fortitude. From the thirtieth year of his age to his death he drank nothing but water. When he suffered violent pain, he shewed no external sign of anguish. In order to preserve his mind undisturbed by passion, he habituated himself to speak in an uniform tone of voice, without elevation or depression. The austerity of his manners was, however, tempered with urbanity and generosity. He was fond of solitude, and passed much of his time in a garden near his school. He died, at an advanced age, of a consumption. Of his tenets little is said by the ancients, because he strictly adhered to the doctrine of Plato.

THE LAMENT OF AGE.

66

BY M. J. J. THE AUTHOR OF PHANTASMAGORIA."

A violet in the primy time of nature,

Forward, not permanent-sweet, not lasting.

SHAKSPEARE.

Oh, the days of youth departed! and the golden dreams

that stole,

Of pleasure and of promise, in that summer of the soul!
Its love, that was like music from a far and fairy land,
Imparting deeper happiness than thought can understand.

Its purity of friendship! its fervent faith that dare,

While gazing on the eye beloved, believe the heart shone there;

The health-bloom of its cheek, and the spirit-breathing balm Of its brow, that was as rivers bright, as skies of azure calm.

Days, dreams, and friends departed! love, joy, and bloom,

no more!

Hath neither earth nor heaven a spell, your spirit to restore? Or is it doomed for mortal sin, this weight of mortal woe, That only once in humble life, your buds of beauty blow?

Give, give me back the feelings fresh that o'er my heart then blew,

The world again a place unknown, and life itself all new,—And let the grave again return what it hath torn from me, And I have wealth unequalled by the treasures of the sea!

UNCERTAINTY OF LITERARY DISTINCTION.

The fame acquired by literary talents is not only in itself of the most durable and extensive nature, but the only means of preserving every other species of celebrity. The pyramids of Memphis, and some stupendous edifices in India, indeed, exist after a vast succession of years; and nothing, in all probability, but an internal convulsion of the globe, will overthrow such immense piles: yet they have not transmitted to posterity the names of those monarchs, through whose vanity, superstition, or munificence, they were erected. The finer designs of ancient art are almost totally lost the exquisite performances of the statuary and the painter are mouldered into dust; but Praxiteles and Xeuxis will always live to fame, though not by their own efforts; for the pencil of literature alone paints to distant ages, and its colours fade not amidst the revolutions of time.

Without the bard or the historian, the monarch builds, and the artist designs, in vain. Without their assistance, the tribute of applause cannot be levied on posterity. Ossian says: "Dark are the deeds of other times, before the light of the song arose ;" and Horace, to the same purport, remarks, that "heroes existed before the Trojan war, but no divine bard recorded their fame, and their deeds are concealed in night."

Notwithstanding this obvious truth, the man of letters is too commonly regarded with indifference, possibly with contempt by his contemporaries, who act in the more elevated departments of life. Such, we may suppose, has ever been the case; for the substance of human nature, however the outward form may vary, is still the same. Statesmen and generals too seldom reflect, that whatever character they are to sustain with posterity, will not depend on the adulation of their creatures, or the huzzas of the people; not even on the applauses of senates, or munificence of kings; but will, in all probability, be finally established on the credit of some literary man, a silent, but not inattentive spectator, living unknown, and dying unregarded. Whim, caprice, or fashion, generally govern the world's opinion concerning living authors. The favourites of the day have seldom stood the test

of time. The immortal "Paradise Lost," was contemptuously said by an author of considerable eminence, "to have been written by one Milton, a blind man," and almost a century elapsed before his merit was properly known. He has been truly compared to a slow subterranean stream-it pursues its silent course in darkness, but at length bursts into day, and is adorned with the radiance of heaven. Shakspeare, for a longer period, obtained but a very moderate degree of estimation. For a short time, indeed, he enjoyed the gale of popular applause, and flourished, in the words of a kindred genius, "like an oak, that pours awhile its green branches to the sun, but is soon enfolded in the skirts of a storm, and clothed on high in mists.'

Yet the fame of both Milton and Shakspeare are now established, and cannot, unless the world relapses into barbarism, suffer a second eclipse. In the days, however, of "the hero William, and the martyr Charles," when Blackmore was knighted, and Quarles pensioned, on account of their poetical pre-eminence, the plays of Shakspeare were seldom acted, and Milton was scarcely known. So slowly does genius emerge beneath the pressure of capice or ignorance!

A voluminous writer, called Cartwright, who is styled by Wood, "the most seraphical preacher of his age-another Tully-and another Vigil," in a poem addressed to Fletcher, thus familiarly treats his great predecessor :

Shakspeare to thee was dull, whose best joke lies
I'th' ladies' questions, and the fools' replies.

Old-fashioned wit, which walk'd from town to town
In trunk hose, which our fathers called the clown:
Whose wit our nice times would obsceneness call,
And which made bawdry pass for comical.
Nature was all his art-thy vein was free
As his, but without his scurrility."

These encomiums on the superior chastity and urbanity of Fletcher's muse, appear somewhat singular to us. Posterity differ in opinion from Mr. Cartwright; who, notwithstanding his numerous publications and celebrity in his own days, may probably be only known to futurity by the illgrounded censure he has passed on Shakspeare, as Zoilous lives to fame by having depreciated Homer.

UNCERTAINTY OF LITERARY DISTINCTION.

17

If we are to judge from the congratulatory verses prefixed to Beaumont's and Fletcher's plays, we must conclude that these dramatic bards were considered as successful rivals to Shakspeare, previous to his death, in 1616. In the year 1642, Shirley, in his prologue to the "Sisters," laments the neglect shewn to his performances, and intimates that they were frequently acted to empty houses. Dryden, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, published in 1666, remarks, that Shakspeare's language was a little obsolete, and that two of Beaumont's and Fletcher's plays were exhibited to one of his. Shadwell, in the prologue to a comedy that came out the following year, observes,

That which the world called wit in Shakspeare's age, Is laughed at as improper for the stage."

In consequence of which, himself and other wits of the time, generously condescended to alter many of his plays, and accommodate them to an audience, grown, we may presume, rather nice and fastidious; having been, for some time, in the habit of attending to the chaste humour and attic elegance of Mrs. Behn, and Tom Durfey! In 1707, Shakspeare was so little known, that Tate published a tragedy, called, Injured Love, or the Cruel Husband, and mentioned in the title page, that it was written by the author (meaning himself) of King Lear. He had, indeed, altered it from Shakspeare, and must have depended on escaping detection from the obscurity of the original, or have supposed that it would hide its diminished head, and sink into oblivion, by means of his superior production: he mentions it in his preface as an "obscure performance commended to his notice by a friend." Steele, in the Tatler, which came out in 1709, gives two quotations, as he says, from Shakspeare's Macbeth; but the passages there quoted are only to be found in Davenant's alteration of that play. He mentions, likewise, some striking incidents in Taming the Shrew, as circumstances that occurred in a family with which he was particularly intimate. In the first instance, we are surprised that Steele should have so imperfect a knowledge of Shakspeare; in the second, that he should trust so much to the ignorance of his readers.

From this period, however, and chiefly by means of the

judicious and elegant associate of Steele in the Spectator, Shakspeare as well as Milton, became more generally known to the world. Yet so late as the year 1750, Dr. Hill, a man not destitute of taste, and during some part of his life a theatrical critic by profession, introduces in The Actor, or a Treatise on the Art of Playing, some lines, if you will believe him, from Romeo and Juliet, " given as the author gives them; not as the butcherly hand of a blockhead prompter may have lopped them, or as the unequal genius of some bungling critic may have attempted to mend them." In another place he again plumes himself on the peculiar accuracy of his quotation; and yet no such lines are to be found in Shakspeare; they are copied from Caius Marius, and Otway is their only just proprietor. He inserted, indeed, entire scenes into that drama from Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet, for which he made a very slight acknowledgment. Other critics have been equally unfortunate, and quoted, as Otway's, some beautiful passages which he had stolen from Shakspeare.

In the Augustan age of Charles II. as it has sometimes been absurdly styled, Elkanah Settle, the city bard, divided theatric fame with Dryden; and Sir William Temple, generally reckoned the oracle of taste in his time, mentions Sir Philip Sidney as "the greatest poet, and the noblest genius of any that have left writings behind them, and published in ours, or in any other modern language." He does not condescend to name Milton in his Essay on Poetry; but evidently alludes to him and Cowley in the following passage :"The religion of the Gentiles had been woven into the contexture of all the ancient poetry, with a very agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of Christianity a place also in their poems: but the true religion was not found to become fiction so well as the false had done; and all their attempts of this kind seemed rather to debase religion, than to heighten poetry." Who now can read the insipid productions of Sidney? Who is not charmed with the sublime energy of Milton? But the splendour of Sidney's character threw a delusive glare over his compositions; and the gloom of republicanism, annexed to the idea of Milton, cast a veil over beauties that could not otherwise have escaped observation.

High rank and temporal grandeur is, however, of no avail