His just exhibition GEL, a foreign critic of great and deserved reputation :—“ If of Passion Shakspeare deserves our admiration for his characters, he is arose from equally deserving of it for his exhibition of Passion, taking templation this word in its widest signification as including every mental the con of Ideas. tory criticisms on answered. condition, every tone, from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds: he lays open to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions." This last is a profound and exquisite remark: and it necessarily implies, that Shakspeare contemplated Ideas, in which alone are involved conditions and consequences ad infinitum. Purblind critics, whose mental vision could not reach far enough to comprise the whole dimensions of our poetical Hercules, have busied themselves in measuring and spanning him muscle by muscle, till they fancied they had Condemna- discovered some disproportion. There are two answers applicable to most of such remarks. First, that Shakspeare underShakspeare stood the true language and external workings of Passion better than his critics. He had a higher, and a more Ideal, and consequently a more Methodical sense of harmony than they. A very slight knowledge of Music will enable any one to detect discords in the exquisite harmonies of HAYDN or MOZART; and Bentley has found more false grammar in the PARADISE LOST than ever poor boy was whipped for through all the forms of Eton or Westminster; but to know why the minor note is introduced into the major key, or the nominative case left to seek for its verb, requires an acquaintance with some preliminary steps of the Methodical scale, at the top of which sits the author, and at the bottom the critic. The second answer is, that Methods, Shakspeare was pursuing two Methods at once; and besides psycholo- the Psychological Method, he had also to attend to the gical. His poetical and 3 We beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum; but it is one of which our Language stands in great need. We have no single term to express the Philosophy of the Human Mind: and what is worse, the Principles of that Philosophy are commonly called Metaphysical, a word of very different meaning. Poetical. Now the Poetical Method requires above all things a preponderance of pleasurable feeling: and where the interest of the events and characters and passions is too strong to be continuous without becoming painful, there Poetical Method requires that there should be what Schlegel calls" a musical alleviation of our sympathy." The Lydian mode must temper the Dorian. This we call Method. We said that Shakspeare pursued two Methods. Oh! he pursued many, many more-"both oar and sail"—and the guidance of the helm, and the heaving of the lead, and the watchful observation of the stars, and the thunder of his grand artillery. What shall we say of his Moral conceptions? Not made up of miserable clap-traps, and the tag-ends of mawkish Novels and endless sermonizing;-but furnishing lessons of profound meditation to frail and fallible Human Nature. He shows us Crime and Want of Principle clothed not with a Shakspurious greatness of soul, but with a force of intellect which moral contoo often imposes but the more easily on the weak, misjudging ceptions guided by multitude. He shows us the innocent mind of Othello plunged philosophiby its own unsuspecting, and therefore unwatchful confidence, into guilt and misery not to be endured. Look at Lear, look at Richard, look in short at every Moral picture of this mighty Moralist! Whoso does not rise from their attentive perusal 66 a sadder and a wiser man"-let him never dream that he knows anything of Philosophical Method. speare's cal method. methodical. Nay, even in his style, how Methodical is our "sweet His style Shakspeare." Sweetness is, indeed, its predominant characteristic; and it has a few immethodical luxuriances of wit; and he may occasionally be convicted of words, which convey a volume of thought, when the business of the scene did not absolutely require such deep meditation. But pardoning him these dulcia vitia, who ever fashioned the English Language, or any Language, ancient or modern, into such variety of appro priate apparel, from " the gorgeous pall of scepter'd tragedy," to the easy dress of flowing pastoral? More musical than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green and hawthorn buds appear. Who, like him, could so Methodically suit the very flow and tone of discourse to characters lying so widely apart in rank, and habits, and peculiarities, as Holofernes and Queen Katharine, Falstaff and Lear? When we compare the pure English style of Shakspeare with that of the very best writers of his day, we stand astonished at the Method by which he was directed in the choice of those words and idioms, which are as fresh now as in their first bloom; nay, which are at the present moment at once more energetic, more expressive, more natural, and more elegant, than those of the happiest and most admired living speakers or writers. But Shakspeare was "not Methodical in the structure of his Fable." Oh, gentle critic! be advised. Do not trust too much to your professional dexterity in the use of the scalping knife and tomahawk. Weapons of diviner mould are wielded by your adversary: and you are meeting him here on his own peculiar ground, the ground of Idea, of Thought, and of inspiration. The very point of this dispute is Ideal. The question is one of Unity and Unity, as we have shown, is wholly the the Unities subject of Ideal law. There are said to be three great Unities examined. which Shakspeare has violated; those of Time, Place, and Action. Now the Unities of Time and Place we will not dispute about. Be ours the Poet, Shakspeare's alleged violation of qui pectus inaniter angit Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet Ut magus, et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis. The Dramatist who circumscribes himself within that Unity of Time which is regulated by a stop-watch, may be exact, but is not Methodical; or his Method is of the least and lowest class. But Where is he living clipt in with the sea, That chides the banks of England, Wales, or Scotland, who can transpose the scenes of Macbeth, and make the seated heart knock at the ribs with the same force as now it does, when the mysterious tale is conducted from the open heath, on which the Weird Sisters are ushered in with thunder and lightning, to the fatal fight of Dunsinane, in which their victim expiates with life, his credulity and his ambition? To the disgrace of the English Stage, such attempts have, indeed, been made on almost all the Dramas of Shakspeare. Scarcely a season passes which does not produce some vστεрov πрótepov of this kind, in which the mangled limbs of our great Poet are thrown together" in most admired disorder." There was once a noble Author, who, by a refined species of murder, cut up the play of Julius Cæsar into two good set Tragedies. Voltaire, we believe, had the grace to make but one of it; but whether his Brutus be an improvement on the model from which it was taken, we trust, after what we have already said, we shall hardly be expected to discuss. owes its Method. Thus we have seen that Shakspeare's mind, rich in stores of Poetry acquired knowledge, commanded all these stores and rendered whole them disposable, by means of his intimate acquaintance with the charm to great laws of Thought, which form and regulate Method. We have seen him exemplifying the opposite faults of Method in two different characters; we have seen that he was himself Methodical in the delineation of character, in the display of Passion, in the conceptions of Moral Being, in the adaptations of Language, in the connection and admirable intertexture of his ever-interesting Fable. Let it not after this be said that Poetry-and under the word Poetry we will now take leave to include all the Works of the higher Imagination, whether operating by measured sound, or by the harmonies of form and colour, or by words, the more immediate and universal repre Method. sentatives of Thought-is not strictly Methodical; nay, does not owe its whole charm, and all its beauty, and all its power, to the Philosophical Principles of Method. Philosophy But what of Philosophy herself? Shall she be exempted wholly conversant from the Laws, which she has imposed on all the rest of the with known Universe? Longe absit! To Philosophy properly belongs the EDUCATION of the Mind: and all that we have hitherto said may be regarded as an indication (we have room for no more) of the chief Laws and regulative Principles of that education. Philosophy, the "Parent of Life," according to the expression of the wise Roman Orator; the "Mother of Good Deeds and of Good Sayings," the "Medicine of the Mind," is herself wholly conversant with Method. True it is that the Ancients, as well as the Moderns, had their machinery for the extemporaneous coinage of intellect, by means of which the scholar was enabled to make a figure on and all subjects, on any and all occasions. They too had their glittering vapours, which (as the Comic Poet tells us) fed a host of Sophists— any μεγάλαι θεαὶ ἀνδράσιν ἀργοῖς, αἵπερ γνώμην καὶ διάλεξιν καὶ νοῦν ἡμῖν παρέχουσι, καὶ τερατείαν, καὶ περίλεξιν, καὶ κροῦσιν, καὶ κατάληψιν. ΑΡΙΣΤΟΦ. Νεφ. 316. Great goddesses are they to lazy folks, Who pour down on us gifts of fluent speech, Thoughts brisk as bees, and pathos soft and thawy. But the Philosophers held a course very different from that of the Sophists. We shall not trouble our readers with a comparative view of many Systems, but we shall present to their admiration one mighty Ancient, and one illustrious Modern, PLATO and BACON. These two varieties will sufficiently exemplify the species. Of PLATO's Works, the larger and more valuable portion |