strange angle, and through a medium by the whirling current of events, but which should bring out more forcibly the breaks out at last, like a furnace, at her mysterious contrasts of human life. Ham- grave. So, too, with his desire for venlet is a being all but loosened from hu- geance on his father's murderer. It has manity, whom we see bursting tie after lighted, not as Goethe has it, on a feeble, tie which had bound him to his kind, and but on a flighty nature; the oak is not in surveying them at last almost from an a tiny jar, it is planted in a broad field, ideal altitude. He is a "chartered liber- but a field where there is not much tine," with method in his madness, and "depth of earth," and where many other with madness in his method, and who, trees growing beside draw a portion of whether he rushes or pauses on his un- that depth away. It is not the want of certain path—now with the rush of the nerve: he could kill the king, in a mocataract above, and now with the pause mentary impulse, as he killed Polonius, of the deep pool below-is sure to dash a but he cannot form or pursue any strong strong and lawless light upon the sub- and steady plan for his destruction; if jects or the persons he encounters. He that plan, at least, required time for its becomes thus a quaint and mighty mask, development. Other feelings, too, interfrom behind which Shakspere speaks out fere with its accomplishment. There is sentiments which he could not else have at times in his mind a reluctance to the so freely disclosed; and-shall we say?-task, as a work of butchery—the butchery the great dramatist has used Hamlet as of an uncle and a stepfather. Regard Turpin did Black Bess-he has drenched for his mother's feelings, and the consehim with the wine of demi-derangement, quences to result on her, is no stranger and then accomplished his perilous ride. to his soul, and serves to cool his ardour Secondly, Hamlet's conduct is entirely and to excuse his delay. The desire of what might have been expected from the vengeance never, in short, becomes the construction of his mind, and the effect main and master passion of his mind, and sad circumstances have produced upon this simply, because that powerful but him. He is "everything by turns, and morbid and jangled mind is incapable of nothing long." No deep passion of any a master passion, and of the execution of kind can root itself in his mind, although a fixed purpose. One consistency only is a hundred passions pass and repass, and there in Hamlet's character, that of subtle rage and subside within his soul. He and poetic intellect. This penetrates with well speaks of himself as consisting of its searching light every nook and corner divers "parts." His very convictions are of the play, follows him through all the not profound. He at first implicitly be- windings of his course, unites in some lieves the word of the ghost as to his measure the contradictory passions which uncle's guilt, but afterwards his belief roll and fluctuate around him, inspirits falters, and he has to be reassured by the his language into eloquence, wit, and wismatter of the play. The mask of total dom, and makes him the facile princeps madness he snatches up, wears con amore of Shakspere's fools - those illustrious for awhile, and then wearies of it, and personages who "never say a foolish thing, drops it, and then resumes it again. This, and never do a wise one." Such a "foretoo, explains his conduct to Ophelia. He most fool of all this world," with brilliant loves her; but his love, or its expression, powers, uncertain will, and "scattery" yields for a time to the paroxysm of the purposes and passions, is Hamlet the passions excited by the ghost; it returns, Dane, as, at least, he appears to us after like a demon who had been dismissed, in much and careful pondering of his chasevenfold force, and he rushes into her racter. Throw into the crucible strong apartment, and goes through antics, partly intellect, vivid fancy, irregular will, flucto sustain his assumed character of mad- tuating courage, impulsive and inconstant ness, but principally as the wild outcome feelings, an excitable heart, a melancholy of real love; his passion is again overlaid temperament, and add to these the da

maging, weakening, yet infuriating influ- throughout, which must be familiar to all. ences of a father's murder, a mother's There is the picture of man, in his strange marriage, the visit of a ghost, an unsettled contrarieties of wormhood and godhood passion for Ophelia, the meddling inter- his head of gold, and his feet of mir ference of a weak father-in-law, the spec- clay-compacted out of all contradictions, tacle of a disturbed and degraded coun- and who-even as the Andes include in try, the feeling of his own incapacity for their sweep, from the ocean below to the fixed resolve or permanent energy of pas- hoary head of Chimborazo above, all clision, and from this wierd mixture there mates, seasons, and productions of earthwill come out a Hamlet, in all his strength touches, as he ascends, all conditions of and weakness, wisdom and folly, energetic being, and runs parallel to all the gradacommencements, and lame and impotent tions of the universe. Pascal, Herbert, conclusions, insane and aimless fury, and Young, and Pope, have written in emustrong, sudden gleams of resolution and lous and eloquent antithesis on the same valour, vain and sounding bombast, and theme; but they all pale before this one clear, terse, and inspired eloquence. What expression of Hamlet's (after a matchless weakness he has does not lie so much in enumeration of man's noble qualities)any one part of his mind, as in the want" of proper management and grasp of his powers as a whole. Partially insane he is, but his insanity is the reverse of a monomania; it arises from the confusion and too rapid succession of moods and feelings, which he cannot consolidate into a whole, or press into one strong, narrow current, running on to his purpose

this quintessence of dust." Where in literature such an anti-climax; such a jerking down of proud pretensions; such two worlds of description and satire condensed into two words? This, and many other expressions here, and in other of Shakspere's works, prove what an accusing spirit, what a myriad-arined and tongued misanthrope, he might have been! But a soured Shakspere is a thought difficult to be entertained.

"As the Pontick sea To the Propontick and the Hellespont." The two famous soliloquies, again, seem Is it too much to call him a sublime and "God's canon against self-slaughter" versententious, an earnest and eloquent fool? sified. They have, we doubt not, deterred Yet it is clear that Shakspere had a many a rash spirit from suicide. If they peculiar and profound sympathy with do not oppose it upon the highest ground, Hamlet. He lingers beside him long. they do it on one generally intelligible He lavishes all his wealth upon him. He and powerful. The prayer of the guilty seems to love to look out at mankind king is worth a thousand dull homilies on through the strange window of those wild the subject. It points to the everlasting eyes. Was this because Hamlet was (as distinction between a sinful and a sinner's is generally supposed) the child of his prayer. The advice of Polonius to his mature age, or was it from a certain son is full of practical wisdom; but, owing fellow-feeling? Hamlet is what Shak- to the contrast with the frozen stupidity spere would have been, had he ever been of the man from whom it comes, reminds thoroughly soured, and had that magnifi- us of a half-melted and streaming mass of cent head of his ever begun to reel and ice. The irony and quaint moral which totter. Had Shakspere, like Swift, John- gild and glare on the skull in the graveson, Byron, and Scott, a fear of "dying yard, till it seems to glare and chatter in a-top," and has he shot out that awful fear return, are in keeping with the wild story into his impersonation of the Prince of Den- and wilder characters, but are not devoid mark, and thus relieved and carried it off? of edifying instruction to those who can The general moral of the play has been surpass the first shudder of disgust. And stated above; but there are besides num- the character and fate of Ophelia convey, berless minor morals, as well as separate in the most plaintive manner, a still tenbeauties, scattered in golden sentences | derer and more delicate lesson

(excellent so far as it goes), Hazlitt's "Characters of Shakspere's Plays," Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Literature," Mrs Jameson on Shakspere's Female Characters, and an admirable series which appeared in "Blackwood," entitled "Shakspere in Germany."

Surely Shakspere was the greatest and ocean, Johnson's "Preface to Shakspere" most humane of all mere moralists. Seeing more clearly than mere man ever saw into the evils of human nature and the corruptions of society, into the natural weakness and the acquired vice of man, he can yet love, pity, forget his anger, and clothe him in the mellow light of his genius, like the sun, who, in certain days I close by claiming a high place for of peculiar balm and beauty, seems to this poet among the benefactors of shed his beams, like an amnesty, upon all his kind. With august philanthropists, beings. But we must not forget that Howard or Wilberforce, we may not class Shakspere is no pattern for us-that this him. Into that seventh heaven of invenvery generosity of heart seems, we fear, to tion, where Milton and Dante dwelt, he have blinded him to the special character came only sometimes, not for want of and adaptations of the Christian scheme power, but because his sphere was a wider —and that we, as Christians, and not and larger one-he had business to do in mere philanthropists, are bound, while the veins of the earth as well as in the pitying the guilty, to do indignant and azure depth of air. But if force of genius incessant battle against that giant Some--sympathy with every form and every thing, or Someone rather, which slew our Saviour, and which has all but ruined our

race.

I have dwelt so long on "Hamlet," that I must now hurry to a close.

With regard to Shakspere's critics and commentators, I will not say, with Hazlitt, that "if you would see the greatness of human genius, read Shakspere; if you would see the smallness of human learning, read his commentators." But I will say, that I have learned more of Shakspere from Hazlitt, than from any other quarter, except from Shakspere himself.

In preparing these cursory remarks upon Shakspere, I have studiously avoided re-reading any works upon the subject. I may, however, recommend to those who wish to sail out farther upon this great

feeling of humanity-the heart of a man united to the imagination of a poet, and wielding the Briarean hands of a demigod-if the writing of thirty-two plays which are colouring to this hour the literature of the world—if the diffusion of harmless happiness in immeasurable quantity-if the stimulation of innumerable minds—if the promotion of the spirit of charity and of universal brotherhood-it these constitute for mortal man titles to the name of benefactor, and to that praise which ceases not with the sun, but expands into immortality, the name and the praise must support the throne which Shakspere has established over the minds of the inhabitants of an earth which may be known in other parts of the universe as "Shakspere's world."

JOHN MILTON.

PERHAPS Some who were astonished at our venturing to write on Shakspere, may be still more so at the subject now selected-John Milton. Can anything new, that is true—or true, that is new, be said on such a theme? Have not the ages been gazing upon this "mighty orb of song" as at the sun? and have

not almost all its gifted admirers ut tered each his glowing panegyric, till now they seem to be ranged like planetary bodies round his central blaze? What more can be said or sung? Is it not impossible to add to, however easy to diminish, our sense of his greatness? Is not the ambition rash and presumptuous which

It

seeks to approach the subject anew? ing with it a connection equally slight; Surely the language of apology, at least, while others interpenetrate it so entirely, is the fit preface to such a deed of daring. that the age becomes almost identified No apology, however, do we intend to with them. Milton was intensely the make. We hold that every one who has man of his time; and, although he shot been delighted, benefited, or elevated by far before it, it was simply because he a great author, may claim the privilege of more fully felt and understood what its gratitude, to tell the world that, and how, tendencies really were; he spread his he has. We hold, too, that the proof of sails in its breath, as in a favourable the true greatness of a man lies in this, gale, which propelled him far beyond the that every new encomiast, if in any measure point where the impulse was at first given. qualified for the task, is sure to find in A glance at the times of Milton would him some new proof that the praises of require to be a profound and comprehenall time have not been wasted or exagge- sive one: for the times that bore such a rated. Who that reads or thinks at all, product must have been extraordinary. has not frequent occasions to pass by the One feature, perhaps the chief, in them cairn which a thankful world has reared was this: Milton's age was an age atto Milton's memory? And who can, at tempting, with sincere, strong, though one time or other, resist the impulse to baffled endeavour, to be earnest, holy, cast on it another stone, however rough and heroic. The Church had, in the and small that stone may be? Such is previous age, been partially and nomiall we at present propose. nally reformed; but it had failed in acEvery man is in some degree the mirror complishing its own full deliverance, or of his times. A man's times stand over the full deliverance of the world. him, as the heavens above the earth, com- had shaken off the nightmare of Popery, pelling an image from the dew-drop, as but had settled itself down into a sleep, well as from the great deep. The differ- more composed, less disturbed, but as ence is, that while the small man is a deadly. Is the Reformation, thought small, the great man is a broad and full, the high hearts which then gave forth reflection of his day. But the effect of their thunder throbs in England, to turn the times may be seen in the baby's out a mere nullity? Has all that bloody bauble and cart, as well as in the style of seed of martyrdom been sown in vain? the painter's pencil and the poet's song. Whether is worse, after all, the incubus The converse is equally true. A man's of superstition, or the sleep of death? times are reflective of the man, as well as We have got rid of the Pope, indeed, a man of the times. Every man acts on, but not of the world, or the devil, or the as well as is acted on by, every other flesh; we must, therefore, repair our reThe cry of the child who falls in pairs-amend our amendments-reform yonder gutter as really affects the progress our Reformation-and try, in this way, of society as the roar of the French Re- to get religion to come down, as a pracvolution. There is a perpetual process tical living power, into the hearts and going on of action and reaction, between lives of Englishmen. We must see the each on the one side, and all on the other. dead blood of the martyrs turned into The characteristic of the great man is, living trees of righteousness-we must that his reaction on his age is more than have character as well as controversiesequal to its action upon him. No man is life, life at all hazards, we must have, wholly a creator, ncr wholly a creature, of even though it be through the destruchis age. The Milton or the Shakspere is tion of ceremonies, the damage of surmore the creator than he is the creature. plices, the dismissal of bishops-ay, or Some men pass through the atmo- the death of kings. Such was the spisphere of their time as meteors through rit of that age. We speak of its real the air, or comets through the heavens onward tendency the direction of the -leaving as little impression, and hav- main stream. We stay not to count

man.

the numerous little obstinate opposing the evil days and evil tongues on which eddies that were taking chips and straws he latterly fell, he would not have rebackwards; thus ran the master current tired into the solitude of his own soul; of the brain, the heart, and the hand of and had he not so retired, the world that magnificent era. would have wanted its greatest poemAre we not standing near the brink of the "Paradise Lost." That was the real another period, in some points very similar fruit of the Puritanic contest-of all its to that of English Puritanism? Is not tears, and all its blood; and let those our age getting tired of names, words, pre- who are still enjoying a result so rich, tensions; and anxious for things, deeds, rea- in gratitude declare "how that red rain lities? It cares nothing now for such terms did make the harvest grow." No life of as Christendom Reformed Churches Milton, worthy of the name, has hither-Glorious Constitution of 1688. It to been written. Fenton's sketch is an wants a Christendom where the character elegant trifle. Johnson's is, in parts, a of Christ-like that of Hamlet-is not heavy invective-in parts, a noble paneomitted by special desire: it wants re- gyric; but in nowise a satisfactory life. reformed churches, and a glorious con- Sir Egerton Brydges has written rather stitution, that will do a little more to an ardent apology for his memory, than a feed, clothe, and educate those who sit life. We propose to refresh ourselves under its shadow, and have long talked and others, by simply jotting down a few of, without tasting, its blessed fruits. It particulars of the poet's career, without wants, in short, those big, beautiful words professing to give, on this head, anything -Liberty, Religion, Free Government, new. Church and State, taken down from our flags, transparencies, and triumphal arches, and introduced into our homes, hearths, and hearts. And, although we have now no Cromwell and no Milton, yet, thank 1608. His father was a scrivener, and God, we have thousands of gallant hearts, and gifted spirits, and eloquent tongues, who have vowed loud and deep, in all the languages of Europe, that falsehoods and deceptions, of all sorts and sizes, of all ages, statures, and complexions, shall come to a close.

John Milton was born in Bread Street, London-a street lying in what is called, technically, the City, under the shadow of St Paul's-on the 9th of December,

was distinguished for his classical attainments. John received his early education under a clergyman of the name of Young; was afterwards placed at St Paul's School, whence he was removed, in his seventeenth year, to Christ Church, Cambridge, where he distinguished himTo Milton's time we may apply the self for the facility and beauty of his words of inspiration-"The children are Latin versification. We are not aware, brought to the birth, but there is not although placed at such a mathematical strength to bring forth." The great university, that he ever excelled in geopurpose of the age was formed, begun, metry; it is uncertain whether he ever but left unfinished-nay, drowned in crossed the Pons asinorum, although it slavery and blood. How mortifying to is certain that he was whipped for a a spirit such as his! It was as if Moses juvenile contumacy, and that he never had been taken up to Pisgah, but had expresses any gratitude to his Alma been struck dead before he saw the land Mater. Universities, in fact, have often of milk and honey. So Milton had la- proved rather stepmothers, than mothers, boured, and climbed to the steep summit, to men of genius, as the cases of Gibbon, whence he expected a new world of liberty Shelley, Coleridge, Pollok, and many and truth to expand before him, but found others, demonstrate. And why? Beinstead a wilder chaos and a fouler hell cause their own souls are to them unithan before. But dare we pity him, and versities; and they cannot fully attend need we pity ourselves? But for Mil- to both, any more than they can be in ton's disappointment, and disgust with two places at the same time. He origi