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. no It is a great merit of these poems that they are free from ambition or exaggeration. Nothing seems overdone. 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. 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. [ ΜΑΤ 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 is itself historical-but by the preternatural agencies with which the whole course of the story is involved, and by the character of Lady Macbeth. The illusion of the dagger and the sleep-walking may be added as individual circumstances tending to give a character of imagination to the whole play. The human interest of the piece is the acting of the purpose of ambition, and the fate which attends it—the high capacities of blinded desire in the soul-and the moral retribution which overrules the affairs of men. But the poetry is the intermingling of preternatural agency with the transactions of life -threads of events spun by unearthly hands-the scene of the cave which blends unreality with real life-the preparation and circumstances of midnight murder-the superhuman calmness of guilt, in its elated strength, in a woman's soul— and the dreaminess of mind which is brought on those whose spirits have drunk the cup of their lust. The language of the whole is perhaps more purely tragic than that of any other of Shakespeare's plays-it is simple, chaste, and strongrarely breaking out into fanciful expression, but a vein of imagination always running through. The language of Macbeth himself is often exceedingly beautiful. Perhaps something may be owing to national remembrances and associations; but we have observed, that in Scotland at least, Macbeth produces a deeper, a more breathless, and a more perturbing passion, in the audience, than any other drama. If Macbeth is the most perfect in the tragic action of the story, the most perfect in tragic passion is Othello. There is nothing to determine unhappiness to the lives of the two principal persons. Their love begins auspiciously; and the renown, high favour, and high character of Othello seem to promise a stability of happiness to himself and the wife of his affections. But the blood which had been scorched in the veins of his race, under the suns of Africa, bears a poison that swells up to confound the peace of the Christian marriage-bed. He is jealous; and the dreadful overmastering passion, which disturbs the steadfastness of his own mind, overflows upon his life, and hers, and consumes them from the earth. The external action of the play is nothing-the causes of events are none; the whole interest of the story, the whole course of the action, the causes of all that happens, live all in the breast |