jangle beyond what all the parish-clerks of London, with their Old Testament farces and interludes, in Richard the Second's time, could ever pretend to? Our only hopes, for the good of their souls, can be, that these people go to the playhouse as they do to church, to sit still, look on one another, make no reflection, nor mind the play more than they would a sermon. There is in this play some burlesque, some humour and ramble of comical wit, some show, and some mimicry to divert the spectators: but the tragical part is plainly none other than a bloody farce, without salt or savour.” We cannot agree with the author of an able article in 'The Retrospective Review,' that "these attacks on Shakespear are very curious, as evincing how gradual has been the increase of his fame;" that "their whole tone shows that the author was not advancing what he thought the world would regard as paradoxical or strange ;" that "he speaks as one with authority to decide." So far from receiving Rymer's frenzied denunciations as an expression of public opinion, we regard them as the idiosyncrasies of a very singular individual, who is furious in the exact pro- | portion that the public opinion differs from his own. He attacks Othello' and 'Julius Cæsar,' especially, because Betterton had for years been drawing crowds to his performance in those tragedies. He is one of those who glory in opposing the general opinion. In his first book, he says, “With the remaining tragedies I shall also send you some reflections on that 'Paradise Lost' of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a poem." Dryden, the great critical authority of his day, before whose opinions all other men bowed, had in 1679 thus spoken of the origin of his great scene between Troilus and Hector: "The occasion of raising it was hinted to me by Mr. Betterton; the contrivance and working of it was my own. They who think to do me an injury by saying that it is an imitation of the scene betwixt Brutus and Cassius, do me an honour by supposing I could imitate the incomparable Shakespear." Dryden then goes on to contrast the modes in which Euripides, Fletcher, and Shakspere have managed the quarrel of two virtuous men, raised to the extremity of In the quotations which we have given from Dryden, it may be seen how reverently criticism was based upon certain laws which, however false might be their application, were nevertheless held to be tests of the merit of the highest poetical productions. Dryden was always balancing between the rigid application of these laws, and his own hearty admiration of those whose art had rejected them. If he had been less of a real poet himself, he might have become as furious a stickler for the canons of the ancients as Rymer was. With all his occasional expressions of hatred towards the French school to 'The Grounds of Criticism.' He was of tragedy, he was unconsciously walking in | written in 1672, presents a curious contrast the circle which the fashion of his age had drawn around all poetical invention. It was assuredly not yet the fashion of the people; for they clung to the school of poetry and passion with a love which no critical opinions could wholly subdue. It was not the fashion of those who had drunk their inspiration from the Elizabethan poets. It was not the fashion of Milton and his disciples. Hear how Edward Phillips speaks of Corneille in 1675:-"Corneille, the great dramatic writer of France, wonderfully applauded by the present age, both among his own countrymen and our Frenchly-affected English, for the amorous intrigues which, if not there before, he commonly thrusts into his tragedies and acted histories; the imitation whereof among us, and of the perpetual colloquy in rhyme, hath of late very much corrupted our English stage." It was the spread of this fashion amongst the courtly littérateurs of the day that gave some encouragement to the extravagance of Rymer. The solemn harangues about decorum in tragedy, the unities, moral fitness, did not always present the ludicrous side, as it did in this learned madman, who sublimated the whole affair into the most delicious absurdity. We love him for it. His application of a "rule" to Fletcher's 'Maid's Tragedy' is altogether such a beautiful exemplification of his mode of applying his critical knowledge, that we cannot forbear one more quotation from him:- "If I mistake not, in poetry, no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him; nor is a servant to kill the master, nor a private man, much less a subject, to kill a king; nor on the contrary. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other by such persons whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together." Rymer never changes his opinions. The principles upon which he founded his first book were carried to a greater height of extravagance in his second. Dryden, on the contrary, depreciates Shakspere, though timidly and doubtfully, in his early criticisms, but warms into higher and higher admiration as he grows older. The 'Defence of the Epilogue to the Conquest of Grenada,' 'Shakespeare, thy gift I place before my sight: The age laid its leaden sceptre upon the sacks of sand. It will be sufficient for us to * Epistle to Kneller. "Tis my made him a very dangerous rival in fame to | evident. There is such a witchery in him that all the rules of art which he does not observe, though built on an equally solid and infallible reason, vanish away in the transports of those that he does observe, so entirely as if I had never known anything of the matter." The rules of art! It was the extraordinary folly of the age which produced these observations to believe that Shakspere realized his great endeavours without any rule at all, that is, without any method. Rymer was such a thorough believer in the infallibility of these rules of art, that he shut his eyes to the very highest power of Shakspere, because it did not agree with these rules. Gildon believed in the power, and believed in the rules at the same time: hence his contradictions. "The unaccountable bigotry of the town to the very errors of Shakespear" was the best proof of the triumphant privilege of genius to abide in full power and tranquillity amidst its own rules. The small poets, and the smaller critics, were working upon mechanic rules. When they saw in Shakspere something like an adherence to ancient rules of art, they cried out, Wonderful power of nature! When they detected a deviation, they exclaimed, Pitiable calamity of ignorance! It is evident that these critics could not subject the people to their laws; and they despise the ignorant people, therefore, as they pity the ignorant Shakspere. Hear Gildon again :—“ A judicious reader of our author will easily discover those defects that his beauties would make him wish had been corrected by a knowledge of the whole art of the drama. For it is evident that, by the force of his own judgment, or the strength of his imagination, he has followed the rules of art in all those particulars in which he pleases. I know that the rules of art have been sufficiently clamoured against by an ignorant and thoughtless sort of men of our age; but it was because they knew nothing of them, and never considered that without some standard of excellence there could be no justice done to merit, to which poetasters and poets must else have an equal claim, which is the highest degree of barbarism. Nay, without an appeal to these very rules, Shakespear : himself is not to be distinguished from the most worthless pretenders, who have often met with an undeserved applause, and challenge the title of great poets from their success." We will only anticipate for a moment the philosophical wisdom of a later school of criticism, to supply an answer to Gildon: "The spirit of poetry, like all other living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by rules, were it only to unite power with beauty. It must embody in order to reveal itself; but a living body is of necessity an organized one; and what is organization but the connection of parts in and for a whole, so that each part is at once end and means?"* The redoubted John DENNIS was another of the antagonists of Rymer. He carried heavier metal than Gildon; but he nevertheless belonged to the cuckoo school of "rules of art." He had a just appreciation of Shakspere as far as he went; and a few of his judgments certainly here deserve a place:-"Shakespear was one of the greatest geniuses that the world ever saw for the tragic stage. Though he lay under greater disadvantages than any of his successors, yet had he greater and more genuine beauties than the best and greatest of them. And what makes the brightest glory of his character, those beauties were entirely his own, and owing to the force of his own nature; whereas his faults were owing to his education, and to the age that he lived in. One may say of him as they did of Homer that he had none to imitate, and is himself inimitable. His imaginations were often as just as they were bold and strong. He had a natural discretion which never could have been taught him, and his judgment was strong and penetrating. He seems to have wanted nothing but time and leisure for thought, to have found out those rules of which he appears so ignorant. His characters are always drawn justly, exactly, graphically, except where he failed by not knowing history or the poetical art. He has for the most part more fairly distinguished them than any of his successors have done, who have falsified them, or confounded them, by * Coleridge. making love the predominant quality in all. He had so fine a talent for touching the passions, they are so lively in him, and so truly in nature, that they often touch us more without their due preparations than those of other tragic poets who have all the beauty of design and all the advantage of incidents. His master-passion was terror, which he has often moved so powerfully and so wonderfully, that we may justly conclude that, if he had had the advantage of art and learning, he would have surpassed the very best and strongest of the ancients. His paintings are often so beautiful and so lively, so graceful and so powerful, especially where he uses them in order to move terror, that there is nothing perhaps more accomplished in our English poetry. His sentiments, for the most part, in his best tragedies, are noble, generous, easy and natural, and adapted to the persons who use them. His expression is in many places good and pure after a hundred years; simple, though elevated-graceful, though bold-and easy, though strong. He seems to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony; that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and trisyllable terminations. For that diversity distinguishes it from heroic harmony, and, bringing it nearer to common use, makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dialogue. Such verse we make when we are writing prose; we make such verse in common conversation. If Shakespear had these great qualities by nature, what would he not have been if he had joined to so happy a genius learning and the poetical art !” It was this eternal gabble about rules of art,-this blindness to the truth that the living power of Shakspere had its own organization,—that set the metre-mongers of that day upon the task of improving Shakspere. Dennis was himself one of the great improvers. Poetical justice was one of the rules for which they clamoured. Duncan and Banquo ought not to perish in 'Macbeth,' nor Desdemona in 'Othello,' nor Cordelia and her father in Lear,' nor Brutus in 'Julius Cæsar,' nor young Hamlet in 'Hamlet.' So Dennis argues :-"The good and the bad perishing promiscuously in the best of Shakespear's tragedies, there can be either none or very weak instruction in them." In this spirit Dennis himself sets to work to remodel ‘Coriolanus:'—“Not only Aufidius, but the Roman tribunes Sicinius and Brutus, appear to me to cry aloud for poetic vengeance; for they are guilty of two faults, neither of which ought to go unpunished." Dennis is not only a mender of Shakspere's catastrophes, but he applies himself to make Shakspere's verses all smooth and proper, according to the rules of art. One example will be sufficient. He was no common man who attempted to reduce the following lines to classical regularity:— "Boy! False hound! If you have writ your annals true, 'tis there, John Dennis has accomplished the feat :— "This boy, that, like an eagle in a dovecote, The alteration of 'The Tempest' by Davenant and Dryden was, as we have mentioned, an attempt to meet the taste of the town by music and spectacle. Shadwell went farther, and turned it into a regular opera; and an opera it remained even in Garrick's time, who tried his hand upon the same experiment. Dennis was a reformer both in comedy and tragedy. He metamorphosed 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' into The Comical Gallant,' and prefixed an essay to it on the degeneracy of the taste for poetry. Davenant changed 'Measure for Measure' into 'The Law against Lovers.' It is difficult to understand how a clever man and something of a poet should have set about his work after this fashion. This is Shakspere's Isabella : "Could great men thunder For every pelting, petty officer Merciful heaven! Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, This is Davenant's :— "If men could thunder As great Jove does, Jove ne'er would quiet be; For every choleric petty officer, Would use his magazine in heaven for We nothing should but thunder hear. Sweet Thou rather with thy stiff and sulph'rous Dost split the knotty and obdurate oak, "The Law against Lovers' was in principle one of the worst of these alterations; for it was a hash of two plays-of 'Measure for Measure,' and of 'Much Ado about Nothing.' This was indeed to destroy the organic life of the author. But it is one of the manifestations of the vitality of Shakspere that, going about their alterations in the regular way, according to the rules of art, the most stupid and prosaic of his improvers have been unable to deprive the natural man of his vigour, even by their most violent depletions. His robustness was too great even for the poetical doctors to destroy it. Lord Lansdowne actually stripped the flesh off Shylock, but the anatomy walked about vigorously for sixty years, till Macklin put the muscles on again. Colley Cibber turned 'King John' into 'Papal Tyranny,' and the stage 'King John' was made to denounce the Pope and Guy Faux for a century, till Mr. Macready gave us back again the weak and crafty king in his original truth of character. Nahum Tate deposed the 'Richard II.' of Shakspere wholly and irredeemably, turning him into 'The Sicilian Usurper.' How Cibber manufac As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be tured 'Richard III.' is known to all men. Durfey melted down 'Cymbeline' with no quiet, |