One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave-

For here lies Juliet.

O, my love! my wife!

Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,
And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.-
Tybalt, ly'st thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favor can I do to thee,

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,
To sunder his that was thine enemy?
Forgive me, cousin! Ah, dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair! I will believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour.
For fear of that, I will stay still with thee;

And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again: here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chamber-maids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest;

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, iook your last.
Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss,

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!

Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavory guide!

Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on

The dashing rocks, my sea-sick weary bark!

Here's to my love !-[Drinks.] O, true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick.-Thus with a kiss I die.

as

The lines in this speech describing the loveliness of Juliet, who is supposed to be dead, have been compared to those in which it is said of Cleopatra after her death, that she looked she would take another Antony into her strong toil of grace;" and a question has been started which is the finest, that we do not pretend to decide. We can more easily decide between Shakspeare and any other author, than between him and himself. Shall we quote any more passages to show his genius or the beauty of ROMEO AND JULIET? At that rate, we might

quote the whole. The late Mr. Sheridan, on being shown a volume of the Beauties of Shakspeare, very properly asked— "But where are the other eleven ?" The character of Mercutio in this play is one of the most mercurial and spirited of the productions of Shakspeare's comic muse.

LEAR.

We wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing about it. All that we can say must fall far short of the subject, or even of what we ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to give a description of the play itself, or of its effects upon the mind, is mere impertinence: yet we must say something. It is then the best of all Shakspeare's plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in earnest. He was here fairly caught in the web of his own imagination. The passion which he has taken as his subject is that which strikes its root deepest into the human heart; of which the bond is the hardest to be unloosed; and the cancelling and tearing to pieces of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. This depth of nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the elements of our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the contrast between the fixed, immovable basis of natural affection, and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination, suddenly wrenched from all its accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, this is what Shakspeare has given, and what nobody else but he could give. we believe. The mind of Lear, staggering between the weight of attachment and the hurried movements of passion, is like a tall ship driven about by the winds, buffeted by the furious waves, but that still rides above the storm, having its anchor fixed in the bottom of the sea; or it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirlpool that foams and beats against it, or like the solid promontory pushed from its basis by the force of an earthquake

So

The character of Lear itself is very finely conceived for the purpose. It is the only ground on which such a story could be

P*

ast insung u the cusness other chaof virtue a racters. It is the absence of us teteste mai tha the only relief in the character of Eumunu the lastan, and that at Notumg times reconciles us to him. We atteminest exaggerate the guilt of his conduct, when he aimset pws rip as a bat business, and writes himself down + tun, wila

re can be said about it. His reus esty I LISTYSMALL
One speech of his is worth a. milli. His satreen

.. he has just deluded win a forged sort d' his
ns against his life, accoums for nisumat
e strange depravity of the times, from “he latte
and moon. Edmund, was in the secret..
This is the excellent impery of fe
e sick in fortune (often the surtits of our
guilty of our disasters the sun, thư:

moon, and stars: as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major: so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising." -The whole character, its careless, light-hearted villainy, contrasted with the sullen, rancorous malignity of Regan and Gonerill, its connection with the conduct of the under-plot, in which Gloster's persecution of one of his sons and the ingratitude of another form a counterpart to the mistakes and misfortunes of Lear, his double amour with the two sisters, and the share which he has in bringing about the fatal catastrophe, are all managed with an uncommon degree of skill and power.

It has been said, and we think justly, that the third act of Othello, and the three first acts of LEAR, are Shakspeare's great master-pieces in the logic of passion: that they contain the highest examples not only of the force of individual passion, but of its dramatic vicissitudes and striking effects, arising from the dif ferent circumstances and characters of the persons speaking. We see the ebb and flow of feeling, its pauses and feverish starts, its impatience of opposition, its accumulating force when it has time to recollect itself, the manner in which it avails itself of every passing word or gesture, its haste to repel insinuation, the alternate contraction and dilatation of the soul, and all “the dazzling fence of controversy" in this mortal combat with poisoned weapons, aimed at the heart, where each wound is fatal. We have seen in Othello, how the unsuspecting frankness and impetuous passions of the Moor are played upon and exasperated by the artful dexterity of lago. In the present play, that which aggravates the sense of sympathy in the reader, and of uncontrollable anguish in the swoln heart of Lear, is the petrifying indifference, the cold, calculating, obdurate selfishness of his daughters. His keen passions seem whetted on their stony hearts. The contras