NO. 67. which is to be found at the coffee-house, the tavern, the play-houses, and Ranelagh.

As for the female world, the same rule of obtaining knowledge or educating themselves, by talking, not listening, is equally expedient, and indeed seems more particularly adapted to the genius of the sex. In this they may, by a prudent choice of their society among the other sex, be much assisted; as they can easily find a pretty numerous class of well-bred young gentlemen, who will never introduce any subject, nor treat any subject already introduced, but in such a manner as does not at all require being listened to; so that every member of the party may with great ease, and without any material injury, speak at one and the same time.

But as I enumerated some very easy and speedy methods of the men's acquiring knowledge, so there is one way, as easy as any of those, by which the ladies may attain it-I mean by being married; which perhaps is the reason why some prudent and economical mothers defer all sorts of instruction till that period, except some particular pieces of knowledge, which may tend to procure their daughters that opportunity of immediate improvement. In a married state, a young lady has an increased advantage of that power of talking which I have mentioned as so essential to the cultivation of the mind. Besides the superior privileges of a matron to use her tongue, she has by marriage acquired a necessary assistant for a speaker; she has provided herself with a hearer in her husband.

THE LOUNGER has been favoured with two communications from female correspondents, which, contrary to his established custom, he thinks himself obliged to acknowledge.

Mrs. Invoice has told her story in a very natural

and forcible manner; and the wrongs of which she complains from the partner of her late husband, exhibit such an impudent abuse of public indulgence, as justly deserves every reprehension a pen so able as hers can inflict.-But her recital admits of so directly personal an allusion, as, notwithstanding all its merit, unavoidably precludes its insertion. Though the pictures which this work occasionally exhibits, to be of any value at all, must be true to nature, yet it were equally averse to the feelings of the author, and to the dignity of his paper, to make them the portraits of individuals.

The verses of Delia are written with ease and spirit; there is but one objection to their being inserted, their very high praise of the LOUNGER, which, though it were ingratitude in him not to acknowledge, it might be deemed vanity to publish. V

No. 68. SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1786.

THAT Poet and Creator are the same,' is equally allowed in criticism as in etymology; and that without the powers of invention and imagination, nothing great or highly delightful in poetry can be achieved.

I have often thought that the same thing holds in some measure with regard to the reader as well as the writer of poetry. Without somewhat of a congenial imagination in the former, the works of the latter will afford a very inferior degree of pleasure. The mind of him who reads should be able to ima

gine what the productive fancy of the poet creates and presents to his view; to look on the world of fancy set before him with a native's eye, and to hear its language with a native's ear; to acknowledge its manners, to feel its passions, and to trace, with somewhat of an instinctive glance, those characters with which the poet has peopled it.

If, in the perusal of any poet, this is required, Shakspeare, of all poets, seems to claim it the most. Of all poets, Shakspeare appears to have possessed a fancy the most prolific, an imagination the most luxuriantly fertile. In this particular he has been frequently compared to Homer, though those who have drawn the parallel have done it, I know not why, with a sort of distrust of their assertion. Did we not look at the Greek with that reverential awe which his antiquity impresses, I think we might venture to affirm, that in this respect the other is more than his equal. In invention of incident, in diversity of character, in assemblage of images, we can scarcely indeed conceive Homer to be surpassed; but in the mere creation of fancy, I can discover nothing in the Iliad that equals the Tempest or the Macbeth of Shakspeare. The machinery of Homer is indeed stupendous; but of that machinery the materials were known; or though it should be allowed that he added something to the mythology he found, yet still the language and the manners of his deities are merely the language and the manners of men. Of Shakspeare, the machinery may be said to be produced as well as combined by himself. Some of the beings of whom it is composed, neither tradition nor romance afforded him; and of those whom he borrowed thence, he invented the language and the manners; language and manners peculiar to themselves, for which he could draw no analogy from mankind. Though formed by fancy, however,

his personages are true to nature, and a reader of that pregnant imagination which I have mentioned above, can immediately decide on the justness of his conceptions; as he who beholds the masterly expression of certain portraits, pronounces with confidence on their likeness, though unacquainted with the persons from whom they were drawn.

But it is not only in those untried regions of magic or of witchery that the creative power of Shakspeare has exerted itself. By a very singular felicity of invention, he has produced, in the beaten field of ordinary life, characters of such perfect originality, that we look on them with no less wonder, at his invention, than on those preternatural beings which are not of this earth;' and yet they speak a language so purely that of common society, that we have but to step abroad into the world to hear every expression of which it is composed. Of this sort is the character of Falstaff.

On the subject of this character I was lately discoursing with a friend, who is very much endowed with that critical imagination of which I have suggested the use in the beginning of this paper. The general import of his observations may form neither an useless nor unamusing field for speculation to my readers.

Though the character of Falstaff, said my friend, is of so striking a kind as to engross almost the whole attention of the audience, in the representation of the play in which it is first introduced, yet it was probably only a secondary and incidental object with Shakspeare in composing that play. He was writing a series of historical dramas, on the most remarkable events of the English history, from the time of King John downwards. When he arrived at the reign of Henry IV. the dissipated youth and extravagant pranks of the Prince of Wales could not fail

to excite his attention, as affording at once a source of moral reflection in the serious department, and a fund of infinite humour in the comic part, of the drama. In providing him with associates for his hours of folly and of riot, he probably borrowed, as was his custom, from some old play, interlude, or story, the names and incidents which he has used in the first part of Henry IV. Oldcastle, we know, was the name of a character in such a play, inserted there, it is probable, in those days of the church's omnipotence in every department of writing, in odium of Sir John Oldcastle, chief of the Lollards, though Shakspeare afterwards, in a Protestant reign, changed it to Falstaff. This leader of the gang which the wanton extravagance of the prince was to cherish and protect, it was necessary to endow with qualities sufficient to make the young Henry, in his society,

-'doff the world aside, And bid it pass.'

Shakspeare, therefore, has endowed him with infinite wit and humour, as well as an admirable degree of sagacity and acuteness in observing the characters of men; but has joined those qualities with a grossness of mind, which his youthful master could not but see, nor seeing but despise. With talents less conspicuous Falstaff could not have attracted Henry; with profligacy less gross and less contemptible, he would have attached him too much. Falstaff's was just that unyoked humour of idleness,' which the Prince could a while uphold,' and then cast off for ever. The audience to which this strange compound was to be exhibited were to be in the same predicament with the Prince, to laugh and to admire while they despised; to feel the power of his humour, the attraction of his wit, the justice of his reflections,

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