Gon. And were the king of it, what would I do? And women too, but innocent and pure; Seb.-And yet he would be king on't. Ant.-The latter end of his commonwealth Forgets the beginning." Gon. All things in common nature should produce Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine Would I not have; but nature should bring forth, Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance, To feed my innocent people." The "wilderness of sweets" with which Milton has sated the fancy in his "Eden" is not more comprehensive than this fine pas sage. The best comment which modern writers offer on the golden age is that of Coleridge, in his Friend;† a work, with all its excellence, so little known that a quotation will be sure of novelty ; I hope the reader's attention may be directed to the work itself. Of the very few friends whose "adoption I have tried" Coleridge is the most constant, the wisest, the best. "Antecedent to all history, and long glimmering through it as a holy tradition, there presents itself to our imagination an indefinite period, dateless as eternity; a state rather than a time. For even the sense of succession is lost in the uniformity of the stream." It was towards the close of this "golden age" when conscience acted in man with the ease and uniformity of instinct-when labour was a sweet name for the activity of sane minds in healthful bodies, and all enjoyed in common the bounteous harvest, produced and gathered in by common effort-when there existed in the sexes, and in the individuals of each sex, just variety enough to permit and call forth the gentle restlessness and final union of chaste love and individual attachment, each seeking and finding the beloved one by the natural affinity of their beings—when the dread Sove * Landmark. † The Friend; a series of essays, in three volumes, to aid in the formation of fixed principles in politics, morals, and religion, &c., by S. T. Coleridge. reign of the Universe was known only as the Universal Parent, no altar but the pure heart, and thanksgiving and grateful love the sole sacrifice. * How far we are to receive the doctrine of human perfectibilitynot by conversion, but rather creation-from infancy to age, the reader must determine by a self-examination of the arguments. Certainly all inclination implies acquirement, which also involves agency or cause, and that cause must be independent of our will, otherwise a contradiction in terms. But it may be dangerous for an individual to pursue this inquiry; the world is not yet ripe for reason. “Alonzo. I would with such perfection govern, Sir, To excel the golden age." Thus discoursing, they "lose and neglect the creeping hours of time." Ariel enters, and with his music "charms up their sense in sleep." "Alonzo.-What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts: I find They are inclined to do so. Sebastian. Please you, Sir, Do not omit the heavy offer of it: It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth It is a comforter." That is, the consciousness of thought. Shakspeare has minutely relations: there is nothing within its verge but he has described. Dr. Young's apostrophe to sleep, though fine, is but an amplification of this one line anatomised sleep, in all its states and "It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth It is a comforter." How perfectly the balm of sleep is appreciated!—it is raised into positive enjoyment. "Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care.” Shakspeare must often have shuddered at the agonies he depicted, and thereby grew finely sensible of "the balm of hurt minds."His personification of sleep, in Henry IV., is above all praise. "Sebastian.—What a strange drowsiness possesses them! This is another of those signs of observation, and expresses more * Owenism. than Shakspeare could have anticipated. Common experience tells us many truths, and this among the number, that change of climate affects us in various ways, influencing both the nervous and sanguineous systems, but more especially the nervous. Fresh air is peculiarly sedative, especially to those long excluded from it. This, of course, is self-evident; but the poet here implies a peculiar state of the air, or "quality of the climate:" "the dull and drowsy ayr." That the air is susceptible of changes in its density and rarity is sufficiently plain, as are its effects upon the body. In ascending mountains the changes of climates are sensibly felt, and drowsiness is a common result, even when independent of change of temperature. The atmosphere cannot be varied in its elements or their proportions without injury to life, and therefore these qualities of the climate must depend upon some extrinsic and superadded agent, which is most probably electricity, the animi mundi and animating cause of every atmospheric phenomenon, whether of the "swift-winged cloud," black and impetuous,† or the filmy gauze high up amid the stars of heaven. Some persons are more powerfully affected by atmospherical changes than others, and more so during the summer solstice, when the atmosphere is positively electrified. Females, particularly, are influenced by thunder-storms, and in some instances so strongly as to induce hysteria and epilepsy. The sensibility of an amputated limb, or a once-fractured bone, during atmospheric changes, is generally known. Even a "6 shooting corn" is no mean barometer. Considering the identity of electricity with the "nervous fluid," these and every such like sympathy between man and the external world is explained. Soil and vegetation are of course essential to the "quality of the climate," which in "producing sleep," as Antonio remarks, "is just philosophy, though but common observance." The humourous Trinculo, discovering Calaban, comments most wisely on the monster : Trinculo. What have we here? a man or a fish? A fish he smells like a fish; a Very ancient and fish-like smell. • Spenser. The nimbus. The cirrus, so prevalent in summer, especially in the quiet repose of evening. In the advancement of science, that of meteorology, one of the most interesting, and yet neglected, may hereafter inform us how to oppose those evils which surround us; for science is useless unless it be applicable to our wants. The monomania of Shakspeare's characters, as in The Tempest, Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Cæsar, &c., outrivals all reasoning. Had Shakspeare been a Pinnel he could not more nicely have delineated "the mind's extacy." Though spiritual agency is represented in The Tempest, the visitation to Alonzo is called extacy by Gonzalo, to whom also Ariel would have been visible unless he was blinder than Balaam's ass. The guiltless good old lord, Gonzalo, was insensible to the appearance, and himself attributes the language of Alonzo, &c., to their " extacy;" which word Shakspeare uses for any degree of mental alienation. But of this more "anon." The situation of Ferdinand and Miranda living for themselves, with such a total giving up of the heart, in the solitude of that lonely isle, is inconceivably beautiful. Byron's Haidee and Juan are more sensual, but far less lovely and pleasing. Haidee quickens the pulse, but Miranda awakens the affections. A model for Eve, so perfect and so peerless, created of every creature best." Mrs. Jameson has exquisitely touched the character of Miranda— it is sacred. Prospero, with all his philosophy, is a most subtle disHe reasoned like a god, but he felt as a man and a father. cerner. Prospero to Ferdinand. not give dalliance "Look thou be true; do Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw To the fire i' the blood." Eve fell knowing no ill; Miranda could not have sinned, but her innocence made chastity with Ferdinand a double virtue, and he was a Milanese and a courtier. * Not in Terence. Free translation, "One fool makes many." † Juvenal. "Basium nullo fine terminetur." The masque of Prospero is a most fascinating episode in the play; it overflows with poetry. Milton's Comus is a more laborious composition, but much beneath Shakspeare in the luxuriance and poetry of the light and fantastic train. "Enter Iris. "Iris.-Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Thy banks with peonied and lilied brims, Which spungy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, Ceres. Hail! many-coloured messenger, that ne'er Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter; Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers How lovelily this is painted! we behold at once the flowers and fields with " warm rain wet," the checquered cloud,-" the rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky." This play ends with a most happy consistency: unlike the "catastrophies" generally, there is no abruptness, nor awkward interlopations. Things come about inevitably, because naturally; and the reader is content to leave the chaste Miranda to the delights which are to open before her in the new world to which she hastens ; and yet we may possibly feel some regret that the "spirit of that sweet Isle" was departing, that the "lime grove" would be forsaken, that no voice would ever more awaken the solitude of their cell. The wand is broke-" those strange books drown'd far beyond the plummet's reach"-Prospero's Duke of Milan-Caliban has sued for motley-and "fine Ariel" is free! Z. |