So Lessing's first comedies are placed in the universities, and consist of events and characters conceivable in an academic life.

I will only further remark the sweet and tempered gravity, with which Shakspeare in the end draws the only fitting moral which such a drama afforded. Here Rosaline rises up to the full height of Beatrice :--

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you, and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ;
Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
With groaning wretches; and your talk shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,

To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible;

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,

Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,

Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools:

A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears,
Deaf'd with the clamors of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,

And I will have you, and that fault withal;

But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,

And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.

Act v. sc. 2. In Biron's speech to the Prin

cess:

and, therefore, like the eye,

Full of straying shapes, of habits, and of forms—

Either read stray, which I prefer; or throw full back to the preceding lines,—

like the eye, full

Of straying shapes, &c.

In the same scene:

Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to me? Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank; You are attaint with fault and perjury:

Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,

A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,
But seek the weary beds of people sick.

There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of expunging this speech of Rosaline's; it soils the very page that retains it. But I do not agree with Warburton and others in striking out the preceding line also. It is quite in Biron's character; and Rosaline not answering it immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and, after he and Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident propriety, says ;Studies my mistress? &c.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

ACT i. sc. 1.

Her. O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low-
Lys. Or else misgraffed, in respect of years;
Her. O spite! too old to be engag'd to young-

Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;
Her. O hell! to chuse love by another's eye!

There is no authority for any alteration ;—but I never can help feeling how great an improvement it would be, if the two former of Hermia's exclamations were omitted; the third and only appropriate one would then become a beauty, and most natural.

Ib. Helena's speech :

I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c.

I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a dream throughout, but especially, and, perhaps, unpleasingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this, too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes. The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of its outward consequences, as detection, and loss of character than men,-their natures being almost wholly extroitive. Still, however just in itself, the representation of this is not poetical; we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal.

112 NOTES ON MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

Act ii. sc. 1. Theobald's edition.

Through bush, through briar-

*

Through flood, through fire

What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must have had! The eight amphimacers For cretics,

30

Ověr hill, ōvěr dāle,

Thōro' bush, thōro' brīar,
Ověr pārk, Ŏvēr pāle,

Thōro' flood, thōrō' fire

and then

have a delightful effect on the ear! in their sweet transition to the trochaic,

I do wander ev'ry where

Swiftěr than the moones spherě, &c.—

The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered, as in fact they are, trochees in time.

It may be worth while to give some correct examples in English of the principal metrical feet:

Pyrrhic or Dibrach, ʊ u = body, spirit.

English and, indeed, in the modern languages in general, makes, perhaps, the greatest distinction, metrically considered, between them and the Greek and Latin.

These simple feet may suffice for understanding the metres of Shakspeare, for the greater part at least ;-but Milton cannot be made harmoniously intelligible without the composite feet, the Ionics, Pæons, and Epitrites.

Ib. sc. 2. Titania's speech :-(Theobald adopting Warburton's reading.)

Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate
Follying (her womb then rich with my young squire)
Would imitate, &c.

Oh! oh! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakspeare, and also on Mr. Warburton's mind's eye!

Act v. sc. 1. Theseus' speech :-(Theobald.)

And what poor [willing] duty cannot do,

Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.

To my ears it would read far more Shakspearian thus: