by the thoughts, and language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action." However disposed I may be to bow to the authority of a critic whose remarks have frequently the force of intuitive truths, it appears to me that the opinion conveyed in the quotation just made, if not false, is much overcharged and exaggerated. To me Shakespeare is never tedious but in his comedy. In it's higher walks indeed he is always excellent and inimitable, but when he surrenders himself without controul to his mirth, his dialogue not seldom runs into a flippant insipidity, equally oppressive from it's facility and its emptiness. This remark may be exemplified by his play of "Love's Labour Lost," which perhaps, next to "The Merry Wives of Windsor," is the most regular of his comedies. Whenever the princess with the ladies of her court appears, the dialogue is most admirable, whether we consider the concise elegance with which they draw the characters of their respective lovers, the beauty of the thoughts and allusions, or the mere harmony of the verse. If in some happy valley, tired with dull prose and the common incidents of life, a number of ladies were to exchange the intrigues and dissipation of a court for

tranquillity and peace they would certainly talk in this manner.

Princess. Know you the man?

Maria. I know him, madam: at a marriage feast,
Between lord Perigort and the beauteous heir
Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized

In Normandy, saw I this Longaville:
A man of sovereign parts he is esteemed,
Well fitted in the arts, glorious in arms:
Nothing becomes him ill, that he would well :
The only soil of his fair virtue's gloss,
(If virtue's gloss will stain with any soil)
Is a sharp wit, match'd with too blunt a will,
Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills,
It none should spare, that come within his power.

Prin. Some merry mocking lord, belike; is't so? Mar. They say so most, that most his humours know. Prin. Such short-liv'd wits do wither as they grow. Who are the rest?

Katharine. The young Dumain, a well accomplish'd youth, Of all, that virtue love, for virtue lov'd:

Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill:

For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,

And shape to win grace, though he had no wit.

I saw him at the duke Alençon's once:
And much too little of the good, I saw,

Is the report to his great worthiness.

Rosaline. Another of these students at that time
Was there with him: if I have heard a truth,
Biron they call him: but a merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal :
His eye begets occasion for his wit,
For every object, that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,

Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished:
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

Prin. God bless my ladies! are they all in love?" &c.

When the King of Navarre and his friends are on the stage, however we may disapprove of their scheme of secession, we recognize at once the manners and language, which most become royalty and most adorn a court. In the midst of so much inimitable excellence, the long conversations of Costard, Moth, Armado, Holofernes, and the inferior persons of the play, are perfectly intolerable. Busy without acuteness, quick without life, the dialogue falls away into a verbal drivel, which would overcome the fame of any author, whose other merits were less firmly established. The same censure may be extended to much of the comedy in the historic play of Henry the IVth. Falstaff, indeed, is always worth hearing. He is an uncommon character, and he never speaks but in a manner appropriate to himself, but the comic parts below him are often weak and tiresome, both in the study and on the stage. "The Merry Wives of Windsor" must be allowed to be exempt from such condemna

tion, and, perhaps, we must so far submit to the opinion of Johnson as to allow this comedy to be the most perfect of all Shakespeare's productions. The author seems to trust, with the full confidence of his superior powers, to the guidance of his disposition. He plays and wantons without restraint, and yet is never silly, trifling, or unappropriate; he luxuriates at large, but the produce of his pen never runs into rankness. Still, however, the decision of Johnson seems to me far too general. It is difficult to say to what department of the drama inclined the natural disposition of a man, who has excelled all other men in every department; but when we observe his portraiture of the more violent passions, of ambition, of jealousy, of revenge, of hate; of the highwrought feelings, of paternal disappointment, of filial devotion, of connubial idolatry; when we mark the astonishing skill with which he works up these master-emotions to the furthest point they can extend to, it is surely impossible not to think that in this more sublime exercise of his genius he was following its natural bent. That he reposes, that he luxuriates in comedy, I would willingly allow, but to call this the original disposition of a man, who is so

equal to the majestic and the impassioned, is to devote Achilles to his boarding school, or Hercules to the employment of the distaff. When Shakespeare fails in tragedy, his defect is generally momentary-pass a line, or perhaps a word, and the violence of the emotion seems to work itself pure, but it would not be difficult to shew pages of his comedy, where a brilliant witticism is so buried in nonsense as to be scarcely perceptible. If in his tragedies he sometimes seizes an occasion to be comic, we must also allow that in his professed comedies he has pathetic passages, as irresistible for their beauty, as surprizing for their place. When we are told that his comedy pleases by its thoughts and language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action, we suspect that by some error of the press there must be a transposition of terms. Falstaff's difficulties and embarrassments would be laughable in any hand; but who could conduct Othello to the murder of his wife, and make him at the moment of doing the infernal deed talk of justice, and yet be heard with patience, who could achieve this with no incident but the stealing of a handkerchief. When the sable hero arraigns the equity of heaven, when he