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bility, for the purposes of a levee, an opera night, or a 

 dancing room. The EHzabethan was a refined and criti- 

 cal, though perhaps a dissipated pleasiire-seeking age. 

 The Elizabethan gallant, in his gay attire, peach-coloui-ed 

 silk hose, and satin doublet, his pack of cards, and his prac- 

 tice with the duello ; who spent his mornings lounging at 

 Paul's, his afternoons at the theatre or bear-garden indis- 

 criminately, and his evenings in mad riot and potations 

 pottle deep, was not a fervent worshipper at a shrine 

 where morals and ethics were specially inculcated. There 

 is no parade of morality, no open exhibition of it, no such 

 moral essays as were permitted to the Johnsonian age, 

 either from the excellent taste of the poet or other causes. 

 The morality is not obtruded, but it no less exists. The 

 reviewer disbelieves this, and thus illustrates the truism, 

 that slandei', to be efficacious, must be ignorantly and not 

 maliciously framed. The calamity of some natures is to 

 disfigure what they intend to embellish, as the Carrib- 

 bean savage, by tattoo and war-paint, disfigures his per- 

 son, which, if not beautiful, were better vmadomed. The 

 reviewer, to do him justice, has a very warm apprecia- 

 tion of the poet's merits ; he eulogises him sufficiently to 

 satisfy the most fervent enthusiast, but would simply 

 ignore all the noblest claims that he has to the honest 

 admiration of posterity. An innocent, well-meaning boy, 

 playing marbles on the tombstone of a great man, will 

 accidentally do more injury in eftacing his epitaph than 

 a fanatic and malicious foe. After giving in his adhesion 

 to the rule of Shakspere as a dramatist, and to his supe- 

 riority over the national dramatists of other countries, 

 he establishes the dictum, " That the plays are not to be 

 judged as poems ; that the drama is a branch of art pecu- 

 liar in itself, aiming at peculiar effects, and achieving its 

 effects by peculiar means ; that the very condition under 

 which Shakspere writes, is to interest and amuse an 



