calm fortitude and elevation of soul arising out of a sense of duty, after her defeat, and lifting her out of all consideration of self, while she feels and fears only for her father. What follows is more striking, and shews how genius can utter sentiments as original as just, even on a subject that is felt, if not understood, by all the world.

"But it will be said that the qualities here exemplified-as sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity,-fortitude, generous affection are qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shakspeare's characters-to Imogen for instance, who unites them all and yet Imogen and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia, and to Cordelia the conjugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain perfectly distinct as women. What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia that peculiar and individual truth of character which distinguishes her from every other human being?

6

"It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition which often leaves the history unspoke which it intends to do,' -a subdued quietness of deportment and expression-a veiled shyness thrown over all her emotions,-her language and her manner-making the outward demonstration invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and delicacy with which this peculiar disposition is sustained throughout the play."

Many have written well-ourselves mayhap among the number of Cordelia-none better than Charles Lamb and Mrs Jameson. You will find our account of her character and condition in Drake's Life of Shakspeare, quoted from an antique number of Maga. The Doctor calls it incomparable-but here is something at least as good-pardon the harmless vanity of a simple old

man:

"In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively imagination, such a character as that of Cordelia is calculated above every other to impress and captivate us. Any thing like mys

tery, any thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed. But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol— then do we seek, we ask, we thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the excess of love is welcomed, not repelled

it is gracious to us as the sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves. Lear is old-" fourscore and upward"-but we see what he bas been in former days: the ardent passions of youth have turned to rashness and wilfulness; he is long passed that age when we are more blessed in what we bestow than in what we receive.

"Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious that in proportion as her own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their 'plaited cunning;' and would retire from all competition with what she so disdains and abhors, even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as she says her

self

'What should Cordelia do?-love and be silent.'

For the very expressions of Lear

What can you say to draw

A third more opulent than your sisters ?' are enough to strike dumb for ever a generous, delicate, but shy disposition, such as is Cordelia's, by holding out a bribe for professions,

"If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this deliberate coolness would strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy; but it is beautifully represented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result of feelings habitually, if not naturally, repressed; and through the whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition-the same absence of all display-the same sobriety of speech veiling the most profound affectionsthe same quiet steadiness of purposethe same shrinking from all exhibition 'of emotion.

"

"Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur,' was a viva voce observation of Madame de Staël, when disgusted by the sentimental affectation of her imitators. This pudeur,' carried to an excess, appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the description of her deportment when she receives the letter of the Earl of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisters and the wretched condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us.

Kent. Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief? Gent. Ay, sir, she took them, and read them in my presence :

And now and then an ample tear stole down Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen Over her passion; who, most rebel-like, Sought to be king over her.

Kent. O then it moved her!

Gent. Not to a rage.

Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father

Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart, Cried, Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies-Sisters! What! the storm! i the night!

Let pity not be betiered! Then she shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes;

*

#

*

*

*

M

Then away she started, to deal with grief alone.'

"Here the last line the image brought before us of Cordelia starting away from observation, to deal with grief alone,'-is as exquisitely beautiful as it is characteristic.

"But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to that scene, in which her poor father recognises her, and, in the intervals of distraction, asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man, are brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost workings of the human heart, that as there is nothing surpassing this scene in Shakspeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared to it in any other writer.

Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty ? Lear. You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

Lear. Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish, fond old man,
Fourscore and upwards; and to deal plainly with

you,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man,
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is: and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments, nor 1 know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.

Cor. And so I am, I am!

Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith, I pray you weep not:

If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
Cor. No cause, no cause!'

"As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact, can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father are conveyed to their prison

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?'

The irony here is so bitter and intense, and at the same time so quiet, so feminine, so dignified in the expression, that who but Cordelia would have uttered it in the same manner, or would have condensed such ample meaning into so few and simple words?

"We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and great part of the fourth act; but towards the conclusion she reappears. Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness, being carried to its extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, like an engine wrenching our frame of nature from its fixed place,' then, like a redeeming angel, she descends to mingle in the scene,

loosening the springs of pity in our eyes,' and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are

left only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for heaven -our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!-O who, after sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life prolonged? What! replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?—a crown upon that old grey head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath ?-on which the deep dread-bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent their fury?-O never, never!

'Let him pass! he hates him That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer.'"

In an introductory dialogue between Alda and Medon (the fair critic and a friend) full of spirit and grace, Medon asks, "do you really expect that any one will read this little book of yours ?" and Alda answers, "no one writes a book without a hope of finding readers, and I shall find a few." But she adds fervently, "out of the fullness of my own heart and soul have I written it. In the pleasure it has given me, in the new and various views of human nature it has opened to me, in the beautiful and soothing images it has placed before me, in the exercise and improvement of my own faculties, I have already been repaid." But Medon asks how she could choose "such a threadbare subject," hinting that Alda has written the book to maintain the superiority of the female sex. Some of Shakspeare's women, he allows, are fit indeed to "inlay heaven with stars;" but very unlike those who at present walk upon the earth.

Many, doubtless, after Medon, will call the "subject threadbare." The heavens themselves have to many eyes a threadbare look-not absosolutely tatter'd, but sorely worn, like the blue surtout-the more's the pity-of a Polish patriot or a Spanish refugee. In the same predicament seem Shakspeare and the sky. But as to nobler optics "the eternal heavens are fresh and strong," so are the songs of the Swan of Avon. Never, till now, have Shakspeare's female characters, except when like stars they 66 were out in twos and

threes," been done justice to on the luminous page of philosophical criticism. Mrs Montague was a woman of much merit in her day; but, compared to Mrs Jameson, was as an owl to a nightingale. True, that

66

"Of all the birds that I do see, The owl is the wisest in her degree;" and her degree was that of a Doctor in Civil Law. The good lady dined out and in on the credit of her criticism, and ought to have been thankful that she died not of a surfeit. Mrs Jameson, we should guess from her writings, is a domestic character, and fond of "parlour twilight." She manifestly belongs to no coterie; but there is no society, however distinguished, that her fine genius, talents, and accomplishments, would not grace. In these, her exquisite commentaries on the impersonations of the virtues of her sex, she has "done the state some service," and they will know it. Long experience of what is called the world, of the folly, duplicity, shallowness, selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon," she well says, "unsettles our youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions, and retire from the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our belief, it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to consider self as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which all motives are to be referred. While we are yet young, and the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us a world within, we cannot fairly look on the world without-all things then are good. When we first throw ourselves forth, and meet burrs and briars on every side, which stick to our very hearts; and fair tempting fruits, which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm hour, when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern their true bearings; when the perception of evil, and sorrow, and sin, brings also the perception of some opposite

good, which awakens our indulgence, or the knowledge of the cause which excites our pity."

These fine sentiments, so finely expressed, introduce a noble eulogium on the moral and philosophical genius of Shakspeare. For in his pages, says this gifted lady, the crooked appears straight, the inaccessible easy, the incomprehensible plain. All we seek for is found there; his. characters combine history and real life; they are complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open to us-all may behold and judge for themselves.

listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us he would have bedeviled an angel! yet such is the unrivalled, though passive delicacy of the delineation, that it can stand it unhurt, untouched. It is wonderful!-yet natural as it is wonderful. There are still people in the world, whose opinions and feelings are tainted by an habitual acquaintance with the evil side of society, though in action and intention they remain right; and who without the real depravity of heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the characters and productions of

others."

"Medon. He flattered no bad passion, disguised no vice in the garb of virtue, trifled with no just and generous principle. He can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet still preserve our love for our fellow beings, and our reverence for ourselves. He has a lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beauty and excellence of virtue;

and, with his eye fixed on the load-star

of truth, steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other pilot we had been wrecked;-for

instance, who but himself would have dared to bring into close contact two such characters as Iago and Desdemona? Had the colours in which he has arrayed

Desdemona been one atom less transparently bright and pure, the charm had been lost; she could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the overpowering blackness of his character must have passed over the sunbright purity of hers. For observe, that Iago's disbelief in the virtue of Desdemona is not pretended, it is real. It arises from his total want of faith in all virtue; he is no more capable of conceiving goodness, than she is capable of conceiving evil. To the brutal coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears only a contemptible weakness; her purity of affection, which saw Othello's visage in his mind,' only a perversion of taste; her bashful modesty only a cloak for evil propensites ::-so he represents them with all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to

Alda is then asked by Medon, if there be indeed in the world many "women in whom the affections and the moral sentiments predominate," and she answers many such; for the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect and less observed. It is more common too, and therefore less remarked; prevailing tone to the character, exbut in women it generally gives the cept where vanity has been made the ruling motive. Alda, therefore, wanted character in its essential truth, not modified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation; she wished to illustrate the manner in which the affections would naturally display themselves in women, whether combined with high intellect, regulated by reflection, and elevated by imagi nation, or existing with perverted dispositions, and purified by the moral sentiments. "I found all in Shakspeare; and his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment, vanity, jealousy, are perfect in their kind, because so quiet in their effect."

How nobly Mrs Jameson has discharged one part of her gracious task we have now seen;-and next month we shall be delighted to accompany her in her exposition of the Characters of Passion and Imagination.

MUCH has been said and sung in praise of this our era or age. To hear some people speak, you would think it the most illustrious since the Flood; that not till now had the human soul reached its full stature, and been firmly knit in all its powers. According to their creed, Sensation, Perception, Judgment, Abstraction, Taste, Imagination, Genius, Reason, are now all as excellent faculties as they ever can be in mortal nature. Compared with the past, the present is a glorious time, and we can only hope that its glories will survive in the future. Dawning has grown meridian; nor is there need of another sun to rise on midday, so splendid the illumination of the mental heavens. "The fond admirers of departed worth," must moderate their enthusiasm-hang down their heads and be mute. The "March of Intellect" has left, dwindled in the distance, shapes whose stature once seemed to reach the sky.

VOL. XXXIII.

We smile to read that there were giants in those days; for to the "large orbs of our majestic eyes," they are but pigmies. Of all obsolete beliefs, the most absurd is that in the wisdom of our ancestors.

But, strange to note, as much has been said and sung in disparagement of this our era or age. It has been eloquently lamented that the ancient spirit is dead-dead and buried. The "Fancy's Midwife" is a sinecuristfor she is called on to assist at no new births. And how should she, since Fancy's self is effete; and her elder sister, Imagination, once so prolific in her loveliness, a Polyandrist with all her Passions of old ardent as bridegrooms and affectionate as husbands in that long honeymoon that for ages knew no setting, bas been by her lords and masters "flung off to beggarly divorcement ?" As for Reason, she has turned her eyes outwards from herself and her own