Act V. sc. iii, SHAKSPERE. Spalding, |

iv. Hickson, &c., with a few lines |

FLETCHER. Sc. iv. (with |

FLETCHER interpolations. |

Swinburne, Littledale). |

|

Epilogue | FLETCHER. Littledale.

* Here Prof. Spalding and Mr Hickson differ.

Mr Swinburne, when duly clothed and in his right mind, and not exposing

himself in his April-Fool's cap and bells, will have something to say on

the subject; and it will no doubt be matter of controversy to the end of

time. Let every one study, and be fully convinct in his own mind.

To Mrs Spalding and her family I am greatly obligd for their willing

consent to the present reprint. To Dr John Hill Burton, the Historian of

Scotland, we are all grateful for his interesting Life of his old

schoolfellow and friend, which comes before the author's _Letter_. Miss

Spalding too I have to thank for help. And our Members, Mrs Bidder--the

friend of our lost sweet-natured helper and friend, Richard Simpson--and

Mr *****, for their gifts of £10 each, and the Rev. Stopford Brooke for

his gift of four guineas, towards the cost of the present volume.

To my friend Miss Constance O'Brien I am indebted for the annext Scheme

of Prof. Spalding's argument, and the Notes and Index. The side-notes,

head-lines, and the additions to the original title-page[xi:1] are mine.

I only regret that the very large amount of his time--so much wanted for

other pressing duties,--which Mr Harold Littledale has given to his

extremely careful edition of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ for us, has thrown

on me, who know the Play so much less intimately than he does, the duty

of writing these _Forewords_. But we shall get his mature opinion in his

Introduction to the Play in a year or two[xi:2].

F. J. FURNIVALL.

_3, St George's Square, Primrose Hill,

London, N.W., Sept. 27-Oct. 13, 1876._

FOOTNOTES:

[v:1] Unsure myself as to the form of oxlip root-leaves, and knowing

nothing of the use of marigolds alluded to in the lines

"Oxlips in their cradles growing,

Marigolds on death-beds blowing,"

also seeing no fancy even if there were fact in 'em, I applied to the

best judge in England known to me, Dr R. C. A. Prior, author of the

_Popular Names of British Plants_; and he says "I am quite at a loss for

the meaning of _cradles_ and _death-beds_ in the second stanza.

"The writer did not know much about plants, or he would not have

combined summer flowers, like the marigold and larkspur, with the

primrose.

"I prefer the reading 'With hair-bells dimme'; for nobody would call the

upright salver-shaped flower of the primrose a 'bell.' The poet probably

means the blue-bell."

On the other hand, Mr Wm Whale of our Egham Nurseries writes: "The

root-leaves of the Oxlip are cradle-shaped, but circular instead of

long. The growth of the leaves would certainly give one an idea of the

stem and Oxlip flowers being lodged in a cradle [? saucer].

"I have seen the marygold[v:A] in my boyish days frequently placed on

coffins; and in a warm death-room they would certainly flower. The

flowers named may be all called Spring-flowers, but of course some

blowing rather later than others."

[v:A] This is called the _Calendula officinalis_, or

_Medicinal Marygold_, not the African or French sorts which

are now so improved and cultivated in gardens.

[vii:1] _Edinb. Review_, July 1840, no. 144, p. 468.

[vii:2] Surely the 'eminent living critic' made an awful mistake about

this. Beaumont and Fletcher write Perdita's flowers, Florizel's

description of her, Autolycus!

[viii:1] In the _Edinburgh Review_ for April 1841, p. 237-8. Prof.

Spalding says that in Fletcher's _Spanish Curate_, "The scene of

defiance and threatening between Jamie and Henrique is in one of

Fletcher's best keys;--not unlike a similar scene in 'The Two Noble

Kinsmen.'" Act III. sc. i.

[ix:1] His Dublin 'Afternoon Lecture' of 1863, shows that he then knew

all that I in 1873 was trying in vain to find a known Shaksperian editor

or critic to tell me.

[ix:2] I name Beaumont because of his run-on lines, &c., and the power I

find in some of the parts of his and Fletcher's joint dramas that I

attribute to him.

[x:1] I cannot get over Chaucer's daisies being calld "smelless but most

quaint." The epithets seem to me not only poor, but pauper: implying

entire absence of fancy and imagination.--F. "Chough hoar" is as bad

though.--H. L.

[xi:1] This was "A Letter / on / Shakspeare's Authorship / of / +The Two

Noble Kinsmen+; / a Drama commonly ascribed / to John Fletcher. /

Edinburgh: / Adam and Charles Black; / and Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown,

Green, and Longman. / London. / M.DCCC.XXXIII."

[xi:2] See the opinion of Mr J. Herbert Stack, an old

_Fortnightly-Reviewer_, in the _Notes_ at the end of this volume.

SKELETON OF PROF. SPALDING'S _LETTER_.

Introduction. Name of the play (p. 2). Historical evidence in favour

of Shakspere's share in the play (6). Incorrectness of the first

and second folios of his works (7). Internal evidence (10). Marked

differences between Fletcher's and Shakspere's styles (11). Shakspere's

versification (11); abruptness (11); mannerisms and repetitions (12);

conciseness tending to obscurity (13); and rapid conception, opposed to

Fletcher's deliberation and diffuseness (14); his distinct, if crowded,

imagery, to Fletcher's vague indefiniteness (15). Shakspere's metaphors

(16), classical allusions (18), reflective turn of mind (20), conceits

(22), personification (25), all differ from Fletcher's manner (26).

Origin of the story of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ (26). Sketch of First

Act, and reasons for assigning it to Shakspere (27). Outline of Second

Act, assigned to Fletcher (35). First Scene of Third Act, Shakspere's

(40); Plot of the rest (41). Fourth Act, Fletcher's (44). Description of

Fifth Act, given to Shakspere, omitting one scene (45).

Points of likeness between Shakspere and contemporary dramatists (56).

Impossibility of imitating him (58). Inferiority of the underplot (60).

Reasons for supposing Shakspere chose the subject (62). His studies

(67). Resemblance between classical and romantic poetry (69).

Shakspere's plots contrasted with those of his contemporaries (73); his

treatment of passion (74); unity of conception (78).

Poetical art compared with plastic (83). Greek plastic art aimed at

expressing Beauty and affecting the senses (84); poetry, at expressing

and affecting the mind (86); therefore poetry appeals to wider

sympathies (88). Dramatic poetry the highest form of poetry (92).

Why Shakspere excelled (93). His representations of human nature both

_true_ and _impressive_ (94); he delineated both its intellect and

passion (99). His morality (101); his representations of evil (104).

Conclusion. Summary of the argument as to plot, scenic arrangements, and

execution (105).

LIFE OF PROFESSOR W. SPALDING,

BY HIS SCHOOL-FELLOW AND FRIEND,

JOHN HILL BURTON, LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF 'THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,' ETC., ETC.

William Spalding was born on the 22nd of May in the year 1809, at

Aberdeen. His father was a practising lawyer as a member of the Society

of Advocates in that town, and held office as Procurator Fiscal of the

district, or local representative of the law officers of the crown, in

the investigation of crimes and the prosecution of criminals. Spalding's

mother, Frances Read, was well connected among the old and influential

families of the city. When he went to school, Spalding was known to be

the only son of a widow. He had one sister who died in early life.

Whatever delicacy of constitution he inherited seems to have come from

his father's side, for his mother lived to the year 1874, and died in

the house of her son's widow among her grown-up grandchildren.

Spalding had the usual school and college education of the district. He

attended the elementary burgh schools for English reading, writing, and

arithmetic, and passed on to Latin in the grammar school. In his day the

fees for attendance in that school, whence many pupils have passed into

eminence, were raised from 7_s._ 6_d._ to 10_s._ for each quarter of the

year. Those who knew Spalding in later life, would not readily

understand that as a school-boy he was noticeable for his personal

beauty. His features were small and symmetrical, and his cheeks had a

brilliant colour. This faded as he approached middle age, and the

features lost in some measure their proportions. He had ever a grave,

thoughtful, and acute face, and one of his favourite pupils records the

quick glance of his keen grey eye in the active duties of his class. He

was noticed in his latter years to have a resemblance to Francis and

Leonard Horner, and what Sydney Smith said of the older and more

distinguished of these brethren might have been said of Spalding's

earnest honest face, that "the commandments were written on his

forehead." When he had exhausted his five years' curriculum at the

grammar school, Spalding stepped on a November morning, with some of

his school-fellows, and a band of still more primitive youth, from the

Aberdeenshire moorlands, and the distant highlands, to enter the open

door of Marishal College, and compete for a bursary or endowment. This

arena of mental gladiatorship was open to all comers, without question

of age, country, or creed. The arrangement then followed--and no doubt

still in use, for it has every quality of fairness and effectiveness to

commend it, was this--An exercise was given out. It then consisted

solely of a passage in English of considerable length, dictated to and

written out by the competitors, who had to convert it into Latin. The

name of each competitor was removed from his exercise, and kept by a

municipal officer. A committee of sages, very unlikely to recognise any

known handwriting among the multitude of papers subjected to their

critical examination, sorted the exercises in the order of their merits,

and then the names of the successful competitors were found. My present

impression is that Spalding took the first bursary. It may have been the

second or the third, for occasionally a careless inaccuracy might trip

up the best scholar, but by acclamation the first place was assigned to

Spalding. Indeed, in a general way, through the whole course of his

education he swept the first prizes before him. When he finished the

four years' curriculum of Marishal College, he attended a few classes in

the college of Edinburgh, where the instruction was of another

kind--less absolute teaching, but perhaps opportunities for ascending

into higher spheres of knowledge. It was a little to the surprise of his

companions that he was next found undergoing those "Divinity Hall"

exercises, which predicate ambition to be ordained for the Church of

Scotland, with the prospect, to begin with, of some moorland parish with

a manse on a windy hill and a sterile but extensive glebe, a vista lying

beyond of possible promotion to the ministry of some wealthy and

hospitable civic community. Spalding said little about his views while

he studied for the Church, and nothing about his reasons for changing

his course, as he did, after a few months of study in his usual

energetic fashion. He had apparently no quarrel either with institutions

or persons, stimulating him to change his design, and he ever spoke

respectfully of the established Church of Scotland.

From this episodical course of study he brought with him some valuable

additions to the large stores of secular learning at his command. He had

a powerful memory, and great facilities for mastering and simplifying

sciences as well as languages. He seemed to say to himself, like Bacon,

"I have taken all knowledge to be my province." With any of his friends

who strayed into eccentric by-paths of inquiry he was sarcastic--almost

intolerant, in denouncing their selection. Why abandon the great

literature--the great sciences and the great arts--which the noblest and

strongest intellects in all ages have combined to enrich and bring to

perfection? Master all that has been done in these, in the first place,

and then you may be permitted to take your devious course. In all the

departments of study he seemed to pass over the intermediate agencies,

to contemplate with something like worship the great leading spirits

whose intellectual stature raised them far above the mob. So in

literature, it was in Homer and Shakspeare that he delighted. In the

sciences connected with the analysis and the uses of intellect, he

looked to Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. In the exact sciences, to Galileo,

Tycho Brache and Newton, and so on. In art, he could admit the merits of

a Teniers, an Ostade, or a Morland, in accurately rendering nature, as

he would admit the merit of an ingenious toy. He could not but wonder at

the turbulent power of Rubens, but he was bitter on the purpose these

gifts were put to, in developing unsightly masses of flesh, and motions

and attitudes wanting alike in beauty and dignity. It was in Michel

Angelo, Raphael, and Thorwaldsen, with a select group from those

approaching near to these in their characteristic qualities, that the

young student selected the gods of his idolatry.

This love of art was something new in Spalding's native district. There

all forms of learning were revered, and many a striving rustic devoted

the whole energies of his life to acquire the means of teaching his

fellow-men from the pulpit or the printing press. But art was nought

among them. Spalding was thoroughly attached to his native district, and

could well have said, "I love my fathers' northern land, where the dark

pine trees grow;" but when his thoughts ran on art, he would sometimes

bitterly call the north of Scotland a modern Boeotia. This is not the

place for inquiring how it came to pass, that neglect of art could keep

company with an ardent love of letters, but it is remarkable that the

district so destitute of the æsthetic, gave to the world some

considerable artists. In the old days there was George Jameson; and in

Spalding's own generation, Boeotia produced Dyce, Giles, Philips, and

Cassy as painters, with Brodie as a sculptor. Spalding could not but see

merit in these, for none of them gave themselves to vulgar or purely

popular art. Still he panted after the higher altitudes, and it appeared

to him at one time that in his friend David Scot he had found the

practical master of his ideal field. Scot had, to be sure, grand

conceptions, but he did not possess the gift that enabled the great

masters to abstract them from the clay of the common world. He had the

defect--and his friend seeing it, felt it almost as a personal

calamity--of lapsing into the ungainly, and even the grotesque, in his

most aspiring efforts.

In approaching the time when the book to which this notice is prefixed

was published, one is tempted to offer a word or two of explanation on

its writer not appearing before the world earlier; and when he did

appear choosing so unobtrusive a fashion for his entry. About the time

when his college education ended, there was something like a revival of

literary ambition in Aberdeen, limited to young men who were Spalding's

contemporaries. A few of them appealed for the loudest blasts of the

trumpet of fame, in grand efforts in heroic and satirical poetry, and

their works may be found in the libraries of collectors curious in

specimens of forgotten provincial literature. These authors were

generally clever young men; and like others of their kind, they found in

after life that verse was not the only path to fame or fortune. One of

them became a distinguished pulpit orator. If Paley noticed, as an "only

defect" in a brother clergyman, that he was a popular preacher, Spalding

was apt to take a harsher view of such a failing; nor would he palliate

it on the representation of one who was the friend and admirer of both,

who pleaded the trials that a person so gifted is subjected to, noting

that there were certain eminences that the human head could not reach

without becoming dizzy--as, for instance, being Emperor of Russia,

Ambassador at an oriental court, Provost of a Scotch "Burgh toon"--or a

popular preacher. Another contemporary who courted and obtained

popularity, and still, to the joy of his friends, lives to enjoy it, was

less distasteful to Spalding, though trespassing on his own field of

ambition as a Greek scholar and Homeric critic. But he made the

distinction, that in this instance he thought the homage to popularity

was natural to the man, moving in irresistible impulses unregulated by a

system for bringing popularity in aid of success.

The lookers-on, knowing that Spalding was ambitious, expected to hear

him in the tuneful choir, but he was dumb. He was once or twice, by

those nearest to him, heard in song, and literally heard only, for it is

believed that he never allowed any manuscript testimony of such a

weakness to leave his custody. One satirical performance got popularity

by being committed to memory. It was called "The fire-balloon." In the

year 1828 there was an arousing of public sympathy with the sufferers by

a great conflagration at Merimachi in North America. A body of the

students who had imbibed from the Professor of Natural Philosophy an

enthusiasm about aerostation, proposed to raise money for the sufferers

by making and exhibiting a huge fire balloon. The effort was embarrassed

by many difficulties and adventures affording opportunity for the

satirist. For instance, a trial trip was attempted, and one of "the

committee," who was the son of a clergyman, got hold of the key of his

father's church, and put its interior at the disposal of his colleagues.

The balloon inflated and ascended. The problem of getting it down again,

however, had not been solved. It got itself comfortably at rest in the

roof of a cupola, and the young philosophers then had to wait until it

became exhausted enough to descend.

The literary ambition of young Aberdeen found for itself a very sedate

and respectable looking organ in "_The Aberdeen Magazine_," published

monthly during the years 1831 and 1832, and still visible in two thick

octavo volumes. Spalding was not to be tempted into this project, though

there was a slight touch in it supposed, solely from internal evidence,

to have come from him. A heavy controversy was begun by one calling

himself "a classical reformer," who brought up foemen worthy of his

steel. At the end of the whole was a sting in a postscript, more

effective than anything in the unwieldy body it was attached to. P. S.

As I am no great scholar, perhaps your classical Reformer will have the

goodness to tell me where I can see _The Works of Socrates_. He seems to

allude to them twice [reference to pages]. As he modestly tells us that

he is a much better translator of Homer than Pope was, perhaps he will

be kind enough to favour the world with a translation, to use his own

words, of "those works which have immortalized the name of

Socrates."[xvii-1]

The papers in the Aberdeen Magazine were not all of the sombre cumbrous

kind. There was an infusion of fresh young blood, fired perhaps by the

influence of Wilson and Lockhart in Blackwood's Magazine, but seeking

original forms of its own. For the leader of this school, Spalding had

both esteem and admiration, but it was for far other merits than those

of the brisk unrestrained writer of fugitive literature. This was Joseph

Robertson, afterwards distinguished as an archæologist. He survived

Spalding eight years. No lines of study could well be in more opposite

directions than those of the two men who respected each other. While

Spalding revelled in all that was brightest and best in literature and

art, Robertson devoted himself to the development of our knowledge about

the period when the higher arts--those of the painter and the

sculptor--had been buried with the higher literature, and the classic

languages had degenerated, in the hands of those who, as Du Cange, whose

ample pages were often turned by Robertson, called them, were

"Scriptores mediæ et infimæ Latinitatis." The source of Spalding's

admiration was that Robertson's writing was perfect of its kind, and led

to important and conclusive results. It was in this spirit that he

wrote his own "Letter." It did not fulfil a high aspiration, but it must

be perfect; and it was surely a moment of supreme happiness to him, when

he found the unknown author sought for and praised by so cautious and

reserved a critic as Hallam.

The "Letter" was published in 1833. It is characteristic of its author's

distaste of loud applause, that whenever this, his first achievement in

letters, saw the light, he fled, as it were, from the knowledge of what

was said of it, and wandered for several months in Italy and Germany.

This was an era in his life, for it gave him the opportunity of seeing

face to face, and profoundly studying, the great works of art that had

hitherto only been imaged in his dreams from copies and engravings. He

at the same time studied--or rather enjoyed--nature. In his native north

he had been accustomed to ramble among the Grampians at the head of the

Dee, where the precipices are from 1500 to 2000 feet high, and snow lies

all the year round. In these rambles he encountered hardships such as

one would hardly have thought within the capacity of his delicate frame.

He took the same method of enjoyable travelling in the Apennines--that

of the Pedestrian.

He gave to the world a slight morsel descriptive of his experiences and

enjoyments, in the Blackwood's Magazine of November, 1835. They were

told in so fine a spirit, so free both from ungraceful levity and solemn

pedantry, that the reader only regretted that they were too sparingly

imparted. He thus announced his own enjoyment in his pilgrimage: "Among

the ruined palaces and temples of Rome, and in the vineyards and

orange-groves beside the blue sea of Naples, I had warmed my imagination

with that inspiration which, once breathed upon the heart, never again

grows cold. It did not desert me now as I entered this upper valley of

the Apennines to seek a new colour and form of Italian landscape. Happy

and elevating recollections thronged in upon me, and blended with the

clear sunshine which slept on the green undulating hills." This fragment

is the only morsel of autobiographic information left by its author, and

therefore perhaps the following, taken from among many expressions of a

genial spirit enjoying itself in freedom, may not be unacceptable. He

has crossed the high-lying, bare plain of Rosetto, and reaches the

village of Val san Giovanni, where "shelter was heartily welcome, the

sun was set, snow-flakes were beginning to whirl in the air, and before

we reached the village, a sharp snow-storm had set in." Here he is

taking comfort to himself before a huge wood fire, when "a man entered

of superior dress and appearance to the rest, and behind him bustled up

a little wretch in the government indirect-tax livery, who, never saying

by your leave, pushed a chair to the fire for his master. The gentleman

popped down, and turning to me, 'I am the Podestà,' said he. I made my

bow to the chief magistrate of the place. 'I am the Potestà,' said he

again, and our little squinting spy repeated reproachfully, 'His

excellency is the Podestà.'

"I was resolved not to understand what they would be at, and the

dignitary explained it to me with a copious use of circumlocution. He

said he had no salary from the government--this did not concern

me;--that he had it in charge to apprehend all vagabonds; this he seemed

to think might concern me. He asked for my passport, which was exhibited

and found right; and the Podestà proved the finest fellow possible.

These villagers then became curious to know what object I had in

travelling about among their mountains. My reader will by this time

believe me when I say that the question puzzled me. My Atanasio felt

that it touched his honour to be suspected of guiding a traveller who

could not tell what he travelled for. He took on him the task of reply.

Premising that I was a foreigner, and perhaps did not know how to

express myself, he explained that I was one of those meritorious

individuals who travel about discovering all the countries and the

unknown mountains, and putting all down on paper; and these individuals

always ask likewise why there are no mendicant friars in the country,

and which the peasants eat oftenest, mutton or macaroni? He added, with

his characteristic determined solemnity, that he had known several such

inquisitive travellers. This clear definition gave universal

satisfaction."[xix-1]

Soon after Spalding's return to Scotland, the late George Boyd, the

sagacious chief of the Firm of Oliver and Boyd, thought he might serve

him in a considerable literary project. It was the age of small books

published in groups--of "Constable's Miscellany," "Lardner's

Cyclopedia," "Murray's Family Library," and the like. With these Mr Boyd

thought he would compete, in the shape of the "Edinburgh Cabinet

Library," and Spalding was prevailed on to write for it three volumes,

with the title, "Italy and the Italian Islands." The bulk of the

contributions to such collections are mere compilations. But Scott,

Southey, Macintosh, and Moore had enlivened them with gifts from a

higher literature, and Spalding's contribution was well fitted to match

with the best of these, though he had to content himself in the ranks of

the compilers, until the discerning found a higher place for his book.

The same acute observer who had set him to this task found another for

him in "The History of English Literature." The _Encyclopedia

Britannica_ in the same manner drew him into contributions which

developed themselves into two works of great value, on "Logic," and on

"Rhetoric." That one of so original and self-relying a nature should

have thus been led by the influence of others into the chief labours of

his life, is explained by the intensity of his desire for perfection in

all he did. Once induced to lift his pen in any particular cause, he

could not lay it down again while there remained an incompleteness

unfilled, or an imperfection unremedied.

In a review on his book on Logic, having detected, from "various

internal symptoms of origin," the style and manner of a personal friend

of his own, he wrote to the culprit in this characteristic form, "very

many thanks for the notice. It may do good with some readers who don't

know the corrupt motives by which it was prompted: and it strikes me as

being exceedingly well and dexterously executed. I am quite sorry to

think how much trouble it must have cost you to pierce into the bowels

of the dry and dark territory, so far as the points you have been able

to reach. I am afraid also that you had to gutta-percha your conscience

a little, before it would stretch to some of your allegations, both

about the work and about the science. I see already so much that I could

myself amend--not in respect of doctrine, but in the manner of

exposition--as to make me regret that I am not in a place where the

classes of students are large enough to take off an edition, and so to

give me by and by the chance of re-writing the book. Yet it is

satisfactory to me to have got clearly the start of the publication of

Hamilton's Lectures, and so to anticipate--for some of the points on

which it will certainly be found that I have taken up ground of my

own--the attention of _some_ of the few men who have written on the

science. Any of them who, having already looked into my book, shall

attempt to master Hamilton's system when it appears in his own statement

of it, are sure to find, if I do not greatly mistake, that I have raised

several problems, the discussion of which will require that my

suggestions be considered independently of Hamilton's, and my little

bits of theory either accepted or refuted. I dare say I told you that

early in the winter I had very satisfactory letters from Germany, and

you heard that the book was kindly taken by some of the Englishmen it

was sent to, and set on tooth and nail, though very amicably, by," &c.

Let us go back to the chronology of his personal history, after his one

opportunity of seeing the world outside of Britain. He had joined the

Bar of Scotland before this episode in his life, and on his return he

took up the position of an advocate prepared for practice. This was no

idle ambitious attempt, for he had endured the drudgery of a solicitor's

office for the mastery of details, and had thoroughly studied the

substance of the law. His career now promised a great future. He was

affluent enough to spurn what Pope called "low gains;" he had good

connections, and became speedily a rising counsel. His career seemed to

be in the line of his friend Jeffrey's, taking all the honours and

emoluments of the profession, and occasionally relaxing from it in a

brilliant paper in the _Edinburgh Review_.[xxi-1] To complete the vista

of good fortune he took to be the domestic sharer of his fortunes a wife

worthy of himself--Miss Agnes Frier, born of a family long known and

respected on the Border. They were married on the 22nd of March in the

year 1838.

Perhaps some inward monitor told him that the fortunes before him were

too heavy to be borne by the elements of health and strength allotted to

him. It was to the surprise of his friends that in 1838 he abandoned the

bar, and accepted the chair of Rhetoric in Edinburgh. In 1845 he

exchanged it for the chair of Rhetoric and Logic at St Andrews. The

emoluments there were an inducement to him, since part of the property

of his family had been lost through commercial reverses over which he

had no control; and he was not one to leave anything connected with the

future of his family to chance. It was a sacrifice, for he left behind

him dear friends of an older generation, such as Jeffrey, Cockburn,

Hamilton, Wilson, and Pillans. Then there were half way between that

generation and his own, Douglas Cheape, Charles Neaves, and George Moir;

while a small body of his contemporaries sorely missed him, for he was a

staunch friend ever to be depended on. He was a great teacher, and left

a well-trained generation of scholars behind him. The work of the

instructor, abhorred by most men, and especially by sensitive men, was

to him literally the "delightful task" of the poet who has endured many

a jibe for so monstrous a euphuism. Even while yet he was himself a

student, if he saw that a companion was wasting good abilities in

idleness or vapid reading, he would burden his own laborious hours with

attempts to stimulate his lazy friend. Just after he had passed through

the Greek class of Marishal College, a temporary teacher for that class

was required. Some one made the bold suggestion of trying the most

distinguished of the students fresh from the workshop, and Spalding

taught the class with high approval. As years passed on, the spirit of

the teacher strengthened within him. The traditions of the older

university were more encouraging to the drilling process than Edinburgh,

where the tendency was towards attractive lecturing. So entirely did the

teacher's duty at last absorb his faculties, that the phenomenon was

compared to the provisions in nature for compensating the loss by

special weaknesses or deficiencies, and that the scholar, conscious that

his own days of working were limited, instinctively felt that in

imparting his stores to others who would distribute them after he was

gone, he was making the most valuable use of his acquirements.

It was a mighty satisfaction to old friends in Edinburgh to hear that

Spalding had condescended to seek, and that he had found, that blessed

refuge of the overworked and the infirm, called a hobby. He was no

sportsman. The illustrious Golfing links of St Andrews were spread

before him in vain, though their attractions induced many a man to pitch

his tabernacle on their border, and it was sometimes consolatorily said

of Professors relegated to this arid social region, that they were

reconciling themselves to Golf. The days were long past for mounting the

knapsack and striding over the Apennines or even the Grampians.

Spalding's hobby was a simple one, but akin to the instincts of his

cultivated taste; it was exercised in his flower-garden. We may be sure

that he did not debase himself to the example of the stupid

floriculturist, the grand ambition of whose life is successfully to

nourish some prize monster in the shape of tulip or pansy. He allied his

gentle task of a cultivator of beautiful flowers, with high science, in

botany and vegetable physiology.

Besides such lighter alleviations, he had all the consolations that the

most satisfactory domestic conditions can administer to the sufferer. In

his later days he became afflicted with painful rheumatic attacks, and

the terrible symptoms of confirmed heart-disease. He died on the 16th of

November, 1859.

FOOTNOTES:

[xvii-1] Aberdeen Magazine, II., 350.

[xix-1] Blackwood's Mag., Nov. 1835, p. 669.

[xxi-1] The following list of her father's contributions, drawn up by

Miss Mary Spalding, is believed to be complete.

No. 144. July 1840. Recent Shaksperian literature. (Books by Collier,

Brown, De Quincey, Dyce, Courtenay, C. Knight, Mrs Jameson, Coleridge,

Hallam, &c.)

No. 145. October 1840. Introduction to the Literature of Europe, by

Henry Hallam.

No. 147. April 1841. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. With an

Introduction. By George Darley.

No. 164. April 1845. 1. The Pictorial Edition of the Works of

Shakespeare. Edited by Charles Knight.--2. The Comedies, Histories,

Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakespeare. Edited by Charles

Knight.--3. The Works of William Shakespeare. The text formed from an

entirely new collation of the old editions; with the various Readings,

Notes, a Life of the Poet, and a History of the English Stage. By J.

Payne Collier, Esquire, F.S.A.

No. 173. July 1847. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. By the Rev.

Alexander Dyce.

No. 181. July 1849. 1. Lectures on Shakespeare. By H. N. Hudson.--2.

Macbeth de Shakespeare, en 5 Actes et en vers. Par M. Emile Deschemps.

_ib._ King Arthur. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. 2nd edition, London, 1849,

8vo.

A LETTER

ON

SHAKSPEARE'S AUTHORSHIP

OF THE DRAMA ENTITLED

_THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN_.

My dear L----, We have met again, after an interval long enough to have

made both of us graver than we were wont to be. A few of my rarely

granted hours of leisure have lately been occupied in examining a

question on which your taste and knowledge equally incline and qualify

you to enter. Allow me to address to you the result of my inquiry, as a

pledge of the gratification which has been afforded me by the renewal of

our early intercourse.

Proud as SHAKSPEARE'S countrymen are of his name, it is singular, though

not unaccountable, that at this day our common list of his works should

remain open to correction. [Sidenote: The list of SHAKSPERE'S works is

not yet settled.] [Sidenote: Are all his in his publisht "_Works_"?]

Every one knows that some plays printed in his volumes have weak claims

to that distinction; but, while the exclusion even of works certainly

not his would now be a rash exercise of prerogative in any editor, it is

a question of more interest, whether there may not be dramas not yet

admitted among his collected works, which have a right to be there, and

might be inserted without the danger attending the dismissal of any

already put upon the list. [Sidenote: Six "Doubtful Plays:" none by

Shakspere.] A claim for admission has been set up in favour of Malone's

six plays,[1:1] without any ground as to five of them, and [1:2]with

very little to support it even for the sixth. [Sidenote: Ireland's

forgery, _Vortigern_.] [Sidenote: The folly of supposing _Vortigern_

genuine.] Ireland's impostures are an anomaly in literary history: even

the spell and sway of temporary fashion and universal opinion are causes

scarcely adequate to account for the blindness of the eminent men who

fell into the snare. The want of any external evidence in favour of the

first fabrication, the Shakspeare papers, was overlooked; and the

internal evidence, which was wholly against the genuineness, was

unhesitatingly admitted as establishing it. The play of 'Vortigern' had

little more to support it than the previous imposition.

There are two cases, however, in which we have external presumptions to

proceed from; for there are traditions traceable to Shakspeare's own

time, or nearly so, of his having assisted in two plays, still known to

us, but never placed among his works. [Sidenote: Shakspere said

(absurdly) to have helpt in Ben Jonson's _Sejanus_.] The one, the

'Sejanus', in which Shakspeare is said to have assisted Jonson, was

re-written by the latter himself, and published as it now stands among

his writings, the part of the assistant poet having been entirely

omitted; so that the question as to that play, a very doubtful question,

is not important, and hardly even curious. But the other drama is in our

hands as it came from the closets of the poets, and, if Shakspeare's

partial authorship were established, ought to have a place among his

works. [Sidenote: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ attributed to Shakspere and

Fletcher; and rightly so.] It is, as you know, THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN,

printed among the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, and sometimes

attributed to SHAKSPEARE and FLETCHER jointly. I have been able to

satisfy myself that it is rightly so attributed, and hope to be able to

prove to you, who are intimately conversant with Shakspeare, and

familiar also with the writings of his supposed co-adjutor, that there

are good grounds for the opinion. [Sidenote: It is unjustly excluded

from _Shakspere's Works_.] The same conclusion has already been reached

by others; but the discussion of the question cannot be needless, so

long as this fine drama continues excluded from the received list of

Shakspeare's works; and while there is reason to believe that there are

many discerning students and zealous admirers of the poet, to whom it is

known only by name. The beauty of the work itself will make much of the

investigation delightful to you, even though my argument on it may seem

feeble and stale.

[Sidenote: I. Historical or External Evidence.]

[Sidenote: II. External Evidence, p. 10.]

The proof is, of course, two-fold; the first branch emerging [2:1]from

any records or memorials which throw light on the subject from without;

the second, from a consideration of the work itself, and a comparison of

its qualities with those of Shakspeare or Fletcher. You will keep in

mind, that it has not been doubted, and may be assumed, that Fletcher

had a share in the work; the only question is,--Whether Shakspeare

wrote any part of it, and what parts, if any?

The Historical Evidence claims our attention in the first instance; but

in no question of literary genuineness is this the sort of proof which

yields the surest grounds of conviction. [Sidenote: I. External

Evidence.] Such questions arise only under circumstances in which the

external proof on either side is very weak, and the internal evidence

has therefore to be continually resorted to for supplying the defects of

the external. It is true that a complete proof of a work having been

actually written by a particular person, destroys any contrary

presumption from intrinsic marks; and, in like manner, when a train of

evidence is deduced, showing it to be impossible that a work could have

been written by a certain author, no internal likeness to other works of

his can in the least weaken the negative conclusion. [Sidenote:

Historical evidence cannot exclude internal, unless the former is

complete.] In either case, however, the historical evidence must be

incontrovertible, before it can exclude examination of the internal; and

the two cases are by no means equally frequent. It scarcely ever happens

that there is external evidence weighty enough to establish certainly,

of itself, an individual's authorship of a particular work; but the

external proof that his authorship was impossible, may often be

convincing and perfect, from an examination of dates, or the like.

Since, therefore, external evidence against authorship admits of

completeness, we are entitled, when such evidence exclusively is founded

on, to demand that it shall be complete. Where by the very narrowest

step it falls short of a demonstration of absolute impossibility, the

internal evidence cannot be refused admittance in contravention of it,

and comes in with far greater force than that of the other. There may be

cases where authorship can be made out to the highest degree, at least,

of probability, by strong internal evidence coming in aid of an external

proof equally balanced for and against; and even where the extrinsic

proof is of itself sufficient [3:1]to infer improbability, internal

marks may be so decided the opposite way, as to render the question

absolutely doubtful, or to occasion a leaning towards the affirmative

side. [Sidenote: Internal evidence the true test for _The Two N. K._]

These principles point out the internal evidence as the true ground on

which my cause must be contested; but it was not necessary to follow

them out to their full extent; for I can show you, that the external

facts which we have here, few as they are, raise a presumption in favour

of Shakspeare's authorship, as strong as exists in cases of more

practical importance, where its effect has never been questioned.

[Sidenote: _The Two N. K._ printed in 1634 as by Fletcher and

Shakspere.]

The fact from which the maintainers of Shakspeare's share in this drama

have to set out, is the first printing of it, which took place in 1634.

In the title-page of this first edition,[4:1] the play is stated to be

the joint work of Shakspeare and Fletcher. [Sidenote: Steevens's

doubts.] It is needless to enumerate categorically the doubts which have

been thrown, chiefly by the acute and perverse Steevens, on the credit

due to this assertion; for a few observations will show that they have

by no means an overwhelming force, while there are contrary presumptions

far more than sufficient to weigh them down. [Sidenote: A.D. 1634 was 18

years after Shakspere's death, 9 after Fletcher's.] The edition was not

published till eighteen years after Shakspeare's death, and nine years

after Fletcher's; but any suspicion which might arise from the length of

this interval, as giving an opportunity for imposture, is at once

removed by one consideration, which is almost an unanswerable argument

in favour of the assertion on the title-page, and in contravention of

this or any other doubts. [Sidenote: No motive to forge Shakspere's

name, as he (Sh.) had then fallen into neglect.] There was no motive for

falsely stating Shakspeare's authorship, because no end would have been

gained by it; for it is a fact admitting of the fullest proof, that,

even so recently after Shakspeare's death as 1634, he had fallen much

into neglect. Fletcher had become far more popular, and his name in the

title-page would have been a surer passport to public favour than

Shakspeare's. If either of the names was to be [4:2]fabricated,

Fletcher's (which stands foremost in the title-page as printed) was the

more likely of the two to have been preferred. It appears then that the

time when the publisher's assertion of Shakspeare's authorship was made,

gives it a right to more confidence than it could have deserved if it

had been advanced earlier. If the work had been printed during the

poet's life, and the height of his popularity, its title-page would have

been no evidence at all. And when the assertion is freed from the

suspicion of designed imposture, the truth of it is confirmed by its

stating the play to have been acted by the king's servants, and at the

Blackfriars. [Sidenote: _2 N. K._ acted at the Blackfriars (in whose

profits Shakspere had once a share).] It was that company which had been

Shakspeare's; the Globe and Blackfriars were the two theatres at which

they played; and at one or the other of these houses all his

acknowledged works seem to have been brought out. The fact of the play

not having been printed sooner, is accounted for by the dramatic

arrangements and practice of the time: the first collected edition of

Shakspeare's works, only eleven years earlier than the printing of this

play, contained about twenty plays of his not printed during his life;

and the long interval is a reason also why the printer and publisher are

different persons from any who were concerned in Shakspeare's other

works. The hyperbolical phraseology of the title-page is quite in the

taste of the day, and is exceeded by the quarto editions of some of

Shakspeare's admitted works.

[Sidenote: Custom of authors writing plays together.]

Was the alleged co-operation then in itself likely to have taken place?

It was. Such partnerships were very generally formed by the dramatists

of that time; both the poets were likely enough to have projected some

union of the kind, and to have chosen each other as the parties to it.

[Sidenote: Shakspere followed this custom, though rarely.] Although

Shakspeare seems to have followed this custom less frequently than most

of his contemporaries, we have reason to think that he did not wholly

refrain from it; and his favourite plan of altering plays previously

written by others, is a near approach to it. [Sidenote: Fletcher very

often.] As to Fletcher, his name is connected in every mind with that of

Beaumont; and the memorable and melancholy letter of the three

players,[5:1] proves him to have coalesced with other writers even

during that poet's short [5:2]life. This is of some consequence,

because, if the two poets wrote at the same time, it would seem that

they must have done so previously to Beaumont's death; for Shakspeare

lived only one year longer than Beaumont, and is believed to have spent

that year in the country. There is no proof that the drama before us was

not written before Beaumont's death (1615), and it is only certain that

its era was later than 1594. [Sidenote: Fletcher's co-authors.] After

the loss of his friend, Fletcher is said to have been repeatedly

assisted by Massinger: he joined in one play with Jonson and Middleton,

and in another with Rowley. [Sidenote: His sonship to a bishop, no

hindrance.] His superior rank (he was the son of a bishop) has been

gravely mentioned as discrediting his connection with Shakspeare; but

the same objection applies with infinitely greater force to his known

co-operation with Field, Daborne, and the others just named; and the

idea is founded on radically wrong notions of the temper of that age.

[Sidenote: Fletcher's burlesquing Shakspere is no argument against their

having written together.] There is scarcely more substance in a doubt

raised from the frequency with which Shakspeare is burlesqued by

Beaumont and Fletcher. Those satirical flings could have been no reason

why Fletcher should be unwilling to coalesce with Shakspeare, because

they indicate no ill feeling towards him. [Sidenote: Shakspere pokes fun

at Kyd, Peele, Marlowe.] They were practised by all the dramatic writers

at the expense of each other; Shakspeare himself is a parodist, and

indulges in those quips frequently, not against such writers only as the

author of the Spanish Tragedy, but against Peele and even Marlowe, his

own fathers in the drama, and both dead before he vented the jests,

which he never would have uttered had he attached to them any degree of

malice. And therefore also Fletcher's sarcasms cannot have disinclined

Shakspeare to the coalition, especially as his personal character made

it very unlikely that he should have taken up any such grudge as a testy

person might have conceived from some of the more severe.

But the circumstance on which most stress has been laid as disproving

Shakspeare's share in the drama in question, is this. [Sidenote: The _2

N. K._ not in the First Folio of Shakspere's Works, 1623, put forth by

Shakspere's fellows.] While the first edition of it was not printed till

1634, two editions of Shakspeare's collected works had been published

between the time of his death (1616) and that year, in neither of which

this play appears; and it is said that its omission in the first folio

(1623), in particular, is fatal to its claim, since Heminge and

[6:1]Condell, who edited that collection, were Shakspeare's

fellow-actors and the executors of his will, and must be presumed to

have known perfectly what works were and what were not his. I have put

this objection as strongly as it can be put; and at first sight it is

startling; but those who have most bibliographical knowledge of

Shakspeare's works, are best aware that much of its force is only

apparent. The omission in the second folio (1632) should not have been

founded on; for that edition is nothing but a reprint of the contents of

the first; and it is only the want of the play in this latter that we

have to consider. [Sidenote: But the First Folio is not of much

authority.] Now, you know well, that in taking some objections to the

authority of the First Folio, I shall only echo the opinions of

Shakspeare's most judicious critics. It was a speculation on the part of

the editors for their own advantage, either solely or in conjunction

with any others, who, as holders of shares in the Globe Theatre, had an

interest in the plays: for it was to the theatre, you will remark,

and not to Shakspeare or his heirs personally, that the manuscripts

belonged. [Sidenote: It was just a speculation for profit;] The edition

shews distinctly, that profit was its aim more than faithfulness to the

memory of the poet, in the correctness either of his text or of the list

of his works. Even the style of the preface excites suspicions which the

work itself verifies. [Sidenote: designd to put down the Quartos, which

yet it copies.] One object of it was to put down editions of about

fifteen separate plays of Shakspeare's, previously printed in quarto,

which, though in most respects more accurate than their successors, had

evidently been taken from stolen copies: the preface of the folio,

accordingly, strives to throw discredit on these quartos, while the

text, usually close in its adherence to them, falls into errors where it

quits them, and omits many very fine passages which they give, and which

the modern editors have been enabled by their assistance to restore.

[Sidenote: The Table of Contents of the First Folio of Shakspere's Works

is of less worth.]

Here it is, however, of more consequence to notice, that the authority

of the Table of Contents of the Folio is worse than weak. The editors

profess to give all Shakspeare's works, and none which are not his: we

know that they have fulfilled neither the one pledge nor the other.

There is no doubt but they could at least have enumerated Shakspeare's

works correctly: but their knowledge and their design of profit did

[7:1]not suit each other. [Sidenote: It lets in two Plays that are not

Shakspere's.] They have admitted, for plain reasons, two plays which are

not Shakspeare's. Their edition contains about twenty plays never before

printed; it was evidently their interest to enlarge this part of their

list as far as they safely could. [Sidenote: _1 Henry VI_,] The

pretended First Part of Henry VI., in which Shakspeare may perhaps have

written a single scene,[8:1] but certainly not twenty lines besides, had

not been printed, and could be plausibly inserted; it does not seem that

they could have had any other reasons for giving it a place. [Sidenote:

and _Titus Andronicus_.] The Tragedy of the Shambles, which we call

'Titus Andronicus,' if it had been printed at all, had been so only

once, and that thirty years before; therefore it likewise was a novelty;

and a pretext was easily found for its admission. The editors then were

unscrupulous and unfair as to the works which they inserted: professing

to give a full collection, they were no less so as to those which they

did not insert. [Sidenote: _Troilus and Cressida_] 'Troilus and

Cressida,' an unpleasing drama, contains many passages of the highest

spirit and poetical richness, and the bad in it, as well as the good, is

perfectly characteristic of Shakspeare; it is unquestionably his.

[Sidenote: is not in the Table of Contents.] It does not appear in

Heminge and Condell's table of contents, and is only found appended,

like a separate work, to some copies of their edition. Its pages are not

even numbered along with the rest of the volume; and if the first

editors were the persons who printed it, it was clearly after the

remainder of the work. If they did print it, their manner of doing so

shews their carelessness of truth more strongly than if they had omitted

it altogether. They first make up their list, and state it as a full one

without that play, which they apparently had been unable to obtain; they

then procure access to the manuscript, print the play, and insert it in

the awkward way in which it stands, and thus virtually confess that the

assertion in their preface, made in reference to their table of

contents, was untrue. At any rate, a part of their impression was

circulated without this play. [Sidenote: _Pericles_ is not in the

volume, and yet is in part Shakspere's.] 'Pericles' also is wholly

omitted by those editors; it appears for the first time in the third

folio (1666), an edition of no value, and its genuineness rests much on

the internal proofs, which [8:2]are quite sufficient to establish it. It

is an irregular and imperfect play, older in form than any of

Shakspeare's; but it has clearly been augmented by many passages written

by him, and therefore had a right to be inserted by the first editors,

upon their own principles. [Sidenote: The editors of the First Folio put

forth an incomplete book.] These two plays then being certainly

Shakspeare's, no matter whether his best or his worst, and his editors

being so situated that they must have known the fact, their edition is

allowed to appear as a complete collection of Shakspeare's works,

although its contents include neither of the two. They probably were

unable to procure copies; but they were not the less bound to have

acknowledged in their preface, that these, or any other plays which they

knew to be Shakspeare's, were necessary for making up a complete

collection. It in no view suited their purposes to make such a

statement; and it was not made. [Sidenote: We cannot trust the Editors

of the First Folio.] In short, the whole conduct of these editors

inspires distrust, but their unacknowledged omission of those two plays

deprives them of all claim to our confidence. The effect of that

omission, in reference to any play which can be brought forward as

Shakspeare's, is just this, that the want of the drama in their edition,

is of itself no proof whatever that Shakspeare was not the author of it,

and leaves the question, whether he was or was not, perfectly open for

decision on other evidence. It leaves the inquiry before us precisely in

that situation. Why Heminge and Condell could not procure the

manuscripts of 'Troilus,' 'Pericles,' or the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' I am

not bound to shew. As to the last, Fletcher may have retained a partial

or entire right of property in it, and was alive at the publication of

their edition. Difficulties at least as great attach to the question as

to the other two rejected plays, in which the strength of the other

proofs has long been admitted as counterbalancing them. But the argument

serves my purpose without any theory on the subject. [Sidenote: The

First Folio no evidence against _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] The state of

it entitles me, as I conceive, to throw the First Folio entirely out of

view, as being no evidence one way or the other.

Laying the folio aside then, I think I have shewn that, in the most

unfavourable view, no doubts which other circumstances can throw on the

assertion made in the title-page of the first edition of the 'Two Noble

Kinsmen,' are of such strength as to ren[9:1]der the truth of it

improbable. [Sidenote: Strong internal evidence will prove it in part

Shakspere's.] Strong internal evidence therefore will, in any view,

establish Shakspeare's claim. But, if the consideration first suggested

be well-founded, (as I have no doubt it is,) namely, that the statement

of the publisher was disinterested, there arises a very strong external

presumption of the truth of his assertion, which will enable us to

proceed to the examination of the internal marks with a prepossession in

favour of Shakspeare's authorship.

As I wish to make you a convert to the affirmative opinion, it may be

wise to acquaint you that you will not be alone in it, if you shall

finally see reason to embrace it. [Sidenote: Early annotators on

Shakspere narrow-minded.] Shakspeare, you know, suffered a long eclipse,

which left him in obscurity till the beginning of last century, when he

reappeared surrounded by his annotators, a class of men who have

followed a narrow track, but yet are greater benefactors to us than we

are ready to acknowledge. The commentators have given little attention

to the question before us; but some of the best of them have declared

incidentally for Shakspeare's claim; and though even the editors who

have professed this belief have not inserted the work as his, this is

only one among many evil results of the slavish system to which they all

adhere. [Sidenote: Yet Pope, Warburton, Farmer, believe _The Two Noble

Kinsmen_ genuine: so does Schlegel.] We have with us Pope, Warburton,

and above all, Farmer, a man of fine discernment, and a most cautious

sifter of evidence. The subject has more recently been treated shortly

by a celebrated foreign critic, the enthusiastic and eloquent

Schlegel,[10:1] who comes to a conclusion decidedly favourable to

Shakspeare.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: II. Internal evidence.]

There still lies before us the principal part of our task, that of

applying to the presumption resulting from the external proof, (whatever

the amount of that may be,) the decisive test of the [10:2]Internal

Evidence. Do you doubt the efficacy of this supposed crucial experiment?

It is true that internal similarities form almost a valueless test when

applied to inferior writers; because in them the distinctive marks are

too weak to be easily traced. [Sidenote: Shakspere's work specially fit

for the Internal Evidence test.] But, in the first place, great authors

have in their very greatness the pledge of something peculiar which

shall identify their works, and consequently the test is usually

satisfactory in its application to them; and, secondly and particularly,

Shakspeare is, of all writers that have existed, that one to whose

alleged works such a test can be most confidently administered; because

he is not only strikingly peculiar in those qualities which

discriminate him from other poets, but his writings also possess

singularities, different from, and opposite to, the usual character of

poetry itself.

I cannot proceed with you to the work itself, till I have reminded you

of some distinctive differences between the two writers whose claims we

are to adjust, the recollection of which will be indispensable to us in

considering the details of the drama. [Sidenote: Differences between

Shakspere and Fletcher to be discusst.] We shall then enter on that

detailed examination, keeping those distinctions in mind, and attempting

to apply them to individual passages; and, when all the scenes of the

play have thus passed successively before us, we shall be able to look

back on it as a whole, and investigate its general qualities.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Shakspere's and Fletcher's versification contrasted.]

The first difference which may be pointed out between Shakspeare and

Fletcher, is that of their versification. You have learned from a study

of the poets themselves, in what that difference consists. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's.] Shakspeare's versification is broken and full of pauses,

he is sparing of double terminations to his verses, and has a marked

fondness for ending speeches or scenes with hemi-stitches. [Sidenote:

Fletcher's.] Fletcher's rhythm is of a newer and smoother cast, often

keeping the lines distinct and without breaks through whole speeches,

abounding in double endings, and very seldom leaving a line incomplete

at the end of a sentence or scene.[11:1] And the opposite taste of the

two poets in their choice and arrangement [11:2]of words, gives an

opposite character to the whole modulation of their verses. [Sidenote:

Modulation of Fletcher's verse: of Shakspere's.] Fletcher's is sweet and

flowing, and peculiarly fitted either for declamation or the softness of

sorrow: Shakspeare's ear is tuned to the stateliest solemnity of

thought, or the abruptness and vehemence of passion. The present drama

exhibits in whole scenes the qualities of Shakspeare's versification;

and there are other scenes which are marked by those of Fletcher's; the

difference is one reason for separating the authorship.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's images and words in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]

You will notice in this play many instances of Shakspeare's favourite

images, and of his very words. Is this a proof of the play having been

his work, or does it only indicate imitation? In Shakspeare's case,

such resemblance, taken by itself, can operate neither way. [Sidenote:

Shakspere a mannerist in style, and] Shakspeare is a mannerist in style.

He knew this himself, and what he says of his minor poems, is equally

true of his dramatic language; he "keeps invention in a noted

weed[12:1];" and almost every word or combination of words is so marked

in its character that its author is known at a glance. [Sidenote:

wanting in variety. Shakspere repeats himself.] But not only is his

style so peculiar in its general qualities, as scarcely to admit of

being mistaken; not only is it deficient in variety of structure, but it

is in a particular degree characterised by a frequent recurrence of the

same images, often clothed in identically the same words. You are quite

aware of this, and those who are not, may be convinced of it by opening

any page of the annotated editions. So far, then, this play is only like

Shakspeare's acknowledged works. It is true, that one who wished to

write a play in Shakspeare's manner, would probably have repeated his

images and words as they are repeated here; but Shakspeare would

certainly have imitated himself quite as often. [Sidenote: The likeness

to Shakspere in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, and the repetitions of him, are

likely to be by him.] The resemblance could be founded on, as indicating

imitation, only in conjunction with other circumstances of dissimilarity

or inferiority to his genuine writings; and where, as in the present

case, there seems to be reason for asserting that the accompanying

circumstances point the work out as an original composition of his, this

very likeness and repetition become a strong argument in support of

those concomitant indications. [12:2]Such repetition is more or less

common in all the play-writers of that age. The number of their works,

the quickness with which they were written, and the carelessness which

circumstances induced as to their elaboration or final correction, all

aided in giving rise to this. [Sidenote: Massinger also repeats himself

much. Fletcher but little.] But all are not equally chargeable with it;

Beaumont and Fletcher less than most, Massinger to an extent far beyond

Shakspeare, and vying with the common-places of Euripides. May not the

professional habits of Shakspeare and Massinger as actors, have had some

effect in producing this, by imprinting their own works in their

memories with unusual strength? Fletcher and his associate were free

from that risk.

[Sidenote: Singularity of Shakspere's style.]

It would not be easy to give a systematic account of those qualities

which combine to constitute Shakspeare's singularity of style. Some of

them lie at the very surface, others are found only on a deeper search,

and a few there are which depend on evanescent relations, instinctively

perceptible to the congenial poetical sense, but extremely difficult of

abstract prose definition. Several qualities also, which we are apt to

think exclusively his, (such, for instance, as his looseness of

construction,) are discovered on examination to be common to him with

the other dramatic writers of his age. Such qualities can give no

assistance in an inquiry like ours, and may be left wholly out of view.

But I think the distinctions which I can specify between him and

Fletcher are quite enough, and applicable with sufficient closeness to

this drama, for making out the point which I wish to prove.

[Sidenote: Qualities of Shakspere's style: energy, obscurity,

abruptness, brevity (in late plays).]

No one is ignorant that Shakspeare is concise, that this quality makes

him always energetic and often most impressive, but that it also gives

birth to much obscurity. He shows a constant wish to deliver thought,

fancy, and feeling, in the fewest words possible. Even his images are

brief; they are continual, and they crowd and confuse one another; the

well-springs of his imagination boil up every moment, and the readiness

with which they throw up their golden sands, makes him careless of fitly

using the wealth thus profusely rendered. He abounds in hinted

descriptions, in sketches of imagery, in glimpses of illustration, in

abrupt and vanishing snatches of fancy. [Sidenote: Shakspere never

vague.] But the merest hint that he gives is of force [13:1]enough to

shew that the image was fully present with him; if he fails to bring it

as distinctly before us, it is either from the haste with which he

passes to another, or from the eagerness induced by the very force and

quickness with which he has conceived the former. [Sidenote: Milton and

language.] It has been said of Milton that language sunk under him; and

it is true of him in one sense, but of Shakspeare in two. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's new meanings and new words.] Shakspeare's strength of

conception, to which, not less than to Milton's, existing language was

inadequate, compelled him either to use old words in unusual meanings,

or to coin new words for himself.[13:2] But his mind had another quality

powerful over his style, which Milton's wanted. [Sidenote: Milton slow,

Shakspere rapid,] Milton's conception was comparatively slow, and

allowed him time for deliberate expression: Shakspeare's was rapid to

excess, and hurried his words after it. When a truth presented itself to

his mind, all its qualities burst in upon him at once, and his

instantaneousness of conception could be represented only by words as

brief and quick as thought itself. [Sidenote: specially in reflective

passages.] This cause operates with the greatest force on his passages

of reflection; for if his images are often brief, his apophthegms are

brief a thousand times oftener: his quickness of ideas seems to have

been stimulated to an extraordinary degree by the contemplation of

general truths. [Sidenote: He forces speech to bear a burden beyond its

strength.] And everywhere his incessant activity and quickness, both of

intellect and fancy, engaged him in a continual struggle with speech; it

is a sluggish slave which he would force to bear a burden beyond its

strength, a weary courser which he would urge at a speed to which it is

unequal. He fails only from insufficiency in his puny instrument; not

because his conception is indistinct, but because it is too full,

energetic, and rapid, to receive adequate expression. It is excess of

strength which hurts, not weakness which incapacitates; he is injured by

the undue prevalence of the good principle, not by its defect.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's obscurity.] The obscurity of other writers is

often the mistiness of the evening twilight sinking into night; his is

the fitful dimness of the dawn, contending with the retiring darkness,

and striving to break out [14:1]into open day. [Sidenote: Fletcher most

unlike Shakspere.] Scarcely any writer of Shakspeare's class, or of any

other, comes near him either in the faults or the grandeur which are the

alternate results of this tendency of mind; but none is more utterly

unlike him than the poet to whom, some would say, we must attribute

passages in this play so singularly like Shakspeare. [Sidenote: Fletcher

diffuse.] Fletcher is diffuse both in his leading thoughts and in his

illustrations. [Sidenote: He amplifies, is elaborate, not vigorous.] His

intellect did not present truth to him with the instant conviction which

it poured on Shakspeare, and his fancy did not force imagery on him with

a profusion which might have tempted him to weave its different

suggestions into inconsistent forms; he expresses thought deliberately

and with amplification; he paints his illustrative pictures with a

careful hand and by repeated touches; his style has a pleasing and

delicate air which is any thing but vigorous, and often reaches the

verge of feebleness. Take a passage or two from the work before us, and

do you say, who know Fletcher, whether they be his, or the work of a

stronger hand.

[Sidenote: Shakspere. Fletcher could not have written these passages,]

He only áttributes

The faculties of other instruments

To his own nerves and act; commands men's ser|vice,

And what they gain in't, boot and glory too.

... What man

_Thirds_ his own worth, (the case is each of ours,)

When that his action's dregged with mind assured

'Tis bad he goes about?--Act I. scene ii.

Dowagers, take hands:

[15:1]_Let us be widows to our woes_: Delay

Commends us to a famishing hope.--Act I. scene i.

I do not quote these lines for praise. The meaning of the last quotation

in particular is obscure when it stands alone, and not too clear even

when it is read in the scene. But I ask you, whether the oracular

brevity of each of the sentences is not perfectly in the manner of

Shakspeare. A fragment from another beautiful address in the first scene

is equally characteristic and less faulty:--

[Sidenote: Shakspere, not Fletcher.]

[15:2]Honoured Hippolita,

Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain

The scythe-tusked boar; that, with thy arm as strong

As it is white, wast near to make the male

To thy sex captive, but that this thy lord

(_Born to uphold creation in that hon|our

First Nature styled it in_) shrunk thee in|to

The bound thou wast o'erflow|ing, | at once subdu|ing |

Thy force and thy affection;--Soldieress!

That equally canst poise sternness with pit|y;--

Who now, I know, hast much more power o'er | him

Than e'er he had on thee;--_who owest[15:3] his strength

And his love too, who is a servant to

The tenor of thy speech_!

Is this like Fletcher? I think not. It is unlike him in versification

and in the tone of thought; and you will here particularly notice that

it is unlike him in abruptness and brevity. It is like Shakspeare in all

these particulars.

[Sidenote: Shakspere hardly ever vague,]

I have said that Shakspeare, often obscure, is scarcely ever vague; that

he may fail to express all he wishes, but almost always gives distinctly

the part which he is able to convey. [Sidenote: Fletcher unable to grasp

images distinctly.] Fletcher is not only slow in his ideas, but often

vague and deficient in precision. The following lines are taken from a

scene in the play under our notice, which clearly is not Shakspeare's. I

would direct your attention, not to the remoteness of the last conceit,

but to the want of distinctness in grasping images, and the inability to

see fully either their picturesque or their poetical relations.

[Sidenote: Fletcher, not Shakspere.]

_Arcite._ We were not bred to talk, man: when we are armed,

And both upon our guards, then _let our fur|y,

Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from | us_.

. . . . .

_Palamon._ Methinks this armour's very like that, Ar|cite,

Thou worest that day the three kings fell, but light|er.

_Arc._ That was a very good one; and that day,

I well remember, you out-did me, cous|in:

... When I saw you charge first,

_Methought I heard a dreadful clap of thund|er

Break from the troop_.

_Pal._ _But still before that flew

The lightning of your valour._--Act III. scene vi.

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphorical, but seldom has long description.]

[16:1]Shakspeare's style, as every one knows, is metaphorical to excess.

[Sidenote: His thought and imagination work together.] His imagination

is always active, but he seldom pauses to indulge it by lengthened

description. I shall hereafter have occasion to direct your observation

to the sobriety with which he preserves imagination in its proper

station, as only the minister and interpreter of thought; but what I

wish now to say is, that in him the two powers operate simultaneously.

He goes on thinking vigorously, while his imagination scatters her

inexhaustible treasures like flowers on the current of his meditations.

His constant aim is the expression of facts, passions, or opinions; and

his intellect is constantly occupied in the investigation of such; but

the mind acts with ease in its lofty vocation, and the beautiful and the

grand rise up voluntarily to do him homage. He never indeed consents to

express those poetical ideas by themselves; but he shows that he felt

their import and their legitimate use, by wedding them to the thoughts

in which they originated. [Sidenote: Shakspere's truths and their

imagery glorify one another.] The truths which he taught, received

magnificence and amenity from the illustrative forms; and the poetical

images were elevated into a higher sphere of associations by the dignity

of the principles which they were applied to adorn. [Sidenote: Metaphor

the strength of poetry; simile its weakness.] Something like this is

always the true function of the imagination in poetry, and dramatic

poetry in particular; and it is also the test which tries the presence

of the faculty; metaphor indicates its strength, and simile its

weakness. [Sidenote: Fletcher is diffuse in description and simile,

loses the original thought in it,] Nothing can be more different from

this, or farther inferior to it, than the style of a poet who turns

aside in search of description, and indulges in simile preferably to the

brevity of metaphor, to whom perhaps a poetical picture originally

suggested itself as the decoration of a striking thought, but who

allowed himself to be captivated by the beauty of the suggested image,

till he forgot the thought which had given it birth, and on its

connexion with which its highest excellence depended. [Sidenote: is poor

in metaphor, and picturesque.] Such was Fletcher, whose style is poor in

metaphor. His descriptions are sometimes beautifully romantic; but even

then the effect of the whole is often picturesque rather than poetically

touching; and it is evident that lengthened description can still less

frequently be dramatic. In his descriptions, it is observable that the

poetical relations introduced in illustration [17:1]are usually few, the

character of the leading subject being relied on for producing the

poetical effect. [Sidenote: Fletcher's and Shakspere's descriptions

contrasted.] Fletcher's longest descriptions are but elegant outlines;

Shakspeare's briefest metaphors are often finished paintings. Where

Shakspeare is guilty of detailed description, he is very often laboured,

cold, and involved; but his illustrative ideas are invariably copious,

and it is often their superfluity which chiefly tends to mar the general

effect. [Sidenote: Metaphor in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is Shakspere's.]

In the play that you are to examine, you will find a profusion of

metaphor, which is undoubtedly the offspring of a different mind from

Fletcher's; and both its excellence and its peculiarity of character

seem to me to stamp it as Shakspeare's. I think the following passage

cannot be mistaken, though the beginning is difficult, and the text

perhaps incorrect.

[Sidenote: Instances of Shakspere's metaphors.]

They two have _cab|ined_

In many as dangerous, as poor a corn|er--

Peril and want contending, they have _skiffed_

Torrents, whose raging _tyranny_ and _pow|er_

I' the least of these was dreadful; and they have

Fought out together where _Death's self_ was _lodged_,

Yet FATE hath BROUGHT THEM OFF. Their _knot_ of love,

Tied, _weaved_, ENTANGLED, with so true, so long,

And with a _finger_ of so deep a cun|ning,

May be _outworn_, never _undone_. I think

Theseus cannot be _umpire_ to himself,

_Cleaving his conscience into twain_, and do|ing

Each side like justice, which he loves best.--Act I. scene iii.

The play throughout will give you metaphors, like Shakspeare's in their

frequency, like his in their tone and character, and like his in their

occasional obscurity and blending together.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's classical images.]

We have been looking to Shakspeare's imagery. You will meet with

classical images in the 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.' Do not allow any

ill-applied notion of his want of learning to convert this into an

argument against his authorship. You will recollect, that an attachment

of this sort is very perceptible in Shakspeare's dramas, and pervades

the whole thread of his youthful poems. It is indeed a prominent quality

in the school of poetry, which prevailed during the earlier part of his

life, perhaps during the whole of it. In his early days, the study of

[18:1]Grecian and Latin literature in England may be said to have only

commenced, and the scenery and figures of the classical mythology broke

on the view of the student with all the force of novelty. [Sidenote:

Elizabethan literature tinged with classicism.] All the literature of

that period is tinged with classicism to a degree which in our satiated

times is apt to seem pedantic. It infected writers of all kinds and

classes: translations were multiplied, and a familiarity with classical

tales and history was sought after or affected even by those who had no

access to the original language. Shakspeare clearly stood in this latter

predicament, his knowledge of Latin certainly not exceeding that of a

schoolboy: but the translated classics enabled him to acquire the facts,

and he shared the taste of the age to its full extent. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's classical allusions.] His admiration of the classical

writers is vouched by the subjects and execution of his early poems, by

numerous allusions in his dramas, particularly his histories, by the

subjects chosen for some of his plays, by one or two imitations of the

translated Latin poets,[19:1] and by many exotic forms in his language,

derived from the same secondary source. Correct tameness is the usual

character of classical allusion in authors well versed in classical

studies. [Sidenote: Milton's classical allusions.] [Sidenote:

Fletcher's.] Even Milton, who has drawn the most exquisite images of

this kind, has sometimes remembered only, where he should have invented:

and Fletcher, whom we have especially to consider, is no exception to

the rule; his many classical illustrations are invariably cold and poor.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's treatment of mythology.] Shakspeare's

mythological images have something singular in them. They are incorrect

as transcripts of the originals, but admirable if examined without such

reference; they are highly-coloured paintings whose subjects are taken

from the simplicity of some antique statue. [Sidenote: His _Venus and

Adonis_.] The 'Venus and Adonis' has some fine and some overcharged

pictures thus formed from the hints which he derived from his

books.[19:2] He received the mythological images but imperfectly, and

his fancy was stimulated without being [19:3]clogged. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's treatment of classical mythology;] He stood but at the

entrance of those visionary forests, within whose glades the heroes and

divinities of ancient faith reposed; he looked through a glimmering and

uncertain light, and caught only glimpses of the sanctity of that world

of wonders: and it was with an imagination heated by the flame of

mystery and partial ignorance that he turned away from the scene so

imperfectly revealed, to brood on the beauty of its broken contours, and

allow fancy to create magnificence richer than memory ever saw. The

occurrence of classical allusions here, therefore, affords no reason for

doubting his authorship even of those passages in which they are found:

and if we could trace any of his singularities in the images which we

have, the argument in his favour would be strengthened by these. Most of

the allusions are too slightly sketched to permit this; but one or two

are like him in their unfaithfulness. We have "Mars' drum" in the 'Venus

and Adonis'; and here beauty is described as able to make him spurn it:

the altar of the same deity is alluded to as the scene of a Grecian

marriage. The "Nemean lion's hide" is here, as his nerve in 'Hamlet.'

[Sidenote: specially in Arcite's prayer in Act V. scene i.] But the most

characteristic use of this sort of imagery is in the prayer in the first

scene of the Fifth Act. [Sidenote: This scene is certainly Shakspere's.]

The whole tenor of the language, the solemnity and majesty of the tone

of thought, the piling up of the heap of metaphors and images, and the

boldness and admirable originality of their conception, all these are

Shakspeare's; and the fact of this accumulation of feeling, thought, and

imagination, being employed to create, out of a fragmentary classical

outline, a picture both new in its features and gorgeously magnificent

in its filling up, is strongly indicative of his hand, and strikingly

resembles his mode of dealing with such subjects elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's tendency to reflection.]

You will be furnished with a rule to guide your decision on many

passages of the drama otherwise doubtful, by having your notice slightly

directed to what will fall more properly under our consideration when we

look back on the general scope of the play,--I mean Shakspeare's

prevailing tendency to reflection. The presence of a spirit of active

and inquiring thought through every page of his writings is too evident

to require any proof. It is exerted on every object which comes under

his notice: it is serious when its theme is lofty; and when the subject

is familiar, [20:1]it is contented to be shrewd. [Sidenote: His own

active and inquiring thought, is the only quality of his own that he's

given _all_ his characters.] He has impressed no other of his own mental

qualities on all his characters: this quality colours every one of them.

It is one to which poetry is apt to give a very subordinate place: and,

in most poets, fancy is the predominating power; because, immeasurably

as that faculty in them is beneath its unequalled warmth in Shakspeare,

yet intellect in them is comparatively even weaker. With inferior poets,

particularly the dramatic, inflation of feeling and profusion of imagery

are the alternate disguises which conceal poverty of thought. [Sidenote:

Fletcher's thought, small beside Shakspere's.] Fletcher is a poet of

much and sterling merit; but his fund of thought is small indeed when

placed beside Shakspeare's. [Sidenote: Shakspere's worldly wisdom, and

solemn thought.] He has, indeed, very little of Shakspeare's practical,

searching, worldly wisdom, and none of that solemnity of thought with

which he penetrates into his loftier themes of reflection. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's Imagination the handmaid of his Understanding.] This quality

in Shakspeare is usually relieved by poetical decoration: Imagination is

active powerfully and unceasingly, but she is rebuked by the presence

of a mightier influence; she is but the handmaid of the active and

piercing Understanding; and the images which are her offspring serve but

as the breeze to the river, which stirs and ripples its surface, but is

not the power which impels its waters to the sea. As you go through this

drama, you will not only find a sobriety of tone pervading the more

important parts of it, but activity of intellect constantly exerted.

[Sidenote: Note the mass of general truths and maxims in this part of

_The Two Noble Kinsmen_.] But what demands particular notice is, the

mass of general truths, of practical, moral, or philosophical maxims,

which, issuing from this reflective turn of mind, are scattered through

Shakspeare's writings as thick as the stars in heaven. The occurrence of

them is characteristic of his temper of mind; and there is something

marked in the manner of the adages themselves. They are often solemn,

usually grave, but always pointed, compressed, and energetic;--they vary

in subject, from familiar facts and rules for social life to the

enunciation of philosophical truths and the exposition of moral duty.

You will meet with them in this drama in all their shapes and in every

page [of Shakspere's part of it].

[Sidenote: Shakspere's reach of thought.]

Shakspeare's reach and comprehension of thought is as remarkable as its

activity, while Fletcher's is by no means great, and in this respect

Massinger comes much nearer to him. The simplest fact has many dependent

qualities, and may be related by [21:1]men of different degrees of

intellect with circumstances differing infinitely, a confined mind

seeing only its plainest qualities, while a stronger one grasps and

combines many distant relations. Shakspeare's love of brevity would not

have produced obscurity nearly so often, had it not been aided by his

width of mental vision. [Sidenote: Passages in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_

too comprehensive for Fletcher.] There are many passages in the play

before us which seem to emanate from a mind of more comprehension than

Fletcher's. Look at the following lines. The idea to be expressed was a

very simple one. Hippolita is entreating her husband to leave her, and

depart to succour the distressed ladies who kneel at her feet and his;

and she wishes to say, that though, as a bride, she was loth to lose her

husband's presence, yet she felt that she should act blameably if she

detained him. Fletcher would have expressed no idea beyond that; but on

it alone he would have employed six lines and two or three comparisons.

Hear how many cognate ideas present themselves to Shakspeare's mind in

expressing the thought. The passage is obscure, but not the less like

Shakspeare on that account.

[Sidenote: Shakspere's pregnancy and obscurity.]

Though much unlike|ly

I should be so transported, _as much sor|ry

I should be such a suitor_; yet I think,

Did I not, by the abstaining of my joy,

_Which breeds a deeper longing_, cure the sur|feit

_That craves a present medicine_, I should pluck

All ladies' scandal on me--Act I. scene i.

It would be well if Shakspeare's continual inclination to thought gave

rise to no worse faults than occasional obscurity. It was not to be

hoped that it should not produce others. His tone of thinking could

not be always high and serious; and even when it flowed in a lofty

channel, its uninterrupted stream could not always be pure. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's conceits and quibbles.] His judgment often fails to perform

its part, and he is guilty of conceit and quibble, not merely in his

comic vein, but in his most deeply tragical situations. He has indeed

one powerful excuse; he had universal example in both respects to

justify or betray him. But he has likewise another plea, that his

constant activity of mind, and the wideness of its province, exposed him

to pe[22:1]culiar risks. A mind always in action must sometimes act

wrongly; and the constant exercise of the creative powers of the mind

dulls the edge of the corrective. It was not strange that he who was

unwearied in tracing the manifestations of that spirit of likeness which

pervades nature, should often mistake a resemblance in name for a

community of essence,--that he whose mind was sensible to the most

delicate differences, should sometimes fancy he saw distinction where

there was none;--it was not strange, however much to be regretted, that

he who left the smooth green slopes of fancy to clamber among the craggy

steeps of thought, should often stumble in his dizzy track, either in

looking up to the perilous heights above, or downwards on the morning

landscape beneath him. [Sidenote: Shakspere's faults.] While the most

glaring errors of the tropical Euphues are strained allegorical

conceits, Shakspeare's fault is oftener the devising of subtle and

unreal distinctions, or the ringing of fantastical changes upon words.

[Sidenote: Lyly's faults.] Lily's error was one merely of taste;

Shakspeare's was one of the judgment, and the heavier of the two, but

still the error of a stronger mind than the other; for the judgment

cannot act till the understanding has given it materials to work upon,

and those fanciful writers who do not reflect at all, are in no danger

of reflecting wrongly. [Sidenote: Shakspere's evil genius triumphs in

his puns.] Shakspeare's evil genius triumphs when it tempts him to a

pun--it enjoys a less complete but more frequent victory in suggesting

an antithesis; but it often happens that this dangerous turn of mind

does not carry him so far as to be of evil consequence. It aids its

quickness and directness of mental view, in giving to his style a

pointed epigrammatic terseness which is quite its own, and a frequent

weight and effect which no other equals. Where, however, this antithetic

tendency is allowed to approach the serious scenes, it throws over them

an icy air which is very injurious, while it often gives the comic ones

a ponderousness which is altogether singular, and but imperfectly

accordant with the nature of comic dialogue. [Sidenote: Characteristics

of his wit.] The arrows of Shakspeare's wit are not the lightly

feathered shafts which Fletcher discharges, and as little are they the

iron-headed bolts which fill the quiver of Jonson; but they are weapons

forged from materials unknown to the others, and in an armoury to which

they had no access; their execution is [23:1]resistless when they reach

their aim, but they are covered with a golden massiveness of decoration

which sometimes impedes the swiftness of their flight. But whether the

effect of these peculiarities of Shakspeare be good or evil, their use

in helping an identification of his manner is very great. [Sidenote:

Contrast with Fletcher's.] Nothing can be more directly opposite to them

than the slow elegance and want of pointedness which we find in

Fletcher, who is not free from conceits, but does not express them with

Shakspeare's hard quaintness, while he is comparatively quite guiltless

of plays on words. The following instances are only a few among many in

the present drama, which seem to be perfectly in Shakspeare's manner,

and to most of which Fletcher's works could certainly furnish no

parallel, either in subject or in expression.

[Sidenote: Passages by Shakspere, not Fletcher.]

Oh, my petition was

Set down in ice, which, by hot grief uncan|died,

Melts into tears; so sorrow, wanting form,

Is pressed with deeper matter.--Act I. scene i.

Theseus speaks thus of the Kinsmen lying before him in the field of

battle desperately wounded:--

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphors.]

Rather than have them

Freed of this plight, and in their morning state,

Sound and at liberty, I would them dead:

But forty thousand fold we had rather have | them[24:1]

_Prisoners to us than Death_. Bear them speedi|ly

From _our kind air, to them unkind_, and min|ister

What man to man may do.--Act I. scene iv.

A lady hunting is addressed in this strain:

Oh jewel

O' the wood, O' the world!--Act III. scene i.

In the same scene one knight says to another,--

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphor.]

This question sick between us,

By bleeding must be cured.

[24:2]And the one, left in the wood, says to the other, who goes to the

presence of the lady whom both love--

You talk of feeding me, to breed me strength;

You are going now to look upon a sun,

That strengthens what _it_ looks on.--Act III. scene i.

The two knights, about to meet in battle, address each other in these

words:--

_Pal._ Think you but thus;

That there were aught in me which strove to shew

Mine enemy in this business,--were't one eye

Against another, arm opposed by arm,

I would destroy the offender;--coz, I would,

Though parcel of myself: then from this, gath|er

How I should tender you!

_Arc._ I am in la|bour

To push your name, your ancient love, our kin|dred,

Out of my memory, and i' the self-same place

To seat something I would confound.--Act V. scene i.

And afterwards their lady-love, listening to the noise of the fight,

speaks thus:--

[Sidenote: Shakspere metaphor.]

Each stroke laments

The place whereon it falls, and sounds more like

A bell than blade.--Act V. scene v.

Shakspeare's fondness for thought, the tendency of that train of

thought to run into the abstract, and his burning imagination, have

united in producing another quality which strongly marks his style, and

is more pleasing than those last noticed. [Sidenote: Shakspere's

personification of mental powers, passions.] He abounds in

Personification, and delights particularly in personifications of mental

powers, passions, and relations. [Sidenote: In _Venus and Adonis_.] This

metaphysico-poetical mood of musing tinges his miscellaneous poems

deeply, especially the Venus and Adonis, which is almost lyrical

throughout; and even in his dramas the style is often like one of

Collins's exquisite odes. [Sidenote: Fletcher uses it but little.] This

quality is common to him with the narrative poets of his age, from whom

[25:1]he received it; but it is adopted to no material extent by any of

his dramatic contemporaries, and by Fletcher less than any. [Sidenote:

Shakspere's distinctive use of Personification.] The other dramatists,

indeed, are full of metaphysical expressions, of the names of affections

and faculties of the soul; but they do not go on as Shakspeare's

kindling fancy impelled him to do, to look on them as independent and

energetic existences. This figure is one of the most common means by

which he elevates himself into the tragic and poetic sphere, the

compromise between his reason and his imagination, the felicitous mode

by which he reconciles his fondness for abstract thought, with his

allegiance to the genius of poetry. [Sidenote: The _Two Noble Kinsmen_

is rich in personifications which must be Shakspere's.] 'The Two Noble

Kinsmen' is rich in personifications both of mental qualities and

others, which have all Shakspeare's tokens about them, and vary

infinitely, from the uncompleted hint to the perfected portrait.

[Sidenote: Instances of these.]

Oh Grief and Time,

Fearful consumers, you will all devour!--Act I. scene i.

Peace might purge

For her repletion, and retain anew

Her charitable heart, now hard, and harsh|er

Than Strife or War could be.--Act I. scene ii.

A most unbounded tyrant, whose success

Makes heaven unfeared, and villainy assured

Beyond its power there's nothing,--almost puts

Faith in a fev|er,| and deifies alone

Voluble Chance.--Act I. scene ii.

This funeral path brings to your household graves;

Joy seize on you again--Peace sleep with him!