ymoon?

pretty Honeymoon! ! People can't have two honeymoons in their There are feelings-I find it now-that we have twice in our existence. There's no making a second time.

No; I think I've put up with your neglect long gh; and there's nothing like beginning as we d to go on. Therefore, Mrs. Caudle, if my sn't made a little more to my liking to-morrow, if you insult me with a herring like that, and my eggs that you might fire 'em out of guns, y, perhaps, Mrs. Caudle, you may see a man in ssion. It takes a good deal to rouse me, but I am up-I say, when I am up-that's all. Where did I put my gloves? You don't know? course not: you know nothing."

SAMUEL JOHNSON

MUEL JOHNSON, critic, poet, essayist and lexipher, was born at Lichfield, England, in 1709; at London, in 1784. He studied for a while at d; became usher in a grammar school, and established a private school of his own. He to London with Garrick, who had been one s pupils, and began to write for the "Genn's Magazine." He was brought into notice series of speeches that were supposed to been spoken in Parliament, but were entirely nary. Several publishers sought him out and as engaged by them to prepare an English dic-y. His best known works are: The Rambler," Idler," Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," es of the Poets," and "A Tour to the des." The world knows more of Johnson's han that of almost any other author, from the aphy of Boswell. Although his biographer had

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reatest admiration for his character and atents, yet his truthfulness does not let him al the many whimsicalities of his subject.

ON SHAKESPEARE

(From "Lives of the Poets")

AKESPEARE is, above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; oet that holds up to his readers a faithful r of manners and of life. His characters are odified by the customs of particular places, ctised by the rest of the world; by the pecues of studies or professions, which can operate pon small numbers; or by the accidents of

࿄IS P ཅཔ་བ ས་༦ ཨIIས una uy

of those general passions and principles by h all minds are agitated, and the whole system ife is continued in motion. In the writings of r poets a character is too often an individual; hose of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. is from this wide extension of design that so h instruction is derived. It is this which fills plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and estic wisdom. It was said of Euripides that y verse was a precept; and it may be said of espeare that from his works may be collected a em of civil and economical prudence. Yet his power is not shown in the splendor of particpassages, but by the progress of his fable and tenor of his dialogue; and he that tries ecommend him by select quotations will succeed the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a -imen.

I will not easily be imagined how much Shakere excels in accommodating his sentiments to life, but by comparing him with other authors. vas observed of the ancient schools of declama, that the more diligently they were frequented more was the student disqualified for the world, use he found nothing there which he should ever t in any other place. The same remark may be lied to every stage but that of Shakespeare. theater, when it is under any other direction, is pled by such characters as were never seen, consing in a language which was never heard, upon ics which will never arise in the commerce of kind. But the dialogue of this author is often evidently determined by the incident which pro

out of common conversation and common occur

es.

Don every other stage the universal agent is by whose power all good and evil is distributed, every action quickened or retarded. To bring ver, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to ene them in contradictory obligations, perplex with oppositions of interest, and harass them violence of desires inconsistent with each other; ake them meet in rapture, and part in agony; 1 their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human was distressed; to deliver them as nothing n ever was delivered; is the business of a modramatist. For this, probability is violated, life srepresented, and language is depraved. But is only one of many passions; and as it has no er influence upon the sum of life, it has little tion in the dramas of a poet who caught his from the living world, and exhibited only what w before him. He knew that any other pasas it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of iness or calamity.

aracters thus ample and general were not · discriminated and preserved; yet perhaps no ever kept his personages more distinct from other. I will not say with Pope, that every h may be assigned to the proper speaker, bemany speeches there are which have nothing cteristical: but, perhaps, though some may be ly adapted to every person, it will be difficult d any that can be properly transferred from ›resent possessor to another claimant. The e is right, when there is reason for choice. er dramatists can only gain attention by hyper

and a dwarf; and he that should form his exions of human affairs from the play, or from le, would be equally deceived.

kespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occuonly by men who act and speak as the reader that he should himself have spoken or acted e same occasion: even where the agency is natural, the dialogue is level with life. Other s disguise the most natural passions and most ent incidents; so that he who contemplates in the book will not know them in the world: speare approximates the remote, and familiarhe wonderful: the event which he represents ot happen; but, if it were possible, its effects I probably be such as he has assigned; and it be said that he has not only shown human e as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would und in trials to which it cannot be exposed. s therefore is the praise of Shakespeare: that rama is the mirror of life; that he who has 1 his imagination, in following the phantoms other writers raise up before him, may here red of his delirious ecstacies, by reading human nents in human language, by scenes from which mit may estimate the transactions of the world, a confessor predict the progress of the pas

s adherence to general nature has exposed him e censure of critics who form their judgments narrower principles. Dennis and Rymer think Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire res his kings as not completely royal. Dennis fended that Menenius, a senator of Rome, d play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps is decency violated when the Danish usurper is