English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond.

COMEDY OF ERRORS.

THE myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspeare, has in this piece prosented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the license. allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible. A comedy would scarcely allow even the two Antipholuses; because, although there have been instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these are mere individual accidents, casus ludentis naturæ, and the verum will not excuse the inverisimile. But farce dares add the two Dromios, and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

Act i. sc. 1.

Oli. What, boy!

Orla. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.

Oli. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?

THERE is a beauty here. The word 'boy' naturally provokes and awakens in Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of elder brother,' he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no boy.

Ib. Oli. Farewell, good Charles.-Now will I stir this gamester: I hope, I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learn'd; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved! and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all.

This has always appeared to me one of the most un-Shaks perian speeches in all the genuine works of our poet; yet I should be nothing surprised, and greatly pleased, to find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so often happened to me with other supposed defects of great men. 1810.

It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakspeare with want of truth to nature; and yet at first sight this speech of Oliver's expresses truths, which it seems almost impossible that any mind should so distinctly, so livelily, and so voluntarily, have presented to itself in connection with feelings and intentions so malignant, and so contrary to those which the qualities expressed would naturally have called forth. But I dare not say that this seeming unnaturalness is not in the nature of an abused wilfulness, when united with a strong intellect. In such characters there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making the absoluteness of the will (sit pro ratione voluntas!) evident to themselves by set ting the reason and the conscience in full array against it. 1818. Ib. sc. 2.

Celia. If you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise.

Surely it should be our eyes' and 'our judgment.'

Ib. sc. 3.

Cel. But is all this for your father?

Ros. No, some of it is for my child's father.

Theobald restores this as the reading of the older editions. It may be so but who can doubt that it is a mistake for 'my father's child,' meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;—and besides what a strange thought, and how out of place, and unintelligible!

Act iv. sc. 2.

Take thou no scorn

To wear the horn, the lusty horn;

It was a crest ere thou wast born.

I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that like this of horns' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin.

WARBURTON'S alteration of is into in is needless. 'Fancy' may very well be interpreted 'exclusive affection,' or 'passionate preference.' Thus, bird-fanciers, gentlemen of the fancy, that is, amateurs of boxing, &c. The play of assimilation,—the meaning one sense chiefly, and yet keeping both senses in view, is perfectly Shaksperian.

Act ii. sc. 3. Sir Andrew's speech :—

An explanatory note on Pigrogromitus would have been more acceptable than Theobald's grand discovery that 'lemon' ought to be 'leman.'

Ib. Sir Toby's speech: (Warburton's note on the Peripatetic philosophy.)

Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three souls out of one weaver ?

O genuine, and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton ! This note of thine, if but one in five millions, would be half a one too much.

Ib. sc. 4.

Duke. My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye

Hath stay'd upon some favor that it loves;

Hath it not, boy?

Vio. A little, by your favor.

Duke. What kind of woman is't?

And yet Viola was to have been presented to Orsino as a eunuch! -Act i. sc. 2. Viola's speech. Either she forgot this, or else she had altered her plan.

Ib.

Vio. A blank, my lord; she never told her love!—

But let concealment, &c.

After the first line (of which the last five words should be spoken with, and drop down in, a deep sigh), the actress ought to make

a pause; and then start afresh, from the activity of thought, born of suppressed feelings, and which thought had accumulated during the brief interval, as vital heat under the skin during a dip in cold water.

Ib. sc. 5.

Fabian. Though our silence be drawn from us by cars, yet peace. Perhaps, 'cables.'

Act iii. sc. 1.

Clown. A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit. (Theobald's note.)

Theobald's etymology of 'cheveril' is, of course, quite right; -but he is mistaken in supposing that there were no such things as gloves of chicken-skin. They were at one time a main article in chirocosmetics.

Act v. sc. 1. Clown's speech :—

So that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make your two affirmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends, and the better for my foes.

(Warburton reads 'conclusion to be asked, is.')

Surely Warburton could never have wooed by kisses and won, or he would not have flounder-flatted so just and humorous, nor less pleasing than humorous, an image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love and wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative? The humor lies in the whispered 'No!' and the inviting 'Don't!' with which the maiden's kisses are accompanied, and thence compared to negatives, which by repetition constitute an affirmative.

Act i. sc. 1.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

Bert. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.

Laf. How understand we that?

BERTRAM and Lafeu, I imagine, both speak together,-Lafeu referring to the Countess's rather obscure remark.

It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable change of the text; but yet, as a mere conjecture, I venture to suggest 'bastards,' for 'bated.' As it stands, in spite of Warburton's note, I can make little or nothing of it. Why should the king except the then most illustrious states, which, as being republics, were the more truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur ?—With my conjecture, the sense would be;—'let higher, or the more northern part of Italy-(unless higher' be a corruption for 'hir'd,' -the metre seeming to demand a monosyllable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of their fathers) see, &c.' The following 'woo' and 'wed' are so far confirmative as they indicate Shakspeare's manner of connection by unmarked influences of association from some preceding metaphor. This it is which

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makes his style so peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise ‘those girls of Italy' strengthen the guess. The absurdity of Warburton's gloss, which represents the king calling Italy superior, and then excepting the only part the lords were going to visit, must strike every one.

Ib. sc. 3.

Laf. They say, miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless.

Shakspeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all knowledge, here uses the word 'causeless' in its strict philosophical sense ;cause being truly predicable only of phenomena, that is, things natural, and not of noumena, or things supernatural.

Act iii. sc. 5.

Dia. The Count Rousillon:-know you such a one?
Hel. But by the ear that hears most nobly of him;
His face I know not.

Shall we say here, that Shakspeare has unnecessarily made his loveliest character utter a lie?-Or shall we dare think that, where to deceive was necessary, he thought a pretended verbal verity a double crime, equally with the other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an attempt to lie to one's own conscience?