makes the whole world kin;" and he was constantly fulfilling his own precept. Thus his greatest men talk of eating and drinking, as if they had verily mouths to eat and drink: Othello complains of a head-ache, as if his head was humanly subject to pain; Prince Henry, the future conqueror of France, asks, when reproached for feeling fatigued in his dignified situation," Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?"—and we meet with the instruments of domestic life, in plain household words, absolutely or metaphorically, as if they were needful or interesting to us. None of all which, to the boast of our neighbours in the last century, can be found throughout the whole range of the French classic theatre, exclusively composed of heroes and heroines, not men and women. The lines objected to, as "poetry debased,"

are

"Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold!”

The learned lexicographer first finds fault with the word dun, because it is a "low" expression, "seldom heard but in the stable," and is to be treated with " contempt." I should be sorry if so good a word were confined to the stable; it cannot well be spared from the works of our best authors. Milton uses it in the sense of his own "darkness visible,”—“In the dun air sublime.”

His next "low" word is knife. He terms it "an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest

employments;" and asks, "who does not, at last, from the long habit of connecting a knife with sordid offices, feel aversion rather than terror?" Of course he would have chosen dagger, as a grander word; but it would not be so appropriate in this situation, in the soliloquy of a woman, who does not appear to wear a dagger. Besides, the connexion of the homely word knife with so awful a murder as that of an old man in his sleep, brings the image in a more familiar, and, therefore, in a more horrible manner, to our minds.

But can it be credited, without turning to the Rambler, that Dr. Johnson presumed to criticize these lines, not knowing by whom they are spoken? According to him Macbeth utters them, not his wife; and their value is certainly degraded, on more than one consideration, by giving them to him.

Lastly, the critic demands: "Who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt peeping through a blanket?" My answer is, that I can; because I do not attach a more ludicrous meaning to the word peep, than in this line of Pope :

"Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise."

But, agreeably to his dictionary, the word peep, in its second sense, is thus defined: "To look slily, closely, or curiously; to look through any crevice;" and he then gives Shakespeare's line as an illustration of this second sense of the word! Who but himself could have supposed there was a hole in the blanket? Any one who chooses, while reading the line, to think of playing bo-peep with that emblem of gravity, Dr. Johr.son, will doubtless experience some "relaxation"

of his own gravity, and he may wish, with him, perhaps, it were "gaze through the curtain of the dark,” or, in mightier Johnsonian phrase,—“ direct a glance of perquisition through the fleecy-woven tegument of the tenebrosity." As for the word blanket, let it be noticed that Lady Macbeth, not her husband, had, at that moment, on being informed, "The King comes here to night,” determined on murdering him in his bed. "Top-full of direct cruelty," in the anticipation of this deed, her thoughts occupied in the very act of stabbing her guest in his bed, she naturally, and consequently with propriety, takes a metaphor from it in the word blanket. Dr. Johnson strongly felt the power of these lines, but quarrelled with the means employed to produce it, and altogether misunderstood the meaning and value of the words. He boasted of this criticism when he was editor; for, in a note, he says, "On this passage there is a long criticism in the Rambler." In this, and many other cases, his authority is like that of a cook, with her. finger and thumb at the neck of a pullet; only, instead of catering for us, he would destroy, or contaminate, our food.

By the occasional skilful application of a common every-day expression, the application of a household word, the mingling of the conveniences or wants of life with deeds of death, our imagination, while reading Shakespeare, is so forcibly enthralled. Had the old King been described as reposing on a stately couch, after the fatigue of his journey, we could not have sympathized with his fate so much as when we find him, like ourselves, sleeping in a bed, with sheets

and blankets. Such is at least a portion of Shakespeare's magic. To find fault with it, is to wish to be disenchanted.

Let it not be said, that, like a man with his mistress, I cannot see a defect in our national poet. I am now occupied in his defence; but at the proper season I should not hesitate in pointing out whatever is faulty to demonstration: and here, while speaking of his dramatic art, I blame his forgetfulness of time. Othello, for example, talks as if he had passed the honeymoon, or nearly so; yet it is plain, from the context, that he kills his wife the night after his nuptials. This was, originally, a criticism by Rymer; and no ingenuity can controvert it. Still, the passion of the scenes is so mighty, that neither audience nor reader would be aware of it, unless there were a Rymer to notice it. That very passion had doubtless blinded the poet himself to the fact; because, had he perceived it, two or three slight alterations, not affecting the business of the scenes, would have annulled the objection. That this may no more be adduced as an argument of his carelessness, which I will not allow, I will instance similar failings of memory in other great men, which are more frequent than many may suppose. Cervantes commits numerous blunders, but his authority may not be considered to the purpose; De Foe, however, the most matter-of-fact of all novelists, does the same. It was not until I had several times read the works of Fielding, who affected undeniable precision, that I perceived he had wonderfully failed in his progress of time. Omitting minor errors in his other novels, I will mention an almost incredible

one in his Tom Jones, where he takes upon himself to divide his books into certain periods of time, with more, as he says, than historical exactness. Thus the incidents at the close of Book V occur, we are distinctly told, “in the latter end of June;" Book VI contains "about three weeks;" Book VII “three days;" Book VIII "about two days;" yet in this very Book VIII, when the month of July could not be passed, we are gravely told, in a parenthesis, (“ as it was now mid-winter,") and the story proceeds regularly onward through frost and snow! No one can believe this was carelessness in the greatest novellist, since he was continually priding himself on exactness; nor can I think the greatest dramatist was careless, seeing he was more exact, on most matters, than the hypercritics will generally allow. A fiction, interwoven with many stirring incidents, is apt to mislead the soundest recollection, whether we write it for instruction, or depose to it in a witness-box.

A foreigner, Schlegel, following Morgann's critical Essay, told us,—“To me Shakespeare appears a profound artist, and not a blind and wildly-luxuriant genius." Upton spoke rather of his poetic art, while there he found great fault in his crowded metaphors. But, with deference to Upton, who has written so well on Shakespeare, it is in the nature of passion to hurry metaphor on metaphor; therefore, what would be a fault in a didactic or descriptive poem, may be beautiful in a drama; a distinction that is seldom made. Morgann had spoken in vain, and we listened to Schlegel with surprise; for we had been accustomed to consider our national poet as almost more than akin