  the  feeling  of  ingratitude  and  cruelty  over 
the  very  elements  of  heaven; — and  which,  combining  many 
•circumstances  into  one  moment  of  consciousness,  tends  to 
produce  that  ultimate  end  of  all  human  thought  and  human 
Reeling,  unity,  and  thereby  the  reduction  of  the  spirit  to  its 
principle  and  fountain,  who  is  alone  truly  one.  Various 
are  the  workings  of  this  the  greatest  faculty  of  the  human 
mind,  both  passionate  and  tranquil.  In  its  tranquil  and 
purely  pleasurable  operation,  it  acts  chiefly  by  creating  out 
of  many  things,  as  they  would  have  appeared  in  the  de- 
scription of  an  ordinary  mind,  detailed  in  unimpassioned 
succession,  a  oneness,  even  as  nature,  the  greatest  of  poets, 
acts  upon  us,  when  we  open  our  eyes  upon  an  extended 
prospect.  Thus  the  flight  of  Adonis  in  the  dusk  of  the 
evening : — 

"  Look !  how  a  bright  star  shooteth  from  the  sky  j 
So  glides  he  in  the  night  from  Venus'  eye  !  " 

How  many  images  and  feelings  are  here  brought  together 


SECT.  L]  AND  SHAKSPERE,  22  J 

without  effort  and  without  discord,  in  the  beauty  of  Adonis, 
the  rapidity  of  his  flight,  the  yearning,  yet  hopelessness,  oi 
the  enamoured  gazer,  while  a  shadowy  ideal  character  i& 
thrown  over  the  whole  !  Or  this  power  acts  by  impressing 
the  stamp  of  humanity,  and  of  human  feelings,  on  inani- 
mate or  mere  natural  objects  : — 

"  Lo!  here  the  gentle  lark,  weary  of  rest, 

From  his  moist  cabinet  mounts  up  on  high, 

And  wakes  the  morning,  from  whose  silver  breast 

The  sun  ariscth  in  his  majesty, 

Who  doth  the  world  so  gloriously  behold, 

The  cedar-tops  and  hills  seem  burnish'd  gold." 

Or  again,  it  acts  by  so  carrying  on  the  eye  of  the  reader 
as  to  make  him  almost  lose  the  consciousness  of  words, — 
to  make  him  see  everything  flashed,  as  Wordsworth  haa 
grandly  and  appropriately  said, — 

"  Flashed 1  upon  that  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude; — 

and  this  without  exciting  any  painful  or  laborious  atten- 
tion, without  any  anatomy  of  description,  (a  fault  not  un- 
common  in  descriptive  poetry) — but  with  the  sweetness 
and  easy  movement  of  nature.  This  energy  is  an  absolute 
essential  of  poetry,  and  of  itself  would  constitute  a  poet,, 
though  not  one  of  the  highest  class  ;  it  is,  however,  a  most 
hopeful  symptom,  and  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis  "  is  one- 
continued  specimen  of  it. 

In  this  beautiful  poem  there  is  an  endless  activity  of 
thought  in  all  the  possible  associations  of  thought  with 
thought,  thought  with  feeling,  or  with  words,  of  feelings- 
vrith  feelings,  and  of  words  with  words. 

"  Even  as  the  sun,  with  purple-colour 'd  face, 
Had  ta'en  his  last  leave  of  the  weeping  morn, 


1  They  flash  "  is  Wordsworth's  text.     He  is  speaking  of  daffodils. 


222  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

*  Rose-cheek'd  Adonis  hied  him  to  the  chase : 
Hunting  he  loved,  but  love  he  laugh'd  to  scorn. 
Sick-thoughted  Venus  makes  amain  unto  him, 
And  like  a  bold-faced  suitor  'gins  to  woo  him." 

Remark  the  humanizing  imagery  and  circumstances  of 
the  first  two  lines,  and  the  activity  of  thought  in  the  play  of 
words  in  the  fourth  line.  The  whole  stanza  presents  at 
once  the  time,  the  appearance  of  the  morning,  and  the  two 
persons  distinctly  characterized,  and  in  six  simple  verses 
puts  the  reader  in  possession  of  the  whole  argument  of  the 
yoem. 

"  Over  one  arm  the  lusty  courser's  rein, 

Under  the1  other  was  the  tender  boy, 

Who  blush'd  and  pouted  in  a  dull  disdain, 

With  leaden  appetite,  unapt  to  toy, 

She  red  and  hot,  as  coals  of  glowing  fire, 

He  red  for  shame,  but  frosty  to :  desire  "  : — 

*This  stanza  and  the  two  following  afford  good  instances 
of  that  poetic  power,  which  I  mentioned  above,  of  making 
every  thing  present  to  the  imagination — both  the  forms, 
and  the  passions  which  modify  those  forms,  either  actually, 
as  in  the  representations  of  love,  or  anger,  or  other  human 
.affections :  or  imaginatively,  by  the  different  manner  in 
which,  inanimate  objects,  or  objects  unim passioned  them- 
rselves,  are  caused  to  be  seen  by  the  mind  in  moments  of 
:  strong  excitement,  and  according  to  the  kind  of  the  excite- 
iment, — whether  of  jealousy,  or  rage,  or  love,  in  the  only 
appropriate  sense  of  the  word,  or  of  the  lower  impulses  of 
•our  nature,  or  finally  of  the  poetic  feeling  itself.  It  is, 
perhaps,  chiefly  in  the  power  of  producing  and  reproducing 
;the  latter  that  the  poet  stands  distinct. 

The  subject  of  the  "  Yenus  and  Adonis  "  is  unpleasing  ; 
but  the  poem  itself  is  for  that  very  reason  the  more  illustra- 
tive of  Shakspere.  There  are  men  who  can  write  passages  of 

1  Read  <•  her  "and  "in." 


SECT.  I.]  AND    SHAKSPERE.  213 

deepest  pathos  and  even  sublimity  on  circumstances  personal 
to  themselves  and  stimulative  of  their  own  passions ;  but 
they  are  not,  therefore,  on  this  account  poets.  Read  that 
magnificent  burst  of  woman's  patriotism  and  exultation, 
Deborah's  song  of  victory ;  it  is  glorious,  but  nature  is  the 
poet  there.  It  is  quite  another  matter  to  become  all  things 
and  yet  remain  the  same, — to  make  the  changeful  god  bo 
felt  in  the  river,  the  lion  and  the  flame  ; — this  it  is,  that  is 
the  true  imagination.  Shakspere  writes  in  this  poem,  as  if 
he  were  of  another  planet,  charming  you  to  gaze  on  the 
movements  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  as  you  would  on  the 
twinkling  dances  of  two  vernal  butterflies. 

Finally,  in  this  poem  and  the  "  Rape  of  Lucrece,"  Shak- 
epere  gave  ample  proof  of  his  possession  of  a  most  profound, 
•energetic,  and  philosophical  mind,  without  which  he  might 
have  pleased,  but  could  not  have  been  a  great  dramatic 
poet.  Chance  and  the  necessity  of  his  genius  combined  to 
lead  him  to  the  drama  his  proper  province ;  in  his  conquest 
of  which  we  should  consider  both  the  difficulties  which 
opposed  him,  and  the  advantages  by  which  he  was  assisted.1 


ShaJcspere's  Judgment  equal  to  his  Genius. 

Thus  then  Shakspere  appears,  from  his  "  Venus  and 
Adonis  "  and  "  Rape  of  Lucrece  "  alone,  apart  from  all  his 
•great  works,  to  have  possessed  all  the  conditions  of  the  true 
poet.  Let  me  now  proceed  to  destroy,  as  far  as  may  be  in 
my  power,  the  popular  notion  that  he  was  a  great  dramatist 
by  mere  instinct,  that  he  grew  immortal  in  his  own  despite, 
and  sank  below  men  of  second  or  third-rate  power,  when 
he  attempted  aught  beside  the  drama — even  as  bees  con- 

1  Compare  the  report  of  the  3rd  Lecture  of  1811-12,  and  chap.  xr.  of 
*he  Biograyhia  Literaria,  given  in  the  Appendix. 


224  POETRY,    THE    DKAMA,  [1818 

struct  their  cells  and  manufacture  their  honey  to  admirable 
perfection  ;  but  would  in  vain  attempt  to  build  a  nest.  £Tow 
this  mode  of  reconciling  a  compelled  sense  of  inferiority 
with  a  feeling  of  pride,  began  in  a  few  pedants,  who- 
having  read  that  Sophocles  was  the  great  model  of  tragedy, 
and  Aristotle  the  infallible  dictator  of  its  rules,  and  finding 
that  the  "Lear,"  "  Hamlet,"  "  Othello,"  and  other  master- 
pieces, were  neither  in  imitation  of  Sophocles  nor  in  obedience 
to  Aristotle, — and  not  having  (with  one  or  two  exceptions) 
the  courage  to  affirm,  that  the  delight  which  their  country- 
received  from  generation  to  generation,  in  defiance  of  the 
alterations  of  circumstances  and  habits,  was  wholly  ground- 
less— took  upon  them,  as  a  happy  medium  and  refuge,  to 
talk  of  Shakspere  as  a  sort  of  beautiful  lusus  naturce,  a  de- 
lightful monster, — wild,  indeed,  and  without  taste  or  judg- 
ment, but  like  the  inspired  idiots  so  much  venerated  in  the 
East,  uttering,  amid  the  strangest  follies,  the  sublimest 
truths.  In  nine  places  out  of  ten  in  which  I  find  his 
awful  name  mentioned,  it  is  with  some  epithet  of  "  wild," 
"irregular,"  "pure  child  of  nature,"  &c.  If  all  this  be 
true,  we  must  submit  to  it ;  though  to  a  thinking  mind  it 
cannot  but  be  painful  to  find  any  excellence,  merely  human, 
thrown  out  of  all  human  analogy,  and  thereby  leaving  us 
neither  rules  for  imitation,  nor  motives  to  imitate  ; — but  if 
false,  it  is  a  dangerous  falsehood  ; — for  it  affords  a  refuge 
to  secret  self-conceit, — enables  a  vain  man  at  once  to 
escape  his  reader's  indignation  by  general  swoln  panegyrics, 
and  merely  by  his  ipse  dixit  to  treat,  as  contemptible,  what 
he  has  not  intellect  enough  to  comprehend,  or  soul  to  feel, 
without  assigning  any  reason,  or  referring  his  opinion  to 
any  demonstrative  principle  ; — thus  leaving  Shakspere  as  a 
sort  of  Grand  Lama,  adored  indeed,  and  his  very  excre- 
ments prized  as  relics,  but  with  no  authority  or  real  in- 
fluence. I  grieve  that  every  late  voluminous  edition  of  his 
works  would  enable  me  to  substantiate  the  present  charge 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  225 

with,  a  variety  of  facts  one-tenth  of  which  would  of  them- 
selves exhaust  the  time  allotted  to  me.  Every  critic,  who 
has  or  has  not  made  a  collection  of  black  letter  books — in  it- 
self a  useful  and  respectable  amusement, — puts  on  the  seven- 
league  boots  of  self -opinion,  and  strides  at  once  from  an  illus- 
trator 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. 

I  think  this  a  very  serious  subject.  It  is  my  earnest 
desire — my  passionate  endeavour, — to  enforce  at  various 
times  and  by  various  arguments  and  instances  the  closo- 
and  reciprocal  connection  of  just  taste  with  pure  morality. 
Without  that  acquaintance  with  the  heart  of  man,  or  that; 
docility  and  childlike  gladness  to  be  made  acquainted  with 
it,  which  those  only  can  have,  who  dare  look  at  their  own 
hearts — and  that  with  a  steadiness  which  religion  only  has 
the  power  of  reconciling  with  sincere  humility ; — without 
this,  and  the  modesty  produced  by  it,  I  am  deeply  convinced 
that  no  man,  however  wide  his  erudition,  however  patient 
his  antiquarian  researches,  can  possibly  understand,  or  be 
worthy  of  understanding,  the  writings  of  Shakspere. 

Assuredly  that  criticism  of  Shakspere  will  alone  be  i 
genial  which  is  reverential.  The  Englishman,  who  without 
reverence,  a  proud  and  affectionate  reverence,  can  utter  the 
name  of  William  Shakspere,  stands  disqualified  for  the 
office  of  critic.  He  wants  one  at  least  of  the  very  senses, 
the  language  of  which  he  is  to  employ,  and  will  discourse, 
at  best,  but  as  a  blind  man,  while  the  whole  harmonious 
creation  of  light  and  shade  with  all  its  subtle  interchange 
of  deepening  and  dissolving  colours  rises  in  silence  to  the 
silent  fat  of  the  uprising  Apollo.  However  inferior  in 
ability  I  may  be  to  some  who  have  followed  me,  I  own  I 
am  proud  that  I  was  the  first  in  time  who  publicly  demon- 
strated to  the  full  extent  of  the  position,  that  the  supposed 

Q 


226  POETKY,   THE   DKAMA,  [1818 

irregularity  and  extravagancies  of  Shakspere  -were  the 
mere  dreams  of  a  pedantry  that  arraigned  the  eagle  because 
it  had  not  the  dimensions  of  the  swan.  In  all  the  suc- 
cessive courses  of  lectures  delivered  by  me,  since  my  first 
attempt  at  the  Royal  Institution,  it  has  been,  and  it  still 
remains,  my  object,  to  prove  that  in  all  points  from  the 
most  important  to  the  most  minute,  the  judgment  of  Shak- 
spere is  commensurate  with  his  genius, — nay,  that  his 
genius  reveals  itself  in  his  judgment,  as  in  its  most  exalted 
form.  And  the  more  gladly  do  I  recur  to  this  subject 
from  the  clear  conviction,  that  to  judge  aright,  and  with 
distinct  consciousness  of  the  grounds  of  our  judgment,  con- 
cerning the  works  of  Shakspere,  implies  the  power  and  the 
means  of  judging  rightly  of  all  other  works  of  intellect, 
those  of  abstract  science  alone  excepted. 

It  is  a  painful  truth  that  not  only  individuals,  but 
even  whole  nations,  are  ofttimes  so  enslaved  to  the  habits 
of  their  education  and  immediate  circumstances,  as  not 
to  judge  disinterestedly  even  on  those  subjects,  the  very 
pleasure  arising  from  which  consists  in  its  disinterestedness, 
namely,  on  subjects  of  taste  and  polite  literature.  Instead 
of  deciding  concerning  their  own  modes  and  customs  by 
any  rule  of  reason,  nothing  appears  rational,  becoming, 
or  beautiful  to  them,  but  what  coincides  with  the  pecu- 
liarities of  their  education.  In  this  narrow  circle,  indi- 
viduals may  attain  to  exquisite  discrimination,  as  the 
French  critics  have  done  in  their  own  literature ;  but 
a  true  critic  can  no  more  be  such  without  placing  him- 
self on  some  central  point,  from  which  he  may  command 
the  whole,  that  is,  some  general  rule,  which,  founded  in 
reason,  or  the  faculties  common  to  all  men,  must  therefore 
apply  to  each, — than  an  astronomer  can  explain  the  move- 
ments of  the  solar  system  without  taking  his  stand  in  the 
sun.  And  let  me  remark,  that  this  will  not  tend  to  pro- 
duce despotism,  but,  on  the  contrary,  true  tolerance,  in  the 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  227 

critic.  He  will,  indeed,  require,  as  the  spirit  and  substance 
of  a  work,  something  true  in  human  nature  itself,  and  in- 
dependent of  all  circumstances ;  but  in  the  mode  of  apply- 
ing it,  he  will  estimate  genius  and  judgment  according  to 
the  felicity  with  which  the  imperishable  soul  of  intellect 
shall  have  adapted  itself  to  the  age,  the  place,  and  the 
existing  manners.  The  error  he  will  expose  lies  in  revers- 
ing this,  and  holding  up  the  mere  circumstances  as  per- 
petual, to  the  utter  neglect  of  the  power  which  can  alone 
animate  them.  For  art  cannot  exist  without,  or  apart  from, 
nature  ;  and  what  has  man  of  his  own  to  give  to  his  fellow- 
man,  but  his  own  thoughts  and  feelings,  and  his  observations 
so  far  as  they  are  modified  by  his  own  thoughts  or  feelings  ? 
Let  me,  then,  once  more  submit  this  question  to  minds 
emancipated  alike  from  national,  or  party,  or  sectarian 
prejudice  ; — Are  the  plays  of  Shakspere  works  of  rude  un- 
cultivated genius,  in  which  the  splendour  of  the  parts  com- 
pensates, if  aught  can  compensate,  for  the  barbarous  shape- 
lossness  and  irregularity  of  the  whole  ? — Or  is  the  form 
equally  admirable  with  the  matter,  and  the  judgment  of 
the  £reat  poet  not  less  deserving  our  wonder  than  his 
genius  ? — Or,  again,  to  repeat  the  question  in  other  words  : 
— Is  Shakspere  a  great  dramatic  poet  on  account  only  of 
those  beauties  and  excellencies  which  he  possesses  in  com- 
mon with  the  ancients,  but  with  diminished  claims  to  our 
love  and  honour  to  the  full  extent  of  his  differences  from 
them  ? — Or  are  these  very  differences  additional  proofs  of 
poetic  wisdom,  at  once  results  and  symbols  of  living  power 
as  contrasted  with  lifeless  mechanism — of  free  and  rival 
originality  as  contradistinguished  from  servile  imitation, 
or,  more  accurately,  a  blind  copying  of  effects,  instead  of  a 
true  imitation  of  the  essential  principles  ?  l — Imagine  not 

1  "  It  was  Lessing  who  first  introduced  the  name  and  the  works  of 
Shakspere  to  the  admiration  of  the  Germans ;  and  I  should  not,  perhaps, 


228  POETRY,   THE   DRAMA, 

that  I  am  about  to  oppose  genius  to  rules.  No  !  the  com- 
parative value  of  these  rules  is  the  very  cause  to  be  tried. 
The  spirit  of  poetry,  like  all  other  living  powers,  must  of 
necessity  circumscribe  itself  by  rules,  were  it  only  to  unite 
power  with  beauty.  It  must  embody  in  order  to  reveal 
itself  ;  but  a  living  body  is  of  necessity  an  organized  one ; 
and  what  is  organization  but  the  connection  of  parts  in  and 
for  a  whole,  so  that  each  part  is  at  once  end  and  means  ? — 
This  is  no  discovery  of  criticism  ; — it  is  a  necessity  of  the 
human  mind ;  and  all  nations  have  felt  and  obeyed  it,  in 
the  invention  of  metre,  and  measured  sounds,  as  the  vehicle 
and  involucrum  of  poetry — itself  a  fellow-growth  from  the 
eame  life, — even  as  the  bark  is  to  the  tree  ! 

No  work  of  true  genius  dares  want  its  appropriate  form, 
neither  indeed  is  there  any  danger  of  this.  As  it  must  not, 
EO  genius  cannot,  be  lawless :  for  it  is  even  this  that  con- 
stitutes it  genius — the  power  of  acting  creatively  under 
laws  of  its  own  origination.  How  then  comes  it  that  not 
only  single  Zoili,  but  whole  nations  have  combined  in  un- 
hesitating condemnation  of  our  great  dramatist,  as  a  sort 
of  African  nature,  rich  in  beautiful  monsters, — as  a  wild 
heath  where  islands  of  fertility  look  the  greener  from  the 
surrounding  waste,  where  the  loveliest  plants  now  shine 
out  among  unsightly  weeds,  and  now  are  choked  by  their 
parasitic  growth,  so  intertwined  that  we  cannot  disentangle 

go  too  far,  if  I  add  that  it  was  Lessing  who  first  proved  to  all  thinking 
men,  even  to  Shakspere's  own  countrymen,  the  true  nature  of  his 
apparent  irregularities.  These,  he  demonstrated,  were  deviations  only 
from  the  accidents  of  the  Greek  Tragedy ;  and  from  such  accidents  as 
hung  a  heavy  weight  on  the  wings  of  the  Greek  poets,  and  narrowed 
their  flight  within  the  limits  of  what  we  may  call  the  heroic  opera.  He 
proved  that  in  all  the  essentials  of  art,  no  less  than  in  the  truth  of 
nature,  the  plays  of  Shakspere  were  incomparably  more  coincident  with 
the  principles  of  Aristotle  than  the  productions  of  Corneille  and  Racine, 
notwithstanding  the  boasted  regularity  of  the  latter." — Biographta 
Lileraria,  chap,  xxiii. 


SECT.  L]  AND  SHAKSPEEB.  229 

the  weed  without  snapping  the  flower  P — In  this  statement 
1  have  had  no  reference  to  the  vulgar  abuse  of  Voltaire,1 
save  as  far  as  his  charges  are  coincident  with  the  decisions 
of  Shakspere's  own  commentators  and  (so  they  would  tell 
you)  almost  idolatrous  admirers.  The  true  ground  of  the 
mistake  lies  in  the  confounding  mechanical  regularity  with 
organic  form.  The  form  is  mechanic,  when  on  any  given 
material  we  impress  a  pre- determined  form,  not  necessarily 
arising  out  of  the  properties  of  the  material ; — as  when  to 
a  mass  of  wet  clay  we  give  whatever  shape  we  wish  it  to 
retain  when  hardened.  The  organic  form,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  innate  ;  it  shapes,  as  it  developes,  itself  from  within, 
and  the  fulness  of  its  development  is  one  and  the  same 
with  the  perfection  of  its  outward  form.  Such  as  the  life 
is,  such  is  the  form.  Nature,  the  prime  genial  artist,  in- 
exhaustible in  diverse  powers,  is  equally  inexhaustible  in 
forms ; — each  exterior  is  the  physiognomy  of  the  being 
within, — its  true  image  reflected  and  thrown  out  from 
the  concave  mirror : — and  even  such  is  the  appropriate 
excellence  of  her  chosen  poet,  of  our  own  Shakspere, — him- 
self a  nature  humanized,  a  genial  understanding  directing 

1  "  Take  a  slight  specimen  of  it. 

'  Je  suis  bien  loin  assurement  de  justifier  en  tout  la  trage"die  d'Hamlet  j 
c'est  une  piece  grossiere  et  barbare,  qui  ne  serait  pas  supportte  par  la  plus 
vile  populace  de  la  France  et  de  I'ltalie.  Hamlet  y  devient  fou  au  second 
acte,  et  sa  maitresse  tulle  au  troisieme  ;  le  prince  tue  Ie  pere  de  sa  nnu- 
tresse,  feignant  de  tuer  un  rat,  et  1'heroine  se  jette  dans  la  riviere.  On 
fait  sa  fosse  sur  le  theatre ;  des  fossoyeurs  disent  des  quolibets  dignes 
d'oux,  en  tenant  dans  leurs  mains  des  tetes  de  morts  ;  le  prince  Hamlet 
repond  a  leurs  grossieretts  abominables  par  des  folies  non  moiiis  dfgoU- 
tantes.  Pendant  ce  temps-la,  un  des  acteurs  fait  la  conquete  de  la  1'ologne. 
Hamlet,  sa  mere,  et  son  beau-pere  boivent  ensemble  sur  le  tht&tre :  on  chante 
&  table,  on  s'y  querelle,  on  se  bat,  on  se  tue :  on  croirait  que  cet  ouvrage 
est  le  fruit  de  ^imagination  £un  sauvage  ivre.'  Dissertation  before 
4  Semiramis.' 

This  is  not,  perhaps,  very  like  Hamlet ;  but  nothing  can  be  more  like 
Voltaire."— H.  N.  C. 


230  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

self-conscionsly  a  power  and  an  implicit  wisdom  deeper 
even  than  our  consciousness. 

I  greatly  dislike  beauties  and  selections  in  general ;  but 
as  proof  positive  of  his  unrivalled  excellence,  I  should  like 
to  try  Shakspere  by  this  criterion.  Make  out  your  amplest 
catalogue  of  all  the  human  faculties,  as  reason  or  the  moral 
law,  the  will,  the  feeling  of  the  coincidence  of  the  two  (a 
feeling  sui  generis  et  demonstratio  demonstrationum)  called 
the  conscience,  the  understanding  or  prudence,  wit,  fancy, 
imagination,  judgment, — and  then  of  the  objects  on  which 
these  are  to  be  employed,  as  the  beauties,  the  terrors,  and 
the  seeming  caprices  of  nature,  the  realities  and  the  capa- 
bilities, that  is,  the  actual  and  the  ideal,  of  the  human 
mind,  conceived  as  an  individual  or  as  a  social  being,  as  in 
innocence  or  in  guilt,  in  a  play-paradise,  or  in  a  war-field 
of  temptation  ; — and  then  compare  with  Shakspere  under 
each  of  these  heads  all  or  any  of  the  writers  in  prose  and 
verse  that  have  ever  lived  !  Who,  that  is  competent  to 
judge,  doubts  the  result  ? — And  ask  your  own  hearts, — ask 
your  own  common-sense — to  conceive  the  possibility  of  this 
man  being — I  say  not,  the  drunken  savage  of  that  wretched1 
sciolist,  whom  Frenchmen,  to  their  shame,  have  honoured 
before  their  elder  and  better  worthies, — but  the  anomalous, 
the  wild,  the  irregular,  genius  of  our  daily  criticism  I 
What !  are  we  to  have  miracles  in  sport  ? — Or,  I  speak 
reverently,  does  God  choose  idiots  by  whom  to  convej 
divine  truths  to  man  ? 


SECT.  I.]  AND    SHAKSPERE.  231 

Recapitulation  and  Summary  of  the  Characteristic!!  of 
Shakspere's  Dramas? 

In  lectures,  of  which  amusement  forms  a  large  part  of 
the  object,  there  are  some  peculiar  difficulties.  The 
architect  places  his  foundation  out  of  sight,  and  the 
musician  tunes  his  instrument  before  he  makes  his  appear- 
ance  ;  but  the  lecturer  has  to  try  his  chords  in  the  presence 
of  the  assembly ;  an  operation  not  likely,  indeed,  to  pro- 
duce much  pleasure,  but  yet  indispensably  necessary  to  a 
right  understanding  of  the  subject  to  be  developed. 

Poetry  in  essence  is  as  familiar  to  barbarous  as  to 
civilized  nations.  The  Laplander  and  the  savage  Indian 
are  cheered  by  it  as  well  as  the  inhabitants  of  London  and 
Paris ; — its  spirit  takes  up  and  incorporates  surrounding 
materials,  as  a  plant  clothes  itself  with  soil  and  climate, 
whilst  it  exhibits  the  working  of  a  vital  principle  within 
independent  of  all  accidental  circumstances.  And  to  judge 
with  fairness  of  an  author's  works,  we  ought  to  distinguish 
what  is  inward  and  essential  from  what  is  outward  and 
circumstantial.  It  is  essential  to  poetry  that  it  be  simple, 
and  appeal  to  the  elements  and  primary  laws  of  our  nature  ; 
that  it  be  sensuous,  and  by  its  imagery  elicit  truth  at  a 
flash ;  that  it  be  impassioned,  and  be  able  to  move  our 
feelings  and  awaken  our  affections.  In  comparing  different 
poets  with  each  other,  we  should  inquire  which  have  brought 
into  the  fullest  play  our  imagination  and  our  reason,  or 
have  created  the  greatest  excitement  and  produced  the 
completest  harmony.  If  we  consider  great  exquisitehess 
of  language  and  sweetness  of  metre  alone,2  it  is  impossible 

1  "  For  the  most  part  communicated  by  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge." — 
H.  N.  C.     That  is  to  say,  written  by  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge,  (Sir  John 
Taylor  Coleridge,)  and  revised  by  Mr.  H.  N.  Coleridge. 

2  "  That  astonishing  product  of  matchless  talent  and  ingenuity,  Pope's 
Translation  of  the  Iliad." — Bioffraphia  Literaria,  chap.  i. 


232  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

to  deny  to  Pope  the  character  of  a  delightful  writer ;  but 
whether  he  be  a  poet,  must  depend  upon  our  definition  of 
the  word ;  and,  doubtless,  if  everything  that  pleases  be 
poetry,  Pope's  satires  and  epistles  must  be  poetry.  This  I 
must  say,  that  poetry,  as  distinguished  from  other  modes 
of  composition,  does  not  rest  in  metre,  and  that  it  is  not 
poetry,  if  it  make  no  appeal  to  our  passions  or  our  imagina- 
tion. One  character  belongs  to  all  true  poets,  that  they 
write  from  a  principle  within,  not  originating  in  anything 
without ;  and  that  the  true  poet's  work  in  its  form,  its 
shapings,  and  its  modifications,  is  distinguished  from  all 
other  works  that  assume  to  belong  to  the  class  of  poetry, 
as  a  natural  from  an  artificial  flower,  or  as  the  mimic 
garden  of  a  child  from  an  enamelled  meadow.  In  the 
former  the  flowers  are  broken  from  their  stems  and  stuck 
into  the  ground ;  they  are  beautiful  to  the  eye  and  fragrant 
to  the  sense,  but  their  colours  soon  fade,  and  their  odour  is 
transient  as  the  smile  of  the  planter ; — while  the  meadow 
may  be  visited  again  and  again  with  renewed  delight,  its 
beauty  is  innate  in  the  soul,  and  its  bloom  is  of  the  fresh- 
ness of  nature. 

The  next  ground  of  critical  judgment,  and  point  of  com- 
parison, will  be  as  to  how  far  a  given  poet  has  been  in- 
fluenced by  accidental  circumstances.  As  a  living  poet 
must  surely  write,  not  for  the  ages  past,  but  for  that  in 
which  he  lives,  and  those  which  are  to  follow,  it  is,  on  the 
one  hand,  natural  that  he  should  not  violate,  and  on  the 
other,  necessary  that  he  should  not  depend  on,  the  mere 
manners  and  modes  of  his  day.  See  how  little  does  Shak- 
spere  leave  us  to  regret  that  he  was  bom  in  his  particular 
age !  The  great  sera  in  modern  times  was  what  is  called 
the  Restoration  of  Letters ! — the  ages  preceding  it  are 
called  the  dark  ages ;  but  it  would  be  more  wise,  perhaps, 
to  call  them  the  ages  in  which  we  were  in  the  dark.  It  is 
usually  overlooked  that  the  supposed  dark  period  was  not 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  233 

universal,  but  partial  and  successive,  or  alternate ;  that  the 
dark  age  of  England  was  not  the  dark  age  of  Italy,  but 
that  one  country  was  in  its  light  and  vigour,  whilst  another 
was  in  its  gloom  and  bondage.  But  no  sooner  had  the 
Reformation  sounded  through  Europe  like  the  blast  of  an 
archangel's  trumpet,  than  from  king  to  peasant  there  arose 
an  enthusiasm  for  knowledge ;  the  discovery  of  a  manu- 
script became  the  subject  of  an  embassy ;  Erasmus  read  by 
moonlight,  because  he  could  not  afford  a  torch,  and  begged 
a  penny,  not  for  the  love  of  charity,  but  for  the  love  of 
learning.  The  three  great  points  of  attention  were  religion, 
morals,  and  taste ;  men  of  genius  as  well  as  men  of  learn- 
ing, who  in  this  age  need  to  be  so  widely  distinguished, 
then  alike  became  copyists  of  the  ancients ;  and  this, 
indeed,  was  the  only  way  by  which  the  taste  of  mankind 
could  be  improved,  or  their  understandings  informed. 
Whilst  Dante  imagined  himself  a  humble  follower  of  Yir- 
-gil,  and  Ariosto  of  Homer,  they  were  both  unconscious  of 
that  greater  power  working  within  them,  which  in  many 
points  carried  them  beyond  their  supposed  originals.  All 
great  discoveries  bear  the  stamp  of  the  age  in  which  they 
are  made ; — hence  we  perceive  the  effects  of  the  purer 
religion  of  the  moderns,  visible  for  the  most  part  in  their 
lives ;  and  in  reading  their  works  we  should  not  content 
ourselves  with  the  mere  narratives  of  events  long  since 
passed,  but  should  learn  to  apply  their  maxims  and  con- 
duct to  ourselves. 

Having  intimated  that  times  and  manners  lend  their 
form  and  pressure  to  genius,  let  me  once  more  draw  a 
slight  parallel  between  the  ancient  and  modern  stage,  the 
stages  of  Greece  and  of  England.  The  Greeks  were  poly- 
theists;  their  religion  was  local;  almost  the  only  object 
of  all  their  knowledge,  art  and  taste,  was  their  gods ;  and, 
accordingly,  their  productions  were,  if  the  expression  may 
be  allowed,  statuesque,  whilst  those  of  the  moderns  are 


234  POETRY,    THE   DRAMA,  [1818 

picturesque.  The  Greeks  reared  a  structure,  which  in  its 
parts,  and  as  a  whole,  fitted  the  mind  with  the  calm  and 
elevated  impression  of  perfect  beauty  and  symmetrical  pro- 
portion. The  moderns  also  produced  a  whole,  a  more 
striking  whole:  but  it  was  by  blending  materials  and 
fusing  the  parts  together.  And  as  the  Pantheon  is  to 
York  Minster  or  Westminster  Abbey,  so  is  Sophocles  com- 
pared with  Shakspere ;  in  the  one  a  completeness,  a  satisfac- 
tion, an  excellence,  on  which  the  mind  rests  with  compla- 
cency ;  in  the  other  a  multitude  of  interlaced  materials,  great 
and  little,  magnificent  and  mean,  accompanied,  indeed, 
with  the  sense  of  a  falling  short  of  perfection,  and  yet,  at 
the  same  time,  so  promising  of  our  social  and  individual 
progression,  that  we  would  not,  if  we  could,  exchange  it 
for  that  repose  of  the  mind  which  dwells  on  the  forms  of 
symmetry  in  the  acquiescent  admiration  of  grace.  This 
general  characteristic  of  the  ancient  and  modern  drama 
might  be  illustrated  by  a  parallel  of  the  ancient  and  modern 
music  ; — the  one  consisting  of  melody  arising  from  a  suc- 
cession only  of  pleasing  sounds, — the  modern  embracing 
harmony  also,  the  result  of  combination  and  the  effect  of  a 
whole. 

I  have  said,  and  I  say  it  again,  that  great  as  was  the 
genius  of  Shakspere,  his  judgment  was  at  least  equal  to 
it.  Of  this  any  one  will  be  convinced,  who  attentively 
considers  those  points  in  which  the  dramas  of  Greece  and 
England  differ,  from  the  dissimilitude  of  circumstances  by 
which  each  was  modified  and  influenced.  The  Greek  stage 
had  its  origin  in  the  ceremonies  of  a  sacrifice,  such  as  Q£ 
the  goat  to  Bacchus,  whom  we  most  erroneously  regard  as 
merely  the  jolly  god  of  wine ; — for  among  the  ancients  he 
was  venerable,  as  the  symbol  of  that  power  which  acts 
without  our  consciousness  in  the  vital  energies  of  nature, 
— the  vi/nutn  mundi, — as  Apollo  was  that  of  the  conscious 
agency  of  our  intellectual  being.  The  heroes  of  old  under 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  235 

the  influence  of  this  Bacchic  enthusiasm  performed  more 
than  human  actions ; — hence  tales  of  the  favourite  cham- 
pions soon  passed  into  dialogue.  On  the  Greek  stage  the 
chorus  was  always  before  the  audience ;  the  curtain  was 
never  dropped,  as  we  should  say ;  and  change  of  place 
being  therefore,  in  general,  impossible,  the  absurd  notion 
of  condemning  it  merely  as  improbable  in  itself  was  never 
entertained  by  any  one.  If  we  can  believe  ourselves  at 
Thebes  in  one  act,  we  may  believe  ourselves  at  Athens  in 
the  next.1  If  a  story  lasts  twenty-four  hours  or  twenty- 
four  years,  it  is  equally  improbable.  There  seems  to  be 
no  just  boundary  but  what  the  feelings  prescribe.  But  on 
the  Greek  stage  where  the  same  persons  were  perpetually 
before  the  audience,  great  judgment  was  necessary  in 
venturing  on  any  such  change.  The  poets  never,  there- 
fore, attempted  to  impose  on  the  senses  by  bringing  places 
to  men,  but  they  did  bring  men  to  places,  as  in  the  well- 
known  instance  in  the  Eumenides,  where  during  an  evident 
retirement  of  the  chorus  from  the  orchestra,  the  scene  is 
changed  to  Athens,  and  Orestes  is  first  introduced  in  the 
temple  of  Minerva,  and  the  chorus  of  Furies  come  in  after- 
wards in  pursuit  of  him.2 

In  the  Greek  drama  there  were  no  formal  divisions  into- 
scenes  and  acts ;  there  were  no  means,  therefore,  of  allow- 
ing for  the  necessary  lapse  of  time  between  one  part  of  the 
dialogue  and  another,  and  unity  of  time  in  a  strict  sense 
was,  of  course,  impossible.  To  overcome  that  difficulty  of 
accounting  for  time,  which  is  effected  on  the  modern  stage 

1  See  Section  iv  :  Notes  on  Othello,  Act.  i. 

7  "  jEsch.  Eumen.  v.  230 — 239.  Kotandum  est,  scenam  jam  Athenas 
translatam  sic  institui,  ut  prime  Orestes  solus  conspiciatur  in  templo 
Minerva  supplex  ejus  simulacrum  vencrans ;  paulo  post  autem  eum  con- 
tequantur  Eumenides,  $c.  Schiitz's  note.  The  recessions  of  the  chorus- 
were  termed  ^travaaraau^.  There  is  another  instance  in  the  Ajax,  v, 
8N.W— H.  N.  C. 


236  POETEY,    THE    DRAMA,  [1818 

by  dropping  a  curtain,  the  judgment  and  great  genius  of 
the  ancients  supplied  music  and  measured  motion,  and 
with  the  lyric  ode  filled  up  the  vacuity.  In  the  story  of 
the  Agamemnon  of  ^Eschylus,  the  capture  of  Troy  is  sup- 
posed to  be  announced  by  a  fire  lighted  on  the  Asiatic 
chore,  and  the  transmission  of  the  signal  by  successive 
beacons  to  Mycenae.  The  signal  is  first  seen  at  the  21st 
line,  and  the  herald  from  Troy  itself  enters  at  the  486th, 
and  Agamemnon  himself  at  the  783rd  line.  But  the 
practical  absurdity  of  this  was  not  felt  by  the  audience, 
who,  in  imagination  stretched  minutes  into  hours,  while 
they  listened  to  the  lofty  narrative  odes  of  the  chorus  which 
almost  entirely  fill  up  the  interspace.  Another  fact  de- 
serves attention  here,  namely,  that  regularly  on  the  Greek 
etage  a  drama,  or  acted  story,  consisted  in  reality  of  three 
dramas,  called  together  a  trilogy,  and  performed  con- 
eocutively  in  the  course  of  one  day.  Now  you  may  con- 
ceive a  tragedy  of  Shakspere's  as  a  trilogy  connected  in 
one  single  representation.  Divide  "  Lear  "  into  three  parts, 
mid  each  would  be  a  play  with  the  ancients  ;  or  take  the 
three  .^Eschylean  dramas  of  Agamemnon,  and  divide  them 
into,  or  call  them,  as  many  acts,  and  they  together  would 
be  one  play.  The  first  act  would  comprise  the  usurpation 
of  -<33gisthus,  and  the  murder  of  Agamemnon :  the  second, 
the  revenge  of  Orestes,  and  the  murder  of  his  mother ;  and 
the  third,  the  penance  and  absolution  of  Orestes; — occupy- 
ing a  period  of  twenty-two  years. 

The  stage  in  Shakspere's  time  was  a  naked  room  with  a 
blanket  for  a  curtain  ;  but  he  made  it  a  field  for  monarchs. 
That  law  of  unity,  which  has  its  foundations,  not  in  the 
factitious  necessity  of  custom,  but  in  nature  itself,  the 
unity  of  feeling,  is  everywhere  and  at  all  times  observed  by 
Shakspere  in  his  plays.  Bead  "  Borneo  and  Juliet ;  " — all  is 
youth  and  spring ; — youth  with  all  its  follies,  its  virtues, 
its  precipitancies ; — spring  with  its  odours,  its  flowers,  and 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  237 

its  transiency ;  it  is  one  and  the  same  feeling  that  com- 
mences, goes  through,  and  ends  the  play.  The  old  men, 
the  Capulets  and  the  Montagues,  are  not  common  old  men  ; 
they  have  an  eagerness,  a  heartiness,  a  vehemence,  the 
effect  of  spring ;  with  Romeo,  his  change  of  passion,  his 
sudden  marriage,  and  his  rash  death,  are  all  the  effects  of 
youth : — whilst  in  Juliet  love  has  all  that  is  tender  and 
melancholy  in  the  nightingale,  all  that  is  voluptuous  in  the 
rose,  with  whatever  is  sweet  in  the  freshness  of  spring ;  but 
it  ends  with  a  long  deep  sigh  like  the  last  breeze  of  the 
Italian  evening.  This  unity  of  feeling  and  character  per- 
vades every  drama  of  Shakspere. 

It  seems  to  me  that  his  plays  are  distinguished  from 
those  of  all  other  dramatic  poets  by  the  following  cha- 
racteristics : 

1.  Expectationin  preference  to  surprise.     It  is  like  the* 
true  reading  of  the  passage ; — "  God  said,  Let  there  be 
light,  and  there  was  light ;  " — not  there  was  light.     As  the 
feeling  with  which  we  startle  at  a  shooting  star,  compared 
with  that  of  watching  the  sunrise  at  the  pre-established!, 
moment,   such   and    so   low   is  surprise   compared    witb 
expectation. 

2.  Signal  adherence  to  the  great  law  of  nature,  that  alB 
opposites  tend  to  attract  and  temper  each  other.     Passion 
in  Shakspere  generally  displays  libertinism,  but  involves 
morality ;  and  if  there  are  exceptions  to  this,  they  arer 
independently  of  their  intrinsic  value,  all  of  them  indicative- 
of  individual  character,  and,  like  the  farewell  admonitions- 
of  a  parent,  have  an   end  beyond  the  parental   relation. 
Thus  the  Countess's  beautiful   precepts  to  Bertram,   by 
elevating  her  character,  raise  that  of  Helena  her  favourite,, 
and  soften  down  the  point  in  her  which  Shakspere  does 
not  mean  us  not  to  see,  but  to  see  and  to  forgive,  and  at 
length   to  justify.     And  so  it  is  in  Polonius,  who  is  tho 
personified  memory  of  wisdom  no  longer  actually  possessed. 


238  POETET,  THB  OEAMA,  [1818 

This  admirable  character  is  always  misrepresented  on  the 
stage.  Shakspere  never  intended  to  exhibit  him  as  a 
buffoon :  for  although  it  was  natural  that  Hamlet, — a 
young  man  of  fire  and  genius,  detesting  formality,  and  dis- 
liking Polonius  on  political  grounds,  as  imagining  that  he 
had  assisted  his  uncle  in  his  usurpation, — should  express 
himself  satirically, — yet  this  must  not  be  taken  as  exactly 
the  poet's  conception  of  him.  In  Polonius  a  certain  in- 
duration of  character  had  arisen  from  long  habits  of 
business;  but  take  his  advice  to  Laertes,  and  Ophelia's 
reverence  for  his  memory,  and  we  shall  see  that  he  was 
meant  to  be  represented  as  a  statesman  somewhat  past  his 
faculties, — his  recollections  of  life  all  full  of  wisdom,  and 
showing  a  knowledge  of  human  nature,  whilst  what  im- 
mediately takes  place  before  him,  and  escapes  from  him,  is 
indicative  of  weakness. 

But  as  in  Homer  all  the  deities  are  in  armour,  even 
Venus ;  so  in  Shakspere  all  the  characters  are  strong. 
Hence  real  folly  and  dulness  are  made  by  him  the  vehicles 
of  wisdom.  There  is  no  difficulty  for  one  being  a  fool  to 
imitate  a  fool :  but  to  be,  remain,  and  speak  like  a  wise 
man  and  a  great  wit,  and  yet  so  as  to  give  a  vivid'  repre- 
sentation of  a  veritable  fool, — hie  labor,  hoc  opus  est.  A 
drunken  constable  is  not  uncommon,  nor  hard  to  draw ; 
but  see  and  examine  what  goes  to  make  up  a  Dogberry. 

3.  Keeping  at  all  times  in  the  high  road  of  life.  Shak- 
spere has  no  innocent  adulteries,  no  interesting  incests,  no 
virtuous  vice : — he  never  renders  that  amiable  which 
religion  and  reason  alike  teach  us  to  detest,  or  clothes 
impurity  in  the  garb  of  virtue,  like  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
the  Kotzebues  of  the  day.  Shakspere's  fathers  are  roused 
by  ingratitude,  his  husbands  stung  by  unfaithfulness ;  in 
him,  in  short,  the  affections  are  wounded  in  those  points 
in  which  all  may,  nay,  must,  feel.  Let  the  morality  of 
Shakspere  be  contrasted  with  that  of  the  writers  of  his 


SECT.  I.]  AND  SHAKSPERE.  239 

own,  or  the  succeeding,  age,  or  of  those  of  the  present  day, 
who  boast  their  superiority  in  this  respect.  No  one  can 
dispute  that  the  result  of  such  a  comparison  is  altogether  in 
favour  of  Shakspere  : — even  the  letters  of  women  of  high 
rank  in  his  age  were  often  coarser  than  his  writings.  If 
he  occasionally  disgusts  a  keen  sense  of  delicacy,  he  never 
injures  the  mind ;  he  neither  excites,  nor  flatters,  passion, 
in  order  to  degrade  the  subject  of  it ;  he  does  not  use  the 
faulty  thing  for  a  faulty  purpose,  nor  carries  on  warfare 
against  virtue,  by  causing  wickedness  to  appear  as  no 
wickedness,  through  the  medium  of  a  morbid  sympathy 
with  the  unfortunate.  In  Shakspere  vice  never  walks  as 
in  twilight :  nothing  is  purposely  out  of  its  place : — he  in- 
verts not  the  order  of  nature  and  propriety, — does  not 
make  every  magistrate  a  drunkard  or  glutton,  nor  every 
poor  man  meek,  humane,  and  temperate ;  he  has  no  bene- 
volent butchers,  nor  any  sentimental  rat-catchers. 

4.  Independence  of  the  dramatic  interest  on  the  plot.1 
The  interest  in  the  plot  is  always  in  fact  on  account  of  the 
characters,  not  vice  versa,  as  in  almost  all  other  writers ; 
the  plot  is  a  mere  canvas  and  no  more.  Hence  arises  the 
true  justification  of  the  same  stratagem  being  used  in  re- 
gard to  Benedick  and  Beatrice, — the  vanity  in  each  being 
alike.  Take  away  from  the  "  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  " 
all  that  which  is  not  indispensable  to  the  plot,  either  as 
having  little  to  do  with  it,  or,  at  best,  like  Dogberry  and 
his  comrades,  forced  into  the  service,  when  any  other  less 
ingeniously  absurd  watchmen  and  night-constables  would 
have  answered  the  mere  necessities  of  the  action; — take 

1  "Coleridge's  opinion  was,  that  some  of  the  plays  of  our  'myriad- 
minded  '  bard  ought  never  to  be  acted,  but  looked  on  as  poems  to  be  read, 
and  contemplated ;  and  so  fully  was  he  impressed  with  this  feeling,  that 
in  his  gayer  moments  he  would  often  say,  '  There  should  be  an  Aft  of 
Parliament  to  prohibit  their  representation.'  "~Gillman's  "  Life  of 
Coleridge." 


240  POETRY,  THE  DRAMA,  [1818 

away  Benedick,  Beatrice,  Dogberry,  and  the  reaction  of 
the  former  on  the  character  of  Hero, — and  what  will 
remain  ?  In  other  writers  the  main  agent  of  the  plot  is 
always  the  prominent  character  ;  in  Shakspere  it  is  so,  or 
is  not  so,  as  the  character  is  in  itself  calculated,  or  not 
calculated,  to  form  the  plot.  Don  John  is  the  main-spring 
of  the  plot  of  this  play  ;  but  he  is  merely  shown  and  then 
withdrawn. 

5.  Independence   of  the   interest  on  the   story  as  the 
ground-work  of  the  plot.    Hence  Shakspere  never  took  the 
trouble  of  inventing  stories.1     It  was  enough  for  him  to 
select  from  those  that  had  been  already  invented  or  re- 
corded such  as  had  one  or  other,  or  both,  of  two  recom- 
mendations, namely,  suitableness  to  his  particular  purpose, 
and   their   being   parts   of   popular   tradition, — names   of 
which  we  had  often  heard,  and  of  their  fortunes,  and  as  to 
which  all  we  wanted  was,  to  see  the  man  himself.     So  it  is 
just  the  man  himself,  the  Lear,  the  Shylock,  the  Richard, 
that  Shakspere  makes  us  for  the  first  time  acquainted  with. 
Omit  the  first  scene  in  "  Lear,  "  and  yet  everything  will 
remain ;  so  the  first  and  second  scenes  in  the  "  Merchant 
of  Venice."     Indeed  it  is  universally  true. 

6.  Interfusion   of  the  lyrical — that  which   in  its  very 
essence  is  poetical — not  only  with  the  dramatic,  as  in  the 
plays  of  Metastasio,  where  at  the  end  of  the  scene  comes 
the  aria  as  the  exit  speech  of  the  character, — but  also  in 
and  through  the  dramatic.     Songs  in  Shakspere  are  in- 
troduced as  songs  only,  just  as  songs  are  in  real  life,  beauti- 
fully as  some  of  them  are  characteristic  of  the  person  who 
has  sang  or  called  for  them,  as  Desdemona's  "  Willow,"  and 

1  "  The  greater  part,  if  not  all  of  his  dramas  were,  as  far  as  the  names 
and  the  main  incidents  are  concerned,  already  stock  plays.  All  the 
stories,  at  least,  on  which  they  are  built,  pre-existed  in  the  chronicles, 
ballads,  or  translations  of  contemporary  or  preceding  English  writers." 
— Biographia  Literaria,  Satyrane's  Letters,  Letter  ii. 


SECT.  I.]  AND   SHAKSPERE.  241 

Ophelia's  wild  snatches,  and  the  sweet  carollings  in  "  As 
You  Like  It."  But  the  whole  of  the  "  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream"  is  one  continued  specimen  of  the  dramatized 
lyrical.  And  observe  how  exquisitely  the  dramatic  of 
Hotspur  ; — 

"  Marry,  and  I'm  glad  on't  with  all  my  heart ; 
I  had  rather  be  a  kitten  and  cry — mew,"  &c. 

melts  away  into  the  lyric  of  Mortimer  ; — 

"  I  understand  thy  looks :  that  pretty  Welsh 

Which  thou  pourest  down  from  these  swelling  heavens, 

I  am  too  perfect  in,"  &c. 

Henry  IV.  Part  I.  Act  HI.  Scene  1. 

7.  The  characters  of  the  dramatis  personce,  like  those  in 
real  life,  are  to  be  inferred  by  the  reader ; — they  are  not 
told  to  him.  And  it  is  well  worth  remarking  that  Shak- 
spere's  characters,  like  those  in  real  life,  are  very  commonly 
misunderstood,  and  almost  always  understood  by  different 
persons  in  different  ways.  The  causes  are  the  same  in 
either  case.  If  you  take  only  what  the  friends  of  the 
character  say,  you  may  be  deceived,  and  still  more  so,  if 
that  which  his  enemies  say ;  nay,  even  the  character  him- 
self sees  himself  through  the  medium  of  his  character,  and 
not  exactly  as  he  is.  Take  all  together,  not  omitting  a 
shrewd  hint  from  the  clown  or  the  fool,  and  perhaps  your 
impression  will  be  right ;  and  you  may  know  whether  you 
have  in  fact  discovered  the  poet's  own  idea,  by  all  the 
speeches  receiving  light  from  it,  and  attesting  its  reality  by 
reflecting  it. 

Lastly,  in  Shakspere  the  heterogeneous  is  united,  as  it  is 
in  nature.  You  must  not  suppose  a  pressure  or  passion 
always  acting  on  or  in  the  character ; — passion  in  Shakspere 
is  that  by  which  the  individual  is  distinguished  from  others, 
not  that  which  makes  a  different  kind  of  him.  Shakspere 
followed  the  main  march  of  the  human  affections.  He 

R 


242  POETRY,    THE    DRAMA,   AND   SHAKSPERE.  [1818 

entered  into  no  analysis  of  the  passions  or  faiths  of  men, 
but  assured  himself  that  such  and  such  passions  and  faiths 
were  grounded  in  our  common  nature,  and  not  in  the  mere 
accidents  of  ignorance  or  disease.  This  is  an  important 
consideration,  and  constitutes  our  Shakspere  the  morning 
star,  the  guide  and  the  pioneer,  of  true  philosophy 


SECT.  II.]        ORDER  OF  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS.  2i3 


SECTION  II. 
ORDER   OF   SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS.1 

"\  7"ARIOUS  attempts  have  been  made  to  arrange  the 
*  plays  of  Shakspere,  each  according  to  its  priority  in 
time,  by  proofs  derived  from  external  documents.  How 
unsuccessful  these  have  been  might  easily  be  shown,  not 
only  from  the  widely  different  results  arrived  at  by  men, 

1  For  convenience  of  comparison  with  later  Shaksperian  criticism! 
1'rof.  Dowden's  arrangement  is  subjoined : — 

1.  Prc-Skaksperian  Group.     Touched  by  Shakspere. 
Titus  Andronicus :  1588-90. 

1  Henry  VI.:  1590-1. 

2.  Early  Comedy. 
Love's  Labour's  Lost :  1590. 
Comedy  of  Errors :  1591. 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  :  1592-3. 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream :  1593-4. 

3.  Marlowe- Shaksperian  Group.    Early  History. 

2  &  3  Henry  VI. :  1591-2 
Richard  III.  :   1593. 

4.  Early  Tragedy. 
Komeo  and  Juliet :  1591  ?  1596-7  ? 

6.  Middle  History. 
Richard  II:  1594. 
King  John:  1595. 

6.  Middle  Comedy. 
Merchant  of  Venice  :   1596. 


244  ORDER  OP  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS.  [1818 

all  deeply  versed  in  the  black-letter  books,  old  plays, 
pamphlets,  manuscript  records  and  catalogues  of  that  age, 
but  also  from  the  fallacious  and  unsatisfactory  nature  of 
the  facts  and  assumptions  on  which  the  evidence  rests.  In 
that  age,  when  the  press  was  chiefly  occupied  with  con- 
troversial or  practical  divinity, — when  the  law,  the  church 
and  the  state  engrossed  all  honour  and  respectability, — 

7.  Later  History.    History  and  Comedy  united. 
1  &2  Henry  IV. :  1597-8. 
Henry  V. :   1599. 

8.  Later  Comedy. 

A.  Sough  and  boisterous. 
Taming  of  the  Shrew :  1597  ? 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor :   1598  ? 

B.  Joyous,  refined,  romantic. 
Much  Ado  about  Nothing :  1598. 
As  You  Like  It:  1599. 
Twelfth  Night :  1600-1. 

c.  Serious,  dark,  ironical. 
All's  Well  that  Ends  Well :  1601-2  ? 
Measure  for  Measure :  1603. 
Troilus  and  Cressida  :  1603?  re  vised  1607? 

9.  Middle  Tragedy. 
Julius  Caesar :  1601. 
Hamlet:  1602. 

10.  Later  Tragedy. 
Othello:   1604. 

Lear :  1605. 

Macbeth:  1606. 

Antony  and  Cleopatra :  1607. 

Coriolanus :   1608. 

Timon  of  Athens :  1607-8. 

11.  Romances. 
Pericles:   1608. 
Cymbeline:  1609. 
Tempest:  1610. 
Winter's  Tale :  1610-11. 


SECT.  II.]         ORDEK  OF  SHAKSPEEK'H  PLATS. 

when  a  degree  of  disgrace,  levior  qucedam  infamies  macula, 
was  attached  to  the  publication  of  poetry,  and  even  to  have 
sported  with  the  Muse,  as  a  private  relaxation,  was  sup- 
posed to  be — a  venial  fault,  indeed,  yet — something  beneath 
the  gravity  of  a  wise  man, — when  the  professed  poets  were 
so  poor,  that  the  very  expenses  of  the  press  demanded  tho 
liberality  of  some  wealthy  individual,  so  that  two-thirds  of 
Spenser's  poetic  works,  and  those  most  highly  praised  by 
his  learned  admirers  and  friends,  remained  for  many  years 
in  manuscript,  and  in  manuscript  perished, — when  tho 
amateurs  of  the  stage  were  comparatively  few,  and  there- 
fore for  the  greater  part  more  or  less  known  to  each  other, 
— when  we  know  that  the  plays  of  Shakspere,  both  during 
and  after  his  life,  were  the  property  of  the  stage,  and  pub- 
lished by  the  players,  doubtless  according  to  their  notions 
of  acceptability  with  the  visitants  of  the  theatre, — in  such 
an  age,  and  under  such  circumstances,  can  an  allusion  or 
reference  to  any  drama  or  poem  in  the  publication  of  a 
contemporary  be  received  as  conclusive  evidence,  that  such 
drama  or  poem  had  at  that  time  been  published  ?  Or, 
farther,  can  the  priority  of  publication  itself  prove  anything 
in  favour  of  actually  prior  composition  ? 

We  are  tolerably  certain,  indeed,  that  the  "  Yenus  and 
Adonis,"  and  the  "  Rape  of  Lucrece,"  were  his  two  earliest 
poems,  and  though  not  printed  until  1593,  in  the  twenty- 
ninth  year  of  his  age,  yet  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
they  had  remained  by  him  in  manuscript  many  years.  For 
Mr.  Malone  has  made  it  highly  probable,  that  he  had  com- 

12.  Fragments. 
Two  Noble  Kinsmen  :   1612. 
Henry  VIII. :  1612-13. 

Poems. 

Venus  and  Adonis  :   1592  ? 
The  Rape  of  Lucrece  :  1593-4. 
Sonnets:   159J-1605? 


246  ORDER  OF  SHAKSPEUE'S  PLATS.  [1818 

menced  a  writer  for  the  stage  in  1591,  when  he  was  twenty- 
seven  years  old,  and  Shakspere  himself  assures  us  that  the 
"  Venus  and  Adonis  "  was  the  first  heir  of  his  invention.1 

Baffled,  then,  in  the  attempt  to  derive  any  satisfaction 
from  outward  documents,  we  may  easily  stand  excused  if 
we  turn  our  researches  towards  the  internal  evidences 
furnished  by  the  writings  themselves,  with  no  other  positive 
data  than  the  known  facts,  that  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis  " 
was  printed  in  1503,  the  "Rape  of  Lucrece"  in  1594,  and 
that  the  "  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  had  appeared  in  1595, — and 
with  no  other  presumptions  than  that  the  poems,  his  very 
first  productions,  were  written  many  years  earlier, — (for 
who  can  believe  that  Shakspere  could  have  remained  to 
his  twenty-ninth  or  thirtieth  year  without  attempting  poetic 
composition  of  any  kind  ?) — and  that  between  these  and 
"Romeo  and  Juliet"  there  had  intervened  one  or  two 
other  dramas,  or  the  chief  materials,  at  least,  of  them, 
although  they  may  very  possibly  have  appeared  after  the 
success  of  the  "  Romeo  and  Juliet  "  and  some  other  circum- 
stances had  given  the  poetry  an  authority  with  the  pro- 
prietors, and  created  a  prepossession  in  his  favour  with  the 
theatrical  audiences. 


Classification  attempted,  1802. 

First  Epoch. 

The  London  Prodigal. 

Cromwell. 

Henry  VI.,  three  parts,  first  edition. 

The  old  King  John. 

Edward  III. 

1  "  But  if  the  first  heir  of  my  invention  prove  deformed,  I  shall  be 
porry  it  had  so  noble  a  godfather,"  &c. — Dedication  of  the  "  Venus  and 
Atlonis  "  to  Lord  Southampton.  —  S.  T.  C. 


SECT.  II.]  ORDER   OF   SHAKSPERE'S    PLATS.  247 

The  old  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 

Pericles. 

All  these  are  transition- works,  Uebergangswerke ;  not  his, 
yet  of  him. 

Second  Epoch. 

All's  Well  That  Ends  Well ;— but  afterwards  worked 

up  afresh,  (umgearbeitet)  especially  Parolles. 
The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona ;  a  sketch. 
Romeo  and  Juliet :  first  draft  of  it. 

Third  Epoch 

rises  into  the  full,  although  youthful,  Shakspere :  it  vras 
the  negative  period  of  his  perfection. 

Love's  Labour's  Lost. 

Twelfth  Night. 

As  You  Like  It. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 

Richard  II. 

Henry  IV.  and  V. 

Henry  VIII. ;  Gelegenheitsgedicht. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  as  at  present. 

Merchant  of  Venice. 

Fourth  Epoch. 

Much  Ado  about  Nothing. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  ;  first  edition. 

Henry  VI. ;  rifacimento. 

Fifth  Epoch. 

The  period  of  beauty  was  now  past ;  and  that  of 
and  grandeur  succeeds. 

Lear. 

Macbeth. 

Hamlet. 

Timon  of  Athens  ;  an  after  vibration  of  Hamlet 


248  ORDER  OF  SHAESPERE'S  PLAYS.  [1818 

Troilus  and  Cressida ;  Uebergang  in  die  Ironie. 

The  Roman  Plays. 

King  John,  as  at  present. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor. \  arbM. 

Taming  of  the  Shrew.        J 

Measure  for  Measure. 

Othello. 

Tempest. 

Winter's  Tale. 

Cymbeline. 

Classification  attempted,  1810.1 

Shakspere's  earliest  dramas  I  take  to  be, 

Love's  Labour's  Lost. 

All's  Well  That  Ends  Well. 

Comedy  of  Errors. 

Romeo  and  Juliet. 
In  the  second  class  I  reckon 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 

As  You  Like  It. 

Tempest.2 

Twelfth  Night. 

In  the  third,  as  indicating  a  greater  energy — not  merely 
of  poetry,  but — of  all  the  world  of  thought,  yet  still  with 
some  of  the  growing  pains,  and  the  awkwardness  of  growth, 
I  place 

Troilus  and  Cressida. 

Cymbeline. 

Merchant  of  Venice. 

Much  Ado  about  Nothing. 

Taming  of  the  Shrew. 

1  Coleridge  lectured  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  1810. 
8  Compare  the  later  and  improved  classification  of  1811-12,  in  Mr. 
Collier's  note  on  the  Fourth  Lecture  of  1811-12 


SECT.  II.]        ORDER  OF  SHAKSPERE'S  PLITS.  24!) 

In  the  fourth,  I  place  the  plays  containing  the  greatest 
characters ; 

Macbeth. 

Lear. 

Hamlet. 

Othello. 

And  lastly,  the  historic  dramas,  in  order  to  be  able  to 
show  my  reasons  for  rejecting  some  whole  plays,  and  very 
many  scenes  in  others. 


Classification  attempted,  1819. 

I  think  Shakspere's  earliest  dramatic  attempt — perhaps 
even  prior  in  conception  to  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis,"  and 
planned  before  he  left  Stratford — was  "  Love's  Labour's 
Lost."  Shortly  afterwards  I  suppose  "  Pericles "  and 
certain  scenes  in  "  Jeronymo  "  to  have  been  produced  :  and 
in  the  same  epoch,  I  place  the  "  Winter's  Tale "  and 
"  Cymbeline,"  differing  from  the  "  Pericles  "  by  the  entire 
rifacimento  of  it,  when  Shakspere's  celebrity  as  poet,  and 
his  interest,  no  less  than  his  influence  as  manager,  enabled 
him  to  bring  forward  the  laid  by  labours  of  his  youth. 
The  example  of  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  which,  as  well  as 
"Jeronymo,"  was  most  popular  in  Shakspere's  first  epoch, 
had  led  the  young  dramatist  to  the  lawless  mixture  of 
dates  and  manners.  In  this  same  epoch  I  should  place 
the  "  Comedy  of  Errors,"  remarkable  as  being  the  only 
specimen  of  poetical  farce  in  our  language,  that  is,  in- 
tentionally such ;  so  that  all  the  distinct  kinds  of  drama, 
which  might  be  educed  a  priori,  have  their  representatives 
in  Shakspere's  works.  I  say  intentionally  such  ;  for  many 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays,  and  the  greater  part  of 
Ben  Jonson's  comedies,  are  farce-plots.  I  add  "  All's  Well 
that  Ends  Well,"  originally  intended  as  the  counterpart  of 


250  ORDER  OF  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS.  [1818 

"Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  "Taming  of  the  Shrew,"  "Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,"  "  Much  Ado  About  Nothing," 
and  "  Borneo  and  Juliet." 


Second  Epoch. 

Richard  II. 

King  John. 

Henry  VI. — rifacimento  only. 

Richard  III. 

Third  Epoch. 

Henry  IY. 
Henry  V. 

Merry  Wives  of  Windsor. 

Henry  VIII., — a  sort  of  historical  masque,  or  show 
play. 

Fourth  Epoch 

gives  all  the  graces  and  facilities  of  a  genius  in  full 
possession  and  habitual  exercise  of  power,  and  peculiarly 
of  the  feminine,  the  lady's  character : — 

Tempest. 

As  You  Like  It. 

Merchant  of  Venice. 

Twelfth  Night. 
and,  finally,  at  its  very  point  of  culmination, — 

Lear. 

Hamlet. 

Macbeth. 

Othello. 

Last  Epoch, 

when  the  energies  of  intellect  in  the  cycle  of  genius  were, 
though  in  a  rich  and  more  potentiated  form,  becoming 
predominant  over  passion  and  creative  self-manifestation. 


SECT.  II.]         ORDER  OF  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS.  251 

Measure  for  Measure. 
Timon  of  Athens. 
Coriolanus. 
Julius  Caesar. 
Antony  and  Cleopatra. 
Troilus  and  Cressida. 

Merciful,  wonder-making  Heaven  !  what  a  man  was  this 
Shakspere  1     Myriad-minded,  indeed,  he  was  ! 


252  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS  [1818 


SECTION  III. 

NOTES    ON    SHAKSPERE'S    PLAYS   FROM 
ENGLISH   HISTORY. 

1"^HE  first  form  of  poetry  is  the  epic,  the  essence  of  which 
•*•  may  be  stated  as  the  successive  in  events  and  charac- 
ters. This  must  be  distinguished  from  narration,  in  which 
there  must  always  be  a  narrator,  from  whom  the  objects 
represented  receive  a  colouring  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  religions,  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  :  — 


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 


SECT.  III.]  FROM   ENGLISH   HISTORY.  253 

intelligent  will,  and  the  opposition  of  the  individual  as 
springing  from  a  defect. 

In  order  that  a  drama  may  be  properly  historical,  it  is 
necessary  that  it  shonld  be  the  history  of  the  people  to 
whom  it  is  addressed.  In  the  composition,  care  must  be 
taken  that  there  appear  no  dramatic  improbability,  as  the 
reality  is  taken  for  granted.  It  must,  likewise,  be  poetical ; 
— that  only,  I  mean,  must  be  taken  which  is  the  permanent 
in  our  nature,  which  is  common,  and  therefore  deeply  in- 
teresting to  all  ages.  The  events  themselves  are  im- 
material, otherwise  than  as  the  clothing  and  manifestation 
of  the  spirit  that  is  working  within.  In  this  mode,  the 
unity  resulting  from  succession  is  destroyed,  but  is  supplied 
by  a  unity  of  a  higher  order,  which  connects  the  events  by 
reference  to  the  workers,  gives  a  reason  for  them  in  the 
motives,  and  presents  men  in  their  causative  character. 
It  takes,  therefore,  that  part  of  real  history  which  is  the 
least  known,  and  infuses  a  principle  of  life  and  organiza- 
tion into  the  naked  facts,  and  makes  them  all  the  frame- 
work of  an  animated  whole. 

In  my  happier  days,  while  I  had  yet  hope  and  onward- 
looking  thoughts,  I  planned  an  historical  drama  of  King 
Stephen,  in  the  manner  of  Shakspere.  Indeed  it  would  be 
desirable  that  some  man  of  dramatic  genius  should  drama- 
tize all  those  omitted  by  Shakspere,  as  far  down  as  Henry 
VII.  Perkin  Warbeck  would  make  a  most  interesting 
drama.  A  few  scenes  of  Marlowe's  Edward  II.  might  be 
preserved.  After  Henry  VIII.,  the  events  are  too  well 
and  distinctly  known,  to  be,  without  plump  inverisimilitude, 
crowded  together  in  one  night's  exhibition.  Whereas,  the 
history  of  our  ancient  kings — the  events  of  their  reigns,  I 
mean, — are  like  stars  in  the  sky ; — whatever  the  real  inter- 
spaces may  be,  and  however  great,  they  seem  close  to  each 
other.  The  stars — the  events — strike  us  and  remain  in 
our  eye,  little  modified  by  the  difference  of  dates.  An 


254  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS  [1818 

historic  drama  is,  therefore,  a  collection  of  events  borrowed 
from  history,  but  connected  together  in  respect  of  cause 
and  time,  poetically  and  by  dramatic  fiction.  It  would  be 
a  fine  national  custom  to  act  such  a  series  of  dramatic  his- 
tories in  orderly  succession,  in  the  yearly  Christmas  holi- 
days, and  could  not  but  tend  to  counteract  that  mock 
cosmopolitism,  which  under  a  positive  term  really  implies 
nothing  but  a  negation  of,  or  indifference  to,  the  particular 
love  of  our  country.  By  its  nationality  must  every  nation 
retain  its  independence ; — I  mean  a  nationality  quoad  the 
nation.  Better  thus ; — nationality  in  each  individual, 
quoad  his  country,  is  equal  to  the  sense  of  individuality 
quoad  himself ;  but  himself  as  subsensuous,  and  central. 
Patriotism  is  equal  to  the  sense  of  individuality  reflected 
from  every  other  individual.  There  may  come  a  higher 
virtue  in  both — just  cosmopolitism.  But  this  latter  is  not 
possible  but  by  antecedence  of  the  former. 

Shakspere  has  included  the  most  important  part  of  nine 
reigns  in  his  historical  dramas — namely — King  John, — 
Richard  II. — Henry  IV.  (two) — Henry  V. — Henry  VI. 
(three)  including  Edward  V.,1 — and  Henry  VIII., — in  all 
ten  plays.  There  remain,  therefore,  to  be  done,  with  excep- 
tion of  a  single  scene  or  two  that  should  be  adopted  from 
Marlowe — eleven  reigns — of  which  the  first  two  appear  the 
only  unpromising  subjects ; — and  those  two  dramas  must 
be  formed  wholly  or  mainly  of  invented  private  stories, 
which,  however,  could  not  have  happened  except  in  con- 
sequence of  the  events  and  measures  of  these  reigns,  and 
which  should  furnish  opportunity  both  of  exhibiting  the 
manners  and  oppressions  of  the  times,  and  of  narrating 
dramatically  the  great  events ; — if  possible — the  death  of 
the  two  sovereigns,  at  least  of  the  latter,  should  be  made  to 

1  The  text  is  apparently  corrupt  here.  It  is  clear  that  we  should 
read, — "  Henry  VI.  (three)  and  Richard  III.,  including  Edward  IV.  and 
Edward  V." 


SECT.  III.]  FROM   ENGLISH   HISTORY.  255' 

have  some  influence  on  the  finale  of  the  story.  All  the 
rest  are  glorious  subjects ;  especially  Henry  I.  (being 
the  struggle  between  the  men  of  arms  and  of  letters,  in 
the  persons  of  Henry  and  Becket,)  Stephen,  Richard  I., 
Edward  II.,  and  Henry  VII. 

King  John. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

Bast.  James  Gurney,  wilt  thou  give  us  leave  awhile  ? 
Gur.  Good  leave,  good  Philip.1 
Bast.  Philip  ?  sparrow !  James,  &c. 

Theobald  adopts  Warburton's  conjecture  of  "  spare  me." 

0  true  Warburton !  and  the  sancta  simplicitas  of  honest 
dull  Theobald's  faith  in  him  !     Nothing  can  be  more  lively 
or  characteristic  than  "  Philip  ?     Sparrow  !  "     Had  War- 
burton  read  old  Skel ton's  "  Philip  Sparrow,"  an  exquisite 
and  original  poem,  and,  no  doubt,  popular  in  Shakspere's 
time,  even  Warburton  would  scarcely  have  made  so  deep  a 
plunge  into  the  bathetic  as  to  have  deathified  "  sparrow  " 
into  "  spare  me  !  " 

Act  iii.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Faulconbridge : — 

"  Now,  by  my  life,  this  day  grows  wondrous  hot; 
Some  airy  devil  hovers  in  the  sky,  &c." 

Theobald  adopts  Warburton's  conjecture  of  "  fiery." 

1  prefer  the  old  text ;  the  word  "  devil  "  implies  "  fiery." 
You  need  only  read  the  line,  laying  a  full  and  strong 
emphasis  on  "  devil,"  to  perceive  the  uselessness  and  taste- 
lessness  of  Warburton's  alteration. 

Richard  II. 

I  have  stated  that  the  transitional  link  between  the  epic 
poem  and  the  drama  is  the  historic  drama;  that  in  the 

1  "  For  an  instance  of  Shakspere's  power  in  minimis,  I  generally  quote 
James  Gurney's  character  in  'King  John.'  How  individual  and 
comical  he  is  with  the  four  words  allowed  to  his  dramatic  life!  " — Tablt 
Talk,  March  12, 1827. 


,256  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS  [1818 

epic  poem  a  pre-announced  fate  gradually  adjusts  and 
employs  the  will  and  the  events  as  its  instruments,  whilst 
the  drama,  on  the  other  hand,  places  fate  and  will  in 
opposition  to  each  other,  and  is  then  most  perfect,  when  the 
victory  of  fate  is  obtained  in  consequence  of  imperfections 
in  the  opposing  will,  so  as  to  leave  a  final  impression  that 
the  fate  itself  is  but  a  higher  and  a  more  intelligent  will. 

From  the  length  of  the  speeches,  and  the  circumstance 
that,  with  one  exception,  the  events  are  all  historical,  and 
presented  in  their  results,  not  produced  by  acts  seen  by,  or 
taking  place  before,  the  audience,  this  tragedy  is  ill  suited 
to  our  present  large  theatres.  But  in  itself,  and  for  the 
closet,1  I  feel  no  hesitation  in  placing  it  as  the  first  and 
most  admirable  of  all  Shakspere's  purely  historical  plays. 
For  the  two  parts  of  "  Henry  IV."  form  a  species  of  them- 
selves, which  may  be  named  the  mixed  drama.  The  dis- 
tinction does  not  depend  on  the  mere  quantity  of  historical 
events  in  the  play  compared  with  the  fictions ;  for  there  is 
as  much  history  in  "  Macbeth  "  as  in  "  Richard,"  but  in 
the  relation  of  the  history  to  the  plot.  In  the  purely  his- 
torical plays,  the  history  forms  the  plot :  in  the  mixed,  it 
directs  it ;  in  the  rest,  as  "  Macbeth,"  "  Hamlet,"  "  Cym- 
beline,"  "  Lear,"  it  subserves  it.  But,  however  unsuited 
to  the  stage  this  drama  may  be,  God  forbid  that  even  there 
it  should  fall  dead  on  the  hearts  of  jacobinized  Englishmen  ! 
Then,  indeed,  we  might  say — -prceteriit  gloria  mundi  !  For 
the  spirit  of  patriotic  reminiscence  is  the  all-permeating 
soul  of  this  noble  work.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  most  purely 
historical  of  Shakspere's  dramas.  There  are  not  in  it,  as 
in  the  others,  characters  introduced  merely  for  the  purpose 
of  giving  a  greater  individuality  and  realness,  as  in  the 
comic  parts  of  "  Henry  IV.,"  by  presenting,  as  it  were,  our 
very  selves.  Shakspere  avails  himself  of  every  opportunity 

1  See  Note  from  Gillman,  Section  I.,  p.  239. 


SECT.  III.]  FROM    ENGLISH   HISTORY.  257 

io  effect  the  great  object  of  the  historic  drama,  that, 
namely,  of  familiarizing  the  people  to  the  great  names  of 
their  country,  and  thereby  of  exciting  a  steady  patriotism, 
a  love  of  just  liberty,  and  a  respect  for  all  those  fundamental 
institutions  of  social  life,  which  bind  men  together : — 

"  This  royal  throne  of  kings,  this  scepter'd  isle, 

This  earth  of  majesty,  this  seat  of  Mars, 

This  other  Eden,  demi-paradise ; 

This  fortress,  bnilt  by  nature  fur  herself, 

Against  infection,  and  the  hand  of  war ; 

This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world; 

This  precious  stone  set  in  the  silver  sea, 

Which  serves  it  in  the  office  of  a  wall, 

Or  as  a  moat  defensive  to  a  house, 

Against  the  envy  of  less  happier  lands ; 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England, 

This  nurse,  this  teeming  womb  of  royal  kings, 

Fear'd  by  their  breed,  and  famous  by  their  birth,"  &c. 

Add  the  famous  passage  in  King  John  : — 

"  This  England  never  did,  nor  ever  shall, 

Lie  at  the  proud  foot  of  a  conqueror, 

But  when  it  first  did  help  to  wound  itself. 

Now  these  her  princes  are  come  home  again, 

Come  the  three  corners  of  the  world  in  arms, 

And  we  shall  shock  them  :  nought  shall  make  us  rue, 

If  England  to  itself  do  rest  but  true." 

And  it  certainly  seems  that  Shakspere's  historic  dramas 
produced  a  very  deep  effect  on  the  minds  of  the  English 
people,  and  in  earlier  times  they  were  familiar  even  to  the 
least  informed  of  all  ranks,  according  to  the  relation  of 
Bishop  Corbett.  Marlborough,  we  know,  was  not  ashamed 
to  confess  that  his  principal  acquaintance  with  English 
history  was  derived  from  them ;  and  I  believe  that  a  large 
part  of  the  information  as  to  our  old  names  and  achieve- 
ments even  now  abroad  is  due,  directly  or  indirectly,  to 
Shakspere. 

Admirable  is  the  judgment  with  which  Shakspere  always 


258  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS  [1818 

in  the  first  scenes  prepares,  yet  how  naturally,  and  with 
what  concealment  of  art,  for  the  catastrophe.  Observe 
how  he  here  presents  the  germ  of  all  the  after  events  in 
Richard's  insincerity,  partiality,  arbitrariness,  and  favorit- 
ism, and  in  the  proud,  tempestuous,  temperament  of  his 
barons.  In  the  very  beginning,  also,  is  displayed  that 
feature  in  Richard's  character,  which  is  never  forgotten 
throughout  the  play — his  attention  to  decorum,  and  high 
feeling  of  the  kingly  dignity.  These  anticipations  show 
with  what  judgment  Shakspere  wrote,  and  illustrate  his 
care  to  connect  the  past  and  future,  and  unify  them  with 
the  present  by  forecast  and  reminiscence. 

It  is  interesting  to  a  critical  ear  to  compare  the  six 
opening  lines  of  the  play — 

"  Old  John  of  Gaunt,  time-honour'd  Lancaster, 
Hast  thou,  according  to  thy  oath  and  band,"  &c. 

each  closing  at  the  tenth  syllable,  with  the  rhythmless  meti'e 
of  the  verse  in  "  Henry  VI."  and  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  in 
order  that  the  difference,  indeed,  the  heterogeneity,  of  the 
two  may  be  felt  etiam  in  simillimis  prima  superficie.  Here 
the  weight  of  the  single  words  supplies  all  the  relief 
afforded  by  intercurrent  verse,  while  the  whole  represents 
the  mood.  And  compare  the  apparently  defective^  metre 
of  Bblingbroke's  first  line, — 

"  Many  years  of  happy  days  befall — " 

with  Prospero's, 

"  Twelve  years  since,  Miranda !  twelve  years  since — " 

The  actor  should  supply  the  time  by  emphasis,  and  pause 
on  the  first  syllable  of  each  of  these  verses. 
Act  i.  sc.  1.     Bolingbroke's  speech  : — 

"  First,  (heaven  be  the  record  to  my  speech !) 
In  the  devotion  of  a  subject's  love,"  &c. 

I  remember  in  the  Sophoclean  drama  no  more  striking 


SECT.  III.]  FROM    ENGLISH    HISTORY.  259 

•example  of  the  ro  TrpfVov  *:al  atpvov  than  this  speech;  and 
the  rhymes  in  the  last  six  lines  well  express  the  precon- 
certedness  of  Bolingbroke's  scheme,  so  beautifully  con- 
trasted with  the  vehemence  and  sincere  irritation  of 
Mowbray. 

Ib.     Bolingbroke's  speech : — 

"  Which  blood,  like  sacrificing  Abel's,  cries         , 
Even  from  the  tongueless  caverns  of  the  earth, 
To  me,  for  justice  and  rough  chastisement." 

Note  the  Suvov  of  this  "  to  me,"  which  is  evidently  felt 
by  Richard : — 

"  How  high  a  pitch  his  resolution  soars ! " 
and  the  affected  depreciation  afterwards  :— 
"  As  he  is  but  my  father's  brother's  son." 
Ib.  Mowbray's  speech : — 

"  In  haste  whereof,  most  heartily  I  pray 
Your  highness  to  assign  our  trial  day." 

The  occasional  interspersion  of  rhymes,  and  the  more 
frequent  winding  up  of  a  speech  therewith — what  purpose 
was  this  designed  to  answer  ?  In  the  earnest  drama,  I 
mean.  Deliberateness  ?  An  attempt,  as  in  Mowbray,  to 
collect  himself  and  be  cool  at  the  close  ? — I  can  see  that  in 
the  following  speeches  the  rhyme  answers  the  end  of  the 
Greek  chorus,  and  distinguishes  the  general  truths  from 
the  passions  of  the  dialogue ;  but  this  does  not  exactly 
justify  the  practice,1  which  is  unfrequent  in  proportion  to 
the  excellence  of  Shakspere's  plays.  One  thing,  however, 
is  to  be  observed, — that  the  speakers  are  historical,  known, 
and  so  far  formal,  characters,  and  their  reality  is  already  a 
fact.  This  should  be  borne  in  mind.  The  whole  of  this 

1  Lope  de  Vega,  in  his  "  New  Art  of  Play-Writing"  (Arte  nuevo  dt 
hacer  comcdias,  1609),  lays  it  down  as  a  rule,  that  an  actor  should  always 
leave  the  stage  with  a  pointed  observation  or  a  couplet. 


260  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS  [1818 

scene  of  the  quarrel  between  Mowbray  and  Bolingbroke 
seems  introduced  for  the  purpose  of  showing  by  anticipation 
the  characters  of  Richard  and  Bolingbroke.  In  the  latter 
there  is  observable  a  decorous  and  courtly  checking  of  his 
anger  in  subservience  to  a  predetermined  plan,  especially  in 
his  calm  speech  after  receiving  sentence  of  banishment 
compared  with  Mowbray's  unaffected  lamentation.  In  the 
one,  all  is  ambitious  hope  of  something  yet  to  come  ;  in  the 
other  it  is  desolation  and  a  looking  backward  of  the  heart. 
Ib.  sc.  2. 

"  Gaunt.  Heaven's  is  the  quarrel ;  for  heaven's  substitute, 
His  deputy  anointed  in  his  right, 
Hath  caused  his  death  :  the  which,  if  wrongfully, 
Let  heaven  rerenge ;  for  I  may  never  lift 
An  angry  arm  against  his  minister." 

Without  the  hollow  extravagance  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  ultra-royalism,  how  carefully  does  Shakspere 
acknowledge  and  reverence  the  eternal  distinction  between 
the  mere  individual,  and  the  symbolic  or  representative,  on 
which  all  genial  law,  no  less  than  patriotism,  depends. 
The  whole  of  this  second  scene  commences,  and  is  antici- 
pative  of,  the  tone  and  character  of  the  play  at  large. 

Ib.  sc.  3.  In  none  of  Shakspere's  fictitious  dramas,  or 
in  those  founded  on  a  history  as  unknown  to  his  auditors 
generally  as  fiction,  is  this  violent  rupture  of  the  succession  of 
time  found  : — a  proof,  I  think,  that  the  pure  historic  drama, 
like  "  Richard  II."  and  "  King  John,"  had  its  own  laws. 

Ib.     Mowbray's  speech  : — 

"  A  dearer  merit l 

Have  I  deserved  at  your  highness'  hand."  * 


1  See  Nares'  Glossary.     To  merit  is  used  by  Chapman  in  the  sense  of 
to  reward, — 

"  The  king  will  merit  it  with  gifts." 

E.  ix.  259. 
•  Read  "  hands." 


SECT.  III.]  FROM    ENGLISH    HISTORY.  261 

0,  the  instinctive  propriety  of  Shakspere  in  the  choice  df 
words ! 

Ib.     Richard's  speech : 

"  Nor  never  by  advised  purpose  meet, 

To  plot,  contrive,  or  complot  any  ill, 

'Gainst  us,  our  state,  our  subjects,  or  our  land." 

Already  the  selfish  weakness  of  Richard's  character 
opens.  Nothing  will  such  minds  so  readily  embrace,  as 
indirect  ways  softened  down  to  their  quasi-couscieucea  by 
policy,  expedience,  &c. 

Ib.     Mowbray's  speech  : — 

" .  .  .  .  All  the  world's  my  way. " 

"  The  world  was  all  before  him."  l—Milt. 

Ib. 

"  Boling.  How  long  a  time  lies  in  one  little  word  ! 

Four  lagging  winters,  and  four  wanton  springs, 
End  in  a  word  :  such  is  the  breath  of  kings." 

Admirable  anticipation ! 

Ib.  sc.  4.  This  is  a  striking  conclusion  of  a  first  act, — 
letting  the  reader  into  the  secret ; — having  before  impressed 
us  with  the  dignified  and  kingly  manners  of  Richard,  yet 
by  well  managed  anticipations  leading  us  on  to  the  full 
gratification  of  pleasure  in  our  own  penetration.  In  this 
scene  a  new  light  is  thrown  on  Richard's  character.  Until 
now  he  has  appeared  in  all  the  beauty  of  royalty ;  but  here, 
as  soon  as  he  is  left  to  himself,  the  inherent  weakness  of 
his  character  is  immediately  shown.  It  is  a  weakness, 
however,  of  a  peculiar  kind,  not  arising  from  want  of  per- 
sonal courage,  or  any  specific  defect  of  faculty,  but  rather 
dn  intellectual  f eminineness,  which  feels  a  necessity  of  ever 
leaning  on  the  breast  of  others,  and  of  reclining  on  thoso 

1  The  reference  is  borrowed  from  Johnson,  and  misquoted. 
"  The  world  was  all  before  them,  where  to  choose 
Their  place  of  rest." — Paradise  Lost,  xii.  640. 


2G2  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'F  PLAYS  [1818 

who  are  all  the  while  known  to  be  inferiors.  To  this  must 
be  attributed  as  its  consequences  all  Richard's  vices,  his- 
tendency  to  concealment,  and  his  cunning,  the  whole  opera- 
tion of  which  is  directed  to  the  getting  rid  of  present 
difficulties.  Richard  is  not  meant  to  be  a  debauchee  :  but 
we  see  in  him  that  sophistry  which  is  common  to  man,  by 
which  we  can  deceive  our  own  hearts,  and  at  one  and  the 
same  time  apologize  for,  and  yet  commit,  the  error.  Shak- 
spere  has  represented  this  character  in  a  very  peculiar 
manner.  He  has  not  made  him  amiable  with  counter- 
balancing faults  ;  but  has  openly  and  broadly  drawn  those 
faults  without  reserve,  relying  on  Richard's  disproportionate 
sufferings  and  gradually  emergent  good  qualities  for  our 
sympathy ;  and  this  was  possible,  because  his  faults  are 
not  positive  vices,  but  spring  entirely  from  defect  of 
character. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1. 

"  K.  Rich.  Can  sick  men  play  so  nicely  with  their  names  ?  * 

Yes  !  on  a  death-bed  there  is  a  feeling  which  may  make 
all  things  appear  but  as  puns  and  equivocations.  And  a 
passion  there  is  that  carries  off  its  own  excess  by  plays  on 
words  as  naturally,  and,  therefore,  as  appropriately  to- 
drama,  as  by  gesticulations,  looks,  or  tones.  This  belongs 
to  human  nature  as  such,  independently  of  associations  and 
habits  from  any  particular  rank  of  life  or  mode  of  employ- 
ment ;  and  in  this  consist  Shakspere's  vulgarisms,  as  in 
Macbeth's — 

"  The  devil  damn  thee  black,  them  cream-faced  loon ! "  &c. 

This  is  (to  equivocate  on  Dante's  words)  in  truth  the  ndbile 
volgare  eloquenza.  Indeed  it  is  profoundly  true  that  there 
is  a  natural,  an  almost  irresistible,  tendency  in  the  mind, 
when  immersed  in  one  strong  feeling,  to  connect  that  feel- 
ing with  every  sight  and  object  around  it ;  especially  if 
there  be  opposition,  and  the  words  addressed  to  it  are  in 


SECT.  III.]  FROM   ENGLISH  HISTORY.  263 

any  way  repugnant  to  the  feeling  itself,  as  here  in  the 
instance  of  Richard's  unkind  language  : 

"  Misery  makes  sport  to  mock  itself." 

No  doubt,  something  of  Shakspere's  punning  must  be 
attributed  to  his  age,  in  which  direct  and  formal  combats 
of  wit  were  a  favourite  pastime  of  the  courtly  and  accom- 
plished. It  was  an  age  more  favourable,  upon  the  whole, 
to  vigour  of  intellect  than  the  present,  in  which  a  dread  of 
being  thought  pedantic  dispirits  and  flattens  the  energies 
of  original  minds.  But  independently  of  this,  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that  a  pun,  if  it  be  congruous  with  the 
feeling  of  the  scene,  is  not  only  allowable  in  the  dramatic 
dialogue,  but  oftentimes  one  of  the  most  effectual  intensives 
of  passion. 

Ib. 

"  K.  Rich.  Ri<;ht ;  you  say  true  :  as  Hereford's  love,  so  his ; 
As  theirs,  so  mine ;  and  all  be  as  it  is." 

The  depth  of  this,  compared  with  the  first  scene ; — 
"  How  high  a  pitch,"  &c. 

There  is  scarcely  anything  in  Shakspere  in  its  degree, 
more  admirably  drawn  than  York's  character ; — his  reli- 
gious loyalty  struggling  with  a  deep  grief  and  indignation 
at  the  king's  follies  ;  his  adherence  to  his  word  and  faith, 
once  given  in  spite  of  all,  even  the  most  natural,  feelings. 
You  see  in  him  the  weakness  of  old  age,  and  the  over- 
whelmingness  of  circumstances,  for  a  time  surmounting 
his  sense  of  duty, — the  junction  of  both  exhibited  in  his 
boldness  in  words  and  feebleness  in  immediate  act ;  and 
then  again  his  effort  to  retrieve  himself  in  abstract  loyalty, 
even  at  the  heavy  price  of  the  loss  of  his  son.  This  species 
of  accidental  and  adventitious  weakness  is  brought  into 
parallel  with  Richard's  continually  increasing  energy  of 
thought,  and  as  constantly  diminishing  power  of  acting ; — 


2o'i  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS  [1818 

and  thus  it  is  Richard  that  breathes  a  harmony  ami  a  re- 
lation into  all  the  characters  of  the  play. 
Ib.  sc.  2. 

"  Queen.  To  please  the  king  I  did ;  to  please  myself 
I  cannot  do  it ;  yet  I  know  no  cause 
Whj  I  should  welcome  such  a  guest  as  grief, 
Save  bidding  farewell  to  so  sweet  a  guest 
As  my  sweet  Richard  :  yet  again,  methinks, 
Some  unborn  sorrow,  ripe  in  sorrow's  womb, 
Is  coming  toward  me  ;  and  my  inward  soul 
With  nothing  trembles :  at  something  it  grieves, 
More  than  with  parting  from  my  lord  the  king." 

It  is  clear  that  Shakspere  never  meant  to  represent 
Richard  as  a  vulgar  debauchee,  bat  a  man  with  a  wanton- 
noes  of  spirit  in  external  show,  a  feminine  friendism,  an 
intensity  of  woman-like  love  of  those  immediately  about 
him,  and  a  mistaking  of  the  delight  of  being  loved  by  him 
for  a  love  of  him.  And  mark  in  this  scene  Shakspere's 
gentleness  in  touching  the  tender  superstitions,  the  terrce 
incognitce  of  presentiments,  in  the  human  mind :  and  how 
sharp  a  line  of  distinction  he  commonly  draws  between 
these  obscure  forecastings  of  general  experience  in  each 
individual,  and  the  vulgar  errors  of  mere  tradition.  Indeed, 
it  may  be  taken  once  for  all  as  the  truth,  that  Shakspere,  in 
the  absolute  universality  of  his  genius,  always  reverences 
whatever  arises  out  of  our  moral  nature  ;  he  never  profanes 
his  muse  with  a  contemptuous  reasoning  away  of  the 
genuine  and  general,  however  unaccountable,  feelings  of 
mankind. 

The  amiable  part  of  Richard's  character  is  brought  full 
upon  us  by  his  queen's  few  words — 

"  ....  so  sweet  a  guest 
As  my  sweet  Richard ; — " 

and  Shakspere  has  carefully  shown  in  him  an  intense  love 
of  his  country,  well  knowing  how  that  feeling  would,  in  a 


SECT.  III.]  FROM  ENGLISH   HISTORY.  2b'5 

pure  historic  drama,  redeem  him  in  the  hearts  of  the 
audience.  Yet  even  in  this  love  there  is  something  feminine 
and  personal : — 

"  Dear  earth,  I  do  salute  thee  with  my  hand, — 
As  a  long  parted  mother  with  her  child 
Plays  fondly  with  her  tears,  and  smiles  in  meeting; 
So  weeping,  smiling,  greet  I  thee,  my  earth, 
And  dc  thee  favour  '  with  my  royal  hands." 

With  this  is  combined  a  constant  overflow  of  emotions  from 
a  total  incapability  of  controlling  them,  and  thence  a  waste 
of  that  energy,  which  should  have  been  reserved  for  actions, 
in  the  passion  and  effort  of  mere  resolves  and  menaces. 
The  consequence  is  moral  exhaustion,  and  rapid  alternations 
of  unmanly  despair  and  ungrounded  hope, — every  feeling 
being  abandoned  for  its  direct  opposite  upon  the  pressure  of 
external  accident.  And  yet  when  Richard's  inward  weak- 
ness appears  to  seek  refuge  in  his  despair,  and  his  ex- 
haustion counterfeits  repose,  the  old  habit  of  kingliness, 
the  effect  of  flatterers  from  his  infancy,  is  ever  and  anon 
producing  in  him  a  sort  of  wordy  courage  which  only 
serves  to  betray  more  clearly  his  internal  impotence.  The 
second  and  third  scenes  of  the  third  act  combine  and 
illustrate  all  this : — 

"  Aumerle.  He  means,  my  lord,  that  we  are  too  remiss ; 
Whilst  Bolingbroke,  through  our  security, 
Grows  strong  and  great,  in  substance,  and  in  friendi. 
JL.  Rich.  Discomfortable  cousin !  know'st  thou  not, 

That  when  the  searching  eye  of  heaven  is  hid 
Behind  the  gK'be,  and  3  lights  the  lower  world, 
Then  thieves  and  robbers  range  abroad  unseen, 


1  So,  1st  Fol.  1623.     The  Globe  Edition  reads  "  favours." 
*  For  "  and  "  read  "  lhat."     Retain  "  bloody  j  "  though  later  edit  ion* 
read  "boldly,"  and  the  Globe  Edition  adopts   it.     The  1st  Folio  baa 
"  that "  and  "  bloody."     It  is  right.     If  the  passnge  is  read  with  strong 
emi'luiiis  on  that,  lower,  and  here,  it  will  become  plui'i. 


266  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS  [1819 

In  murders  nnd  in  outrage,  bloody  here ; 
But  when,  from  under  this  terrestrial  ball, 
He  fires  the  proud  tops  of  the  eastern  pines, 
And  darts  his  light  through  every  guilty  hole, 
Then  murders,  treasons,  and  detested  sins, 
The  cloak  of  night  being  pluckt  from  off  their  backs, 
Stand  bare  and  naked,  trembling  at  themselves  ? 
So  when  this  thief,  this  traitor,  Bolingbroke,"  &c. 
***** 

"  Aumerle.  Where  is  the  Duke  my  father  with  his  power  ? 
K.  Eich.  No  matter  where  ;  of  comfort  no  man  speak : 
Let's  talk  of  graves,  of  worms,  and  epitaphs, 
Make  dust  our  paper,  and  with  rainy  eyes 
Write  sorrow  on  the  bosom  of  the  earth,"  &c. 
***** 

"  Aumerle,  My  father  hath  a  power,  enquire  of  him  ; 

And  learn  to  make  a  body  of  a  limb. 

K.  Eich.  Thou  chid'st  me  well :  proud  Bolingbroke,  I  come, 
To  change  blows  with  thee  for  our  day  of  doom. 
This  ague-fit  of  fear  is  over-blown  ; 
An  easy  task  it  is  to  win  our  own." 
***** 

"  Scroop.  Your  uncle  York  hath 1  joined  with  Bolingbroke. — * 

***** 

**  K.  Eich.  Thou  hast  said  enough. 

Beshrew  thee,  cousin,  which  didst  lead  me  forth 

Of  that  sweet  way  I  was  in  to  despair  ! 

What  say  you  now  ?  what  comfort  have  we  now  ? 

By  heaven,  I'll  hate  him  everlastingly, 

That  bids  me  be  of  comfort  any  more." 


Act  iii.  sc.  3.     Bolingbroke's  speech  : — 

"  Noble  lord,8 

Go  to  the  rude  ribs  of  that  ancient  castle,"  &c. 

Observe  the  fine  struggle  of  a  haughty  sense  of  power  and 
ambition  in  Bolingbroke  with  the  necessity  for  dissimu- 
lation. 

1  Read  "  is." 

8  So  1st  Fol.     Globe  Ed.,  « lords." 


SECT.  III.]  FKOM    ENGLISH    BISTORT.  267 

Ib.  sc.  4.  See  here  the  skill  and  judgment  of  our  poet 
in  giving  reality  and  individual  life,  by  the  introduction 
of  accidents  in  his  historic  plays,  and  thereby  making  them 
dramas,  and  not  histories.  How  beautiful  an  islet  of 
repose — a  melancholy  repose,  indeed — is  this  scene  with  the 
Gardener  and  his  Servant.  And  how  truly  affecting  and 
realizing  is  the  incident  of  the  very  horse  Barbary,  in  the* 
scene  with  the  Groom  in  the  last  act ! — 
*•  Groom.  I  was  a  poor  groom  of  thy  stable,  King, 

When  thou  wert  King;  who,  travelling  towards  York, 
With  much  ado,  at  length  have  gotten  leave 
To  look  upon  my  sometime  master's  face.1 
O,  how  it  yearn 'd  my  heart,  when  I  beheld, 
In  London  streets,  that  coronation  day, 
When  Bolingbroke  rode  on  roan  Barbary! 
That  horse,  that  thou  so  often  hast  bestrid  5 
That  horse,  that  I  so  carefully  have  dress'd ! 
K.  Eich.  Rode  he  on  Barbary  ?  " 

Bolingbroke's  character,  in  general,  is  an  instance  how 
Shakspere  makes  one  play  introductory  to  another ;  for  it 
is  evidently  a  preparation  for  "  Henry  IV.,"  as  Gloster  in 
the  third  part  of  "  Henry  VI."  is  for  "  Richard  III." 

I  would  once  more  remark  upon  the  exalted  idea  of  the 
only  true  loyalty  developed  in  this  noble  and  impressive 
play.  We  have  neither  the  rants  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  nor  the  sneers  of  Massinger ; — the  vast  importance 
of  the  personal  character  of  the  sovereign  is  distinctly 
enounced,  whilst,  at  the  same  time,  the  genuine  sanctity 
which  surrounds  him  is  attributed  to,  and  grounded  on, 
the  position  in  which  he  stands  as  the  convergence  and 
exponent  of  the  life  and  power  of  the  state. 

The   great  end  of  the  body  politic   appears   to  be  to 

1  The  IstFol.  has— 

"  To  look  upon  my  (sometimes  Royall)  master's  face." 

Doubtless,  the  Groom  said  "royal, "and  some  critic  substituted  "  some- 
times royal."  The  Globe  Edition  retains  the  alteration,  omitting  tho 
bracket*. 


268  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS  [1818 

humanize,  and  assist  in  the  progressiveness  of,  the  animal 
man ; — but  the  problem  is  so  complicated  with  contingencies 
as  to  render  it  nearly  impossible  to  lay  down  rules  for  the 
formation  of  a  state.  And  should  we  be  able  to  form  a 
system  of  government,  which  should  so  balance  its  different 
powers  as  to  form  a  check  upon  each,  and  so  continually 
remedy  and  correct  itself,  it  would,  nevertheless,  defeat  its 
own  aim ; — for  man  is  destined  to  be  guided  by  higher 
principles,  by  universal  views,  which  can  never  be  fulfilled 
in  this  state  of  existence, — by  a  spirit  of  progressiveness 
which  can  never  be  accomplished,  for  then  it  would  cease 
to  be.  Plato's  Republic  is  like  Bnnyan's  Town  of  Man- 
Soul, — a  description  of  an  individual,  all  of  whose  faculties 
are  in  their  proper  subordination  and  inter-dependence ; 
and  this  it  is  assumed  may  be  the  prototype  of  the  state  as 
one  great  individual.  But  there  is  this  sophism  in  it,  that 
it  is  forgotten  that  the  human  faculties,  indeed,  are  parts 
and  not  separate  things ;  but  that  you  could  never  get 
chiefs  who  were  wholly  reason,  ministers  who  were  wholly 
understanding,  soldiers  all  wrath,  labourers  all  concupis- 
cence, and  so  on  through  the  rest.  Each  of  these  partakes 
of,  and  interferes  with,  all  the  others. 


Henry  IV.     Part  I. 
Act  i.  sc  1.     King  Henry's  speech  : 

"No  more  the  thirsty  entrance  of  this  soil 

Shall  daub  her  lips  with  her  own  children's  blood." 

A  most  obscure  passage  :  but  I  think  Theobald's  interpre- 
tation right,  namely,  that  "  thirsty  entrance "  means  the 
dry  penetrability,  or  bibulous  drought,  of  the  soil.  The 
obscurity  of  this  passage  is  of  the  Shaksperian  sort. 

Ib.  EC.  2.  In  this,  the  first  introduction  of  Falstaff, 
observe  the  consciousness  and  the  intentionality  of  his  wit, 
BO  that  when  it  does  not  flow  of  its  own  accord,  its  absence 


SlCT.  III.]  FKOM   ENGLISH   HISTORY.  2G9 

is  felfc,  and  an  effort  visibly  made  to  recall  it.  Note  also 
throughout  how  Falstaff's  pride  is  gratified  in  the  power  of 
influencing  a  prince  of  the  blood,  the  heir  apparent,  by 
means  of  it.  Hence  his  dislike  to  Prince  John  of  Lancaster, 
and  his  mortification  when  he  finds  his  wit  fail  on  him  : — 

"P.  John.  Fare  you  well,  Falstaff;  I,  in  my  condition, 
Shall  better  speak  of  you  than  you  deserve. 

Fal.  I  would  you  had  but  the  wit;  'twere  better  than  your  dukedom. 
— Good  faith,  this  same  young  sober-blooded  boy  doth  not  love  me  ;— 
nor  a  man  cannot  make  him  laugh." 

Act  ii.  so.  1.     Second  Carrier's  speech  : — 
" .  .  .  .  breeds  fleas  like  a  loach." l 

Perhaps  it  is  a  misprint,  or  a  provincial  pronunciation, 
for  "leach,"  that  is,  blood-suckers.  Had  it  been  gnats, 
instead  of  fleas,  there  might  have  been  some  sense,  though 
small  probability,  in  Warburton's  suggestion  of  the  Scottish 
"loch."  Possibly  "loach,"  or  "lutch,"  may  be  some  lost 
word  for  dovecote,  or  poultry-lodge,  notorious  for  breeding 
fleas.  In  Stevens's  or  my  reading,  it  should  properly  be 
"loaches,"  or  "  leeches,"  in  the  plural ;  except  that  I  think 
I  have  heard  anglers  speak  of  trouts  like  a  salmon. 

Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

"  Glend.  Nay,  if  you  melt,  then  will  she  run  mad." 

This  "  nay  "  so  to  be  dwelt  on  in  speaking,  as  to  be 
equivalent  to  a  dissyllable  —  o  ,  is  characteristic  of  the 
solemn  Glendower :  but  the  imperfect  line — 

"She  bids  you 

Upon  a  the  wanton  rushes  lay  you  down,"  &c. 

is  one  of  those   fine  hair-strokes  of   exquisite  judgment 

1  "  Loach.  A  small  fish."  "  It  seems  as  reasonable  to  suppose  the 
loach  infested  with  fleas  as  the  tench,  which  may  be  meant  in  a  pre- 
ceding speech." — Hares'  Glossary,  q.  T. 

«  Bead  "  on."    Fol.  1623. 


270  NOTKS  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLAYS  [1818 

peculiar  to  Shakspere; — thus  detaching  the  lady's  speech, 
and  giving  it  the  individuality  and  entireness  of  a  little 
poem,  while  he  draws  attention  to  it. 


Henry  IV.     Part  II. 
Act  ii.  sc.  2. 

"  P.  Hen.  Sup  any  women  with  him  ? 

Page.  None,  my  lord,  but  old  mistress  Quickly,  and  mistress  Doll 
Tear-sheet." 

*****  o 

"  P.  Hen.  This  Doll  Tear-sheet  should  be  somo  road." 

I  am  sometimes  disposed  to  think  that  this  respectable 
young  lady's  name  is  a  very  old  corruption  for  Tear-street 
'.' — street-walker,  terere  stratam  (viam).  Does  not  the 
jPrince'e  question  rather  show  this  ? — 

'•'  This  Doll  Tear-street  should  be  some  road  ?  " 
Act  iii.  sc.  ] .     King  Henry's  speech  : 

".  .  .  .  Then,  happy  low,  lie  down  ; 
Uneasy  lies  the  head  that  wears  a  crown." 

I  know  no  argument  by  which  to  persuade  any  one  to  be 
,of  my  opinion,  or  rather  of  my  feeling :  but  yet  I  cannot 
help  feeling  that  "  Happy  low-lie-down  !  "  is  either  a  pro- 
verbial expression,  or  the  burthen  of  some  old  song,  and 
means,  "  Happy  the  man,  who  lays  himself  down  on  his 
r8traw  bed  or  chaff  pallet  on  the  ground  or  floor !  " 

Ib.  sc.  2.     Shallow's  speech : — 

"  Rah,  tah,  tah,  would  'a  say ;  bounce,  would  'a  say,"  &c. 

That  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  have  more  than  once  been 
.guilty  of  sneering  at  their  great  master,  cannot,  I  fear,  be 
.denied  ;  but  the  passage  quoted  by  Theobald  from  the 
-"  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle  "  is  an  imitation.  If  it  be 


SECT.  III.]  FROM    ENGLISH   HISTORY.  271 

chargeable  with  any  fault,  it  is  with  plagiarism,  not  with 
sarcasm. 


Henry  V. 
Act  i.  sc.  2.     Westmoreland's  speech  : — 

"  They  know  your  grace  hath  cause,  and  means,  and  might ; 
So  hath  your  highness;  never  King  of  England 
Had  nobles  richer,"  &c. 

Does  "  grace  "  mean  the  king's  own  peculiar  domains 
and  legal  revenue,  and  "  highness  "  his  feudal  rights  in  the 
military  service  of  his  nobles  ? — I  have  sometimes  thought 
it  possible  that  the  words  "  grace  "  and  "  cause  "  may  have 
been  transposed  in  the  copying  or  printing ; — 

"They  know  your  cause  hath  grace,"  &c. 

What  Theobald  meant,  I  cannot  guess.  To  me  his  pointing 
makes  the  passage  still  more  obscure.  Perhaps  the  lines 
ought  to  be  recited  dramatically  thus  : — 

"  They  know  your  Grace  hath  cause,  and  means,  and  might  :— 
So  hath  your  Highness — never  King  of  England 
Had  nobles  richer,"  &c. 

He  breaks  off  from  the  grammar  and  natural  order 
from  earnestness,  and  in  order  to  give  the  meaning  more 
passionately. 

Ib.     Exeter's  speech  : — 

"  Yet  that  is  but  a  crush'd  necessity." 

Perhaps  it  may  be  "  crash  "  for  "  crass  "  from  crassus 
clumsy ;  or  it  may  be  "  curt,"  defective,  imperfect :  any- 
thing would  be  better  than  Warburton's  "  'scus'd,"  which 
honest  Theobald,  of  course,  adopts.  By  the  bye,  it  seems 
clear  to  me  that  this  speech  of  Exeter's  properly  belongs  to 
Canterbury,  and  was  altered  by  the  actors  for  convenience 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     K.  Henry's  speech  : — 


272  NOTES  ON  SHAKSPERE'S  PLATS  [1818 

"  We  would  not  die  in  that  man's  company 
That  fears  his  fellowship  to  die  with  us." 

Should  it  not  be  "  live  "  in  the  first  line  ? 
Ib.  sc.  5. 

"Const.  Odiable! 

Orl.      0  seigneur  !  le  jour  cst  perdu,  tout  cst  perdu  f 
Dan.    Mort  de  ma  vie!  all  is  confounded,  all ! 
Reproach  and  everlasting  shame 
Sit  mocking  in  our  plumes! — 0  mcschantc  fortune  f 
Do  not  run  away  !  " 

Ludicrous  as  these  introductory  scraps  of  French  appear, 
so  instantly  followed  by  good,  nervous  mother-English,  yet 
they  are  judicious,  and  produce  the  impression  which  Shak- 
spere  intended, — a  sudden  feeling  struck  at  once  on  the 
ears,  as  well  as  the  eyes,  of  the  audience,  that  "  here  come 
the  French,  the  baffled  French  braggards !  " — And  this 
will  appear  still  more  judicious,  when  we  reflect  on  the 
scanty  apparatus  of  distinguishing  dresses  in  Shakspere's 
tiring-room. 

Henry  VI.     Part  I. 
Act  i.  sc.  1.     Bedford's  speech: — 

"  Hung  be  the  heavens  with  black,  yield  day  to  night  I 
Comets,  importing  change  of  times  and  states, 
Brandish  your  crystal  tresses  in  the  sky ; 
And  with  them  scourge  the  bad  revolting  stars 
That  have  consented  unto  Henry's  death  ! 
H^nry '  the  fifth,  too  famous  to  live  long! 
England  ne'er  lost  a  king  of  so  much  worth." 

Bead  aloud  any  two  or  three  passages  in  blank  verse 
even  from  Shakspere's  earliest  dramas,  as  "  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,"  or  "  Romeo  and  Juliet ;  "  and  then  read  in  the  same 
way  this  speech,  with  especial  attention  to  the  metre;  an;] 

1  Read  "  King  Henry." 


SECT.  III.]  FROM    ENGLISH   BISTORT.  273 

if  you  do  not  feel  the  impossibility  of  the  latter  having  been 
written  by  Shakspere,1  all  I  dare  suggest  is,  that  you  may 
have  ears, — for  so  has  another  animal, — but  an  ear  you 
cannot  have,  mejndice. 


Richard  III. 

This  play  should  be  contrasted  with  "  Bichard  II."  Pride 
of  intellect  is  the  characteristic  of  Richard,  carried  to  the 
extent  of  even  boasting  to  his  own  mind  of  his  villany, 
whilst  others  are  present  to  feed  his  pride  of  superiority ; 
as  in  his  first  speech,  act  II.  sc.  1.  Shakspere  here,  as  in 
all  his  great  parts,  developes  in  a  tone  of  sublime  morality 
the  dreadful  consequences  of  placing  the  moral  in  subordi- 
nation to  the  mere  intellectual  being.  In  Richard  there  is 
a  predominance  of  irony,  accompanied  with  apparently 
blunt  manners  to  those  immediately  about  him,  but 
formalized  into  a  more  set  hypocrisy  towards  the  people  as 
represented  by  their  magistrates. 

1  See  Prof.  Dowden's  Arrangement  of  the  Plays,  Section  II.,  where 
"  Henry  VI."  is  found  in  the  "  Pre-Shaksperian  Group." 


274  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 


SECTION  IV. 

NOTES    ON    SOME    OTHER   PLAFS    OF 
SHAKSPERE. 

The  Tempest. 

'"PHERE  is  a  sort  of  improbability  with  which  we  are 
-^-  shocked  in  dramatic  representation,  not  less  than  in 
a  narrative  of  real  life.  Consequently,  there  must  be  rules 
respecting  it ;  and  as  rules  are  nothing  but  means  to  an 
•end  previously  ascertained — (inattention  to  which  simple 
4 ruth  has  been  the  occasion  of  all  the  pedantry  of  the 
French  school), — we  must  first  determine  what  the  imine- 
•diate  end  or  object  of  the  drama  is.  And  here,  as  I  have 
previously  remarked,  I  find  two  extremes  of  critical  de- 
cision ; — the  French,  which  evidently  presupposes  that  a 
perfect  delusion  is  to  be  aimed  at, — an  opinion  which  needs 
no  fresh  confutation ;  and  the  exact  opposite  to  it,  brought 
forward  by  Dr.  Johnson,  who  supposes  the  auditors 
throughout  in  the  full  reflective  knowledge  of  the  contrary. 
In  evincing  the  impossibility  of  delusion,  he  makes  no 
sufficient  allowance  for  an  intermediate  state,  which  I 
have  before  distinguished  by  the  term,  illusion,  and  have 
attempted  to  illustrate  its  quality  and  character  by  refe- 
rence to  our  mental  state,  when  dreaming.  In  both  cases 
we  simply  do  not  judge  the  imagery  to  be  unreal ;  there  is 
a  negative  reality,  and  no  more.  Whatever,  therefore, 
tends  to  prevent  the  mind  from  placing  itself,  or  being 
placed,  gradually  in  that  state  in  which  the  images  have 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  275 

such  negative  reality  for  the  auditor,  destroys  this  illusion, 
and  is  dramatically  improbable. 

Now  the  production  of  this  effect — a  sense  of  improba-* 
bility — will  depend  on  the  degree  of  excitement  in  which 
the  mind  is  supposed  to  be.  Many  things  would  be  in- 
tolerable in  the  first  scene  of  a  play,  that  would  not  at  all 
interrupt  our  enjoyment  in  the  height  of  the  interest,  when 
the  narrow  cockpit  may  be  made  to  hold 

"  The  vasty  field  of  France,  or  we  may  cram 
Within  its  wooden  O  the  very  casques, 
That  did  affright  the  air  at  Agincourt." 

Again,  on  the  other  hand,  many  obvious  improbabilities 
will  be  endured,  as  belonging  to  the  ground-work  of  the 
story  rather  than  to  the  drama  itself,  in  the  first  scenes, 
which  would  disturb  or  disentrance  us  from  all  illusion  in 
the  acme  of  our  excitement ;  as  for  instance,  Lear's  division 
of  his  kingdom,  and  the  banishment  of  Cordelia. 

But,  although  the  other  excellencies  of  the  drama  besides 
this  dramatic  probability,  as  unity  of  interest,  with  distinct- 
ness and  subordination  of  the  characters,  and  appropriate- 
ness of  style,  are  all,  so  far  as  they  tend  to  increase  the 
inward  excitement,  means  towards  accomplishing  the  chief 
end,  that  of  producing  and  supporting  this  willing  illusion, 
— yet  they  do  not  on  that  account  cease  to  be  ends  them- 
selves; and  we  must  remember  that,  as  such,  they  carry 
their  own  justification  with  them,  as  long  as  they  do  not 
contravene  or  interrupt  the  total  illusion.  It  is  not  even 
always,  or  of  necessity,  an  objection  to  them,  that  they 
prevent  the  illusion  from  rising  to  as  great  a  height  as  it 
might  otherwise  have  attained ; — it  is  enough  that  they  are 
fiimply  compatible  with  as  high  a  degree  of  it  as  is  requisite 
for  the  purpose.  Nay,  upon  particular  occasions,  a  palpa- 
ible  improbability  may  be  hazarded  by  a  great  genius  for 
the  express  purpose  of  keeping  down  the  interest  of  a 


276  NOTES   ON   SOME  OTHER  [1818 

merely  instrumental  scene,  which  would  otherwise  make 
too  great  an  impression  for  the  harmony  of  the  entire 
illusion.  Had  the  panorama  been  invented  in  the  time  of 
Pope  Leo  X.,  Raffael  would  still,  I  doubt  not,  have  smiled 
in  contempt  at  the  regret,  that  the  broom-twigs  and  scrubby 
bushes  at  the  back  of  some  of  his  grand  pictures  were  not 
as  probable  trees  as  those  in  the  exhibition. 

The  "  Tempest "  is  a  specimen  of  the  purely  romantic 
drama,  in  which  the  interest  is  not  historical,  or  dependent 
upon  fidelity  of  portraiture,  or  the  natural  connection  of 
events, — but  is  a  birth  of  the  imagination,  and  rests  only 
on  the  coaptation  and  union  of  the  elements  granted  to,  or 
assumed  by,  the  poet.  It  is  a  species  of  drama  which  owes 
no  allegiance  to  time  or  space,  and  in  which,  therefore, 
errors  of  chronology  and  geography — no  mortal  sins  in  any 
species — are  venial  faults,  and  count  for  nothing.  It 
addresses  itself  entirely  to  the  imaginative  faculty  ;  and 
although  the  illusion  may  be  assisted  by  the  effect  on 
the  senses  of  the  complicated  scenery  and  decorations  of 
modern  times,  yet  this  sort  of  assistance  is  dangerous. 
For  the  principal  and  only  genuine  excitement  ought  to 
come  from  within, — from  the  moved  and  sympathetic 
imagination ;  whereas,  where  so  much  is  addressed  to  the 
mere  external  senses  of  seeing  and  hearing,  the  spiritual 
vision  is  apt  to  languish,  and  the  attraction  from  without 
will  withdraw  the  mind  from  the  proper  and  only  legitimate 
interest  which  is  intended  to  spring  from  within. 

The  romance  opens  with  a  busy  scene  admirably  appro- 
priate to  the  kind  of  drama,  and  giving,  as  it  were,  the 
key-note  to  the  whole  harmony.  It  prepares  and  initiates 
the  excitement  required  for  the  entire  piece,  and  yet  does 
not  demand  anything  from  the  spectators,  which  their 
previous  habits  had  not  fitted  them  to  understand.  It  is 
the  bustle  of  a  tempest,  from  which  the  real  horrors  are 
abstracted ; — therefore  it  is  poetical,  though  not  in  strict- 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPKEB.  277 

ness  natural — (the  distinction  to  which  I  have  so  often 
alluded) — and  is  purposely  restrained  from  concentering 
the  interest  on  itself,  but  used  merely  as  an  induction  or 
tuning  for  what  is  to  follow. 

In  the  second  scene,  Prospero's  speeches,  till  the  entrance 
of  Ariel,  contain  the  finest  example  I  remember  of  retro- 
spective narration  for  the  purpose  of  exciting  immediate 
interest,  and  putting  the  audience  in  possession  of  all  the 
information  necessary  for  the  understanding  of  the  plot.1 
Observe,  too,  the  perfect  probability  of  the  moment  chosen 
by  Prospero  (the  very  Shakspere  himself,  as  it  were,  of 
the  tempest)  to  open  out  the  truth  to  his  daughter,  his 
own  romantic  bearing,  and  how  completely  anything  that 
might  have  been  disagreeable  to  us  in  the  magician,  is 
reconciled  and  shaded  in  the  humanity  and  natural  feelings 
of  the  father.  In  the  very  first  speech  of  Miranda  tho 
simplicity  and  tenderness  of  her  character  are  at  once  laid 
open ;  it  would  have  been  lost  in  direct  contact  with  the 
agitation  of  the  first  scene.  The  opinion  once  prevailed, 
but,  happily,  is  now  abandoned,  that  Fletcher  alone  wrote 
for  women ; 2 — the  truth  is,  that  with  very  few,  and  those 
partial,  exceptions,  the  female  characters  in  the  plays  of 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are,  when  of  the  light  kind,  not 

1  "Pro.  Mark  his  condition,  and  th'  event;  then  tell  me, 

If  this  might  be  a  brother. 
Mini.  I  should  sin, 

To  think  but  nobly  of  my  grandmother; 
Good  wombs  have  bore  bad  suns. 
Pro.     Now  the  condition,"  &e. 

Theobald  has  a  note  upon  this  passage,  and  suggests  that  Shakspere 
placed  it  thus : — 

"  Pro.    Good  wombs  have  bore  bad  sons, — 

Now  the  condition." 

Mr.  Coleridge  writes  in  the  margin :  "  I  cannot  but  believe  that 
Theobald  is  quite  right."— H.  N.  C. 

*  See  conclusion  c  f  Lecture  VI.,  1811-12. 


278  NOTES   ON    SOME    OTHER  [1818 

decent ;  when  heroic,  complete  viragos.  But  in  Shakspere 
all  the  elements  of  womanhood  are  holy,  and  there  is  the 
sweet,  yet  dignified  feeling  of  all  that  continuates  society, 
as  sense  of  ancestry  and  of  sex,  with  a  purity  unassailable 
by  sophistry,  because  it  rests  not  in  the  analytic  processes, 
but  in  that  sane  equipoise  of  the  faculties,  during  which 
the  feelings  are  representative  of  all  past  experience, — not 
of  the  individual  only,  but  of  all  those  by  whom  she  has 
been  educated,  and  their  predecessors  even  up  to  the  first 
mother  that  lived.  Shakspere  saw  that  the  want  of  pro- 
minence, which  Pope  notices  for  sarcasm,1  was  the  blessed 
beanty  of  the  woman's  character,  and  knew  that  it  arose 
not  from  any  deficiency,  but  from  the  more  exquisite 
harmony  of  all  the  parts  of  the  moral  being  constituting 
one  living  total  of  head  and  heart.  He  has  drawn  it, 
indeed,  in  all  its  distinctive  energies  of  faith,  patience, 
constancy,  fortitude, — shown  in  all  of  them  as  following 
the  heart,  which  gives  its  results  by  a  nice  tact  and  happy 
intuition,  without  the  intervention  of  the  discursive  faculty, 
—  sees  all  things  in  and  by  the  light  of  the  affections,  and 
errs,  if  it  ever  err,  in  the  exaggerations  of  love  alone.  In 
all  the  Shaksperian  women  there  is  essentially  the  same- 
foundation  and  principle  ;  the  distinct  individuality  and 
variety  are  merely  the  result  of  the  modification  of  circum- 
stances, whether  in  Miranda  the  maiden,  in  Imogen  the 
wife,  or  in  Katharine  the  queen. 

But  to  return.  The  appearance  and  characters  of  the 
super  or  ultra-natural  servants  are  finely  contrasted.  Ariel 
has  in  everything  the  airy  tint  which  gives  the  name ;  and 
it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  Miranda  is  never  directly 
brought  into  comparison  with  Ariel,  lest  the  natural  and 
human  of  the  one  and  the  supernatural  of  the  other  should 
tend  to  neutralize  each  other  ;  Caliban,  on  the  other  hand, 

1  See  Appendix :  V.  ^  "  Table  Talk,"  Sep.  27,  1830. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  279 

is  all  earth,  all  condensed  and  gross  in  feelings  and  images ; 
be  has  the  dawnings  of  understanding  without  reason  or 
the  moral  sense,  and  in  him,  as  in  some  brute  animals,  this 
advance  to  the  intellectual  faculties,  without  the  moral 
sense,  is  marked  by  the  appearance  of  vice.  For  it  is  in 
the  primacy  of  the  moral  being  only  that  man  is  truly 
human ;  in  his  intellectual  powers  he  is  certainly  ap- 
proached by  the  brutes,  and,  man's  whole  system  duly 
considered,  those  powers  cannot  be  considered  other  than 
means  to  an  end,  that  is,  to  morality. 

In  this  scene,  as  it  proceeds,  is  displayed  the  impression 
made  by  Ferdinand  and  Miranda  on  each  other  ;  it  is  love 
at  first  sight ; — 

"  at  the  first  sight 
They  have  changed  eyes  : " — 

and  it  appears  to  me,  that  in  all  cases  of  real  love,  it  is  at 
one  moment  that  it  takes  place.  That  moment  may  have 
been  prepared  by  previous  esteem,  admiration,  or  even 
affection, — yet  love  seems  to  require  a  momentary  act  of 
volition,  by  which  a  tacit  bond  of  devotion  is  imposed, — 
a  bond  not  to  be  thereafter  broken  without  violating  what 
should  be  sacred  in  our  nature.  How  finely  is  the  true 
Shaksperian  scene  contrasted  with  Dryden's  vulgar  altera- 
tion of  it,  in  which  a  mere  ludicrous  psychological  experi- 
ment, as  it  were,  is  tried — displaying  nothing  but  indelicacy 
without  passion.  Prospero's  interruption  of  the  courtship 
has  often  seemed  to  me  to  have  no  sufficient  motivo ;  still 
his  alleged  reason — 

"  lest  too  light  winning 
Make  the  prize  light "- 

is  enough  for  the  ethereal  connections  of  the  romantic 
imagination,  although  it  would  not  be  so  for  the  historical.1 

1  "Fer.  Yes,  faith,  and  all  his  Lords,  the  Duke  of  Milan, 
And  his  brave  son.  beine:  twain." 


280  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

The  whole  courting  scene,  indeed,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
third  act,  between  the  lovers  is  a  masterpiece ;  and  the 
first  dawn  of  disobedience  in  the  mind  of  Miranda  to  the 
command  of  her  father  is  very  finely  drawn,  so  as  to  seem 
the  working  of  the  Scriptural  command,  Thou  shalt  leave 
father  and  mother,  &c.  0  !  with  what  exquisite  purity  this 
scene  is  conceived  and  executed !  Shakspere  may  some- 
times be  gross,  but  I  boldly  say  that  he  is  always  moral 
and  modest.  Alas !  in  this  our  day  decency  of  manners 
is  preserved  at  the  expense  of  morality  of  heart,  and  deli- 
cacies for  vice  are  allowed,  whilst  grossness  against  it  is 
hypocritically,  or  at  least  morbidly,  condemned. 

In  this  play  are  admirably  sketched  the  vices  generally 
accompanying  a  low  degree  of  civilization  ;  and  in  the  first 
scene  of  the  second  act  Shakspere  has,  as  in  many  other 
places,  shown  the  tendency  in  bad  men  to  indulge  in  scorn 
and  contemptuous  expressions,  as  a  mode  of  getting  rid  of 
their  own  uneasy  feelings  of  inferiority  to  the  good,  and 
also,  by  making  the  good  ridiculous,  of  rendering  the  tran- 
sition of  others  to  wickedness  easy.  Shakspere  never  puts 
habitual  scorn  into  the  mouths  of  other  than  bad  men,  as 
here  in  the  instances  of  Antonio  and  Sebastian.1  The 
scene  of  the  intended  assassination  of  Alonzo  and  Gonzalo 
is  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  scene  between  Macbeth  and 
his  lady,  only  pitched  in  a  lower  key  throughout,  as  de- 
signed to  be  frustrated  and  concealed,  and  exhibiting  the 

Theobald  remarks  that  nobody  was  lost  in  the  wreck ;  and  yet  that  no 
such  character  is  introduced  in  the  fable,  as  the  Duke  of  Milan's  son. 
Mr.  C.  notes :  "  Must  not  Ferdinand  have  believed  he  was  lost  in  the 
fleet  that  the  tempest  scattered  ?  " — H.  N.  C. 

1  "  Observe  the  fine  humanity  of  Shakspere  in  that  his  sneerers  are  all 
worthless  villains.  Too  cunning  to  attach  value  to  self-praise,  and 
unable  to  obtain  approval  from  those  whom  they  are  compelled  to 
respect,  they  propitiate  their  own  self-love  by  disparaging  and  lowering 
others." — S.  T.  C.  in  "  Allsop's  Recollections."  See  notes  on  "  Othello," 
Act.  ii.  sc.  1,  and  Appendix:  V. ;  Apr.  5,  1833. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  281 

same  profound  management  in  the  manner  of  familiarizing 
a  mind,  not  immediately  recipient,  to  the  suggestion  of 
guilt,  by  associating  the  proposed  crime  with  something 
ludicrous  or  out  of  place, — something  not  habitually  matter 
of  reverence.  By  this  kind  of  sophistry  the  imagination 
and  fancy  are  first  bribed  to  contemplate  the  suggested 
act,  and  at  length  to  become  acquainted  with  it.  Observe 
how  the  effect  of  this  scene  is  heightened  by  contrast  with 
another  counterpart  of  it  in  low  life, — that  between  the 
conspirators  Stephano,  Caliban,  and  Trinculo  in  the  second 
scene  of  the  third  act,  in  which  there  are  the  same  essential 
characteristics. 

In  this  play  and  in  this  scene  of  it  are  also  shown  the 
springs  of  the  vulgar  in  politics, — of  that  kind  of  politics 
which  is  inwoven  with  human  nature.  In  his  treatment 
of  this  subject,  wherever  it  occurs,  Shakspere  is  quite 
peculiar.  In  other  writers  we  find  the  particular  opinions 
of  the  individual ;  in  Massinger  it  is  rank  republicanism ; 
in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  even  jure  divino  principles  arc 
carried  to  excess ; — but  Shakspere  never  promulgates  any 
party  tenets.  He  is  always  the  philosopher  and  the 
moralist,  but  at  the  same  time  with  a  profound  veneration 
for  all  the  established  institutions  of  society,  and  for  those 
classes  which  form  the  permanent  elements  of  the  state — 
especially  never  introducing  a  professional  character,  as 
such,  otherwise  than  as  respectable.  If  he  must  have  any 
name,  he  should  be  styled  a  philosophical  aristocrat,1  de- 

1  May  we  venture  to  put  just  one  piece  of  new  cloth  on  an  old 
garment  ? 

"  Then  always,  and,  of  course,  as  the  superbest,  poetic  culmination- 
expression  of  Feudalism,  the  Shaksperian  dramas,  in  the  attitudes, 
dialogue,  characters,  &c. ,  of  the  princes,  lords  and  gentlemen,  the  per- 
vading atmosphere,  the  implied  and  expressed  standard  of  manners, 
the  high  port  and  proud  stomach,  the  regal  embroidery  of  style,  &c." — 
Walt  Whitman,  "Democratic  Vistas,"  1370. 


282  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

lighting  in  those  hereditary  institutions  which  have  a 
tendency  to  bind  one  age  to  another,  and  in  that  distinc- 
tion of  ranks,  of  which,  although  few  may  be  in  possession, 
all  enjoy  the  advantages.  Hence,  again,  you  will  observe 
the  good  nature  with  which  he  seems  always  to  make  sport 
with  the  passions  and  follies  of  a  mob,  as  with  an  irrational 
animal.1  He  is  never  angry  with  it,  but  hugely  content 
with  holding  up  its  absurdities  to  its  face ;  and  sometimes 
you  may  trace  a  tone  of  almost  affectionate  superiority, 
something  like  that  in  which  a  father  speaks  of  the  rogue- 
ries of  a  child.  See  the  good-humoured  way  in  which  he 
describes  Stephano  passing  from  the  most  licentious 
freedom  to  absolute  despotism  over  Trinculo  and  Caliban. 
The  truth  is,  Shakspere's  characters  are  all  genera  intensely 
individualized ;  the  results  of  meditation,  of  which  obser- 
vation supplied  the  drapery  and  the  colours  necessary  to 
combine  them  with  each  other.  He  had  virtually  surveyed 
all  the  great  component  powers  and  impulses  of  human 
nature, — had  seen  that  their  different  combinations  and 
subordinations  were  in  fact  the  individualizers  of  men,  and 
showed  how  their  harmony  was  produced  by  reciprocal 
disproportions  of  excess  or  deficiency.  The  language  in 
which  these  truths  are  expressed  was  not  drawn  from  any 
set  fashion,  but  from  the  profoundest  depths  of  his  moral 
being,  and  is  therefore  for  all  ages. 


Love's  Labour's  Lost. 

The  characters  in  this  play  are  either  impersonated  out 
of  Shakspere's  own  multiformity  by  imaginative  self- 
position,  or  out  of  such  as  a  country  town  and  a  school- 
boy's observation  might  supply, — the  curate,  the  school- 

1  "  Shakspere's  evenness  and  sweetness  of  temper  were  almost  pro- 
verbial in  bis  own  age." — Biographia  Litcraria,  chap.  ii. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  283 

master,  the  Armado  (who  even  in  my  time  was  not  extinct 
in  the  cheaper  inns  of  North  Wales),  and  so  on.  The 
satire  is  chiefly  on  follies  of  words.  Biron  and  Rosaline 
are  evidently  the  pre-existent  state  of  Benedick  and  Beatrice, 
and  so,  perhaps,  is  Boyet  of  Lafeu,  and  Costard  of  the 
Tapster  in  "  Measure  for  Measure  ;  "  and  the  frequency  of 
the  rhymes,  the  sweetness  as  well  as  the  smoothness  of  the 
metre,  and  the  number  of  acute  and  fancifully  illustrated 
aphorisms,  are  all  as  they  ought  to  be  in  a  poet's  youth. 
True  genius  begins  by  generalizing  and  condensing ;  ifc 
ends  in  realizing  and  expanding.  It  first  collects  the 
seeds. 

Yet  if  this  juvenile  drama  had  been  the  only  one  extant 
of  our  Shakspere,  and  we  possessed  the  tradition  only  of 
his  riper  works,  or  accounts  of  them  in  writers  who  had 
not  even  mentioned  this  play, — how  many  of  Shakspere's- 
characteristic  features  might  we  not  still  have  discovered 
in  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  though  as  in  a  portrait  taken 
of  him  in  his  boyhood. 

I  can  never  sufficiently  admire  the  wonderful  activity  of 
thought  throughout  the  whole  of  the  first  scene  of  the  play, 
rendered  natural,  as  it  is,  by  the  choice  of  the  characters, 
and  the  whimsical  determination  on  which  the  drama  is- 
founded.  A  whimsical  determination  certainly  ; — yet  not 
altogether  so  very  improbable  to  those  who  are  conversant 
in  the  history  of  the  middle  ages,  with  their  Courts  of 
Love,  and  all  that  lighter  drapery  of  chivalry,  which 
engaged  even  mighty  kings  with  a  sort  of  serio-comic? 
interest,  and  may  well  be  supposed  to  have  occupied  more 
completely  the  smaller  princes,  at  a  time  when  the  noble's- 
or  prince's  court  contained  the  only  theatre  of  the  domain 
or  principality.  This  sort  of  story,  too,  was  admirably 
suited  to  Shakspere's  times,  when  the  English  court  was- 
still  the  foster-mother  of  the  state  and  the  muses ;  and 
when,  in  consequence,  the  courtiers,  and  men  of  rank  and 


284  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

fashion,  affected  a  display  of  wit,  point,  and  sententious 
observation,  that  would  be  deemed  intolerable  at  present, — 
but  in  which  a  hundred  years  of  controversy,  involving 
every  great  political,  and  every  dear  domestic,  interest,  had 
trained  all  but  the  lowest  classes  to  participate.  Add  to 
this  the  very  style  of  the  sermons  of  the  time,  and  the 
eagerness  of  the  Protestants  to  distinguish  themselves  by 
long  and  frequent  preaching,  and  it  will  be  found  that, 
from  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  to  the  abdication  of  James 
II.  no  country  ever  received  such  a  national  education  as 
England. 

Hence  the  comic  matter  chosen  in  the  first  instance  is  a 
ridiculous  imitation  or  apery  of  this  constant  striving  after 
logical  precision,  and  subtle  opposition  of  thoughts,  together 
with  a  making  the  most  of  every  conception  or  image,  by 
expressing  it  under  the  least  expected  property  belonging 
to  it,  and  this,  again,  rendered  specially  absurd  by  being 
applied  to  the  most  current  subjects  and  occurrences.  The 
phrases  and  modes  of  combination  in  argument  were 
caught  by  the  most  ignorant  from  the  custom  of  the  age, 
and  their  ridiculous  misapplication  of  them  is  most 
amusingly  exhibited  in  Costard ;  whilst  examples  suited 
only  to  the  gravest  propositions  and  impersonations,  or 
apostrophes  to  abstract  thoughts  impersonated,  which  are 
in  fact  the  natural  language  only  of  the  most  vehement 
agitations  of  the  mind,  are  adopted  by  the  coxcombry  of 
Armado  as  mere  artifices  of  ornament. 

The  same  kind  of  intellectual  action  is  exhibited  in  a 
more  serious  and  elevated  strain  in  many  other  parts  of 
this  play.  Biron's  speech  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  act  is 
an  excellent  specimen  of  it.  It  is  logic  clothed  in  rhetoric ; 
— but  observe  how  Shakspere,  in  his  two-fold  being  of 
poet  and  philosopher,  avails  himself  of  it  to  convey  pro- 
found truths  in  the  most  lively  images, — the  whole  remain- 
ing faithful  to  the  character  supposed  to  utter  the  lines, 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  285 

and   the    expressions    themselves    constituting   a   further 
development  of  that  character  : — 

u  Other  slow  arts  entirely  keep  the  brain : 
And  therefore  finding  barren  practisers, 
Scarce  shew  a  harvest  of  their  heavy  toil : 
But  love,  first  learned  in  a  lady's  eyes, 
Lives  not  alone  immured  in  the  brain ; 
But,  with  the  motion  of  all  elements, 
Courses  as  swift  as  thought  in  every  power ; 
And  gives  to  every  power  a  double  power, 
Above  their  functions  and  their  offices. 
It  adds  a  precious  seeing  to  the  eye, 
A  lover's  eyes  will  gaze  an  eagle  blind ; 
A  lover's  ear  will  hear  the  lowest  sound, 
When  the  suspicious  tread  of  theft  is  stopp'd : 
Love's  feeling  is  more  soft  and  sensible, 
Thcin  are  the  tender  horns  of  cockled  snails; 
Love's  tongue  proves  dainty  Bacchus  gross  in  taste  j 
For  valour,  is  not  love  a  Hercules, 
Still  climbing  trees  in  the  Hesperides  ? 
Subtle  as  Sphinx ;  as  sweet  and  musical 
As  bright  Apollo's  lute,  strung  with  his  hair; 
And  when  love  speaks,  the  voice  of  all  the  gods 
Makes  2  heaven  drowsy  with  the  harmony. 
Never  durst  poet  touch  a  pen  to  write, 
Until  his  ink  were  temper'd  with  love's  sighs ; 
O,  then  his  lines  would  ravish  savage  ears, 
And  plant  in  tyrants  mild  humility. 
From  women's  eyes  this  doctrine  I  derive  : 
They  sparkle  still  the  right  Promethean  fire; 
They  are  the  books,  the  arts,  the  academes, 
That  shew,  contain,  and  nourish  all  the  world; 
Else,  none  at  all  in  aught  proves  excellent. 
Then  fools  you  were  these  women  to  forswear ; 
Or,  keeping  what  is  sworn,  you  will  prove  fools. 
For  wisdom's  sake,  a  word  that  all  men  love ; 
Or  for  love's  sake,  a  word  that  loves  all  men  ; 
Or  for  men's  sake,  the  authors  of  these  women  j 


1  "  And  musical  as  is  Apollo's  Lute." — Milton'a  "  Comus,"  478. 
*  "  Make,"  1st  Fol. 


286  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

Or  women's  sake,  by  whom  we  men  are  men ; 

Let  us  once  lose  our  oaths,  to  find  ourselves, 

Or  else  we  lose  ourselves  to  keep  our  oaths  : 

It  is  religion,  to  be  thus  forsworn  : 

For  charity  itself  fulfils  the  law : 

And  who  can  sever  love  from  charity  ?  " — 

This  is  quite  a  study; — sometimes  you  see  this  youthful 
god  of  poetry  connecting  disparate  thoughts  purely  by 
means  of  resemblances  in  the  words  expressing  them, — a 
thing  in  character  in  lighter  comedy,  especially  of  that 
kind  in  which  Shakspere  delights,  namely,  the  purposed 
display  of  wit,  though  sometimes,  too,  disfiguring  his 
graver  scenes ; — but  more  often  you  may  see  him  doubling 
the  natural  connection  or  order  of  logical  consequence  in 
the  thoughts  by  the  introduction  of  an  artificial  and  sought 
for  resemblance  in  the  words,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  third 
line  of  the  play, — 

"  And  then  grace  113  in  the  disgrace  of  death  5 "  ' — 
this  being  a  figure  often  having  its  force  and  propriety,  as 
justified  by  the  law  of  passion,  which,  inducing  in  the 
mind  an  unusual  activity,  seeks  for  means  to  waste  its 
superfluity, — when  in  the  highest  degree — in  lyric  repe- 
titions and  sublime  tautology — (at  her  feet  lie  bowed,  he  fell, 
he  lay  down;  at  her  feet  he  boived,  he  fell;  where  he  bowed, 
there  he  fell  down  dead), — and,  in  lower  degrees,  in  making 
the  words  themselves  the  subjects  and  materials  of  that 
surplus  action,  and  for  the  same  cause  that  agitates  our 
limbs,  and  forces  our  very  gestures  into  a  tempest  in  states 
of  high  excitement. 

1  See  "  Richard  II.,"  quoted   in   Lecture   XII.,  in  the  Lectures  of 
1811-12: 

"  Take  not,  good  cousin,  farther  than  you  should, 

Lest  you  mistake ; " 

end  the  poem  in  Lecture  IX.,  assigned  to  Milton : 
"  By  a  crab-like  way 
Time  past  made  pastime." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  287 

The  mere  style  of  narration  in"  Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  like 
that  of  ^Egeon  in  the  first  scene  of  the  "  Comedy  of  Errors," 
and  of  the  Captain  in  the  second  scene  of  "  Macbeth," 
seems  imitated  with  its  defects  and  its  beauties  from  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  ;  whose  "Arcadia,"  though  not  then  published, 
was  already  well  known  in  manuscript  copies,  and  could 
hardly  have  escaped  the  notice  and  admiration  of  Shak- 
spere  as  the  friend  and  client  of  the  Earl  of  Southampton. 
The  chief  defect  consists  in  the  parentheses  and  parenthetic 
thoughts  and  descriptions,  suited  neither  to  the  passion  of 
the  speaker,  nor  the  purpose  of  the  person  to  whom  the 
information  is  to  be  given,  but  manifestly  betraying  the 
author  himself, — not  by  way  of  continuous  undersong,  but 
— palpably,  and  so  as  to  show  themselves  addressed  to  the 
general  reader.  However,  it  is  not  unimportant  to  notice 
how  strong  a  presumption  the  diction  and  allusions  of  this 
play  afford,  that,  though  Shakspere's  acquirements  in  the 
dead  languages  might  not  be  such  as  we  suppose  in  a 
learned  education,  his  habits  had,  nevertheless,  been 
scholastic,  and  those  of  a  student.  For  a  young  author's 
first  work  almost  always  bespeaks  his  recent  pursuits,  and 
his  first  observations  of  life  are  either  drawn  from  the 
immediate  employments  of  his  youth,  and  from  the  charac- 
ters and  images  most  deeply  impressed  on  his  mind  in  the 
situations  in  which  those  employments  had  placed  him ; 
— or  else  they  are  fixed  on  such  objects  and  occurrences  in 
the  world,  as  are  easily  connected  with,  and  seem  to  bear 
upon,  his  studies  and  the  hitherto  exclusive  subjects  of  his 
meditation.  Just  as  Ben  Jonson,  who  applied  himself  to 
the  drama  after  having  served  in  Flanders,  fills  his  earliest 
plays  with  true  or  pretended  soldiers,  the  wrongs  and 
neglects  of  the  former,  and  the  absurd  boasts  and  knavery 
of  their  counterfeits.  So  Lessing's  first  comedies  arc 
placed  in  the  universities,  and  consist  of  events  and  charac- 
ters conceivable  in  an  academic  life. 


288  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

I  will  only  further  remark  the  sweet  and  tempered 
gravity,  with  which  Shakspere  in  the  end  draws  the  only 
fitting  moral  which  such  a  drama  afforded.  Here  Eosaline 
rises  up  to  the  full  height  of  Beatrice : — 

"  Jtos.  Oft  have  I  heard  of  you,  my  lord  Biron, 

Before  I  saw  you,  and  the  world's  large  tongue 

Proclaims  you  for  a  man  replete  with  mocks ; 

Full  of  comparisons,  and  wounding  flouts, 

Which  you  on  all  estates  will  execute 

That  lie  within  the  mercy  of  your  wit : 

To  weed  this  wormwood  from  your  fruitful  brain, 

And  therewithal,  to  win  me,  if  you  please, 

(Without  the  which  I  am  not  to  be  won,) 

You  shall  this  twelvemonth  term  from  day  to  day 

Visit  the  speechless  sick,  and  still  converse 

With  groaning  wretches ;  and  your  talk  l  shall  be, 

With  all  the  fierce  endeavour  of  your  wit, 

To  enforce  the  pained  impotent  to  smile. 

Siron.  To  move  wild  laughter  in  the  throat  of  death  ? 

It  cannot  be ;  it  is  impossible ; 

Mirth  cannot  move  a  soul  in  agony. 

Eos.   Why,  that's  the  way  to  choke  a  gibing  spirit, 

Whose  influence  is  begot  of  that,  loose  grace, 

Which  shallow  laughing  hearers  give  to  fools: 

A  jest's  prosperity  lies  in  the  ear 

Of  him  that  hears  it,  never  in  the  tongue 

Of  him  that  makes  it ;  then,  if  sickly  ears, 

Deaf 'd  with  the  clamors  of  their  own  dear  groans, 

Will  hear  your  idle  scorns,  continue  then, 

And  I  will  have  you,  and  that  fault  withal ; 

But,  if  they  will  not,  throw  away  that  spirit, 

And  I  shall  lind  you  empty  of  that  fault, 

Right  joyful  of  your  reformation." 

Act  y.  sc.  2.     In  Biron's  speech  to  the  Princess : 

— and,  therefore,  like  the  eye, 
Full  of  straying  *  shapes,  of  habits,  and  of  forms — 


1  Read  "task." 

2  So,  1st  Fol.     The  Globe  Shak.  reads  "strange."     We  quote  the 
Globe  edition  of  Shakspere,  as  a  fair  average  indication  of  the  con- 
clusions at  which  modern  criticism  has  arrived 


SECT.. IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEEE.  289 

Either  read  stray,  which  I  prefer;  or  throw  full  back  to 
the  preceding  lines, — 

"  like  the  eye,  full 
Of  straying  shapes,"  &c. 

In  the  same  scene : 

"  Biron.  And  what  to  me,  my  love  ?  and  what  to  me  ? 

Eos.  You  must  be  purged  too,  your  sins  are  rank } l 
You  are  attaint  with  fault2  and  perjury  : 
Therefore,  if  you  my  favour  mean  to  get, 
A  twelvemonth  shall  you  spend,  and  never  rest, 
But  seek  the  weary  beds  of  people  sick." 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  indeed,  about  the  propriety  of 
expunging  this  speech  of  Rosaline's  ;  it  soils  the  very  page 
that  retains  it.  But  I  do  not  agree  with  Warburton  and 
others  in  striking  out  the  preceding  line  also.  It  is  quite 
in  Biron's  character ;  and  Rosaline  not  answering  it  imme- 
diately, Dumain  takes  up  the  question  for  him,  and,  after 
he  and  Longaville  are  answered,  Biron,  with  evident  pro- 
priety, says  j — 

"  Studies  my  mistress  ?  "  &c.a 


Midsummer  Night's  Dream. 

Act.  i.  sc.  1. 

"  Her.  O  cross !  too  high  to  be  enthrall'd  to  low — 
Lys.  Or  else  misgraffed,  in  respect  of  years ; 
Her.  O  spite !  too  old  to  be  engaged  to  young — 
Lys.  Or  else  it  stood  upon  the  choice  of  friends ; 
Her.  O  hell !  to  chuse  love  by  another's  eye ! " 

There  is  no  authority  for  any  alteration ; — but  I  never  can 

1  «  Rock'd,"  1st  Fol.  and  Globe  Ed. 
a  "Faults,"  1st  Fol.  and  Globe  Ed. 
•  Read 

"  Studies,  my  lady  ?     Mistress,  look  on  me." 
n 


290  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTUKB  [1818 

help  feeling  how  great  an  improvement  it  would  be,  if  the 
two  former  of  Hermia's  exclamations  were  omitted; — the 
third  and  only  appropriate  one  would  then  become  a  beauty, 
and  most  natural. 

Ib.    Helena's  speech : — 

"I  will  go  toll  him  of  fair  Horraia's  flight,"  &c, 

I  am  convinced  that  Shakspere  availed  himself  of  the  title 
of  this  play  in  his  own  mind,  and  worked  upon  it  as  a 
dream  throughout,  but  especially,  and,  perhaps,  unpleas- 
ingly,  in  this  broad  determination  of  ungrateful  treachery 
in  Helena,  so  undisguisedly  avowed  to  herself,  and  this, 
too,  after  the  witty  cool  philosophizing  that  precedes.  The 
act  itself  is  natural,  and  the  resolve  so  to  act  is,  I  fear, 
likewise  too  true  a  picture  of  the  lax  hold  which  principles 
have  on  a  woman's  heart,  when  opposed  to,  or  even 
separated  from,  passion  and  inclination.  For  women  are 
loss  hypocrites  to  their  own  minds  than  men  are,  because 
in  general  they  feel  less  proportionate  abhorrence  of  moral 
.evil  in  and  for  itself,  and  more  of  its  outward  consequences, 
as  detection,  and  loss  of  character,  than  men, — their  natures 
being  almost  wholly  extroitive.  Still,  however  just  in 
Itself,  the  representation  of  this  is  not  poetical ;  we  shrink 
from  it,  and  cannot  harmonize  it  with  the  ideal. 
Act  ii.  so.  1.  Theobald's  edition. 

Through  bush,  through  briar — 
****** 
Through  flood,  through  fire — 

What  a  noble  pair  of  ears  this  worthy  Theobald  must 
have  had  I     The  eight  amphimacers  or  cretics, — 

Over  hill,  Over  dale, 
Thdrfi'  bush,  thdro"  briar, 
Ovfir  pftrk,  flvfir  pale, 
Thdrd'  flood,  thdro"  fire— 


SlCT.  1V.J  PUTS   OF  SnAKSPEKK.  291 

liavr  a  drli^litt'ul  rfftvt  on  I  he  car  in  their  .swi-H  transition 
to  the  trochaic,  — 

I  d&  wandcV  flv'ry  whftrtt 

Swifter  than  thfi  moonfc  sphflr«,  Ac.— 

The  last  words  as  sustaining  the  rhyme,  must  be  oou- 

Mih-n-d,  as  in  fart   tliry  aiv,  I  ro.-luvs  in  (inn-. 

It   m:i\    l.c  \\ni-lli   \\lulr  t..  i.'ivi'   M»IIH-   curi-f.-t.  f\iini|»l«'s  in 

English  of  tho  principal  metrical  foot  :— 


Pyrrhic  or  Dibruch,  u  o  - 

Trihrat-h,  o  u  o  —  ii&ltidl},  hastily  pronounced. 

Iambus  u  —  -  tMi-jlit. 

Trochee,  —  «  -  ttgkity, 

S|.oii,l,«-,         -  -  G&d  gpake. 

The  paucity  of  spondees  in  single  words  in  English  and, 

iiulffd,    in    ihr    i  .....  Icrii    liin^uai'cs    in    uM'iifral,    nuikcs,   |icr- 
haps,  the  greatest  distinction,  metrically  considered,  bo- 

<\vfcn  tin-in  ami  tin'  (Jri-rk  and    Latin. 

Daoty),  —  oo  —  mtrrllj). 

l>«Bst,  o  w  —  —  A  prfyfa,  or  the  first  three  syllables 
of  cltrtmduy, 

AmphibrachyB,  o  —  u  —  faliyhtfiil. 
Amphimaoer,  —  o  —  —  dvtr  hill. 
AntibiurchiiiH,  o  —  —  —  tht  Ldrd  Odd. 
i:     <-hius,  --  o  -  mivillfhi. 
Molossus,  —  --  «  John  Jennet  Janet. 


'I'll.-  M  liuipli-  l'«  '•'    in  i\   Milli.-r  fur  IIII,|IT.-,|  iinlinj^  tlio  nii-tr.v> 

of  S!iaK>|i.  i,  ,  lor  tlu<  grt'ut«'r  j>art  at  least;  —  but  Milton 
cannot  be  made  harmoniously  intelligible  without  tho  com- 
posite  feet,  the  Ionics,  Pnons,  ami  Kpiii  -ites. 

Ib.    Titaiiiu'H  speech:  —  (Tlu-ol.uld  adopting 
rending) 


292  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

"Which  she,  with  pretty  and  with  swimming  gait 
Follying '  (her  womb  then  rich  with  my  young  squire) 
Would  imitate,"  &c. 

Oh  !  oh  !  Heaven  have  mercy  on  poor  Shakspere,  and  also 
on  Mr.  Warburton's  mind's  eye  ! 

Act  v.  sc.  1.     Theseus'  speech  : — (Theobald.) 

"  And  what  poor  [willing]  duty  cannot  do,a 
Noble  respect  takes  it  in  might,  not  merit." 

To  my  ears  it  would  read  far  more  Shaksperian  thus : — 

"  And  what  poor  duty  cannot  do,  yet  would, 
Noble  respect,"  &c. 

Ib.  sc.  2. 

"  Puck.  Now  the  hungry  lion  roars, 

And  the  wolf  behowls  the  moon ; 
Whilst  the  heavy  ploughman  snores 
All  with  weary  task  foredone,"  &c. 

Very  Anacreon  in  perfectness,  proportion,  grace,  and 
spontaneity  !  So  far  it  is  Greek  ; — but  then  add,  0  !  what 
wealth,  what  wild  ranging,  and  yet  what  compression  and 
condensation  of,  English  fancy  !  In  truth,  there  is  nothing 
in  Anacreon  more  perfect  than  these  thirty  lines,  or  half  so 
rich  and  imaginative.  They  form  a  speckless  diamond. 


Comedy  of  Errors. 

The  myriad-minded  man,  our,  and  all  men's,  Shakspere, 
has  in  this  piece  presented  us  with  a  legitimate  farce  in 
exactest  consonance  with  the  philosophical  principles  and 
character  of  farce,  as  distinguished  from  comedy  and  from 

1  For  "  following." 

*  1st  Fol.  and  Globe  Ed.  :— 

"  And  what  poor  duty  cannot  do,  noble  respect 

Takes  it  in  might,  not  merit." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  293 

entertainments.  A  proper  farce  is  mainly  distinguished 
from  comedy  by  the  license  allowed,  and  even  required,  in 
the  fable,  in  order  to  produce  strange  and  laughable  situa- 
tions. The  story  need  not  be  probable,  it  is  enough  that  it 
is  possible.  A  comedy  would  scarely  allow  even  the  two 
Antipholuses  ;  because,  although  there  have  been  instances 
of  almost  indistinguishable  likeness  in  two  persons,  yet 
these  are  mere  individual  accidents,  casus  ludentis  naturae, 
and  the  verum  will  not  excuse  the  inverisimile.  But  farce 
dares  add  the  two  Dromios,  and  is  justified  in  so  doing  by 
the  laws  of  its  end  and  constitution.  In  a  word,  farces 
commence  in  a  postulate,  which  must  be  granted. 


As  You  LiJce  It* 
Act.  i.  sc.  1. 

"OIL     What,  boy! 

Or/a.  Come,  come,  elder  brother,  you  are  too  young  in  this. 
Oli.     Wilt  thou  lay  hands  on  me,  villain  ?  " 

There   is   a    beauty   here.      The   word   "  boy "   naturally 
provokes  and  awakens  in  Orlando  the  sense  of  his  manly 
powers  ;  and  with  the  retort  of  "elder  brother,"  he  grasps 
him  with  firm  hands,  and  makes  him  feel  he  is  no  boy. 
Ib. 

"  Oli.  Farewell,  good  Charles. — Now  will  I  stir  this  gamester :  I  hope, 
1  shall  see  an  end  of  him ;  for  my  soul,  yet  I  know  not  why,  hates 
nothing  more  than  him.1  Yet  he's  gentle ;  never  school'd,  and  yet 
learn'd ;  full  of  noble  device ;  of  all  sorts  cnchantingly  beloved !  and, 
indeed,  so  much  in  the  heart  of  the  world,  and  especially  of  my  own 
people,  who  best  know  him,  that  I  am  altogether  misprized  :  but  it 
shall  not  be  so  long ;  this  wrestler  shall  clear  all." 

This  has  always  appeared  to  me  one  of  the  most  un- 

1  An  attempt  to  improve  Shaksperc's  English.  The  correct  text 
is  "  he." 


294  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

Shaksperian  speeches  in  all  the  genuine  works  of  our  poet ; 
yet  I  should  be  nothing  surprised,  and  greatly  pleased,  to 
find  it  hereafter  a  fresh  beauty,  as  has  so  often  happened 
to  me  with  other  supposed  defects  of  great  men.  1810. 

It  is  too  venturous  to  charge  a  passage  in  Shakspere 
with  want  of  truth  to  nature ;  and  yet  at  first  sight  this 
speech  of  Oliver's  expresses  truths,  which  it  seems  almost 
impossible  that  any  mind  should  so  distinctly,  so  livelily, 
and  so  voluntarily,  have  presented  to  itself,  in  connection 
with  feelings  and  intentions  so  malignant,  and  so  contrary 
to  those  which  the  qualities  expressed  would  naturally 
have  called  forth.  But  I  dare  not  say  that  this  seeming 
unnatnralness  is  not  in  the  nature  of  an  abused  wilfulness, 
when  united  with  a  strong  intellect.  In  such  characters 
there  is  sometimes  a  gloomy  self-gratification  in  making 
the  absoluteness  of  the  will  (sit  pro  ratione  voluntas  /) 
evident  to  themselves  by  setting  the  reason  and  the  con- 
science in  full  array  against  it.  1818. 

Ib.  so.  2. 

"  Celia.  If  yon  saw  yourself  with  your  eyes,  or  knew  yourself  with 
your  judgment,  the  fear  of  your  adventure  would  counsel  you  to  a  more 
equal  enterprise." 

Surely  it  should  be  "  our  eyes  "  and  "  our  judgment." 
Ib.  sc.  3. 

"  Gel.  But  is  all  this  for  your  father  ? 
Bos.  No,  some  of  it  is  for  my  child's  father." 

Theobald  restores  this  as  the  reading  of  the  older  editions. 
It  may  be  so ;  but  who  can  doubt  that  it  is  a  mistake  for 
"my  father's  child,"  meaning  herself?  According  to 
Theobald's  note,  a  most  indelicate  anticipation  is  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Rosalind  without  reason  ; — and  besides,  what 
a  strange  thought,  and  how  out  of  place,  and  unintelligible  ! 

Act  iv.  sc.  2. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  295 

"  Take  thou  no  scorn 

To  wear  the  horn,  the  lusty  horn ; 

It  was  a  crest  ere  thou  wast  born.'' 

I  question  whether  there  exists  a  parallel  instance  of  a 
phrase,  that  like  this  of  "  horns  "  is  universal  in  all  lan- 
guages, and  yet  for  which  no  one  has  discovered  even  a 
plausible  origin. 


Twelfth  Night. 
Act  L  sc.  1.     Duke's  speech : — 

"  — so  full  of  shapes  fa  fancy, 
That  it  alone  is  high  fantastical." 

Warburton's  alteration  of  is  into  in  is  needless.  "  Fancy  " 
may  very  well  be  interpreted  "  exclusive  affection,"  or 
"passionate  preference."  Thus,  bird-fanciers,  gentlemen 
of  the  fancy,  that  is,  amateurs  of  boxing,  &c.  The  play  of 
assimilation, — the  meaning  one  sense  chiefly,  and  yet  keep- 
ing both  senses  in  view,  is  perfectly  Shaksperian. 

Act.  ii.  sc.  3.     Sir  Andrew's  speech  : — 

An  explanatory  note  on  Pigrogromitus  would  have  been 
more  acceptable  than  Theobald's  grand  discovery  that 
"  lemon  "  ought  to  be  "  leman." 

Ib.  Sir  Toby's  speech:  (Warburton's  note  on  the 
Peripatetic  philosophy.) 

"  Shall  we  rouse  the  night-owl  in  a  catch,  that  will  draw  three  souls 
out  of  one  weaver  ?  " 

0  genuine,  and  inimitable  (at  least  I  hope  so)  War- 
burton  !  This  note  of  thine,  if  but  one  in  five  millions, 
would  be  half  a  one  too  much. 

Ib.  sc.  4. 

" Duke.  My  life  upon't,  young  though  thou  art,  thine  eye 
Hath  stayM  upon  some  favour  that  it  loves ; 
Hath  it  not,  boy  ? 


296  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

Vio.  A  little,  by  your  favour. 
Duke.  What  kind  of  woman  is't  ?  " 

And  yet  Viola  was  to  have  been  presented  to  Orsino  as  a 
eunuch  ! — Act  i.  sc.  2.     Viola's  speech.     Either  she  forgot 
this,  or  else  she  had  altered  her  plan. 
Ib. 

"  Vio.  A  blank,  my  lord :  she  never  told  her  love ! — 
But  let  concealment,"  &c. 

After  the  first  line  (of  which  the  last  five  words  should  be 
spoken  with,  and  drop  down  in,  a  deep  sigh)  the  actress 
ought  to  make  a  pause ;  and  then  start  afresh,  from  the 
activity  of  thought,  born  of  suppressed  feelings,  and  which 
thought  had  accumulated  during  the  brief  interval,  as  vital 
heat  under  the  skin  during  a  dip  in  cold  water. 
Ib.  sc.  5. 

"  Fabian.  Though  our  silence  be  drawn  from  us  by '  cars,  yet  peace." 

Perhaps,  "cables." 
Act.  iii.  sc.  1. 

"  Clown.  A  sentence  is  but  a  cheveril  glove  to  a  good  wit."  (Theobald's 
note.) 

Theobald's  etymology  of  "  cheveril "  is,  of  course,  quite 
right ; — but  he  is  mistaken  in  supposing  that  there  were 
no  such  things  as  gloves  of  chicken-skin.  They  were  at 
one  time  a  main  article  in  chirocosmetics. 

Act.  v.  sc.  1.     Clown's  speech  : — 

"  So  that,  conclusions  to  be  as  kisses,  if  your  four  negatives  make  your 
two  affirmatives,  why,  then,  the  worse  for  my  friends,  and  the  better 
for  my  foes." 

(Warburton  reads  "conclusion  to  be  asked,  is.") 
Surely  Warburton  could  never  have  wooed  by  kisses  and 
won,  or  he  would  not  have  flounder-flatted  so  just  and 
humorous,  nor  less  pleasing  than  humorous,  an  image  into 

1  Read  "with." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEKE.  297 

so  profound  a  nihility.  In  the  name  of  love  and  wonder, 
do  not  four  kisses  make  a  double  affirmative  ?  The 
humour  lies  in  the  whispered  "No!"  and  the  inviting 
"  Don't ! "  with  which  the  maiden's  kisses  are  accompanied, 
and  thence  compared  to  negatives,  which  by  repetition 
constitute  an  affirmative. 


All's  Well  that  Ends  Well. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

'•'  Count.  If  the  living  be  enemy  to  the  grief,  the  excess  makes  it  soon 
mortal. 

Bert.  Madam,  I  desire  your  holy  wishes. 
Laf.  How  understand  we  that  1 " 

Bertram   and   Lafen,   I  imagine,  both   speak   together, — 
Lafeu  referring  to  the  Countess's  rather  obscure  remark. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.     (Warburton's  note.) 

"  King.  —  let  higher  Italy 

(Those  'bated,  that  inherit  but  the  fall 
Of  the  last  monarchy)  see,  that  you  come 
Not  to  woo  honor,  but  to  wed  it." 

It  would  be,  I  own,  an  audacious  and  unjustifiable 
change  of  the  text ;  but  yet,  as  a  mere  conjecture,  I  ven- 
ture to  suggest  "  bastards,"  for  "  'bated."  As  it  stands, 
in  spite  of  Warburton's  note  I  can  make  little  or  nothing 
of  it.  Why  should  the  king  except  the  then  most  illus- 
trious states,  which,  as  being  republics,  were  the  more 
truly  inheritors  of  the  Roman  grandeur  ? — With  my  con- 
jecture, the  sense  would  be ; — "  let  higher,  or  the  more 
northern  part  of  Italy — (unless  "higher"  be  a  corruption 
for  "  hir'd," — the  metre  seeming  to  demand  a  monosyllable) 
(those  bastards  that  inherit  the  infamy  only  of  their 
fathers)  see,  &c."  The  following  "  woo  "  and  "  wed  "  are 
so  far  confirmative  as  they  indicate  Shakspere's  manner  of 


298  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

connection  by  unmarked  influences  of  association  from 
some  preceding  metaphor.  This  it  is  which  makes  his 
style  so  peculiarly  vital  and  organic.  Likewise  "  those 
girls  of  Italy  "  strengthens  the  guess.  The  absurdity  of 
Warburton's  gloss,  which  represents  the  king  calling  Italy 
superior,  and  then  excepting  the  only  part  the  lords  were 
going  to  visit,  must  strike  every  one. 
Ib.  sc.  3. 

"  Laf.  They  say,  miracles  are  past ;  and  we  have  our  philosophical 
persons  to  make  modern  and  familiar,  things  supernatural  and 
causeless" 

Shakspere,  inspired,  as  it  might  seem,  with  all  know- 
ledge, here  uses  the  word  "  causeless  "  in  its  strict  philo- 
sophical sense ; — cause  being  truly  predicable  only  of 
phenomena,  that  is,  things  natural,  and  not  of  noumena,  or 
things  supernatural. 

Act.  iii.  sc.  5. 

"  Dia.  The  Count  Rousillon  : — know  you  such  a  one  ? 
Hel.  But  by  the  ear  that  hears  most  nobly  of  him ; 
His  face  I  know  not." 

Shall  we  say  here,  that  Shakspere  has  unnecessarily  made 
his  loveliest  character  utter  a  lie  ? — Or  shall  we  dare  think 
that,  where  to  deceive  was  necessary,  he  thought  a  pre- 
tended verbal  verity  a  double  crime,  equally  with  the  other 
a  lie  to  the  hearer,  and  at  the  same  time  an  attempt  to  lie 
to  one's  own  conscience  ? 


Merry  Wives  of  Windsor. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 
"  Shal.  The  luce  is  the  fresh  fish,  the  salt  fish  is  an  eld  coat." 

I  cannot  understand  this.     Perhaps  there  is  a  corruption 
both  of  words  and  speakers.     Shallow  no  sooner  corrects 


"SECT.  IV.]  PLATS   OF   SHAKSPERE.  299 

one  mistake  of  Sir  Hugh's,  namely,  "louse"  for  "luce,"  a 
pike,  but  the  honest  Welchman  falls  into  another,  namely, 
"cod"  (baccala)  Cambrice  "cot"  for  coat. 

"  Shal.  The  luce  is  the  fresh  fish— 
Evans.  The  salt  fish  is  an  old  cot.'' 

"  Luce  is  a  fresh  fish,  and  not  a  louse ; "  says  Shallow. 
"  Aye,  aye,"  quoth  Sir  Hugh  ;  "  the  fresh  fish  is  the  luce  ;  it 
is  an  old  cod  that  is  the  salt  fish."    At  all  events,  as  the  text 
stands,  there  is  no  sense  at  all  in  the  words. 
Jb.  sc.  3. 

"  Fal.  Now,  the  report  goes,  she  has  all  the  rule  of  her  husband's 
purse ;  she l  hath  a  legion  of  angels. 

Pist.  As  many  devils  entertain ;  and  to  her,  boy,  say  I." 

Perhaps  it  is — 
"  As  many  devils  enter  (or  enter'd)  swine ;  and  to  her,  boy,  say  I "  :— • 

a  somewhat  profane,  but  not  un-Shaksperian  allusion  to 
the  "  legion  "  in  St.  Luke's  "  gospel." 


Measure  for  Measure. 

This  play,  which  is  Shakspere's  throughout,  is  to  me  the 
most  painful — say  rather,  the  only  painful — part  of  his- 
genuine  works.  The  comic  and  tragic  parts  equally  border 
on  the  /i«r>;r6)', — the  one  being  disgusting,  the  other  hor- 
rible ;  and  the  pardon  and  marriage  of  Angelo  not  merely 
baffles  the  strong  indignant  claim  of  justice — (for  crueltyf 
with  lust  and  damnable  baseness,  cannot  be  forgiven,  be- 
cause we  cannot  conceive  them  as  being  morally  repented 
of ;)  but  it  is  likewise  degrading  to  the  character  of  woman. 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  who  can  follow  Shakspere  in  his- 
errors  only,  have  presented  a  still  worse,  because  more 
loathsome  and  contradictory,  instance  of  the  same  kind  ia 

'  Head  "he." 


300  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHEK  [1818 

the  "  Night- Walker,"  in  the  marriage  of  Alathe  to  Algripe. 
Of  the  counterbalancing  beauties  of  "  Measure  for  Measure," 
I  need  say  nothing ;  for  I  have  already  remarked  that  the 
play  is  Shakspere's  throughout. 
Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

" '  Ay,  but  to  die,  and  go  we  know  not  where,'  &c. 
"  This  natural  fear  of  Claudio,  from  the  antipathy  we  have  to  death, 
seems  very  little  varied  from  that  infamous  wish  of  Maecenas,  recorded 
in  the  101st  epistle  of  Seneca : 

" '  Debilem  facito  manu, 

Debilem  pede,  coxa,'  $c"    Warburton's  note. 

I  cannot  but  think  this  rather  an  heroic  resolve,  than  an 
infamous  wish.  It  appears  to  me  to  be  the  grandest 
symptom  of  an  immortal  spirit,  when  even  that  bedimmed 
and  overwhelmed  spirit  recked  not  of  its  own  immortality, 
still  to  seek  to  be, — to  be  a  mind,  a  will. 

As  fame  is  to  reputation,  so  heaven  is  to  an  estate,  or 
immediate  advantage.  The  difference  is,  that  the  self-lovo 
of  the  former  cannot  exist  but  by  a  complete  suppression 
and  habitual  supplantation  of  immediate  selfishness.  In 
one  point  of  view,  the  miser  is  more  estimable  than  the 
spendthrift ; — only  that  the  miser's  present  feelings  are  as 
much  of  the  present  as  the  spendthrift's.  But  cceteris 
paribus,  that  is,  upon  the  supposition  that  whatever  is  good 
or  lovely  in  the  one  coexists  equally  in  the  other,  then, 
doubtless,  the  master  of  the  present  is  less  a  selfish  being, 
an  animal,  than  he  who  lives  for  the  moment  with  no 
inheritance  in  the  future.  Whatever  can  degrade  man,  is 
supposed  in  the  latter  case,  whatever  can  elevate  him,  in 
the  former.  And  as  to  self ; — strange  and  generous  self  ! 
that  can  only  be  such  a  self  by  a  complete  divestment  of 
all  that  men  call  self, — of  all  that  can  make  it  either  prac- 
tically to  others,  or  consciously  to  the  individual  himself, 
different  from  the  human  race  in  its  ideal.  Such  self  is 
but  a  perpetual  religion,  an  inalienable  acknowledgment  of 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  301 

God,  the  sole  basis  and  ground  of  being.     In  this  sense, 
how  can  I  love  God,  and  not  love  myself,  as  far  as  it  is 
of  God  ? 
Ib.  so.  2. 

"  Pattern  in  himself  to  know, 
Grace  to  stand,  and  virtue  go." 

Worse  metre,  indeed,  but  better  English  would  be, — 
"  Grace  to  stand,  virtue  to  go." 


Cymbeline. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

"  You  do  not  meet  a  man,  but  frowns :  our  bloods 
No  more  obey  the  heavens,  than  our  courtiers' 
Still  seem,  as  does  the  king's." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  of  Mr.  Tyrwhitt's  emendations 
of  "  courtiers  "  and  "  king,"  as  to  the  sense ; — only  it  is 
not  impossible  that  Shakspere's  dramatic  language  may 
allow  of  the  word,  "brows"  or  "faces"  being  understood 
after  the  word  "courtiers',"  which  might  then  remain  in 
the  genitive  case  plural.  But  the  nominative  plural  makes 
excellent  sense,  and  is  sufficiently  elegant,  and  sounds  to 
my  ear  Shaksperian.  What,  however,  is  meant  by  "our 
bloods  no  more  obey  the  heavens  ?" — Dr.  Johnson's  asser- 
tion that  "  bloods  "  signify  "  countenances,"  is,  I  think, 
mistaken  both  in  the  thought  conveyed — (for  it  was  never 
a  popular  belief  that  the  stars  governed  men's  coun- 
tenances,) and  in  the  usage,  which  requires  an  antithesis 
of  the  blood, — or  the  temperament  of  the  four  humours, 
choler,  melancholy,  phlegm,  and  the  red  globules,  or  the 
sanguine  portion,  which  was  supposed  not  to  be  in  our 
own  power,  but,  to  be  dependent  on  the  influences  of  the 
heavenly  bodies, — and  the  countenances  which  are  in  our 


302  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

power  really,  though  from  flattery  we  bring  them  into  a 
no  less  apparent  dependence  on  the  sovereign,  than  the 
former  are  in  actual  dependence  on  the  constellations. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  the  word  "courtiers" 
was  a  misprint  for  "  countenances,"  arising  from  an 
anticipation,  by  foreglance  of  the  compositor's  eye,  of  the 
word  "  courtier "  a  few  lines  below.  The  written  r  is 
easily  and  often  confounded  with  the  written  n.  The 
compositor  read  the  first  syllable  court,  and — his  eye  at 
the  same  time  catching  the  word  "  courtier "  lower  down 
• — he  completed  the  word  without  reconsulting  the  copy. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  Shakspere  intended  first  to  express, 
generally  the  same  thought,  which  a  little  afterwards  he 
repeats  with  a  particular  application  to  the  persons  meant ; 
• — a  common  usage  of  the  pronominal  "  our,"  where  the 
speaker  does  not  really  mean  to  include  himself ;  and  the 
word  "you"  is  an  additional  confirmation  of  the  "our" 
being  used  in  this  place,  for  men  generally  and  indefinitely, 
just  as  "  you  do  not  meet,"  is  the  same  as,  "  one  does 
not  meet." 

Act  i.  sc.  2.1     Imogen's  speech  : — 

"  — My  dearest  husband, 

I  something  fear  iny  father's  wrath  ;  but  nothing 
(Always  reserved  my  holy  duty)  what 
His  rage  can  do  on  me." 

Place   the   emphasis   on   "me;"   for   "rage"   is  a  mere 

repetition  of  "  wrath." 

"  Cym.  0  disloyal  thing, 

That  should'st  repair  my  youth,  thou  heapest 
A  year's  age  on  me." 

How  is  it  that  the  commentators  take  no  notice  of  the 
un-Shaksperian  defect  in  the  metre  of  the  second  line,  and 

1  So  in  1st  Fol.    "  Sc.  1  "  in  Globe  Ed. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  303 

what  in  Shakspere  is  the  same,  in  the  harmony  with  the 
sense  and  feeling  ?  Some  word  or  words  must  have  slipped 
out  after  "youth," — possibly  "and  see  :  " — 

"  That  should'st  repair  my  youth !— and  see,  thou  heap'st,"  &c. 
Ib.  sc.  4.'     Pisanio's  speech  : — 

" — For  so  long 

As  he  could  make  me  with  this  eye  or  ear 
Distinguish  him  from  others,"  &c. 

But  "  this  eye,"  in  spite  of  the  supposition  of  its  being 
used  SeiKriK&e,  is  very  awkward.  I  should  think  that 
either  "  or  " — or  "  the  "  was  Shakspere's  word ; — 

"  As  he  could  make  me  or  with  eye  or  ear." 
Ib.  sc.  7.a     lachimo's  speech  : — 

"  Hath  nature  given  them  eyes 
To  see  this  vaulted  arch,  and  the  rich  crop 
Of  sea  and  land,  which  can  distinguish  'twixt 
The  fiery  orbs  above,  and  the  twinn'd  stones 
Upon  the  number'd  beach." 

I  would  suggest  "cope"  for  "crop."  As  to  "twinn'd 
stones " — may  it  not  be  a  bold  catachresis  for  muscles, 
cockles,  and  other  empty  shells  with  hinges,  which  are 
truly  twinned  ?  I  would  take  Dr.  Farmer's  "  umber'd," 
which  I  had  proposed  before  I  ever  heard  of  its  having 
been  already  offered  by  him :  but  1  do  not  adopt  his  inter- 
pretation of  the  word,  which  I  think  is  not  derived  from 
umbra,  a  shade,  but  from  umber,  a  dingy  yellow-brown 
soil,  which  most  commonly  forms  the  mass  of  the  sludge 
on  the  sea-shore,  and  on  the  banks  of  tide-rivers  at  low 
water.  One  other  possible  interpretation  of  this  sentence 
has  occurred  to  me,  just  barely  worth  mentioning; — that 
the  "  twinn'd  stonos "  are  the  augrim  stones  upon  the 

1  So  in  1st  Fol.    "  Sc.  3  "  in  Globe  Ed. 
J  So  in  1st  Fol.    "  Sc.  6  "  in  Globe  Ed. 


304  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

nnmber'd  beech,  that  is,  the  astronomical  tables  of  beech- 
wood. 

Act  v.  sc.  5. 

"  Sooth.  When  as  a  lion's  wliclp,"  &c. 

It  is  not  easy  to  conjecture  why  Shakspere  shonld  have 
introduced  this  ludicrous  scroll,  which  answers  no  one 
purpose,  either  propulsive,  or  explicatory,  unless  as  a  joke 
on  etymology. 


Titus  Andronicuf. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Theobald's  note. 

"  I  never  heard  it  so  much  as  intimated,  that  he  (Shakspere)  had 
turned  his  genius  to  stage-writing,  before  he  associated  with  the  players, 
and  became  one  of  their  body." 

That  Shakspere  never  "turned  his  genius  to  stage 
writing,"  as  Theobald  most  Theobaldice  phrases  it,  before 
he  became  an  actor,  is  an  assertion  of  about  as  much 
authority,  as  the  precious  story  that  he  left  Stratford  for 
deer-stealing,  and  that  he  lived  by  holding  gentlemen's 
horses  at  the  doors  of  the  theatre,  and  other  trash  of  that 
arch-gossip,  old  Aubrey.  The  metre  is  an  argument 
against  Titus  Andronicus  being  Shakspere's,  worth  a  score 
such  chronological  surmises.  Yet  I  incline  to  think  that 
both  in  this  play  and  in  Jeronymo,  Shakspere  wrote  some 
passages,  and  that  they  are  the  earliest  of  his  compositions. 

Act  v.  sc.  2. 

I  think  it  not  improbable  that  the  lines  from — 

"  I  am  not  mad ;  I  know  thee  well  enough  ; — 

******* 
So  thou  destroy  Rapine,  and  Murder  there." 

were  written  by   Shakspere  in  his   earliest  period.     But 
instead  of  the  text — 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  305 

"  Revenge,  which  makes  the  f mil  offender  quake. 
Tit.  Art  thou  Revenge  ?  and  art  thou  sent  to  me  ?" — 

the  words  in  italics  ought  to  be  omitted. 


Troilus  and  Cressida. 

Mr.  Pope  (after  Dryden)  informs  us,  that  the  story  of  Troilus  and 
Cressida  was  originally  the  work  of  one  Lollius,  a  Lombard  :  but 
Dryden  goes  yet  further;  he  declares  it  to  have  been  written  in  Latin 
verse,  and  that  Chaucer  translated  it. — Lollius  was  a  historiographer  of 
Urbino  in  Italy.  Note  in  Stockdale's  edition,  1807. 

"  Lollius  was  a  historiographer  of  Urbino  in  Italy."  So 
affirms  the  notary,  to  whom  the  Sieur  Stockdale  com- 
mitted the  disfacimento  of  Ayscough's  excellent  edition  of 
Shakspere.  Pity  that  the  researchf  ul  notary  has  not  either 
told  us  in  what  century,  and  of  what  history,  he  was  a 
writer,  or  been  simply  content  to  depose,  that  Lollius,  if  a 
writer  of  that  name  existed  at  all,  was  a  somewhat  some- 
where. The  notary  speaks  of  the  Troy  Boke  of  Lydgate, 
printed  in  1513.  I  have  never  seen  it;  but  I  deeply 
regret  that  Chalmers  did  not  substitute  the  whole  of 
Lydgate's  works  from  the  MSS.  extant,  for  the  almost 
worthless  Gower. 

The  "  Troilus  and  Cressida  "  of  Shakspere  can  scarcely  be 
classed  with  his  dramas  of  Greek  and  Roman  history ;  but 
it  forms  an  intermediate  link  between  the  fictitious  Greek 
and  Roman  histories,  which  we  may  call  legendary  dramas, 
xnd  the  proper  ancient  histories ;  that  is,  between  the 
"  Pericles  "  or  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  and  the  "  Coriolanus," 
or  "Julius  Cresar."  "  Cymbeline "  is  a  congener  with 
"  Pericles,"  and  distinguished  from  "  Lear  "  by  not  having 
any  declared  prominent  object.  But  where  shall  we  class 
the  "Timon  of  Athens?"  Perhaps  immediately  below 

x 


306  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

"  Lear."  It  is  a  Lear  of  the  satirical  drama ;  a  Lear  of 
domestic  or  ordinary  life ; — a  local  eddy  of  passion  on  the 
high  road  of  society,  while  all  around  is  the  week-day 
goings  on  of  wind  and  weather ;  a  Lear,  therefore,  without 
its  soul-searching  flashes,  its  ear-cleaving  thunderclaps, 
its  meteoric  splendors, — without  the  contagion  and  the 
fearful  sympathies  of  nature,  the  fates,  the  furies,  the 
frenzied  elements,  dancing  in  and  out,  now  breaking 
through,  and  scattering, — now  hand  in  hand  with, — the 
fierce  or  fantastic  group  of  human  passions,  crimes,  and 
anguishes,  reeling  on  the  unsteady  ground,  in  a  wild  har- 
mony to  the  shock  and  the  swell  of  an  earthquake.  But 
my  present  subject  was  "  Troilus  and  Cressida;"  and  I 
suppose  that,  scarcely  knowing  what  to  say  of  it,  I  by  a 
cunning  of  instinct  ran  off  to  subjects  on  which  I  should 
find  it  difficult  not  to  say  too  much,  though  certain  after 
all  that  I  should  still  leave  the  better  part  unsaid,  and  the 
gleaning  for  others  richer  than  my  own  harvest. 

Indeed,  there  is  no  one  of  Shakspere's  plays  harder  to 
characterize.  The  name  and  the  remembrances  connected 
with  it,  prepare  us  for  the  representation  of  attachment  no 
less  faithful  than  fervent  on  the  side  of  the  youth,  and  of 
sudden  and  shameless  inconstancy  on  the  part  of  the  lady. 
And  this  is,  indeed,  as  the  gold  thread  on  which  the  scenes 
are  strung,  though  often  kept  out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind 
by  gems  of  greater  value  than  itself.  But  as  Shakspere 
calls  forth  nothing  from  the  mausoleum  of  history,  or  the 
catacombs  of  tradition,  without  giving,  or  eliciting,  some 
permanent  and  general  interest,  and  brings  forward  no 
subject  which  he  does  not  moralize  or  intellectualize,— so 
here  he  has  drawn  in  Cressida  the  portrait  of  a  vehement 
passion,  that,  having  its  true  origin  and  proper  cause  in 
warmth  of  temperament,  fastens  on,  rather  than  fixes  to, 
some  one  object  by  liking  and  temporary  prefoi\3iico. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  307 

"  There's  language  in  her  eye,  her  cheek,  her  lip, 
Nay,  her  foot  speaks ;  her  wanton  spirits  look  out 
At  every  joint  and  motive  of  her  body." l 

This  Shakspere  has  contrasted  with  the  profound  affec- 
tion represented  in  Troilus,  and  alone  worthy  the  name  of 
love ; — affection,  passionate  indeed, — swoln  with  the  con- 
fluence of  youthful  instincts  and  youthful  fancy,  and  grow- 
ing in  the  radiance  of  hope  newly  risen,  in  short  enlarged 
by  the  collective  sympathies  of  nature ; — but  still  having  a 
depth  of  calmer  element  in  a  will  stronger  than  desire, 
more  entire  than  choice,  and  which  gives  permanence  to 
its  own  act  by  converting  it  into  faith  and  duty.  Hence 
with  excellent  judgment,  and  with  an  excellence  higher 
than  mere  judgment  can  give,  at  the  close  of  the  play, 
when  Cressida  has  sunk  into  infamy  below  retrieval  and 
beneath  hope,  the  same  will,  which  had  been  the  substance 
and  the  basis  of  his  love,  while  the  restless  pleasures  and 
passionate  longings,  like  sea-waves,  had  tossed  but  on  its 
surface, — this  same  moral  energy  is  represented  as  snatch- 
ing him  aloof  from  all  neighbourhood  with  her  dishonour, 
from  all  lingering  fondness  and  languishing  regrets,  whilst 
it  rushes  with  him  into  other  and  nobler  duties,  and 
deepens  the  channel,  which  his  heroic  brother's  death  had 
left  empty  for  its  collected  flood.  Yet  another  secondary 
and  subordinate  purpose  Shakspere  has  inwoven  with  his 
delineation  of  these  two  characters, — that  of  opposing  the 
inferior  civilization,  but  purer  morals,  of  the  Trojans  to 

1  "  But  who  is  this,  what  thing  of  sea  or  land  ? 
1'emale  of  sex  it  seems, 
That  so  bedecked,  ornate,  and  gay, 
Comes  this  way  sailing 
Like  a  stately  ship 
Of  Tarsus,  bound  for  the  isles 
Of  .1  avail  or  Gadire 
With  all  her  bravery  on  .  .  .  ? " 

Milton's  Sams.  Anw.  L  710-17. 


308  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

the  refinements,  deep  policy,  but  duplicity  and  sensual 
corruptions,  of  the  Greeks. 

To  all  this,  however,  so  little  comparative  projection  is 
given, — nay,  the  masterly  group  of  Agamemnon,  Nestor, 
and  Ulysses,  and,  still  more  in  advance,  that  of  Achilles, 
Ajax,  and  Thersites,  so  manifestly  occupy  the  foreground, 
that  the  subservience  and  vassalage  of  strength  and  animal 
courage  to  intellect  and  policy  seems  to  be  the  lesson  most 
often  in  our  poet's  view,  and  which  he  has  taken  little 
pains  to  connect  with  the  former  more  interesting  moral 
impersonated  in  the  titular  hero  and  heroine  of  the  drama. 
But  I  am  half  inclined  to  believe,  that  Shakspere's  main 
object,  or  shall  I  rather  say,  his  ruling  impulse,  was  to 
ti'anslate  the  poetic  heroes  of  paganism  into  the  not  less 
rude,  but  more  intellectually  vigorous,  and  more  featurely, 
warriors  of  Christian  chivalry, — and  to  substantiate  the 
distinct  and  graceful  profiles  or  outlines  of  the  Homeric 
epic  into  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  romantic  drama, — in 
short,  to  give  a  grand  history-piece  in  the  robust  style  of 
Albert  Durer. 

The  character  of  Thersites,  in  particular,  well  deserves  a 
more  careful  examination,  as  the  Caliban  of  demagogic 
life ; — the  admirable  portrait  of  intellectual  power  deserted 
by  all  grace,  all  moral  principle,  all  not  momentary  impulse  ; 
— just  wise  enough  to  detect  the  weak  head,  and  fool 
enough  to  provoke  the  armed  fist  of  his  betters ; — one 
whom  malcontent  Achilles  can  inveigle  from  malcontent 
Ajax,  tinder  the  one  condition,  that  he  shall  be  called  on  to 
do  nothing  but  abuse  and  slander,  and  that  he  shall  be 
allowed  to  abuse  as  much  and  as  purulently  as  he  likes, 
that  is,  as  he  can ; — in  short,  a  mule, — quarrelsome  by  the 
original  discord  of  his  nature, — a  slave  by  tenure  of  his 
own  baseness, — made  to  bray  and  be  brayed  at,  to  despise 
and  be  despicable.  "Aye,  Sir,  but  say  what  you  will,  he 
is  a-  very  clever  fellow,  though  the  best  friends  will  fall 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  309 

out.  There  was  a  time  when  Ajax  thought  he  deserved 
to  have  a  statue  of  gold  erected  to  him,  and  handsome 
Achilles,  at  the  head  of  the  Myrmidons,  gave  no  little 
credit  to  his  friend  Thersites  !  " 

Act  iv.  sc.  5.     Speech  of  Ulysses : — 

"  O,  these  encounterers,  so  glib  of  tongue, 
That  give  a  coasting  '  welcome  ere  it  comes — " 

Should  it  be  "accosting?"  "Accost  her,  knight,  ac- 
cost ! "  in  the  "  Twelfth  Night."  Yet  there  sounds  a 
something  so  Shaksperian  in  the  phrase — "  give  a  coasting 
welcome,"  ("coasting"  being  taken  as  the  epithet  and 
adjective  of  "welcome,")  that  had  the  following  words 
been,  "  ere  they  land,"  instead  of  "  ere  it  comes,"  I  should 
have  preferred  the  interpretation.  The  sense  now  is,  "  that 
give  welcome  to  a  salute  ere  it  comes." 


Coriolanus. 

This  play  illustrates  the  wonderfully  philosophic  impar- 
tiality of  Shakspere's  politics.  His  own  country's  history 
furnished  him  with  no  matter,  but  what  was  too  recent  to 
be  devoted  to  patriotism.  Besides,  he  knew  that  the  in- 
struction of  ancient  history  would  seem  more  dispassionate. 
In  "  Coriolanus  "  and  "Julius  Caesar,"  you  see  Shakspere's 
good-natured  laugh  at  mobs.  Compare  this  with  Sir 
Thomas  Brown's  aristocracy  of  spirit. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Coriolanus'  speech  : — 

"  He  that  depends 

Upon  your  favours,  swims  with  fins  of  lead, 
And  hews  down  oaks  with  rushes.     Hung  ye  !     Trust  ye  ?  " 

I  suspect  that  Shakspere  wrote  it  transposed ; 
«  Trust  ye  ?     Hange  ye  ?  " 

1  So,  1st  Fol.     "  Accosting"  is  adopted  in  the  Globe  Ed. 


310  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

Ib.  so.  10.     Speech  of  Aufidins  : — 

"  Mine  emulation 

Hath  not  that  honor  in't,  it  had ;  for  where 
I  thought  to  crush  him  in  an  equal  force, 
True  sword  to  sword  ;  I'll  potch  at  him  some  way, 
Or  wrath,  or  craft  may  get  him. — 

My  valor l  (poison'd 

With  only  suffering  stain  by  him)  for  him 
Shall  fly  out  of  itself:  not1  sleep,  nor  sanctuary, 
Being  naked,  sick,  nor  fane,  nor  capitol, 
The  prayers  of  priests,  nor  times  of  sacrifices, 
Embankments  '  all  of  fury,  shall  lift  up 
Their  rotten  privilege  and  custom  'gainst 
My  hate  to  Marcius." 

I  have  such  deep  faith  in  Shakspere's  heart-lore,  that  I 
take  for  granted  that  this  is  in  nature,  and  not  as  a  mere 
anomaly ;  although  I  cannot  in  myself  discover  any  germ 
of  possible  feeling,  which  could  wax  and  unfold  itself  into 
such  sentiment  as  this.  However,  I  perceive  that  in  this 
speech  is  meant  to  be  contained  a  prevention  of  shock  at 
the  after-change  in  Aufidius'  character. 

Act  ii.  so.  1.     Speech  of  Menenius  : — 

"The  most  sovereign  prescription  in  Galen"  &c. 
Was  it  without,  or  in  contempt  of,  historical  information 
that    Shakspere   made  the  contemporaries   of    Coriolanus 
quote    Cato   and    Galen  ?      I   cannot    decide   to   my  own 
satisfaction. 

Ib.  sc.  3.     Speech  of  Coriolanus  : — 

"  Why  in  this  wolvish  gown2  should  I  stand  here — " 


1  Read  (1st  Fol.  and  Globe  Ed.) 

"  My  valour's  poison'd 

With  only  suffering  stain  by  him ;  for  him." 

Also  "  nor  sleep,"  and  "  embarquement."  "  Embankment "  is  a  plausible 
suggestion,  but  "  embarquement  "  is  correct.  The  sense  of  it  is  "  em- 
bargoes, impediments." — Dyce's  "  Shak.  Glossary." 

2  1st  Fol.  1623,  "  woolvish  tongue  ; "  2nd  Fol.  1632,  "  gown ;  "  Globe 
Ed.  "  toge,"  which  was  Malone's  suggestion. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  311 

That  the  gown  of  the  candidate  was  of  whitened  wool, 
we  know.  Does  "  wolvish  "  or  "  woolvish  "  mean  "  made 
of  wool  ?  "  If  it  means  "  wolfish,"  what  is  the  sense  ? 

Act  iv.  sc.  7.     Speech  of  Aufidius : — 

"  All  places  yield  to  him  ere  he  sits  down,"  &c. 

I  have  always  thought  this  in  itself  so  beautiful  speech, 
the  least  explicable  from  the  mood  and  full  intention  of  the 
speaker,  of  any  in  the  whole  works  of  Shakspere.  I  cherish 
the  hope  that  I  am  mistaken,  and  that,  becoming  wiser,  I 
shall  discover  some  profound  excellence  in  that,  in  which 
I  now  appear  to  detect  an  imperfection. 


Julius  Ccesar. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 
"  Mar.  What  meanest  thou  by  that  ?     Mend  me,  them  saucy  fellow  ! " 

The  speeches  of  Flavius  and  Marullus  are  in  blank 
verse.  Wherever  regular  metre  can  be  rendered  truly 
imitative  of  character,  passion,  or  personal  rank,  Shak- 
spere seldom,  if  ever,  neglects  it.  Hence  this  line  should 
be  read : — 

"  What  mean'st  by  that  ?  mend  me,  thou  saucy  fellow ! " 

I  say  regular  metre :  for  even  the  prose  has  in  the  highest 
and  lowest  dramatic  personage,  a  Cobbler  or  a  Hamlet,  a 
rhythm  so  felicitous  and  so  severally  appropriate,  as  to  be 
a  virtual  metre. 
Ib.  sc.  2. 

"  Bru.  A  soothsayer  bids  you  beware  the  Ides  of  March." 

If  my  ear  does  not  deceive  me,  the  metre  of  this  line  was 
meant  to  express  that  sort  of  mild  philosophic  contempt, 
characterizing  Brutus  even  in  his  first  casual  speech.  The 
line  is  a  trimeter, — each  dipodia  containing  two  accented 


312  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

and  two  unaccented  syllables,  but  variously  arranged,  as 
thus ; — 

u «.•     I     —    u       o     —    I     o     —    o     — 

"A  soothsayer  |  bids  you  beware  |  the  Ides  of  March." 

Ib.     Speech  of  Brutus  : 

"  Set  honor  in  one  eye,  and  death  i'  the  other, 
And  1  will  look  on  both  indifferently." 

Warburton  would  read  "  death  "  for  "  both  ; "  but  I  prefer 
the  old  text.  There  are  here  three  things,  the  public 
good,  the  individual  Brutus'  honor,  and  his  death.  The 
latter  two  so  balanced  each  other,  that  he  could  decide  for 
the  first  by  equipoise ;  nay — the  thought  growing — that 
honour  had  more  weight  than  death.  That  Cassius  under- 
stood it  as  Warburton,  is  the  beauty  of  Cassius  as  con- 
trasted with  Brutus. 
Ib.  Caesar's  speech  : — 

"  He  loves  no  plays, 
As  thou  dost,  Antony  ;  he  hears  no  music,"  &c. 

"  This  is  not  a  trivial  observation,  nor  does  our  poet  mean  barely  by  it, 
that  Cassius  was  not  a  merry,  sprightly  man;  but  that  he  had  not  a 
due  temperament  of  harmony  in  his  disposition."  Theobald's  note. 

0  Theobald !  what  a  commentator  wast  thou,  when  thou 
would'st  affect  to  understand  Shakspere,  instead  of  con- 
tenting  thyself   with   collating   the   text !     The   meaning 
here  is  too  deep  for  a  line  ten -fold  the  length  of  thine  to 
fathom. 

Ib.  sc.  3.     Caesar's  l  speech  : — 

"  Refactions  for  redress  of  all  these  griefs; 
And  I  will  set  this  foot  of  mine  as  far, 
As  who  goes  farthest." 

1  understand  it  thus :    "  You   have   spoken  as  a  con- 
spirator ;  be  so  in  fact,  and  I  will  join  you.     Act  on  your 
principles,  and  realize  them  in  a  fact." 

1  "  Czesar's  "  is  a  slip  of  the  pen  for  "  Casca's." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  313 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Speech  of  Brutus  : — 

"  It  must  be  by  his  death  ;  and,  for  my  part, 

I  know  no  personal  cause  to  spurn  at  him, 

But  for  the  general.     He  would  be  crown'd : — 

How  that  might  change  his  nature,  there's  the  question. 

And,  to  speak  truth  of  Caesar, 

I  have  not  known  when  his  affections  sway'd 
More  than  his  reason. 

So  Caesar  may ; 

Then,  lest  he  may,  prevent. 

This  speech  is  singular ; — at  least,  I  do  not  at  present 
Bee  into  Shakspere's  motive,  his  rationale,  or  in  what 
point  of  view  he  meant  Brutus'  character  to  appear.  For 
surely — (this  I  mean  is  what  I  say  to  myself,  with  my 
present  quantum  of  insight,  only  modified  by  my  experience 
in  how  many  instances  I  have  ripened  into  a  perception  of 
beauties,  where  I  had  before  descried  faults ;)  surely, 
nothing  can  seem  more  discordant  with  our  historical  pre- 
conceptions of  Brutus,  or  more  lowering  to  the  intellect 
of  the  Stoico-Platonic  tyrannicide,  than  the  tenets  here 
attributed  to  him — to  him,  the  stern  Roman  republican ; 
namely, — that  he  would  have  no  objection  to  a  king,  or  to 
Csesar,  a  monarch  in  Rome,  would  Caesar  but  be  as  good  a 
monarch  as  he  now  seems  disposed  to  be !  How,  too, 
could  Brutus  say  that  he  found  no  personal  cause — none 
in  Ccesar's  past  conduct  as  a  man  ?  Had  he  not  passed 
the  Rubicon  ?  Had  he  not  entered  Rome  as  a  conqueror  ? 
Had  he  not  placed  his  Gauls  in  the  Senate  ? — Shakspere, 
it  may  be  said,  has  not  brought  these  things  forward. — 
True ; — and  this  is  just  the  ground  of  my  perplexity. 
What  character  did  Shakspere  mean  his  Brutus  to  be  ? 

Ib.     Speech  of  Brutus  : — 

"  For  if  thou  path,  thy  native  semblance  on — " 

Surely,  there  need  be  no  scruple  in  treating  this  "  path  " 
as  a  mere  misprint  or  mis-script  for  "put."  In  what 


314  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

place  does  Shakspere, — where  does  any  other  writer l  of 
the  same  age — use  "  path  "  as  a  verb  for  "  walk  ?  " 
Ib.  sc.  2.     Caesar's  speech  : — 

"  She  dreamt  last 5  night,  she  saw  my  statue —  * 

No  doubt,  it  should  be  statua,  as  in  the  same  age,  they 
more  often  pronounced  "  heroes  "  as  a  trisyllable  than  dis- 
syllable. A  modern  tragic  poet  would  have  written, — 

"  Last  night  she  dreamt,  that  she  my  statue  saw —  " 

But  Shakspere  never  avails  himself  of  the  supposed  license 
of  transposition,  merely  for  the  metre.     There  is  always 
some  logic  either  of  thought  or  passion  to  justify  it. 
Act  iii.  sc.  1.     Antony's  speech  : — 

"  Pardon  me,  Julius — here  wast  thon  baj^d,  brave  hart ; 
Here  didst  thou  fall,  and  here  thy  hunters  stand 
Sign'd  in  thy  spoil,  and  crimson'd  in  thy  death.3 
0  world.'  thou  wast  the  forest  to  this  hart, 
And  this,  indeed,  0  world  !  the  heart  of  thee." 

I  doubt  the  genuineness  of  the  last  two  lines  ; — not  because 
they  are  vile ;  but  first,  on  account  of  the  rhythm,  which 
is  not  Shaksperian,  but  just  the  very  tune  of  some  old 
play,  from  which  the  actor  might  have  interpolated  them  ; 
— and  secondly,  because  they  interrupt,  not  only  the  sense 
and  connection,  but  likewise  the  flow  both  of  the  passion, 
and  (what  is  with  me  still  more  decisive)  of  the  Shak- 
sperian link  of  association.  As  with  many  another  paren- 
thesis or  gloss  slipt  into  the  text,  we  have  only  to  read  the 
passage  without  it,  to  see  that  it  never  was  in  it.  I  venture 
to  say  there  is  no  instance  in  Shakspere  fairly  like  this. 
Conceits  he  has ;  but  they  not  only  rise  out  of  some  word 

1  Consult  Nares'  Glossary  for  other  instances. 

a  Read  "  to-night." 

8  Read  "  lethe."  Other  authors  use  the  word  in  the  sense  of  "  death." 
Nares  thinks  it  was  pronounced  as  a  monosyllable,  when  so  used,  and 
derived  rather  from  lethum  than  lethe 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE  315 

in  the  lines  before,  but  also  lead  to  the  thought  in  the 
lines  following.  Here  the  conceit  is  a  mere  alien  :  Antony- 
forgets  an  image,  when  he  is  even  touching  it,  and  then 
recollects  it,  when  the  thought  last  in  his  mind  must  have 
led  him  away  from  it. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     Speech  of  Brutus : — 

" What,  shall  one  of  us, 

That  struck  the  foremost  man  of  all  this  world, 
But  for  supporting  robbers." 

This  seemingly  strange  assertion  of  Brutus  is  unhappily 
verified  in  the  present  day.  What  is  an  immense  army,  in 
which  the  lust  of  plunder  has  quenched  all  the  duties  of 
the  citizen,  other  than  a  horde  of  robbers,  or  differenced 
only  as  fiends  are  from  ordinarily  reprobate  men  ?  Caesar 
supported,  and  was  supported  by,  such  as  these ; — and 
even  so  Buonaparte  in  our  days.1 

I  know  no  part  of  Shakspere  that  more  impresses  on 
me  the  belief  of  his  genius  being  superhuman,  than  this 
scene  between  Brutus  and  Cassius.  In  the  Gnostic  heresy, 
it  might  have  been  credited  with  less  absurdity  than  most 
of  their  dogmas,  that  the  Supreme  had  employed  him 
'to  create,  previously  to  his  function  of  representing, 
characters. 


Antony  and  Cleopatra. 

Shakspere  can  be  complimented  only  by  comparison 
with  himself :  all  other  eulogies  are  either  heterogeneous* 
as  when  they  are  in  reference  to  Spenser  or  Milton ;  or 
they  are  flat  truisms,  as  when  he  is  gravely  preferred  to 
Corneille,  Racine,  or  even  his  own  immediate  successors, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Massinger  and  the  rest.  The 

1  Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus  (x.  10,  Long's  Translation)  sets  himsell 
down  as  a  robber,  because  he  warred  against  the  Sarmatians. 


316  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

highest  praise,  or  rather  form  of  praise,  of  this  play,  which 
I  can  offer  in  my  own  mind,  is  the  doubt  which  the  perusal 
always  occasions  in  me,  whether  the  "Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra" is  not,  in  all  exhibitions  of  a  giant  power  in  its 
strength  and  vigour  of  maturity,  a  formidable  rival  of 
"  Macbeth,"  "  Lear,"  "  Hamlet,"  and  "  Othello."  Feliciter 
audax  is  the  motto  for  its  style  comparatively  with  that  of 
Shakspere's  other  works,  even  as  it  is  the  general  motto  of 
all  his  works  compared  with  those  of  other  poets.  Be  it 
remembered,  too,  that  this  happy  valiancy  of  style  is  but 
the  representative  and  result  of  all  the  material  excellencies 
BO  expressed. 

This  play  should  be  perused  in  mental  contrast  with 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet ;  " — as  the  love  of  passion  and  appetite 
opposed  to  the  love  of  affection  and  instinct.  But  the  art 
displayed  in  the  character  of  Cleopatra  is  profound ;  in 
this,  especially,  that  the  sense  of  criminality  in  her  passion 
is  lessened  by  our  insight  into  its  depth  and  energy,  at  the 
very  moment  that  we  cannot  but  perceive  that  the  passion 
itself  springs  out  of  the  habitual  craving  of  a  licentious 
nature,  and  that  it  is  supported  and  reinforced  by  voluntary 
stimulus  and  sought-for  associations,  instead  of  blossoming 
out  of  spontaneous  emotion. 

Of  all  Shakspere's  historical  plays,  "  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra "  is  by  far  the  most  wonderful.  There  is  not  one  in 
which  he  has  followed  history  so  minutely,  and  yet  there 
fire  few  in  which  he  impresses  the  notion  of  angelic 
strength  so  much ; — perhaps  none  in  which  he  impresses  it 
more  strongly.  This  is  greatly  owing  to  the  manner  in 
which  the  fiery  force  is  sustained  throughout,  and  to  the 
numerous  momentary  flashes  of  nature  counteracting  the 
historic  abstraction.  As  a  wonderful  specimen  of  the  way 
in  which  Shakspere  lives  up  to  the  very  end  of  this  play, 
read  the  last  part  of  the  concluding  scene.  And  if  you 
tvould  feel  the  judgment  as  well  as  the  genius  of  Shak- 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERB.  317 

spere  in  your  hearts'  core,  compare  this  astonishing  drama 
with  Dryden's  "All  For  Love." 
Act.  i.  sc.  1.     Philo's  speech  : — 

"  His  captain's  heart, 

Which  in  the  scuffles  of  great  fights  hath  burst 
The  buckles  on  his  breast,  reneges  all  temper — " 

It  should  be  "  reneagues,"  or  "  reniegues,"  as  "  fatigues,"  &c. 
Ib. 

"  Take  but  good  note,  and  you  shall  see  in  him 
The  triple  pillar  of  the  world  transformed 
Into  a  strumpet's  fool." 

"Warburton's  conjecture  of  "  stool  "  is  ingenious,  and  would 
be  a  probable  reading,  if  the  scene  opening  had  discovered 
Antony  with  Cleopatra  on  his  lap.  But,  represented  as  he 
is  walking  and  jesting  with  her,  "fool "  must  be  the  word. 
Warburton's  objection  is  shallow,  and  implies  that  he  con- 
founded the  dramatic  with  the  epic  style.  The  "pillar" 
of  a  state  is  so  common  a  metaphor  as  to  have  lost  the 
image  in  the  thing  meant  to  be  imaged. 
Ib.  sc.  2. 

"  Much  is  breeding ; 

Which,  like  the  courser's  hair,  hath  yet  but  life, 

And  not  a  serpent's  poison." 

This  is  so  far  true  to  appearance,  that  a  horse-hair, 
"laid,"  as  Hollinshed  says,  "in  a  pail  of  water,"  will  be- 
come the  supporter  of  seemingly  one  worm,  though  pro- 
bably of  an  immense  number  of  small  slimy  water-lice. 
The  hair  will  twirl  round  a  finger,  and  sensibly  compress 
it.  It  is  a  common  experiment  with  school  boys  in  Cum- 
berland and  Westmorland. 

Act  ii.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Enobarbus : — 

"  Her  gentlewomen,  like  the  Nereids, 
So  many  mermaids,  tended  her  i'  th'  eyes, 
And  made  their  bends  adornings.     At  the  helm 
A  seeming  mermaid  steers." 


318  KOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

I  have  the  greatest  difficulty  in  believing  that  Shakspere 
wrote  the  first  "  mermaids."  He  never,  I  think,  would 
have  so  weakened  by  useless  anticipation  the  fine  image 
immediately  following.  The  epithet  "  seeming  "  becomes 
BO  extremely  improper  after  the  whole  number  had  been 
positively  called  "  so  many  mermaids." 


Timon  of  Athens.1 
Act  i.  so.  1. 

"  Tim.       The  man  is  honest. 

Old  Ath.  Therefore  he  will  be,  Timon. 

His  honesty  rewards  him  in  itself." — 

Warburton's  comment — "  If  the  man  be  honest,  for  that 
reason  he  will  be  so  in  this,  and  not  endeavour  at  the 
injustice  of  gaining  my  daughter  without  my  consent " — 
is,  like  almost  all  his  comments,  ingenious  in  blander :  he 
can  never  see  any  other  writer's  thoughts  for  the  mist- 
working  swarm  of  his  own.  The  meaning  of  the  first  line 
the  poet  himself  explains,  or  rather  unfolds,  in  the  second. 
•"  The  man  is  honest ! " — "  True ; — and  for  that  very  cause, 
find  with  no  additional  or  extrinsic  motive,  he  will  be  so. 
Ko  man  can  be  justly  called  honest,  who  is  not  so  for 
honesty's  sake,  itself  including  its  own  reward."  Note, 
-that  "  honesty  "  in  Shakspere's  age  retained  much  of  its 
old  dignity,  and  that  contradistinction  of  the  honestum 
from  the  utile,  in  which  its  very  essence  and  definition 
consist.  If  it  be  honestum,  it  cannot  depend  on  the  utile. 

Ib.    Speech  of  Apemantus,  printed  as  prose  in  Theobald's 
edition : — 

"  So,  so"t  aches  contract,  and  starve  your  supple  joints ! " 
I  may  remark  here  the  fineness  of  Shakspere's  sense  of 
musical  period,  which  would  almost  by  itself  have  suggested 

1  See  notes  on  "  Troilus  and  Cressida." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEEE.  319 

(if  the  hundred  positive  proofs  had  not  been  extant),  that 
the  word  "  aches  "  was  then  ad  libitum,  a  dissyllable — 
aitches.  For  read  it,  "  aches,"  in  this  sentence,  and  I 
would  challenge  you  to  find  any  period  in  Shakspere's 
writings  with  the  same  musical,  or,  rather  dissonant,  nota- 
tion. Try  the  one,  and  then  the  other,  by  your  ear,  read- 
ing the  sentence  aloud,  first  with  the  word  as  a  dissyllable 
and  then  as  a  monosyllable,  and  you  will  feel  what  I 
mean.1 

Ib.  sc.  2.     Cupid's  speech  :  Warburton's  correction  of — 

"  There  taste,  touch,  all  pleas'd  from  thy  table  rise — " 
into 

"  Th'  ear,  taste,  touch,  smell,"  &c. 

This  is  indeed  an  excellent  emendation. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Senator's  speech  : — 

"  — nor  then  silenc'd  with  a 
'  Commend  me  to  your  master ' — and  trie  cap 
Plays  in  (he  right  fand,  thus: —  " 

Either,  methinks,  "  plays  "  should  be  "  play'd,"  or  "  and  " 
should  be  changed  to  "  while."    I  can  certainly  understand 
it  as  a  parenthesis,  an  interadditive  of  scorn ;  but  it  does 
rot  sound  to  my  ear  as  in  Shakspere's  manner. 
Ib.  sc.  2.     Timon's  speech  :  (Theobald.) 

"  And  that  unaptness  made  you 3  minister, 
Thus  to  excuse  yourself." 


1  It  is,  of  course,  a  verse, — 

"  Aches  contract,  and  starve  your  supple  joints !  " 
and  is  so  printed  in  all  later  editions.  But  Mr.  C.  was  reading  it  in 
prose  in  Theobald;  and  it  is  curious  to  see  how  his  ear  detected  the 
rhythmical  necessity  for  pronouncing  "  aches"  as  a  dissyllable,  although 
the  metrical  necessity  seems  for  the  moment  to  have  escaped  him. 
—II.  N.  C. 

2  Read  "  when  "  for  "  with." 

3  "  YOST"  in  1st  Fol.  uua  Globe  Ed. 


320  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

Bead  your; — at  least  I  cannot  otherwise  understand  the 
line.  You  made  my  chance  indisposition  and  occasional 
unaptness  your  minister — that  is,  the  ground  on  which 
you  now  excuse  yourself.  Or,  perhaps,  no  correction  is 
necessary,  if  we  construe  "  made  you  "  as  "  did  you  make ;  " 
"  and  that  nnaptness  did  you  make  help  you  thus  to  excuse 
yourself."  But  the  former  seems  more  in  Shakspere's 
manner,  and  is  less  liable  to  be  misunderstood.1 
Act  iii.  sc.  3.  Servant's  speech  : — 

"  How  fairly  this  lord  strives  to  appear  foul ! — takes  virtuous  copies 
to  be  wicked ;  like  those  that  under  hot,  ardent,  zeal  would  set  whole 
realms  on  fire.  Of  such  a  nature  is  his  politic  love." 

This  latter  clause  I  grievously  suspect  to  have  been  an 
addition  of  the  players,  which  had  hit,  and,  being  con- 
stantly applauded,  procured  a  settled  occupancy  in  the 
prompter's  copy.  Not  that  Shakspere  does  not  elsewhere 
sneer  at  the  Puritans ;  but  here  it  is  introduced  so  nolenter 
volenter  (excuse  the  phrase)  by  the  head  and  shoulders  ! — 
and  is  besides  so  much  more  likely  to  have  been  conceived 
in  the  age  of  Charles  I. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     Timon's  speech  : — 

"  Raise  me  this  beggar,  and  deny't  that  lord. — " 

Warbnrton  reads  "  denude." 

I  cannot  see  the  necessity  of  this  alteration.  The  editors 
and  commentators  are,  all  of  them,  ready  enough  to  cry 
out  against  Shakspere's  laxities  and  licenses  of  style,  for- 
getting that  he  is  not  merely  a  poet,  but  a  dramatic  poet ; 
that,  when  the  head  and  the  heart  are  swelling  with  ful- 
^ness,  a  man  does  not  ask  himself  whether  he  has  gramma- 
tically arranged,  but  only  whether  (the  context  taken  in) 
he  has  conveyed,  his  meaning.  "  Deny  "  is  here  clearly 
equal  to  "withhold;"  and  the  "it,"  quite  in  the  genius  of 

1  "  Your  "  is  the  received  reading  now. — H.  N.  C. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  321 

vehement  conversation,  which  a  syntaxist  explains  by 
ellipses  and  subauditurs  in  a  Greek  or  Latin  classic,  yet 
triumphs  over  as  ignorances  in  a  contemporary,  refers  to 
accidental  and  artiBcial  rank  or  elevation,  implied  in  the 
verb  "  raise."  Besides,  does  the  word  "  denude  "  occur  in 
any  writer  before,  or  of,  Shakspere's  age  ? 


Borneo  and  Juliet. 

I  have  previously  had  occasion  to  speak  at  large  on  the 
subject  of  the  three  unities  of  time,  place,  and  action,  as 
applied  to  the  drama  in  the  abstract,  and  to  the  particular 
stage  for  which  Shakspere  wrote,  as  far  as  he  can  be  said 
to  have  written  for  any  stage  but  that  of  the  universal 
mind.  I  hope  I  have  in  some  measure  succeeded  in  de- 
monstrating that  the  former  two,  instead  of  being  rules, 
were  mere  inconveniences  attached  to  the  local  peculiarities 
of  the  Athenian  drama ;  that  the  last  alone  deserved  the 
name  of  a  principle,  and  that  in  the  preservation  of  this 
unity  Shakspere  stood  pre-eminent.  Yet,  instead  of  unity 
of  action,  I  should  greatly  prefer  the  more  appropriate, 
though  scholastic  and  uncouth,  words  homogeneity,  pro- 
portionateness,  and  totality  of  interest, — expressions,  which 
involve  the  distinction,  or  rather  the  essential  diffei'ence, 
betwixt  the  shaping  skill  of  mechanical  talent,  and  the 
creative,  productive,  life-power  of  inspired  genius.  In  the 
former  each  part  is  separately  conceived,  and  then  by  a 
succeeding  act  put  together ; — not  as  watches  are  made  for 
whole-sale, — (for  there  each  part  supposes  a  pre-conception 
of  the  whole  in  some  mind) — but  more  like  pictures  on  a 
motley  screen.  Whence  arises  the  harmony  that  strikes 
us  in  the  wildest  natural  landscapes, — in  the  relative  shapes 
of  rocks,  the  harmony  of  colours  in  the  heaths,  ferns,  and 
lichens,  the  leaves  of  the  beech  and  the  oak,  the  stems  and 

T 


322  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

rich  brown  branches  of  the  birch  and  other  mountain  trees, 
varying  from  verging  autumn  to  returning  spring, — com- 
pared with  the  visual  effect  from  the  greater  number  of 
artificial  plantations  ? — From  this,  that  the  natural  land- 
scape is  effected,  as  it  were,  by  a  single  energy  modified  ab 
infra  in  each  component  part.  And  as  this  is  the  particular 
excellence  of  the  Shaksperian  drama  generally,  so  is  it 
especially  characteristic  of  the  "  Romeo  and  Juliet." 

The  groundwork  of  the  tale  is  altogether  in  family  life, 
and  the  events  of  the  play  have  their  first  origin  in  family 
feuds.  Filmy  as  are  the  eyes  of  party-spirit,  at  once  dim 
and  truculent,  still  there  is  commonly  some  real  or  sup- 
posed object  in  view,  or  principle  to  be  maintained ;  and 
though  but  the  twisted  wires  on  the  plate  of  rosin  in  the 
preparation  for  electrical  pictures,  it  is  still  a  guide  in  some 
degree,  an  assimilation  to  an  outline.  But  in  family 
quarrels,  which  have  proved  scarcely  less  injurious  to 
.states,  wilfulness,  and  precipitancy,  and  passion  from  mere 
habit  and  custom,  can  alone  be  expected.  With  his  accus- 
tomed judgment,  Shakspere  has  begun  by  placing  before 
us  .a  lively  picture  of  all  .the  impulses  of  the  play ;  and,  as 
nature  ever  presents  two  sides,  one  for  Heraclitus,  and  one 
for  Democritus,  he  has,  by  way  of  prelude,  shown  the 
laughable  absurdity  of  the  evil  by  the  contagion  of  it 
reaching  the  servants,  who  have  so  little  to  do  with  it,  but 
who  are  under  the  necessity  of  letting  the  superfluity  of 
sensorial  power  fly  off  through  the  escape-valve  of  wit- 
combats,  and  of  quarrelling  with  weapons  of  sharper  edge, 
all  in  humble  imitation  of  their  masters.  Yet  there  is  a 
sort  of  unhired  fidelity,  an  ourishness  about  all  this  that 
makes  it  rest  pleasant  on  one's  feelings.  All  the  first 
scene,  down  to  the  conclusion  of  the  Prince's  speech,  is  a 
motley  dance  of  all  ranks  and  ages  to  one  tune,  as  if  the 
horn  of  Huon  had  been  playing  behind  the  scenes. 

Benvolio's  speech — 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEBB.  323 

"  Madam,  an  hour  before  the  worshipp'd  suu 
Peer'd  forth  the  golden  window  of  the  east  " — 

and,  far  more  strikingly,  the  following  speech  of  old 
Montague — 

"  Many  a  morning  hath  he  there  been  seen 

With  tears  augmenting  the  fresh  morning '  dew" — 

prove  that  Shakspere  meant  the  Romeo  and  Juliet  to 
approach  to  a  poem,  which,  and  indeed  its  early  .date,  may 
be  also  inferred  from  the  multitude  of  rhyming  couplets 
throughout.  And  if  we  are  right,  from  the  internal 
evidence,  in  pronouncing  this  one  of  Shakspere's  early 
dramas,  it  affords  a  strong  instance  of  the  fineness  of  his 
insight  into  the  nature  of  the  passions,  that  Borneo  is  in- 
troduced already  love-bewildered.  The  necessity  of  loving 
creates  an  object  for  itself  in  man  and  woman ;  and  yet 
there  is  a  difference  in  this  respect  between  the  sexes, 
though  only  to  be  known  by  a  perception  of  it.  It  would 
have  displeased  us  if  Juliet  had  been  represented  as  already 
in  love,  or  as  fancying  herself  so ; — but  no  one,  I  believe, 
ever  experiences  any  shock  at  Romeo's  forgetting  his 
Rosaline,  who  had  been  a  mere  name  for  the  yearning  of 
his  youthful  imagination,  and  rushing  into  his  passion  for 
Juliet.  Rosaline  was  a  mere  creation  of  his  fancy ;  and 
we  should  remark  the  boastful  positiveness  of  Romeo  in  a 
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 ! 

*»•»*»» 

One  fairer  than  my  love !  the  all-seeing  sun 

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

The  character  of  the  Nurse  is  the  nearest  of  anything  in 
Shakspere  to  a  direct  borrowing  from  mere  observation ; 

1  Head  ';  morning's."  »  Act  i.  »c.  a. 


324  NOTES    ON   SOME   OTHER  [1818 

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  larch  tree,  you  generalize  a  grove  of 
them, — so  it  is  nearly  as  much  so  in  old  age.  The  genera- 
lization 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  affec- 
tions gives  her  privileges  and  rank  in  the  household ; 
and  observe  the  mode  of  connection  by  accidents  of  time 
and  place,  and  the  childlike  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  cannot  choose  but  laugh,"  &c. 

In  the  fourth  scene  we  have  Mercutio  introduced  to  us, 
O  !  how  shall  I  describe  that  exquisite  ebullience  and  over- 
flow 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  smooth- 
ness !  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  excellencies 
and  all  its  weaknesses,  constitute  the  character  of  Mercutio  1 

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  ;— 
Ami  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  1 


SKCT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPEEE.  325 

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  quarrel- 
some violence !  But  it  would  be  endless  to  repeat  obser- 
vations 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  unadvised,  too  sudden,"  &c. 

With  love,  pure  love,  there  is  always  an  anxiety  for  the 
safety  of  the  object,  a  disinterestedness,  by  which  it  is  dis- 
tinguished 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  Shakspere's  mastery  in 
playing  a  distinctly  rememberable  variety  on  the  same 
remembered  air,  than  in  the  transporting  Jove-confessions 
of  Borneo  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. 

1  Bead  "of." 


326  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

Ib.  sc.  3.     The  Friar's  speech  : — 

The  reverend  character  of  the  Friar,  like  all  Shakspere'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. 

"Horn.  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  find1 
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  conceived. 

Ib.  sc.  2.     Juliet's  speech: 


SHOT.  IV.]  PLATS   OP   SHAKSPERE;  327 

"  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  : — 

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

All  deep  passions  are  a  sort  of  atheists,  that  believe  no 
future. 
Ib.  sc.  5. 

"  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,  atay  »'— 
Romeo,  I  come !  this  do  I  drink  to  thee." 

Shakspere  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. 

1  Read  "  heaven  is." 


328  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

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  cir- 
cumstance. It  is  difficult  to  understand  what  effect, 
whether  that  of  pity  or  of  laughter,  Shakspere  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  y.  sc.  1.     Romeo's  speech  : — 

"0  mischief!  thou  are  s wife 
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  softened 
by  love ;  and  now  it  is  doubled  by  love  and  sorrow  and 
awe  of  the  place  where  he  is. 

Ib.     Romeo's  speech  : — 

"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. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERB.  329 

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


Hear. 

Of  all  Shakspere's  plays  "  Macbeth  "  is  the  most  rapid, 
"Hamlet"  the  slowest,  in  movement.  "Lear"  combines 
length  with  rapidity, — like  the  hurricane  and  the  whirl- 
pool, absorbing  while  it  advances.  It  begins  as  a  stormy 
day  in  summer,  with  brightness ;  but  that  brightness  is 
lurid,  and  anticipates  the  tempest. 

It  was  not  without  forethought,  nor  is  it  without  its  due 
significance,  that  the  division  of  Lear's  kingdom  is  in  the 
first  six  lines  of  the  play  stated  as  a  thing  already  deter- 
mined in  all  its  particulars,  previously  to  the  trial  of  pro- 
fessions, as  the  relative  rewards  of  which  the  daughters 
were  to  be  made  to  consider  their  several  portions.  The 
strange,  yet  by  no  means  unnatural,  mixture  of  selfishness, 
sensibility,  and  habit  of  feeling  derived  from,  and  fostered 
by,  the  particular  rank  and  usages  of  the  individual ; — the 
intense  desire  of  being  intensely  beloved, — selfish,  and  yet 
characteristic  of  the  selfishness  of  a  loving  and  kindly 
nature  alone ; — the  self-supportless  leaning  for  all  pleasure 
on  another's  breast ; — the  cravings  after  sympathy  with  a 
prodigal  disinterestedness,  frustrated  by  its  own  ostenta- 
tion, and  the  mode  and  nature  of  its  claims  ; — the  anxiety, 
the  distrust,  the  jealousy,  which  more  or  less  accompany 
all  selfish  affections,  and  are  amongst  the  surest  contra- 
distinctions of  mere  fondness  from  true  love,  and  which 
originate  Lear's  eager  wish  to  enjoy  his  daughter's  violent 
professions,  whilst  the  inveterate  habits  of  sovereignty 
convert  the  wish  into  claim  and  positive  right,  and  an  in- 
compliance with  it  into  crime  and  treason; — these  facts, 


330  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

those  passions,  these  moral  verities,  on  which  the  whole 
tragedy  is  founded,  are  all  prepared  for,  and  will  to  the 
retrospect  be  found  implied,  in  these  first  four  or  five  lines 
of  the  play.  They  let  us  know  that  the  trial  is  but  a  trick ; 
and  that  the  grossness  of  the  old  king's  rage  is  in  part  the 
natural  result  of  a  silly  trick  suddenly  and  most  unex- 
pectedly baffled  and  disappointed. 

It  may  here  be  worthy  of  notice,  that  "  Lear  "  is  the 
only  serious  performance  of  Shakspere,  the  interest  and 
situations  of  which  are  derived  from  the  assumption  of  a 
gross  improbability;  whereas  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's 
tragedies  are,  almost  all  of  them,  founded  on  some  out  of 
the  way  accident  or  exception  to  the  general  experience  of 
mankind.  But  observe  the  matchless  judgment  of  our 
Shakspere.  First,  improbable  as  the  conduct  of  Lear  is  in 
the  first  scene,  yet  it  was  an  old  story  rooted  in  the  popular 
faith, — a  thing  taken  for  granted  already,  and  consequently 
without  any  of  the  effects  of  improbability.  Secondly,  it 
is  merely  the  canvas  for  the  characters  and  passions,— a 
mere  occasion  for, — and  not,  in  the  manner  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  perpetually  recurring  as  the  cause,  and  sine 
qua  non  of, — the  incidents  and  emotions.  Let  the  first 
scene  of  this  play  have  been  lost,  and  let  it  only  be  under- 
stood that  a  fond  father  had  been  duped  by  hypocritical 
professions  of  love  and  duty  on  the  part  of  two  daughters 
to  disinherit  the  third,  previous^,  and  deservedly,  more 
dear  to  him  ; — and  all  the  rest  of  the  tragedy  would  retain 
its  interest  undiminished,  and  be  perfectly  intelligible.  The 
accidental  is  nowhere  the  groundwork  of  the  passions,  but 
that  which  is  catholic,  which  in  all  ages  has  been,  and  ever 
will  be,  close  and  native  to  the  heart  of  man, — parental 
anguish  from  filial  ingratitude,  the  genuineness  of  worth, 
though  coffined  in  bluntness,  and  the  execrable  vileness  of 
a  smooth  iniquity.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  have  added  the 
"  Merchant  of  Venice ;  "  but  here  too  the  same  remarks 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  331 

apply.  It  was  an  old  tale ;  and  substitute  any  other  danger 
than  that  of  the  pound  of  flesh  (the  circumstance  in  whicli 
the  improbability  lies),  yet  all  the  situations  and  tho- 
emotions  appertaining  to  them  remain  equally  excellent 
and  appropriate.  Whereas  take  away  from  the  "  Mad 
Lover  "  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  the  fantastic  hypothesis 
of  his  engagement  to  cut  out  his  own  heart,  and  have  ifc 
presented  to  his  mistress,  and  all  the  main  scenes  must  go 
with  it. 

Kotzebue  is  the  German  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  with- 
out their  poetic  powers,  and  without  their  vis  comica* 
But,  like  them,  he  always  deduces  his  situations  and  pas- 
sions from  marvellous  accidents,  and  the  trick  of  bringing; 
one  part  of  our  moral  nature  to  counteract  another ;  as  our 
pity  for  misfortune  and  admiration  of  generosity  and 
courage  to  combat  our  condemnation  of  guilt,  as  iit 
adultery,  robbery,  and  other  heinous  crimes ; — and,  like* 
them  too,  he  excels  in  his  mode  of  telling  a  story  clearly 
and  interestingly,  in  a  series  of  dramatic  dialogues.  Only 
the  trick  of  making  tragedy-heroes  and  heroines  out  of 
shopkeepers  and  barmaids  was  too  low  for  the  age,  and  too- 
unpoetic  for  the  genius,  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  inferior 
in  every  respect  as  they  are  to  their  great  predecessor  and 
contemporary.  How  inferior  would  they  have  appeared, 
had  not  Shakspere  existed  for  them  to  imitate ; — which  in- 
every  play,  more  or  less,  they  do,  and  in  their  tragedies- 
most  glaringly: — and  yet — (0  shame!  shame!) — they 
miss  no  opportunity  of  sneering  at  the  divine  man,  and 
sub- detracting  from  his  merits  ! 

To  return  to  Lear.  Having  thus  in  the  fewest  words, 
and  in  a  natural  reply  to  as  natural  a  question, — which 

1  "  If  we  would  charitably  consent  to  forget  the  comic  humour,  the 
wit,  the  felicities  of  style,  in  other  words,  all  the  poetry,  and  nine- 
tenths  of  all  the  genius  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  that  which  would1 
remain  becomes  a  Kotzebue." — Biographia  Literaria,  chap,  xxiii. 


332  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

yet  answers  the  secondary  purpose  of  attracting  our  atten- 
tion to  the  difference  or  diversity  between  the  characters 
of  Cornwall  and  Albany, — provided  the  premisses  and 
data,  as  it  were,  for  our  after  insight  into  the  mind  and 
mood  of  the  person,  whose  character,  passions,  and  suffer- 
ings are  the  main  subject-matter  of  the  play ; — from  Lear, 
the  persona  patiens  of  his  drama,  Shakspere  passes  without 
delay  to  the  second  in  importance,  the  chief  agent  and 
prime  mover,  and  introduces  Edmund  to  our  acquaintance, 
preparing  us  with  the  same  felicity  of  judgment,  and  in 
the  same  easy  and  natural  way,  for  his  character  in  the 
seemingly  casual  communication  of  its  origin  and  occasion. 
From  the  first  drawing  up  of  the  curtain  Edmund  has 
etood  before  us  in  the  united  strength  and  beauty  of 
earliest  manhood.  Our  eyes  have  been  questioning  him. 
Gifted  as  he  is  with  high  advantages  of  person,  and  further 
endowed  by  nature  with  a  powerful  intellect  and  a  strong 
energetic  will,  even  without  any  concurrence  of  circum- 
stances and  accident,  pride  will  necessarily  be  the  sin  that 
most  easily  besets  him.  But  Edmund  is  also  the  known 
and  acknowledged  son  of  the  princely  Grloster :  he,  there- 
fore, has  both  the  germ  of  pride,  and  the  conditions  best 
fitted  to  evolve  and  ripen  it  into  a  predominant  feeling. 
Yet  hitherto  no  reason  appears  why  it  should  be  other 
than  the  not  unusual  pride  of  person,  talent,  and  birth, — 
a  pride  auxiliary,  if  not  akin,  to  many  virtues,  and  the 
natural  ally  of  honourable  impulses.  But  alas !  in  his 
own  presence  his  own  father  takes  shame  to  himself  for 
the  frank  avowal  that  he  is  his  father, — he  has  "  blushed 
so  often  to  acknowledge  him  that  he  is  now  brazed  to  it ! " 
Edmund  hears  the  circumstances  of  his  birth  spoken  of 
with  a  most  degrading  and  licentious  levity, — his  mother 
described  as  a  wanton  by  her  own  paramour,  and  the 
remembrance  of  the  animal  sting,  the  low  criminal  grati- 
fications connected  with  her  wantonness  and  prostituted 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  333 

beauty,  assigned  as  the  reason,  why  "  the  whoreson  must 
be  acknowledged  ! "  This,  and  the  consciousness  of  its 
notoriety ;  the  gnawing  conviction  that  every  show  of 
respect  is  an  effort  of  courtesy,  which  recalls,  while  it 
represses,  a  contrary  feeling ; — this  is  the  ever  trickling 
flow  of  wormwood  and  gall  into  the  wounds  of  pride, — the 
corrosive  virus  which  inoculates  pride  with  a  venom  not 
its  own,  with  envy,  hatred,  and  a  lust  for  that  power 
which  in  its  blaze  of  radiance  would  hide  the  dark  spots 
on  his  disc, — with  pangs  of  shame  personally  undeserved 
and  therefore  felt  as  wrongs,  and  with  a  blind  ferment  of 
vindictive  working  towards  the  occasions  and  causes,  es- 
pecially towards  a  brother,  whose  stainless  birth  and  lawful 
honours  were  the  constant  remembrancers  of  his  own 
debasement,  and  were  ever  in  the  way  to  prevent  all  chance 
of  its  being  unknown,  or  overlooked  and  forgotten.  Add! 
to  this,  that  with  excellent  judgment,  and  provident  for 
the  claims  of  the  moral  sense, — for  that  which,  relatively 
to  the  drama,  is  called  poetic  justice,  and  as  the  fittest 
means  for  reconciling  the  feelings  of  the  spectators  to  the 
horrors  of  Gloster's  after  sufferings, — at  least,  of  rendering 
them  somewhat  less  unendurable  ; — (for  I  will  not  disguise 
my  conviction,  that  in  this  one  point  the  tragic  in  this  play 
has  been  urged  beyond  the  outermost  mark  and  ne  plus 
ultra  of  the  dramatic) — Shakspere  has  precluded  all  excuse 
and  palliation  of  the  guilt  incurred  by  both  the  parents 
of  the  base-born  Edmund,  by  Gloster's  confession  that  he 
was  at  the  time  a  married  man,  and  already  blest  with  at 
lawful  heir  of  his  fortunes.  The  mournful  alienation  of 
brotherly  love,  occasioned  by  the  law  of  primogeniture  in 
noble  families,  or  rather  by  the  unnecessary  distinctions* 
engrafted  thereon,  and  this  in  children  of  the  same  stock, 
is  still  almost  proverbial  on  the  continent, — especially,  as- 
I  know  from  my  own  observation,  in  the  south  of  Europe, 
— and  appears  to  have  been  scarcely  less  common  in  our 


334  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

own  island  before  the  Revolution  of  1688,  if  we  may  judge 
from  the  characters  and  sentiments  so  frequent  in  our  elder 
comedies.  There  is  the  younger  brother,  for  instance,  in  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  play  of  the  "  Scornful  Lady,"  on  the  one 
side,  and  Oliver  in  Shakspere's  "As  You  Like  It,"  on  the 
other.  Need  it  be  said  how  heavy  an  aggravation,  in  such 
a  case,  the  stain  of  bastardy  must  have  been,  were  it  only 
that  the  younger  brother  was  liable  to  hear  his  own  dis- 
honour and  his  mother's  infamy  related  by  his  father  with 
an  excusing  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  and  in  a  tone  betwixt 
waggery  and  shame ! 

By  the  circumstances  here  enumerated  as  so  many  pre- 
disposing causes,  Edmund's  character  might  well  be  deemed 
already  sufficiently  explained  ;  and  our  minds  prepared  for 
it.  But  in  this  tragedy  the  story  or  fable  constrained 
Shakspere  to  introduce  wickedness  in  an  outrageous  form 
in  the  persons  of  Regan  and  Goneril.  He  had  read  nature 
too  needfully  not  to  know,  that  courage,  intellect,  and 
strength  of  character,  are  the  most  impressive  forms  of 
power,  and  that  to  power  in  itself,  without  reference  to 
any  moral  end,  an  inevitable  admiration  and  complacency 
appertains,  whether  it  be  displayed  in  the  conquests  of  a 
Buonaparte  or  Tamerlane,  or  in  the  foam  and  the  thunder 
of  a  cataract.  But  in  the  exhibition  of  such  a  character  it 
was  of  the  highest  importance  to  prevent  the  gnilt  from 
passing  into  utter  monstrosity, — which  again  depends  on 
the  presence  or  absence  of  causes  and  temptations  sufficient 
to  account  for  the  wickedness,  without  the  necessity  of 
recurring  to  a  thorough  fiendishness  of  nature  for  its  origi- 
nation. For  such  are  the  appointed  relations  of  intellectual 
power  to  truth,  and  of  truth  to  goodness,  that  it  becomes 
both  morally  and  poetically  unsafe  to  present  what  is  admi- 
rable,— what  our  nature  compels  us  to  admire — in  the 
mind,  and  what  is  most  detestable  in  the  heart,  as  co- 
existing in  the  same  individual  without  any  apparent  con- 


SECT.  IV. ]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  335 

uection,  or  any  modification  of  the  one  by  the  other.  That 
Shakspere  has  in  one  instance,  that  of  lago,  approached  to 
this,  and  that  he  has  done  it  successfully,  is,  perhaps,  the 
most  astonishing  proof  of  his  genius,  and  the  opulence  of 
its  resources.  But  in  the  present  tragedy,  in  which  he 
was  compelled  to  present  a  Groneril  and  a  Began,  it  was 
most  carefully  to  be  avoided ; — and  therefore  the  only  one 
conceivable  addition  to  the  inauspicious  influences  on  the 
preformation  of  Edmund's  character  is  given,  in  the  infor- 
mation that  all  the  kindly  counteractions  to  the  mischievous 
feelings  of  shame,  which  might  have  been  derived  from  co- 
domestication  with  Edgar  and  their  common  father,  had 
been  cut  off  by  his  absence  from  home,  and  foreign  educa- 
tion from  boyhood  to  the  present  time,  and  a  prospect  of 
its  continuance,  as  if  to  preclude  all  risk  of  his  interference 
with  the  father's  views  for  the  elder  and  legitimate  son  : — • 

"  He  hath  been  out  nine  years,  and  away  he  shall  again." 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

"  Cor.  Nothing,  my  lord. 

Lear.   Nothing  ? 

Cor.     Nothing. 

Lear.    Nothing  can  come  of  nothing :  speak  again. 

Cor.     Unhappy  that  I  am,  I  cannot  heave 

My  heart  into  my  mouth :  I  love  your  majesty 
According  to  my  bond ;  nor  more,  nor  less." 

There  is  something  of  disgust  at  the  ruthless  hypocrisy 
of  her  sinters,  and  some  little  faulty  admixture  of  pride 
and  sullenness  in  Cordelia's  "Nothing;"  and  her  tone  is 
well  contrived,  indeed,  to  lessen  the  glaring  absurdity  of 
Lear's  conduct,  but  answers  the  yet  more  important  pur- 
pose of  forcing  away  the  attention  from  the  nursery-tale, 
the  moment  it  has  served  its  end,  that  of  supplying  the 
canvas  for  the  picture.  This  is  also  materially  furthered 
by  Kent's  opposition,  which  displays  Lear's  moral  incapa^ 


336  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

bility  of  resigning  the  sovereign  power  in  the  very  act  of 
disposing  of  it.  Kent  is,  perhaps,  the  nearest  to  perfect 
goodness  in  all  Shakspere's  characters,  and  yet  the  most 
individualized.1  There  is  an  extraordinary  charm  in  his 
bluntness,  which  is  that  only  of  a  nobleman  arising  from  a 
contempt  of  overstrained  courtesy ;  and  combined  with 
easy  placability  where  goodness  of  heart  is  appai*ent.  His 
passionate  affection  for,  and  fidelity  to,  Lear  act  on  our 
feelings  in  Lear's  own  favour  :  virtue  itself  seems  to  be  in 
company  with  him. 

Ib.  sc.  2.     Edmund's  speech  : — 

"  Who,  in  the  lusty  stealth  of  nature,  take 
More  composition  and  fierce  quality 
Than  doth,"  &c. 

Warburton's  note  upon  a  quotation  from  Vanini. 

Poor  Vanini ! — Any  one  but  Warburton  would  have 
thought  this  precious  passage  more  characteristic  of  Mr. 
Shandy  than  of  atheism.  If  the  fact  really  were  so  (which 
it  is  not,  but  almost  the  contrary),  I  do  not  see  why  the 
most  confirmed  theist  might  not  very  naturally  utter  the 
same  wish.  But  it  is  proverbial  that  the  youngest  son  in 
a  large  family  is  commonly  the  man  of  the  greatest  talents 
in  it ;  and  as  good  an  authority  as  Vanini  has  said — inca- 
lescere  in  venerem  ardentius,  spei  sobolis  injuriosum  esse. 

In  this  speech  of  Edmund  you  see,  as  soon  as  a  man 
cannot  reconcile  himself  to  reason,  how  his  conscience  flics 
off  by  way  of  appeal  to  nature,  who  is  sure  upon  such 
occasions  never  to  find  fault,  and  also  how  shame  sharpens 
a  predisposition  in  the  heart  to  evil.  For  it  is  a  profound 
moral,  that  shame  will  naturally  generate  guilt ;  the  op- 
pressed will  be  vindictive,  like  Shylock,  and  in  the  anguish 
of  undeserved  ignominy  the  delusion  secretly  springs  up, 

1  Compare  note  on  Mr.  Collier's  Sixth  Lecture,  from  The  Friend 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERK.  337 

of  getting  over  the  moral  quality  of  an  action  by  fixing  the 
mind  on  the  mere  physical  act  alone. 
Ib.     Edmund's  speech  : — 

"This  is  the  excellent  foppery  of  the  world!  that,  when  we  are  sick 
in  fortune  (often  the  surfeit  of  our  own  behaviour),  we  make  guilty  of 
our  disasters,  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the  stars,"  &c. 

Thus  scorn  and  misanthropy  are  often  the  anticipations 
and  mouth-pieces  of  wisdom  in  the  detection  of  super- 
stitions. Both  individuals  and  nations  may  be  free  from 
such  prejudices  by  being  below  them,  as  well  as  by  rising 
above  them. 

Ib.  sc.  3.  The  Steward  should  be  placed  in  exact  anti- 
thesis to  Kent,  as  the  only  character  of  utter  irredeemable 
baseness  in  Shakspere.  Even  in  this  the  judgment  and 
invention  of  the  poet  are  very  observable ; — for  what  else 
could  the  willing  tool  of  a  Goneril  be  ?  Not  a  vice  bub 
this  of  baseness  was  left  open  to  him. 

Ib.  sc.  4.  In  Lear  old  age  is  itself  a  character, — its 
natural  imperfections  being  increased  by  life-long  habits  of 
receiving  a  prompt  obedience.  Any  addition  of  indivi- 
duality would  have  been  unnecessary  and  painful ;  for  the 
relations  of  others  to  him,  of  wondrous  fidelity  and  of 
frightful  ingratitude,  alone  sufficiently  distinguish  him. 
Thus  Lear  becomes  the  open  and  ample  play-room  of 
nature's  passions. 

"Knight.  Since  my  young  lady's  going  into  France,  Sir;  the  fool 
hath  much  pin'd  away." 

The  Fool  is  no  comic  buffoon  to  make  the  groundlings 
laugh, — no  forced  condescension  of  Shakspere's  genius  to 
the  taste  of  his  audience.  Accordingly  the  poet  prepares 
for  his  introduction,  which  he  never  does  with  any  of  his 
common  clowns  and  fools,  by  bringing  him  into  living 
connection  with  the  pathos  of  the  play.  He  is  as  wonderful 

z 


338  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER 

a  creation  as  Caliban ;    his  wild  babblings,   and  inspired 
idiocy,  articulate  and  gauge  the  horrors  of  the  scene. 

The  monster  Goneril  prepares  what  is  necessary,  while 
the  character  of  Albany  renders  a  still  more  maddening 
grievance  possible,  namely,  Regan  and  Cornwall  in  perfect 
sympathy  of  monstrosity.  Not  a  sentiment,  not  an  image, 
•which  can  give  pleasure  on  its  own  account,  is  admitted ; 
whenever  these  creatures  are  introduced,  and  they  are 
brought  forward  as  little  as  possible,  pure  horror  reigns 
throughout.  In  this  scene  and  in  all  the  early  speeches  of 
Lear,  the  one  general  sentiment  of  filial  ingratitude  prevails 
as  the  main  spring  of  the  feelings ; — in  this  early  stage  the 
outward  object  causing  the  pressure  on  the  mind,  which  is 
not  yet  sufficiently  familiarized  with  the  anguish  for  the 
imagination  to  work  upon  it. 

Ib. 

"  Gon.  Do  you  mark  that,  my  lord  ? 
Alb.    I  cannot  be  so  partial,  Goneril, 

To  the  great  love  I  bear  you. 
Gon.  Pray  you,  content,"  &c. 

Observe  the  baffled  endeavour  of  Goneril  to  act  on  the 
fears  of  Albany,  and  yet  his  passiveness,  his  inertia ;  he  is 
not  convinced,  and  yet  he  is  afraid  of  looking  into  the 
thing.  Such  characters  always  yield  to  those  who  will 
take  the  trouble  of  governing  them,  or  for  them.  Perhaps, 
the  influence  of  a  princess,  whose  choice  of  him  had 
royalized  his  state,  may  be  some  little  excuse  for  Albany's 
weakness. 

Ib.  sc.  5. 

"Lear.  0  let  me  not  be  mad,  not  mad,  sweet  heaven! 
Keep  me  in  temper !  I  would  not  be  mad ! —  " 

The  mind's  own  anticipation  of  madness  !  The  deepest 
tragic  notes  are  often  struck  by  a  half  sense  of  an  impend- 
ing blow.  The  Fool's  conclusion  of  this  act  by  a  grotesque 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  339 

prattling  seems  to  indicate  the  dislocation  of  feeling  that 
has  begun  and  is  to  be  continued. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Edmund's  speech : — 

"  He  replied, 

Thou  unpossessing  bastard !  "  &c. 

Thus  the  secret  poison  in  Edmund's  own  heart  steals 
forth ;  and  then  observe  poor  Grloster's — 

"  Loyal  and  natural  boy !" 

as  if  praising  the  crime  of  Edmund's  birth ! 
Ib.     Compare  Regan's — 

"  What,  did  my  father's  godson  seek  your  life  ? 
He  whom  my  father  named  ?  " 

with  the  unfeminine  violence  of  her — 

"  All  vengeance  comes  too  short,"  &c. 

and  yet  no  reference  to  the  guilt,  but  only  to  the  accident, 
which  she  uses  as  an  occasion  for  sneering  at  her  father. 
Regan  is  not,  in  fact,  a  greater  monster  than  Goneril,  but 
she  has  the  power  of  casting  more  venom. 
Ib.  sc.  2.     Cornwall's  speech  : — 

"  This  is  some  fellow, 

Who,  having  been  praised  for  bluntness,  doth  affect 
A  saucy  roughness,"  &c. 

In  thus  placing  these  profound  general  truths  in  the 
mouths  of  such  men  as  Cornwall,  Edmund,  lago,  <fec., 
Shakspere  at  once  gives  them  utterance,  and  yet  shows 
how  indefinite  their  application  is. 

Ib.  sc.  3.  Edgar's  assumed  madness  serves  the  great 
purpose  of  taking  off  part  of  the  shock  which  would  other- 
wise be  caused  by  the  true  madness  of  Lear,  and  further 
displays  the  profound  difference  between  the  two.  In 
every  attempt  at  representing  madness  throughout  the 
whole  range  of  dramatic  literature,  with  the  single  excep- 


340  NOTES   ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

tion  of  Lear,  it  is  mere  lightheadedness,  as  especially  in 
Otway.  In  Edgar's  ravings  Shakspere  all  the  while  lets 
you  see  a  fixed  purpose,  a  practical  end  in  view  ; — in  Lear's, 
there  is  only  the  brooding  of  the  one  anguish,  an  eddy 
without  progression. 

Ib.  sc.  4.     Lear's  speech : — 

"  The  king  would  speak  with  Cornwall ;  the  dear  father 

Would  with  his  daughter  speak/'  &c. 

»  *  »  *  * 

"  No,  but  not  yet :  may  be  he  is  not  well,"  &c. 

The  strong  interest  now  felt  by   Lear  to  try  to  find 
excuses  for  his  daughter  is  most  pathetic. 
Ib.     Lear's  speech  : — 

" Beloved  Regan, 


Thy  sister's  naught ; — O  Regan,  she  hath  tied 
Sharp-tootlvd  unkindness,  like  a  vulture,  here. 
I  can  scarce  speak  to  thee ; — thou'lt  not  believe 
Of1  how  depraved  a  quality — O  Regan  ! 

Beg.  I  pray  you,  Sir,  take  patience ;  I  have  hope, 
You  less  know  how  to  value  her  desert, 
Than  she  to  scant  her  duty. 

Lear.  Say,  how  is  that  ?  " 

Nothing  is  so  heart-cutting  as  a  cold  unexpected  defence 
or  palliation  of  a  cruelty  passionately  complained  of,  or  so 
expressive  of  thorough  hard-heartedness.  And  feel  the 
excessive  horror  of  Regan's  "  O,  Sir,  you  are  old!" — and 
then  her  drawing  from  that  universal  object  of  reverence 
and  indulgence  the  very  reason  for  her  frightful  conclusion — 

"  Say,  you  have  wrong'd  her  !" 

All  Lear's  faults  increase  our  pity  for  him.     We  refuse  to 
know  them  otherwise  than  as  means  of  his  sufferings,  and 
aggravations  of  his  daughter's  ingratitude. 
Ib.     Lear's  speech  : — 

1  Read  «  with." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  341 

"  O,  reason  not  the  need :  our  basest  beggars 
Are  in  the  poorest  thing  superfluous,"  &c. 

Observe  that  the  tranquillity  which  follows  the  first 
stunning  of  the  blow  permits  Lear  to  reason. 

Act  iii.  sc.  4.  0,  what  a  world's  convention  of  agonies 
is  here !  All  external  nature  in  a  storm,  all  moral  nature 
convulsed, — the  real  madness  of  Lear,  the  feigned  madness 
of  Edgar,  the  babbling  of  the  Fool,  the  desperate  fidelity 
of  Kent — surely  such  a  scene  was  never  conceived  before 
or  since !  Take  it  but  as  a  picture  for  the  eye  only,  it  is 
more  terrific  than  any  which  a  Michel  Angelo,  inspired  by 
a  Dante,  could  have  conceived,  and  which  none  but  a 
Michel  Angelo  could  have  executed.  Or  let  it  have  been 
uttered  to  the  blind,  the  bowlings  of  nature  would  seem 
converted  into  the  voice  of  conscious  humanity.  This 
scene  ends  with  the  first  symptoms  of  positive  derange- 
ment ;  and  the  intervention  of  the  fifth  scene  is  particularly 
judicious, — the  interruption  allowing  an  interval  for  Lear 
to  appear  in  full  madness  in  the  sixth  scene. 

Ib.  sc.  7.     Gloster's  blinding  : — 

What  can  I  say  of  this  scene  ? — There  is  my  reluctance 
to  think  Shakspere  wrong,  and  yet — 

Act  iv.  sc.  6.     Lear's  speech  : — 

"  Ha !  Goneril !— with  a  white  beard .' — They  flattered  me  like  a  dog ; 
and  told  me,  I  had  white  hairs  in  my  beard,  ere  the  black  ones  were 
there.  To  say  Ay  and  No  to  every  thing  '  I  said ! — Ay  and  No  too  was 
no  good  divinity.  When  the  rain  came  to  wet  me  once,"  &c. 

The  thunder  recurs,  but  still  at  a  greater  distance  from 
our  feelings. 

Ib.  sc.  7.     Lear's  speech  : — 

"  Where  have  I  been  ?     Where  am  I  ? — Fair  daylight  ? — 
I  am  mightily  abused. — I  should  even  die  with  pity 
To  see  another  thus,"  &c. 


Read  "thing  that  I" 


342  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHKTC  [1818 

How  beautifully  the  affecting  return  of  Lear  to  reason, 
and  the  mild  pathos  of  these  speeches  prepare  the  mind 
for  the  last  sad,  yet  sweet,  consolation  of  the  aged  sufferer's 
death ! 


Hamlet. 

["Hamlet"  was  the  play,  or  rather  Hamlet  himself  was  the 
character,  in  the  intuition  and  exposition  of  which  I  first  made 
my  turn  for  philosophical  criticism,  and  especially  for  insight 
into  the  genius  of  Shakspere,  noticed.  This  happened  first 
amongst  my  acquaintances,  as  Sir  George  Beaumont  will  bear 
witness ;  and  subsequently,  long  before J  Schlegel  had  delivered 
at  Vienna  the  lectures  on  Shakspere,  which  he  afterwards  pub- 
lished, I  had  given  on  the  same  subject  eighteen  lectures  sub- 
stantially the  same,  proceeding  from  the  very  same  point  of 
view,  and  deducing  the  same  conclusions,  so  far  as  I  either  then 
agreed,  or  now  agree,  with  him.  I  gave  these  lectures  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  before  six  or  seven  hundred  auditors  of  rank 
and  eminence,  in  the  spring  of  the  same  year,  in  which  Sir 
Humphry  Davy,  a  fellow-lecturer,  made  his  great  revolutionary 
discoveries  in  chemistry.  Even  in  detail  the  coincidence  of 
Schlegel  with  my  lectures  was  so  extraordinary,  that  all  who  at 
a  later  period 2  heard  the  same  words,  taken  by  me  from  my  notes 

1  This  "long  before"  must  be  set  down  to  a  little  excitement  (for 
more  of  which,  see  succeeding  sentence,  commencing  "  Mr.  Hazlitt"), 
if  we  were  right,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt,  in  considering  Coleridge's 
first  lectures  at  the  l?oyal  Institution,  to  have  been  those  of  1806-8. 
See  Lectures  of  1811-12,  Introductory  Matter,  §  5.  Coleridge's  state- 
ments  vary  only  in  seeming.  In  the  letter  of  Feb.  1818  (see  Lecture 
IX.,  of  1811-12)  he  says  Schlegel's  lectures  "  were  not  given  orally  till 
two  years  after  mine."  This  gives  1806.  In  the  note  in  the  text,  "in 
the  spring  of  the  same  year,"  &c. ,  refers  to  1807.  But  it  clearly  was 
"  before."  Schlegel's  lectures  were  delivered  at  Vienna  during  the  year 
1808,  and  published  the  year  following.  (Volesungen  iibcr  dramatische 
Kunst  und  Litcratur,  1809,  3  vols.) 

Schlegel  was,  by  five  j-ears,  Coleridge's  senior,  having  been  born  in 
4767.  He  was  professor  at  Jena,  when  Coleridge  was  in  Germany. 

9  Coleridge  lectured  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  1810. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  343 

of  the  lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution,  concluded  a  borrowing 
on  my  part  from  Schlegel.  Mr.  Hazlitt,  whose  hatred  of  me  is 
in  such  an  inverse  ratio  to  my  zealous  kindness  towards  him,  as  to 
be  defended  by  his  warmest  admirer,  Charles  Lamb — (who, 
God  bless  him!  besides  his  characteristic  obstinacy  of  adherence 
to  old  friends,  as  long  at  least  as  they  are  at  all  down  in  the 
world,  is  linked  as  by  a  charm  to  Hazlitt's  conversation) — only 
as  "  frantic ; " — Mr.  Hazlitt,  I  say,  himself  replied  to  an  asser- 
tion of  my  plagiarism  from  Schlegel  in  these  words ; — "  That  is 
a  lie ;  for  I  myself  heard  the  very  same  character  of  Hamlet 
from  Coleridge  before  he  went  to  Germany,  and  when  he  had 
neither  read  nor  could  read  a  page  of  German  ! "  Now  Hazlitt 
was  on  a  visit  to  me  at  my  cottage  at  Nether  Stowey,  Somerset, 
in  the  summer  of  the  year  1 798,  in  the  September  of  which  year 
I  first  was  out  of  sight  of  the  shores  of  Great  Britain.  Recorded 
by  me,  S.  T.  Coleridge,  7th  January,  1819.] 

The  seeming  inconsistencies  in  the  conduct  and  character 
of  Hamlet  have  long  exercised  the  conjectural  ingenuity  of 
critics ;  and,  as  we  are  always  loth  to  suppose  that  the 
cause  of  defective  apprehension  is  in  ourselves,  the  mystery 
has  been  too  commonly  explained  by  the  very  easy  process 
of  setting  it  down  as  in  fact  inexplicable,  and  by  resolving 
the  phenomenon  into  a  misgrowth  or  lusus  of  the  capricious 
and  irregular  genius  of  Shakspere.  The  shallow  and 
stnpid  arrogance  of  these  vulgar  and  indolent  decisions  I 
would  fain  do  my  best  to  expose.  I  believe  the  character 
of  Hamlet  may  be  traced  to  Shakspere's  deep  and  accurate 
science  in  mental  philosophy.  Indeed,  that  this  character 
must  have  some  connection  with  the  common  fundamental 
laws  of  our  nature  may  be  assumed  from  the  fact,  that 
Hamlet  has  been  the  darling  of  every  country  in  which 
the  literature  of  England  has  been  fostered.  In  order  to 
understand  him,  it  is  essential  that  we  should  reflect  on  tho 
constitution  of  our  own  minds.  Man  is  distinguished  from 
the  brute  animals  in  proportion  as  thought  prevails  over 
sense :  but  in  the  healthy  processes  of  the  mind,  a  balance 
is  constantly  maintained  between  the  impressions  from  out- 


344  NOTES  ON  SOME  OIHEB  [1818 

•ward  objects  and  the  inward  operations  of  the  intellect ; — 
for  if  there  be  an  overbalance  in  the  contemplative  faculty, 
man  thereby  becomes  the  creature  of  mere  meditation,  and 
loses  his  natural  power  of  action.  Now  one  of  Shakspere's 
modes  of  creating  characters  is,  to  conceive  any  one  intel- 
lectual or  moral  faculty  in  morbid  excess,  and  then  to  place 
liimself,  Shakspere,  thus  mutilated  or  diseased,  under  given 
circumstances.  In  Hamlet  he  seems  to  have  wished  to 
exemplify  the  moral  necessity  of  a  due  balance  between  our 
attention  to  the  objects  of  our  senses,  and  our  meditation 
on  the  workings  of  our  minds, — an  equilibrium  between  the 
real  and  the  imaginary  worlds.  In  Hamlet  this  balance 
is  disturbed :  his  thoughts,  and  the  images  of  his  fancy, 
are  far  more  vivid  than  his  actual  perceptions,  and  his  very 
perceptions,  instantly  passing  through  the  medium  of  his 
contemplations,  acquire,  as  they  pass,  a  form  and  a  colour 
not  naturally  their  own.  Hence  we  see  a  great,  an  almost 
enormous,  intellectual  activity,  and  a  proportionate  aversion 
to  real  action  consequent  upon  it,  with  all  its  symptoms 
.and  accompanying  qualities.  This  character  Shakspere 
places  in  circumstances,  under  which  it  is  obliged  to  act 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment : — Hamlet  is  brave  and  careless 
of  death ;  but  he  vacillates  from  sensibility,  and  procras- 
tinates from  thought,  and  loses  the  power  of  action  in  the 
energy  of  resolve.  Thus  it  is  that  this  tragedy  presents  a 
direct  contrast  to  that  of  "Macbeth;"  the  one  proceeds 
with  the  utmost  slowness,  the  other  with  a  crowded  and 
breathless  rapidity. 

The  effect  of  this  overbalance  of  the  imaginative  power 
is  beautifully  illustrated  in  the  everlasting  broodings  and 
superfluous  activities  of  Hamlet's  mind,  which,  unseated 
from  its  healthy  relation,  is  constantly  occupied  with  the 
world  within,  and  abstracted  from  the  world  without, — 
giving  substance  to  shadows,  and  throwing  a  mist  over  all 
common-place  actualities.  It  is  the  nature  of  thought  to 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  345 

be  indefinite; — definiteness  belongs  to  external  imagery 
alone.  Hence  it  is  that  the  sense  of  sublimity  arises,  noi 
from  the  sight  of  an  outward  object,  but  from  the  beholder's 
reflection  upon  it ; — not  from  the  sensuous  impression,  but 
from  the  imaginative  reflex.  Few  have  seen  a  celebrated 
waterfall  without  feeling  something  akin  to  disappointment: 
it  is  only  subsequently  that  the  image  comes  back  full  into 
the  mind,  and  brings  with  it  a  train  of  grand  or  beautiful 
associations.  Hamlet  feels  this ;  his  senses  are  in  a  state 
of  trance,  and  he  looks  upon  external  things  as  hiero- 
glyphics. His  soliloquy — 

"O!  that  this  too  too  solid  flesh  would  melt,"  &c. 

springs  from  that  craving  after  the  indefinite — for  that 
which  is  not — which  most  easily  besets  men  of  genius  ;  and 
the  self-delusion  common  to  this  temper  of  mind  is  finely 
exemplified  in  the  character  which  Hamlet  gives  of  him- 
self :— 

"  It  cannot  be 

But  I  am  pigeon- liver'd,  and  lack  gall 
To  make  oppression  bitter." 

He  mistakes  the  seeing  his  chains  for  the  breaking  them, 
delays  action  till  action  is  of  no  use,  and  dies  the  victim  of 
mere  circumstance  and  accident. 

There  is  a  great  significancy  in  the  names  of  Shakspere's 
plays.  In  the  "Twelfth  Night,"  "Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,"  "As  You  Like  It,"  and  "Winter's  Tale,"  the 
total  effect  is  produced  by  a  co-ordination  of  the  characters 
as  in  a  wreath  of  flowers.  But  in  "  Coriolanus,"  "  Lear," 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  "  Hamlet,"  "  Othello,"  &c.,  the  effect 
arises  from  the  subordination  of  all  to  one,  either  as  the 
prominent  person,  or  the  principal  object.  "  Cymbeline  " 
is  the  only  exception ;  and  even  that  has  its  advantages  in 
preparing  the  audience  for  the  chaos  of  time,  place,  and 


346  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

costume,  by  throwing  the  date  back  into  a  fabulous  king's 
reign. 

But  as  of  more  importance,  so  more  striking,  is  the 
judgment  displayed  by  our  truly  dramatic  poet,  as  well  as 
poet  of  the  drama,  in  the  management  of  his  first  scenes. 
With  the  single  exception  of  "  Cymbeline,"  they  either 
place  before  us  at  one  glance  both  the  past  and  the  future 
in  some  effect,  which  implies  the  continuance  and  full 
agency  of  its  cause,  as  in  the  feuds  and  party-spirit  of  the 
servants  of  the  two  houses  in  the  first  scene  of  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet ;  "  or  in  the  degrading  passion  for  shows  and 
public  spectacles,  and  the  overwhelming  attachment  for 
the  newest  successful  war-chief  in  the  Roman  people, 
already  become  a  populace,  contrasted  with  the  jealousy  of 
the  nobles  in  "  Julius  Caesar ;  " — or  they  at  once  commence 
the  action  so  as  to  excite  a  curiosity  for  the  explanation  in 
the  following  scenes,  as  in  the  storm  of  wind  and  waves, 
and  the  boatswain  in  the  "  Tempest,"  instead  of  antici- 
pating our  curiosity,  as  in  most  other  first  scenes,  and  in 
too  many  other  first  acts ; — or  they  act,  by  contrast  of 
diction  suited  to  the  characters,  at  once  to  heighten  the 
effect,  and  yet  to  give  a  naturalness  to  the  language  and 
rhythm  of  the  principal  personages,  either  as  that  of  Pros- 
pero  and  Miranda  by  the  appropriate  lowness  of  the  style, — 
or  as  in  "King  John,"  by  the  equally  appropriate  state- 
liness  of  official  harangues  or  narratives,  so  that  the  after 
blank  verse  seems  to  belong  to  the  rank  and  quality  of  the 
speakers,  and  not  to  the  poet ; — or  they  strike  at  once  the 
key-note,  and  give  the  predominant  spirit  of  the  play,  as 
in  the  "  Twelfth  Night,"  and  in  "  Macbeth  ;  " — or  finally, 
the  first  scene  comprises  all  these  advantages  at  once,  as  in 
"  Hamlet." 

Compare  the  easy  language  of  common  life,  in  which 
this  drama  commences,  with  the  direful  music  and  wild 
wayward  rhythm  and  abrupt  lyrics  of  the  opening  of 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEKB.  347 

"Macbeth."  The  tone  is  quite  familiar; — there  is  no 
poetic  description  of  night,  no  elaborate  information  con- 
veyed by  one  speaker  to  another  of  what  both  had  imme- 
diately before  their  senses — (such  as  the  first  distich  in 
Addison's  "  Cato,1  which  is  a  translation  into  poetry  of 
"  Past  four  o'clock  and  a  dark  morning ! ")  ; — and  yet 
nothing  bordering  on  the  comic  on  the  one  hand,  nor  any 
striving  of  the  intellect  on  the  other.  It  is  precisely  the 
language  of  sensation  among  men  who  feared  no  charge  of 
effeminacy,  for  feeling  what  they  had  no  want  of  resolution 
to  bear.  Yet  the  armour,  the  dead  silence,  the  watchful- 
ness that  first  interrupts  it,  the  welcome  relief  of  the  guard, 
the  cold,  the  broken  expressions  of  compelled  attention  to 
bodily  feelings  still  under  control — all  excellently  accord 
with,  and  prepare  for,  the  after  gradual  rise  into  tragedy  j 
— but,  above  all,  into  a  tragedy,  the  interest  of  which  is  as 
eminently  ad  et  apud  intra,  as  that  of  "  Macbeth  "  is  directly 
ad  extra. 

In  all  the  best  attested  stories  of  ghosts  and  visions,  as 
in  that  of  Brutus,  of  Archbishop  Cranmer,  that  of  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini  recorded  by  himself,  and  the  vision  of 
Galileo  communicated  by  him  to  his  favourite  pupil  Tor- 
ricelli,  the  ghost-seers  were  in  a  state  of  cold  or  chilling 
damp  from  without,  and  of  anxiety  inwardly.  It  has  been 
with  all  of  them  as  with  Francisco  on  his  guard, — aloneT 
in  the  depth  and  silence  of  the  night ; — "  'twas  bitter  coldr 
and  they  were  sick  at  heart,  and  not  a  mouse  stirring."  The 
attention  to  minute  sounds, — naturally  associated  with  the 
recollection  of  minute  objects,  and  the  more  familiar  and 
trifling,  the  more  impressive  from  the  unusualness  of  their 
producing  any  impression  at  all — gives  a  philosophic  per- 

1  "  The  dawn  is  overcast,  the  morning  lowers, 

And  heavily  in  clouds  brings  on  the  day, 
The  great,  the  important  day,  big  with  the  fate 
Of  Cato  and  of  Rome." 


348  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

tinency  to  this  last  image ;  but  it  has  likewise  its  dramatic 
use  and  purpose.  For  its  commonness  in  ordinary  con- 
versation tends  to  produce  the  sense  of  reality,  and  at  onco 
hides  the  poet,  and  yet  approximates  the  reader  or  spec- 
tator to  that  state  in  which  the  highest  poetry  will  appear, 
and  in  its  component  parts,  though  not  in  the  whole  com- 
position, really  is,  the  language  of  nature.  If  I  should  not 
speak  it,  I  feel  that  I  should  be  thinking  it ; — the  voice 
only  is  the  poet's, — the  words  are  my  own.  That  Shak- 
spere  meant  to  put  an  effect  in  the  actor's  power  in  the 
very  first  words — "Who's  there?" — is  evident  from  the 
impatience  expressed  by  the  startled  Francisco  in  the  words 
that  follow — "  Nay,  answer  me  :  stand  and  unfold  yourself." 
A  brave  man  is  never  so  peremptory,  as  when  he  fears  that 
he  is  afraid.  Observe  the  gradual  transition  from  the 
silence  and  the  still  recent  habit  of  listening  in  Francisco's 
• — "  I  think  I  hear  them  " — to  the  more  cheerful  call  out, 
which  a  good  actor  would  observe,  in  the — "  Stand  ho ! 
Who  is  there?"  Bernardo's  inquiry  after  Horatio,  and 
the  repetition  of  his  name  and  in  his  own  presence,  indicate 
a  respect  or  an  eagerness  that  implies  him  as  one  of  the 
persons  who  are  in  the  foreground ;  and  the  scepticism 
attributed  to  him, — 

"  Horatio  says,  'tis  but  our  fantasy ; 

And  will  not  let  belief  take  hold  of  him — " 

prepares  us  for  Hamlet's  after  eulogy  on  him  as  one  whose 
blood  and  judgment  were  happily  commingled.  The  actor 
should  also  be  careful  to  distinguish  the  expectation  and 
gladness  of  Bernardo's  "Welcome,  Horatio!"  from  the 
mere  courtesy  of  his  "  Welcome,  good  Marcellus  !  " 

Now  observe  the  admirable  indefiniteness  of  the  first 
opening  out  of  the  occasion  of  all  this  anxiety.  The  pre- 
paration informative  of  the  audience  is  just  as  much  as  was 
precisely  necessary,  and  no  more ; — it  begins  with  the  un- 
certainty appertaining  to  a  question  :— 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  349 

"  Mar.  What,  bas  this  thing  appear'd  again  to-night  ? — " 

Even  the  word  "  again  "  has  its  credibilizing  effect.  Then 
Horatio,  the  representative  of  the  ignorance  of  the  audience, 
not  himself,  but  by  Marcellus  to  Bernardo,  anticipates  the 
common  solution — "'tis  but  our  fantasy!"  upon  which 
Marcellus  rises  into 

"This  dreaded  sight,  twice  seen  of  us — " 

flrhich  immediately  afterwards  becomes  "this  apparition," 
and  that,  too,  an  intelligent  spirit,  that  is,  to  be  spoken  to  ! 
Then  comes  the  confirmation  of  Horatio's  disbelief ; — 

"  Tush !  tush !  'twill  not  appear ! — " 

and  the  silence,  with  which  the  scene  opened,  is  again 
restored  in  the  shivering  feeling  of  Horatio  sitting  down, 
at  such  a  time,  and  with  the  two  eye-witnesses,  to  hear  a 
story  of  a  ghost,  and  that,  too,  of  a  ghost  which  had 
appeared  twice  before  at  the  very  same  hour.  In  the  deep 
feeling  which  Bernardo  has  of  the  solemn  nature  of  what 
he  is  about  to  relate,  he  makes  an  effort  to  master  his  own 
imaginative  terrors  by  an  elevation  of  style, — itself  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  effort, — and  by  turning  off  from  the  ap- 
parition, as  from  something  which  would  force  him  too 
deeply  into  himself,  to  the  outward  objects,  the  realities  of 
nature,  which  had  accompanied  it : — 

"  Ber.  Last  night  of  all, 

When  yon  same  star,  that's  westward  from  the  pole, 
Hud  made  his  course  t<>  illume  that  part  of  heaven 
Where  now  it  burns,  Marcellus  and  my  self, 
The  bell  then  beating  one " 

This  passage  seems  to  contradict  the  critical  law  that 
•what  is  told,  makes  a  faint  impression  compared  with  what 
is  beholden ;  for  it  does  indeed  convey  to  the  mind  more 
than  the  eye  can  see ;  whilst  the  interruption  of  the  narra- 
tive at  the  very  moment,  when  we  are  most  intensely 


350  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

listening  for  the  sequel,  and  have  our  thoughts  diverted 
from  the  dreaded  sight  in  expectation  of  the  desired,  yet 
almost  dreaded,  tale — this  gives  all  the  suddenness  and 
surprise  of  the  original  appearance ; — 

"  Mar.  Peace,  break  thee  off;  look,  where  it  comes  again ! —  " 

Note  the  judgment  displayed  in  having  the  two  persons 
present,  who,  as  having  seen  the  Ghost  before,  are  naturally 
eager  in  confirming  their  former  opinions, — whilst  the 
sceptic  is  silent,  and  after  having  been  twice  addressed  by 
his  friends,  answers  with  two  hasty  syllables — "  Most  like," 
• — and  a  confession  of  horror : 

"  —  It  harrows  me  with  fear  and  wonder." 

O  heaven !  words  are  wasted  on  those  who  feel,  and  to 
those  who  do  not  feel  the  exquisite  judgment  of  Shakspere 
in  this  scene,  what  can  be  said  ? — Hume  himself  could  not 
but  have  had  faith  in  this  Ghost  dramatically,  let  his  anti- 
ghostism  have  been  as  strong  as  Samson  against  other 
ghosts  less  powerfully  raised. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

"  Mar.  Good  now,  sit  down,  and  tell  me,  he  that  knows, 
Why  this  same  strict  and  most  observant  watch,"  &c. 

How  delightfully  natural  is  the  transition  to  the  retro- 
spective narrative !  And  observe,  upon  the  Ghost's  re- 
appearance, how  much  Horatio's  courage  is  increased  by 
having  translated  the  late  individual  spectator  into  general 
thought  and  past  experience, — and  the  sympathy  of  Mar- 
cellus  and  Bernardo  with  his  patriotic  surmises  in  daring 
to  strike  at  the  Ghost ;  whilst  in  a  moment,  upon  its 
vanishing,  the  former  solemn  awe-stricken  feeling  returns 
upon  them : — 

"  We  do  it  wrong,  being  so  majestical, 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence. — " 

Jb.     Horatio's  speech : — 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  351 

"  I  have  heard, 

The  cock,  that  is  the  trumpet  to  the  morn, 
Doth  with  his  lofty  and  shrill-sounding  throat 
Awake  the  god  of  day,"  &c. 

No  Addison  could  be  more  careful  to  be  poetical  in  diction 
than  Shakspere  in  providing  tlie  grounds  and  sources  of 
its  propriety.  But  how  to  elevate  a  thing  almost  mean  by 
its  familiarity,  young  poets  may  learn  in  this  treatment  of 
the  cock-crow. 

Ib.     Horatio's  speech  : — 

"  And,  by  my  advice, 
Let  us  impart  what  we  have  seen  to-night 
Unto  young  Hamlet ;  for,  upon  my  life, 
The '  spirit,  dumb  to  us,  will  speak  to  him." 

Note  the  inobtrusive  and  yet  fully  adequate  mode  of  intro- 
ducing the  main  character,  "young  Hamlet,"  upon  whom 
is  transferred  all  the  interest  excited  for  the  acts  and  con- 
cerns of  the  king  his  father. 

Ib.  so.  2.  The  audience  are  now  relieved  by  a  change 
of  scene  to  the  royal  court,  in  order  that  "Hamlet"  may 
not  have  to  take  up  the  leavings  of  exhaustion.  In  the 
king's  speech,  observe  the  set  and  pedantically  antithetic 
form  of  the  sentences  when  touching  that  which  galled  the 
heels  of  conscience, — the  strain  of  undignified  rhetoric, — 
and  yet  in  what  follows  concerning  the  public  weal,  a 
certain  appropriate  majesty.  Indeed  was  he  not  a  royal 
brother  ? — 

Ib.     King's  speech : — 

"  And  now,  Laertes,  what's  the  news  with  you  ?  "  &c. 

Thus  with  great  art  Shakspere  introduces  a  most  important, 
but  still  subordinate  character  first,  Laertes,  who  is  yet 
thus  graciously  treated  in  consequence  of  the  assistance 

1  Rcad«thU." 


352  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

given  to  the  election  of  the  late  king's  brother  instead  of 
bis  son  by  Polonius. 
Ib. 

"  Ham.  A  little  more  than  kin,  and  less  than  kind. 
King.   How  is  it  that  the  clouds  still  hang  on  you  ? 
Ham.  Not  so,  my  lord,  I  am  too  much  i'  the  sun." 

Hamlet  opens  his  mouth  with  a  playing  on  words,  the 
complete  absence  of  which  throughout  characterizes  "  Mac- 
beth." This  playing  on  words  may  be  attributed  to  many 
causes  or  motives,  as  either  to  an  exuberant  activity  of 
mind,  as  in  the  higher  comedy  of  Shakspere  generally ; — 
or  to  an  imitation  of  it  as  a  mere  fashion,  as  if  it  were 
said — "Is  not  this  better  than  groaning?" — or  to  a  con- 
temptuous exultation  in  minds  vulgarized  and  overset  by 
their  success,  as  in  the  poetic  instance  of  Milton's  Devils 
in  the  battle ; — or  it  is  the  language  of  resentment,  as  is 
familiar  to  every  one  who  has  witnessed  the  quarrels  of  the 
lower  orders,  where  there  is  invariably  a  profusion  of  pun- 
ning invective,  whence,  perhaps,  nicknames  have  in  a  con- 
siderable degree  sprung  up ; — or  it  is  the  language  of 
suppressed  passion,  and  especially  of  a  hardly  smothered 
parsonal  dislike.  The  first,  and  last  of  these  combine  in 
Hamlet's  case;  and  I  have  little  doubt  that  Farmer  is 
right  in  supposing  the  equivocation  carried  on  in  the  ex- 
pression "too  much  i'  the  sun,"  or  son. 

Ib. 

"  Ham.  Ay,  madam,  it  is  common." 

Here  observe  Hamlet's  delicacy  to  his  mother,  and  how  the 
suppression  prepares  him  for  the  overflow  in  the  next 
spe2ch,  in  which  his  character  is  more  developed  by  bring- 
ing forward  his  aversion  to  externals,  and  which  betrays 
his  habit  of  brooding  over  the  world  within  him,  coupled 
with  a  prodigality  of  beautiful  words,  which  are  the  half 
tsmbodyings  of  thought,  and  are  more  than  thought,  and 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OP  SHAKSPERE.  3u3 

have  an  outness,  a  reality  sui  generis,  and  yet  retain  their 
correspondence  and  shadowy  affinity  to  the  images  and 
movements  within.  Note  also  Hamlet's  silence  to  the 
long  speech  of  the  king  which  follows,  and  his  respectful, 
but  general,  answer  to  his  mother. 
Ib.  Hamlet's  first  soliloquy  : — 

"  O,  that  this  too  too  solid  flesh  would  melt, 
Thaw,  and  resolve  itself  into  a  dew !  "  &c. 

This  tvedium  vitce  is  a  common  oppression  on  minds  cast 
in  the  Hamlet  mould,  and  is  caused  by  disproportional  o 
mental  exertion,  which  necessitates  exhaustion  of  bodily 
feeling.  Where  there  is  a  just  coincidence  of  external  and 
internal  action,  pleasure  is  always  the  result ;  but  whero 
the  former  is  deficient,  and  the  mind's  appetency  of  the 
ideal  is  unchecked,  realities  will  seem  cold  and  uumoving. 
In  such  cases,  passion  combines  itself  with  the  indefinite 
alone.  In  this  mood  of  his  mind  the  relation  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  his  father's  spirit  in  arms  is  made  all  at  onco 
to  Hamlet : — it  is — Horatio's  speech,  in  particular — a  per- 
fect model  of  the  true  style  of  dramatic  narrative ; — the- 
purest  poetry,  and  yet  in  the  most  natural  language,  equally 
remote  from  the  ink-horn  and  the  plough. 

Ib.  sc.  3.  This  scene  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  Shak- 
spere's  lyric  movements  in  the  play,  and  the  skill  with 
which  it  is  interwoven  with  the  dramatic  parts  is  peculiarly 
an  excellence  of  our  poet.  You  experience  the  sensation  of 
a  pause  without  the  sense  of  a  stop.  You  will  observe  in 
Ophelia's  short  and  general  answer  to  the  long  speech  of 
Laertes  the  natural  carelessness  of  innocence,  which  cannot 
think  such  a  code  of  cautions  and  prudences  necessary  to 
its  own  preservation. 

Ib.     Speech  of  Polonius  : — (in  Stockdale's  edition.) 

"  Or  (not  to  crack  the  wind  of  the  poor  phrase,) 
Wronging  it  thus,  you'll  tender  me  a  fool." 

A  A 


354  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

I  suspect  this  "  wronging  "  is  here  used  much  in  the  same 
sense  as  "  wringing  "  or  "  wrenching ; "  and  that  the  paren- 
thesis should  be  extended  to  "  thus." l 
Ib.     Speech  of  Polonius : — 

" How  prodigal  the  soul 

Lends  the  tongue  vows  : — these  blazes,  daughter,"  &e, 

A  spondee  has,  I  doubt  not,  dropped  out  of  the  text 
Either  insert  "  Go  to  "  after  "  vows  ;" — 

"  Lends  the  tongue  vows : — Go  to,  these  blazes,  daughter —  " 
or  read 

"Lends  the  tongue  vows  : — These  blazes,  daughter,  mark  you — " 

Shakspere  never  introduces  a  catalectic  line  without  intend- 
ing an  equivalent  to  the  foot  omitted  in  the  pauses,  or  the 
dwelling  emphasis,  or  the  diffused  retardation.  I  do  not, 
however,  deny  that  a  good  actor  might,  by  employing  the 
last  mentioned  means,  namely,  the  retardation,  or  solemn 
knowing  drawl,  supply  the  missing  spondee  with  good 
•effect.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  in  this  or  any  other  of 
the  foregoing  speeches  of  Polonius,  Shakspere  meant  to 
bring  out  the  senility  or  weakness  of  that  personage's 
mind.  In  the  great  ever-recurring  dangers  and  duties  of 
Hfe,  where  to  distinguish  the  fit  objects  for  the  application 
of  the  maxims  collected  by  the  experience  of  a  long  life, 
requires  no  fineness  of  tact,  as  in  the  admonitions  to  his 
son  and  daughter,  Polonius  is  uniformly  made  respectable. 
But  if  an  actor  were  even  capable  of  catching  'these  shades 
in  the  character,  the  pit  and  the  gallery  would  be  mal- 
content at  their  exhibition.  It  is  to  Hamlet  that  Polonius 
is,  and  is  meant  to  be,  contemptible,  because  in  inward- 
ness and  uncontrollable  activity  of  movement,  Hamlet's 

1  It  is  so  pointed  in  the  modern  editions. — H.  N.  C.  As  also  in  the 
2nd  Quarto,  1604,  which  has  "  wrong,"  and  in  the  1st  Fol.  1623,  which 
has  "  roaming."  The  Globe  Ed.  prints  "  running." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  355 

mind  is  the  logical  contrary  to  that  of  Polonius,  and  be- 
sides, as  I  have  observed  before,  Hamlet  dislikes  the  man, 
as  false  to  his  true  allegiance  in  the  matter  of  the  sncces- 
sion  to  the  crown. 

Ib.  sc.  4.  The  unimportant  conversation  with  which 
this  scene  opens  is  a  proof  of  Shakspere's  minute  know- 
ledge of  human  nature.  It  is  a  well  established  fact,  that 
on  the  brink  of  any  serious  enterprise,  or  event  of  moment, 
men  almost  invariably  endeavour  to  elude  the  pressure  of 
their  own  thoughts  by  turning  aside  to  trivial  objects  and 
familiar  circumstances  :  thus  this  dialogue  on  the  platform 
begins  with  remarks  on  the  coldness  of  the  air,  and  inquiries, 
obliquely  connected,  indeed,  with  the  expected  hour  of  the 
visitation,  but  thrown  out  in  a  seeming  vacuity  of  topics, 
as  to  the  striking  of  the  clock  and  so  forth.  The  same 
desire  to  escape  from  the  impending  thought  is  carried  on 
in  Hamlet's  account  of,  and  moralizing  on,  the  Danish 
custom  of  wassailing :  he  runs  off  from  the  particular  to 
the  universal,  and,  in  his  repugnance  to  personal  and 
individual  concerns,  escapes,  as  it  were,  from  himself  in 
generalizations,  and  smothers  the  impatience  and  uneasy 
feelings  of  the  moment  in  abstract  reasoning.  Besides 
this,  another  purpose  is  answered ; — for  by  thus  entangling 
the  attention  of  the  audience  in  the  nice  distinctions  and 
parenthetical  sentences  of  this  speech  of  Hamlet's,  Shak- 
spere  takes  them  completely  by  surprise  on  the  appearance 
of  the  Ghost,  which  comes  upon  them  in  all  the  suddenness 
of  its  visionary  character.  Indeed,  no  modern  writer 
would  have  dared,  like  Shakspere,  to  have  preceded  this 
last  visitation  by  two  distinct  appearances, — or  could  have 
contrived  that  the  third  should  rise  upon  the  former  two 
in  impressiveness  and  solemnity  of  interest. 

But  in  addition  to  all  the  other  excellencies  of  Hamlet's 
speech  concerning  the  wassail-music — so  finely  revealing 
the  predominant  idealism,  the  ratiocinative  meditativeness, 


356  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

of  his  character — it  has  the  advantage  of  giving  nature  and 
probability  to  the  impassioned  continuity  of  the  speech 
instantly  directed  to  the  Ghost.  The  momentum  had  been 
given  to  his  mental  activity ;  the  full  current  of  the 
thoughts  and  words  had  set  in,  and  the  very  forgetfulness, 
in  the  fervour  of  his  argumentation,  of  the  purpose  for 
which  he  was  there,  aided  in  preventing  the  appearance 
from  benumbing  the  mind.  Consequently,  it  acted  as  a 
new  impulse, — a  sudden  stroke  which  increased  the  velocity 
of  the  body  already  in  motion,  whilst  it  altered  the  direction. 
The  co-presence  of  Horatio,  Marcellus,  and  Bernardo  is 
most  judiciously  contrived ;  for  it  renders  the  courage  of 
Hamlet  and  his  impetuous  eloquence  perfectly  intelligible. 
The  knowledge, — the  unthought  of  consciousness, — the 
sensation, — of  human  auditors, — of  flesh  and  blood  sym- 
pathists — acts  as  a  support  and  a  stimulation  a  tergo,  while 
the  front  of  the  mind,  the  whole  consciousness  of  the 
speaker,  is  filled,  yea,  absorbed,  by  the  apparition.  Add 
too,  that  the  apparition  itself  has  by  its  previous  appear- 
ances been  brought  nearer  to  a  thing  of  this  world.  This 
accrescence  of  objectivity  in  a  Ghost  that  yet  retains  all 
its  ghostly  attributes  and  fearful  subjectivity,  is  truly 
wonderful. 

Ib.  sc.  5.     Hamlet's  speech  : — 

"  O  all  yon  host  of  heaven!  O  earth  !  What  else? 
And  shall  I  couple  hell  ?— " 

I  remember  nothing  equal  to  this  burst  unless  it  be  the 
first  speech  of  Prometheus  in  the  Greek  drama,  after  the 
exit  of  Vulcan  and  the  two  Afrites.  But  Shakspere  alone 
could  have  produced  the  vow  of  Hamlet  to  make  his 
memory  a  blank  of  all  maxims  and  generalized  truths, 
that  "observation  had  copied  there," — followed  imme- 
diately by  the  speaker  noting  down  the  generalized  fact, 

"  That  one  may  smile,  and  smile,  and  be  a  villain! " 


SECT.  IV.J  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  357 

Ib. 

"  Mar.  Hillo,  ho,  ho,  my  lord ! 

Ham.  Hillo,  ho,  ho,  boy !  come  bird,  come,"  &c. 

This  part  of  the  scene  after  Hamlet's  interview  with  tho 
Ghost  has  been  charged  with  an  improbable  eccentricity. 
But  the  truth  is,  that  after  the  mind  has  been  stretched 
beyond  its  usual  pitch  and  tone,  it  must  either  sink  into 
exhaustion  and  inanity,  or  seek  relief  by  change.  It  is 
thus  well  known  that  persons  conversant  in  deeds  of 
cruelty,  contrive  to  escape  from  conscience,  by  connecting 
something  of  the  ludicrous  with  them,  and  by  inventing 
grotesque  terms  and  a  certain  technical  phraseology  to  dis- 
guise the  horror  of  their  practices.  Indeed,  paradoxical 
as  it  may  appear,  the  terrible  by  a  law  of  the  human  mind 
always  touches  on  the  verge  of  the  ludicrous.  Both  arise 
from  the  perception  of  something  out  of  the  common  order 
of  things — something,  in  fact,  out  of  its  place ;  and  if  from 
this  we  can  abstract  danger,  the  uncommonness  will  alone 
remain,  and  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  be  excited.  The 
close  alliance  of  these  opposites — they  are  not  contraries — 
appears  from  the  circumstance,  that  laughter  is  equally  the 
expression  of  extreme  anguish  and  horror  as  of  joy :  as 
there  are  tears  of  sorrow  and  tears  of  joy,  so  is  there  a 
laugh  of  terror  and  a  laugh  of  merriment.  These  complex 
causes  will  naturally  have  produced  in  Hamlet  the  dis- 
position to  escape  from  his  own  feelings  of  the  overwhelm- 
ing and  supernatural  by  a  wild  transition  to  the  ludicrous,* 
— a  sort  of  cunning  bravado,  bordering  on  the  flights  of 
delirium.  For  you  may,  perhaps,  observe  that  Hamlet's 

1  A  similar  recourse  to  an  antic  ludicrousness  in  Hamlet,  as  an  outlet 
for  over-excitement,  occurs  when  the  king  turns  sic-k  at  the  poisoning 
in  the  play.  This  involuntary  evidence  of  guilt  causes  Hamlet  to 
exclaim  (or  to  sing, — and  we  can  almost  figure  him  dancing  about), 

M  For  thou  must  know,  O  Damon  dear,"  &c. 

J.;(  ill  f.'  2. 


358  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

wildness  is  but  half  false ;  he  plays  that  subtle  trick  of 
pretending  to  act  only  when  he  is  very  near  really  being 
what  he  acts. 

The  subterraneous  speeches  of  the  Ghost  are  hardly 
defensible : — but  I  would  call  your  attention  to  the  charac- 
teristic difference  between  this  Ghost,  as  a  superstition 
connected  with  the  most  mysterious  truths  of  revealed 
religion, — and  Shakspere's  consequent  reverence  in  his 
treatment  of  it, — and  the  foul  earthly  witcheries  and  wild 
language  in  "Macbeth." 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Polonius  and  Beynaldo. 

In  all  things  dependent  on,  or  rather  made  Tip  of,  fine 
address,  the  manner  is  no  more  or  otherwise  rememberable 
than  the  light  motions,  steps,  and  gestures  of  youth  and 
health.  But  this  is  almost  everything  : — no  wonder,  there- 
fore, if  that  which  can  be  put  down  by  rule  in  the  memory 
should  appear  to  us  as  mere  poring,  maudlin,  cunning, — 
slyness  blinking  through  the  watery  eye  of  superannuation. 
So  in  this  admirable  scene,  Polonius,  who  is  throughout 
the  skeleton  of  his  own  former  skill  and  statecraft,  hunts 
the  trail  of  policy  at  a  dead  scent,  supplied  by  the  weak 
fever-smell  in  his  own  nostrils. 

Ib.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Polonius  : — 

."  My  liege,  and  madam,  to  expostulate,"  &c. 
Warburton's  note : 

"  Then  as  to  the  jingles,  and  play  on  words,  let  us  but  look  into  the 
sermons  of  Dr.  Donne  (tie  wittiest  man  of  that  age),  and  we  shall  find 
them  full  of  this  vein." 

I  have,  and  that  most  carefully,  read  Dr.  Donne's 
sermons,  and  find  none  of  these  jingles.  The  great  art  of 
an  orator — to  make  whatever  he  talks  of  appear  of  impor- 
tance— this,  indeed,  Donne  has  effected  with  consummate 
skill. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEBE.  359 

Ib. 

"  Ham.  Excellent  well  j 
You  are  a  fishmonger." 

That  is,  you  are  sent  to  fish  out  this  secret.      This  is 
Hamlet's  own  meaning. 
Ib. 

"  Ham.  For  if  the  sun  breeds  mnggots  in  a  dead  dog, 
Being  a  god,  kissing  carrion — " 

These  purposely  obscure  lines,  I  rather  think,  refer  to  some 
thought  in  Hamlet's  mind,  contrasting  the  lovely  daughter 
with  such  a  tedious  old  fool,  her  father,  as  he,  Hamlet, 
represents  Polonius  to  himself : — "  Why,  fool  as  he  is,  he 
is  some  degrees  in  rank  above  a  dead  dog's  carcase ;  and  if 
the  sun,  being  a  god  that  kisses  carrion,  can  raise  life  out 
of  a  dead  dog, — why  may  not  good  fortune,  that  favours 
fools,  have  raised  a  lovely  girl  out  of  this  dead-alive  old 
fool?"  Warburton  is  often  led  astray,  in  his  interpreta- 
tions, by  his  attention  to  general  positions  without  the  duo 
Shaksperian  reference  to  what  is  probably  passing  in  tho 
mind  of  his  speaker,  characteristic,  and  expository  of  his 
particular  character  and  present  mood.  The  subsequent 
passage, — 

"  O  Jephtha,  judge  of  Israel !  what  a  treasure  hadst  thou ! " 

is  confirmatory  of  my  view  of  these  lines. 
Ib. 

"Ham.  You  cannot,  Sir,  take  from  me  anything  that  I  will  more 
willingly  part  withal ;  except  my  life,  except  my  life,  except  my 
life." 

This  repetition  strikes  me  as  most  admirable. 
Ib. 

"  Ham.  Then  are  our  beggars,  bodies ;  and  our  monarchs,  and  out- 
stretched heroes,  the  beggars'  shadows." 

I  do  not  understand  this ;  and  Shaksperc  seems  to  havo 


360  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

intended  the  meaning  not  to  be  more  than  snatched  at :-~ 
"  By  my  fay,  I  cannot  reason ! " 
Ib. 

"The  rugged  Pyrrhus — he  whose  sable  arms,"  &c. 

This  admirable  substitution  of  the  epic  for  the  dramatic, 
giving  such  a  reality  to  the  impassioned  dramatic  diction 
of  Shakspere's  own  dialogue,  and  authorized,  too,  by  the 
actual  style  of  the  tragedies  before  his  time  ("  Porrex  and 
Ferrex,"1  "Titus  Andronicus,"  &c.) — is  well  worthy  of 
notice.  The  fancy,  that  a  burlesque  was  intended,  sinks 
below  criticism :  the  lines,  as  epic  narrative,  are  superb. 

In  the  thoughts,  and  even  in  the  separate  parts  of  the 
diction,  this  description  is  highly  poetical :  in  truth,  taken 
by  itself,  this  is  its  fault  that  it  is  too  poetical ! — the  lan- 
guage of  lyric  vehemence  and  epic  pomp,  and  not  of  the 
drama.  But  if  Shakspere  had  made  the  diction  truly 
dramatic,  where  would  have  been  the  contrast  between 
"  Hamlet"  and  the  play  in  "  Hamlet  p" 

Ib. 

" had  seen  the  mobled  queen,"  &c. 

A  mob-cap  is  still  a  word  in  common  use  for  a  morning 
cap,  which  conceals  the  whole  head  of  hair,  and  passes 
nnder  the  chin.  It  is  nearly  the  same  as  the  night- cap, 
that  is,  it  is  an  imitation  of  it,  so  as  to  answer  the  purpose 
("  I  am  not  drest  for  company  "),  and  yet  reconciling  it 
•with  neatness  and  perfect  purity. 

Ib.     Hamlet's  soliloquy : 

**  O,  what  a  rogue  and  peasant  slave  am  I ! "  &c. 


1  The  earliest  known  English  tragedy,  "  The  tragedie  of  Ferrex  and 
Forrex,"  acted  "before  the  Queene's  Maiestie"  on  "the  xviij  day  of 
Januarie,  1561,  by  the  gentlemen  of  the  Inner  Temple,"  and  first 
published  in  1570. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  361 

This  is  Shakspere's  own  attestation  to  the  truth  of   the 
idea  of  Hamlet  which  I  have  before  put  forth. 
Ib. 

"  The  spirit  that  I  have  seen, 
Ma}-  be  a  '  devil :  and  the  devil  hath  power 
To  assume  a  pleasing  shape;  yea,  and,  perhaps 
Out  of  my  weakness,  and  my  melancholy, 
(As  he  is  very  potent  with  such  spirits) 
Abuses  me  to  damn  me." 

See  Sir  Thomas  Brown : 

"  1  believe that  those   apparitions  and  ghosts  of  departed 

persons  are  not  the  wandering  souls  of  men,  but  the  unquiet  walks  of 
devils,  prompting  and  suggesting  us  unto  mischief,  blood  and  villany, 
Instilling  and  stealing  into  our  hearts,  that  the  blessed  spirits  are  not 
at  rest  in  their  graves,  but  wander  solicitous  of  the  affairs  of  the  world," 
—Relig.  Med.  Pt.  I.  Sect.  37. 

Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

"To  be,  or  not  to  be,  that  is  the  question,"  &c. 

This  speech  is  of  absolutely  universal  interest, — and  yet 
to  which  of  all  Shakspere's  characters  could  it  have  been 
appropriately  given  but  to  Hamlet  ?  For  Jaques  it  would 
have  been  too  deep,  and  for  lago  too  habitual  a  communion 
with  the  heart ;  which  in  every  man  belongs,  or  ought  to 
belong,  to  all  mankind. 

Ib. 

"  That  undiscover'd  country,  from  whose  bourne 
No  traveller  returns. —  " 

Theobald's  note  in  defence  of  the  supposed  contradiction 
of  this  in  the  apparition  of  the  Ghost. 

0  miserable  defender !     If  it  be  necessary  to  remove  the 
apparent  contradiction, — if  it  be  not  rather  a  great  beauty, 

1  Quarto  of  1604,  "a  deale;"  1st  Fol.   "the  Divell}"  Globo  Ed. 
"the  devil." 


362  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

— surely,  it  were  easy  to  say,  that  no  traveller  returns  to 
this  world,  as  to  his  home,  or  abiding-place. 
Ib. 

"  Ham.  Ha,  ha !  are  you  honest  ? 
Oph.    My  lord  ? 
Ham.  Are  you  fair?" 

Here  it  is  evident  that  the  penetrating  Hamlet  perceives, 
from  the  strange  and  forced  manner  of  Ophelia,  that  the 
sweet  girl  was  not  acting  a  part  of  her  own,  but  was  a 
decoy ;  and  his  after  speeches  are  not  so  mnch  directed  to 
her  as  to  the  listeners  and  spies.  Such  a  discovery  in  a 
mood  so  anxious  and  irritable  accounts  for  a  certain  harsh- 
ness in  him ; — and  yet  a  wild  up-working  of  love,  sporting 
with  opposites  in  a  wilful  self-tormenting  strain  of  irony, 
is  perceptible  throughout.  "  I  did  love  you  once  : " — "  I 
loved  you  not:" — and  particularly  in  his  enumeration  of 
the  faults  of  the  sex  from  which  Ophelia  is  so  free,  that 
the  mere  freedom  therefrom  constitutes  her  character. 
Note  Shakspere's  charm  of  composing  the  female  character 
by  the  absence  of  characters,  that  is,  marks  and  out- 
juttings. 

Ib.     Hamlet's  speech  : — 

"  I  say,  we  will  have  no  more  marriages :  those  that  are  married 
already,  all  but  one,  shall  live  :  the  rest  shall  keep  as  they  are." 

Observe  this  dallying  with  the  inward  purpose,  charac- 
teristic of  one  who  had  not  brought  his  mind  to  the  steady 
acting  point.  He  would  fain  sting  the  uncle's  mind ; — 
but  to  stab  his  body! — The  soliloquy  of  Ophelia,  which 
follows,  is  the  perfection  of  love— so  exquisitely  unselfish  ! 

Ib.  sc.  2.  This  dialogue  of  Hamlet  with  the  players  is 
one  of  the  happiest  instances  of  Shakspere's  power  of 
diversifying  the  scene  while  he  is  carrying  on  the  plot. 

Ib. 

"Ham.  My  lord,  you  play'd  once  i'  the  university,  you  say?  (To 
Polonius.) 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERB.  363 

To  have  kept  Hamlet's  love  for  Ophelia  before  the  audience 
in  any  direct  form,  would  have  made  a  breach  in  the  unity 
of  the  interest; — but  yet  to  the  thoughtful  reader  it  is- 
suggested  by  his  spite  to  poor  Polonius,  whom  he  cannot 
let  rest. 

Ib.  The  style  of  the  interlude  here  is  distinguished 
from  the  real  dialogue  by  rhyme,  as  in  the  first  interview 
with  the  players  by  epic  verse. 

Ib. 

"  Ros.  My  lord,  you  once  did  love  me. 

Ham.    So  I  do  still,  by  these  pickers  and  stealers.  * 

I  never  heard  an  actor  give  this  word  "  so  "  its  proper 
emphasis.  Shakspere's  meaning  is — "  loved  you  ?  Hum  ! 
— so  I  do  still,  &c."  There  has  been  no  change  in  my 
opinion : — I  think  as  ill  of  you  as  I  did.  Else  Hamlet 
tells  an  ignoble  falsehood,  and  a  useless  one,  as  the  last 
speech  to  Guildenstern — "Why,  look  you  now,"  &c. — 
proves. 

Ib.     Hamlet's  soliloquy  : — 

"  Now  could  I  drink  hot  blood, 
And  do  such  business  as  the  bitter  day 1 
Would  quake  to  look  on." 

The  utmost  at  which  Hamlet  arrives,  is  a  disposition,  a 
mood,  to  do  something : — but  what  to  do,  is  still  left  un- 
decided, while  every  word  he  utters  tends  to  betray  his- 
disguise.  Yet  observe  how  perfectly  equal  to  any  call  of 
the  moment  is  Hamlet,  let  it  only  not  be  for  the  f uture. 

Ib.  sc.  4.  Speech  of  Polonius.  Polonius's  volunteer 
obtrusion  of  himself  into  this  business,  while  it  is  appro- 
priate to  his  character,  still  itching  after  former  importance, 
removes  all  likelihood  that  Hamlet  should  suspect  his 

1  80,  Quarto  of  1604.     The  1st  Fol.  and  Globe  Ed.  read 
"  And  do  such  bitter  business  as  the  day." 


364  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

presence,  and  prevents  us  from  making  his  death  injure 
Hamlet  in  our  opinion. 

Ib.     The  king's  speech  :— 

"  O,  my  offence  is  rank,  it  smells  to  heaven,"  &c. 

This  speech  well  marks  the  difference  between  crime  and 
guilt  of  habit.  The  conscience  here  is  still  admitted  to 
audience.  Nay,  even  as  an  audible  soliloquy,  it  is  far  less 
improbable  than  is  supposed  by  such  as  have  watched  men 
only  in  the  beaten  road  of  their  feelings.  But  the  final — 
*'  all  maybe  well!"  is  remarkable; — the  degree  of  merit 
attributed  by  the  self-flattering  soul  to  its  own  struggle, 
though  baffled,  and  to  the  indefinite  half-promise,  half- 
command,  to  persevere  in  religious  duties.  The  solution 
is  in  the  divine  medium  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
expiation : — not  what  you  have  done,  but  what  you  are, 
must  determine. 

Ib.     Hamlet's  speech  : — 

"  Now  might  I  do  it,  pat,  now  he  is  praying  : 

And  now  I'll  do  it : — And  so  he  goes  to  heaven : 

And  so  am  I  revenged  ?     That  would  be  scann'd,"  &c. 

Dr.  Johnson's  mistaking  of  the  marks  of  reluctance  and 
procrastination  for  impetuous,  horror-striking,  fiendishness  ! 
— Of  such  importance  is  it  to  understand  the  germ  of  a 
character.  But  the  interval  taken  by  Hamlet's  speech  is 
truly  awful !  And  then — 

"  My  words  fly  up,  my  thoughts  remain  below : 
Woi'ds,  without  thoughts,  never  to  heaven  go," — 

O  what  a  lesson  concerning  the  essential  difference  be- 
tween wishing  and  willing,  and  the  folly  of  all  motive- 
mongering,  while  the  individual  self  remains ! 

Ib.  sc.  4. 

"  Ham.  A  bloody  deed ; — almost  as  bad,  good  mother, 
As  kill  a  king,  and  marry  with  his  brother. 
Queen.  As  kill  a  king  ?  " 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERB.  365 

I  confess  that  Shakspere  has  left  the  character  of  the 
Queen  in  an  unpleasant  perplexity.  Was  she,  or  was  she 
not,  conscious  of  the  fratricide  ? 

Act  iv.  sc.  2. 

"  Sos.  Take  you  me  for  a  spnnge,  my  lord  ? 

Ham.  Ay,  Sir ;  that  soaks  up  the  King's  countenance,  his  rewards, 
li's  authorities,"  &c. 

Hamlet's  madness  is  made  to  consist  in  the  free  utterance 
of  all  the  thoughts  that  had  passed  through  his  mind  before; 
— in  fact,  in  telling  home-truths. 

Act  iv.  sc.  5.  Ophelia's  singing.  O,  note  the  conjunc- 
tion here  of  these  two  thoughts  that  had  never  subsisted  in 
disjunction,  the  love  for  Hamlet,  and  her  filial  love,  with 
the  guileless  floating  on  the  surface  of  her  pure  imagination 
of  the  cautions  so  lately  expressed,  and  the  fears  not  too 
delicately  avowed,  by  her  father  and  brother  concerning 
the  dangers  to  which  her  honour  lay  exposed.  Thought, 
affliction,  passion,  murder  itself — she  turns  to  favour  and 
prettiness.  This  play  of  association  is  instanced  in  the 
close : — 

"  My  brother  shall  know  of  it,  and  I  thank  you  for  your  good 
counsel." 

Ib.     Gentleman's  speech : — 

"  And  as  the  world  were  now  but  to  begin, 
Antiquity  forgot,  custom  not  known, 
The  ratifiers  and  props  of  every  ward  ' — 
They  cry,"  &c. 

Fearful  and  self-suspicious  as  I  always  feel,  when  I  seem 
to  see  an  error  of  judgment  in  Shakspere,  yet  I  cannot 
reconcile  the  cool,  and,  as  Warburton  calls  it,  "rational 
and  consequential,"  reflection  in  these  lines  with  the  anony- 
mousness,  or  the  alarm,  of  this  Gentleman  or  Messenger, 
as  he  is  called  in  other  editions. 

1  Read  "  word." 


366  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

Ib.     King's  speech : — 

"  There's  such  divinity  doth  hedge  a  king, 
That  treason  can  but  peep  to  what  it  would, 
Acts  little  of  his  will." 

Proof,  as  indeed  all  else  is,  that  Shakspere  never  intended 
os  to  see  the  King  with  Hamlet's  eyes ;  though,  I  suspect, 
the  managers  have  long  done  so. 

Ib.     Speech  of  Laertes : — 

"  To  hell,  allegiance !  vows,  to  the  blackest  devil ! " 
"  Laertes  is  a  good  character,  but,"  &c.     WAKBURTON. 

Mercy  on  Warburton's  notion  of  goodness !  Please  to 
refer  to  the  seventh  scene  of  this  act ; — 

"  I  will  do  it ; 

And  for  this  purpose  I'll  anoint  my  sword,"  &c. 

uttered  by  Laertes  after  the  King's  description  of  Hamlet; — 

"  He  being  remiss, 

Most  generous,  and  free  from  all  contriving, 
Will  not  peruse  the  foils." 

Yet  I  acknowledge  that  Shakspere  evidently  wishes,  as 
much  as  possible,  to  spare  the  character  of  Laertes, — to 
break  the  extreme  turpitude  of  his  consent  to  become  an 
agent  and  accomplice  of  the  King's  treachery ; — and  to 
this  end  he  re-introduces  Ophelia  at  the  close  of  this  scene 
to  afford  a  probable  stimulus  of  passion  in  her  brother. 

Ib.  sc.  6.  Hamlet's  capture  by  the  pirates.  This  is 
almost  the  only  play  of  Shakspere,  in  which  mere  accidents, 
independent  of  all  will,  form  an  essential  part  of  the  plot ; 
— but  here  how  judiciously  in  keeping  with  the  character 
of  the  over-meditative  Hamlet,  ever  at  last  determined  by 
accident  or  by  a  fit  of  passion  ! 

Ib.  sc.  7.  Note  how  the  King  first  awakens  Laertes's 
vanity  by  praising  the  reporter,  and  then  gratifies  it  by  the 
report  itself,  and  finally  points  it  by — 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  3G7 

"  Sir,  this  report  of  his 
Did  Hamlet  so  envenom  with  his  envy !  "— 

Ib.     King's  speech : 

"  For  goodness,  growing  to  a.  pleurisy, 
Dies  in  his  own  too  much." 

Theobald's  note  from  Warburton,  who  conjectures 
"plethory." 

I  rather  think  that  Shakspere  meant  "pleurisy,"  but 
involved  in  it  the  thought  of  plethora,  as  supposing  pleurisy 
to  arise  from  too  much  blood ;  otherwise  I  cannot  explain 
the  following  line — 

"  And  then  this  should  is  like  a  spendthrift  sigh, 
That  hurts  by  easing." 

In  a  stitch  in  the  side  every  one  must  have  heaved  a  sigh 
that  "  hurt  by  easing." 

Since  writing  the  above  I  feel  confirmed  that  "  pleurisy  " 
is  the  right  word ;  for  I  find  that  in  the  old  medical  dic- 
tionaries the  pleurisy  is  often  called  the  "  plethory." 

Ib. 

*'  Queen.  Your  sister's  drown'd,  Laertes. 
Laer.        Drown'd  !  O,  where  ?  " 

That  Laertes  might  be  excused  in  s«me  degree  for  not 
cooling,  the  Act  concludes  with  the  affecting  death  of 
Ophelia, — who  in  the  beginning  lay  like  a  little  projection 
of  land  into  a  lake  or  stream,  covered  with  spray-flowers 
quietly  reflected  in  the  quiet  waters,  but  at  length  is  under- 
mined or  loosened,  and  becomes  a  faery  isle,  and  after  a 
brief  vagrancy  sinks  almost  without  an  eddy ! 

Act  v.  sc.  1.  O,  the  rich  contrast  between  the  Clowns 
and  Hamlet,  as  two  extremes  !  You  see  in  the  former  the 
mockery  of  logic,  and  a  traditional  wit  valued,  like  truth, 
for  its  antiquity,  and  treasured  up,  like  a  tune,  for  use. 

Ib.  sc.  1  and  2.     Shakspere  seems  to  mean  all  Hamlet's 


368  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

character  to  be  brought  together  before  his  final  dis- 
appearance from  the  scene ; — his  meditative  excess  in  the 
grave-digging,  his  yielding  to  passion  -with  Laertes,  his 
love  for  Ophelia  blazing  out,  his  tendency  to  generalize  on 
all  occasions  in  the  dialogue  with  Horatio,  his  fine  gentle- 
manly manners  with  Osrick,  and  his  and  Shakspere's  own 
fondness  for  presentiment : 

"But  them  would'st  not  think,  bow  ill  all's  here  about  my  heart:  but 
it  is  no  matter." 


Macbetli. 

"  Macbeth  "  stands  in  contrast  throughout  with  "  Ham- 
let ; "  in  the  manner  of  opening  more  especially.  In  the 
latter,  there  is  a  gradual  ascent  from  the  simplest  forms  of 
conversation  to  the  language  of  impassioned  intellect, — yet 
the  intellect  still  remaining  the  seat  of  passion :  in  the 
former,  the  invocation  is  at  once  made  to  the  imagination 
and  the  emotions  connected  therewith.  Hence  the  move- 
ment throughout  is  the  most  rapid  of  all  Shakspere's 
plays ;  and  hence  also,  -with  the  exception  of  the  disgusting1 
passage  of  the  Porter1  (Act  ii.  sc.  3),  -which  I  dare  pledge 
myself  to  demonstrate  to  be  an  interpolation  of  the  actors, 
there  is  not,  to  the  best  of  iny  remembrance,  a  single  pun 
or  play  on  words  in  the  whole  drama.  I  have  previously 
given  an  answer  to  the  thousand  times  repeated  charge 
against  Shakspere  upon  the  subject  of  his  punning,  and 
I  here  merely  mention  the  fact  of  the  absence  of  any  puns 
in  "  Macbeth,"  as  justifying  a  candid  doubt  at  least,  whether 
even  in  these  figures  of  speech  and  fanciful  modifications 

1  It  is  strange  that  Coleridge  did  not  see  the  absolute  necessity  of 
interposing  just  such  a  scene,  between  the  murder  and  discovery  of  it, 
to  relieve  the  terrible  strain  on  the  mind  of  the  audience, — and  even 
might  we  not  add,  on  the  dramatic  powers  of  the  poet  ? 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  3C9 

of  language,  Shakspere  may  not  have  followed  rules  and 
principles  that  merit  and  would  stand  the  test  of  philo- 
sophic examination.  And  hence,  also,  there  is  an  entire 
absence  of  comedy,  nay,  even  of  irony  and  philosophic  con- 
templation, in  "Macbeth," — the  play  being  wholly  and 
purely  tragic.  For  the  same  cause,  there  are  no  reasonings 
of  equivocal  morality,  which  would  have  required  a  more 
leisurely  state  and  a  consequently  greater  activity  of  mind  ; 
— no  sophistry  of  self-delusion, — except  only  that  previously 
to  the  dreadful  act,  Macbeth  mistranslates  the  recoilings 
and  ominous  whispers  of  conscience  into  prudential  and 
selfish  reasonings,  and,  after  the  deed  done,  the  terrors  of 
remorse  into  fear  from  external  dangers, — like  delirious 
men  who  run  away  from  the  phantoms  of  their  own  brains, 
or,  raised  by  terror  to  rage,  stab  the  real  object  that  is 
within  their  reach : — whilst  Lady  Macbeth  merely  endea- 
vours to  reconcile  his  and  her  own  sinkings  of  heart  by 
anticipations  of  the  worst,  and  an  affected  bravado  in  con- 
fronting them.  In  all  the  rest,  Macbeth's  language  is  the 
grave  utterance  of  the  very  heart,  conscience-sick,  even  to 
the  last  faintings  of  moral  death.  It  is  the  same  in  all  the 
other  characters.  The  variety  arises  from  rage,  caused 
ever  and  anon  by  disruption  of  anxious  thought,  and  the 
quick  transition  of  fear  into  it. 

In  "  Hamlet "  and  "  Macbeth "  the  scene  opens  with 
superstition ;  but,  in  each  it  is  not  merely  different,  bat 
opposite.  In  the  first  it  is  connected  with  the  best  and 
holiest  feelings  ;  in  the  second  with  the  shadowy,  turbulent, 
and  unsanctified  cravings  of  the  individual  will.  Nor  is 
the  purpose  the  same ;  in  the  one  the  object  is  to  excite, 
whilst  in  the  other  it  is  to  mark  a  mind  already  excited. 
Superstition,  of  one  sort  or  another,  is  natural  to  victorious 
generals ;  the  instances  are  too  notorious  to  need  mention- 
ing. There  is  so  much  of  chance  in  warfare,  and  such  vast 
events  are  connected  with  the  acts  of  a  single  individual, — 

B  B 


870  NOTES  ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

the  representative,  in  truth,  of  the  efforts  of  myriads,  and 
jet  to  the  public  and,  doubtless,  to  his  own  feelings,  the 
aggregate  of  all, — that  the  proper  temperament  for  gene- 
rating or  receiving  superstitions  impressions  is  naturally 
produced.  Hope,  the  master  element  of  a  commanding 
genius,  meeting  with  an  active  and  combining  intellect, 
tend  an  imagination  of  just  that  degree  of  vividness  which 
disquiets  and  impels  the  soul  to  try  to  realize  its  images, 
greatly  increases  the  creative  power  of  the  mind ;  and 
hence  the  images  become  a  satisfying  world  of  themselves, 
as  is  the  case  in  every  poet  and  original  philosopher : — but 
liope  fully  gratified,  and  yet  the  elementary  basis  of  the 
passion  remaining,  becomes  fear ;  and,  indeed,  the  general, 
who  must  often  feel,  even  though  he  may  hide  it  from  his 
.own  consciousness,  how  large  a  share  chance  had  in  his 
^uccesses,  may  very  naturally  be  irresolute  in  a  new  scene, 
where  he  knows  that  all  will  depend  on  his  own  act  and 
election. 

The  Weird  Sisters  are  as  true  a  creation  of  Shakspere's, 
as  his  Ariel  and  Caliban, — fates,  furies,  and  materializing 
witches  being  the  elements.  They  are  wholly  different 
from  any  representation  of  witches  in  the  contemporary 
•writers,  and  yet  presented  a  sufficient  external  resemblance 
to  the  creatures  of  vulgar  prejudice  to  act  immediately  on 
the  audience.  Their  character  consists  in  the  imaginative 
disconnected  from  the  good  ;  they  are  the  shadowy  obscure 
and  fearfully  anomalous  of  physical  nature,  the  lawless  of 
human  nature, — elemental  avengers  without  sex  or  kin  : 

"  Fair  is  foul,  and  foul  is  fair ; 
Hover  thro'  the  fog  and  filthy  air." 

How  much  it  were  to  be  wished  in  playing  "Macbeth," 
that  an  attempt  should  be  made  to  introduce  the  flexile 
character-mask  of  the  ancient  pantomime ; — that  Flaxman 
would  contribute  his  genius  to  the  embodying  and  making 
sensuously  perceptible  that  of  Shakspere  ! 


SECT.  IV.]  PLA\b   OF    SHAKSPERE.  371 

The  style  and  rhythm  of  the  Captain's  speeches  in  the 
second  scene  should  be  illustrated  by  reference  to  the 
interlude  in  "  Hamlet,"  in  which  the  epic  is  substituted  for 
the  tragic,  in  order  to  make  the  latter  be  felt  as  the  real- 
life  diction.  In  "  Macbeth,"  the  poet's  object  was  to  raise 
the  mind  at  once  to  the  high  tragic  tone,  that  the  audience 
might  be  ready  for  the  precipitate  consummation  of  guilt 
in  the  early  part  of  the  play.  The  true  reason  for  the  first 
appearance  of  the  Witches  is  to  strike  the  key-note  of  the 
character  of  the  whole  drama,  as  is  proved  by  their  re- 
appearance in  the  third  scene,  after  such  an  order  of  the 
king's  as  establishes  their  supernatural  power  of  infor- 
mation. I  say  information, — for  so  it  only  is  as  to  Glamis 
and  Cawdor ;  the  "  king  hereafter  "  was  still  contingent, — 
still  in  Macbeth's  moral  will ;  although,  if  he  should  yield 
to  the  temptation,  and  thus  forfeit  his  free  agency,  the 
link  of  cause  and  effect  more  physico  would  then  commence. 
I  need  not  say,  that  the  general  idea  is  all  that  can  be 
required  from  the  poet, — not  a  scholastic  logical  consis- 
tency in  all  the  parts  so  as  to  meet  metaphysical  objectors. 
But  0  !  how  truly  Shaksperian  is  the  opening  of  Macbeth's 
character  given  in  the  unpossessedness  of  Banquo's  mind, 
•wholly  present  to  the  present  object, — an  unsullied,  un- 
ecarified  mirror ! — And  how  strictly  true  to  nature  it  is, 
that  Banquo,  and  not  Macbeth  himself,  directs  our  notice 
to  the  effect  produced  on  Macbeth's  mind,  rendered  temp- 
tible  by  previous  dalliance  of  the  fancy  with  ambitious 
thoughts : 

"  Good  Sir,  why  do  you  start ;  and  seem  to  fear 
Things  that  do  sound  so  fair  ?  " 

And  then,  again,  still  unintroitive,  addresses  the  Witches  : — 

"  I'  the  name  of  truth, 
Are  ye  fantastical,  or  that  indeed 
Which  outwardly  ye  show  ?  " 


372  NOTES   ON   SOME   OTHER  [1818 

Banquo's  questions  are  those  of  natural  curiosity,  — such 
as  a  girl  would  put  after  hearing  a  gipsy  tell  her  school- 
fellow's fortune ; — all  perfectly  general,  or  rather  planless. 
But  Macbeth,  lost  in  thought,  raises  himself  to  speech  only 
by  the  Witches  being  about  to  depart : — 

"  Stay,  you  imperfect  speakers,  tell  me  more : —  " 

and  all  that  follows  is  reasoning  on  a  problem  already  dis- 
cussed in  his  mind, — on  a  hope  which  he  welcomes,  and 
the  doubts  concerning  the  attainment  of  which  he  wishes 
to  have  cleared  up.  Compare  his  eagerness, — the  keen  eye 
with  which  he  has  pursued  the  Witches  evanishing — 

"  Speak,  I  charge  you  ! " 

with  the  easily  satisfied  mind  of  the  self-uninterested 
Banquo : — 

"  The  air l  hath  bubbles,  as  the  water  has, 

And  tliese  are  of  them  : — Whither  are  they  vanish'd  ?* 

and  then  Macbeth's  earnest  reply, — 

"  Into  the  air  ;  and  what  seem'd  corporal,  melted 
As  breath  into  the  wind. — 'Would  they  had  staid!" 

Is  it  too  minute  to  notice  the  appropriateness  of  the  simile 
"as  breath,"  &c.,  in  a  cold  climate  ? 

Still  again  Banquo  goes  on  wondering  like  any  common 
spectator : 

"  "Were  such  things  here  as  we  do  speak  about  ?  " 

whilst  Macbeth  persists  in  recurring  to  the  self-con- 
cerning : — 

"  Your  children  shall  be  kings. 
Ban,  You  shall  be  king. 
Macb.  And  thane  of  Cawdor  too :  went  it  not  so  ?  " 

So  surely  is  the  gnilt  in  its  germ  anterior  to  the  supposed 
1  Read  "  earth." 


SECT.  IV.]  PFATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  373 

cause,  and  immediate  temptation!  Before  he  can  cool, 
the  confirmation  of  the  tempting  half  of  the  prophecy 
arrives,  and  the  concatenating  tendency  of  the  imagination 
is  fostered  by  the  sudden  coincidence  : — 

"  Glamis,  and  thane  of  Cawdor  i 
The  greatest  is  behind." 

Oppose  this  to  Banquo's  simple  surprise  : — 

"  What,  can  the  devil  speak  true?" 
Ib.     Banquo's  speech  : — 

"  That,  trusted  home, 

Might  yet  enkindle  you  unto  the  crown, 

Besides  the  thane  of  Cawdor." 

I  doubt  whether  "  enkindle  "  has  not  another  sense  than 
that  of  "stimulating;"  I  mean  of  "kind"  and  "kin,"  as 
when  rabbits  are  said  to  "kindle."  However,  Macbeth  no 
longer  hears  anything  ab  extra : — 

"  Two  truths  are  told, 

As  happy  prologues  to  the  swelling  act 

Of  the  imperial  theme." 

Then  in  the  necessity  of  recollecting  himself — 
"  I  thank  you,  gentlemen." 

Then  he  relapses  into  himself  again,  and  every  word  of  his 
soliloquy  shows  the  early  birth-date  of  his  guilt.  He  is  all- 
powerful  without  strength ;  he  wishes  the  end,  but  is  irre- 
solute as  to  the  means ;  conscience  distinctly  warns  him, 
and  he  Inlls  it  imperfectly  : — 

"  If  chance  will  have  me  king,  why,  chance  may  crown  me 
Without  my  stir." 

Lost  in  the  prospective  of  his  guilt,  he  turns  round  alarmed 
lest  others  may  suspect  what  is  passing  in  his  ov/n  mind, 
and  instantly  vents  the  lie  of  ambition : 


374  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHKR  [1818 

"  My  dull  brain  was  wrought 
With  things  forgotten; — 

And  immediately  after  pours  forth  the  promising  courtesies 
of  a  usurper  in  intention  : — 

"  Kind  gentlemen,  your  pains 
Are  register'd  where  every  day  I  turn 
The  leaf  to  read  them." 

Ib.     Macbeth's  speech : 

"Present  fears 
Are  less  than  horrible  imaginings." 

Warburton's  note,  and  substitution  of  "  feats  "  for  "  fears." 
Mercy  on  this  most  wilful  ingenuity  of  blundering,  which, 

nevertheless,  was  the  very  Warburton  of  Warburton — his 

inmost  being!     "Fears,"  here,  are  present  fear-striking 

objects,  terribilia  adstantia. 

Ib.   sc.   4.     0 !   the   affecting   beauty  of  the  death  of 

Cawdor,  and  the  presentimental  speech  of  the  king : 

"  There's  no  art 

To  find  the  mind's  construction  in  the  face : 
He  was  a  gentleman  on  whom  I  built 
An  absolute  trust — " 

Interrupted  by — 

"  O  worthiest  cousin ! " 

on  the  entrance  of  the  deeper  traitor  for  whom  Cawdor  had 
made  way !  And  here  in  contrast  with  Duncan's  "  plen- 
teous joys,"  Macbeth  has  nothing  but  the  common-places 
of  loyalty,  in  which  he  hides  himself,  with  "  our  duties." 
Note  the  exceeding  effort  of  Macbeth's  addresses  to  the 
king,  his  reasoning  on  his  allegiance,  and  then  especially 
when  a  new  difficulty,  the  designation  of  a  successor, 
suggests  a  new  crime.  This,  however,  seems  the  first  dis- 
tinct notion,  as  to  the  plan  of  realizing  his  wishes ;  and 
here,  therefore,  with  great  propriety,  Macbeth's  cowardice 
of  his  own  conscience  discloses  itself.  I  always  think  there 
is  something  especially  Shaksperian  in  Duncan's  speeches 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  375 

throughout  this  scene,  such  pourings  forth,  such  abandon- 
ments, compared  with  the  language  of  vulgar  dramatists, 
whose  characters  seem  to  have  made  their  speeches  as  the 
actors  learn  them. 

Ib.     Duncan's  speech : — 

"  Sons,  kinsmen,  thanes, 
And  you  whose  places  are  the  nearest,  know, 
We  will  establish  our  estate  upon 
Our  eldest  Malcolm,  whom  we  name  hereafter 
The  Prince  of  Cumberland  :  which  honour  must 
Not  unaccompanied,  invest  him  only  ; 
But  signs  of  nobleness,  like  stars,  shall  shine 
On  all  deservers." 

It  is  a  fancy ; — but  I  can  never  read  this  and  the  follow- 
ing speeches  of  Macbeth,  without  involuntarily  thinking  of 
the  Miltonic  Messiah  and  Satan. 

Ib.  sc.  5.  Macbeth  is  described  by  Lady  Macbeth  so  as 
At  the  same  time  to  reveal  her  own  character.  Could  ho 
have  everything  he  wanted,  he  would  rather  have  it  inno- 
cently ; — ignorant,  as  alas !  how  many  of  us  are,  that  he 
who  wishes  a  temporal  end  for  itself,  does  in  truth  will  the 
means ;  and  hence  the  danger  of  indulging  fancies.  Lady 
Macbeth,  like  all  in  Shakspere,  is  a  class  individualized  : — • 
of  high  rank,  left  much  alone,  and  feeding  herself  with 
day-dreams  of  ambition,  she  mistakes  the  courage  of  fantasy 
for  the  power  of  bearing  the  consequences  of  the  realities 
of  guilt.  Hers  is  the  mock  fortitude  of  a  mind  deluded  by 
ambition  ;  she  shames  her  husband  with  a  superhuman 
audacity  of  fancy  which  she  cannot  support,  but  sinks  in 
the  season  of  remorse,  and  dies  in  suicidal  agony  Her 

speech : 

u  Come,  all  you  spirits 
That  tend  on  mortal  thoughts,  unsex  me  here,"  &c. 

is  that  of  one  who  had  habitually  familiarized  her  imagina- 
tion to  dreadful  conceptions,  and  was  trying  to  do  so  still 
more.  Her  invocations  and  requisitions  are  all  the  false 


376  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHKR  [1818 

efforts  of  a  mind  accustomed  only  hitherto  to  the  shadows 
of  the  imagination,  vivid  enough  to  throw  the  every-day 
substances  of  life  into  shadow,  but  never  as  yet  brought 
into  direct  contact  with  their  own  correspondent  realities. 
She  evinces  no  womanly  life,  no  wifely  joy,  at  the  return 
of  her  husband,  no  pleased  terror  at  the  thought  of  his 
past  dangers  ;  whilst  Macbeth  bursts  forth  naturally — 

"  My  dearest  love  " — 

and  shrinks  from  the  boldness  with  which  she  presents  his 
own  thoughts  to  him.  With  consummate  art  she  at  first 
uses  as  incentives  the  very  circumstances,  Duncan's  coming 
to  their  house,  &c.,  which  Macbeth's  conscience  would  most 
probably  have  adduced  to  her  as  motives  of  abhorrence  or 
repulsion.  Yet  Macbeth  is  not  prepared  : 
'•"  We  will  speak  further." 

Ib.  sc.  6.  The  lyrical  movement  with  which  this  scene 
opens,  and  the  free  and  unengaged  mind  of  Banquo,  loving 
nature,  and  rewarded  in  the  love  itself,  form  a  highly 
dramatic  contrast  with  the  laboured  rhythm  and  hypo- 
critical over- much  of  Lady  Macbeth's  welcome,  in  which 
you  cannot  detect  a  ray  of  personal  feeling,  but  all  is  thrown 
upon  the  "  dignities,"  the  general  duty. 

Ib.  sc.  7.     Macbeth's  speech  : 

"  We  will  proceed  no  further  in  this  business  : 
He  hath  honour'd  me  of  late ;  and  I  have  bought 
Golden  opinions  from  all  sorts  of  people, 
Which  would  be  worn  now  in  their  newest  gloss, 
Not  cast  aside  so  soon. " 

Note  the  inward  pangs  and  warnings  of  conscience  in- 
terpreted  into  prudential  reasonings. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Banquo's  speech: 

"  A  heavy  summons  lies  like  lead  upon  me, 
And  yet  I  would  not  sleep.     Merciful  powers! 
Restrain  in  me  the  cursed  thoughts,  that  nature 
Gives  way  to  in  repose." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPEBE.  377 

The  disturbance  of  an  innocent  soul  by  painful  suspicions 
of  another's  guilty  intentions  and  wishes,  and  fear  of  tho 
cursed  thoughts  of  sensual  nature. 

Ib.  sc.  2.  Now  that  the  deed  is  done  or  doing — now 
that  the  first  reality  commences,  Lady  Macbeth  shrinks. 
The  most  simple  sound  strikes  terror,  the  most  natural 
consequences  are  horrible,  whilst  previously  everything, 
however  awful,  appeared  a  mere  trifle ;  conscience,  which 
before  had  been  hidden  to  Macbeth  in  selfish  and  pru- 
dential fears,  now  rushes  in  upon  him  in  her  own  veritable 
person : 

"  Methought  I  heard  a  voice  cry — Sleep  no  morel 

I  could  not  say  Amen, 
When  they  did  say,  God  bless  us !  " 

And  see  the  novelty  given  to  the  most  familiar  images  by 
a  new  state  of  feeling. 

Ib.  sc.  3.  This  low  soliloquy  of  the  Porter  and  his  few 
speeches  afterwards,  I  believe  to  have  been  written  for  the 
mob  by  some  other  hand,  perhaps  with  Shakspere's  con- 
sent ;  and  that  finding  it  take,  he  with  the  remaining  ink 
of  a  pen  otherwise  employed,  just  interpolated  the  words — 

"  I'll  devil-porter  it  no  further :  I  had  thought  to  have  let  in  some  of 
all  professions,  that  go  the  primrose  way  to  th'  everlasting  bonfire." 

Of  the  rest  not  one  syllable  has  the  ever-present  being  of 
Shakspere. 

Act  iii.  sc.  1.  Compare  Macbeth's  mode  of  working  on 
the  murderers  in  this  place  with  Schiller's  mistaken  scene 
between  Butler,  Devereux,  and  Macdonald  in  "  Wallenstein." 
(Part  II.  act  iv.  sc.  2.)  The  comic  was  wholly  out  of 
season.  Shakspere  never  introduces  it,  but  when  it  may 
react  on  the  tragedy  by  harmonious  contrast. 

Ib.  sc.  2.     Macbeth's  speech  : 

"  But  let  the  frame  of  things  disjoint,  both  the  worlds  suffer 
Ere  we  will  eat  our  meal  in  fear,  and  sleep 


378  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

In  the  affliction  of  these  terrible  dreams 
That  shake  us  nightly." 

Ever  and  ever  mistaking  the  anguish  of  conscience  for 
fears  of  selfishness,  and  thus  as  a  punishment  of  that  selfish- 
ness, plunging  still  deeper  in  guilt  and  ruin. 

Ib.     Macbeth's  speech : 

"  Be  innocent  of  the  knowledge,  dearest  chuck, 
Till  thou  applaud  the  deed." 

This  is  Macbeth's  sympathy  with  his  own  feelings,  and 
his  mistaking  his  wife's  opposite  state. 
Ib.  sc.  4. 

"  Macb.  It  will  have  blood,  they  say ;  blood  will  have  blood  t 
Stones  have  been  known  to  move,  and  trees  to  speak ; 
Augurs,  and  understood  relations,  have 
By  magot-pies,  and  choughs,  and  rooks,  brought  forth 
The  secret'st  man  of  blood." 

The  deed  is  done ;  but  Macbeth  receives  no  comfort, — 
no  additional  security.  He  has  by  guilt  torn  himself  live- 
asunder  from  nature,  and  is,  therefore,  himself  in  a  preter- 
natural state :  no  wonder,  then,  that  he  is  inclined  to 
superstition,  and  faith  in  the  unknown  of  signs  and  tokens, 
and  super-human  agencies. 

Act  iv.  sc.  ] . 

"  Len.  'Tis  two  or  three,  my  lord,  that  bring  you  word, 

Macduff  is  fled  to  England. 
Macb.   Fled  to  England  ?  " 

The  acme  of  the  avenging  conscience. 

Ib.  sc.  2.  This  scene,  dreadful  as  it  is,  is  still  a  relief, 
because  a  variety,  because  domestic,  and  therefore  soothing, 
as  associated  with  the  only  real  pleasures  of  life.  The  con- 
versation between  Lady  Macduff  and  her  child  heightens 
the  pathos,  and  is  preparatory  for  the  deep  tragedy  of  their 
assassination.  Shakspere's  fondness  for  children  is  every- 
where shown  ; — in  Prince  Arthur,  in  "  King  John ;  "  in 


SECT.  IV.]  PLAYS  OF  SHAKSPEBE.  379 

the  sweet  scene  in  the  "  Winter's  Tale  "  between  Hermione 
and  her  son ;  nay,  even  in  honest  Evans's  examination  of 
Mrs.  Page's  schoolboy.  To  the  objection  that  Shakspere 
wounds  the  moral  sense  by  the  unsubdued,  undisguised 
description  of  the  most  hateful  atrocity — that  he  tears  the 
feelings  without  mercy,  and  even  outrages  the  eye  itself 
with  scenes  of  insupportable  horror — I,  omitting  "  Titus 
Andronicus,"  as  not  genuine,  and  excepting  the  scene  of 
Gloster's  blinding  in  "  Lear,"  answer  boldly  in  the  name  of 
Shakspere,  not  guilty. 

Ib.  sc.  3.     Malcolm's  speech : 

"  Better  Macbeth, 
Than  such  a  one  to  reign." 

The  moral  is — the  dreadful  effects  even  on  the  best 
minds  of  the  soul-sickening  sense  of  insecurity. 

Ib.  How  admirably  Macduff's  grief  is  in  harmony  with 
the  whole  play  !  It  rends,  not  dissolves,  the  heart.  "  The 
tune  of  it  goes  manly."  Thus  is  Shakspere  always  master 
of  himself  and  of  his  subject, — a  genuine  Proteus  : — we  see 
all  things  in  him,  as  images  in  a  calm  lake,  most  distinct, 
most  accurate, — only  more  splendid,  more  glorified.  This 
is  correctness  in  the  only  philosophical  sense.  But  he 
requires  your  sympathy  and  your  submission ;  you  must 
have  that  recipiency  of  moral  impression  without  which 
the  purposes  and  ends  of  the  drama  would  be  frustrated, 
and  the  absence  of  which  demonstrates  an  utter  want  of  all 
imagination,  a  deadness  to  that  necessary  pleasure  of  being 
innocently — shall  I  say,  deluded  ? — or  rather,  drawn  away 
from  ourselves  to  the  music  of  noblest  thought  in  harmo- 
nious sounds.  Happy  he,  who  not  only  in  the  public 
theatre,  but  in  the  labours  of  a  profession,  and  round  the 
light  of  his  own  hearth,  still  carries  a  heart  so  pleasure- 
fraught  ! 

Alas  for  Macbeth  !     Now  all  is  inward  with  him ;  he 


380  NOTES  OX  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

has  no  more  prudential  prospective  reasonings.  His  wife, 
the  only  being  who  could  have  had  any  seat  in  his  affec- 
tions, dies  ;  he  puts  on  despondency,  the  final  heart-armour 
of  the  wretched,  and  would  fain  think  everything  shadowy 
and  unsubstantial,  as  indeed  all  things  are  to  those  who 
cannot  regard  them  as  symbols  of  goodness : — 

"  Out,  out,  brief  candle ! 
Life's  but  a  walking  shadow ;  a  poor  player, 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage, 
And  then  is  heard  no  more :  it  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing." 


The  Winter's  Tale.' 

Although,  on  the  whole,  this  play  is  exquisitely  re- 
spondent to  its  title,  and  even  in  the  fault  I  am  about  to 
mention,  still  a  winter's  tale  ;  yet  it  seems  a  mere  indolence 
of  the  great  bard  not  to  have  provided  in  the  oracular 
response  (Act  ii.  sc.  2.)  some  ground  for  Hermione's  seem- 
ing death  and  fifteen  years  voluntary  concealment.  This 
might  have  been  easily  effected  by  some  obscure  sentence 
of  the  oracle,  as  for  example  : — 

"Nor  shall  he  ever  recover  an  heir,  if  he  have  a  wife  before  that 
recovery." 

The  idea  of  this  delightful  drama  is  a  genuine  jealousy 
of  disposition,  and  it  should  be  immediately  followed  by 
the  perusal  of  "  Othello,"  which  is  the  direct  contrast  of  it 
in  every  particular.  For  jealousy  is  a  vice  of  the  mind,  a 
culpable  tendency  of  the  temper,  having  certain  well  known 

1  Whoever  it  was  that  placed  these  notes  on  the  "  Winter's  Tale " 
and  those  on  "  Othello  "  together,  it  is  certain  that  Coleridge  usually 
treated  the  plays  together,  in  order  to  contrast  the  jealousy,  usually  so 
called,  of  Othello  with  that  of  Leontes.  "Macbeth"  is  arranged  with 
"  llamlut "  for  similar  reasons. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS   OF   SHAKSPKRB.  381 

and  well  defined  effects  and  concomitants,  all  of  which  are 
visible  in  Leontes,  and,  I  boldly  say,  not  one  of  which 
marks  its  presence  in  "Othello;" — such  as,  first,  an  ex- 
citability by  the  most  inadequate  causes,  and  an  eagerness 
to  snatch  at  proofs ;  secondly,  a  grossness  of  conception, 
and  a  disposition  to  degrade  the  object  of  the  passion  by 
sensual  fancies  and  images ;  thirdly,  a  sense  of  shame  of 
his  own  feelings  exhibited  in  a  solitary  moodiness  of 
humour,  and  yet  from  the  violence  of  the  passion  forced 
to  utter  itself,  and  therefore  catching  occasions  to  ease  the 
mind  by  ambiguities,  equivoques,  by  talking  to  those  who 
cannot,  and  who  are  known  not  to  be  able  to,  understand 
what  is  said  to  them, — in  short,  by  soliloquy  in  the  form 
of  dialogue,  and  hence  a  confused,  broken,  and  fragmentaryr 
manner;  fourthly,  a  dread  of  vulgar  ridicule,  as  distinct 
from  a  high  sense  of  honour,  or  a  mistaken  sense  of  duty  ; 
and  lastly,  and  immediately,  consequent  on  this,  a  spirit  of 
selfish  vindictiveness. 

Act  i.  sc.  1 — 2. 

Observe  the  easy  style  of  chitchat  between  Camillo  and 
Archidamus  as  contrasted  with  the  elevated  diction  on  the- 
introduction  of  the  kings  and  Hermione  in  the  second 
scene :  and  how  admirably  Polixenes'  obstinate  refusal  to 
Leontes  to  stay — 

"  There  is  no  tongue  that  moves ;  none,  none  i'  the  world, 
So  soon  as  yours,  could  win  me ; —  " 

prepares  for  the  effect  produced  by  his  afterwards  yielding 
to  Hermione; — which  is,  nevertheless,  perfectly  natural 
from  mere  courtesy  of  sex,  and  the  exhaustion  of  the  will 
by  former  efforts  of  denial,  and  well  calculated  to  set  in 
nascent  action  the  jealousy  of  Leontes.  This,  when  once 
excited,  is  unconsciously  increased  by  Hermione  :— 

"  Yet,  good  deed,  Leontes, 
I  love  thee  not  a  jar  o'  the  clock  behind 
What  lady  she  her  lord  j—  " 


382  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

accompanied,  as  a  good  actress  ought  to  represent  it,  by 
an  expression  and  recoil  of  apprehension  that  she  had  gone 
too  far. 

"  At  my  request,  he  would  not : — " 

The  first  working  of  the  jealous  fit ; — 
"  Too  hot,  too  hot :— " 

The  morbid  tendency  of  Leontes  to  lay  hold  of  the 
merest  trifles,  and  his  grossness  immediately  afterwards — 

"  Paddling  palms  and  pinching  fingers : —  " 

followed  by  his  strange  loss  of  self-control  in  his  dialogue 
with  the  little  boy. 

Act  iii.  so.  2.     Paulina's  speech : 

"  That  thou  betray'dst  Polixenes,  'twas  nothing  5 
That  did  but  show  thee,  of  a.  fool,  inconstant, 
And  damnable  ingrateful. —  " 

Theobald  reads  "soul." 

I  think  the  original  word  is  Shakspere'a.  1.  My  ear 
feels  it  to  be  Shaksperian;  2.  The  involved  grammar  is 
Shaksperian  ; — "  show  thee,  being  a  fool  naturally,  to  have 
improved  thy  folly  by  inconstancy;"  3.  The  alteration  is 
inost  flat,  and  un- Shaksperian.  As  to  the  grossness  of 
the  abuse — she  calls  him  "gross  and  foolish"  a  few  lines 
below. 

Act  iv.  sc.  2.     Speech  of  Autolycus : — 

"  For  the  life  to  come,  I  sleep  out  the  thought  of  it." 

Fine  as  this  is,  and  delicately  characteristic  of  one  who 
liad  lived  and  been  reared  in  the  best  society,  and  had  been 
precipitated  from  it  by  dice  and  drabbing ;  yet  still  it 
strikes  against  my  feelings  as  a  note  out  of  tune,  and  as  not 
.coalescing  with  that  pastoral  tint  which  gives  such  a  charm 
to  this  act.  It  is  too  Macbeth-like  in  the  "  snapper  up  of 
jnnconsidered  trifles." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPKKB.  383 

Ib.  sc.  4.     Perdita's  speech : — 

"  From  Dis's  waggon!  daffodils." 

An  epithet  is  wanted  here,  not  merely  or  chiefly  for  the 
metre,  but  for  the  balance,  for  the  aesthetic  logic.  Per- 
haps, "  golden "  was  the  word  which  would  set  off  the 
"  violets  dim." 

Ib.  "  Pale  primroses 

That  die  unmarried. —  " 

Milton's — 

'•'  And  the  rathe  primrose  that  forsaken  dies." 

Ib.     Perdita's  speech : — 

"  Even  here  undone : 

I  was  not  much  afraid ; l  for  once  or  twice 
I  was  about  to  speak,  and  tell  him  plainly, 
The  self-same  sun,  that  shines  upon  his  court, 
Hides  not  his  visage  from  our  cottage,  but 
Looks  on  alike.     Wilt  please  you,  Sir,  be  gone.! 

(To  Florizel.) 

1  told  you,  what  would  come  of  this.     Beseech  you, 
Of  your  own  state  take  care :  this  dream  of  mine, 
Being 2  awake,  I'll  queen  it  no  inch  farther, 
But  milk  my  ewes,  and  weep." 

O  how  more  than  exquisite  is  this  whole  speech ! — And 
that  profound  nature  of  noble  pride  and  grief  venting 
themselves  in  a  momentary  peevishness  of  resentment 
toward  Florizel : — 

" Wilt  please  you,  Sir,  be  gone  ! " 

Ib.     Speech  of  Autolycus : — 

"Let  me  have  no  lying;  it  becomes  none  but  tradesmen,  and  they 
often  give  us  soldiers  the  lie ;  but  we  pay  them  for  it  in 3  stamped  coin, 
not  stabbing  steel ; — therefore  they  do  not  give  us  the  lie." 

As  we  pay  them,  they,  therefore,  do  not  give  it  us. 


'  Read  "  afear'd."        •  Bead  "  being  now  awake."         •  Read  "  with." 


384  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER 


Othello. 

Act  i.  so.  1.  Admirable  is  the  preparation,  so  truly  and 
peculiarly  Shaksperiaii,  in  the  introduction  of  Boderigo,  as 
the  dupe  on  whom  lago  shall  first  exercise  his  art,  and  in 
so  doing  display  his  own  character.  Roderigo,  without 
any  fixed  principle,  but  not  without  the  moral  notions  and 
sympathies  with  honour,  which  his  rank  and  connections 
had  hung  upon  him,  is  already  well  fitted  and  predisposed 
for  the  purpose ;  for  very  want  of  character  and  strength 
of  passion,  like  wind  loudest  in  an  empty  house,  constitute 
his  character.  The  first  three  lines  happily  state  the  nature 
and  foundation  of  the  friendship  between  him  and  lago, — 
the  purse, — as  also  the  contrast  of  Roderigo's  intemperance 
of  mind  with  lago's  coolness, — the  coolness  of  a  precon- 
ceiving experimenter.  The  mere  language  of  protestation — 

"  If  ever  I  did  dream  of  such  a  matter, 
Abhor  me, —  " 

which  falling  in  with  the  associative  link,  determines 
Roderigo's  continuation  of  complaint — 

"  Thou  told'st  me,  thou  didst  hold  him  in  thy  hate — " 

elicits  at  length  a  true  feeling  of  lago's  mind,  the  dread  of 
contempt  habitual  to  those,  who  encourage  in  themselves, 
and  have  their  keenest  pleasure  in,  the  expression  of  con- 
tempt for  others.  Observe  lago's  high  self-opinion,  and 
the  moral,  that  a  wicked  man  will  employ  real  feelings,  as 
well  as  assume  those  most  alien  from  his  own,  as  instru- 
ments of  his  purposes  : — 

And,  by  the  faith  of  man, 


I  know  my  place,1 1  am  worth  no  worse  a  place." 
1  Bead  "  price." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  385 

I  think  Tyrwhitt's  reading  of  "  life  "  for  "  wife  " — 
"  A  fellow  almost  damn'd  in  a  fail'  wife  " — 

the  true  one,  as  fitting  to  lago's  contempt  for  whatever  did 
not  display  power,  and  that  intellectual  power.  In  what 
follows,  let  the  reader  feel  how  by  and  through  the  glass 
of  two  passions,  disappointed  vanity  and  envy,  the  very 
vices  of  which  he  is  complaining,  are  made  to  act  upon  him 
as  if  they  were  so  many  excellencies,  and  the  more  appro- 
priately, because  cunning  is  always  admired  and  wished 
for  by  minds  conscious  of  inward  weakness ; — but  they  act 
only  by  half,  like  music  on  an  inattentive  auditor,  swelling 
the  thoughts  which  prevent  him  from  listening  to  it. 
Ib. 

"  Pod.  What  a  full  fortune  does  the  thick-lips  owe, 
If  he  can  carry  't  thus." 

Roderigo  turns  off  to  Othello;  and  here  comes  one,  if 
not  the  only,  seeming  justification  of  our  blackamoor  or 
negro  Othello.  Even  if  we  supposed  this  an  uninterrupted 
tradition  of  the  theatre,  and  that  Shakspere  himself,  from 
want  of  scenes,  and  the  experience  that  nothing  could  be 
made  too  marked  for  the  senses  of  his  audience,  had  prac- 
tically sanctioned  it, — would  this  prove  aught  concerning 
his  own  intention  as  a  poet  for  all  ages  ?  Can  we  imagine 
him  so  utterly  ignorant  as  to  make  a  barbarous  negro  plead 
royal  birth, — at  a  time,  too,  when  negroes  were  not  known, 
except  as  slaves  ? — As  for  lago's  language  to  Brabantio,  it 
implies  merely  that  Othello  was  a  Moor,  that  is,  black. 
Though  I  think  the  rivalry  of  Roderigo  sufficient  to  account 
for  his  wilful  confusion  of  Moor  and  Negro, — yet,  even  if 
compelled  to  give  this  up,  I  should  think  it  only  adapted 
for  the  acting  of  the  day,  and  should  complain  of  an 
enormity  built  on  a  single  word,  in  direct  contradiction  to 
lago's  "Barbary  horse."  Besides,  if  we  could  in  good 
earnest  believe  Shakspere  ignorant  of  the  distinction,  still 

C  C 


386  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [181« 

why  should  we  adopt  one  disagreeable  possibility  instead 
of  a  ten  times  greater  and  more  pleasing  probability  ?  It 
is  a  common  error  to  mistake  the  epithets  applied  by  the 
dramatis  personce  to  each  other,  as  truly  descriptive  of  what 
the  audience  ought  to  see  or  know.  No  doubt  Desdemona 
saw  Othello's  visage  in  his  mind  ;  yet,  as  we  are  constituted, 
and  most  surely  as  an  English  audience  was  disposed  in  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  it  would  be  something 
monstrous  to  conceive  this  beautiful  Venetian  girl  falling 
in  love  with  a  veritable  negro.  It  would  argue  a  dispro- 
portionateness,  a  want  of  balance,  in  Desdemona,  which 
Shakspere  does  not  appear  to  have  in  the  least  contem- 
plated. 

Ib.     Brabantio's  speech  : — 

"  This  accident  is  not  unlike  my  dream  : — " 

The  old  careful  senator,  being  caught  careless,  transfers 
his  caution  to  his  dreaming  power  at  least. 
Ib.     lago's  speech  : — 

'•' —  For  their  souls, 
Another  of  his  fathom  they  have  not, 
To  lead  their  business : —  " 

The  forced  praise  of  Othello  followed  by  the  bitter 
hatred  of  him  in  this  speech !  And  observe  how  Bra- 
bantio's dream  prepares  for  his  recurrence  to  the  notion 
of  philtres,  and  how  both  prepare  for  carrying  on  the  plot 
of  the  arraignment  of  Othello  on  this  ground. 

Ib.  sc.  2. 

"  Oth.  Tis  better  as  it  is." 

How  well  these  few  words  impress  at  the  outset  the 
truth  of  Othello's  own  character  of  himself  at  the  end — 
that  he  was  "  not  easily  wrought ! "  His  self-government 
contradistinguishes  him  throughout  from  Leontes. 

Ib.     Othello's  speech  : — 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERB.  387 

"  —  And  my  demerits ' 
May  speak,  unbonnetted —  " 

The  argument  in  Theobald's  note,  where  "and  bon- 
netted  "  is  suggested,  goes  on  the  assumption  that  Shak- 
spere  could  not  nse  the  same  word  differently  in  different 
places ;  whereas  I  should  conclude,  that  as  in  the  passage 
in  "Lear"  the  word  is  employed  in  its  direct  meaning,  so 
here  it  is  used  metaphorically ;  and  this  is  confirmed  by 
what  has  escaped  the  editors,  that  it  is  not  "I,"  but  "my 
demerits "  that  may  speak  unbonnetted, — without  the 
symbol  of  a  petitioning  inferior. 

Ib.  sc.  3.     Othello's  speech  : — 

"  Please  2  your  grace,  my  ancient ; 
A  man  he  is  of  honesty  and  trust : 
To  his  conveyance  I  assign  my  wife." 

Compare  this  with  the  behaviour  of  Leontes  to  his  true 
friend  Camillo. 
Ib.  sc.  5. 

"  Bra.  Look  to  her,  Moor ;  have  a  quick  eye  to  see ) 
She  has  deceived  her  father,  and  may  thee. 
Oth.     My  life  upon  her  faith." 

In  real  life,  how  do  we  look  back  to  little  speeches  as 
presentimental  of,  or  contrasted  with,  an  affecting  event ! 
Even  so,  Shakspere,  as  secure  of  being  read  over  and  over, 
of  becoming  a  family  friend,  provides  this  passage  for  his 
readers,  and  leaves  it  to  them. 

Ib.     lago's  speech : — 

a  Virtue  ?  a  fig!  'tis  in  ourselves,  that  we  are  thus,  or  thus,"  &c. 

This  speech  comprises  the  passionless  character  of  lago. 
It  is  all  will  in  intellect ;  and  therefore  he  is  here  a  bold 

1  "Demerits"  had  the  same  sense  as  "merits"  in  Shakspere's  time 
But  see  Section  III.,  note  on  "  Richard  II.,"  Act  L  sc.  3. 

2  Head  "  so  please." 


388  NOTES   ON   SOME   OTHER  [1818 

partizan  of  a  truth,  but  yet  of  a  truth  converted  into  a 
falsehood  by  the  absence  of  all  the  necessary  modifications 
caused  by  the  frail  nature  of  man.  And  then  comes  the 
last  sentiment, — 

"  Our  raging  motions,  our  carnal  stings,  our  unbitted  lusts,  whereof 
I  take  this,  that  you  call — love,  to  be  a  sect  or  scion  !" 

Here  is  the  true  lagoism  of,  alas  !  how  many !  Note  lago's 
pride  of  mastery  in  the  repetition  of  "  Go,  make  money  ! " 
to  his  anticipated  dupe,  even  stronger  than  his  love  of 
lucre  :  and  when  Roderigo  is  completely  won — 

"  I  am  changed.    Til  go  sell  all  my  land." 

when  the  effect  has  been  fully  produced,  the  repetition  of 
triumph — 

"  Go  to ;  farewell ;  put  money  enough  in  your  purse ! "  * 

The  remainder — lago's  soliloquy — the  motive-hunting  of  a 
motiveless  malignity — how  awful  it  is  !  Yea,  whilst  he  is 
still  allowed  to  bear  the  divine  image,  it  is  too  fiendish  for 
his  own  steady  view, — for  the  lonely  gaze  of  a  being  next 
to  devil,  and  only  not  quite  devil, — and  yet  a  character 
which  Shakspere  has  attempted  and  executed,  without 
disgust  and  without  scandal ! 

Dr.  Johnson  has  remarked  that  little  or  nothing  is  want- 
ing to  render  the  "  Othello  "  a  regular  tragedy,  but  to  have 
opened  the  play  with  the  arrival  of  Othello  in  Cyprus,  and 
to  have  thrown  the  preceding  act  into  the  form  of  narration. 
Here  then  is  the  place  to  determine,  whether  such  a  change 
would  or  would  not  be  an  improvement ; — nay  (to  throw 
down  the  glove  with  a  full  challenge)  whether  the  tragedy 
would  or  not  by  such  an  arrangement  become  more  regular, 

1  The  line  in  Shakspere  is 

"  Go  to ;  farewell.     Do  you  hear,  Roderigo  ?  " 

The  words  "put  money  enough  in  your  purse," — which,  moreover,  have 
not  quite  a  Shakspere  ring, — do  not  form  part  of  the  text. 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.  389 

— that  is,  more  consonant  with  the  rules  dictated  by 
universal  reason,  on  the  true  common-sense  of  mankind, 
in  its  application  to  the  particular  case.  For  in  all  acts  of 
judgment,  it  can  never  be  too  often  recollected,  and  scarcely 
too  often  repeated,  that  rules  are  means  to  ends,  and,  coii^ 
eequently,  that  the  end  must  be  determined  and  understood 
before  it  can  be  known  what  the  rules  are  or  ought  to  be. 
Now,  from  a  certain  species  of  drama,  proposing  to  itself 
the  accomplishment  of  certain  ends, — these  partly  arising 
from  the  idea  of  the  species  itself,  but  in  part,  likewise, 
forced  upon  the  dramatist  by  accidental  circumstances 
beyond  his  power  to  remove  or  control, — three  rules  have 
been  abstracted ; — in  other  words,  the  means  most  con- 
ducive to  the  attainment  of  the  proposed  ends  have  been 
generalized,  and  prescribed  under  the  names  of  the  three 
unities, — the  unity  of  time,  the  unity  of  place,  and  the 
unity  of  action, — which  last  would,  perhaps,  have  been  as 
appropriately,  as  well  as  more  intelligibly,  entitled  the 
unity  of  interest.  "With  this  last  the  present  question  has 
no  immediate  concern:  in  fact,  its  conjunction  with  the 
former  two  is  a  mere  delusion  of  words.  It  is  not  properly 
a  rule,  but  in  itself  the  great  end  not  only  of  the  drama, 
but  of  the  epic  poem,  the  lyric  ode,  of  all  poetry,  down  to 
the  candle-flame  cone  of  an  epigram, — nay  of  poesy  in 
general,  as  the  proper  generic  term  inclusive  of  all  the  fine 
arts  as  its  species.  But  of  the  unities  of  time  and  place, 
which  alone  are  entitled  to  the  name  of  rules,  the  history 
of  their  origin  will  be  their  best  criterion.  You  might 
take  the  Greek  chorus  to  a  place,  but  you  could  not  bring 
a  place  to  them  without  as  palpable  an  equivoque  as  bring- 
ing Birnam  wood  to  Macbeth  at  Dnnsinane.1  It  was  the 
same,  though  in  a  less  degree,  with  regard  to  the  unity  of 
time : — the  positive  fact,  not  for  a  moment  removed  from 

1  See  concluding  division  of  Section  I. 


390  NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  [1818 

the  senses,  the  presence,  I  mean,  of  the  same  identical 
chorus,  was  a  continued  measure  of  time ; — and  although 
the  imagination  may  supersede  perception,  yet  it  must  he 
granted  to  be  an  imperfection — however  easily  tolerated — 
to  place  the  two  in  broad  contradiction  to  each  other.  In 
truth,  it  is  a  mere  accident  of  terms  ;  for  the  Trilogy  of  the 
Greek  theatre  was  a  drama  in  three  acts,  and  notwith- 
standing this,  what  strange  contrivances  as  to  place  there 
are  in  the  Aristophanic  Frogs.  Besides,  if  the  law  of  mere 
actual  perception  is  once  violated — as  it  repeatedly  is  even 
in  the  Greek  tragedies — why  is  it  more  difficult  to  imagine 
three  hours  to  be  three  years  than  to  be  a  whole  day  and 
night  ? 

Act  ii.  so.  1. 

Observe  in  how  many  ways  Othello  is  made,  first,  our 
acquaintance,  then  our  friend,  then  the  object  of  our 
anxiety,  before  the  deeper  interest  is  to  be  approached ! 

Ib. 

"  Mont.  But,  good  lieutenant,  is  your  general  wived  ? 

Cos.  Most  fortunately :  he  hath  achieved  a  maid 
That  paragons  description,  and  wild  fame ; 
One  that  excels  the  quirks  of  blazoning  pens, 
And,  in  the  essential  vesture  of  creation, 
Does  bear  all  excellency.1 

Here  is  Cassio's  warm-hearted,  yet  perfectly  disengaged, 
praise  of  Desdemona,  and  sympathy  with  the  "  most  for- 
tunately"  wived  Othello  : — and  yet  Cassio  is  an  enthusiastic 
admirer,  almost  a  worshipper,  of  Desdemona.  O,  that 
detestable  code  that  excellence  cannot  be  loved  in  any 
form  that  is  female,  but  it  must  needs  be  selfish  !  Observe 
Othello's  "honest,"  and  Cassio's  "bold"  lago,  and  Cassio's 
full  guileless-hearted  wishes  for  the  safety  and  love-raptures 

1  The  reading  of  the  Quartos.  The  Folios  have  "Does  tire  the 
ingeniver ; "  the  Globe  Ed.  "  ingener."  "  Ingene  "  meant  "  genius,  wit," 
in  Shnkspere's  day.  See  Nares'  ':  Glossary." 


SECT.  IV.]  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERB.  391 

of  Othello  and  "the  divine  Desdemona."  And  also  note 
the  exquisite  circumstance  of  Cassio's  kissing  lago's  wife, 
as  if  it  ought  to  be  impossible  that  the  dullest  auditor 
should  not  feel  Cassio's  religious  love  of  Desdemona's 
purity.  lago's  answers  are  the  sneers  which  a  proud  bad 
intellect  feels  towards  woman,  and  expresses  to  a  wife. 
Surely  it  ought  to  be  considered  a  very  exalted  compliment 
to  women,  that  all  the  sarcasms  on  them  in  Shakspere  are 
put  in  the  mouths  of  villains.1 
Ib. 

"  Des.  I  am  not  merry ;  but  I  do  beguile,"  &o. 

The  struggle  of  courtesy  in  Desdemona  to  abstract  her 
attention. 
Ib. 

"  (Togo  aside.")  He  takes  her  by  the  palm  :  Ay,  well  said,  whisper  j 
with  as  little  a  web  as  this,  will  I  ensnare  as  great  a  fly  as  Cassio.  Ay, 
smile  upon  her,  do,"  &c. 

The  importance  given  to  trifles,  and  made  fertile  by  the 
villainy  of  the  observer. 

Ib.     lago's  dialogue  with  Roderigo : 

This  is  the  rehearsal  on  the  dupe  of  the  traitor's  inten- 
tions on  Othello. 

Ib.     lago's  soliloquy : 

"But  partly  led  to  diet  my  revenge, 
For  that  I  do  suspect  the  lusty  Moor 
Hath  leap'd  into  my  seat." 

This  thought,  originally  by  lago's  own  confession  a  mere 
suspicion,  is  now  ripening,  and  gnaws  his  base  nature  as 
his  own  "  poisonous  mineral "  is  about  to  gnaw  the  noble 
heart  of  his  general. 

Ib.  sc.  3.     Othello's  speech: 

1  isee  similar  remarks  in  the  notes  on  "  The  Tempest." 


392  NOTES   ON   SOME    OTHER  [1818 

"  I  know,  lago, 

Thy  honesty  and  love  doth  mince  this  matter, 

Making  it  light  to  Cassio." 

Honesty  and  love !     Ay,  and  who  but  the  reader  of  the 
play  could  think  otherwise  ? 
Ib.     lago's  soliloquy : 

"  And  what's  he  then  that  says — I  play  the  villain  ? 
When  this  advice  is  free  I  give,  and  honest, 
Probable1  to  thinking,  and,  indeed,  the  course 
To  win  the  Moor  again." 

He  is  not,  you  see,  an  absolute  fiend;  or,  at  least,  he 
wishes  to  think  himself  not  so. 
Act  iii.  sc.  3. 

"  DCS.  Before  Emilia  here, 
I  give  tliee  warrant  of  this  2  place." 

The  over-zeal  of  innocence  in  Desdemona. 
Ib. 

Enter  Desdemona  and  ^Emilia. 

"  Oth.  If  she  be  false,  O,  then,  heaven  mocks  itself! 
I'll  not  believe  it." 

Divine !     The  effect  of  innocence  and  the  better  genius  ! 
Act  iv.  sc.  3. 

"  Mmil.  Why,  the  wrong  is  but  a  wrong  i'  the  world ;  and  having 
the  world  for  your  labour,  'tis  a  wrong  in  your  own  world,  and  you 
might  quickly  make  it  right." 

Warburton's  note. 

What  any  other  man,  who  had  learning  enough,  might 
have  quoted  as  a  playful  and  witty  illustration  of  his 
remarks  against  the  Calvinistic  thesis,  Warburton  gravely 
attributes  to  Shakspere  as  intentional ;  and  this,  too,  in  the 
mouth  of  a  lady's  woman  ! 

1  All  the  early  editions,  and  Globe  Ed.,  read  "  proball."    The  word 
is  not  found  elsewhere.     (Nares*  "  Glossary.") 
a  Read  « thy." 


"SECT.  IV.]  PLATS   OF   SH^SPERE.  393 

Act  v.  last  scene.     Othello's  speech : — • 

" Of  one,  whose  hand, 

Like  the  base  Indian,  threw  a  pearl  away 
Richer  than  all  his  tribe,"  &c. 

Theobald's  note  from  Warburton. 

Thus  it  is  for  no-poets  to  comment  on  the  greatest  of 
poets  !  To  make  Othello  say  that  he,  who  had  killed  his 
wife,  was  like  Herod  who  killed  Mariamne  ! — O,  how  many 
beauties,  in  this  one  line,  were  impenetrable  to  the  ever 
thought-swarming,  but  idealess,  Warburton !  Othello 
wishes  to  excuse  himself  on  the  score  of  ignorance,  and 
yet  not  to  excuse  himself, — to  excuse  himself  by  accusing. 
This  struggle  of  feeling  is  finely  conveyed  in  the  word 
"  base,"  which  is  applied  to  the  rude  Indian,  not  in  his  own 
character,  but  as  the  momentary  representative  of  Othello's. 
"  Indian  " — for  I  retain  the  old  reading — means  American, 
a  savage  in  genere. 

Finally,  let  me  repeat  that  Othello  does  not  kill  Des- 
demona  in  jealousy,1  but  in  a  conviction  forced  upon  him 
by  the  almost  superhuman  art  of  lago, — such  a  conviction 
as  any  man  would  and  must  have  entertained  who  had 
believed  lago's  honesty  as  Othello  did.  We,  the  audience, 
know  that  lago  is  a  villain  from  the  beginning ;  but  in 
considering  the  essence  of  the  Shaksperian  Othello,  we 
must  perse veringly  place  ourselves  in  his  situation,  and 
under  his  circumstances.  Then  we  shall  immediately  feel 
the  fundamental  difference  between  the  solemn  agony  of 
the  noble  Moor,  and  the  wretched  fishing  jealousies  of 
Leontes,  and  the  morbid  suspiciousness  of  Leonatus,  who 
is,  in  other  respects,  a  fine  character.  Othello  had  no  life 
but  in  Desdemona : — the  belief  that  she,  his  angel,  had 
fallen  from  the  heaven  of  her  native  innocence,  wrought  a 
civil  war  in.  his  heart.  She  is  his  counterpart ;  and,  like 

1  See  Appendix  :   V.,  Othello. 


394    NOTES  ON  SOME  OTHER  PLATS  OF  SHAKSPERE.    [1818 

him,  is  almost  sanctified  in  our  eyes  by  her  absolute  un- 
emspiciousness,  and  holy  entireness  of  love.  As  the  curtain 
drops,  which  do  we  pity  the  most  ? 


Extremum  liunc .  There  are  three  powers : — Wit, 

which  discovers  partial  likeness  hidden  in  general  diver- 
sity ;  subtlety,  which  discovers  the  diversity  concealed  in 
general  apparent  sameness ; — and  profundity,  which  dis- 
covers an  essential  unity  under  all  the  semblances  of 
difference. 

Give  to  a  subtle  man  fancy,  and  he  is  a  wit ;  to  a  deep 
man  imagination,  and  he  is  a  philosopher.  Add,  again, 
pleasurable  sensibility  in  the  threefold  form  of  sympathy 
with  the  interesting  in  morals,  the  impressive  in  form,  and 
the  harmonious  in  sound, — and  you  have  the  poet. 

J3ut  combine  all, — wit,  subtlety,  and  fancy,  with  pro- 
fundity, imagination,  and  moral  and  physical  susceptibility 
of  the  pleasurable, — and  let  the  object  of  action  be  man 
universal;1  and  we  shall  have — 0,  rash  prophecy!  say, 
rather,  we  have — a  Shakspere  ! 

1  See  opening  remarks  on  Spenser,  Appendix :  III. 


SECT  V.]  JONSON,  BEAUMONT,  ETC.  395 


SECTION  V. 

JONSON,  BEAUMONT,  FLETCHER,  AND 
MASSINGER.1 

A  CONTEMPORARY  is  rather  an  ambiguous  term, 
•^  when  applied  to  authors.  It  may  simply  mean  that 
one  man  lived  and  wrote  while  another  was  yet  alive,  how- 
ever deeply  the  former  may  have  been  indebted  to  the 
latter  as  his  model.  There  have  been  instances  in  the 
literary  world  that  might  remind  a  botanist  of  a  singular 
sort  of  parasite  plant,  which  rises  above  ground,  indepen- 
dent and  unsupported,  an  apparent  original ;  but  trace  its 
roots,  and  you  will  find  the  fibres  all  terminating  in  the 
root  of  another  plant  at  an  unsuspected  distance,  which, 
perhaps,  from  want  of  sun  and  genial  soil,  and  the  loss  of 
sap,  has  scarcely  been  able  to  peep  above  the  ground. — Or 
the  word  may  mean  those  whose  compositions  were  con- 
temporaneous in  such  a  sense  as  to  preclude  all  likelihood 
of  the  one  having  borrowed  from  the  other.  In  the  latter 
sense  I  should  call  Ben  Jonson  a  contemporary  of  Shak- 
spere,  though  he  long  survived  him  ;  while  I  should  prefer 
the  phrase  of  immediate  successors  for  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  and  Massinger,  though  they  too  were  Shakspere's- 
contemporaries  in  the  former  sense. 

1  We  might  reasonably  have  added  to  this  heading, "  as  compared 
with  Sbakspere,"  for  that  is  practically  the  main  theme  of  the  chapter. 
See  Appendix:  V.,  Feb.  17,  1833. 


,396  JONSON,    BEAUMONT,    FLETCHER,  [1818 


BEN 
Born,  1574.—  Died,  1637. 

Ben  Jonson  is  original;  he  is,  indeed,  the  only  one  of 
the  great  dramatists  of  that  day  who  was  not  either  directly 
produced,  or  very  greatly  modified,  by  Shakspere.  In 
truth,  he  differs  from  our  great  master  in  everything  —  in 
form  and  in  substance  —  and  betrays  no  tokens  of  his 
proximity.  He  is  not  original  in  the  same  way  as  Shak- 
spere is  original  ;  but  after  a  fashion  of  his  own,  Ben 
Jonson  is  most  truly  original.2 

The  characters  in  his  plays  are,  in  the  strictest  sense  of 
the  term,  abstractions.  Some  very  prominent  feature  is 
taken  from  the  whole  man,  and  that  single  feature  or 
humour  is  made  the  basis  upon  which  the  entire  character 
is  built  up.  Ben  Jonson's  dramatis  personce  are  almost  as 
fixed  as  the  masks  of  the  ancient  actors  ;  you  know  from 
the  first  scene  —  sometimes  from  the  list  of  names  —  exactly 
what  every  one  of  them  is  to  be.  He  was  a  very  accurately 
observing  man  ;  but  he  cared  only  to  observe  what  was 
external  or  open  to,  and  likely  to  impress,  the  senses.  He 
individualizes,  not  so  much,  if  at  all,  by  the  exhibition  of 
moral  or  intellectual  differences,  as  by  the  varieties  and 
contrasts  of  manners,  modes  of  speech  and  tricks  of 
temper  ;  as  in  such  characters  as  Puntarvolo,  Bobadill,  &c. 

1  believe  there  is  not  one  whim  or  affectation  in  common 
life  noted  in  any  memoir  of  that  age  which  may  not  be 
found  drawn  and  framed  in  some  corner  or  other  of  Ben 
Jonson's  dramas  ;    and  they  have  this  merit,  in  common 

'  From  Mr.  Green's  note.  —  H.  N.  C. 

2  See   Section  VI.  ;   notes  on  "  Epicaene,"   and  on  "  Bartholomew 
Fair." 


SECT.  V.]  AND  MASSINGER  397 

•with  Hogarth's  prints,  that  not  a  single  circumstance  is 
introduced  in  them  which  does  not  play  upon,  and  help  to 
bring  out,  the  dominant  humour  or  humours  of  the  piece. 
Indeed  I  ought  very  particularly  to  call  your  attention  to 
the  extraordinary  skill  shown  by  Ben  Jonson  in  contriving 
situations  for  the  display  of  his  characters.  In  fact,  his 
care  and  anxiety  in  this  matter  led  him  to  do  what  scarcely 
any  of  the  dramatists  of  that  age  did — that  is,  invent  his 
plots.  It  is  not  a  first  perusal  that  suffices  for  the  full 
perception  of  the  elaborate  artifice  of  the  plots  of  the 
"Alchemist "  and  the  "  Silent  Woman  ;  " — that  of  the  former 
is  absolute  perfection  for  a  necessary  entanglement,  and  an 
unexpected,  yet  natural,  evolution. 

Ben  Jonson  exhibits  a  sterling  English  diction,  and  he 
has  with  great  skill  contrived  varieties  of  construction ; 
but  his  style  is  rarely  sweet  or  harmonious,  in  consequence 
of  his  labour  at  point  and  strength  being  so  evident.  In 
all  his  works,  in  verse  or  prose,  there  is  an  extraordinary 
opulence  of  thought ;  but  it  is  the  produce  of  an  amassing 
power  in  the  author,  and  not  of  a  growth  from  within. 
Indeed  a  large  proportion  of  Ben  Jonson's  thoughts  may 
be  traced  to  classic  or  obscure  modern  writers,  by  those 
who  are  learned  and  curious  enough  to  follow  the  steps  of 
this  robust,  surly,  and  observing  dramatist. 


BEAUMONT.     Born,  1586.— Died,  1616. 
FLETCHER.     Born,  1576. — Died,  1625. 

Mr.  Weber,  to  whose  taste,  industry,  and  appropriate 
erudition  we  owe,  I  will  not  say  the  best  (for  that  would  be 
saying  little),  but  a  good,  edition  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
has  complimented  the  "  Philaster,"  which  he  himself 
describes  as  inferior  to  the  "  Maid's  Tragedy  "  by  the  same 


398  JONSON,   BEAUMONT,    FLETCHEB,  [1818 

writers,  as  but  little  below  the  noblest  of  Shakspere's  plays, 
"  Lear,"  "  Macbeth,"  Othello,"  &c.,  and  consequently  imply- 
ing the  equality,  at  least,  of  the  "  Maid's  Tragedy ;  " — and 
an  eminent  living  critic, — who  in  the  manly  wit,  strong 
sterling  sense,  and  robust  style  of  his  original  works,  had 
presented  the  best  possible  credentials  of  office  as  charge 
d'affaires  of  literature  in  general, — and  who  by  his  edition 
of  Massinger — a  work  in  which  there  was  more  for  an 
editor  to  do,  and  in  which  more  was  actually  well  done, 
than  in  any  similar  work  within  my  knowledge — has 
proved  an  especial  right  of  authority  in  the  appreciation 
of  dramatic  poetry,  and  hath  potentially  a  double  voice 
with  the  public  in  his  own  right  and  in  that  of  the  critical 
synod,  where,  as  princeps  senatus,  he  possesses  it  by  his 
prerogative, — has  affirmed  that  Shakspere's  superiority  to 
his  contemporaries  rests  on  his  superior  wit  alone,  while  in 
fill  the  other,  and,  as  I  should  deem,  higher  excellencies  of 
the  drama,  character,  pathos,  depth  of  thought,  &c.,  he  is 
equalled  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Ben  Jonson,  and 
Massinger ! 1 

Of  wit  I  am  engaged  to  treat  in  another  Lecture.  It  is 
a  genus  of  many  species ;  and  at  present  I  shall  only  say, 
that  the  species  which  is  predominant  in  Shakspere,  is  so 
completely  Shaksperian,  and  in  its  essence  so  interwoven 
with  all  his  other  characteristic  excellencies,  that  I  am  equally 
incapable  of  comprehending,  both  how  it  can  be  detached 
from  his  other  powers,  and  how,  being  disparate  in  kind 
from  the  wit  of  contemporary  dramatists,  it  can  be  com- 
pared with  theirs  in  degree.  And  again — the  detachment 
and  the  practicability  of  the  comparison  being  granted — 
I  should,  I  confess,  be  rather  inclined  to  concede  the  con- 
trary;— and  in  the  most  common  species  of  wit,  and  in 
the  ordinary  application  of  the  term,  to  yield  this  particular 

1  See  Mr.  Gifford's  introduction  to  his  edition  of  Massinger. — H.  N.  C. 


SECT.  V.]  AND  MASSINGER.  399 

palm  to  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  whom  here  and  hereafter 

I  take  as  one   poet  with  two  names, — leaving  undivided 
what  a  rare  love  and  still  rarer  congeniality  have  united. 
At  least,  I  have  never  been  able  to  distinguish  the  presence 
of  Fletcher  during  the  life  of  Beaumont,  nor  the  absence 
of  Beaumont  during  the  survival  of  Fletcher.1 

But  waiving,  or  rather  deferring,  this  question,  I  protest 
against  the  remainder  of  the  position  in  toto.  And  indeed, 
whilst  I  can  never,  I  trust,  show  myself  blind  to  the  various 
merits  of  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  Massinger, 
or  insensible  to  the  greatness  of  the  merits  which  they 
possess  in  common,  or  to  the  specific  excellencies  which 
give  to  each  of  the  three  a  worth  of  his  own, — I  confess, 
that  one  main  object  of  this  Lecture  was  to  prove  that 
Shakspere's  eminence  is  his  own,  and  not  that  of  his  age ; 
— even  as  the  pine-apple,  the  melon,  and  the  gourd  may 
grow  on  the  same  bed; — yea,  the  same  circumstances  of 
warmth  and  soil  may  be  necessary  to  their  full  develop- 
ment, yet  do  not  account  for  the  golden  hue,  the  ambrosial 
flavour,  the  perfect  shape  of  the  pine-apple,  or  the  tufted 
crown  on  its  head.  Would  that  those,  who  seek  to  twist 
it  off,  could  but  promise  us  in  this  instance  to  make  it  the 
germ  of  an  equal  successor  ! 

What  had  a  grammatical  and  logical  consistency  for  the 
ear, — what  could  be  put  together  and  represented  to  the 
«ye — these  poets  took  from  the  ear  and  eye,  unchecked 
by  any  intuition  of  an  inward  impossibility ; — just  as  a 
man  might  put  together  a  quarter  of  an  orange,  a 
quarter  of  an  apple,  and  the  like  of  a  lemon  and  a  pome- 
granate, and  make  it  look  like  one  round  diverse-coloured 

1  Beaumont  was  but  thirty  when  he  died,  and  Fletcher  lired  to  be 
forty-nine.  It  is  true,  he  was  ten  years  older  than  Beaumont,  but  there 
are  many  plays  well  known  to  be  by  Fletcher  only.  A  difference  of 
style  is  written  on  their  faces.  See  the  portraits,  in  Mr.  Dyce's  edition. 

II  vola. 


400  JONSON,    BEAUMONT,    FLETCHER,  [1818 

fruit.1  But  nature,  which  works  from  within  by  evolution 
and  assimilation  according  to  a  law,  cannot  do  so,  nor 
could  Shakspere  ;  for  he  too  worked  in  the  spirit  of  nature, 
by  evolving  the  germ  from  within  by  the  imaginative 
power  according  to  an  idea.  For  as  the  power  of  seeing  is 
to  light,  so  is  an  idea  in  mind  to  a  law  in  nature.  They 
are  correlatives,  which  suppose  each  other. 

The  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  mere  aggre- 
gations without  unity  ;  in  the  Shaksperian  drama  there  is  a 
vitality  which  grows  and  evolves  itself  from  within, — a  key 
note  which  guides  and  controls  the  harmonies  throughout. 
What  is  "  Lear  ?  " — It  is  storm  and  tempest — the  thunder 
at  first  grumbling  in  the  far  horizon,  then  gathering  around 
ns,  and  at  length  bursting  in  fury  over  our  heads, — suc- 
ceeded by  a  breaking  of  the  clouds  for  a  while,  a  last  flash 
of  lightning,  the  closing  in  of  night,  and  the  single  hope 
of  darkness-!  And  "  Romeo  and  Juliet  ?  " — It  is  a  spring 
day,  gusty  and  beautiful  in  the  morn,  and  closing  like  an 
April  evening  with  the  song  of  the  nightingale ; — whilst 
"  Macbeth "  is  deep  and  earthy, — composed  to  the  sub- 
terranean music  of  a  troubled  conscience,  which  converts 
everything  into  the  wild  and  fearful ! 

Doubtless  from  mere  observation,  or  from  the  occasional 
similarity  of  the  writer's  own  character,  more  or  less  in 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  and  other  such  writers  will  happen 
to  be  in  correspondence  with  nature,  and  still  more  in 
apparent  compatibility  with  it.  But  yet  the  false  source 
is  always  discoverable,  first  by  the  gross  contradictions  to 
nature  in  so  many  other  parts,  and  secondly,  by  the  want 
of  the  impression  which  Shakspere  makes,  that  the  thing 
said  not  only  might  have  been  said,  but  that  nothing  else 
could  be  substituted,  so  as  to  excite  the  same  sense  of  its 
exquisite  propriety.  I  have  always  thought  the  conduct 

1  See  Appendix:  V.,  July  1,  1833,  and  notes  on  the  "Queen  of 
Corinth,"  in  Section  VII. 


SECT.  V.]  AND    MASSINGEB.  401 

and  expressions  of  Othello  and  lago  in  the  last  scene,  when 
lago  is  brought  in  prisoner,  a  wonderful  instance  of  Shak- 
spere's  consummate  judgment : — - 

"  Oth,  I  look  down  towards  his  feet; — but  that's  a  fable. 

If  that  thou  be'st  a  devil,  I  cannot  kill  thee. 
logo.  I  bleed,  Sir ;  but  not  kill'd. 
Oth,  I  am  not  sorry  neither. 

Think  what  a  volley  of  execrations  and  defiances  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  would  have  poured  forth  here  ! 

Indeed  Massinger  and  Ben  Jonson  are  both  more  perfect 
in  their  kind  than  Beaumont  and  Fletcher ;  the  former  in 
the  story  and  affecting  incidents  ;  the  latter  in  the  exhibi- 
tion of  manners  and  peculiarities,  whims  in  language,  and 
vanities  of  appearance. 

There  is,  however,  a  diversity  of  the  most  dangerous 
kind  here.  Shakspere  shaped  his  characters  out  of  the 
nature  within ;  but  we  cannot  so  safely  say,  out  of  his  own 
nature  as  an  individual  person.  No !  this  latter  is  itself 
but  a  natura  naturala, — an  effect,  a  product,  not  a  power. 
It  was  Shakspere's  prerogative  to  have  the  universal, 
which  is  potentially  in  each  particular,  opened  out  to  him, 
the  'homo  generalis,  not  as  an  abstraction  from  observation 
of  a  variety  of  men,  but  as  the  substance  capable  of  endless 
modifications,  of  which  his  own  personal  existence  was  but 
one,  and  to  nse  this  one  as  the  eye  that  beheld  the  other, 
and  as  the  tongue  that  could  convey  the  discovery.  There 
is  no  greater  or  more  common  vice  in  dramatic  writers 
than  to  draw  out  of  themselves.  How  I — alone  and  in  the 
self-sufficiency  of  my  study,  as  all  men  are  apt  to  be  proud 
in  their  dreams — should  like  to  be  talking  Tting !  Shak- 
epere,  in  composing,  had  no  I,  but  the  I  representative. 
In  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  you  have  descriptions  of  cha- 
racters by  the  poet  rather  than  the  characters  themselves ; 
we  are  told,  and  impressively  told,  of  their  being ;  but  we 
rarely  or  never  feel  that  they  actually  are. 

D  D 


402  JOKSON,   BEAUMONT,    FLETCHER,  [1818 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  the  most  lyrical  of  onr 
dramatists.  I  think  their  comedies  the  best  part  of  their 
works,  although  there  are  scenes  of  very  deep  tragic  interest 
in  some  of  their  plays.  I  particularly  recommend  Monsieur 
Thomas  for  good  pure  comic  humour. 

There  is,  occasionally,  considerable  license  in  their 
dramas ;  and  this  opens  a  subject  much  needing  vindication 
and  sound  exposition,  but  which  is  beset  with  such  diffi- 
culties for  a  Lecturer,  that  I  must  pass  it  by.  Only  as  far 
as  Shakspere  is  concerned,  I  own,  I  can  with  less  pain 
admit  a  fault  in  him  than  beg  an  excuse  for  it.  I  will  not, 
therefore,  attempt  to  palliate  the  grossness  that  actually 
exists  in  his  plays  by  the  customs  of  his l  age,  or  by  the 
far  greater  coarseness  of  all  his  contemporaries,  excepting 
Spenser,  who  is  himself  not  wholly  blameless,  though 
nearly  so ; — for  I  place  Shakspere's  merit  on  being  of  no 
age.  But  I  would  clear  away  what  is,  in  my  judgment* 
not  his,  as  that  scene  of  the  Porter  in  "Macbeth,"  and 

1  Yet  he  might  well  have  done  so. 

The  "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  "  was  written,  it  is  said,  at  the  virgin 
Queen's  request,  and  doubtless  the  poet  wrote  what  he  expected  would 
]  lease  her.  If  a  license  of  humour,  no  longer  tolerated  in  polite  society, 
was  not  the  custom  of  the  time,  Hamlet's  talk  to  Ophelia  at  the  play  is 
inexcusable;  though  it  harmonizes  easily  enough  with  Shakspere's 
evident  idea  of  Ophelia, — as  simple,  Characterless,  and  sensuous.  The 
porter's  talk  cannot  be  compared  with  it,  because  it  is  not  addressed  to 
a  woman. 

Coleridge  starts  with  a  theory.  Then  he  says,  in  effect,  "remove  all 
that  contradicts  it,  and  it  is  established."  Why  did  he  not  get  over  his 
difficulty,  by  recognizing — what  is  a  fact — that  the  kind  of  leste  humour 
we  find  in  Shakspere  is  "  of  no  age."  It  is  endemic  as  well  as  epidemic. 
Furthermore,  in  Shakspere,  if  we  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  it 
never  becomes  unwholesome.  Shakspere  was  not  afraid  to  turn  it  to 
account.  The  narration  of  the  death  of  Falstaff  (Hen.  V.  Act.  ii.  §  3) 
becomes  a  masterpiece  by  a  single  stroke.  See  commencement  of 
Section  VI.,  and  notes  on  "  Valentinian,"  Act  iii.,  in  [Section  VIL; 
also.  Appendix:  V.}  Mar.  15,  1834. 


SECT.  V.]  AND  MASSINGER.  403 

many  other  such  passages,  and  abstract  what  is  coarse  in 
manners  only,  and  all  that  which  from  the  frequency  of 
our  own  vices,  we  associate  with  his  words.  If  this  were 
truly  done,  little  that  could  be  justly  reprehensible  would 
remain.  Compare  the  vile  comments,  offensive  and  defen- 
sive, on  Pope's 

"Lust  thro'  some  gentle  strainers,"  &c. 

with  the  worst  thing  in  Shakspere,  or  even  in  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher ;  and  then  consider  how  unfair  the  attack  is 
on  our  old  dramatists ;  especially  because  it  is  an  attack 
that  cannot  be  properly  answered  in  that  presence  in  which 
an  answer  would  be  most  desirable,  from  the  painful  nature 
of  one  part  of  the  position ;  but  this  very  pain  is  almost  a 
demonstration  of  its  falsehood  1 


MASSINGER. 

<• 

Born  at  Salisbury,  1584.— Died,  1640. 

With  regard  to  Massinger,  observe, 

1.  The  vein  of  satire  on  the  times ;  but  this  is  not  as  in 
Shakspere,  where  the  natures  evolve  themselves  according 
to  their  incidental  disproportions,  from  excess,  deficiency, 
or  mislocation,  of  one  or  more  of  the  component  elements  ; 
but  is  merely  satire  on  what  is  attributed  to  them  by" 
others. 

2.  His  excellent  metre ' — a  better  model  for  dramatists 
in  general  to  imitate  than  Shakspere's, — even  if  a  dramatic 
taste  existed  in  the  frequenters  of  the  stage,  and  could  be 
gratified  in  the  present  size  and  management,  or  rather 
mismanagement,  of  the  two  patent  theatres.     I  do  not 

1  See  Section  VII.,  notes  on  Harris's  commendatory  poem,  anil  on 
the  "  Loyal  Subject." 


404  JOK8SOX,    BEAUMONT,   FLETCHER,  [1818 

mean  that  Massinger's  verse  is  superior  to  Shakspere's  or 
equal  to  it.  Far  from  it ;  but  it  is  much  more  easily  con- 
structed and  may  be  more  successfully  adopted  by  -writers 
in  the  present  day.  It  is  the  nearest  approach  to  the  lan- 
guage of  real  life  at  all  compatible  with  a  fixed  metre.  In 
Massinger,  as  in  all  our  poets  before  Dry  den,  in  order  to 
make  harmonious  verse  in  the  reading,  it  is  absolutely 
necessary  that  the  meaning  should  be  understood ; — when 
the  meaning  is  once  seen,  than  the  harmony  is  perfect. 
Whereas  in  Pope  and  in  most  of  the  writers  who  followed 
in  his  school,  it  is  the  mechanical  metre  which  determines 
the  sense. 

3.  The  impropriety,  and  indecorum  of  demeanour  in  his 
favourite    characters,   as  in   Bertoldo   in  the  "  Maid  of 
Honour,"  who  is  a  swaggerer,  talking  to  his  sovereign 
what  no  sovereign  could  endure,  and  to  gentlemen  what 
no  gentleman  would  answer  without  pulling  his  nose. 

4.  Shakspere's   Ague-cheek,   Osric,  &c.,  are   displayed 
through  others,  in  the  course  of  social  intercourse,  by  the 
mode  of  their  performing  some  office  in  which  they  are 
employed ;  but  Massinger's  Sylli  come  forward  to  declare 
themselves  fools  ad  arbitrium  auctoris,  and  so  the  diction 
always  needs  the  subintelligitur  ("the  man  looks  as  if  he 
thought  so  and  so,")   expressed  in  the  language  of  the 
satirist,  and  not  in  that  of  the  man  himself  :— 

"  Sylli.  You  may,  madam, 
Perhaps,  believe  that  I  in  this  use  art 
To  make  you  dote  upon  me,  t>y  exposing 
My  more  than  most  rare  features  to  your  view  j 
But  I,  as  I  have  ever  done,  deal  simply, 
A  mark  of  sweet  simplicity,  ever  noted 
In  the  family  of  the  Syllia.     Therefore,  lady, 
Look  not  with  too  much  contemplation  on  me ; 
If  you  do,  you  are  in  the  suds." 

Maid  of  Honour,  act  i.  sc.  2. 

The  author  mixes  his  own  feelings  and  judgments  con- 


SECT.  Y.J  AND  MASSINGER.  405 

cerning  the  presumed  fool ;  but  the  man  himself,  till  mad, 
fights  up  against  them,  and  betrays,  by  his  attempts  to 
modify  them,  that  he  is  no  fool  at  all,  but  one  gifted  with 
activity  and  copiousness  of  thought,  image  and  expression, 
which  belong  not  to  a  fool,  but  to  a  man  of  wit  making 
himself  merry  with  his  own  character. 

5.  There  is  an  utter  want  of  preparation  in  the  decisive 
acts  of  Massinger's  characters,  as  in  Camiola  and  Aurelia 
in  the  "  Maid  of  Honour."     Why  ?     Because  the  dramatis 
personce  were  all  planned  each  by  itself.    Whereas  in  Shak- 
spere,  the  play  is  syngenesia;  each  character  has,  indeed,  a 
life  of  its  own,  and  is  an  individuum  of  itself,  but  yet  an 
organ  of  the  whole,  as  the  heart  in  the   human  body. 
Shakspere  was  a  great  comparative  anatomist. 

Hence  Massinger  and  all,  indeed,  but  Shakspere,  take 
a  dislike  to  their  own  characters,  and  spite  themselves 
upon  them  by  making  them  talk  like  fools  or  monsters  ;  as 
Fulgentio  in  his  visit  to  Camiola  (Act  ii.  sc.  2).  Hence 
too,  in  Massinger,  the  continued  flings  at  kings,  courtiers, 
and  all  the  favourites  of  fortune,  like  one  who  had  enough 
of  intellect  to  see  injustice  in  his  own  inferiority  in  the 
share  of  the  good  things  of  life,  but  not  genius  enough  to 
rise  above  it,  and  forget  himself.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
have  the  same  vice  in  the  opposite  pole,  a  servility  of  sen- 
timent and  a  spirit  of  partizanship  with  the  monarchical 
faction. 

6.  From  the  want  of  a  guiding  point  in  Massinger'a 
characters,  you  never  know  what  they  are  about.     In  fact 
they  have  no  character. 

7.  Note  the  faultiness  of  his  soliloquies,  with  connectives 
and  arrangements,  that  have  no  other  motive  but  the  fear 
lest  the  audience  should  not  understand  him. 

8.  A  play  of  Massinger's  produces  no  one  single  effect, 
whether  arising  from  the  spirit  of  the  whole,  as  in  th« 
"As  You  Like  It;"  or  from  any  one  indisputably  pro- 


406  JONSOX,    BEAUMONT,   FLETCHER,  [1818 

minent  character,  as  Hamlet.     It  is  just  "  which  you  like 
best,  gentlemen ! " 

9.  The  unnaturally  irrational  passions  and  strange  whims 
of  feeling  which  Massinger  delights  to  draw,  deprive  the 
reader  of  all   sound  interest  in  the   characters ; — as  in 
Mathias  in  the  "  Picture,"  and  in  other  instances.1 

10.  The  comic   scenes   in   Massinger  not  only  do  not 
harmonize  with  the  tragic,  not  only  interrupt  the  feeling, 
but  degrade  the  characters  that  are  to  form  any  part  in 
the  action  of  the  piece,  so  as  to  render  them  unfit  for  any 
tragic  interest.    At  least,  they  do  not  concern,  or  act  upon, 
or  modify,  the  principal  characters.    As  when  a  gentleman 
is  insulted  by  a  mere  blackguard, — it  is  the  same  as  if  any 
other  accident  of  nature  had  occurred,  a  pig  run  under  his 
legs,  or  his   horse   thrown  him.     There   is   no    dramatic 
interest  in  it. 

I  like  Massinger's  comedies  better  than  his  tragedies, 
although  where  the  situation  requires  it,  he  often  rises  into 
the  truly  tragic  and  pathetic.  He  excels  in  narration,  and 
for  the  most  part  displays  his  mere  story  with  skill.  But 
he  is  not  a  poet  of  high  imagination ;  he  is  like  a  Flemish 
painter,  in  whose  delineations  objects  appear  as  they  do  in 
nature,  have  the  same  force  and  truth,  and  produce  the 
same  effect  upon  the  spectator.  But  Shakspere  is  beyond 
this  ; — he  always  by  metaphors  and  figures  involves  in  the 
thing  considered  a  universe  of  past  and  possible  experiences ; 
he  mingles  earth,  sea  and  air,  gives  a  soul  to  everything, 
and  at  the  same  time  that  he  inspires  human  feelings,  adds 
a  dignity  in  his  images  to  human  nature  itself : — 

"  Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovereign  eye ; 
Kissing  with  golden  face  the  meadows  green, 
Gilding  pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchymy,"  &c. 

33rd  Sonnet. 


1  See  Appendix :  V.,  April  5,  1833. 


SECT.  V.'J  AND  MASSINGEE.  407 

Note. — Have  I  not  over-rated  Gifford's  edition  of  Mas- 
singer  ? — Not, — if  I  have,  as  but  just  is,  main  reference  to 
the  restitution  of  the  text ;  but  yes,  perhaps,  if  I  were 
talking  of  the  notes.  These  are  more  often  wrong  than 
right.  In  the  "  Maid  of  Honour,"  Act.  i.  sc.  5,  Astutio 
describes  Fulgentio  as  "  A  gentleman,  yet  no  lord."  Gifford 
supposes  a  transposition  of  the  press  for  "No  gentleman, 
yet  a  lord."  But  this  would  have  no  connection  with  what 
follows  ;  and  we  have  only  to  recollect  that  "  lord  "  means 
a  lord  of  lands,  to  see  that  the  after  lines  are  explanatory. 
He  is  a  man  of  high  birth,  but  no  landed  property ; — as  to 
the  former,  he  is  a  distant  branch  of  the  blood  royal ; — as 
to  the  latter,  his  whole  rent  lies  in  a  narrow  compass,  the 
king's  ear  !  In  the  same  scene  the  text  stands  : 

"  Bert.  No .'  they  are  useful 
For  your  imitation ; — I  remember  you,  &c. ; — " 

and  Gifford  condemns  Mason's  conjecture  of  "initiation" 
as  void  of  meaning  and  harmony.  Now  my  ear  deceives 
me  if  "initiation"  be  not  the  right  word.  In  fact,  "imi- 
tation "  is  utterly  impertinent  to  all  that  follows.  Bertoldo 
tells  Antonio  that  he  had  been  initiated  in  the  manners 
suited  to  the  court  by  two  of  three  sacred  beauties,  and 
that  a  similar  experience  would  be  equally  useful  for  his 
initiation  into  the  camp.  Not  a  word  of  his  imitation. 
Besides,  I  say  the  rhythm  requires  "initiation,"  and  is 
lame  as  the  verse  now  stands. 


408  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  [1818 


SECTION  VI. 

NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON. 

TT  would  be  amusing  to  collect  out  of  our  dramatists 
•*-  from  Elizabeth  to  Charles  I.  proofs  of  the  manners 
of  the  times.  One  striking  symptom  of  general  coarseness 
of  manners,  which  may  co-exist  with  great  refinement  of 
morals,  as,  alas  !  vice  versa,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  very  fre- 
quent allusions  to  the  olfactories  with  their  most  disgusting 
stimulants,  and  these,  too,  in  the  conversation  of  virtuous 
ladies.  This  would  not  appear  so  strange  to  one  who  had 
been  on  terms  of  familiarity  with  Sicilian  and  Italian 
women  of  rank :  and  bad  as  they  may,  too  many  of  them, 
actually  be,  yet  I  doubt  not  that  the  extreme  grossness  of 
their  language  has  impressed  many  an  Englishman  of  the 
present  era  with  far  darker  notions  than  the  same  language 
would  have  produced  in  the  mind  of  one  of  Elizabeth's,  or 
James's  courtiers.  Those  who  have  read  Shakspere  only, 
complain  of  occasional  grossness  in  his  plays ;  but  compare 
him  with  his  contemporaries,  and  the  inevitable  conviction 
is,  that  of  the  exquisite  purity  of  his  imagination.1 

The  observation  I  have  prefixed  to  the  "  Volpone  "  is  the 
key  to  the  faint  interest  which  these  noble  efforts  of  intel- 
lectual power  excite,  with  the  exception  of  the  fragment  of 
the  "  Sad  Shepherd ; "  because  in  that  piece  only  is  there  any 

1  See  Section  V.,  and  note. 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  409 

character  with  whom  you  can  morally  sympathize.  On 
the  other  hand,  "  Measure  for  Measure "  is  the  only  play 
of  Shakspere's  in  which  there  are  not  some  one  or  more 
characters,  generally  many,  whom  you  follow  with  affec- 
tionate feeling.  For  I  confess  that  Isabella,  of  all  Shak- 
epere's  female  characters,  pleases  me  the  least ;  and  "  Mea- 
sure for  Measure  "  is,  indeed,  the  only  one  of  his  genuine 
works,  which  is  painful  to  me.1 

Let  me  not  conclude  this  remark,  however,  without  a 
thankful  acknowledgment  to  the  manes  of  Ben  Jonson, 
that  the  more  I  study  his  writings,  I  the  more  admire 
them ;  and  the  more  my  study  of  him  resembles  that  of  an 
ancient  classic,  in  the  minutiae  of  his  rhythm,  metre,  choice 
of  words,  forms  of  connection,  and  so  forth,  the  more 
numerous  have  the  points  of  my  admiration  become.  I 
may  add,  too,  that  both  the  study  and  the  admiration 
cannot  but  be  disinterested,  for  to  expect  therefrom  any 
advantage  to  the  present  drama  would  be  ignorance.  The 
latter  is  utterly  heterogeneous  from  the  drama  of  the 
Shaksperian  age,  with  a  diverse  object  and  contrary  prin- 
ciple. The  one  was  to  present  a  model  by  imitation  of 
real  life,  taking  from  real  life  all  that  in  it  which  it  ought 
to  be,  and  supplying  the  rest ; — the  other  is  to  copy  what 
is,  and  as  it  is, — at  best  a  tolerable,  but  most  frequently  a 
blundering,  copy.  In  the  former  the  difference  was  an 
essential  element ;  in  the  latter  an  involuntary  defect.  We 
should  think  it  strange,  if  a  tale  in  dance  were  announced, 
and  the  actors  did  not  dance  at  all ; — and  yet  such  is 
modern  comedy. 

Whalley's  Preface. 

"  But  Jonson  was  soon  sensible,  how  inconsistent  this  medley  of 
names  and  manners  was  in  reason  and  nature;  and  with  how  little 


1  See  Appendix  :  V.,  June  24,  1827. 


410  NOTES   ON  BEN  JONSON.  [1818 

propriety  it  could  ever  have  a  place  in  a  legitimate  and  just  picture  of 
real  life." 

But  did  Jonson  reflect  that  the  very  essence  of  a  play, 
the  very  language  in  which  it  is  written,  is  a  fiction  to 
which  all  the  parts  must  conform  ?  Surely,  Greek  manners 
in  English  should  be  a  still  grosser  improbability  than  a 
Greek  name  transferred  to  English  manners.  Ben's  per~ 
sonce  are  too  often  not  characters,  but  derangements ; — the 
hopeless  patients  of  a  mad-doctor  rather, — exhibitions  of 
folly  betraying  itself  in  spite  of  existing  reason  and  pru- 
dence. He  not  poetically,  but  painfully  exaggerates  every 
trait ;  that  is,  not  by  the  drollery  of  the  circumstance,  but 
by  the  excess  of  the  originating  feeling. 

•"  But  to  this  we  might  reply,  that  far  from  being  thought  to  build 
bis  characters  upon  abstract  ideas,  he  was  really  accused  of  represent- 
ing particular  persons  then  existing;  and  that  even  those  characters 
which  appear  to  be  the  most  exaggerated,  are  said  to  have  had  their 
respective  archetypes  in  nature  and  life." 

This  degrades  Jonson  into  a  libeller,  instead  of  justifying 
him  as  a  dramatic  poet.  Non  quod  verum  est,  sed  quod 
verisimile,  is  the  dramatist's  rule.  At  all  events,  the  poet 
who  chooses  transitory  manners,  ought  to  content  himself 
with  transitory  praise.  If  his  object  be  reputation,  he 
ought  not  to  expect  fame.  The  utmost  he  can  look  for- 
wards to,  is  to  be  quoted  by,  and  to  enliven  the  writings 
of,  an  antiquarian.  Pistol,  Nym  and  id  genus  omne,  do  not 
please  us  as  characters,  but  are  endured  as  fantastic  crea- 
tions, foils  to  the  native  wit  of  Falstaff. — I  say  wit  empha- 
tically ;  for  this  character  so  often  extolled  as  the  master- 
piece of  humour,  neither  contains,  nor  was  meant  to  contain, 
any  humour  at  all. 

WJialleifs  Life  of  Jonson. 

"  It  is  to  the  honour  of  Jonson's  judgment,  that  the  greatest  poet  of 
our  nation  had  the  same  opinion  of  Donne's  genius  and  wit ;  and  hath 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  411 

preserved  part  of  him  from  perishing,  by  putting  his  thoughts  and 
satire  into  modern  verse." 

Videlicet  Pope ! 

"  He  said  further  to  Drummond,  Shakspere  wanted  art,  and  some- 
times sense;  for  in  one  of  his  plays  he  brought  in  a  number  of  men, 
saying  they  had  suffered  shipwreck  in  Bohemia,  where  is  no  sea  near 
by  a  hundred  miles." 

I  have  often  thought  Shakspere  justified  in  this  seeming 
anachronism.  In  Pagan  times  a  single  name  of  a  German 
kingdom  might  well  be  supposed  to  comprise  a  hundred 
miles  more  than  at  present.  The  truit  is,  these  notes  of 
Drummond's  are  more  disgraceful  to  himself  than  to 
Jonson.  It  would  be  easy  to  conjecture  how  grossly 
Jonson  must  have  been  misunderstood,  and  what  he  had! 
said  in  jest,  as  of  Hippocrates,  interpreted  in  earnest.  But 
this  is  characteristic  of  a  Scotchman  ;  he  has  no  notion  of 
a  jest,  unless  you  tell  him — "This  is  a  joke!" — and  still 
less  of  that  finer  shade  of  feeling,  the  half-and-half,  in 
which  Englishmen  naturally  delight. 


Every  Man  out  of  His  Humour. 
Epilogue. 

"  The  throat  of  war  be  stopt  within  her  land, 
And  turtle-footed  peace  dance  fairie  rings 

About  her  court." 

i 

Turtle-footed  is  a  pretty  word,  a  very  pretty  word :  prayf 
what  does  it  mean  ?  Doves,  I  presume,  are  not  dancers ; 
and  the  other  sort  of  turtle,  land  or  sea,  green-fat  or 
hawksbill,  would,  I  should  suppose,  succeed  better  in  slow 
minuets  than  in  the  brisk  rondillo.  In  one  sense,  to  be 
sure,  pigeons  and  ring-doves  could  not  dance  but  with 
eclat — a  daw  ? 


NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  [1818 

Poetaster. 


Introduction. 


'* Light!  I  salute  thee,  but  with  wounded  nerves, 
Wishing  thy  golden  splendour  pitchy  darkness." 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  Satan's  address  to  the  sun 
in  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  more  than  a  mere  coincidence  with 
these  lines ;  but  were  it  otherwise,  it  would  be  a  fine 
instance,  what  usurious  interest  a  great  genius  pays  in 
borrowing.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  give  a  detailed 
psychological  pr  from  these  constant  outbursts  of  anxious 
self-assertion,  that  Jonson  was  not  a  genius,  a  creative 
power.  Subtract  that  one  thing,  and  you  may  safely 
accumulate  on  his  name  all  other  excellencies  of  a  capacious, 
vigorous,  agile,  and  richly-stored  intellect. 

Act  i.  so.  1. 

"  Ovid.  While  slaves  be  false,  fathers  hard,  and  bawds  be  whorish —  " 

The  roughness  noticed  by  Theobald  and  Whalley,  may  ba 
cured  by  a  simple  transposition : — 

"  While  fathers  hard,  slaves  false,  and  bawds  b,e  whorish,* 
Act  iv.  sc.  3. 

"  Crisp.  O — oblatrant — furibund— fatuate — strenuous. 
O — conscious." 

It  would  form  an  interesting  essay,  or  rather  series  of 
essays,  in  a  periodical  work,  were  all  the  attempts  to 
ridicule  new  phrases  brought  together,  the  proportion 
observed  of  words  ridiculed  which  have  been  adopted,  and 
are  now  common,  such  as  strenuous,  conscious,  &c.,  and  a 
trial  made  how  far  any  grounds  can  be  detected,  so  that 
one  might  determine  beforehand  whether  a  word  was 
invented  under  the  conditions  of  assimilability  to  our  lan- 
guage or  not.  Thus  much  is  certain,  that  the  ridiculera 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  413 

•were  as  often  -wrong  as  right;  and  Shakspere  himself 
could  not  prevent  the  naturalization  of  accommodation, 
remuneration,  &c. ;  or  Swift  the  gross  abuse  even  of  the 
word  idea. 


Fall  of  Sejanus. 
Acti. 

"  Arruntius.  The  name  Tiberius, 
I  hope,  will  keep,  howe'er  he  hath  foregone 
The  dignity  and  power. 

Silius.  Sure,  while  he  lives. 

Arr.  And  dead,  it  comes  to  Drusus.     Should  he  fail, 
To  the  brave  issue  of  Germanicus ; 
And  they  are  three :  too  many  (ha  ?)  for  him 
To  have  a  plot  upon  ? 

Sil.  I  do  not  know 

The  heart  of  his  designs ;  but,  sure,  their  face 
Looks  farther  than  the  present. 

Arr.  By  the  gods, 

If  I  could  guess  he  had  but  such  a  thought, 
My  sword  should  cleave  him  down,'5  &c. 

The  anachronic  mixture  in  this  Arruntius  of  the  Roman 
republican,  to  whom  Tiberius  must  have  appeared  as  much 
a  tyrant  as  Sejanus,  with  his  James-and-Charles-the-First 
zeal  for  legitimacy  of  descent  in  this  passage,  is  amusing. 
Of  our  great  names  Milton  was,  I  think,  the  first  who 
could  properly  be  called  a  republican.  My  recollections  of 
Buchanan's  works  are  too  faint  to  enable  me  to  judge 
whether  the  historian  is  not  a  fair  exception. 

Act  ii.     Speech  of  Sejanus : — 

"  Adultery !  it  is  the  lightest  ill 
I  will  commit.    A  race  of  wicked  acts 
Shall  flow  out  of  my  anger,  and  o'erspread 
The  world's  wide  face,  which  no  posterity 
Shall  e'er  approve,  nor  yet  keep  silent,"  && 


414  NOTES   ON   BEN  JONSON.  [1818 

The  more  we  reflect  and  examine,  examine  and  reflect, 
the  more  astonished  shall  we  be  at  the  immense  superiority 
of  Shakspcre  over  his  contemporaries  : — and  yet  what  con- 
temporaries ! — giant  minds  indeed  !  Think  of  Jonson's 
erudition,  and  the  force  of  learned  authority  in  that  age ; 
and  yet  in  no  genuine  part  of  Shakspere's  works  is  there 
to  be  found  such  an  absurd  rant  and  ventriloquism  as  this, 
and  too,  too  many  other  passages  ferruminated  by  Jonson 
from  Seneca's  tragedies  and  the  writings  of  the  later 
Romans.  I  call  it  ventriloquism,  because  Sejanus  is  a 
puppet,  out  of  which  the  poet  makes  his  own  voice  appear 
to  come. 

Act.  v.  Scene  of  the  sacrifice  to  Fortune.  This  scene 
is  unspeakably  irrational.  To  believe,  and  yet  to  scoff  at, 
a  present  miracle  is  little  less  than  impossible.  Sejanus 
should  have  been  made  to  suspect  priestcraft  and  a  secret 
conspiracy  against  him. 


Volpone. 

This  admirable,  indeed,  but  yet  more  wonderful  than 
admirable,  play  is  from  the  fertility  and  vigour  of  inven- 
tion, character,  language,  and  sentiment  the  strongest 
proof,  how  impossible  it  is  to  keep  up  any  pleasurable 
interest  in  a  tale,  in  which  there  is  no  goodness  of  heart 
in  any  of  the  prominent  characters.  After  the  third  act, 
this  play  becomes  not  a  dead,  but  a  painful,  weight  on  the 
feelings.  Zeluco  is  an  instance  of  the  same  truth.  Bonario 
and  Celia  should  have  been  made  in  some  way  or  other 
principals  in  the  plot ;  which  they  might  have  been,  and 
the  objects  of  interest,  without  having  been  made  charac- 
ters. In  novels,  the  person,  in  whose  fate  you  are  most 
interested,  is  often  the  least  marked  character  of  the  whole. 
If  it  were  possible  to  lessen  the  paramountcy  of  Volpone 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  415 

himself,  a  most  delightful  comedy  might  be  produced,  by 
making  Celia  the  ward  or  niece  of  Corvino,  instead  of  his 
•wife,  and  Bonario  her  lover. 


Epiccene. 

This  is  to  my  feelings  the  most  entertaining  of  old  Beu's 
comedies,  and,  more  than  any  other,  would  admit  of  being 
brought  out  anew,  if  under  the  management  of  a  judicious 
and  stage-understanding  play-wright ;  and  an  actor,  who 
had  studied  Morose,  might  make  his  fortune. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Clerimont's  speech  : — 

"'He  would  have  hanged  a  pewterer's  'prentice  once  on  a  Shrove 
Tuesday's  riot,  for  being  o'  that  trade,  when  the  rest  were  quiet' 

"  The  old  copies  read  quit,  i.  e.  discharged  from  working,  and  gone  to 
d.vert  themselves."  Whalley's  note. 

It  should  be  quit,  no  doubt;  but  not  meaning  "dis- 
charged from  working,"  &c. — but  quit,  that  is,  acquitted. 
The  pewterer  was  at  his  holiday  diversion  as  well  as  the 
other  apprentices,  and  they  as  forward  in  the  riot  as  he. 
But  he  alone  was  punished  under  pretext  of  the  riot,  but 
in  fact  for  his  trade. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1. 

"Morose.  Cannot  I,  yet,  find  out  a  more  compendious  method,  than 
by  this  trunk,  to  save  my  servants  the  labour  of  speech,  and  mine  ears 
the  discord  of  sounds  ?  " 

What  does  "  trunk  "  mean  here  and  in  the  1st  scene  of 
the  1st  act  ?  Is  it  a  large  ear- trumpet  ? — or  rather  a  tube, 
such  as  passes  from  parlour  to  kitchen,  instead  of  a  bell  ? 

Whalley's  note  at  the  end. 

"  Some  critics  of  the  last  age  imagined  the  character  of  Morose  to  b« 
wholly  out  of  nature.  But  to  vindicate  our  poet,  Mr.  Dryden  tells  us 
from  tradition,  and  we  may  venture  to  take  his  word,  that  Jonson  was 
really  acquainted  with  a  lerson  of  this  whimsical  turn  of  mind:  and  a> 


116  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  [1818 

humour  is  a  personal  quality,  the  poet  is  acquitted  from  the  charge  of 
exhibiting  a  monster,  or  an  extravagant  unnatural  caricatura." 

If  Dryden  had  not  made  all  additional  proof  superfluous 
by  his  own  plays,  this  very  vindication  would  evince  that 
lie  had  formed  a  false  and  vulgar  conception  of  the  nature 
and  conditions  of  the  drama  and  dramatic  personation. 
Ben  Jonson  would  himself  have  rejected  such  a  plea : — 

"  For  he  knew,  poet  never  credit  gain'd 

By  writing  truths,  but  things,  like  truths,  well  feign'd." 

By  "truths"  he  means  "facts."  Caricatures  are  not  less 
so,  because  they  are  found  existing  in  real  life.  Comedy 
demands  characters,  and  leaves  caricatures  to  farce.  The 
safest  and  truest  defence  of  old  Ben  would  be  to  call  the 
Epicaene  the  best  of  farces.  The  defect  in  Morose,  as  in 
other  of  Jonson 's  dramatis  personce,  lies  in  this ; — that  the 
accident  is  not  a  prominence  growing  out  of,  and  nourished 
by,  the  character  which  still  circulates  in  it,  but  that  the 
character,  such  as  it  is,  rises  out  of,  or,  rather,  consists  in, 
the  accident.  Shalcspere's  comic  personages  have  exqui- 
sitely characteristic  features ;  however  awry,  dispropor- 
tionate, and  laughable  they  may  be,  still,  like  Bardolph's 
nose,  they  are  features.  But  Jonson's  are  either  a  man 
with  a  huge  wen,  having  a  circulation  of  its  own,  and 
which  we  might  conceive  amputated,  and  the  patient 
thereby  losing  all  his  character ;  or  they  are  mere  wens 
themselves  instead  of  men, — wens  personified,  or  with  eyes, 
nose,  and  mouth  cut  out,  mandrake- fashion. 

Nota  bene.  All  the  above,  and  much  more,  will  have 
been  justly  said,  if,  and  whenever,  the  drama  of  Jonson  is 
brought  into  comparisons  of  rivalry  with  the  Shaksperian. 
But  this  should  not  be.  Let  its  inferiority  to  the  Shak- 
sperian be  at  once  fairly  owned, — but  at  the  same  time  as 
the  inferiority  of  an  altogether  different  genus  of  the  drama. 
On  this  ground,  old  Ben  would  still  maintain  his  proud 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  417 

height.  He,  no  less  than  Shakspere,  stands  on  the  summit 
of  his  hill,  and  looks  round  him  like  a  master, — though  hia 
be  Lattrig  and  Shakspere's  Skiddaw. 


The  Alchemist. 

Act  i.  sc.  2.     Face's  speech : — 

"  Will  take  his  oath  o'  the  Greek  Xenophon, 
If  need  be,  in  his  pocket." 

Another  reading  is  "  Testament." 

Probably,  the  meaning  is, — that  intending  to  give  false 
evidence,  he  carried  a  Greek  Xenophon  to  pass  it  off  for  a 
Greek  Testament,  and  so  avoid  perjury — as  the  Irish  do, 
by  contriving  to  kiss  their  thumb-nails  instead  of  the 
book. 

Act  ii.  BC.  2.     Mammon's  speech  : — 

"  I  will  have  all  my  beds  blown  up ;  not  stuft  t 
Down  is  too  hard." 

Thus  the  air-cushions,  though  perhaps  only  lately  brought 
into  use,  were  invented  in  idea  in  the  seventeenth  century  ! 


Catiline's  Conspiracy. 

A  fondness  for  judging  one  work  by  comparison  with 
others,  perhaps  altogether  of  a  different  class,  argues  a 
vulgar  taste.  Yet  it  is  chiefly  on  this  principle  that  the 
Catiline  has  been  rated  so  low.  Take  it  and  Sejanus,  as 
compositions  of  a  particular  kind,  namely,  as  a  mode  of 
relating  great  historical  events  in  the  liveliest  and  most 
interesting  manner,  and  I  cannot  help  wishing  that  we 
had  whole  volumes  of  such  plays.  We  might  as  rationally 
expect  the  excitement  of  the  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield  "  from 

E    I 


418  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON  [1818 

Goldsmith's  "  History  of  England,"  as  that   of   "  Lear," 
"  Othello,"  &c.,  from  the  "  Sejanus  "  or  "  Catiline." 
Act  i.  so.  4. 

"  Cat.  Sirrah,  what  ail  you? 

(He  spies  one  of  his  boys  not  answer.) 
Pag.  Nothing. 
Best.  Somewhat  modest. 
Cat.  Slave,  I  will  strike  your  soul  out  with  my  foot,"  &c. 

This  is  either  an  unintelligible,  or,  in  every  sense,  a  most 
unnatural,  passage, — improbable,  if  not  impossible,  at  the 
moment  of  signing  and  swearing  such  a  conspiracy,  to  the 
most  libidinous  satyr.  The  very  presence  of  the  boys  is 
an  outrage  to  probability.  I  suspect  that  these  lines  down 
to  the  words  "  throat  opens,"  should  be  removed  back  so 
as  to  follow  the  words  "on  this  part  of  the  house,"  in  the 
speech  of  Catiline  soon  after  the  entry  of  the  conspirators. 
A  total  erasure,  however,  would  be  the  best,  or,  rather,  the 
only  possible,  amendment. 

Act  ii.  sc.  2.     Sempronia's  speech : — 

"  — He  is  but  a  new  fellow, 
An  inmate  here  in  Rome,  as  Catiline  calls  him — " 

A  "  lodger "  would  have  been  a  happier  imitation  of  the 
inquilinus  of  Sallust. 

Act  iv.  RC.  6.     Speech  of  Cethegus  : — 

"  Can  these  or  such  be  any  aids  to  us,"  &c. 

What  a  strange  notion  Ben  must  have  formed  of  a 
determined,  remorseless,  all-daring,  foolhardiness,  to  have 
represented  it  in  such  a  mouthing  Tamburlane,  and  bom- 
bastic tongue-bully  as  this  Cethegus  of  his  ! 

Bartholomew  Fair. 

Induction.     Scrivener's  speech  : — 

•'  If  there  be  never  a  servant-monster  i'  the  Fair,  who  can  help  it,  he 
says,  nor  a  nest  of  antiques  ?  " 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  410 

The  best  excuse  that  can  be  made  for  Jonson,  and  in  a 
somewhat  less  degree  for  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in  respect 
of  these  base  and  silly  sneers  at  Shakspere,  is,  that  his 
plays  were  present  to  men's  minds  chiefly  as  acted.  They 
had  not  a  neat  edition  of  them,  as  we  have,  so  as,  by  com- 
paring the  one  with  the  other,  to  form  a  just  notion  of  the 
mighty  mind  that  produced  the  whole.  At  all  events,  and 
in  every  point  of  view,  Jonson  stands  far  higher  in  a  moral 
light  than  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  He  was  a  fair  con- 
temporary, and  in  his  way,  and  as  far  as  Shakspere  is  con- 
cerned, an  original.  But  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were 
always  imitators  of,  and  often  borrowers  from,  him,  and 
yet  sneer  at  him  with  a  spite  far  more  malignant  than 
Jonson,  who,  besides,  has  made  noble  compensation  by  his 
praises. 

Act  ii.  sc.  3. 

"  Just.  I  mean  a  child  of  the  horn-thumb,  a  babe  of  booty,  boy,  a 
cutpurse." 

Does  not  this  confirm,  what  the  passage  itself  cannot  but 
suggest,  the  propriety  of  substituting  "booty"  for  "beauty" 
in  Falstaff's  speech,  Henry  IV.  Pt.  I.  act  i.  sc.  2,  "  Let  not 
us,  &c.  ?  " 

It  is  not  often  that  old  Ben  condescends  to  imitate  a 
modern  author ;  but  Master  Dan.  Knockhum  Jordan  and 
his  vapours  are  manifest  reflexes  of  Nym  and  Pistol. 

Ib.  sc.  5. 

"  Quart.  She'll  make  excellent  geer  for  the  coachmakers  hero  in 
SimtljtifM,  to  anoint  wheels  and  axletrees  with." 

Good  !  but  yet  it  falls  short  of  the  speech  of  a  Mr. 
Johnes,  M.P.,  in  the  Common  Council,  on  the  invasion 
intended  by  Buonaparte  :  "  Houses  plundered — then  burnt ; 
— sons  conscribed — wives  and  daughters  ravished,"  <fec., 
Ac. — "  But  as  for  you,  you  luxurious  Aldermen !  with 
your  fat  will  he  grease  the  wheels  of  his  triumphal 
o.hariot ! " 


420  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  [1818 

lb.  sc.  6. 

"  Cok.  Avoid  i'  your  satin  doublet,  Numps." 

This  reminds  me  of  Shakspere's  "  Aroint  thee,  witch  !  " 
I  find  in  several  books  of  that  age  the  words  aloigne  and 
eloigne  —  that  is,  —  "keep  your  distance!"  or  "off  with 
yon  !"  Perhaps  "  aroint  "  was  a  corruption  of  "  aloigne  " 
by  the  vulgar.  The  common  etymology  from  ronger  to 
gnaw  seems  unsatisfactory. 

Act  iii.  sc.  4. 

"  Quarl.  How  now,  Numps  !  almost  tired  i'  your  protectorship  ? 
overparted,  overparted  ?" 

An  odd  sort  of  prophetic  ality  in  this  Numps  and  old 
Noll! 

Ib.  sc.  C.     Knockhum's  speech  :  — 

"  He  eats  with  his  eyes,  as  well  as  his  teeth." 

A  good  motto  for  the  Parson  in  Hogarth's  "Election 
Dinner,"  —  who  shows  how  easily  he  might  be  reconciled  to 
the  Church  of  Rome,  for  he  worships  what  he  eats. 

Act  v.  sc.  6. 

"  Pup.  Di.  It  is  not  prophane. 

Lan.  It  is  not  prophane,  he  says. 

Boy.  It  is  prophane. 
Pup.  It  is  not  prophane. 

Soy.  It  is  prophane. 

Pup.  It  is  not  prophane. 

Lan.  Well  said,  confute  him  with  Not,  still." 

An  imitation  of  the  quarrel  between  Bacchus  and  the 
Frogs  in  Aristophanes  :  — 


d\Xd 

bircoov  rj  <f>apvy£  av  ?}/i(3 

\ar£avyt  Si'  i/pipac, 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON.  421 


A  16  vv  ffo  Q. 
ovrif  yap  oil  viK>iffere. 


ovSt  fit}v  Jj/xac  < 

AlOVVffOQ. 

ovSf  ft,f]v  ii/ielc  ys  Sit  y.'  ovSt 


The  Devil  is  an  Ass. 

Act  i.  sc.  1. 

"  Piig.  Why  any :  Fraud, 
Or  Covetousness,  or  lady  Vanity, 
Or  old  Iniquity,  I'll  call  him  hither* 

The  words  in  italics  should  probably  be  given  to  the  master-devil, 
Satan."  Whalley's  note. 

That  is,  against  all  probability,  and  with  a  (for  Jonson) 
impossible  violation  of  character.  The  words  plainly  be- 
long to  Pug,  and  mark  at  once  his  simpleness  and  his 
impatience. 

Ib.  sc.  4.     Fitz-dottrel's  soliloquy : — 

Compare  this  exquisite  piece  of  sense,  satire,  and  sound 
philosophy  in  1616  with  Sir  M.  Hale's  speech  from  the 
bench  in  a  trial  of  a  witch  many  years  afterwards.1 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Meercraft's  speech  : — 

"Sir,  money's  a  wliore,  a  bawd,  a  drudge. — " 

I  doubt  not  that  "money"  was  the  first  word  of  the 
line,  and  has  dropped  out : — 

"Money!  Sir,  money's  a,"  &c. 


1  In  1664,  at  Bury  St.  Edmonds  on  the  trial  of  Rose  Cullender  and 
Amy  Duny.— H.  N.  C. 


I 


422  NOTES   ON   BEN   JONSON.  [1818 

The  Staple  of  Newt. 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     Pecunia's  speech  : — 

"  No,  he  would  ha'  done, 

That  lay  not  in  his  power :  he  had  the  use 

Of  your  bodies,  Band  and  Wax,  and  sometimes  Statute's." 

Read  (1815), 

"  —  he  had  the  use  of 
Your  bodies,"  &c. 

Now,  however,  I  doubt  the  legitimacy  of  my  trans- 
position of  the  "  of  "  from  the  beginning  of  this  latter  line 
to  the  end  of  the  one  preceding ; — for  though  it  facilitates 
the  metre  and  reading  of  the  latter  line,  and  is  frequent  in 
Massinger,  this  disjunction  of  the  preposition  from  its  case 
seems  to  have  been  disallowed  by  Jonson.  Perhaps  the 
better  reading  is — 

"  O'  your  bodies,"  &c. — 

the  two  syllables  being  slurred  into  one,  or  rather  snatched, 
or  sucked,  up  into  the  emphasized  "  your."  In  all  points 
of  view,  therefore,  Ben's  judgment  is  just ;  for  in  this  way, 
the  line  cannot  be  read,  as  metre,  without  that  strong  and 
quick  emphasis  on  "your"  which  the  sense  requires; — 
and  had  not  the  sense  required  an  emphasis  on  "  your," 
the  tmesis  of  the  sign  of  its  cases  "of,"  "to,"  &c.,  would 
destroy  almost  all  boundary  between  the  dramatic  verse 
and  prose  in  comedy : — a  lesson  not  to  be  rash  in  con- 
jectural amendments.  1818. 
Ib.  sc.  4. 

"P.  jun.  I  love  all  men  of  virtue,  frommy  Princess. —  " 

"Frommy,"/ro?nme,  pious,  dutiful,  <fec. 

Act  v.  sc.  4.     Penny-boy  sen.  arid  Porter : — 


SECT.  VI.]  NOTES  ON  BEN  JONSON  423 

I  dare  not,  will  not,  think  that  honest  Ben  had  "Lear  " 
in  his  mind  in  this  mock  mad  scene. 


The  New  Inn. 
Act  i.  so.  1.     Host's  speech  : — 

"  A  heavy  purse,  and  then  two  turtles,  males. — " 

"Makes,"  frequent  in  old  books,  and  even  now  used  in 
some  counties  for  mates,  or  pairs. 
Ib.  sc.  3.     Host's  speech  : — 

"  — And  for  a  leap 
O'  the  vaulting  horse,  to  play  the  vaulting  house.— * 

Instead  of  reading  with  Whalley"ply"  for  "play,"  I 
would  suggest  "  horse  "  for  "house."  The  meaning  would 
then  be  obvious  and  pertinent.  The  punlet,  or  pun-maggotf 
or  pun  intentional,  "horse  and  house,"  is  below  Jonson. 
The  jeu-de-mots  just  below — 

"  Read  a  lecture 
Upon  Aquinas  at  St.  Thomas  a  Waterings —  " 

had  a  learned  smack  in  it  to  season  its  insipidity. 
Ib.  sc.  6.     Lovel's  speech : — 

"  Then  shower'd  his  bounties  on  me,  like  the  Hours, 
That  open-handed  sit  upon  the  clouds, 
And  press  the  liberality  of  heaven 
Down  to  the  laps  of  thankful  men  I  * 

Like  many  other  similar  passages  in  Jonson,  this  is  *TSoc 
\u\ivvv  itiiiv — a  sight  which  it  is  difficult  to  make  one's 
self  see, — a  picture  my  fancy  cannot  copy  detached  from 
the  words. 

Act  ii.  sc.  5.  Though  it  was  hard  upon  old  Ben,  yet 
Felton,  it  must  be  confessed,  was  in  the  right  in  consider- 
ing the  Fly,  Tipto,  Bat  Burst,  &c.,  of  this  play  mere 
dotages.  Such  a  scene  as  this  was  enough  to  damn  a  new 


424  NOTES  OK  BEN  JONSON.  [1818 

play ;  and  Nick  Stuff  is  worse  still, — most  abominable  stufE 
indeed ! 

Act  iii.  sc.  2.     Level's  speech  : — 

"  So  knowledge  first  begets  benevolence, 
Benevolence  breeds  friendship,  friendship  love. —  " 

Jonson  has  elsewhere  proceeded  thus  far ;  but  the  part 
most  difficult  and  delicate,  yet,  perhaps,  not  the  least 
capable  of  being  both  morally  and  poetically  treated,  is  the 
union  itself,  and  what,  even  in  this  life,  it  can  be. 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         425 


SECTION  VII. 
NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER. 

Seward's  Preface.     1750. 

"  '"I"' HE  '  King  And  No  King,'  too,  is  extremely  spirited  in  all  its 
_L  characters ;  Arbaces  holds  up  a  mirror  to  all  men  of  virtuous 
principles  but  violent  passions.  Hence  he  is,  as  it  were,  at  once 
magnanimity  and  pride,  patience  and  fury,  gentleness  and  rigour, 
chastity  and  incest,  and  is  one  of  the  finest  mixtures  of  virtues  and 
vices  that  any  poet  has  drawn,"  &c. 

These  are  among  the  endless  instances  of  the  abject 
state  to  which  psychology  had  sunk  from  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.  to  the  middle  of  the  present  reign  of  George  IJI. ; 
and  even  now  it  is  but  just  awaking. 

Ib.  Seward's  comparison  of  Julia's  speech  in  the  "  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona,"  act  iv.  last  scene — 

"  Madam,  'twas  Ariadne  passioning,"  &c. — 
with  Aspatia's  speech  in  the  "  Maid's  Tragedy  " — 
"  I  stand  upon  the  sea-beach  now,"  &c.     Act  iu 

«,nd  preference  of  the  latter. 

It  is  strange  to  take  an  incidental  passage  of  one  writer,-, 
intended  only  for  a  subordinate  part,  and  compare  it  with 
the  same  thought  in  another  writer,  who  had  chosen  it  for 
a  prominent  and  principal  figure. 

Ib.     Seward's   preference   of   Alphonso's   poisoning  in 


426         NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.      [1818 

"  A  "Wife  for  a  Month,"  act  i.  sc.  1,  to  the  passage  in  "  King 
John,"  act  v.  sc.  7, — 

"Poison'd,  ill  fare!  dead,  forsook,  cast  off! " 

Mr.  Seward  !  Mr.  Seward !  you  may  be,  and  I  trust  yon 
are,  an  angel ;  but  you  were  an  ass. 
Ib. 

"  Every  reader  of  taste  will  see  how  superior  this  is  to  the  quotation 
from  Shakspere." 

Of  what  taste  ? 

Ib.     Seward's  classification  of  the  Plays  : — 
Surely  "Monsieur  Thomas,"  "The  Chances,"  "Beggar's 
Bush,"  and  the  "  Pilgrim,"  should  have  been  placed  in  the 
very  first  class !     But  the  whole  attempt  ends  in  a  woeful 
failure. 


Harris's  Commendatory  Poem  on  Fletcher. 

"  I'd  have  a  state  of  wit  convoked,  which  hath 
A  power  to  take  up  on  common  faith : —  " 

This  is  an  instance  of  that  modifying  of  quantity  by 
emphasis,  without  which  our  elder  poets  cannot  be  scanned. 
"  Power,"  here,  instead  of  being  one  long  syllable — pow'r 
— must  be  sounded,  not  indeed  as  a  spondee,  nor  yet  as  a 
trochee  ;  but  as  — °  u  ; — the  first  syllable  is  1 J. 

We  can,  indeed,  never  expect  an  authentic  edition  of  our 
elder  dramatic  poets  (for  in  those  times  a  drama  was  a 
poem),  until  some  man  undertakes  the  work,  who  has 
studied  the  philosophy  of  metre.  This  has  been  found  the 
main  torch  of  sound  restoration  in  the  Greek  dramatists 
by  Bentley,  Porson,  and  their  followers ; — how  much  more, 
then,  in  writers  in  our  own  language !  It  is  true  that 
quantity,  an  almost  iron  law  with  the  Greek,  is  in  English 
rather  a  subject  for  a  peculiarly  fine  ear,  than  any  law  or 


SECT.  VII.]        NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.        427 

even  rule ;  but,  then,  instead  of  it,  we  have,  first,  accent ; 
secondly,  emphasis  ;  and  lastly,  retardation,  and  acceleration 
of  the  times  of  syllables  according  to  the  meaning  of  the 
words,  the  passion  that  accompanies  them,  and  even  the 
character  of  the  person  that  uses  them.  With  due  attention 
to  these, — above  all,  to  that,  which  requires  the  most 
attention  and  the  finest  taste,  the  character,  Massinger,  for 
example,  might  be  reduced  to  a  rich  and  yet  regular  metre. 
But  then  the  regulce  must  be  first  known ; — though  I  will 
venture  to  say,  that  he  who  does  not  find  a  line  (not  cor- 
rupted) of  Massinger's  flow  to  the  time  total  of  a  trimeter 
catalectic  iambic  verse,  has  not  read  it  aright.  But  by 
virtue  of  the  last  principle — the  retardation  or  acceleration 
of  time — we  have  the  proceleusmatic  foot  u  u  u  v,  and  the 

dispondceiis ,  not  to  mention  the  choriamlus,  the 

ionics,  paeons,  and  epitrites.1  Since  Dryden,  the  metre  of 
our  poets  leads  to  the  sense :  in  our  elder  and  more  genuine 
bards,  the  sense,  including  the  passion,  leads  to  the  metre. 
Read  even  Donne's  satires  as  he  meant  them  to  be  read, 
and  as  the  sense  and  passion  demand,  and  you  will  find  in 
the  lines  a  manly  harmony. 


Life  of  Fletcher  in  Stockdale's  Edition.     1811. 

"In  general  their  plots  are  more  regular  than  Shakspere's. —  * 

This  is  true,  if  true  at  all,  only  before  a  court  of  criticism, 
which  judges  one  scheme  by  the  laws  of  another  and  a 
diverse  one.  Shakspere's  plots  have  their  own  laws  or 
regulw,  and  according  to  these  they  are  regular. 

1  See  note  on  "  The  Loyal  Subject,"  and  Section  V, 


428  NOTES   OK   BEAUMONT   AND   FLETCHER.  [1818 


Maid's  Tragedy. 

Act  i.  The  metrical  arrangement  is  most  slovenly 
throughout. 

"  Strat.  As  well  as  masque  can  be,"  &c. 

and  all  that  follows  to  "  who  is  return'd  " — is  plainly  blank 
verse,  and  falls  easily  into  it. 
Ib.     Speech  of  Melantius  : — 

"  These  soft  and  silken  wars  are  not  for  me  t 

The  music  must  be  shrill,  and  all  confused, 

That  stirs  my  blood ;  and  then  I  dance  with  arms." 

What  strange  self-trumpeters  and  tongue-bullies  all  the 
brave  soldiers  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  are  !  Yet  I  am 
inclined  to  think  it  was  the  fashion  of  the  age  from  the 
Soldier's  speech  in  the  "  Counter  Scuffle  ; "  and  deeper  than 
the  fashion  B.  and  F.  did  not  fathom. 

Ib.     Speech  of  Lysippus  : — 

"  Yes,  but  this  lady 

Walks  discontented,  with  her  wat'ry  eyes 

Bent  on  the  earth,"  &c. 

Opulent  as  Shakspere  was,  and  of  his  opulence  prodigal, 
he  yet  would  not  have  put  this  exquisite  piece  of  poetry  in 
the  mouth  of  a  no-character,  or  as  addressed  to  a  Melan- 
tius. I  wish  that  B.  and  F.  had  written  poems  instead  of 
tragedies. 
Ib. 

"  Mel.  I  might  run  fiercely,  not  more  hastily. 
Upon  my  foe." 

Read 

"  I  might  run  mtire  fiercely,  not  more  hastily. —  * 

Ib.      Speech  of  Calianax : — 


SECT.  VII.]      NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.        429 

"  Office  !  I  would  I  could  put  it  off !  I  am  sure  I  sweat  quite  through 
my  office!" 

The  syllable  off  reminds  the  testy  statesman  of  his  robe, 
and  he  carries  on  the  image. 
Ib.     Speech  of  Melantius  : — 

«  —Would  that  blood, 
That  sea  of  blood,  that  I  have  lost  in  fight,"  &c. 

All  B.  and  F.'s  generals  are  pugilists,  or  cudgel-fighters, 
that  boast  of  their  bottom  and  of  the  claret  they  have  shed. 
Ib.     The  Masque ; — Cinthia's  speech : — 

"  But  I  will  give  a  greater  state  and  glory, 
And  raise  to  time  a  noble  memory 
Of  what  these  lovers  are." 

I  suspect  that  "nobler,"  pronounced  as  "nobiler  "  —  u 
— ,  was  the  poet's  word,  and  that  the  accent  is  to  be  placed 
on  the  penultimate  of  "  memory."  As  to  the  passage — 

"  Yet,  while  our  reign  lasts,  let  us  stretch  our  power,"  &c. 

removed  from  the  text  of  Cinthia's  speech  by  these  foolish 
editors  as  unworthy  of  B.  and  F. — the  first  eight  lines  are 
not  worse,  and  the  last  couplet  incomparably  better,  than 
vhe  stanza  retained. 

Act  ii.     Amintor's  speech  : — 

"  Oh,  thou  hast  named  a  word,  that  wipes  away 
AH  thoughts  revengeful !  In  that  sacred  name, 
1  The  king,'  there  lies  a  terror." 

Ifc  is  worth  noticing  that  of  the  three  greatest  tragedians, 
Massinger  was  a  democrat,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  the 
most  servile  jure  divino  royalist,  and  Shakspere  a  philo- 
sopher ; — if  aught  personal,  an  aristocrat. 


430  NOTES    ON    BEA0MONT   AND    FLETCHEB. 

A  King  and  No  King. 

Act  iv.     Speech  of  Tigranes  :  — 

"  She,  that  forgat  the  greatness  of  her  grief 

And  miseries,  that  must  follow  such  mad  passions, 

Endless  and  wild  as  women  !  "  &c. 

Seward's  note  and  suggestion  of  "  in." 

It  would  be  amusing  to  learn  from  some  existing  friend 
of  Mr.  Seward  what  he  meant,  or  rather  dreamed,  in  this 
cote.  It  is  certainly  a  difficult  passage,  of  which  there  are 
two  solutions  ;  —  one,  that  the  writer  was  somewhat  more 
injudicious  than  usual  ;  —  the  other,  that  he  was  very,  very 
much  more  profound  and  Shaksperian  than  usual.  Seward's 
emendation,  at  all  events,  is  right  and  obvious.  Were  it  a 
passage  of  Shakspere,  I  should  not  hesitate  to  interpret  it 
as  characteristic  of  Tigranes'  state  of  mind,  —  disliking  the 
very  virtues,  and  therefore  half-consciously  representing 
them  as  mere  products  of  the  violence,  of  the  sex  in  general 
in  all  their  whims,  and  yet  forced  to  admire,  and  to  feel 
and  to  express  gratitude  for,  the  exertion  in  his  own 
instance.  The  inconsistency  of  the  passage  would  be  the 
consistency  of  the  author.  But  this  is  above  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher. 


The  Scornful  Lady. 

Act  ii.     Sir  Roger's  speech  :  — 

"  Did  I  for  this  consume  my  quarters  in  meditations,  vows,  and  woo'd 
her  in  heroical  epistles  ?  Did  I  expound  the  Owl,  and  undertake,  with 
labour  and  expense,  the  recollection  of  those  thousand  pieces,  consumed 
in  cellars  and  tobacco-shops,  of  that  our  honour'd  Englishman,  Nic. 
Broughton  ?  "  &c. 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.        431 

Strange,  that  neither  Mr.  Theobald,  nor  Mr.  Seward, 
should  have  seen  that  this  mock  heroic  speech  is  in  full- 
mouthed  blank  verse !  Had  they  seen  this,  they  would 
have  seen  that  "  quarters  "  is  a  substitution  of  the  players 
for  "  quires  "  or  "  squares,"  (that  is)  of  paper : — 

"  Consume  my  quires  in  meditations,  vows, 
And  woo'd  her  in  beroical  epistles." 

They  ought,  likewise,  to  have  seen  that  the  abbreviated 
"Ni.  Br."  of  the  text  was  properly  "Mi.  Dr." — and  that 
Michael  Drayton,  not  Nicholas  Broughton,  is  here  ridiculed 
for  his  poem  "  The  Owl  "  and  his  "  Heroical  Epistles." 
Ib.     Speech  of  Younger  Loveless  : — 

"  Fill  him  some  wine.    Thou  dost  not  see  me  moved,"  &c. 

These  Editors  ought  to  have  learnt,  that  scarce  an 
instance  occurs  in  B.  and  F.  of  a  long  speech  not  in  metre. 
This  is  plain  staring  blank  verse. 


The  Custom,  of  the  Country. 

I  cannot  but  think  that  in  a  country  conquered  by  a 
nobler  race  than  the  natives,  and  in  which  the  latter  became 
villeins  and  bondsmen,  this  custom,  lex  merchetce,  may  have 
been  introduced  for  wise  purposes, — as  of  improving  the 
breed,  lessening  the  antipathy  of  different  races,  and  pro- 
ducing a  new  bond  of  relationship  between  the  lord  and 
the  tenant,  who,  as  the  eldest  born,  would,  at  least,  have 
a  chance  of  being,  and  a  probability  of  being  thought,  the 
lord's  child.  In  the  West  Indies  it  cannot  have  these 
effects,  because  the  mulatto  is  marked  by  nature  different 
from  the  father,  and  because  there  is  no  bond,  no  law,  no 
custom,  but  of  mere  debauchery.  1815. 

Act  i  sc.  1 .     Rutilio's  speech : — 

"  Yet  if  you  play  not  fair  play,*'  &c. 


432        NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.       [1818 

Evidently  to  be  transposed  and  read  thus : — 

"  Yet  if  you  play  not  fair,  above-board  too, 
Til  tell  you  what — 

I've  a  foolish  engine  here  : — I  say  no  more — 
But  if  your  Honour's  guts  are  not  enchanted — " 

Licentious  as  the  comic  metre  of  B.  and  F.  is,  — a  far  more 
lawless,  and  yet  far  less  happy,  imitation  of  the  rhythm  of 
animated  talk  in  real  life  than  Massinger's — still  it  is  made 
worse  than  it  really  is  by  ignorance  of  the  halves,  thirds, 
and  two-thirds  of  a  line  which  B.  and  F.  adopted  from 
the  Italian  and  Spanish  dramatists.  Thus  in  Rutilio's 
speech : — 

"  Though  I  confess 

Any  man  would  desire  to  have  her,  and  by  any  means,"  &e. 

Correct  the  whole  passage — 

"  Though  I  confess 

Any  man  would 

Desire  to  have  her,  and  by  any  means, 

At  any  rate  too,  yet  this  common  hangman 

That  hath  whipt  off  a  thousand  maids'  heads  already — 

That  he  should  glean  the  harvest,  sticks  in  my  stomach  ! " 

In  all  comic  metres  the  gulping  of  short  syllables,  and 
the  abbreviation  of  syllables  ordinarily  long  by  the  rapid 
pronunciation  of  eagerness  and  vehemence,  are  not  so  much 
a  license,  as  a  law, — a  faithful  copy  of  nature,  and  let 
them  be  read  characteristically,  the  times  will  be  found 
nearly  equal.  Thus  the  three  words  marked  above  make 
a  choriambus  —  u  u  — ,  or  perhaps  SL  paeon  primus  —  u  \j  u  ; 
a  dactyl,  by  virtue  of  comic  rapidity,  being  only  equal  to 
an  iambus  when  distinctly  pronounced.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  all  B.  and  F.'s  works  might  be  safely  corrected  by 
attention  to  this  rule,  and  that  the  editor  is  entitled  to 
transpositions  of  all  kinds,  and  to  not  a  few  omissions. 
For  the  rule  of  the  metre  once  lost — what  was  to  restrain 
the  actors  from  interpolation  ? 


SECT.  VII.]      NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  A.ND  FLETCHER.         433 

The  Elder  Brother. 
Act  i.  sc.  2.     Charles's  speech : — 

"  — For  what  concerns  tillage, 
Who  better  can  deliver  it  than  Virgil 
In  his  Georgicks  ?  and  to  cure  your  herds, 
His  Bucolicks  is  a  master-piece. 

Fletcher  was  too  good  a  scholar  to  fall  into  so  gross  a 
blunder,  as  Messrs.  Sympson  and  Colman  suppose.  I  read 
the  passage  thus : — 

"  For  what  concerns  tillage, 
Who  better  can  deliver  it  than  Virgil, 
In  his  G  SorgKcks,  or  to  cure  your  herds ; 
(His  Bucolicks  are  a  master-piece.)     But  when,"  &c. 

Jealous  of  Virgil's  honour,  he  is  afraid  lest,  by  referring 
to  the  Georgics  alone,  he  might  be  understood  as  under- 
valuing the  preceding  work.     "  Not  that  I  do  not  admire 
the  Bucolics,  too,  in  their  way : — But  when,  &c." 
Act  iii.  sc.  3.     Charles's  speech  : — 

"  — She  has  a  face  looks  like  a  story  ; 
The  story  of  the  heavens  looks  very  like  her." 

Seward    reads     "glory;"    and     Theobald    quotes    from 
Philaster — 

"  That  reads  the  story  of  a  woman's  face. — " 

I  can  make  sense  of  this  passage  as  little  as  Mr.  Seward ; 
— the  passage  from  Philaster  is  nothing  to  the  purpose. 
Instead  of  "a  story,"  I  have  sometimes  thought  of  pro- 
posing "  Astrflea." 

Ib.     Angelina's  speech  : — 

"  You're  old  and  dim,  Sir, 
And  the  shadow  of  the  earth  eclipsed  your  judgment." 

Inappropriate  to  Angelina,  but  one  of  the  finest  lines  in 
our  language. 

v  r 


434  NOTES    ON   BEAUMONT   AND   FLETCHER.  [1818 

Act  iv.  sc.  3.     Charles's  speech. : — 

"  And  lets  the  serious  part  of  life  run  by 
As  thin  neglected  sand,  whiteness  of  name. 
You  must  be  mine,"  &c. 

Seward's  note,  and  reading — 

"  — Whiteness  of  name, 
You  must  be  mine !  " 

Nonsense!  "Whiteness  of  name,"  is  in  apposition  to 
"  the  serious  part  of  life,"  and  means  a  deservedly  pure 
reputation.  The  following  line — "You  must  be  mine!" 
means — "  Though  I  do  not  enjoy  you  to-day,  I  shall  here- 
after, and  without  reproach." 


The  Spanish  Curate. 

Act  iv.  sc.  7.     Amaranta's  speech : — 

"  And  still  1  push'd  him  on,  as  he  had  been  coming" 

Perhaps  the  true  word  is  "  conning,"  that  is,  learning, 
•or  reading,  and  therefore  inattentive. 

Wit  without  Money. 

Act  i.     Valentine's  speech : — 

"One  without  substance,"  &c. 

The  present  text,  and  that  proposed  by  Seward,  are 
equally  vile.  I  have  endeavoured  to  make  the  lines  sense, 
though  the  whole  is,  I  suspect,  incurable  except  by  bold 
conjectural  reformation.  I  would  read  thus : — 

"  One  without  substance  of  herself,  that's  woman ; 
Without  the  pleasure  of  her  life,  that's  wanton  j 
Tho'  she  be  young,  forgetting  it ;  tho'  fair, 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         435 

Making  her  glass  the  eyes  of  honest  men, 
Not  her  own  admiration." 

** That's  wanton,"  or,  "that  is  to  say,  wantonness." 
Act  ii.     Valentine's  speech  : — 

"Of  half-a-crown  a  week  for  pins  and  puppets — " 
As  there  is  a  syllable  wanting  in  the  measure  here.     Seward. 

A  syllable  wanting !     Had  this  Seward  neither  ears  nor 
fingers  ?     The  line  is  a  more  than  usually  regular  iambic 
hendecasyllable. 
Ib. 

"  With  one  man  satisfied,  with  one  rein  guided ; 
With  one  faith,  one  content,  one  bed ; 
Aged,  she  makes  the  wife,  preserves  the  fame  and  issue ; 
A  widow  is,"  &c. 

Is  "  apaid  " — contented — too  obsolete  for  B.  and  F.  ?     If 
not,  we  might  read  it  thus  : — 

"  Content  with  one  faith,  with  one  bed  apaid, 

She  makes  the  wife,  preserves  the  fame  and  issue  j — " 

Or  it  may  be — 

"  — with  one  breed  apaid — " 

that  is,  satisfied  with  one  set  of  children,  in  opposition  to — 
"  A  widow  is  a  Christmas-box,"  &c. 

Colman's  note  on  Seward's  attempt  to  put  this  play  into 
metre. 

The  editors,  and  their  contemporaries  in  general,  were 
ignorant  of  any  but  the  regular  iambic  verse.  A  study  of 
the  Aristophanic  and  Plautine  metres  would  have  enabled 
them  to  reduce  B.  and  F.  throughout  into  metre,  except 
where  prose  is  really  intended. 


436  NOTES    ON   BEAUMONT   AND   FLETCHER.  [1818 

The  Humorous  Lieutenant. 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Second  Ambassador's  speech : — 

"  — When  your  angers, 
Like  so  many  brother  billows,  rose  together, 
And,  curling  up  your  foaming  crests,  defied,"  &c. 

This  worse  than  superfluous  "  like  "  is  very  like  an  inter- 
polation of  some  matter  of  fact  critic — all  pus,  prose  atque 
venenum.  The  "  your  "  in  the  next  line,  instead  of  "  their," 
is  likewise  yours,  Mr.  Critic  ! 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Timon's  speech  : — 

"  Another  of  a  new  way  will  be  look'd  at. — " 

We  must  suspect  the  poets  wrote,  "  of  a  new  day."  So,  immediately 
after, 

" Time  may 

For  all  his  wisdom,,  yet  give  us  a  day." 

Seward's  Note. 

For  this  very  reason  I  more  than  suspect  the  contrary. 
Ib.  sc.  3.     Speech  of  Leucippe : — 

"  I'll  put  her  into  action  for  a  wastcoat. — " 
What  we  call  a  riding-habit, — some  mannish  dress, 

The  Mad  Lover. 

Act  iv.     Masque  of  beasts : — 

"  —This  goodly  tree, 
An  usher  that  still  grew  before  his  lady, 
Wither'd  at  root :  this,  for  he  could  not  woo, 
A  grumbling  lawyer :  "  &c. 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         437 

Here  must  have  been  omitted  a  line  rhyming  to  "  tree ;  " 
and  the  words  of  the  next  line  have  been  transposed : — 

"  This  goodly  tree, 

Which  leafless,  and  obscured  with  moss  you  see, 
An  usher  this,  that  'fore  his  lady  grew, 
WitherM  at  root :  this,  for  he  could  not  woo,"  &c. 


The  Loyal  Subject.  , 

It  is  well  worthy  of  notice,  and  yet  has  not  been,  I  believe, 
noticed  hitherto,  what  a  marked  difference  there  exists  in 
the  dramatic  writers  of  the  Elizabetho-Jacobsean  age — 
(Mercy  on  me  !  what  a  phrase  for  "  the  writers  during  the 
reigns  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I.!") — in  respect  of  their 
political  opinions.  Shakspere,  in  this  as  in  all  other  things, 
himself  and  alone,  gives  the  permanent  politics  of  human 
nature,  and  the  only  predilection,  which  appears,  shews 
itself  in  his  contempt  of  mobs  and  the  populacy.  Mas- 
singer  is  a  decided  Whig ; — Beaumont  and  Fletcher  high- 
flying, passive-obedience,  Tories.  The  Spanish  dramatists 
furnished  them  with  this,  as  with  many  other  ingredients. 
By  the  by,  an  accurate  and  familiar  acquaintance  with  all 
the  productions  of  the  Spanish  stage  previously  to  1620,  is 
an  indispensable  qualification  for  an  editor  of  B.  and  F. ; — 
and  with  this  qualification  a  most  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive edition  might  be  given.  This  edition  of  Colman's 
(Stockdale,  1811)  is  below  criticism. 

In  metre,  B.  and  F.  are  inferior  to  Shakspere,  on  the 
one  hand,  as  expressing  the  poetic  part  of  the  drama,  and 
to  Massinger,  on  the  other,  in  the  art  of  reconciling  metre 
with  the  natural  rhythm  of  conversation, — in  which,  indeed, 
Massinger  is  unrivalled.  Read  him  aright,  and  measure 
by  time,  not  syllables,  and  no  lines  can  be  more  legitimate, 
— none  in  which  the  substitution  of  equipollent  feet,  and 
the  modifications  by  emphasis,  are  managed  with  such 


438  NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT  AND    FLETCHER.  [1818 

exquisite  judgment.1     B.  and  F.   are  fond  of  the  twelve 
syllable  (not  Alexandrine)  line,  as — 

"  Too  many  fears  'tis  thought  too :  and  to  nourish  those — " 

This  has,  often,  a  good  effect,  and  is  one  of  the  varieties 
most  common  in  Shakspere. 

Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a  Wife. 

Act  iii.     Old  Woman's  speech : — 

"  —  I  fear  he  will  knock  my 
Brains  out  for  lying." 

Mr.  Seward  discards  the  words  "  for  lying,"  because 
"  most  of  the  things  spoke  of  Estifania  are  true,  with  only 
a  little  exaggeration,  and  because  they  destroy  all  appear- 
ance of  measure."  Colman's  note. 

Mr.  Seward  had  his  brains  out.  The  humour  lies  in 
Estifania's  having  ordered  the  Old  Woman  to  tell  these 
tiles  of  her ;  for  though  an  intriguer,  she  is  not  represented 
as  other  than  chaste ;  and  as  to  the  metre,  it  is  perfectly 
correct. 

Ib. 

"  Marg.  As  you  love  me,  give  way. 
Leon.  It  shall  be  better,  I  will  give  none,  madam,"  &c. 

The  meaning  is  :  "  It  shall  be  a  better  way,  first ; — as  it 
is,  I  will  not  give  it,  or  any  that  you  in  your  present  mood 
would  wish." 

The  Laws  of  Candy. 
Act  i.     Speech  of  Melitus  : — 

"  Whose  insolence  and  never  yet  match'd  pride 
Can  by  no  character  be  well  express'd, 
But  in  her  only  name,  the  proud  Erota." 

Colman's  note. 

1   Sec  note  on  Harris's  commendatory  poem,  and  Section  V. 


SECT.  VII.]      NOTES  ON  BEACTMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         439 

The  poet  intended  no  allusion  to  the  word  "  Erota " 
itself ;  but  says  that  her  very  name,  "  the  proud  Erota," 
became  a  character  and  adage ;  as  we  say,  a  Quixote  or  a 
Brutus  :  so  to  say  an  "  Erota,"  expressed  female  pride  aud 
insolence  of  beauty. 

Ib.     Speech  of  Antinous  : — 

"  Of  my  peculiar  honours,  not  derived 

From  successary,  but  purchased  with  my  blood. — * 

The  poet  doubtless  wrote  "successry,"  which,  though 
not  adopted  in  onr  language,  would  be,  on  many  occasions, 
as  here,  a  much  more  significant  phrase  than  ancestry. 


The  Little  French  Lawyer.1 

Act  i.  sc.  1.     Dinant's  speech  : — 

"  Are  you  become  a  patron  too  ?    'Tis  a  new  one, 
No  more  on't,"  &c. 

Seward  reads : — 

"  Are  you  become  a  patron  too  ?     How  long 

Have  you  been  conning  this  speech  ?    'Tis  a  new  one,"  <tc. 

If  conjectural  emendation,  like  this,  be  allowed,  we  might 
venture  to  read  : — 

"  Are  you  become  a  patron  to  a  new  tune* 
or, 

"Are  you  become  a  patron  ?     'Tis  a  new  tune.9 
Ib. 

"Din.  Thou  wouldst  not  willingly 
Live  a  protested  coward,  or  be  call'd  one  ? 
Clir.  Words  are  but  words. 
Din.  Nor  wouldst  thou  take  a  blow  ?  " 

Seward's  note. 

1  See  Appendix:  V.,  June  24,  1827. 


440        NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.      [1818 

0  miserable  !  Dinant  sees  through  Cleremont's  gravity, 
and  the  actor  is  to  explain  it.  "  Words  are  but  words,"  is 
the  last  struggle  of  affected  morality. 


Valentinian. 

Act  i.  so.  3.  It  is  a  real  trial  of  charity  to  read  this 
scene  with  tolerable  temper  towards  Fletcher.  So  very 
slavish — so  reptile — are  the  feelings  and  sentiments  repre- 
sented as  duties.  And  yet  remember  he  was  a  bishop's 
son,  and  the  duty  to  God  was  the  supposed  basis. 

Personals,  including  body,  house,  home,  and  religion ; — 
property,  subordination,  and  inter- community ; — these  are 
the  fundamentals  of  society.  I  mean  here,  religion  nega- 
tively taken, — so  that  the  person  be  not  compelled  to  do 
or  utter,  in  relation  of  the  soul  to  God,  what  would  be,  in 
that  person,  a  lie ; — such  as  to  force  a  man  to  go  to  church, 
or  to  swear  that  he  believes  what  he  does  not  believe. 
Religion,  positively  taken,  may  be  a  great  and  useful 
privilege,  but  cannot  be  a  right, — were  it  for  this  only  that 
it  cannot  be  pre-defined.  The  ground  of  this  distinction 
between  negative  and  positive  religion,  as  a  social  right,  is 
plain.  No  one  of  my  fellow-citizens  is  encroached  on  by 
my  not  declaring  to  him  what  I  believe  respecting  the 
super-sensual ;  but  should  every  man  be  entitled  to  preach 
against  the  preacher,  who  could  hear  any  preacher  ?  Now 
it  is  different  in  respect  of  loyalty.  There  we  have  positive 
rights,  but  not  negative  rights ; — for  every  pretended 
negative  would  be  in  effect  a  positive ; — as  if  a  soldier  had 
a  right  to  keep  to  himself,  whether  he  would,  or  would  not, 
fight.  Now,  no  one  of  these  fundamentals  can  be  right- 
fully attacked,  except  when  the  guardian  of  it  has  abused 
it  to  subvert  one  or  more  of  the  rest.  The  reason  is,  that 
the  guardian,  as  a  fluent,  is  less  than  the  permanent  which 
he  is  to  guard.  He  is  the  temporary  and  mutable  mean, 


SECT.  VII.]      NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         441 

and  derives  his  whole  value  from  the  end.  In  short,  as 
robbery  is  not  high  treason,  so  neither  is  every  unjust  act 
of  a  king  the  converse.  All  must  be  attacked  and  endan- 
gered. Why  ?  Because  the  king,  as  a  to  A.,  is  a  mean  to 
A.  or  subordination,  in  a  far  higher  sense  than  a  proprietor, 
as  6  to  B.  is  a  mean  to  B.  or  property. 
Act  ii.  sc.  2.  Claudia's  speech : — 

"  Chimney-pieces ! "  &c. 

The  whole  of  this  speech  seems  corrupt;  and  if  accu- 
rately printed, — that  is,  if  the  same  in  all  the  prior  editions, 
irremediable  but  by  bold  conjecture.  "Till  my  tackle," 
should  be,  I  think,  while,  &c. 

Act  iii.  sc.  1.  B.  and  F.  always  write  as  if  virtue  or 
goodness  were  a  sort  of  talisman,  or  strange  something, 
that  might  be  lost  without  the  least  fault  on  the  part  of 
the  owner.  In  short,  their  chaste  ladies  value  their  chastity 
as  a  material  thing, — not  as  an  act  or  state  of  being ;  and 
this  mere  thing  being  imaginary,  no  wonder  that  all  their 
women  are  represented  with  the  minds  of  strumpets,  except 
a  few  irrational  humourists,  far  less  capable  of  exciting  our 
sympathy  than  a  Hindoo,  who  has  had  a  basin  of  cow-broth 
thrown  over  him ; — for  this,  though  a  debasing  super- 
stition, is  still  real,  and  we  might  pity  the  poor  wretch, 
though  we  cannot  help  despising  him.  But  B.  and  F.'s 
Lucinas  are  clumsy  fictions.  It  is  too  plain  that  the  authors 
had  no  one  idea  of  chastity  as  a  virtue,  but  only  such  a 
conception  as  a  blind  man  might  have  of  the  power  of 
seeing,  by  handling  an  ox's  eye.  In  "  The  Queen  of 
Corinth,"  indeed,  they  talk  differently ;  but  it  is  all  talk, 
and  nothing  is  real  in  it  but  the  dread  of  losing  a  reputa- 
tion. Hence  the  frightful  contrast  between  their  women 
(even  those  who  are  meant  for  virtuous)  and  Shakspere's. 
So,  for  instance,  "  The  Maid  in  the  Mill :  " — a  woman  must 
not  merely  have  grown  old  in  brothels,  but  have  chuckled 


442  NOTES    ON  BEAUMONT  AND   FLETCHER.  [1818 

over  every  abomination  committed  in  them  with  a  rampant 
sympathy  of  imagination,  to  have  had  her  fancy  so  drunk 
with  the  minutice  of  lechery  as  this  icy  chaste  virgin  evinces 
hers  to  have  been. 

It  would  be  worth  while  to  note  how  many  of  these 
plays  are  founded  on  rapes, — how  many  on  incestuous  pas- 
sions, and  how  many  on  mere  lunacies.  Then  their  virtuous 
women  are  either  crazy  superstitions  of  a  merely  bodily 
negation  of  having  been  acted  on,  or  strumpets  in  their 
imaginations  and  wishes,  or,  as  in  this  "  Maid  in  the  Mill," 
both  at  the  same  time.  In  the  men,  the  love  is  merely 
lust  in  one  direction, — exclusive  preference  of  one  object. 
The  tyrant's  speeches  are  mostly  taken  from  the  mouths  of 
indignant  denouncers  of  the  tyrant's  character,  with  the 
substitution  of  "  I "  for  "  he,"  and  the  omission  of  the 
prefatory  "  he  acts  as  if  he  thought "  so  and  so.  The  only 
feelings  they  can  possibly  excite  are  disgust  at  the  Aeciuses, 
if  regarded  as  sane  loyalists,  or  compassion,  if  considered 
as  Bedlamites.  So  much  for  their  tragedies.  But  even 
their  comedies  are,  most  of  them,  disturbed  by  the  fantas- 
ticalness,  or  gross  caricature,  of  the  persons  or  incidents. 
There  are  few  characters  that  you  can  really  like, — (even 
though  you  should  have  had  erased  from  your  mind  all  the 
filth,  which  bespatters  the  most  likeable  of  them,  as  Piniero 
in  "  The  Island  Princess "  for  instance,) — scarcely  one 
whom  you  can  love.  How  different  this  from  Shakspere, 
who  makes  one  have  a  sort  of  sneaking  affection  even  for 
his  Barnardines ; — whose  very  lagos  and  Richards  are 
awful,  and,  by  the  counteracting  power  of  profound  intel- 
lects, rendered  fearful  rather  than  hateful ; — and  even  tho 
exceptions,  as  Groneril  and  Regan,  are  proofs  of  superlative 
judgment  and  the  finest  moral  tact,  in  being  left  utter 
monsters,  nulla  virtute  redemptce,  and  in  being  kept  out  of 
sight  as  much  as  possible, — they  being,  indeed,  only  means 
for  the  excitement  and  deepening  of  noblest  emotions  to- 


SECT.  VII.]      NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         443 

wards  the  Lear,  Cordelia,  <fec.,  and  employed  with  the 
severest  economy  !  But  even  Shakspere's  grossness — that 
which  is  really  so,  independently  of  the  increase  in  modern 
times  of  vicious  associations  with  things  indifferent, — (for 
there  is  a  state  of  manners  conceivable  so  pnre,  that  the 
language  of  Hamlet  at  Ophelia's  feet  might  be  a  harmless 
rallying,  or  playful  teazing,  of  a  shame  that  would  exist  in 
Paradise)  l — at  the  worst,  how  diverse  in  kind  is  it  from 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  !  In  Shakspere  it  is  the  mere 
generalities  of  sex,  mere  words  for  the  most  part,  seldom 
or  never  distinct  images,2  all  head-work,  and  fancy-drol- 
leries ;  there  is  no  sensation  supposed  in  the  speaker.  I 
need  not  proceed  to  contrast  this  with  B.  and  F. 


Hollo. 

This  is,  perhaps,  the  most  energetic  of  Fletcher's1 
tragedies.  He  evidently  aimed  at  a  new  Richard  III.  in 
"  Hollo  ;" — but  as  in  all  his  other  imitations  of  Shaksperer 
he  was  not  philosopher  enough  to  bottom  his  original. 
Thus,  in  "  Hollo,"  he  has  produced  a  mere  personification 
of  outrageous  wickedness,  with  no  fundamental  character- 
istic impulses  to  make  either  the  tyrant's  words  or  actions 
philosophically  intelligible.  Hence,  the  most  pathetic 
situations  border  on  the  horrible,  and  what  he  meant  for 
the  terrible,  is  either  hateful,  TO  niorjTov,  or  ludicrous.  The 
scene  of  Baldwin's  sentence  in  the  third  act  is  probably 

1  See  Section  V.  and  note,  and  opening  paragraph  of  Section  VL 
8  B^ranger  himself  could  not  be  nlore  delicate  : — 

"  Ton  pere  dit :  Pour  gendre, 
Tra,  la,  tralala,  la,  la,  la, 
Flora,  faut-il  le  prendre  ? 
Oui,  tout  has  repondra 
Ma  timide  Flora." 

La  Nourrice. 


444  NOTES  ON   BEAUMONT   AND    FLETCHER.  [1818 

the  grandest  working  of  passion  in  all  B.  and  F.'s  dramas ; 
— but  the  very  magnificence  of  filial  affection  given  to 
Edith,  in  this  noble  scene,  renders  the  after  scene — (in 
imitation  of  one  of  the  least  Shaksperian  of  all  Shakspere's 
works,  if  it  be  his,  the  scene  between  Richard  and  Lady 
Anne), — in  which  Edith  is  yielding  to  a  few  words  and 
tears,  not  only  unnatural,  but  disgusting.  In  Shakspere, 
Lady  Anne  is  described  as  a  weak,  vain,  very  woman 
throughout. 
Act  i.  sc.  1. 

"  Cris.  He  is  indeed  the  perfect  character 
Of  a  good  inan}  and  so  his  actions  speak  him." 

This  character  of  Aubrey,  and  the  whole  spirit  of  this 
and  several  other  plays  of  the  same  authors,  are  interesting 
as  traits  of  the  morals  which  it  was  fashionable  to  teach  in 
the  reigns  of  James  I.  and  his  successor,  who  died  a  martyr 
to  them.  Stage,  pulpit,  law,  fashion, — all  conspired  to 
enslave  the  realm.  Massinger's  plays  breathe  the  opposite 
spirit ;  Shakspere's  the  spirit  of  wisdom  which  is  for  all 
ages.  By  the  by,  the  Spanish  dramatists — Calderon,  in 
particular, — had  some  influence  in  this  respect,  of  romantic 
loyalty  to  the  greatest  monsters,  as  well  as  in  the  busy 
intrigues  of  B.  and  F.'s  plays. 


The  Wildgoose  Chase. 
Act  ii.  sc.  1.     Belleur's  speech  : — 

'•'  — that  wench,  methinks, 
If  I  were  but  well  set  on,  for  she  is  a,  fable, 
If  I  were  but  hounded  right,  and  one  to  teach  me." 

Sympson  reads  "affable,"  which  Colman  rejects,  and  says, 
"  the  next  line  seems  to  enforce  "  the  reading  in  the  text. 

Pity,  that  the  editor  did  not  explain  wherein  the  sense, 
"  seemingly  enforced  by  the  next  line,"  consists.     May  the 


SECT.  VII. ]      NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         445 

true  word  be  "  a  sable,"  that  is,  a  black  fox,  hunted  for  its 
precious  fur?  Or  "at-able," — as  we  now  say, — "she  is 
come-at-able  ?  " 


A  Wife  for  a  Month. 
Act  iv.  sc.  1.     Alphonso's  speech : — 

"  Betwixt  the  cold  bear  and  the  raging  lion 
Lies  my  safe  way." 

Seward's  note  and  alteration  to — 

"  'Twixt  the  cold  bears,  far  from  the  raging  lion — " 

This  Mr.  Seward  is  a  blockhead  of  the  provoking  species. 
In  his  itch  for  correction,  he  forgot  the  words — "  lies  my 
safe  way  ! "  The  Bear  is  the  extreme  pole,  and  thither  he 
would  travel  over  the  space  contained  between  it  and  "  the 
raging  lion." 


The  Pilgrim. 

Act  iv.  sc.  2.  Alinda's  interview  with  her  father  is 
lively,  and  happily  hit  off ;  but  this  scene  with  Boderigo  is 
truly  excellent.  Altogether,  indeed,  this  play  holds  the 
first  place  in  B.  and  F.'s  romantic  entertainments,  Lust- 
spiele,  which  collectively  are  their  happiest  performances, 
and  are  only  inferior  to  the  romance  of  Shakspere  in  the 
"  As  You  Like  It,"  "  Twelfth  Night,"  &c. 

Ib. 

"  Alin.  To-day  you  shall  wed  Sorrow, 
And  Repentance  will  come  to-morrow." 

Read  "  Penitence,"  or  else — 

"  Bepentance,  she  will  come  to-morrow." 


446        NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.       [1818 

The  Queen  of  Corinth. 

Act  ii.  sc.  1.  Merione's  speech.  Had  the  scene  of  this 
tragi- comedy  been  laid  in  Hindostan  instead  of  Corinth, 
and  the  gods  here  addressed  been  the  Veeshnoo  and  Co. 
of  the  Indian  Pantheon,  this  rant  would  not  have  been 
much  amiss. 

In  respect  of  style  and  versification,  this  play  and  the 
following  of  "  Bonduca  "  may  be  taken  as  the  best,  and  yet 
as  characteristic,  specimens  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's 
dramas.  I  particularly  instance  the  first  scene  of  the 
"  Bonduca."  Take  Shakespere's  "Richard  II.,"  and  having 
selected  some  one  scene  of  about  the  same  number  of  lines, 
and  consisting  mostly  of  long  speeches,  compare  it  with 
the  first  scene  in  "Bonduca," — not  for  the  idle  purpose  of 
finding  out  which  is  the  better,  but  in  order  to  see  and 
understand  the  difference.  The  latter,  that  of  B.  and  F., 
you  will  find  a  well  arranged  bed  of  flowers,  each  having 
its  separate  root,  and  its  position  determined  aforehand  by 
the  will  of  the  gardener, — each  fresh  plant  a  fresh  volition. 
In  the  former  you  see  an  Indian  fig-tree,  as  described  by 
Milton  ; — all  is  growth,  evolution,  yivtaiQ; — each  line,  each 
word  almost,  begets  the  following,  and  the  will  of  the 
writer  is  an  interfusion,  a  continuous  agency,  and  not  a 
series  of  separate  acts.  Shakspere  is  the  height,  breadth, 
and  depth  of  genius  :  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  the  excellent 
mechanism,  in  juxta-position  and  succession,  of  talent.1 

The  Noble  Gentleman. 

Why  have  the  dramatists  of  the  times  of  Elizabeth, 

James  I.  and  the  first  Charles  become  almost  obsolete,  with 

the  exception  of  Shakspere  ?      Why  do  they  no  longer 

belong  to  the  English,  being  once  so  popular  ?     And  why 

1  Compare  Section  V. 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         447 

is  Shakspere  an  exception  ? — One  thing,  among  fifty,  neces- 
sary to  the  full  solution  is,  that  they  all  employed  poetry 
and  poetic  diction  on  unpoetic  subjects,  both  characters 
and  situations,  especially  in  their  comedy.  Now  Shakspere 
is  all,  all  ideal, — of  no  time,  and  therefore  for  all  times. 
Read,  for  instance,  Marine's  panegyric  in  the  first  scene  of 
this  play : — 

"Know 

The  eminent  court,  to  them  that  can  be  wise, 
And  fasten  on  her  blessings,  is  a  sun,"  &c. 

What  can  be  more  unnatural  and  inappropriate — (not  only 
is,  but  must  be  felt  as  such) — than  such  poetry  in  the 
mouth  of  a  silly  dupe  ?  In  short,  the  scenes  are  mock 
dialogues,  in  which  the  poet  solus  plays  the  ventriloquist, 
but  cannot  keep  down  his  own  way  of  expressing  himself. 
Heavy  complaints  have  been  made  respecting  the  trans- 
prosing  of  the  old  plays  by  Gibber ;  but  it  never  occurred 
to  these  critics  to  ask,  how  it  came  that  no  one  ever 
attempted  to  transprose  a  comedy  of  Shakspere 's. 


The  Coronation. 
Act  i.     Speech  of  Seleucus  : — 

"  Altho'  he  be  my  enemy,  should  any 
Of  the  gay  flies  that  buz  about  the  court, 
Sit  to  catch  trouts  i'  the  summer,  tell  me  so, 
I  durst,"  &c. 

Colman's  note. 

Pshaw  !  "  Sit "  is  either  a  misprint  for  "  set,"  or  the  old 
and  still  provincial  word  for  "  set,"  as  the  participle  passive 
of  "  seat "  or  "  set."  I  have  heard  an  old  Somersetshire 
gardener  say : — "  Look,  Sir !  I  set  these  plants  here ;  those 
yonder  I  sit  yesterday." 

Act  ii.     Speech  of  Arcadius : — 


448  NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT   AND   FLETCHER.  [1818 

"  Nay,  some  will  swear  they  love  their  mistress, 
Would  hazard  lives  and  fortunes,"  &c 

Read  thus : — 

"  Nay,  some  will  swear  they  love  their  mistress  so, 
They  would  hazard  lives  and  fortunes  to  preserve 
One  of  her  hairs  brighter  than  Berenice's, 
Or  young  Apollo's  ;  and  yet,  after  this,"  &c. 

"  They  would  hazard  " — furnishes  an  anapaest  for  an  iambus. 
"And  yet,"  which  must  be  read,  a~iy$t,  is  an  instance  of 
the  enclitic  force  in  an  accented  monosyllable.  "  Aiid  yet  " 
is  a  complete  iambus;  but  anyet  is,  like  spirit,  a  dibrach 
u  u,  trocheized,  however,  by  the  arsis  or  first  accent  damp- 
ing, though  not  extinguishing,  the  second. 


Wit  at  Several  Weapons. 

Act  i.     Oldcraft's  speech  : — 

"  I'm  arm'd  at  all  points,"  &c 

It  would  be  very  easy  to  restore  all  this  passage  to  metre, 
by  supplying  a  sentence  of  four  syllables,  which  the  reason- 
ing almost  demands,  and  by  correcting  the  grammar. 
Bead  thus : — 

"  Arm'd  at  all  points  'gainst  treachery,  I  hold 

My  humour  firm.     If,  living,  I  can  see  thee 

Thrive  by  thy  wits,  I  shall  have  the  more  courage, 

Dying,  to  trust  thee  with  my  lands.  .  If  not, 

The  best  wit,  I  can  hear  of,  carries  them. 

For  since  so  many  in  my  time  and  knowledge, 

•Rich  children  of  the  city,  have  concluded 

For  lack  of  wit  in  beggary,  I'd  rather 

Make  a  wise  stranger  my  executor, 

Than  a  fool  son  my  heir,  and  have  my  lands  call'd 

After  my  wit  than  name :  and  that's  my  nature ! 

Ib.     Oldcraft's  speech  : — 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.        449 

"To  prevent  which  I  have  sought  out  a  match  for  her. —  * 

Read 

"  Which  to  prevent  I've  sought  a  match  out  for  her." 

Ib.     Sir  Gregory's  speech  : — 

" Do  you  think 

"  I'll  have  any  of  the  wits  hang  upon  me  after  I  am  married  once  ?" 

Bead  it  thus  : — 

"  Do  you  think 

That  I'll  have  any  of  the  wits  to  hang 
Upon  me  after  I  am  married  once  ?  " 

and  afterwards — 

"Is  it  a  fashion  in  London, 
To  marry  a  woman,  and  to  never  see  her  ?" 

The  superfluous  "  to "  gives  it  the  Sir  Andrew  Ague- 
cheek  character. 


The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn. 

Act  ii.     Speech  of  Albertus : — 

"  But,  Sir, 

By  my  life,  I  vow  to  take  assurance  from  you, 
That  right-hand  never  more  shall  strike  my  son, 
•  *»»»» 

Chop  his  hand  off'" 

In  this  (as,  indeed,  in  all  other  respects ;  but  most  in  this) 
it  is  that  Shakspere  is  so  incomparably  superior  to  Fletcher 
and  his  friend, — in  judgment !  What  can  be  conceived 
more  unnatural  and  motiveless  than  this  brutal  resolve  ? 
How  is  it  possible  to  feel  the  least  interest  in  Albertus 
afterwards  ?  or  in  Cesario  after  his  conduct  ? 


0  o 


NOTES   ON   BEAUMONT   AND    FLETCHER.  [1818 


The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen. 

On  comparing  the  prison  scene  of  Palamon  and  Arcite, 
Act  ii.  sc.  2,  with  the  dialogue  between  the  same  speakers, 
Act  i.  sc.  2,  I  can  scarcely  retain  a  doubt  as  to  the  first 
act's  having  been  written  by  Shakspere.  Assuredly  it  was 
not  written  by  B.  and  F.  I  hold  Jonson  more  probable 
than  either  of  these  two. 

The  main  presumption,  however,  for  Shakspere's  share 
in  this  play  rests  on  a  point,  to  which  the  sturdy  critics  of 
this  edition  (and  indeed  all  before  them)  were  blind, — that 
is,  the  construction  of  the  blank  verse,  which  proves  beyond 
all  doubt  an  intentional  imitation,  if  not  tho  proper  hand, 
of  Shakspere.  Now,  whatever  improbability  there  is  in 
the  former  (which  supposes  Fletcher  conscious  of  the 
inferiority,  the  too  poematic  minus-  dramatic  nature,  of  his 
versification,  and  of  which  there  is  neither  proof,  nor  like- 
lihood) adds  so  much  to  the  probability  of  the  latter.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  harshness  of  many  of  these  very  pas- 
sages, a  harshness  unrelieved  by  any  lyrical  inter-breath- 
ings, and  still  more  the  want  of  profundity  in  the  thoughts, 
keep  me  from  an  absolute  decision. 

Act  i.  sc.  3.     Emilia's  speech  : — 

Since  his  depart,  his  sports, 


Tho'  craving  seriousness  and  skill,"  &c. 

I  conjecture  "  imports,"  that  is,  duties  or  offices  of  impor- 
tance. The  flow  of  the  versification  in  this  speech  seems 
to  demand  the  trochaic  ending — o ;  while  the  text  blends 
jingle  and  hisses  to  the  annoyance  of  less  sensitive  ears 
than  Fletcher's — not  to  say,  Shakspere's. 


SECT.  VII.]       NOTES  ON  BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER.         451 


The  Woman  Hater. 

Act  i.  sc.  2.     This  scene  from  the  beginning  is  proso 
printed  as  blank  verse,  down  to  the  line — 

"  E'en  all  the  valiant  stomachs  in  the  court — " 

where  the  verse  recommences.  This  transition  from  the 
prose  to  the  verse  enhances,  and  indeed  forms,  the  comic 
effect.  Lazarillo  concludes  his  soliloquy  with  a  hymn  to 
the  goddess  of  plenty. 


III. 

LECTURES  ON   SHAKSPERE  AND 

MILTON,   AT   BRISTOL. 

1813-14. 


LECTURES  ON  SHAKSPERE  AND  MILTON 
AT  BRISTOL.     1813-14. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

A  \  7E  have  given  Mr.  Collier's  transcripts  of  the  Lectures 
of  1811-12.  We  have  given  the  various  notes  and 
fragments  preserved  by  Coleridge,  in  preparation  for  his 
volumes  of  dramatic  criticism,1  which  never  appeared ;  and 
such  other  matter  on  the  same  subject  as  is  found  in  the 
"  Remains."  Our  materials  are  not  exhausted. 

Incited,  doubtless,  by  the  fame  of  the  course  of  1811-12, 
Coleridge's  Bristol  friends  eagerly  closed  with  his  proposal, 
in  the  autumn  of  1813,  to  repeat  it  in  that  city.  Accord- 
ingly, Coleridge  forwarded  a  Prospectus  to  Bristol.  This 
was  busily  circulated,  tickets  sold,  the  date  of  the  first 
lecture  fixed,  and  the  lecturer  duly  informed.  On  the  day 
appointed,  or  rather,  a  few  days  later,  according  to  Cottle,2 
the  active  agent  in  the  business,  Coleridge  arrived  from 
London. 

1  See  plan  of  the  contents  of  these  projected  volumes  in  note  to 
p.  177. 

a  "  Early  Recollections,  chiefly  relating  to  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge, 
during  his  long  residence  in  Bristol."  By  Joseph  Cottle.  2  vols.  1837. 
Cottle  was  the  publisher  of  Coleridge's  early  poems.  Long  before  1813 
•ve  had  retired  from  business,  though  little  older  than  his  friend. 


45G  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE,    ETC.,    AT   BRISTOL. 

It  appears  that  an  opening  course  of  five  lectures  on 
Shakspere  was  in  the  first  instance  announced.  The  first 
lecture  of  this  course  was  delivered  on  Thursday,  October 
28th,  1813.  In  commencing  the  second  lecture,  Coleridge, 
apologizing  for  his  diffuseness  in  the  first,  promises  a  sixth, 
without  extra  fee.  The  remaining  five  were  regularly 
delivered  on  successive  Tuesdays  and  Thursdays,  up  to 
November  16. 

Cottle,  in  his  account  of  them,  falls  into  confusion  over 
the  date  of  these  lectures.  He  puts  them,  as  well  as  the 
Milton  Lectures,  in  1814.  Mr.  George,  of  Bristol,  has 
pointed  out  to  us  this  error.  To  Mr.  George,  also,  the 
public  is  indebted  for  the  full  reports  which  follow  of  the 
earlier  course,  unearthed  by  him  from  forgotten  pages  of 
"  The  Bristol  Gazette,"  and  from  the  lumber-room  of  the 
Bristol  Museum.1  These  reports  are  particularly  valuable, 
as  supplementing  Mr.  Collier's  imperfect  series. 

On  December  30,  1813,  Coleridge  announced  a  "  second 
course  of  Lectures,  on  the  remaining  plays  of  Shakspere," 
with  "  an  examination  of  Dr.  Johnson's  Preface  to  Shak- 
spere," and  four  Lectures  on  Milton. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  these  additional  Shak- 
ppere  Lectures  were  delivered  or  not.  We  have  found  no 
trace  of  them.  Coleridge  was  ill  and  desponding  at  this 
time.  At  his  own  wish,  he  was  constantly  followed  by  a 
servant,  whose  duty  it  was  to  prevent  him  purchasing 
opium.  One  thing  is  certain,  that  in  "  The  Mirror,"  of 

1  "The  volume  containing  the  Reports  of  the  1813  Lectures,"  writes 
Mr.  George,  "I  hunted  up  in  the  loft  of  the  Bristol  Museum,  where  it 
had  been  lying  on  the  floor  for  many  years.  The  volume  contains  odd 
numbers  of  Bristol  papers,  ranging  from  1803  to  1813." 


INTRODUCTORY.  457 

Saturday,  April  2, 1814,  without  any  allusion  to  Shakspere, 
four  Lectures  on  Milton  are  announced,  to  commence  on 
"Tuesday  next."  On  the  9th,  the  3rd  and  4th  Lectures 
are  announced.  So  that  the  Milton  Lectures  were  actually 
delivered  on  April  5,  7,  12,  and  14. 

As  they  would,  doubtless,  be,  in  substance,  the  same  as 
those  of  1811-12,  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  Mr.  Collier 
lost,  we  much  regret  not  to  have  been  able  to  discover  any 
reports  of  these  Milton  Lectures.  All  we  know  about  them 
is  that  they  were  not  well  attended.1  They  probably  were 
not  reported.  The  allied  armies  in  Paris,  and  Napoleon 
abdicating  at  Fontainebleau,  at  the  very  time  of  their 
delivery,  would  leave  small  room  in  men's  minds,  or  in 
newspaper  columns,  for  literary  subjects. 

1  "  An  erysipelatous  complaint,  of  an  alarming  nature,  has  rendered 
me  barely  able  to  attend  and  go  through  with  my  lectures,  the  receipts 
of  which  have  almost  paid  the  expenses  of  the  room,  advertisements," 
&c. — Coleridge  to  Cottle,  in  a  letter  undated,  but  evidently  referring  to 
the  Milton  Lectures. 


458  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE    AND  ("1813-14 


LECTURE  I. 


General  Characteristics  of  Shakspere.1 

T  N  lectures  of  which  amusement  forms  a  share,  difficulties 
are  common  to  the  first.  The  architect  places  his  foun- 
dation out  of  sight,  the  musician  tunes  his  instrument  before 
his  appearance,  but  the  lecturer  has  to  try  his  chords  in  the 
hearing  of  the  assembly.  This  will  not  tend  to  increase 
amusement,  but  it  is  necessary  to  the  right  understanding 
of  the  subject  to  be  developed. 

Poetry  in  essence  is  as  familiar  to  barbarous  as  civilized 
nations.  The  Laplander  and  the  savage  Indian  are  equally 
cheered  by  it,  as  the  inhabitants  of  Paris  or  London ; — its 
spirit  incorporates  and  takes  up  surrounding  materials,  as 
a  plant  clothes  itself  with  soil  and  climate,  whilst  it  bears 
marks  of  a  vital  principle  within,  independent  of  all  acci- 
dental circumstances. 

To  judge  with  fairness  of  an  author's  works,  we  must 
observe,  firstly,  what  is  essential,  and  secondly,  what  arises 

1  With  this  first  report  compare  pp.  231  et  seq.,  the  portion  of  the 
"  Remains,"  "  for  the  most  part  communicated  by  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge." 

How  shall  we  account  for  the  verbal  coincidences  ?  We  can  only 
suggest  that  Coleridge  used,  in  1813,  notes  he  had  previously  made, 
and  that  these  notes  ultimately  fell  into  Mr.  Justice  Coleridge's 
hands. 

If  such  is  the  case,  our  note  on  p.  231  should  be  cancelled. 


LECT.  I.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  459 

from  circumstances.  It  is  essential,  as  in  Milton,1  that 
poetry  be  simple,  sensuous,  and  impassionate  2 : — simple, 
that  it  may  appeal  to  the  elements  and  the  primary  laws 
of  our  nature ;  sensuous,  since  it  is  only  by  sensuous 
images  that  we  can  elicit  truth  as  at  a  flash  ;  impassionate, 
since  images  must  be  vivid,  in  order  to  move  our  passions 
and  awaken  our  affections. 

In  judging  of  different  poets,  we  ought  to  inquire  what 
authors  have  brought  into  fullest  play  our  imagination  and 
our  reason,  or  have  created  the  greatest  excitements  and 
produced  the  completest  harmony.  Considering  only 
great  exquisiteness  of  language,  and  sweetness  of  metre,  it 
is  impossible  to  deny  to  Pope  the  title  of  a  delightful 
writer ;  whether  he  be  a  Poet  must  be  determined  as  wo 
define  the  word :  doubtless  if  everything  that  pleases  be 
poetry,  Pope's  satires  and  epistles  must  be  poetry.  Poetry, 
as  distinguished  from  general  modes  of  composition,  does 
rot  rest  in  metre,  it  is  not  poetry  if  it  make  no  appeal  to 
our  imagination,  our  passions,  and  our  sympathy.  One 
character  attaches  to  all  true  Poets,  they  write  from  a  prin- 
ciple within,  independent  of  everything  without.  The 
work  of  a  true  Poet,  in  its  form,  its  shapings  and  modifica- 
tions, is  distinguished  from  all  other  works  that  assume  to 
belong  to  the  class  of  poetry,  as  a  natural  from  an  artificial 
flower;  or  as  the  mimic  garden  of  a  child,  from  an 
enamelled  meadow.  In  the  former  the  flowers  are  broken 
from  their  stems  and  stuck  in  the  ground ;  they  are 
beautiful  to  the  eye  and  fragrant  to  the  sense,  but  their 
colours  soon  fade,  and  their  odour  is  transient  as  the  smile 
of  the  planter;  while  the  meadow  may  be  visited  again 

1  At  the  end  of  the  Sixth  Report,  "The  Bristol  Gazette"  appends 
some  errata.  For  "as  in  Milton,"  we  are  told  to  read  "as  Milton 
defines  it." 

3  Read  "passionate."  The  reporter  has  confused  bet  ween  passionate 
BII>  1  impassioned. 


460  LECTURES    ON    SHAKSPERE  AND  [1813-14 

and  again,  with  renewed  delight ;  its  beauty  is  innate  in 
the  soil,  and  its  bloom  is  of  the  freshness  of  nature. 

The  next  ground  of  judging  is  how  far  a  Poet  is  in- 
fluenced by  accidental  circumstances.  He  writes  not  for 
past  ages,  but  for  that  in  which  he  lives,  and  that  which  is 
to  follow.  It  is  natural  that  he  should  conform  to  the 
circumstances  of  his  day,  but  a  true  genius  will  stand  in- 
dependent of  these  circumstances :  and  it  is  observable  of 
Shakspere  that  he  leaves  little  to  regret  that  he  was  born 
in  such  an  age.  The  great  sera  in  modern  times  was  what 
is  called  the  restoration  of  literature ;  the  ages  which  pre- 
ceded it  were  called  the  dark  ages  ;  it  would  be  more  wise, 
perhaps,  to  say,  the  ages  in  which  we  were  in  the  dark.  It 
is  usually  overlooked  that  the  supposed  dark  eera  was  not 
universal,  but  partial  and  successive  or  alternate ;  that  the 
dark  age  of  England  was  not  the  dark  age  of  Italy ;  but 
that  one  country  was  in  its  light  and  vigour,  while  another 
was  in  its  gloom  and  bondage.  The  Reformation  sounded 
through  Europe  like  a  trumpet ;  from  the  king  to  the 
peasant  there  was  an  enthusiasm  for  knowledge,  the  dis- 
covery of  a  MS.  was  the  subject  of  an  embassy.  Erasmus 
read  by  moonlight,  because  he  could  not  afford  a  torch,  and 
begged  a  penny,  not  for  the  love  of  charity,  but  for  the 
love  of  learning.  The  three  great  points  of  attention  were 
morals,  religion,  and  taste,  but  it  becomes  necessary  to  dis- 
tinguish in  this  age  mere  men  of  learning  from  men  of 
genius ;  all,  however,  were  close  copyists  of  the  ancients, 
and  this  was  the  only  way  by  which  the  taste  of  mankind 
could  be  improved,  and  the  understanding  informed. 
Whilst  Dante  imagined  himself  a  copy  of  Virgil,  and 
Ariosto  of  Homer,  they  were  both  unconscious  of  that 
greater  power  working  within  them,  which  carried  them 
beyond  their  originals ;  for  their  originals  were  polytheists. 
All  great  discoveries  bear  the  stamp  of  the  age  in  which 
they  were  made;  hence  we  perceive  the  effect  of  their 


LEG!1.  I.]  MILTON,    AT   BRISTOL.  461 

purer  religion,  which  was  visible  in  their  lives,  and  in 
reading  of  their  works  we  should  not  content  ourselves 
with  the  narration  of  events  long  since  passed,  but  apply 
their  maxims  and  conduct  to  our  own. 

Having  intimated  that  times  and  manners  lend  their 
form  and  pressure  to  the  genius,  it  may  be  useful  to  draw 
a  slight  parallel  between  the  ancient  and  modern  stage,  as 
it  existed  in  Greece  and  in  England.  The  Greeks  were 
poljtheists,  their  religion  was  local,  the  object  of  all  their 
knowledge,  science,  and  taste,  was  their  Gods ;  their  pro- 
ductions were,  therefore  (if  the  expression  may  be  allowed), 
statuesque; — the  moderns  we  may  designate  as  picturesque ; 
the  end,  complete  harmony.  The  Greeks  reared  a  structure, 
which,  in  its  parts  and  as  a  whole,  filled  the  mind  with  the 
calm  and  ( lev  ited  impression  of  perfect  beauty  and  sym- 
metrical proportion.  The  moderns,  blending  materials, 
produced  one  striking  whole.  This  may  be  illustrated  by 
comparing  the  Pantheon  with  York  Minster  or  West- 
minster Abbey.  Upon  the  same  scale  we  may  compare 
Sophocles  with  Shakspere ; — in  the  one  there  is  a  com- 
pleteness, a  satisfying,  an  excellence,  on  which  the  mind 
can  rest ;  in  the  other  we  see  a  blended  multitude  of 
materials,  great  and  little,  magnificent  and  mean,  mingled, 
if  we  may  so  say,  with  a  dissatisfying,  or  falling  short  of 
perfection ;  yet  so  promising  of  our  progression,  that  we 
would  not  exchange  it  for  that  repose  of  the  mind  which 
dwells  on  the  forms  of  symmetry  in  acquiescent  admiration 
of  grace.  This  general  characteristic  of  the  ancient  and 
modern  poetry,  might  be  exemplified  in  a  parallel  of  their 
ancient  and  modern  music  :  the  ancient  music  consisted  of 
melody  by  the  succession  of  pleasing  sounds :  the  modern 
embraces  harmony,  the  result  of  combination,  and  effect  of 
the  whole. 

Great  as  was  the  genius  of  Shakspcre,  his  judgment  was 
at  least  equal.  Of  this  we  shall  be  convinced,  if  we  look 


462  LECTURES  ON   SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

round  on  the  age,  and  compare  the  nature  of  the  respective 
dramas  of  Greece  and  England,  differing  from  the  neces- 
sary dissimilitude  of  circumstances  by  which  they  are 
modified  and  influenced.  The  Greek  stage  had  its  origin 
in  the  ceremonies  of  a  sacrifice ;  such  as  the  goat  to 
Bacchus ; — it  were  erroneous  to  call  him  only  the  jolly  god 
of  wine,  among  the  ancients  he  was  venerable ;  he  was  the 
symbol  of  that  power  which  acts  without  our  consciousness 
from  the  vital  energies  of  nature,  as  Apollo  was  the  symbol 
of  our  intellectual  consciousness.  Their  heroes  under  his 
influence  performed  more  than  human  actions  ;  hence  tales 
of  their  favourite  champions  soon  passed  into  dialogue. 
On  the  Greek  stage  the  chorus  was  always  before  the 
audience — no  curtain  dropt — change  of  place  was  impos- 
sible, the  absurd  idea  of  its  improbability  was  not  indulged. 
The  scene  cannot  be  an  exact  copy  of  nature,  but  only  an 
imitation.  If  we  can  believe  ourselves  at  Thebes  in  one 
act,  we  can  believe  ourselves  at  Athens  in  the  next.  There 
seems  to  be  no  just  boundary  but  what  the  feelings  pre^ 
scribe.  In  Greece,  however,  great  judgment  was  necessary, 
where  the  same  persons  were  perpetually  before  the  audience, 
if  a  story  lasted  twenty-four  hours  or  twenty-four  years,  it 
was  equally  improbable — they  never  attempted  to  impose 
on  the  senses,  by  bringing  places  to  men,  though  they  could 
bring  men  to  places. 

Unity  of  time  was  not  necessary,  where  no  offence  was 
taken  at  its  lapse  between  the  acts,  or  between  scene  and 
scene,  for  where  there  were  no  acts  or  scenes  it  was  impos- 
sible rigidly  to  observe  its  laws.  To  overcome  these  diffi- 
culties the  judgment  and  great  genius  of  the  ancients 
supplied  music,  and  with  the  charms  of  their  poetry  filled 
lip  the  vacuity.  In  the  story  of  the  Agamemnon  of 
^Eschylus,  the  taking  of  Troy  was  supposed  to  be  announced 
by  the  lighting  of  beacons  on  the  Asiatic  shore  :  the  mind 
being  beguiled  by  the  narrative  ode  of  the  chorus,  em- 


LECT.  I.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  463 

bracing  the  events  of  the  siege,  hours  passed  as  minutes, 
and  no  improbability  was  felt  at  the  return  of  Agamemnon  ; 
and  yet  examined  rigidly  he  must  have  passed  over  from 
Troy  in  less  than  fifteen  minutes.  Another  fact  here  pre- 
sented itself,  seldom  noticed ;  with  the  Ancients  three 
plays  were  performed  in  one  day,  they  were  called  Trilogies. 
In  Shakspere  we  may  fancy  these  Trilogies  connected  into 
one  representation.  If  "  Lear  "  were  divided  into  three, 
each  part  would  be  a  play  with  the  ancients.  Or  take  the 
three  plays  of  Agamemnon,  and  divide  them  into  acts, 
they  would  form  one  play  : 

1st.  Act  would  be  the  Usurpation  of  ./Egistlms,  and  Murder  of 
Agamemnon  ; 

2nd.  Revenge  of  Orestes,  and  Murder  of  his  Mother  j 
3rd.  The  penance  of  Orestes  j ' 

consuming  a  time  of  twenty-two  years.  The  three  plays 
being  but  three  acts,  the  dropping  of  the  curtain  was  as  the 
conclusion  of  a  play. 

Contrast  the  stage  of  the  ancients  with  that  of  the  time 
of  Shakspere,  and  we  shall  be  struck  with  his  genius  ;  with 
them,  it  had  the  trappings  of  royal  and  religious  ceremony; 
with  him,  it  was  a  naked  room,  a  blanket  for  a  curtain ; 
but  with  his  vivid  appeals  the  imagination  figured  it  out 

"  A  field  for  monarchs." 

After  the  rupture  of  the  Northern  nations,  the  Latin 
language,  blended  with  the  modern,  produced  the  Romaunt 
tongue,  the  language  of  the  Minstrels:  to  which  term,  as 
listinguishing  their  Songs  and  Fabliaux,  we  owe  the  word 
And  the  species  of  romance.  The  romantic  may  be  con- 
sidered as  opposed  to  the  antique,  and  from  this  change  of 
manners,  those  of  Shakspere  take  their  colouring.  He  ia 

1  For  "  Penance  of  Orestes,"  read  "  The  Trial  of  Orestes  before  tbu 
God»."— Errata. 


464  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

not  to  be  tried  by  ancient  and  classic  rules,  but  by  the 
standard  of  his  age.  That  law  of  unity  which  has  its 
foundation,  not  in  factitious  necessity  of  custom,  but  in 
nature  herself,  is  instinctively  observed  by  Shakspere. 

A  unity  of  feeling  pervades  the  whole  of  his  plays.  In 
"Romeo  and  Juliet"  all  is  youth  and  spring — it  is  youth 
with  its  follies,  its  virtues,  its  precipitancies  ;  it  is  spring 
with  its  odours,  flowers,  and  transiency  : — the  same  feeling 
commences,  goes  through,  and  ends  the  play.  The  old 
men,  the  Capulets  and  Montagues,  are  not  common  old 
men,  they  have  an  eagerness,  a  hastiness,  a  precipitancy — 
the  effect  of  spring.  With  Romeo  his  precipitate  change 
of  passion,  his  hasty  marriage,  and  his  rash  death,  are  all 
the  effects  of  youth.  With  Juliet,  love  has  all  that  is 
tender  and  melancholy  in  the  nightingale,  all  that  is  volup- 
tuous in  the  rose,  with  whatever  is  sweet  in  the  freshness 
of  spring,  but  it  ends  with  a  long  deep  sigh,  like  the  breeze 
of  the  evening.  This  unity  of  character  pervades  the  whole 
of  his  dramas. 

Of  that  species  of  writing  termed  tragic-comedy,  too 
much  has  been  produced,  but  it  has  been  doomed  to  the 
shelf.  With  Shakspere  his  comic  constantly  re-acted  on 
his  tragic  characters.  "  Lear,"  wandering  amidst  the 
tempest,  had  all  his  feelings  of  distress  increased  by  the 
overflowings  of  the  wild  wit  of  the  Fool,  as  vinegar  poured 
upon  wounds  exacerbates  their  pain ;  thus  even  his  comic 
humour  tends  to  the  development  of  tragic  passion. 

The  next  character  belonging  to  Shakspere  as  Shakspere, 
was  the  keeping  at  all  times  the  high  road  of  life.  With 
him  there  were  no  innocent  adulteries,  he  never  rendered 
that  amiable  which  religion  and  reason  taught  us  to  detest ; 
he  never  clothed  vice  in  the  garb  of  virtue,  like  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher, — the  Kotzebues  of  his  day  ;  his  fathers  were 
roused  by  ingratitude,  his  husbands  were  stung  by  un- 
faithfulness ;  the  affections  were  wounded  in  those  points 


LECT.  I.]  MILTON,  AT  BKISTOL.  465 

where  all  may  and  all  must  feel.  Another  evidence  of 
exquisite  judgment  in  Shakspere  was,  that  he  seized  hold 
of  popular  tales.  "  Lear  "  and  the  "  Merchant  of  Venice  " 
were  popular  tales,  but  so  excellently  managed,  both  were 
the  representation  of  men  in  all  ages  and  at  all  times. 

His  dramas  do  not  arise  absolutely  out  of  some  one 
extraordinary  circumstance ;  the  scenes  may  stand  inde- 
pendently of  any  such  one  connecting  incident,  as  faithful, 
reflections  of  men  and  manners.  In  his  mode  of  drawing* 
characters  there  were  no  pompous  descriptions  of  a  man 
by  himself;  his  character  was  to  be  drawn  as  in  real  life, 
from  the  whole  course  of  the  play,  or  out  of  the  mouths  of 
his  enemies  or  friends.  This  might  be  exemplified  in  the 
character  of  Polonius,  which  actors  have  often  misrepre- 
sented. Shakspere  never  intended  to  represent  him  as  a 
buffoon.  It  was  natural  that  Hamlet,  a  young  man  of 
genius  and  fire,  detesting  formality,  and  disliking  Polonius 
for  political  reasons,  as  imagining  that  he  had  assisted  his 
uncle  in  his  usurpation,  should  express  himself  satirically  ; 
but  Hamlet's  words  should  not  be  taken  as  Shakspere's 
conception  of  him.  In  Polonius  a  certain  induration  of 
character  arose  from  long  habits  of  business  ;  but  take  his; 
advice  to  Laertes,  the  reverence  of  his  memory  by  Ophelia,, 
and  we  shall  find  that  he  was  a  statesman  of  business, 
though  somewhat  past  his  faculties.  One  particular  feature 
which  belonged  to  his  character  was,  that  his  recollections 
of  past  life  were  of  wisdom,  and  showed  a  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  whilst  what  immediately  passed  before,  and 
escaped  from  him,  was  emblematical  of  weakness. 

Another  excellence  in  Shakspere,  and  in  which  no  other 
writer  equalled  him,  was  in  the  language  of  nature.  So 
correct  was  it  that  we  could  see  ourselves  in  all  he  wrote  ; 
his  style  and  manner  had  also  that  felicity,  that  not  a 
sentence  could  be  read  without  its  being  discovered  if  it 
were  Shaksperian.  In  observations  of  Hying  character, 

H  H 


4Gti  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

snch  as  of  landlords  and  postilions,  Fielding  had  great  ex- 
cellence, but  in  drawing  from  his  own  heart,  and  depicting 
that  species  of  character  which  no  observation  could  teach, 
lie  failed  in  comparison  with  Richardson,  who  perpetually 
placed  himself  as  it  were  in  a  day-dream ;  but  Shakspere 
excelled  in  both ;  witness  an  accuracy  of  character  in  the 
Nurse  of  Juliet.  On  the  other  hand,  the  great  characters 
of  Othello,  lago,  Hamlet,  and  Richard  III.,  as  he  never 
could  have  witnessed  anything  similar,  he  appears  invari- 
ably to  have  asked  himself,  How  should  I  act  or  speak  in 
such  circumstances  ?  His  comic  characters  were  also 
peculiar.  A  drunken  constable  was  not  uncommon ;  but 
he  could  make  folly  a  vehicle  for  wit,  as  in  Dogberry. 
Every  thing  was  a  sub-stratum  on  which  his  creative  genius 
might  erect  a  superstructure. 

To  distinguish  what  is  legitimate  in  Shakspei^e  from 
•what  does  not  belong  to  him,  we  must  observe  his  varied 
images  symbolical  of  moral  truth,  thrusting  by  and  seeming 
to  trip  up  each  other,  from  an  impetuosity  of  thought  pro- 
ducing a  metre  which  is  always  flowing  from  one  verse  into 
the  other,  and  seldom  closing  with  the  tenth  syllable  of 
the  line — an  instance  of  which  may  be  found  in  the  play 
of  "  Pericles,"  written  a  century  before,  but  which  Shak- 
spere altered,  and  where  his  alteration  may  be  recognized 
even  to  half  a  line.  This  was  the  case  not  merely  in 
his  later  plays,  but  in  his  early  dramas,  such  as  "  Love's 
Labour's  Lost."  The  same  perfection  in  the  flowing  con- 
tinuity of  interchangeable  metrical  pauses  is  constantly 
perceptible. 

Lastly,  contrast  his  morality  with  the  writers  of  his  own 
or  the  succeeding  age,  or  with  those  of  the  present  day, 
who  boast  of  their  superiority.  He  never,  as  before  ob- 
served, deserted  the  high  road  of  life ;  he  never  made  his 
lovers  openly  gross  or  profane  ;  for  common  candour  must 
allow  that  his  images  were  incomparably  less  so  than  those 


LECT.  L]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  467 

of  his  contemporaries.  Even  the  letters  of  females  in  high 
life  were  coarser  than  his  writings. 

The  writings  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  bear  no  compa- 
rison ;  the  grossest  passages  of  Shakspere  were  purity  to 
theirs ;  and  it  should  be  remembered  that  though  he  might 
occasionally  disgust  a  sense  of  delicacy,  he  never  injured  the 
mind ;  he  caused  no  excitement  of  passion  which  he  flattered 
to  degrade,  never  used  what  was  faulty  for  a  faulty  purpose  j 
carried  on  no  warfare  against  virtue,  by  which  wicked- 
ness may  be  made  to  appear  as  not  wickedness,  and  where 
our  sympathy  was  to  be  entrapped  by  the  misfortunes  of 
vice :  with  him  vice  never  walked  as  it  were  in  twilight.  He 
never  inverted  the  order  of  nature  and  propriety,  like  some 
modern  writers,  who  suppose  every  magistrate  to  be  a 
glutton  or  a  drunkard,  and  every  poor  man  humane  and 
temperate  ;  with  him  we  had  no  benevolent  braziers  or  sen- 
timental ratcatchers.  Nothing  was  purposely  out  of  place. 

If  a  man  speak  injuriously  of  a  friend,  our  vindication  of 
him  is  naturally  warm.  Shakspere  had  been  accused  of 
profaneness.  He  (Mr.  C.)  from  the  perusal  of  him,  had 
acquired  a  habit  of  looking  into  his  own  heart,  and  per- 
ceived the  goings  on  of  his  nature,  and  confident  he  was, 
Shakspere  was  a  writer  of  all  others  the  most  calculated  to 
make  his  readers  better  as  well  as  wiser. 


468  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 


LECTURE  II. 

Macbeth. 

TV/TR.  COLERIDGE'S  lecture  of  last  evening  on  "Mac- 
*  *  •*  beth  "  was  marked,  characteristically,  with  that  philo- 
sophical tact  which  perceives  causes,  and  traces  effects,  im- 
palpable to  the  common  apprehension.  He  seemed  to  have 
been  admitted  into  the  closet  of  Shakspere's  mind ;  to  have 
shared  his  secret  thoughts,  and  been  familiarized  with  his 
most  hidden,  motives.  Mr.  Coleridge  began  by  commenting 
on  the  vulgar  stage  error  which  transformed  the  Weird 
Sisters  into  witches  with  broomsticks.  They  were  awful 
beings,  and  blended  in  themselves  the  Fates  and  Furies  of 
the  ancients  with  the  sorceresses  of  Gothic  and  popular 
superstition.  They  were  mysterious  natures :  fathers, 
mothers,1  sexless :  they  come  and  disappear :  they  lead  evil 
minds  from  evil  to  evil ;  and  have  the  power  of  tempting 
those  who  have  been  the  tempters  of  themselves.  The  ex- 
quisite judgment  of  Shakspere  is  shown  in  nothing  more 
than  in  the  different  language  of  the  Witches  with  each 
other,  and  with  those  whom  they  address  :  the  former  dis- 
plays a  certain  fierce  familiarity,  grotesqueness  mingled 
tfith  terror  ;  the  latter  is  always  solemn,  dark,  and  myste- 
rious. Mr.  Coleridge  proceeded  to  show  how  Macbeth 
became  early  a  tempter  to  himself ;  and  contrasted  the 
talkative  curiosity  of  the  innocent-minded  and  open-dis- 

1  For  ''fathers,  mothers,"  read  "  fatherless,  motherless." — Errata. 


LECT.  II.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  469 

positioned  Banquo,  in  the  scene  with  the  Witches,  with  the 
Silent,  absent,  and  brooding  melancholy  of  his  partner.  A 
striking  instance  of  this  self-temptation  was  pointed  out  in 
the  disturbance  of  Macbeth  at  the  election  of  the  Prince  of 
Cumberland  ;  but  the  alarm  of  his  conscience  appears,  even 
while  meditating  to  remove  this  bar  to  his  own  advance- 
ment, as  he  exclaims,  "Stars!  hide  your  fires!"  The 
ingenuity  with  which  a  man  evades  the  promptings  of  con- 
science before  the  commission  of  a  crime,  was  compared 
with,  his  total  imbecility  and  helplessness  when  the  crime 
had  been  committed,  and  when  conscience  can  be  no  longer 
dallied  with  or  eluded.  Macbeth  in  the  first  instance  enu- 
merates the  different  worldly  impediments  to  his  scheme  of 
murder :  could  he  put  them  by,  he  would  "  jump  the  life 
to  come."  Yet  no  sooner  is  the  murder  perpetrated,  than 
all  the  concerns  of  this  mortal  life  are  absorbed  and  swal- 
lowed up  in  the  avenging  feeling  within  him  :  he  hears  a 
voice  cry,  "  Macbeth  has  murder'd  sleep : "  and  therefore, 
"  Glamis  shall  sleep  no  more." 

The  lecturer  alluded  to  the  prejudiced  idea  of  Lady 
Macbeth  as  a  monster ;  as  a  being  out  of  nature  and  without 
conscience  :  on  the  contrary,  her  constant  effort  throughout 
the  play  was,  if  the  expression  may  be  forgiven,  to  bully 
conscience.  She  was  a  woman  of  a  visionary  and  day- 
dreaming turn  of  mind  ;  her  eye  fixed  on  the  shadows  of 
her  solitary  ambition ;  and  her  feelings  abstracted,  through 
the  deep  musings  of  her  absorbing  passion,  from  the  com- 
mon-life sympathies  of  flesh  and  blood.  But  her  con- 
science, so  far  from  being  seared,  was  continually  smarting 
within  her ;  and  she  endeavours  to  stifle  its  voice,  and  keep 
down  its  struggles,  by  inflated  and  soaring  fancies,  and 
appeals  to  spiritual  agency. 

So  far  is  the  woman  from  being  dead  within  her,  that 
her  sex  occasionally  betrays  itself  in  the  very  moment  of 
<l:irk  and  bloody  imagination.  A  passage  where  she  alludes 


470  LECTURES    ON    SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

to  "  plucking  lier  nipple  from  the  boneless  gums  of  her 
infant,"  though  usually  thought  to  prove  a  merciless  and 
unwomanly  nature,  proves  the  direct  opposite :  she  brings 
it  as  the  most  solemn  enforcement  to  Macbeth  of  the 
solemnity  of  his  promise  to  undertake  the  plot  against 
Duncan.  Had  she  so  sworn,  she  would  have  done  that 
which  was  most  horrible  to  her  feelings,  rather  than  break 
the  oath ;  and  as  the  most  horrible  act  which  it  was  pos- 
sible for  imagination  to  conceive,  as  that  which  was  most 
revolting  to  her  own  feelings,  she  alludes  to  the  destruction 
of  her  infant,  while  in  the  act  of  sucking  at  her  breast. 
Had  she  regarded  this  with  savage  indifference,  there 
would  have  been  no  force  in  the  appeal ;  but  her  very  allu- 
sion to  it,  and  her  purpose  in  this  allusion,  shows  that  she 
considered  no  tie  so  tender  as  that  which  connected  hei 
with  her  babe.  Another  exquisite  trait  was  the  faltering 
of  her  resolution,  while  standing  over  Duncan  in  his 
slumbers  :  "  Had  he  not  resembled  my  father  as  he  slept,  I 
had  done  it." 

Mr.  Coleridge  concluded  the  lecture,  of  which  we  have 
been  only  able  to  touch  upon  a  few  of  the  heads,  by  an- 
nouncing his  intention  of  undertaking  in  his  next  discourse 
the  analysis  of  the  character  of  Hamlet.  It  is  much  to  the 
credit  of  the  literary  feeling  of  Bristol  that  the  room  over- 
flowed.1 

1  This  remark  is  conclusive  that  Coleridge's  complaint  in  his  letter  to 
Cottle  (see  note  to  the  Introductory  Matter)  refers  to  the  Milton  lectures. 


LECT.  III.]  MILTON,    AT    BRISTOL.  471 


LECTURE  III. 

Hamlet. 

PHE  seeming  inconsistencies  in  the  conduct  and  charnc- 
-*•  ter  of  Hamlet  have  long  exercised  the  conjectural 
ingenuity  of  critics  :  and  as  we  are  always  loth  to  suppose 
that  the  cause  of  defective  apprehension  is  in  ourselves,  the 
mystery  has  been  too  commonly  explained  by  the  very  easy 
process  of  supposing  that  it  is,  in  fact,  inexplicable,  nnd 
by  resolving  the  difficulty  into  the  capricious  and  irregular 
genius  of  Shakspere. 

Mr.  Coleridge,  in  his  third  lecture,  has  effectually  exposed 
the  shallow  and  stupid  arrogance  of  this  vulgar  and  indo- 
lent decision.  He  has  shown  that  the  intricacies  of  Hamlet's 
character  may  be  traced  to  Shakspere's  deep  and  accurate 
science  in  mental  philosophy.  That  this  character  must 
Lave  some  common  connection  with  the  laws  of  our  nature, 
was  assumed  by  the  lecturer,  from  the  fact  that  Hamlet 
was  the  darling  of  every  country  where  literature  was  fos- 
tered. He  thought  it  essential  to  the  understanding  of 
Hamlet's  character  that  we  should  reflect  on  the  constitu- 
tion of  our  own  minds.  Man  was  distinguished  from  the 
animal  in  proportion  as  thought  prevailed  over  sense  ;  but 
in  healthy  processes  of  the  mind,  a  balance  was  maintained 
between  the  impressions  of  outward  objects  and  the  inward 
operations  of  the  intellect :  if  there  be  an  overbalance  in 
the  contemplative  faculty,  man  becomes  the  creature  of 


472  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERE    AND  [1813-14 

meditation,  and  loses  the  power  of  action.  Shakspere 
seems  to  have  conceived  a  mind  in  the  highest  degree  of 
excitement,  with  this  overpowering  activity  of  intellect, 
and  to  have  placed  him  in  circumstances  where  he  was 
obliged  to  act  on  the  spur  of  the  moment.  Hamlet,  though 
brave  and  careless  of  death,  had  contracted  a  morbid  sensi- 
bility from  this  overbalance  in  the  mind,  producing  the 
lingering  and  vacillating  delays  of  procrastination,  and 
wasting  in  the  energy  of  resolving  the  energy  of  acting. 
Thus  the  play  of  "  Hamlet  "  offers  a  direct  contrast  to  that 
of  "  Macbeth  : "  the  one  proceeds  with  the  utmost  slowness, 
the  other  with  breathless  and  crowded  rapidity. 

The  effect  of  this  overbalance  of  imagination  is  beauti- 
fully illustrated  in  the  inward  brooding  of  Hamlet — the 
effect  of  a  superfluous  activity  of  thought.  His  mind,  un- 
seated from  its  healthy  balance,  is  for  ever  occupied  with 
the  world  within  him,  and  abstracted  from  external  things  ; 
his  words  give  a  substance  to  shadows,  and  he  is  dissatisfied 
with  common-place  realities.  It  is  the  nature  of  thought 
to  be  indefinite,  while  definiteness  belongs  to  reality.  The 
sense  of  sublimity  arises,  not  from  the  sight  of  an  outward 
object,  but  from  the  reflection  upon  it ;  not  from  the  im- 
pression, but  from  the  idea.  Few  have  seen  a  celebrated 
waterfall  without  feeling  something  of  disappointment :  it 
is  only  subsequently,  by  reflection,  that  the  idea  of  the 
waterfall  comes  full  into  the  mind,  and  brings  with  it  a 
train  of  sublime  associations.  Hamlet  felt  this :  in  him  we 
see  a  mind  that  keeps  itself  in  a  state  of  abstraction,  and 
beholds  external  objects  as  hieroglyphics.  His  soliloquy, 
*'  Oh  that  this  too,  too  solid  flesh  would  melt,"  arises  from 
a  craving  after  the  indefinite :  a  disposition  or  temper 
which  most  easily  besets  men  of  genius;  a  morbid  craving 
for  that  which  is  not.  The  self-delusion  common  to  this 
temper  of  mind  was  finely  exemplified  in  the  character 
which  Hamlet  gives  of  himself:  "  It  cannot  be,  but  I  am 


LECT.  III.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  473 

pigeon-liver'd,  and  lack  gall,  to  make  oppression  bitter." 
He  mistakes  the  seeing  his  chains  for  the  breaking  of  them ; 
and  delays  action,  till  action,  is  of  no  use ;  and  he  becomes 
the  victim  of  circumstances  and  accident. 

The  lecturer,  in  descending  to  particulars,  took  occasion 
to  defend  from  the  common  charge  of  improbable  eccen- 
tricity, the  scene  which  follows  Hamlet's  interview  with  the 
Ghost.  He  showed  that  after  the  mind  has  been  stretched 
beyond  its  usual  pitch  and  tone,  it  must  either  sink  into 
exhaustion  and  inanity,  or  seek  relief  by  change.  Persons 
conversant  with  deeds  of  cruelty  contrive  to  escape  from 
their  conscience  by  connecting  something  of  the  ludicrous 
with  them  ;  and  by  inventing  grotesque  terms,  and  a  certain 
technical  phraseology,  to  disguise  the  horror  of  their 
^practices. 

,•  The  terrible,  however  paradoxical  it  may  appear,  will  be 
found  to  touch  on  the  verge  of  the  ludicrous.  Both  arise 
from  the  perception  of  something  out  of  the  common  nature 
of  things, — something  out  of  place :  if  from  this  we  can 
abstract  danger,  the  uncommonness  alone  remains,  and  the 
sense  of  the  ridiculous  is  excited.  The  close  alliance  of 
these  opposites  appears  from  the  circumstance  that  laughter 
is  equally  the  expression  of  extreme  anguish  and  horror  as 
of  joy :  in  the  same  manner  that  there  are  tears  of  joy  as 
well  as  tears  of  sorrow,  so  there  is  a  laugh  of  terror  as  well 
as  a  laugh  of  merriment.  These  complex  causes  will  natu- 
rally have  produced  in  Hamlet  the  disposition  to  escape 
from  his  own  feelings  of  the  overwhelming  and  superna- 
tural by  a  wild  transition  to  the  ludicrous, — a  sort  of 
cunning  bravado,  bordering  on  the  flights  of  delirium. 
.  Mr.  Coleridge  instanced,  as  a  proof  of  Shakspere's  minute 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  the  unimportant  conversation 
which  takes  place  during  the  expectation  of  the  Ghost's  ap- 
pearance :  and  he  recalled  to  our  notice  what  all  must  have 
observed  in  common  life,  that  on  the  brink  of  some  serious 


474  LECTURES   ON    SHAKSPERE    AND  [1813-14 

enterprise,  or  event  of  moment,  men  naturally  elude  the  pres- 
sure of  their  own  thoughts  by  turning  aside  to  trivial  objects 
and  familiar  circumstances.  So  in  "Hamlet,"  the  dialogue 
on  the  platform  begins  with  remarks  on  the  coldness  of  the 
air,  and  inquiries,  obliquely  connected  indeed  with  the  ex- 
pected hour  of  the  visitation,  but  thrown  out  in  a  seeming 
vacuity  of  topics,  as  to  the  striking  of  the  clock.  The 
same  desire  to  escape  from  the  inward  thoughts  is  admir- 
ably carried  on  in  Hamlet's  moralizing  on  the  Danish 
custom  of  wassailing ;  and  a  double  purpose  is  here  an- 
swered, which  demonstrates  the  exquisite  judgment  of 
Shakspere.  By  thus  entangling  the  attention  of  the 
audience  in  the  nice  distinctions  and  parenthetical  sen- 
tences of  Hamlet,  he  takes  them  completely  by  surprise  on 
the  appearance  of  the  Ghost,  which  comes  upon  them  in  all 
the  suddenness  of  its  visionary  character.  No  modern 
writer  would  have  dared,  like  Shakspere,  to  have  preceded 
this  last  visitation  by  two  distinct  appearances,  or  could 
have  contrived  that  the  third  should  rise  upon  the  two 
former  in  impressiveness  and  solemnity  of  interest. 

Mr.  Coleridge  at  the  commencement  of  this  lecture  drew 
a  comparison  between  the  characters  of  Macbeth  and  Bona- 
parte— both  tyrants,  both  indifferent  to  means,  however 
barbarous,  to  attain  their  ends ;  and  he  hoped  the  fate  of 
the  latter  would  be  like  the  former,  in  failing  amidst  a  host 
of  foes,1  which  his  cruelty  and  injustice  had  roused  against 
him.  At  the  conclusion  of  his  lecture,  he  alluded  to  the 
successes  of  the  Allies,  and  complimented  his  country  on 
the  lead  she  had  taken,  and  the  example  she  had  set  to 
other  nations,  in  resisting  an  attack  upon  the  middle  classes 
of  society  ;  for  if  the  French  Emperor  had  succeeded  in  his 
attempts  to  gain  universal  dominion,  there  would  have 

1  This  lecture  was  delivered  on  Nov.  4 :  the  battle  of  Leipsic  was 
fought  on  Oct.  18. 


LECT.  III.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  475 

been  but  two  classes  suffered  to  exist — the  high  and  the 
low.  England,  justly  proud,  as  she  had  a  right  to  be,  of  a 
Shakspere,  a  Milton,  a  Bacon,  and  a  Newton,  could  also- 
boast  of  a  Nelson  and  a  Wellington. 


476  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPEEE   AXD  [1813-14 


LECTURE  IV. 

Winter's  Tale.     Othello. 

\  T  the  commencement  of  the  fourth  lecture  last  evening, 
Mr.  Coleridge  combated  the  opinion  held  by  some 
critics,  that  the  writings  of  Shakspere  were  like  a  wilder- 
ness, in  which  were  desolate  places,  most  beautiful  flowers, 
and  weeds  ;  he  argued  that  even  the  titles  of  his  plays  were 
appropriate  and  showed  judgment,  presenting  as  it  were  a 
bill  of  fare  before  the  feast.  This  was  peculiarly  so  in 
the  "  Winter's  Tale," — a  wild  story,  calculated  to  interest 
a  circle  round  a  fireside.  He  maintained  that  Shakspere 
ought  not  to  be  judged  of  in  detail,  but  on  the  whole.  A 
pedant  differed  from  a  master  in  cramping  himself  with 
certain  established  rales,  whereas  the  master  regarded  rules 
as  always  controllable  by  and  subservient  to  the  end.  The 
passion  to  be  delineated  in  the  "  Winter's  Tale  "  was  jea- 
lousy. Shakspere's  description  of  this,  however,  was  per- 
fectly philosophical:  the  mind,  in  its  first  harbouring  of 
it,  became  mean  and  despicable,  and  the  first  sensation  was 
perfect  shame,  arising  from  the  consideration  of  having 
possessed  an  object  unworthily,  of  degrading  a  person  to  a 
thing.  The  mind  that  once  indulges  this  passion  has  a  pre- 
disposition, a  vicious  weakness,  by  which  it  kindles  a  fire 
from  every  spark,  and  from  circumstances  the  most  inno- 
cent and  indifferent  finds  fuel  to  feed  the  flame.  This  he 
exemplified  in  an  able  manner,  from  the  conduct  and 


I/ECT.  IV.]  MILTON,   AT   BRISTOL  477 ' 

opinion  of  Leontes,  who  seized  upon  occurrences  of  which 
he  himself  was  the  cause ;  and  when  speaking  of  Hermione, 
combined  his  anger  with  images  of  the  lowest  sensuality, 
and  pursued  the  object  with  the  utmost  cruelty.  This  cha- 
racter Mr.  Coleridge  contrasted  with  that  of  Othello,  whom 
Stnkspere  had  portrayed  the  very  opposite  to  a  jealous 
man  :  he  was  noble,  generous,  open-hearted  ;  unsuspicious 
and  unsuspecting ;  and  who,  even  after  the  exhibition  of 
the  handkerchief  as  evidence  of  his  wife's  guilt,  bursts  out 
in  her  praise.  Mr.  C.  ridiculed  the  idea  of  making  Othello 
a  negro.  He  was  a  gallant  Moor,  of  royal  blood,  combining 
a  high  sense  of  Spanish  and  Italian  feeling,  and  whose 
noble  nature  was  wrought  on,  not  by  a  fellow  with  a  coun- 
tenance predestined  for  the  gallows,  as  some  actors  repre- 
sented lago,  but  by  an  accomplished  and  artful  villain,  who 
was  indefatigable  in  his  exertions  to  poison  the  mind  of  the 
brave  and  swarthy  Moor.  It  is  impossible,  with  our  limits, 
to  follow  Mr.  Coleridge  through  those  nice  discriminations- 
by  which  he  elucidated  the  various  characters  in  this  excel- 
lent drama.  Speaking  of  the  character  of  the  women  ofr 
Shakspere,  or  rather,  as  Pope  stated,  the  absence  of  cha- 
racter, Mr.  Coleridge  said  this  was  the  highest  compliment 
that  could  be  paid  to  them :  the  elements  were  so  com- 
mixed, so  even  was  the  balance  of  feeling,  that  no  one 
protruded  in  particular, — everything  amiable  as  sisters, 
mothers,  and  wives,  was  included  in  the  thought.  To  form 
a  just  estimation  and  to  enjoy  the  beauties  of  Shakspere/ 
Mr.  Coleridge's  lectures  should  be  heard  again  and  again. 
Perhaps,  at  some  future  period,  we  may  occasionally  fill: 
our  columns  with  an  Analysis  of  his  different  Lectures,* 
similar  to  what  we  presented  last  week  of  the  first;  at  pre- 
sent we  must  content  ourselves  with  generals. 


478  LECTURES   ON   SHAKSPERB    AND  [1813-14 


LECTURE  V. 

Historical  Plays.     Richard  II. 

TIj*TJLLY  to  comprehend  the  nature  of  the  Historic 
Drama,  the  difference  should  be  understood  between 
the  epic  and  tragic  muse.  The  latter  recognizes  and  is 
grounded  upon  the  free-will  of  man ;  the  former  is  under 
the  control  of  destiny,  or,  among  Christians,  an  overruling 
Providence.  In  the  epic,  the  prominent  character  is  evei 
under  this  influence,  and  when  accidents  are  introduced, 
they  are  the  result  of  causes  over  which  our  will  has  no 
power.  An  epic  play  begins  and  ends  arbitrarily  ;  its  only 
law  is,  that  it  possesses  beginning,  middle,  and  end.  Homer 
ends  with  the  death  of  Hector ;  the  final  fate  of  Troy  is 
left  untouched.  Virgil  ends  with  the  marriage  of  ^}neas ; 
the  historical  events  are  left  imperfect. 

In  the  tragic,  the  free-will  of  man  is  the  first  cause,  and 
accidents  are  never  introduced  ;  if  they  are,  it  is  considered 
a  great  fault.  To  cause  the  death  of  a  hero  by  accident, 
euch  as  slipping  off  a  plank  into  the  sea,1  would  be  beneath 
the  tragic  muse,  as  it  would  arise  from  no  mental  action. 

Shakspere,  in  blending  the  epic  with  the  tragic,  has 
given  the  impression  of  the  drama  to  the  history  of  his 

1  Coleridge  had  probably  in  mind  a  celebrated  Duke  of  Milan  who 
perished  in  this  way,  landing  from  his  ship,  and  rendered  helpless  by  th» 
weight  of  his  armour. 


LECT.  V.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  479 

country.  By  this  means  he  has  bequeathed  as  a  legacy 
the  pure  spirit  of  history.  Not  that  his  facts  are  implicitly 
to  be  relied  on,  or  is  he  to  be  read,  as  the  Duke  of  Mai'l- 
borough  read  him,  as  an  historian ;  but  as  distance  is 
destroyed  by  a  telescope,  and  by  the  force  of  imagination 
we  see  in  the  constellations,  brought  close  to  the  eye,  a 
multitude  of  worlds,  so  by  the  law  of  impressiveness,  when 
we  read  his  plays,  we  seem  to  live  in  the  era  he  portrays. 

One  great  object  of  his  historic  plays,  and  particularly 
of  that  to  be  examined  (Richard  II.),  was  to  make  his 
countrymen  more  patriotic;  to  make  Englishmen  proud 
of  being  Englishmen.  It  was  a  play  not  much  acted. 
This  was  not  regretted  by  the  lecturer ;  for  he  never  saw 
any  of  Shakspere's  plays  performed,  but  with  a  degree  of 
pain,  disgust,  and  indignation.  He  had  seen  Mrs.  Siddons 
as  Lady,  and  Kemble  as  Macbeth : — these  might  be  the 
Macbeths  of  the  Kembles,  but  they  were  not  the  Macbeths 
of  Shakspere.  He  was  therefore  not  grieved  at  the  enor- 
mous size  and  monopoly  of  the  theatres,  which  naturally 
produced  many  bad  but  few  good  actors ;  and  which  drove 
Shakspere  from  the  stage,  to  find  his  proper  place  in  the 
heart  and  in  the  closet,  where  he  sits  enthroned  on  a 
double-headed  Parnassus.  With  him  and  Milton  every- 
thing that  was  admirable,  everything  that  was  praiseworthy, 
was  to  be  found. 

Shakspere  showed  great  judgment  in  his  first  scenes ; 
they  contained  the  germ  of  the  ruling  passion  which  was 
to  be  developed  hereafter.  Thus  Richard's  hardiness  of 
mind,  arising  from  kingly  power ;  his  weakness  and  de- 
bauchery from  continual  and  unbounded  flattery ;  and  the 
haughty  temper  of  the  barons ;  one  and  the  other  alternately 
forming  the  moral  of  the  play,  are  glanced  at  in  the  first 
scenes.  An  historic  pHy  requires  more  excitement  than 
a  tragic ;  thus  Shakspere  never  loses  an  opportunity  of 
awakening  a  patriotic  feeling.  For  this  purpose  Old  Gaunt 


480  LECTURES  ON  SHAKSPERE  AND      [1813-14 

accuses  Richard  of  having  farmed  out  the  island.  What 
could  be  a  greater  rebuke  to  a  king  than  to  be  told  that 

"  This  realm,  this  England, 

Is  now  leased  out 

Like  to  a  tenement,  or  pelting  farm." 

This  speech  of  Gaunt  is  most  beautiful;  the  propriety 
of  putting  so  long  a  speech  into  the  mouth  of  an  old  dying 
man  might  easily  be  shown.  It  thence  partook  of  the 
nature  of  prophecy : — 

"  Methinks  I  am  a  prophet  new  inspired, 
And  thus  expiring,  do  foretell  of  him." 

The  plays  of  Shakspere,  as  before  observed  of  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet,"  were  characteristic  throughout : — whereas 
that  was  all  youth  and  spring,  this  was  womanish  weak- 
ness ;  the  characters  were  of  extreme  old  age,  or  partook 
of  the  nature  of  age  and  imbecility.  The  length  of  the 
speeches  was  adapted  to  a  delivery  between  acting  and 
recitation,  which  produced  in  the  auditors  a  docility  or 
frame  of  mind  favourable  to  the  poet,  and  useful  to  them- 
selves : — how  different  from  modern  plays,  where  the  glare 
of  the  scenes,  with  every  wished-for  object  industriously 
realized,  the  mind  becomes  bewildered  in  surrounding 
attraction ;  whereas  Shakspere,  in  place  of  ranting,  music, 
and  outward  action,  addresses  us  in  words  that  enchain 
the  mind,  and  carry  on  the  attention  from  scene  to  scene. 

Critics  who  argue  against  the  use  of  a  thing  from  its 
abuse,  have  taken  offence  at  the  introduction  in  a  tragedy 
of  that  play  on  words  which  is  called  punning.  But  how 
stands  the  fact  with  nature  ?  Is  there  not  a  tendency  in 
the  human  mind,  when  suffering  under  some  great  affliction, 
to  associate  everything  around  it  with  the  obtrusive  feel- 
ing, to  connect  and  absorb  all  into  the  predominant  sen- 
sation ?  Thus  Old  Gaunt,  discontented  with  his  relation, 


LECT.  V.]  MILTOX,  AT  BRISTOL.  481 

in  the  peevishness  of  age,  when  Richard  asks  "how  is  it 
with  aged  Gaunt,"  breaks  forth — 

"  O !  how  that  name  befits  my  composition ! 
Old  Gaunt,  indeed  ;  and  Gaunt  in  being  old. 

***** 
Gaunt  am  I  for  the  grave,  Gaunt  as  a  grave,"  &c. 

Shakspere,  as  if  he  anticipated  the  hollow  sneers  of 
critics,  makes  Richard  reply  : — 

''•  Can  sick  men  play  so  nicely  with  their  names  ?" 

To  which  the  answer  of  Gaunt  presents  a  confutation  of 
this  idle  criticism, — 

"  No,  misery  makes  sport  to  mock  itself." 

The  only  nomenclature  of  criticism  should  be  the  classi- 
fication of  the  faculties  of  the  mind,  how  they  are  placed, 
how  they  are  subordinate,  whether  they  do  or  do  not 
appeal  to  the  worthy  feelings  of  our  nature.  False  criticism 
is  created  by  ignorance,  light  removes  it ;  as  the  croaking 
of  frogs  in  a  ditch  is  silenced  by  a  candle. 

The  beautiful  keeping  of  the  character  of  the  play  is  con- 
spicuous in  the  Duke  of  York.  He,  like  Gaunt,  is  old,  and, 
full  of  a  religious  loyalty,  struggling  with  indignation  at 
the  king's  vices  and  follies,  is  an  evidence  of  a  man  giving1 
up  all  energy  under  a  feeling  of  despair.  The  play  through- 
out is  a  history  of  the  human  mind,  when  reduced  to  ease 
its  anguish  with  words  instead  of  action,  and  the  necessary 
feeling  of  weakness  which  such  a  state  produces.  The 
scene  between  the  Queen,  Bushy,  and  Bagot,  is  also  worthy 
of  notice,  from  the  characters  all  talking  high,  but  perform- 
ing nothing ;  and  from  Shakspere's  tenderness  to  those 
presentiments,  which,  wise  as  we  will  be,  will  still  adhere 
to  our  nature. 

Shakspere  has  contrived  to  bring  the  character  of  Richard, 
with  all  his  prodigality  and  hard  usage  of  his  friends,  still 

I  I 


LECTURES    ON   SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

within  the  compass  of  our  pity ;  for  we  find  him  much 
beloved  by  those  who  knew  him  best.  The  Queen  is  pas- 
sionately attached  to  him,  and  his  good  Bishop  (Carlisle) 
adheres  to  the  last.  He  is  not  one  of  those  whose  punish- 
ment gives  delight ;  his  failings  appear  to  arise  from  out- 
ward objects,  and  from  the  poison  of  flatterers  around  him  ; 
we  cannot,  therefore,  help  pitying,  and  wishing  he  had 
been  placed  in  a  rank  where  he  would  have  been  less 
exposed,  and  where  he  might  have  been  happy  and  useful. 
The  next  character  which  presented  itself,  was  that  of 
.Bolingbroke.  It  was  itself  a  contradiction  to  the  line  of 
Pope — "  Shakspere  grew  immortal  in  spite  of  himself.'' 
One  thing  was  to  be  observed,  that  in  all  his  plays  he  takes 
the  opportunity  of  sowing  germs,  the  full  development  of 
-which  appears  at  a  future  time.  Thus  in  Henry  IV.  he 
prepares  us  for  the  character  of  Henry  V.,  and  the  whole 
of  Gloucester's  character  in  Henry  VI.  is  so  different  from 
any  other  that  we  are  prepared  for  Richard  III.  In  Boling- 
broke is  defined  the  struggle  of  inward  determination  with 
outward  show  of  humility.  His  first  introduction,  where 
he  says  to  the  nobles  who  came  to  meet  him, — 

"  Welcome,  my  lords.  I  wot  your  love  pursues 
A  banished  traitor  ;  all  my  treasury 
Is  yet  but  unfelt  thanks,"  &c. 

could  only  be  compared  to  Marius,  as  described  by  Plutarch, 
exclaiming,  on  the  presentation  of  the  consular  robes,  Do 
these  "  befit  a  banished  traitor  ?  "  concealing  in  pretended 

-i  disgrace  the  implacable  ambition  that  haunted  him. 

In  this  scene  old  York   again  appears,  and  with  high 
feelings  of  loyalty  and  duty  reproves  Bolingbroke  in  bold- 

.  ness  of  words,  but  with  feebleness  of  action : — 

*'  Show  me  thy  humble  heart,  and  not  thy  knee." 

**»*#* 

"Tut!  tut! 


LECT.  V.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  483 

Grace  me  no  grace,  iior  uncle  me  no  uncle : 
I  am  no  traitor's  uncle." 

*»#»*• 

"  Why,  foolish  boy,  the  king  is  left  behind, 
And  in  my  loyal  bosom  lies  his  power." 

Yet  after  all  this  vehemence  he  concludes — 

"  Well,  well,  I  see  the  issue  of  these  arms; 

I  cannot  mend  it ; 

But  if  I  could,  by  Him  that  gave  me  life, 

I  would  attach  you  all 

So  fare  you  well, 

Unless  you  please  to  enter  in  the  castle, 
And  there  repose  you  for  this  night : — " 

the  whole  character  transpiring  in  verbal  expression. 

The  overflowing  of  Richard's  feelings,  and  which  tends 
to  keep  him  in  our  esteem,  is  the  scene  where  he  lands, — 

'•  Dear  earth,  I  do  salute  thee  with  my  hand, 
Tho'  rebels  wound  thee  with  their  horses'  hoofs;" 

eo  beautifully  descriptive  of  the  sensations  of  a  man  and  a 
king  attached  to  his  country  as  his  inheritance  and  his 
birthright.  His  resolution  and  determination  of  action  are 
depicted  in  glowing  words,  thus : — 

"  Fo  when  this  thief,  this  traitor  Bolingbroke, 

Shull  see  us  rising  in  our  throne,"  &c.  &c. 

***«*« 

"  For  every  man  that  Bolingbroke  hath  press'd, 
God  for  his  Richard  hath  in  heavenly  pay 
A  glorious  angel." 

Who,  after  this,  would  not  have  supposed  great  energj 
of  action  ?  No !  all  was  spent,  and  upon  the  first  ill 
tidings,  nothing  but  despondency  takes  place,  with  alterna- 
tives of  unmanly  despair  and  unfounded  hopes ;  great 
activity  of  mind,  without  any  strength  of  moral  feeling  to 
rouse  to  action,  presenting  an  awful  lesson  in  the  education 
of  princes. 


484  LECTURES   ON    SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

Here  it  might  be  observed,  that  Shakspere,  following  the 
best  tragedies  where  moral  reflections  are  introduced  in  the 
choruses,  &c.,  puts  general  reflections  in  the  mouths  of 
unimportant  personages.  His  great  men  never  moralize, 
except  under  the  influence  of  violent  passion ;  for  it  is  the 
nature  of  passion  to  generalize.  Thus,  two  fellows  in  the 
street,  when  they  quarrel,  have  recourse  to  their  proverbs, 
— "It  is  always  the  case  with  such  fellows  as  those,"  or 
some  such  phrase,  making  a  species  their  object  of  aversion. 
Shakspere  uniformly  elicits  grand  and  noble  truths  from 
passion,  as  sparks  are  forced  from  heated  iron.  Richard's 
parade  of  resignation  is  consistent  with  the  other  parts  of 
the  play : — 

.    .     .     .    "  Of  comfort  no  man  speak; 

Let 's  talk  of  graves,  of  worms,  and  epitaphs,"  &c 

easing  his  heart,  and  consuming  all  that  is  manly  in  words: 
never  anywhere  seeking  comfort  in  despair,  but  mistaking- 
the  moment  of  exhaustion  for  quiet,  This  is  finely  con- 
trasted in  Bolingbroke's  struggle  of  haughty  feeling  with 
^temporary  dissimulation,  in  which  the  latter  says : — 

"  Harry  Bolingbroke, 

On  both  his  knees  doth  kiss  King  Richard's  hand,"  &c. 

But,  with  the  prudence  of  his  character,  after  this  hypocri- 
tical speech,  adds — 

"  March  on,  and  mark  King  Richard  how  he  looks." 

Shakspere's  wonderful  judgment  appears  in  his  his- 
torical plays,  in  the  introduction  of  some  incident  or 
other,  though  no  way  connected,  yet  serving  to  give  an  air 
of  historic  fact.  Thus  the  scene  of  the  Queen  and  the 
Gardener  realizes  the  thing,  makes  the  occurrence  no  longer 
a  segment,  but  gives  an  individuality,  a  liveliness  and 
presence  to  the  scene. 

After  an  observation  or  two  upon    Shakspere's  taking 


LECT.  V.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  485 

advantage  of  making  an  impression  friendly  to  the  charac- 
ter of  his  favourite  hero  Henry  V.,  in  the  discourse  of 
Bolingbroke  respecting  his  son's  absence,  Mr.  Coleridge 
said  he  should  reserve  his  definition  of  the  character  of 
Falstaff  until  he  came  to  that  of  Richard  III.,  for  in  both 
was  an  overprizing  of  the  intellectual  above  the  moral  cha- 
racter ;  in  the  most  desperate  and  the  most  dissolute  the 
same  moral  elements  were  to  be  found. 

Of  the  assertion  of  Dr.  Johnson,  that  the  writings  of 
Shakspere  were  deficient  in  pathos,  and  that  he  only  put 
our  senses  into  complete  peacefulness,  Mr.  Coleridge  held 
this  much  preferable  to  that  degree  of  excitement  which 
was  the  object  of  the  German  drama ;  and  concluded  a  very 
interesting  lecture  with  reading  some  observations  he  penned 
after  being  present  at  the  representation  of  a  play  in  Ger- 
many, in  which  the  wife  of  a  colonel  who  had  fallen  into 
disgrace  was  frantic  first  for  grief,  and  afterwards  for  joy. 
A  distortion  of  feeling  was  the  feature  of  the  modern  drama 
of  Kotzebue  and  his  followers ;  its  heroes  were  generous, 
liberal,  brave,  and  noble,  just  so  far  as  they  could,  without 
the  sacrifice  of  one  Christian  virtue ;  its  misanthropes  were 
tender-hearted,  and  its  tender-hearted  were  misanthropes. 


486  LECTURES    ON   SHAKSPERK   AND  [1813-14 


LECTURE  VI. 

B/iclwrd  III.     Falstaff.     lago.     Shaltspere  as  a  Poet 
generally. 

T  N  our  fourth  page  may  be  seen  an  analysis  of  the  fifth 
Lecture  of  this  gentleman.  Last  evening  he  delivered 
his  sixth.  It  may  be  necessary  here  to  remark  that  Mr. 
Coleridge  in  his  second  Lecture  stated  that  from  the 
diffuseness  he  unavoidably  fell  into  in  his  introductory 
discourse,  he  should  be  unable  to  complete  the  series  he 
had  designed  -without  an  additional  Lecture,  which  those 
•who  had  regularly  attended  would  be  admitted  to  gratis. 
This  was  the  one  delivered  last  night ;  that,  therefore, 
intended  on  Education,  would  be  the  seventh  instead  of 
the  sixth,  which  is  to  take  place  on  to-morrow  (Thursday '). 
We  must  content  ourselves  with  giving  to-day  a  very  brief 
account  of  the  Lecture  of  last  night.  Mr.  Coleridge  com- 
menced by  tracing  the  history  of  Tragedy  and  Comedy 
among  the  ancients,  with  whom  both  2  were  distinct.  Shak- 
spere,  though  he  had  produced  comedy  in  tragedy,  had 
never  produced  tragi-comedy.  With  him,  as  with  Aristo- 
phanes, opposites  served  to  illustrate  each  other.  The 

1  NOT.  18,  1813.     We  have  no  information  to  furnish  on  the  subject 
of  this  Lecture. 

2  Though  we  have  certainly  tampered  with  the  punctuation,   no 
attempt  has  been  made  to  correct  the  English  of  these  reports. 


LECT.  VI.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  487 

arena  common  to  both  was  ideal,  the  comedy  of  the  Greek 
and  the  English  dramatist  was  as  much  above  real  life  as 
the  tragedy.  Tragedy  was  poetry  in  the  deepest  earnest, 
comedy  was  mirth  in  the  highest  zest,  exulting  in  the 
removal  of  all  bounds ;  an  intellectual  wealth  squandered 
in  sport ;  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  morality ;  its  lessons 
were  prudential ;  it  taught  to  avoid  vice ;  but  if  it  aimed 
at  admonition,  it  became  a  middle  thing,  neither  tragedy 
nor  comedy.  Mr.  C.,  in  deciphering  the  character  of 
Falstaff,  was  naturally  led  to  a  comparison  of  the  wit  of 
Shakspere  with  that  of  his  contemporaries  (Ben  Jonson, 
Ac.  &c.),  and  aptly  remarked,  that  whilst  Shakspere  gave 
us  wit  as  salt  to  our  meat,  Ben  Jonson  gave  wit  as  salt 
instead  of  meat.  After  wit,  Mr.  C.  proceeded  to  define 
humour,  and  entered  into  a  curious  history  of  the  origin  of 
the  term,  distinguishing  the  sanguine,  the  temperate,  the 
melancholy,  the  phlegmatic.  Where  one  fluid  predominated 
over  the  other,  a  man  was  said  to  be  under  the  influence  of 
that  particular  humour.  Thus  a  disproportion  of  black 
bile  rendered  a  man  melancholy.  But  when  nothing  serious 
was  the  consequence  of  a  predominance  of  one  particular 
fluid,  the  actions  performed  were  humorous,  and  a  man 
capable  of  describing  them  termed  a  humorist. 

Shakspere,  possessed  of  wit,  humour,  fancy,  and  imagi- 
nation, built  up  an  outward  world  from  the  stores  within 
his  mind,  as  the  bee  builds  a  hive  from  a  thousand  sweets, 
gathered  from  a  thousand  flowers.  He  was  not  only  a 
great  Poet  but  a  great  Philosopher.  The  characters  of 
Richard  III.,  lago,  and  Falstaff,  were  the  characters  of 
men  who  reverse  the  order  of  things,  who  place  intellect  at 
the  head,1  whereas  it  ought  to  follow  like  geometry,  to 
prove  and  to  confirm.  No  man,  either  hero  or  saint,  ever 
acted  from  an  unmixed  motive ;  for  let  him  do  what  he 

1  See  the  opening  paragraph  of  Mr.  Collier's  XUth  Lecture, 
p.  147. 


488  LECTURES    ON  SHAKSPERE   AND  [1813-14 

•will  rightly,  still  conscience  whispers  "  it  is  your  duty." 
Kichard,  langhing  at  conscience,  and  sneering  at  religion, 
felt  a  confidence  in  his  intellect,  which  urged  him  to 
commit  the  most  horrid  crimes,  because  he  felt  himself, 
although  inferior  in  form  and  shape,  superior  to  those 
around  him ;  he  felt  he  possessed  a  power  that  they  had 
not.  lago,  on  the  same  principle,  conscious  of  superior 
intellect,  gave  scope  to  his  envy,  and  hesitated  not  to  ruin 
a  gallant,  open,  and  generous  friend  in  the  moment  of 
felicity,  because  he  was  not  promoted  as  he  expected. 
Othello  was  superior  in  place,  but  lago  felt  him  inferior  in 
intellect,  and  unrestrained  by  conscience,  trampled  upon 
him.  Falstaff,  not  a  degraded  man  of  genius,  like  Burns, 
but  a  man  of  degraded  genius,  with  the  same  consciousness 
of  superiority  to  his  companions,  fastened  himself  on  a 
young  prince,  to  prove  how  much  his  influence  on  an  heir 
apparent  could  exceed  that  of  statesmen.  With  this  view 
he  hesitated  not  to  practise  the  most  contemptuous  of  all 
characters  : — an  open  and  professed  liar  :  even  his  sensuality 
was  subservient  to  his  intellect,  for  he  appeared  to  drink 
sack  that  he  might  have  occasion  to  show  his  wit.  One 
thing,  however,  worthy  of  observation,  was  the  contrast  of 
labour  in  Falstaff  to  produce  wit,  with  the  ease  with  which 
Prince  Henry  parried  his  shaft,  and  the  final  contempt 
which  such  a  character  deserved  and  received  from  the 
young  king,  when  Falstaff,  calling  his  friends  around  him, 
liym,  Bardolph,  Pistol,  &c.,  expected  the  consummation 
of  that  influence  which  he  flattered  himself  to  have 
established. 

Mr.  C.  concluded  by  delivering  his  opinion  of  Shak- 
spere's  general  character  as  a  Poet,  independent  of  a 
Dramatist.  His  "  Venus  and  Adonis,"  written  at  an  early 
age,  contained  evidence  of  his  qualifications  as  a  Poet : 
great  sweetness  and  melody  of  sound,  with  an  exquisite 
richness  of  language,  were  symptoms  of  that  genius  which, 


LECT.  VI.]  MILTON,  AT  BRISTOL.  489 

further  displayed  in  his  "Lucrece,"  received  its  consum- 
mation in  his  Dramatic  writings.  Our  limits  prevent  us 
from  following  Mr.  Coleridge  fnrther.  We  do  not  offer 
an  apology  to  our  readers  for  having  consumed  so  many 
of  our  columns  in  a  brief  outline  of  his  interesting  Lectures. 
To  gain  an  insight  into  human  nature,  to  enjoy  the  writings 
and  genius  of  the  first  dramatic  poet  of  any  age,  and  above 
all  to  obtain  that  knowledge  of  ourselves,  which  the  Lec- 
tures of  Mr.  Coleridge,  rich  in  imagery,  language,  and 
wisdom,  were  calculated  to  produce,  have  afforded  us  so 
much  genuine  gratification,  that  we  could  not  resist  the 
desire  of  imparting  a  share  to  our  readers. 


IV. 
APPENDIX. 


493 


APPENDIX. 

'"PO  make  our  volume  as  complete  a  record  as  possible  of 

Coleridge's  opinions  on  the  English  Dramatists,  some 

incidental  criticisms  from  other  works  of  his  are  appended. 

His  criticisms  on  English  poets,  not  dramatists,  are 
numerous.  In  our  extracts  from  Mr.  Collier's  Preface,  all 
such  that  he  gives  have  been  admitted,  to  secure  them  a 
permanent  place.  For  the  same  reason,  we  here  include 
the  notes  on  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  in  the  Lectures  of  1818 ; 
and  those  on  Milton,  in  the  same  Lectures,  for  a  double 
reason,  for  they  probably  contain  the  substance  of  the 
missing  lectures  of  1811-12.  Many  criticisms  on  modern 
poets  will  be  found  in  the  "  Table  Talk,"  and  in  the 
"  Biographia  Literaria," — on  Bowles,  Southey,  and  Words- 
worth, mainly.  These  publications  are  easily  accessible. 

It  may  be  added  that  Coleridge  often  repeats  himself, — 
with  variations.  The  substance  of  our  quotation  from  the 
"Friend,"  for  example,  may  be  found  in  the  "Essay  on 
Method ; "  and  Coleridge's  ideas  on  poetry  generally,  in  the 
lectures  of  1811-12,  and  in  those  of  1818,  are  illustrated 
by  similar  ones  in  the  "Biographia  Literaria." 

I.  The  specific  symptoms  of  poetic  power  elucidated  in  a 
critical  analysis  of  STiakspere's  "  Venus  and  Adonis"  and 
"Rape  of  Lucrece."  Chapter  xv.  of  the  "Biographia 
Literaria." 

In  the  application  of  these  principles  to  purposes  of 
practical  criticism  as  employed  in  the  appraisal  of  works 
more  or  less  imperfeet,  I  have  endeavoured  to  discover 
what  the  qualities  in  a  poem  are,  which  may  be  deemed 


494  APPENDIX. 

promises  and  specific  symptoms  of  poetic  power,  as  distin- 
guished from  general  talent  determined  to  poetic  com- 
position by  accidental  motives,  by  an  act  of  the  will,  rather 
than  by  the  inspiration  of  a  genial  and  productive  nature. 
In  this  investigation,  I  could  not,  I  thought,  do  better, 
than  keep  before  me  the  earliest  work  of  the  greatest 
genius,  that  perhaps  human  nature  has  yet  produced,  our 
myriad-minded  l  Shakspere.  I  mean  the  "  Venus  and 
Adonis,"  and  the  "Lucrece;"  works  which  give  at  once 
strong  promises  of  the  strength,  and  yet  obvious  proofs  of 
the  immaturity,  of  his  genius.  From  these  I  abstracted 
the  following  marks,  as  characteristics  of  original  poetic 
genius  in  general.  / 

1.  In  the  "Venus  and  Adonis,"  the  first  and  most 
jobvious  excellence  is  the  perfect  sweetness  of  the  versifica- 
tion ;  its  adaptation  to  the  subject  ;  and  the  power  dis- 
played in  varying  the  march  of  the  words  without  passing 
into  a  loftier  and  more  majestic  rhythm  than  was  demanded 
by  the  thoughts,  or  permitted  by  the  propriety  of  preserv- 
ing a  sense  of  melody  predominant.  The  delight  in  rich- 
ness and  sweetness  of  sound,  even  to  a  faulty  excess,  if  it 
be  evidently  original,  and  not  the  result  of  an  easily  imitable 
mechanism,  I  regard  as  a  highly  favourable  promise  in  the 
•compositions  of  a  young  man.  "  The  man  that  hath  not 
music  in  his  soul  "  can  indeed  never  be  a  genuine  poet. 
Imagery  (even  taken  from  nature,  much  more  when  trans- 
planted from  books,  as  travels,  voyages,  and  works  of 
natural  history)  ;  affecting  incidents  ;  just  thoughts  ;  in- 
teresting personal  or  domestic  feelings  ;  and  with  these  the 
#rt  of  their  combination  or  intertexture  in  the  form  of  a 
poem  ;  may  all  by  incessant  effort  be  acquired  as  a  trade, 


|ui>|0ioi'ovc,  a  phrase  which  I  have  borrowed  from  a  Greek 
monk,  who  applies  it  to  a  Patriarch  of  Constantinople.  I  might  have 
said  that  I  have  reclaimed  rather  than  borrowed  it,  for  it  seejns.  to 
.belong  to  Shakspere  de  jure  singulari,  et  ex  privilegio  natura.  —  S.  T.  C. 


APPENDIX.  495 

by  a  man  of  talents  and  much  reading,  who,  as  I  once 
before  observed,  has  mistaken  an  intense  desire  of  poetic 
reputation  for  a  natural  poetic  genius ;  the  love  of  the 
arbitrary  end  for  a  possession  of  the  peculiar  means.  But 
the  sense  of  musical  delight,  with  the  power  of  producing 
it,  is  a  gift  of  imagination ;  and  this,  together  with  the 
power  of  reducing  multitude  into  unity  of  effect,  and 
modifying  a  series  of  thoughts  by  some  one  predominant 
thought  or  feeling,  may  be  cultivated  and  improved,  but  can 
never  be  learnt.  It  is  in  these  that  "  Poeta  nascitur  nonfit." 
2.  A  second  promise  of  genius  is  the  choice  of  subjects 
very  remote  from  the  private  interests  and  circumstances 
of  the  writer  himself.  At  least  I  have  found,  that  where 
the  subject  is  taken  immediately  from  the  author's  personal 
sensations  and  experiences,  the  excellence  of  a  particular 
poem  is  but  an  equivocal  mark,  and  often  a  fallacious 
pledge,  of  genuine  poetic  power.1  We  may  perhaps  re- 
member the  tale  of  the  statuary,  who  had  acquired  con- 
siderable reputation  for  the  legs  of  his  goddesses,  though 
the  rest  of  the  statue  accorded  but  indifferently  with  ideal 
beauty;  till  his  wife,  elated  by  her  husband's  praises, 
modestly  acknowledged  that  she  herself  had  been  his  con- 
stant model.  In  the  "  Venus  and  Adonis,"  this  proof  of 
poetic  power  exists  even  to  excess.  It  is  throughout  as  if 
a  superior  spirit,  more  intuitive,  more  intimately  conscious 
even  than  the  characters  themselves,  not  only  of  every  out- 
ward look  and  act,  but  of  the  flux  and  reflux  of  the  mind 
in  all  its  subtlest  thoughts  and  feelings,  were  placing  the 
whole  before  our  view ;  himself  meanwhile  un participating 

1  This  is  at  least  candid  on  the  part  of  Coleridge,  so  many  of  whose 
own  poems  are  of  this  private  interpretation.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
tells  us,  in  the  preface  to  the  earlier  editions  of  his  poems  :  "  If  I  could 
judge  of  others  by  myself,  I  should  not  hesitate  to  affirm,  that  the  most 
interesting  passages  in  all  writings  are  those  in  which  the  author 
develops  his  own  feelings."  The  statements  are  not  antagonistic. 


496  APPENDIX. 

in  the  passions,  and  actuated  only  by  that  pleasurable 
excitement  which  had  resulted  from  the  energetic  fervour 
of  his  own  spirit,  in  so  vividly  exhibiting  what  it  had  so 
accurately  and  profoundly  contemplated.  I  think  I  should 
have  conjectured  from  these  poems,  that  even  then  the 
great  instinct  which  impelled  the  poet  to  the  drama  was 
secretly  working  in  him,  prompting  him  by  a  series  and 
never-broken  chain  of  imagery,  always  vivid,  and  because 
unbroken,  often  minute ;  by  the  highest  effort  of  the  pic- 
turesque in  words,  of  which  words  are  capable,  higher 
perhaps  than  was  ever  realized  by  any  other  poet,  even 
Dante  not  excepted  ;  to  provide  a  substitute  for  that  visual 
language,  that  constant  intervention  and  running  comment 
by  tone,  look,  and  gesture,  which,  in  his  dramatic  works, 
he  was  entitled  to  expect  from  the  players.  His  Venus 
and  Adonis  seem  at  once  the  characters  themselves,  and 
the  whole  representation  of  those  characters  by  the  most 
consummate  actors.  Tou  seem  to  be  told  nothing,  but  to 
see  and  hear  everything.  Hence  it  is,  that  from  the  per- 
petual activity  of  attention  required  on  the  part  of  the 
reader;  from  the  rapid  flow,  the  quick  change,  and  the 
playful  nature  of  the  thoughts  and  images;  and,  above  all, 
from  the  alienation,  and,  if  I  may  hazard  such  an  expres- 
sion, the  utter  aloofness  of  the  poet's  own  feelings  from 
those  of  which  he  is  at  once  the  painter  and  the  analyst ; 
that  though  the  very  subject  cannot  but  detract  from  the 
pleasure  of  a  delicate  mind,  yet  never  was  poem  less  dan- 
gerous on  a  moral  account.  Instead  of  doing  as  Ariosto, 
and  as,  still  more  offensively,  Wieland  has  done ;  instead 
of  degrading  and  deforming  passion  into  appetite,  the  trials 
of  love  into  the  struggles  of  concupiscence,  Shakspere  has 
here  represented  the  animal  impulse  itself,  so  as  to  preclude 
all  sympathy  with  it,  by  dissipating  the  reader's  notice 
among  the  thousand  outward  images,  and  now  beautiful, 
now  fanciful  circumstances,  which  form  its  dresses  and  its 


APPENDIX.  497 

scenery ;  or  by  diverting  our  attention  from  the  main  sub- 
ject by  those  frequent  witty  or  profound  reflections  which 
the  poet's  ever  active  mind  has  deduced  from,  or  connected 
with,  the  imagery  and  the  incidents.  The  reader  is  forced 
into  too  much  action  to  sympathize  with  the  merely  passive 
of  onr  nature.  As  little  can  a  mind  thus  roused  and 
awakened  be  brooded  on  by  mean  and  instinct  emotion,  aa 
the  low,  lazy  mist  can  creep  upon  the  surface  of  a  lake  while 
a  strong  gale  is  driving  it  onward  in  waves  and  billows. 

3.  It  has  been  before  observed  that  images,  however 
beautiful,  though  faithfully  copied  from  nature,  and  as 
accurately  represented  in  words,  do  not  of  themselves  cha- 
racterize the  poet.  They  become  proofs  of  original  genius 
only  as  far  as  they  are  modified  by  a  predominant  passion ; 
or  by  associated  thoughts  or  images  awakened  by  that 
passion ;  or  when  they  have  the  effect  of  reducing  multitude 
to  unity,  or  succession  to  an  instant ;  or  lastly,  when  a 
human  and  intellectual  life  is  transferred  to  them  from  the 
poet's  own  spirit, 

"Which  shoots  its  being  through  earth,  sea,  and  air." 

In  the  two  following  lines,  for  instance,  there  is  nothing 
objectionable,  nothing  which  would  preclude  them  from, 
forming,  in  their  proper  place,  part  of  a  descriptive  poem : 

"  Behold  yon  row  of  pines,  that  shorn  and  bow'd 
Bend  from  the  sea-blast,  seen  at  twilight  eve." 

But  with  the  small  alteration  of  rhythm,  the  same  words 
would  be  equally  in  their  place  in  a  book  of  topography,  or 
in  a  descriptive  tour.  The  same  image  will  rise  into  a 
semblance  of  poetry  if  thus  conveyed : 

"  Yon  row  of  bleak  and  visionary  pines, 
By  twilight-glimpse  discerned,  mark !  how  they  flee 
From  the  fierce  sea-blast,  all  their  tresses  wild 
Streaming  before  them." 

I  have  given  this  as  an  illustration,  by  no  means  as  an 
instance,  of  that  particular  excellence  which  I  had  in  view, 

K  K 


498  APPENDIX. 

and  in  which  Shakspere,  eren  in  his  earliest  as  in  his  latest 
works,  surpasses  all  other  poets.  It  is  by  this  that  he  still 
gives  a  dignity  and  a  passion  to  the  objects  which  he  pre- 
Bents.  Unaided  by  any  previous  excitement,  they  burst 
upon  us  at  once  in  life  and  in  power. 

"  Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain-tops  with  sovereign  eye." 

Shakspere's  33rd  Sonnet. 
"  Not  mine  own  fears,  nor  the  prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come — 


The  mortal  moon  hath  her  eclipse  endured, 
And  the  sad  augurs  mock  their  own  presage : 
Incertainties  now  crown  themselves  assured, 
And  peace  proclaims  olives  of  endless  age. 
Now  with  the  drops  of  this  most  balmy  time 
My  love  looks  fresh,  and  Death  to  me  subscribes, 
Since,  spite  of  him,  I'll  live  in  this  poor  rhyme, 
While  he  insults  o'er  dull  and  speechless  tribes; 
And  thou  in  this  shalt  find  thy  monument, 
When  tyrants'  crests,  and  tombs  of  brass  are  spent." 

Sonnet  107. 

As  of  higher  worth,  so  doubtless  still  more  characteristic 
of  poetic  genius  does  the  imagery  become,  when  it  moulds 
and  colours  itself  to  the  circumstances,  passion,  or  character, 
present  and  foremost  in  the  mind.  For  unrivalled  instances 
of  this  excellence,  the  reader's  own  memory  will  refer  him 
to  the  "  Lear,"  "  Othello,"  in  short  to  which  not  of  the 
"greed,  ever  living,  dead  man's"  dramatic  works?  Inopem 
me  copia  fecit.  How  true  it  is  to  nature,  he  has  himself 
finely  expressed  in  the  instance  of  love  in  Sonnet  98 : 

"  From  you  have  I  been  absent  in  the  spring, 
When  proud-pied  April  drest  in  all  his  trim 
Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  everything ; 
That  heavy  Saturn  laugh 'd  and  leap'd  with  him. 
Yet  nor  the  lays  of  birds,  nor  the  sweet  smell 
Of  different  flowers  in  odour  and  in  hue, 


APPENDIX.  499 

Could  make  me  any  summer's  story  tell, 

Or  from  their  proud  lap  pluck  them  where  they  grew : 

Nor  did  I  wonder  at  the  lily's  white, 

Nor  praise  the  deep  vermilion  in  the  rose; 

They  were  but  sweet,  but  figures  of  delight, 

Drawn  after  you,  you  pattern  of  all  those. 
Yet  seem'd  it  winter  still,  and  you  away, 
As  with  your  shadow  I  with  these  did  play!" 

Scarcely  less  sure,  or  if  a  less  valuable,  not  less  indis- 
pensable mark 

Tovifiov  fiiv  Tloiqrov 

bffrtg  f>>i[ia  yiwdiov  Xoicoi, 

will  the  imagery  supply,  when,  with  more  than  the  power 
of  the  painter,  the  poet  gives  us  the  liveliest  image  of  suc- 
cession with  the  feeling  of  simultaneousness  ! 

"  With  this  he  breaketh  from  the  sweet  embrace 
Of  those  fair  arms,  that  bound  him  to  her  breast, 
And  homeward  through  the  dark  laund  runs  apace  t 

****** 

Look  how  a  bright  star  shooteth  from  the  sky! 
So  glides  he  in  the  night  from  Femes'  eye." 

Venus  and  Adonis,  1.  811. 

4.  The  last  character  I  shall  mention,  which  would  prove 
indeed  but  little,  except  as  taken  conjointly  with  the  former ; 
yet  without  which  the  former  could  scarce  exist  in  a  high 
degree,  and  (even  if  this  were  possible)  would  give  promises 
only  of  transitory  flashes  and  a  meteoric  power ; — is  depth 
and  energy  of  thought.  No  man  was  ever  yet  a  great  poet, 
without  being  at  the  same  time  a  profound  philosopher. 
For  poetry  is  the  blossom  and  the  fragrancy  of  all  human 
knowledge,  human  thoughts,  human  passions,  emotions, 
language.  In  Shakspere's  Poems,  the  creative  power  and 
the  intellectual  energy  wrestle  as  in  a  war  embrace.  Each 
in  its  excess  of  strength  seems  to  threaten  the  extinction 
of  the  other.  At  length,  in  the  drama  they  were  reconciled, 
and  fought  each  with  its  shield  before  the  breast  of  tho 
other.  Or  like  two  rapid  streams  that,  at  their  first  meet- 


500  APPENDIX. 

ing  within  narrow  and  rocky  banks,  mutually  strive  to 
repel  each  other,  and  intermix  reluctantly  and  in  tumult, 
but  soon  finding  a  wider  channel  and  more  yielding  shores, 
blend  and  dilate,  and  flow  on  in  one  current  and  with  one 
voice.  The  "  Venus  and  Adonis  "  did  not  perhaps  allow 
the  display  of  the  deeper  passions.  But  the  story  of 
Lucretia  seems  to  favour,  and  even  demand,  their  intensest 
workings.  And  yet  we  find  in  Shakspere's  manage- 
ment of  the  tale  neither  pathos  nor  any  other  dramatic 
quality.  There  is  the  same  minute  and  faithful  imagery 
as  in  the  former  poem,  in  the  same  vivid  colours,  inspirited 
by  the  same  impetuous  vigour  of  thought,  and  diverging 
and  contracting  with  the  same  activity  of  the  assimilative 
and  of  the  modifying  faculties ;  and  with  a  yet  larger  dis- 
play, a  yet  wider  range  of  knowledge  and  reflection ;  and 
lastly,  with  the  same  perfect  dominion,  often  domination, 
over  the  whole  world  of  language.  What,  then,  shall  we 
say  ?  even  this,  that  Shakspere,  no  mere  child  of  nature ; 
no  automaton  of  genius ;  no  passive  vehicle  of  inspiration 
possessed  by  the  spirit,  not  possessing  it ;  first  studied 
patiently,  meditated  deeply,  understood  minutely,  till  know- 
ledge, become  habitual  and  intuitive,  wedded  itself  to  his 
habitual  feelings ;  and  at  length  gave  birth  to  that  stupen- 
dous power,  by  which  he  stands  alone,  with  no  equal  or 
second  in  his  own  class ;  to  that  power  which  seated  him 
on  one  of  the  two  glory-smitten  summits  of  the  poetic 
mountain,  with  Milton  as  his  compeer,  not  rival.  While 
the  former  darts  himself  forth,  and  passes  into  all  the 
forms  of  human  character  and  passion,  the  one  Proteus  of 
the  fire  and  the  flood ;  the  other  attracts  all  forms  and 
things  to  himself,  into  the  unity  of  his  own  ideal.  All 
things  and  modes  of  action  shape  themselves  anew  in  the 
being  of  Milton ;  while  Shakspere  becomes  all  things,  yet 
for  ever  remaining  himself.  O  what  great  men  hast  thou 
not  produced,  England  !  my  country  !  Truly,  indeed, 


APPENDIX.  501 

*  Must  we  be  free  or  die,  who  speak  the  tongue, 
Which  Shakspere  spake ;  the  faith  and  morals  hold, 
Which  Milton  held.     In  everything  we  are  sprung 
Of  earth's  first  blood,  have  titles  manifold ! " 

WOKDSWOKTH. 


II.  ShaJcspere's  Method.     From  the  "  Friend." 

The  difference  between  the  products  of  a  well  disciplined 
and  those  of  an  uncultivated  understanding,  in  relation  to 
what  we  will  now  venture  to  call  the  Science  of  Method,  is 
often  and  admirably  exhibited  by  our  great  dramatist.  We 
scarcely  need  refer  our  readers  to  the  Clown's  evidence,  in 
the  first  scene  of  the  second  act  of  "  Measure  for  Measure," 
or  to  the  Nurse  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet."  But  not  to  leave 
the  position,  without  an  instance  to  illustrate  it,  we  will 
take  the  "  easy -yielding  "  Mrs.  Quickly's  relation  of  the 
circumstances  of  Sir  John  Falstaff 's  debt  to  her : — 

"  Falstaff.  What  is  the  gross  sum  that  I  owe  thee  ? 

Mrs.  Quickly.  Marry,  if  thou  wert  an  honest  man,  thyself  and  the 
money  too.  Thou  didst  swear  to  me  upon  a  parcel-gilt  goblet,  sitting 
in  my  Dolphin  chamber,  at  the  round  table,  by  a  sea-coal  fire,  on 
Wednesday  in  Whitsun  week,  when  the  prince  broke  thy  head  for 
liking  his  father  to  a  singing  man  of  Windsor — thou  didst  swear  to  me 
then,  as  I  was  washing  thy  wound,  to  marry  me  and  make  me  my  lady 
thy  wife.  Canst  thou  deny  it  ?  Did  not  goodwife  Keech,  the  butcher's 
wife,  come  in  then  and  call  me  gossip  Quickly  ? — coming  in  to  borrow  a 
tness  of  vinegar:  telling  us  she  had  a  good  dish  of  prawns — whereby 
thou  didst  desire  to  eat  some — whereby  I  told  thee  they  were  ill  for  a 
green  wound,"  &c.  &c.  &c. 

Henry  IV.,  Part  II.  Act  II.  Scene  1. 

And  this,  be  it  observed,  is  so  far  from  being  carried 
beyond  the  bounds  of  a  fair  imitation,  that  "the  poor 
•Bool's  "  thoughts  and  sentences  are  more  closely  interlinked 
than  the  truth  of  nature  would  have  required,  but  that  the 
•connections  and  sequence,  which  the  habit  of  method  can 
alone  give,  have  in  this  instance  a  substitute  in  the  fusion 
of  passion.  For  the  absence  of  method,  which  characterizes 


502  APPENDIX. 

the  uneducated,  is  occasioned  by  an  habitual  submission  of 
the  understanding  to  mere  events  and  images  as  such,  and 
independent  of  any  power  in  the  mind  to  classify  or  appro- 
priate them.  The  general  accompaniments  of  time  and 
place  are  the  only  relations  which  persons  of  this  class 
appear  to  regard  in  their  statements.  As  this  constitutes 
their  leading  feature,  the  contrary  excellence,  as  distin- 
guishing the  well-educated  man,  must  be  referred  to  the 
contrary  habit.  Method,  therefore,  becomes  natural  to  the 
mind  which  has  been  accustomed  to  contemplate  not  things 
only,  or  for  their  own  sake  alone,  but  likewise  and  chiefly 
the  relations  of  things,  either  their  relations  to  each  other, 
or  to  the  observer,  or  to  the  state  and  apprehension  of  the 
hearers.  To  enumerate  and  analyze  these  relations,  -with 
the  conditions  under  which  alone  they  are  discoverable,  is 
to  teach  the  science  of  method. 

The  enviable  results  of  this  science,  when  knowledge 
has  been  ripened  into  those  habits  which  at  once  secure 
and  evince  its  possession,  can  scarcely  be  exhibited  more 
forcibly  as  well  as  more  pleasingly,  than  by  contrasting 
with  the  former  extract  from  Shakspere  the  narration  given 
by  Hamlet  to  Horatio  of  the  occurrences  during  his  pro- 
posed transportation  to  England,  and  the  events  that  in- 
terrupted his  voyage : — 

"Ham.  Sir,  in  my  heart  there  was  a  kind  of  fighting, 
That  would  not  let  me  sleep :  methought  I  lay 
Worse  than  the  mutines  in  the  bilboes.     Eashly, 

And  praised  be  rashness  for  it, Let  us  know, 

Our  indiscretion  sometimes  serves  us  well, 

When  our  deep  plots  do  pall :  and  that  should  teach  us, 

There's  a  divinity  that  shapes  our  ends, 

Rough-hew  them  how  we  will, 

,  HOT.  That  is  most  certain. 
Ham.  Up  from  my  cabin, 
My  sea-gown  scarf  d  about  me,  in  the  dark 
Groped  I  to  find  out  them  ;  had  my  desire, 
Finger'd  their  packet  j  and,  in  fine,  withdrew 


APPENDIX.  503 

To  my l  own  room  again  :  making  so  bold, 

My  fears  forgetting  manners,  to  unseal 

Their  grand  commission ;  where  I  found,  Horatio, 

O  royal  knavery!  an  exact  command, 

Larded  with  many  several  sorts  of  reasons, 

Importing  Denmark's  health,  and  England's  too, 

With,  ho!  such  bugs  and  goblins  in  my  life, 

That  on  the  supervise,  no  leisure  bated, 

No,  not  to  stay  the  grinding  of  the  axe, 

My  head  should  be  struck  off! 

HOT.  Is't  possible  ? 

Ham.  Here's  the  commission. — Eead  it  at  more  leisure." 

Act  V.  Scene  2. 

Here  the  events,  with  the  circumstances  of  time  and 
place,  are  all  stated  with  equal  compression  and  rapidity, 
not  one  introduced  which  could  have  been  omitted  without 
injury  to  the  intelligibility  of  the  whole  process.  If  any 
tendency  is  discoverable,  as  far  as  the  mere  facts  are  in 
question,  it  is  the  tendency  to  omission  ;  and,  accordingly, 
the  reader  will  observe  that  the  attention  of  tbe  narrator  is 
afterwards  called  back  to  one  material  circumstance,  which 
he  was  hurrying  by,  by  a  direct  question  from  the  friend  to 
whom  the  story  is  communicated,  "  How  was  this  sealed  ?  " 
But  by  a  trait  which  is  indeed  peculiarly  characteristic  of 
Hamlet's  mind,  ever  disposed  to  generalize,  and  meditative 
to  excess  (but  which,  with  due  abatement  and  reduction,  is 
distinctive  of  every  powerful  and  methodizing  intellect), 
all  the  digressions  and  enlargements  consist  of  reflections, 
truths,  and  principles  of  general  and  permanent  interest, 
either  directly  expressed  or  disguised  in  playful  satire. 

" 1  sat  me  down : 

Devised  a  new  commission ;  wrote  it  fair. 
I  once  did  hold  it,  as  our  statists  do, 
A  baseness  to  write  fair,  and  labour'd  much 
How  to  forget  that  learning ;  but,  sir,  now 
It  did  me  yeoman's  service.     Wilt  thou  knuv# 
The  effect  of  what  I  wrote  ? 


Read  "  mine." 


504  APPENDIX. 

Hor.  Aye,  good  my  lord. 

Ham.  An  earnest  conjuration  from  the  king, 
As  England  was  his  faithful  tributary ; 
As  love  between  them,  like  the  palm,  might  flourish » 
As  peace  should  still  her  wheaten  garland  wear,1 
And  many  such  like  '  As  'es  of  great  charge — 
That  on  the  view  and  knowing  of  these  contents, 
He  should  the  bearers  put  to  sudden  death, 
Not  shriving  time  allowed. 

Hor.  How  was  this  seal'd? 

Ham.   Why,  even  in  that  was  heaven  ordinant. 
I  had  my  father's  signet  in  my  purse. 
Which  was  the  model  of  that  Danish  seal : 
Folded  the  writ  up  in  form  of  the  other  ; 
Subscribed  it ;  gave't  the  impression ;  placed  it  safely, 
The  changeling  never  known.     Now,  the  next  day 
Was  our  sea-fight ;  and  what  to  this  was  sequent, 
Thou  knowest  already. 

Hor.  So  Guildenstern  and  Rosencrantz  go  to't  ? 

Ham,  Why,  man,  they  did  make  love  to  this  employment. 
They  are  not  near  my  conscience :  their  defeat 
Doth  by  their  own  insinuation  grow. 
'Tis  dangerous  when  the  baser  nature  comes 
Between  the  pass  and  fell  incensed  points 
Of  mighty  oppositea." 

It  would,  perhaps  be  sufficient  to  remark  of  the  pre- 
ceding passage,  in  connection  with  the  humorous  specimen 
of  narration, 

"  Fermenting  o'er  with  frothy  circumstance," 

'in  Henry  IV.,  that  if  overlooking  the  different  value  of 
matter  in  each,  we  considered  the  form  alone,  we  should 
find  both  immethodical ;  Hamlet  from  the  excess,  Mrs. 
Quickly  from  the  want,  of  reflection  and  generalization ; 
and  that  method,  therefore,  must  result  from  the  due  mean 
or  balance  between  our  passive  impressions  and  the  mind's 

1  Coleridge  omits  the  next  line — 

"  And  stand  a  comma  'tween  their  amities," 
and  also,  after  "  these  contents,"  the  line — 

"  Without  debatement  further,  more  or  less." 


APPENDIX.  505 

own  reaction  on  the  same.  (Whether  this  reaction  does 
not  suppose  or  imply  a  primary  act  positively  originating 
in  the  mind  itself,  and  prior  to  the  object  in  order  of  nature, 
though  co-instantaneous  in  its  manifestation,  will  be  here- 
after discussed.)  But  we  had  a  further  purpose  in  thus 
contrasting  these  extracts  from  our  "  myriad-minded  bard  " 
(fivpiovovq  avrjp).  We  wished  to  bring  forward,  each  for 
itself,  these  two  elements  of  method,  or  (to  adopt  an  arith- 
metical term)  its  two  main  factors. 

Instances  of  the  want  of  generalization  are  of  no  rare 
occurrence  in  real  life ;  and  the  narrations  of  Shakspere's 
Hostess  and  the  Tapster  differ  from  those  of  the  ignorant 
and  unthinking  in  general  by  their  superior  humour,  the 
poet's  own  gift  and  infusion,  not  by  their  want  of  method, 
which  is  not  greater  than  we  often  meet  with  in  that  class 
of  which  they  are  the  dramatic  representatives.  Instances 
of  the  opposite  fault,  arising  from  the  excess  of  generaliza- 
tion and  reflection  in  minds  of  the  opposite  class,  will,  like 
the  minds  themselves,  occur  less  frequently  in  the  course 
of  our  own  personal  experience.  Yet  they  will  not  have 
been  wanting  to  our  readers,  nor  will  they  have  passed  un- 
observed, though  the  great  poet  himself  (6  T^V  lavroS  ^X^ 
ufftt  v\iji'  riva  cKTwyuctrov  ^op^cue  iromXeuc  ^op^wtrac1)  has 
more  conveniently  supplied  the  illustrations.  To  complete, 
therefore,  the  purpose  aforementioned,  that  of  presenting 
each  of  the  two  components  as  separately  as  possible,  wo 
chose  an  instance  in  which,  by  the  surplus  of  its  own 
activity,  Hamlet's  mind  disturbs  the  arrangement,  of  which 
that  very  activity  had  been  the  cause  and  impulse. 

Thus  exuberance  of  mind,  on  the  one  hand,  interferes 
with  the  forms  of  method ;  but  sterility  of  mind,  on  the 
other,  wanting  the  spring  and  impulse  to  mental  action,  ia 
wholly  destructive  of  method  itself.  For  in  attending  too 

1  (Translation.} — He  that  moulded  bis  own  soul,  as  some  incorporeal 
material,  into  various  forms. — THEMISTIUS. 


506  APPENDIX. 

exclusively  to  the  relations  which  the  past  or  passing  events 
and  objects  bear  to  general  truth,  and  the  moods  of  his 
own  thought,  the  most  intelligent  man  is  sometimes  in 
danger  of  overlooking  that  other  relation  in  which  they  are 
likewise  to  be  placed  to  the  apprehension  and  sympathies 
of  his  hearers.  His  discourse  appears  like  soliloquy  inter- 
mixed with  dialogue.  But  the  uneducated  and  unreflecting 
talker  overlooks  all  mental  relations,  both  logical  and  psy- 
chological ;  and  consequently  precludes  all  method  that  is 
not  purely  accidental.  Hence  the  nearer  the  things  and 
incidents  in  time  and  place,  the  more  distant,  disjointed, 
and  impertinent  to  each  other,  and  to  any  common  purpose, 
will  they  appear  in  his  narration ;  and  this  from  the  want 
of  a  staple,  or  starting-post,  in  the  narrator  himself ;  from 
the  absence  of  the  leading  thought,  which,  borrowing  a 
phrase  from  the  nomenclature  of  legislation,  we  may  not 
inaptly  call  the  initiative.  On  the  contrary,  where  the 
habit  of  method  is  present  and  effective,  things  the  most 
remote  and  diverse  in  time,  place,  and  outward  circum- 
stance, are  brought  into  mental  contiguity  and  succession, 
the  more  striking  as  the  less  expected.  But  while  we 
would  impress  the  necessity  of  this  habit,  the  illustrations 
adduced  give  proof  that  in  undue  preponderance,  and  when 
the  prerogative  of  the  mind  is  stretched  into  despotism, 
the  discourse  may  degenerate  into  the  grotesque  or  the 
fantastical. 

With  what  a  profound  insight  into  the  constitution  of 
the  human  soul  is  this  exhibited  to  us  in  the  character  of 
the  Prince  of  Denmark,  where  flying  from  the  sense  of 
reality,  and  seeking  a  reprieve  from  the  pressure  of  its 
duties  in  that  ideal  activity,  the  overbalance  of  which,  with 
the  consequent  indisposition  to  action,  is  his  disease,  he 
compels  the  reluctant  good  sense  of  the  high  yet  healthful- 
minded  Horatio,  to  follow  him  in  his  wayward  meditation 
amid  the  graves !  "  To  what  base  uses  we  may  return, 


APPENDIX.  507 

Horatio  !  Why  may  not  imagination  trace  the  noble  dust 
of  Alexander,  till  he  find  it  stopping  a  bung-hole  ?  Hor. 
'Twere  to  consider  too  curiously,  to  consider  so.  Ham.  No, 
faith,  not  a  jot;  but  to  follow  him  thither  with  modesty 
enough,  and  likelihood  to  lead  it.  As  thus :  Alexander 
died,  Alexander  was  baried,  Alexander  returneth  to l  dust — 
the  dust  is  earth ;  of  earth  we  make  loam :  and  why  of 
that  loam,  whereto  he  was  converted,  might  they  not  stop 
a  beer-barrel  ? 

"  Imperial  Cresar,  dead  and  turn'd  to  clay, 
Might  stop  a  hole  to  keep  the  wind  away ! " 

Act  V.,  Sc.  1. 

But  let  it  not  escape  our  recollection,  that  when  the 
objects  thus  connected  are  proportionate  to  the  connecting 
energy,  relatively  to  the  real,  or  at  least  to  the  desirable 
sympathies  of  mankind ;  it  is  from  the  same  character 
that  we  derive  the  genial  method  in  the  famous  soliloquy, 
"  To  be  ?  or  not  to  be  ?  "  which,  admired  as  it  is,  and  has 
been,  has  yet  received  only  the  first-fruits  of  the  admiration 
due  to  it. 

We  have  seen  that  from  the  confluence  of  innumerable 
impressions  in  each  moment  of  time  the  mere  passive 
memory  must  needs  tend  to  confusion — a  rule,  the  seem- 
ing exceptions  to  which  (the  thunder-bursts  in  "  Lear,"  for 
instance)  are  really  confirmations  of  its  truth.  For,  in 
many  instances,  the  predominance  of  some  mighty  passion 
takes  the  place  of  the  guiding  thought,  and  the  result 
presents  the  method  of  nature,  rather  than  the  habit  of 
the  individual.  For  thought,  imagination  (and  we  may 
add  passion),  are,  in  their  very  essence,  the  first,  con- 
nective, the  latter,  co-adunative ;  and  it  has  been  shown, 
that  if  the  excess  lead  to  method  misapplied,  and  to  con- 
nections of  the  moment,  the  absence,  or  marked  deficiency, 
either  precludes  method  altogether,  both  form  and  sub- 

1  Read  "  into." 


503  APPENDIX. 

stance,  or  (as  the  following  extract  will  exemplify)  retains 
the  outward  form  only. 

"  My  liege  and  madam,  to  expostulate 

What  majesty  should  be,  what  duty  is, 

Why  day  is  day,  night  night,  and  time  is  time, 

Were  nothing  but  to  waste  night,  day  and  time. 

Therefore — since  brevity  is  the  soul  of  wit, 

And  tediousuess  the  limbs  and  outward  flourishes, 

I  will  be  brief.     Your  noble  son  is  mad : 

Mad  call  I  it — for,  to  define  true  madness, 

What  is't,  but  to  be  nothing  else  but  mad  ? 

But  let  that  go. 

Queen.  More  matter  with  less  art. 

Pol.  Madam !  I  swear,  I  use  no  art  at  alL 
That  he  is  mad;  'tis  true  :  'tis  true,  'tis  pity  t 
And  pity  'tis,  'tis  true  (a  foolish  figure  ! 
But  farewell  it,  for  I  will  use  no  art.) 
Mad  let  us  grant  him,  then :  and  now  remains, 
That  we  find  out  the  cause  of  this  effect, 
Or  rather  say  the  cause  of  this  defect: 
For  this  effect  defective  comes  by  cause. 
Thus  it  remains,  and  the  remainder  thus. 
Perpend !  "  Hamlet,  Act  II.,  Sc.  2. 

Does  not  the  irresistible  sense  of  the  ludicrous  in  thia 
flourish  of  the  soul-surviving  body  of  old  Polonius's  intel~ 
lect,  not  less  than  in  the  endless  confirmations  and  most 
undeniable  matters  of  fact,  of  Tapster  Pompey  or  "  the 
hostess  of  the  tavern,"  prove  to  our  feelings,  even  before 
the  word  is  found  which  presents  the  truth  to  our  under- 
standings, that  confusion  and  formality  are  but  the  opposite 
poles  of  the  same  null-point  ? 

It  is  Shakspere's  peculiar  excellence,  that  throughout 
the  whole  of  his  splendid  picture  gallery  (the  reader  will 
excuse  the  confessed  inadequacy  of  this  metaphor),  we  find 
individuality  everywhere,  mere  portrait  nowhere.  In  all 
liis  various  characters,  we  still  feel  ourselves  communing 
with  the  same  human  nature,  which  is  everywhere  present 
as  the  vegetable  sap  in  the  branches,  sprays,  leaves,  buds, 


APPENDIX.  509 

blossoms,  and  fruits,  their  shapes,  tastes,  and  odonrs. 
Speaking  of  the  effect,  i.e.  his  works  themselves,  we  may 
define  the  excellence  of  their  method  as  consisting  in  that 
just  proportion,  that  union  and  interpenetration  of  the 
universal  and  the  particular,  which  must  ever  pervade  all 
works  of  decided  genius  and  true  science.  For  method 
implies  a  progressive  transition,  and  it  is  the  meaning  of 
the  word  in  the  original  language.  The  Greek  MtdoSos,  is 
literally  a  way,  or  path  of  transit.  Thus  we  extol  the 
Elements  of  Euclid,  or  Socrates'  discourse  with  the  slave 
in  the  Menon,  as  methodical,  a  term  which  no  one  who 
holds  himself  bound  to  think  or  speak  correctly  would 
apply  to  the  alphabetical  order  or  arrangement  of  a  common 
dictionary.  But  as,  without  continuous  transition,  there 
can  be  no  method,  so  without  a  pre-conception  there  can 
be  no  transition  with  continuity.  The  term,  method, 
cannot  therefore,  otherwise  than  by  abuse,  be  applied  to  a 
mere  dead  arrangement,  containing  in  itself  no  principle 
of  progression. 


III.  Notes  on  Chaucer  and  Spenser.     Remains  of  Lecture 
III.  of  the  course  of  1818. 

CHAUCER. 
Born  in  London,  1328.— Died  1400.1 

Chaucer  must  be  read  with  an  eye  to  the  Norman-French 
Trouveres,  of  whom  he  is  the  best  representative  in  English. 
He  had  great  powers  of  invention.  As  in  Shakspere,  his 
characters  represent  classes,  but  in  a  different  manner ;  * 

1  From  Mr.  Green's  note. — H.  N.  C.     Mr.  Green  took  notes  of  the 
course.     We  may  recall  Gillman's  remark  here :    "  The  attempts  to 
copy  his  lectures  verbatim  have  failed,  they  are  but  comments." — 
Life,  p.  336. 

2  See  note  to  Lecture  VI.,  1811-12,  p.  68. 


510  APPENDIX. 

Shakspere's  characters  are  the  representatives  of  the  interior 
nature  of  humanity,  in  which  some  element  has  become  so 
predominant  as  to  destroy  the  health  of  the  mind ;  whereas 
Chaucer's  are  rather  representatives  of  classes  of  manners- 
He  is  therefore  more  led  to  individualize  in  a  mere  personal 
sense.  Observe  Chaucer's  love  of  nature ;  and  how  happily 
the  subject  of  his  main  work  is  chosen.  When  you  reflect 
that  the  company  in  the  Decameron  have  retired  to  a 
place  of  safety  from  the  raging  of  a  pestilence,  their  mirth 
provokes  a  sense  of  their  unfeelingness  ;  whereas  in  Chaucer 
nothing  of  this  sort  occurs,  and  the  scheme  of  a  party  on  a 
pilgrimage,  with  different  ends  and  occupations,  aptly 
allows  of  the  greatest  variety  of  expression  in  the  tales.1 


SPENSER. 
Born  in  London,  1553.— Died  1599. 

There  is  this  difference,  among  many  others,  between 
Shakspere  and  Spenser : — Shakspere  is  never  coloured  by 
the  customs  of  his  age ;  what  appears  of  contemporary 
•character  in  him  is  merely  negative ;  it  is  just  not  some- 
thing else.  He  has  none  of  the  fictitious  realities  of  the 
classics,  none  of  the  grotesquenesses  of  chivalry,  none  of 
the  allegory  of  the  middle  ages ;  there  is  no  sectarianism 
.either  of  politics  or  religion,  no  miser,  no  witch, — no 
common  witch, — no  astrology — nothing  impermanent  of 
however  long  duration ;  but  he  stands  like  the  yew  tree  in 
Lorton  vale,  which  has  known  so  many  ages  that  it  belongs 
to  none  in  particular ;  a  living  image  of  endless  self-repro- 
duction, like  the  immortal  tree  of  Malabar.  In  Spenser 

1  "  Through  all  the  works  of  Chaucer  there  reigns  a  cheerfulness,  a 
manly  hilarity,  which  makes  it  almost  impossible  to  doubt  a  corre- 
spondent habit  of  feeling  in  the  author  himself." — Biographia  Literaria, 
.chap.  ii.  See  Appendix:  V.,  Mar,  15,  1834. 


APPENDIX.  511 

the  spirit  of  chivalry  is  entirely  predominant,  although 
•with  a  much  greater  infusion  of  the  poet's  own  individual 
self  into  it  than  is  found  in  any  other  writer.  He  has  the 
•wit  of  the  southern  with  the  deeper  inwardness  of  the 
northern  genius. 

No  one  can  appreciate  Spenser  without  some  reflection 
on  the  nature  of  allegorical  writing.  The  mere  etymological 
meaning  of  the  word,  allegory, — to  talk  of  one  thing  and 
thereby  convey  another, — is  too  wide.  The  true  sense  is 
this, — the  employment  of  one  set  of  agents  and  images  to 
convey  in  disguise  a  moral  meaning,  with  a  likeness  to  the 
imagination,  but  with  a  difference  to  the  understanding, — 
those  agents  and  images  being  so  combined  as  to  form  a 
homogeneous  whole.  This  distinguishes  it  from  metaphor, 
which  is  part  of  an  allegory.  But  allegory  is  not  properly 
•distinguishable  from  fable,  otherwise  than  as  the  first 
includes  the  second,  as  a  genus  its  species ;  for  in  a  fable 
there  must  be  nothing  but  what  is  universally  known  and 
acknowledged,  but  in  an  allegory  there  may  be  that  which 
is  new  and  not  previously  admitted.  The  pictures  of  the 
great  masters,  especially  of  the  Italian  schools,  are  genuine 
allegories.  Amongst  the  classics,  the  multitude  of  their 
gods  either  precluded  allegory  altogether,  or  else  made 
everything  allegory,  as  in  the  Hesiodic  Theogonia ;  for  you 
can  scarcely  distinguish  between  power  and  the  personifi- 
cation of  power.  The  Cupid  and  Psyche  of,  or  found  in, 
Apuleius,  is  a  phenomenon.  It  is  the  platonic  mode  of 
accounting  for  the  fall  of  man.  The  Battle  of  the  Soul1 
by  Prudentius  is  an  early  instance  of  Christian  allegory. 

Narrative  allegory  is  distinguished  from  mythology  as 
reality  from  symbol ;  it  is,  in  short,  the  proper  intermedium 
between  person  and  personification.  Where  it  is  too 
strongly  individualized,  it  ceases  to  be  allegory;  this  is 
often  felt  in  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  where  the  characters 
1  Psychomachia. — H.  N.  C. 


612  APPENDIX. 

are  real  persons  with  nicknames.  Perhaps  one  of  the 
most  curious  warnings  against  another  attempt  at  narrative 
allegory  on  a  great  scale,  may  be  found  in  Tasso's  account 
of  what  he  himself  intended  in  and  by  his  "  Jerusalem, 
Delivered." 

As  characteristic  of  Spenser,  I  would  call  your  particular 
attention  in  the  first  place  to  the  indescribable  sweetness 
and  fluent  projection  of  his  verse,  very  clearly  distinguish- 
able from  the  deeper  and  more  inwoven  harmonies  of 
Shakspere  and  Milton.  This  stanza  is  a  good  instance  of 
what  I  mean  : — 

"  Yet  she,  most  faithfull  ladie,  all  this  while 

Forsaken,  wofull,  solitarie  mayd, 

Far  from  all  peoples  preace,  as  in  exile, 

In  wildernesse  and  wastfull  deserts  strayd 

To  seeke  her  knight ;  who,  subtily  betrayd 

Through  that  late  vision  which  th'  enchaunter  wrought, 

Had  her  abandond ;  she,  of  nought  affrayd, 

Through  woods  and  wastnes  wide  him  daily  sought, 

Yet  wished  tydinges  none  of  him  unto  her  brought." 

F.  Qu.  B.  I.  c.  3.  at.  3. 

2.  Combined  with  this  sweetness  and  fluency,  the  scien- 
tific construction  of  the  metre  of  the  "  Faery  Queene  "  is 
very  noticeable.  One  of  Spenser's  arts  is  that  of  allitera- 
tion, and  he  uses  it  with  great  effect  in  doubling  the 
impression  of  an  image  : — 

"  In  wildernesse  and  wastful  deserts, — " 
***** 

"  Through  woods  and  wastnes  twlde, —  " 
***** 

"  They  passe  the  bitter  waves  of  Acheron, 

Where  many  soules  sit  •wailing  woefully, 

And  come  to  fiery  flood  of  P^legeton, 

Whereas  the  damned  ghosts  in  torments  fry, 

And  with  sharp,  shrilling  shrieks  doth  bootlesse  cry, — "  &c. 

He  is  particularly  given  to  an  alternate  alliteration,  which 
is,  perhaps,  when  well  used,  a  great  secret  in  melody : — 


APPENDIX.  513 

"A  ramping  lyon  rushed  suddenly,— 

*  *  *  *  » 

And  sad  to  see  her  sorrowful  constraint, 

***** 

And  on  the  grasse  her  rfaintie  Jimbes  did  fay, — "  &c. 

You  cannot  read  a  page  of  the  "  Faery  Queene,"  if  you  read 
for  that  purpose,  without  perceiving  the  intentional  allitera- 
tiveness  of  the  words ;  and  yet  so  skilfully  is  this  managed, 
that  it  never  strikes  any   unwarned   ear   as  artificial,   or 
other  than  the  result  of  the  necessary  movement  of  the  verse. 
3.  Spenser  displays  great  skill  in  harmonizing  his  de- 
scriptions of  external  nature  and  actual  incidents  with  the 
allegorical  character  and  epic  activity  of  the  poem.     Take 
these  two  beautiful  passages  as  illustrations  of  what  Imean: — 
"  By  this  the  northerne  wagoner  had  set 
His  sevenfold  teme  behind  the  stedfast  starre 
That  was  in  ocean  waves  yet  never  wet, 
But  firme  is  fixt,  and  sendeth  light  from  farre 
To  all  that  in  the  wide  deepe  wandring  arre; 
And  chearefull  chaunticlere  with  his  note  shrill 
Had  warned  once,  that  Phoebus'  fiery  carre 
In  hast  was  climbing  up  the  easterne  hill, 
Full  envious  that  Night  so  long  his  roome  did  fill  j 

When  those  accursed  messengers  of  hell, 

That  feigning  dreame,  and  that  faire-forged  spright 

Came,"  &c.— B.  I.  c.  2.  st.  1. 

****** 

"  At  last,  the  golden  oriental!  gate 

Of  greatest  Heaven  gan  to  open  fayre  ; 

And  Phoebus,  fresh  as  brydegrome  to  his  mate, 

Came  dauncing  forth,  shaking  his  deawie  hayre ; 

And  hurld  his  glistring  beams  through  gloomy  ayre. 

Which  when  the  wakeful  Elfe  perceiv'd,  streightway 

He  started  up,  and  did  him  selfc  prepayre 

In  sunbright  armes  and  battailons  '  array ; 

For  with  that  Pagan  proud  he  combat  will  that  day.* 

Ib.  c.  5.  it.  2. 


1  Read  "battailous." 
L  L 


514  APPENPIX. 

Observe  also  the  exceeding  vividness  of  Spenser's  de- 
scriptions. They  are  not,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word, 
picturesque ;  but  are  composed  of  a  wondrous  series  of 
images,  as  in  our  dreams.  Compare  the  following  passage 
with  anything  you  may  remember  in  pari  materia  in  Milton 
or  Shakspere  : — • 

"  His  haughtie  helmet,  horrid  all  with  gold, 

Both  glorious  brightnesse  and  great  tcrrour  bredd, 

For  all  the  crest  a  dragon  did  enfold 

With  greeclie  pawes,  and  over  all  did  spredd 

His  golden  winges ;  his  dreadfull  hideous  hedd, 

Close  couched  on  the  bever,  seemd  to  throw 

From  flaming  mouth  bright  sparkles  fiery  redd, 

That  suddeine  horrour  to  faint  hartes  did  show ; 

And  scaly  tayle  was  stretcht  adowne  his  back  full  low. 

Upon  the  top  of  all  his  loftie  crest 

A  bounch  of  haires  discolourd  diversly, 

With  sprinkled  pearle  and  gold  full  richly  drest, 

Did  shake,  and  seemed  to  daunce  for  jollitie; 

Like  to  an  almond  tree  ymounted  hye 

On  top  of  greene  Selinis  all  alone, 

With  blossoms  brave  bedecked  daintily, 

Whose  tender  locks  do  tremble  every  one 

At  everie  little  breath  that  under  heaven  is  blowne." 

Ib,  c.  7.  st.  31-2. 

4.  You  will  take  especial  note  of  the  marvellous  indepen- 
dence and  true  imaginative  absence  of  all  particular  space 
or  time  in  the  "Faery  Queene."  It  is  in  the  domains 
neither  of  history  or  geography ;  it  is  ignorant  of  all 
artificial  boundary,  all  material  obstacles;  it  is  truly  in 
land  of  Faery,  that  is,  of  mental  space.  The  poet  has 
placed  you  in  a  dream,  a  charmed  sleep,  and  you  neither 
wish,  nor  have  the  power,  to  inquire  where  you  are,  or 
how  you  got  there.  It  reminds  me  of  some  lines  of  my 

own : — 

"  Oh  !  would  to  Alia ! 
The  raven  or  the  sea-irew  were  appointed 


APPENDIX.  515 

To  bring  me  food! — or  rather  that  my  soul 
Might  draw  in  life  from  the  universal  air! 
It  were  a  lot  divine,  in  some  small  skiff, 
Along  some  ocean's  boundless  solitude, 
To  float  for  ever  with  a  careless  course, 
And  think  myself  the  only  being  alive!" 

Bemorse,  Act  IV. ,  8c.  8. 

Indeed  Spenser  himself,  in  the  conduct  of  his  great  poem, 
may  be  represented  under  the  same  image,  his  symbolizing 
purpose  being  his  mariner's  compass  : — 

"'  As  pilot  well  expert  in  perilous  wave, 
That  to  a  stedfast  s>tarre  his  course  hath  bent, 
When  foggy  mistes  or  cloudy  tempests  have 
The  fiiithfull  light  of  that  faire  lampe  yblent, 
And  coverd  Heaven  with  hideous  dreriment ; 
Upon  his  card  and  compas  firmes  his  eye, 
The  maysters  of  his  long  experiment, 
And  to  them  does  the  steddy  helme  apply, 
Bidding  his  winged  vessell  fairely  forward  fly.1* 

B.  IF.  c.  7.  st.  1. 

So  the  poet  through  the  realms  of  allegory. 

5.  You  should  note  the  quintessential  character  of  Chris- 
tian chivalry  in  all  his  characters,  but  more  especially  in 
his  women.  The  Greeks,  except,  perhaps,  in  Homer,  seem 
to  have  had  no  way  of  making  their  women  interesting, 
but  by  unsexing  them,  as  in  the  instances  of  the  tragic 
Medea,  Electra,  &c.  Contrast  such  characters  with  Spen- 
ser's Una,  who  exhibits  no  prominent  feature,  has  no  par- 
ticularization,  but  produces  the  same  feeling  that  a  statue 
does,  when  contemplated  at  a  distance : — 

"  From  her  fayre  head  her  fillet  she  undight, 

And  layd  her  stole  aside  :  her  angels  face, 

As  the  great  eye  of  Heaven,  shyned  bright, 

And  made  a  sunshine  in  the  shady  place ; 

Did  never  mortal  eye  behold  such  heavenly  grace." 

B.  I.  c.  3.  at.  4. 


5]  6  APPENDIX. 

6.  In  Spenser  we  see  the  brightest  and  pnrest  form  of 
that  nationality  which  was  so  common  a  characteristic  of 
onr  elder  poets.  There  is  nothing  unamiable,  nothing  con- 
temptuous of  others,  in  it.  To  glorify  their*  country — to 
elevate  England  into  a  queen,  an  empress  of  the  heart — • 
this  was  their  passion  and  object ;  and  how  dear  and  im- 
portant an  object  it  was  or  may  be,  let  Spain,  in  the  recol- 
lection of  her  Cid,  declare !  There  is  a  great  magic  in 
national  names.  What  a  damper  to  all  interest  is  a  list  of 
native  East  Indian  merchants  !  Unknown  names  are  non- 
conductors ;  they  stop  all  sympathy.  No  one  of  our  poets 
has  touched  this  string  more  exquisitely  than  Spenser ; 
especially  in  his  chronicle  of  the  British  Kings  (B.  II. 
c.  10),  and  the  marriage  of  the  Thames  with  the  Medway 
(B.  IV.  c.  11),  in  both  which  passages  the  mere  names 
constitute  half  the  pleasure  we  receive.  To  the  same  feel- 
ing we  must  in  particular  attribute  Spenser's  sweet  reference 
to  Ireland : — 

"  Ne  thence  the  Irishe  rivers  absent  were ; 

Sith  no  Jesse  famous  than  the  rest  they  be,"  &c. — Ib. 
****** 

"And  Mulla  mine,  whose  waves  I  whilom  taught  to  weep." — Ib, 

And  there  is  a  beautiful  passage  of  the  same  sort  in  the 
"  Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again  :  " — 

" '  One  day/  quoth  he,  '  I  sat,  as  was  my  trade, 
Under  the  foot  of  Mole,'"  &c. 

Lastly,  the  great  and  prevailing  character  of  Spenser's 
mind  is  fancy  under  the  conditions  of  imagination,  as  an 
ever  present  but  not  always  active  power.  He  has  an 
imaginative  fancy,  but  he  has  not  imagination,  in  kind  or 
degree,  as  Shakspere  and  Milton  have ;  the  boldest  effort 
of  his  powers  in  this  way  is  the  character  of  Talus.1  Add 

1  B.  5.  "Legend  of  Artegall."— H.  N.  C. 


APPENDIX.  517 

to  this  a  feminine  tenderness  and  almost  maidenly  purity 
of  feeling,  and  above  all,  a  deep  moral  earnestness  which 
produces  a  believing  sympathy  and  acquiescence  in  the 
reader,  and  you  have  a  tolerably  adequate  view  of  Spenser's 
intellectual  bein£. 


IV.  Notes  on  Milton.     Remains   of   Lecture   III.   of   the 
Course  of  1818.1 

MILTON. 
Born  in  London,  1608.— Died,  1674. 

If  we  divide  the  period  from  the  accession  of  Elizabeth 
to  the  Protectorate  of  Cromwell  into  two  unequal  portions, 
the  first  ending  with  the  death  of  James  I.  the  other  com- 
prehending the  reign  of  Charles  and  the  brief  glories  of 
the  Republic,  we  are  forcibly  struck  with  a  difference  in 
the  character  of  the  illustrious  actors,  by  whom  each  period 
is  rendered  severally  memorable.  Or  rather,  the  difference 
in  the  characters  of  the  great  men  in  each  period,  leads  us 
to  make  this  division.  Eminent  as  the  intellectual  powers 
were  that  were  displayed  in  both ;  yet  in  the  number  of 
great  men,  in  the  various  sorts  of  excellence,  and  not 
merely  in  the  variety  but  almost  diversity  of  talents  united 
in  the  same  individual,  the  age  of  Charles  falls  short  of  its 
predecessor ;  and  the  stars  of  the  Parliament,  keen  as  their 
radiance  was,  in  fulness  and  richness  of  lustre,  yield  to  the 
constellation  at  the  court  of  Elizabeth ; — which  can  only 
be  paralleled  by  Greece  in  her  brightest  moment,  when  the 
titles  of  the  poet,  the  philosopher,  the  historian,  the  states- 
man and  the  general  not  seldom  formed  a  garland  round 

1  Mr.  H.  N.  Coleridge  appends  to  the  remains  of  this  lecture  some 
notes  on  Milton  from  different  sources.  We  have  given  them,  so  far  a 3 
ihej  concern  us. 


518  APPENDIX. 

the  same  head,  as  in  the  instances  of  our  Sidneys  and 
Ralcighs.  But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  vehe- 
mence of  will,  an  enthusiasm  of  principle,  a  depth  and  an 
earnestness  of  spirit,  which  the  charms  of  individual  fame 
and  personal  aggrandizement  could  not  pacify, — an  aspi- 
ration after  reality,  permanence,  and  general  good, — in 
short,  a  moral  grandeur  in  the  latter  period,  with  which 
the  low  intrigues,  Machiavellic  maxims,  and  selfish  and 
servile  ambition  of  the  former,  stand  in  painful  contrast. 

The  causes  of  this  it  belongs  not  to  the  present  occasion 
to  detail  at  length ;  but  a  mere  allusion  to  the  quick  suc- 
cession of  revolutions  in  religion,  breeding  a  political  in- 
difference in  the  mass  of  men  to  religion  itself,  the  enor- 
mous increase  of  the  royal  power  in  consequence  of  the 
humiliation  of  the  nobility  and  the  clergy — the  transference 
of  the  papal  authority  to  the  crown, — the  unfixed  state  of 
Elizabeth's  own  opinions,  whose  inclinations  were  as  popish 
as  her  interests  were  protestant — the  controversial  extra- 
vagance and  practical  imbecility  of  her  successor — will 
help  to  explain  the  former  period ;  and  the  persecutions 
that  had  given  a  life  and  soul  interest  to  the  disputes  so 
imprudently  fostered  by  James, — the  ardour  of  a  conscious 
increase  of  power  in  the  commons,  and  the  greater  austerity 
of  manners  and  maxims,  the  natural  product  and  most 
formidable  weapon  of  religious  disputation,  not  merely 
in  conjunction,  but  in  closest  combination,  with  newly 
awakened  political  and  republican  zeal,  these  perhaps 
account  for  the  character  of  the  latter  aera. 

In  the  close  of  the  former  period,  and  during  the  bloom 
of  the  latter,  the  poet  Milton  was  educated  and  formed; 
and  he  survived  the  latter,  and  all  the  fond  hopes  and 
aspirations  which  had  been  its  life ;  and  so  in  evil  days>* 

1  Coleridge  is  thinking  of  the  passage, — 

"  Standing  on  earth,  not  rapt  above  the  pole, 
More  safe  I  sing  with  mortal  voice,  unchanged 


APPENDIX.  519 

standing  as  the  representative  of  the  combined  excellence 
of  both  periods,  he  produced  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  as  by 
an  after- throe  of  nature.  "There  are  some  persons 
(observes  a  divine,  a  contemporary  of  Milton's)  of  whom 
the  grace  of  God  takes  early  hold,  and  the  good  spirit 
inhabiting  them  carries  them  on  in  an  even  constancy 
through  innocence  into  virtue,  their  Christianity  bearing 
equal  date  with  their  manhood,  and  reason  and  religion, 
like  warp  and  woof,  running  together,  make  up  one  web 
of  a  wise  and  exemplary  life.  This  (he  adds)  is  a  most 
happy  case,  wherever  it  happens ;  for  besides  that  there  is 
no  sweeter  or  more  lovely  thing  on  earth  than  the  early 
buds  of  piety,  which  drew  from  our  Saviour  signal  affection 
to  the  beloved  disciple,  it  is  better  to  have  no  wound  than 
to  experience  the  most  sovereign  balsam,  which,  if  it  work 
a  cure,  yet  usually  leaves  a  scar  behind."  Although  it  was 
and  is  my  intention  to  defer  the  consideration  of  Milton'a 
own  character  to  the  conclusion  of  this  Lecture,  yet  I  could 
not  prevail  on  myself  to  approach  the  "Paradise  Lost" 
without  impressing  on  your  minds  the  conditions  under 
which  such  a  work  was  in  fact  producible  at  all,  the  original 
genius  having  been  assumed  as  the  immediate  agent  and 
efficient  cause ;  and  these  conditions  I  find  in  the  character 
of  the  times  and  in  his  own  character.  The  age  in  which 
the  foundations  of  his  mind  were  laid,  was  congenial  to  it 
as  one  golden  sera  of  profound  erudition  and  individual 
genius ; — that  in  which  the  superstructure  was  carried  up, 
was  no  less  favourable  to  it  by  a  sternness  of  discipline 
and  a  show  of  self-control,  highly  flattering  to  the  imagi- 
native dignity  of  an  heir  of  fame,  and  which  won  Milton 

To  hoarse  or  mute,  though  fallen  on  evil  days, 
On  evil  days  though  fallen,  and  evil  tongues ; 
In  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compass'd  round, 
And  solitude." 

Par.  Lost.  vii.  23-8. 


520  APPENDIX. 

over  from  the  dear-loved  delights  of  academic  groves  and 
cathedral  aisles  to  the  anti-prelatic  party.  It  acted  on  him, 
too,  no  doubt,  and  modified  his  studies  by  a  characteristic 
controversial  spirit  (his  presentation  of  Grod  is  tinted  with 
it) — a  spirit  not  less  busy  indeed  in  political  than  in 
theological  and  ecclesiastical  dispute,  but  carrying  on  the 
former  almost  always,  more  or  less,  in  the  guise  of  the 
latter.  And  so  far  as  Pope's  censure l  of  our  poet, — that 
he  makes  God  the  Father  a  school  divine — is  just,  we  must 
attribute  it  to  the  character  of  his  age,  from  which  the 
men  of  genius,  who  escaped,  escaped  by  a  worse  disease, 
the  licentious  indifference  of  a  Frenchified  court. 

Such  was  the  nidus  or  soil,  which  constituted,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word,  the  circumstances  of  Milton's 
mind.  In  his  mind  itself  there  were  purity  and  piety 
absolute ;  an  imagination  to  which  neither  the  past  nor 
the  present  were  interesting,  except  as  far  as  they  called 
forth  and  enlivened  the  great  ideal,  in  which  and  for  which 
he  lived ;  a  keen  love  of  truth,  which,  after  many  weary 
pursuits,  found  a  harbour  in  a  gublime  listening  to  the  still 
voice  in  his  own  spirit,  and  as  keen  a  love  of  his  country, 
which,  after  a  disappointment  still  more  depressive,  ex- 
panded and  soared  into  a  love  of  man  as  a  probationer  of 
immortality.  These  were,  these  alone  could  be,  the  con- 
ditions tinder  which  such  a  work  as  the  "  Paradise  Lost " 
conld  be  conceived  and  accomplished.  By  a  life-long  study 
Milton  had  known — 

"  What  was  of  use  to  know, 
What  best  to  say  could  say,  to  do  had  done. 
His  actions  to  his  words  n^reed,  his  words 
To  his  large  heart  gave  utterance  due,  his  heart 
Contain'd  of  good,  wise,  fair,  the  perfect  shape  j " 


1  See  Appendix,  V.  t  Sept.  4,  1833. 


APPENDIX.  521 

and  he  left  the  imperishable  total,  as  a  bequest  to  the  ages 
coming,  in  the  "  Paradise  Lost."  1 

Difficult  as  I  shall  find  it  to  turn  over  these  leaves  with- 
out catching  some  passage,  which  would  tempt  me  to  stop, 
I  propose  to  consider,  1st,  the  general  plan 'and  arrange- 
ment of  the  work ; — 2ndly,  the  subject  with  its  difficulties 
and  advantages ; — 3rdly,  the  poet's  object,  the  spirit  in 
the  letter,  the  Irdvpiov  eV  /uvda,  the  true  school-divinity; 
and  lastly,  the  characteristic  excellencies  of  the  poem,  in 
what  they  consist,  and  by  what  means  they  were  produced. 

1.  As  to  the  plan  and  ordonnance  of  the  Poem. 
Compare  it  with  the  "  Iliad,"  many  of  the  books  of 

•which  might  change  places  without  any  injury  to  the 
thread  of  the  story.  Indeed,  I  doubt  the  original  existence 
of  the  "  Iliad  "  as  one  poem ;  it  seems  more  probable  that 
it  was  put  together  about  the  time  of  the  Pisistratidaa. 
The  "  Iliad  " — and,  more  or  less,  all  epic  poems,  the  sub- 
jects of  which  are  taken  from  history — have  no  rounded 
conclusion ;  they  remain,  after  all,  but  single  chapters 
from  the  volume  of  history,  although  they  are  ornamental 
chapters.  Consider  the  exquisite  simplicity  of  the  "  Parar 
dise  Lost."  It  and  it  alone  really  possesses  a  beginning,  a 
middle,  and  an  end ;  it  has  the  totality  of  the  poem  as 
distinguished  from  the  ab  ovo  birth  and  parentage,  or 
straight  line,  of  history. 

2.  As  to  the 'subject. 

In  Homer,  the  supposed  importance  of  the  subject,  as 
the  first  effort  of  confederated  Greece,  is  an  after-thought 
of  the  critics ;  and  the  interest,  such  as  it  is,  derived  from 
the  events  themselves,  as  distinguished  from  the  manner 

1  Here  Mr.  C.  notes  :  "  Not  perhaps  here,  but  towards,  or  as,  the 
conclusion,  to  chastize  the  fashionable  notion  that  poetry  is  a  relaxation 
or  amusement,  one  of  the  superfluous  toys  and  luxuries  of  the  intellect .' 
To  contrast  the  permanence  of  poems  with  the  transiency  and  fleeting 
moral  effects  of  empires,  and  what  are  called,  great  events." — II.  N.  C. 


b'22  APPENDIX. 

of  representing  them,  is  very  languid  to  all  but  Greeks. 
It  is  a  Greek  poem.  The  superiority  of  the  "  Paradise 
Lost "  is  obvious  in  this  respect,  that  the  interest  transcends 
the  limits  of  a  nation.  But  we  do  not  generally  dwell  on 
this  excellence  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  because  it  seems 
attributable  to  Christianity  itself ; — yet  in  fact  the  interest 
is  wider  than  Christendom,  and  comprehends  the  Jewish 
and  Mohammedan  worlds ; — nay,  still  further,  inasmuch  as 
it  repi'esents  the  origin  of  evil,  and  the  combat  of  evil  and 
good,  it  contains  matter  of  deep  interest  to  all  mankind,  as 
forming  the  basis  of  all  religion,  and  the  true  occasion  of 
all  philosophy  whatsoever. 

The  Fall  of  Man  is  the  subject ;  Satan  is  the  cause ; 
man's  blissful  state  the  immediate  object  of  his  enmity  and 
attack  ;  man  is  warned  by  an  angel  who  gives  him  an 
account  of  all  that  was  requisite  to  be  known,  to  make  the 
warning  at  once  intelligible  and  awful ;  then  the  temptation 
ensues,  and  the  Fall ;  then  the  immediate  sensible  conse- 
quence ;  then  the  consolation,  wherein  an  angel  presents  a 
vision  of  the  history  of  men  with  the  ultimate  triumph  of 
the  Redeemer.  Nothing  is  touched  in  this  vision  but  what 
is  of  general  interest  in  religion  ;  anything  else  would  have 
been  improper. 

The  inferiority  of  Klopstock's  "Messiah"  is  inexpres- 
sible. I  admit  the  prerogative  of  poetic  feeling,  and  poetic 
faith ;  but  I  cannot  suspend  the  judgment  even  for  a 
moment.  A  poem  may  in  one  sense  be  a  dream,  but  it 
must  be  a  waking  dream.  In  Milton  you  have  a  religious 
faith  combined  with  the  moral  nature  ;  it  is  an  efflux ;  you 
go  along  with  it.  In  Klopstock  there  is  a  wilfulness ;  he 
makes  things  so  and  so.  The  feigned  speeches  and  events 
in  the  "Messiah"  shock  us  like  falsehoods;  but  nothing 
of  that  sort  is  felt  in  the  "Paradise  Lost,"  in  which  no 
particulars,  at  least  very  few  indeed,  are  touched  which  can 
come  into  collision  or  juxta-position  with  recorded  matter. 


APPENDIX.  523 

But  notwithstanding  the  advantages  in  Milton's  subjecf, 
there  were  concomitant  insuperable  difficulties,  and  Milton 
has  exhibited  marvellous  skill  in  keeping  most  of  them  out 
of  sight.  High  poetry  is  the  translation  of  reality  into  the 
ideal  under  the  predicament  of  succession  of  time  only. 
The  poet  is  an  historian,  upon  condition  of  moral  power 
being  the  only  force  in  the  universe.  The  very  grandeur 
of  his  subject  ministered  a  difficulty  to  Milton.  The  state- 
ment of  a  being  of  high  intellect,  warring  against  the 
supreme  Being,  seems  to  contradict  the  idea  of  a  supreme 
Being.  Milton  precludes  our  feeling  this,  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, by  keeping  the  peculiar  attributes  of  divinity  less  in 
sight,  making  them  to  a  certain  extent  allegorical  only. 
Again,  poetry  implies  the  language  of  excitement ;  yet  how 
to  reconcile  such  language  with  God  ?  Hence  Milton  con- 
fines the  poetic  passion  in  God's  speeches  to  the  language 
of  scripture ;  and  once  only  allows  the  passio  vera,  or  quasi- 
humana  to  appear,  in  the  passage,  where  the  Father  con- 
templates his  own  likeness  in  the  Son  before  the  battle : — 

"  Go  then,  thou  Mightiest,  in  thy  Father's  might, 
Ascend  my  chariot,  guide  the  rapid  wheels 
That  shake  Heaven's  basis,  bring  forth  all  my  war, 
My  bow  and  thunder;  my  almighty  arms 
Gird  on,  and  sword  upon  thy  puissant  thigh ; 
Pursue  these  sons  of  darkness,  drive  them  out 
From  all  Heaven's  bounds  into  the  utter  deep  t 
There  let  them  learn,  as  likes  them,  to  despise 
God  and  Messiah  his  anointed  king." 

B.  VI.  v.  710-18. 

3.  As  to  Milton's  object : — 

It  was  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man !  The  con- 
troversial spirit  observable  in  many  parts  of  the  poem, 
especially  in  God's  speeches,  is  immediately  attributable  to 
the  great  controversy  of  that  age,  the  origination  of  evil. 
The  Armenians  considered  it  a  mere  calamity.  The  Cal- 
vinists  took  away  all  human  will.  Milton  asserted  tho 


APPENDIX. 

will,  but  declared  for  the  enslavement  of  the  will  out  of  an 
act  of  the  will  itself.  There  are  three  powers  in  us,  which 
distinguish  us  from  the  beasts  that  perish; — 1,  reason;  2, 
the  power  of  viewing  universal  truth ;  and  3,  the  power  of 
contracting  universal  truth  into  particulars.  Religion  is 
the  will  in  the  reason,  and  love  in  the  will. 

The  character  of  Satan  is  pride  and  sensual  indulgence, 
finding  in  self  the  sole  motive  of  action.  It  is  the  character 
so  often  seen  in  little  on  the  political  stage.  It  exhibits  all 
the  restlessness,  temerity,  and  cunning  which  have  marked 
the  mighty  hunters  of  mankind  from  Nimrod  to  Napoleon. 
The  common  fascination  of  men  is,  that  these  great  men, 
as  they  are  called,  must  act  from  some  great  motive. 
Milton  has  carefully  marked  in  his  Satan  the  intense  selfish- 
ness, the  alcohol  of  egotism,  which  would  rather  reign  in 
kell  than  serve  in  heaven.  To  place  this  lust  of  self  in 
opposition  to  denial  of  self  or  duty,  and  to  show  what 
exertions  it  would  make,  and  what  pains  endure  to  accom- 
plish its  end,  is  Milton's  particular  object  in  the  character 
of  Satan.  But  around  this  character  he  has  thrown  a 
singularity  of  daring,  a  grandeur  of  sufferance,  and  a 
ruined  splendour,  which  constitute  the  very  height  of 
poetic  sublimity. 

Lastly,  as  to  the  execution  : l  — 

The  language  and  versification  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost " 
are  peculiar  in  being  so  much  more  necessarily  corre- 
spondent to  each  than  those  in  any  other  poem  or  poet. 
Tiie  connection  of  the  sentences  and  the  position  of  the 
words  are  exquisitely  artificial ;  but  the  position  is  rather 
according  to  the  logic  of  passion  or  universal  logic,  than  to 
the  logic  of  grammar.  Milton  attempted  to  make  the 
English  language  obey  the  logic  of  passion  as  perfectly  as 
the  Greek  and  Latin.  Hence  the  occasional  harshness  in 
the  construction. 

1  See  Appendix,  V. :  May  12,  1830. 


APPENDIX.  525 

Sublimity  is  the  pre-eminent  characteristic  of  the 
"  Paradise  Lost."  It  is  not  an  arithmetical  sublime  like 
Klopstock's,  whose  rule  always  is  to  treat  what  we  might 
think  large  as  contemptibly  small.  Klopstock  mistakes 
bigness  for  greatness.  There  is  a  greatness  arising  from 
images  of  effort  and  daring,  and  also  from  those  of  moral 
endurance:  in  Milton  both  are  united.  The  fallen  angels 
are  human  passions,  invested  with  a  dramatic  reality. 

The  apostrophe  to  light  at  the  commencement  of  the 
third  book  is  particularly  beautiful  as  an  intermediate  link 
between  Hell  and  Heaven ;  and  observe,  how  the  second 
and  third  book  support  the  subjective  character  of  the 
poem.  In  all  modern  poetry  in  Christendom  there  is  an 
under  consciousness  of  a  sinful  nature,  a  fleeting  away  of 
external  things,  the  mind  or  subject  greater  than  the  object, 
the  reflective  character  predominant.  In  the  "  Paradise 
Lost"  the  sublimest  parts  are  the  revelations  of  Milton's 
own  mind,  producing  itself  and  evolving  its  own  greatness  j 
and  this  is  so  truly  so,  that  when  that  which  is  merely 
entertaining  for  its  objective  beauty  is  introduced,  it  at 
first  seems  a  discord.  , 

In  the  description  of  Paradise  itself  you  have  Milton's 
sunny  side  as  a  man;  here  his  descriptive  powers  are 
exercised  to  the  utmost,  and  he  draws  deep  upon  his  Italian 
resources.  In  the  description  of  Eve,  and  throughout  this 
part  of  the  poem,  the  poet  is  predominant  over  the  theolo- 
gian. Dress  is  the  symbol  of  the  Fall,  but  the  mark  of 
intellect ;  and  the  metaphysics  of  dress  are,  the  hiding 
what  is  not  symbolic  and  displaying  by  discrimination 
what  is.  The  love  of  Adam  and  Eve  in  Paradise  is  of  the 
highest  merit — not  phantomatic,  and  yet  removed  from 
everything  degrading.  It  is  the  sentiment  of  one  rational 
being  towards  another  made  tender  by  a  specific  difference 
in  that  which  is  essentially  the  same  in  both ;  it  i» 
a  union  of  opposites,  a  giving  and  receiving  mutually 


52(5  APPENPTX. 

of  the  permanent  in  either,  a  completion  of  each  in  the 
other. 

Milton  is  not  a  picturesque,  but  a  musical,  poet ;  although 
he  has  this  merit  that  the  object  chosen  by  him  for  any 
particular  foreground  always  remains  prominent  to  the 
end,  enriched,  but  not  incumbered,  by  the  opulence  of 
descriptive  details  furnished  by  an  exhaustless  imagination. 
I  wish  the  "  Paradise  Lost  "  were  more  carefully  read  and 
studied  than  I  can  see  any  ground  for  believing  it  is,  espe- 
cially those  parts  which,  from  the  habit  of  always  looking 
for  a  story  in  poetry,  are  scarcely  read  at  all, — as  for 
example,  Adam's  vision  of  future  events  in  the  llth  and 
12th  books.  No  one  can  rise  from  the  perusal  of  this 
immortal  poem  without  a  deep  sense  of  the  grandeur  and 
the  purity  of  Milton's  soul,  or  without  feeling  how  sus- 
ceptible of  domestic  enjoyments  he  really  was,  notwith- 
standing the  discomforts  which  actually  resulted  from  an 
apparently  unhappy  choice  in  marriage.  He  was,  as  every 
truly  great  poet  has  ever  been,  a  good  man ;  but  finding  it 
impossible  to  realize  his  own  aspii'ations,  either  in  religion, 
or  politics,  or  society,  he  gave  up  his  heart  to  the  living 
spirit  and  light  within  him,  and  avenged  himself  on  the 
world  by  enriching  it  with  this  record  of  his  own  trans- 
pendant  ideal. 

NOTES  ox  MILTON.     180 7.1 

(Hay ley  quotes  the  following  passage  : — ) 

"  Time  serves  not  now,  and,  perhaps,  I  might  seem  too  profuse  to 
give  any  certain  account  of  what  the  mind  at  home,  in  the  spacious 
circuits  of  her  musing,  hath  liberty  to  propose  to  herself,  though  of 


1  These  notes  were  written  by  Mr.  Coleridge  in  a  copy  of  Hayley's 
"  £.ife  of  Milton "  (4to.  1796),  belonging  to  Mr.  Poole.  By  him  they 
were  communicated,  and  this  seems  the  fittest  place  for  their  pub- 
lication.—H.  N.  C. 


APPENDIX.  527 

highest  hope  and  hardest  attempting;  whether  that  epic  form,  whereof 
the  two  poems  of  Homer,  and  those  other  two  of  Virgil  and  Tasso,  are 
a  diffuse,  and  the  Book  of  Job  a  brief,  model"  (p.  69.) 

These  latter  words  deserve  particular  notice.  I  do  not 
doubt  that  Milton  intended  his  "  Paradise  Lost "  as  an 
epic  of  the  first  class,  and  that  the  poetic  dialogue  of  the 
Book  of  Job  was  his  model  for  the  general  scheme  of  hi,3 
"  Paradise  Regained."  Readers  would  not  be  disappointed 
in  this  latter  poem,  if  they  proceeded  to  a  perusal  of  it 
with  a  proper  preconception  of  the  kind  of  interest  intended 
to  be  excited  in  that  admirable  work.  In  its  kind  it  is  the 
most  perfect  poem  extant,  though  its  kind  may  be  inferior 
in  interest — being  in  its  essence  didactic — to  that  other 
sort,  in  which  instruction  is  conveyed  more  effectively,  be- 
cause less  directly,  in  connection  with  stronger  and  more 
pleasurable  emotions,  and  thereby  in  a  closer  affinity  with 
action.  But  might  we  not  as  rationally  object  to  an 
accomplished  woman's  conversing,  however  agreeably,  be- 
cause it  has  happened  that  we  have  received  a  keener 
pleasure  from  her  singing  to  the  harp  ?  Si  genus  sit  probo 
et  sapienti  viro  liaud  indignum,  et  si  poema  sit  in  suo  genere 
perfectum,  satis  est.  Quod  si  hoc  auctor  idem  altioribus 
numeris  et  carmini  diviniori  iptum  per  se  divinum  super- 
addiderit,  mehercule  satis  est,  et  plusquam  satis.  I  cannot, 
however,  but  wish  that  the  answer  of  Jesus  to  Satan  in 
the  4th  book  (v.  285),— 

"  Think  not  but  that  I  know  these  things  ;  or  think 
I  know  them  not,  not  therefore  am  I  short 
Of  knowing  what  I  ought,"  &c. 

had  breathed  the  spirit  of  Hayley's  noble  quotation,  rather 
than  the  narrow  bigotry  of  Gregory  the  Great.  The  pas- 
sage is,  indeed,  excellent,  and  is  partially  true  ;  but  partial 
truth  is  the  worst  mode  of  conveying  falsehood. 

(Hayley,  p.  250.  Hayley's  conjectures  on  the  origin  of 
the  "  Paradise  Lost ")  :— 


52£  APPENDIX. 

If  Milton  borrowed  a  hint  from  any  writer,  it  was  more 
probably  from  Strada's  "  Prolusions,"  in  which  the  Fall  of 
the  Angels  is  pointed  out  as  the  noblest  subject  for  a 
Christian  poet.1  The  more  dissimilar  the  detailed  images 
are,  the  more  likely  it  is  that  a  great  genius  should  catch 
the  general  idea. 

(Hayl.  p.  294.     Extracts  from  the  Adamo  of  Andreini :) 

"  I/iicifero.  Che  dal  mio  centro  oscuro 

Mi  chiama  a  rimirar  cotanta  luce  ? 

Who  from  my  dark  abyss 

Calls  me  to  gaze  on  this  excess  of  light?" 

The  words  in  italics  are  an  unfair  translation.  They 
may  suggest  that  Milton  really  had  read  and  did  imitate 
this  drama.  The  original  is  "  in  so  great  light."  Indeed 
the  whole  version  is  affectedly  and  inaccurately  Miltonic. 

Ib.  v.  11.  Che  di  fango  opre  festi — 

Forming  thy  works  of  dust  (no,  dirt. — ) 

Ib.  v.  17.  Tessa  pur  stella  a  Stella 

V  aggiungo  e  luna,  e  sole. — 

Let  him  unite  above 

Star  upon  star,  moon,  sun." 

Let  him  weave  star  to  star, 
Then  join  both  moon  and  sun ! 

"  Ib.  T.  21.  Ch  'al  fin  con  biasmo  e  scorno 

Vana  1'  opra  sara,  vano  il  sudore! 

Since  in  the  end  division 

Shall  prove  his  works  and  all  his  efforts  vain." 


1  The  reference  seems  generally  to  be  to  the  5th  Prolusion  of  the  1st 
Book.  Hie  arcus  ac  tela,  quibus  olim  in  magno  illo  Superum  tumultu 
princeps  armorum  Michael  confixit  anctorem  proditionis  ;  Me  fulmina 
humance  mentis  terror.  *  *  *  In  nubibus  armatas  bello  legiones 
instruam,  atque  inde  pro  re  nata  auxiliarcs  ad  terram  copias  evocabo. 
*  *  *  Hie  mihi  C (elites,  quos  esscferunt  elementorum  tutelar es,  prima 
ilia  corpora  miscebunt.  Sect.  4. — H.  N.  C. 


APPENDIX.  629 

Since  finally  with  censure  and  disdain 
Vain  shall  the  work  be,  and  his  toil  be  vain ! 


1796.1 

The  reader  of  Milton  must  be  always  on  his  duty :  he  is 
surrounded  with  sense ;  it  rises  in  every  line ;  every  word 
is  to  the  purpose.  There  are  no  lazy  intervals ;  all  has 
been  considered,  and  demands  and  merits  observation.  If 
this  be  called  obscurity,  let  it  be  remembered  that  it  is  such 
an  obscurity  as  is  a  compliment  to  the  reader ;  not  that 
vicious  obscurity,  which  proceeds  from  a  muddled  head. 


V.  Extracts  from  the  "  Table  Tall:"* 

Othello. — "  Othello  must  not  be  conceived  as  a  negro,  but 
a  high  and  chivalrous  Moorish  chief.  Shakspere  learned 
the  spirit  of  the  character  from  the  Spanish  poetry,  which 
was  prevalent  in  England  in  his  time.3  Jealousy  does  not 
strike  me  as  the  point  in  his  passion ;  I  take  it  to  be  rather 
an  agony  that  the  creature,  whom  he  had  believed  angelic, 
with  whom  he  had  garnered  up  his  heart,  and  whom  he 
could  not  help  still  loving,  should  be  proved  impure  and 
worthless.  It  was  the  struggle  not  to  love  her.  It  was  a 
moral  indignation  and  regret  that  virtue  should  so  fall : — 
'  But  yet  the  pity  of  it,  lago ! — O  lago !  the  pity  of  it, 
lago  ! '  In  addition  to  this,  his  honour  was  concerned  : 

1  From  a  common-place  book  of  Mr.  C.'s,  communicated  by  Mr.  J. 
M.  Gutch.— H.  N.  C. 

2  Also  edited  by  H.  N.  Coleridge,  Coleridge's  son-in-law  and  nephew. 
Considering  Coleridge's  endless  repetitions  of  himself,  and  not  to  over- 
crowd the  text  with  notes,  we  have  judged  it  better  to  delegate 
criticisms  to  the  Appendix. 

3  Caballeros  Granadinos, 
Aunque  Moros,  hijos  d'algo. — II.  N.  C. 
M    M 


530  APPENDIX. 

lago  would  not  have  succeeded  but  by  hinting  that  his 
honour  was  compromised.  There  is  no  ferocity  in  Othello  ; 
his  mind  is  majestic  and  composed.  He  deliberately  deter- 
mines to  die ;  and  speaks  his  last  speech  with  a  view  of 
showing  his  attachment  to  the  Venetian  state,  though  it 
had  superseded  him. 

Schiller  has  the  material  Sublime ; l  to  produce  an  effect, 
he  sets  }~ou  a  whole  town  on  fire,  and  throws  infants  with 
their  mothers  into  the  flames,  or  locks  up  a  father  in  an 
old  tower.  But  Shakspere  drops  a  handkerchief,  and  the 
same  or  greater  effects  follow. 

Lear  is  the  most  tremendous  effort  of  Shakspere  as  a 
poet ;  Hamlet  as  a  philosopher  or  meditater ;  and  Othello 
is  the  union  of  the  two.  There  is  something  gigantic  and 
unformed  in  the  former  two  ;  but  in  the  latter,  everything 
assumes  its  due  place  and  proportion,  and  the  whole  mature 
powers  of  his  mind  are  displayed  in  admirable  equilibrium." 
—Dec.  29,  1822. 

"  I  have  often  told  you  that  I  do  not  think  there  is  any 
jealousy,  properly  so  called,  in  the  character  of  Othello. 
There  is  no  predisposition  to  suspicion,  which  I  take  to  be 
£m  essential  term  in  the  definition  of  the  word.  Desdemona 
very  truly  told  Emilia  that  he  was  not  jealous,  that  is,  of  a 
jealous  habit,  and  he  says  so  as  truly  of  himself.  lago's 
suggestions,  you  see,  are  quite  new  to  him  ;  they  do  not 
correspond  with  anything  of  a  like  nature  previously  in  his 
mind.  If  Desdemona  had,  in  fact,  been  guilty,  no  one 
would  have  thought  of  calling  Othello's  conduct  that  of  a 
jealous  man.  He  could  not  act  otherwise  than  he  did  with 
the  lights  he  had ;  whereas  jealousy  can  never  be  strictly 
right.  See  how  utterly  unlike  Othello  is  to  Leontes,  in  the 

1  This  expression — "material  Sublime" — like  a  hundred  others 
which  have  slipped  into  general  use,  came  originally  from  Mr.  Coleridge, 
and  was  by  him,  in  the  first  instance,  applied  to  Schiller's  "  Robbers." 
—See  Act  iv.,  sc.  5.— H.  N.  C. 


APPENDIX.  531 

*  Winter's  Tale,'  or  even  to  Leonatus,  in  s  Cymbeline  ! '  The 
jealousy  of  the  first  proceeds  from  an  evident  trifle,  and 
something  like  hatred  is  mingled  with  it ;  and  the  conduct 
of  Leonatus  in  accepting  the  wager,  and  exposing  his  wife 
to  the  trial,  denotes  a  jealous  temper  already  formed." — 
June  24,  1827. 

Hamlet. — "  Hamlet's  character  is  the  prevalence  of  the 
abstracting  and  generalizing  habit  over  the  practical.  He 
does  not  want  courage,  skill,  will,  or  opportunity ;  but 
every  incident  sets  him  thinking ;  and  it  is-  curious,  and  at 
the  same  time  strictly  natural,  that  Hamlet,  who  all  the 
play  seems  reason  itself,  should  be  impelled,  at  last,  by 
mere  accident,  to  effect  his  object.  I  have  a  smack  of 
Hamlet  myself,  if  I  may  say  so." — June  15, 1827. 

Polonius. — "  A  Maxim  is  a  conclusion  upon  observation 
of  matters  of  fact,  and  is  merely  retrospective ;  an  idea, 
or,  if  you  like,  a  Principle,  carries  knowledge  within  itself, 
and  is  prospective.  Polonius  is  a  man  of  maxims.  While 
he  is  descanting  on  matters  of  past  experience,  as  in  that 
excellent  speech  to  Laertes  before  he  sets  out  on  his  travels, 
he  is  admirable ;  but  when  he  comes  to  advise  or  project, 
he  is  a  mere  dotard.  You  see  Hamlet,  as  the  man  of  ideas, 
despises  him.  A  man  of  maxims  only  is  like  a  Cyclops 
•with  one  eye,  and  that  eye  placed  in  the  back  of  his  head." 
— June  15,  1827. 

Hamlet  and  Ophelia. — "  In  the  scene  with  Ophelia,  in 
the  third  act,  Hamlet  is  beginning  with  great  and  unfeigned 
tenderness ;  but  perceiving  her  reserve  and  coyness,  fancies 
there  are  some  listeners,  and  then,  to  sustain  his  part,  breaks 
out  into  all  that  coarseness." — June  15,  1827. 

Measure  fur  Measure. — "  '  Measure  for  Measure '  is  tho 
single  exception  to  the  delightfulness  of  Shakspere's  plays. 


532  APPENDIX. 

It  is  a  hateful  work,  although  Shaksperian  throughout. 
Our  feelings  of  justice  are  grossly  wounded  in  Angelo's 
escape.  Isabella  herself  contrives  to  be  unamiable,  and 
Claudio  is  detestable." — June  24,  1827. 

The  Fox. — "  I  am  inclined  to  consider  '  The  Fox  '  as  the 
greatest  of  Ben  Jonson's  works.  But  his  smaller  works 
are  full  of  poetry."—  June  24,  1827. 

The  Little  French  Laivyer. — "  '  Monsieur  Thomas  '  and 
the  '  Little  French  Lawyer '  are  great  favourites  of  mine 
amongst  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays.  How  those  plays 
overflow  with  wit !  And  yet  I  scarcely  know  a  more  deeply 
tragic  scene  anywhere  than  that  in  '  Hollo,'  in  which  Edith 
pleads  for  her  father's  life,  and  then,  when  she  cannot 
prevail,  rises  up  and  imprecates  vengeance  on  his  murderer." 
—June  24,  1827. 

ShaJcspere  and  Milton. — "  Shakspere  is  the  Spinozistic 
deity — an  omnipresent  creativeness.  Milton  is  the  deity 
of  prescience ;  he  stands  ab  extra,  and  drives  a  fiery  chariot 
and  four,  making  the  horses  feel  the  iron  curb  which  holds 
them.  in.  Shakspere's  poetry  is  characterless ;  that  is,  it 
does  not  reflect  the  individual  Shakspere ;  but  John  Milton 
himself  is  in  every  line  of  the  "  Paradise  Lost."  Shak- 
epere's  rhymed  verses  are  excessively  condensed, — epigrams 
with  the  point  everywhere  ;  but  in  his  blank  dramatic  verse 
he  is  diffused,  with  a  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out.  No 
one  can  understand  Shakspere's  superiority  fully  until  he 
has  ascertained,  by  comparison,  all  that  which  he  possessed 
in  common  with  several  other  great  dramatists  of  his  age, 
and  has  then  calculated  the  surplus  which  is  entirely  Shak- 
spere's own.  His  rhythm  is  so  perfect,  that  you  may  be 
almost  sure  that  you  do  not  understand  the  real  force  of  a 
line,  if  it  does  not  run  well  as  you  read  it.  The  necessary 
mental  pause  after  every  hemistich  or  imperfect  line  is 


APPENDIX.  066 

always  equal  to  the  time  that  would  have  been  taken  in 
reading  the  complete  verse." — May  12, 1830. 

Women. — "  'Most  women  have  no  character  at  all,'  said 
Pope,  and  meant  it  for  satire.  Shakspere,  who  knew  man 
and  woman  much  better,  saw  that  it,  in  fact,  was  the  per- 
fection of  woman  to  be  characterless.  Every  one  wishes  a 
Desdemona  or  Ophelia  for  a  wife, — creatures  who,  though 
they  may  not  always  understand  you,  do  always  feel  you, 
and  feel  with  you."— Sept.  27,  1830. 

The  style  of  Shakspere  compared  with  that  of  Jonson  and 
others. — "  In  the  romantic  drama  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
are  almost  supreme.  Their  plays  are  in  general  most  truly 
delightful.  I  could  read  the  '  Beggar's  Bush  '  from  morn- 
ing to  night.  How  sylvan  and  sunshiny  it  is  !  The  '  Little 
French  Lawyer  '  is  excellent.  '  Lawrit '  is  conceived  and 
executed  from  first  to  last  in  genuine  comic  humour. 
'  Monsieur  Thomas  '  is  also  capital.  I  have  no  doubt  what- 
ever that  the  first  act  and  the  first  scene  of  the  second  act 
of  the  '  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  '  are  Shakspere's.  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher's  plots  are,  to  be  sure,  wholly  inartificial ;  they 
only  care  to  pitch  a  character  into  a  position  to  make  him 
or  her  talk ;  you  must  swallow  all  their  gross  improba- 
bilities, and,  taking  it  all  for  granted,  attend  only  to  the 
dialogue.  How  lamentable  it  is  that  no  gentleman  and 
scholar  can  be  found  to  edit  these  beautiful  plays  !  Did 
the  name  of  criticism  ever  descend  so  low  as  in  the  hands 
of  those  two  fools  and  knaves,  Seward  and  Simpson  ? 
There  are  whole  scenes  in  their  edition  which  I  could  with 
certainty  put  back  into  their  original  verse,  and  more  that 
could  be  replaced  in  their  native  prose.  Was  there  ever 
such  an  absolute  disregard  of  literary  fame  as  that  displayed 
by  Shakspere,  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  ? 

In  Ben  Jonson  you  have  an  intense  and  burning  art. 


534  APPENDIX. 

Some  of  his  plots,  that  of  the  '  Alchemist,'  for  example,  are 
perfect.  Ben  Jonson  and  Beanmont  and  Fletcher  would, 
if  united,  have  made  a  great  dramatist  indeed,  and  yet  not 
have  come  near  Shakspere ;  but  no  doubt  Ben  Jonson  was 
the  greatest  man  after  Shakspere  in  that  age  of  dramatic 
genius. 

The  styles  of  Massinger's  plays  and  the  '  Samson  Ago- 
nistes '  are  the  two  extremes  of  the  arc  within  which  the 
diction  of  dramatic  poetry  may  oscillate.  Shakspere  in 
his  great  plays  is  the  midpoint.  In  the  '  Samson  Agonistes,' 
colloquial  language  is  left  at  the  greatest  distance,  yet 
something  of  it  is  preserved,  to  render  the  dialogue  pro- 
bable :  in  Massinger  the  style  is  differenced,  but  differenced 
in  the  smallest  degree  possible,  from  animated  conversation 
by  the  vein  of  poetry. 

There's  such  a  divinity  doth  hedge  our  Shakspere  round, 
that  we  cannot  even  imitate  his  style.  I  tried  to  imitate 
his  manner  in  the  '  Remorse,'  and,  when  I  had  done,  I 
found  I  had  been  tracking  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and 
Massinger  instead.  It  is  really  very  curious.  At  first 
sight,  Shakspere  and  his  contemporary  dramatists  seem  to 
write  in  styles  much  alike  :  nothing  so  easy  as  to  fall  into 
that  of  Massinger  and  the  others ;  whilst  no  one  has  ever 
yet  produced  one  scene  conceived  and  expressed  in  the 
Shaksperian  idiom.  I  suppose  it  is  because  Shakspere  is 
universal,  and,  in  fact,  has  no  manner;  just  as  jrou  can  so 
much  more  readily  copy  a  picture  than  Nature  herself." — 
Feb.  17, 1833. 

Plays  of  Massinger. — "  The  first  act  of  the  'Virgin  Martyr* 
is  as  fine  an  act  as  I  remember  in  any  play.  The  '  Very 
Woman '  is,  1  think,  one  of  the  most  perfect  plays  we  have. 
There  is  some  good  fun  in  the  first  scene  between  Don 
John,  or  Antonio,  and  Cuculo,  his  master ;  and  can  any- 
thing exceed  the  skill  and  sweetness  of  the  scene  between 


APPENDIX.  535 

him  and  his  mistress,  in  which  he  relates  his  story  ?  The 
'  Bondman  '  is  also  a  delightful  play.  Massinger  is  always 
entertaining  ;  his  plays  have  the  interest  of  novels. 

Bnt,  like  most  of  his  contemporaries,  except  Shakspere, 
Massinger  often  deals  in  exaggerated  passion.  Malefort 
senior,  in  the  'Unnatural  Combat,' however  he  may  have 
had  the  moral  will  to  be  so  wicked,  could  never  have 
actually  done  all  that  he  is  represented  as  guilty  of,  with- 
out losing  his  senses.  He  would  have  been,  in  fact,  mad." 
— April  5,  1833. 

Shakspere's  Villains. — "  Regan  and  Goneril  are  the  only 
pictures  of  tho  unnatural  in  Shakspere — the  pure  unnatural; 
and  you  will  observe  that  Shakspere  has  left  their  hideous- 
ness  unsoftened  or  diversified  by  a  single  line  of  goodness 
or  common  human  frailty.  Whereas,  in  Edmund,  for 
whom  passion,  the  sense  of  shame  as  a  bastard,  and 
ambition,  offer  some  plausible  excuses,  Shakspere  has 
placed  many  redeeming  traits.  Edmund  is  what,  under 
certain  circumstances,  any  man  of  powerful  intellect  might 
be,  if  some  other  qualities  and  feelings  were  cut  off. 
Hamlet  is,  inclusively,  an  Edmund,  but  different  from  him, 
as  a  whole,  on  account  of  the  controlling  agency  of  other 
principles  which  Edmund  had  not. 

It  is  worth  while  to  remark  the  use  which  Shakspere 
always  makes  of  his  bold  villains  as  vehicles  for  expressing 
opinions  and  conjectures  of  a  nature  too  hazardous  for  a 
wise  man  to  put  forth  directly  as  his  own,  or  from  any 
sustained  character." — April  5,  1833. 

Love's  Labour's  Lost. — "  I  think  I  could  point  out  to  a 
half  line  what  is  really  Shakspere's  in  '  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,'  and  some  other  of  the  not  entirely  genuine  plays. 
What  he  wrote  in  that  play  is  of  his  earliest  manner, 
having  the  all-pervading  sweetness  which  he  never  lost,  and 


536  APPENDIX. 

that  extreme  condensation  which  makes  the  couplets 
fall  into  epigrams,  as  in  the  '  Venus  and  Adonis,'  and 
'  Rape  of  Lucrece.'  In  the  drama  alone,  as  Shakspere 
soon  found  out,  could  the  sublime  poet  and  profound 
philosopher  find  the  conditions  of  a  compromise.  In  the 
*  Love's  Labour's  Lost '  there  are  many  faint  sketches  of 
some  of  his  vigorous  portraits  in  after  life — as  for  example, 
in  particular,  of  Benedict  and  Beatrice."  1 — April  7,  1833. 

A  Dramatist's  Artifice. — "  The  old  dramatists  took  great 
liberties  in  respect  of  bringing  parties  in  scene  together, 
and  representing  one  as  not  recognizing  the  other  under 
some  faint  disguise.  Some  of  their  finest  scenes  are  con- 
structed on  this  ground.  Shakspere  avails  himself  of  this 
artifice  only  twice,  I  think, — in  'Twelfth  Night,'  where 
the  two  are  with  great  skill  kept  apart  till  the  end  of  the 
play ;  and  in  the  '  Comedy  of  Errors,'  which  is  a  pure 
farce,  and  should  be  so  considered.  The  definition  of  a 
farce  is,  an  improbability  or  even  impossibility  granted  in 
the  outset ;  see  what  odd  and  laughable  events  will  fairly 
follow  from  it !  "—April  7,  1833. 

Bertram. — "  I  cannot  agree  with  the  solemn  abuse  which 
the  critics  have  poured  out  upon  Bertram  in,  '  All's  Well 
that  Ends  Well.'  He  was  a  young  nobleman  in  feudal 
times,  just  bursting  into  manhood,  with  all  the  feelings  of 
pride  of  birth  and  appetite  for  pleasure  and  liberty  natural 
to  such  a  character  so  circumstanced.  Of  course,  he  had 
never  regarded  Helena  otherwise  than  as  a  dependant  in 
the  family ;  and  of  all  that  which  she  possessed  of  goodness 
and  fidelity  and  courage,  which  might  atone  for  her  in- 

1  Mr.  Coleridge,  of  course,  alluded  to  Biron  and  Rosaline ;  and  there 
are  other  obvious  prolusions,  as  the  scene  of  the  masque  with  the 
courtiers,  compared  with  the  plaj  in  "  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream." 
— H.  N.  C. 


APPENDIX.  537 

feriority  in  other  respects,  Bertram  was  necessarily  in  a 
great  measure  ignorant.  And  after  all,  her  primd  facie 
merit  was  the  having  inherited  a  prescription  from  her  old 
father  the  doctor,  by  which  she  cures  the  king, — a  merit 
which  supposes  an  extravagance  of  personal  loyalty  in 
Bertram  to  make  conclusive  to  him  in  such  a  matter  as 
that  of  taking  a  wife.  Bertram  had  surely  good  reason  to 
look  upon  the  king's  forcing  him  to  marry  Helena  as  a 
very  tyrannical  act.  Indeed,  it  must  be  confessed  that 
her  character  is  not  very  delicate,  and  it  required  all  Shak- 
spere's  consummate  skill .  to  intei'est  us  for  her ;  and  he 
does  this  chiefly  by  the  operation  of  the  other  characters, — 
the  Countess,  Lafeu,  &c.  We  get  to  like  Helena  from 
their  praising  and  commending  her  so  much." — July  1, 
1833. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Tragedies. — "  In  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  tragedies  the  comic  scenes  are  rarely  so  inter- 
fused amidst  the  tragic  as  to  produce  a  unity  of  the  tragic 
on  the  whole,  without  which  the  intermixture  is  a  fault. 
In  Shakspere,  this  is  always  managed  with  transcendent 
skill.  The  Fool  in  '  Lear '  contributes  in  a  very  sensible 
manner  to  the  tragic  wildness  of  the  whole  drama.  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  serious  plays  or  tragedies  are  complete 
hybrids, — neither  fish  nor  flesh, — upon  any  rules,  Greek, 
Roman,  or  Gothic ;  and  yet  they  are  very  delightful  not- 
withstanding. No  doubt,  they  imitate  the  ease  of  gentle- 
manly conversation  better  than  Shakspere,  who  was  unable 
not  to  be  too  much  associated  to  succeed  perfectly  in  this." 
—July  1,  1833. 

Milton's  Egotism. — "  In  the  '  Paradise  Lost ' — indeed  in 
every  one  of  his  poems — it  is  Milton  himself  whom  you 
see;  his  Satan,  his  Adam,  his  Raphael,  almost  his  Eve — 
are  all  John  Milton;  and  it  is  a  sense  of  this  intense 
egotism  that  gives  me  the  greatest  pleasure  in  reading 


538  APPENDIX. 

Milton's  works.    The  egotism  of  such  a  man  is  a  revelation 
of  spirit."— Aug.  18,  1833. 

Milton's  Method  in  "  Paradise  Lost." — "  In  my  judgment, 
an  epic  poem  must  either  be  national  or  mundane.  As  to 
Arthur,  you  could  not  by  any  means  make  a  poem  on  him 
national  to  Englishmen.  What  have  we  to  do  with  him  ? 
Milton  saw  this,  and  with  a  judgment  at  least  equal  to  his 
genius,  took  a  mundane  theme — one  common  to  all  man- 
kind. His  Adam  and  Eve  are  all  men  and  women  in- 
clusively. Pope  satirizes  Milton  for  making  God  the 
Father  talk  like  a  school  divine.1  Pope  was  hardly  the 
man  to  criticize  Milton.  The  truth  is,  the  judgment  of 
Milton  in  the  conduct  of  the  celestial  part  of  his  story  is 
very  exquisite.  Wherever  God  is  represented  as  directly 
acting  as  Creator,  without  any  exhibition  of  his  own  essence, 
Milton  adopts  the  simplest  and  sternest  language  of  the 
Scriptures.  He  ventures  upon  no  poetic  diction,  no  ampli- 
fication, no  pathos,  no  affection.  It  is  truly  the  voice  of 
the  Word  of  the  Lord  coming  to,  and  acting  on,  the  subject 
Chaos.  But,  as  some  personal  interest  was  demanded  for 
the  purposes  of  poetry,  Milton  takes  advantage  of  the 
dramatic  representation  of  God's  address  to  the  Son,  the 
Filial  Alterity,  and  in  those  addresses  slips  in,  as  it  were  by 
stealth,  language  of  affection,  or  thought,  or  sentiment. 
Indeed,  although  Milton  -was  undoubtedly  a  high  Arian  in 
his  mature  life,  he  does  in  the  necessity  of  poetry  give  a 
greater  objectivity  to  the  Father  and  the  Son,  than  he 
would  have  justified  in  argument.  He  was  very  wise  in 
adopting  the  strong  anthropomorphism  of  the  Hebrew 

1  "  Milton's  strong  pinion  now  not  Heav'n  can  bound, 
Now,  serpent-like,  in  prose  he  sweeps  the  ground ; 
In  quibbles  angel  and  archangel  join, 
And  God  the  Father  turns  a  school  divine." 

HOR.,  Book  II.,  Ep.  i.,  99.— H.  N.  0. 


APPENDIX.  539 

Scriptures  at  once.  Compare  the  '  Paradise  Lost '  with 
Klopstock's  '  Messiah,'  and  you  will  learn  to  appreciate 
Milton's  judgment  and  skill  quite  as  much  as  his  genius." 
— Sept.  4,  1833. 

Chaucer. — "  I  take  unceasing  delight  in  Chaucer.  His 
manly  cheerfulness  is  especially  delicious  to  me  in  my  old 
age.1  How  exquisitely  tender  he  is,  and  yet  how  perfectly 
free  from  the  least  touch  of  sickly  melancholy  or  morbid 
drooping !  The  sympathy  of  the  poet  with  the  subjects 
of  his  poetry  is  particularly  remarkable  in  Shakspere  and 
Chaucer ;  but  what  the  first  effects  by  a  strong  act  of 
imagination  and  mental  metamorphosis,  the  last  does  with- 
out any  effort,  merely  by  the  inborn  kindly  joyousness  of 
his  nature.  How  well  we  seem  to  know  Chaucer !  How 
absolutely  nothing  do  we  know  of  Shakspere  ! 

I  cannot  in  the  least  allow  any  necessity  for  Chaucer's 
poetry,  especially  the  '  Canterbury  Tales,'  being  considered 
obsolete.  Let  a  few  plain  rules  be  given  for  sounding  the 
final  e  of  syllables,  and  for  expressing  the  termination  of 
snch  words  as  ocean,  and  nation,  &c.,  as  dissyllables, — or 
let  the  syllables  to  be  sounded  in  such  cases  be  marked  by 
a  competent  metrist.  This  simple  expedient  would,  with 
a  very  few  trifling  exceptions,  where  the  errors  are  invete- 
rate, enable  any  reader  to  feel  the  perfect  smoothness  and 
harmony  of  Chaucer's  verse.  As  to  understanding  his 
language,  if  you  read  twenty  pages  with  a  good  glossary, 
you  surely  can  find  no  further  difficulty,  even  as  it  is  ;  but 
I  should  have  no  objection  to  see  this  done : — Strike  out 
those  words  which  are  now  obsolete,  and  I  will  venture  to 
say  that  I  will  replace  every  one  of  them  by  words  still  in 

1  Eighteen  years  before,  Mr.  Coleridge  entertained  the  same  feelings 
towards  Chaucer.— H.  N.  C.  The  editor  of  the  "Table  Talk"  here 
quotes  the  passage,  from  the  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  which  we  have 
given  in  a  note,  Appendix :  III. 


540  APPENDIX. 

use  out  of  Chaucer  himself,  or  Grower  his  disciple.  I  don't 
want  this  myself :  I  rather  like  to  see  the  significant  terms 
which  Chaucer  unsuccessfully  offered  as  candidates  for 
admission  into  our  language ;  but  surely  so  very  slight  a 
change  of  the  text  may  well  be  pardoned,  even  by  black- 
letterati,  for  the  purpose  of  restoring  so  great  a  poet  to  his 
ancient  and  most  deserved  popularity." — Mar.  15,  1834. 

Shalcspere  of  no  Age. — "  Shakspere  is  of  no  age.  It  is 
idle  to  endeavour  to  support  his  phrases  by  quotations 
from  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  &c.  His  lan- 
guage is  entirely  his  own,  and  the  younger  dramatists 
imitated  him.  The  construction  of  Shakspere's  sentences, 
whether  in  verse  or  prose,  is  the  necessary  and  homo- 
geneous vehicle  of  his  peculiar  manner  of  thinking.  His 
is  not  the  style  of  the  age.  More  particularly,  Shakspere's 
blank  verse  is  an  absolutely  new  creation.  Read  Daniel l 
i — the  admirable  Daniel — in  his  '  Civil  Wars,'  and  '  Triumphs 
of  Hymen.'  The  style  and  language  are  just  such  as  any 
very  pure  and  manly  writer  of  the  present  day — Words- 
worth, for  example — would  use ;  it  seems  quite  modern  in 
comparison  with  the  style  of  Shakspere.  Ben  Jonson's 
blank  verse  is  very  masterly  and  individual,  and  perhaps 
Massinger's  is  even  still  nobler.  In  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
it  is  constantly  slipping  into  lyricisms. 

I  believe  Shakspere  was  not  a  whit  more  intelligible  in 

1  "This  poet's  well-merited  epithet  is  that  of  the  ' well-languaged 
Daniel;'  but,  likewise,  and  by  the  consent  of  his  contemporaries,  no 
less  than  all  succeeding  critics,  the  '  prosaic  Daniel.'  Yet  those  who 
thus  designate  this  wise  and  amiable  writer,  from  the  frequent  incor- 
respoudency  of  his  diction  with  his  metre,  in  the  majority  of  his  com- 
positions, not  only  deem  them  valuable  and  interesting  on  other  accounts, 
but  willingly  admit  that  there  are  to  be  found  throughout  his  poems, 
and  especially  in  his  '  Epistles'  and  in  his  '  Hymen's  Triumph,'  many 
and  exquisite  specimens  of  that  style,  which,  as  the  neutral  ground  of 
prose  and  verse,  is  common  to  both." — Biog.  Lit.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  82. — 
H.  N.  C. 


APPENDIX.  541 

hid  own  day  than  he  is  now  to  an  educated  man,  except 
for  a  few  local  allusions  of  no  consequence.  As  I  said,  he 
is  of  no  age — nor,  I  may  add,  of  any  religion,  or  party,  or 
profession.  The  body  and  substance  of  his  works  came 
out  of  the  unfathomable  depths  of  his  own  oceanic  mind : 
his  observation  and  reading,  which  was  considerable,  sup- 
plied him  with  the  drapery  of  his  figures." — Mar.  15, 1834. 


INDEX, 


Aches,  319. 

Action.  25,  164. 

Actor,  The,  216. 

Shakspere  as  an,  see  "  Shak- 

spere." 

Adam,  in  "  As  you  Like  It,"  9. 
Addison,  347,351. 
"  Agamemnon,  The,"  462 
Ages,  The  Dark,  197,  460. 
«  Alchemist,  The/'  397,  417,  534. 
Allegory,  511. 
Alliteration,  512. 
"  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,"  249, 

297. 

Anger,  83. 

"  Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  315. 
Apollo,  234,  462. 
Apothecary,  The,  in  "  Romeo  and 

Juliet,"  119. 
Apuleius,  511. 
Arbaces,  in  "  A  King  and  No  King," 

425. 

Ariel,  140,  182. 
Ariosto,  460,  496. 
Aristophanes,  187,  189,  190,  420. 
Aristotle,  51,  224. 
Art  and  Nature,  227. 
41  As  You  Like  It,"  10,  293. 
Autolycus,  382. 


Avarice,  99. 

Bacchus,  234,  402. 
Bacon,  04,  G5,  66. 

on  literature,  210. 

Barbauld,  Mrs.,  2fi. 

Bardolph,  75. 

"Bartholomew  Fair,"  418. 

Bastardy,  332. 

Beaumont,  397.      See  "  Beaumont 

and  Fletcher." 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  399,  401, 

402,  428,  440. 
compared  with  Shakspere.  Sec 

"  Sha'.tspere." 

compared  with  Jonson,  419. 

their  imitation  of  Shakspere, 

11,  270,  331,  419,  443. 
their     indebtedness      to     the 

Spanish  Drama,  437,  444. 
their   metre  and  versification, 

402,  431,  432,  435,  437,  446,  540. 

—  their  sneers  at  Shakspere,  419. 

their  ultra-royalism,  260,  281, 

405,  429,  437. 
their  unnaturalness,  11,  533. 

—  their  women,  277,  299,  441. 

—  their  vice,  12,  443. 
their  virtue,  441,  444. 


544 


INDEX. 


Beauty,  203. 

"Beggar's  Bush,  The,"  533. 

Benedick,  68. 

Bertram,  536. 

Biron,  68,  181,  283. 

Body  and  Mind,  95,  108,  114. 

Bohemia,  411. 

Bolingbroke,  154,  260,  266,  482. 

Bonaparte,  315,  334,  474. 

and  Coleridge,  128. 

Books,  indestructibility  of,  50,  65. 

use  of,  213.     See  "  Reading." 

Brown,  Sir  Thomas,  309,  361. 
Brutus,  313. 
Burbage,  9. 
Burns,  14,  15,  59. 
Byron,  Lord,  26. 

Calderon,  444. 

Caliban,  142,  182. 

Campbell,  15,  16. 

his"GertrudeofWyoming,"16. 

his  "  Pleasures  of  Hope,"  16. 

Capulet,  83. 

Care,  17. 

Cassius,  100. 

"  Catiline's  Conspiracy,''  417. 

Catullus,  46. 

Charles  I.,  26. 

age  of,  66,517. 

Chaucer,  15,  509,  539. 

compared  with  Shakspere.  See 

"  Shakspere." 

Children,  86,  101,  378. 

Chorus,  Greek,  54,  55,  192. 

"  Christnbel,"  29. 

Christianity  and  Morality,  201. 

Clarence's  Dream,  1 7. 

Cleopatra.  316. 

Coleridge,  Mrs.  H.  N.,  31. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  length  of  his  Lec- 
tures, 4. 


Coleridge,  S.  T.,  mode  of  lecturing 

5,  19,  20.  64. 
his  audiences,  7,  19,  26,  457, 

470. 

his  manner,  7. 

his   Lectures    at    the    Royal 

Institution,    15,   29,    30,   31,  64, 

342. 
and  Schlegel,  21,  30,  32,  127, 

342. 

on  his  contemporaries,  16. 

on  himself  as  a  poet,   10,  33, 


—  his  way  of  reading  verse.  1 7. 

—  a  French  estimate  of  him,  19. 

—  his  vagaries,  21,  23,  32. 

—  bis  irresoluteness,  15,  22. 
— •  his  health,  19,  30,  175. 

—  hissed,  26. 

—  for  once  ungenerous,  26. 
— •  his  character,  29. 

—  his  circumlocution,  29. 
— •  his  eyes,  29. 

—  his  talent,  43. 

—  on  love,    1 14.      See   "  Love," 
"Marriage,"  "Materialism." 

and  Bonaparte,  1 28. 


Comedy  and  Tragedy,  188,  486. 
"  Comedy  of  Errors,"  249,  292,  536. 
Commonwealth,  The  Age  of  the,  66, 

284,517. 

Conceits,  66,  93.     See  "  Shakspere." 
Constance,  40. 

Contemporary,  Definition  of  a,  395. 
Contrast,  Effect  of,  207. 
Cordelia,  335. 
"  Coriolanus,"  309. 
"  Coronation,  The,"  447. 
Courts  of  Love,  283. 
Cowardice,  82,  348. 
Cressida,  306. 
Criticism,  causes  of  false,  35. 


INDEX. 


545 


Criticism,  French,  51,  132,  226,274. 

German,  51. 

must  be  reverential,  225. 

Personalities  of  Modern,  36. 

Critics,  Uneducated,  51,  225. 
Culture,  Effect  of,  87,  110. 
"  Custom  of  the  Country,  The,"  431. 
"Cymbeline,"  249,  301,  305. 

Daniel,  540. 

Dante,  233,  460. 

Darwin,  Dr.,  48. 

Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  31,  64. 

Deborah,  89. 

Denude,  321. 

Desdemona,  391. 

Dibdin,  Dr.,  32. 

Donne,  358,  410,  427. 

Dow,  Gerard,  85. 

Drama,  Ancient,  187. 

—  and   Shakspere,   29,  121, 

461. 
Greek,  121,  187,  193,234,390, 

461,463. 
—  modern,  204,  276. 

origin  of,  196. 

Roman,  196. 

The,  what  it  should  be,  211, 

274. 

Dramatic  diction,  214,  403. 
Drayton,  431. 
Dream  of  Clarence,  17. 
Dreams,  17. 
Drummond,  411. 
Dryden,  12,  72,  85,  162,  317,  416. 

Edgar,  339. 

Edmund,  332. 

"  Elder  Brother,  The,"  433. 

Elizabeth,  Keign  of,  66,  517. 

a  harlot,  66. 

Elwes,  99. 

England,  Eulogy  of,  148,  257. 


English  language,  71. 
Envy,  100. 
"Epicaene,"  415. 
Erasmus,  233,  460. 
"Every  Man  out  of  !iis  Humour," 
411.' 

Faces,  119. 

Falstaff,  8,  28,  147,  208,  402,  419, 
487. 

Fancy  and  *Wit,  74. 

Farces,  293,  416,  536. 

"  Ferrex  and  Pollex,"  360. 

Fielding,  88,  466. 

Fletcher,  397.  See  "  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher." 

Fleur  de  Luce  Court,  175. 

Flogging,  22,  24,  61. 

Fool,  The,  in  "  Lear,"  29,  54,  337. 

Fools,  in  Shakspere.  See  "  Shak- 
spere." 

origin  of  their  introduction,  54. 

French  criticism.     See  "  Criticism." 

—  language,  70. 

revolution,  66. 

Frescoes,  49. 
Frommy,  422. 

Generals,  superstition  of  great,  369. 
Genius,  86,  101,  495. 
and  Talent,  13,  64. 

—  and  Public  Taste,  214. 
German  criticism,  51. 
drama,  213. 

language,  70. 

Ghosts,  347,  361. 
Gifford,  397,  407. 
Gloster,  in  "  Lear,"  333,  341,  379. 
Goethe,  27. 
Gower,  305. 

Greek  Art,  &c.,  Polytheism,  it» 
influence  on,  233. 


N   N 


546 


INDEX. 


Greek  chorus,  54,  55,  192. 

Drama.     See  "  Drama." 

Language,  70,  71. 

Grill,  in  "  The  Faery  Queen,"  109. 
Guilt  and  Shame,  336. 

"  Hamlet,"  29,  329,  472. 

Hamlet,  25,  27,  158,  228,  329,  342, 

471,  503,  506,  530,  531. 
Harris's   Commendatory   Poem    on 

Fletcher,  426. 
Hazlitt,  175. 
"Henry  IV.,"  Part  L,  268. 

Part  II.,  270. 

"Henry  V.,"  271. 

"  Henry  VI.,"  Part  I.,  272. 

Historical  Plays,  10,  252,  478. 

Hogarth,  397,  420. 

Holofernes,  181. 

Honest,  318. 

Hooker,  on  Poetry,  37. 

Hume,  28,  350. 

"  Humorous  Lieutenant,  The,"  436. 

Humour,  Origin  of  the  Term,  487. 

lago,  27,  147,  335,  384,  387,  392, 

487. 
Ignorant,  The,  51. 

their  mode  of  Recollection,  87. 

"Iliad,  The,"  521. 
Images  in  Poetry,  16,  406. 
Imagination,  91,  102,  344,  472. 
Imitation  in  Poetry,  88,  122. 
Intellect  and  Character,   147,  273, 

308,  332,  334,  385,  387. 

and  Moral  Worth,  171. 

Isabella,  409. 

Italian  Langnnge,  70,  71. 

mismanagement  of  the  young, 

110. 

Jealousy,  381. 


Jealousy  of  Leontes.  Sec  "  Leontes." 
so    called,    of    Othello.      See 

"  Othello." 
"  John,  King,"  255. 
Johnson,   Dr.,   22,   26,  45,   72,   85, 

152,  162,  163,  301,  364,  374,  388, 

485. 
Jonson,  Ben,  50,  287,  396,  401,  409, 

416. 

and  Drummoncl,  411. 

compared  with  Shakspere.  See 

"  Shakspere." 
his     characters     abstractions, 

396,410,416. 

his  imitation  of  Shakspere,  4 19. 

bis  metre  and  versification,  397, 

540. 
might  be  in  part  reproduced, 

415. 

not  a  genius,  412. 

Joy  and  Sorrow,  357. 
"  Julius  Csesar,"  311. 

Kemble,  479. 

Kent,  in  "  Lear,"  336. 

"  King  and  No  King,  A,"  425,  430. 

"Kinsmen,   The   Two   Noble,"  10, 

450,  533. 

Klopstock  and  Milton,  522,  525. 
Kotzebue,  12,  331,  464,  485. 

Laertes,  351,  366. 
Lamb,  11,  17,  22. 

a  letter  by,  170. 

Language.  See " English,""French," 

&c.,  "  Language.  '* 

of  passion,  48,  55,  71,  89. 

poetic,  89,  90. 

Laurence,  Friar,  99. 

'« Laws  of  Candy,  The,"  438. 

"Lear,"  53,  54,  140,  240,  329,  400, 

507. 


INDEX. 


547 


Lear,  337,  530. 

Leontes.  381,  3*6,  387,  393,  476, 

530. 

Lessing,  227. 
'Lex.  Merchetae,  431. 
Life,  increasing  sameness  of  human, 

215. 

Weariness  of,  352. 

'•'  Little  French  Lawyer,  The,"  439, 

532,  533. 
Love,  23,  24,  91,  93,  325,  327,  362, 

390. 
among  blood  relations,  96.  108, 

329. 
and  human  nature,  106. 

—  and  license,  97,  108,  114. 
and  marriage,  96,  107. 

—  and  nature,  97,  307,  o!6,  328. 
at  first  sight,  97, 106,  113,117, 

279. 
courts  of,  28,5. 

—  definition  of,  95,  102,  1 19,  307. 
'•Love's   Labour's    Lost,"  80,   101, 

180,  249,  272,  535. 
"  Loyal  Subject,  The,"  437. 
"  Lucrece,"  9, 58,  223,  245,  489,  493. 
Ludicrous,   The,   as   reaction  from 

mental  strain,  357,  473. 

'•  Macbeth,"  329,  344,  352,  368,400, 

469. 
Macbeth,  369,  371,  374,  468. 

Lady,  369,  375. 

<;  Mad  Lover,  The,"  12,  331,  339, 

365,  4o6. 

Madness  of  Undevoutness,  1 04. 
';  Maid  of  Honour,  The,"  405,  407. 
"  Maid  of  the  Mill,  The,"  441. 
"  Maid's  Tragedy,  The,"  397,  428. 
Make  for  mate,  423. 
Man,  343. 
Manners  and  Morality,  76. 


Manners,  English,  in  Shakspcre's 
Time,  408. 

Italian,  408. 

of  the  Kestoration,  425. 

Marlborough,  257. 

Marriage,  96,  107. 

needful   for  completion,    112, 

114. 

of  brother  and  sister,  111. 

Masks,  on  the  stage,  194. 

Massinger,  401,  403. 

a  democrat,  281,  405,  424,  437. 

compared  with  Sliakspere.  See 

"  Shakspere. " 

his    metre    and    versification. 

403,  427,  439,  534,  540. 

Materialism  reproved,  108. 

Materialist,  The,  consulted  on  co- 
habitation, 106. 

Mathematics,  how  not  to  be-  taught, 
52. 

"  Measure  fur  Measure,"  299,  409, 
531. 

Menarider,  190. 

Mercutio,  68,  84,  101,  324. 

"Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  The," 
298,  402. 

Mctaslasio,  240. 

Metre  and  Versification  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  Jonson,  Mas- 
singer,  Milton,  Shakspere,  Spen- 
ser. See  "  Beaumont  and  Flet- 
cher," "  Jonson,"  &c. 

remarks  on.  290.  354,  422, 426, 

432,  448. 

"  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A,'' 
241,  289. 

Milton,  16,  24,  45,  58,  61,  94,  139, 
157,214,  479,  517,  529. 

an  aristocrat,  28,  413. 

and  Kli.psto.-k,  522,  52=. 

compared  with  Shakspere.  532. 


548 


INDEX. 


Milton,  his  "  Death,"  91,  102. 

his  egotism,  537. 

his    "  Liberty    of    Unlicensed 

Printing,"  62. 
his  metre  and  versification,  49, 

181,  526,  534. 

—  his  "  Paradise  Lost,"  519,  538. 

his  "  Paradise  Regained,"  28. 

his  "  Samson  Agonistes,"  14, 


534. 

—  his  Satan,  26. 
—  his  Women,  94. 

on  Poetry,  185,  459. 


Mind  and  Body,  95,  108, 114. 

Miranda,  135,  145,  277. 

Mobled,  360. 

Moliere,  his  "  Miser,"  99. 

"  Monsieur  Thomas,"  402,  533. 

Moore's  "Gamester,"  12. 

"  Moralities,"  202. 

Morality  and  Christianity,  201. 

of  our  ancestors,  200. 

of  our  day,  37. 

Morals  and  Manners,  76. 
Motives  always  mixed,  487. 
"  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,"  239. 
"  Mysteries,"  197. 
as  seen  by  Coleridge  in  Ger- 
many, 198. 

Napoleon.     See  "  Bonaparte." 
Nature  and  Art,  227. 
"  New  Inn,  The,"  423. 
"  Noble  Gentlemen,  The,"  446. 
Novels,  35. 

Nurse,  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  85, 
323. 

CEdipus,  100. 

Old  Age  humanizing,  86,  181. 
Ophelia,  362,  365,  531. 
"Othello,"  384. 


Othello,  11,  530. 

contrasted  with  Jago,  27. 

not  a  Negro,  385,  477,  529. 

not  jealous,  26,  381,  386,  393, 

477,  530. 

Painting  and  Poetry,  92,  102,  209. 
Passion,  Language  of,  48,  55,  71, 

89. 

Perdita,  385. 
"  Pericles,"  27,  46t>. 
"  Philaster,"  397. 
"  Pilgrim,  The,"  445. 
"Pilgrim's  Progress,  The,"  511. 
Pistol,  82. 
Plato,  96. 

—  his  "  Republic,"  268. 

on  Tragedy  and  Comedy,  187. 

Playing  on  Words,  352.  See  "  Shak- 

spere." 
Poesy,  an  original  use  of  the  word, 

173,  209. 
Poet,  The,  a  child,  104. 

not  rashly  to  be  classed,  2©3. 

requisites  of,  57,  189,  459. 

the  true  philosopher,  105. 

the  dramatic,  characteristics  of, 

212. 

"Poetaster,  The,"  4 12. 
Poetry,  55,  90,  231,  252,  458. 

and  painting,  92,  102,  209. 

and  religion,  103. 

and  science,  184. 

and  sculpture,  189. 

a  serious  study,  94. 

definition  of,  45,  183,  189. 

form  in,  228. 

images  in,  16,  406. 

imitation  in,  86,  12*. 

Hooker  on,  37. 

Milton  on,  185,  459. 

Polonius,  238,  358,  465,  531. 


INDEX. 


549 


Polytheism,  its  influence  in  Greek 

Art,  &c.,  233. 
Pope,  26.  45,  52.  143, 144, 231, 232, 

278,  403,  404,  411,  459,  477,  533, 

538. 
Porter,  The,  in  "  Hamlet,"  368,  377, 

402. 

Power,  334. 
Primogeniture,  333. 
Private  Life,  Discipline  of,  110. 
Proteus,  56. 
Puns,  73,  92,  262. 

"  Queen  of  Corinth,  The,"  446. 

Readers,  Four  Classes  of,  44. 
Reading,  Value  of,  171,  213. 
Recitative,  53,  62,  63. 
Reformation,  The,  233,  460. 
Religion  and  Poetry,  103. 

as  a  Basis  of  Society,  440. 

Reviews,  Use  of,  35,  39. 

Rhymes  in  Blank  Verse,  259. 

"  Richard  II.,"  147,  255,  273. 

Richard  II.,  152,  258,  479. 

"  Richard  III.,"  273. 

Richard  III.,  27,  147,  273,  487. 

Richardson,  466. 

Roderigo,  384. 

Rogers,  Samuel,  18,  26. 

"  Rollo,"  443. 

Roman  Drama,  196. 

Romance  Languages,  203,  463. 

Romeo,  90,  98,116. 

"  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  80,  81,  83,  89, 

101,236,321,  400,464. 

a  modern  termination,  12. 

Romeo  and  Othello,  118. 

Rosalind,  294. 

Rosaline,  in  "  Love's  Labour's  Lost," 

288. 
in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  115, 

118,323. 


"  Rule  a  Wife  and  have  a  Wife,"  438. 

"  Sad  Shepherd,  The,"  40'J. 
Satan,  Milton's,  524. 
Schlegel.     See  "  Coleridge.'' 
Schiller  at  fault,  377. 

compared  with  Shakspere,  530. 

"  Scornful  Lady,  The,"  430. 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  14,  16. 

his  "  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  13. 

Seudamour's  Dream,  17. 

Sculpture,  189. 

"Sejanus,"413. 

Selections  of  Prose  and  Verse,  230. 

Self,  301. 

Seneca,  202. 

Seward,  426  et  passim. 

his  Preface  to  Beaumont  and 

Fletcher,  425. 
Shakspere,  14,  57,   179,   394,  401, 

533. 
general  characteristics  of,  237, 

458. 
as  a  poet  generally,  218,  283, 

488. 

his  genius,  179,  315,  401. 

whether  an  irregular  genius, 

51,224,343,427. 

—  a  Proteus,  56,  379. 

—  a  prophet,  146,  180. 

—  a  philosopher,  180,  242,  281, 
429,  487. 

an  aristocrat,  281,  429. 

—  not  sectarian,  179,  267,  281, 
309,320,  437,541. 

—  reverential,  264,  326,  467. 

how  far  a  scholar,  287,  310. 

as  an  actor,  9. 

—  order  of  his  plays,  8,  58,  59, 
243. 

his  historical   plays,   10,  252, 

478. 


550 


INDEX. 


Shakspere,  his  doubtful  plays,  10, 93, 

249,  450. 
and  the  names  of  his  plays, 

345,  380 
of  no  age,  67,  82,  93, 131,  179, 

232,  447,  540. 
and  ancient  drama,  29,   121, 

461. 

and  his  age,  67,  399,  447. 

and  his  contemporaries,  315, 


398,  408,  414. 
compared  with  Beaumont  and 

Fletcher,  11,  74,  78,  94,  99,  238, 

350,  397,  400,  427,  437,  445,  446, 

464,  467,  537. 

compared  with  Chaucer,  509. 

compared  with  Jonson,  11,  396, 

416,  487,  533. 
compared  with  Massinger,  398, 

403,  406. 

compared  with  Milton,  532. 

compared  with  Schiller,  530. 

compared  with  Spenser,  510, 

516. 
at  work,  27,  69,   85,  88,   98, 

138,  241,  294,  344,  346,  362,  379, 

484,  536. 
in   transition,   81,    101.      See 

"  Taste." 

his  method,  501. 

idealizes,  125,  132,  465. 

and  nature,  29,  56,  58,  68,  84, 

88,  99,  124,   137,  160,  179,   180, 

229,  237,  355,  400,  401,  465,  508. 
his  judgment,  52,  81,  136,  142, 

145,  159,  223,  234,  316,  330,  333, 

341,  350,  358,  365,  401,  461,  465, 

484. 

true  to  himself,  126,  379. 

. his  language,  76,  216,  284, 534, 

540. 
— —  his  use  of  images,  406,  497. 


Shakspere,  his  songs,  240. 

his  metre  and  versification,  181 

291,  311,  354,  437,  446,  450,  540. 
portrays  classes  of  men,  1 1 ,  68, 

82,  85,   124,  282,  323,  336,   375, 

508. 
his  portrayal  of  manners,  122, 

465. 

his  portrayal  of  character,  241. 

his  gentlemen,  67,  85. 

his  women,  78,  94,  105,  277, 

299,  362,  391,  409,  477,  533. 

and  the  priestly  character,  99. 

his  fools,  29,  54,  55. 

his  partiality  of  boys,  378. 

his  portrayal  of  vice,  8, 12,  27, 

143,  182,  239,  280,  334,  337,  391, 

464,  535. 

never  portrays  avarice,  99,  1 79. 

only  once  portrays  envy,  100. 

his  wit,  74,  75,  398. 

his  conceits,  puns,  and  playing 


on  words,  72,  90,  150,  263,  314, 

352,  368. 

his  immorality,  76,  94. 

his  coarseness,   77,  262,  402, 

408,  443,  466. 

his  critics,  125,  343. 

text  of,  128. 

poem  by  Milton  on,  129. 

two  classes  of  readers  of,  124. 

Shame  and  Guilt,  336. 
Siddons,  Mrs.,  12,  479. 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  his  "Arcadia," 

287. 

his  women,  105. 

"  Silent  Woman,  The,"  397. 
Skelton's  "  Philip  Sparrow,"  255. 
Society  based  on  marriage,  107. 

fundamentals  of,  440. 

Sophocles,  51,  461. 
Sorrow  and  Joy,  357. 


INDEX. 


551 


Soul.     See  "  Mind." 

Southey,  13,  16. 

his  "  Curse  of  Kehama,"  1 2. 

not  original,  17. 

"  Spanish  Curate,  The,"  434. 

Spanish  Language,  70. 

Stage,  and  Beaumont  and  Flet- 
cher, 437. 

Spenser,  17,  67,  109,  245,  510. 

compared  with  Shakspere,  510, 

516. 

his  women,  104,  515. 

on  sensuality,  109. 

Stage,  The,  53,  205. 

Greek,  52,  56,  234,  462. 

origin  of  English,  54. 

of  Shakspere's  day,  52,  122, 

236. 

of  our  day,  37,  77,  479. 

source  of  pleasure  in,  53, 

206. 

illusion  produced  by,  206,  207, 

274. 

masks  on,  194. 

"  Staple  of  News,  The,"  422. 

Statuary,  121. 

Steevens,  1 4  ci  passim, 

Sterne,  119. 

Superstition,  369. 

Swift's  "  Polite  Conversation,"  85. 

Talent  and  Genius,  13,  64,  75. 

Tannhauser,  109. 

Taste,  81,  101. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  36,  82. 

"  Tempest,  The,"  132,  274. 

Terms,  vague  use  of,  40,  45. 

"  The  Devil  is  an  Ass,"  421. 

Thersites,  308. 

Think,  need  of  learning  to,  38. 

"  Timon  of  Athens,"  305,  318. 

"  Titus  Andronicus,"  304,  379. 


Tone,  in  Reading,  63.  See  K  Cole- 
ridge,'' and  "  Kecitative." 

Tragedy  and  Comedy,  188,  486. 

Trilogies,  390,  463. 

Trinculo,  182. 

"  Troilus  and  Cressida,"  305. 

"  Twelfth  Night,"  295. 

"Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  The,"  10, 
450,  533. 

Tybalt,  82. 

Una,  515. 

Unities,  The,  53,  56,  123,  204,  321, 
389. 

"  Valentinian,"  440. 

"Venus  and  Adonis,"  9,  57,  219, 

222,  245,  488,  493. 
«  Very  Woman,  The,"  534. 
Villeiny,  a  praiseworthy  custom  of, 

431. 

"  Virgin  Martyr,  The,"  534. 
"Volpone,"  414,  532. 
Voltaire,  229. 

Warburton,  374,  et  passim. 
Weber,  397. 

Weird  Sisters,  The,  370,  468. 
Whalle\  's  Preface  to  Jonson,  409. 

Life  of  Jonson,  410. 

Wieland.  496. 

"  Wife  for  a  Month,  A,"  445. 

"  Wild  Goose  Chase,  The,"  444. 

Wilkes,  147. 

"  Winter's  Tale,  The,"  380,  476. 

Wit.  46,  73.     See  "  Shakspere." 

and  Fancy,  74. 

"  Wit  at  Several  Weapons,"  448. 
"  Wit  without  Money,"  434. 
'•Woman  Hater,  The,"  451. 
Women,  96,  290. 


552 


INDEX. 


Women  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
Milton,  Shakspere,  Sidney,  Spen- 
ser. See  under  those  names. 

Words,  double  use  of,  46. 

introduction  of  new,  412. 

Wordsworth,  17,  29. 


Wordsworth,  a  letter  by,  169. 

York,  Duke  of,  in  "Richard  II.." 

149,  263,  481. 
Youth,   how    mismanaged    on    the 

Continent,  110. 


CH1SWICK    I'RESS  : — C.    WHITTINGHAM    AND   CO.,    TOOKS  COURT, 
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JOYCES  Scientific  Dialogues. 
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KANT'S  Critique  of  Pure  Reason. 
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john.  51. 

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KEIGHTLEY'S  (Thomas)  My- 
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KEIGHTLEY'S  Fairy  Myth- 
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tries. Revised  Edition,  with 
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LA  FONTAINE'S  Fables.  Trans- 
lated into  English  Verse  by  Elizur 
Wright.  New  Edition,  with  Notes 
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LAPPENBERG'S  History  of 
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LECTURES  ON  PAINTING, 
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LEONARDO  DA  VINCI'S 
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Laurence  Gomme,  F.S.A.  Vol.  I. 

[/«  (he  Press. 

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L  O  W  N  D  E  S '  Bibliographer's 
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LONGUS.  Daphnis  and  Ghloe. 
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LUCAN'S  Pharsalia.  Translated 
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LUCIAN'S  Dialogues  of  the 
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LUCRETIUS.  Translated  by  the 
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i6 


An  Alphabetical  List  of  Books 


MANZONI.  The  Betrothed  : 
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MARCO  POLO'S  Travels;  the 
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MARRYAT'S  (Capt.  RN.) 
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-  -  Peter  Simple.      With  8  full- 

page  Illustrations.     3.?.  6d. 

Midshipman  Easy.    With  8 


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MARTIAL'S  Epigrams,  complete. 
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MARTINEAU'S  (Harriet)  His- 
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-  See  Conite1  s  Positive  Philosophy. 

MATTHEW  PARIS'S  English 
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MATTHEW  OF  WESTMIN- 
STER'S Flowers  of  History, 
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MAXWELL'S  Victories  of  Wel- 
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MENZEL'S  History  of  Germany, 
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MICHAEL  ANGELO  AND 
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MICHELET'S  Luther's  Auto- 
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MILL  (J.  S.).  Early  Essays  by 
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MILLER  (Professor).  History 
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MILTON'S  Prose  Works.  Edited 
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Contained  in  Bohris  Libraries. 


MITFORD'S  (Miss)  Our  Village. 
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MOLIERE'S  Dramatic  Works. 
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MONTAGU.  The  Letters  and 
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tion, and  revised  by  W.  Moy 
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MONTAIGNE'S  Essays.  Cotton's 
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MONTESQUIEU'S  Spirit  of 
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corrected.  By  J.  V.  Priichard, 
AM.  2  vols.  y.  6d.  each. 

MOTLEY  (J.  L.).  The  Rise  of 
the  Dutch  Republic.  A  History. 
By  John  Lothrop  Motley.  New 
Edition,  with  Biographical  Intro- 
duction by  Moncure  D.  Conway. 
3  vols  3^.  6d.  each. 

MORPHY'S  Games  of  Chess. 
Being  the  Matches  and  best  Games 
played  by  the  American  Champion, 
with  Explanatory  and  Analytical 
Notes  by  J.  Lowenthal.  55. 

MUDIE'S  British  Birds ;  or,  His- 
tory of  the  Feathered  Tribes  of  the 
Kritish  Islands.  Revised  by  \V. 
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of  Birds  and  7  Coloured  Plates  of 
Eggs.  2  vols. 

NAVAL  AND  MILITARY  HE- 
ROES of  GREAT  BRITAIN ; 
or,  Calendar  ot  Victory.  Being  a 
Record  of  British  Valour  and  Con- 
quest by  Sea  and  Land,  on  every 
day  in  the  year,  from  the  time  of 
William  the  Conqueror  to  the 
Battle  of  Inkermann.  By  Major 
Johns,  R.M.,  and  Lieut.  P.  H. 
Njrolas,  R.M.  24.  Portraits.  6s. 


NEANDER  (Dr.  A.).  History 
of  the  Christian  Religion  and 
Church.  Trans,  from  the  German 
by  J .  Torrey .  I  o  vols.  35.6^.  each . 

Life  of  Jesus  Christ.    Trans- 
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Lectures  on  the  History  of 

Christian  Dogmas.      Edited  by 
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Memorials  of  Christian  Life 


in  the  Early  and  Middle  Ages  ; 
including  Light  in  Dark  Places. 
Trans,  by  J.  E.  Ryland.  3^.  6d. 

NIBELUNGEN  LIED.  The 
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translated  from  the  old  German 
text  by  Alice  Hoiton,  and  edited 
by  Edward  Bell,  M.A.  To  which 
is  prefixed  the  Essay  on  the  Nibe- 
lungen  Lied  by  Thomas  Carlyle. 

Sfr 

NEW  TESTAMENT  (The)  in 
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scripts. 900  pages.  5^. 

The  Lexicon  may  be  had  sepa- 
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NICOLINI'S  Histoiy   of   the 

Jesuits:    their  Origin,    Process, 

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NORTH  (R.)  Lives  of  the  Right 
Hon.  Francis  North,  Baron  <  Juild 
ford,  the  Hon.  Sir  iMulley  North, 
and  the  lion,  and  Rev.  Dr.  John 
North.  By  the  Hon.  Roger 
North.  Together  with  the  Auto- 


18 


An  Alphabetical  List  of  Books 


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y  6d.  each. 

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OCKLEY  (S.)  History  of  the 
Saracens  and  their  Conquests 
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By  Simon  Ockley,  B.D.,  Professor 
of  Arabic  in  the  University  of 
Cambridge.  3.?.  6d. 

OMAN  (J.  C.)  The  Great  Indian 
Epics:  the  Stories  of  the  RAMA- 
YANA  and  the  MAHABHARATA. 
By  John  Campbell  Oman,  Prin- 
cipal of  Khalsa  College,  Amritsar. 
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ORDERICUS  VITALIS'  Eccle 
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PASCAL'S  Thoughts.  Translated 
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PERSIUS.— See  JUVENAL. 

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PICKERING'S  History  of  (he 
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PINDAR.  Translated  into  Prose 
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PLANCHE.  History  of  British 
Costume,  from  the  Earliest  Time 
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II. — The  Republic,  Timseus,  and 
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Morals.  Theosophical  Essays. 

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QUINTILIAN'S    Institutes   of 

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Orator.     Translated  by  the  Rev. 

.S.  Watson,  M.A.     2  vols.     $s. 

each. 

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RANKE'S  History  of  thd  Popes, 
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—  History  of  Servia  and  the 
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REUMONT  (Alfred  de).  See 
CARAFAS. 

RECREATIONS  in  SHOOTING. 
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RICARDO  on  the  Principles  of 
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RICHTER  (Jean  Paul  Friedrich). 
Levana,  a  Treatise  on  Education: 
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-  Flower,  Fruit,  and  Thorn 
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laus Siebenkaes,  Parish  Advocate 
in  the  Parish  of  Kuhsclmappel. 
Newly  translated  by  Lt.  -Col.  Alex. 
Ewing.  3^.  6d. 

ROGER  DE  HOVEDEN'S  An- 
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and  of  other  Countries  of  Europe 
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ROGER  OF  WENDOVER'S 
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1 235,  formerly  ascribed  to  Matthew 
Paris.  Translated  by  J.  A.  Giles, 
D.C.L.  2  vols.  55.  each. 

ROME  in  the  NINETEENTH 
CENTURY.  Containing  a  com- 
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Life  of  Lorenzo  de'  Medici, 

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RUSSIA  History  of,  from  the 
earliest  Period,  compiled  from 
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SALLUST,  FLORUS,  and  VEL- 
LEIUS  PATERCULUS. 
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SCHILLER'S  Works.  Translated 
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each : — 

I. — History  of  the  Thirty  Years' 

War. 

II.—  History  of  the  Revolt  in  the 
Netherlands,  the  Trials  of 
Counts Egmont  and  Horn, 
the  Siege  of  Antwerp,  and 
the  Disturbances  in  France 
preceding  the  Reign  of 
Henry  IV. 


SCHILLER'S  WORKS  continued. 

III. — Don  Carlos,  Mary  Stuarl 
Maid  of  Orleans,  Bride  c 
Messina,  together  with  th 
Use  of  the  Chorus  i 
Tragedy  (a  short  Essay). 
These  Dramas  are  a 
translated  in  metre. 

IV.— Robhers  ( with  Schiller 
original  Preface),  Fiescc 
Love  and  Intrigue,  De 
metrius,  Ghost  Seer,  S^oi 
of  Divinity. 

The     Dramas    in    th: 
volume  are  translated  int 
Prose. 
V. — Poems. 

VI.— Essays, /Esthetical  and  Philc 

sophical. 

VII.— Wallenstein's  Camp,  Pu 
colomini  and  Death  c 
Wallenstein,  William  Tel 

SCHILLER  and  GOETHI 
Correspondence  between,  froi 
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L.  Dora  Schmitz.  2  vols.  y.  6 
each. 

SCHLEGEL'S  (F.)  Lectures  o 
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Philosophy  of  Language.  Tran 
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rison,  M.A.  3*.  6d. 

Lectures  on  the  History  < 

Literature,  Ancient  and  Moden 
Translated  from  the  German.  y.6< 

Lectures  on  the  Philosoph 

of  History.     Translated  by  J.  1 
Robertson.     3*.  6d. 

Lectures  on  Modern  Histor; 

together  with  the  Lectures  entitle 
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Whitetock.  3*.  bd. 

Esthetic  and  Miscellaneoi 

Works.      Translated    by   E. 
Millington.     31.  &/. 


An  Alphabetical  List  of  Books 


SCHLEGEL  (A.  W  )  Lectures 
on  Dramatic  Art  and  Literature. 
Translated  by  J.  Black.  Revist-d 
Edition,  by  the  Rev.  A.  J.  W. 
Morrison,  M.A.  3-r.  6d. 

SCHOPENHAUER  on  the  Four- 
fold Root  of  the  Principle  of 
Sufficient  Reason  and  On  the 
Will  in  Nature.  Translated  by 
Madame  Hillebrand.  $s. 

-  Essays.     Selected  and  Trans- 
lated.    With  a  Biographical  Intro- 
duction and  Sketch  of  his  Philo- 
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SCHOUW'S  Earth,  Plants,  and 
Man.  Translated  by  A.  Henfrey. 
With  coloured  Map  of  the  Geo- 
graphy of  Plants.  55. 

SCHUMANN  (Robert).  His  Life 
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Translated  by  A.  L.  Alger.  35.  6d. 

-  Early  Letters.  Originally  pub- 
blished  by  his  Wife.     Translated 
by  May  Herbert.     With  a  Preface 
by    Sir    George    Grove,    D.C  L. 
3*.  6d. 

SENECA    on    Benefits.      Newly, 
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3*.  6d. 

-  Minor  Essays  and  On  Clem- 
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SHAKESPEARE'S  Dramatic 
Art.  The  History  and  Character 
of  Shakespeare's  Plays.  By  Dr. 
Hermann  Ulrici.  Translated  by 
L.  Dora  Schmitz.  2  vols.  3.?.  6d. 
each. 

SHAKESPEARE  (William).  A 
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Ph.D.,  LL.D.  Translated  by 
L.  Dora  Schmitz.  §s. 

SHARPE  (S.)  The  History  of 
Egypt,  from  the  Earliest  Times 
till  the  Conquest  by  the  Arabs, 
A.D.  640.  By  Samuel  Sharpe. 
2  Maps  and  upwards  of  400  Illus- 
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SHERIDAN'S  r-matic  Works, 
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35.  6J. 

SISMONDI'S  History  of  the 
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Europe.  Translated  by  Thomas 
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SIX  OLD  ENGLISH  CHRON- 
ICLES: viz.,  ASSER'S  LIFE  OF 
ALFKED  AND  THECHRONICLESOF 
ETHE  WERD,  GII.DAS,  NENNIUS, 
GEOFFREY  OF  MONMOUTH,  AND 
RICHARD  OF  CIRKNCRSTER. 
Edited  by  J.  A.  Giles,  D.C.L.  5*. 

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Opposite*,  Collected  and  Con- 
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SMITH'S  (Adam)  The  Wealth  of 
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Bax.  2  vols.  3-f.  6</.  each. 

—  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments ; 
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SMYTH'S  (Professor)  Lectures 
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SMITH'S  (  Pye )  Geology  and 
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SMOLLETT'S  Adventures  of 
Roderick  Random.  Witli  short 
Memoir  and  Bibliography,  and 
Cruikshank's  Illustrations.  35.  6</. 

—  Adventures  of  Peregrine 
Pickle,  in  which  are  included  the 
Memoirs  of  a   Lady  of  Quality. 
WTith    Bibliography    and    Cruik- 
shank's Illustrations.  2 vols.  3t.6<f. 
each. 


Contained  in  Bokris  Libraries. 


SMOLLETT'S  The  Expedition 
of  Humphry  Clinker.  With 
Bibliography  and  Cruikshank's 
Illustrations.  3^.  6d. 

SOCRATES  isurnamed  Scholas- 
ticus ').  The  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory of  (A.  D.  305-445).  Translated 
from  the  Greek.  5.?. 

SOPHOCLES.  The  Tragedies  of. 
A  New  Prose  Translation,  with 
Memoir,  Notes,  &c.,  by  E.  P. 
Coleridge.  $s. 

The  Oxford  Translation.    55. 

SOUTHEY'S  Life  of  Nelson. 
With  Facsimiles  of  Nelson's  writ- 
ing, Portraits,  Plans,  and  upwards 
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Wood.  >s. 

—  Life  of  Wesley,  and  the  Rise 
and  Progress  of  Methodism.  5.?. 

-  Robert  Southey.  The  Story 
of  his  Life  written  in  his  Letters. 
With  an  Introduction.  Edited  by 
Joh*  Dennis.  3.?.  6d, 

SOZOMEN'S  Ecclesiastical  His- 
tory. Comprising  a  History  of 
the  Church  from  A.D.  324-440. 
Translated  from  the  Greek.  To- 
gether with  the  ECCLESIASTICAL 
HISTORY  OK  PHILOSTORGIUS,  as 
epitomised  by  Phot  ins.  Trans- 
lated from  the  Greek  by  Rev.  E. 
Walford,  M.A.  51-. 

SPINOZA  S  Chief  Works.  Trans- 
lated, with  Introduction,  by  R.I  I.  M. 
Elwes.  2  vols.  5*.  each. 

STANLEY'S  Classified  Synopsis 
of  the  Principal  Painters  of  the 
Dutch  and  Flemish  Schools. 
By  George  Stanley.  5*. 

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A  Collection  of  Games  played  at 
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STOCKHARDT'S  Experimental 
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Heaton,  F.  C.S.  With  numerous 
Woodcuts.  New  Edition,  revised 
throughout.  5-r- 

STRABO'S  Geography.  Trans- 
lated by  W.  Falconer,  M.A., 
and  II.  C.  Hamilton.  3  vols. 
51.  each. 

STRICKLAND'S  (Agnes)  Lives 
of  the  Queens  of  England,  from 
the  Norman  Conquest.  Revised 
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5*.  each. 

Life  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots. 


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An  Alphabetical  List  of  Books 


UETONIUS'  Lives  of  the  Twelve 
Caesars  and  Lives  of  the  Gram- 
marians.  The  translation  of 
Thomson,  revised  by  T.  Forester. 

5*. 

JLLY.  Memoirs  of  the  Duke 
of,  Prime  Minister  to  Henry 
the  Great.  Translated  from  the 
French.  With  4  Portraits.  4  vols. 
3-f.  6t/.  each. 

TVTFT'S  Prose  Works.  Edited 
by  Temple  Scott.  With  a  Bio- 
graphical Introduction  by  the  Right 
Hon.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  M.P. 
With  Portraits  and  Facsimiles. 
1 1  vols.  3-s.  6d.  each. 

[  Vols.  I -IV.  ready. 
I.— Edited  by  Temple  Scott. 
With  a  Biographical  In- 
troduction by  the  Right 
Hon.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky, 
M.  P.  Containing  :  —  A 
Tale  of  a  Tub,  The  Battle 
of  the  Books,  and  other 
early  works. 

II.—  The  Journal  to  Stella.  Edited 
by  Frederick  Ry land,  M.  A. 
With  2  Portraits  of  Stella, 
and  a  Facsimile  of  one  of 
the  Letters. 

[.&  IV. — Writings  on  Religion  and 
the  Church.  Edited  by 
Temple  Scott. 

V. — Historical  and  Political 
Tracts  (English).  Edited 
by  Temple  Scott 

II. — Gulliver's  Travels.      Edited 

by  G.   R    Dennis.     With 

Portrait  and  Maps. 

The  order  and    contents  of 

the  remaining  volumes  will 

probably  be  as  follows  : — 

&VIL— Historical  and   Pul.tical 

Tracts  (Irish). 

X. — Contributions  to  the  '  Ex- 
aminer,' 'Tatler,'  'Spec- 
tator,' &c. 

X. — Historical  Writings. 
CI. — Literary  Essays  and   Biblio- 
graphy. 


STOWE  (Mrs.  H.B.)  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  or  Life  among  the  Lowly. 
With  Introductory  Remarks  by 
Rev.  J.  Sherman.  With  8  full- 
page  Illustrations.  T,S.  dd. 

TACITUS.  The  Works  of.  Liter- 
ally translated.  2  vols.  5^.  each. 

TALES  OF  THE  GENII;  or, the 
Delightful  Lessons  of  H  ram,  the 
Son  of  Asmar.  Translated  from 
the  Persian  by  Sir  Charles  Morell. 
Numer-ms  Woodcuts  and  12  Steel 
Engravings.  5-c. 

TASSO'S  Jerusalem  Delivered. 
Translated  into  English  Spenserian 
Verse  by  T.  H.  Wiffen.  With  8 
Engravings  on  Steel  and  24  Wood- 
cuts by  Thurston.  $s. 

TAYLOR'S  (Bishop  Jeremy) 
Holy  Living  and  Dying,  with 
Prayers  containing  the  Whole  Duty 
of  a  Christian  and  the  parts  of  De- 
votion fitted  to  all  Occasions  and 
furnishe'l  for  all  Necessities.  35.  6</. 

TEN  BRINK.— See  BRINK. 

TERENCE  and  PH.SJDRUS. 
Literally  translated  by  H.  T.  Riley, 
M.A.  To  wh  chis  added,  SMART'S 
MEIRICALVERSION  OF  PH/-EDRUS. 
5<- 

THEOCRITUS.  BION,  MOS- 
CHUS,  and  T  Y RTJEUS.  Liter- 
ally translated  by  the  Rev.  J. 
Banks,  M.A.  To  which  are  ap- 
pended the  Metrical  Versions  of 
Chapman.  $s. 

THEODORET  and  EVAGRIUS. 
Histories  of  the  Church  (rom  A.D. 
332  to  A.D.  427;  and  from  A.D. 
431  to  A.D.  544.  Translated  from 
the  Greek.  5.?. 

THIERRY'S  History  of  the 
Conquest  of  England  by  the 
Normans ;  its  Causes,  and  its 
Consequences  in  fc  ngland,  Scot- 
land, Ireland,  and  the  Continent. 
Translated  by  William  Hazlitt. 
2  vo]$.  $s.  6d.  eaclj, 


Contained  in  Boktt's  Libraries. 


THtrCYDIDES.  The  Pelopon- 
nesian  War.  Literally  translated 
by  the  Rev.  H.  Dale.  2  vols. 
3^.  £>d.  each. 

—  An  Analysis  and  Summary 
of.  With  Chronological  Table  of 
Events,  Ac.  By  JT.  T.  Wheeler. 


THUDICHUM  (J.  L.  W.)  A  Trea- 
tise on  Wines:  their  Origin, 
Nature,  and  Varieties.  With  Prac- 
tical Directions  for  Viticulture  and 
Vinification.  By  J.  L.  W.  Thudi- 
chum,  M.D.,  F.R.C.P.  (Lond.). 
Illustrated.  5*. 

URE'S  (Dr.  A.)  Cotton  Manufac- 
ture of  Great  Britain,  systemati- 
cally investigated.  Revised  Edit. 
by  P.  L.  Simmonds.  With  150 
original  Illustrations.  2  vols.  5*. 
each. 

-  Philosophy  of  Manufactures. 
Revised  Edition,  by  P.  L.  Sim- 
monds. With  numerous  Figures. 
Double  volume,  fs.  dd. 

VASARI'S  Lives  of  the  most 
Eminent  Painters,  Sculptors, 
and  Architects.  Translated  by 
Mrs.  J.  Foster,  with  a  Commen- 
tary by  J.  P.  Richter,  Ph.D.  6 
vols.  y,  6d.  each. 

VIRGIL.  A  Literal  Prose  Trans- 
lation by  A.  Hamilton  Bryce, 
LL.D.,  F.R.S.E.  With  Portrait. 
3s.  6d. 

VOLTAIRE'S  Tales.  Translated 
by  R.  B.  Boswell.  Vol.  I  ,  con- 
taining Bebouc,  Memnon,  Can- 
dide,  L'Ingenu,  and  other  Tales. 


W  ALTON  S  Complete  Angler, 
or  the  Contemplative  Man's  Re- 
creation ,  by  Izaak  Walton  and 
Charles  Cotton.  Edited  by  Ed- 
ward Jesse.  To  which  is  added 
an  account  of  Fishing  Stations, 


Tackle,  &c.,  by  Henry  G.  Bol 
With  Portrait  and  203  Engravin 
on  Wood  and  26  Engravings 
Steel.     5,. 

-  Lives  of  Donne,  Hooker,  & 
New   Edition   revised    by  A.  1 
Bullen,  with  a  Memoir  of  Iza 
Walton  by  Wm.  Dowling.     Wi 
numerous  Illustrations.     5.1. 

WELLINGTON,  Life  of.  By  '  1 
Old  Soldier.'  From  the  materis 
of  Maxwell.  With  Index  and  : 
Steel  Engravings.  5^. 

-  Victories  of.    See  MAXWEL 

WERNER'S  Templars  J 
Cyprus.  Translated  by  E.  A.  J 
Lewis.  3^.  dd. 

WESTROPP  (H.  M.)  A  Ham 
book  of  Archaeology,  Egyptia 
Greek,  Etruscan,  Roman.  I 
H.  M.  Westropp.  2nd  Editio: 
revised.  With  very  numeroi 
Illustrations.  5*. 

WHITE'S  Natural  History  < 
Selborne,  with  Observations  c 
various  Parts  of  Nature,  and  tl 
Naturalists'  Calendar.  With  Not 
by  Sir  William  Jardine.  Edite 
by  Edward  Jesse.  With  40  Po 
traits  and  coloured  Plates.  5^. 

WHEATLEY'S  A  Rational  Illu 
tration  of  the  Book  of  Commo 
Prayer.  3*.  6J. 

WHEELER'S  Noted  Names  < 
Fiction,  Dictionary  of.  Incluc 
ing  also  Familiar  Pseudonym: 
Surnames  bestowed  on  Eminer 
Men,  and  Analogous  Popular  Ai 
pellations  often  referred  to  i 
Literature  and  Conversation.  B 
W.  A.  Wheeler,  M.A.  5^. 

WIESELER'S  Chronologies 
SynopaU  of  the  Four  Gosp«h 
Translated  by  the  Rev.  Cano 
Vcnablcs.  31.  6J. 


»6        Alphabetical  List  of  Books  in  Bohris  Libraries. 


WILLIAM  of  MALMESBURY'S 
Chronicle  of  the  Kings  of  Eng- 
land, from  the  Earliest  Period 
to  the  Reign  of  King  Stephen. 
Translated  by  the  Rev.  J.  Sharpe. 
Edited  by  J.  A.  Giles,  D.C.L.  5*. 

CENOPHON'S  Works.  Trans- 
lated by  the  Rev.  J.  S.  Watson, 
M.A.,  and  the  Rev.  II.  Dale.  In 
3  vols.  5.?.  each. 

iTOUNG  (Arthur).  Travels  in 
France  during  the  years  1787, 
1788.  and  1789.  Edited  by 
M.  Betham  Edwards.  35.  6d. 


YOUNG  (Arthur).  Tour  in  Ire- 
land, with  General  Observations 
on  the  state  of  the  country  during 
the  years  1776-79.  Edited  by 
A.  W.  Hutton.  With  Complete 
Bibliography  by  J.  P.  Ander- 
son, and  Map.  2  vols.  y.  6d. 
each. 

YULE-TIDE  STORIES.  A  Col- 
lection of  Scandinavian  and  North- 
German  Popular  Tales  and  Tra- 
ditions, from  the  Swedish,  Danish, 
and  German.  Edited  by  B.Thorpe. 


(  27  ) 

NEW    AND     FORTHCOMING     VOLUMES    O. 

BONN'S  LIBRARIES. 


THE  PROSE  WORKS  OF  JONATHAN  SWIFT.  Edited  t 
Temple  Scott.  With  an  Introduction  by  the  Right  Hon.  W.  E.  I 
Lecky,  M.P.  In  u  volumes,  3^.  6d.  each. 

Vol.  I.—'  A  Tale  of  a  Tub,'  '  The  Battle  of  the  Books,'  and  oth< 
early  works.  Edited  by  Temple  Scott.  With  Intioduction  by  tl 
Right  Hon.  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  M  P.  Portrait  and  Facsimiles. 

Vol.  II.— 'The  Journal  to  Stella.'  Edited  by  F.  Ryland,  M.J 
With  a  Facsimile  Letter  and  two  Portraits  of  Stella. 

Vols.  Ill  and  IV.— Writings  on  Religion  and  the  Churcl 
Edited  by  Temple  Scott.  With  portraits  and  facsimiles  of  title  page 

Vol.  V.  —Historical  and  Political  Tracts  (English).  Edited  b 
Temple  Scott.  With  Portrait  and  Facsimiles. 

Vol.  VIII  —Gulliver's  Travels.  Edited  by  G.  R.  Dennis.  Wit 
the  original  Maps  and  Illustrations. 

THE  LAY  OF  THE  NIBELUNGS.  Metrically  translated  from  th 
Old  German  text  by  Alice  Ilorton,  an<l  Edited  by  Edward  Bell,  M..A 
With  the  Essay  on  the  Nibelungen  Lied  by  Thomas  Carlyle.  51. 

GRAY'S  LETTERS.  Edited  by  the  Rev.  D.  C.  Tovey,  M.A.,  authc 
of  'Gray  and  his  Friends,'  &c.,  late  Clark  Lecturer  at  Trinity  College 
Cambridge.  Vol.  I.  \Shortl) 

CICERO'S  LETTERS.  The  whole  extant  Correspondence.  Traru 
lated  by  Evelyn  S.  Shuckburgh,  M.A.  In  4  vols.  5*.  each. 

[  Vols.  I.  and  II.    eady 

THE    ROMAN     HISTORY    OF    APPIAN    OF    ALEXANDRIA 

Translated  by  Horace  White,  M  A  ,  I. L.I).     With  Maps  and   lllus 
trations.     2  vols.     6.r.  each. 

GASPARY'S  HISTORY  OF  ITALIAN  LITERATURE.  Trans 
lated  by  Hermann  Oelsner,  M.A.,  Ph.D.  Vol.  I.  [In  the  preu 

THE  GREAT  INDIAN  EPICS.  The  Stories  of  the  Ramayana  an- 
the  Mahabharata.  By  John  Campbell  Oman,  Principal  of  Khata 
College,  Amritsar.  With  Notes,  Appendices,  and  Illustrations 
New  Edition,  revised,  3^.  bd. 

LELAND'S  ITINERARY.  Edited  by  Laurence  Gonune,  F.S.A.  Ii 
several  volumes.  \_Prifaring 


28  ) 

ROYAL   NAVY    ^ANDBOOKS. 

EDITED    MY 

COMMANDER  C.  N    ROBINSON,   R.N. 

Profusely  Illustrated.     Crown  8vo.   $s.  each. 
Now  Ready. 

\.  NAVAL  ADMINISTRATION.  By  Admiral  Sir  R.  VESEY 
HAMILTON,  G.C.B.  With  Portraits  and  other  Illustrations. 

z.  THE  MECHANISM  OF  MEN-OF-WAR.  By  Fleet-Engineer 
REGINALD  C.  OLDKNOW,  R.N.  With  61  Illustrations. 

3.  TORPEDOES  AND  TORPEDO-VESSELS.  By  Lieutenant 
G.  E.  ARMSTRONG,  late  R.N.  With  53  Illustrations. 

\.  NAVAL  GUNNERY,  a  Description  and  History  of  the  Fighting 
Equipment  of  a  Man-of-War.  By  Captain  H.  GARBETT,  R.N.  With 
125  Illustrations. 

The  following  Volumes  are  in  preparation. 

;.  THE  ENTRY  AND  TRAINING  OF  OFFICERS  AND 
MEN  OF  THE  ROYAL  NAVY  AND  THE  ROYAL  MARINES. 
By  Lieutenant  J.  N.  ALLEN,  late  R.N. 

x  NAVAL  STRATEGY  AND  THE  PROTECTION  OF  COM- 
MERCE. By  Professor  J.  K.  LAUGHTON,  R.N. 

i.   THE  INTERNAL  ECONOMY  OF  A  MAN-OF-WAR. 

5.    NAVAL  ARCHITECTURE. 

).    DOCKYARDS  AND  COALING  STATIONS. 

x    NAVAL  TACTICS. 

[.   NAVAL  HYGIENE. 

i.   THE  LAWS  OF  THE  SEA. 

PRESS   OPINIONS. 

'Commander  Robinson,  whose  able  work,  "The  British  Fleet,"  was  reviewed  in  these 
lumns  in  November,  1894,  has  now  undertaken  the  editing  of  a  series  of  handbooks,  each 
which  will  deal  with  one  particular  subject  connected  with  that  great  creation,  the  Royal 
avy.  Our  national  literature  has  certainly  lacked  much  in  this  respect.  Such  books  as 
.ve  heretofore  been  produced  have  almost  invariably  been  of  a  character  tou  scientific  and 
:hnical  to  be  of  much  use  to  the  general  public.  The  series  now  being  issued  is  intended  to 
viate  this  defect,  and  when  completed  will  form  a  description,  both  historical  and  actual,  of  the 
jyal  Navy,  which  will  not  only  be  of  use  to  the  professional  student,  but  also  be  of  interest 
all  who  are  concerned  in  the  maintenance  and  efficiency  of  the  Navy.' — Broad  Arrow. 

1  The  series  of  naval  handbooks  edited  by  Commander  Robinson  has  made  a  most  hopeful 
ginning,  and  may  be  counted  upon  to  supply  the  growing  popular  demand  for  information 
regard  to  the  Navy,  on  which  the  national  existence  depends.' — Times. 

'Messrs.  Bell's  series  of  "Royal  Navy  Handbooks"  promises  to  be  a  very  successful 
terprise  They  are  practical  and  definitely  informative,  and,  though  meant  for  the  use  of 
rsons  closely  acquainted  with  their  subjects,  they  are  not  so  discouragingly  technical  as  to 

useless  to  the  lay  seeker  after  knowledge.' — Bookman. 


New  Editions,  fcap.  8vo.  2s.  6a.  each  net. 


THE 


EDITION 


BRITISH      POETS. 

"This  excellent  edition  of  the  English  classics,  with  their  complete  text.-  an 
scholarly  introductions,  are  something  very  different  from  the  cheap  volume-  i 
extracts  which  are  jugt  now  so  much  too  common.' — St.  James's  Guz«tt«. 

'  An  excellent  series.     Small,  handy,  and  complete.'  -Saturday  Keuiew. 


Akenside.   Edited  by  Bev.  A.  Dyce. 

Seattle.  Edited  by  Bev.  A.  Dyce. 
Edited  by  W.  M.  Bossetti 
Edited  by  G.  A.  Aitken. 


Edited  by  B.  B.  JohnHon. 


•Blake. 

•Burns. 

3  vols. 
Butler. 

'2  vols. 

Campbell.  Edited  by  His  Son- 
in-law,  the  Bev.  A.  W.  Hill.  With 
Memoir  by  W.  Allingham. 

Chatter-ton.     Edited  by  the   Bev. 

W.   W.   Skeat,   M.A.     2  vols. 
Chaucer.   Edited  by  Dr.  K.  Morris, 

with  Memoir  by  Sir  H.  Nicolas.  6  vols. 
Churchill.   Edited  by  Jas.  Hannay. 

2  vols. 
•Coleridge.     Edited  by   T.    Ashe, 

B.A.     2  vols. 
Collins.      Edited     by     W.     Moy 

Thomas. 
Cowper.     Edited  by  John  Bruco. 

F.S.A.    3  voU. 
Dryden.     Edited  by    the  Bev.   B. 

Hooper,  M.A.    5  vols. 

Falconer.  Edited  by  the  Bev.  J. 
Mittord. 

Goldsmith.      Revised  Edition  by 

Austin  Dobsou.     With  Portrait. 
•Qray.     Edited   by   J.  Braduhaw, 

LL.D. 
Herbert.     Edited  by  the  Bev.  A.  B. 

Gronart. 
•Herriok.        Edited     by     George 

SamUoury.     2  vols. 
*Keata.     Edited  by  the  late  Lord 

Honybton. 


ttirke    White.       Edited,    with 
Memoir,  by  Sir  H.  Nicola*. 

Milton.     Edited  by  Dr.  Bradshav 

2  VOIB. 

Parnell.      Edited  by  G.  A.  AUkeo 

Pope.  Edited  by  G.  B.  Denni 
With  Memoir  by  John  Dennis.  3  vu 

Prior.  Edited  by  B.  B.  Johusoi 
2  vols. 

Raleigh  and  Wotton.  With  S 
lections  from  the  Writings  of  oth 
COURTLY  POhTS  from  1540  to  IttJ 
Edited  by  Ven.  Archdeacon  Hanuu 
D.O.L. 

Rogers.     Edited  by  Edward  Be 

M.A. 
Scott.      Edited  by    John    Deun 

5  volb. 
Shakespeare's  Poems.    Edited  1 

H«:v.  A.  Dyoe. 
Shelley.      Edited   by    H.    Buxb 

Gorman.    5  vols. 
Spenser.    Edited  by  J.  Payne  C( 

liur.    5  vols. 
Surrey.     Edited  by  J.  Yeowell. 

Swift.      Edited    by    the    Bev. 

Mitt'urd.     3  vols. 
Thomson.     Edited  by  tlie  Bev. 

0.  Tovey.    2  voU. 
Vaughan.      Saoied    Foema    ai 

>'ioiu    Ejaculation*.      Uditad    by    1 

Rev.  H.  Lyte. 
WordBworth.      Edited    by    Pr 

Dowden.    7  vols. 
Wyatt.     Edited  by  J.  Yeowell. 

Young.  2  vola.  Edited  by  t 
U..v.  J.  Mitford. 


•    ihne  volume*  may  aluo  bt  had  bonud  ib  IruL  hneu,  with  design  in  golu  on  » 
ftOU  back  by  aieenon  White,  and  gilt  tup.  !U.  Od.  each  nou 


THE     ALL-ENGLAND     SERIES. 

HANDBOOKS   OF   ATHLETIC    GAMES. 

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Cricket.    By  the   Hon.  and  Eev. 

E.  LTTTELTON. 
Lawn    Tennis.      By    H.   W.    W. 

WILBERFORCK.     With   a  Chapter  for 

Ladies,  by  Mrs.  HILLYAKD. 
Tennis  and  Rackets  and  Fives. 

By  JULIAN  MARSHALL,  Major  J.  SPENS, 

and  Rev.  J.  A.  ARNAH  TAIT. 
Golf.    By  W.  T.  LINSKILL. 
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With  Prefatory  Note  by  Bat  Mullins. 
Cycling.   By  H.  H.  GRIFFIN, L.A.C., 

N  C.U.,  O.T  C.     With   a  Chapter  for 

Ladies,  by  Miss  AGUES  WOOD. 
Fencing.    By  H.  A.  COLMORE  DUNN. 


Wrestling.  By  WALTER  ARM- 
STRONG (' Cross-buttocker'). 

Broadsword  and  Singlestick. 
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LIPPS-WOLLEY. 

Gymnastics.     By   A.   F.   JENKIN. 

Double  vol.  2s. 

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P.  GRAF. 

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Dumb-bells.     By  F.  GRAF. 
Football  —  Rugby    Game.       By 

HARRY  VASSALL. 
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C.  W.  ALCOCK.     Revised  Edition, 
Hockey.      By    F.    S.    CRESWELL. 

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Skating.      By     DOUGLAS     ADAMS. 

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Dancing.      By    EDWARD    SCOTT. 

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THE  CLUB  SERIES  OF  CARD  AND  TABLE  GAMES. 

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Whist.  By  Dr.  WM.  POLE,  F.R.S. 
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Bridge.  By  Robtrt  F.  GBEEN. 

[In  the  press. 
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DRATSON,  F.R.A.S.     With  a  Preface 

by  W.  J.  Peall. 

Chess.     By  ROBERT  F.  GBEEN. 
The  Two- Move  Chess  Problem. 

By  B.  G.  LAWS. 

Chess  Openings.  By  I.  GUNSBEBG. 
Draughts  and  Backgammon. 

*«y '  BEKKILEY." 
Reversl  and  Go  Bang. 

By  '  BKBKHLJCY  ' 


Dominoes  and  Solitaire. 

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BAXTER  WRAY. 

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CANTERBURY.    By  HARTLEY  WITHERS.  3rd  Edition,  revised.    37  Illustrations. 

CHESTER.     By  CHARLES  HIATT.     2nd  Edition,  revised.     35  Illustrations. 

DURHAM.     By  J.  E.  BYGATK,  A.R.C.A.     44  Illustrations. 

EXETER.     By  PERCY  ADDLESHAW,  B.A.    2nd  Edition,  revised.    35  Illustrations. 

GLOUCESTER.     By  H.  ].  L.  J.  MASSE,  M  A.     49  Illustrations. 

HEREFORD.     By  A.  HUGH  FISHER,  A.R.E.     40  Illustrations. 

LICHFIELD.     By  A.  B.  CLIFTON.    42  Illustrations. 

LINCOLN.     By  A   F.  KENDRICK,  B  A.     and  Edition,  revised      46  Illustrations. 

NORWICH.     By  C.  H.  B.  QUENNELL.    38  Illustrations. 

OXFORD.     By  Rev.  PERCY  DEARMER,  M.A.     2nd  Edition,  revised.     34  Illus- 
trations. 

PETERBOROUGH.     By  Rev.  W.  D.  SWEETING.     2nd  Edition,  revised. 
51  Illustrations. 

ROCHESTER.    By  G.  H.  PALMER,  B.A.    2nd  Edition,  revised.    38  Illustrations. 

SALISBURY.     By  GLEESON  WHITE.     2nd  Edition,  revised.    50  Illustrations. 

SOUTHWELL.     By  Rev.  ARTHUR  DIMOCK,  M.A.     37  Illustrations. 

WELLS.     By  Rev.  PERCY  DEARMER,  M.A.    43  Illustrations. 

WINCHESTER.    By  P.  W.  SERGEANT,    and  Edition,  revised.    50  Illustration 

YORK.     By  A.  GLUTTON- BROCK,  M.A.    41  Illustrations. 

In  the  Press. 


CARLISLE.     By  C.  K.  ELEY. 

ST.  PAUL'S.     By  Rev.  ARTHUR  DIMOCK, 


RIPON.     By  CECIL  HALI.ETT,  B.A. 
ST.  DAVID'S.     By  PHILIP  ROBSON, 

A.R.I. B.A. 

ELY.     By  Rev.  W.  D.  SWEETING,  M  A. 
WORCESTER.     By  E.  F.  STRANGE. 


BRISTOL.     By  H.  J.  L.  J.  MASSE,  M.A. 
ST.  ALBANS     By  Rev.  W.  D.  SWBKTING. 


CHICHESTER.  By  H.  C.  CORLETTB, 
A.R.I. B.A. 

ST.  ASAPH  and  BANGOR.  By  P.  B. 
IRONSIDE  MAX. 

GLASGOW.  By  P.  MACGREGOR  CHAL- 
MERS, I.A.,  F.b.A.(Scot.). 


Uniform  with  above  Series.    Nmv  ready. 

ST.  MARTIN'S  CHURCH,  CANTERBURY.  By  the  Rev.  CANON  ROUTI.EDGE. 
HEVERLEY   MINSTER.      By  CHARLES  HIATT. 
WIMBORNE    MINSTER     and    CHRISTCHURCH     PRIORY.      By    the    Rev.   T. 

PERKINS,  M.A. 

TEWKESUURY  ABBEY.     By  H.  J.  L.  J.  MASSK,  M.A. 
WESTMINSTER  ABBEY.    By  CHARLES  HIATT. 


'The  volumes  are  handy  in  size,  moderate  in  price,  well  illustrated,  and  written  in  a 
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tuuri»t  in  England.' — Times. 

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WEBSTER'S 

INTERNATIONAL 

DICTIONARY 

OF   THE  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE. 
2118  Pages.       3500  Illustrations. 


PRICES: 

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The  Appendices  comprise  a  Pronouncing  Gazettper  of  the  World, 
Vocabularies  of  Scripture,  Greek,  Latin,  and  English  Proper  Names, 
a  Dictionary  of  the  Noted  Nanres  of  Fiction,  a  Brief  History  of  the 
English  Language,  a  Dictionary  of  Foreign  Quotations,  Words,  Phrases, 
Proverbs,  &c.,  a  Biographical  Dictionary  with  10,000  names,  &c.,  &c. 


'  We  believe  that,  all  things  considered,  this  will  be  found  to  be  the  best 
existing  English  dictionary  in  one  volume.  We  do  not  know  of  any  work 
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National  Observer, 

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in  fact,  who  is  likely  to  be  posed  at  an  unfamiliar  at  half-understood  word  or 
phrase. '—St.  James's  Gazette. 

Prospectuses,  with  Specimen  Pages,  on  Application. 
THE    ONLY    AUTHORISED    AND    COMPLETE    EDITION. 


LONDON  :    GEORGE  BELL  &  SONS,  YORK  STREET, 

COVENT  GARDEN.; 
S.  &  S.  10.99.' 


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