An endless ring of tailless horses has been produced, doubtless the

most important part of the affair; but there is much ingenuity yet to

be shown in developing from this abstract ring a certain number of

single, concrete, individual, proper Noah's Ark horses, with proper

Noah's Ark tails. The ring is chopped or sawn up into a great many

pieces. Each piece is thicker at one end than the other, because the

outer diameter of the ring was necessarily greater than the inner; but

with this allowance each piece may be considered flat. The thick end

is the head of the horse, the thin end the hind quarter; one

projecting piece represents the position and profile of the fore legs,

but they are not separated; and similarly of the hind {546} legs. Now

is the time for the carver to set to work. He takes the piece of wood

in hand, equalizes the thickness where needful, and pares off the

sharp edges. He separates into two ears the little projecting piece

which juts out from the head, separates into two pairs of legs the two

projecting pieces which jut out from the body, and makes a respectable

pair of eyes, with nostrils and mouth of proper thorough-bred

character; he jags the back of the neck in the proper way to form a

mane, and makes, not a tail, but a little recess to which a tail may

comfortably be glued. The tail is a separate affair. An endless ring

of horses' tails is first turned in a lathe. A much smaller slab,

smaller in diameter and in thickness than the other, is cut into an

annulus or ring; and this ring is turned by tools on both edges and

both sides. When bisected, each end of each half of the ring exhibits

the profile of a horse's tail; and when cut up into small bits, each

bit has the wherewithal in it for fashioning one tail. After the

carver has done his work, each horse receives its proper tail; and

they are all proper long tails too, such as nature may be supposed to

have made, and not the clipped and cropped affairs which farriers and

grooms produce.

This continuous ring system is carried faithfully through the whole

Noah's Ark family. One big slab is for an endless ring of elephants;

another of appropriate size for camels; others for lions, leopards,

wolves, foxes, dogs, donkeys, ducks, and all the rest. Sometimes the

ears are so shaped as not very conveniently to be produced in the same

ring as the other part of the animal; in this case an endless ring of

ears is made, and chopped up into twice as many ears as there are

animals. Elephant's trunks stick out in a way that would perplex the

turner somewhat; he therefore makes an endless ring of trunks, chops

it up, and hands over the pieces to the carver to be fashioned into as

many trunks as there are elephants. In some instances, where the

animal is rather a bullet-headed sort of an individual, the head is

turned in a lathe separately, and glued on to the headless body. If a

carnivorous animal has a tail very much like that of one of the

graminivorous sort, the carver says nothing about it, but makes the

same endless ring of tails serve both; or they may belong to the same

order but different families--as, for instance, the camel and the cow,

which are presented by these Noah's Ark people with tails cut from the

same endless ring. Other toys are made in the same way. Those eternal

soldiers which German boys are always supposed to love so much, as if

there were no end of Schleswig-Holsteins for them to conquer, are--if

made of wood (for tin soldiers are also immensely in request)--turned

separately in a lathe, so far as their martial frames admit of this

mode of shaping; but the muskets and some other portions are made on

the endless ring system. All this may be seen very well at Kew; for

there are the blocks of soft pine, the slabs cut from them (with the

grain of the wood in the direction of the thickness), the rings turned

from the slabs, the turnings and curvatures of the rings, the profile

of an animal seen at each end, the slices cut from each ring, the

animal fashioned from each slice, the ring of tails, the separate

tails for each ring, the animal properly tailed in all its glory, and

a painted specimen or two to show the finished form in which the

loving couples go into the ark--pigs not so much smaller than

elephants as they ought to be, but piggishly shaped nevertheless.

All the English toy-makers agree, with one accord, that we cannot for

an instant compete with the Germans and Tyrolese in the fabrication of

such articles, price for price. We have not made it a large and

important branch of handicraft; and our workmen have not studied

natural history with sufficient assiduity to give the proper

distinctive forms to the animals. {547} The more elaborate

productions--such as the baby-dolls which can say "mamma," and make

their chests heave like any sentimental damsels--are of French, rather

than German manufacture, and are not so much wooden productions as

combinations of many different materials. Papier-mache, moulded into

form, is becoming very useful in the doll and animal trade; while

india-rubber and gutta-percha are doing wonders. The real Noah's Ark

work, however, is thoroughly German, and is specially connected with

wood-working. Some of the more delicate and elaborate specimens of

carving--such as the groups for chimney-piece ornaments, honored by

the protection of glass shades--are made of lime-tree or linden-wood,

by the peasants of Oberammergau, in the mountain parts of Bavaria.

There were specimens of these kinds of work at our two exhibitions

which could not have been produced in England at thrice the price; our

good carvers are few, and their services are in request at good wages

for mediaeval church-work. We should be curious to know what an

English carver would require to be paid for a half-guinea Bavarian

group now before us--a Tyrolese mountaineer seated on a rock, his

rifle resting on his arm, the studded nails in his climbing shoes, a

dead chamois at his feet, his wife leaning her hand lightly on his

shoulder, his thumb pointing over his shoulder to denote the quarter

where he had shot the chamois, his wooden bowl of porridge held on his

left knee, the easy fit and flow of the garments of both man and woman--

all artistically grouped and nicely cut, and looking clean and white

in linden-wood. No English carver would dream of such a thing at such

a price. However, these are not the most important of the productions

of the peasant carvers, commercially speaking; like as our Mintons and

Copelands make more money by everyday crockery than by beautiful

Parian statuettes, so do the German toy-makers look to the Noah's Ark

class of productions as their main stay in the market, rather than to

more elegant and artistic works.

------

{548}

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

BY CARDINAL WISEMAN.

[In the autumn of last year a communication was made to his eminence

the late Cardinal Wiseman by H. Bence Jones, Esq., M.D., as Secretary

of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, requesting him to deliver

a lecture before that society. The cardinal, with the prompt

kindness usual to him, at once assented. The Shakespeare

Tercentenary seemed to prescribe the subject, which his eminence

therefore selected.

The following pages were dictated by him in the last weeks of his

life. The latter part was taken down in the beginning of January;

the earlier part was dictated on Saturday the fourteenth of that

month. It was his last intellectual exertion, and it overtaxed his

failing strength.

The Rev. Dr. Clifford, chaplain to the Hospital of St. John and St.

Elizabeth, who acted as his amanuensis, states, from the lips of his

eminence, that the matter contained in these pages is the beginning

and the ending of what he intended to deliver. We have, therefore,

only a fragment of a whole which was never completed except in the

author's mind.]

I.

There have been some men in the world's history--and they are

necessarily few--who by their deaths have deprived mankind of the

power to do justice to their merits, in those particular spheres of

excellence in which they had been pre-eminent. When the "immortal"

Raphael for the last time laid down his palette, still moist with the

brilliant colors which he had spread upon his unfinished masterpiece,

destined to be exposed to admiration above his bier, he left none

behind him who could worthily depict and transmit to us his beautiful

lineaments: so that posterity has had to seek in his own paintings,

among the guards at a sepulchre, or among the youthful disciples in an

ancient school, some figure which may be considered as representing

himself.

When his mighty rival, Michelangelo, cast down that massive chisel

which no one after him was worthy or able to wield, none survived him

who could venture to repeat in marble the rugged grandeur of his

countenance; but we imagine that we can trace in the head of some

unfinished satyr, or in the sublime countenance of his Moses, the

natural or the idealized type from which he drew his stern and noble

inspirations.

And, to turn to another great art, when Mozart closed his last

uncompleted score, and laid him down to pass from the regions of

earthly to those of heavenly music, which none had so closely

approached as he, the science over which he ruled could find no

strains in which worthily to mourn him except his own, and was

compelled to sing for the first time his own marvelous requiem at his

funeral. [Footnote 101]

[Footnote 101: The same may be said of the celebrated Cimarosa.]

No less can it be said that when the pen dropped from Shakespeare's

hand, when his last mortal illness mastered the strength of even his

genius, the world was left powerless to describe in writing his noble

and unrivalled characteristics. Hence we turn back upon himself, and

endeavor to draw from his own works the only true records of his

genius and his mind. [Footnote 102]

[Footnote 102: Even in his lifetime this seems to have been

foreseen. In 1664, in an epigram addressed to "Master William

Shakespeare," and first published by Mr. Halliwell, occurred the

following lines: "Besides in places thy wit windes like Maeander.

When (_whence_) needy new composers borrow more Thence (_than_)

Terence doth from Plautus or Menander, But to praise thee aright I

want thy store. Then let thine owne words thine owne worth upraise

And help t' adorne thee with deserved baies." _Halliwell's Life of

Shakespeare_, p. 160.]

{549}

We apply to him phrases which he has uttered of others; we believe

that he must have involuntarily described himself, when he says,

"Take him all in all,

We shall not look upon his like again;"

or that he must even consciously have given a reflection of himself

when he so richly represents to us "the poet's eye in a fine phrenzy

rolling." ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," act v., scene 1.)

But in fact, considering that the character of a man is like that

which he describes, "as compounded of many simples extracted from many

objects" ("As You Like It," act iv., scene 1), we naturally seek for

those qualities which enter into his composition; we look for them in

his own pages; we endeavor to cull from every part of his works such

attributions of great and noble qualities to his characters, and unite

them so as to form what we believe is his truest portrait. In truth,

no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected

himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that

every great master has more or less reproduced in his works

characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our

greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose

entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his

imperishable works. Indeed, as in these there is infinitely greater

variety, and consequently greater versatility of power necessary to

produce it, so must the amount of elements which enter into is

composition represent changeable yet blending qualities beyond what

the most finished master in any other art an be supposed to have

possessed.

The positive and directly applicable materials which we possess for

constructing a biography of this our greatest writer, are more scanty

than have been collected to illustrate the life of many an inferior

author. His contemporaries, his friends, perhaps admirers, have left

us but few anecdotes of his life, and have recorded but few traits of

either his appearance or his character. Those who immediately

succeeded him seem to have taken but little pains to collect early

traditions concerning him, while yet they must have been fresh in the

recollections of his fellow-countrymen, and still more of his

fellow-townsmen. [Footnote 103]

[Footnote 103: As evidence of this neglect we may cite the "Journal"

of the Rev. John Ward, Incumbent of Stratford-upon-Avon, to which he

was appointed in 1662. This diary, which has been published by

Doctor Severn, "from the original MSS.," preserved in the library of

the Medical Society of London, contains but two pages relating to

Shakespeare, and those contain but scanty and unsatisfactory

notices. I will quote only two sentences: "Remember to peruse

Shakespeare's Plays--bee much versed in them, that I may not bee

ignorant in that matter, whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning

up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England, to omit

Shakespeare" (p. 184). Shakespeare's daughter was still alive when

this was written, as appears from the sentence that immediately

follows: it seems to us wonderful that so soon after the poet's

death a shrewd and clever clergyman and physician (for Mr. Ward was

both) should have known so little about his celebrated townsman's

works or life. ]

It appears as though they were scarcely conscious of the great and

brilliant luminary of English literature which was shining still, or

had but lately passed away; and as though they could not anticipate

either the admiration which was to succeed their duller perceptions of

his unapproachable grandeur, or the eager desire which this would

generate of knowing even the smallest details of its rise, its

appearance, its departure. For by the biography of Shakespeare one

cannot understand the records of what he bought, of what he sold, or

the recital of those acts which only confound him with the common mass

which surrounded him, and make him appear as the worthy burgess or the

thrifty merchant; though even about the ordinary commonplace portions

of his life such uncertainty exists, that doubts have been thrown on

the very genuineness of that house which he is supposed to have

inhabited.

Now, it is the characteristic individualizing quality, actions, and

mode of executing his works, to whatever class of excellence he may

belong, that we long to be familiar with in order to say that we know

the man. What matters it to us that he paid so many marks or {550}

shillings to purchase a homestead in Stratford-upon-Avon? The simple

autograph of his name is now worth all the sums that he thus expended.

One single line of one of his dramas, written in his own hand, would

be worth to his admirers all the sums which are known to have passed

between him and others. What has become of the goodly folios which

must have once existed written in his own hand? Where are the books

annotated or even scratched by his pen, from which he drew the

subjects and sometimes the substance of his dramas? What vandalism

destroyed the first, or dispersed the second of these valuable

treasures? How is it that we know nothing of his method of

composition? Was it in solitude and sacred seclusion, self-imprisoned

for hours beyond the reach of the turmoil of the street or the

domestic sounds of home? Or were his unrivalled works produced in

scraps of time and fugitive moments, even perhaps in the waiting-room

of the theatre, or the brawling or jovial sounds of the tavern?

Was he silent, thoughtful, while his fertile brain was seething and

heaving in the fermentation of his glorious conceptions; so that men

should have said--"Hush! Shakespeare is at work with some new and

mighty imaginings!" or wore he always that light and careless spirit

which often belongs to the spontaneous facility of genius; so that his

comrades may have wondered when, and where, and how his grave

characters, his solemn scenes, his fearful catastrophes, and his

sublime maxims of original wisdom, were conceived, planned, matured,

and finally written down, to rule for ever the world of letters?

Almost the only fact connected with his literary life which has come

down to us is one which has been recorded, perhaps with jealousy,

certainly with ill-temper, by his friend Ben Jonson--that he wrote

with overhaste, and hardly ever erased a line, though it would have

been better had he done so with many.

This almost total absence of all external information, this drying-up

of the ordinary channels of personal history, forces us to seek for

the character and the very life of Shakespeare in his own works. But

how difficult, in analyzing the complex constitution of such a man's

principles, motives, passions, and affections, to discriminate between

what he has drawn for himself, and what he has created by the force of

his imagination. Dealing habitually with fictions, sometimes in their

noblest, sometimes in their vilest forms--here gross and even savage,

there refined and sometimes ethereal, how shall we discover what

portions of them were copied from the glass which he held before

himself, what from the magic mirrors across which flitted illusive or

fanciful imagery? The work seems hopeless. It is not like that of the

printer, who, from a chaotic heap of seemingly unmeaning lead, draws

out letter after letter, and so disposes them that they shall make

senseful and even brilliant lines. It is more like the hopeless labor

of one who, from the fragments of a tesselated pavement, should try to

draw the elegant and exquisitely tinted figure which once it bore.

This difficulty of appreciating, and still more of delineating, the

character of our great poet, makes him, without perhaps an exception,

the most difficult literary theme in English letters.

How to reduce the subject to a lecture seems indeed a literal paradox.

But when to this difficulty is added that of an impossible compression

into narrow limits of the widest and vastest compass ever embraced by

any one man's genius, it must appear an excess of rashness in any-one

to presume that he can do justice to the subject on which I am

addressing you.

It seems, therefore, hardly wonderful that even the last year,

dedicated naturally to the tercentenary commemoration of William

Shakespeare, should have passed over without any public eulogy of his

greatness in this our metropolis. It seemed, indeed, as if the

magnitude of that one man's genius was too oppressive for this

generation. It was not, I believe, an undervaluing {551} of his merits

which produced the frustration of efforts, and the disappointment of

expectations, that seemed to put to rout and confusion, or rather to

paralyze, the exertions so strenuously commenced to mark the year as a

great epoch in England's literary history. I believe, on the contrary,

that the dimensions of Shakespeare had grown so immeasurably in the

estimation of his fellow-countrymen, that the proportions of his

genius to all that had followed him, and all that surround us, had

grown so enormously in the judgment and feeling of the country, from

the nobleman to the workman, that the genius of the man oppressed us,

and made us feel that all our multiplied resources of art and speech

were unequal to his worthy commemoration. No plan proposed for this

purpose seemed adequate to attain it. Nothing solid and permanent that

could either come up to his merits or to our aspirations seemed to be

within the grasp either of the arts or of the wealth of our country.

The year has passed away, and Shakespeare remains without any

monument, except that which, by his wonderful writings, he has raised

for himself. Even the research after a site fit for the erection of a

monument to him, in the city of squares, of gardens, and of parks,

seemed only to work perplexity and hopelessness.

Presumptuous as it may appear, the claim to connect myself with that

expired and extinct movement is my only apology for my appearing

before you. If, a year after its time, I take upon myself the eulogy

of Shakespeare, if I appear to come forward as with a funeral oration,

to give him, in a manner, posthumous glory, it is because my work has

dropped out of its place, and not because I have inopportunely

misplaced it. In the course of the last year, it was proposed to me,

both directly and indirectly, to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare. I

was bold enough to yield my assent, and thus felt that I had

contracted an obligation to the memory of the bard, as well as to

those who thought that my sharing what was done for his honor would

possess any value. A task undertaken becomes a duty unfulfilled. When,

therefore, it was proposed to me to perform my portion of the homage

which I considered due to him, though it was to be a month too late, I

felt it would be cowardice to shrink from its performance.

For in truth the undertaking required some courage; and to retire

before its difficulties might be stigmatized as a dastardly timidity.

It is a work of courage at any time and in any place to undertake a

lecture upon Shakespeare, more in fact than to venture on the delivery

of a series. The latter gives scope for the thousand things which one

would wish to say--it affords ample space for apposite

illustration--and it enables one to enrich the subject with the

innumerable and inimitable beauties that are flung like gems or

flowers over every page of his magnificent works. But in the midst of

public, or rather universal, celebration of a national and secular

festival in his honor, in the presence probably of the most finished

literary characters in this highly-educated country, still more

certainly before numbers of those whom the nation acknowledges as

deeply read in the works of our poet as the most accomplished critic

of any age has been in the writings of the classics--men who have

introduced into our literature a class-name--that of "Shakespearian

scholars"--to have ventured to speak on this great theme might seem to

have required, not courage, but temerity. Why, it might have been

justly asked, do none of those who have consumed their lives in the

study of him, not page by page, but line by line, who have pressed his

sweet fruits between their lips till they have absorbed all their

lusciousness, who have made his words their study, his thoughts their

meditation,--why does not one at least among them stand forward now,

and leave for posterity the record of his matured observation? Perhaps

I may assign the reason which I have before, that they {552} know,

too, the unapproachable granduer of the theme, and the rare powers

which are required to grasp and to hold it.

Be it so; but at any rate, if in the presence of others so much more

capable it would have been rash to speak, to express one's thoughts,

when there is no competition, may be pardonable at least.

And yet, when everybody else is silent, it may be very naturally

asked, Have I a single claim to put forward upon your attention and

indulgence? I think I may have _one_; though I fear that when I

mention it, it may be considered either a paradox or a refutation of

my pretensions. My claim, then, to be heard and borne with is

this--that I have never in my life seen Shakespeare acted; I have

never heard his eloquent speeches declaimed by gifted performers; I

have not listened to his noble poetry as uttered by the kings or

queens of tragedy; I have not witnessed his grand, richly-concerted

scenes endowed with life by the graceful gestures, the classical

attitudes, the contrasting emotions, and the pointed emphasis of those

who in modern times may be considered to have even added to that which

his genius produced; I know nothing of the original and striking

readings or renderings of particular passages by masters of mimic art;

I know him only on his flat page, as he is represented in immovable,

featureless, unemotional type.

Nor am I acquainted with him surrounded, perhaps sometimes sustained,

but, at any rate, worthily adorned and enhanced in accessory beauty,

by the magic illusion of scenic decorations, the splendid pageantry

which he simply hints at, but which, I believe, has been now realized

to its most ideal exactness and richness--banquets, tournaments, and

battles, with the almost deceptive accuracy of costume and of

architecture. When I hear of all these additional ornaments hung

around his noble works, the impression which they make upon my mind

creates a deeper sense of amazement and admiration, how dramas written

for the "Globe" Theatre, wretchedly lighted, incapable of grandeur

even from want of space, and without those mechanical and artistical

resources which belong to a later age, should be capable of bearing

all this additional weight of lustre and magnificence without its

being necessary to alter a word, still less a passage, from their

original delivery. [Footnote 104 ] This exhibits the nicely-balanced

point of excellence which is equally poised between simplicity and

gorgeousness; which can retain its power and beauty, whether stript to

its barest form or loaded with exuberant appurtenances.

[Footnote 104: The chorus which serves as a prologue to "King Henry

V.," shows how Shakespeare's own mind keenly felt the deficiencies

of his time, and almost anticipatingly wrote for the effects which a

future age might supply:

"But pardon, gentles all,

This flat unraised spirit that hath dar'd,

On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth

So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold

The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt.

. . . .

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;

Into a thousand parts divide one man,

And make imaginary puissance:

Think, when we talk of horses, that ye see them

Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings."]

After having said thus much of my own probably unenvied position, I

think I shall not be wrong in assuming that none of Shakespeare's

enthusiastic admirers, one of whom I profess myself to be, and that

few of my audience, are in this exceptional position. They will

probably consider this a disadvantage on my side; and to some extent I

must acknowledge it--for Shakespeare wrote to be acted, and not to be

read.

But, on the other hand, is it not something to have approached this

wonderful man, and to have communed with him in silence and in

solitude, face to face, alone with him alone; to have read and studied

and meditated on him in early youth, without gloss or commentary, or

preface or glossary? For such was my good or evil fortune; not during

the still hours of night, but during that stiller portion of an

Italian {553} afternoon, when silence is deeper than in the night,

under a bright and sultry sun when all are at rest, all around you

hushed to the very footsteps in a well-peopled house, except the

unquelled murmuring of a fountain beneath orange trees, which mingled

thus the most delicate of fragrance with the most soothing of sounds,

both stealing together through the half-closed windows of wide and

lofty corridors. Is there not more of that reverence and that relish

which constitute the classical taste to be derived from the

concentration of thought and feelings which the perusal of the simple

unmarred and unoverlaid text produces; when you can ponder on a verse,

can linger over a word, can repeat mentally and even orally with your

own deliberation and your own emphasis, whenever dignity, beauty, or

wisdom invite you to pause, or compel you to ruminate?

In fact, were you desired to give your judgment on the refreshing

water of a pure fountain, you would not care to taste it from a

richly-jewelled and delicately-chased cup; you would not consent to

have it mingled with the choicest wine, nor flavored by a single drop

of the most exquisite essence; you would not have it chilled with ice,

or gently attempered by warmth. No, you would choose the most

transparent crystal vessel, however homely; you would fill at the very

cleft of the rock from which it bubbles fresh and bright, and drink it

yet sparkling, and beading with its own air-pearls the walls of the

goblet. Nay, is not an opposite course that which the poet himself

censures as "wasteful, ridiculous excess?"

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily;

To throw a perfume on the violet.

. . . .

Or with a taper light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to varnish."

(_"King John" act iv., scene 2._)

You will easily understand, from long and almost apologetic preamble,

in the first place, that I take it for granted that I am addressing an

audience which is not assembled to receive elementary or new

information concerning England's greatest poet. On the contrary, I

believe myself to stand before many who are able to judge, rather than

merely accept, my opinions, and in the presence of an assembly

exclusively composed of his admirers, thoroughly conversant with his

works. A further consequence is this, that my lecture will not consist

of extracts--still less of recitations of any of those beautiful

passages which occur in every play of Shakespeare. The most celebrated

of these are present to the mind of every English scholar, from his

school-boy days to his maturer studies.

II.

It would be superfluous for a lecturer on Shakespeare to put to

himself the question, What place do you intend to give to the subject

of your discourse in the literature of England or of Europe? Whatever

difference of opinion may exist elsewhere, I believe that in this

country only one answer will be given. Among our native writers no one

questions that Shakespeare is supremely pre-eminent, and most of us

will probably assign him as lofty a position in the whole range of

modern European literature. Perhaps no other nation possesses among

its writers any one name to which there is no rival claim, nor even an

approximation of equality, to make a balance against it. Were we to

imagine in England a Walhalla erected to contain the effigies of great

men, and were one especial hall to contain those of our most eminent

dramatists, it must needs be so constructed as to have one central

niche. Were a similar structure prepared in France, it would be

natural to place in equal prominence at least two figures, or, in

classical language, two different muses of Tragedy and of Comedy would

have to be separately represented. But in England, assign what place

we may to those who have excelled in either branch in mimic art, {554}

the highest excellence in both would be found centered in one man; and

from him on either side would have to range the successful cultivators

of the drama.

But this claim to so undisputed an elevation does not rest upon his

merits only in this field of our literature. Shakespeare has

established his claim to the noblest position in English literature on

a wider and more solid basis than the mere composition of skilful

plays could deserve. As the great master of our language, as almost

its regenerator, quite its refiner--as the author whose use of a word

stamps it with the mark of purest English coinage--whose employment

of a phrase makes it household and proverbial--whose sententious

sayings, flowing without effort from his mind, seem almost sacred, and

are quoted as axioms or maxims indisputable--as the orator whose

speeches, not only apt, but natural to the lips from which they issue,

are more eloquent than the discourses of senators or finished public

speakers--as the poet whose notes are richer, more wondrously varied

than those of the greatest professed bards--as the writer who has run

through the most varied ways and to the greatest extent through every

department of literature and learning, through the history of many

nations, their domestic manners, their characteristics, and even their

personal distinctives, and who seems to have visited every part of

nature, to have intuitively studied the heavens and the earth--as the

man, in fine, who has shown himself supreme in so many things,

superiority in any one of which gains reputation in life and glory

after death, he is preeminent above all, and beyond the reach of envy

or jealousy.

And if no other nation can show us another man whose head rises above

all their other men of letters, as Shakespeare does over ours, they

cannot pretend, by the accumulation of separated excellences, to put

in competition with him a type rather than a realization of possible

worth.

Until, therefore, some other writer can be produced, no matter from

what nation, who unites in himself personally these gifts of our bard

in an equally sublime degree, his stature overtops them all, wherever

born and however celebrated.

The question, however, may be raised, Is he so securely placed upon

his pedestal that a rival may not one day thrust him from it?--is he so

secure upon his throne that a rebel may not usurp it? To these

interrogations I answer unhesitatingly, Yes.

In the first place, there have only been two poets in the world before

Shakespeare who have attained the same position with him. Each came at

the moment which closed the volume of the period past and opened that

of a new epoch. Of what preceded Homer we can know but little; the

songs by bards or rhapsodists had, no doubt, preceded him, and

prepared the way for the first and greatest epic. This, it is

acknowledged, has never been surpassed; it became the standard of

language, the steadfast rule of versification, and the model of

poetical composition. His supremacy, once attained, was shaken by no

competition; it was as well assured after a hundred years as it has

been by thousands. Dante again stood between the remnants of the old

Roman civilization and the construction of a new and Christian system

of arts and letters. He, too, consolidated the floating fragments of

an indefinite language, and with them built and thence himself fitted

and adorned that stately vessel which bears him through all the

regions of life and of death, of glory, of trial, and of perdition.

A word found in Dante is classical to the Italian ear; a form, however

strange in grammar, traced to him, is considered justifiable if used

by any modern sonneteer. [Footnote 105] He holds the place in his own

country which Shakespeare does in ours; not only is his _terza rima_

considered inimitable, {555} but the concentration of brilliant

imagery in our words, the flashes of his great thoughts and the

copious variety of his learning, marvellous in his age, make his

volume be to this day the delight of every refined intelligence and

every polished mind in Italy.

[Footnote 105: Any one acquainted with Mastrofini's "Dictionary of

Italian Verbs" will understand this.]

And he, too, like Homer, notwithstanding the magnificent poets who

succeeded him, has never for a moment lost that fascination which he

alone exercises over the domain of Italian poetry. He was as much its

ruler in his own age as he is in the present.

In like manner, the two centuries and more which have elapsed since

Shakespeare's death have as completely confirmed him in his legitimate

command as the same period did his two only real predecessors. No one

can possibly either be placed in a similar position or come up to his

great qualities, except at the expense of the destruction of our

present civilization, the annihilation of its past traditions, the

resolution of our language into jargon, and its regeneration, by a new

birth, into something "more rich and strange" than the powerful idiom

which so splendidly combines the Saxon and the Norman elements. Should

such a devastation and reconstruction take place, whether they come

from New Zealand or from Siberia, then there may spring up the poet of

that time and condition who may be the fourth in that great series of

unrivalled bards, but will no more interfere with his predecessor's

rights than Dante or Shakespeare does with those of Homer.

But further, we may truly say that the legislator of a people can be

but one, and, as such, can have no rival beyond his own shores. Solon,

Lycurgus, and Numa are the only three men in profane history who have

reached the dignity of this singular title. The first seized on the

character of the bland and polished Athenians, and framed his code in

such harmony with it, that no subsequent laws, even in the periods of

most corrupt relaxation, could efface their primitive stamp, cease to

make the republic proud of their lawgiver's name.

Lycurgus understood the stern and almost savage hardihood and

simplicity of the Spartan disposition, and perpetuated it and

regulated it by his harsh and unfeeling system, of which,

notwithstanding, the Lacedaemonian was proud. And so Numa Pompilius

comprehended the readiness of the infant republic, sprung from so

doubtful and discreditable a parentage, to discover a noble descent,

and connect its birth and education with gods and heroes; took hold of

this weakness for the sanction of his legislation; and feigned his

conferences with the nymph Egeria as the sources of his wisdom. No;

whatever may become of kings, legislators are never dethroned.

And so is Shakespeare the unquestioned legislator of modern literary

art. No one will contend that, without certain detriment, it would be

possible for a modern writer, especially of dramatic fiction, to go

back beyond him and endeavor to establish a pre-Shakespearian school

of English literature, as we have the pre-Raphaelite in art. Struggle

and writhe as any genius may--even if endowed with giant strength

it--will be but as the battle of the Titans against Jove. Huge rocks

will be rolled down upon him, and the lightning from Shakespeare's

hand will assuredly tear his laurels, if it do not strike his head.

Byron could not appreciate the dramatic genius of Shakespeare; perhaps

his sympathies ranged more freely among corsairs and Suliotes than

among purer and nobler spirits. Certainly he speaks of him with a

superciliousness which betrays his inability fully to comprehend him.

[Footnote 106] And yet, would "Manfred" have existed if the romantic

drama and the spirit-agency of Shakespeare {556} had not given it life

and rule? So in other nations. I shall probably quote to you the

sentiments of foreign writers of highest eminence concerning

Shakespeare, not as authorities, but as illustrations of what I may

say.

[Footnote 106: Lord Byron thus writes to Mr. Murray, July 14, 1821:

"I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a political play

. . . . You will find all this very unlike Shakespeare; and so much

the better, in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of

models, though the most extraordinary of writers."--_Moore's Life of

Lord Byron._]

Singularly enough, the greatest of German modern writers has nowhere

recorded a full and deliberate opinion on our poet. But who can doubt

that "Goetz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand," and even the grand

and tender "Faust," and no less Schiller's "Wallenstein," belong to

the family of Shakespeare, are remotely offsprings of his genius, and

have to be placed as tributary garlands round his pedestal. To imagine

Shakespeare even in intention removed from his sovereignty would be a

treachery parallel only to that of Lear dethroned by his own

daughters.

But still more may we say that, in all such positions as that which we

have assigned to Shakespeare, there has always been a culminating

point to which succeeds decline--if not downfall. It is so in art.

Immediately after the death of Raphael, and the dispersion of his

school, art took a downward direction, and has never risen again to

the same height. And while he marks the highest elevation ever reached

in the arts of Europe, a similar observation will apply to their

particular schools. Leonardo and Luini in Lombardy; the Carracci in

Bologna; Fra Angelico in Umbria; Garofalo in Ferrara, not only take

the place of chiefs in their respective districts, but mark the period

from which degeneracy has to date. And so surely is it in our case,

whatever may have been the course of literature which led up to

Shakespeare, without pronouncing judgment on Spenser, or "rare Ben

Jonson," it is certain that after him, although England has possessed

great poets, there stands not one forward among them as Shakespeare's

competitor. Milton, and Dryden, and Addison, and Rowe have given us

specimens of high dramatic writing of no mean quality; others as well,

and even these have written much and nobly, in lofty as in familiar

verse; yet not one has the public judgment of the nation placed on a

level with him. The intermediate space from them to our own times has

left only the traces of a weak and enervated school. It would be

unbecoming to speak disparagingly of the poets of the present age; but

no one, I believe, has ventured to consider them as superior to the

noble spirits of our Augustan age. The easy descent from the loftiest

eminence is not easily reclimbed.

Surely, then, we may consider Shakespeare, as an ancient mythologist

would have done, as "enskied" among "the invulnerable clouds," where

no shaft, even of envy, can assail him. From this elevation we may

safely predict that he never can be plucked.

III.

The next point which seems to claim attention is the very root of all

that I have said or shall have still to say. To what does Shakespeare

owe this supremacy, or whence flow all the extraordinary qualities

which we attribute to him? You are all prepared with the answer in one

single word his GENIUS.

The genius of Shakespeare is our familiar thought and ready expression

when we study him, and when we characterize him. Nevertheless, simple

and intelligible as is the word, it is extremely difficult to analyze

or to define it. Yet everything that is great and beautiful in his

writings seems to require an explanation of the cause to which it owes

its origin.

One great characteristic of genius, easily and universally admitted,

is, that it is a gift, and not an acquisition. It belongs inherently

to the person possessing it; it cannot be transmitted by heritage; it

cannot be infused by parental affection; it cannot be bestowed by

earliest care; neither can it be communicated by the most finished

{557} culture or the most studied education. It must be congenital, or

rather inborn to its possessor. It is as much a living, a natural

power, as is reason to every man. As surely as the very first germ of

the plant contains in itself the faculty of one day evolving from

itself leaves, flowers, and fruit, so does genius hold, however

hidden, however unseen, the power to open, to bring forth, and to

mature what other men cannot do, but what to it is instinctive and

almost spontaneous. It may begin to manifest itself with the very dawn

of reason; it may remain asleep for years, till a spark, perhaps

accidentally, kindles up into a sudden and irrepressible splendor that

unseen intellectual fuel which has been almost unknown to its

unambitious owner.

In our own minds we easily distinguish between the highest abilities

or the most rare attainments, when the fruit of education and of

application, and what we habitually distinguish as the manifestation

of genius. But still we do not find it so easy to reduce to words this

mental distinction; the one, after all, however gracefully and however

brightly, walks upon the earth, adorning it by the good or fair things

which it scatters on its way; the other has wings, and flies above the

surface--it is like the aurora of Homer or of Thorwaldsen, which, as

it flies above the plane of mortal actions, sheds down its flowers

along its brilliant path upon those worthy to gaze upward toward it.

We connect in our minds with genius the ideas of flashing splendor and

eccentric movement. It is an intellectual meteor, the laws of which

cannot be defined or reduced to any given theory. We regard it with a

certain awe, and leave it to soar or to droop, to shine or disappear,

to dash irregularly first in one direction and then in another; no one

dare curb it or direct it; but all feel sure that its course, however

inexplicable, is subject to higher and controlling rule. But in order

to define more closely what we in reality understand by genius, it may

be well to consider its action in divided and more restricted spheres

of activity. For although we habitually attribute this singular

quality to many, and often but on light grounds, it is seldom that we

do so seriously and deliberately without some qualifying epithet. We

speak of a military genius, of a mechanical genius, of a poetical

genius, of a musical genius, or of an artistic genius. All these

expressions contain a restrictive clause. We do not understand when we

use them that the person to whom they were attributed possessed any

power beyond the limits of a particular sphere. We do not mean by the

use of the word genius that the soldier knew anything of poetry, or

the printer of mechanism. We understand that each in his own

profession or stage of excellence possessed a complete elevation over

the bulk of those who followed the same pursuits; a superiority so

visible, so acknowledged, and so clearly individual, that no one else

considered it inferiority, still less felt shame at not being able to

rise to the same level. They gather round them acknowledged disciples

and admirers, who rather glory to have been guided by their teaching,

and formed on their example.

And in what consisted that complete though limited excellence? If I

might venture to express a judgment, I would say that genius in these

different courses of science or art may be defined a natural sympathy

with all that relates to each of them, with the power of giving full

and certain execution to the mental conception. The military genius is

one who, either untrained by studious preparation, or else starting

out of the lines in which many were ranged level with himself, seizes

the staff of command, and receives the homage of comrades and

superiors. While others have been plodding through the long drill of

theory and of practice, he is found to have discovered a new system of

the science, bold, irregular, but successful. But to possess this

genius, there must be a universal sympathy with all that relates {558}

to its own peculiar province. The military genius of which we are

speaking must embrace or acquire that which relates to the soldier's

life and duty, from the _dress_ of a single soldier, from his duties

in the sentry-box, or on the picquet, to the practice of the regiment

and the evolutions of a field-day; from the complete command of tens

of thousands on the battle-field, with an eagle's eye and a lion's

heart, to the scientific planning, on the chessboard of an empire, of

the campaign, which he meditates, move by move and check by check,

till the final victory is crowned in the capital city. He who has not

given proof of his being equal to all this, has not made good his

claim to military genius. But such a one will find, wherever he puts

his hand, generals and marshals, each able to command a host, or to

take his place in his roughest of enterprises.

I need not pass through other forms of genius to reach similar

results; Stephenson, from the labor of the mine, creating that system

of mechanical motion, which may be said to have subdued the world, and

bound the earth in iron links; Mozart giving concerts at the age of

seven that astonished gray-headed musicians; Raphael, before the

ordinary age of finished pupilage, master of every known detail in art

of oil or fresco, drawing, expression, and grand composition; Giotto,

caught in the field as a young shepherd by Cimabue, drawing his sheep

upon a stone, and soon becoming the master of modern art. [Footnote

107] These and many others repeat to us what I have said of the

military genius--an inborn capacity, comprehensive and complete, with

the power of fully carrying out the suggestions of mind. Had there

been a single portion of their pursuits in which they did not excel,

if the result of their work had not exhibited the happy union and

concord of the many qualities requisite for its perfection, they never

would have attained the attribution of genius.

[Footnote 107: The early manifestation of artistic power is so

frequent and well known, that it would be superfluous to enumerate

other instances. The expression _"anch' io son pittore"_ is become

proverbial. One of the Carracci, on being translated from an

inferior profession to the family studio, was found at once to

possess the pictorial skill of his race. At the present, Mintropp at

Duesseldorf, and Ackermann at Berlin, are both instances of very high

artists, the one in drawing, the other in sculpture, both originally

shepherds.]

If this sympathy with one branch of higher pursuits passes beyond it

and associates with it a similar facility of acquisition and execution

in some other and distinct art or science, it is clear that the claim

to genius is higher and more extensive. Raphael was before the world a

painter, but he could scarcely have been so without embracing every

other department of art. Before the science of perspective was matured

or popularly known, when, in consequence, defects are to be found in

the disposition of figures, and in the adjustment of aerial distances,

[Footnote 108] his architecture shows an instinctive familiarity with

its rules and proportions; a proof that he possessed an architectural

eye. And consequently the one statue which he is supposed to have

carved, and the one palace which he is said to have built, show how

easily he could have undertaken and executed beautiful works in either

of those two classes of art. In Orcagna and Michelangelo we have the

three branches of art supremely united; and the second of these adds

poetry and literature to his artistic excellence. In like manner,

Leonardo has left proof of most varied and accurate mechanical as well

as literary genius.

[Footnote 108: See Mr. Lloyd's article on "Raphael's School of

Athens," in Mr. Woodward's _Fine Art Quarterly Review_, January,

1864, p. 67.]

It is evident, however, that while a genius has its point of

concentration, every remove from this, though wider, will be fainter

and less complete. We may describe it as Shakespeare himself describes

glory, and say:

"Genius is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,

Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught."

(_"Henry VI.," act i., scene 3._)

The sympathies with more remote subjects and pursuits will be rather

the means of illustration, adornment, and {559} pleasing variety, than

for the essential requirements of the principal aim. But though less

minute in their application, in the hand of genius they will be

wonderfully accurate and apt.

IV.

All that I have been saying is applicable in the most complete and

marvellous way to Shakespeare's genius. His sympathies are universal,

perfect in their own immediate use, infinitely varied, and strikingly

beautiful, when they reach remoter objects. And hence, though at first

sight he might be classified among those who have displayed a literary

genius, he stretches his mind and his feelings so beyond them on every

side, that to him, almost, perhaps, beyond any other man, the simple

distinctive, without any qualification, belongs. No one need fear to

call Shakespeare simply a grand, a sublime genius.

The centre-point of his sympathies is clearly his dramatic art. From

this they expand, for many degrees, with scarce perceptible

diminution, till they lose themselves in far distant, and, to him,

unexplored space. This nucleus of his genius has certainly never been

equalled before or since. Its essence consists in what is the very

soul of the dramatic idea, the power to throw himself into the

situation, the circumstances, the nature, the acquired habits, the

feelings, true or fictitious, of every character which he introduces.

This forms, in fact, the most perfect of sympathies. We do not, of

course, use the word in that more usual sense of harmony of affection,

or consent of feeling. Shakespeare has sympathy as complete for

Shylock or Iago as he as for Arthur or King Lear. For a time he lives

in the astute villain as in the innocent child; he works his entire

power of thought into intricacies of the traitor's brain; he makes his

heart beat in concord with the usurer's sanguinary spite, and then,

like some beautiful creature in the animal world, draws himself out of

the hateful evil, and is himself again; and able, even, often to hold

his own noble and gentle qualities as a mirror, or exhibit the

loftiest, the most generous, and amiable examples of our nature. And

this is all done without study, and apparently without effort. His

infinitely varied characters come naturally into their places, never

for a moment lose their proprieties, their personality, and the exact

flexibility which results from the necessary combination in every man

of many qualities. From the beginning to the end each one is the same,

yet reflecting in himself the lights and shadows which flit around

him.

This extraordinary versatility stands in striking contrast with the

dramatic productions of other countries. The Greek tragedian is Greek

throughout--his subjects, his mythology, his sentences, play

wonderfully indeed, but yet restrictedly, within a given sphere. And

Rome is but the imitator in all its literature of its great mistress

and model.

"Graiis eloquium, Gratis dedit ore rotundo, Musa loqui."

Even through the French school, with the strict adhesion to the

ancient rule of the unities, seems to have descended the partiality

for what may be called the chastely classical subjects. Not so with

Shakespeare.

Who, a stranger might ask, is the man, and where was he born, and

where does he live, that not only his acts and scenes are placed in

any age, or in any land, but that he can fill his stage with the very

living men of the time and place represented; make them move as easily

as if he held them in strings; and make them speak not only with

general conformity to their common position, but with individual and

distinctive propriety, so that each is different from the rest? Did he

live in ancient Rome, strolling the Forum, or climbing the Capitol;

hear ancient matrons converse with modest dignity; listen to

conspirators among the columns of its porticos; mingle among senators

around Pompey's {560} statue; or with plebeians crowding to hear

Brutus or Anthony harangue? Was he one accustomed to idle in the

piazza of St. Mark, or shoot his gondola under the Rialto? Or was he a

knight or even archer in the fields of France or England during the

period of the Plantagenets or Tudors, and witnessed and wrote down the

great deeds of those times, and knew intimately and personally each

puissant lord who distinguished himself by his valor, by his wisdom,

or even by his crimes? Did he live in the courts of princes, perchance

holding some office which enabled him to listen to the grave

utterances of kings and their counsellors, or to the witty sayings of

court jesters? Did he consort with banished princes, and partake of

their sports or their sufferings? In fine, did he live in great

cities, or in shepherds' cottages, or in fields and woods; and does he

date from John and live on to the eighth Henry--a thread connecting in

himself the different epochs of mediaeval England? One would almost

say so; or multiply one man into many, whose works have been united

under one man.

This ubiquity, if we may so call it, of Shakespeare's sympathies,

constitutes the unlimited extent and might of his dramatic genius. It

would be difficult to imagine where a boundary line could at length

have been drawn, beyond which nothing original, nothing new, and

nothing beautiful, could be supposed to have come forth from his mind.

We are compelled to say that his genius was inexhaustible.

V.

This rare and wonderful faculty becomes more interesting if we follow

it into further details.

I remember an anecdote of Garrick, who, in company with another

performer of some eminence, was walking in the country, and about to

enter a village. "Let us pass off," said the younger comedian to his

more distinguished companion, "as two intoxicated fellows." They did

so, apparently with perfect success, being saluted by the jeers and

abuse of the inhabitants. When they came forth at the other end of the

village, the younger performer asked Garrick how he had fulfilled his

part. "Very well," was the reply, "except that you were not perfectly

tipsy in your legs."

Now, in Shakespeare there is no danger of a similar defect. Whatever

his character is intended to be it is carried out to its very

extremities. Nothing is forgotten, nothing overlooked. Many of you, no

doubt, are aware that a controversy has long existed whether the

madness of Hamlet is intended by Shakespeare to be real or simulated.

If a dramatist wished to represent one of his persons as feigning

madness, that assumed condition would be naturally desired by the

writer to be as like as possible to the real affliction. If the other

persons associated with him could at once discover that the madness

was put on, of course the entire action would be marred, and the

object for which the pretended madness was designed would be defeated

by the discovery. How consummate must be the poet's art, who can have

so skilfully described, to the minutest symptoms, the mental malady of

a great mind, as to leave it uncertain to the present day, even among

learned physicians versed in such maladies, whether Hamlet's madness

was real or assumed.

This controversy may be said to have been brought to a close by one of

the ablest among those in England who have every opportunity of

studying the almost innumerable shades through which alienation of

mind can pass. [Footnote 109] And so delicate are the changeful

characteristics which Shakespeare describes, that Dr. Conolly

considers that a twofold form of {561} disease is placed before us in

the Danish prince. He concludes that he was laboring under real

madness, yet able to put on a fictitious and artificial derangement

for the purposes which he kept in view. Passing through act by act and

scene by scene, analyzing, with experienced eye, each new symptom as

it occurs, dividing and anatomatizing, with the finest scalpel, every

fibre of his brain, he exhibits, step by step, the transitionary

characters of the natural disease in a mind naturally, and by

education, great and noble, but thrown off his pivot by the anguish of

his sufferings and the strain of aroused passion. And to this is

superadded another and not genuine affection, which serves its turn

with that estranged mind when it suits it to act, more especially that

part which the natural ailment did not suffice for. Now, Dr. Conolly

considers these symptoms so accurately as well as minutely described,

that he throws out the conjecture that Shakespeare may have borrowed

the account of them from some unknown papers by his son-in-law, Dr.

Hall.

[Footnote 109: "A Study of Hamlet," by John Conolly, M.D., London,

1863. In p. 52 the author quotes Mr. Coleridge and M. Killemain as

holding the opinion that Shakespeare has "contrived to blend both

(feigned and real madness) in the extraordinary character of Hamlet;

and to join together the light of reason, the cunning of intentional

error, and the involuntary disorder of a soul."]

But let it be remembered that in those days mental phenomena were by

no means accurately examined or generally known. There was but little

attention paid to the peculiar forms of monomania, or to its

treatment, beyond restraint and often cruelty. The poor idiot was

allowed, if harmless, to wander about the village or the country, to

drivel or gibber amidst the teasing or ill-natured treatment of boys

or rustics. The poor maniac was chained or tied in some wretched

out-house, at the mercy of some heartless guardian, with no protector

but the constable. Shakespeare could not be supposed, in the little

town of Stratford, nor indeed in London itself, to have had

opportunities of studying the influence and the appearance of mental

derangement of a high-minded and finely-cultivated prince. How then

did Shakespeare contrive to paint so highly-finished and yet so

complex an image? Simply by the exercise of that strong sympathetic

will which enabled him to transport, or rather to transmute, himself

into another personality. While this character was strongly before him

he changed himself into a maniac; he felt intuitively what would be

his own thought, what his feelings, were he in that situation; he

played with himself the part of the madman, with his own grand mind as

the basis of its action; he grasped on every side the imagery which he

felt would have come into his mind, beautiful even when dislorded,

sublime even when it was grovelling, brilliant even when dulled, and

clothed it in words of fire and of tenderness, with a varied rapidity

which partakes of wildness and of sense. He needed not to look for a

model out of himself, for it cost him no effort to change the angle of

his mirror and sketch his own countenance awry. It was but little for

him to pluck away the crown from reason and contemplate it dethroned.

Before taking leave of Dr. Conolly's most interesting monography, I

will allow myself to make only one remark. Having determined to

represent Hamlet in this anomalous and perplexing condition, it was of

the utmost importance to the course and end of this sublime drama,

that one principal incident should be most decisively separated from

Hamlet's reverse of mind. Had it been possible to attribute the

appearance of the Ghost, as the Queen, his mother, does attribute it

in the fifth act, to the delusion of his bewildered phantasy, the

whole groundwork of the drama would have crumbled beneath its

superincumbent weight. Had the spectre been seen by Hamlet, or by him

first, we should have been perpetually troubled with the doubt whether

or not it was the hallucination of a distracted, or the invention of a

deceitful brain. But Shakespeare felt the necessity of making this

apparition be held for a reality, and therefore he makes it the very

first incident in his tragedy, antecedent to the slightest symptom

{562} of either natural or affected derangement, and makes it first be

seen by two witnesses together, and then conjointly by a third

unbelieving and fearless witness. It is the testimony of these three

which first brings to the knowledge of the incredulous prince this

extraordinary occurrence. One may doubt whether any other writer has

ever made a ghost appear successively to those whom we may call the

wrong persons, before showing himself to the one whom alone he cared

to visit. The extraordinary exigencies of Shakespeare's plot rendered

necessary this unusual fiction. And it serves, moreover, to give the

only color of justice to acts which otherwise must have appeared

unqualified as mad freaks or frightful crimes.

What Dr. Conolly has done for Hamlet and Ophelia, Dr. Bucknill had

previously performed on a more extensive scale. In his "Psychology of

Shakespeare" [Footnote 110] he has minutely investigated the mental

condition of Macbeth, King Lear, Timon, and other characters. On

Hamlet he seems inclined to take a different view from Dr. Conolly;

inasmuch as he considers the simulated madness the principal feature,

and the natural unsoundness which it is impossible to overlook as

secondary. But this eminent physician, well known for his extensive

studies of insanity, bears similar testimony to the extraordinary

accuracy of Shakespeare's delineations of mental diseases; the nicety

with which he traces their various steps in one individual, the

accuracy with which he distinguishes these morbid affections in

different persons. He seems unable to account for the exact minuteness

in any other way than by external observation. He acknowledges that

"indefinable possession of genius, call it spiritual tact or insight,

or whatever term may suggest itself, by which the great lords of mind

estimate all phases of mind with little aid from reflected light," as

the mental instrument through which Shakespeare looked upon others at

a distance or within reach of minute observation. Still he seems to

think that Shakespeare must have had many opportunities of observing

mental phenomena. I own I am more inclined to think that the process

by which the genius of Shakespeare reached this painful yet strange

accuracy was rather that of introversion than of external observation.

At any rate, it is most interesting to see eminent physicians

maintaining by some means or other that Shakespeare arrived by some

sort of intuition at the possession of a psychological or even medical

knowledge, fully verified and proved to be exact by the researches two

centuries later of distinguished men in a science only recently

developed. Mrs. Jameson has well distinguished the different forms of

mental aberration in Shakespeare's characters, when she says that

"Constance is frantic, Lear is mad, Ophelia is insane." [Footnote

111]

[Footnote 110: Pages 58 and 100.]

[Footnote 111: "Characteristics of Women." New York 1833, p. 142.]

VI.

This last quotation may serve to introduce a further and a more

delicate test of Shakespeare's insight into character. That a man

should be able to throw himself into a variety of mind and characters

among his fellow-men, may be not unreasonably expected. He has

naturally a community of feelings, of passions, of temptations, and of

motives with them. He can understand what is courage, what ambition,

what strength or feebleness of mind. Inward observation and matured

experience help much to guide him to a conception and delineation of

the character of his fellow-men. But of the stronger emotions, the

wilder passions, the subdued gentleness and tenderness, the heroic

endurance, the meek bearing, and the saintly patience of the woman, he

can have had no experience. Looking into himself for a reflection, he

will probably find a blank.

{563}

It has often been said that in his female characters Shakespeare is

not equal to himself. The work to which I have just alluded meets, I

think completely, this objection, which, I believe, even Schlegel

raises. It required a lady, with mind highly cultivated, with the

nicest powers of discrimination, and with happiness of expression, to

vindicate at once Shakespeare and her sex. The difficulty of this task

can hardly be appreciated without the study of its performance. Its

great difficulty consists in the almost family resemblance of the

different portraits which make up Shakespeare's female gallery. There

is scarcely any room for events, even for incident, still less for

actions, say for bold and unfeminine deeds. Several of the heroines of

Shakespeare are subjected to similar persecutions, and almost the same

trials. In almost every one the affections and their expression have

alone to interest us. From Miranda, the desert-nurtured child in the

simplicity of untempted innocence, to Isabella in her cloistered

virtue, or Hermione in her unyielding fortitude--there are such

shades, such varying yet delicate tints, that not two of these

numerous conceptions can be said to resemble another. And whence did

Shakespeare derive his models? Some are lofty queens, others most

noble ladies, some foreigners, some native; different types in mind

and heart, as in the lineament or complexion. Where did he find them?

Where did he meet them? In the cottages of Stratford, or in the

purlieus of Blackfriars? Among the ladies of the court, or in the

audience in his pit? No one can say--no one need say. They were the

formations of his own quickened and fertile brain, which required but

one stroke, one line, to sketch him a portrait to which he would give

immortality. Far more difficult was this success, and not less

completely was it achieved, in that character which medical writers

seem hardly to believe could be but a conception. We may compare the

mind of Shakespeare to a diamond pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut

into countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every

smallest change of direction or of angle caught a new reflection, so

that not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but

by a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of

innumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or

repeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in

his memory.

VII.

We may safely conclude that, in whatever constitutes the dramatic art

in its strictest sense, Shakespeare possessed matchless sympathies

with all its attributes. The next and most essential quality required

for true genius is the power to give outward life to the inward

conception. Without this the poet is dumb. He may be a "mute,

inglorious Milton;" he cannot be a speaking, noble Shakespeare. I

should think that I was almost insulting such an audience, were I to

descant upon Shakespeare's position among the bards and writers of

England, and of the modern world. Upon this point there can scarcely

be a dissentient opinion. His language is the purest and best, his

verses the most flowing and rich; and as for his sentiments, it would

be difficult without the command of his own language to characterize

them. No other writer has ever given such periods of sententious

wisdom.

. . . . .

I have spoken of genius as a gift to an individual man. I will

conclude by the reflection that that man becomes himself a gift; a

gift to his nation; a gift to his age; a gift to the world of all

times. That same Providence which bestows greatness, majesty,

abundance, and grace, no less presents, from time to time, to a people

or a race, these few transcendent men who mark for it {564} periods no

less decisively, though more nobly, than victories or conquests. On

England that supreme power has lavished the choicest blessings of this

worldly life; it has made it vast in dominion, matchless in strength;

it has made it the arbiter of the earth, and mistress of the sea; it

has made it able to stretch its arm for war to the savage antipodes,

and, if it chose, its hand for peace to the utter civilized west; it

has brought the produce of north and south to its feet with skill and

power, to transform and to refashion in forms graceful or useful, to

send them back, almost as new creations, to its very source. Industry

has clothed its most barren plains with luxuriant crops, and with

Titan boldness hollowed its sternest rocks, to plunder them of their

ever-hidden treasures. Its gigantic strength seems but to play with

every work of venturesome enterprise, till its cities seem to the

stranger to overflow with riches, and its country to be overspread

with exuberant prosperity.

Well, these are great and magnificent favors of an over-ruling, most

benignant Power; and yet there is a boast which belongs to our country

that may seem to be overlooked. Yet it is a double gift that that same

creating and directing rule has made this country the birthplace and

the seat of the two men who, within a short period, were made the

rulers each of a great and separate intellectual dominion, never to be

deposed, never to be rivalled, never to be envied. To Newton was given

the sway over the science of the civilized world; to Shakespeare the

sovereignty over its literature.

The one stands before us passionless and grave, embracing in his

intellectual grandeur every portion of the universe, from the stars,

to him invisible, to the rippling of the tiny waves which the tide

brought to his feet. The host of heaven, that seemed in causeless

dispersion, he marshalled into order, and bound in safest discipline.

He made known to his fellow-men the secret laws of heaven, the springs

of movement, and the chains of connection, which invariably and

unchangeably impel and guide the course of its many worlds.

In this aspect one's imagination figures him as truly the director of

what he only describes--as the leader of a complicated army, who, with

his staff, seems to draw or to send forward the wheeling battalions,

intent on their own errands, combining or resolving movements far

remote; or, under a more benign and pleasing form, we may contemplate

him, like a great master in musical science, standing in the midst of

a throng, in which are mingled together the elements of sublimest

harmonies, confused to the eye, but sweetly attuned to the ear,

mingling into orderly combination and flowing sequence, as they float

through the air, which, though he elicit not nor produce, he seems by

his outstretched hand to direct, or, at least, he proves himself fully

to understand. For what each one separately does, unconscious of what

even his companion is doing, he from afar knows, and almost beholds,

understanding from his centre the concerted and sure results of their

united action. And so Newton, from his chamber on this little earth,

without being able more than the most helpless insect to add power or

give guidance to one single element in the composition of this

universe, could trace the orbits of planet or satellite, and calculate

the oscillations and the reciprocal influences of celestial spheres.

Then his directing wand seems to contract itself to a space within his

grasp. It becomes that magic prism with which he intercepts a ray from

the sun on his passage to earth; and as a bird seizes in its flight

the bee laden with its honey, and robs it of its sweet treasure--even

so he compels the messenger of light to unfold itself before us, and

lay bare to our sight the rich colors which the rainbow had exhibited

to man since the deluge, and which had lain concealed since creation,

in every sunbeam that had passed through our atmosphere. And further

still, he bequeathes that wonderful alembic of light {565} to

succeeding generations, till, in the hand of new discoverers, it has

become the key of nature's laboratory, in which she has been surprised

melting and compounding, in crucibles huge as ocean, the rich hues

with which she overlays the surfaces of suns and stars, yet, at the

same time, breathes its delicate blush upon the tenderest petals of

the opening rose.

And all the laws and all the rules which form his code of nature seem

engraved, as with a diamond point, upon a granite surface of the

primitive rocks--inflexible, immovable, unchangeable as the system

which they represent.

Beside him stands the Ruler of that world, which, though even

sublimely intellectual, is governed by him with laws in which the

affections, even the passions, the moralities, and the anxieties of

life have their share; in which there is no severity but for vice, no

slavery but for baseness, no unforgivingness but for calculating

wickedness. In his hand is not the staff of authority, whether it take

the form of a royal sceptre or of a knightly lance, whether it be the

shepherdess's crook or the fool's bauble, it is still the same, the

magician's wand. Whether it be the divining rod with which he draws up

to light the most hidden streams of nature's emotions, or the

potential instrument of Prospero's spells, which raises storms in the

deep or works spirit-music in the air, or the wicked implement with

which the witches mingle their unholy charm, its cunning and its might

have no limit among created things. But it is not a world of stately

order which he rules, nor are the laws of unvarying rigor by which it

is commanded. The wildest paroxysms of passion; the softest delicacy

of emotions; the most extravagant accident of fortune; the tenderest

incidents of home; the king and the beggar, the sage and the jester,

the tyrant and his victim; the maiden from the cloister and the

peasant from the mountains; the Italian school-child and the Roman

matron; the princes of Denmark and the lords of Troy--all these and

much more are comprised in the vast embrace of his dominions. Scarcely

a rule can be drawn from them, yet each forms a model separately, a

finished group in combination. Unconsciously as he weaves his work,

apparently without pattern or design, he interlaces and combines in

its surface and its depth images of the most charming variety and

beauty; now the stern mosaic, without coloring, of an ancient

pavement, now the flowing and intertwining arabesque of the fanciful

east; now the rude scenes of ancient mediaeval tapestry like that of

Beauvais, and then the finished and richly tinted production of the

Gobelins loom.

And yet through this seeming chaos the light permeates, and that so

clear and so brilliant as equally to define and to dazzle. Every

portion, every fragment, every particle, stands forth separate and

particular, so as to be handled, measured, and weighed in the balance

of critic and poet. Each has its own exact form and accurate place, so

that, while separately they are beautiful, united they are perfect.

Hence their combinations have become sacred rules, and have given

inviolable maxims not only to English but to universal literature.

Germany, as we have seen, studies with love and almost veneration

every page of Shakespeare; national sympathies and kindred speech make

it not merely easy but natural to all people of the Teutonic family to

assimilate their literature to that its highest standard. France has

departed, or is fast departing, from its favorite classical type, and

adopting, though with unequal power, the broader and more natural

lines of the Shakespearian model. His practice is an example, his

declarations are oracles.

Still, as I have said, the wide region of intellectual enjoyment over

which our great bard exerts dominion, is not one parcelled out or

divided into formal and state-like provinces. While the student of

science is reading in his {566} chamber the great "Principia" of

Newton, he must keep before him the solution of only one problem. On

that his mind must undistractedly rest, on that his power of thought

be intensely concentrated. Woe to him if imagination leads his reason

into truant wanderings; woe if he drop the thread of finely-drawn

deductions! He will find his wearied intelligence drowsily floundering

in a sea of swimming figures and evanescent quantities, or floating

amidst the fragments of a shipwrecked diagram. But over Shakespeare

one may dream no less than pore; we may drop the book from our hand

and the contents remain equally before us. Stretched in the shade by a

brook in summer, or sunk in the reading chair by the hearth in winter,

in the imaginative vigor of health, in the drooping spirits of

indisposition, one may read, and allow the trains of fancy which

spring up in any scene to pursue their own way, and minister their own

varied pleasure or relief; and when by degrees we have become familiar

with the inexhaustible resources of his genius, there is scarcely a

want in mind or the affections that needs no higher than human succor,

which will not find in one or other of his works that which will

soothe suffering, comfort grief, strengthen good desires, and present

some majestic example to copy, or some fearful phantom. But when we

endeavor to contemplate all his infinitely varied conceptions as

blended together in one picture, so as to take in, if possible, at one

glance the prodigious extent of his prolific genius, we thereby build

up what he himself so beautifully called the "fabric of a vision,"

matchless in its architecture as in the airiness of its materials.

There are forms fantastically sketched in cloud-shapes, such as Hamlet

showed to Polonius, in the midst of others rounded and full, which

open and unfold ever-changing varieties, now gloomy and threatening,

then tipped with gold and tinted with azure, ever-rolling,

ever-moving, melting the one into the other, or extricating each

itself from the general mass. Dwelling upon this maze of things and

imaginations, the most incongruous combinations come before the dreamy

thought, fascinated, spell-bound, and entranced. The wild Ardennes and

Windsor Park seem to run into one another, their firs and their oaks

mingle together; the boisterous ocean boiling round "the still vexed

Bermoothes" runs smoothly into the lagoons of Venice; the old gray

porticos of republican Rome, like the transition in a dissolving view,

are confused and entangled with the slim and fluted pillars of a

Gothic hall; here the golden orb, dropped from the hand of a captive

king, rolls on the ground side by side with a jester's mouldy

skull--both emblems of a common fate in human things. Then the grave

chief-justice seems incorporated in the bloated Falstaff; King John

and his barons are wassailing with Poins and Bardolph at an inn door;

Coriolanus and Shylock are contending for the right of human

sensibilities; Macbeth and Jacques are moralizing together on

tenderness even to the brute. And so of other more delicate creations

of the poet's mind--Isabella and Ophelia, Desdemona and the Scotch

Thane's wife, produce respectively composite figures of inextricable

confusion. And around and above is that filmy world, Ariel and Titania

and Peas-blossom and Cobweb and Moth, who weave as a gossamer cloud

around the vision, dimming it gradually before our eyes, in the last

drooping of weariness, or the last hour of wakefulness.

* * * * * * *

{567}

MISCELLANY.

ART.

_Domestic._--The south gallery of the new academy is the largest and

best lighted of the several exhibition rooms, and contains some of the

most ambitious pictures of the year. As the visitor, pausing for a

moment to survey the paintings, drawings, studies, architectural

designs, and miscellanea which are hung around the four sides of the

open corridor at the head of the grand staircase, turns naturally into

the great gallery, through whose wide entrance he catches glimpses of

the art treasures within, so do we propose to conduct the reader

thither without further parley. Here confront us specimens of almost

every subject legitimate to the art, and of some not legitimate--great

pictures and little pictures, grave pictures and gay pictures,

landscape and _genre_, history and portraiture, beasts, birds, fishes,

and flowers. At either end of the room hangs a full-length portrait of

a gentleman of note, which challenges the visitor's attention, be he

never so reluctant. No. 464, the late Governor Gamble, of Missouri, by

F.T.L. Boyle, belongs to a family only too numerous among us (we speak

of the picture only), and whose acquaintance one feels strongly

inclined to cut in the present instance. But that is impossible. There

stands the familiar lay-figure in the old conventional attitude, which

we feel sure the governor never assumed of his own accord. The marble

columns, the draped curtain, the library table and the books--all the

stock accessories in fine--are there; and either for the purpose of

pointing a moral, of instituting a personal comparison, or of calling

attention to its workmanship, the governor blandly directs your

attention to a bust of Washington. He might be intending to do any one

or all of these things so far as the expression of his face affords an

indication. The idea on which the portrait is painted is thoroughly

false, and ought to be by this time discarded; but year after year

artists continue to mint these modish, stiff, and ridiculous figures,

when with a little regard to common sense they could produce portraits

which all would recognize as natural and effective. Especially is this

the case with the present picture, which evinces considerable

executive ability. The other portrait to which we alluded, No. 412, a

full length of Ex-Governor Morgan, painted by Huntington, for the

Governor's Room in the City Hall, is one of the least creditable works

ever produced by that artist, cold and repulsive in color, awkward in

attitude, and unsatisfactory as a likeness.

Occupying a less prominent position than either of these pictures, but

conspicuous enough to attract a large share of attention, is the

full-length portrait of Archbishop McCloskey, No. 438, by G.P.A.

Healy. Mr. Healy, though never very happy as a colorist and often

disposed to sacrifice characteristic expression to a passion for

painting brocades and draperies, has generally succeeded in imparting

a refined air to his portraits, however feeble they might be as

likenesses. The present work is coarse in expression, and untrue as a

likeness. It is a mistake to suppose that a free, rapid touch is

adapted to every style of face. The small and delicate features of the

archbishop, with their shrewd, yet refined and benevolent expression,

cannot be dashed off with a few strokes of the brush, but require

careful painting, and, above all, patient painting. Mr. Healy's

portrait of Dr. Brownson in last year's exhibition, though of little

merit as a painting, was much better than this. No. 448, a portrait of

the late Peletiah Perit, by Hicks, is one of the most creditable

specimens of that very unequal painter that we have recently seen. Mr.

Perit is sitting easily and naturally in his library chair, and is not

made to assume the attitude of a posture-master for the time being, in

order that posterity may know how he did _not_ look in life. The

likeness is not remarkable; but the accessories are carefully painted

and agreeably colored. No. 423, portrait of a lady, by R.M. Staigg, is

exactly what it assumes to be--a lady. In the refined air of the

gentlewoman which the artist has so happily conveyed, he recalls some

of the female heads of Stuart, though in the present instance he had

no wide scope for the display {568} of Stuart's charming gift of

color. The resemblance is more in the general sentiment than in any

technical qualities. Almost adjoining this work is another portrait of

a lady, No. 425, by W.H. Furness, a forcible example of the

naturalistic school, of great solidity of texture and purity of color.

There is intelligence, earnestness, and strength in this face, and in

the attitude, though the latter, as well as the accessories, is

studiously simple. Baker and Stone contribute some attractive

portraits to this room. No. 454, a lady, by the latter, is a good

specimen of a style neither strong nor founded on true principles, but

which, on account of a certain conventional gracefulness, which amply

satisfies those who look no deeper than the surface of the canvas,

will always find admirers. No. 458, a portrait of Capt. Riblett, of

the New York 7th Regiment, by Baker, is a clever work, noticeable for

the easy pose of the figure, the clear fresh coloring, and the firm

handling.

Two other portrait pieces may be noticed in this room, of very

opposite degrees of merit. They illustrate a method of treating this

branch of the art which has become popular of late years, and which

seeks to combine portraiture with _genre_; that is to say, the figures

represent real personages, but to the uninitiated seem merely the

actors in some little domestic scene. Any subject verging on the

dramatic is of course inappropriate to this method. Thus the stiffness

too often inseparable from portraiture and its unsympathetic character

to a stranger are avoided, and the "gentlemen" and "ladies" who have

monopolized so much space on the walls awaken an interest in a wider

circle than when appearing simply in their proper persons. No. 441, "A

Picnic in the Highlands," by Rossiter, presents us with portraits of

some twenty ladies and gentlemen, including a fair proportion of

generals, who have been ruthlessly summoned from the pleasures of the

rural banquet or of social intercourse to place themselves in

attitudes which a travelling photographer would blush to copy, and be

thus handed down to posterity. In submitting to this dreadful process

Generals Warren and Seymour afforded a new proof of courage under

adverse circumstances; and one scarcely knows whether they deserve

most to be pitied, or the artist to be denounced for putting brave men

in so ridiculous a position. The picture is simply disgraceful, and

would naturally be passed over in silence had it not been hung in a

position to challenge attention, while many works of merit are placed

far above the line. Thirty or forty years ago, when the academy was

glad to enroll painters of the calibre of Mr. Rossiter among its

members, such productions were perhaps acceptable on the line. But

have hanging committees no appreciation that there is such a thing as

progress? The other picture above alluded to is No. 435, "Claiming the

Shot," by J.G. Brown. It represents a hunting scene in the

Adirondacks, and though thinly painted, with no merit in the

landscape, and of a general commonplace character, tells its story

with humor and point. We have not the pleasure of knowing the party of

amateur hunters whose good-natured altercation forms the subject of

Mr. Brown's picture, but their faces are perfectly familiar to us, and

may be seen any day on Broadway, until the shooting season summons

them to a purer atmosphere than our civic rulers permit us to breathe.

That good-looking and well-dressed young man, with the incipient

aristocratic baldness, and the languid, gentleman-like air, reclining

in a not ungraceful attitude on a stump, and whose incredulous shake

of the head denotes that he will not resign his claim to the

successful shot--is he not a type of our _jeunesse doree?_ And who has

not met the portly, florid gentleman, his face beaming with good

nature and good living, who claps our young friend on the back and

advises him to give it up? The earnest expression of the half-kneeling

hunter, clinching the argument as he identifies his bullet-hole in the

side of the slain buck, is well rendered, as is also that of another

florid gentleman who looks on, a quiet but highly amused witness of

the dispute. In the background are a party of guides and boatmen

engaged in preparing supper for the disputants, over whose perplexity

they appear to be indulging in a little quiet "chaff." We imagine that

the faces of the principal actors in this group are good likenesses,

and we feel sure that to see them thus depicted amidst scenes

suggesting healthful out-door sports will be pleasant to their

friends.

{569}

From portraits we pass naturally to figure pieces, and first pause

with astonishment before No. 394, "The Two Marys at the Sepulchre," by

R.W. Weir. Here is a work which has doubtless cost much thought and

patient labor, but which is so hopelessly beneath the dignity of the

subject as to seem almost like a caricature. When will modern painters

recognize that sacred history is a branch of their art not to be

attempted except under very peculiar and favorable

circumstances?--that the artist must feel and believe what he paints,

unless he wishes to degenerate into insipidity? We do not desire to

impugn Mr. Weir's sincerity, but a work so cold, lifeless, and void of

propriety shows that he is either hiding his light under a bushel, or

is incapable of feeling, perhaps we should say of reflecting, the

religious fervor which should be associated with so awful a scene. Had

he even stuck to the conventional forms and accessories which have

satisfied six centuries of Christian painters, he might have produced

something of respectable mediocrity. But modern realism would not

permit this, and therefore the Virgin is represented as a commonplace

middle-aged woman, who might as well be Mr. Weir's housekeeper, and

whose mawkish expression is positively repulsive. Of St. Mary Magdalen

the attitude, figure, and expression are not less inappropriate.

Surely these personages are raised above the level of ordinary

women--no believer in Christianity will deny that--and cannot the

painter so represent them? In other respects the picture has little

merit, being stiff and mannered in the drawing and of a mixture of

dull gray and salmon in its local coloring.

The most conspicuous landscape in this room is Bierstadt's immense

view of the Yo Semite Valley in California, No. 436, which occupies

the place of honor in the middle of the south wall. For months past

the artist has been announced as at work on this picture, and in view

of the great merits recognized in his "Rocky Mountains," public

expectation has been raised to a high pitch. But public expectation

has been doomed to disappointment this time, for the Yo Semite is much

inferior to its predecessor, though, in several respects, both works

show the same characteristics in equal perfection. They have breadth

of drawing, admirable perspective, and convey an idea of the solemn

grandeur of nature in the virgin solitudes of the west. But while in

the older work Mr. Bierstadt succeeded in forgetting for a time the

academic mannerisms which he brought with him from Germany, in the

present one he has, unconsciously, perhaps, lapsed into them again,

and produced something of great mechanical excellence, and with about

as much nature as can be seen through the atmosphere of a Duesseldorf

studio. Yellow appears to be his weakness, and the canvas is

accordingly suffused with yellow tints of every gradation of tone; not

a luminous yellow which the eye may rest upon with pleasure, but a

hard, dusty-looking pigment, without warmth, or transparency, or

depth; such a yellow as never tinged the skies of California or any

other part of the world, but is begotten of men who derive their ideas

of nature from copying _pictures_ of landscapes, instead of going

directly to nature. The grass and the foliage which receive the

sunlight are of a dirty, yellowish green, those in the shadow of the

great mountain ridge on the right of the scene of a yellowish black,

the very rocks and water are yellow, and if Indians or emigrants had

been introduced into the foreground, we feel convinced they would have

received the prevailing hue. Only in the mountain peaks, checkered

with sunlight and shadow, does the artist seem to escape from this

thraldom to one color, and paint with force and truthfulness. The

picture is therefore a failure; and yet viewed from the head of the

great stair-case, across the open space, and through the entrance to

the exhibition-room, it has a mellowness of tone and truthfulness of

perspective which almost induce us to retract our criticism. Approach

it, however, and the illusion vanishes. Another Californian scene by

Bierstadt, in this room, No. 472, "the Golden Gate," shows the

artist's predominant fault even more conspicuously, and is not only

unworthy of him, but absolutely unpleasant to look at. No. 487, "Among

the Alps," by Gignoux, is a solidly, though coarsely painted work, and

notwithstanding a prevalent cold, leaden tone, tolerably effective.

The idea of solemn repose is well conveyed, although scarcely one of

the details is truthfully rendered. The water of the mountain lake is

not water, but an opaque mass, the trees and rocks are so slurred in

the drawing as to be {570} unrecognizable by the naturalist, and the

shadows are unnecessarily deep and sombre. Such painting, however,

pleases the multitude, who do not care much for absolute truth,

provided effect is obtained; and Mr. Gignoux's picture is considered

very fine indeed. No. 466, "A Mountain Lake in the Blue Ridge," by

Sonntag, is a fine piece of scene painting, and, if properly enlarged,

would form an excellent design for a stage drop-curtain. As a

representation of nature it is false in nearly every detail. And yet

no landscape painter deals more readily and dexterously with the

external forms of American forest scenery, or perhaps has more

neatness of touch; and none, it may be added, has wandered further

from the true path.

No. 465, "Greenwood Lake," by Cropsey, is a pleasanter picture than we

commonly see from this artist, who, to judge from his productions,

scarcely ever saw a cloudy day, and has a very indifferent

acquaintance with shadows. Here is a still, serene summer afternoon,

in the foreground a newly-mown hayfield, with a group of mowers and

rakers, just pausing from their labor, and beyond the placid bosom of

the lake. Despite its somewhat monotonous uniformity of tone, the

picture is pervaded by an agreeable sentiment of repose,

characteristic of midsummer; and as an honest attempt to portray a

pleasing phase of nature it is welcome. No. 493, "Afternoon in the

Housatonic Valley," by J.B. Bristol, represents the period of the day

selected by Mr. Cropsey, but the tone of his picture is lower and

cooler, and the coloring more harmonious. Its most noticeable feature

is a noble mountain in the background, whose wooded sides afford fine

contrasts of light and shadow. No. 494, "A Foggy Morning--Coast of

France," by Dana, evinces more desire to catch the secret of rich

coloring than success. It is not by scattering warm pigments about,

without regard to harmony or gradation, that Mr. Dana can attain his

end; and so far as color is concerned he shows no improvement upon his

work of former years. In composition he wields, as usual, a graceful

pencil, and his children are pleasingly and naturally drawn.

------

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE ILIAD OF HOMER RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE.

By Edward, Earl of Derby. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 430 and 457. New York:

Charles Scribner & Company.

There have been several translations of the Iliad into English verse,

but, practically, only three have hitherto been much in vogue. The

first of these, by Chapman, is a work of considerable spirit, of a

rude, fiery kind; but it is unfaithful, and has long been antiquated.

Pope's brilliant and thoroughly un-Homeric version will always be

popular as a poem, though anything more widely different from the

original was probably never published as a translation. Cowper is

verbally accurate, but tame and tiresome. A translation in blank

verse, by William Munford, of Richmond, Va., appeared in Boston some

twenty years ago, but does not seem to have attracted the attention it

deserved.

Lord Derby appears to have avoided nearly all the defects and combined

nearly all the merits of his predecessors. He has aimed "to produce a

translation and not a paraphrase; not, indeed, such a translation as

would satisfy, with regard to each word, the rigid requirements of

accurate scholarship, but such as would fairly and honestly give the

sense and spirit of every passage and of every line, omitting nothing

and expanding nothing, and adhering as closely as our language will

allow, even to every epithet which is capable of being translated, and

which has, in the particular passage, anything of a special and

distinctive character." The testimony of critics is almost unanimous

as to the success with which he has carried out his design. His

translation is incomparably more faithful than either of those we have

mentioned. He almost invariably perceives the delicate shades of

meaning which Pope was {571} not scholar enough to notice, and he is

often wonderfully happy in expressing them in English. His language is

dignified and pure; his style animated and idiomatic; and his verse

has more of the majestic flow of Homer than that of any previous

translator. He has produced by all odds the best version of the Iliad

in the English language.

That a statesman should have succeeded in a task of this sort, where

Pope and Cowper failed, is strange indeed. But let our readers judge

for themselves: we give first a somewhat celebrated passage from

Pope--the bivouac of the Trojans, at the end of the eighth

book--premising that Pope prefixes to it four lines which have no

equivalent in the Greek, and which are not only an interpolation but a

positive injury to the sense:

"The troops exulting sat in order round,

And beaming fires illumined all the ground.

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,

O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,

When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,

And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;

Around her throne the vivid planets roll,

And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,

O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,

And tip with silver every mountain's head;

Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,

A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;

The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,

Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.

So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,

And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays:

The long reflections of the distant fires

Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires;

A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,

And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field,

Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,

Whose umbered arms, by fits, thick flashes send,

Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,

And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."

This is not a faultless passage, but no one can help admiring the

felicitous imagery, the vivid word-painting, the wonderful harmony of

the versification. Yet what reader of Homer will hesitate to prefer

Lord Derby's simpler and almost strictly literal rendering?

"Full of proud hopes, upon the pass of war,

All night they camped; and frequent blazed their fires.

As when in heaven, around the glittering moon

The stars shine bright amid the breathless air;

And every crag, and every jutting peak

Stands boldly forth, and every forest glade;

_Ev'n to the gates of heaven is opened wide

The boundless sky;_ shines each particular star

Distinct; joy fills the gazing shepherd's heart.

So bright, so thickly scattered o'er the plain,

Before the walls of Troy, between the ships

And Xanthus' stream, the Trojan watchfires blazed.

A thousand fires burnt brightly; and round each

Sat fifty warriors in the ruddy glare;

With store of provender before them laid,

Barley and rye, the tethered horses stood

Beside the cars, and waited for the morn."

Take now the description of Vulcan serving the gods at a banquet, from

the conclusion of the first book. Cowper gives it as follows:

"So he; then Juno smiled, goddess white-armed,

And smiling still, from his unwonted hand

Received the goblet. He from right to left [Footnote 112]

Rich nectar from the beaker drawn, alert

Distributed to all the powers divine.

Heaven rang with laughter inextinguishable,

Peal after peal, such pleasure all conceived

At sight of Vulcan in his new employ.

So spent they in festivity the day,

And all were cheered; nor was Apollo's harp

Silent, nor did the muses spare to add

Responsive melody of vocal sweets.

But when the sun's bright orb had now declined,

Each to his mansion, wheresoever built

By the same matchless architect, withdrew.

Jove also, kindler of the fires of heaven,

His couch ascending as at other times

When gentle sleep approached him, slept serene,

With golden-sceptred Juno by his side."

[Footnote 112: Just the reverse,--_from left to right_, [Greek text]

Cowper's blunder is serious, because to proceed from right to left

was looked upon by the Greeks as unlucky.]

{572}

Cowper is better than Pope here; but Lord Derby is the most literal

and by far the best of the three. His lines have a dignified

simplicity not unworthy the father of poetry himself; yet the

translation is nearly verbatim:

"Thus as he spoke, the white-armed goddess smiled,

And smiling from his hand received the cup,

Then to th' immortals all in order due

He ministered, and from the flagon poured

The luscious nectar; while among the gods

Rose laughter irrepressible, at sight

Of Vulcan hobbling round the spacious hall.

Thus they till sunset passed the festive hours;

Nor lacked the banquet aught to please the sense,

Nor sound of tuneful lyre, by Phoebus touched,

Nor muses' voice, who in alternate strains

Responsive sang; but when the sun was set,

Each for his home departed, where for each

The cripple Vulcan, matchless architect,

With wondrous skill a noble house had reared.

To his own couch, where he was wont of old,

When overcome by gentle sleep, to rest,

Olympian Jove ascended; there he slept,

And by his side the golden-throned queen."

If our space permitted we might easily extend these comparisons, and

show that Lord Derby excels other translators in every phase of his

undertaking--in the rude shock of war, the touching emotions of human

sentiment, the debates of the gods, and the beauties and phenomena of

nature. We cannot refrain, however, from quoting a few passages of

conspicuous excellence.

Hector's assault on the ships in the fifteenth book is thus spiritedly

rendered:

"Fiercely he raged, as terrible as Mars

With brandished spear; or as a raging fire

'Mid the dense thickets on the mountain side.

The foam was on his lips; bright flashed his eyes

Beneath his awful brows, and terribly

Above his temples waved amid the fray

The helm of Hector; Jove himself from heaven

His guardian hand extending, him alone

With glory crowning 'mid the host of men,

But short his term of glory; for the day

Was fast approaching, when, with Pallas' aid

The might of Peleus' son should work his doom.

Oft he essayed to break the ranks, where'er

The densest throng and noblest arms he saw;

But strenuous though his efforts, all were vain;

They, massed in close array, his charge withstood;

Firm as a craggy rock, upstanding high

Close by the hoary sea, which meets unmoved

The boist'rous currents of the whistling winds,

And the big waves that bellow round its

So stood unmoved the Greeks, and undismayed.

At length, all blazing in his arms, he sprang

Upon the mass; so plunging down as when

On some tall vessel, from beneath the clouds

A giant billow, _tempest-nursed_, descends:

The deck is drenched in foam; the stormy wind

Howls in the shrouds; th' affrighted seamen quail

In fear, but little way from death removed; [Footnote 113]

So quailed the spirit in every Grecian breast."

[Footnote 113: We are particularly struck with the

excellence of Lord Derby's translation of this

magnificent image when we contrast it with Mr.,

Munford's:

"As on a ship a wat'ry mountain falls,

Driven from the clouds by all the furious winds;

With foam the deck is covered, pitiless

The deafening tempest roars among the shrouds;

The sailors, whirled along by raging waves.

Tremble, confused and faint; immediate death

Appears before them."

Yet, no less an authority than the late President

Felton, of Harvard, pronounced Munford's

the best of all English metrical versions of the

Iliad.]

In book sixth Hector is accosted by his mother on his return from the

battle-field. She offers him wine, wherewith to pour a libation to

Jove and then to refresh himself. Lord Darby's translation of his

answer is very neat and very close to the original:

{573}

"No, not for me, mine honored mother, pour

The luscious wine, lest thou unnerve my limbs

And make me all my wonted prowess lose.

The ruddy wine I dare not pour to Jove

With hands unwashed; nor to the cloud-girt son

Of Saturn may the voice of prayer ascend

From one with blood bespattered and defiled."

We close our extracts with a few lines from book third. Priam, sitting

with "the sage chiefs and councillors of Troy" at the Scaean gate

watching the hostile armies, thus addresses Helen:

"'Come here, my child, and sitting by my side,

From whence thou canst discern thy former lord,

His kindred and his friends (not thee I blame,

But to the gods I owe this woful war),

Tell me the name of yonder mighty chief

Among the Greeks a warrior brave and strong:

Others in height surpass him; but my eyes

A form so noble never yet beheld,

Nor so august; he moves, a king indeed.'

To whom in answer, Helen, heav'nly fair:

'With rev'rence, dearest father, and with shame

I look on thee: oh, would that I had died

That day when hither with thy son I came,

And left my husband, friends, and darling child,

And all the loved companions of my youth:

That I died not, with grief I pine away.

But to thy question; I will tell thee true;

Yon chief is Agamemnon, Atreus' son,

Wide-reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good,

And valiant warrior; in my husband's name,

Lost as I am, I called him brother once.'"

----

LIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.

By William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C., author of "Hortensius," "Napoleon at

St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe," "History of Trial by Jury," etc., and

late fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two volumes, 8vo., pp. 364

and 341. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.

Mr. Forsyth has a very correct notion of the business of a biographer.

His object has been not only to tell Cicero's history but to describe

his private life--to make us acquainted with minute details of his

domestic habits, and to represent him as far as possible in the same

manner as he would a man of the present generation. "The more we

accustom ourselves," he says, "to regard the ancients as persons of

like passions as ourselves, and familiarize ourselves with the idea of

them as fathers, husbands, friends, and _gentlemen_, the better we

shall understand them." He has therefore carefully gathered up from

the letters and other writings of the Roman orator those little bits

of personal allusion, domestic history, and unconsidered trifles which

indicate, more clearly sometimes than important actions, the bent of

one's mind or the inmost character of one's heart; and he has arranged

them with great skill, and a good eye for effect. He shows but slight

literary polish; his style is not elegant, nor always clear, nor even

dignified; but he has a logical way of putting things, a happy knack

of arrangement, and a habit of keeping to the point and throwing aside

superfluous matter, for which we dare say he is indebted to his

training as a pleader in the courts. As a lawyer, too, he is specially

qualified to give the history of the causes in which Cicero's orations

were delivered; and this he does better than we have ever seen it done

before, explaining the narrative by copious illustrations from modern

jurisprudence. But if in some respects he writes like a lawyer, in

another very important point his practice as an advocate seems not to

have affected him. He is thoroughly impartial. He sums up Cicero's

character more like a judge than a queen's counsel. He admires him but

not blindly; holding the safe middle path between the excessive

veneration shown by Middleton and Niebuhr and the unreasonable

animosity of Drumann and Mommsen. He admits that Cicero was weak,

timid, and irresolute; but these defects were counter-balanced by the

display, at critical periods of his life, of the very opposite

qualities. In the contest with Catiline and the final struggle with

Antony he was as firm and brave as a man need be. One principal cause

of his irresolution was an anxiety to do what was right. If he knew

that he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of remorse.

His standard of morality was as high as it was perhaps possible to

elevate it by the mere light of nature. The chief fault of his moral

character was a want of sincerity. In a different sense of the words

from that expressed by St. Paul, he wished to become all things to all

men, if by any means he might win some. His private correspondence and

{574} his public speeches were often in direct contradiction with each

other as to the opinions he expressed of his contemporaries. His

foible was vanity. He was never tired of speaking of himself. As a

philosopher he had no pretensions to originality, but he was the first

to make known to his countrymen the philosophy of Greece, which until

he appeared may be said to have spoken to the Romans in an unknown

tongue. He adhered to no particular sect, but affected chiefly the

school of the new academy. He was a firm believer in a providence and

a future state. As an orator his faults are coarseness in invective,

exaggeration in matter, and prolixity in style. "Many of his sentences

are intolerably long, and he dwells upon a topic with an exhaustive

fulness which leaves nothing to the imagination. The pure gold of his

eloquence is beaten out too thin, and what is gained in surface is

lost in solidity and depth."

The position of Cicero with respect to the political parties into

which the republic was divided in his time is not so well described as

his personal character. While Mr. Forsyth displays industry and good

judgment in collecting and arranging the little traits which go to

make up a life-like portrait, he lacks the comprehensive and

philosophical view with which Merivale has recently surveyed the same

period of history. Forsyth writes as one who, having mingled with the

busy crowd in the forum, should come away and tell us what he had seen

and heard, and describe the men with whom he had talked. Merivale

surveys the scene from a distance; and though his perception of

individual objects is less distinct than Forsyth's, his view is

broader and takes in better the relative situations and proportions of

the various features spread out before him. Both are excellent in

their kind: the historian is the more instructive, the biographer the

more entertaining.

BEATRICE.

By Julia Kavanagh, author of "Nathalie," "Adele," "Queen Mab," etc.,

etc. Three volumes in one. 12mo., pp. 520. New York: D. Appleton &

Company.

The readers of "Adele" and "Nathalie" will hardly be prepared for what

awaits them in the novel now upon our table. Miss Kavanagh has won a

high reputation by her delicate pictures of quiet home life, and

thorough analyses of female character. But lately the prevailing

thirst for sensational stories appears to have enticed her away from

the old path, and led her to attempt a style of novel which will no

doubt please the majority of readers better than her earlier efforts,

though as a work of art it is inferior to them. It is by no means

however a merely sensation story. The heroine is painted with all Miss

Kavanagh's accustomed clearness and skill; although the uninterrupted

series of plots and counterplots, the dramatic terseness of the

dialogue, and the effectiveness of the situations, tempt one to forget

sometimes, in the absorbing interest of the narrative, the higher

merit of vivid and truthful drawing of character. That of Beatrice is

charmingly conceived, and admirably worked out, recalling those

delightful heroines who first gave Miss Kavanagh a hold upon the

popular heart. Beatrice is a spirited, proud, natural, warm-hearted

girl, born in poverty and fallen heiress unexpectedly to great wealth.

Her guardian and step-father, Mr. Gervoise, subjects her to

innumerable wrongs in order that he may get possession of the

property. Poison even and a mad-house are hinted at. The book is

principally a narrative of battle between the defenceless girl and

this villain. Our readers who may wish to know how the struggle ends

are referred to the book itself; they will have no reason to regret

the time they may spend in reading it.

GRACE MORTON; OR, THE INHERITANCE.

A Catholic Tale. By M.L.M. 12mo., pp. 324.

THE CONFESSORS OF CONNAUGHT; OR,

THE TENANTS OF A LORD BISHOP.

A Tale of our Times. By M. L. M., author of Grace Morton, etc. 12mo.,

pp.319. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier &

Company.

These are both religious stories. The first is inscribed to the

Catholic youth of America, and the scene is laid in Pennsylvania. The

second is founded upon the evictions in 1860, in the parish of Partry,

Ireland, of a number of tenants of the Protestant bishop of Tuam, who

had refused to send their children to proselytizing schools. The

well-known missionary, Father Lavelle, is a {575} prominent figure in

the book, slightly disguised under the name of Father Dillon.

A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:

FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE

CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.

By M. l'Abbe J.E. Darras. First American from the last French edition.

With an Introduction and Notes, by the Most Rev. M.J. Spalding, D.D.,

Archbishop of Baltimore. Numbers 6, 7, and 8. 8vo. pp. (each) 48. New

York: P. O'Shea.

We are pleased to learn that two valuable appendices are to be added

to the American translation of this important work; one by an eminent

Jesuit on the history of the Church in Ireland, the other by the Rev.

C.I. White, D.D., on the history of the Church in America. The English

version of the book ought thus to be far superior to the original

French. The numbers appear with great promptness, and present the same

neat and tasteful appearance which we took occasion to praise in

noticing some of the earlier parts.

LIFE OF THE CURE D'ARS.

From the French of the Abbe Alfred Monnin. 12mo., pp. 355. Baltimore:

Kelly & Piet.