246 CURSORY OBSERVATIONS 



the workj must yield and give way. The variety, which portraits 

 and allegorical figures produce, is not to be slightly given up upon 

 a punctilio of reason, when that reason deprives the art, in a man- 

 ner, of its very existence."* 



In this instance, the exploded Heathen Mythology supplied Ru- 

 bens with his allegorical figures. The materials, thus obtained, 

 were not only contrary to probability, but to possibility ; yet their 

 introduction is justified by Sir Joshua, on the broad ground that 

 they contributed essentially to the end which the painter had in 

 view, of rendering his series of pictures more interesting and agree- 

 able. It is true those allegorical figures had a symbolical applica- 

 tion to the real or supposed qualities of Mary of Medicis, and to the 

 most remarkable events of her life. Rubens was, also, kept in 

 countenance by the spirit of the age ; for all the poets and painters, 

 his contemporaries, were accustomed to introduce these fabulous 

 deities, with an emblematical signification, in their works. Shak- 

 speare, with a similar view and license, but with infinitely more 

 effect, introduced ghosts and witches in Macbeth and Hamlet : but 

 in doing so, he, also, availed himself of the spirit of the age ; and, 

 probably, he, likewise, partook of the belief in those apparitions and 

 demoniac mysteries which then prevailed all over the world. These 

 supernatural agents possessed a fearful interest in his scenes, at that 

 time : at present, when they are disbelieved and laughed at, our 

 dramatic writers have laid them aside as worse than useless. In 

 any modern tragedy, they would be hooted off the stage, and the 

 piece damned. 



Shakspeare uniformly violated the unities of time and place to 

 suit his purpose, and render his dramas more effective. If his daring 

 imagination had been cribbed in and confined by an unseasonable 

 punctilio of reason, and a fear of incurring an inapplicable charge 

 of incongruity, he would, probably, never have merited Dr. John- 

 son's admirable descriptive lines, 



" He looked through nature at a single view, 

 Exhausted worlds, and then imaged new." 



• Discourse VII. 



