SHAKSPEARE.

[See the volume entitled "Imagination and Fancy," page 149.]

SHAKSPEARE had as great a comic genius as tragic; and everybody would think so, were it possible for comedy to impress the mind as tragedy does. It is true, the times he lived in, as Hazlitt has remarked, were not so foppish and ridiculous as those of our prose comic dramatists, and therefore he had not so much to laugh at: and it is observed by the same critic, with equal truth, that his genius was of too large and magnanimous a description to delight in satire. But who doubts that had Shakspeare lived in those inferior times, the author of the character of Mercutio could have written that of Dorimant? of Benedick and Beatrice, the dialogues of Congreve? or of Twelfth Night and the Taming of the Shrew, the most uproarious farce? I certainly cannot think with Dr. Johnson, that he wrote comedy better than tragedy; that "his tragedy seems to be skill, and his comedy instinct." I could

as soon believe that the instinct of Nature was confined to laughter, and that her tears were shed upon principles of criticism. Such may have been the Doctor's recipe for writing tragedy; but Irene is not King Lear. Laughter and tears are alike born with us, and so was the power of exciting them with Shakspeare; because it pleased Nature to make him a complete human being.

Shakspeare had wit and humour in perfection; and like every possessor of powers so happy, he rioted in their enjoyment. Molière was not fonder of running down a joke: Rabelais could not give loose to a more "admirable fooling." His mirth is commensurate with his melancholy; it is founded on the same knowledge and feeling, and it furnished him with a set-off to their oppression. When he had been too thoughtful with Hamlet, he "took it out" with Falstaff and Sir Toby. Not that he was habitually melancholy. He had too healthy a brain for that, and too great animal spirits; but in running the whole circle of thought, he must of necessity have gone through its darkest as well as brightest phases; and the sunshine was welcome in proportion. Shakspeare is the inventor of the phrase, "setting the table in a roar;" of the memory of Yorick; of the stomach of Falstaff, stuffed as full of wit as of sack. He "wakes the nightowl with a catch;" draws "three souls out of one weaver;" passes the " passes the "equinoctial of Queubus"

(some glorious torrid zone, lying beyond three o'clock in the morning); and reminds the "unco righteous" for ever, that virtue, false or true, is not incompatible with the recreations of "cakes and ale." Shakspeare is said to have died of getting out of a sick-bed to entertain his friends Drayton and Ben Jonson, visitors from London. He might have died a later and a graver death, but he could not well have had one more genial, and therefore more poetical. Far was it from dishonouring the eulogizer of "good men's feasts;" the recorder of the noble friends Antonio and Bassanio; the great thorough-going humanist, who did equal justice to the gravest and the gayest moments of life.

It is a remarkable proof of the geniality of Shakspeare's jesting, that even its abundance of ideas does not spoil it; for, in comedy as well as tragedy, he is the most reflective of writers. I know but of one that comes near him in this respect; and very near him (I dare to affirm) he does come, though he has none of his poetry, properly so called. It is Sterne; in whose Tristram Shandy there is not a word without meaning,—often of the profoundest as well as kindliest sort. The professed fools of Shakspeare are among the wisest of men. They talk Æsop and Solomon in every jest. Yet they amuse as much as they instruct us. The braggart Parolles, whose name signifies words, as

though he spoke nothing else, scarcely utters a sentence that is not rich with ideas; yet his weakness and self-committals hang over them all like a sneaking infection, and hinder our laughter from becoming respectful. The scene in which he is taken blindfold among his old acquaintances, and so led to vilify their characters, under the impression that he is gratifying their enemies, is almost as good as the screen-scene in the School for Scandal.

I regret that I can give nothing of it in this volume, nor even of Falstaff, and Sir Toby, nor Benedick, nor Autolycus, &c. &c., almost all the most laughable comedies of Shakspeare being written in prose. But if it could have been given, how should I have found room for anything else? The confinement to verse luckily does not exclude some entertaining specimens both of his humour and wit.

THE COXCOMB.'

Hotspur gives an account of a noble coxcomb, who pestered him at an unseasonable moment.

Hotspur. My liege, I did deny no prisoners.
But, I remember, when the fight was done,
When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,

Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,
Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin, new reap'd,
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest home;
He was perfumed like a milliner :

And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose, and took 't away again ;—
Who, therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff;2—and still he smil'd and talk'd;
And, as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He called them-untaught knaves, unmannerly,

To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

He questioned me; among the rest demanded
My prisoners, in your Majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold,

To be so pestered with a popinjay,

Out of my grief and my impatience,

Answer'd neglectingly, I know not what ;

He should, or he should not ;-for he made me mad,

To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,

And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman,

Of guns, and drums, and wounds, (God save the mark !)

And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth

Was parmaceti, for an inward bruise;

And that

was great pity, so it was,

That villainous saltpetre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and, but for these vile guns,

He would himself have been a soldier.
This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer'd indirectly, as I said;

And, I beseech you, let not his report