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Collections of Modern Works.

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in Edinburgh; the thousands of visitors to be seen there in the evening, after their day's work is over, eagerly enjoying, and intelligently commenting on, the various works placed before them. Again, contrast the encouragement formerly given, with that accorded now. Think of the prices obtained by Hogarth, who could only get his pictures disposed of by a sort of auction, and who, for his six pictures of "Marriage à la Mode," received only a hundred and twenty guineas. Little more than forty years afterwards they brought a thousand guineas. The Rake's Progress brought fourteen guineas each; Strolling Players twenty-six guineas; and his other works similar prices. Then take Reynolds' works: "A Girl with Mousetrap," L.50; Sleeping Shepherd Boy, L.50; A Strawberry Girl, L.50. Each of these works would now bring (and one of them was lately sold at) above L.2000. And, coming later down, the works of Wilkie, Turner, Etty, Calcott, Collins, and others, have risen, since they were executed, three, four, and five times in value. In the Royal Academy Exhibition this season, the prices for pictures of note ranged from 300 to 1000 guineas. For one picture there, a sum of L.3000 was paid; and the enterprising publisher who has purchased it has made a good bargain, for, though he will probably lay out L.5000 or L.6000 more on an engraving from the picture, he calculates on selling, at the outset, a thousand twenty guinea proofs. No doubt, from the enormous wealth concentrated there, London is the place where most encouragement is given, and to which the rich Lancashire merchants generally resort for pictures; but the knowledge of art is now spreading widely, and many purchasers annually visit our exhibition in Edinburgh. Collections of modern works there, are fast superseding those of old pictures—belief in which is now very hesitatingly yielded,—and the wealthy merchants of Glasgow, Greenock, Dundee, Aberdeen, etc., are forming galleries. Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts, and the Glasgow Art Union, have also done good service in spreading a taste for art. It was thought at first that their operations would have a tendency to drive private collectors out of the field. At first, perhaps, to a certain extent they did so; but now these powerful bodies have to encounter such competition, that many of the most important works in the exhibition are generally secured by private purchasers.

The

We have thus endeavoured to give some notion of the present state of art in this country, by contrasting fairly the position it now holds with that which it held at former periods; and our review of the leading circumstances in the history of British Art fully entitles us to affirm, that Art is now more highly appreciated and encouraged by the public, than it ever was at any former time.

ART. VI.-1. Essays on the Drama. By WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. London: 1858. 8vo.

2. Philip van Artevelde; a Dramatic Romance in Two Parts. BY HENRY TAYLOR. Sixth Edition. London: 1852. 8vo. 3. Edwin the Fair, an Historical Drama; and Isaac Comnenus, a Play. By HENRY TAYLOR. Second Edition. London: 1845. 12mo.

4. The Saint's Tragedy; or, the True Story of Elizabeth of Hungary, Landgravine of Thuringia, Saint of the Romish Calendar. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, Jun. With a Preface by Professor Maurice. Second Edition.

5. Saul: a Drama.

In Three Parts. Montreal: 1857. 6. Violenzia: a Tragedy. London: 1851. 8vo.

7. Merope. By MATTHEW ARNOLD. London: 1858. 12mo. 8. Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, and his relation to Calderon and Goethe. Translated from the German of Dr HERMANN ULRICI. London: 1846. 8vo.

THE plays of Shakespeare are not only the highest examples of the English drama, but they may almost be said to constitute, in themselves alone, the beginning, fulfilment, and end of an art. There was nothing like them before; and whatever has been like them since, has owed its resemblance to imitation, not to related vitality. With the exceptions of Ben Jonson and Massinger, Shakespeare's cotemporaries and early successors did not produce dramas that have any serious claim to be considered as works of art. Fletcher, the next greatest in reputation after Ben Jonson, wrote plays full of fine passages of poetry, and of startling dramatic effects, but a predominating unity of idea, which is the first essential of every work of art, is no more to be found in his works, than in those of our modern spasmodists, whom, indeed, he in some respects remarkably resembles. Ben Jonson and Massinger, however, resembled Shakespeare far less than Fletcher did. Fletcher imitated his style at least; but Jonson and Massinger were independent dramatists of a wholly different school—of a school to which our best recent dramatists have belonged. This school of dramatists occupies a sort of middle place between the ancient and the Shakespearian drama, and we fear it must be described as differing from both by defect. It would not be difficult to show that the Greek and the Shakespearian drama are two opposite poles, between which there is no satisfactory artistic medium. These two arts are so different from each other, that they appeal to two entirely different states of mind, which can scarcely exist or be exercised at one and the

The Greek Drama and that of Shakespeare.

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same time. The Greek drama, including all its successful modern imitations, requires of its auditor or reader a refined perception, and a condition of passive receptivity. It is so simple, that it demands no exertion of the reflective faculty for its appreciation; on the other hand, it is so perfect, that it asks for the utmost calmness and refinement of judgment and feeling. It is exactly like a pure and noble style of melody in music, which the hearer receives either easily and passively, or not at all. On the contrary, the Shakespearian drama, as it is found in Shakespeare, and in him only, is an infinitely elaborate harmony, calling upon the hearer for the active co-operation of his reflective powers, in the absence of which, it is no more than a musical chaos. Between the pure Greek drama, with its few and simple characters, its plain sequence of action, and its ostentatiously expounded morality, and the drama of Shakespeare, with its little world of people, its complicated unity, and its development of ethical results, too delicate and subtle to be expressed more briefly than by the entire work, there are innumerable shades of difference arising from the mixture of the two systems,-namely, that of melody or rhythmus, which is a simple and proportioned succession, and that of harmony, which is a simultaneous working of several such simple successions, the parts of which require, by a lively exercise of attention and reflection, to be contemplated in relation to each other in order that their poetic value may be perceived. It is of the essence of the Shakespearian art, as it exists in Shakespeare, to be practically unlimited. Like nature, the world of Shakespeare seems simple to the simple, and profound to the profound. It is only the Coleridges and Goethes who know enough of him to know how little they understand him. Every reader finds as much as he himself knows, in the works of Shakespeare, and the sense which every intelligent reader must have of the world of unknown meaning which stretches on every side, is the greatest charm of the Shakespearian art; it is the vanishing horizon, without which no landscape is perfect. Though this charm is widely felt, it is rarely that people can be brought to consider the quality of a depth beyond the reach of a commonly good understanding, as being other than an artistic fault. The fact however is, that that obscurity alone is faulty, which arises from defective expression. In Shakespeare language attains the highest conceivable perfection of expression; the obscurity which covers portions of his work arising from the reader's own remoteness from the writer's thought, and therefore being no more a fault of that writer, than the indistinctness of the stars in the galaxy, or of the separate trees and leaves in the forest on a mountain-side twenty miles off, is the fault of nature. There are the objects, to be seen by whomsoever has eyes strong

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enough; meantime there are thousands of stars and trees sufficiently in the foreground to be well seen by the least telescopic vision, while those which are beyond such vision combine into masses of light and colour, which are not the less grateful to the eye, because we know that they are made up of infinite but separately invisible touches of creative skill. To this quality of practical infinitude in Shakespeare no critic has done full justice. The best of all his critics-not excepting Goethe and Coleridge -Ulrici, has allotted too little space to each play to allow of an effective indication of the marvellous way in which the theme, which this critic has always caught with admirable acuteness, is echoed from character to character, from event to event, and from word to word.

O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet, and far from cliff and scar,

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

In the greatest works of the greatest composers alone, is there any resemblance to this quality of Shakespeare's art. In a long composition of Beethoven, you may hear the theme repeated in a very similar manner, and under a thousand variations and disguises, each of which is an additional illustration, as well as a repetition. In order that those of our readers who have never made a critical study of Shakespeare's method may understand it, and so appreciate the contrast which we propose to draw between it and modern dramatic art, we take "Love's Labour Lost," as being perhaps, of all Shakespeare's plays, that one in which the moral theme is developed in the clearest way. The following is Ulrici's criticism on this work:

"The leading idea of the piece is the significant contrast of the fresh, youthful, and ever-blooming reality of life, and a dry, lifeless, and recluse study of science. Either member of the contrariety, nakedly opposed to the other, and placed in hostile opposition to, and wholly uninfluenced by it, becomes untrue, preposterous, and absurd. The science which abstracts itself from reality, and retires in lonely contemplation, must either quickly entomb itself in the barren sands of a tasteless and pedantic erudition, or else, overcome by the gay seductions of life, give itself up to excessive pleasure and learned trifling, and earn for itself the merited reproach of affectation or pretension. One of these results is embodied in the curate, Sir Nathaniel, and the village schoolmaster, Holofernes-those truthful representatives of the retailers of learned trifles-and in the pompous and bombastic Spanish knight, Don Adriano de Armado, the Quixote of a highsounding phraseology. The other is indicated by the king and his companions. From the pursuit of wisdom, which they blindly hope to gain by abstract study, they soon fall into the veriest silliness and

Critics of Shakespeare.

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fooleries of love-making; in spite of their oaths, nature and truth make themselves quickly felt, and gain an easy victory. But this victory over false wisdom is fundamentally nothing more than the defeat of folly by folly. For, on the other hand, nature and reality, taken by themselves, are but fugitive and illusory images when apart from the solidity of the cognizant mind; separated from this, the gaiety of love is checked and damped; talents, shrewdness, and acquirements, become a mere vain and superficial wit; and love itself, when unassociated with the solidity, earnestness, and moderation, which occasional solitude and contemplative reflection alone can bestow upon the mind, sinks into a tawdry show of tinsel and spangle; and to such meditation the prince and his courtiers are for a while consigned by the objects of their adoration. We have here the triumph of the fine and correct judgment of a noble woman, which is as complete as that of her social wit and clever management. The speech of the princess, in which she condemns the prince to twelve months of seclusion and self-denial, and the words of Rosaline, which indignantly expose the thorough worthlessness of wit and talents when exclusively directed to festive and social amusement, convey, as it were, the moral of the fable."

It is much to be regretted that neither Ulrici nor either of the other two or three critics, who have shown themselves able to comprehend the method of Shakespeare, and have stated, more or less clearly, the central thought of particular plays, have given to the world that minutely detailed criticism which could alone do justice to the subject. An adequate criticism of the least elaborate of Shakespeare's dramas would constitute a goodly volume, but it would be one which would teach the ordinary reader to understand Shakespeare better than twenty volumes of mere general criticism, however judicious. In this place we can, of course, undertake to do no more than give a few glimpses of that method which is Shakespeare's peculiarity, as distinguished from other, and especially modern dramatists, and without a knowledge of which some of the most remarkable defects of modern dramatists, who have almost all, more or less, imitated Shakespeare without understanding him, could not be appreciated. The following remarks will be more easily comprehended if the reader will be at the pains to read them with his Shakespeare before him.

In Love's Labour Lost" the satire on the confusion of words with things-of false science with reality-which, next to pride, is perhaps the most prevailing error of mankind, is opened by the proclamation of the king and his courtiers of their intention to retire for three years space from the world, in order to "war against their own affections, and the huge army of the world's desires." Shakespeare, however, is careful to make the king state that their ultimate object in establishing this "little academe" is nothing more than a desire for the world's applause.

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