points out also to us, that the "submit to unknown fears,” of the next sentence, is not to be understood in the low sense of any intellectual prostration, but as answering to the transcendental "Causeless."

As the Character which speaks, must always be considered in estimating Shakespeare's meaning, it may be observed, that Lafeu is painted as a humorous, and also as a wise and good man. He is on the freest terms with the worthy king; and even the wild young Lord, Bertram, is made to say, "I do know him well, and common speech gives him a worthy pass." There is certainly something exquisite in his sly, good-humored hit at the "philosophical persons;" and he still carries on the same strain, while exulting in the king's wonderful cure, after being, as he observes, "relinquished of the Artists, of all the learned and authentic fellows." It is evident how much he would have rejoiced at some of the wonderful cures wrought in our own day, by means of Mesmerism, Hypnotism, and Homœopathy, to the infinite discomfiture of OUR “learned and authentic fellows."

If Shakespeare himself had been a "philosophical person," he never could have written Lafeu's speeches. In them he has shewn that he saw clean thro' the skeptical spirit, a thing impossible for a skeptic to do.

SHAKESPEARE'S IDEA OF TRUE ART.

It will, we may presume, be conceded, that whatever is essentially true of one of the Fine Arts, must also be true of the others; and it is proposed to test this, by taking Hamlet's advice to the Players, wherein proof is given of the Author's views of the Artistic in Acting, and substituting for the word Playing, the word Poetry.

"Let your discretion be your Tutor; suit the Action to the word, the word to the Action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of Nature; for anything so done is from the purpose of Poetry, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the Mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own Image, and the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, tho' it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others "

Now assuming that these were Shakespeare's own views upon Playing, and it does not seem likely that in this place he would make Hamlet speak otherwise than sensibly; can it be doubted that he would also have applied such views to the Poem to be played: yet if a Ghost be only the product of a diseased brain, and the appearance of a Ghost to three persons at once a sheer impossibility, "the modesty of Nature" has been very much "o'erstept" in the Poem of Hamlet; and if the end of all the Arts is, "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature," what can be more "overdone," according to the Skeptical Philosophy.

Nevertheless, Hamlet does not yet seem to have made the judicious "grieve," and even those who think an Apparition only a state of the brain, feel that a powerful effect has been produced, altho' on any sound principle of Artistic Reasoning, nothing but displeasure should ensue in the minds of those who think that in any given work, the Mirror has not been held up to Nature.

In the meanwhile, the Ghost-Believer thinks himself fully justified in pronouncing Hamlet to be "an excellent Play, well digested in the Scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning."

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS ADMIRERS.

The practice of insisting upon Ghost-Belief as being a mere Superstition, does certainly seem to place Shakespeare's most able and zealous Admirers in a false position, when treating of him as an Artist. But let them be heard in their own words. 1st. Mr. Morgan, in his excellent Essay upon the Character of Falstaff, thus expresses himself in a note :

"Ghosts differ from other imaginary beings, in this; that they belong to no Element, have no specific Nature or character, and are effects, however harsh the expression, supposed to be without a cause; the reason of which is, that they are not the creation of the Poet, but the servile Copies or transcripts of popular imagination, connected with supposed Reality and Religion. Should the Poet assign the true cause, and call them the mere painting or coinage of the brain, he would disappoint his own end, and destroy the being he had raised. Should he assign fictitious causes, and add a specific Nature and a local habitation, it would not be endured; or the effect would be lost by the conversion of one thing into another. The approach to reality in this case defeats all the arts and managements of fiction.

Let us compare this Critique upon Ghosts with Shakespeare's treatment of the Ghost in Hamlet. He has there given him a most specific character, that of an injured man seeking for Revenge. It sounds strangely, too, to hear a professor of Christianity speaking of what is understood to be the Soul of a deceased man, as of an Effect without a Cause; and then we are called upon to think that a great Poet could make servile copies from popular Imaginations, when the truth is, that all great Artists make it their delight to copy Nature, even to the minutest details, well knowing that in no other way can lasting effects be produced. That anything weak or false, or the copy of

such things, should produce great Artistic effects, is against all sound reasoning; and we therefore conclude, that when the philosophical Skeptic denies a Ghost, he does so merely from his Intellect, which is very like to be in the wrong, and not from his Feelings, the ultimate test of all works of Art.

Altho' the Ghost in Hamlet has every mark of reality, yet the local habitation, by which Mr. Morgan means a place in the External World, was not needed for him. His place was in the Spiritual World, and Hamlet and his friends saw him with their spiritual eyes, at the same time that the Platform was beheld by their natural eyes. That such was the case Shakespeare knew perfectly well, and this accounts for the Queen not being able to see the Ghost altho' Hamlet did. The Ghost did not wish her to see him, and therefore he did not present himself to her spiritual eyes. Shakespeare knew that Man is an inhabitant of Two Worlds, and consequently that all these things involved the gravest Truths. Were it not so, and that they were merely the servile copies of false imaginations, they would justly offend every cultivated mind, but we have daily experience that they do not do so.

2dly. Mr. Coleridge speaks of "this Ghost as a Superstition connected with the most mysterious Truths of revealed Religion, and Shakespeare's consequent reverence in his treatment of it." Here again the Ghost-Believer has an uncomfortable sensation. A Superstition, that is a weakness and a falsity, seems to have but little claim for reverential treatment from a great Artist. Why could not Mr. Coleridge have said "a Truth connected with the most mysterious Truths of revealed Religion?"

3dly.

Lessing says "Voltaire has regarded the ap

* Quoted by Dr. Drake.-(Memorials of Shakespeare.)

B

pearance of a dead person as a Miracle, and Shakespeare as a natural event. Which of the two thought most as a Philosopher is a question that we have nothing to do with. But the Englishman thought most as a Poet."

Here we have the pleasing admission that Shakespeare has treated the appearance of the Ghost as a part of the true system of things, which is implied in the phrase "a natural event." But why does Lessing say, that whether this was philosophical or not, is a question with which we have nothing to do? and why a distinction between Philosophy and Poetry, which seems to imply, that what was bad in the one, might be good in the other? Is that good Philosophy? and have we not everything to do with the question in estimating Shakespeare as an Artist? When the Soothsayer in Antony and Cleopatra, is asked "I'st you, Sir, that know things," he significantly replies,

"In Nature's infinite book of Secresy,

A little I can read."

Can it be doubted that Shakespeare would not have said for himself what he has written for the Soothsayer? Surely not; and in that "infinite book of Secresy," he would find all that he has written.

4thly. Mr. Charles Knight, speaking of the appearance of the Ghost to Hamlet, observes, that "the images are of this world, and are not of this world. They belong at once to popular Superstition, and the highest Poetry." Mr. Knight soon after makes some remarks connected with which a few words are requisite.

"How exquisite," says he, "are the last lines of the Ghost; full of the Poetry of external nature, and of the depth of human affection, as if the Spirit that had for so

* In his Semiramis.