to the secret hearts of their audience; and it was this second race, not, indeed, so numerous as our own, who closed with the Spanish Shakespeare *. This literary phenomenon, though now apparent, was not perceived when it was occurring.

Every taste has delivered its variable decision on these our old plays, each deciding by its own standard; and the variance is occasioned not always by deficiency in critical judgment, but in the very nature of the object of criticism, in the inherent defect of our ancient drama itself. These old plays will not endure criticism. They were not written for critics, and they now exist even in spite of criticism. They were all experiments of the freest genius, rarely placed under favouring circumstances. They were emanations of strong but short conceptions, poured forth in haste and heat; they blotted their lines as rarely as we are told did Shakespeare; they revelled in their first conceptions, often forgotten in their rapid progress; the true inspiration was lodged in their breasts, the hidden volcano has often burst through its darkness, and flamed through a whole scene, for often have they written as Shakespeare wrote. We may look in them for entire scenes, felicitous lines, and many an insulated passage, studies

* Bouterwek's Hist. of Spanish Lit. i. 128.

for a poet; anthologies have been drawn from these elder dramatists *. We may perceive how this sudden

* Two of these collections are to be valued.

"COTGRAVE'S English Treasury of Wit and Language, 1655." He neglected to furnish the names of the dramatic writers from whom he drew the passages. Oldys, with singular diligence, succeeded in recovering these numerous sources, which I transcribed from his manuscript notes. Oldys' copy should now repose in the library of Mr. Douce, given to the Bodleian.

A collection incomparably preferable to all preceding ones is "The British Muse, or a Collection of Thoughts-Moral, Natural, or Sublime-of our English Poets who flourished in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by THOMAS HAYWARD, gent., 1732," in three volumes. It took a new title, not a new edition, as "The Quintessence of English Poetry." Such a title could not recommend itself. The prefatory matter was designed for a critical history of all these Anthologies, and was the work of Oldys; but it was miserably mangled by Dr. Campbell, then the Aristarchus of the booksellers, to save print and paper! Our literary antiquary has vented, in a manuscript note, his agony and his indignation. He had also greatly assisted the collector;-the circuit is wide and copious, and there is not a name of note which does not appear in these volumes. The ethical and poetic powers of our old dramatic poets, as here displayed, I doubt could be paralleled by our literary neighbours. We were a thoughtful people at the time that our humour was luxuriant as lighter gaiety was from the first the national inheritance of France.

Of this collection, says Oldys, "Wherever you open it, you are in the heart of your subject. Every leaf includes many lessons, and is a system of knowledge in a few lines. The merely speculative may here find experience; the flattered, truth; the diffident, resolution, &c." For my part, I think of these volumes as highly as Oldys himself.

But what has occasioned the little success of these collections of single passages and detached beauties, like collections of proverbs,

generation of poets, some of whose names are not familiar to us, have moulded our language with the images of their fancy, and strengthened it by the stability of their thoughts.

is the confusion of their variety. We are pleased at every glance; till the eye, in weariness, closes over the volume which we neglect to

reopen.

CHARLES LAMB's "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets" is of deeper interest. He was a nobler workman, and he carries us on through whole scenes by a true unerring emotion. His was a poe

tical mind labouring in poetry.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE vicissitudes of the celebrity of Shakespeare may form a chapter in the philosophy of literature and the history of national opinions. Shakespeare was destined to have his dramatic faculty contested by many successful rivals, to fall into neglect, to be rarely acted and less read, to appear barbarous and unintelligible, to be even discarded from the glorious file of dramatists by the anathemas of hostile criticism; and finally, in the resurrection of genius (a rare occurrence!) to emerge into universal celebrity. This literary history of Shakespeare is an incident in the history of the human mind singular as the genius which it relates to. philosopher now contemplates the phenomenon of a poet who in his peculiar excellence is more poetical than the poets of every other people. We have to track the course of this prodigy, and if possible to comprehend the evolutions of this solitary luminary. It is knowledge which finally must direct our feelings in the operations of the mind as well as in the phenomena of nature. We are conscious that even the anomalous is regulated by its own proper motion, and that there is nothing in human nature so arbitrary as

The

to stand by itself so completely insulated as to be an effect without a cause.

SHAKESPEARE is a poet who is always now separated from other poets, and the only one, except POPE, whose thoughts are familiar to us as household words. His eulogy has exhausted the language of every class of enthusiasts, the learned and the unlearned, the profound and the fantastical. The writings of this greatest of dramatists are, as once were those of Homer, a Bible whence we receive those other revelations of man, and of all that concerns man. There was no excess of wonder and admiration when HURD declared that "This astonishing man is the most original THINKER and SPEAKER since the days of HOMER."

The halo which surrounds the poetic beatitude has almost silenced criticism in its devotion; but a literary historian may not at all times be present in the choir of votaries; his labours lie outwards among the progressive opinions of a people, nor is he free to pass over what may seem paradoxical if it lie in his way.

The universal celebrity of Shakespeare is comparatively of recent origin: received, rejected, and revived, we must ascertain the alternate periods, and we must look for the causes of the neglect as well as the popularity of the poet. We may congratulate ourselves on the numerous escapes of our national bard from the