a

beam which shines brightest upon mortality's expiring embers, and whose divine consolation and guidance cheered the Poet, inspires us also-not with the wavering trust of renowned men of old, with whom a future life was hypothetical, and whose souls' desires for a reunion with seers who had gone before were burdened with misgivings-but with " the sure and certain hope" of looking upon himself, in a better country and under a fairer aspect than that, when,

"Beaten and chopp'd with tamed antiquity,"

William Shakspeare, the mortal, bewailed the marring touch of Time.

C.-The human heart which is the "haunt and main region” of every poet's pen, consists of so much which, as Wordsworth asserts, is essential to it and eternal there, and these inseparable and immutable qualities have been so comprehensively and, very frequently, so inimitably treated by Shakspeare, that Nature, as far as we are able to conceive her capacity for illustration, could hardly furnish materials for another mind like his, whose empire should be vast, and yet natural. In its physiological proportions a contracted sphere, in its spiritual attributes a realm Shakspeare. Poems.

*

of undefined dilatability, it might of this moral metropolis of poets, the heart, be said,

66 a crooked figure may

Attest, in little place, a million;"*

and Shakspeare seems as if by Nature chosen and commissioned as Delineator General of our race, and thus supremely delegated, to have gone forth undauntedly over the expansive and uneven territory of the sentiments and passions of mankind. The Poet has often availed himself of auxiliary aid, and frequently adventures, with no deceptive self-reliance, beyond the boundary of the natural; but within that boundary has he left space for a future Shakspeare; -for one who, like his sovereign self, would be "cabinned, cribbed, confined," in a kind of colony of character; one to whose discursive disposition it would be a natural and uncontrollable necessity to follow in the track of men, wherever Nature dictated?

E-Thou art unmindful, O Querist, that Nature, of whom thou speakest as in some parts absolute from the beginning, is, in other parts, most evanescent.-Reveal, I adjure thee, before this, our other auditor, after whom it is that well-discerning Will hath, by * Henry v. Chorus.

the mouth of Hamlet, designated Frailty;* and then, admire the fitness of a feminine appellative for that volatile Dame, whom thy imagination doth mistakenly picture as an antique quakeress, clad in unvarying russet, fashioned in starched propriety, and vested with perdurability. Thy device savoureth too much of demureness, friend! Believe it, Nature, though turned of her six thousandth year, is not a straightlaced, crimp-bodiced grandam, of orders grey;-alas for manifold goodmen whom it painfully concerneth, doth she not, lacking that staidness which might be expected iu a mother of millions,-doth she not by example countenance, in mothers of units and of tens, an itching after new apparel? Pardon this levity, most grave and reverend Signor, but the excessive gravity of your latter interrogation too much o'ertasked my imperturbability; but know, that with a personage ycleped Folly, in a play of Ford,† I might truly say, "I love not any whom I laugh not at: pretty strange humour is't not?" and you might properly reply, with a certain Raybright, "To any one that knows you not, it is." You suspect the capability of Nature to furnish illustrative material for another Frailty, thy name is Woman!" Hamlet, i. 2. + The Sun's Darling, i. 1.

Shakspeare, the first having so comprehensively dealt with the permanent passions of the mind; yet the process of time, which may not materially alter essential attributes, continually diversifies their development; and in the changed aspect we sometimes fail to recognise the individual. The constituent parts of a kaleidoscope are identically the same in each of its fortuitous conformations; but the effect of the least commotion is manifested by a changed figure. The word which better than any other characterises our condition, is progression; and Coriolanus, when he thus accuses a fickle mob,

"With every minute you do change a mind,”*

supplies the whole world with a text on instability. In these mundane mutations the poets find their "occupation;" and perhaps it is matter for rejoicing that these mutations are not few or far between, supposing that Nature were to have always her quiver full of minstrel-children: monotony, Sir, must have made them warble in a flat key; things would have died in description and looked dusky in song; detail must have engendered ennui by disgusting minuteness. Poor Nature herself would have had to endure an

* Coriolanus, i. 1.

inquisition, her inquisitors being her own infants; and they being often "gravelled for lack of matter,' the old gentlewoman's hairs must, metaphorically, have all been numbered. What a weary session would impatient man have had, before a faded drop-scene! But since our lot is cast where all are at once spectators of and actors in a revolving panorama, tedium is not; and now, exempted from " dropping buckets into empty wells," or giving superfluous coatings to previously-painted lilies, ceaseless configurations supply fresh matériel for the Poet, who can with reason only murmur when

66

Change grows too changeable-without being new."

The fitful Shelley-a "wandering star," sometimes obscure, at others, coruscating with intense brilliancy -has written so beautifully on this fertile theme, that, like a sweet, sad strain Eolian, sweeps over one's memory his wail upon

"MUTABILITY.

"We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,

Streaking the darkness radiantly!-yet soon

Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

* As You Like it, iv. 1.