There is nothing, I believe, in the majestic Corneille equal to the stern pride of Coriolanus, or which gives such an idea of the crumbling in pies of the Roman grandeur, "like to an unsubstantial pageant faded," as the Anthony and Cleopatra. But to match the best serious comedies, such as Moliere's Misanthrope and his Tartuffe, we must go to Shakespeare's tragic characters, the Timon of Athens or honest Iago, where we shall more than succeed. He put his strength into his tragedies, and played with comedy. He was greatest in what was greatest, and his forte was not trifling, according to the opinion here combated, even though he might do that as well as any body else, unless he could do it better than any body else."

This is all cleverly done; but in the support of what we hold to be an erring opinion. It is carried a great deal too far. It would be folly to dissent for an instant from one word that is said in praise of the tragedies, for they are a race of passionate Titans against whom it were madness to rebel. They tyrannize over the heart, and hold all the feelings in a severe bondage. The sublimities of Shakespeare reach to heaven,-and awe the imagination into a dreaming imbecility. The pathos of his tragic characters is of the sweetest and the deepest kind, and it is made doubly sweet by the melodious poetry which clings like air around it. It is music, and music in a dream. Into the heart it floats,-melting every feeling in its course, and leaving a bewitching melody through all its progress, never after to pass away! There are the same degrees of greatness, however, though of a different nature, in the comedies of Shakespeare; and it is not because we adore the tragic powers of this great heart-master that we should utterly forsake or cry down the comic ones. To our notion, Shakespeare, in his comedies, is worth a world of Cervantes' and Congreves. The whole set of plays is a harmony of humanity; and to reject any portion of them, is but to betray a disposition to make things out of tune and harsh. It would be a difficult task to point out where the line is drawn between the tragedies and comedies; they run into each other with matchless sweetness; are involved,

VOL. III.

blended,-married, each to the other. The romantic wanders into the comic, and scatters its favours far and near. The ludicrous ventures in amongst the stern and the awful, and “holds its own." Some of the comic charac ters in the tragedies almost share ho→ nours with the serious heroes of the piece, and are quite "as much followed." Mercutio is a most pleasant fellow; and if he did not die so svon, we are not sure that he might not have "cut into little stars," better than Romeo himself. Certain it is, that Romeo makes no great figure till after the death of Mercutio. The grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet might be pointed out as an illustration of all the plays; in it, mirth and sorrow,➡ carelessness and pain,-philosophy and rugged cunning, unite, blend, and make indeed a goodly piece of work of it. It is a short tragi-comedy,as life is! After the protracted meditation on human fate, and the bitter invectives against the events of the world, uttered, and lingered over by young Prince Hamlet, this work of grave-digging comes in as a good comment; and the pleasantries of the two labourers take off the intensity of the thought. The grave-digger turns up the fresh earth, and throws down a skull and a joke at the same moment. He seems to be occupied in a sort of human gardening; and takes delight in his occupation. He sings at grave➡ making. The fool in Lear eases the passion into our hearts. He makes merry with anguish; but he now and then jogs the hand that holds the knife. All his jests are bitter things well wrapt up. If the fool were not by, Lear would destroy himself under the first bewildering blows of fate. He would resort to death to do him justice, and relieve his naked helplessness. He would plunge out of his troubles,-away from his pelican daughters, into death;--a regal suicide! But the fool is by, to distort events, and make a mock of anguish ; and he humanely eases the passionate fury and agony of the old man into madness! Richard the Third is a wit; which is not the common character of kings. Twelfth Night, The Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, Much ado about Nothing, which are all professed comedies, are equal in their way to any thing in na 3 z

ture. They are full of a romantic pleasure which fairly intoxicates the spirits. They make the heart drunk with full and fast cups of wit and fancies. Shakespeare administers to us as quickly, and overcomes our senses as hastily, as lago passes the replenished cups to Cassio, plunging him into inebriety. The two parts of Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Cymbeline, The Tempest, which are called plays, are the links which unite the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare. They are perfect in their kind: the comic genius, perhaps, predominates. What we would shew from this slight review of some of the characters, and some of the plays of Shakespeare, is, that the comic is in the same degree of excellence as the tragic;---that the latter cannot well be severed from the former ;---that they are so completely two for a pair, that it would be as ridiculous for a man to have a favourite leg, or a lady to pet and spoil one of her eyes, as for the reader to adopt the tragic and reject the comic, or take the comic and forsake the tragic. They must be loved together, by any one who can love either of them. They are united, and no man may put them asunder.

But, we have staid too long" from the lecture. To return,-Mr Hazlitt is very happy in his remarks on Shallow and Silence.

"In point of understanding and attainments Shallow sinks low enough; and yet his cousin Silence is a foil to him; he is the shadow of a shade, glimmers on the very verge of downright imbecility, and totters on the brink of nothing. He has been inerry twice and once ere now,' and is hardly persuaded to break his silence in a song. Shallow has heard the chimes at midnight,' and roared out glees and catches at taverns and inns of court when he was young. So at least he tells his cousin Silence, and Falstaff encourages the loftiness of his pretensions. Shallow would be thought a great man among his dependents and followers: Silence is nobody-not even in his own opinion: yet he sits in the orchard, and eats his carraways and pippins among the rest."

This is delightful,-written in the very spirit of the Elizabethan age,and quite true. Shallow and Silence

seem, indeed, to be at the very lag end of human nature. Beyond them all is nothing; Shallow is but the echo of a man: Silence is not even that. The only person in all the plays of Shakespeare that nearly approaches to the nonentity of Silence is Goodman Dull in Love's Labour Lost. Dull is however conversational, which Silence is not, but the Dulls were ever so. How pleasant is that address to him at the end of a long conversetion of various parties!" Via, Goodman Dull, thou hast spoken no word all this while."-" No, Sir, nor understood none neither." What a fine and utter emptiness! What a rich indifference to everything. Mr Hazlitt thinks that the comedies of Shake speare are not rich enough in the follies and fashions, and intrigues of artificial life. "I think," he says, "that comedy does not find its richest harvest till individual infirmities have passed into general manners; and it is the example of courts chiefly that stamps folly with credit and currency, or glosses over vice with meretricious lustre." This, perhaps, may be true,but the poet makes it up from the ample stores of nature. The following passage in further support of this is exceedingly happy and ingenious.

"We find that the scenes of Shakespeare's comedies are mostly laid in the country, or are transferable there at pleasure: the genteel comedy exists only in towns and crowds of bor rowed characters, who copy others as the satirist copies them, and who are only seen to be despised. All beyond Hyde Park is a desart to it.' While there the pastoral and poetic comedy begins to vegetate and flourish, unpruned, idle, and fantastic with im punity. It is hard to lay waste a country gentleman' in a state of nature, whose humility may have run a little wild or to seed, or to lay violent hands on a young booby squire, my lady's eldest son and heir, whose absurdities have not yet arrived at years of discretion: but my Lord Foppington, who is the prince of coxcombs,' and proud of being at the head of so prevailing a party," de serves his fate."

Mr Hazlitt always speaks of Falstaff with delight,-as he deserves to be spoken of. He is truly the perfection of all comic invention; he carries with him a body, capacious

enough for his humour, and his sack; he hung rs after a capon and a quibble, and devours every absurdity and delicacy that comes in his way. Old, unwieldy, and profane, he is sprightly of temper, and alert of mind; he rolls after all sorts of jesting,-even if it can only be found in a robbery or a brothel. There is a kind of gluttony in his humour,-but at the same time, the utmost joyousness in his gluttony. His own body is the pillow for his own wit and humour, and for the wit and humour of every one else; all mention of him is the provocation of humour, and his memory is mirth itself; his tavern-bill is an excellent joke, from the mere recollection of the huge sleeper from whom it is purloined. There is a voraciousness in all he says or does; a full-fed, huge humour, in every word and action. "There is a fury in that gut." Schlegel, the German Lecturer, has well observed, that Falstaff has a whole court of amusing caricatures about him, who make their appearance by turns, without ever throwing him into the shade. Mr Hazlitt has an excellent essay on this glorious personage in his "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays," and he has done him justice in these

lectures.

After some clever and acute observations on others of the comic characters of Shakespeare, Mr Hazlitt passes to a review of the powers of Ben Jonson. We agree with our lecturer in not thinking of old Ben so highly as certain verbal and editorial critics would have us. The world knows very little about him, though they cherish his name. He is so extremely scholastic,-s -so hard and crude, -so laboured and set,-that we are almost content to take his merits upon hearsay, and grant his fame by right of custom. There is great power in him; but it is power produced" at the sweat and labour of his brain." All is forced up-hill work." He reins his humour in,--and rides it with noble mastery; but he surprises more with its formal pride and restrained courage,-and with its glittering housing and embossed trappings, than with its free and unhidden, and simple beauty. It is a dangerous thing to say a word against the acknowledged heirs of fame,-but it is most cowardly to overlaud them, or to eulogize them for virtues which

they do not possess. Great poets and men of a rapturous imagination do not read, or do not doat upon Ben Jonson. Collegians, and learned men, and critics, are his readers and supporters. There is a controversy about him, and on this his fame greatly exists. He feeds commentators, and they in return "nod to him and do him courtesy." Many passages in his plays are exceedingly splendid,— but their beauties are built up at great cost and difficulty. They are piled on each other with the utmost caution and exactness. His ideas are enriched by repetition, and his fancies come in clusters, or not at all. Mr Hazlitt well contrasts him with Shakespeare.

"Ben Jonson is a great borrower from the works of others, and a plagiarist even from nature; so little freedom is there in his imitations of her, and he appears to receive her bounty like an alms. His works read like translations, from a certain cramp manner and want of adaptation. Shakespeare, even when he takes whole passages from books, does it with that spirit, felicity, and mastery over his subject, that instantly makes them his own, and shews more independence of mind and original thinking in what he plunders without scruple, than Ben Jonson often did in his most studied passages, forced from the sweat and labour of his brain. His style is as dry, as literal, and meagre, as Shakespeare's is exuberant, liberal, and unrestrained. The one labours hard, lashes himself up, and produces little pleasure with all his fidelity and tenaciousness of purpose: the other, without putting himself to any trouble or thinking about his success, performs wonders,→

"Does mad and fantastic execution, Engaging and redeeming of himself,

With such a careless force, and forceless cunning,

As if that luck in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all."

Mr Hazlitt well remarks that " each of his characters has a particular cue, a professional badge which he wears and is known by, and by nothing else." There is, indeed, a mark set upon them, and the author dreads its being effaced, lest they should not afterwards be recognized. He starts one character with one peculiarity,-and

And enamoured, do wish. so they might
But enjoy such a sight,

That they still were to run by her side, Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.

Do but look on her eyes, they do light

All that Love's world compriseth! Do but look on her hair, it is bright As Love's star when it riseth! Do but mark, her forehead's smoother Than words that sooth her! And from her arched brows, such a grace Sheds itself through the face,

As alone there triumphs to the life All the gain, all the good of the elements strife.

Have you seen but a bright lily grow,

Before rude hands have touched it?
Have you mark'd but the fall of the snow,
Before the soil hath smutched it?
Have you felt the wool of the bever
Or swan's down ever?
Or have smelt of the bud o' the briar?
Or the nard in the fire?

Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!"

Mr Hazlitt concludes his second lecture with some very intelligent and just criticism on the Silent Woman, The Fox or Volpone, Every Man in his Humour, and the Alchymist. The character of Sir Epicure Mammon is in truth one of the best that Ben Jonson has drawn. His inordinate appetite for wordiness well suits his voracious love of sumptuous food and store of money. Image after image comes trooping forth in long and splendid array; and the language is withal of a very costly quality. We cannot refrain from quoting one of his speeches, which, for pomp and gor geous effect, has never been surpas

sed.

-My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells,

Dishes of agate set in gold, and studded

Boil'd i'the spirit of sol, and dissolv'd in pearl,

(Apicius diet 'gainst the epilepsy,) And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,

Headed with diamant and carbuncle. My footboy shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons,

Knots, godwits, lampreys; I myself will have

The beards of barbels serv'd:-instead of salads,

Oil'd mushrooms; and the swelling unetious paps

Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Drest with an exquisite and poignant

sauce;

For which I'll say unto my cook, There's gold,

Go forth, and be a knight.""

It is hard to descend to simple prose after all this exquisite ornament. Words tell for jewels :-and the whole passage glitters, like a Dowager's stomacher on a birth-day.

CONDITION OF POOR IMPRISONED DEBTORS.

WE take blame to ourselves for not giving an earlier and more particular attention to the subject of this article; and we confess that we were ignorant of the extent of the sufferings of many unhappy individuals, until we very recently saw some printed annual reports of an Edinburgh Association for Relief of Destitute Imprisoned Debtors, This society, it seems, has existed for five years; and

we observe from the fourth annual

report, that in four years 149 persons had been tiberated from jail. We hope that we shall soon see a fifth report, which, from the late distresses of the labouring classes, cannot fail to be interesting. The society makes it a rule to pay no debts, nor part of any debt; they assist none who have behaved fraudulently; or who are un willing to pay after their liberation, the debts for which they were imprisoned as far as their wages and earnings will allow. Inquiry is made in every case, with respect to the manner in which the debt was contracted, and if the conduct of the debtor do not bear investigation, he