that respect, as inferior to Shakspeare as The City Madam is, in all respects, to The Tempest. Gifford has done injustice to Massinger as well as to Shakspeare, for his selection from the former is by no means well chosen. Hallam praises "the harmonious swell of numbers,"* which is assuredly to be found in many passages of Massinger, but not in Gifford's example. Still, know not how much of the preference may be traceable to pleasure derived in boyhood; but, to my ear, neither Massinger nor any other writer, sounds so gracefully as Shakspeare, in so many varied styles. "To him," says Johnson,†

That dumb magician (taking out a key), that without a charm,

Dids't make my entrance easy to possess

What wise men wish, and toil for! Hermes' moly,
Sibylla's golden bough, the great elixir

Imagin'd only by the alchemist,

Compared with these are shadows, thou the substance,

And guardian of felicity! No marvel,

My brother made his place of rest thy bosom,
That being the keeper of his heart, a mistress

To be hugged ever! In by-corners of
This sacred room, silver in bags, heap'd up,
Like billets saw'd and ready for the fire,
Unworthy to hold fellowship with bright gold
That flow'd about the room conceal'd itself."
And more of the same, not better.
Act iii. Sc. 3.-Works iv. 66.

City Madam,

"we must ascribe the praise, unless Spenser may divide it with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness and harmony the English language could be softened." But the vigour and dignity of which our mother-tongue is unquestionably susceptible, are equally well illustrated by Shakspeare. I cannot imagine how Johnson could say that "his declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak,* for his power," he adds, "was the power of nature;" I know not precisely how a set speech is defined, or where the power of nature is supposed to end. But I have had the pleasure of giving harangues from Shakspeare, both original and adopted, as warm and as forcible as language can be.† I think that I have heard it said, that Shakspeare Idid not shine in narration. I know not where to find any thing finer than the entry of Richard and Bolingbroke into London; and a less elaborate passage, describing Wolsey's death,§ sounds to my ear as agreeably as the funeral scene in the Andria. And so of more familiar life,—the conversation at the smith's forge about Arthur's death :||—I could easily and gladly fill

* P.75.

With others, see the speeches of Queen Catherine and Mark Antony, ii. 149 and 241.

i. 67.

§ ii. 162.

|| i. 23,

a volume with instances of declamation, narration, and description, equally excellent for the sentiment and the rhythm.

But I am soaring into regions to which I claim no peculiar right, and I must have done. My main purpose has been, to tell in cold narration the story which Shakspeare has sung poetically; but it is sadly unfair to impute to me the opinion, that Shakspeare ought to have sacrificed poetry to truth. I was, almost in childhood, bred up upon Shakspeare and the history of England, and I would not now that our youth should, for any thing that I write, love Shakspeare the less, but that they should study history the more.

302

ADDITIONAL NOTICES OF THE

SEVERAL PLAYS.

KING JOHN.-Campbell has observed upon the omission of "the great charter of our liberties," in a way to entitle him to share with me the sneer of the Pictorial Editor.*

It is remarkable that the poet of England, and the most eloquent poet who ever summed up the virtues of Brutus, should have dramatized the reign of King John, without the most distant allusion to Magna Charta. Was he afraid of offending Elizabeth ? I think not; for he brought out Julius Cæsar in the reign of King James, whose petty mind was more afraid of popular principles than that of Elizabeth."

I suspect that Elizabeth was at least as likely as James to visit with severity the circulation

* i. 155.

of unpalatable principles. But there is nothing offensive in this way in Julius Cæsar. However, Shakspeare was probably guided by the old play; not, as the Pictorial Editor fancifully suggests, because the people were familiar with the story as it is told there, but because it was convenient to him to adopt it.

Mr. Campbell has committed another of the sins for which I am rebuked by the Pictorial: he has suggested a topic omitted by Shakspeare.

"I regret further that his mighty genius did not turn to poetical account another event in King John's reign, still more adapted to poetry, namely, the superstitious desolation of the English mind which immediately followed the papal excommunication that was issued from Rome against England and her king. The shutting up the churches, the nation's sudden deprivation of all the exterior exercises of its religion, the altars despoiled of their ornaments, the cessation of sabbath bells, and the celebration of mass with doors shut against the laity, all these circumstances have been wrought up by Hume* into an historic picture that is worthy of Livy; and what would they not have been as a poetical picture in the hands of Shakspeare?"

Shakspeare was undoubtedly sensible of the

* ii. 62, from the Dunstable Chronicle, i. 51.