450 THE POEMS OF SHAKSPEARE. 



beyond its fair limit, when he dared to assert that Shakspeare " in 

 tragedy, often writes with great appearance of labour, what is written at 

 last with little felicity" " that the effect of his throes is tumour, 

 meanness, tediousness, and obscurity" " that in narration, he affects a 

 disproportionate pomp of diction, and a wearisome train of circumlocu- 

 tion, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have 

 been more perfectly delivered in few." Does this characterize the 

 author of " Othello," or of " Irene ?" Is our egotistical doctor his own 

 theme ? When this learned Theban alternately thunders and chuckles 

 over Shakspeare's "love of quibbling," he is, to a believing reader, 

 what he asserts a quibble is to Shakspeare " a luminous vapour that 

 deceives the traveller." Whoever has witnessed the childishness of 

 agony, that shocking levity with which men in deep woe grasp at a 

 word, or hunt down a thought, will impute these apparent blemishes to 

 their true cause Shakspeare's knowledge of the unaccountable moods of 

 the mind. But let this incomparable bard pronounce, in his own lan- 

 guage, his own justification : 



<l Sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell 

 Once set a-ringin<j, with its own weight goes ; 

 That little strength rings out the doleful knell. 

 So Lucrece, set a-woik, sad tales doth tell 

 To pencil'd peusiveness and coloured sorrow." 



Equally unfounded is Johnson's censure of the moral tendency of Shak- 

 speare's plays. He owns, that from his works " a system of social duty 

 could be collected ;" but he blames him because " his precepts and ac- 

 tions drop casually from him ;" that is, he blames the great painter of 

 this world, for the exact portraiture of that present providence, the mo- 

 ral governance of which no one denies to appear accidental, though the 

 combined result of the whole can only be explained by the employment 

 of infinite wisdom. Shakspeare was too great a philosopher to imagine 

 that the world could be imposed on by that stale ethical falsehood, that 

 every action, good or bad, is to meet its immediate and appropriate re- 

 ward ; but has unpretendingly enforced this general product of his reflec- 

 tion, that the balance of happiness will be found in the aggregate in 

 favour of goodness. We are perfectly convinced, that those authors, 

 who have gone on a contrary principle, of representing the world as one 

 large court of law and equity, always sitting without one drawback of 

 fee, vacation time, or quibble, if they have done anything, (which is 

 improbable), have done harm ; and that the disciples (if such there be) 

 of Rasselas, Celebs, or lazy Lawrence, cheated ere long of their fair 

 hopes, will have to exclaim before they die, with the greatest disciple of 

 Zeno's school, " Virtue, what art thou but a name ?" Had this charge 

 of immorality been made against Beaumont and Fletcher,* the next 

 best poets of the day, who seem more completely emancipated from the 

 trammels of law and morality than might be expected from the sons of a 

 judge and a bishop, we should, without a sigh, have resigned them to 

 the critical lash. But we can never consent that Shakspeare should be 

 charged with error, in what is one of his most signal merits that ex- 



* See Campbell's Essay on the British Poets. 



