This entire passage, terminating at "howling," is deficient in grammatical correctness, for it contains an antecedent not succeeded by a consequent: but is there a reader of taste who would wish it to be any thing but what it is? As for those barbarisms of the double negative and the double comparative, which Malone is studious to recall from the old copies into Shakspeare's text, I have already declared my conviction that they are falsely charged upon Shakspeare. They are not to be found in those effusions of his muse which issuedR from the press under his own immediate inspection; and they must assuredly be considered as the illiterate errors of an illiterate transcriber. I could now easily, and the task would be delightful to me, produce examples, from the page of Shakspeare, of all the excellencies which I have attributed to his diction; of its sublimity, its force, its tenderness, its pathos, its picturesque character, its sweet and evervarying harmony. But I have already very far transgressed the limits prescribed to me in my volume; and I must restrain myself. When, therefore, I have cited, at the close of what I am now writing, the description by Jaques, in "As you Like it," of the seven ages of man, as an evidence of Shakspeare's power to touch the most familiar topics into poetry, as the Phrygian monarch could touch the basest substances into gold, I shall conclude this long and, as I fear, this fatiguing treatise on Shakspeare and his works, by asking if he be not a mighty genius, sufficiently illustrious and commanding to call forth the choice spirits of a learned and intellectual century to assert his greatness, and to march in his triumph to fame? Yes, Master of the human heart! we own At thy command the varied tumult rolls: The Fays and Elves quick glancing o'er the green: There, mid the lightning's blaze, and whirlwind's howl, Or, as hell's caldron bubbles o'er the flame, These are thy wonders, Nature's darling birth! In ages far remote, when Albion's state Hath touch'd the mortal limit, mark'd by Fate: When Arts and Science fly her naked shore: And the world's Empress shall be great no more Then Australasia shall thy sway prolong; And her rich cities echo with thy song. There myriads still shall laugh, or drop the tear, At Falstaff's humour, or the woes of Lear : Man, wave-like, following man, thy powers admire ; And thou, my SHAKSPEARE, reign till time expire. NEWSTEAD ABBEY, C. S. THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN. All the world's a stage, JAQUES. Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth : In fair round belly, with good capon lined, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; |