tenderest and most exquisitely constituted creature in the fairy band. Is this Shakespeare's "lob of spirits," who delighted in his proper name "Hobgoblin," who labored "in the quern" [a corn-mill worked by hand], and whose "shape and making" were so unlike those of his fellow fays that a stranger fairy knew him by those alone? A glance at the print of Puck which accompanies the old ballad of the Mad Pranks of Robin Goodfellow, printed in 1588, when Shakespeare was twenty-two years old, would have shown whoever put this Puck upon the stage, that his pretty manikin was about as unlike the Puck of Shakespeare's day as it was possible to make him. There he is a mixture of fay, dwarf Hercules, and Satyr; and bears a brush broom in one hand and a candle in the other. But what need of ballads and prints to guide us? Who that has read the play (and who has not), cannot call the urchin before his mind's eye as instantly as Oberon commanded his real presence !—a rough, knurly-limbed, fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow,—a very Shetlander among the gossamer-winged, dainty-limbed shapes around him; and strong enough to knock all their heads together for his elvish sport. We cannot have exactly such a Puck; but we can be content with one "who comes to disfigure or to present" such a Puck.

Fairy lakes and panoramas of Fairy-land are just as much out of place as a dandy Puck. There is not the slightest warrant in the text for either. The scene of the fairy business is "A Wood near Athens;" and the only changes are from one part to "Another part of the Wood." Pas seuls, shawl dances, and the people who dance them, are no less foreign to the design of Shakespeare; and equally so is the turning of a part of Oberon's soliloquy into a duet, to be sung with a blue fairy who comes in for the purpose waving her wand, and goes out continuing the process. And, by the way, why are all stage fairies similarly armed and equally

constant in the use of the weapon? Pray what is the purpose of all this violent stirring up of the atmosphere? It is difficult to discover, except that it perpetuates a timehonored stage conventionality.

The text gives no hint of any of these things. That tells of fairy gambols and pranks which form a part of the movement of the play. Shakespeare brings on the stage just such fairies as Mary Arden had told him of when he stood at her knee, like any other mortal child; she, mother though she was, not dreaming the while, as her sweet Will looked up in her face, that she had borne and was nurturing one who was to be the delight of all nations, the greatest pride of the greatest race among the peoples of the earth, the noblest intellect the world's history should tell of. It is the fairies of his nursery hours which Shakespeare has idealized in A Midsummer Night's Dream: such fairies as half Stratford believed were dancing in Sir Thomas Lucy's park every moonlight night; and these flit about the wood near Athens, make lovers' quarrels and make them up again in mere mischief, and dance and sing for themselves, and not to display their skill to others. There is nothing there of fairy lakes and panoramas, and people tying themselves and each other up in rose-colored shawls while they stand with infinite pain upon the extremity of one toe, and untying themselves by standing on the other. True, there have been fairy ballets composed in which there are pas of all kinds; but in those, motion, the dance, is the medium of expression. It is not so in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Nothing is there set down to be performed which has not to do with the progress of the piece; and to arrest that for the movement of a panorama or the evolutions of a ballet, is to stifle Shakespeare with a paint-brush, and to trample poetry under foot with entrechats and bore it through and through with pirouettes.

Shakespeare has preserved a unity in this fanciful composition, which the spectacle-making managers only mar by changing the last scene to Fairy-land. It is to be present at the wedding of Theseus and Hyppolita that Oberon and Titania have left Fairy-land and come to Athens, as we learn from their mutual reproaches at their first meeting; and the events which form the movement of the three progressive acts of the play, the second, third and fourth, are but the fruit of accident and mischief. The fifth Act, like the finale of a finely-wrought musical composition, placidly resumes the theme which was announced at its commencement, and simply blends with it the counter-theme with which it has been intricately worked up during the body of the piece. The poet ends the fairy freaks which have harassed the human mortals through this dream, by turning the tormentors into benefactors, and bringing them into the house to bless the place and the children born of the marriages celebrated on that night. After the grotesque fun and broad humor of the interlude, the dream resumes its fanciful and graceful form, and fades upon the mind, a troop of shadowy figures, singing benisons.

The music which Mendelssohn has written for this exquisite work of genius, is in its intrinsic beauty and its skilful adaptation as near the perfection and power of genius, as the production of mere talent, taste, and acquired resource can ever be. Some years ago, when such a suspicion had never, to my knowledge, been uttered, I ventured the assertion that Mendelssohn was entirely wanting in original, creative genius, and extended the same judgment to Spohr. I am no longer left alone in this opinion. To neither of these composers are we indebted for any new form of musical thought. Their works display learning, labor, taste, skill, and, in the case of Mendelssohn particularly, an unusual command of all the resources of the art; but we

look in vain through their compositions for the fruits of that gift which we call inspiration; we hear no strain which, had they not been born, might not have been conceived by other minds. The music of neither is characteristic in its elements, though both have peculiarities by which we recognize their compositions: but these are peculiarities of treatment, handling,-not of original conception.

The overture, the march and the dances, written by Mendelssohn for this play, are the finest productions of his pen. It is paying them the highest possible compliment to say that they are thoroughly informed with the spirit of Shakespeare's poetry. The same may be said of all the music which the German composer has written to A Midsummer Night's Dream. But as to a part of it, there is a great æsthetic error, which however has not to do with its intrinsic merits, and for which the fashion of the stage and not the composer is accountable.-In many passages the thoughts of the musical composer and the poet are heard together. This is false Art. The mingling of two forms of expression is inadmissible, because it must be fatal to the full and just effect which properly belongs to either. Let Music or Poetry take possession of our souls; but do not call upon our emotions to serve the bidding of two masters. The painter might far more consistently attempt to unite the sculptor's art with his, by bringing his figures into relief, or the sculptor seek to heighten the relief of his work by deepening the shadows with paint. If verse be the poet's medium of expression, let Poetry alone express his thought; if musical sounds, let Music alone do his bidding. We may alternate our enjoyment of the two arts, as in the case of illustrated poems, or music interspersed with verse-but if both claim our attention at the same time, we are under the dominion of neither, and all unity of effect is destroyed.

Dramatic poetry can receive no more aid from Music, than dramatic music can receive from Poetry. All that the musician can do for the dramatist is to embellish his work: all that the poet can accomplish for the musician is to furnish him with dramatic situations, and suggestive thoughts, of which his music is to be the sole exponent, to the entire disregard of all except the mere dramatic conception of the poet; whose words, as words, are in this case to be considered the mere vehicles of musical sounds. Any mingling of the offices of Poet (using the word in its limited sense) and Musician, effects only the confounding, confusing, and consequent destruction of both.

In truth, Music and Poetry more than any two other Arts must be enjoyed apart; because they both appeal to the mind through the same sense, the ear, which, otherwise, is called upon to receive at the same time two impressions, one transmitting thought, the other awakening emotion. The consequence of the attempt to do this, is distraction both of mind and sense, as all who have been subjected to it must have noticed. In a play, where words are the vehicles of thought and expression, music may properly precede or follow the Acts, or be interspersed through the poetry, but cannot properly accompany it in an opera, where music is the medium of expression, we want words only for the situation or emotion which they furnish, as a subject to the composer, and for the purposes of articulation. He who needs, or can suffer the music of Mendelssohn while he is listening to the verse of Shakespeare, or who longs to hear the verse of Romani while he is enjoying the music of Bellini, might with greater propriety ask that St. Luke's narrative should be plainly written across the face of Raphael's Transfiguration, so that he might enjoy the story and the picture together, or complain that Virgil did not write his description of Venus appearing to Eneas