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and at last, at the crisis of his agony, and while earth, and hell, and heaven were all darkening around him, cried out, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" (a fearful question, where you dare not lay the emphasis on any one, but must on all the words), cannot but feel more tender and awful emotions as they contemplate this outlying and unacknowledged type of the Crucified, suspended among the crags of the Caucasian wilderness.

SHAKESPEARE.-A LECTURE.*

IF a clergyman, thirty years ago, had announced a lecture on Shakspeare, he might, as a postscript, have announced the resignation of his charge, if not the abandonment of his office. Times are now changed, and men are changed along with them. The late Dr. Hamilton of Leeds, one of the most pious and learned clergymen in England, has left, in his "Nuga Literariæ," a general paper on Shakspeare, and was never, so far as I know, challenged thereanent. And if you ask me one reason of this curious change, I answer, it is the long-continued presence of the spirit of Shakspeare, in all its geniality, breadth, and power, in the midst of our society and literature. He is among us like an unseen ghost, coloring our language, controlling our impressions, if not our thoughts, swaying our imaginations, sweetening our tempers, refining our tastes, purifying our manners, and effecting all this by the simple magic of his genius, and through a medium-that of dramatic writing and representation-originally the humblest, and not yet the highest, form in which poetry and passion have chosen to exhibit themselves. Waiving, at present, the consideration of Shakspeare in his form-the dramatist, let us look at him now

* This having been originally delivered as a lecture, we have decided that it should retain the shape. "Shakspeare; a Sketch," would look, and be, a ludicrous idea. As well a mountain in a flower-pot, as Shakspeare in a single sketch. A sketch seeks to draw, at least, an outline of a whole. From a lecture, so much is not necessarily expected.

in his essence-t -the poet. But, first, does any one ask, What is a poet? What is the ideal of the somewhat indefinite, but large and swelling term-poet? I answer, the greatest poet is the man who most roundly, clearly, easily, and strikingly, reflects, represents, and reproduces, in an imaginative form, his own sight or observation, his own heart or feeling, his own history or experience, his own memory or knowledge, his own imagination or dream-sight, heart, history, memory, and imagination, which, so far as they are faithfully represented from his conciousness, do also reflect the consciousness of general humanity. The poet is more a mirror than a maker; he may, indeed, unite with his reflective power others, such as that of forming, infusing into his song, and thereby glorifying a particular creed or scheme of speculation; but, just as surely as a rainbow, rising between two opposing countries or armies, is but a feeble bulwark, so, the real power of poetry is, not in conserving, nor in resisting, nor in supporting, nor in destroying, but in meekly and fully reflecting, and yet recreating and beautifying all things. Poetry, said Aristotle, is imitation; this celebrated ephorism is only true in one acceptation. If it mean that poetry is in the first instance prompted by a conscious imitation of the beautiful, which gradually blossoms into the higher shape of unconscious resemblance, we demur. But if by imitation is meant the process by which love for the beautiful in art or nature, at first silent and despairing, as the child's affection for the star, strengthens, and strengthens still, till the admired quality is transfused into the very being of the admirer, who then pours it back in eloquence or in song, so sweetly and melodiously, that it seems to be flowing from an original fountain in his own breast; if this be the meaning of the sage when he says that poetry is imitation, he is unquestionably right. Poetry is just the saying Amen, with a full heart and a clear voice, to the varied symphonies of nature, as they echo through the vaulted and solemn aisles of the poet's own soul.

It follows, from this notion of poetry, that in it there is no such thing as absolute origination or creation; its Belight simply evolves the clement which already has existed amidst the darkness-it does not call it into existence. It follows, again, that the grand distinction between philosophy and

poetry is, that while the former tries to trace things to their causes, and to see them as a great naked abstract scheme, poetry catches them as they are, in the concrete, and with all their verdure and flush about them; for even philosophical truths, ere poetry will reflect them, must be personified into life, and thus fitted to stand before her mirror. The ocean does not act as a prism to the sun-does not divide and analyse his light-but simply shows him as he appears to her in the full crown-royal of his beams. It follows still farther, that the attitude of the true poet is exceedingly simple and sublime. He is not an inquirer, asking curious questions at the universe-not a tyrant speculator, applying to it the splendid torture of investigation; his attitude is that of admiration, reception, and praise. He loves, looks, is enlightened, and shines-even as Venus receives and renders back the light of her parent sun.

If, then, the greatest poet be the widest, simplest and clearest reflector of nature and man, surely we may claim this high honor for Shakspeare-the eighth wonder of the world. "Of all men," says Dryden, " he had the largest and most comprehensive soul!". You find everything included in him, just as you find that the blue sky folds around all things, and after every new discovery made in her boundless domains, seems to retire quietly back into her own greatness, like a queen, and to say, "I am richer than all my possessions;" thus Shakspeare never suggests the thought of being exhausted, any more than the sigh of an Eolian lyre, as the breeze is spent, intimates that the mighty billows of the air shall surge no more. Responsive as such a lyre to all the sweet or strong influences of nature, she must cease to speak, ere he can cease to respond. I can never think of that great brow of his, but as a large lake-looking-glass, on which, when you gaze, you see all passions, persons, and hearts: here, suicides striking their own breasts, there, sailors staggering upon drunken shores; here, kings sitting in purple, and there, clowns making mouths behind their backs; here, demons in the shape of man, and there angels in the form of women; here, heroes bending their mighty bows, and there, hangmen adjusting their greasy ropes; here, witches picking poisons, and culling infernal simples for their caldron, and there, joiners and weavers enacting their

piece of very tragical mirth, amid the moonlight of the "Midsummer Night's Dream;" here statesmen uttering their an cient saws, and there watchmen finding "modern instances" amid the belated revellers of the streets; here, misanthropes cursing their day, and there, pedlars making merry with the lasses and lads of the village fair; here, Mooncalfs, like Caliban, throwing forth eloquent curses and blasphemy, and there, maidens, like Miranda, "sole-sitting" by summer seas, beautiful as foam-bells of the deep; here, fairies dancing like motes of glory across the stage, and there, hush! it is the grave that has yawned, and, lo! the buried majesty of Denmark has joined the motley throng, which pauses for a moment to tremble at his presence. Such the spectacle presented on that great mirror! How busy it is, and yet how still! How melancholy, and yet how mirthful! Magical as a dream, and yet sharp and distinct as a picture! How fluctuating, yet how fixed! "It trembles, but it cannot pass away." It is the world-the'world of every age-the miniature of the universe!

The times of Shakspeare require a minute's notice in our hour's analysis of his genius. They were times of a vast upheaving in the public mind. Protestantism, that strong manchild, had newly been born on the Continent, and was making wild work in his cradle. Popery, the ten-horned monster, was dying, but dying hard; but over England there lay what might be called a "dim religious light"-being neither the gross darkness of medieval Catholicism, nor the naked glare of Nonconformity-a light highly favorable to the exercise of imagination-in which dreams seem realised, and in which realities were softened with the haze of dreams. The Book of God had been brought forth, like Joseph from his dungeon, freed from prison attire and looks-although it had not yet, like him, mounted its chariot of general circulation, and been carried in triumphal progress through the land. The copies of the Scriptures, for the most part, were confined to the libraries of the learned, or else chained in churches. Conceive the impetus given to the poetical genius of the country, by the sudden discovery of this spring of loftiest poetry-conceive it by supposing that Shakspeare's works had been buried for ages, and been dug up now. Literature in general had revived; and the soul of man, like an eagle newly fledged, and

looking from the verge of her nest, was smelling from afar many a land of promise, and many a field of victory. Add to this, that a New World had recently been discovered; and if California and Australia have come over us like a summer's (golden) cloud, and made not only the dim eye of the old miser gleam with joy, and his hand, perhaps, relax its hold of present, in the view of prospective gold, but made many a young bosom, too, leap at the thought of adventure upon those marvellous shores-and woven, as it were, a girdle of virgin gold round the solid globe-what must have been the impulse and the thrill, when first the bars of ocean were broken up, when all customary landmarks fled away, like the islands of the Apocalyptic vision, and when in their room a thousand lovely dreams seemed retiring, and beckoning as they retired, toward isles of palms, and valleys of enchantment, and mountains ribbed with gold, and seas of perfect peace and sparkling silver, and immeasurable savannahs and forests hid by the glowing west; and when, month after month, travelers and sailors were returning to testify by their tales of wonder, that such dreams were true, must not such an ocean of imaginative influence have deposited a rich residuum of genius? And that verily it did, the names of four men belonging to this period are enough to prove; these are, need I say? Edmund Spenser, Walter Raleigh, Francis Bacon, and William Shakspeare.

The Life of Shakspeare I do not seek to write, and do not profess to understand, after all that has been written regarding it. Still he seems to me but a shade, without shape, limit, or local habitation; having nothing but power, beauty, and grandeur. I cannot reconcile him to life, present or past. Like a Brownie, he has done the work of his favorite household, unheard and unseen. His external history is, in his own language, a blank; his internal, a puzzle, save as we may dubiously gather it from the escapes of his Sonnets, and the masquerade of his Plays.

"O Cuckoo, shall I call thee bird,

Or but a wandering voice?"

A munificent and modest benefactor, he has knocked at the door of the human family at night; thrown in inestimable

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