jecture as to the use made by Shakspeare of the poem of Chaucer. His other sources were Chapman's translation of Homer, the Troy Book of Lydgate, and Caxton's History of the destruction of Troy. It is well known that there is no trace of the particular story of Troilus and Creseide among the ancients. It occurs indeed in Lydgate and Caxton; but the name and actions of Pandarus, a very essential personage in the tale as related by Shakspeare and Chaucer, are entirely wanting, except a single mention of him by Lydgate, and that with an express reference to Chaucer as his authority. Shakspeare has taken the story of Chaucer with all its imperfections and defects, and has copied the series of its incidents with his customary fidelity; an exactness seldom to be found in any other dramatic writer.

Since then two of the greatest writers this island has produced have treated the same story, each in his own peculiar manner, it may be neither unentertaining nor uninstructive to consider the merit of their respective modes of composition as illustrated in the present example. Chaucer's poem includes many beauties, many genuine touches of nature, and many strokes of an exquisite pathos. It is on the whole, however, written in that style which has unfortunately been so long imposed upon the world as dignified, classical, and chaste. It is naked of incidents, of ornament, of whatever should most awaken the imagination, astound the fancy, or hurry away the soul. It has the stately

march of a Dutch burgomaster as he appears in a procession, or a French poet as he shows himself in his works. It reminds one too forcibly of a tragedy of Racine. Every thing partakes of the author, as if he thought he should be everlastingly disgraced by becoming natural, inartificial, and alive. We travel through a work of this sort as we travel over some of the immense downs with which our island is interspersed. All is smooth, or undulates with so gentle and slow a variation as scarcely to be adverted to by the sense. But all is homogeneous and tiresome: the mind sinks into a state of aching torpidity; and we feel as if we should never get to the end of our eternal journey.* What a contrast to a journey among mountains and vallies, spotted with herds of various kinds of cattle, interspersed with villages, opening ever and anon to a view of the distant ocean, and refreshed with rivulets and streams; where if the eye is ever fatigued, it is only with the boundless flood of beauty which is incessantly pouring upon it! Such is the tragedy of Shakspeare.

The historical play of Troilus and Cressida exhibits as full a specimen of the different styles in which this wonderful writer was qualified to excel, as is to be found in any of his works. A more poetical passage, if poetry consists in sublime picturesque and beautiful imagery, neither ancient

• These remarks apply to nine-tenths of the poem, though by no means to those happier passages in which the author unfolds the sentiments of his personages.

nor modern times have produced, than the exhortation addressed by Patroclus to Achilles, to persuade him to shake off his passion for Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, and reassume the terrors of his military greatness:

Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,

And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,

Be shook to air.

ACT iii, SCENE 3.

Never did morality hold a language more profound, persuasive, and irresistible, than in Shakspeare's Ulysses, who in the same scene, and engaged in the same cause with Patroclus, thus expostulates with the champion of the Grecian forces:

For emulation hath a thousand sons,

That one by one pursue. If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forth right,
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost: there you lie,
Like to a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
For pavement to the abject rear, o'er-run
And trampled on.

-O, let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was!

For beauty, wit, high birth, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,.......
That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More praise than they will give to gold o'erdusted.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man!!

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax.

The cry went once on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent.

+

But the great beauty of this play, as it is of all the genuine writings of Shakspeare, beyond all didactic morality, beyond all mere flights of fancy, and beyond all sublime, a beauty entirely his own, and in which no writer, ancient or modern, can enter into competition with him, is, that his men are men; his sentiments are living, and his characters marked with those delicate, evanescent, undefinable touches, which identify them with the great delineations of nature. The speech of Ulysses just quoted, when taken by itself, is purely an exquisite specimen of didactic morality; but when combined with the explanation given by Ulysses, before the entrance of Achilles, of the nature of his design, it becomes the attribute of a real man, and starts into life. Achilles (says he) stands in the entrance of his tent.

Please it our general to pass strangely by him,

As if he were forgot; and princes all,

Lay negligent and loose regard upon him:

I will come last: 'tis like, he'll question me,

Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn'd on him :
If so, I have derision med'cinable,

To use between your strangeness and his pride,
Which his own will shall have desire to drink.

When we compare the plausible and seemingly

affectionate manner in which Ulysses addresses himself to Achilles with the key which he here furnishes to his meaning, and especially with the epithet "derision," we have a perfect elucidation of his character, and must allow that it is impossible to exhibit the crafty and smooth-tongued politician in a more exact or animated style. The advice given by Ulysses is in its nature sound and excellent, and in its form inoffensive and kind; the name, therefore, of "derision" which he gives to it, marks to a wonderful degree the cold and self-centred subtlety of his character.

The following is a most beautiful example of the genuine Shakspearian manner, such as I have been attempting to describe; where Cressida first proceeds so far as to confess to Troilus that she loves him:

CRESSIDA.

Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart:-
Prince Troilus, I have lov'd you night and day,
For many weary months.

TROILUS.

Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?

CRESSIDA.

Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
With the first glance that ever-Pardon me—
If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
I love you now; but not, till now, so much
But I might master it :-in faith, I lie;
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother:-See, we fools!
Why have I blabb'd? Who shall be true to us,