A LAMP FOR THE READER. THE writings of Shakespeare, in addition to the more conspicuous graces of his language, are fraught with innumerable significant peculiarities, (unattempted, and probably unattainable by other authors) the offspring of his own transcendant genius only. These feats of phraseology, and achievements of expression, may appropriately be denominated the illustrative mechanism of his composition. Profusely employed throughout his wondrously-contrived dialogues, they are often treated as obscurities, because unappreciated; although, the principle of their application being recognized, they cast a brilliant and certain light upon his treasure-stored page. They constitute a system, in which the arrangement of the metre, the disposition of the prose, the form of a word, the duplication of the sense, in which everything within the range of diction and construction is compelled, by the powers of a colossal intellect, to perform an extraordinary part in delineation. In the subjoined narrative of a fight, the abrupt curtness of a verse brings the recital to a sudden check, where the progress of the combatant is temporarily arrested by the opposition of a potent foe; graphically imaging this phase of the action recounted, and indicating the fitting pause to be there observed by the narrator: "For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name) Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which smok'd with bloody execution, Like valour's minion, carv'd out his passage Till he fac'd the slave; Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam'd him from the nave to th' chaps, A 2 |