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LOVES LABOUR LOST.

225

he wrote in that play is of his earliest manner, having the all-pervading sweetness which he never lost, and 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 Shakspeare soon found out, could the sublime poet and profound philosopher find the conditions of a compromise. In the Love's Labour Lost there are many faint sketches of some of his vigorous portraits in after

HIERON. Nay, then I care not-come, we shall be friends;
Let us lay our heads together.

See, here's a goodly noose will hold them all.
VICEROY. O damn'd devil! how secure he is!
HIERON. Secure! why dost thou wonder at it?
I tell thee, Viceroy, this day I've seen Revenge,
And in that sight am grown a prouder monarch
Than ever sate under the crown of Spain.
Had I as many lives as there be stars,
As many heavens to go to as those lives,
I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot,
But I would see thee ride in this red pool.
Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge,

I cannot look with scorn enough on death.

KING. What! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth.
HIERON. Do, do, do; and meantime I'll torture you.

You had a son as I take it, and your son

Should have been married to your daughter: ha! was it not so?

You had a son too, he was my liege's nephew.

He was proud and politic—had he lived,

He might have come to wear the crown of Spain:

I think 't was so-'t was I that kill'd him;

Look you this same hand was it that stabb'd

His heart-do you see this hand?

For one Horatio, if you ever knew him—

A youth, one that they hang'd up in his father's garden-
One that did force your valiant son to yield," &c.-ED.

* "In Shakspeare'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 the other. Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting 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."--Biog, Lit. vol. ii. p. 21.

life-as for example, in particular, of Benedict and Beatrice.*

Gifford has done a great deal for the text of Massinger, but not as much as might easily be done. His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary dramatists is obtuse indeed.t

In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere; yet, when the creation in its outline is once perfect, then he seems to rest from his labour, and to smile upon his work, and tell himself that it is very good. You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are simply Shakspeare's, disporting himself in joyous triumph and vigorous fun after a great achievement of his highest genius.

The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of bringing parties in scene together, and representing one as not recognising the other under some faint disguise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed on this ground. Shakspeare 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!

* 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 play in A Midsummer Night's Dream.-ED.

↑ See his Introduction to Massinger, vol. i. p. 79, in which, amongst other most extraordinary assertions, Mr. Gifford pronounces that rhythmical modu lation is not one of Shakspeare's merits !-ED.

STATES MEN.-BURKE.

227

APRIL 8, 1833.
Statesmen.-Burke.

NEVER was much subject to violent political humours or accesses of feelings. When I was very young, I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically; but it was always on subjects connected with some grand general principle, the violation of which I thought I could point out. As to mere details of administration, I honestly thought that ministers, and men in office, must, of course, know much better than any private person could possibly do; and it was not till I went to Malta, and had to correspond with official characters myself, that I fully understood the extreme shallowness and ignorance with which men of some note too were able, after a certain fashion, to carry on the government of important departments of the empire. I then quite assented to Oxenstiern's saying, Nescis, mi fili, quam parva sapientia regitur mundus.

Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically as he seems to have done. Yet, until he could associate his general principles with some sordid interest, panic of property, Jacobinism, &c., he was a mere dinner bell. Hence you will find so many half truths in his speeches and writings. Nevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge his transcendant greatness. He would have been more influential if he had less surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds in all respects.

As a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope, so a scientific lecture requires a scientific audience.

I

APRIL 9, 1833.

Prospect of Monarchy or Democracy.—The reformed House of Commons.

HAVE a deep, though paradoxical, conviction that most of the European nations are more or less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure monarchy; that is, to a government in which, under circumstances of complicated and subtle control, the reason of the people shall become efficient in the apparent will of the king. As it seems to me, the wise and good in every country will, in all likelihood, become every day more and more disgusted with the representative form of government, brutalised as it is, and will be, by the predominance of democracy in England, France, and Belgium. The statesmen of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility of the effective and permanent combination of the three elementary forms of government; and, perhaps, they had more reason than we have been accustomed to think.

You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it-low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering at everything noble, refined, and truly national! The direct and personal despotism will come on by and by, after the multitude shall have been gratified with the ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land. As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so much fiery spirit, if there be no principle to guide and to sanctify it ?

*This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be acknowledged that at present the prophet of democracy has a good right to be considered the favourite.-ED.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

229

APRIL 10, 1833.

United States of America.

THE

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Captain B. Hall. Northern and Southern States.-Democracy with Slavery.-Quakers. HE possible destiny of the United States of America, as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen,-stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare and Milton, is an august conception. Why should we not wish to see it realised? America would then be England viewed through a solar microscope; Great Britain in a state of glorious magnification! How deeply to be lamented is the spirit of hostility and sneering which some of the popular books of travels have shown in treating of the Americans! They hate us, no doubt, just as brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an Englishman concerning themselves ten times as much as that of a native of any other country on earth. A very little humouring of their prejudices, and some courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of Englishmen, would work wonders, even as it is, with the public mind of the Americans.

Captain Basil Hall's book is certainly very entertaining and instructive; but, in my judgment, his sentiments upon many points, and more especially his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. After all, are not most of the things shown up with so much bitterness by him mere national foibles, parallels to which every people has and must of necessity have?

What you say about the quarrel in the United States is sophistical. No doubt, taxation may, and

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