As if the Lord Chamberlain had said: I have consented, in consequence of the eager desire of Laertes to finish his education, to permit him to leave the kingdom, but I am fully sensible of all the perils, to which he is exposed in a dissipated metropolis, and it cost me many a painful struggle, before his arguments could vanquish my anxiety. In the next scene, Laertes appears making preparations for his voyage, which are for a moment, delayed, by his parting exhortation to a beloved sister to beware of the perils of Love, and the machinations of man. Polonius now enters and taunts his son for his seeming sluggishness in lingering ashore, while the favouring gale and the clamorous crew are equally loud in calling him to the ship. Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame, The wind sets in the shoulder of your sail, And you are staid for, Then with all the benignity and affection of a parent, he lays his hand on the head of Laertes, and gives him his benediction; There my blessing with you And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou charàcter. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. THE FRIENDS THOU HAST, AND THEIR ADOPTION TRY? But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-batch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rieb, not gaudy : Neither a borrower, nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; Thou canst not then be false to any man. The writer of this article cannot be suspected of making any indecent comparisons, or of impugning the wisdom and elegance of the Bible, but, we know not whether this passage is exceeded by any chapter in VOL. IF S the Proverbs of Solomon, or the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach. The monitions of Polonius are of more sterling weight and lustre, than the Golden verses of Pythagoras, and are surpassed only by the Sermon on the Mount. During the debates in the House of Commons in the year 1770, BURKE observed of the famous forty-fifth number of the North Briton, written by the patriot Wilkes, that it was a spiritless though a virulent performance, a mere mixture of vinegar and water, at once sour and vapid. The expression of this sentiment is perhaps not more happy than the correctness of the criticism. It is amazing that any of Wilkes' writings should ever have been popular, in the best sense of the word. They are certainly, for the most part, tame and inelegant productions. This is the more wonderful, when we reflect that Mr. Wilkes was confessedly a man of wit and genius, an elegant classical scholar, and very advantageously distinguished for the fluency and felicity of his colloquial powers. In this respect, he seems to have some resemblance to Charles Fox, who certainly could talk well, though, in our opinion, he was never very famous for writing well. In the hands of John Wilkes and Charles Fox, the pen appears to move sullenly over the page. But theirs was the voluble tongue to declaim and to delight. One spoke in the Senate, and men thought Demosthenes was resuscitated from the dead; another talked with his jovial friends, and it seemed they were listening to Aristippus, to Alcibiades, or to Petronius Arbiter. But when Wilkes and Fox retired to their closets they produced nothing but the awkward memorials of their own imbecility. IN the Plays of Shakspeare, in almost every instance, where the poet's genius and peculiar powers of invention lead him to the use of what the vulgar call strange and out of the way expressions, those ingenious and pains taking gentlemen, the commentators, with all the sapience of the wise men of Gotham, are continually favouring us with their dainty emendations. In compliance with this precious custom, in the initial scene of Othello, we find a host of these note makers and paragraph weavers holding up their smouldering and smoky flambeaus to illuminate a passage which is as clear as the sun. The supplanted Iago is describing contemptuously the effeminate person and indolent habits of the handsome and hated Cassio. After sneering at him as a scholar, an orator, and a Florentine, we are told that he is A fellow, almost damned in a fair wife. Even the sagacious Johnson most unaccountably appears to be baffled on this occasion; and, in a tone of despondency, tells us that this is one of the passages, which must for the present be resigned to corruption and obscurity; and that he has nothing that he can, with any approach to confidence propose. The Oxford Editor, Sir Thomas Hanmer, in his wonted dashing and cut and thrust way, proposes to read, almost damned in a fair phiz, an interpolation of so impudent and audacious a character, that the commentator ought to be almost damned for his presumption in thus mangling the Tragedy. Another pestilent knave assures us that the line ought to run thus, a fellow almost damned in a fair life; and then, after suitable reflections upon the inconveniences of an unsullied reputation, he gravely quotes, as from some Bible, that memorable passage, Cursed is he of whom all men speak well. As at this epoch in the story of the play, Cassio is not suspected, either by Roderigo or Othello, of being in love with another man's wife, and as it is equally clear that he has no wife of his own, his attachment to Bianca, a common courtezan, being altogether of a different character, it is not, we must confess, passing strange that the beetle headed com-mentators should flounder a little in the ocean of absurdity. But that JOHNSON should be embarrassed by our author's original manner of expressing himself is wonderful, when we reflect that the Doctor was pretty constantly in the habit of tracing the remote allusions of Shakspeare and faithfully translating his obscurer idiom into all the plainness of modern speech. We are convinced that Shakspeare gave the line as it stands, as much as if we had been at his desk, when it was written. There is no room for any alteration; nor can we discern any doubt, or any obscurity. The phrase is picturesque, characteristical, and germane to the matter. It is purely Shakspearean. A vindictive soldier, irritated and injured, at once calumnious, suspicious, and malignant, is engaged in portraying, in lampblack colours, the exaggerated features of a fortunate rival. So slender are his claims, to military preferment, says Iago, that his knowledge of the art of war is confined merely to a closet acquaintance of tactics. He has read much and can talk plausibly, but is neither endowed with the gallantry of a soldier, nor skilled in any of the results of experience. Moreover, from the beauty of his person, the volubility of his tongue, and the speciousness of his manners, he is qualified to shine at toilets, to dazzle the fancy and to entrap the affections of some credulous female, and to be effectually ruined by some matrimonial engagement, which will more completely than ever disqualify him for that martial eminence to which, by the partiality and injustice of › thello, he has been thus causelessly advanced to my prejudice and his own disgrace. He will soon be damned in a fair wife; and in consequence of that enchanting power, which a beautiful bride exercises over a doting husband he will incontinently prefer the couch to the camp; and instead of mounting fiery barbs To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, Therefore you have a new proof, Roderigo, both from my description of the past and my well-grounded anticipation of the future, how totally unfit this upstart Cassio is for the place of second in command to Othello; a place which from my valour and long services, and by all the titles of seniority and preferment ought surely to have been mine. DR. JOHNSON's remarks affixed to each play of Shakspeare are read and remembered; but many of his foot-notes are lost amid the rubbish of succeeding commentators. The following, expressed in most beautiful language, is very ingenious and happy. The father of Juliet is making preparations for a splendid supper and masquerade to which all the beauties of Verona are invited by their munificent entertainer, who thus warns Paris of the pleasure he is about to enjoy in the society of these lovely ladies: Such comfort as do lusty young men feel Among fresh female buds shall you this night Inherit at my house, &c. To say, and to say in pompous words, that a young man shall feel as much in an assembly of beauties, as young men feel in the month of April, is surely to waste sound upon a very poor sentiment. I read Such comfort as do lusty yeoman feel. You shall feel from the sight and conversation of those ladies such hopes of happiness and such pleasure as the farmer receives from the Spring, when the plenty of the year begins, and the prospect of the harvest fills him with rapture. A comment of such a character is almost as splendid as the text itself. The word, which the learned Doctor has substituted, is preferable to the phrase of Shakspeare; but, in all the copies to which we have access, the poet's reading remains undisturbed. ORIGINAL POETRY-FOR THE PORT FOLIO. THE FORESTERS; A POEM: Descriptive of a Pedestrian Journey to the Falls of Niagara, With a plate representing an interesting scene on the shores of the Susquehanna, (Continued from page 77.) ONCE more the dawn arous'd us to the road, Our fare discharg'd, we left this lone abode, And down, through deepening swamps, pursued our way, The green moss matted o'er each mouldering heap; The woods resound-the fluttering partridge* dies; And the blue smoke rolls slowly through the vale. Trailing their broad barr'd tails, two pheasants strode, The levell'd tube its fiery thunders pour'd, And deep around the hollow forest roar'd; Low in the dust the mangled victims lie, And conscious triumph fills each traveller's eye. Where Bear Creek grumbles down his gloomy bed, This is the tetrao virginianus of Linnæus. In the States of New-England it is called the quail. The bird here called a pheasant is the ruffed grous (tetrao umbellus) of European naturalists. In New-England it is called the partridge. |