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discord of jarring principles. But the end of dramatic poetry not only requires that the characters be judiciously moulded and aptly circumstanced, but that every passion be naturally expressed. There is certainly a wide difference between the description of the sallies, the repulses, and impatience of a violent affection, whether they are described by the agent or the spectator, and their actual imitation and expression. But perfect imitation can never be effectuated, unless the poet in some measure become the person he represents, clothe himself with his character, assume his manners, and transfer himself into his situation. The texture of his mind must be exquisitely fine and delicate; susceptible of every feeling, and easily moved by every impression. Together with this delicacy of affection, he must possess a peculiar warmth and facility of imagination, by which he may retire from himself, become insensible of his actual condition, and, .regardless of external circumstances, feel the very incidents he invents: like the votaries of a pagan religion, he must worship idols, the works of his own hands, and tremble

before the demons of his own creation. Nothing affords a stronger evidence of the active, versatile nature of the soul, and of the amazing rapidity of its motions, than these seemingly inconceivable and inconsistent exertions.

Shakespeare, inventing the characters of Hamlet, Macbeth, or Othello, actually felt the passions, and contending emotions ascribed to them. Compare a soliloquy of Hamlet, with one of the descriptions of Rodrigue in the Cid. Nothing can be more natural in the circumstances and with the temper of Hamlet, than the following reflections:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! O fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely.-That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much; not two:
So excellent a king, that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-
Let me not think on't-Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears.-Why she, even she-
O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer-married with my uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month-
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. Oh, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.

In the Cid, Rodrigue, who is the hero of the tragedy, and deeply enamoured of Chimene, is called upon to revenge a heinous insult done to his father by the father of his mistress; and he delineates the distress of his situation, in the following manner; certainly with great beauty of expression and versification, and with peculiar elegance of description, but not as a real sufferer:

Percé jusqu'au fond du coeur

D'une atteinte imprevue aussi bien que mortelle;

Miserable vengeur d'une trop juste querelle,
Et malheureux objet d'une injuste rigueur,
Je demeure immobile, et mon ame abattue
Cede au coup qui me tue.

This harangue would better suit a descriptive novelist or narrator of the story, than the person actually concerned. Let us make the experiment. Let us change the verbs and pronouns from the first person into the third; and, instead of supposing that Rodrigue speaks, let us imagine that the state of his mind is described by a spectator: "Pierced, even to the heart, by an unfore

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seen, as well as mortal stroke, the mi"serable avenger of a just quarrel, and the unhappy object of unjust severity, he re"mains motionless, and his broken spirit yields to the blow that destroys him."

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Il demeure immobile, et son ame abattue
Cede au coup qui le tue.

Try the soliloquy of Hamlet by the same test; and, without inserting the words "he said," which render it dramatic, the change will be impossible. Try also the following lines from Virgil: they are taken from that

celebrated and well-known passage, where Dido expresses to Anna the passion she had conceived for Æneas.

Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes?
Quem sese ore ferens! quam forti pectore et armis!
Credo equidem, nec vana fides, genus esse deorum, &c.

It may be observed in general, that, whenever a speech seems proper and intelligible with the change of persons above-mentioned, and without inserting some such words as, "he said," or, " he replied," it is narration, it is description; but can scarcely be called the language of passion. I am aware, that some passages, even in Shakespeare, may be opposed to this observation. When Macbeth returns from the assassination of Duncan, Lady Macbeth tells him to carry back the daggers, and smear with blood the faces of the king's attendants, meaning to fasten upon them the suspicion of the murder. Macbeth replies,—

I'll go no more ;—

I am afraid to think what I have done;

Look on't again, I dare not.

Is this the direct and natural expression of