Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

The comic machinery in Aristophanes, is, for the most part, a parody on the Greek mythology, and his wit a travestie on Euripides. Whatever we may think of his talent in this way, the art itself of making sense into nonsense, and of letting down the sublime into the ludicrous, in general is rather a cheap one, and implies much more a want of feeling than an excess of wit.

The account which is given of the _old_, the _middle_, and the _new comedy_, is very learned and dogmatical. The different styles and authors rise in value with the critic, in proportion as he knows nothing of them. He likes that, which some old commentator has praised, better than what he has read himself; and that still better, which neither he himself, nor any one else, has read. Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus, Menander, Sophron, and the Sicilian Epicharmus, whose works are lost, are prodigiously great men; and the author, ‘tries conclusions infinite’ respecting their different possible merits. On the contrary, Terence is only half a Menander, and Plautus a coarse buffoon. In spite, however, of this fastidiousness, he cannot deny the elegant humanity of the one, nor the strong native humour of the other. The style of these writers, particularly that of Terence, is admirable for a certain conversational ease, and correct simplicity, exactly in the mid-way between carelessness and affectation. But M. Schlegel has a mode of doing away this merit, by observing, that

‘Plautus and Terence were among the most ancient Roman writers, and belonged to a time when the language of books was hardly yet in existence, and when every thing was drawn fresh from life. This _naïve_ simplicity had its charms in the eyes of those Romans, who belonged to the period of learned cultivation; but it was much more a natural gift, than the fruit of poetical art.’

We shall conclude this part of the subject, with his observations on the nature and range of the characters introduced into the ancient Comedy.

‘Athens, where the fictitious, as well as the actual scenes, were generally placed, was the centre of a small territory; and in nowise to be compared with our great cities, either in extent or population. The republican equality admitted no marked distinction of ranks: There were no proper nobility; all were alike citizens, richer or poorer; and, for the most part, had no other occupation, than that of managing their properties. Hence the Attic comedy could not well admit of the contrasts arising from diversity of tone and conversation; it generally continues in a sort of middle state, and has something citizen-like; nay, if I may so say, something of the manners of a small town about it, which we do not see in those comedies, in which the manners of a court, and the refinement or corruption of monarchial capitals, are pourtrayed.

‘From what has been premised, we may at once see nearly the whole circle of characters; nay, those which perpetually occur, are so few, that they may almost all of them be here enumerated. The austere and frugal, or the mild and yielding father, the latter not unfrequently under the dominion of his wife, and making common cause with his son; the housewife, either loving and sensible, or obstinate and domineering, and proud of the accession brought by her to the family-property; the giddy and extravagant, but open and amiable, young man, who, even in a passion, sensual at its very commencement, is capable of true attachment; the vivacious girl, who is either thoroughly depraved, vain, cunning and selfish—or well-disposed, and susceptible of higher emotions; the simple and boorish, or the cunning slave, who assists his young master to deceive his old father, and obtain money for the gratification of his passions by all manner of tricks; the flatterer, or accommodating parasite, who, for the sake of a good meal, is ready to say or do any thing that may be required of him; the sycophant, a man whose business it was to set quietly-disposed people by the ears, and stir up lawsuits, for which he offered his services; the braggart soldier, who returns from foreign service, generally cowardly and simple, but who assumes airs from the fame of the deeds performed by him abroad; and, lastly, a servant, or pretended mother, who preaches up a bad system of morals to the young girl entrusted to her guidance; and the slave-dealer, who speculates on the extravagant passions of young people, and knows no other object than the furtherance of his own selfish views. The two last characters are to our feelings a blemish in the new Grecian comedy; but it was impossible, from the manner in which it was constituted, to dispense with them.’ p. 263.

We must now pass on to modern literature.—Of the Italian drama, which is the least prolific part of their literature, we shall shortly have to speak with reference to another work; and shall at present proceed to our author’s account of the French Theatre, which forms a class by itself, and which is here most ably analyzed.

‘With respect to the earlier tragical attempts of the French in the last half of the sixteenth, and the first part of the seventeenth century, we refer to Fontenelle, La Harpe, the _Melanges Litteraires_ of Suard and Andre. Our chief object is an examination of the system of tragic art, practically followed by their later poets; and by them partly, but by the French critics universally, considered as alone entitled to any authority, and every deviation from it viewed as a sin against good taste. If the system is in itself the best, we shall be compelled to allow that its execution is masterly, perhaps not to be surpassed. But the great question here is, how far the French tragedy is, in spirit and inward essence, related to the Greek, and whether it deserves to be considered as an improvement upon it.

‘Of their first attempts, it is only necessary to observe, that the endeavour to imitate the ancients displayed itself at a very early period in France; and that they conceived that the surest method of succeeding in this endeavour, was to observe the strictest outward regularity of form, of which they derived their ideas more from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from an intimate acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. In the first tragedies which were represented, the Cleopatra and Dido of Jodelle, a prologue and chorus were introduced; Jean de la Peruse translated the Medea of Seneca; Garnier’s pieces are all taken from the Greek tragedies, or from Seneca; but, in the execution, they bear a much closer examination to the latter. The writers of that day employed themselves also diligently on the Sophonisba of Trissino, from a regard for its classic appearance. Whoever is acquainted with the mode of proceeding of real genius, which is impelled by the almost unconscious and immediate contemplation of great and important truths, will be extremely suspicious of all activity in art, which originates in an abstract theory. But Corneille did not, like an antiquary, execute his dramas as so many learned school exercises, on the model of the ancients. Seneca, it is true, led him astray; but he knew and loved the Spanish theatre; and it had a great influence on his mind. The first of his pieces with which it is generally allowed that the classical epoch of French tragedy begins, and which is certainly one of his best, the _Cid_, is well known to have been borrowed from the Spanish. It violates, considerably, the unity of place, if not also that of time, and it is animated throughout by the spirit of chivalrous love and honour. But the opinion of his contemporaries, that a tragedy must be framed accurately according to the rules of Aristotle, was so universally prevalent, that it bore down all opposition. Corneille, almost at the close of his dramatic career, began to entertain scruples of conscience; and endeavoured, in a separate treatise, to prove, that his pieces, in the composition of which he had never even thought of Aristotle, were, however, all accurately written according to his rules.

‘It is quite otherwise with Racine: of all the French poets he was, without doubt, the best acquainted with the ancients, and he did not merely study them as a scholar; he felt them as a poet. He found, however, the practice of the theatre already firmly established, and he did not undertake to deviate from it for the sake of approaching these models. He only therefore appropriated the separate beauties of the Greek poets; but, whether from respect for the taste of his age, or from inclination, he remained faithful to the prevailing gallantry, so foreign to the Greek tragedy, and for the most part made it the foundation of the intrigues of his pieces.

‘Such was nearly the state of the French theatre till Voltaire made his appearance. He possessed but a moderate knowledge of the Greeks, of whom, however, he now and then spoke with enthusiasm, that on other occasions he might rank them below the more modern masters of his own nation, including himself; but yet he always considered himself bound to preach up the grand severity and simplicity of the Greeks as essential to tragedy. He censured the deviations of his predecessors as errors, and insisted on purifying and at the same time enlarging the stage, as, in his opinion, from the constraint of court manners, it had been almost straitened to the dimensions of an antichamber. He at first spoke of the bursts of genius in Shakespear, and borrowed many things from this poet, at that time altogether unknown to his countrymen; he insisted too on greater depth in the delineation of passion, on a more powerful theatrical effect; he demanded a scene ornamented in a more majestic manner; and lastly, he not unfrequently endeavoured to give to his pieces a political or philosophical interest altogether foreign to poetry. His labours have unquestionably been of utility to the French stage, although it is now the fashion to attack this idol of the last age, on every point, with the most unrelenting hostility’ p. 323.

M. Schlegel very ably exposes the incongruities which have arisen from engrafting modern style and sentiments on mythological and classical subjects in the French writers.

‘In Phædra,’ he says, ‘this princess is to be declared regent for her son till he comes of age, after the supposed death of Theseus. How could this be compatible with the relations of the Grecian women of that day?—It brings us down to the times of a Cleopatra.—When the way of thinking of two nations is so totally opposite, why will they torment themselves with attempts to fashion a subject, formed on the manners of the one to suit the manners of the other?—How unlike the Achilles in Racine’s Iphigenia to the Achilles of Homer! The gallantry ascribed to him is not merely a sin against Homer, but it renders the whole story improbable. Are human sacrifices conceivable among a people, whose chiefs and heroes are so susceptible of the most tender feelings?’

‘Corneille was in the best way in the world when he brought his Cid on the stage; a story of the middle ages, which belonged to a kindred people; a story characterized by chivalrous love and honour, and in which the principal characters are not even of princely rank. Had this example been followed, a number of prejudices respecting tragical ceremony would of themselves have disappeared; tragedy, from its greater truth, from deriving its motives from a way of thinking still current and intelligible, would have been less foreign to the heart; the quality of the objects would of themselves have turned them from the stiff observation of the rules of the ancients, which they did not understand; in one word, the French tragedy would have become national and truly romantic. But I know not what unfortunate star had the ascendant. Notwithstanding the extraordinary success of his Cid, Corneille did not go one step farther; and the attempt which he made had no imitators. In the time of Louis XIV. it was considered as beyond dispute, that the French, and in general the modern European history was not adapted for tragedy. They had recourse therefore to the ancient universal history. Besides the Greeks and Romans, they frequently hunted about among the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Egyptians, for events, which, however obscure they might often be, they could dress out for the tragic stage. Racine made, according to his own confession, a hazardous attempt with the Turks: It was successful; and since that time, the necessary tragical dignity has been allowed to this barbarous people. But it was merely the modern, and more particularly the French names, which could not be tolerated as untragical and unpoetical; for the heroes of antiquity are, with them, Frenchmen in every thing but the name; and antiquity was merely used as a thin veil under which the modern French character could be distinctly recognized. Racine’s Alexander is certainly not the Alexander of history: but if, under this name, we imagine to ourselves the great Condé, the whole will appear tolerably natural.—And who does not suppose Louis XIV. and the Dutchess de la Valiere represented under Titus and Berenice? Voltaire expresses himself somewhat strongly, when he says, that, in the tragedies which succeeded those of Racine, we imagine we are reading the romances of Mademoiselle Scuderi, which paint citizens of Paris under the names of heroes of antiquity. He alluded here more particularly to Crebillon. However much Corneille and Racine were tainted with the way of thinking of their own nation, they were still at times penetrated with the spirit of true _objective_ exhibition. Corneille gives us a masterly picture of the Spaniards in the Cid; and this is conceivable—for he drew his materials from them. With the exception of the original sin of gallantry, he succeeded also pretty well with the Romans: Of one part of their character at least, he had a tolerable conception, their predominating patriotism, and unyielding pride of liberty, and the magnanimity of their political sentiments. All this, it is true, is nearly the same as we find it in Lucan, varnished over with a certain inflation and self-conscious pomp. The simple republican austerity, the humility of religion, he could not attain. Racine (in Britannicus) has admirably painted the corrupt manners of the Romans under the Emperors, and the timid and dastardly manner in which the tyranny of Nero first began to display itself. He had Tacitus indeed for a model, as he himself gratefully acknowledges; but still it is a great merit to translate history in such an able manner into poetry. He has also shown a just conception of the general spirit of Hebrew history. He was less successful with the Turks: Bajazet makes love wholly in the European manner: The blood-thirsty policy of Eastern despotism is very well pourtrayed in the Vizier; but the whole resembles Turkey turned upside down, where the women, instead of being slaves, have contrived to get possession of the government; and the result is so very revolting, that we might be inclined to infer, from it, the Turks are really not so much to blame in keeping their women under lock and key. Neither has Voltaire, in my opinion, succeeded much better in his Mahomet and Zaire: the glowing colours of an Oriental fancy are no where to be found. Voltaire has, however, this great merit, that he insisted on treating subjects with more historical truth; and further, that he again elevated to the dignity of the tragical stage the chivalrous and Christian characters of modern Europe, which, since the time of the Cid, had been altogether excluded from it. His Lusignan and Nerestan are among his most true, affecting, and noble creations; his Tancred, although the invention as a whole is defective in strength, will always gain upon every heart, like his namesake in Tasso.’ p. 369.

Our author prefers Racine to Corneille, and even seems to think Voltaire more natural: but he has exhausted all that can be said of French tragedy in his account of Corneille; and all that he adds upon Racine and Voltaire, is only a modification of the same general principles. He has been able to give no general character of either, as distinct from the original founder of the French dramatic school; Corneille had more pomp, Racine more tenderness; Voltaire aimed at a stronger effect: But the essential qualities are the same in all of them; the style is always French, as much as the language in which they write.

‘It has been often remarked, that, in French tragedy, the poet is always too easily seen through the discourses of the different personages; that he communicates to them his own presence of mind; his cool reflection on their situation; and his desire to shine upon all occasions. When we accurately examine the most of their tragical speeches, we shall find that they are seldom such as would be delivered by persons, speaking or acting by themselves without any restraint; we shall generally discover in them something which betrays a reference, more or less perceptible, to the spectator. Rhetoric, and rhetoric in a court dress, prevails but too much in many French tragedies, especially in those of Corneille, instead of the suggestions of a noble, but simple and artless nature: Racine and Voltaire have approximated much nearer to the true conception of a mind carried away by its sufferings. Whenever the tragic hero is able to express his pain in antitheses and ingenious allusions, we may safely dispense with our pity. This sort of conventional dignity is, as it were, a coat of mail, to prevent the blow from reaching the inward parts. On account of their retaining this festal pomp, in situations where the most complete self-forgetfulness would be natural, Schiller has wittily enough compared the heroes in French tragedy to the kings in old copperplates, who are seen lying in bed with their mantle, crown, and sceptre.’ p. 373, &c.

Racine is deservedly the favourite of the French nation; for, besides the perfection of his style, and a complete mastery over his art, according to the rules prescribed by the national taste, there is a certain tenderness of sentiment, a movement of the heart, under all the artificial pomp by which it is disguised, which cannot fail to interest the reader. His _Athalie_ is perhaps the most perfect of all his pieces. Some of the lyrical descriptions are equally delightful, from the beauty of the rhythm and the imagery. We might mention the chorus in which the infant Joaz is compared to a young lily on the side of a stream. Poetry is the union of imagery with sentiment; and yet nothing can be more rare than this union in French tragedy. Another passage in Racine, which might be quoted as an exception to their general style, is the speech of Phædra describing her descent into the other world, which is, however, a good deal made up from Seneca; and indeed it is the fault of this author, that he leans too constantly for support on others, and is rather the accomplished imitator than the original inventor. There is but one thing wanting to his plays—that they should have been his own. He can no more be considered as the author of the Iphigenia, for instance, than La Fontaine can be considered as the inventor of Æsop’s fables. Voltaire is more original in the choice of his subjects. But the means by which he seeks to give an interest to them, are of the most harsh and violent kind; and, even in the variety of his materials, he shows the monotony of his invention. Four of his principal tragedies turn entirely on the question of religious apostasy, or on the conflict between the attachment of supposed orphans to their newly discovered parents, and their obligations to their old benefactors. As a relief, however, the scene of these four tragedies is laid in the four opposite quarters of the globe.

M. Schlegel speaks highly of Racine’s comedy, ‘_Les Plaideurs_‘; and thinks that if he had cultivated his talents for comedy, he would have proved a formidable rival of Moliere. He might very probably have succeeded in imitating the long speeches which Moliere too often imitated from Racine; but nothing can (we think) be more unlike, than the real genius of the two writers. In fact, Moliere is almost as much an English as a French author,—quite a _barbare_, in all in which he particularly excels. He was unquestionably one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived; a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and invention,—full of life, laughter, and observation. But it cannot be denied that his plays are in general mere farces, without nature, refinement of character, or common probability. Several of them could not be carried on for a moment without a perfect collusion between the parties to wink at impossibilities, and act in defiance of all common sense. For instance, take the _Medecin malgre lui_, in which a common wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made to support, through a whole play, the character of a learned physician, without exciting the least suspicion; and yet, notwithstanding the absurdity of the plot, it is one of the most laughable, and truly comic productions, that can well be imagined. The rest of his lighter pieces, the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, _Monsieur Pourceaugnac_, &c. are of the same description,—gratuitous fictions, and fanciful caricatures of nature. He indulges in the utmost license of burlesque exaggeration; and gives a loose to the intoxication of his animal spirits. With respect to his two most laboured comedies, the Tartuffe and Misanthrope, we confess that we find them rather hard to get through. They have the improbability and extravagance of the rest, united with the endless common-place prosing of French declamation. What can exceed the absurdity of the Misanthrope, who leaves his mistress, after every proof of her attachment and constancy, for no other reason than that she will not submit to the _technical formality_ of going to live with him in a desert? The characters which Celimene gives of her friends, near the opening of the play, are admirable satires, (as good as Pope’s characters of women), but not comedy. The same remarks apply in a greater degree to the Tartuffe. The long speeches and reasonings in this play may be very good logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or any thing but comedy. If each of the parties had retained a special pleader to speak his sentiments, they could not have appeared more tiresome or intricate. The improbability of the character of Orgon is wonderful. The _Ecole des Femmes_, from which Wycherley has borrowed the Country Wife, with the true spirit of original genius, is, in our judgment, the masterpiece of Moliere. The set speeches in the original play would not be borne on the English stage, nor indeed on the French, but that they are carried off by the verse. The _Critique de L’Ecole des Femmes_, the dialogue of which is prose, is written in a very different style.

Our author attributes the ambitious loquacity of the French drama to their characteristic vanity, and the general desire of this nation to shine on all occasions. But this principle seems itself to require a prior cause, namely, a facility of shining on all occasions, and a disposition to admire every thing. It has been remarked, as a general rule, that the theatrical amusements of a people, which are intended as a relaxation from their ordinary pursuits and habits, are by no means a test of the national character; and it is a confirmation of this opinion, that the French, who are naturally a lively and impatient people, should be able to sit and hear with such delight their own dramatic pieces, which abound, for the most part, in sententious maxims and solemn declamation, and would appear quite insupportable to an English audience, though the latter are considered as a dull, phlegmatic people, much more likely to be tolerant of formal descriptions and grave reflections.

_Extremes meet._ This is the only way of accounting for that enigma, the French character. It has often been remarked, indeed, that this ingenious nation exhibits more striking contradictions in its general deportment than any other that ever existed. They are the gayest of the gay, and the gravest of the grave. Their very faces pass at once from an expression of the most lively animation, when they are in conversation or action, to a melancholy blank. They are one moment the slaves of the most contemptible prejudices, and the next launch out into all the extravagance of the most dangerous speculations. In matters of taste they are as inexorable as they are lax in questions of morality: they judge of the one by rules, of the other by their inclinations. It seems at times as if nothing could shock them, and yet they are offended at the merest trifles. The smallest things make the greatest impression on them. From the facility with which they can accommodate themselves to circumstances, they have no fixed principles or real character. They are always that which gives them least pain, or costs them least trouble. They can easily disentangle their thoughts from whatever gives them the slightest uneasiness, and direct their sensibility to flow in any channels they think proper. Their whole existence is more theatrical than real—their sentiments put on or off like the dress of an actor. Words are with them equivalent to things. They say what is agreeable, and believe what they say. Virtue and vice, good and evil, liberty or slavery, are matters almost of indifference. They are the only people who were ever vain of being cuckolded, or being conquered. Their natural self-complacency stands them instead of all other advantages!

The same almost inexplicable contradictions appear in their writings as in their characters. They excel in all that depends on lightness and grace of style, on familiar gaiety, on delicate irony, on quickness of observation, on nicety of tact—in all those things which are done best with the least effort. Their sallies, their points, their traits, turns of expression, their tales, their letters, are unrivalled. Witness the writings of Voltaire, Fontaine, Le Sage. Whence then the long speeches, the pompous verbosity, the systematic arrangement of their dramatic productions? It would seem as if they took refuge in this excessive formality, as a defence against their natural lightness and frivolity: and that they admitted of no mixed style in poetry, because the least interruption of their assumed gravity would destroy the whole effect. The impression has no natural hold of their minds. It is only by repeated efforts that they work themselves up to the tragic tone, and their feelings let go their hold with the first opportunity. They conform, in the most rigid manner, to established rules, because they have no steadiness to go alone, nor confidence to trust to the strength of their immediate impulses. The French have no style of their own in serious art, because they have no real force of character. Their tragedies are imitations of the Greek dramas, and their historical pictures a still more servile and misapplied imitation of the Greek statues. For the same reason, the expression which their artists give to their faces is affected and mechanical; and the description which their poets give of the passions, the most laboured, overt and explicit possible. Nothing is left to be _understood_. Nothing obscure, distant, imperfect—nothing that is not distinctly made out—nothing that does not stand, as it were, in the foreground, is admitted in their works of art.

The dark and doubtful views of things, the irregular flights of fancy, the silent workings of the heart—all these require some effort to enter into them: They are therefore excluded from French poetry, the language of which must, above all things, be clear and defined, and not only intelligible, but intelligible by its previous application. It is therefore essentially conventional and common-place. It rejects every thing that is not cast in a given mould—that is not stamped by custom—that is not sanctioned by authority;—every thing that is not French. The French, indeed, can conceive of nothing that is not French. There is something that prevents them from entering into any views which do not perfectly fall in with their habitual prejudices. In a word, they are not a people of imagination. They receive their impressions without trouble or effort, and retain no more of them than they can help. They are the creatures either of sensation or abstraction. The images of things, when the objects are no longer present, throw off all their complexity and distinctions, and are lost in the general class, or name; so that the words _charming_, _delicious_, _superb_, &c. convey just the same meaning, and excite just the same emotion in the mind of a Frenchman, as the most vivid description of real objects and feelings could do. Hence their poetry is the poetry of abstraction. Yet poetry is properly the embodying general ideas in individual forms and circumstances. But the French style excludes all individuality. The true poet identifies the reader with the characters he represents; the French poet only identifies him with himself. There is scarcely a single page of their tragedy which fairly throws nature open to you. It is tragedy in masquerade. We never get beyond conjecture and reasoning—beyond the general impression of the situation of the persons—beyond general reflections on their passions—beyond general descriptions of objects. We never get at that something more, which is what we are in search of, namely, what we ourselves should feel in the same situations. The true poet transports you to the scene—you see and hear what is passing—you catch, from the lips of the persons concerned, what lies nearest to their hearts;—the French poet takes you into his closet, and reads you a lecture upon it. The _chef-d’œuvres_ of their stage, then, are, after all, only ingenious paraphrases of nature. The dialogue is a tissue of common-places, of laboured declamations on human life, of learned casuistry on the passions, on virtue and vice, which any one else might make just as well as the person speaking; and yet, what the persons themselves would say, is all we want to know, and all for which the poet puts them into those situations. It is what constitutes the difference between the dramatic and the didactic.

All this is differently managed in Shakespear: And accordingly, the French translations of that author uniformly leave out all the poetry, or what we consider as such. They generalize the passion, the character, the thoughts, the images, every thing;—they reduce it to a common topic. It is then perfect—for it is French. It would be in vain to look, in these unmeaning paraphrases, where all is made unobjectionable, and smooth as the palm of one’s hand, for the ‘Not a jot, not a jot,’ in Othello,—for the ‘Light thickens,’ of Macbeth,—or the picture which the exclamation of the witches gives us of him, ‘Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly?’ When Othello kills himself, after that noble characteristic speech at the end, in which he makes us feel all that passes in his soul, and runs over the objects and events of his whole life, the blow strikes not only at him but at us: When Orosman in Zaire, after a speech which Voltaire has copied from the English poet, does the same thing, he falls—like a common-place personified. We do not here insist on the preference to be given to one or other of these two styles; we only say they are quite different. The French critics contend, we think without reason, that their own is exclusively good, and all others barbarous.

Not so our author. If Shakespear never found a thorough partisan before, he has found one now. We have not room for half of his praise. He defends him at all points. His puns, his conceits, his anachronisms, his broad allusions, all go, not indeed for nothing, but for so many beauties. They are not something to be excused by the age, or atoned for by other qualities; but they are worthy of all acceptation in themselves. This we do not think it necessary to say. It is no part of our poetical creed, that genius can do no wrong. As the French show their allegiance to their kings by crying _Quand meme!_—so we think to show our respect for Shakespear by loving him in spite of his faults. Take the whole of these faults, throw them into one scale, heap them up double, and then double that, and we will throw into the opposite scale single excellences, single characters, or even single passages, that shall outweigh them all! All his faults have not prevented him from showing as much knowledge of human nature, in all possible shapes, as is to be found in all other poets put together; and that, we conceive, is quite enough for one writer. Compared with this magical power, his faults are of just as much consequence as his bad spelling, and to be accounted for in the same way. In speaking of Shakespear, we do not mean to make any general comparison between the French and English stage. There is no other acknowledged English school of tragedy,—or it is merely a bad imitation of the French. We give them up Addison; but we must keep Shakespear to ourselves. He had even the advantage of the Greek tragedians in this respect, that, with all their genius, they seem to have described only Greek manners and sentiments: whereas he describes all the people that ever lived. That which distinguishes his dramatic productions from all others, is this wonderful variety and perfect individuality. Each of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the mind. The poet appears, for the time, to identify himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to the other, like the same soul successively animating different bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the mouth of the person in whose name it is spoken. His plays alone are expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them. His characters are real beings of flesh and blood: they speak like men, not like authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at the time, and overheard all that passed. As, in our dreams, we hold conversations with ourselves, make remarks or communicate intelligence, and have no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and which we ourselves are to make, till we hear it; so, the dialogues in Shakespear are carried on without any consciousness of what is to follow, without any appearance of preparation or premeditation. The gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. Nothing is made out by inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis; all comes immediately from nature. Each object and circumstance seems to exist in his mind, as it existed in nature; each several train of thought and feeling goes on of itself without confusion or effort: In the world of his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, and being of its own![5]

‘The distinguishing property,’ says our author, ‘of the dramatic poet, is the capability of transporting himself so completely into every situation, even the most unusual, that he is enabled, as plenipotentiary of the whole human race, without particular instructions for each separate case, to act and speak in the name of every individual. It is the power of endowing the creatures of his imagination with such self-existent energy, that they afterwards act in each conjuncture according to general laws of nature: the poet institutes, as it were, experiments, which are received with as much authority as if they had been made on real objects. Never, perhaps, was there so comprehensive a talent for the delineation of character as Shakespear’s. It not only grasps the diversities of rank, sex, and age, down to the dawnings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truth; not only does he transport himself to distant ages and foreign nations, and portray in the most accurate manner, with only a few apparent violations of costume, the spirit of the ancient Romans, of the French in their wars with the English, of the English themselves during a great part of their history, of the Southern Europeans (in the serious part of many comedies), the cultivated society of that time, and the former rude and barbarous state of the North; his human characters have not only such depth and precision that they cannot be arranged under classes, and are inexhaustible, even in conception:—no—This Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits; calls up the midnight ghost; exhibits before us his witches amidst their unhallowed mysteries; peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs:—and, these beings existing only in imagination, possess such truth and consistency, that, even when deformed monsters like Caliban, he extorts the conviction, that if there should be such beings, they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries with him the most fruitful and daring fancy into the kingdom of nature,—on the other hand, he carries nature into the regions of fancy, lying beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at seeing the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard of, in such intimate nearness.

‘If Shakespear deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally deserving it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its widest signification, as including every mental 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. His passions do not at first stand displayed to us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic poets, who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style of love. He paints in a most inimitable manner, the gradual progress from the first origin. “He gives,” as Lessing says, “a living picture of all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls; of all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains; of all the stratagems by which every other passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions.” Of all poets, perhaps, he alone has portrayed the mental diseases, melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible, and, in every respect, definite truth, that the physician may enrich his observations from them in the same manner as from real cases.

‘And yet Johnson has objected to Shakespear, that his pathos is not always natural and free from affectation. There are, it is true, passages, though, comparatively speaking, very few, where his poetry exceeds the bounds of true dialogue, where a too soaring imagination, a too luxuriant wit, rendered the complete dramatic forgetfulness of himself impossible. With this exception, the censure originates only in a fanciless way of thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its own tame insipidity. Hence, an idea has been formed of simple and natural pathos, which consists in exclamations destitute of imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day life. But energetical passions electrify the whole of the mental powers, and will, consequently, in highly favoured natures, express themselves in an ingenious and figurative manner. It has been often remarked, that indignation gives wit; and, as despair occasionally breaks out into laughter, it may sometimes also give vent to itself in antithetical comparisons.

‘Besides, the rights of the poetical form have not been duly weighed. Shakespear, who was always sure of his object, to move in a sufficiently powerful manner when he wished to do so, has occasionally, by indulging in a freer play, purposely moderated the impressions when too painful, and immediately introduced a musical alleviation of our sympathy. He had not those rude ideas of his art which many moderns seem to have, as if the poet, like the clown in the proverb, must strike twice on the same place. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against dwelling too long on the excitation of pity; for nothing, he said, dries so soon as tears; and Shakespear acted conformably to this ingenious maxim, without knowing it.

‘The objection, that Shakespear wounds our feelings by the open display of the most disgusting moral odiousness, harrows up the mind unmercifully, and tortures even our minds by the exhibition of the most insupportable and hateful spectacles, is one of much greater importance. He has never, in fact, varnished over wild and blood-thirsty passions with a pleasing exterior,—never clothed crime and want of principle with a false show of greatness of soul; and in that respect he is every way deserving of praise. Twice he has portrayed downright villains; and the masterly way in which he has contrived to elude impressions of too painful a nature, may be seen in Iago and Richard the Third. The constant reference to a petty and puny race must cripple the boldness of the poet. Fortunately for his art, Shakespear lived in an age extremely susceptible of noble and tender impressions, but which had still enough of the firmness inherited from a vigorous olden time, not to shrink back with dismay from every strong and violent picture. We have lived to see tragedies of which the catastrophe consists in the swoon of an enamoured princess. If Shakespear falls occasionally into the opposite extreme, it is a noble error, originating in the fulness of a gigantic strength: And yet this tragical Titan, who storms the heavens, and threatens to tear the world from off its hinges; who, more fruitful than Æschylus, makes our hair stand on end, and congeals our blood with horror, possessed, at the same time, the insinuating loveliness of the sweetest poetry. He plays with love like a child; and his songs are breathed out like melting sighs. He unites in his genius the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most foreign, and even apparently irreconcileable properties, subsist in him peaceably together. The world of spirits and nature have laid all their treasures at his feet. In strength a demi-god, in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals, as if unconscious of his superiority; and is as open and unassuming as a child.

‘Shakespear’s comic talent is equally wonderful with that which he has shown in the pathetic and tragic: it stands on an equal elevation, and possesses equal extent and profundity. All that I before wished was, not to admit that the former preponderated. He is highly inventive in comic situations and motives. It will be hardly possible to show whence he has taken any of them; whereas in the serious part of his drama, he has generally laid hold of something already known. His comic characters are equally true, various and profound, with his serious. So little is he disposed to caricature, that we may rather say many of his traits are almost too nice and delicate for the stage, that they can only be properly seized by a great actor, and fully understood by a very acute audience. Not only has he delineated many kinds of folly; he has also contrived to exhibit mere stupidity in a most diverting and entertaining manner.’ II. 145.

The observations on Shakespear’s language and versification which follow, are excellent. We cannot, however, agree with the author in thinking his rhyme superior to Spenser’s: His excellence is confined to his blank verse; and in that he is unrivalled by any dramatic writer. Milton’s alone is equally fine in its way. The objection to Shakespear’s mixed metaphors is not here fairly got over. They give us no pain from long custom. They have, in fact, become idioms in the language. We take the meaning and effect of a well known passage entire, and no more stop to scan and spell out the particular words and phrases than the syllables of which they are composed. If our critic’s general observations on Shakespear are excellent, he has shown still greater acuteness and knowledge of his author in those which he makes on the particular plays. They ought, in future, to be annexed to every edition of Shakespear, to correct the errors of preceding critics. In his analysis of the historical plays,—of those founded on the Roman history,—of the romantic comedies, and the fanciful productions of Shakespear, such as, the Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Tempest, &c., he has shown the most thorough insight into the spirit of the poet. His contrast between Ariel and Caliban; the one made up of all that is gross and earthly, the other of all that is airy and refined, ‘ethereal mould, sky-tinctured,’—is equally happy and profound. He does not, however, confound Caliban with the coarseness of common low life. He says of him with perfect truth—‘Caliban is malicious, cowardly, false and base in his inclinations; and yet he is essentially different from the vulgar knaves of a civilized world, as they are occasionally portrayed by Shakespear. He is rude, but not vulgar. He never falls into the prosaical and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is a poetical being in his way; he always, too, speaks in verse. But he has picked up every thing dissonant and thorny in language, of which he has composed his vocabulary.’

In his account of Cymbeline and other plays, he has done justice to the sweetness of Shakespear’s female characters, and refuted the idle assertion made by a critic, who was also a poet and a man of genius, that

—‘stronger Shakespear felt for man alone.’

Who, indeed, in recalling the names of Imogen, of Miranda, of Juliet, of Desdemona, of Ophelia and Perdita, does not feel that Shakespear has expressed the very perfection of the feminine character, existing only for others, and leaning for support on the strength of its affections? The only objection to his female characters is, that he has not made them masculine. They are indeed the very reverse of ordinary tragedy-queens. In speaking of Romeo and Juliet, he says, ‘It was reserved for Shakespear to unite purity of heart, and the glow of imagination, sweetness and dignity of manners, and passionate violence, in one ideal picture.’ The character of Juliet was not to be mistaken by our author. It is one of perfect unconsciousness. It has nothing forward, nothing coy, nothing affected, nothing coquettish about it:—It is a pure effusion of nature.

‘Whatever,’ says our critic, ‘is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous on the first opening of the rose, is breathed in this poem. But, even more rapidly than the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, it hurries on from the first timid declaration of love and modest return, to the most unlimited passion—to an irrevocable union; then, amidst alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the death of the two lovers, who still appear enviable as their love survives them, and as, by their death, they have obtained a triumph over every separating power. The sweetest and the bitterest; love and hatred; festivity and dark forebodings; tender embraces and sepulchres; the fulness of life and self-annihilation—are all here brought close to each other: And all these contrasts are so blended in the harmonious and wonderful work into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but endless sigh.’

In treating of the four principal tragedies, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear, he goes deeper into the poetry and philosophy of those plays than any of the commentators. But we dare not now encroach on the patience of our readers with any farther citations.

The remarks on the doubtful pieces of Shakespear are most liable to objection. We cannot agree, for instance, that Titus Andronicus is in the spirit of Lear, because in his dotage he mistakes a fly which he has killed for his black enemy the Moor. Thomas Lord Cromwell, and Sir John Oldcastle, which he praises highly, are very indifferent. Pericles, prince of Tyre, is not much to our taste. There is one fine scene in it, where Marina rouses the prince from his lethargy, by the proofs of her being his daughter. Yet this is not like Shakespear. The Yorkshire Tragedy is very good; but decidedly in the manner of Heywood. The account given by Schlegel, of the contemporaries and immediate successors of Shakespear is good, though it might have been better. That of Ben Jonson is particularly happy. He says, that he described not characters, but ‘humours,’ that is, particular modes of expression, dress and behaviour in fashion at the time, which have since become obsolete, and the imitation of them dry and unintelligible. The finest thing in Ben Jonson (not that it is by any means the only one), is the scene between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon, where the latter proves his possession of the philosopher’s stone, by a pompous display of the riches, luxuries and pleasures he is to derive from it; and, by a happy perversion of logic, satisfies himself, though not his hearer, of the existence of the cause, by a strong imagination of the effects which are to follow from it. He is also very successful in his character of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. They describe the passions at their height, not in their progress—the extremes, not the gradations of feeling. Their plays, however, have great power and great beauty. The Faithful Shepherdess is the origin of Milton’s Comus. ‘Rule a Wife and Have a Wife’ is one of the very best comedies that ever was written; and holds, to this day, undisputed possession of the stage. Yet, as our critic observes, there is in the general tone of their writings a certain crudeness and precocity, a heat, a violence of fermentation, a disposition to carry every thing to excess, which is not pleasant. Their plays are very much what young noblemen of genius might be supposed to write in the heyday of youthful blood, the sunshine of fortune, and all the petulance of self-opinion. They have completely anticipated the German paradoxes. Schlegel has no mercy on the writers of the age of Charles II. He compares Dryden himself to ‘a man walking upon stilts in a morass.’ He justly prefers Otway to Rowe; but we think he is wrong in supposing, that if Otway had lived longer he would have done better. His plays are only the ebullitions of a fine, enthusiastic, sanguine temperament: and his genius would no more have improved with age, than the beauty of his person. Of our comic writers, Congreve, Wycherley, Vanburgh, &c., M. Schlegel speaks very contemptuously and superficially. It is plain that he knows nothing about them, or he would not prefer Farquhar to all the rest. If, after our earlier dramatists, we have any class of writers who are excellent, it is our comic writers.

We cannot go into our author’s account of the Spanish drama. The principal names in it are Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope de Vega. Neither can we agree in the praises which he lavishes on the dramatic productions of these authors. They are too flowery, lyrical, and descriptive. They are pastorals, not tragedies. They have warmth; but they want vigour.

Our author may be supposed to be at home in German literature; but his doctrines appear to us to be more questionable there, than upon any other subject. What the German dramatists really excel in, is the production of effect: but this is the very thing which their fastidious countryman most despises and abhors. They really excel all others in mere effect; and there is no nation that can excel all others in more than one thing. Werter is, in our opinion, the best of all Goethe’s works; but because it is the most popular, our author takes an opportunity to express his contempt for it. Count Egmont, which is here spoken highly of, seems to us a most insipid and preposterous composition. The effect of the pathos which is said to lie concealed in it, is utterly lost upon us. Nathan the Wise, by Lessing, is also a great favourite of Schlegel; because it is unintelligible except to the wise. As the French plays are composed of a tissue of common-placs, the German plays of this stamp are a tissue of paradoxes, which have no foundation in nature or common opinion,—the pure offspring of the author’s fantastic brain. For the same reason, Schiller’s Wallenstein is here preferred to his Robbers. But we cannot so readily give up our old attachment to the Robbers. The first reading of that play is an event in every one’s life, which is not to be forgotten.

Madame de Staël has very happily ridiculed this pedantic’s taste in criticism.