252 REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOrHY 



tily enough, the difference of their fortunes. Proteus starts in love, 

 a sort of tinder-box to beauty, who takes fire with the first ray of a 

 bright eye. Valentine, as yet "fancy free," escapes Verona, ambi- 

 tious to see the " wonders of the world abroad." Proteus would 

 disuade him : 



« VdL — Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus ; 

 Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits." 



It is curious that Shakspeare should never have travelled, consi- 

 dering the naturally errant inclination which he so often exhibits, 

 and the value which a local knowledge of those places connected 

 with his plays might have given him ; he has, of course, for want 

 of this knowledge, made several geographical blunders, especially 

 that well-known one of making Bohemia a sea-port — it might have 

 been known to him. He must have studied with some eagerness to 

 supply the deficiency of travel. 



This first scene is full of verbal quibbles and puns. To condemn 

 Shakspeare on the score of his puns and quibbles is common with 

 those saturnine, self-important persons, whose dignity is superior to 

 a smile. But is it not rather an excellence than a fault? being not 

 only a peculiarity of the age in which he lived, but also common to 

 every anterior and succeeding period ? With the lower class of the 

 present day, what is so frequent as those little Jew d' esprit, called 

 puns, those diaphragmatic stimuli. The Elizabethan spra of Latin 

 and love, was celebrated for that euphuistical style of conversation 

 which was always oscillating between the sublime and the ridicu- 

 lous, the sober and the silly, and which those " chartered libertines," 

 the " fools" of that day, tended to increase by their ceaseless ribaL 

 dry and jests. An ancient rhetorician delivered a caution against 

 dwelling too long on the excitation of pity, for " nothing," he said, 

 " dries so soon as tears." I have often noticed that ridicule and risi- 

 bility never appear so easily excited as on the most melancholy oc- 

 casions. Shakspeare's plays are the phantasmagoric images of the 

 world as it is — a magnified, but yet a perfect, portraiture. Those 

 who cry out against " plays on words," writes Schlegel, as an un- 

 natural and affected invention, only betray their own ignorance : 

 with children, as well as nations of the most simple manners, a 

 great inclination to this is often displayed." 



In Homer we find several examples ; the Books of Moses, the old- 

 est written memorial of the primitive world, are full of them ; on 

 the other hand, poets and orators, as Cicero, have delighted in them. 



