"Thou did'st usurp my place, and dost thou not Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?

Farewell, York's wife,-and Queen of sad mischance."

This is tragedy: the sublimest point of tragedy.

I do not believe that any writer ever looked deeper into human nature than Shakspeare.Take for example the following scene from Macbeth.

MACDUFF.

See, who comes here?

MALCOLM.

My countryman; but yet I know him not.

MACDUFF.

My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.

MALCOLM.

I know him now-Good God, betimes remove
The means that make us strangers!

ROSSE.

Sir, Amen.

MACDUFF.

Stands Scotland where it did?

ROSSE.

Alas, poor country;

Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,

But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstacy; the dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd, for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.

MACDUFF.

O, relation

Too nice, and yet too true!

MALCOLM.

What is the newest grief?

ROSSE.

Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughtered.

My children too?

MACDUFF.

ROSSE.

Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

MACDUFF.

And I must be from thence!

My wife killed too?

ROSSE.

I have said.

MALCOLM.

Be comforted:

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge

To cure this deadly grief.

He has no children!

MACDUFF.

This dialogue resembles that between Flavian and Curiatius in Corneille. Flavian enters to announce to the lover of Camilla that he has been chosen to combat the Horatii.

CURIACE.

Albe de trois guerriers a-t-elle fait le choix ?

FLAVIAN.

Je viens pour vous l'apprendre.

CURIACE.

Hé bien! qui sont les trois ?

FLAVIAN.

Vos deux frères et vous.

CURIACE.

Qui?

FLAVIAN.

Vous et vos deux frères.

The interrogations of Macduff and Curiatius are beauties of the same order. But Macduff's exclamation : "He has no children!" is unparalleled.

The same hand which drew this picture has traced a charming scene in the farewell of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo has been condemned to

banishment, and, on the morning after his secret marriage with Juliet, he is warned by the approaching daylight that it is time to depart.

JULIET.

Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;
It was the nightingale and not the lark
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree :
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO.

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east ;
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops;
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET.

Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I;
It is some meteor that the sun exhales
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,

And light thee on thy way to Mantua :
Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not to be gone.

ROMEO.

Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so ;
I'll say, yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads :
I have more care to stay than will to go ;-
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.-

How is't my soul? Let's talk, it is not day,

JULIET.

It is, it is, bie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps,
Some say the lark makes sweet division;

This doth not so for she divideth us;

Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;
O, now, I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's up to the day.
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

This contrast of the charms of the dawning of morning and the parting endearments of the lovers, with the catastrophe which is about to follow, is very touching. The sentiment is more natural than that of the Greek tragedies and less pastoral than that of the Italian tragicomedies. I know of only one dramatic scene which bears any resemblance to that which I have just quoted from Romeo and Juliet. It occurs in an Indian drama. The resemblance, however, does not consist in the freshness of the imagery, in the simplicity of the sorrowful farewell, and certainly not in the interest of the situation. Sacontala, when about to quit her paternal roof, feels herself drawn back by her veil.

SACONTALA.

Who thus seizes the folds of my veil?