whom the critic calls his brother fool as "good at anything, and yet a fool"? Lastly, is he a fool who rejects honour and advancement, and deserts the exiled Duke when he is restored to his state, because

"out of these convertites

There is much matter to be heard and

learn'd"?

Assuredly, upon the first blush of the question, we must say that the German critic is wrong.

And yet, what is a fool, according to the Shaksperean definition? The fool is one

"Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,

And rail'd on lady Fortune in good terms, In good set terms, and yet a motley fool." The fool is one that doth "moral on the time;" one that hath been a courtier;

"and in his brain,Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage, he hath strange places

cramm'd

good pancakes" is not pointless. Perhaps it is a fool's bolt, and soon shot; yet it hits. But the fool is not without his affections. The friendship which Celia had for Rosalind is reciprocated by the friendship which the fool has for Celia :

"Ros. But, cousin, what if we essay'd to steal

The clownish fool out of your father's court? Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me."

He is fled to the forest with the two ladies, their comfort, their protector:-

"My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft Your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing." They are in Arden; and then the fool becomes a philosopher :

:

"Thus we may see,' quoth he, 'how the world wags:

"T is but an hour ago since it was nine;
And after one hour more 't will be eleven;
And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale.'"

The fool's manners are changing. He did not talk thus in the court. He is quickly growing a philosopher. Hazlitt truly tells us that the following dialogue is better than all Zimmermann on Solitude,' where only half the question is disposed of:—

"Cor. And how like you this shepherd's life, master Touchstone?

Touch. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life it is naught. In respect that it is solitary I like it very well; but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life. Now, in respect it is in the fields it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes

The fool has lived apart from human sympathies. He has been a thing to make idle people laugh; to live in himself alone; to be in the world and not of the world; to be licensed and despised; to have no responsibilities. The fool goes out of the social state in which he has moved, and he becomes a human being. His affections are called forth in a natural condition of society; he is restored to his fellow-creatures, a man, and not a fool. We do not think that Shakspere meant the courtship of Touchstone and Audrey to be a travestic of the romantic passion of Orlando and Rosalind. It appears to us that it is anything but farce or irony when the fool and the shepherdess thus commune :

"Touch. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

Aud. I do not know what poetical is: Is it honest in deed, and word? Is it a true thing?"

And there is anything but folly when Touch

stone resolves

"Be it as it may be, I will marry thee." A touch of the court-of his old vocation of saying without accountableness-lingers with him, when, rejoicing in that most original hedge priest, who says, "Ne'er a fantastical knave of them all shall flout me out of my calling" (the Fleet prison priest of a century ago)—he hugs himself with the belief that "I were better to be married of him than of another;"-but he is after all the true lover, when he rejects the "most vile Mar-text," and in the honesty of his heart exclaims, "To-morrow is the joyful day, Audrey; to-morrow will we be married." And thus, it appears to us, is Ulrici justified in denominating Jaques and Touchstone "the two fools." It was the characteristic of the Shaksperean fool to hang loose upon the society in which he was cherished; to affect no concern in its anxieties, no sympathy in its pleasures; to be passionless and sarcastic. Jaques, a banished courtier, refuses to seek companionship in the solitary life; he rejects its freedom-he finds in it only a distorted mirror of the social life. The wounded stag

are "fat and greasy citizens." This is not real philosophy; it is false sentimentality. Jaques-refusing to adopt the tone of his companions, who have embraced the free life of the woods, its freshness, its privacy-has put himself into the condition of the fool, who belongs to the world only because he is a mocker of the world. When his friends sing,

"Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,

And pleased with what he gets,"

Jaques answers,

"If it do come to pass

That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease,

A stubborn will to please," &c.

This is the answer of one for whom "motley's the only wear."

And yet how beautifully all this harmonises with the pastoral character of this delightful comedy! The professional fool gradually slides into a real man, from the power of sympathy, which is strong in him, and which is called forth by the absence of a just occasion for his professional unrealities. He is no longer a chorus. The clever but self-sufficient courtier, half in jest, half in earnest, becomes a mocker and a pretended misanthrope. He is passed into the chorus of the real action. In the mean while the main business of the comedy goes forward; and we live amongst all the natural and kindly impulses of true thoughts and feelings, mingled with weaknesses that are a part of this sincerity. But most certainly the spirit which breathes throughout is not one of censure, or sarcasm, or irony. It is a most loving, and sincere, and tolerant spirit— radiant with poetry, and therefore with truth. We desire nothing better to show that Shakspere did not speak through Jaques than these words:

"Jaques. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against our mistress the world, and all our misery.

Orlando. I will chide no breather in the world but myself; against whom I know most faults."

THIS comedy was first printed in the folio edition of 1623, under the title of 'Twelfe Night, or What you will.' The text is divided into acts and scenes; and the order of these has been undisturbed in the modern editions.

It is scarcely necessary to enter into any detail of the conjectures of the commentators as to the chronology of 'Twelfth Night.' Their guesses have been proved to be very wide of the mark. There was found in the British Museum, in 1828, a little manuscript diary of a student of the Middle Temple, extending from 1601 to 1603*, in which the following decisive passage occurs :—

"Feb. 2, 1601 [2].

"At our feast we had a play called 'Twelve night or what you will, much like the comedy of errors, or Menechmis in Plautus, but most like & neere to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from his lady, in generall termes telling him what shee liked best in him, & prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile, &c., and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad."

Here is an end then of conjecture. The play was no doubt publicly acted before this performance at the Candlemas feast of the Middle Temple; and it belongs, therefore, to the first year of the seventeenth century,

* We derive our particulars from Mr. Collier's valuable Annals of the Stage.' He says "I was fortunate enough to meet with it among the Harleian Manuscripts in the Museum." Mr. Hunter, in his Disquisition on the Tempest,' says, "You may remember when, in 1828, I

called your attention, at the British Museum, to the discovery which I had then made in the Diary of Manningham, that Twelfth Night' was performed in 1602, before the benchers of the Middle Temple." Mr. Hunter subsequently came to a belief that the Diary' was that of John Manningham, who was entered at the Middle Temple in 1597.

แ

or the last of the sixteenth; for it is not found in the list of Meres, in 1598.

The romance literature of Europe was a common property, from which the Elizabethan writers of every grade drew materials for their own performances, using them up with all possible variety of adaptation. Italy was the great fountain-head of these fictions; although they might have travelled thither from the East, and gradually assumed European shape and character. In the hands of real poets, such as Boccaccio and Shakspere, the original material was little more than the canvass upon which the artist worked. The commentators upon our poet tell us, with regard to 'Twelfth Night,' "There is great reason to believe that the serious part of this comedy is founded on some old translation of the seventh history in the fourth volume of Belleforest's 'His

toires Tragiques.' Belleforest took the story, as usual, from Bandello. The comic scenes appear to have been entirely the production of Shakspeare." He did create, then, Sir Andrew, and Sir Toby, and Malvolio, and the Clown. But who created Viola, and Olivia, and the Duke? They were made, say the critics, according to the recipe of Bandello: -Item, a twin brother and sister; item, the sister in love, and becoming a page in the service of him she loved; item, the said page sent as a messenger to the lady whom her master loved; item, the lady falling in love with the page; item, the lady meeting with the twin-brother; item, all parties happily matched. All this will be found at great length in Mrs. Lenox's 'Shakspeare Illustrated,' accompanied with many profound remarks upon the poet's stupidity in leaving the safe track of the novelist; which remarks, being somewhat antiquated, may be passed over. Nor is it necessary for us to republish the entire story of 'Apolonius and Silla,' as told in a collection published