AND OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 26*7 



thought" which Hamlet refined upon — it seems too good for Clau- 

 dio ; such a fear of death is peculiar to exalted and deeply thinking 

 minds. The celebrated Johnson could not hear the word death 

 lightly pronounced ; in an instant the current of his thoughts was 

 turned awry, and with an inward dread he would solemnly pro- 

 nounce that sublime passage of Milton, for " who would lose for 

 fear of pain, this intellectual being."* The fear is not of death, but 

 that uncertainty, which every mind capable of thought must, in 

 spite of faith, sometimes dwell upon, the ", dread uncertainty of 

 after death," and, most horrible of all, the dread of annihilation, 

 " to lose this intellectual being." 



After these inimitable scenes, the mind is relieved by the simpli- 

 city of the Duke's descriptions ; indeed, nearly the whole of the 

 next scenes are incidental, humourous, and light : the duet of Lucio 

 and the disguised Duke is highly amusing. — Exit Lucio — 



" Duke. — No might nor greatness in mortality 

 Can censure 'scape ; back-wounding calumny 

 The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong. 

 Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ?" 



This is a salvo for all the wounds which candour inflicts ; for we 

 are all kings in degree, and have, more or less, our royal liabilities. 



Act the fourth opens with a song by Mariana. Though Shak- 

 speare's rhymes are heavy, and more epigrammatic than delicate, 

 yet in the occasional songs introduced in his plays I know of none 

 in Anacreon more delicate and spirited.f 



" Take, oh take, those lips away, 

 That so sweetly were forsworn ; 



* "Miss Seward — There is one mode of the fear of death, which is certainly 

 absurd ; and that is the dread of annihilation, which is only a pleasing sleep 

 without a dream. 



Johnson — It is neither pleasing, nor sleep ; it is nothing. Now mere ex- 

 istence is so much better than nothing, that one would rather exist even in 

 pain than not exist. The lady confounds annihilation, which is nothing, with 

 the apprehension of it, which is dreadful." — See BoswelPs Life of Johnson. 



-r The pleasures of the mind are so ascendant that the most illustrious 

 men have sighed for a heaven of such enjoyment. Hence it is that we so 

 readily communicate that happiness by a direction to the source of it ; hence 

 it is that I here distinguish the name of Tennyson, whose beautiful Lyrics 

 are less known than they merit : one of the most beautiful is taken from 

 this character of our poet. Never was written a more impressive and fasci- 

 nating poem than Mariana in the Moated Grange ; the imagery is incompa- 

 rable. 



