sense,

intention was to exhibit the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment: in which I find the character consistent throughout. Here is an oaktree planted in a china vase, proper only to receive the most delicate flowers. The roots strike out, and the vessel flies to pieces. A pure, noble, highly moral disposition, but without that energy of soul, which constitutes the hero, sinks under a load, which it can neither carry, nor resolve to abandon altogether. All his obligations are sacred to him; but this is above his powers. An impossibility is required at his hands; not an impossibility in itself, but that which is so to him. Observe, how he turns, shifts, hesitates, advances, and recedes! How he is continually reminded, and reminding himself, of his great commission, which he, nevertheless, in the end, seems almost entirely to lose sight of; still without ever recovering his former tranquillity!"

The main idea on which the foregoing estimate of Hamlet's character is supported, appears to me to be very accurately conceived, whatever may be thought of some of the colouring bestowed upon it by the German writer. The charge of inconsistency has been sometimes urged against this character; but surely without sufficient reflection: for it is only such inconsistency as may be said to be inseparable from the particular character which Shakspeare intended to represent, and of which it constitutes, in truth, a very essential part. Without attempting to justify the extravagancies committed by Hamlet, in a moral point of view, or as amiable in themselves, they are certainly not incompatible with the poet's obvious design, viz. to exhibit the strugglings of an irresolute mind, under very peculiar circumstances of irritation, and where the very consciousness of its inferiority had, of itself, a tendency to increase the irritability. If this opinion were not confirmed by the whole tenor of Hamlet's conduct, it would be amply justified by the soliloquy in act 2, beginning with,

“O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”

and, again, by that towards the close of the 4th act, "How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge!" &c.

We are also to take into the account the degree of gloom necessarily created by the supernatural vision, and the general distrust of mankind, which the circumstances of his father's murder, and his mother's subsequent conduct, would naturally have awakened in such a mind. Thus we perceive, that the only individual in whom he reposes any confidence, is Horatio; and even to him he does not, in the first instance, seem disposed to unbosom himself; unless, indeed, we are to presume that he might have been checked by the presence of Marcellus.

There are persons who have endeavoured to account for the inconsistency of Hamlet's conduct, by supposing that his intellect was in some measure disordered; but where do we discover a single passage in the play that at all countenances such an inference? That his madness was merely feigned, not only appears from his own confession, but from the whole tenor of the piece. In this respect, Shakspeare did no more than follow the old story, on which the play is founded. Doctor Johnson has remarked, that Hamlet's assumed madness seems unnecessary, inasmuch as "he does nothing, which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity;" but there does not appear to be any good reason why he should not have adopted this disguise, to protect himself from suspicion, whilst meditating the accomplishment of his revenge. In this particular the author has also conformed to the "Historie of Hamblet."

His behaviour, in the scene with Ophelia, is one of the least defensible of Hamlet's eccentricities. But is not this equally referrible to the state of mind in which he is described to be throughout, and of which a general distrust of all about him is one of the leading features? No where does it appear, that his love for her was of that high-wrought complexion which occasions the disregard, not only of the most important duties, but of all sober discretion. We may, therefore, easily imagine, that after he had reluctantly imparted his secret to Horatio, whose prudence he had so well ascertained, he should be unwilling to throw off an assumed character, designed to impose on the whole court, before an inexperienced girl, whose very simplicity so easily had betrayed him. He might even have suspected that she had been employed by others to observe him, as was really the case; for to a mind circumstanced like Hamlet's, suspicion is ever on the alert, and there is no pronouncing where it may not fall. It may, however, be objected, and I am afraid with truth, that nothing could justify the harshness of his manner towards an innocent young creature, who was fondly attached to him, as it was by no means necessary to support the character of insanity; and it is, perhaps, to be regretted, that the poet should not have differently modelled this scene. All I deny is the inconsistency of Hamlet's conduct, in this instance, with reference to his general character. Such inconsistencies are even necessary to preserve its unity.

His conduct over the grave of Ophelia may be considered as open to a similar reproof; but he explains the matter sufficiently himself, in a subsequent conversation with Horatio, by attributing this behaviour (which he acknowledges to have been highly indecorous) to a violent degree of excitement, into which he had been surprised, at the moment:

"The bravery of his grief did put me
Into a towering passion."

Fully impressed with the belief that he had much greater cause for sorrow than Laertes, his irritability seems to have been proportionably excited by the vehement lamentations of the latter. All such exhibitions of clamorous grief have a tendency to produce a feeling of disgust, where sorrow is intensely felt: and surely such an emotion was likely to vent itself in the irritable and splenetic mind of Hamlet, as it does, when he exclaims, Nay, an thou'lt rant,

I'll mouth as well as thou!"

Seneca has observed, that "curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent;" and the silence, that belongs to severe affliction, is no where more beautifully described than by our author himself, in Macbeth:

"The grief, that does not speak,

Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break."

He afterwards, it is true, makes an apology to Laertes on the score of temporary madness; and this may be, as Johnson observes, an unworthy subterfuge; but is it the less in character, when we recollect, that it was his interest to keep up the belief in his occasional insanity, under which, indeed, he had so recently sheltered himself from the murder of Polonius? It seems idle to arraign Hamlet, upon his responsibility as a man, without adverting to the particular character, which the poet intended to set before our eyes, "with all its imperfections on its head." Such a mode of criticism is surely less applicable to Shakspeare than to any other writer.

As to the confession of his love for Ophelia, in the burialscene, such a feeling, had it ever existed in his breast, would naturally enough have been revived on this solemn occasion; although it might have lain in a state of comparative torpor before, smothered, as it were, by his other afflicting considerations. It may also be observed, that the excitement, under which he then laboured, would necessarily lead to exaggeration.

The character of Hamlet, though perfectly true to nature throughout, is one to which Shakspeare alone, perhaps, could have done justice. It seems to be chiefly wanting in what is commonly called interest; and in this lies its principal difficulty. It will not, it is true, appear sufficiently interesting to those who alone look for that quality in the exhibition of an inflexible sternness of soul, or an undeviating career of virtue, uniformly sustained, even upon the most trifling occasions. But, to such as are gratified by a faithful representation of human nature in a highly-cultivated, and, in many respects, a highly-gifted, though irresolute mind, pursued through all its intricacies, and clothed with all its infirmities, the picture will be interesting indeed!

SEBASTIAN BACH, AND HIS MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS.

BACH, Handel, Haydn, and Mozart, may justly be termed the four cardinal pillars upon which the magnificent edifice of modern Harmony bids fair to rest for ages in unassailable security. To the three latter the fullest meed of justice has been awarded, both by the adepts in the art, and by the mass of the uninitiated; while the genius and the transcendant merits of Sebastian Bach are scantily acknowledged by the chosen few alone, and frequently admitted only with considerable qualifications. "He was a giant," we have heard it remarked, "for the age in which he lived; but the art has made giant strides since his time, and taste has undergone great changes: what may have been beautiful in music nearly a century ago, has naturally become antiquated or trite at the present day.'

The production of the baptismal register of Handel, who was born twenty-six days later than Bach, would probably be of little avail against heterodox opinions like these. The abettors of them, in their radicalism, are quite prepared to include even Handel, with some allowance in his favour, in their qualified praise of what they term the old school. To such persons, that is, to men not destitute of a certain degree of cultivation and skill in musical matters, it may be worth while to offer a remark or two on this subject.

But there exists another class of beings, the fashionable "fanatici," who, with the most slender pretensions, profess the greatest enthusiasm for the art, and conceive themselves gifted with a plenitude and correctness of taste, which entitles them to a decisive judgment on every musical production of the past and present ages. To these pseudo-critics the works of Bach have but a small chance of giving satisfaction. Their case, indeed, is generally this: they either condemn, without a hearing, for fashion's sake; or they have heard once in a way, or have themselves dared to spell-with stiff fingers on perhaps a mistuned old instrument-a fugue of poor Sebastian. A fugue, that odious seccatura, at which their heart would misgive, were a Wesley or Bach himself to play it!" What is a fugue, when compared with a zitti, zitti, or a batti, batti? What, but a dreary Ice-berg beyond Croker's Mountains against a tulip-show of Chandler and Buckingham in the Wandsworth-road-German Pumpernickel contrasted with a Paté de Perigord?"

These are the coxcomb critics of the art; their sensitive butterfly organs suck nought but the exquisite. It were cruel to distress them with food beyond their peristaltic powers. Leave we them, and turn to our more weighty opponents, those votaries of harmony, who, with a strong tincture of musical feeling, with a respectable share of sense and judgment, are too much ab

sorbed in their idol, the modern school, to value any composition of former times; who pronounce every thing stiff and antiquated, which does not precisely agree with the models, upon which their individual taste has formed itself.

We are prepared to concede one point to our adversaries; we are aware that taste in musical matters is subject to certain changes. Of this the history of the art furnishes sufficient evidence. But, without the aid of facts, it must be obvious that our ideas of the beautiful, in any art, must be more or less liable to variation, in proportion as such art is deduced from first principles, more or less founded in nature; and, when so deduced, carried to a greater or less degree of maturity and perfection. Thus it is, that in painting and sculpture the path of the artist is the least liable to uncertainty. Nature is, or at least ought to be, his principal guide. If he follow her, with a heart open to her beauties, and a mind sufficiently pure and lofty to reject all that is low and ignoble, he can scarcely err. The path of the poet, with some variation, arising from the difference of form and means, is similar. The architect appears to stand on less solid ground; and, in music, the data towards a theory of the beautiful seem to be still less defined, or at least less obvious, and unquestionably less explored.

Music, an art entirely of man's creation, the darling offspring of his imagination, conjured into being, as it were, by the spell of one single acoustic experiment, although subjected, in the course of its culture, to the laws of numbers, to the rules of rhythm and symmetry, unquestionably offers some points, upon which the opinions of different individuals and different ages may be, and have been at variance. But the fundamental principles of music have undergone as little change, since the time of Sebastian Bach, as the science of mathematics since Newton. Not a single new harmonic combination, not any tenable innovation in measure or rhythm, has been added to the science for this century past. The melodies of modern composers may have assumed greater softness-perhaps greater effeminacy; and some of the ultras in the profession may have ventured to try how far the ear can bear a temporary fit of eccentricity, if it be immediately restored to good humour by a reviving cantilena. But, granting the existence of some minor changes in the forms connected with the art, are we warranted in slighting the productions of great men of former times, merely because they differ in some points from the taste of the present age? Are we to sneer at the majesty of the Doric, because a gaudy Chinese shed takes more our fancy? Besides, what right have we to maintain that our present taste is more correct, more cultivated, than the taste of such men as Sebastian Bach? There was a period-not a very remote one-when the stern chasteness of Michael Angelo,