warriors, the sublime idea of mighty Rome seemed almost to justify and consecrate the deeds she commanded, and the iniquitous wars that were to extend her destined glory. Though continually in arms, her children seldom fought to defend their country; their battles were waged to yoke people after people to the car of her triumphs. Men just, and wise, and virtuous, and kind, in the relations of private life, went forth as the willing servants of her ambitious greatness; and, in the midst of her long-continued victory, felt their spirits elated and sustained by love of that country which knew no law but the desire of still-spreading dominion. Their justice and their wisdom lay prostrate under the delusive imagination of a sacred right in that country to command their obedienceunder the belief that the gods befriended, and fate had decreed her greatness. They bowed down, in the worship of their souls, before that majestic greatness which was to overshadow land after land; and knew of no right violated, and no duty left undone, while, keeping their allegiance, they obeyed her fierce mandates to subdue or to destroy. One image was in their souls: Rome, great and glorious, fulfilling her conquering destinies. To that they devoted their unprized life. In that they were content to find their perpetual fame. In that they accomplished the law of their severe and arduous virtue. When we remember what men they were whom that "high and palmy state" sent forth to execute her triumphs, our mind is filled with wonder, in contemplating the lofty character of their invincible souls; when we consider in what service they grew to their lofty stature, our wonder is augmented; but it may cease, if we consider the power which imagination may hold over the whole spirit of a magnanimous and mighty people; and when we consider what was that awful idea of their country, which held bound, as under a spell, the imagination of the whole Roman race. Their great poet has, indeed, admirably expressed the conception of this never-forgotten principle of Roman minds, this ruling purpose and belief of their spirits through all time, when he has led the founder of the line into the shades, and there his father, the old Anchises, shows him the future heroes of his race, the spirits of the unborn warriors of Rome, and prophetically describing their VOL. VII. 2 D fame, he breaks out at last into an inspired exclamation which might seem as directing, with oracular power and preternatural command, the spirit of their deeds through their victorious career of ages to come. "Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem, This conception of the City of Mars, as of a power endowed for conquest and dominion, seems to have been perpetually present to the imagination of those great spirits, and to have transformed the virtue of their heroic patriotism into the service of a gigantic and unprincipled ambition. Perhaps the "Prophecy of Capys" is the loftiest Lay of the Four. The child of Mars, and foster-son of the she-wolf, is wonderfully well exhibited throughout in his hereditary qualities; and grandly in the Triumph, where the exultation breaks through, that all this gold and silver is subservient to the Roman steel-all the skill and craft of refinement and ingenuity must obey the voice of Roman valour. There are many such things scattered up and down Horace's Odes; but we can scarcely remember any that are more spirited, more racy, or more characteristic, than these Lays; and perhaps the nobility of the early Roman character is as fondly admired and fitly appreciated by an English freeman, as by a courtier of the reign of Augustus. It is a great merit of these poems that they are free from ambition or exaggeration. Nothing seems overdone - no tawdry piece of finery disfigures the simplicity of the plan that has been chosen. They seem to have been framed with great artistical skill-with much self-denial, and abstinence from anything incongruous-and with a very successful imitation of the effects intended to be represented. Yet every here and there images of beauty, and expressions of feeling, are thrown out that are wholly independent of Rome or the Romans, and that appeal to the widest sensibilities of the human heart. In point of homeliness of thought and language, there is often a boldness which none but a man conscious of great powers of writing would have ventured to show. 66 In these rare qualities, The Lays of Ancient Rome resemble Lockhart's Spanish Ballads, which must have been often ringing in Macaulay's ears, since first he caught their inspiring music more than twenty years ago-when, "like a burnished fly in pride of May," he bounced through the open windows of Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Two such volumes all a summer's day you may seek without finding among the works! of our Young Poets." People do not call Lockhart and Macaulay poets at all-for both have acquired an inveterate habit of writing prose in preference to verse, and first-rate prose too; but then the genius of the one man is as different as may be from that of the other-agreeing, however, in this, that each exhibits bone and muscle sufficient, if equitably distributed among ten "Young Poets," to set them up among the "rural villages" as strong men, who might even occasionally exhibit in booths as giants. A FEW WORDS ON SHAKESPEARE. [ ΜΑΥ 1819. ] SHAKESPEARE is of no age. He speaks a language which thrills in our blood in spite of the separation of two hundred years. His thoughts, passions, feelings, strains of fancy, all are of this day, as they were of his own-and his genius may be contemporary with the mind of every generation for a thousand years to come. He, above all poets, looked upon men, and lived for mankind. His genius, universal in intellect and sympathy, could find, in no more bounded circumference, its proper sphere. It could not bear exclusion from any part of human existence. Whatever in nature and life was given to man, was given in contemplation and poetry to him also, and over the undimmed mirror of his mind passed all the shadows of our mortal world. Look through his plays, and tell what form of existence, what quality of spirit, he is most skilful to delineate? Which of all the manifold beings he has drawn, lives before our thoughts, our eyes, in most unpictured reality? Is it Othello, Shylock, Falstaff, Lear, the Wife of Macbeth, Imogen, Hamlet, Ariel? In none of the other great dramatists do we see anything like a perfected art. In their works, everything, it is true, exists in some shape or other, which can be required in a drama taking for its interest the absolute interest of human life and nature; but, after all, may not the very best of their works be looked on as sublime masses of chaotic confusion, through which the elements of our moral being appear? It was Shakespeare, the most unlearned of all our writers, who first exhibited on the stage perfect models, perfect images of all human characters, and of all human events. We cannot conceive any skill that could from his great characters remove any defect, or add to their perfect composition. Except in him, we look in vain for the entire fulness, the self-consistency, and self-completeness of perfect art. All the rest of our drama may be regarded rather as a testimony of the state of genius-of the state of mind of the country, full of great poetical disposition, and great tragic capacity and power-than as a collection of the works of an art. Of Shakespeare and Homer alone it may be averred, that we miss in them nothing of the greatness of nature. In all other poets we do; we feel the measure of their power, and the restraint under which it is held; but in Shakespeare and in Homer, all is free and unbounded as in nature; and as we travel along with them, in a car drawn by celestial steeds, our view seems ever interminable as before, and still equally far off the glorious horizon. If we may be permitted to exceed the measure of the occasion to speak so much of Shakespeare himself, may we presume yet farther, and go from our purpose to speak of his individual works? Although there is no one of them that does not bear marks of his unequalled hand-scarcely one which is not remembered by the strong affection of love and delight towards some of its characters, yet to all his readers they seem marked by very different degrees of excellence, and a few are distinguished above all the rest. Perhaps the four that may be named, as those which have been to the popular feeling of his countrymen the principal plays of their great dramatist, and which would be recognised as his master-works by philosophical criticism, are Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear. The first of these has the most entire tragic action of any of his plays. It has, throughout, one awful interest, which is begun, carried through, and concluded with the piece. This interest of the action is a perfect example of a most important dramatic unity, preserved entire. The matter of the interest is one which has always held a strong sway over human sympathy, though mingled with abhorrence, the rise and fall of ambition. Men look on the darings of this passion with strong sympathy, because it is one of their strongest inherent feelings—the aspiring of the mind through its consciousness of power, shown in the highest forms of human life. But it is decidedly a historical, not a poetical interest. Shakespeare has made it poetical by two things chiefly-not the character of Macbeth, which |