ror, as, in a few minutes, freezes youth and beauty into a monumental statue. The last parallel I shall mention, shall give Shakspeare his due preference, where our authors very visibly emulate but cannot reach him. It is the quarrel of Amintor and Melantius in the Maid's Tragedy compared to that of Brutus and Cassius. The beginning of the quarrel is upon as just grounds, and the passions are wrought up to as great violence, but there is not such extreme dignity of character, nor such noble sentiments of morality, in either Amintor or Melantius as in Brutus. 3 Having thus given, we hope, pretty strong proofs of our authors' excellence in the sublime, and shewn how near they approach in splendour to the great sun of the British theatre, let us now just touch on their comedies, and draw one parallel of a very different kind. Horace makes a doubt whether co 3 One key to Amintor's heroism and distress will, I believe, solve all the objections that have been raised to this scene; which will vanish at once by only an occasional conformity to our authors' ethical and political principles. They held passive obedience and non-resistance to princes an indispensable duty; a doctrine which Queen Elizabeth's goodness made her subjects fond of imbibing, and which her successor's king-craft, with far different views, carried to its highest pitch. In this period our authors wrote, and we may as well quarrel with Tasso for popery, or with Homer and Virgil for heathenism, as with our authors for this principle. It is therefore the violent shocks of the highest provocations struggling with what Amintor thought his eternal duty; of nature rebelling against principle (as a famous partisan for this doctrine in Queen Anne's reign expressed it, when he happened not to be in the ministry) which drive the heroic youth into that phrenzy which makes him challenge his dearest friend for espousing too revengefully his own quarrel against the sacred majesty of the most abandonedly wicked king. The same key is necessary to the heroism of Aecius, Aubrey, Archas, and many others of our authors' characters; in all which the reader will perhaps think there is something unnaturally absurd; but the absurdity is wholly chargeable on the doctrine, not on the poets. -Seward. medy should be called poetry or not, i. e. whether the comedies of Terence, Plautus, Menander, &c. should be esteemed such, for in its own nature there is a comic poetic diction as well as a tragic one; a diction which Horace himself was a great master of, though it had not then been used in the drama; for even the sublimest sentiments of Terence, when his comedy raises its voice to the greatest dignity, are still not cloathed in poetic diction. The British drama, which before Jonson received only some little improvement from the models of Greece and Rome, but sprung chiefly from their own moralities, and religious farces, and had a birth extremely similar to what the Grecian drama originally sprung from, differed in its growth from the Greeks chiefly in two particulars. The latter separated the solemn parts of their religious shews from the satiric farcical parts of them, and so formed the distinct species of tragedy and comedy; the Britons were not so happy, but suffered them to continue united, even in the hands of as great or greater poets than Sophocles and Euripides. But they had far better success in the second instance. The Greeks appropriated the spirit and nerves of poetry to tragedy only, and though they did not wholly deprive the comedy of metre, they left it not the shadow of poetic diction and sentiment; Idcirco quidam, comœdia ne ne poema Esset, quæsivére: Quod acer spiritus ac vis The Britons not only retained metre in their comedies, but also all the acer spiritus, all the strength and nerves of poetry, which was in a good measure owing to the happiness of our blank verse, which at the same time that it is capable of the highest sublimity, the most extensive and noblest harmony of the tragic and epic, yet, when used familiarly, is so near the sermo pedestris, so easy and natural, as to be well adapted even to the drollest comic dialogue. The French common metre is the very reverse of this; it is much too stiff and formal either for tragedy or comedy, unable to rise with proper dignity to the sublimity of the one, or to descend with ease to the jocose familiarity of the other. Besides the cramp of rhyme, every line is cut asunder by so strong a cæsure, that in English we should divide it into the three-foot stanza, as "When Fanny blooming fair Take one of the rhimes from these, and write them in two lines, they are exactly the same with the French tragic and epic metre: "When Fanny blooming fair, first caught my ravish'd sight, Struck with her air and shape, I felt a strange delight.” In a language where this is their sublimest measure, no wonder that their greatest poet should write his Telemaque, an Epic Poem, in prose. Every one must know that the genteel parts of comedy, descriptions of polite life, moral sentences, paternal fondness, filial duty, generous friendship, and particularly the delicacy and tenderness of lovers' sentiments, are equally proper to poetry in comedy as tragedy; in these things there is no sort of real difference between the two, and what the This is the first stanza of a song by Lord Chesterfield.-Reed. Greeks and Latins formed had no foundation in nature; our old poets, therefore, made no such difference, and their comedies, in this respect, vastly excel the Latins and Greeks. Jonson, who re formed many faults of our drama, and followed the plans of Greece and Rome very closely in most instances, yet preserved the poetic fire and diction of comedy as a great excellence. How many instances of inimitable poetic beauties might one produce from Shakspeare's comedies? Not so many, yet extremely numerous, are those of our authors, and such as in an ancient classic would be thought beauties of the first magnitude. These lie before me in such variety, that I scarce know where to fix. But I'll confine myself chiefly to moral sentiments. In The Elder Brother, Charles the scholar thus speaks of the joys of literature; being asked by his father "Nor will you Take care of my estate? Char. But in my wishes; For know, sir, that the wings on which my soul With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels; Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy, Vol. x. ii. p. 123. In Monsieur Thomas, a youth in love with his friend's intended wife, after resisting the greatest temptations of passion, is thus encouraged by the young lady to persevere in his integrity: "Francis. Whither do you drive me? Cellide. Back to your honesty, make that good ever, -Keep your ears, The two main ports that may betray ye, strongly Ridged round about with virtue, that no breaches, Our authors, in carrying the metaphor of a citadel compared to the mind through so many divisions, seem to have built on the foundation of St Paul, who, in like manner, carries on a metaphor from armour through its several parts.-Ephesians vi. 11. Put on the whole armour of God; having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. See also the same metaphor in Isaiah lix. 17, from whom St Paul took his. Were I to quote our authors' frequent resemblance to the style and sentiments of the scriptures, another very large field would open to us, and this would help us to the solution of two questions, which they who have a just taste of the excellencies of our old English poets naturally ask: 1. How came the British muse, in the very infancy of literature, when but just sprung from the dark womb of monkish superstition, to rise at once to such maturity as she did in Spenser, Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, and Massinger? 2. What spirit is it that has animated the frozen foggy genius of Britain into a nobler and fiercer flame of poetry than was ever yet kindled in the bright invigorating climes of France and modern Italy; insomuch, that a Gallic and Italian eye is dazzled and of fended at the brightness of the noblest expressions of Milton and the authors above-mentioned? We answer, it was no less a spirit than the Spirit of God, it was the Sun of Righteousness, the hal |