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might be his merits as a political economist, was of a very subordinate class as a philosopher

"The tenth transmitter of a foolish creed.'

May we add, that the distinctions of Metaphysics and Geography have nothing in common, nor is truth of any particular country.

The learned Professor makes too little account of the German philosopher Kant, whose maxim that the mind alone is formative,' is the only lever by which the modern philosophy can be overturned. He has indeed overlaid this simple principle by his logical technicalities, his categories and stuff, as Locke has confounded all common sense with his ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. Nothing can be done towards a true theory of the mind, till philosophers are convinced that all ideas are ideas of the understanding; and that it requires all the same faculties to have the idea of the stud of a brass nail in an old arm-chair, that is, the perception of connection, limits, form, difference, aye, and of abstraction, in this simple object, as in the highest speculations of theological or metaphysical science. The modern philosophers contend that the mind has no idea of any thing but sensible images: the way to turn the tables upon them is then to prove, that in the idea of every one of these sensible objects, there is necessarily involved the exercise of all those faculties, of which they deny the existence, and which are exerted, only in a different degree, in the most simple or the most refined operations of the understanding.

SHAKESPEAR'S FEMALE CHARACTERS

[July 28, 1816.

The Examiner.] SHAKESPEAR'S Women (we mean those who were his favourites, and whom he intended to be the favourites of the reader) exist almost entirely in the relations and charities of domestic life. They are nothing in themselves, but every thing in their attachment to others. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves, because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. We catch their beauties only sideways as in a glass, but we everywhere meet their hearts coming at us,-full butt, as Miss Peggy meets her husband in the Park. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for

support, so well as Shakespear-no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from all affectation and disguise, that

'Calls true love acted simple modesty '—

no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, urged to an extremity, grow romantic and extravagant, for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the common prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of their feelings when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women are in this respect exquisite logicians, for they argue from what they feel, and that is a sure game, when the stake is deep. They know their own minds exactly. High imagination springs from deep habit; and Shakespear's women only followed up the idea of what they liked, of what they had sworn to with their tongues, and what was engraven on their hearts, into its untoward consequences. They were the prettiest little set of martyrs and confessors on record.

We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she had for Posthumus; and she deserves it rather better. Of all Shakespear's women she is perhaps the most touching, the most tender, and the most true. As to Desdemona, who was alone a match for her in good faith and heroic self-devotion, she had her faults, and she suffered for them. Imogen's incredulity as to her husband's infidelity is much the same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, my Lord, I fear, has forgot Britain.' Her readiness to pardon Tachimo's falsehoods, and his designs upon her virtue, is a good lesson to prudes; and shews (as perhaps Shakespear intended it, or nature for him) that where there is a strong attachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice. The morality of Shakespear in this way is great; but it is not to be found in the four last lines of his plays, in the form of extreme unction. The scene in which Pisanio gives Imogen her husband's letter accusing her of incontinency, is as fine as anything could be:

'Pisanio. What cheer, Madam ?

Imogen. False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there, and to think on him?

To weep 'twixt clock and clock! If sleep charge nature,

To break it with a fearful dream of him,

And cry myself awake? That's false to 's bed, is it?

Pisanio. Alas, good lady!

Imogen. I false? thy conscience witness, Iachimo,
Thou didst accuse him of incontinency,

Thou then look'dst like a Villain: Now methinks,
Thy favour's good enough. Some Jay of Italy,
Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him :
Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,
And for I am richer than to hang by th' walls,
I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh,

Men's vows are women's traitors. All good seeming
By thy revolt, oh Husband, shall be thought
Put on for villainy: not born where't grows,
But worn a bait for Ladies.

Pisanio. Good Madam, hear me—

Imogen. Talk thy tongue weary, speak:

I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,

Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,
Nor tent to bottom that.'-

When Pisanio, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says—

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Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and suggests a course pretty and full in view,' by which she may happily be near the residence of Posthumus,' she exclaims

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And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change

-Fear and niceness,

The handmaids of all women, or more truly,
Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage,
Ready in gibes, quick answer'd, saucy, and
As quarellous as the weazel'

She interrupts him hastily :

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In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully,

-'My dear Lord,

Thou art one of the false ones: now I think on thee,

My hunger's gone; but even before, I was

At point to sink for food.'

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman Officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former

master:

.' And when

With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strewed his grave,
And on it said a century of pray'rs,

Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh,

And leaving so his service, follow you,

So please you entertain me.'

Now this is the very religion of love. Is it not? All this, which is the essence of the character, is free from every thing like personal flattery or laboured description. She relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies only on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited as it were with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her :

With fairest flowers,

While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,

I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azure'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor

The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath.'

The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her bed-chamber :

-'Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch-
But kiss, one kiss-'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights now canopied

Under the windows, white and azure, laced

With blue of Heav'n's own tinct-on her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' th' bottom of a cowslip.'

There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,—as that well-known passage beginning, Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,' sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial. Desdemona is another instance (almost to a proverb) of the devotedness of the sex to a favourite object. She is subdued even to the very quality of her lord,' and to Othello's honours and his valiant parts her soul and fortunes consecrates.' The lady protests as much herself, and she is as good as her word. There is not a set description of her in any part of the play; and the only thing that tends that way is the equivocal and somewhat luscious dialogue that takes place between Iago and Cassio as an accompaniment to the ceremonies of the wedding-night. We see her visage in her mind her character every where predominates over her person: 'A maiden, never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blush'd at itself.'

She is not a painted idol, carved out of the poet's brain, but is herself a worshipper at the shrine of duty. As Milton dashes the luxurious effect of his descriptions by a moral, Shakespear qualifies it by the interest of the story, as in the scene where Othello takes Desdemona by the hand. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her actions, the pertinacity of her affections, in a manner arises out of the gentleness of her nature. It is an unreserved reliance on the purity of her intentions, a surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and self-willed (though that may be accounted for in the same way from an inability to resist a rising inclination) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and instead of following Othello to Cyprus, she would rather have remained at home, a moth of peace,' if her husband could have staid with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of nature do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for Othello's harsh usage of her are exquisitely managed. After he has struck her and called her names, she says:

-'Alas, Iago,

What shall I do to win my lord again?

Good friend, go to him; for by this light of Heaven,

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