consists in having made the same intrigue serve to punish both the jealous husband and the insolent lover. He has thus imparted to the drama, with the exception of the license of a few expressions, a much more moral tone than that of the novels from which he may have derived his subject, and in which the husband always ends by being duped, while the lover is made happy.

This comedy appears to have been composed in 1601.

THE TEMPEST.

(1611.)

"WHETHER this be, or be not, I'll not swear," says old Gonzalo, at the conclusion of the "Tempest," when utterly confounded by the marvels which have surrounded him ever since his arrival on the island. It seems as though, through the mouth of the honest man of the drama, Shakspeare desired to express the general effect of this charming and singular work. As brilliant, light, and transparent as the aerial beings with which it is filled, it scarcely allows itself to be apprehended by reflection; and hardly, through its changeful and diaphanous features, can we feel certain that we perceive a subject, a dramatic contexture, and real adventures, feelings, and personages. Nevertheless, it contains all these, and all these are revealed in it; and, in rapid succession, each object in its turn moves the imagination, occupies the attention, and disappears, leaving no trace behind but a confused emotion of pleasure and an impression of truth, to which we dare not either refuse or grant our belief.

"This drama," says Warburton, "is one of the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination, peculiar to Shakspeare, which soars above the bounds of nature, without forsaking sense; or, more properly, carries nature along with him beyond her established limits." Everything is, in this picture, at once fantastic and true. As if he were the creator of the work, as if he were the true enchanter, surrounded by all the illusions of his art, Prospero, in manifesting himself to us, seems the only opaque and solid body in the midst. of a populace of airy phantoms clothed with the forms of life, but unpossessed of the appearances of duration. A few minutes scarcely elapse before the amiable Ariel, lighter even than when he comes with the quickness of thought, escapes from the contact of the magic wand, and, freed from the forms which are prescribed to him— free in fact from all sensible form, dissolves into thin air, in which his individual existence, as far as we are concerned, vanishes away. Is not that half-intelligence, which seems to glimmer in the monster Caliban, an effect of magic? and does it not seem that, on setting foot out of the disenchanted isle in which he is about to be left to himself, we shall see him relapse into his natural state of an inert mass, assimilating itself by degrees to the earth, from which it is scarcely distinct? When far from our view, what will become of that Antonio and that Sebastian, who were so ready to conceive plans of crime, and of that Alonzo, who was so easily and

E E

frivolously accessible to feelings of every kind?

What will become of the young lovers, so quickly and so completely enamoured of each other, and who, in our view, seem to have been created only that they might love, and to have no other object in life than to disclose to our view the delightful pictures of love and innocence? Each of these personages displays to us only that portion of his existence which concerns his present position; none of them reveals to us in himself those abysses of nature, or those deep sources of thought into which Shakspeare descends so frequently and so thoroughly; but they manifest before our eyes all the outward effects of these inward feelings; we do not know whence they come, but we recognise perfectly well what they seem to be-true visions of which we can discern neither the flesh nor the bones, but the forms of which are distinct and familiar to us.

Thus, by the suppleness and lightness of their nature, these singular creatures conduce to a rapidity of action, and a variety of movement, unexampled, perhaps, in any other of Shakspeare's dramas. None of his other plays are more amusing or more animated than this, and in none is a lively, and even waggish, gaiety more naturally conjoined with serious interests, melancholy feelings, and touching affections. It is a fairy tale, in all the force of the term, and in all the vivacity of the impressions which such a tale can impart.

The style of the "Tempest" shares in this kind of

magic. Figurative and aerial, bringing before the mind. a host of images and impressions as vague and fugitive as those uncertain forms which are depicted in the clouds, it moves the imagination without riveting it, and maintains it in a state of undecided excitement, which renders it accessible to all the spells under which the enchanter desires to place it. It is a tradition in England, that the celebrated Lord Falkland,' Mr. Selden, and Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, regarded the style of the part of Caliban, in the "Tempest," as quite peculiar to that personage, and as one of Shakspeare's own creations. Johnson is of a contrary opinion; but, supposing the tradition to be authentic, the authority of Johnson would not be sufficient to invalidate that of Lord Falkland, a man of eminently elegant mind, and who was remarkable, as it would appear, for a delicacy of tact, which, in criticism at least, was often wanting in the Doctor. Besides, Lord Falkland, who was almost a contemporary of Shakspeare, as he was born several years before the death of the poet, would be entitled to be believed in preference regarding shades of language which, a hundred-and-fifty years later, were naturally

The most virtuous, amiable, and erudite man in England, during the reign of Charles I., of whom Lord Clarendon has said that "if there were no other brand upon the Civil War than his single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity." After having boldly maintained the liberties of his country against Charles I., in Parliament, he joined the cause of that prince as soon as it became the cause of justice; and having been made a minister of Charles, he died at the battle of Newbury, in despair at the misfortunes which he foresaw; he was then thirty-three years of age.