latter, "the human mortals!" It is astonishing that Shakspeare should be considered, not only by foreigners, but by many of our own critics, as a gloomy and heavy writer, who painted nothing but "Gorgons and Hydras and Chimeras dire." His subtlety exceeds that of all other dramatic writers, insomuch that a celebrated person of the present day said, that he regarded him rather as a metaphysician than a poet. His delicacy and sportive gaiety are infinite. In the Midsummer Night's Dream' alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we do not think any ten passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian. boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite Bottom, or Hippolyta's description of a chase, or Theseus' answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like 1 The following lines are remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in the repetition of the rhymes:

"Titania. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey-bags steal from the humblebees,
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs,
And light them at the fiery glowworm's eyes,
To have my love to bed, and to arise;

And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:

Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies."-[Act iii. sc. 2,

Dyce's edit., 1868, vol. ii. p. 290.]

wandering in a grove by moonlight; the descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from beds of flowers.

Shakspeare is almost the only poet of whom it may be said, that

Age cannot wither, nor custom stale,
His infinite variety."

His nice touches of individual character, and marking of its different gradations, have been often admired; but the instances have not been exhausted, because they are inexhaustible. We will mention two which occur to us. One is where Christopher Sly expresses his approbation of the play, by saying, ""Tis a good piece of work, would 'twere done," as if he were thinking of his Saturday night's job. Again, there cannot well be a finer gradation of character than that in Henry IV., between Falstaff and Shallow, and Shallow and Silence. It seems difficult to fall lower than the squire; but this fool, great as he is, finds an admirer and humble foil in his cousin Silence. Vain of his acquaintance with Sir John, who makes a butt of him, he exclaims, "Would, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that which this Knight and I have seen!" "Aye, Master Shallow, we have heard the chimes at midnight," says Sir John. The true spirit of humanity, the thorough knowledge of the stuff we are made of, the practical wisdom with the seeming fooleries, in the whole of this exquisite scene, and afterwards in the dialogue on the death of old Double, have no parallel anywhere else.

It has been suggested to us, that the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' would do admirably to get up as a Christmas after-piece; and our prompter proposes that Mr. Kean should play the part of Bottom, as worthy of his great talents. He might offer to play the lady like any of our actresses that he pleased, the lover or the tyrant like any of our actors that he pleased, and the

lion like "the most fearful wild-fowl living." The carpenter, the tailor, and joiner would hit the galleries; the young ladies in love would interest the side-boxes; and Robin Goodfellow and his companions excite a lively fellow-feeling in the children from school. There would be two courts: an empire within an empire; the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants, and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions, for the sound of trumpets, and glittering of spears! What a fluttering of urchins' painted wings! What a delightful profusion of gauze clouds, and airy spirits floating on them! It would be a complete English fairy-tale.

No. XVII.

On the Beggar's Opera.

We have begun this Essay on a very coarse sheet of damaged foolscap, and we find that we are going to write it, whether for the sake of contrast, or from having a very fine pen, in a remarkably nice hand. Something of a similar process seems to have taken place in Gay's mind when he composed his Beggar's Opera.' He chose a very unpromising ground to work upon, and he has prided himself in adorning it with all the graces, the precision and brilliancy of style. It is a vulgar error to call this a vulgar play. So far from it, that we do not scruple to declare our opinion that it is one of the most refined productions in the language. The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the materials; by "happy alchemy of mind,” the author has extracted an essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: but, by the

sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted this motley group into a set of fine gentlemen and ladies, satirists and philosophers. He has also effected this transformation without once violating probability or "o'erstepping the modesty of nature." In fact Gay has turned the tables on the critics; and by the assumed licence of the mock-heroic style, has enabled himself to do justice to nature—that is, to give all the force, truth, and locality of real feeling to the thoughts and expressions, without being called to the bar of false taste and affected delicacy. The extreme beauty and feeling of the song, 'Woman is like the fair flower in its lustre,' is only equalled by its characteristic propriety and naïveté. It may be said that this is taken from Tibullus; but there is nothing about Covent Garden in Tibullus. Polly, describes her lover going to the gallows with the same touching simplicity, and with all the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but the misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the object of her affections: "I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand; the admiring crowd lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely end. Even butchers weep, and Jack Ketch refuses his fee rather than consent to tie the fatal knot." The preservation of the character and costume is complete. It has been said by a great authority, "There is some soul of goodmess in things evil," and the Beggar's Opera' is a goodnatured but instructive comment on this text. The poet has thrown all the gaiety and sunshine of the imagination, all the intoxication of pleasure and the vanity of despair, round the shortlived existence of his heroes; while Peachum and Lockitt are seen in the background, parcelling out their months and weeks between them. The general view exhibited of human

1

life is of the most masterly and abstracted kind. The author has, with great felicity, brought out the good qualities and interesting emotions almost inseparable from the lowest conditions; and with the same penetrating glance has detected the disguises which rank and circumstances lend to exalted vice. Every line in this sterling comedy sparkles with wit, and is fraught with the keenest sarcasm. The very wit, however, takes off from the offensiveness of the satire; and we have seen great statesmen, very great statesmen, heartily enjoying the joke, laughing most immoderately at the compliments paid to them as not much worse than pickpockets and cut-throats in a different line of life, and pleased, as it were, to see themselves humanised by some sort of fellowship with their kind. Indeed, it may be said that the moral of the piece is to show the vulgarity of vice; and that the same violations of integrity and decorum, the same habitual sophistry in palliating their want of principle, are common to the great and powerful with the lowest and most contemptible of the species. What can be more convincing than the arguments used by these would-be politicians to show that in hypocrisy, selfishness, and treachery, they do not come up to many of their betters? The exclamation of Mrs. Peachum, when her daughter marries Macheath, "Hussy, hussy! you will be as illused and as much neglected as if you had married a lord," is worth all Miss Hannah More's laboured invectives on the laxity of the manners of high life!1

1 The late ingenious Baron Grimm, of acute critical memory, was up to the merit of the 'Beggar's Opera.' In his correspondence he says: "If it be true that the nearer a writer is to Nature the more certain he is of pleasing, it must be allowed that the English, in their dramatic pieces, have greatly the advantage over us. There reigns in them an inestimable tone of nature, which the timidity of our taste has banished from French pieces. M. Patu has just published, in two volumes, a selection of smaller dramatic pieces, trans