feelings, who do not well know how to refer these feelings to their causes; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded, and to trace the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered; and when this is done with warmth as well as precision, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation; a thousand slight and harmonizing touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit which can only be recognised by those who are in some measure under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it, by worshipping meekly at the shrines which it inhabits.

"In the exposition of these there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancy of all English readers-but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images-that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic in the simple aspect of nature that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry-and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul-and which, in the midst of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins-contrasting with all

that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements-which he alone has poured out from the richness of his own mind without effort or restraint, and contrived to intermingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this world's affairs, without deserting for an instant the proper business of the scene, or appearing to pause or digress from love of ornament or need of repose; he alone, who, when the subject requires it, is always keen, and worldly, and practical, and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him as he goes all sounds and shapes and sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace, and is a thousand times more full of imagery and splendour than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists in existence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequalled perfection; but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination as not to jostle, or disturb, or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage not less, but more rapidly and directly, than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support, and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands,

nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but spring living from the soil in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator."

As a writer of miscellaneous poetry, Shakspeare is not so generally known and appreciated, as he is for his marvellous productions of a dramatic character; and yet it would be difficult to find, in the whole range of poetical literature, compositions more gorgeous in description, and more beautiful in imagery than are some of his minor poems. His sonnets, of which he composed one hundred and fifty-four, are exquisitely written; many of them profound in thought and brilliant in fancy. The following striking passage is selected from vol. 7 of "The Retrospective Review":"It is the fashion to admire Shakspeare before every other writer of our country and the fashion is good. He was beyond doubt the rarest spirit that ever spoke, uninspired, to man. The scholar and the antiquarian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Italian, may contend for the high excellence of others. They may laud the originality and majesty of Homer, the grace of Virgil, and the terrible strength of Dante. We admit them all. Those great authors may, or may not, be more original than our own poet. They certainly possessed the doubtful advantage of having lived (and died) before him. But that the one is more original where he claims originality, or that the others surpassed him in occasional grace, or could compete with him in general power, we utterly deny.

:

Shakspeare was the profoundest thinker, the wittiest, the airiest, the most fantastic spirit (reconciling the extremes of ordinary natures) that ever condescended to teach and amuse mankind. He plunged into the depths of speculation; he penetrated to the inner places of knowledge, plucking out the heart of the mystery;' he soared to the stars; he trod the earth, the air, the waters. Every element yielded him rich tribute. He surveyed the substances and the spirits of each; he saw their

stature, their power, their quality, and reduced them without an effort to his own divine command.

"It is quite impossible to estimate the benefit which this country has received from the eternal productions of Shakspeare. Their influence has been gradual, but prodigious; operating at first on the loftier intellects, but becoming in time diffused over all, spreading wisdom and charity amongst us. There is, perhaps, no one person of any considerable rate of mind who does not owe something to this matchless poet. He is the teacher of all good,-pity, generosity, true courage, love. His works alone (leaving mere science out of the question) contain, probably, more actual wisdom than the whole body of English learning. He is the text for the moralist and the philosopher. His bright wit is cut out into little stars; his solid masses of knowledge are meted out in morsels and proverbs; and, thus distributed, there is scarcely a corner which he does not illuminate, or a cottage which he does not enrich. His bounty is like the sea, which, though often unacknowledged, is everywhere felt; on mountains, and plains, and distant places, carrying its cloudy freshness through the air, making glorious the heavens, and spreading verdure on the earth beneath."

The brief review we have given of Shakspeare's life could have been made infinitely more attractive, if our narrow limits had admitted of a more copious selection of criticisms upon his works, his intellectual character, and the lofty position which he occupies in dramatic compositions. The critical productions of Sir Walter Scott, Campbell, Leigh Hunt, Schlegel (a celebrated German writer), Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hallam, Lamb, Mrs. Jameson, and many others, furnish a series of memorials which do honour to the greatest of all names in English literature. We have space only for two or three of the most striking. Our first is taken from Coleridge, who has designated our immortal bard by the felicitous epithet of the "Thousand-souled Shakspeare." With what enthusiasm this profound critic describes, in the following passage, the pleasure he has experienced from a careful study of his plays :

"Oh! when I think of the inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure in our Shakspeare,-that I have been almost daily reading him since I was ten years oldthat the thirty intervening years have been unintermittingly, and not fruitlessly, employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English, Italian, Spanish, and German belles lettres; and the last fifteen years, in addition, far more intensely, in the analysis of the laws of life and reason, as they exist in man;-and that, upon every step I have made forward in taste, in acquisition of facts from history, or my own observation, and in knowledge of the different laws of being,-that at every new accession of information, after every successful exercise of meditation, and every fresh presentation of expe rience, I have unfailingly discovered a proportionate in crease of wisdom and intuition in Shakspeare."

Of all the critics upon Shakspeare one of the most accomplished and philosophical is Augustus William Schlegel. His course of "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature," contains a progressive series of critical disquisitions, unequalled for profound reasoning, soundness of judgment, and just appreciation of poetical genius. The translator of this admirable work has said, with great truth, that "Schlegel was the finest critic, Coleridge the finest of illustrators, and Hazlitt the finest commentator on Shakspeare." We have not room for more than one extract from the celebrated work of the German lecturer:"To me Shakspeare appears a profound artist, and not a blind and wildly luxuriant genius. In such poets as are usually considered careless pupils of nature, I have always found, on a closer examination, when they have produced works of real excellence, a distinguished cultivation of the mental powers, practice in art, and views worthy in themselves, and maturely considered. That idea of poetic inspiration which many lyric poets have brought into vogue, as if they were not in their seuses, and, like the Pythia, when possessed by the divinity, delivered oracles unintelligible to themselves, is least of all applicable to dramatic composition-one of the productions of the human mind which requires the greatest exercise of thought. It is admitted that