missing its constructions, which are numerous, and those too of a very idiomatic kind in the early English poetry the works of Chaucer, for instance, and in some of the extant specimens of the mysteries and moralities. These there is no doubt that Shakspeare read and remembered. Over and above this, there are, I am convinced, in his works, many forms of expression which we may call self-invented, as well as newly compounded words; and from these causes have arisen much of that indistinctness to the ordinary reader, of which Mr. Hallam, in his late excellent criticism, loudly complains. But we should remember, that to the same source we owe Shakspeare's wonderful freedom from mannerism, almost always really the result of poverty, that constant freshness and endless variety of phrase, which, though we may be sometimes wearied by his style, makes it impossible that, as in the case of Gibbon, we should be weary of it. Besides his licenses, there is scarcely a single legitimate grammatical arrangement which does not find a place in his writings. In this particular he surpasses the dramatists of his own day, as much as they generally excel those of the succeeding period. Hence we may account for similarities of construction, which, in the case of any other writer, we should at once pronounce to be copied from the Greeks. It is this flexibility, together with his unequalled command

of metaphor, which gives him so great a power over
the management of the ethical maxim; in the fre-
quency of the use of which, though perhaps not in
the manner, he again comes nearer to the ancient
tragedians than our dramatists have generally done.
To bring forward a recognised moral truth, as such,
but in a form and in language as widely different as
possible from that in which the metaphysician or moral

i In this the writers of the French school bear of course a closer resem-
blance to the Greek dramatists. Of those who adopted the more sententious
mode of expressing the yvwun, Young appears to have been one of the most
successful, probably because he was naturally disposed to didactic writing.
Much that he has written would indeed split up into crystals of morality. god
Of his Night Thoughts, though the general argument is excellent, we may
safely say, with Juliet,

"Take it and cut it up in little stars,"

"And all the world shall fall in love with night."

It is curious to watch the different forms and conditions of the yvwun in
different hands, and in different periods of the drama. In the two older
tragedians, commanding respect as the earnest and solemn voice of philosophy
and religion; in Euripides and Seneca, more frequently like the saw of
the moral dogmatist; in Terence and in Shakspeare, the voice of acting or
suffering human nature, always in conformity with the character of the person
who gives it utterance, and proceeding oftener from the heart than the head;
Latin
dramatists, often little more than a species of acknowledgment of
the subservience of the drama to moral purposes, the voice of sheer bypocrisy,
forced upon the writer, sneered at by the pit and boxes, and only destined
to deceive the gods. For those "spirits of the wise" do not merely "sit in
the clouds and mock." That the virtuous sentiment, or the righteous retri-
bution, meet with due applause, is theirs.

-

A

*

Ημενον ἄνω φρόνημά πως
Αὐτόθεν ἐξέπραξεν ἔμπας
Εδράνων ἐφ ̓ ἀγνῶν.
d

This passage in the Supplices of Desctylus is thus read in my edition

πως

TION

ес

But even thew the passage is not quite correct. For I would now preter- accu

philosopher would present it, and to bring it so forward, that the sympathy of the reader, or spectator, with the action, should be heightened, rather than interrupted, is undoubtedly one of the greatest difficulties of dramatic writing: this art Shakspeare possessed in an eminent degree, and was apparently fond of exercising it.

To the other causes of resemblance we may add the subjects of Shakspeare's plays, and, dependently on them, what may be called his dramatic positions. The success of most plays has been owing either to accurate or skilfully exaggerated representation of the manners of the day; or to highly wrought appeals to the passions; or, thirdly, to a national interest, where the groundwork of the piece consists of a legend, or a portion of the history of the country to which the audience belongs. All these sources of interest may of course be combined in the same play, but one of them generally predominates. Of these, Shakspeare has depended on the first, less, and on the third, more, than any other of our dramatists. Here, then, is another means of accounting for his greater similarity to the masters of ancient tragedy, inasmuch as they can have nothing in common with the shifting forms of European manners; according to which, not merely the language, but the incidents and plots of so many of our dramas are regulated. Ancient tragedy

"seldom smiles ;" and if it does, it is with the smile of Cassius. Here we can seldom find any parallel to the Greeks, except perhaps some metaphorical expression, or an occasional repartee. The more intensely passionate tragedies in our language are indeed in many of their subjects akin to those of Eschylus and Sophocles, but in manner there is generally a considerable distinction. In the former, there is far more activity, more of the agony and distortion of the human victim, either grappling with, or wildly embracing, the passion of which he is alternately the master and the slave: in the latter, the hero is led through a path of terror, slowly, perhaps, but ever onward, by the iron hand of a power, whose throne is higher than Olympus.

The frequent dignity of the character of the sufferer, the wider interest, or national consequence of the catastrophe, the calmer progress, the simplicity of the plot, the longer narrative, the rare introduction of love, find, on the whole, the closest parallel in the historical plays of Shakspeare. These, accordingly, possessing an advantage in the above-mentioned respects, offering also much opportunity for the introduction of the moral maxim, and being equally open with the others to peculiarities of construction, supply, on the whole, as might have been expected, the greatest number of parallel passages.

Once more, in speaking of Shakspeare's similarity generally, much is doubtless owing to the multiplicity of his ideas. None ever swept with so wide a pinion the whole universe of thought, not confined to the same line, or to an uniform elevation, but free, and with a vigour which allowed him to use his liberty to the utmost, it is not perhaps to be wondered at, that we find him frequently crossing, in his flight, the path of every poet on whose track the light is still remaining; nor can we conceive it possible for any truly great and natural poet to arise, who shall not occasionally find himself within limits which Shakspeare has already traversed. These appear to me the most reasonable means of accounting for many extraordinary similarities. What he may have gathered from conversation with learned friends, from translations, or fragments of translations, in English or continental languages,

On the subject of Shakspeare's learning, almost all that his two worthiest critics have remarked is contained in the subjoined extracts.

Shakspeare was poor in dead learning, but he possessed a fulness of living and applicable knowledge. He knew Latin, and even something of Greek, though not probably enough to read the writers with ease in the original language."-Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature, lect. xii.

"It is not unimportant to notice, how strong a presumption the diction and allusions of this play (Love's Labour's Lost) afford; that though Shakspeare's acquirements in the dead languages might not be such as we understand in a learned education, his habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits," &c.-Literary Remains of S. T. Coleridge, vol. ii. p. 108,