makes cowards of us all.» But this conclusion would justify the logician in saying, negatur consequens; for it is entirely detached both from the major and minor propo

sition.

« To

This soliloquy is not less exceptionable in the propriety of expression, than in the chain of argumentation. die-to sleep-no more,» contains an ambiguity, which all the art of punctuation cannot remove for it may signify that « to die,» is to sleep no more; or the expression « no more," may be considered as an abrupt apostrophe in thinking, as if he meant to say « no more of that reflection.»>

« Ay, there's the rub,» is a vulgarism beneath the dignity of Hamlet's character, and the words that follow leave the sense imperfect:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

Not the dreams that might come, but the fear of what dreams might come, occasioned the pause or hesitation. Respect in the same line may be allowed to pass for consideration: but

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

according to the invariable acceptation of the words wrong and contumely, can signify nothing but the wrongs sustained by the oppressor, and the contumely or abuse thrown upon the proud man; though it is plain that Shakspeare used them in a different sense: neither is the word spurn a substantive, yet as such he has inserted it in these lines:

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes.

If we consider the metaphors of the soliloquy, we shall find them jumbled together in a strange confusion.

If the metaphors were reduced to painting, we should find it a very difficult task, if not altogether impracticable, to represent with any propriety outrageous fortune using her slings and arrows, between which indeed there is no sort of analogy in nature. Neither can any figure be more ridiculously absurd than that of a man taking arms against a sea, exclusive of the incongruous medley of slings, arrows, and seas, justled within the compass of one reflection. What follows is a strange rhapsody of broken images of sleeping, dreaming, and shifting off a coil, which last conveys no idea that can be represented on canvass. A man may be exhibited shuffling off his garments or his chains but how he should shuffle off a coil, which is another term for noise and tumult, we cannot comprehend. Then we have « long-lived calamity,» and « time armed with whips and scorns;» and « patient merit spurned at by unworthiness;» and « misery with a bare bodkin going to make his own quietus,» which at best is but a mean metaphor. These are followed by figures « sweating under fardels of burdens,» « puzzled with doubts,» « shaking with fears,» and « flying from evils.» Finally, we see «< resolution sicklied o'er with pale thought,» a conception like that of representing health by sickness; and a « current of pith turned awry so as to lose the name of action, which is both an error in fancy, and a solecism in sense. In a word, this soliloquy may be compared to the Ægri somnia, and the Tabula, cujus vanæ fingentur species.

But while we censure the chaos of broken, incongruous metaphors, we ought also to caution the young poet against the opposite extreme of pursuing a metaphor, until the spirit is quite exhausted in a succession of cold conceits; such as we see in the following letter, said to be sent by Tamerlane to the Turkish emperor Bajazet. Where is the monarch that dares oppose our arms? Where is the potentate who doth not glory in being numbered among our vassals? As for thee, descended from a Turcoman mariner, since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wrecked in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldest furl the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repentance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the harbour of safety; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in the sea of that punishment thou hast deserved.»

But if these laboured conceits are ridiculous in poetry, they are still more inexcusable in prose: such as we find them frequently occur in Strada's Bellum Belgicum. Vix descenderat à prætorià navi Cæsar; cùm fæda ilico exorta in portu tempestas; classem impetu disjecit, prætoriam hausit; quasi non vecturam amplius Cæsarem Cæsarisque fortunam. « Cæsar had scarcely set his feet on shore, when a terrible tempest arising, shattered the fleet even in the harbour, and sent to the bottom the prætorian ship, as if he resolved it should no longer carry Cæsar and his fortunes. »

Yet this is modest in comparison of the following flowers: Alii, pulsis è tormento catenis discerpti sectique, dimidiato corpore pugnabant sibi superstites, ac peremptæ partis ultores. Others, dissevered and cut in twain by chain-shot, fought with one-half of their bodies that remained, in revenge of the other half that was slain. >>

Homer, Horace, and even the chaste Virgil, is not free

from conceits. The latter, speaking of a man's hand cut off in battle, says,

Te decisa suum, Laride, dextera quærit ;

Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant:

thus enduing the amputated hand with sense and volition. This, to be sure, is a violent figure, and hath been justly condemned by some accurate critics; but we think they are too severe in extending the same censure to some other passages in the most admired authors.

Virgil, in his sixth Eclogue, says,

Omnia quæ,

Phœbo quondam meditante, beatus

Audiit Eurotas, jussitque ediscere lauros,
Ille canit.

Whate'er, when Phoebus bless'd the Arcadian plain,
Eurotas heard and taught his bays the strain,
The senior sung-

And Pope has copied the conceit in his Pastorals,

Thames heard the numbers as he flow'd along,
And bade his willows learn the mourning song.

Vida thus begins his first Eclogue,

Dicite, vos musæ, et juvenum memorate querelas;
Dicite nam motas ipsas ad carmina cautes,

Et requiêsse suos perhibent vaga flumina cursus.

Say, heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse :
Begin, ye daughters of immortal verse;
Exulting rocks have own'd the power of song,

And rivers listen'd as they flow'd along.

Racine adopts the same bold figure in his Phædra:

Le flot qui l'apporta recule epouvanté :

The wave that bore him, backwards shrunk appall❜d.

Even Milton has indulged himself in the same licence of expression

-As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabæan odour from the spicy shore

Of Araby the blest; with such delay

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league,
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old ocean smiles.

And indeed more correct writers, both ancient and modern, abound with the same kind of figure, which is reconciled to propriety, and even invested with beauty, by the efficacy of the prosopopoeia, which personifies the object. Thus, when Virgil says Enipeus heard the songs of Apollo, he raises up, as by enchantment, the idea of a river god crowned with sedges, his head raised above the stream, and in his countenance the expression of pleased attention. By the same magic we see, in the couplet quoted from Pope's Pastorals, old father Thames leaning upon his urn, and listening to the poet's strain.

Thus in the regions of poetry, all nature, even the passions and affections of the mind, may be personified