attention. In a French garden you never for a moment lose the consciousness of man's labour and man's art.

The most extravagant criticism has proceeded from the want of something like a fixed principle in the great problem of imitation. Dr. Johnson has been applauded for his answer to Voltaire, who expressed his wonder that Shakspeare's extravagances should be endured by a nation which had seen Cato: Let him be answered that Addison speaks the language of 'poets, and Shakspeare of men.' But this epigram has really neither sense nor truth in it. Shakspeare did not speak the language of men, but of poets, and the greatest of poets; it was because his language, as poetry, was so superior to that of Addison that the effect it produced was so much greater. The secret of Shakspeare's success is, that his representations of nature are more vivid and lifelike than those of Addison; and from what does this vividness arise, but from the intensity of poetic power and the brightness of the medium through which it passes? That medium is style. Had Shakspeare spoken the language only of men, as distinguished from that of poets, he would never have delighted thousands upon thousands of all ranks and characters. Critics have been too apt to talk about nature and the natural, as if the object of art were to produce an illusion; as if correct imitation of nature were the first condition of a work of art. But this is a most mischievous mistake. In such poets as Dante, Milton, and Spenser, the absence of any illusion, and of any specific imitation of nature, in no way lessens their claims as artists; while the presence of direct imitation in painted statues or waxwork figures has always injured their pretensions to be considered works of art. The Furies of Eschylus were not by any means so real as the poetical machinery of a modern melodrame — or as the 'gig' of Thurtell, once exhibited on the Surrey boards, with some of the real water from the pond;' But which was the most admirable? The most exquisite works of art necessarily depart from the truth, to produce their highest effects. All that our artistic faith demands is that there be no incongruous mixture of reality with fiction; and that our judgment be not shocked by a contradiction with the object which we have in view. No one's sense of reality is shocked by observing that a marble statue has not the hues, the action, and the warmth of a human being. It does not profess to be an imitation; it professes to be a representation, in hard, cold, and colourless marble, of a human form. Paint it, and on the one hand you quit the professed sphere of art, that is, representation,— to intrude on that of reality, that is, imitation; while on the other hand the imperfection of the means will always prevent

your attempt from being successful:- for your imitation must still be an imperfect one. Men no doubt delight in representation, and they also delight in imitation; but the artist should be careful never to confound these distinct provinces. If he proposes merely to imitate nature, he must content himself, for the most part, with addressing the lowest faculties in man. He may paint a peach trailed over by a bunch of grapes; his object here is imitation-and, if successful, he will excite some vulgar wonder. But in this case he must not hope to leave an abiding impression of beauty in the soul of any human being: our artistic nature will remain untouched. It is the same, if the subject of imitation belongs to a higher class. Now in the drama we propose to represent, not to imitate, life, and to represent it in its poetical aspects. And we soon discover how many of the realities, which in actual life would be most affecting, are so far from being poetical, that they will not bear transferring to any stage of more pretension than a booth.

If this distinction between representation and imitation be correct; if a work of art be amenable to the strict truth of nature only in so far as it professes to be an imitation,-it is a distinction which will serve us as a guide through the obscurities of many questions. Our present purpose with it is its application to the French classic drama. That drama, it is notorious, does not affect likeness or imitation. It represents, to be sure, the emotions and the passions of men; but it is neither solicitous to produce an illusion, nor to imitate the actions and language of ordinary life. Critics have made merry with its unnatural' use of confidants, and long declamations; they have also been unsparing in their condemnation of rhyme:

rhyme also is so unnatural! To be consistent, this style of objection should be pushed further: it ought to condemn the absurdity of operas and ballets in which lovers express love, vengeance, and despair in cavatinas and scenas; for no man in the outer world ever warbled vengeance, or hurled defiance in an entrechat. Under some such feeling, Madame de Staël laughs at the idea of Curtius performing a pas seul before leaping into the gulph. The actual spectators, we submit, are more reasonable, as well as more accommodating. No spectator at a French play ever exclaimed, How absurd to talk in rhyme; men don't talk so!' Neither did any spectator at an English play ever object to blank verse, soliloquies, and asides. They know that they are witnessing a representation, not a reality. It is probable, indeed, that in the English drama rhyme would be objectionable; not because unnatural,' but because more artificial than the general style which our drama observes. For we de

part from nature less widely; and our representation, though in some respects much more poetical, retains in others much more of the semblance of imitation. With us rhyme never appears to have succeeded on the stage, except in short passages. While in the French drama, where no imitation is professed, rhyme is only a beauty the more.

This discussion may help us to explain how the French, adopting a peculiar form of art, should regard as faulty every deviation from that specific form. In their system of representation, all imitation was subordinate to the charms of stately diction and harmonious versification. Dignity was a substitute for fidelity. The allusion to a mouse in Hamlet' was more like nature than the description in Iphigénie;' but it was less beautiful, less noble,' less like art. English critics retaliate the scorn, and ridicule the 'pomposity' of the French drama, which they complacently contrast with the nature' of their own. But all such comparisons are misplaced. The French drama is as different from the English, as the Orlando Furioso is from the Excursion. Who thinks of judging these poems according to one standard? Both French and English dramatists knew very well the style of art which would suit their audiences. The French delight in a well-planned story, unfolded in a direct and logical' manner; in sustained pomp of language; in philosophic maxims and in sharp antitheses. The English delight in action, passion, and imagery; they trouble themselves very little about dignity or bienséance. A Frenchman's first remark on a new play is respecting its beaux vers; an Englishman is struck by its characters and its situations.' The danger which most besets a French dramatist is lengthy dialogue and description; that of an English dramatist is the tendency to melodramatic exaggeration.

Alfred de Vigny has declared that 'toute tragédie était une 'catastrophe et un dénoûment d'une action déjà mûre au lever 'du rideau.' Such a tragedy must be essentially different from one of Shakspeare's; where not merely the catastrophe, but the first origin and whole development of the event, is transacted before our eyes. No comparison can be established between two such styles. Each nation ought to be considered at liberty to prefer its own; for tastes admit not of dispute. Notwithstanding which, unfortunately each nation has insisted upon the recognition of its own taste as absolute. Even M. Chasles, in spite of his English education and sympathies, and with all his admiration for Shakspeare, is too much of a Frenchman not to believe, that the classic drama is the only perfect form. The perfection of the drama, as drama, is in

Sophocles; and it will always be a mistake to seek in Shakpeare the finished beauty and supreme proportions, the relation of the parts to the whole, in a word the complete art of 'the drama; what we must seek in that great man is the strict ' and minute examination of humanity, the metaphysical and yet living distinctions of Hamlet and Macbeth; the sublime qualities of the philosopher and observer. The men of genius of the Gothic and barbarian world, of which Shakspeare is the 'intellectual king, have achieved the poetical beauty of details by the study of truth; whereas Sophocles and Racine, pene'trated with the sentiment of beauty, have given to truth a form at once lovely and immortal.' M. Chasles also observes, comparing the two nations, Emanant du sentiment du beau, l'art hellénique veut la beauté de la forme, et tend à l'unité; le génie contraire, attaché à la sévérité du devoir, cherche le vrai, et tend à la variété. A l'un, l'harmonie et la règle; à l'autre, la profondeur dans le caprice."* This passage well describes, though somewhat affectedly, the national tendencies of the Hellenic and Teutonic mind. The Greeks worshipped beauty, and sacrificed to it every other consideration. All their statues are calm-if the Laocoon is, as we suppose, subsequent to Virgil. Love, Desire, Pain and even Terror, are represented in majestic repose. The convulsions of passion were as sedulously avoided by the Greeks as they are eagerly sought after by the Teutonic race. The Belvidere Apollo has conquered, and is calm. Fawns and Satyrs are monsters yet beautiful. Caliban under a Greek hand would have been handsome. Medusa's face is lovely and grave: the terror is in her serpent-locks. As soon as ever the critical nature of French poetry is properly appreciated, there can be no difficulty in understanding French criticisms upon foreign poets. Their fastidiousness is at once accounted for; and that verbal sensitiveness, which has astonished Englishmen, ceases to be a subject of wonder. We shall then no longer laugh at Voltaire for being shocked at the itching palm of Cassius,' at Hamlet's talking of his mother's shoes,' and at not a mouse stirring.' On the contrary, we shall fully comprehend how French poetry, scrupulously avoiding every detail which may be prosaic or vulgar (unless, indeed, lighted up by passion, and then few things can be vulgar), seeks by every possible artifice of language to distinguish itself from ordinary speech. It is pitched altogether, in a higher key; and, therefore, the familiarities of English poetry sound discordant in it. Still, after all, the French do not adopt a different

* Etudes sur l'Antiquité, p. 5.

principle from that adopted in our own poetry; they only enforce it with greater rigour. There are many terms and many subjects which are banished by us also from poetry, on account of their vulgar or unpoetic associations; nor is this the case only with words appropriated to disgusting objects. A wig, for example, has nothing unusual or disgusting; yet the most daring poet would never introduce the word upon a serious occasion. What we should feel if the word wig' were introduced, the French feel, when they find a queen's shoes mentioned, in a profoundly serious passage. There are hundreds of other innocent words now suffering under this capricious proscription, even in our free country. A lover, we suppose, may still indite a woeful ballad to his mistress's eye-brow,' but by no means to her nose: if he allude to her breath, it must be to its scent, not its smell. Our heroic bards may lawfully speak of bread or wine, but not of brandy or beef, though more heroic aliments than the former.

That etiquette should prescribe certain restrictions in language, and that a court amusement should not offend by uncourtly language, may to a great extent justify the timidity of Racine and Voltaire; but never was there a more complete error than what Voltaire and the French critics promulgated respecting the classical precedent for their fastidiousness. The Greeks were in no way so timid. Whoever is familiar with their drama must be aware of the singular ignorance concerning it which the French critics, at the time they were always citing it as a model, universally displayed. The principles they profess to have drawn from it are contradicted perpetually by the drama itself. The Greeks often violated the unities, sometimes mingled comedy (and not very dignified' comedy) with tragedy, and certainly were by no means alarmed at familiar words.

French taste for a long while reigned supreme. From the fall of its empire we date the rise of the opinion, now we think pretty well established, that Shakspeare was a careful artist, not a blind, irregular genius, stumbling on fine passages by accident. The periwig of Louis XIV., however, had long overshadowed European literature. The French critics claimed to be the legitimate successors to the throne of Aristotle. England, Germany, Italy and Spain, all more or less avowedly, submitted to the yoke. Rome did not more completely subdue the world by her arms, in her high and palmy days, than France subdued the literature of Europe. But universal dominion cannot rest on unsound foundations. An irruption of the Germans was destined in both cases to shatter an unnatural empire;