Art thou not Angelo? I know thee now, Of men, that, smitten with some sore disease, For others' benefit? Ilario. And what of that? Angelo. But this; that such a medicine have 1 found, And would to thee impart. Ilario. Why, then I thank thee: And yet with little credence in thy skill; Yet tell it :-drowning men, they say, will catch Angelo. Then hear it in one word-Revenge! A painted sepulchre; outwardly fair, Yet full of bones and rottenness within. Angelo. Stop! stop! Thou wilt not leave me; nay, thou shalt not. I spoke it but to try thee: well I know Thou lovest Crichton, as he loves himself. Ilario. What! can the devil hide his cloven feet? Thou shouldst be him; and yet thou hast them not. Oh! if thou art a man, beware, beware, Look to thyself. What! canst thou have a soul An old man, loaden'd with infirmities, And tottering to his grave? Angelo. Oh, fancy! fancy! How thou canst blind men's views, and change their thoughts, Setting before their eyes themselves and others In strange misshapen forms. Consider, man, Thou art Ilario, who a week ago, In glowing health, and fill'd with expectation Of honours and success, set out for Padua. Ilario. Didst thou say Padua? Cursed be that name! Angelo. What happen'd there yourself must know the best, It matters not to me; and yet I think It was not that which caused your love for Crichton. Ilario. Crichton! my love for him! Avaunt, thou fiend, I see thy damned art! I would begone, And yet I cannot move. Speak then, I'll hear thee. Or poison him, or take away his life In any way you please, with equal justice? If it be unjust, you may do all this, And yet not sin more deeply than you have done, &c. &c. The next quotation is a soliloquy of Ilario in the third act; when, in order to bring about his revenge, he has rendered the prince jealous of Crichton. Begone, ye coward fears! these communings That men hold with themselves are never happy: Are found in action: this it is which gives The thoughts their life and vigour. But when once False doubts arise without a cause existing. The last quotation, from the third scene of the first act, is a soliloquy of Ippolita, the duke's daughter; and, to use the theatrical phrase, in love with Crichton. Ah me! there is no softener of the heart Is it the throbbing breast, and kindling eye? That burst unheeded from the beating breast; That gains more strength by preying on itself. The best criterion by which we could form a judgment of the merits of Clitheroe's tragedies, would be to compare these extracts with Mr. Lamb's specimens of the dramatic writers contemporary with Shakspeare. I am much mistaken if there be any passages among them all to be compared in poetic beauty to those which I have just quoted; with the exception indeed of those exquisitely beautiful passages from Ford, which compared with the general level of the tragedies from which they are extracted, may be said to shine like jewels in an Ethiop's ear. In the tragedy of Crichton, the author has somewhat deviated from strict historic truth, in giving to the Duke of Mantua one daughter instead of two, neither of whom was called Ippolita ; and a second son, on whom he has bestowed the name of Lorenzo. I purpose shortly to send you extracts from each of the other five tragedies; and what may perhaps be still more curious, from the author's own memoirs. W.W. SONNET TO THE NIGHTINGALE. Oh, unseen haunter of the greenwood bowers, O'er cradled child her song unwearying, Thy voice is less allied to joy than sorrow; B. LECTURES ON POETRY, BY T. CAMPBELL. Continued from Page 15. LECTURE 1. PART 2. IN concluding the former part of this Lecture, I remarked, that the term Poetry, in its extensive and philosophical meaning, applies to prose fictions, when they delight the imagination. But I endeavoured to discriminate the delight of the imagination, from that mere curiosity in the stir of existence, the gratification of which is the object of the great mass of novels. Fancied events and characters are not poetry, unless they present conceptions of Nature heightened above common-place, skilfully selected and originally combined. It is true, that fiction makes an approach to poetry, the moment that it represents scenes and incidents, and characters, with a story or drama possessing harmony of design; but the approach will be very distant, if a spirit be not also infused into the imitation of life, that shall make it seem like a magic vision of the original. The imagination cannot be said to be exercised, unless we are transported beyond reality. I have also said, that Comedy, though it often conveniently dispenses with verse, is allied to poetry in its nature. There is no doubt that our comic emotions are less eminently poetical than those of our serious sensibility, and that the sense of ridicule rather humbles, than flatters, the pride of humanity. But ridicule is nevertheless a boldly fanciful power, and one that transports us out of all mediocrity of sensation. Nor is it unconnected with our perceptions of moral truth. The exaggerating medium through which it exhibits human follies, may not be compared, indeed, to the magnifying telescope, that makes us acquainted with the glories of heaven, but to the microscope, that amuses us with the plumage and panoply of the half-visible tribes of creation. It detects all the fluttering vanities in "that little busy world, the heart of man." It possesses and carries us away in a torrent of gay enthusiasm. A total insensibility to the comic, though not a proof, is rather a suspicious symptom of the other imaginative faculties being obtuse. And there have been more absurd distinctions made by theorists, than that of Lucian's philosopher, when he discrimi nates man from ass by his risibility-ὡς άνθρωπος μεν γελαστικών, ονος δε οὐ γελαστικόν." * Lucian's Βίων Πρασις. VOL. 1. NO. 11. Feb. 1821. K The consummate characters of comedy are great ideal conceptions, master-pieces of imagination, though their familiar mirth may make them seem our humble acquaintances. It is true that we hear, every day, of particular persons having been the real originals exactly delineated by the most humorous authors. But in proportion to the genius of such moral painters, we may venture to deny the possibility of their having copied individual portraits. Some eccentric person may have been generally in the mind of a writer at the time of his sketching an exquisite character, but only as a rallying point to the innumerable original traits of his imagination. Who would ask where Shakspeare found his Falstaff, except in the mine of his own invention ? At the same time, whilst the abstracting and combining powers of the imagination have entered into the invention of such characters, they appear to be individuals. Consummate art makes us forget that they have been invented, and gives them the free and familiar air of reality. The bulk of fiction-writers, unable to create imaginary beings of this description, take a shorter road towards individual ty, by adopting indivi-, duals ready-made; and copy or caricature human nature, as it has the misfortune to fall in their way. Their readers feel some difference of effect, but are not always quite clear as to the cause of their being better pleased with ideal than accidental imitation. They have been assured of some village, or town, or family, where the most ideal comic characters, to a certainty, lived, long before and after they were so kind as to visit the brain of the genius that pourtrayed them; and mistaking hints for prototypes, they associate the idea of lively character-painting, with the copying of a live man. The commonest novel shews them some feigned name, under which there is no more of human nature described, than what exactly tallies with the slander or ridicule attached to the neighbour whose intended likeness they recognise; and they are apt to imagine, that Le Sage and Cervantes had recourse to the same expedients. We are rarely presented, in verse, with the same garrulous common-place fiction as in prose. The bad novelist is familiarly, the bad poet is loftily, tiresome. And, is indifferent verse, it may then be asked, more tolerable than the mediocrity of prose? No, it is a great deal worse. This circumstance, however, is an indirect argument in favour of verse. We must be pleased with it highly, or not at all. It is a noble instrument, on which imperfect execution is insupportable. The prose describer of life may, without disappointing us, abstain from any attempt to raise us above the ordinary sensations of life; and he, for the most part, only wearies us by its insipid dialogues. But the bad versifier disgusts us by adopting the token of an enthusiasm |