Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon us the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: And we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon. Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cor- The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee? He, that parts us, shall bring a brand from heaven, And fire us hence, like foxes. Wipe thine eyes; The goujeers shall devour them, flesh and fell, Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see them starve first. Come. [Exeunt LEAR and CORDELIA, guarded." What a blessed change has been wrought on poor old Lear! No more he cries "the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else, Save what beats here." doomed, shines like a place of vernal and summer joy. He has forgotten the hovel on the heath-the creature "crown'd with rank fumiter," "singing aloud," "as mad as the vext sea"-he will not think of those" unnatural hags.""No-no-no-no"-but the prison to which he and his Cordelia are Do you see this? Look on her,-look, —her lips, Look there, look there! [He dies." Almost every word spoken by Cordelia have we here set down; how few they are-but in power how mighty! Well and beautifully does the gifted lady, whose work has been lying before us while we have been writing, say, that "if Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's Tragedies, Cordelia, in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and passion, approaches nearest to perfection; and in her adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determi- In the story of King Lear and his nor yet to see it acted; but we believe the original sinner was Tate, of the firm of Tate, Brady, and Co. Dr Johnson observes," that though the important moral, that villainy is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin, be incidentally enforced, yet Shakspeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and what is yet more strange, to the faith of the Chronicler." And he seems surprised that this conduct is justified by the Spectator, who blames Tate for giving Cordelia success and happiness in the alteration, and declares that in his opinion "the tragedy has lost half its beauty." Samuel sides with Tate against Shakspeare and Addison. But though Samuel-in this case-be in the wrong, we cannot but respect and love the high-minded and tender;'-hearted heretic. "A play," quoth he," in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life; but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded that the observation of justice makes a play worse; or that if other excellencies are equal, the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted virtue. In the present case, the public has decided. Cordelia, from the time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity. And if my sensations could add any thing to the general suffrage, I might relate I was many years ago so shocked with Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor." We have never been so fortunate as to read this version of the story, Too harrowing had been the horror-too dreadful the terror-the pity too severe, to the shuddering soul of him, rightly called the great English Moralist. He could not endure to see Lear enter with Cordelia dead in his arms-to hear him utter "O my poor fool is hanged!" He was afraid to read those scenes glad to escape from the belief that such wretchedness could be in this world-happy to see sunshine stream down at last from the black sky, and settle into a spot of peace on the bosom of the green earth. For sake of such relief from pathos too intense, he was willing to sacrifice the most awful triumph ever achieved by the genius of mortal man over the darkest mysteries of our nature. Blame him not—rather let him have our reverence. Neither, surely, is he to be found fault with for saying, that "since all reasonable beings love justice, he cannot easily be persuaded that the observation of justice makes a play worse." must always make it better. But is there here any injustice? To the last moment of her life Cordelia was happy It "Fair creature! to whom Heaven A calm and sinless life, with love, bath given !" A few days of what we might call misery were all she ever suffered. She could not change insanity into perfect health-but she said— "O my dear father! Restoration, hang Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made!" And Restoration came at that invocation, and did her bidding; so that, when afterwards sent to prison together, Lear said they two would sing there, like "birds i' the cage!" And so they did; till a slave stole in upon their holy communion, and Cordelia in a moment was murdered-and sent to bliss. "O fairest flower! no sooner blown than blasted!" For not till then was the beauty of Cordelia's being full-blown, under the sunshine of joy and the dews of pity-it was perfect-and in its perfection ceased to be on earth, and was transferred to heaven. "Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages." What were they-her wages? Blessings from her father's quieted eyes! the still delight of duty unconscious of its own grandeur in the depth of love! Schlegel speaks well-" after surviving so many suffering Lear can only die in a tragical manner from his grief for the death of Cordelia; and if he is also to be saved, and to pass the remainder of his days in happiness, the whole loses its meaning. According to Shakspeare's plan, the guilty, it is true, are all punished, for wickedness destroys itself; but the auxiliary virtues are everywhere too late, or overmatched by the cunning activity of malice. The persons of the drama have only such a faint belief in providence as heathens may be supposed to have; and the poet here writes to shew us that this belief requires a wider range than the dark pilgrimage on earth to be established in its utmost extent." Most true. Only the light from beyond the grave can enable our eyes to see into the mystery of the darkness in which all things on this side of it are shrouded; and poetical justice itself can only be felt in the spirit of religion. Charles Lamb, alluding to Tate's botchings, says well-" It is not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too.' Where is her husband? He seems to have come with her across the Channel-but to have been recalled by some sudden disturbances in France. Nobody doubts that Cordelia was a perfect wife. That is implied in her filial piety. But her conjugal duties were for a while to lie dormant and forgotten-along with her lord and their mutual love. She was sent on a higher missionand in Nature's holiest cause she was a martyr. "A happy ending!" exclaims Mr Lamb-" as if the living martyrdom that Lear had gone through the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life, the only decoand be happy after, if he could susrous thing for him. If he is to live all this pudder and preparation— tain the world's burden after, why why torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station -as if, at his years and with his experience, any thing was left but to die!" Characters of the Affections! Hermione, Imogen, Desdemona, and Cordelia! Farewell. May we now be permitted to philosophize? The language of ethical writers in general seems to oppose the idea of making the Affections objects of moral approbation. Thus Dr Reid, (Essay V., Chap. 5,) speaks unequivocally:-" If virtue and vice be a matter of choice, they must consist in voluntary actions, or in fixed purposes of acting according to a certain rule, when there is opportunity, and not in qualities of mind which are involuntary." Thus Mr Stewart, (Outlines, 257, 258,) more explicitly still :-" The propriety or impropriety of our conduct depends in no instance on the strength or weakness of the affection, but on our obeying or disobeying the dictates of reason and of conscience." In connexion with which he says, 66 our affections were given us to arrest our attention to particular objects, whose happiness is connected with our exertions; and to excite and support the activity of the mind, when a sense of duty might be insufficient for the purpose.' >> Both these writers here speak what may be considered as the received language of moralists. They are not proposing new views, but referring to acknowledged principles. In all these observations it is laid down as an unquestionable maxim, that in order to constitute virtue, there must be in the mind of the agent at the time a knowledge of his conformity with the rule of virtue. It is further represented by Dr Reid, that to make any thing right, it must be matter of choice or election, which the affections are not. Now, we cannot help thinking, that notwithstanding both these maxims, which would exclude the affections, generally speaking, from morality, they are nevertheless esteemed, and justly esteemed, by the common sentiment of mankind, as the great constituents of virtue. Let us speak first of a class of affections which are uniformly looked upon with the highest respect, and most decided moral approbationthose which regard parents; and we would ask, whether a child whose mind is much filled with these affections, is full of reverence, of fond and grateful feeling, towards those to whom it seems to itself to owe all things, tenderly fearful to give them pain, and only solicitous to do their pleasure, does or does not bear a mind of which the state itself, considered without respect to the particular actions it suggests, but regarded as a frame of mind, (only with confidence that it is sufficiently sincere and fixed to produce its own actions when occasion may arise,) is not an object of moral approbation? Now there can be but one answer, that the filial piety of such a child would be the object of our very purest and highest and most delighted praise. Yet in such a mind there shall be no consideration that these feelings are right, and that feelings different from these would be wrong. There shall be nothing but the pure and simple inspiration of affection. Still less would there be in such a temper of mind, and in all the feelings that sprung up in it, any thing of election or choice. The very supposition that they are affections, precludes all choice. The acts indeed are matter of choice, but they derive their worth and character solely from the motive, in which there is here no choice; and even these are not considered by the mind by any rule of right, but are tried merely how far they accord with the feelings that are in the heart. Now, this single case, if it be admitted, will entirely set aside the absolute authority of those two principles which we have cited from Dr Reid and Mr Stewart, and which are very commonly admitted. It will shew that these rules require to be explained, and to be much restricted in their application; that if they are useful, it is in particular cases; but that as absolute tests of morality, in which sense they are proposed, they do not hold good ;since here is a case of a very high moral order, in which they are totally inapplicable. And this case, it will be observed, though proposed as a single one, is merely the representative of a very extensive order of moral cases,-all those of pure, good, rightly-directed native affection. The instance of a mind so perfectly pure and good as we have supposed, is a rare one, but such do occur; and it would be no vindication, but the strongest objection, to a theory of morals, that it would not include those cases, however rare, which were rare only from the height of moral excellence they implied. We have represented nearly the only case in which it is supposable that the mind may be full of spontaneous goodness, without having yet begun to judge itself by any rule of right and wrong. But the same will hold of innumerable affections. Does it diminish the merit of gratitude in our eyes, that it comes as a spontaneous and irresistible movement upon the heart? Or do we approve more of him who measures the returns of kindness which he will make, precisely to what the kindness done requires, than of him whose unsatisfied feelings persuade him that he has never done enough? Imagine him who fights in his country's battles, and to whom nothing that his power can do seems sufficient to satisfy his longing desire to render her service; only admitting that his desire is for her, and not for himself. Or suppose any of the acts of kindness which one human being renders to another. Does the quick strong impulse from which it flows, take away the ground of approbation, or does it constitute it? It is true that passing emotions of right feeling are not virtue; nor is a single good affection. But suppose any man, who in all the various relations of life feels kindly, warmly, generously, and who in performing all its offices is influenced by the pleasure he feels, and by a sense of natural aversion to that which would be contrary to his just, kind, right feelings should we withhold our esteem from such a man, and say that his feelings had no moral quality because they were involuntary or his actions, because they were prompted by his feelings, and not measured to a known rule of right? ? We are inclined to think, that by far the greater part of the moral approbation and disapprobation we bestow in life, is given from recognising the presence or absence of such right affections. If the nature of man be truly considered, and the purport of the greater part of the moral instruction which he receives, and the moral discipline he passes through, it will be found that the great object of all is to frame him to right feelings. Are these feelings right and moral only because they have been formed in the mind against nature? And do they lose their character when by greater hap piness of disposition, and of the circumstances of life, they are found there unforced, springing up in the very bounty of nature? The most perfect regulation of the mind towards the Supreme_Being, is a regulation of feelings. Does it diminish in our esteem the regard due to the most perfect piety, that it was from the beginning a predominant feeling in the soul?-and that it has not been slowly framed, by thought, self-conquest, and the exercises of religion? This cursory notice of some of the more important dispositions of our nature may serve to satisfy us that there is some great defect in those ethical theories, which represent volition, and the conscious reference to a rule of right, as necessary to constitute a proper object of our moral approbation. To us it would appear more consonant to our natural feelings and to truth to say, that if it had been possible for man, constituted as he is, to have been from his birth good, without any consideration that he was so, or any temptation of evil entering into his mind to tell him that he had a conscience,-if all his affections for earth and heaven could have been right, and pure, and strong, and all in their just proportion, so that every allurement to ill that could have been offered to him should have appeared not matter of deliberation but of abhorrence,-that this state, which, according to the ethical maxims in question, must be without any merit or claim to praise, would have been in truth the highest moral state conceivable. These maxims then cannot be supported. But, constituted as human nature is, this state is not possible. In man good is mixed with evil, and it is this mixture which gives occasion to all ethical enquiry. The contention between good and evil is that strife of which conscience is the umpire. It is reflection on the tendencies of these two opposite forces that gives rise to a rule of right. It is the allurement which both good and evil offer to the mind, that makes virtue a matter of volition and choice. From this mixed state, then, and this subjection of human nature to two different powers, arises a great department of morality. And, as it appears to us, all that has been usually |