It needs more catholicity - more liberality, and a little less attempt at severity. With its flashy name exchanged for something more dignified, and its main plan retained, it would soon be the most able and entertaining weekly in the country.

I forgot to mention that there has been a flare-up in the Democratic Review, also, between the Editor and Mr. Langley, one of the proprietors. Both better leave, for the paper cannot live with the management it has had for the past year or two. It lives by plunder of other people's brains tence, we should imagine.

a rather uncertain mode of exis

We thank the New York Correspondent of the Cincinnati Courier for his good opinion, although given cum grano salis—but we would thank him at the same time to stick to the truth. He is right only in the proportion of one word in ten. What does he mean by catholicity"? What does he mean by calling The Broadway Journal" "a flashy name”? What does he mean by " putting the name of the other editor on the paper "" ? The name of the “other editor” was never off the paper. What does he mean by his pet phrase "a flare-up"? There has been no flare-up either in the case of "The Broadway Journal " or of "The Democratic Review."

WILEY & PUTNAM'S LIBRARY OF CHOICE READING. No. XVII. THE CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE. BY WILLIAM HAZLITT.

[Text: Broadway Journal, Aug. 16, 1845.

THIS is one of the most interesting numbers of "The Library" yet issued. If anything could induce us to read anything more in the way of commentary on Shakspeare, it would be the name of Hazlitt prefixed. With his hackneyed theme he has done wonders, and those wonders well. He is emphatically a critic, brilliant, epigrammatic, startling, paradoxical, and suggestive, rather than accurate, luminous, or profound. For purposes of mere amusement, he is the best commentator who ever wrote in English. At all points, except, perhaps in fancy, he is superior to Leigh Hunt, whom nevertheless he remarkably resembles. It is folly to compare him with Macaulay for there is scarcely a single point of approximation, and Macaulay is by much the greater man. The author of "The Lays of Ancient Rome" has an intellect so well balanced and so thoroughly proportioned, as to appear, in the eyes of the multitude, much smaller than it really is. He needs a few foibles to purchase him éclat. Now, take away the innumerable foibles of Hunt and Hazlitt, and we should have the anomaly of finding them more diminutive than we fancy them while the foibles remain. Nevertheless, they are men of genius still.

In all commentating upon Shakspeare, there has been a radical error, never yet mentioned. It is the error of attempting to expound his characters

- to

account for their actions. to reconcile his inconsistencies not as if they were the coinage of a human brain, but as if they had been actual existences upon earth. We talk of Hamlet the man, instead of Hamlet the dramatis persona of Hamlet that God, in place of Hamlet that Shakspeare created. If Hamlet had really lived, and if the tragedy were an accurate record of his deeds, from this record (with some trouble) we might, it is true, reconcile his inconsistences and settle to our satisfaction his true character. But the task becomes the purest absurdity when we deal only with a phantom. It is not (then) the inconsistencies of the acting man which we have as a subject of discussion (although we proceed as if it were, and thus inevitably err,) but the whims and vacillations the conflicting energies and indolences

of the poet. It seems to us little less than a miracle, that this obvious point should have been overlooked. While on this topic we may as well offer an illconsidered opinion of our own as to the intention of the poet in the delineation of the Dane. It must have been well known to Shakspeare, that a leading feature in certain more intense classes of intoxication, (from whatever cause,) is an almost irresistible impulse to counterfeit a farther degree of excitement than actually exists. Analogy would lead any thoughtful person to suspect the same impulse in madness - where beyond doubt it is manifest. This, Shakspeare felt - not thought. He felt it through his marvellous power of identification with humanity at large - the ultimate source of his magical influence upon mankind. He wrote of Hamlet as if Hamlet he were; and having, in the first instance, imagined his hero excited to partial insanity by the disclosures of the ghost- he (the

poet) felt that it was natural he should be impelled to exaggerate the insanity.

THE POETICAL WRITINGS OF MRS. ELIZABETH OAKES
FIRST COMPLETE Edition. NEW YORK;

SMITH.

J. S. REDFIELD.

[Text: Broadway Journal, Aug. 23, 1845.]

MRS. ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH (better known as Mrs. Seba Smith) is indebted for her reputation as a poet, principally to "The Sinless Child," her longest and perhaps her most meritorious composition. It was originally published in the "Southern Literary Messenger, ," where it at once attracted much notice — but was not thoroughly appreciated until its second introduction to the public, in volume form, by Mr. John Keese, as editor. In a well-written Preface, he pointed out its peculiar merits, and these have since been readily and very generally admitted.

Of course we do not agree with Mr. Keese in all the encomium which his personal partialities, perhaps, rather than his judgment, have induced him to lavish on "The Sinless Child." The conception is original, but somewhat forced; and although the execution is, in parts, effective, still the conduct, upon the whole, is feeble, and the dénoûment is obscure, and inconsequential. In any commendation of the poem, the critic should confine himself, principally, to detached passages. Many of these will be found to possess merits of a lofty order and very many of them are remarkable for ease, grace, and exceeding

delicacy and purity of thought and manner. For example :

Each tiny leaf became a scroll
Inscribed with holy truth,
A lesson that around the heart
Should keep the dew of youth;
Bright missals from angelic throngs
In every by-way left.

How were the earth of glory shorn
Were it of flowers bereft !

We prefer, however, the little episode called "The Stepmother" to any portion of "The Sinless Child," and shall take the liberty of quoting it in full. It has been universally and justly admired:

You speak of Hobart's second wife, a lofty dame and bold,

I like not her forbidding air, and forehead high and cold; The orphans have no cause for grief, she dare not give it

now.

Though nothing but a ghostly fear, her heart of pride could bow.

One night the boy his mother called, they heard him weeping say,

"Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy's cheek, and wipe his tears away."

Red grew the lady's brow with rage, and yet she feels a strife

Of anger and of terror too, at thought of that dead wife.

Wild roars the wind, the lights burn blue, the watch-dog howls with fear,