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THE POEMS OF SHAKSPEARE. 

 " His native wood-notes wild." 



THE neglect to which more than two centuries have agreed in con- 

 signing what are called (and it is no figure of speech) the Poems of 

 Shakspeare, has ever astonished us. It is certain that, though, in some 

 instances, we may be led by our veneration of the Saint into a super- 

 stitious adoration of his most worthless appendages, we may have, in 

 other cases, committed a parallel injustice, in restricting the supposed 

 presence of the Divinity to some one shrine, better suited, perhaps, but 

 not more hallowed. 



It is hard to discover a standard, wherewith to measure these appa- 

 rent caprices of taste ; through the influence of which, while one poet 

 has been enabled, by the golden chain of a matchless production, to 

 draw up all his inferior creations another, like chaos separating into 

 elements, with a portion of his material has supplied the atmosphere of 

 the Gods, while the rest of his substance is left to be trampled upon 

 by men. 



The effects of genius, like those of artificial agents, are, and have 

 been, contradictory : the warrior's fame has sometimes proved itself his 

 best ally, and has saved him the bodily exertion of conquering ; the 

 writer's fame has often insured a preternatural duration to the meanest 

 effort of his pen. Renown, like the steam-engine, while it is an applicable 

 strength, multiplies in a mighty ratio the hero's animal power ; or, like 

 paper credit, jvhile public opinion continues propitious, imparts a nominal 

 value to the meanest scrap issued by genius. But it also shares with 

 these extraordinary forces the risk of a recoil, or the natural aversion of 

 the crowd to experiment. 



We have an instance, in the world's behaviour to Shakspeare and 

 Milton, of a whimsical anomaly in public opinion. Milton's smaller 

 poems, like the ring about Saturn, have caught splendour from the 

 principal body; Shakspeare's satellites have been eclipsed in the 

 excessive blaze of his drama, like Mercury in the vicinage of the sun. 

 Perhaps the reason of our different treatment of the vassals, should be 

 sought in the differing natures of the paramount productions. Where 

 the great work is an object for the bulk of its worshippers of unapproach- 

 able awe, where the common reader is called on for such an exertion, as 

 discourages him from frequently recurring to it, he is glad to escape into 

 those more superficial or careless effusions, where towering genius 

 preludes or relaxes. Charmed with the sagacity that can identify the 

 mark of the Paradise in the Allegro, he celebrates, with exaggerated 

 rapture, a work which at once soothes his vanity with the hope that he 

 can feel Milton, and exempts his indolence from the solemnity of Scrip- 

 tural reference. But when the poet's Magnum Opus has an obvious 

 human interest, it engrosses the curiosity of the many ; so that spec- 



