vation of the feminine character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and intelligible-not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in history— MEDON. In history?-this is new! ALDA. Yes! I repeat, in history, where certain isolated facts and actions are recorded, without any relation to causes, or motives, or connecting feelings; and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns in disgust, and the feeling heart has no relief but in positive, and I may add, reasonable incredulity. I have lately seen one of Correggio's finest pictures, in which the three Furies are represented, not as ghastly deformed hags, with talons, and torches, and snaky hair, but as young women, with fine luxuriant forms and regular features, and a single serpent wreathing the tresses like a bandeau-but such countenances ! -such a hideous expression of malice, cunning, and cruelty !—and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa Where it is less the horror than the grace * 'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on the same principle, having said himself, that " proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman." Hence it is that whether he portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth; or the wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude, Lady Anne, or Cressida, he is the more fearfully impressive, because we cannot claim for ourselves an exemption from the same nature, before which, in its corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust. VOL. I. vation of the feminine character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and intelligible-not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in history MEDON. In history?-this is new! Yes! I repeat, in history, where certain isolated facts and actions are recorded, without any relation to causes, or motives, or connecting feelings; and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns in disgust, and the feeling heart ha no relief but in positive, and I may add, re able incredulity. I have lately seen one reggio's finest pictures, in which the thre are represented, not as ghastly defor with talons, and torches, and snak young women, with fine luxuri regular features, and a single the tresses like a bandeau-but -such a hideous expression and cruelty!—and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da Vinci worked upon the same grand principle of art in his Medusa Where it is less the horror than the grace 'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on the same principle, having said himself, that "proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman." Hence it is that whether he portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth; or the wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude, Lady Anne, or Cressida, he is the more fearfully impressive, because we cannot claim for ourselves an exemption from the same nature, before which, in its corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust. VOL. I. Do MEDON. you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a monstrous and incredible libel on your sex ? ALDA. They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of those women whom we see walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of the world-the puppets of habit, the fools of fortune, without any particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue; whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by opinion, not by conscience; who are good while there is no temptation to be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation: not three months a widow, and following to the sepulchre the remains of a husband and a father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them. In such a case it required perhaps either Richard |