is at least a practice which in no instance has received the sanction of Shakespeare. From such deficiency of mutual interest and liaison among the personages of the drama, I am further strengthened in my belief that our great poet had no share in constructing it. Dr. Johnson long ago observed that his real power is not seen in the splendour of particular passages, but in the progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and when it becomes necessary for me to quote a decision founded on comprehensive views, I can appeal to none in which I should more implicitly confide. Gower relates the story of Pericles in a manner not quite so desultory; and yet such a tale as that of Prince Appolyn, in its most perfect state, would hardly have attracted the notice of any playwright, except one who was quite a novice in the rules of his art."

In this view Malone finally acquiesced, in substance, though, with great truth and good taste, still insisting that "the wildness and irregularity of the fable, the artless conduct of the piece, and the inequalities of the poetry, may be all accounted for, by supposing it either his first or one of his earliest essays in dramatic composition."

Steevens's decision long remained unquestioned, both as to the point of Shakespeare's share of authorship, and the poetic merits of the drama itself; and it has recently received more authority for having been substantially reaffirmed by Mr. Hallam: “From the poverty and bad management of the fable, the want of effective and distinguishable character, and the general feebleness of the tragedy as a whole, I should not believe the structure to have been Shakespeare's. But (he adds) many passages are far more in his manner than in that of any contemporary writer with whom I am acquainted, and the extrinsic testimony, though not conclusive, being of some value, I should not dissent from the judgment of Steevens and Malone, that it was in 'no inconsiderable degree repaired and improved by his hand""

B

(Literature of Europe).

He elsewhere insists that the play is full of evident marks of an inferior hand." Other modern critics, of nearly as high name, have gone still further in censure: W. Gifford, for example, rejects and brands the play as "the worthless Pericles."

This sweeping, unqualified censure was amusingly counterbalanced by as unqualified an expression of admiration, by William Godwin—a writer whose political ethics and metaphysics, full of the boldest opinions, expressed in the most startling and paradoxical form, had prepared the public to expect similar extravagances on all other subjects, and had thus taken away much of the weight of his literary judgments. Yet these judgments are in fact entitled to all the weight due to a writer of genius,-manifesting on all such subjects an extensive acquaintance with English literature in its whole range, guided by a pure taste, and a quick and deep sensibility to every form of beauty. In his Life of Chaucer, incidentally speaking of Pericles, he designates it as "a beautiful drama, which in sweetness of manner, delicacy of description, truth of feeling, and natural ease of language, would do honour to the greatest author that ever existed." Since that period, many others have been more disposed to dwell upon the beauties of Pericles-the existence of which few now deny-than upon its many defects, to which none but a blind idolater of the great bard can close his eyes. Accordingly its merits have been vindicated by the modern continental critics, and by several of the later English ones: as by Franz Horn, Ulrici, Knight, Dr. Drake, and especially by Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), in a long and admirable note, in his memoir of Ben Jonson, prefixed to Moxon's edition of Jonson's works (1838). Barry Cornwall roundly charges the preceding critics (from Pope to Gifford) with having condemned Pericles unread; while he proves that "the merit and style of the work sufficiently denote the author"—that author of whom he eloquently says,

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that he "was and is, beyond all competition, the greatest poet that the world has ever seen. He is the greatest in general power, and greatest in style, which is symbol or evidence of power. For the motion of verse corresponds with the power of the poet; as the swell and tumult of the sea answer to the winds that call them up. From Lear down to Pericles, there ought to be no mistake between Shakespeare and any other writer."

The "glorious uncertainty of the law" has been exemplified and commemorated, in a large and closely printed volume, containing nothing but the mere titles of legal decisions, once acknowledged as law, and since reversed or contradicted, as "cases overruled, doubted, or denied." The decisions of the critical tribunals would furnish materials for a much larger work; and Shakespearian criticism, by itself, would supply an ample record of varying or overruled judgments. Those on the subject of Pericles alone would constitute a large title in the collection.

Yet, in the play itself may be found some foundation for all and each of those opinions, though least for the hasty and vague censures of Pope and Gifford. The play is awkwardly and unskilfully constructed, being on the plan of the old legendary drama, when it was thought sufficient to put some popular narrative into action, with little attempt at a condensed and sustained continuous interest in the plot or its personages. It rambles along through the period of two generations, without any attempt at the artist-like management of a similar duration in the Winter's Tale, by breaking up the story into parts, and making the one a natural sequel to the other, so as to keep up a uniform continuity of interest throughout both. The story itself is extravagant, and its denouement is caused by the aid of the heathen mythology, which every mind, trained under modern associations and habits of thought, feels as repugnant to dramatic truth, and at once refuses to lend to it that transient conventional be

lief so necessary to any degree of illusion or interest, and so readily given to shadowy superstitions of other kinds, as ghosts, witches, and fairies, more akin to our general opinions, or more familiar to our childhood. A still greater defect than this is one rare indeed in any thing from Shakespeare's mind—the vagueness and meagreness of the characters, undistinguished by any of that portrait-like individuality which gives life and reality to the humblest personages of his scene. Thence, in spite of the excellence of particular parts, there results a general feebleness of effect in the whole. The versification is, in general, singularly halting and uncouth, and the style is sometimes creeping and sometimes extravagant.

From these circumstances, if, at the time when Pericles was excluded from the ordinary editions, its place had been supplied by a prose outline of the story, with occasional specimens of the dialogue, such as Voltaire gave of Julius Cæsar, selected only from the most extravagant passages, there would be little hesitation in denying the whole or the greater part of the play to be Shakespeare's, or in allowing that it bore "evident marks of an inferior hand."

Yet, on the other hand, it contains much to please, to surprise, to affect, and to delight. The introduction of old Gower, linking together the broken action by his antiquated legendary narrative, is original and pleasing. The very first scenes have here and there some passages of sudden and unexpected grandeur, and the later acts bear everywhere the very "form and pressure" of Shakespeare's mind. Yet it is observable, that wherever we meet him, in his own unquestionable person, it is not as the poetic Shakespeare of the youthful comedies, but with the port and style of the author of Lear and Cordelia. Indeed, the scene, in the last act, of Pericles's recognition of his daughter, recalls strongly the touching passages of Cordelia's filial love, and Lear's return to reason, by a resemblance, not so much of situation or lan

guage, as of spirit and feeling. The language and style of these nobler passages are peculiarly Shakespearian, and, as Mr. Hallam justly observes, "of the poet's later manner." They have his emphatic mode of employing the plainest and most homely words in the highest and most poetical sense,his original compounds, his crowded magnificence of gorgeous imagery, interspersed with the simplest touches of living nature. Thus, when Pericles retraces his lost wife's features in his recovered child:

"My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one

My daughter might have been; my queen's square brows,
Her stature to an inch; as wand-like straight;

As silver-voic'd; her eyes as jewel-like,

And cas'd as richly; in pace another Juno;

Who starves the ears she feeds, and makes them hungry
The more she gives them speech."

Here, too, we find his peculiar mode of stating and enforcing general truths-not in didactic digression, but as interwoven with and growing out of the incidents or passing emotions of the scene. Taking these characteristics into view, and these alone, the play must be pronounced worthy of all the praise bestowed by Godwin. If, then, we were to reverse the experiment, just suggested, upon the supposed reader who knows no more of Pericles than that it is a play which has been ascribed by some to Shakespeare, and to place before him a prose abstract of the plot, interspersed with large extracts from the finer passages, he would surely wonder why there could have been a moment's hesitation in placing Pericles by the side of Cymbeline and the Winter's Tale.

There are two different solutions of these contradictory phenomena, and it is not easy to decide, with confidence, which is the true one. The first hypothesis is founded upon the old traditionary opinion, that Pericles, in its original form, was one of the author's earliest dramatic essays, per