such an intimate knowledge of the

tet under all its aberrations, as would ...or the enquirer into mental physiology.

as in that of Hamlet, finely discriminated Sed insanity, Edgar, amidst all the wild

gination has accumulated, never touching on s misery, whilst Lear, on the contrary, finds it y object, and every thought, however distant or Now even the Orestes of Euripides, or the Clementina

can, as pictures of disordered reason, be placed in 、、 with this of Lear; it may be pronounced, indeed, from And completeness, beyond the reach of rivalry.

the miseries incident to humanity the apprehension of aping loss of reason is, perhaps, the most dreadful. Lear, on wvering the ingratitude of his eldest daughter, feels compunction for his treatment of the youngest: "I did her wrong," he exclaims, and such is the violence of the shock and the keenness of his sufferings, that, even in this first conflict of resentment and sorrow, he deprecates this heaviest of calamities:

"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven ! " *

But when Regan, following the example of her sister, inflicts upon him still greater dishonour, the fearful assurance is intimately felt, and he predicts its visitation in positive terms:

Nothing can impress us with a more tremendous idea of this awful state of mind, than the feelings of Lear during his exposure to the

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. p. 381. Act i. sc. 5.

+ Ibid. vol. xvii. p. 441. Act ii. sc. 4.

tempest. What, under other circumstances, would have been shrunk from with alarm and pain, is now unfelt, or only so, as a relief from deeper horrors:

66

"Lear. Thou think'st 'tis much, that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin so 'tis to thee;

But where the greater malady is fix'd,

It is at the close of this scene that the misfortune which he has dreaded so much, overtakes him: "his wits," as Kent observes, 'begin to unsettle;" but it is not a total dereliction of intellect: Lear is neither absolutely delirious, nor maniacal; but he labours under that species of hallucination which leaves to the wretched sufferer a sense of his own unhappiness: a state of being, beyond all others, calculated to awaken the most thrilling sensations of pity.

A picture of more terrible grandeur or of wilder sublimity, than what occurs, during the exposure of the aged monarch to the impetuous fury of the storm, was never imagined. Every thing conspires to render it unparalleled in its powers of impression. On a

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. pp. 459-461. Act iii. sc. 4.

night, when the conflicting elements of fire, air, and water, deafen nature itself with their uproar; on a night,

"wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,

The lion and the belly-pinched wolf

Keep their fur dry,"

is the miserable old king driven out by his unnatural daughters, to wander over a bleak and barren heath in search of shelter, destitute of even common necessaries, a very beggar on the bounty of his former subjects, and accompanied only by his fool, and the faithful though banished Kent. It is with difficulty that they persuade him to take refuge from the storm; at length, he yields, at the same time addressing the fool in terms which, perhaps more than any other lines in the play, unveil the native goodness of his heart:

"Come, your hovel,

Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That's sorry yet for thee." +

No sooner, however, has the fool entered this hovel, than he returns horror-struck, followed by Edgar, who rushes on the heath, an almost naked maniac, and exclaiming,

"Away! the foul fiend follows me !

Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind." ‡

The dialogue which now ensues between these extraordinary characters is, of itself, a proof of the boundless expansion of the poet's mind. The torrent of agonizing grief and resentment which flows from Lear, abandoned by his daughters, verging towards 'insanity, and aware of its approach; the wild exuberance of fancy which thrills in the phrenzied accents of Edgar, who, under the disguise of a madman tormented by demons, is flying from death threatened by a

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. pp. 445, 446. Act iii. sc. 1.

father; and the quaint mixture of wisdom, pleasantry, and satire in the language of the honest fool, who yet heightens, while he means to alleviate the distresses of his master, are elements of mental strife which harmonise with, and add a kind of illimitable horror to the storm which howls around.

Nor inferior to this in merit, though of a totally different cast, is the scene in which the exhausted monarch, having been lulled to sleep through the effects of an opiate, is awakened by the sound of music, whilst Cordelia, hanging over him, with an almost breathless anxiety, at length ventures to address him. The language of the poor old man, in the moment of partial reminiscence, is, beyond any other effort of human composition, simple and affecting:

VOL. II.

"Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?
Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out of the grave:

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly,

I fear, I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks, I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is; and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nor I know not

Where I did lodge last night: Do not laugh at me;

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.

I know, you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.

27. CYMBELINE: 1605. This play, if not, in the construction of its fable, one of the most perfect of our author's productions, is, in point of poetic beauty, of variety and truth of character, and in the display of sentiment and emotion, one of the most lovely and interesting. Nor can we avoid expressing our astonishment at the sweeping condemnation which Johnson has passed upon it; charging its fiction with folly, its conduct with absurdity, its events with impossibility; terming its faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation. †

Of the enormous injustice of this sentence, nearly every page of Cymbeline will, to a reader of any taste or discrimination, bring the most decisive evidence. That it possesses many of the too common inattentions of Shakspeare, that it exhibits a frequent violation of costume, and a singular confusion of nomenclature, cannot be denied; but these are trifles light as air, when contrasted with its merits, which are of the very essence of dramatic worth, rich and full in all that breathes of vigour, animation, and intellect, in all that elevates the fancy, and improves the heart, in all that fills the eye with tears, or agitates the soul with hope and fear.

In possession of excellences, vital as these must be deemed, cold and fastidious is the criticism that, on account of irregularities in mere technical detail, would shut its eyes upon their splendour. Nor are there wanting critics of equal learning with, and superior taste to Johnson, who have considered what he has branded with the unqualified charge of "confusion of manners," as forming, in a certain point of view, one of the most pleasing recommendations of the piece. Thus Schlegel, after characterising Cymbeline as one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions, adds, - "He has here connected a novel of Boccacio with traditionary tales of the ancient

Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvii. pp. 564-567. Act iv. sc. 7. + Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 649.