told the reader that I was going to make a digression, and I believe I have made a good one.

Still though I should imagine that talking of Walter Scott is not exactly foreign to my purpose. I wanted to draw a comparison between him and Shakespeare, and accordingly have done so; so that if the reader will but please to recollect the thing, he will see that the fault of the digression is not altogether so bad as what it might otherwise appear, did I not brush up his memory with this hint.

To resume however.

Can such characters as those I spake (not such as I speak) of, interest the heart? Can such superhuman beings call forth the reader's sympathy? No surely. (How different with Shakespeare!) The consciousness that the scenes in which they are engaged have never been paralleled in life-that such forced hyperbolical and extraordinary passions and feelings-joys and misfortunes-virtues and vices have never actuated the human breast, and were never exhibited on the theatre of the world, will haunt the mind, and repress the sympathetic movements of the heart. The heat and activity of the author's genius may throw over his personages the gloss of wit, knowledge, and eloquence, and thus catch for a mo

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ment the eye; but their influence stops there, they make no progress to the heart, for they will still appear to me as beings of another orderanother nature, who have no relation to me or mankind, and cannot therefore create in me aught of sympathy or interest. I shall look on them as

on the figures raised by the magic glass, with whom I have no connexion-whose existence I know to be unreal-whose strangeness and splendour attract my attention for a moment, and then pass away and are forgotten.

Yet further. Let us look to those characters as delineated by different authors, we shall find nearly the entire of them moulded from the same impression, and continued from one to another, unvaried in aught but by being arrayed in another style, or viewed through another medium, by some unimportant changes in situations, actions, and circumstances. We see the same feature of unattainable excellence in each hero and heroine-of superlative courage, magnanimity, and unbending virtue in each warrior-of uniform dignity in each king—and of unparalleled purity or depravity in each virtuous or vicious character. They are all family likenesses; all of the same class, undistinguished but by a difference in the style of shades and colours; yet the lines

of separation between the latter are so imperfectly defined, and the former melt into each other with such languid discrimination, that they rather connect and establish, than annul the resemblance. But the characters of Shakespeare are no second hand copies, meanly stolen from preceding authors, and-varnished over to deceive the injudicious eye. His mighty mind disdained such sordid traffic. He drew the originals themselves, and having exhausted the almost infinite variety of human nature, he then repaired to the fountain head of his own uncircumscribed imagination, and bade the rich streams flow from thence with all the conscious energy of native excellence. His characters are fréquently numerous, even to excess, and yet in all those multitudes that people his dramas, and move in such rapid succession through his scenes, no two shall ever be found alike. Though this may not at first strike a superficial view, yet a nearer examination will always evince some well-marked (though perhaps not immediately obvious) limit, that separates them and stamps the distinction.

His representations of life appear rather origi nals than copies. He viewed the wide labyrinth of human nature with an acuteness of vision, and extensiveness of observation, such as no other

mortal has ever been favoured with, and painted from thence with such accuracy, fidelity, and vigour, that a being of another sphere could (from the study of his works) judge of each character and 66 scene of this many coloured life" with nearly as much precision as though he himself had been an actor and an observer. In Shakespeare's personages we find no distorted aggravations no hideous caricatures of mental deformity-no well polished pictures of internal and external symmetrical perfection. They are men and women, not male and female Gods and Goddesses, whom he has laid before our view; who are actuated by the same motives, passions, and interests, which always sway the human breast, and who look forward to such objects, move in such situations, and are shrouded by the shade of misery, or illumined by the ray of happiness, through such means as I myself may feel. 'Tis with such characters as these I can feel myself interested, as though it were by that universal chain which binds mankind together. "Tis with their sorrows-their joys-that I can yield my whole heart to sympathetic delusion, and in the enthusiasm of feeling overleaping the bounds, dividing reality from fiction, be a fellow sufferer myself.

Even where our bard's creative mind fled beyond the limits of this "visible diurnal sphere," to stray amidst the worlds of imagination, yet there did nature* attend him; and while fancy, with irregular and rapid step, led him through her magic regions-her hanging rocks and foaming cataracts her gloomy caverns and shadesher savage desarts and darkening tempests; or, amidst her autumnal hills and vales-her cloudless skies-her zephyrs, meads, and streams, and all her fairest views; yet still his mighty mother" held her faithful glass before his eye, as it ranged over each enchanted scene, and

"In a fine frenzy rolling,

Glanced from heav'n to earth, from earth to heaven."

and thus guided-swayed-and illumined its beautiful and creative movements.

It has been asserted by some as a bar to that

* The Tempest, if I mistake not, is one of the justest and most beautiful specimens of the fair and artful combination of nature with fancy, that any age or nation can exhibit.

Thus nature is characterized in Gray's sublime Ode of the "Progress of Poesy."