But he, his own affection's counsellor,

Is to himself so secret and so close,

As is the bud bit with an envious worm,

Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are than we feel their beauty and effect, and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and attractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality, he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen into the mouth of one who is not even a lover:

It is her breathing that

Perfumes the chamber thus! the flame o'th' taper
Bows towards her! and would under-peep her lids
To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied

Under the windows, white and azure, laced

With blue of Heaven's own tinct-on her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops

I' the bottom of a cowslip.

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

e Vol. xxviii, pp. 473-477.

M

No. XIV.

ON SHAKSPEARE'S DELINEATION OF PASSION.

IF SHAKSPEARE deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally deserving of 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 pourtrayed 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 Shakspeare 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 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

Never was lunacy, as the effect of severe grief and disappointment, painted in stronger or more correct colours than in the person of Lear; and where shall we find the first stage of melancholia expressed in terms more admirably true to nature than in the following description from the lips of Hamlet? "I have of late," he says, "but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise; and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me but a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestic roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours."

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. Shakspeare, 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 Shakspeare acted conformably to this ingenious maxim without knowing it. The paradoxical assertion of Johnson, that Shakspeare had a greater talent for comedy than tragedy, and that in the latter he has frequently displayed an affected tone, does not even deserve to be so far noticed that we should adduce, by way of refutation, the great tragical compositions of the poet, which, for overpowering effect, leave almost every thing which the stage has yet seen

A contemporary of the poet tenderly felt this while he says:

Yet so to temper passion, that our ears

Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
Both smile and weep.

far behind them: a few of the much less celebrated scenes would be quite sufficient. What might to many readers lend an appearance of truth to this opinion, are the plays on words, which, not unfrequently in Shakspeare, are introduced into serious and sublime passages, and into those also of a peculiarly pathetic nature. I shall here, therefore, deliver a few observations respecting a play on words in general, and its poetical use. A thorough investigation would lead us too far from our subject, and too deeply into considerations on the essence of language, and its relation to poetry, or rhyme, &c. There is, in the human mind, a desire that language should exhibit the object which it denotes in a sensible manner by sound, which may be traced even as far back as the origin of poetry. As, in the shape in which language comes down to us, this is seldom the case in a perceptible degree, an imagination which has been powerfully excited is fond of laying hold of the congruity in sound which may accidentally offer itself, that by such means he may, in a single case, restore the lost resemblance between the word and the thing. For example, it was common to seek in the name of a person, though often accidentally bestowed, a reference to his qualities and fortune,—it was purposely converted into an expressive name. Those who cry out against plays on words as an unnatural and affected invention, only betray their own ignorance. With children, as well as nations