often touch us more, without their due preparations, than those of other tragick poets, who have all the beauty of design and all the advantage of incidents. His master passion was terror, which he has often mov'd so powerfully and so wonderfully, that we may justly conclude, that if he had had the advantage of art and learning, he wou'd have surpass'd the very best and strongest of the ancients. His paintings are often so beautiful and so lively, so graceful and so powerful, especially where he uses them in order to move terror, that there is nothing perhaps more accomplish'd in our English poetry. His sentiments, for the most part in his best tragedies, are noble, generous, easie and natural, and adapted to the persons who use them. His expression is, in many places, good and pure, after a hundred years; simple tho' elevated, graceful tho' bold, and easie tho' strong. He seems to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony; that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and trisyllable terminations. For that diversity distinguishes it from heroick harmony, and, bringing it nearer to common use, makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dialogue. Such verse we make when we are writing prose; we make such verse in common conversation.

"If Shakespear had these great qualities by nature, what would he not have been, if he had join'd to so happy a genius learning and the poetical art. For want of the latter, our author has sometimes made gross mistakes in the characters which he has drawn from history, against the equality and conveniency of manners of his dramatical persons. Witness Menenius in the following tragedy, whom he has made an arrant buffoon, which is a great absurdity. For he might as well have imagin'd a grave majestick Jack Pudding, as a buffoon in a Roman senator. Aufidius, the general of the Volscians, is shewn a base and a profligate villain. He has offended against the equality of the manners even in the hero himself. For Coriolanus, who in the first part of the tragedy is shewn so open, so frank, so violent, and so magnanimous, is represented in the latter part by Aufidius, which is contradicted by no one, a flattering, fawning, cringing, insinuating traytor."

Mr. Dennis proceeds very generously to apologize for Shakespear's faults, by observing, that he had neither friends to consult, nor time to make corrections. He, also, attributes his lines" utterly void of celestial fire," and passages" harsh and unmusical," to the want of opportunity to wait for felicitous hours and moments of choicest inspiration. To remedy these defects-to mend the harmony and to put life into the dulness of Shakespear-Mr. Dennis has assayed, and brought his own genius to the alteration of Coriolanus for the stage, under the lofty title of "The Invader of his Country, or the Fatal Resentment." In the catastrophe, Coriolanus kills Aufidius, and is himself afterwards slain, to satisfy the requisitions of poetical justice; which, to Mr. Dennis's great distress, Shakespear so often violates. It is quite amusing to observe, with how per

verted an ingenuity all the gaps in Shakespear's verses are filled up, the irregularities smoothed away, and the colloquial expressions changed for stately phrases. Thus, for example, the noble wish of Coriolanus on entering the forum—

"The honoured gods

Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice
Supplied with worthy men! plant love among us!
Throng our large temples with the shows of peace,
And not our streets with war"-

is thus elegantly translated into classical language:

"The great and tutelary gods of Rome
Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice
Supplied with worthy men: plant love among you :
Adorn our temples with the pomp of peace,

And, from our streets, drive horrid war away.”

The conclusion of the hero's last speech on leaving Rome“Thus I turn my back: there is a world elsewhere,"

is elevated into the following heroic lines

"For me, thus, thus, I turn my back upon you,
And make a better world where'er I go."

His fond expression of constancy to his wife

"That kiss

I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip
Hath virgined it e'er since,❞—

is thus refined:

"That kiss

I carried from my love, and my true lip

Hath ever since preserved it like a virgin."

The

The icicle, which was wont to "hang on Dian's temple," here more gracefully "hangs upon the temple of Diana." burst of mingled pride, and triumph of Coriolanus, when taunted with the word "boy," is here exalted to tragic dignity. Our readers have, doubtless, ignorantly admired the original:

Fluttered your Volsces in Corioli.

Alone I did it-Boy!"

The following is the improved version:

"This boy, that, like an eagle in a dove court,
Flutter'd a thousand Volsces in Corioli,
And did it without second or acquittance,

Thus sends their mighty chief to mourn in hell!"

Who does not now appreciate the sad lot of Shakespearso feelingly bewailed by Mr. Dennis-that he had not a critic, of the age of King William, by his side, to refine his stile and elevate his conceptions?

It is edifying to observe, how the canons of Mr. Dennis's criticism, which he regarded as the imperishable laws of genius, are now either exploded, or considered as matters of subordinate importance, wholly unaffecting the inward soul of poetry. No one now regards the merits of an Epic poem, as decided by the subservience of the fable and the action to the moral-by the presence or the absence of an allegory-by the fortunate or unfortunate fate of the hero-or by any other rules of artificial decorum, which the critics of former times thought fit to inculcate. We learn, from their essays, whether the works which they examine are constructed, in externals, according to certain fantastic rules; but, whether they are frigid or impassioned, harmonious or prosaic, filled with glorious imaginations, or replete with low common-places ;-whether, in short, they are works of genius or of mere toil-are questions entirely beneath their concern. The critique on the tragedy of Cato, ingenious and just as it is, omits one material objection to that celebrated piecethat it is good for nothing, and would be so if all the faults selected for censure could be, in an instant, corrected. There is a French essay on Telemachus, framed on the same superficial principles of criticism, which, after a minute examination of the moral, fable, characters, allegory, and other like requisites of excellence, triumphantly proves its claim to be ranked with, if not above, the great poems of Homer and of Virgil. Mr. Dennis seems, in general, to have applied the rules of criticism, extant in his day, to the compositions on which he passed judgment; but there was one position respecting which his contemporaries were not agreed, and on which he combated with the spirit of a martyr. This disputed point, the necessity of observing poetical justice in works of fiction, we shall briefly examine, because we think that it involves one of those mistakes in humanity, which it is always desirable to expose. But first we must, in fairness, lay one of our author's many arguments, on this subject, before our readers.

"The principal character of an epick poem must be either morally good or morally vicious; if he is morally good, the making him end unfortunately will destroy all poetical justice, and, consequently, all instruction such a poem can have no moral, and, consequently, no fable, no just and regular poetical action, but must be a vain fiction and an empty amusement. Oh, but there is a retribution in futurity! But I thought that the reader of an epick poem was to owe his instruction to the poet, and not to himself: well then, the poet may tell him so at the latter end of his poem: ay, would to God I could see such a latter end of an epick poem, where the poet should tell the reader, that he has cut an honest man's throat, only that he may have an opportunity to send him to heaven; and that, tho' this would be but an indifferent plea upon an indictment for murder at the Old Baily, yet that he hopes the good-natur'd reader will have compassion on him, as the gods have on his hero. But raillery apart, sir, what occasion is there for having recourse to an epick poet to tell ourselves by the bye, and by occasional reflection, that there will be a retribution in futurity, when the Christian has this in his heart constantly and directly, and the Atheist and Free-thinker will make no such reflection? Tell me truly, sir, would not such a poet appear to you or me, not to have sufficiently consider'd what a poetical moral is? And should not you or I, sir, be oblig'd, in order to make him comprehend the nature of it, to lay before him that universal moral, which is the foundation of all morals, both epick and dramatick, and is inclusive of them all, and that is, That he who does good, and perseveres in it, shall always be rewarded; and he who does ill, and perseveres in it, shall always be punish'd? Should we not desire him to observe, that the foresaid reward must always attend and crown good actions, not sometimes only, for then it would follow, that sometimes a perseverance in good actions has no reward, which would take away all poetical instruction, and, indeed, every sort of moral instruction, resolving Providence into chance or fate. Should we not, sir, farther put him in mind, that since whoever perseveres in good actions, is sure to be rewarded at the last, it follows, that a poet does not assert by his moral, that he is always sure to be rewarded in this world, because that would be false, as you have very justly observ'd, p. 60; and, therefore, never can be the moral of an epick poem, because what is false may delude, but only truth can instruct. Should we not let him know, sir, that this universal moral only teaches us, that whoever perseveres in good actions, shall be always sure to be rewarded either here or hereafter; and that the truth of this moral is prov'd by the poet, by making the principal character of his poem, like all the rest of his characters, and like the poetical action, at the bottom, universal and allegorical, even after distinguishing it by a particular name, by making this principal character at the bottom, a meer poetical phantom of a very short duration, thro' the whole extent of which duration we can see at once, which continues no longer than the reading of the poem, and that being over, the phantom is to us nothing, so that unless our sense is satisfy'd of the reward that is given to this poetical phantome, whose whole duration we see thro' from the very beginning to the end; instead of a wholsome moral, there would

be a pernicious instruction, viz. That a man may persevere in good actions, and not be rewarded for it thro' the whole extent of his duration, that is, neither in this world nor in the world to come."

It may be sufficient to answer to all this-and to much more of the same kind which our author has adduced-that little good can be attained by representations which are perpetually at variance with our ordinary perceptions. The poet may represent humanity as mightier and fairer than it appears to a common observer. In the mirror which he "holds up to nature," the forms of might and of beauty may look more august, more lovely, or more harmonious, than they appear, in the light of common day," to eyes which are ungifted with poetic vision. But if the world of imagination is directly opposed to that of reality, it will become a cold abstraction, a baseless dream, a splendid mockery. We shall strive in vain to make men sympathise with beings of a sphere purely ideal, where might shall be always right, and virtue its own present as well as exceeding great reward. Happily, the exhibition is as needless for any moral purposes, as it would be inadequate to attain them. Though the poet cannot make us witnesses of the future recompense of that virtue, which here struggles and suffers, he can cause us to feel, in the midst of its very struggles and sufferings, that it is eternal. He makes the principle of immortality manifest in the meek submission, in the deadly wrestle with fate, and even in the mortal agonies of his noblest characters. What, in true dignity, does virtue lose, by the pangs which its clay tenement endures, if we are made conscious of its high prerogatives, though we do not visibly gaze on the immunities which shall ultimately be its portion? Hereafter it may be rewarded, but now it is triumphant. We require no dull epilogue to tell us, that it shall be crowned in another and happier state of being; for our souls gush with admiration and sympathy with it, amidst its sorrows. We love it, and burn to imitate it, for its own loveliness, not for its gains. Surely it is a higher aim of the poet to awaken this emotion-to inspire us with the awe of goodness, amidst its deepest external debasements, and to make us almost desire to share in them, than to invite us to partake in her rewards, and to win us by a calculating sympathy. The hovel or the dungeon does not, in the pictures of a genuine poet, give the coloring to the soul which inhabits it, but receives from its majesty a consecration beyond that of temples, and a dignity more exalted than that of palaces. For it is his high prerogative to exhibit the spiritual part of man triumphant over that about him, which is mortal-to shew, in his far-reaching hope, his moveless constancy, his deep and disinterested affections, his enthusiasm which no disappointment can quench, that