no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and that every mortal enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary deception, When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, breathes out its longing for its distant home, the prevailing character of its songs must be melancholy. Hence the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours is that of desire: the former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood to affirm that every thing flows in one strain of wailing and complaint, and that the voice of melancholy must always be loudly heard. As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so the romantic poetry can assume every tone, even that of the most lively gladness; but still it will always, in some shape or other, bear traces of the source from which it originated. The feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more intense, their fancy more incorporeal, and their thoughts more contemplative." *

Who does not perceive that this reference to futurity, this apprehension of the possible consequences of death, which chills the blood with awful emotion, and mingles fear even with the energies of hope, is peculiarly characteristic of the serious drama of Shakspeare? In what poet, for instance, shall we find the terrors of dissolution painted with such appalling strength? where nature recoiling with such involuntary horror from the thoughts of extinction? and where those blended feelings which, on the eve of our departure, even agitate the good, ere the forms of earthly love sink into night, and a world unknown receives the disembodied spirit? Need we point to Henry the Sixth, to Hamlet, to Measure for Measure, to Macbeth, and to many others, for proofs of this continual appeal to life beyond the grave, this perpetual effort to unite, with influential power, these two states of our existence, certainly one of the most striking distinctions which separate the romantic from the antique style

* Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.

of dramatic fiction, and in which, as in every other feature of this species of poetry, Shakspeare was the first who, in our own or any other country, exhibited such unrivalled excellence, as to constitute him, in every just sense of the term, the founder of this species of the drama.

For have we not, in his productions, the noblest model of that comprehensive form which, including under one view all the varieties and vicissitudes of human being, presents us with a picture in which not only the virtues and the vices, but the follies and the frailties, the levities and the mirth of man, are harmonised and blended into a perfect whole, connected too, and that intimately, with a vast range of surrounding circumstances which, both in the foreground and in the distance, are so managed, as, by the illusory aid of tinting, grouping, and shadowing, to assist in the production of a great and determinate effect. To evince the superiority of this mode of composition over that which prevailed on the Grecian stage, it is only necessary to reflect, that the concatenated series of events which is unfolded, with so much unity of design, in the single drama of Macbeth, could only be represented, on the simple and confined plan of the school of Athens, by a trilogy, or succession of distinct tragedies! Can a system, thus necessarily broken into insulated parts, be put into competition with the rich and full evolution of the romantic or Shakspearean drama?

It is evident, therefore, that the romantic or picturesque drama should be judged by laws and regulations of its own; that it is a distinct order of art, displaying great originality and invention, and a much more perfect and profound view of human life and its dependencies, than any anterior effort in the same department of literature; and as all the productions of our poet are exclusively referable to this order, of which he is, without dispute, the greatest master, a brief enquiry into the CONDUCT OF HIS DRAMA cannot fail to throw some light on the subject.

Of the three unities, upon which so much stress has been laid by the French critics, Shakspeare has in general, and, for the most part,

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very judiciously, rejected two. One of these, the unity of place, was, indeed, indissolubly connected with the tragedy of the Greeks; for as the chorus was continually on their stage, no curtain could be dropped, nor was any change of scene therefore possible; but the unity of time was, most assuredly, neither rigidly observed by them, nor did it constitute any essential part of their system; on the contrary, Aristotle, after remarking, "that the dramatic fable should have such a length that the connexion of the circumstances may easily be remembered," immediately afterwards declares of this very length, that "as far as regards the time of the performance and the spectators, it has no relation to the poetic art," and that " as to the natural boundary of the action, the greater it is the better, provided it be perspicuous. In fact, as to unity of place, no rule was required, this limitation, as we have seen, being the inevitable consequence of the defective and insulated construction of their dramatic fable; and as to unity of time, the observation which we have just quoted from Aristotle is decisive, the circumstances attending both these supposed laws being such, as fully to warrant the assertion of Mr. Twining, who, commenting on the Stagyrite, observes, that "with respect to the strict unities of time and place, no such rules were imposed on the Greek poets by the critics, or by themselves ; nor are imposed on any poet, either by the nature, or the end, of the dramatic imitation itself;" and we may add, that, in as far as both have been simultaneously reduced to practice, either by the Greeks themselves, or by their still more scrupulous imitators the French, have interest and probability been proportionably sacrificed.

Whether Shakspeare, therefore, acting solely from his own judgment, rejected, or, guided merely by the usage of his day, overlooked, these unities, a great point was gained for all the lovers of nature and verisimilitude. For, omitting regulations which, though generally or partially observed by the ancients, were either altogether

* Pye's Aristotle, 4to. 1792, p. 22.

arbitrary, or only locally necessary, he has adopted two of which it may be said, that neither time, circumstance, nor opinion, can diminish the utility. To unity of action, the indispensable requisite of every well-constituted fable, he has added, what in him is found more perfect than in any other writer, unity of feeling, as applicable not only to individual character, but to the prevailing tone and influence of each play. Thus, while it must be confessed that the former is, in a few instances, broken in upon, by the admission of extraneous personages or occurrences, in no respect is the latter, throughout the whole range of his productions, forgotten or violated.

It is to this sedulous attention in the preservation of unity of feeling, that Shakspeare owes much of his fascination and powers of impression over the hearts and minds of his audience. It has been duly panegyrised by the critics with respect to his delineation of character; but as referable to the expression and effect of an entire drama, it has been too much overlooked. What, for example, can be more distinct than the tone of feeling which pervades every portion of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, and how consistently is this tone preserved throughout each! Through the first, from its opening to its close, breathe the freshness and the fragrance of youth and spring, their sweetness, their innocency, and alas! their transiency; while in the second, a tempest of more than midnight horror, and the still more turbulent strife of human vice and passion, howl for ever in our ears! Again, how delightful is the tender and philosophic melancholy, which steals upon us in every scene of As You Like It, and how contrasted with the bustle and vivacity, the light and effervescent wit which animate, and sparkle in, the dialogue of Much Ado about Nothing! We consider this unity, by which the separate parts of a drama are rendered so strictly subservient to a single and a common object, namely, the production of a combined and uniform impression, as one of the most remarkable proofs of the depth and comprehensiveness of the mind of Shakspeare.

This excellence is the more extraordinary, as no part in the conduct of his drama is perhaps so prominent, as that mixture of seriousness

and mirth, of comic and tragic effect, which springs from the very structure itself of the romantic drama. But this interchange of emotion serves only to place the intention of the poet, and the fulness of his success, more completely in our view; for he has almost always contrived, that the ludicrous personages of his play should give essential aid to the pre-determined effect of the composition as a whole; and this co-operation is even most apparent, where the impression intended to be excited is the most tragic: thus the anguish which lacerates the bosom of Lear, when deserted by his children, and driven forth amid the horrors of the tempest, is augmented almost to madness by the sarcastic drollery of the fool; developed, indeed, with an energy and strength which no other expedient could have accomplished.

These contrasts, which are, in fact, of the very essence of the romantic drama, as requiring richer and more varied accompaniments than the antique species, form, in their whole spirit and effect, a sufficient apology, were one in the least necessary, for the tragi-comic texture of our author's principal productions.

By embracing in one view the whole of the checkered scene of human existence, its joys and sorrows, its perpetually shifting circumstances and relations, and by blending these into one harmonious picture, Shakspeare has achieved a work to which the ancient world had nothing similar, and which, of all the efforts of human genius, demands perhaps the widest and profoundest exertion of intellect. It demands a knowledge of man, both as a genus and a species; of man, as acting from himself, and of man in society under all its aspects and revolutions: it demands a knowledge of what has influenced and modified his character from the earliest dawn of record ; and, above all, it demands a conversancy of the most intimate kind with his constitution, moral, intellectual, and religious; so that in detaching a portion of history for the purposes of dramatic composition, the philosopher shall be as discernible in the execution as the poet.