of the seventeenth century, its literature, as well as its institutions, was the sincere expression of these qualities. When the English drama attempted to reproduce the poetic image of the world, tragedy and comedy were not separated. The predominance of the popular taste sometimes carried tragic representations to a pitch of atrocity which was unknown in France, even in the rudest essays of dramatic art; and the influence of the clergy, by purging the comic stage of that excessive immorality which it exhibited elsewhere, also deprived it of that malicious and sustained gaiety which constitutes the essence of true comedy. The habits of mind which were entertained among the people by the minstrels and their ballads, allowed the introduction, even into those compositions which were most exclusively devoted to mirthfulness, of some touches of those emotions which comedy in France can never admit without losing its name, and becoming melodrama. Among truly national works, the only thoroughly comic play which the English stage possessed before the time of Shakspeare, "Gammer Gurton's Needle," was composed for a college, and modelled in accordance with the classic rules. The vague titles given to dramatic works, such as play, interlude, history, or even ballad, scarcely ever indicate any distinction of style. Thus, between that which was called tragedy, and that which was sometimes named comedy, the only essential difference consisted in the dénouement, according to the principles laid down

in the fifteenth century by the monk Lydgate, who "defines a comedy to begin with complaint and to end with gladness, whereas tragedy begins in prosperity and ends in adversity."

Thus, at the advent of Shakspeare, the nature and destiny of man, which constitute the materials of dramatic poetry, were not divided or classified into different branches of art. When art desired to introduce them on the stage, it accepted them in their entirety, with all the mixtures and contrasts which they present to observation; nor was the public taste inclined to complain of this. The comic portion of human realities had a right to take its place wherever its presence was demanded or permitted by truth; and such was the character of civilisation, that tragedy, by admitting the comic element, did not derogate from truth in the slightest degree. In such a condition of the stage and of the public mind, what could be the state of comedy, properly so called? How could it be permitted to claim to bear a particular name, and to form a distinct style? ୮ It succeeded in this attempt by boldly leaving those

realities in which its natural domain was neither respected nor acknowledged; it did not limit its efforts to the delineation of settled manners or of consistent characters; it did not propose to itself to represent men and things under a ridiculous but truthful aspect; but it became a fantastic and romantic work, the refuge of those amusing improbabilities which, in its idleness or

folly, the imagination delights to connect together by a slight thread, in order to form from them combinations capable of affording diversion or interest, without calling for the judgment of the reason. Graceful pictures, surprises, the curiosity which attaches to the progress of an intrigue, mistakes, quid-pro-quos, all the witticisms of parody and travestie, formed the substance of this inconsequent diversion. The conformation of the Spanish plays, a taste for which was beginning to prevail in England, supplied these gambols of the imagination with abundant frameworks and alluring models. Next to their chronicles and ballads, collections of French or Italian tales, together with the romances of chivalry, formed the favourite reading of the people. Is it strange that so productive a mine, and so easy a style, should first have attracted the attention of Shakspeare? Can we feel astonished that his young and brilliant imagination hastened to wander at will among such subjects, free from the yoke of probabilities, and excused from seeking after serious and vigorous combinations? The great poet, whose mind and hand proceeded, it is said, with such equal rapidity that his manuscript scarcely contained a single erasure, doubtless yielded with delight to those unrestrained gambols in which he could display without labour his rich and varied faculties. He could put anything he pleased into his comedies, and he has, in fact, put everything into them, with the exception of one thing

which was incompatible with such a system, namely, the ensemble which, making every part concur towards the same end, reveals at every step the depth of the plan, and the grandeur of the work. It would be difficult to find in Shakspeare's tragedies a single conception, position, act, or passion, or degree of vice or virtue, which may not also be met with in some one of his comedies; but that which in his tragedies is carefully thought out, fruitful in result, and intimately connected with the series of causes and effects, is in his comedies only just indicated, and offered to our sight for a moment to dazzle us with a passing gleam, and soon to disappear in a new combination. In "Measure for Measure," Angelo, the unworthy governor of Vienna, after having condemned Claudio to death for the crime of having seduced a young girl whom he intended to marry, himself attempts to seduce Isabella, the sister of Claudio, by promising her brother's pardon as a recompense for her own dishonour; and when, by Isabella's address in substituting another girl in her place, he thinks he has received the price of his infamous bargain, he gives orders to hasten Claudio's execution. Is not this tragedy? Such a fact might well be placed in the life of Richard the Third; and no crime of Macbeth's presents this excess of wickedness. But in "Macbeth" and "Richard III.," crime produces the tragic effect which belongs to it, because it bears the impress of probability, and because real forms and colours attest

its presence: we can discern the place which it occupies in the heart of which it has taken possession: we know how it gained admission, what it has conquered, and what remains for it to subjugate: we behold it incorporating itself by degrees into the unhappy being whom it has subdued we see it living, walking, and breathing, with a man who lives, walks, and breathes, and thus communicates to it his character, his own individuality. In Angelo, crime is only a vague abstraction, connected en passant with a proper name, with no other motive than the necessity of making that person commit a certain action which shall produce a certain position, from which the poet intends to derive certain effects. Angelo is not presented to us at the outset either as a rascal or as a hypocrite; on the contrary, he is a man of exaggeratedly severe virtue. But the progress of the poem requires that he should become criminal, and criminal he becomes; when his crime is committed, he will repent of it as soon as the poet pleases, and will find himself able to resume without effort the natural course of his life, which had been interrupted only for a moment.

Thus, in Shakspeare's comedy, the whole of human life passes before the before the eyes of the spectator, reduced to a sort of phantasmagoria-a brilliant and uncertain reflection of the realities pourtrayed in his tragedy. Just when the truth seems on the point of allowing itself to be caught, the image grows pale, and vanishes; its part