Which with the heart, then cools, and ne'er returneth
To blush and beautify the cheek again.

But see his face is black and full of blood:

His eye-balls further out than when he lived,
Staring full ghastly, like a strangled man;
His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling,
His hands abroad displayed, like one that grasp'd
And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued.
Look on the sheets-his hair you see is sticking,
His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged,
Like to the summer corn by tempest lodged.
-Oh! those soft natural deaths, that are joint-twins
To sweetest slumber! No rough-bearded comet
Glares on thy mild departure—the dull owl

Beats not against thy casement--the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion. Pity winds thy corse
While horror waits on princes."

We haste now to look at the manner in which this compilation has been made, for we feel that criticism has no right to purse its little brow in the presence of Shakespeare.

He has, to our belief, very few imperfections, and perhaps these might vanish from our minds, if we had the perfection properly to scan them. The play, as it is compressed, is most interesting, clear, and vigorous. It bears us from the beginning to the middle of that tremendous struggle, and very properly stops at the death of the first of the Richards. Richard, Duke of York, has all the quickness, resolution, and ability, which would naturally exist in a man that was inwardly stirred to wrestle for the crown. He has not that rushing stream of thoughts and purposes which characterized Richard III., his son, who was born in the cause of an aspiring father; and with all the excitement of a parent's and a brother's death urging him on. The individuality of Shakespeare's character is most strongly exemplified in the two Richards;—but in what is it not? Perhaps the

faults of the compilation are these:-First, the characters are too hastily introduced and despatched, and their language clipped too closely. They are "curtailed of their fair proportions." Jack Cade and his rabble are put into strait-waistcoats, as a body might say, and the armourer and his man are cut short in their dispute most abruptly and unsatisfactorily. We see nothing of Talbot, and missing him is like walking among the Elgin Marbles and seeing an empty place where the Theseus had reclined. In the next place the party is too much modernized. We speak of it as we heard it. Again, the events are not harmonized well, and Shakespeare felt that they could not be put together in less than fifteen acts, "and we would take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds." The present play appears to go on by fits and starts, and to be made up too much of unmatchable events. It is inlaid with facts of different colour, and we can see the cracks which the joiner's hand could not help leaving.

After these little objections, all our observations on this compilation are full of praise.

Great ingenuity is displayed, and we should think Kean had a hand in it. The author has extracted veins of gold from a huge mine, and he is liberal enough to share it with other people. (The workings of Richard's mind are brought out as it were by the hand of the anatomist, and all the useless parts are cut away and laid aside.

But with all we fear the public will not take the obligation as it is meant, and as it ought to be received. The English people do not care one fig about Shakespeare,— only as he flatters their pride and their prejudices. are not sure that this has not been remarked before, though we do not remember where; nevertheless it is

We

our firm opinion. But let us say a few words of the

actors.

Kean stands like a tower. He is "all power, passion, self-will." His animations flow from his lips as " musical as is Apollo's lute."

It is impossible to point out any peculiar and little felicities where the whole piece of acting is of no mingled web. If we were to single a favourite part, we should choose that in which he parts with his son, young Rutland, just before the battle. It was pathetic to oppression. Our hearts swelled with the feeling of tears, which is a deeper feeling than the starting of them in the eye. His tongue lingered on the following passage as fondly as his eyes clung to the object which occasioned them, and as tenderly as the heart dwells and dotes upon some long-loved object :—

"Bring in my dear boy, Rutland.

[Enter RUTLAND with attendants.
My darling! let me kiss thee ere I go—
I know not if I e'er shall see thee more.

If I should fall, I leave thee to thy brothers,
All valiant men; and I will charge them all,
On my last blessing, to take care of thee,

As of their souls."

His death was very great. But Kean always "dies as erring men do die." The bodily functions wither up, and the mental faculties hold out till they crack. It is an extinguishment, not a decay. The hand is agonized with death; the lip trembles with the last breath, as we see the autumn leaf thrill in the cold wind of evening. The very eye-lid dies. The acting of Kean is Shakespearian-he will fully understand what we mean. There is little to be said of the rest. Pope as a Cardinal (how aptly chosen) balances a red hat. Holland wears insipid white hair, and is even more insipid than the hair that he

carries. Rae plays the adulterous Suffolk, and proves how likely he is to act amiss. Wallack, as young Clifford, "towers above his sex." Mr. Maywood is more miserable in Henry VI. than winters or wet nights, or Death on a pale horse, or want of money, or deceitful friends, or any other crying evil.

The comic parts are sadly mangled, owing to illness of Munden and Oxberry. Jack Cade dies of a lock-jaw; and Dick the butcher is become a grave man. Mrs. Glover chews the blank verse past endurance; her comedy is round and comfortable; her tragedy is worse than death.

One thing we are convinced of on looking over the three parts of Henry, from which this play is gleaned; which is, that Shakespeare was the only lonely and perfectly happy creature God ever formed. He could never have a mate,-being most unmatchable.

III.

MARGINALIA FROM THE FOLIO.

A Midsummer Night's Dream.1

These are the forgeries of jealousie,
And never since the middle Summers spring
Met we on hil, in dale, forrest, or mead,
By paved fountaine, or by rushie brooke,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling Winde,
But with thy braules thou hast disturb'd our sport.
ACT II [SCENE 1].

THERE is something exquisitely rich and luxurious in
Titania's saying "since the middle summer's spring" as

In this play there are but two pages which show any trace of Keats's hand. They are in Act II, and bear the above note.

if bowers were not exuberant and covert enough for fairy sports until their second sprouting—which is surely the most bounteous overwhelming of all Nature's goodnesses. She steps forth benignly in the spring and her conduct is so gracious that by degrees all things are becoming happy under her wings and nestle against her bosom : she feels this love and gratitude too much to remain selfsame, and unable to contain herself buds forth the overflowings of her heart about the middle summer. O Shakespeare thy ways are but just searchable! The thing is a piece of profound verdure.

Troylus and Cressida.1

I have (as when the Sunne doth light a-scorne)
Buried this sigh, in wrinkle of a smile :

ACT I [SCENE 1].

I have not read this copy much and yet have had time to find many faults-however 'tis certain that the Commentators have contrived to twist many beautiful passages into commonplaces as they have done with respect to "a scorn" which they have hocus pocus'd into "a storm" thereby destroying the depth of the similetaking away all the surrounding atmosphere of Imagery and leaving a bare and unapt picture. Now however beautiful a Comparison may be for a bare aptnessShakespeare is seldom guilty of one-he could not be content to "the sun lighting a storm," but he gives us Apollo in the act of drawing back his head and forcing a smile upon the world-"the Sun doth light a-scorn."

1 Troylus and Cressida is much underlined throughout, and has the above note at the opening of the first Act. The reading a storm is persisted in in the Globe edition...