in the Science into a region apparently very different. Those who Poetry capable of tread the enchanted ground of POETRY, oftentimes do not even Method, suspect that there is such a thing as Method to guide their steps. Yet even here we undertake to show that it not only has a necessary existence, but the strictest Philosophical application; and that it is founded on the very Philosophy which has furnished us with the Principles already laid down. It may surprise some of our readers, especially those who have been brought up in Schools of foreign taste, to find that we rest our proof of these assertions on one single evidence, and that that evidence is SHAKSPEARE, whose Mind they have, probably, been taught to consider as eminently immethodical. evidenced In the first place, Shakspeare was not only endowed with great plays of native genius, (which indeed he is commonly allowed to have Shakspeare. been,) but what is less frequently conceded, he had much acquired knowledge. "His information," says Professor WILDE," was great and extensive, and his reading as great as his knowledge of Languages could reach. Considering the bar which his education and circumstances placed in his way, he had done as much to acquire knowledge as even Milton. A thousand instances might be given of the intimate knowledge Shakthat Shakspeare had of facts. I shall mention only one. I do knowledge not say, he gives a good account of the Salic law, though a by his much worse has been given by many antiquaries. But he who reads the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech in Henry the Fifth, and who shall afterwards say that Shakspeare was not a man of great reading and information, and who loved the thing itself, is a person whose opinion I would not ask or trust upon any matter of investigation." Then was all this reading, all this information, all this knowledge of our great dramatist, a mere rudis indigestaque moles? Very far from it. Method, we have seen, demands a knowledge of the relations which things bear to each other, or to the observer, or to the state and speare's methodized perception of relations. apprehension of the hearers. In all and each of these was Shakspeare so deeply versed, that in the personages of a play, he seems “to mould his mind as some incorporeal material alternately into all their various forms."2 In every one of his various characters we still feel ourselves communing with the same human nature. Everywhere we find individuality : nowhere mere portrait. The excellence of his productions consists in a happy union of the universal with the particular. But the universal is an Idea. Shakspeare, therefore, studied mankind in the Idea of the human race; and he followed out that Idea into all its varieties, by a Method which never failed to guide his steps aright. Let us appeal to him to illustrate, by example, the difference between a sterile and an exuberant mind, in respect to what we have ventured to call the Science Comparison of Method. On the one hand observe Mrs. Quickly's relation of the circumstances of Sir John Falstaff's debt : of Mrs. Quickly's relation of Falstaff's debt, with a narration of Hamlet to Horatio. FALSTAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee? : Mrs. QUICKLY. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for likening his father to a singing man in Windsor-thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the Butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly?-coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar: telling us she had a good dish of prawns—whereby thou didst desire to eat some-whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound," &c. &c. &c. (Henry IV. P. I. Act II. Scene I.) On the other hand consider the narration given by Hamlet to Horatio, of the occurrences during his proposed transportation to England, and the events that interrupted his voyage. (Act V. Scene II.) HAM. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep: methought I lay * ὁ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ψυχὴν ὥσει ὕλην τινα ἀσώματον μορφαῖς ποικιλαῖς μορφώσας. THEMISTIUS. Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do fail: and that should teach us Rough-hew them how we will. HOR. That is most certain. HAM. Up from my cabin, My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio, My head should be struck off! HOR. Is't possible? HAM. Here's the commission.-Read it at more leisure. Devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair. HOR. Ay, good my lord. HAM. An earnest conjuration from the king, As England was his faithful tributary; As love between them, like the palm, might flourish; And many such like As's of great charge That, on the view and knowing of these contents, HOR. How was this sealed? HAM. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. Folded the writ up in the form of the other; Subscribed it; gave't the impression; plac'd it safely, The changeling never known. Now, the next day Both dis courses im in form. That of Mrs. Quickly wants order resulting from the power of thought. That of Hamlet If, overlooking the different value of the matter in these two methodical narrations, we consider only the form, it must be confessed that both are immethodical. We have asserted that Method results from a balance between the passive impression received from outward things, and the internal activity of the mind in reflecting and generalizing; but neither Hamlet nor the Hostess holds this balance accurately. In Mrs. Quickly, the memory alone is called into action, the objects and events recur in the narration in the same order, and with the same accompaniments, however accidental or impertinent, as they had first occurred to the narrator. The necessity of taking breath, the efforts of recollection, and the abrupt rectification of its failures, produce all her pauses, and constitute most of her connections. But when we look to the Prince of Denmark's recital the case governed by is widely different. Here the events, with the circumstances of time and place, are all stated with equal compression and rapidity; not one introduced which could have been omitted without injury to the intelligibility of the whole process. If any tendency is discoverable, as far as the mere facts are in question, it is to omission: and accordingly the reader will observe that the attention of the narrator is called back to one material circumstance, which he was hurrying by, by a direct question (How WAS THIS SEALED?) from the friend to whom the story is communicated. But by a trait, which is indeed peculiarly characteristic of Hamlet's mind, ever disposed to generalize, and meditative to excess, all the digressions and enlargements consist of reflections, truths, and principles of general and permanent interest, either directly expressed or disguised in playful satire. reflection. Instances of the want of generalization are of no rare occurrence; and the narration of Shakspeare's Hostess differs from those of the ignorant and unthinking in ordinary life, only by its superior humour, the poet's own gift and infusion, not by tess' want real life. its want of Method, which is not greater than we often meet The Hoswith in that class of minds of which she is the dramatic repre- of method sentative. Nor will the excess of generalization and reflection common in have escaped our observation in real life, though the great Poet has more conveniently supplied the illustrations. In attending too exclusively to the relations which the past or passing events and objects bear to general truth, and the moods of his own mind, the most intelligent man is sometimes in danger of overlooking that other relation, in which they are likewise to be placed to the apprehension and sympathies of his hearers. His discourse appears like soliloquy intermixed with dialogue. But the uneducated and unreflecting talker overlooks all mental relations, and consequently precludes all Method that is not purely accidental. Hence, the nearer the things and incidents in time and place, the more distant, disjointed, and impertinent to each other, and to any common purpose, will they appear in his narration: and this from the absence of any leading thought in the narrator's own mind. On the contrary, where the habit of Method is present and effective, things the most remote and diverse in time, place, and outward circumstance, are brought into mental contiguity and succession, the more striking as the less expected. But while we would impress the necessity of this habit, the illustrations adduced give proof that in undue preponderance, and when the prerogative of the mind is stretched into despotism, the discourse may degenerate into the wayward, or the fantastical. of Shak Shakspeare needed not to read Horace in order to give his Consistency characters that Methodical Unity which the wise Roman so strongly recommends : Si quid inexpertum scenæ committis, et audes But this was not the only way in which he followed an accu- speare's characters. |