Mr. Rymer is decorously enraged, to think that the tragedy should turn on a handkerchief. "Why," he asks in virtuous indignation, " was not this called the tragedy of the handkerchief? what can be more absurd than (as Quintilian expresses it) in parvibus (sic) litibus has tragedias movere? We have heard of Fortunatus his purse, and of the invisible cloak long ago worn thread-bare, and stowed up in the wardrobe of obsolete romances; one might think that were a fitter place for this handkerchief than that it, at this time of day, be worn on the stage, to raise every-where all this clutter and turmoil." And again," the handkerchief is so remote a trifle, no booby on this side Mauritania could make any consequence from it."

Our author suggests a felicitous alteration of the catastrophe of Othello. He proposes, that the handkerchief, when lost, should have been folded in the bridal couch; and when Othello was stifling Desdemona,

"The fairy napkin might have started up to disarm his fury, and stop his ungracious mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear) have lain as dead. Then might he (believing her dead) touched with remorse, have honestly cut his own throat, by the good leave, and with the applause, of all the spectators; who might thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, admiring the beauty of providence, fairly and truly represented on the theatre."

The following is the summing up and catastrophe of this marvellous criticism:

"What can remain with the audience to carry home with them from this sort of poetry, for their use and edification? How can it work, unless (instead of settling the mind and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our appetite-and fill our head with vanity, confusion, tintamarre, and jingle-jangle, beyond what all the parish clerks of London, with their Old Testament farces and interludes, in Richard the Second's time, could ever pretend to? Our only hopes, for the good of their souls, can be that these people go to the play-house as they do to church-to sit still, look on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the play more than they would a sermon."

"There is in this play some burlesk, some humour, and ramble of comical wit, some shew, and some mimicry to divert the spectators; but the tragical part is clearly none other than a bloody farce, without salt or savour.'

Our author's criticism on Julius Cæsar is very scanty, compared with that on Othello, but it is not less decisive. Indeed, his classical zeal here sharpens his critical rage; and he is incensed against Shakespear, not only as offending the dignity of the tragic muse, but the memory of the noblest Romans. "He might," exclaims the indignant critic, "be familiar with

Othello and Iago, as his own natural acquaintance, but Cæsar and Brutus were above his conversation; to put them in fools' coats, and make them Jack Puddens in the Shakespear dress, is a sacrilege beyond any thing in Spelman. The truth is, this author's head was full of villainous, unnatural images-and history has furnished him with great names, thereby to recommend them to the world, by writing over them-This is Brutus, this is Cicero, this is Cæsar." He affirms, "that the language Shakespear puts into the mouth of Brutus would not suit or be convenient, unless from some son of the shambles, or some natural offspring of the butchery." He abuses the poet for making the conspirators dispute about day-break-seriously chides him for not "allowing the noble Brutus a watch-candle in his chamber on this important night, rather than puzzling his man, Lucius, to grope in the dark for a flint and tinder box to get the taper lighted"-speaks of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius, as that in which "they are to play a prize, a trial of skill in huffing and swaggering, like two drunken Hectors of a twopenny reckoning." And finally, alluding to the epilogue of Laberius, forced by the Emperor to become an actor, he thus sums up his charges:

"This may shew with what indignity our poet treats the noblest Romans. But there is no other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one must wear a fool's coat that comes to be dressed by him; nor is he more civil to the ladies-Portia, in good manners, might have challenged more respect; she that shines a glory of the first magnitude in the gallery of heroic dames, is with our poet scarce one remove from a natural; she is the own cousin-german of one piece, the very same impertinent silly flesh and blood with Desdemona. Shakespear's genius lay for comedy and humour. In tragedy he appears quite out of his element; his brains are turned-he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to controul him, to set bounds to his phrenzy."

One truth, though the author did not understand it, is told in this critique on Julius Casar; that Shakespear's "senators and his orators had their learning and education at the same school, be they Venetians, Ottamites, or noble Romans." They drew, in their golden urns, from the deep fountain of humanity, those living waters which lose not their sweetness or their inspiration in the changes of man's external condition.

These attacks on Shakespear are very curious, as evincing how gradual has been the increase of his fame. Their whole tone shews that the author was not advancing what he thought the world would regard as paradoxical or strange. He speaks as one with authority to decide. We look now on his work amazedly; and were it put forth by a writer of

our times, should regard it as "the very extacy of madness." Such is the lot of genius. However small the circle of cotemporary admirers, it must "gather fame" as time rolls on. It appeals to natural beauty and feeling, which cannot alter. The minds who once have deeply felt it, can never lose the impression it first made upon them-they transmit it to others of a kindred feeling, by whom it is extended to those who are worthy to treasure it within their souls. Its stability and duration at length awaken the attention of the world-it acknowledges the sanction of time, and professes an admiration for the author, which it only feels for his name. We should not, however, have thus dwelt on the attacks of Rymer, had we regarded them merely as objects of wonder, or as proofs of the partial influence of Shakespear's genius. They are far from deserving unmingled scorn. They display, at least, an honest, unsophisticated hatred, which is better than the maudlin admiration of Shakespear, expressed by those who were deluded by Ireland's forgeries. Their author has a heartiness, an earnestness almost romantic, which we cannot despise, though directed against our idol. With a singular obtuseness to poetry, he has a chivalric devotion to all that he regards as excellent, stately, and grand. He looks on the supposed errors of the poet as moral crimes. He confounds fiction with factgrows warm in defence of shadows-feels a violation of poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a jury-moves a Habeas Corpus for all damsels imprisoned in romance-and if the bard kills those of his characters who deserve to live, pronounces judgment on him as in case of felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the Don Quixote of criticism. Like the illustrious hero of Cervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhibition in his disinterested rage. He does more honour to the poet than any other writer, for he seems to regard him as an arbiter of life and deathresponsible only to the critic for the administration of his powers.

Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice cannot be punished too severely, and that the poet ought to leave his victims objects of pity, he protests against the introduction of very wicked characters. "Therefore," says he, " among the ancients we find no malefactors of this kind; a wilful murderer is, with them, as strange and unknown as a parricide to the old Romans. Yet need we not fancy that they were squeamish, or unacquainted with any of those great lumping crimes in that age: when we remember their Edipus, Orestes, or Medea. But they took care to wash the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with

such art to prepare the morsel: they made it all junket to the taste, and all physic in the operation."

Our author understands exactly the balance of power in the affections. He would dispose of all the poet's characters to a hair, according to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal them in array as in a procession, and mark out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. According to him, so much of presage and no more should be given-such a degree of sorrow, and no more ought a character to endure; vengeance should rise precisely to a given height, and be executed by a certain appointed hand. He would regulate the conduct of fictitious heroes as accurately as of real beings, and often reasons very beautifully on his own poetic decalogue. "Amintor," says he, (speaking of a character in the Maid's Tragedy)" should have begged the king's pardon; should have suffered all the racks and tortures a tyrant could inflict; and from Perillus's bull should have still bellowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was to be kept-that he is true to Aspatia, that he dies for his mistress! Then would his memory have been precious and sweet to after ages; and the midsummer maidens would have offered their garlands all at his grave."

Mr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for the poetical prerogatives of kings. No courtier ever contended more strenuously for their divine right in real life, than he for their pre-eminence in tragedy. "We are to presume," observes he gravely," the greatest virtues, where we find the highest rewards; and though it is not necessary that all heroes should be kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads, by poetical right, are heroes. This character is a flower, a prerogative, so certain, so indispensably annexed to the crown, as by no poet, or parliament of poets, ever to be invaded.” Thus does he draw out the rules of life and death for his regal domain of tragedy:`" If I mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him; nor is a servant to kill the master, nor a private man, much less a subject to kill a king, nor, on the contrary. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other, by such persons whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together." He admits, however, that "there may be circumstances that alter the case: as where there is sufficient ground of partiality in an audience, either upon the account of religion (as Rinaldo or Riccardo in Tasso, might kill Soliman, or any other Turkish king or great Sultan) or else in favour of our country, for then a private English hero might overcome a king of some rival nation." How pleasant a master of the ceremonies is he in the regions of fictionregulating the niceties of murder like the decorums of a dancewith an amiable preference for his own religion and country!

These notions, however absurd, result from an indistinct sense of a peculiar dignity and grandeur essential to tragedy— and surely this feeling was not altogether deceptive. Some there are, indeed, who trace the emotions of strange delight which tragedy awakens, entirely to the love of strong excitement, which is gratified by spectacles of anguish. According to their doctrine, the more nearly the representation of sorrow approaches reality, the more intense will be the gratification of the spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted, that if the audience at a tragedy were informed of an execution about to take place in the neighbourhood, they would leave the theatre to witness it. We believe that experience does not warrant a speculation so dishonourable to our nature. How few, except those of the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the punishment of capital offenders! Even of those whom the dreadful infliction draws together, how many are excited merely by curiosity, and a desire to view that last mortal agony, which in a form more or less terrible all must endure! We think that if, during the representation of a tragedy, the audience were compelled to feel vividly that a fellow-creature was struggling in the agonies of a violent death, many of them would retire-but not to the scene of horror. The reality of human suffering would come too closely home to their hearts, to permit their enjoyment of the fiction. How often, during the scenic exhibition of intolerable agony-unconsecrated and unredeemed-have we been compelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the highest triumph of an author, whose aim is to heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces us, in our own defence, to escape from his power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy were merely occasioned by the love of excitement, the pleasure would be in proportion to the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then would The Gamester be more pathetic than Othello, and Isabella call forth deeper admiration than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the Newgate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently to refute the position on which they are founded.

Equally false is the opinion, that the pleasure derived from tragedy arises from a source of individual security, while others are suffering. There are no feelings more distantly removed from the selfish, than those which genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at its representation out of ourselves, and "the ignorant present time," by earnest sympathy with the passions and the sorrows, not of ourselves, but of our nature. We feel our community with the general heart of man. The encrustments of selfishness and low passion are rent asunder, and the