sentences, whether in verse or prose, is the necessary and homogeneous vehicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. His is not the style of the age. More particularly, Shakspeare's blank verse is an absolutely new creation. Read Daniel * the admirable Daniel-in his "Civil Wars," and "Triumphs of Hymen." The style and language are just such as any very pure and manly writer of the present day Wordsworth, for example would use; it seems quite modern in comparison with the style of Shakspeare. Ben Jonson's blank verse is very masterly and individual, and perhaps Massinger's is even

* " This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the 'well-languaged Daniel; but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than of all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those who thus designate this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them valuable and interesting on other accounts, but willingly admit that there are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his Epistles and in his Hymen's Triumph, many and exquisite specimens of that style, which, as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both." - Biog. Lit., vol. ii.

p.

82.

still nobler. In Beaumont and Fletcher it is constantly slipping into lyricisms.

I believe Shakspeare was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than he is now to an educated man, except for a few local allusions of no consequence. As I said, he is of no age-nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind: his observation and reading, which was considerable, supplied him with the drapery of his figures.

*

As for editing Beaumont and Fletcher, the task would be one immensi laboris. The

"the myriad

* Mr. Coleridge called Shakspeare minded man,” ἄνηρ μυριονοῦς· a phrase," said he, "which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, that I have reclaimed, rather than borrowed it, for it seems to belong to Shakspeare de jure singulari, et ex privilegio natura." See Biog. Lit. vol. ii. p. 13. I have sometimes thought that Mr. C. himself had no inconsiderable claim to the same appellation. - ED.

confusion is now so great, the errors so enormous, that the editor must use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. All I can say as to Beaumont and Fletcher is, that I can point out well enough where something has been lost, and that something so and so was probably in the original; but the law of Shakspeare's thought and verse is such, that I feel convinced that not only could I detect the spurious, but supply the genuine, word.

March 20. 1834.

LORD BYRON AND H. WALPOLE'S "MYSTERIOUS MOTHER."-LEWIS'S "JAMAICA JOURNAL."

LORD BYRON, as quoted by Lord Dover *, says, that the " Mysterious Mother" raises

66

"He

* In the memoir prefixed to the correspondence with Sir H. Mann, Lord Byron's words are: is the ultimus Romanorum, the author of the Mysterious Mother,' a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling love play. He is the father of the first ro

Horace Walpole above every author living in his, Lord Byron's, time. Upon which I venture to remark, first, that I do not believe that Lord Byron spoke sincerely; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception in favour of himself at least ;-secondly, that it is a miserable mode of comparison which does not rest on difference of kind. It proceeds of envy and malice and detraction to say that A. is higher than B., unless you show that they are in pari materiá; - thirdly, that the "Mysterious Mother" is the most disgusting, detestable, vile composition that ever came from the hand of man. No one with a spark of true manliness, of which Horace Walpole had none, could have written it. As to the blank verse, it is indeed better than Rowe's and Thomson's, which was execrably bad:

any approach, therefore, to the manner of

Is

mance, and of the last tragedy, in our language; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he may." Preface to Marino Faliero. not "Romeo and Juliet" a love play?—But why reason about such insincere, splenetic trash? — ED.

the old dramatists was of course an improvement; but the loosest lines in Shirley are superior to Walpole's best.

Lewis's "Jamaica Journal" is delightful; it is almost the only unaffected book of travels or touring I have read of late years. You have the man himself, and not an inconsiderable man, certainly a much finer mind than I supposed before from the perusal of his romances, &c. It is by far his best work, and will live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours are very pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, like his romances, a fever dream horrible, without point or terror.

I FOUND that every thing in and about Sicily had been exaggerated by travellers,