in it which perhaps excel any thing that has been written by any tragedian, ancient or modern. However we will only compare one paffage of it at prefent, with another in Clitandre ; as they both happen to be on fimilar fubjects. The blinded lover, after many complaints, and wishes for revenge, hears the noise of a tempeft, and thus he breaks out:

PY MANTE.

Mes menaces déja font trembler tout le monde:
Le vent fuit d'épouvante, et le tonnetre en gronde:
L'œil du ciel s'en retire, et par un voile noir,
N'y pouvant résister, se défend d'en rien voir.
Cent nuages épais fe distilant en larmes,

A force de pitié, veulent m'ôter les armes.
La nature étonnée embrasse mon couroux,
Et veut m'offrir Dorife, ou devancer mes coups.
Tout eft de mon parti, le ciel même n'envoie
Tant d'éclairs redoublés, qu'afin que je la voie.

King Lear, whom age renders weak and querulous, and who is now beginning to grow mad, thus very naturally, in the general calamity of the ftorm, recurs to his own particular circumftances.

LEAR,

LEAR.

Spit fire, spout rain ;

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters;
I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children,
You owe me no fubmiffion. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I ftand your flave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man!
And yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles, 'gainst a head

So old and white as this. Oh! oh! 'tis foul.

They must have little feeling that are not touched by this speech, fo highly pathetic.

How fine is that which follows!

LEAR.

Let the great Gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble thou wretch, That hast within thee undivulged crimes

Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee thou bloody hand,

Thou perjur'd, and thou fimular of virtue,
That art inceftuous! Caitiff, shake to pieces,
That under covert, and convenient feeming,

Haft

Haft practis'd on man's life! Clofe pent up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and ask
Thefe dreadful fummoners grace! I am a man
More finn'd against than finning.

Thus it is Shakespear redeems the nonfense, the indecorums, the irregularities of his plays; and whoever, for want of natural tafte, or ignorance in the English language, is infenfible to the merit of these paffages, is just as unfit to judge of his works, as a deaf man, who only perceived the blackness of the fky, and did not hear the deep-voiced thunder, and the roaring elements, would have been to have defcribed the awful horrors of this midnight form.

The French critic apologizes for our perfifting in the reprefentation of Shakespear's plays, by faying we have none of a more regular form. In this he is extreamly mistaken; we have many plays written according to the rules of art; but nature, which fpeaks in Shakespear, prevails over them all. If at one of our theatres there was a

fet

set of actors who gave the true force of every fentiment, expreffed juftly every emotion of the heart, feemed infpired with the paffion they were to counterfeit, fell fo naturally into the circumstances and fituations the poet had appointed for them, that they never betrayed they were actors, but fometimes would have an aukward gesture, or for a moment a vicious pronunciation, fhould we not constantly resort thither ?— If at another theatre there were a fet of puppets regularly featured, exactly proportioned, whose movements were geometrically juft, that spoke through an organ fo conftituted by a great mafter of mufic as never to give any harsh or disagreeable tones, and the faces, the action, the pronunciation of these puppets had no fault, but that there was no expreffion in their countenance, no natural air in their motion, and that their fpeech had not the various inflexions of the human voice, would a real connoiffeur abandon the living actors for fuch lifeless images, because fome nice and dainty critic

pleaded,

pleaded, that the puppets were not subject to any human infirmities, would not cough, fneeze, or become hoarfe in the midst of a fine period? or could it avail much to urge that their movements and tones, being directed by juft mechanics, would never betray the aukwardness of rufticity, or a falfe accent caught from bad education.

Shakespear's dramatis perfonæ are men, frail by constitution, hurt by ill habits, faulty and unequal. But they speak with human voices, are actuated by human paffions, and are engaged in the common affairs of human life. We are interested in what they do, or fay, by feeling every moment, that they are of the fame nature as ourfelves. Their precepts therefore are an inftruction, their fates and fortunes an experience, their testimony an authority, and their misfortunes a warning.

Love and ambition are the subjects of the French plays. From the first of these paffions