of the catastrophe of Othello. He proposes, that the handkerchief, when lost, should have been folded in the bridal couch; and when Othello was stifling Desdemona,

"The fairy napkin might have started up to disarm his fury, and stop his ungracious mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear) have lain as dead. Then might he, (believing her dead,) touched with remorse, have honestly cut his own throat, by the good leave, and with the applause, of all the spectators; who might thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, admiring the beauty of providence, fairly and truly represented on the theatre."

and swaggering like two drunken Hectors of a two-penny reckoning." And finally, alluding to the epilogue of Laberius, forced by the emperor to become an actor, he thus sums up his charges:

"This may show with what indignity our poet treats the noblest Romans. But there is no other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one must wear a fool's coat that comes to be dressed by him; nor is he more civil to the ladies-Portia, in good manners, might have challenged more respect; she that shines a glory of the first magnitude in the gallery of heroic dames, is with our poet scarce one re

The following is the summing up and catas-move from a natural; she is the own cousintrophe of this marvellous criticism:

german of one piece, the very same impertinent silly flesh and blood with Desdemona. Shakspeare's genius lay for comedy and humour. In tragedy he appears quite out of his element; his brains are turned-he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to control him, to set bounds to his phrensy."

"What can remain with the audience to carry home with them from this sort of poetry, for their use and edification? How can it work, unless (instead of settling the mind and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our appetite-and fill our head with vanity, One truth, though the author did not underconfusion, tintamarra, and jingle-jangle, be- stand it, is told in this critic on Julius Cæsar; yond what all the parish clerks of London, that Shakspeare's "senators and his orators with their Old Testament farces and interludes, had their learning and education at the same in Richard the Second's time, could ever pre-school, be they Venetians, Ottamites, or noble tend to? Our only hopes, for the good of their Romans." They drew, in their golden urns, souls, can be that these people go to the play- from the deep fountain of humanity, those livhouse as they do to church-to sit still, looking waters which lose not their sweetness in on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the changes of man's external condition. the play more than they would a sermon. "There is in this play some burlesque, some humour, and ramble of comical wit, some show, and some mimicry to divert the spectators; but the tragical part is clearly none other than a bloody farce, without salt or savor."

must "gather fame" as time rolls on. It appeals to feelings which cannot alter. The minds who once have deeply felt it, can never lose the impression at first made upon them-they

These attacks on Shakspeare are very curious, as evincing how gradual has been the increase of his fame. Their whole tone shows that the author was not advancing what he thought the world would regard as paradoxical or strange. He speaks as one with authority to decide. We look now on his work amazedly; Our author's criticism on Julius Cæsar is very and were it put forth by a writer of our times, scanty, compared with that of Othello, but it is should regard it as " the very ecstasy of madnot less decisive. Indeed, his classical zeal ness." Such is the lot of genius. However here sharpens his critical rage; and he is in-small the circle of cotemporary admirers, it censed against Shakspeare, not only as offending the dignity of the tragic muse, but the memory of the noblest Romans. He might," exclaims the indignant critic, "be familiar with Othello and Iago, as his own natural acquaint-transmit it to others, by whom it is extended ance, but Cæsar and Brutus were above his to those who are worthy to treasure it. Its conversation; to put them in fools' coats, and stability and duration at length awaken the atmake them Jack Puddens in the Shakspeare tention of the world, which thus acknowledges dress, is a sacrilege beyond any thing in Spel- the sanction of time, and professes an admiraman. The truth is, this author's head was tion for the author, which it only feels for his full of villanous, unnatural images-and his- name. We should not, however, have thus tory has furnished him with great names, dwelt on the attacks of Rymer, had we rethereby to recommend them to the world, by garded them merely as objects of wonder, or writing over them-This is Brutus, this is Cicero, as proofs of the partial influence of Shaksthis is Cæsar." He affirms, "that the language peare's genius. They are far from deserving Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Brutus unmingled scorn. They display, at least, an would not suit or be convenient, unless from honest, unsophisticated hatred, which is better some son of the shambles, or some natural than the maudlin admiration of Shakspeare, offspring of the butchery." He abuses the expressed by those who were deluded by Irepoet for making the conspirators dispute about land's forgeries. Their author has a heartday-break-seriously chides him for not allow-ness, an earnestness almost romantic, which ing the noble Brutus a watch-candle in his chamber on this important night, rather than puzzling his man, Lucius, to grope in the dark for a flint and tinder-box to get the taper lighted-speaks of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, as that in which "they are to play a prize, a trial of skill in huffing

we cannot despise, though directed against our idol. With a singular obtuseness to poetry, he has a chivalric devotion to all that he regards as excellent and grand. He looks on the supposed errors of the poet as moral crimes. He confounds fiction with fact-grows warm in defence of shadows-feels a violation of

poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a | Thus does he lay down the rules of life and jury-moves a habeas corpus for all damsels death for his regal domain of tragedy: “If I imprisoned in romance—and, if the bard kills mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a those of his characters who deserve to live, man, except her quality gives her the advanpronounces judgment on him as in case of tage above him; nor is a servant to kill the felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the master, nor a private man, much less a subDon Quixote of criticism. Like the hero of ject to kill a king, nor on the contrary. PoetiCervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious cal decency will not suffer death to be dealt to injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhi- each other, by such persons whom the laws bition in his disinterested rage. In one sense of duel allow not to enter the lists together." he does more honour to the poet than any He admits, however, that "there may be cirother writer, for he seems to regard him as an cumstances that alter the case: as where there arbiter of life and death-responsible only to is sufficient ground of partiality in an authe critic for the administration of his powers. dience, either upon the account of religion (as) Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of Rinaldo or Riccardo, in Tasso, might kill Soliwhat is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for man, or any other Turkish king or great Sulpoetical justice; and as he thinks that vice tan) or else in favour of our country, for then cannot be punished too severely, and yet that a private English hero might overcome a king the poet ought to leave his victims objects of of some rival nation." How pleasant a maspity, he protests against the introduction of ter of the ceremonies is he in the regions of very wicked characters. Therefore," says fiction-regulating the niceties of murder like he, "among the ancients we find no malefac- the decorums of a dance-with an amiable tors of this kind; a wilful murderer is, with preference for his own religion and country! them, as strange and unknown as a parricide to the old Romans. Yet need we not fancy that they were squeamish, or unacquainted with many of those great lumping crimes in that age; when we remember their dipus, Orestes, or Medea. But they took care to wash the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with such art to prepare the morsel; they made it all junket to the taste, and all physic in the operation."

Our author understands exactly the balance of power in the affections. He would dispose of all the poet's characters to a hair, according to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal them in array as in a procession, and mark out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. According to him, so much of presage and no more should be given-such a degree of sorrow, and no more ought a character endure; vengeance should rise precisely to a given height, and be executed by a certain appointed hand. He would regulate the conduct of fictitious heroes as accurately as of real beings, and often reasons well on his own poetic decalogue. "Amintor," says he, (speaking of a character in the Maid's Tragedy) "should have begged the king's pardon; should have suffered all the racks and tortures a tyrant could inflict; and from Perillus's bull should have still bellowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was to be kept that he is true to Aspatia, that he dies for his mistress! Then would his memory have been precious and sweet to after ages; and the midsummer maidens would have of fered their garlands all at his grave."

Mr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for the poetical prerogatives of kings. No cour tier ever contended more strenuously for their divine right in real life, than he for their preeminence in tragedy. We are to presume," observes he gravely, "the greatest virtues, where we find the highest rewards; and though it is not necessary that all heroes should be kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads, by poetical right, are heroes. This character is a flower, a prerogative, so certain, so indispensably annexed to the crown, as by no poet, or parliament of poets, ever to be invaded."

These notions, however absurd, result from an indistinct sense of a peculiar dignity and grandeur essential to tragedy-and surely this feeling was not altogether deceptive. Some there are, indeed, who trace the emotions of strange delight which tragedy awakens, entirely to the love of strong excitement, which is gratified by spectacles of anguish. According to their doctrine, the more nearly the representation of sorrow approaches reality, the more intense will be the gratification of the spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted, that if the audience at a tragedy were informed of an execution about to take place in the neighbourhood, they would leave the theatre to witness it, We believe that experience does not warrant a speculation so dishonourable to our nature. How few, except those of the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the punishment of capital offenders! Even of those whom the dreadful infliction draws together, how many are excited merely by curiosity, and a desire to view the last mortal agony, which in a form more or less terrible all must endure! We think that if, during the representation of a tragedy, the audience were compelled to feel vividly that a fellow-creature was struggling in the agonies of a violent death, many of them would retire -but not to the scene of horror. The reality of human suffering would come too closely home to their hearts, to permit their enjoyment of the fiction. How often, during the scenic exhibition of intolerable agony-unconsecrated and unredeemed-have we been compelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the highest triumph of an author, whose aim is to heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces us, in our own defence, to escape from his power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy were merely occasioned by the love of excitement, the pleasure would be in proportion to the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then would The Gamester be more pathetic than Othello, and Isabella call forth deeper admiration than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George

Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the New- which power has achieved over its earthly

gate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently to refute the position on which they are founded.

Equally false is the opinion, that the pleasure derived from tragedy arises from a source of individual security, while others are suffering. There are no feelings more distantly removed from the selfish, than those which genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at its representation out of ourselves, and "the ignorant present time,"-by earnest sympathy with the passions and the sorrows, not of ourselves, but of our nature. We feel our community with the general heart of man. The encrustments of selfishness and low passion are rent asunder, and the warm tide of human sympathies gushes triumphantly from its secret and divine sources.

frame. In short, it is the high duty of the tragic poet to exhibit humanity sublimest in its distresses-to dignify or to sweeten sorrow-to exhibit eternal energies wrestling with each other, or with the accidents of the worldand to disclose the depth and the immortality of the affections. He must represent humanity as a rock, beaten, and sometimes overspread, with the mighty waters of anguish, but still unshaken. We look to him for hopes, principles, resting places of the soul-for emotions which dignify our passions, and consecrate our sorrows. A brief retrospect of tragedy will show, that in every age when it has triumphed, it has appealed not to the mere love of excitement, but to the perceptions of beauty in the soul-to the yearnings of the deepest affections-to the aspirations after grandeur and permanence, which never leave man even in his errors and afflictions.

little struggle; the doom of the heroes is fixed on high, and they pass, in sublime composure, to fulfil their destiny. Their sorrows are awful, their deaths religious sacrifices to the power of Heaven. The glory that plays about their heads is the prognostic of their fate. A con

It is not, then, in bringing sorrow home in its dreadful realities to our bosoms, nor in Nothing could be more dignified than the painting it so as to make us cling to our selfish old tragedy of the Greeks. Its characters were gratifications with more earnest joy, that the demi-gods, or heroes; its subjects were often tragic poet moves and enchants us. Grief is the destinies of those lines of the mighty, but the means-the necessary means indeed- which had their beginning among the eldest by which he accomplishes his lofty purposes. deities. So far, in the development of their The grander qualities of the soul cannot be plots, were the poets from appealing to mere developed the deepest resources of comfort sensibility, that they scarcely deigned to within it cannot be unveiled-the solemnities awaken an anxious throb, or draw forth a of its destiny cannot be shadowed forth-ex-human tear. In their works, we see the catascept in peril and in suffering. Hence peril and | trophe from the beginning, and feel its influence suffering become instruments of the Tragic at every step, as we advance majestically along Muse. But these are not, in themselves, those the solemn avenue which it closes. There is things which we delight to contemplate. Various, indeed, yet most distinct from these, are the sources of that deep joy that tragedy produces. Sometimes we are filled with a delight not dissimilar to that which the Laocoon excites an admiration of the more than mortal beauty of the attitudes and of the finishing-secration is shed over their brief and sad and even of the terrific sublimity of the folds career, which takes away all the ordinary in which the links of fate involve the charac- feelings of suffering. Their afflictions are ters. When we look at that inimitable group, sacred, their passions inspired by the gods, we do not merely rejoice in a sympathy with their fates prophesied in elder time, their deaths extreme suffering-but are enchanted with ten- almost festal. All things are tinged with sancder loveliness, and feel that the sense of dis-tity or with beauty in the Greek tragedies. tress is softened by the exquisite touches of Bodily pain is made sublime; destitution and genius. Often, in tragedy, our hearts are ele- wretchedness are rendered sacred; and the vated by thoughts "informed with nobleness" -by the view of heroic greatness of soul-by the contemplation of affections which death cannot conquer. It is not the depth of anguish which calls forth delicious tears-it is some sweet piece of self-denial-some touch of human gentleness, in the midst of sorrow-stances attendant on the death of Edipus! some "glorious triumph of exceeding love," which suffuses our "subdued eyes," and mellows our hearts. Death itself often becomes the source of sublime consolations: seen through the poetical medium, it often seems to fall on the wretched "softly and lightly, as a passing cloud." It is felt as the blessed means of re-uniting faithful and ill-fated lovers-it is the pillow on whic the long struggling patriot rests. Often it exhibits the noblest triumph of the spiritual over the material part of man. The intense ardour of a spirit that "o'er-inform'd its tenement of clay"-yet more quenchless in the last conflict, is felt to survive the struggle, and to triumph even in the victory

very grove of the Furies is represented as ever fresh and green. How grand is the suffering of Prometheus, how sweet the resolution of Antigone, how appalling, yet how magnificent the last vision of Cassandra, how reconciling and tender, yet how awful, the circum

And how rich a poetic atmosphere do the Athenian poets breathe over all the creations of their genius! Their exquisite groups appear in all the venerableness of hoar antiquity; yet in the distinctness and in the bloom of unfading youth. All the human figures are seen, sublime in attitude, and exquisite in finishing; while, in the dim background, appear the shapes of eldest gods, and the solemn abstractions of life, fearfully imbodied — "Death the skeleton, and time the shadow!"Surely there is something more in all this, than a vivid picture of the sad realities of our human existence.

The Romans failed in tragedy, because their

death have deprived it of its terrors. In Shakspeare, the passionate is always steeped in the beautiful. Sometimes he diverts sorrow with tender conceits, which, like little fantastic rocks, break its streams into sparkling cascades and circling eddies. And when it must flow on, deep and still, he bends over it branching foliage and graceful flowers-whose

love of mere excitement was too keen to permit them to enjoy it. They had "supped full of horrors." Familiar with the thoughts of real slaughter, they could not endure the philosophic and poetic view of distress in which it is softened and made sacred. Their imaginations were too practical for a genuine poet to affect. Hence, in the plays which bear the name of Seneca, horrors are heaped on hor-leaves are seen in its dark bosom, all of one rors-the most unpleasing of the Greek fictions (as that of Medea) are re-written and made ghastly and every touch that might redeem is carefully effaced by the poet. Still, the grandeur of old tragedy is there—still "the gorgeous pall comes sweeping by"-still the dignity survives, though the beauty has faded.

sober and harmonious hue-but in their clearest form and most delicate proportions.

The other dramatists of Shakspeare's age, deprived, like him, of classical resources, and far inferior to him in imagination and wisdom, strove to excite a deep interest by the wildness of their plots, and the strangeness of the incidents with which their scenes were crowded. Their bloody tragedies are, however, often relieved by passages of exquisite sweetness. Their terrors, not humanized like those of Shakspeare, are yet far removed from the vulgar or disgusting. Sometimes, amidst the gloom of continued crimes, which often follow each other in stern and awful succession, are fair pictures of more than earthly virtue, tinted with the dews of heaven, and encircled with celestial glories. The scene in The Broken Heart, where Calantha, amidst the festal crowd, receives the news of the successive deaths of those dearest to her in the world, yet dances

all the affairs of her empire, and then dies smiling by the body of her contracted lordare in the loftiest spirit of tragedy. They combine the dignity and majestic suffering of the ancient drama, with the intenseness of the modern. The last scene unites beauty, tender

stately picture-as sublime as any single scene in the tragedies of Eschylus or Shakspeare.

In the productions of Shakspeare, doubtless, tragedy was divested of something of its external grandeur. The mythology of the ancient world had lost its living charm. Its heroic forms remained, indeed, unimpaired in beauty or grace, in the distant regions of the imagination, but they could no longer occupy the foreground of poetry. Men required forms of flesh and blood, animated by human passion, and awakening human sympathy. Shakspeare, therefore, sought for his materials nearer to common humanity than the elder bards. He took also, in each play, a far wider range than they had dared to occupy. He does not, therefore, convey so completely as they did one grand har-on-and that in which she composedly settles monious feeling, by each of his works. But who shall affirm, that the tragedy of Shakspeare has not an elevation of its own, or that it produces pleasure only by exhibiting spectacles of varied anguish? The reconciling power of his imagination, and the genial influences of his philosophy are ever softening andness, and grandeur, in one harmonious and consecrating sorrow. He scatters the rainbow hues of fancy over objects in themselves repulsive. He nicely developes the "soul of good- Of the succeeding tragedians of England, ness in things evil," to console and delight us. the frigid imitators of the French Drama, it is He blends all the most glorious imagery of na- necessary to say but little. The elevation of ture with the passionate expressions of afflic- their plays is only on the stilts of declamatory tion. He sometimes, in a single image, ex-language. The proportions and symmetry of presses an intense sentiment in all its depth, their plots are but an accordance with arbitrary yet identifies it with the widest and the grandest rules. Yet was there no reason to fear that objects of creation. Thus he makes Timon, the sensibilities of their audience should be in the bitterness of his soul, set up his tomb too strongly excited, without the alleviations of on the beached shore, that the wave of the fancy or of grandeur, because their sorrows ocean may once a day cover him with its em- are unreal, turgid, and fantastic. Cato is a bossed foam-expanding an individual feel- classical petrifaction. Its tenderest expression ing into the extent of the vast and eternal sea; is, "Be sure you place his urn near mine," yet making us feel it as more intense, from the which comes over us like a sentiment frozen very sublimity of the image. The mind can in the utterance. Congreve's Mourning Bride always rest without anguish on his catastro- has a greater air of magnificence than most phies, however mournful. Sad as the story of tragedies of his or of the succeeding time; Romeo and Juliet is, it does not lacerate or but its declamations fatigue, and its labyrinthine tear the heart, but relieves it of its weight by plot perplexes. Venice Preserved is cast in the awakening sweet tears. We shrink not at mould of dignity and of grandeur; but the their tomb, which we feel has set a seal on characters want nobleness, the poetry cohertheir loves and virtues, but almost long with ence, and the sentiments truth. them there "to set up our everlasting rest." We do not feel unmingled agony at the death of Lear; when his aged heart, which has been beaten so fearfully, is at rest-and his withered frame, late o'er-informed with terrific energy, reposes with his pious child. We are not shocked and harrowed even when Hamlet falls; for we feel that he is unfit for the bustle of this world, and his own gentle contemplations on

The plays of Hill, Hughes, Philips, Murphy, and Rowe, are dialogues, sometimes ill and sometimes well written-occasionally stately in numbers, but never touching the soul. It would be unjust to mention Young and Thomson as the writers of tragedies.

The old English feeling of tender beauty has at last begun to revive. Lamb's John Woodvil, despised by the critics, and for a while neg.

lected by the people, awakened those gentle | scenes of Barry Cornwall, passages of the pulses of deep joy which had long forgotten to daintiest beauty abound-the passion is every beat. Here first, after a long interval, instead where breathed tenderly forth, in strains which of the pompous swelling of inane declamation, are "silver sweet"-and the sorrow is relieved the music of humanity was heard in its sweet- by tenderness the most endearing. Here may est tones. The air of freshness breathed over be enjoyed "a perpetual feast of nectared its forest scenes, the delicate grace of its images, sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns."-In its nice disclosure of consolations and venera- these-and in the works of Shiel, and even of blenesses in the nature of man, and the exqui- Maturin-are the elements whence a tragedy site beauty of its catastrophe, where the stony more noble and complete might be moulded, remorse of the hero is melted into child-like than any which has astonished the world since tears, as he kneels on the little hassock where Macbeth and Lear. We long to see a stately subhe had often kneeled in infancy, are truly ject for tragedy chosen by some living aspirantShakspearean. Yet this piece, with all its the sublime struggle of high passions for the masdelicacies in the reading, wants that striking tery displayed-the sufferings relieved by gloriscenic effect, without which a tragedy cannot ous imaginations, yet brought home to our souls, succeed on the stage. The Remorse of Cole- and the whole conveying one grand and harmoridge is a noble poem; but its metaphysical nious impression to the general heart. Let us clouds, though fringed with golden imagina- hope that this triumph will not long be wanting, tions, brood too heavily over it. In the detached to complete the intellectual glories of our age.

REVIEW OF CIBBER'S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE.

[RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW, No. 2.]

THERE are, perhaps, few individuals, of in- determination not to repress it, because it is tense personal conciseness, whose lives, writ- part of himself, and therefore will only increase ten by themselves, would be destitute of interest the resemblance of the picture. Rousseau did or of value. Works of this description enlarge not more clearly lay open to the world the the number of our intimacies without inconve- depths and inmost recesses of his soul, than nience; awaken, with a peculiar vividness, Cibber his little foibles and minikin weakpleasant recollections of our own past career; nesses. The philosopher dwelt not more inand excite that sympathy with the little sor- tensely on the lone enthusiasm of his spirit, rows, cares, hopes, and enjoyments of others, on the alleviations of his throbbing soul, on which infuses new tenderness into all the the long draughts of rapture which he eagerly pulses of individual joy. The qualification drank in from the loveliness of the universe, which is most indispensable to the writer of than the player on his early aspirings for scenic such auto-biographies, is vanity. If he does applause, and all the petty triumphs and mornot dwell with gusto on his own theme, he will tifications of his passion for the favour of the communicate no gratification to his reader. He town. How real and speaking is the descripmust not, indeed, fancy himself too outrage- tion which he gives of his fond desires for the ously what he is not, but should have the bright course of an actor-of his light-hearted highest sense of what he is, the happiest relish pleasure, when, in the little part of the Chapfor his own peculiarities, and the most confi- lain, in The Orphan, he received his first apdent assurance that they are matters of great plause-and of his highest transport, when, interest to the world. He who feels thus, will the next day, Goodman, a retired actor of note, not chill us by cold generalities, but trace with clapping him on the shoulder at a rehearsal, an exquisite minuteness all the felicities of his exclaimed, with an oath, that he must make a life, all the well remembered moments of grati- good actor, which almost took away his breath, fied vanity, from the first beatings of hope and and fairly drew tears into his eyes! The spirit first taste of delight, to the time when age is of gladness, which gave such exquisite keengladdened by the reflected tints of young enter-ness to his youthful appetite for praise, susprise and victory. Thus it was with Colley tained him through all the changes of his forCibber; and, therefore, his Apology for his own life is one of the most amusing books that have ever been written. He was not, indeed, a very wise or lofty character-nor did he affect great virtue or wisdom-but openly derided gravity, bade defiance to the serious pursuits of life, and honestly preferred his own lightness of heart and of head, to knowledge the most extensive or thought the most profound. He was vain even of his vanity. At the very commencement of his work, he avows his

tune, enabling him to make a jest of penury, assisting him to gather fresh courage from every slight, adding zest to every success, until he arrived at the high dignity of "Patentee of the Theatre Royal." When "he no revenue had but his good spirits to feed and clothe him," these were ample. His vanity was to him a kingdom. The airiest of town butterflies, he sipped of the sweets of pleasure wherever its stray gifts were found; sometimes in the tavern among the wits, but chiefly in the