related.

Every spectator's affections were ranged under the white or red rose, in whose contentions some had lost their parents and friends, others had gained establishments and honours.

All the inducements which the Greek tragedians had to chuse their heroes from the works of the poets, who had sung the wars of Troy, and the Argonautic expedition, were still in greater force with our countryman to take his subjects from the history and traditions of those more recent transactions, in which the spectator was informed and interested more personally and locally. There was not a family so low, that had not had some of its branches torn off in the storms of these intestine commotions; nor a valley so happily retired, that, at some time, the foot of hostile paces had not bruis'd her flow'rets. In these characters the rudest peasant read the sad history of his country: while the better sort were informed of the most minute circumstances by our chronicles. The tra

gedians

gedians who took their subjects from Homer, had all the advantage a painter would have, who was to draw a picture from a statue of Phidias or Praxiteles. Poor Shakspeare from the wooden images in our mean chronicles was to form his portraits. What judgment was there in discovering, that by moulding them to an exact resemblance he should engage and please! And what discernment and penetration into characters, and what amazing skill in moral painting, to be able, from such uncouth models, to bring forth not only a perfect, but, when occasion required, a graceful

likeness!

The patterns from which he drew, were not only void of poetical spirit and ornament, but also of all historical dignity. The histories of those times were a mere heap of rude undigested annals, coarse in their style, and crowded with trivial anecdotes. No Tacitus had investigated the obliquities of our statesmen, or, by diving

into

into the profound secrets of policy, had dragged into light the latent motives, the secret machinations of our politicians: yet how does he enter into the deepest mysteries of state! There cannot be a stronger proof of the superiority of his genius over the historians of the times than the following instance.

The learned Sir Thomas More, in his history of Crook'd-Back Richard, tells, with the garrulity of an old nurse, the current stories of this king's deformity, and the monstrous appearance of his infancy, which he seems with superstitious credulity to believe to have been the omens and prognostics of his future villainy. Shakspeare, with a more philosophic turn of mind, considers them, not as presaging, but as instigating his cruel ambition, and finely accounts in the following speeches for the asperity of his temper, and his fierce and unmitigated desire of dominion, from his being by his person dis

qualified

qualified for the softer engagements of society.

GLOUCESTER.

Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard:
What other pleasure can the world afford?

I'll make my heaven on a lady's lap;

And deck my body in gay ornaments,

And 'witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.
Oh! miserable thought! and more unlikely,"
Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns.
Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb,
And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,
She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe
To shrink my arm like to a wither'd shrub;
To make an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To shape my legs of an uneven size;
To disproportion me in every part:
Like to a Chaos, or unlick'd bear's whelp

That carries no impression like the dam.

And am I then a man to be belov'd?

Oh monstrous fault to harbour such a thought!

Then since the world affords no joy to me,

But

But to command, to check, to o'er-bear such
As are of better person than myself;

I'll make my heav'n to dream upon the crown,
And while I live to account this world but hell,
Until the misshap'd trunk that bears this head
Be round impaled with a glorious crown.

[Henry VI. Act 3d, Scene 3d. GLOUCESTER.

The midwife wonder'd, and the women cry'd,

Oh Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!
And so I was, which plainly signified

That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog :
Then since the heav'ns have shap'd my body so,

Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.

I have no brother, I am like no brother,

And that word, love, which grey-beards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,

And not in me: I am myself alone.

[Henry VI. Act 5th, Scene 7th.

Our author, by following minutely the chronicles of the times, has embarrassed his dramas with too great a number of persons and events. The hurley-burley of these plays recommended them to a rude illiterate

E