the introduction of the Friar on his first appearance culling simples and descanting on their virtues. Of the passionate scenes in this tragedy, that between the Friar and Romeo when he is told of his sentence of banishment, that between Juliet and the Nurse when she hears of it, and of the death of her cousin Tybalt (which bear no proportion in her mind, when passion, after the first shock of surprise, throws its weight into the scale of her affections), and the last scene at the tomb, are among the most natural and overpowering. In all of these it is not merely the force of any one passion that is given, but the slightest and most unlookedfor transitions from one to another, the mingling currents of every different feeling rising up and prevailing in turn, swayed by the master-mind of the poet, as the waves undulate beneath the gliding storm. Thus when Juliet has by her complaints encouraged the Nurse to say, "Shame come to Romeo," she instantly repels the wish, which she had herself occasioned, by answering—

"Blister'd be thy tongue

For such a wish, he was not born to shame.
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit,

For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal earth!

O, what a beast was I to chide him so!

NURSE. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin? JULIET. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband? Ah, my poor lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it ?"

L

And then follows, on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that "father, mother, nay, or both were dead," rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished from her.-Perhaps one of the finest pieces of acting that ever was witnessed on the stage, is Mr Kean's manner of doing this scene and his repetition of the word Banished. He treads close indeed upon the genius of his author.

A passage which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakspeare (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks the poison.

"Let me peruse this face

Mercutio's kinsman! noble county Paris!
What said my man when my betoss'd soul
Did not attend him as we rode ! I think,
He told me Paris should have marry'd Juliet,
Said he not so? or did I dream it so?

Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
To think it was so?- O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave—

O, my love! my wife!

Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.-
Tybalt, ly'st thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,
To sunder his that was thine enemy?

Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair! I will believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour.
For fear of that, I will stay still with thee;
And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again: here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest;

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!-
Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide!
Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks, my sea-sick weary bark!
Here's to my love!-[Drinks.] O, true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.

The lines in this speech describing the loveliness of Juliet, who is supposed to be dead, have been compared to those in which it is said of Cleopatra after her death, that she looked 66 as she would take another Antony in her strong toil of grace;" and a question has been started which is the finest, that we do not pre

tend to decide. We can more easily decide between Shakspeare and any other author, than between him and himself. Shall we quote any more passages to show his genius or the beauty of ROMEO AND JULIET? At that rate, we might quote the whole. The late Mr Sheridan, on being shown a volume of the Beauties of Shakspeare, very properly asked—“ But where are the other eleven?" The character of Mercutio in this play is one of the most mercurial and spirited of the productions of Shakspeare's comic muse.

LEAR.

WE wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing about it. All that we can say must fall far short of the subject, or even of what we ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to give a description of the play itself, or of its effect upon the mind, is mere impertinence yet we must say something. It is then the best of all Shakspeare's plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in earnest. He was here fairly caught in the web of his own imagination. The passion which he has taken as his subject is that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart; of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed; and the cancelling and tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the contrast between the fixed, immovable basis