Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek ;-but then add, O! what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression and condensation of, English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond. "COMEDY OF ERRORS." A HE myriad-minded man, our, and all men's Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible. comedy would scarcely allow even the two Antipholuses; because, although there have been instances of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet these are mere individual accidents, casus ludentis naturæ, and the rerum will not excuse the inverisimile. But farce dares add the two Dromios, and is justified in so doing by the laws of its end and constitution. In a word, farces commence in a postulate, which must be granted. "AS YOU LIKE IT." ACT I. sc. 1. "Oli. What, boy! Orla. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this. THERE HERE is a beauty here. beauty here. The word "boy" naturally provokes and awakens in Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of "elder brother," he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no-boy. Ib. "Oli. Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester: I hope, I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learn'd; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved! and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogetlier misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all." This has always appeared to me one of the most. un-Shakespearian speeches in all the genuine works of our poet; yet I should be nothing surprised, and greatly pleased, to find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so often happened to me with other supposed defects of great men.-1810. It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakespeare with want of truth to nature; and yet at first sight this speech of Oliver's expresses truths, which it seems almost impossible that any mind should so distinctly, so livelily, and so voluntarily, have presented to itself, in connection with feelings and intentions so malignant, and so contrary to those which the qualities expressed would naturally have called forth. But I dare not say that this seeming unnaturalness is not in the nature of an abused wilfulness, when united with a strong intellect. In such characters there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making the absoluteness of the will (sit pro ratione voluntas!) evident to themselves by setting the reason and the conscience in full array against it. -1818. Ib. sc. 2. "Celia. If your saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise.” Surely it should be " judgment." Ib. sc. 3. our eyes" and " our "Cel. But is all this for your father? Ros. No; some of it is for my child's father." Theobald restores this as the reading of the older editions. It may be so: but who can doubt that it is a mistake for "my father's child," meaning herself? According to Theobald's note, a most indelicate anticipation is put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason;-and besides, what a strange thought, and how out of place and unintelligible! Act iv. SC. "Take thou no scorn To wear the horn, the lusty horn; I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that like this of "horns" is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin. |
