was altogether a more original thinker and critic, yet his reviews lie buried under a mass of duller matter. Macaulay wants, to be sure, the solidity of Burke, the rich philosophy of that poetic thinker; yet even Burke could not have hit the mark with greater nicety. He would have carried too much metal. Macaulay is essentially a critical essayist; not a mere critic, not an original judge, not a lecturer, but that rare union of critic and miscellaneous writer-a critical essayist. Portait painting and finished declamation have been carried to perfection in his articles, in which you find, besides, a treasury of fine and ingenious thoughts, richly illustrated and admirably employed.

CHAPTER VII.

BRITISH POETS

SECTION I.

SHAKSPEARE.

Q. What are some of the circumstances of his life? A. He was born at Stratford-on-Avon, in 1564. When a youth, he had trespassed on the huntinggrounds of a rich neighbor and written a scurrilous satire upon him, and to escape his vengeance fled to London, where he soon connected himself with the stage, first as an actor, then as an author. He continued to write plays until two years before his death, which occurred in his native place in 1616. His plays are thirty-five in number. The subjects treated on, are the more striking parts of ancient and modern history, and the stories supplied by Italian novelists. They are tragic, comic, and mixed in their character. The author appears to have had no anticipation of the brilliant reputation they were destined to receive after his decease.

Q. What have critics said of the peculiarities of his genius and writings?

A. The power of language has been tasked to eulogize his literary merits. One has said that the

us.

pyramids will crumble to the dust, and the Nile be dry, and the Ethiop change his skin, and the leopard his spots, before Shakspeare will grow obsolete with He looked on man, and at once became master of the inmost recesses of his soul, as it were by intuition. He has exhibited the mind of man in all its phases. His propensities, his habits, his practices, his reasoning, false and philosophical, were all exhibited by him in truth and power. His virtues, his weaknesses, his eccentricities, were all known to this great anatomist of the human mind; his hopes, his passions, his frivolities were all laid bare to him.

While unsurpassed in the variety and magnificence of his poetic creations (says another critic), he thinks with a precision, a depth, a comprehensive and intuitive power, seldom equalled. In all his characters, whether fanciful, or intended to personify real beings, not a feature or a line is misplaced. Nor is he less true in his representations of inanimate objects. Human nature he learned not from study, but from observation and intuition. He may justly be called the poet of human nature, not of one age, but of all-the poet not of one country, but of all. To say that Shakspeare had no faults would be saying that he was not human; his blemishes are those of his age, his beauties are his own. He stands alone upon a summit unattained before, and inaccessible to all that follow; above the elemental strife of criticism, smiling at the thunders which roll beneath his feet, and unobscured by the clouds that gather only around the base of that proud eminence.

It has also been remarked, that in none of the persons of his dramas is any thing of their author to be seen. Every one speaks and acts for himself, as he might be expected to do in the supposed circum

stances.

Q. Whence did Shakspeare derive the materials of his plays? A. Though not a classical scholar, he read numerous translations of ancient works. He had read all the romances, tales, legends, and novels, written in English; also in histories and biographies then ex

tant. He is generally accurate in the incidents he introduces, though he sometimes takes liberties with them. He took his words from the common people, from all classes in the busy scenes of life, and from the popular books of his day.

Q. What objections lie against the writings of Shakspeare? A. He disregarded the unities of time and placebut this is no great matter-he deals in puns and quibbles-but, above all, he often employs expressions not only vulgar and low, but indecent -common in his day, but unsuited to the higher ideas of propriety that prevail in our own day and country. An edition of Shakspeare, purged from vulgarity and indecency, would be a valuable contribution to the literature of the age. A volume has lately been published, entitled, "The Wisdom and Genius of Shakspeare," consisting of extracts under appropriate heads. This deserves a high place in the private, and in the School Library.

It is difficult to select fine specimens from Shakspeare that have not become too familiar to excite much interest. Cardinal Wolsey's Speech to Cromwell-Marc Antony's Address on the death of Cæsar, may be referred to as admirable portions of Shakspeare's writings.

We can not forbear to give his graphic account of the Seven Ages of Man.

COURSE OF HUMAN LIFE.

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school; and then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress's eyebrow: then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon's mouth and then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lined;

:

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances,
And so he plays his part: the sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound: last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing."

Of Shakspeare, Hazlitt remarks, that his genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and on the foolish, the monarch and the beggar. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives as well those that they knew, as those which they did not know or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call and came at his bidding. The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real men and women; and there is the same truth in his delineations of the one as of the other; for if the preternatural characters he describes could be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act as he makes them. He had only to think of any thing in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it.

The poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies. His plays are expressions of the passions rather than descriptions of them.

Shakspeare's language and versification are like the rest of him. He has a magic power over words: they come winged at his bidding, and seem to know their places. They are struck out at a heat, and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His language translates thoughts into visible images.

SECTION II.

MILTON-PARADISE LOST.

Q. What are some of the circumstances in the life of this remarkable man?

A. He was born in London, in 1608, was graduated at the University of Cambridge, spent some years in rural retirement, then traveled on the Continent, sojourning a while in Italy. Upon his return, he became Latin secretary to Cromwell, having gained distinction by writing in favor of the Commonwealth. In 1652, he was deprived of sight, yet continued to publish political pamphlets, until Cromwell's death and the restoration of the Stuart family to the throne. He then retired and composed his immortal work, the Paradise Lost, which was first published in 1667. For this noble work he received only ten pounds from his publisher, while his widow received but eight more; so little was the work appreciated in that age of loose morality.

Q. What are the most important features of this poem?

A. It is written in the finest style of blank verse. As soon as we open it, we find ourselves introduced all at once into an invisible world, and surrounded with celestial and infernal beings. Angels and devils are not the machinery, but the principal actors in the poem, and what, in any other composition, would be the marvelous, is here only the natural course of events. The subject suited the daring sublimity of his genius. He narrates the circumstances of the fall of man, for which the Scriptures furnish only scanty materials, but the imagination of the poet has supplied a wonderful variety and abundant incidents.

Considerable portions of the work describe scenes and events above this world; and as man can form no ideas of which the objects around him have not supplied, at least, the elements, the poet may be said to have fallen short of his design. His heaven is only a more magnificent kind of earth, and his most exalted supernatural beings only a nobler order of men. These passages, however, are the finest in the book. The artful change of objects: the scene laid now in earth, now in hell, and now in heaven, affords a sufficient diversity; while unity of plan is, at the same time, supported. Still life and calm scenes are presented in the employments of Adam and Eve in Paradise; while busy scenes and great actions occur in