Chapter XXIV: Part 24

But if philosophical criticism has been so far favourable to develope the truth of nature in the great poet, it is not a consequence that Shakespeare himself produced his poetry on those revolving systems of metaphysics by which some late aesthetic and rhetorical German critics have somewhat offuscated the solitary luminary. They have developed such a system of intricate thinking in the genius of the poet, such a refined connexion between his conceptions and the execution of his dramatic personages--they have so grafted their own imagination upon his, that at times it becomes doubtful whether we are influenced by the imagination of the critic, or that of the poet. In this seraphic mode of criticism, the poem becomes mythic, and the poet a myth; in the power of abstraction, these critics have passed beyond the regions of humanity. We soar with them into the immensity of space, and we tremble as if we stood alone in the universe; we have lost sight of nature, as we seem to have passed her human boundaries. The ancient divinity of poetry itself, even Homer, is absorbed in the Shakespearian myth; for Shakespeare, to snatch a feather from the fiery wing of Coleridge, is "the Spinosistic deity, an omnipresent creativeness."

Thou whose rapt spirit beheld the vision of human existence, "the wheel in the middle of the wheel, and the spirit of the living creature within," and wrotest thy inspirations, how shall we describe thy faculty? To paint lightning, and to give it no motion, is the doom of the baffled artist. Something, however, we may conceive of the Shakespearian faculty when we say that it consisted in a facility of feeling, an aptitude in following those trains of thought which constitute that undeviating propriety, in the consonance of the character with its action, and the passion with its language. Whether the poet followed the romancer or the chronicler in his conception of a dramatic character, he at the first step struck into that undeviating track of our humanity amid the accidents of its position. The progress of each dramatic personage was therefore a unity of diction and character, of sentiment and action; all was direct, for there was no effort where all was impulse; and the dramatic genius of Shakespeare, as if wholly unstudied, seems to have formed the habit of his intellectual character. Was this unerring Shakespearian faculty an intuitive evidence, like certain axioms; or may we venture to fancy that our poet, as it were, had discovered the very mathematics of metaphysics?

Besides this facility of feeling appropriating to itself the whole sphere of human existence, there is another characteristic of our national bard. He struck out a diction which I conceive will be found in no other poet. What is usually termed diction would, applied to Shakespeare, be more definite, and its quality more happily explained, if we call it _expression_, and observed in what magic the Shakespearian expression lies. This diction has been subject to the censure of obscurity. Modern critics have ascribed the invention of our dramatic blank verse to Shakespeare; but Shakespeare was no inventor in the usual acceptation of the term, and assuredly was not of unrhymed metre: what, indeed, are imperfectly or rarely found among his tuneful predecessors and contemporaries, are the sweetness of his versification, combined with ceaseless imagery; we view the image through the transparency of the thought never disturbing it; it is neither a formal simile nor an expanded metaphor--it is a single expression, a sensible image combined with an emotion.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Posterity is even in some danger of losing the real name of our
great dramatic poet. In the days of Shakespeare, and long after,
proper names were written down as the ear caught the sound, or they
were capriciously varied by the owner. It is not therefore strange
that we have instances of eminent persons writing the names of
intimate friends and of public characters in a manner not always to
be recognised. Of this we are now furnished with the most abundant
evidence, which was not sufficiently adverted to in the early times
of our commentators.

The autographs we possess of our national bard are unquestionably
written SHAKSPERE, according to the pronunciation of his native town;
there the name was variously written,--even in the same public
document,--but always regulated by the dialectical orthoepy. The
marriage license of the poet, recovered in the "Gentleman's Magazine"
for September, 1836, offers a striking evidence of the viciousness of
the pronunciation and the utter carelessness with which names were
written, for there we find it SHAGSPERE.

That the poet himself considered that the genuine name was
SHAKESPEARE, accordant with his own (a spear, the point upward),
seems certain, notwithstanding his compliance with the custom of his
country; for his "Rape of Lucrece," printed by himself in 1594, in
the first edition bears the name of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, as also does
the "Venus and Adonis," that first heir of his invention; these first
editions of his juvenile poems were doubtlessly anxiously scrutinised
by the youthful bard. In the literary metropolis the name was so
pronounced. Bancroft has this allusion in his Epigrams--"To
Shakespeare:"--

"Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare,
That poets startle."

The well-known allusion of Robert Greene, to a shake-scene, confirms
the pronunciation. I now supply one more evidence--that of Thomas
Heywood, the intimate of Shakespeare and his brother dramatists; he,
like some others, has printed the name with a hyphen, which I
transcribe from the volume open before me,--

"Mellifluous Shake-speare,"

_Hierarchie of Angels_, 206.

The question resolves itself into this--Is the name of our great bard
to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock of SHAKSPERE,
the twang of a provincial corruption; or, following the writers of
the Elizabethan age, shall we maintain the restoration of the euphony
and the truth of the name of SHAKESPEARE?

[2] Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his "New Facts regarding the Life of
Shakespeare."

[3] Roscius Anglicanus.--They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin.

[4] Greene was then lying on his last pallet of rhyme and misery,
dictating this sad legacy of "a groat's worth of wit bought with a
million of repentance."

[5] _Bombast_ is not here used in the present application of the
term, in a depreciating sense, but is a simile derived from the
cotton used in stuffing out or quilting the fashionable dresses.

[6] Collier's "New Facts," 13. Dyce's edition of "Greene's Dramatic
Works."

[7] Heywood's "Apology for Actors."--The Epistle to his bookseller at
the end.

[8] In the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_ the joint production of Jonson,
Marlowe, and Chapman,--Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the
madness of Hamlet and Ophelia.

[9] ROBERT CHESTER, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced
in the "Bib. Anglo-Poetica" at 50_l._, but this price was too
moderate; for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of
absurd poetry willingly gave 61_l._ 19_s._ I have not yet seen this
extraordinary production, and derive my knowledge only from a
specimen in the catalogue.

[10] In 1612 or 13.

[11] Most of our old plays come before us in a corrupt and mangled
state. They were often imperfectly caught by the scribe, or otherwise
surreptitiously obtained; hurried through the press from some
illegible manuscript by a careless printer, who would throw three
distinct speeches into the mouth of one character, transpose the
names of the dramatis personae, and omit the change of scene; while
others again with indiscriminate fidelity, from a stolen transcript
of the prompter's book, preserved his private memorandums and
directions in the stage-copy. Even in the first folio of Shakespeare,
so absent from their work were the player-editors, that "tables and
chairs" are introduced to direct the property-man, or the
scene-shifters, to be in readiness. Verse is printed as prose, to
save the expenditure of those small blank spaces which divide those
two regions of genius. The dramatists themselves, who probably
conceived that they had consigned all their property in their vended
plays, never read their own proof-sheets. The reader may form a clear
conception of the injuries inflicted on these writers by the existing
presentation copy of Massinger's "Duke of Milan," in which may be
seen how the poet, after its publication, indignantly corrected the
multiplied and the strange errata. The printer gave this text--

"Observe and honour her as if the SEAL
Of woman's goodness only dwelt in hers."

The poet corrected this to "the SOUL." The sagacity of an English
Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only the
poet himself could have supplied it.

Again the printer's text runs--

"From any lip whose HONOUR writ not Lord."

The poet corrected this also to "whose OWNER."

These errors of the press are far more important to the readers of
Shakespeare than many suspect. "Who knows," exclaimed the acute
Gifford, "whether much of the ingenious toil to explain nonsense in
the variorum edition of Shakespeare is not absolutely wasted upon
mere _errors of the press_?" Not long after this was said, an actual
experiment of the kind was made by a skilful printer. This person,
during the leisure of eleven years of a French captivity, had found
his most constant companion in a Shakespeare.* By his own experience
of the blunders and the mischances of the typographer, to which we
may add also a little sagacity, he recovered some of the lost text.
His new readings were accompanied by an explanation of those
mechanical accidents which had caused these particular errata. The
practical printer mortified the haughty commentator by several
felicitous and obvious emendations. The grave brotherhood of
black-letter looked askance on such humble ingenuity, and turned
against the simple printer. Unluckily for ZACHARY JACKSON, he had the
temerity, in the flush of success, of abandoning his type-work to err
in "the dalliance of fancy" into an ambitious Commentary of "seven
hundred passages," when seventy had exceeded his fair claim. The
commentating printer therefore met with the fate of the immortalised
cobbler who ventured to criticise beyond the right measure of his
last.

* So numerous were the English prisoners in France during the
persecuting war of Napoleon, and so general was the demand for a
Shakespeare, that more than one edition, I think, was printed by
the French booksellers, which I have seen on their literary
stalls.

[12] Collier's "Poetical Decameron," i. 52. STEEVENS thought _The
Yorkshire Tragedy_ to be Shakespearian; and the Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE,
struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that "it
contains passages worthy of his pen."--_Dyce's Mem. of Shakespeare_,
xxxi.

[13] That Shakespeare was the favourite poet of Charles the First is
confirmed to the eyes of posterity; for on the copy the king used, he
has written his own name, and left other traces of his pen; the
volume now bears also the autograph of George the Third. It is
preserved, it is hoped, in the library of the sovereigns of England.

[14] Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics;
when, on this occasion, having quoted that passage in _Richard the
Third_ which displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds--"_Other stuff of
this sort_ may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet
used not much license in departing from the truth of history." Pye,
in his "Commentary on the Poetic of Aristotle," is indignant at the
language of Milton. He takes the term "stuff" in its modern
depreciating sense; but it had no such meaning with Milton, it merely
signified _matter_. Pye exclaims--"Could Milton have imagined that
_the stuff_ of Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to 'Comus'
and the 'Samson Agonistes?'"--212.

[15] I derive my knowledge from the "Roscius Anglicanus" of DOWNES,
the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate;
but the edition by F. WALDRON, 1784, is an addition to our literary
history. Though chiefly dramatic, it abounds with some curious secret
history. Waldron, himself an humble actor, was, however, a sagacious
literary antiquary; but his modesty and failure of encouragement
impeded his proposed labours. Gifford found him intelligent when that
critic was busied on Jonson; and I possess an evidence of his acute
emendations.

By this chronicle of our drama, it appears that in a list of fifteen
stock plays there are seven of Beaumont and Fletcher, three of
Jonson, and three of Shakespeare. In another list of twenty-one plays
there are _five_ of Jonson, and but _one_ of Shakespeare and that
_Titus Andronicus_.

[16] Butler's "Genuine Remains," ii. 494.

[17] _Rollo, King and no King_, and _The Maid's Tragedy_.

[18] We may listen to Pope:--S. "Rymer is a learned and strict
critic!"--P. "Ay, that's exactly his character. He is generally
right, though rather too severe in his opinion of the particular
plays he speaks of; and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we
ever had."--Spence's "Anecdotes," 172.

[19] "Edinburgh Review," Sept. 1831.

[20] The fate of Rymer's Tragedy has been illustrated by the
inimitable humour of Addison in No. 592 of "The Spectator."
Describing different theatrical properties, he says--"They are
provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed,
are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and
shredded for that use. Mr. Rymer's _Edgar_ is to fall in snow at the
next acting of _King Lear_, in order to heighten, or rather to
alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince, and to serve by
way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written
against."

[21] On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas of
_Cato_, _The Conscious Lovers_, and Cibber's and Farquhar's plays are
simply announced, while the elder dramatists have accompanying
epithets, which show the degree of their celebrity according, at
least, to the director of the bills; and perhaps indicate the
necessity he was under to remind the public, who were not familiar
with the titles of these old plays. Thus appear "_The Silent Woman_,
a Comedy by the _famous_ Ben Jonson;" "_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_,
written by the _immortal_ Shakespeare;" "_The Soldier's Fortune_,
written by the late _ingenious_ Mr. Otway." Though Shakespeare bears
away the prize among these epithetical allotments, I suspect that his
_immortality_--here positively assigned to him--was owing to the
honour of the recent edition by Rowe.

In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of
Shakespeare for the variety of their _historical subjects_. On one of
these bills _Richard the Third_ is described as "containing the
distresses of King Henry the Sixth; the murder of young King Edward
the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of
Richmond, and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of
Bosworth, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York
and Lancaster; with many other true historical passages."

[22] "Tatler"--42.

[23] "Spectator"--39, 285.

[24] V. iv. 186.

[25] Pope said that "it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play
now, professedly in Shakespeare's style, that is, the style of a bad
age!" He relished as little Milton's "high style," as he called it.
"The high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his
subject turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it
does." Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days
of Pope, when the "Gothic model" was proscribed by such high
authorities. But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the
stately but classical "Ferrex and Porrex," and occasioned Spence to
reprint it;--a tragedy in the unimpassioned style and short
breathings of the asthmatic Seneca.

[26] COXETER, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating
the best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his
scheme to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion
may be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he
appeals to the "Gorboduc" which Spence had published by the desire of
Pope; both these wits, and the future editor of "Old Plays," Dodsley,
had used the spurious edition! Coxeter's judgment was prophetic in
the present instance. "Dodsley's Collection" turned out to be a
chance "medley;" unskilled in the language and the literature and the
choice of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, "by the assistance of a
little common sense set a great number of these passages right;" that
is, the dramatist of the dull "Cleone" brought down the ancient
genius to his own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was
spurious. If, after all, some parts were left unintelligible, the
reader must consider how many such remain in Shakespeare.

[27] A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first
edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as
the notes--particularly those which Theobald describes as "rather
verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation." The
candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the
second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving
the _costume_ or dress of the characters at the time.

[28] This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged
on that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the
decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their
warerooms, open for the sale of what are called "their effects;" but
which, in this instance of literary property, may be deemed "the
ineffectual effects." At the sale of "the effects" of Tonson, the
great bibliopolist, in 1767, one hundred and forty copies of Pope's
"Shakespeare," in six volumes quarto, for which the original
subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed of at sixteen shillings
only per set.--"Gent. Mag.," lvii. 76.

[29] See "Quarrels of Authors."

[30] Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to
censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous
in Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the
Aristotelian-Gallic Poetic, our "monster-poet" carries away the palm.
The critic acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare
"Semiramis" to that "monster of a tragedy"--"Hamlet," the Ghost there
acts as a ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and
revealing a secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of
Ninus appears in a full assembly, only to tell the hero to listen to
somebody else who knows the secret as well as the Ghost.--"Cours de
Litterature."

[31] Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied
information, has been alphabetically arranged in "A Glossary, or
Collection of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs,
Proverbs, &c., which have required illustration in the _works of
English Authors_, particularly _Shakespeare and his Contemporaries_,"
by Archdeacon Nares, 4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is
useful, and which I suspect has not been justly appreciated. It is a
substitute for all these commentators; and with this volume, at an
easy rate, we are made free of the whole Shakespearian corporation.

[32] Monsieur VILLEMAIN, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our
English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed
a life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article on SHAKESPEARE
in the "Biographie Universelle." The perplexities of his taste, and
the contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but
it must have been a serious labour for a person of his strict
candour. Our critic remains astonished at Johnson's preference of
Shakespeare's comic to his tragic genius, which never can be, he
adds, the opinion of foreigners. Monsieur Villemain is perfectly
right; for no foreigner can comprehend the humour, not always
delicate but strong, which often depends on the phrase, as well as on
the character; but he errs when he can only discover in the comedy of
Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and not a picture of manners.
Our critic has formed no conception of the poet's ideal standard and
universal nature; insomuch that to this day we continue to apply
among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes of the comic
characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive that which
perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the
enthusiastic critic who has decided that MOLIERE only gave "a prosaic
copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile
imitator." I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on
system. I beg leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the
French Shakespeare to elevate our own. Moliere is as truly an
original genius as any dramatist of any age.

[33] This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which
had been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire's
entire composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a
foreigner's pen, and of one determined to prove the authenticity of
its source. "Voltaire, like the French in general," said Dr. Young,
"showed the greatest complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest
contempt for us inwardly." He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in
English, and begged him to correct any gross faults. The doctor set
himself very honestly to work, marked the passages most liable to
censure, and when he went to explain himself about them, Voltaire
could not avoid bursting out and laughing in his face!--_Spence._

Had Voltaire accepted the doctor's verbal corrections, or the
opinions suggested by him, something else than the "laughing in the
face" had been recollected.

[34] Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his
involuntary and his voluntary blunders:--

In _Hamlet_, when one sentinel inquires of the other--"Have you had
quiet guard?" he is answered--"Not a mouse stirring!" which Voltaire
translates literally--"Pas un souris qui trotte!" How different is
the same circumstance described by Racine--"Tout dort, et l'armee, et
le vents, et Neptune!" A verse Kaimes had condemned as mere bombast!
To every people who had not associated with the general
night-stillness of a castle the movement of a mouse, this description
would appear ludicrously puerile; while, with us, the familiar idiom
is most happily appropriate to the speaker; but this natural language
no foreigner can acquire by study or reflection; we imbibe our idioms
as we did the milk of the nurse's breast.

In _Julius Caesar_, when Voltaire translates Caesar's reply to
Metellus, who would fall at his feet to supplicate for the repeal of
his brother's banishment, the Caeesar of Shakespeare uses metaphorical
expressions. He would not yield to

"That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words,
Low-crooked curt'sies, and base _spaniel-fawning_.
If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,
_I'd spurn thee like a cur out of my way_."

This natural style was doubtless "trop familier" for the polished
Frenchman, and his version is malicious, and he delights to detail
every motion of a spaniel, even to the licking of the feet of his
master!--

"_Les airs d'un chien couchant_ peuvent toucher un sot;
Flatte, prie a genoux, et _leche-moi les pieds_--
Va, je te _rosserai_ comme un chien."

_Rosser_ can only be translated by so mean a phrase as "a sound
beating;" while to spurn is no ignoble action, and is used rather in
a poetical than familiar style.

THE "HUMOURS" OF JONSON.

JONSON studied "THE HUMOURS," and not the passions. What were these "humours"? The bard himself does not distinguish them from "manners"--

Their MANNERS, now call'd HUMOURS, feed the stage.

The ambiguity of the term has confounded it with humour itself; they are, however, so far distinct, that a "humour," that is, some absorbing singularity in a character, may not necessarily be very humorous--it may be only absurd.

When this term "humours" became popular, it sunk into a mystification. Every one suddenly had his "humour." It served on all occasions as an argument which closed all discussion. The impertinent insisted on the privilege of his "humour." "The idiot" who chose to be "apish," declared that a lock of hair fantastically hung, or the dancing feather in his cap, were his "humour." A moral quality, or an affection of the mind, was thus indiscriminately applied to things themselves, when they were objects of affectation or whim. The phrase was tossed about till it bore no certain meaning. Such indeed is the fate of all fashionable cant--ephemera which, left to themselves, die away with their season.

The ludicrous incongruity of applying these physical qualities to moral acts, and apologizing for their caprices by their "humours," was too exquisitely ludicrous not to be seized on as the property of our comic satirists. Shakespeare and Jonson have given perpetuity to this term of the vocabulary in vogue, and Jonson has dignified it by transferring it to his comic art. Shakespeare has personified these "humours" in that whimsical, blunt, grotesque Corporal Nym, the pith of whose reason and the chorus of whose tune are his "humours;" admirably contrasting with that other "humourist," his companion, ranting the fag-ends of tragedies "in Cambyses' vein." Jonson, more elaborate, according to his custom, could not quit his subject till he had developed the whole system in two comedies of "Every Man IN" and "Every Man OUT of his HUMOUR."

The vague term was least comprehended when most in use. Asper, the censor of the times,[1] desires Mitis, who had used it, "to answer what was meant:" Mitis, a neutralized man, "who never acts, and has therefore no character," can only reply, "Answer what?" The term was too plain or too obscure for that simple soul to attach any idea to a word current with all the world.

The philosopher then offers

To give these ignorant well-spoken days
Some taste of their abuse of this word HUMOUR.

This rejoices his friend Cordatus:

Oh, do not let your purpose fall, good Asper;
It cannot but arrive most acceptable,
Chiefly to such as have the happiness
Daily to see how _the poor innocent word
Is rack'd and tortured_.

It is then that Asper, or rather Jonson, plunges into a dissertation on "the elements," which, according to the ancient philosophy, compound the fragile body of man, with the four "humours," or moistures.[2]

Had not this strange phrase been something more than a modish coinage, it had not endured so long and spread so wide. Other temporary phrases of this nature were equally in vogue, nor have they escaped the vigilant causticity of Jonson. Such were "the vapourers," and "the jeerers;" but these had not substance in them to live, and Jonson only cast on them a side-glance. "The humours" were derived from a more elevated source than the airy nothingness of fashionable cant.

How "the humours" came into vogue may I think be discovered. A work long famous, and of which multiplied editions, in all the languages of Europe, were everywhere spread, deeply engaged public attention; this work was _Huarte's Examen de Ingenios_, translated into English as "The Examination of Men's Wits." It was long imagined that the Spaniard had drawn aside the veil from nature herself, revealing among her varieties those of the human character. The secret, "to what profession a man will be most apt," must have taken in a wide circle of inquirers. In the fifth chapter, we learn that "the differences of men's wits depend on the hot, the moist, and the dry;" the system is carried on through "the elements" and "the humours." The natural philosophy is of the schools, but the author's anatomy of the brain amounted to a demonstration of the phenomenon, as it seemed to him. He, however, had struck out some hardy novelties and some mendacious illustrations. The system was long prevalent, and every one now conceived himself to be the passive agent of his predominant temperament or "humour," and looked for that page which was to discover to him his own genius. This work in its day made as great a sensation as the "Esprit" of Helvetius at a later time; and in effect resembled the phrenology of our day, and was as ludicrously applied. The first English version--for there are several--appeared in 1594, and we find that, four years after, "the humours" were so rife that they served to plot a whole comedy, as well as to furnish an abundance of what they called "epigrams," or short satires of the reigning mode.

Jonson's intense observation was microscopical when turned to the minute evolutions of society, while his diversified learning at all times bore him into a nobler sphere of comprehension. This taste for reality, and this fulness of knowledge on whatever theme he chose, had a reciprocal action, and the one could not go without the other. Our poet doggedly set to "a humour" through its slightest anomalies, and in the pride of his comic art expanded his prototype. Yet this was but half the labour which he loved; his mind was stored with the most burdensome knowledge; and to the scholar the various erudition which he had so diligently acquired threw a more permanent light over those transient scenes which the painter of manners had so carefully copied.

The pertinacity of Jonson in heaping such minute particularities of "a humour," has invariably turned his great dramatic personages into complete personifications of some single propensity or mode of action; and thus the individual is changed into an abstract being. The passion itself is wholly there, but this man of one volition is thrown out of the common brotherhood of man; an individual so artificially constructed as to include a whole species. Our poet, if we may decide by the system which he pursued, seems to have considered his prodigious dramatic characters as the conduit-pipes to convey the abundant waters which he had gathered into his deep cisterns.

It is surely evident that such elaborate dramatic personages were not extemporary creations thrown off in the heat of the pen. Our poet professed to instruct as much as to delight; and it was in the severity of thought and the austerity of his genius that his nobler conceptions arose. His studious habits have been amply ascertained. When he singled out "a humour," to possess himself of every trait of the anomalous dispositions he contemplated, he must gradually have accumulated, as they occurred, the particulars whence to form the aggregate; and like Swift, in his "Advice to Servants," in his provident diligence he must have jotted down a mass such as we see so curiously unfolded in "the character of the persons," prefixed to "Every Man in his Humour," a singular dramatic sketch. To this mass, with due labour and shaping, he gave the baptism of an expressive name, and conceived that a name would necessarily become a person. If he worked in this manner, as I believe he did, and "the characters" we have just seen confirm the suggestion, it sufficiently explains the space he required to contain his mighty and unmixed character--the several made into one; and which we so frequently observe he was always reluctant to quit, while a stroke in his jottings remained untold. His cup indeed often runs over, and sometimes the dregs hang on our lips. We have had perhaps too many of these jottings.

But if Jonson has been accused of having servilely given portraits--and we have just seen in what an extraordinary way they are portraits--his learning has also been alleged as something more objectionable in the dramatic art; and we have often heard something of the pedantry of Jonson.

In that elaborate personage Sir Epicure Mammon, we have not only the alchemist and the epicurean to answer that characterizing name, but we are not to be set free without enduring the obscure babble of "the projection" and "the projectors"--which assuredly cost some patient sweat of that curious brain--and further being initiated into the gastronomic mysteries of the kitchens of the ancients. Volpone, and "the gentleman who loves not noise," his other masterpieces, like Sir Epicure Mammon, are of the same colossal character. In "The Fox" and "The Fly," the richest veins of antiquity are melted down into his own copious invention; nor had the ancients themselves a picture so perfect, or a scene so living, of those legacy-hunters, though that vice was almost a profession with them. If true learning in the art of the drama be peccant, our poet is a very saintly sinner; and Jonson indeed was, as Cleaveland has hailed his manes,

The wonder of a learned age.

The fate of Jonson has inflicted its penalties on his very excellences. Some modern critics, whose delicacy of taste in its natural feebleness could not strain itself to the vigour of Jonson, have strangely failed to penetrate into the depths of that mighty mind; and some modern poets have delivered their sad evidence, that for them the Coryphaeus of our elder dramatists has become unintelligible. Of all our dramatists, Jonson, the Juvenal of our drama, alone professed to study the "humour" or manners of the age; but manners vanish with their generation; and ere the century closes even actors cannot be procured to personate characters of which they view no prototype. They remain as the triumphs of art and genius, for those who are studious of this rare combination; but they were the creatures of "the age," and not for "all time," as Jonson himself energetically and prophetically has said of Shakespeare.[3]

Shadwell, who has left us nearly twenty comedies, and "the god of whose idolatry" was Jonson, in his copious prefaces, and prologues and epilogues, overflows with his egotistical admiration of "the humours." In his preface to _The Sullen Lovers_, he says that we are not to expect the intrigue of comedy, plot and business, lest he should "let fall the humour." And in _The Humourist_, he says, "Mr. Jonson was very unjustly taxed for personating particular men," in the writing of his humours; "but it will ever be the fate of them that write the humours of the town." We have more of this in the dedication of _The Virtuoso_, where we are told that "four of the humours are entirely new." We have his definition of these "humours" in the epilogue to _The Humourists_, and which is neatly expressed.

A Humour is the bias of the mind,
By which, with violence, 'tis one way inclined;
It makes our action lean on one side still;
And, in all changes, that way bends the will.

It is singular that as Jonson has been somewhat censured for drawing so elaborately these artificial men and their humours, Shadwell should have adopted the notion, and made it the staple of his comic invention.

When men were more insulated, and society was less monotonous than at the present day, those whom we now call humourists, without however any allusion to the system of the humours, and whom we now rarely meet with, allowed their peculiar tastes and fancies to be more prominent in their habits, so as to make them more observable, and more the subject of ridicule than we find them in the present level decorum of society.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In the Introduction to _Every Man Out of his Humour_.

[2] See Nares' "Glossary" for an account of these Humours in their
philosophical sense.

[3] "He was not of an age, but for all time."--_Jonson._

DRAYTON.

"THE POLY-OLBION" of DRAYTON is a stupendous work, "a strange Herculean toil," as the poet himself has said, and it was the elaborate production of many years. The patriotic bard fell a victim to its infelicitous but glorious conception; and posterity may discover a grandeur in this labour of love, which was unfelt by his contemporaries.

The "Poly-olbion" is a chorographical description of England and Wales; an amalgamation of antiquarianism, of topography, and of history; materials not the most ductile for the creations of poetry. This poem is said to have the accuracy of a road-book; and the poet has contributed some notices, which add to the topographic stores of CAMDEN; for this has our poet extorted an alms of commendation from such a niggardly antiquary as Bishop Nicholson, who confesses that this work affords "a much truer account of this kingdom than could be well expected from the pen of a poet."

The grand theme of this poet was his fatherland! The muse of Drayton passes by every town and tower; each tells some tale of ancient glory, or of some "worthy" who must never die. The local associations of legends and customs are animated by the personifications of mountains and rivers; and often, in some favourite scenery, he breaks forth with all the emotion of a true poet. The imaginative critic has described the excursions of our muse with responsive sympathy. "He has not," says Lamb, "left a rivulet so narrow that it may be stepped over without honourable mention, and has associated hills and streams with life and passion beyond the dreams of old mythology." But the journey is long, and the conveyance may be tedious; the reader, accustomed to the decasyllabic or heroic verse, soon finds himself breathless among the protracted and monotonous Alexandrines, unless he should relieve his ear from the incumbrance, by resting on the caesura, and thus divide those extended lines by the alternate grace of a ballad-stanza. The artificial machinery of Drayton's personifications of mountains and rivers, though these may be often allowed the poet, yet they seem more particularly ludicrous, as they are crowded together on the maps prefixed to each county, where this arbitrary mythology, masculine and feminine, are to be seen standing by the heads of rivers, or at the entrances of towns.

This extraordinary poem remains without a parallel in the poetical annals of any people; and it may excite our curiosity to learn its origin. The genealogy of poetry is often suspicious; but I think we may derive the birth of the "Poly-olbion" from LELAND's magnificent view of his designed work on "Britain," and that hint expanded by the "Britannia" of CAMDEN, who inherited the mighty industry, without the poetical spirit of LELAND: DRAYTON embraced both.

It is a nice question to decide how far history may be admitted into poetry; like "Addison's Campaign," the poem may end in a rhymed gazette. And in any other work of invention, a fiction, by too free an infusion of historical matter, can only produce that monster called "the Romance of History," a nonsensical contradiction in terms, for neither can be both; or that other seductive and dangerous association of real persons and fictitious incidents, the historical romance! It is remarkable that DRAYTON censures DANIEL, his brother poet, for being _too historical_ in his "Civil Wars," and thus transgressing the boundaries of history and poetry, of truth and invention. Of these just boundaries, however, he himself had no clear notion. Drayton in his "Baron's Wars" sunk into a grave chronicler; and in the "Poly-olbion," we see his muse treading a labyrinth of geography, of history, and of topography!

The author of the "Poly-olbion" may truly be considered as the inventor of a class of poems peculiar to our country, and which, when I was young, were popular or fashionable. These are loco-descriptive poems. Such were Denham's "Cooper's Hill,"[1] and its numerous and, some, happy imitations. In these local descriptions some favoured spot in the landscape opens to the poet not only the charm of its natural appearance, but in the prospect lie scenes of the past. Imagination, like a telescope fixed on the spot, brings nearer to his eyes those associations which combine emotion with description; and the contracted spot, whence the bard scattered the hues of his fancy, is aggrandized by noble truths.

The first edition of the "Poly-olbion," in 1613, consisted of eighteen "Songs," or cantos, and every one enriched by the notes and illustrations of the poet's friend, our great national antiquary, SELDEN, whose avarice of words in these recondite stores conceals almost as many facts as he affords phrases. This volume was ill received by the incurious readers of that age. Drayton had vainly imagined that the nobles and gentlemen of England would have felt a filial interest in the tale of their fathers, commemorated in these poetic annals, and an honourable pride in their domains here so graphically pictured. But no voice, save those of a few melodious brothers, cheered the lonely lyrist, who had sung on every mountain, and whose verse had flowed with every river. After a hopeless suspension of nine years, the querulous author sent forth the concluding volume to join its neglected brother. It appeared with a second edition of the first part, which is nothing more than the unsold copies of the first, to which the twelve additional "Songs" are attached, separately paged. These last come no longer enriched by the notes of Selden, or even embellished by those fanciful maps which the unfortunate poet now found too costly an ornament. Certain accidental marks of the printer betray the bibliographical secret, that the second edition was in reality but the first.[2] The preface to the second part is remarkable for its inscription, in no good humour,

TO ANY THAT WILL READ IT!

There was yet no literary public to appeal to, to save the neglected work which the great SELDEN had deemed worthy of his studies: but there was, as the poet indignantly designates them, "a cattle, _odi profanum vulgus et arceo_, of which I account them, be they never so great." And "the cattle" conceived that there was nothing in this island worthy studying. We had not yet learned to esteem ourselves at a time when six editions of Camden's "Britannia," in the original Latin, were diffusing the greatness of England throughout Europe.

But though this poet devoted much of his life to this great antiquarian and topographic poem, he has essayed his powers in almost every species of poetry; fertility of subject, and fluency of execution, are his characteristics. He has written historical narratives too historical; heroic epistles hardly Ovidian; elegies on several occasions, or rather, domestic epistles, of a Horatian cast; pastorals, in which there is a freshness of imagery, breathing with the life of nature; and songs, and satire, and comedy. In comedy he had not been unsuccessful, but in satire he was considered more indignant than caustic. There is one species of poetry, rare among us, in which he has been eminently successful; his "Nymphidia, or Court of Faerie," is a model of the grotesque, those arabesques of poetry, those lusory effusions on chimerical objects. There are grave critics who would deny the poet the liberty allowed to the painter. The "Nymphidia" seems to have been ill understood by some modern critics. The poet has been censured for "neither imparting nor feeling that half-believing seriousness which enchants us in the wild and magical touches of Shakespeare;" but the poet designed an exquisitely ludicrous fiction. Drayton has, however, relieved the grotesque scenes, by rising into the higher strains of poetry, such as Gray might not have disdained.

It was the misfortune of Drayton not to have been a popular poet, which we may infer from his altercations with his booksellers, and from their frequent practice of prefixing new title pages, with fresher dates, to the first editions of his poems. That he was also in perpetual quarrel with his muse, appears by his frequent alteration of his poems. He often felt that curse of an infelicitous poet, that his diligence was more active than his creative power. Drayton was a poet of volume, but his genius was peculiar; from an unhappy facility in composition, in reaching excellence he too often declined into mediocrity. A modern reader may be struck by the purity and strength of his diction; his strong descriptive manner lays hold of the fancy; but he is always a poet of reason, and never of passion. He cannot be considered as a poet of mediocrity, who has written so much above that level; nor a poet who can rank among the highest class, who has often flattened his spirit by its redundance.

There was another cause, besides his quarrel with his muse, which threw a shade over the life of Drayton. He had been forward to greet James the First, on his accession to the throne of England, with a congratulatory ode; but for some cause, which has not been revealed, he tells us, "he suffered shipwreck by his forward pen." The king appears to have conceived a personal dislike to the bard, a circumstance not usual with James towards either poets or flatterers. It seems to arise from some state-matter, for Drayton tells us,

I feare, as I do stabbing, this word, state.

According to Oldys, Drayton appears to have been an agent in the Scottish king's intercourse with his English friends; some unlucky incident probably occurred, which might have indisposed the monarch towards his humble friend. The unhappy result of his court to the new sovereign cast a sour and melancholy humour over his whole life; Drayton, in his "Elegy" to his brother-poet, Sandys, has perpetuated his story.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dr. Johnson has ascribed the invention of local poetry to Denham,
who, he thought, had "traced a new scheme of poetry, copied by Garth
and Pope, after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration
of smaller poets." Johnson and the critics of his day were wholly
unacquainted with the Fathers of our poetry; nor is it true that we
have not had loco-descriptive poems since Garth and Pope, which may
rank with theirs.

[2] Perhaps none of our poets have been more luckless in their
editors than Drayton. He himself published a folio edition of his
works in 1619; but some of his more interesting productions, now
lying before me, are contained in a small volume, 1631--the year in
which he died.

A modern folio edition was published by Dodsley in 1748. The
title-page assures us that this volume contains _all_ his writings;
while a later edition, in four volumes 8vo, 1753, pretends to supply
the deficiencies of the former, which at length Dodsley had
discovered, but it is awkwardly done by an _Appendix_, and is still
deficient. The rapid demand for a new edition of Drayton between 1748
and 1753 bears a suspicious aspect. An intelligent bibliopolist, Mr.
Rodd, informs me that this _octavo_ edition is in fact the identical
_folio_, only arranged to the octavo form by a contrivance, well
known among printers, at the time of printing the folio. The
separation of the additional poems in the Appendix confirms this
suggestion.

Of the "Poly-olbion," the edition called the second, of 1622, has
fetched an excessive price; while the first, considered incomplete,
may be procured at a very moderate price. The possessor of the first
edition, however, enjoys the whole treasure of Selden's lore. Mr.
Southey, in his "Specimens of Our Ancient Poets," has reprinted the
entire "Poly-olbion" with his usual judgment; but, unhappily, the
rich stores of Selden the publishers probably deemed superfluous.
Drayton is worthy of a complete edition of his works.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH.

Rawleigh is a great name in our history, and fills a space in our imagination. His military and maritime genius looked for new regions, to found perhaps his own dominion. Yet was this hero the courtier holding "the glass of fashion," and the profound statesman--whose maxims and whose counsels Milton, the severe Milton, carefully collected--and the poet, who, when he found a master-genius lingering in a desert, joyed to pay him the homage of his protection. Rawleigh, who, in his youthful hours, and even through his vagrant voyages, was at all times a student, in the ripeness of his knowledge was a sage. Thus he who seemed through all his restless days to have lived only for his own age, was the true servant of posterity.

If ever there have been men whose temperaments and dispositions have harmonized within themselves faculties seemingly incompatible, with an equability of force combining the extremes of our nature, it would not be difficult to believe that Sir Walter Rawleigh was one of this rarest species. Various and opposite were his enterprises, but whichever was the object his aptitude was prompt; for he is equally renowned for his active and his contemplative powers; in neither he seems to have held a secondary rank. And he has left the nation a collection of his writings which claim for their author the just honours of being one of the founders of our literature.

This is the perspective view of his _character_ as it appears at a distance; his was a strange and adventurous _life_! the shifting scenes seem gathering together as in a tale of fiction, full of as surprising incidents, and as high passions, and as intricate and mysterious as the involutions of a well-invented fable. And in this various history of a single individual should we be dazzled by the haughtiness of prosperity, and even be startled by the baseness of humiliation, still shall we find one sublime episode more glorious than the tale, and as pathetic a close as ever formed the catastrophe of a tragic romance. I pursue this history as far as concerns its psychological development.

It was the destiny of Rawleigh to be the artificer of his own fortunes, and in that arduous course to pass through pinching ways and sharp turns. The younger son of a family whose patrimony had not lasted with their antiquity, he had nothing left but his enterprise and his sword; his mind had decided on his calling. The romantic adventures of the Spanish in new regions had early kindled the master-mind which takes its lasting bent from its first strong impulse. The Spaniards and their new world, "the treasures and the paradises" which they enjoyed, haunted his dreams to his latest days. The age in which the great struggle had commenced in Europe for the independence of nations and of faiths, was as favourable to the indulgence of the military passion as it was pregnant with political instruction. No period in modern history was so prodigal of statesmen and of heroes; and Rawleigh was to be both.

Two noble schools for military education were opened for our youthful volunteer: among the Protestants in France, when they assembled their own armies, and subsequently in the Netherlands, under the Prince of Orange, Rawleigh learned the discipline of a valorous but a wary leader, and beheld in Don John of Austria the hardihood of a presumptuous commander, whose "self-confidence could overcome the greatest difficulties, yet in his judgment so weak, that he could not manage the least."

The captain who had fleshed his sword in many a field, now cast his fortunes in that other element which led Columbus to discovery, and Pizarro to conquest. Rawleigh had an uterine brother, whom he justly called his "true brother," Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a great navigator, and the projector of a new passage to the Indies; an expedition was fitted out by them to colonise some parts of North America; his first maritime essay was frustrated by a disastrous accident. But the intrepid activity of Rawleigh allowed no pause, and now it turned against the rebellious kerns of Ireland. His disputes with Grey, the Lord-deputy, brought them before the council-board in the presence of the queen. Our adventurer knew how to value this fortunate opportunity. His eloquent tale struck his lordly adversary dumb, and was not slightly noticed by Elizabeth. The soldier of fortune was now hanging loosely about the circle of the court, watchful of another fortunate moment to attract the queen's attention. There was a very remarkable disposition in this extraordinary man, as I have elsewhere noticed, of practising petty artifices in the affairs of life. The gay cavalier flung his rich embroidered mantle across the plashy spot for an instantaneous foot-cloth, not unknowing that an act of gallantry was sure to win the susceptible coquetry of his royal mistress. His personal grace, and his tall stature, and the charm of his voluble elocution when once admitted into the presence, were irresistible. On the same system as he had cast his mantle before the queen, he scratched on a window-pane likely to catch her majesty's eye that verse expressive of his "desire" and "his fear to climb," to which the queen condescended to add her rhyme.

The man of genius was not yet entangled in the meshes of political parties, and was still contemplating on an imaginary land north of the Gulf of Florida, as studious of the art of navigation as he had been of the art of war. He has left a number of essays on both these subjects, composed for Prince Henry in the succeeding reign. He was already in favour with the queen, for she sanctioned a renewal of the unfortunate expedition under his brother. Rawleigh had the largest vessel built under his own eye, for he was skilful in naval architecture, and he named it "The Rawleigh," anticipating the day when it should leave that name to a city or a kingdom. It was on this occasion that the queen commanded Rawleigh to present to his brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a precious gem on which was engraven an anchor guided by a lady, graciously desiring in return the picture of the hardy adventurer. Such were the arts of female coquetry which entered so admirably into her system of policy, kindling such personal enthusiasm in the professed lovers of their royal mistress, while she resigned her heroes to their enterprises at their own honourable cost of their fortunes or their lives. In this second expedition Sir Humphrey Gilbert realised a discovery of what was then called "The Newfoundland," of which he took possession for England with the due formalities; but on his return his slender bark foundered, and thus obscurely perished one of the most enlightened of that heroic race of our maritime discoverers--the true fathers of future colonies.