was more active than it ever was before or since, precisely at the epoch of the greatest literary glory of the Peninsula. Lope de Vega was himself a familiar of the Holy Office, and lent his aid, on more than one occasion, at those infernal festivals which bore the name of Acts of Religion. We must, therefore, probably look for the cause of the intellectual and political decline of this powerful empire, in other circumstances of a less general character, the nature of which it is of course foreign to our present purpose to examine. A future, or at least very early revival of learning in Spain herself, is hardly perhaps to be expected; but we may venture to hope, that in the flourishing states which will naturally spring up in the ancient possessions of this kingdom in America, under their new political forms, the noble and expressive Castilian dialect may yet bring forth another harvest of fruits, even more mature and exquisite than the first wild though rich products of the parent stock. IV. The seat of learning was transferred immediately, as we have already remarked, from Madrid to Paris, and at this epoch is properly fixed the commencement of the French school, to which we may advert on a future occasion. We propose to complete the present hasty outline of the rise of learning in the other parts of modern Europe, by a cursory notice of the circumstances attending it in England. There, as in Spain, learning received an impulse from the example of Italy, and began to flourish, in a remarkable manner, contemporaneously with the most brilliant epoch of the arts in the Peninsula. The English and French languages were the last of all in assuming a precise and mature form. The Italian, the Spanish and the Portuguese had, as we have seen, reached very nearly the forms which they now wear, as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, while the French and English were yet wholly unsettled. Learning had been encouraged and protected in England by the Saxon Kings, especially Alfred, who was himself one of the first scholars of his time, and would doubtless have made rapid and regular advances from that period, had not its progress been interrupted by the Norman conquest, which not only crushed the spirit of the people, but introduced for two or three centuries a new and foreign language to the exclusion of the English. But the natural vigor of the mass absorbed and assimilated to itself this mixture of extraneous substance, and it was not long before the hardy, independent and original English spirit began to show itself in literature, as well as in politics. Our earliest poets, particularly Chaucer, though they failed in forming the language, and are now of course in a great measure obsolete and unread, are not inferior, for true poetical inspiration and an affluent facility of style, to the best of their successors. They looked to the great masters of Italy as models, but not with a servile eye. Some of Chaucer's Tales are imitated from those of Boccaccio, but the subjects are treated with a perfectly free and unshackled spirit. Chaucer felt that a good story belonged to him who knew how to tell it well, and he took his property, as Molière said of his own occasional recurrence to the works of his brother poets, wherever he found it. In the mean time, learning advanced, and the language was gradually formed, but the best writers still kept their eyes on Italy, and their taste was doubtless directed and much improved by this circumstance. We discern traces of the study of Italian literature in Spenser; and, at a later period, Milton, whose mind indeed embraced the whole world of thought, drank deeply at these pure and sweet fountains. Even Shakspeare, careless, as he was and had a right to be, of every thing foreign to the resources of his own unrivalled genius, appears nevertheless to have had some knowledge of Italian poetry. It is properly with Spenser, that the English school of polite literature may be said to open. Few poets of any age or nation have excelled the author of the Fairy Queen, in vigor and richness of imagination, purity of taste, or felicity of language; and had he been a little happier in the choice of his subject, he might have held the same rank in the poetry of England, that was assumed by Dante and Petrarch in that of Italy. But as poetry is properly a representation or picture of the actions and passions of real life as it goes on before us, it can never produce much effect or become truly popular, unless its forms correspond with those of its subject. Hence the great popularity of the drama, which represents exactly the outward semblance as well as the spirit of the world, and thus holds a perfect mirror up to nature. In the Fairy Queen, on the contrary, the observations of the author upon actual life, (for to this, after all, the substance of poetry reduces itself) become unintelligible, and lose their effect in consequence of the precise circumstance, by which he probably intended to heighten it, of their being wrapped up in a cloud of allegory. Where there is one person forcibly struck by an abstract image of Hypocrisy or Avarice, hundreds and thousands burst with laughter at the grimaces of Tartuffe and Harpagon. We read with satisfaction a well-written statement of the effects of ambition or jealousy, and lay down the book with considerable emotion; but Othello and Macbeth fire the stage, and convulse the spectator with terror and pity, as if the images before him belonged to the circle of his own friends and family. Hence it is that, while Shakspeare and Scott fill the imaginations and the mouths of men, the work of Spenser, a poet not inferior perhaps in genius to either, is much praised, occasionally quoted and criticised, now and then taken from the shelf, and wholly unknown to the mass of the people. In England, as in Spain, the great development of literary talent took place in the drama. The general characteristics of the two schools are nearly the same,---originality, richness and power, with a somewhat rude and imperfect taste. Such is the great merit of the Spanish school in its way, and the extraordinary talent of the principal writers belonging to it, that it would at first view be difficult to suppose that it could have been surpassed or even equalled; but it is nevertheless certain that the British drama, though distinguished in general by beauties of the same kind, and liable to nearly the same objections, has nevertheless reached a height of perfection, which places it far above that of Spain. For this superiority, it is principally indebted to the unique and unrivalled genius of Shakspeare. Every form of praise has been, for a century past, so completely exhausted upon this writer, that it is too late to attempt to add any thing either in commendation or illustration of the value of his works. Suffice it to say, that he seems to delight alike in all the great departments of his art, and carries them all to the same degree of perfection. He thus combines in his own person the various sorts of merit which, as we have seen above, are distributed among the three great masters of the Italian school, and also among the illustrious trio, which stands at the head of French dramatic literature. As the powers requisite for excellence in the various branches of the art depend upon the same principle, viz. a keen sensibility, or in other words, an exquisitely fine constitution of the organs by which our intellectual part communicates with the world around us, the possession of them all by the same individual is not in itself extraordinary. It is rather a thing comformable to the order of nature. But the development of them all by the same person to any great extent, is found by experience to be very uncommon. Accident generally determines, pretty early in life, the direction of the intellectual faculties: habit soon confirms it, and after a time renders any change difficult, and finally impossible. But the genius of Shakspeare never consented to wear these common shackles. He expresses all the various emotions with equal power and freedom, and exhibits in all the same mastery over his subject, facility of style, and richness of fancy. One would hardly suppose it possible that the spirit, which raised the terrible storms of passion that distract the brain of Lear, could breathe with such melting sweetness the soft accents of pure and tender love through the lips of Juliet and Miranda, and then again burst forth with such a hearty good will in the horse-laugh of honest Jack Falstaff. Shakspeare ranges like a chartered libertine through all the domains of the understanding. He could hang up philosophy out of compliment to the charming Juliet, but when he chooses to enter the field of general observation, he puts the seven sages of Greece to the blush. It would be easy to select from his plays a body of practical ethics, superior not merely in power and beauty of expression, but in actual truth, to any treatise on the subject that has yet been produced. When he paints nature, his canvass is all alive, and when he chooses to exert his creative power, he introduces us to half a dozen imaginary worlds, each of which appears to be as real, and soon becomes as familiar to us as our own. To display a second-rate talent in several walks of art or science is nothing,-the worthless triumph of conscious mediocrity;-to excel in any one, is sufficient for the glory of any one man :—but to carry each and all at once to a greater perfection than any other person of any age or nation, is something apparently miraculous, and places the divine genius which was able to accomplish it, entirely hors de pair. Such, however, is the praise of Shakspeare. Nevertheless, he may justly be charged with occasional offences against good taste: and this seems to be an accidental result of the astonishing variety of his powers. His faults consist for the most part in bringing together in the same picture various figures, in themselves all good, but in their nature incongruous. The porter in Macbeth, for example, is a capital sketch, but he interrupts, unpleasantly, the solemn interest with which we follow out the wild and supernatural story of the play. It is impossible, however, for a real lover of poetry, to desire, that the works of Shakspeare,-whatever may be their faults,-had been any other than they are. The enthusiastic admiration of the German school of the present day has even sanctified his errors, and proved, satisfactorily, that they are all real beauties. -- By the side of this miracle of genius, the other dramatists, his contemporaries, though possessing great merit, appear at a disadvantage. The wit and learning of Jonson, the sweetness of Beaumont and Fletcher, the power and richness of Massinger, Ford and Shirley, are eclipsed by the superior perfection of their matchless rival, in most of their as well as his peculiar qualities. They constitute, however, a noble cortège to his triumphal car. Their value was more highly appreciated by their contemporaries than it is now, for the age in which he lived, by a singular fatality, does not seem to have been fully aware of the transcendent excellence of the poet of Avon. Pepys, in his private memoirs, lately published, declares the plays of Ben Jonson to be the best he had seen, pronounces the Midsummer Night's Dream 'insipid and ridicuious,'-Othello a' mean thing,' and Henry VIII. a simple piece of patch-work.' Such profane language as this, in the mouth of one of the best judges of the time, himself a poet and fond of the drama, may serve to console the admirers of Racine for the fall of Phèdre, and the complete failure of Athalie. Such were the glories of the English school of poetry, in its best and brightest days, but they did not end here. The same period, which produced this brilliant constellation of dramatic poets, beheld the youth of one, whom a competent judge has declared to be 'not second' to the best of them, and who has tried his powers in a line of poetry which critics commonly regard as superior to the drama. It does not belong to us to correct the decision of Gray, upon the comparative excellence of Shakspeare and Milton, although his judgment may not, perhaps, agree with ours: nor does the cursory manner in which we are compelled to treat the subject permit us to enlarge upon the merits of the latter. We are free to confess, that with the highest admiration for the genius and character of Milton, we do not recognise in his poetry a talent of the same order with that of Shakspeare. His touch is free and bold,-that of Shakspeare airy and elastic. The coloring of Milton is rich and true,—that of Shakspeare fresh, bright and dewy. In Milton's creations, we feel the hand of a master;--in those of Shakspeare, we forget |
