ページの画像
PDF
ePub

seemingly casual incidents are contrived in such a manner as to lead at last to the most complete development of the catastrophe. The ease and conscious unconcern with which this is effected only make the skill more wonderful. The business of the plot evidently thickens in the last act: thest o y moves forward with increasing rapidity at every step ;i ts various ramifications are drawn from the most distant point to the same centre; the principal characters are brought together, and placed in very critical situations; and the fate of almost every person in the drama is made to depend on the solution of a single circumstance- the answer of lachimo to the question of Imogen respecting the obtaining of the ring from Posthumus. Dr. Johnson was opinion that Shakspeare was generally inattentive to the winding up of his plots. We think the contrary is true; and we might cite in proof of this remark not only the present play, but the conclusion of Lear, of Romeo and Juliet, of Macbeth, of Othello, even of Hamlet, and of other plays of less moment, in which the last act is crowded with decisive events brought about by natural and striking

means.

The pathos in Cymbeline is not violent or tragical, but of the most pleasing and amiable kind. A certain tender gloom overspreads the whole. Posthumus is the ostensible hero of the piece; but its greatest charm is the character of Imogen. Posthumus is only interesting from the interest she takes in him, and she is only interesting herself from her tenderness and constancy to her husband. It is the peculiar characteristic of Shakspeare's heroines, that they seem to exist only in their attachment to others: they are pure abstractions of the affections. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves, because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakspeare-no one ever so so well painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguise-no one else ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the habitual prejudices of their

sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women were in this respect exquisite logicians; for there is nothing so logical as passion. They knew their own minds exactly; and only followed up a favorite idea, which they had sworn to with their tongues, and which was engraven on their hearts, into its untoward consequences. They were the prettiest little set of martyrs and confessors on record. Cibber, in speaking of the early English stage, accounts for the want of prominence and theatrical display in Shakspeare's female characters from the circumstance that women in those days were not allowed to play the parts of women, which made it necessary to keep them a good deal in the back ground. Does not this state of manners itself, which prevented their exhibiting themselves in public, and confined them to the relations and charities of domestic life, afford a truer explanation of the matter? His women are certainly very unlike stage heroines; the reverse of tragedy queens.

We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she had for Posthumus; and she deserves it better. Of all Shakspeare's women, she is perhaps the most tender, and the most artless. Her incredulity in the opening scene with Iachimo, as to the husband's infidelity, is much the same as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, "My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain.' Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations, and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes, and may show that where there is a real attachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice.

The character of Cloten, the conceited booby lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with great humor and knowledge of character. The description which Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her, "Whose love-suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege" is enough to cure the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is remarkable, that though Cloten makes so poor a figure in love, he is described as assuming an air of consequence as the queen's son in a council of state, and, with all the absurdities of his person and man

ners, is not without shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that folly is as often owing to a want of proper sentiments as to a want of understanding. The exclamation of the ancient critic, "Oh, Menander and Nature! which of you copied from the other?" would not be misapplied to Shakspeare.

IMITATION

OF HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

BY J. A. SHEA, ESQ.

Oh, many a flower of beauty blushes
Where Yarrow's silver coolness gushes;
Lovely, and bright, and pure they look,
When the gloamier steals on bower and book.
But when are they sae pure as she,
Who treads their dwelling bowers wi' me?
Her foot wad sham' the bounding roe,
Her breast wad dim the mountain snow,
And ne'er sae beautiful and bright
As her's will be these eyes o' light,
That burn alang that azure ceiling
Till they possess her luve an' feeling.
There's nae sic lassie in the isle,
Sae fond her sigh-sae saft her smile,
And sweeter is her ilka word
Than music o' the moonlight bird.
I gaed to meet her by the thorn
That opes its blossom-ee to morn,
She said-oh joy is me to tell-
That she wad bless me wi' hersel';
And happy-happy sure am I
Wi' sic a lass to live and die!

EPIGRAM.

Says Rauzzini to Braham, "I'll tell you von ting,

When you've lost all your teeth, Mishter Bram, how to sing."

[ocr errors]

Tell your secret," says Braham.-" Ah, mio diletto,

You must do like your maestro, and sing in false-setto!"

[graphic]

THE BIRTH-PLACE OF DR. YOUNG.

This view represents the old parsonage house at Upham, about three miles from Bishop's Waltham, in Hampshire, in which the eminent Dr. Young was born in June, 1681, whilst his father was rector of that parish. The above is more interesting, as the house no longer exists. Having become ruinous, it was, a few years since, taken down and rebuilt, by the Rev. J. Haygarth, the present rector. The window in the gable end (in the front of the above view,) was that of the room in which the poet was born. The late elegant scholar and critic, Dr. Joseph Warton, was formerly rector of Upham; and during his incumbency he caused the event to be commemorated by a tablet, suspended in the apartment, and bearing this inscription-In hoc cubiculo natus erat eximius ille Poeta Edvardus Young, 1681. This tablet, a two-fold relic of departed genius, is still preserved in the new house.

Dr. Young was a man of great application and learning; even whilst at Oxford, his character may be formed from the words of Tindal, commonly denominated "The Atheist Tindal," who spent much time at All Souls', and who used to argue with Young on topics of religion. "The other

[ocr errors]

boys," says Tindal, "I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow, Young, is continually pestering me with something of his own. Young, however, is most known as a poet; and though ambition prompted him to venture upon the troubled sea of politics, he obtained from it but little celebrity, and no promotion. His " Night Thoughts" will hand his name down to the latest posterity as a poet, and his "Revenge" will always place him in a respectable rank amongst dramatists.

THE VILLAGE CHOIR.

BY THE HERMIT IN OSCOTT.

What sounds were heard,
What scenes appeared,
O'er all the coasts!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,

Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,

And cries of tortured ghosts!

Pope.

From a multiplicity of topics which might occupy my pen, I think I cannot select a better, at least one more adapted to my present mood of mind, than that which treats of the amusements which engrossed our attention, during our residence at the Farm House. One day I shall particularly select; not for any manifest superiority of its incident, but for the whimsical and uncommon variety by which it was characterized : -ab uno

Disce omnes.

Happily for the narrator, the last 24th of November was precisely the same kind of day with the one he has chosen for his story. My readers will, perhaps, recollect the state of the weather on that occasion; at all events, the memory will require but little brushing, not half so much as was then bestowed on their skates, when it is suggested that the frost had advanced so far, as to make skating, on the following

« 前へ次へ »