he alone had that radiating intellect which extended all ways, and penetrated all things, scattering the darkness of ignorance that rested on his age, while it invigorated its spirit and bettered the heart. He was witty, and humorous, and tender, and lofty, and airy, and profound, beyond all men who have lived before or since. He had that particular and eminent faculty, which no other tragic writer perhaps ever possessed, of divesting his subject altogether of himself. He developed the characters of men, but never intruded himself amongst them. He fashioned figures of all colours and shapes and sizes; but he did not put the stamp of egotism upon them, nor breathe over each the sickly hue of his own opinion. They were fresh and strong, beautiful or grotesque, as occasion asked,-or they were blended and compounded of different metals, to suit the various uses of human life; and thus cast, he sent them forth amongst mankind to take their chance for immortality.

The contemporaries of Shakspeare were great and remarkable men. They had winged imaginations, and made lofty flights. They saw above, below, or around; but they had not the taste or discrimination which he possessed, nor the same extensive vision. They drew correctly and vividly for particular aspects, while he towered above his subject, and surveyed it on all sides, from "top to toe." If some saw farther than others, they were dazzled at the riches before them, and grasped hastily, and with little care. They were perplexed with that variety which he made subservient to the general effect. They painted a portrait-or two or three only, as though afraid of confusion. He, on the other hand, managed and marshalled all. His characters lie like strata of earth, one under another; or, to use his own expression, "matched in mouth like bells,-each under each." We need only look to the plays of Falstaff, where there are wits and rogues and simpletons of a dozen shades,-Falstaff, Hal, Poins, Bardolph, Nym, Pistol, Hostess, Shallow, Silence, Slender,-to say nothing of those rich recruits, equal only to a civil war. Now, no one else has done this, and it must be presumed that none have been able to do it; Marlow, Marston, Webster, Decker, Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher-a strong phalanx, yet none have proved themselves competent to so difficult a task.

It has been well said, that it is not so much in one faculty that Shakspeare excelled his fellows, as in that wondrous combination of talent, which has made him, beyond controversy, eminent above all. He was as universal as the light, and had riches countless. The Greek dramatists are poor in the comparison. The gloom of Fate hung over their tragedies, and they spoke by the oracle. They have indeed too much of the monotony of their skies; but our poet, while he had the brightness of the summer months, was as various as the April season, and as fickle and fantastic as May.

It is idle to say that the characters of writers cannot be discovered from their works. There is sure to be some betrayal,- (Shakspeare is a wonderful and single exception in his dramatic works, but he has written others) -there is always some mark of vanity, or narrow bigotry, or intolerant pride, when either of these vices darken or contract the poet's heart: there is some moment when he who is querulous will complain, and he who is misanthropic will pour out his hate; but passing by the dramas, in which, however, there is no symptom of any personal failings, there is nothing to

See Mr. Hazlitt's Essay on the characters of Shakspeare.

be found in all his lyrical writings, save only a little repining; and this the malice of his stars may well excuse. The poets and wits of modern times would, we suspect, spurn at the servitude which Shakspeare wore out with patience. But he, rich as he was in active faculty, possessed also the passive virtue of endurance-the philosophy which enabled him to meet misfortune, and to bear up against the accidents of poverty and of the time. It is to the eternal honour of Lord Southampton, that he could distinguish in some measure the worth of our matchless poet, and that he had generosity enough to honour and reward it. So much has been written and said on Shakspeare, that we will not add further to the enormities of criticism. He breathes like a giant under the loads of rubbish which his pigmy critics and commentators have flung upon him. One good editor, with a reasonable knowledge of the manners and diction of the times, would do the world a service by casting aside nine-tenths of the barren dissertation that has been wasted on the subject, and which now remains, like a caput mortuum, weighing down the better text of our greatest poet.

After Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher have altogether the highest claims to considerations. For, though Ben Jonson was more eminent in some respects, and Massinger better in others, they were, as serious dramatic poets, decidedly superior to both. It is difficult to separate Beaumont from Fletcher; especially as all the plays wherein the former had a share are not certainly known. Beaumont is said to have had the better judgment (to have "brought the ballast of judgment"), and Fletcher the livelier and more prolific fancy; but as the latter was the sole author of the "Faithful Shepherdess," "Valentinian," "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife," and "The Two Noble Kinsmen,"* besides being concerned jointly with Beaumont in some of the most serious plays which pass under their joint names, he is entitled on the whole to the greatest share of our admiration. An excellent critic has said of Fletcher, that he was "mistrustful of nature.' We think rather that he was careless of her. He lets his Muse run riot too often. There is no symptom of timidity about him (if that be meant): he never stands on the verge of a deep thought, curbing his wit for propriety's sake. On the contrary, he seems often not to know where to stop. Hence it is that his style becomes dilated, and has sometimes an appearance of effeminacy.

If we may believe the portraits of Fletcher, there was something flushed and sanguine in his personal complexion. His eye had a fiery and eager look; his hair inclined to red; and his whole appearance is restless, and, without being heavy, is plethoric. And his verse is like himself. It is flushed and full of animal spirit. It has as much of this as Marlow's had; but there is not the same extravagance, and scarcely the same power, which is to be found in the verse of the elder dramatist. Fletcher, however, had a great deal of humonr, and a great deal of sprightliness. There is a buoyancy in his language that is never perceptible in Massinger, nor even in the shrewder scenes of Ben Jonson;-but he had not a wit like Shakspeare, nor a tithe of his ethereal fancy. There is always something worldly in Fletcher, and the other poets of his time, which interferes with their airest abstractions, and drags down the wings of their Muse. We see it in the "Witch" of Middleton, in the "Faithful Shepherdess" of Fletcher and

* "The Two Noble Kinsmen" is said to have been written by Fletcher and Shakspeare; and the early part of the play certainly betrays marks of the great master hand, or else an imitation so exquisite, as to cause our regret that it was not more frequently attempted.

others; whereas we do not feel it in "The Tempest," nor in "Macbeth," disturbing our delusion; and Oberon and Titania and her crew, even when they mix with the "rude mechanicals,

"Who work for bread upon Athenian stalls,❞—

remain to us a golden dream. They meet by moonlight upon the haunted shores of Athens, to make sport with human creatures, to discuss their tiny jealousies, to submit even to the thraldom of an earthly passion; but they still keep up their elfin state, from first to last, unsoiled by any touch of mortality.

Before we part with Fletcher, we shall give the reader a passage from his tragedy of "Philaster," that will illustrate, more than any thing we can say, both his merits and defects. Bellario (a girl in disguise) addresses the king of Sicily, on behalf of his daughter (Arethusa), who has just been married clandestinely to Philaster. The young couple come in as masquers; and thus the boy-girl intercedes :

Right royal sir, I should

Sing you an epithalamium of these lovers,
But having lost my best airs with my fortunes,
And wanting a celestial harp to strike
This blessed union on, thus in glad story

I give you all. These two fair cedar branches,
The noblest of the mountain, where they grew
Straightest and tallest, under whose still shades
The worthier beasts bave made their layers, and slept
Free from the Sirian star, and the fell thunder-stroke,
Free from the clouds, when they were big with humour,
And deliver'd

In thousand spouts their issues to the earth:

Oh! there was none but silent Quiet there;

Till never pleased Fortune shot up shrubs,

Base under-brambles, to divorce these branches;

And for a while they did so :

And now a gentle gale hath blown again,

And made these branches meet and twine together,
Never to be divided.-The God, that sings

His holy numbers over marriage beds,

Hath knit their noble hearts, and here they stand
Your children, mighty king; and I have done."

With regard to Massinger, there can be no doubt, we think, that he was decidedly inferior to Fletcher as a poet; but that he was a more equal writer is very possible, and he had perhaps as great a share of the mere dramatic faculty. His verse has been celebrated for its flow, we believe, by Dr. Ferriar; but we cannot, we confess, perceive much beauty in it. It is not rugged and harsh, but it wants music, nevertheless; it runs in a tolerably regular current, but it has seldom or never any felicitous modulations. Massinger himself has not much of the fluctuation of genius. We would not be understood to say that carelessness is the necessary concomitant of talent, but merely that Massinger rarely rises much beyond the level on which he sets out. He is less accessible to passion than Fletcher and others, and is not often either very elevated or very profound. His imagination does not soar, like Marlow's, nor penetrate, like the dark subtle power of Webster. He has strength, however, and sometimes great majesty of diction. He builds up a character to a stately height, although he does not often endow it with the turns and vacillations of humanity. "Sforza" is the best which occurs to us at this moment, and is in some measure an exception to our opinion. We do not see any thing improba

ble in his conduct, more than is justified by the irregularities of human nature. His wild admiration and fierce injunctions are sufficiently consistent; and the way in which he rises upon us, from being the slave of a woman's beauty to the height of a hero and philosopher, has always attracted our deep regard. His return, and his remorse, too, are all in character; and though Massinger's forte is by no means the pathetic, the death of Sforza is full of pathos. He sighs forth this breath thus

and here death cuts short his saying; but the unfinished accents are more touching than the most elaborate and highly strained completion.

We think of Ben Jonson, almost as a matter of course, when we name Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. He was not equal to his companions in tragedy; but he was superior to them, and perhaps to almost all others, in his terse, shrewd, sterling, vigorous, comic scenes. He had a faculty between wit and humour (but more nearly allied to the latter), which has not been surpassed. His strokes were sometimes as subtle as Shakspeare's; but his arrowy wit was not feathered. His humour was scarcely so broad and obvious as Fletcher's; but it was more searching, and equally true. His tragedies were inferior to his comedies. He had a learned eye, and set down good things from the book; but he relies upon facts (if we may so speak) instead of Nature, and they do not provide for all the dilemmas to which his heroes are reduced.

Of Middleton it may be said, that he had a high imagination, and was an observer of manners and character; and that his verse was rich, being studded with figures and bright conceits. His play of the "Witch" is supposed by Stevens to have preceded Macbeth; and, if so, there can be no doubt but that Shakspeare made use of it. The relative merits of his witches and those of Shakspeare have already been decided by Mr. Charles Lamb to our satisfaction. As a play, we prefer, on the whole, our author's "Women Beware of Women." Leontio's speech, when he is returning home to his young wife, is a fine compliment to marriage.

Marston was more of a satirist than a dramatic writer. He was harsh in his style, and cynical and sceptical in his ideas of human nature. Nevertheless he was a deep and bold thinker; and he might have filled the office of a court jester, with all the privileges of a motley, for he could whip a folly well. He held up the mirror to vice, but seldom or never to virtue. He had little imagination, and less dilatation, but brings his ideas at once to a point. A fool or a braggart he could paint well, or a bitter wit: but he does little else; for his villains are smeared over, and his good people have no marks of distinction upon them. Yet there are a few touches of strange pathos in the midst of his satires; but they arise from the depth of the sentiment, rather than from the situation of things, or from any strength of passion in the speaker, either of love or pity or despair. Marston appears to us like a man who, having outlived the hopes of a turbulent youth, has learned nothing but that evil is a great principle of human nature, and mingles sparingly the tenderness of past recollections with the bitter consciousness of existing ill.

Decker had a better notion of character than most of his contemporaries ; but he had not the poignancy of Marston, and scarcely the imagination of

Middleton, and fell short of the extravagant power and towering style of Marlow. Perhaps, however, he had more of the qualities of a good dramatist than either. He understood the vacillations of the human mind. His men and women did not march to the end of the drama without turning to the right or to the left; but they gave themselves up to nature and their passions, and let us pleasantly into some of the secrets and inconsistencies of the actual world. His portraits of Mattheo and Bellafront (particularly the former), of Friscobaldo and Hypolito, are admirable. He is almost the only writer (even in his great time) who permits circumstances to have their full effect upon persons, and to turn them from the path on which they set out. He did not torture facts to suit a preconceived character; but varied the character according to events. He knew that to be inconsistent and to change was natural to man (and woman), and acted accordingly. As a specimen of the style of Decker, the reader may take the following extract. The Duke (of Milan) and his Doctor and servants are waiting for the revival of Infelicia, who has been thrown, by opiates, into a sleep.

"Duke. Uncurtain hero Softly, sweet doctor.

You call'd

For music, did you not? Oh, ho! it speaks,

It speaks. Watch, sirs, her waking; note those sands.
Doctor, sit down. A dukedom that should weigh

Mine own twice down, being put into one scale,

And that fond desperate boy Hypolito

Making the weight up, should not (at my hands)
Buy her i' the other, were her state more light
Than hers who makes a dowry up with alms.
Doctor,-I'll starve her on the Apennine,
Ere he shall marry her. I must confess
Hypolito is nobly born; a man,

Did not mine enemy's blood boil in his veins.
Servant. She wakes, my lord.

Duke. Look, Doctor Benedict.

I charge ye, on your lives, maintain for truth
Whate'er the Doctor or myself aver.

Infel. Oh! God,-what fearful dreams!
Servant. Lady!

Duke. Girl!

Chapman (the translator of Homer) was a grave and solid writer; but he did not possess much skill in tragedy; and in his dramas at least, did not show the same poetic power as some of his rivals. Nevertheless he was a fine pedant, a stately builder of verse. In his best-known tragedy, "Bussy d'Ambois," his hero will receive no human help when dying, but says—

"Prop me, true sword, as thou hast ever done.
The equal thought I bear of life and death
Shall make me faint on no side: I am up

Here like a Roman statue: I will stand

Till Death hath made me marble. Oh! my fame,

Live, in despite of murder. Take thy wings,

And haste thee where the grey-eyed Morn perfumes

Her rosy chariot with Sabæan spices;

Fly where the Evening, from Iberian vales,

Takes on her swarthy shoulders Hecaté
Crown'd with a grove of oaks :