452 THE POEMS OF SHAKSPEARE. 



infamous crime and detestable policy alike rendered them unworthy. 

 This artful dynasty had itself wielded the pen, and could well estimate 

 the value of its service, when skillfully guided, Its last representative, 

 in whom all the wicked energies of that house were concentrated, the 

 man- queen Elizabeth, has contrived to ensconce her bloated iniquities 

 behind the webs of a thousand poets and historians. These have sent 

 her down to posterity the virgin, the heroine, the good queen Bess. 

 No doubt the enemies of her house suffered in proportion ; for whenever 

 the cardinal virtues are forced into one camp for greater security, the 

 cardinal vices are detached to the other. 



We have small hesitation in avowing, that Shakspeare has contributed, 

 perhaps from necessity, to produce or fortify some of these errors ; and 

 we can hardly blame him for leaning partially to that queen who is said 

 to have suggested subjects to his muse. But whenever the remoteness 

 of the scene presents an occasion, that love of freedom, which ever 

 burns in the breast of the truly great, bursts forth uncontrollably.. Let 

 those who doubt, compare this plebeian in his conception of Brutus and 

 Cassius with the republican Dante, or the patrician Sackville ; 



" Oh, bloody Brutus, rightly dost thou rue, 

 And thou, O Cassius, justly came thy fall.*" 



Johnson asserts Shakspeare's genius to have had a natural tendency to 

 comedy. " His tragedy seems to have been skill, his comedy instinct." 

 To decide at the bottom of which depth of the unfathomable ocean 

 the most treasure lies strewed, may, at first sight, seem an inquiry as 

 hopeful as the decision between Shakspeare's excellences. We have no 

 sufficient data for such comparison ; yet, to us, it has always appeared, 

 that into the mirth of Shakspeare, as into the Irish music, there entered 

 a pathos, f the reverse of which we could never discern in his sorrow. 

 Our surmise will be allowed to receive confirmation, if we can produce an 

 instance of the same subject treated by Shakspeare and some author .of 

 a decided comic cast, in which the former shall have differed from the 

 latter by introducing a sympathy into a ludicrous situation. The prac- 

 tical joke of a duel between cowards has never been so ably conducted 

 as by Shakespeare, in his Twelfth Night, and by Johnson in his silent 

 Woman. The mutual fears of Ague cheek and Viola, and of Daw and 

 Lafoole, are excited in a manner very similar. It would be hard to 

 adjust the scales of humour between Sir Toby and Truewit. After the 

 former has acquainted the supposed Cesario, that "his interceptor, full 

 of despite, bloody as the hunter, attends him at Orchard's End," how 

 artfully does he raise the climax of horror, when he assures him, " souls 

 and bodies has he divorced three and his incensement, at this moment, 



* Millon has been praised, and deservedly, for having seen through the false 

 taste of his age in Gardens. Shakspeare detecttd error in a wider field elo- 

 quence. The speech of Brutus to his people is in the fashion of the time of Sir 

 Edward Coke, for instance, though Shakespeare has improved him, as he Little- 

 ton. The correction and reprimand of his contemporaries are in the matchless 

 speech of Antony, which none other of that day could have conceived, and which 

 Curran considered the best study for an incipient orator. 



t Vide the death of Falstaff, or the meeting of Master Launcelot Gobbo and his 

 papa. 



