this simulation, expresses a characteristic disapprobation of the part she is made to play,

To speak so indirectly I am loth:

I would say the truth.*

She yields to the supposed Friar with a kind of forced docility, because her situation as a religious novice, and his station, habit, and authority, as her spiritual director, demand this sacrifice. In the end we are made to feel, that, although her transition from the convent to the throne has but placed this noble creature in her natural sphere, yet that Isabella, as Duchess of Vienna, could not more command our highest reverence, than Isabel, the novice of Saint Clare.

*Act iv. scene 5.

SHAKSPEARE has exhibited in Beatrice a spirited and faithful portrait of the fine lady of his own time. The deportment, language, manners, and allusions, are those of a particular class in a particular age; but the individual and dramatic character which forms the groundwork, is strongly discriminated; and being taken from general nature, belongs to every age. In Beatrice, high intellect and high animal spirits meet,

and excite each other like fire and air. In her wit, (which is brilliant without being imaginative,) there is a touch of insolence not unfrequent in women, when the wit predominates over reflection and imagination. In her temper, too, there is a slight infusion of the termagant, and her satirical humour plays with such an unrespective levity over all subjects alike, that it required a profound knowledge of women to bring such a character within the pale of our sympathy. But Beatrice, though wilful, is not wayward,—she is volatile, not unfeeling. She has not only an exuberance of wit and gaiety, but of heart, and soul, and energy of spirit; and is no more like the fine ladies of modern comedy,-whose wit consists in a temporary allusion or a play upon words, and whose petulance is displayed in a toss of the head, a flirt of the fan, or a flourish of the pocket handkerchief,-than one of our modern dandies is like Sir Philip Sidney.

In Beatrice, Shakspeare has contrived that the poetry of the character shall not only soften, but heighten its comic effect. We are not only inclined to forgive Beatrice all her scornful airs, all

her biting jests, all her assumption of superiority; but they amuse and delight us the more, when we find her, with all the head-long simplicity of a child, falling at once into the snare laid for her affections. When we see her, who thought a man of God's making not good enough for her,—who disdained to be o'er-mastered by "a piece of valiant dust," stooping like the rest of her sex, vailing her proud spirit, and taming her wild heart to the loving hand of him whom she had scorned, flouted, and misused, "past the endurance of a block." And we are yet more completely won by her generous enthusiastic attachment to her cousin. When the father of Hero believes the tale of her guilt; when Claudio, her lover, without remorse or a lingering doubt, consigns her to shame; when the Friar remains silent, and the generous Benedick himself knows not what to say,-Beatrice, confident in her affections, and guided only by the impulses of her own feminine heart, sees through the inconsistency, the impossibility of the charge, and exclaims, without a moment's hesitation

O, on my soul! my cousin is belied!

Schlegel, in his remarks on the play of "Much Ado about Nothing," has given us an amusing instance of that sense of reality with which we are impressed by Shakspeare's characters. He says of Benedick and Beatrice, as if he had known them personally, that the exclusive direction of their pointed raillery against each other "is a proof of a growing inclination:" this is not unlikely; and the same inference would lead us to suppose that this mutual inclination had commenced before the opening of the play. The very first words uttered by Beatrice are an inquiry after Benedick, though expressed with her usual arch imperti

nence :

I pray you, is Signior Montanto returned from the wars, or no?

I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.

And in the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his absence, in the pertinacity and bitterness of her satire, there is certainly great argument that he occupies much more of her