↑ Jew, who, lending to a merchant an hundred crowns, would have a pound of his flesh, because he could not pay him at the time appointed." Some question has been made whether the ballad or the play were written first; but we are satisfied, for reasons which need not be stated here, that the ballad was before the play; and the first stanza suggests the novel, of which we have given an outline, as the probable foundation of it:

"In Venice towne not long agoe a cruel Jew did dwell,
Which lived all on usurie, as Italian writers tell."

Here again the Poet is clearly traced by certain resemblances of expression: in the play we have,- -"Go with me to a notary, seal me there your single bond; and in a merry sport," &c.; and again,-"Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?" and in the ballad,—“But we will have a merry jest for to be talked long ;" and again,—“The bloudie Jew now ready is with whet ted blade in hand.". Some lines of the same story are traceable in various other quarters: in fact, it has been seen in so many places, that nobody can tell whence it came or where it was seen first. Probably it was of eastern origin; one of the many things which, originally set on foot by Arabian fiction or some neighbouring authority, have been happening from time to time ever since.

Thus far we have not seen the two incidents of the bond and the caskets united; yet it is by no means certain that Shakespeare was the first to unite them. In 1579, one Stephen Gosson, having, as would seem, been certified of his own election in such sort and manner as left him full ieisure to hunt up and whip the faults of others, put toru. tract entitled "The School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against pocts, pipers, players, jesters, and such like caterpillers of the commonwealth." He was pleased, however, to except from the general censure “The Jew shown at the Bull, representing the greediness of worldly choosers and the bloody minds of usurers." No performance answering to this description has in modern times been discovered; but the expressions, "worldly choosers" and "bloody minds of usurers," look as if the two incidents in question had been combined before The Merchant of Venice was written. The praise which has been, perhaps justly, bestowed upon this feature of the play, naturally makes us curious to know how far it was original with Shakespeare; but there is little prospect that such curiosity will ever be gratified. Most likely, however, the knowledge of the whole truth would cause no great abatement in the Poet's fame.

Mr. Verplanck has raised an interesting inquiry as to what may have put Shakespeare upon such a choice of subject. The old form of a bond for the payment of money was an obligation to pay a larger sum, generally double, unless payment were made at

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

the stipulated time. The common law held that on the forfeiture of the bond the whole penalty was recoverable; but here the courts of equity stepped in. and would not permit the lender to take more than in conscience he ought;" that is, the sum lent, with interest and costs, and the damages, if any there were, caused by non-performance of some other contract. tween what were called the old-school and new-school lawyers, Hence a struggle bewhich began in the time of Henry VIII., and continued till the reign of Queen Anne, when it was settled by statute in favour of the equitable doctrine. This legal controversy was at its height in Shakespeare's time; and as it entered largely into the concerns of business, it became a matter of general popular interest. That there were inany cases of hardship, in enforcing penalties, well known to the people of London, is quite probable; and something of the kind seems referred to in the ballad of Gernutus the Jew:

"Good people, that do hear this song, for truth I dare well say, That many a wretch as ill as he doth live now at this day."

Mr. Verplanck thinks, and with great apparent reason, that this controversy may have suggested the subject of the play; not indeed that the Poet had any thought of writing a law-lecture or an argument on the point, but that he saw the advantage of using a traditionary plot involving a principle familiar to the minds of his audience, and pregnant with allusions of immediate interest.

The praise of The Merchant of Venice is in the mouth of nearly all the critics. That this praise is well deserved, appears in that, from the reopening of the theatres at the Restoration till the present day, the play has kept possession of the stage, while at the same time it is among the first of the Poet's works to be read, and the last to be forgotten, its interest being as inexhaustible in the closet as upon the stage. the very beginning of our acquaintance with Shakespeare; one Well do we remember it as of the dearest acquaintances that we have ever made, and which has been to us a source of more pleasure and profit than we should dare undertake to tell. Whatsoever local or temporary question may have suggested the theme, the work strikes at once upon cords of universal and perpetual interest: if it fell in with any prejudices or purposes of the time, this was to draw men's thoughts the more surely, because secretly, into the course and service of truth; to open and hold their minds, without letting them know it, to grave, solemn lessons of wisdom and humanity; thus, like a wise masterbuilder, using the transient and popular for the building up of the permanent and beautiful. It is this power of causing that men be really elevated while thinking they are but pleased; of raising us above our self-ends by seemingly ministering to them; that often renders poetry so much more effectual for moral instruction than .ectures and sermons: these, by telling men they ought to be

better, are apt to foster in them the conceit that they are so ; whereas the other, even because it does not tell them this, is more apt to make them so in a word, it instructs them all the better foras much as it does not stir up in them any notion or fancy that they have been instructed.

Critics, no doubt, have too often entertained themselves and others with speculations as to the Poet's specific moral purpose in this play or that. Wherein their great mistake is the not duly bearing in mind, that the special proposing of this or that moral lesson is quite from or beside the purpose of art. As already hinted, a work of art, to be really deserving the name, must needs be mora., because it must be proportionable and true to nature, thus falling in with the preestablished harmonies between our inward being and the measures of external order and law: otherwise it is at strife with the compact of things; a piece of dissonance; a part all out of concert and tune with itself; a jarring, unbalanced, crazy thing, that will die with the screechings and gratings of its own noise. If, therefore, a work be morally bad, this proves the author more a bungler than any thing else; and if any one admire it or take pleasure in it, he does so, not from reason, but from passion, or from something within him which his reason, in so far as he hath any, necessarily disapproves: so that he is rather to be laughed at as a dunce, than preached to as a sinner.

Touching the moral design of The Merchant of Venice, critics have differed greatly, some regarding it as teaching the most large and liberal toleration, others as caressing the narrowest and bitterest prejudices of the age. This difference among the critics is a strong argument of the Poet's impartiality; for where no one view is specially prominent, there is the more room for men to attribute such as they may severally prefer, and for each to show his own mind in the work of interpretation. For our own part, we are satisfied that in this case, as in others, the choice and treatment of the subject were mainly for poetic and dramatic effect; but for such effect in the largest and noblest sense, the sense intended by Ben Jonson in that great and most apt expression. —“ He was not of an age, but for all time." And the highest praise that the nature of the work might allow is justly his, in that he did not let the prejudices of his age sway him either way from the just meas. ures and proportions of art. On this point, therefore, we do greatly approve the remarks of Mr. Verplanck: "When the subject expanded itself in his mind, he described and he reasoned from his own observation of man and society. He therefore painted men as he had seen them; the wisest and kindest blinded by the prejudices of their education or their country, and becoming hard ened to inflicting insolence and injury; the injured, the insulted, the trampled upon, goaded by continual wrongs into savage malignity. Had the Poet invested the despised and injured man with the gentle and more amiable qualities of our nature, and

enlisted our sympathies wholly on his side, he would have painted a far less true view of human nature, and have conveyed a much less impressive and useful lesson of practical morality."

In point of characterization The Merchant of Venice is exceed ingly rich, whether we consider the quantity or the quality; and the more we think and study the work, the more we cannot bu. wonder that so much of human nature in so great a variety of development should be crowded into so small a space. The persons naturally fall into three several groups, with each its several plot and action; yet the three are most skilfully complotted, each standing out clear and distinct in its place, yet concurring with the others in dramatic unity, so that every thing helps on every other thing, without either the slightest confusion or the slightest appearance of care to avoid it. Of these three groups

it is hardly needful to add that Antonio, Shylock, and Portia are respectively the centres; while the part of Lorenzo and Jessica, though strictly an episode, seems, nevertheless, to grow forth as au element of the original germ, a sort of inherent superfluity, and as such essential, not indeed to the being, but to the well-being of the work in short, a fine romantic undertone accompaniment to the other parts, yet contemplated and provided for in the whole plan and structure of the piece; itself in harmony with all the rest, and therefore perfecting their harmony with one another.

It is observable that the first entry in the Stationers' Register speaks of the play as "a book of the Merchant of Venice, or otherwise called the Jew of Venice;" as if it were then in question whether to name the piece from Antonio or Shylock. Individually considered, Shylock is altogether the character of the play, and exhibits perhaps more strength and skill of workmanship than all the others. So that, viewing the persons severally, it seems that the piece ought by all means to be called The Jew of Venice. But upon looking further into the principles of dramatic combination, we may easily discover cause why it should rather be named as it is. For if the Jew be the most important person individually, the Merchant is so dramatically. Thus it is the laws of art, not of individual delineation, that entitle Antonio to the preeminence, because, however inferior in himself, he is the centre and mainspring of the entire action without him the Jew, great as he is in himself, had no business there; whereas the converse, if true at all, is by no means true in so great a degree.

Not indeed that the Merchant is a small matter in himself; far from it he is every way a most interesting and attractive personage; insomuch that even Shylock away, still there were timber enough in him for a good dramatic hero. A peculiar interest attaches to him from the state of mind in which we first see him. He is deeply sad, not knowing wherefore: a dim, mysterious presage of evil weighs down his spirits, as though he felt afar off the coming on of some great calamity; yet this strange, unwonted

gloom, sweetened with his habitual gentleness and good-nature, has the effect of showing how dearly he is held by such whose friendship is the fairest earthly purchase of virtue. This boding, presentimental state of mind lends a certain charm to his character, affecting us something as an instance of second-sight, and coalescing with the mind's innate aptitude to the faith that

"powers there are

That touch each other to the quick

in modes Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, No soul to dream of."

And it is very considerable that upon spirits such as he even the smiles of fortune often have a strangely saddening effect; for in proportion as they are worthy of them they naturally feel that they are far otherwise, and the sense of so vast a discrepancy between their havings and deservings is apt to fill them with an indefinable oppressive dread of some reverse wherein present discrepancies shall be fully made up. So that wealth seldom dispenses such warmugs save to its most virtuous possessors. And such is Antonio: a kind-hearted, sweet-mannered man; of a large and liberal spirit; affable, generous, and magnificent in his dispositions; patient of trial, indulgent to folly, free where he loves, and frank where he hates; in prosperity modest, in adversity cheerful; craving wealth for the uses of virtue, and as the organs and sinews of. friendship, so that the more he is worth, the more he seems worthy, his character is one which we never weary of contem plating. The only blemish we perceive in him is his treatment of Shylock in this, though we cannot but see that it is much more the fault of the times than of the man, we are forced to side against him; than which it were not easy to allege a stronger case of poetical justice. Yet even this we blame rather as an abuse of himself than of Shylock, and think the less of it as wronging the latter, because, notwithstanding he has such provocations, he avowedly grounds his hate mainly on those very things which nake the strongest title to a good man's love.

And so Bassanio,

Bassanio.

The friendship between Antonio and his companions is such picture as Shakespeare evidently delighted to draw. noble a sentiment is not apt to inhabit ignoble breasts. Gratiano, and Salarino are each admirable in their way, and give a charming variety to the scenes where they move. though something too lavish of purse, is a model of a gentleman; in whose character and behaviour all is order and propriety; with whom good manners are the proper outside and visibility of a fair .nind, the natural foliage and drapery of inward refinement, and delicacy, and rectitude. Well-bred, he has that in him which, even had his breeding been ill, would have raised him above it, and made him a gentleman. Gratiano and Salarino are two as