Page images
PDF
EPUB

she would have a king to succeed her; and who should that be but her nearest kinsman, the king of Scots? Being then advised by the archbishop of Canterbury to fix her thoughts upon God, she replied that she did so, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice soon after left her; her senses failed; she fell into a lethargic slumber, which continued some hours, and she expired gently, without farther struggle or convulsion (March 24th), in the seventieth year of her age, and forty-fifth of her reign.

SHAKSPEARE AND BEN JONSON.

Hume.

Shakspeare was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

"As the tall cypress towers above the shrubs." 1

The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better treated in Shakspeare; and however others are now 2 generally preferred 1 Dryden here quotes the well-known line of Virgil, Eclogue 1. Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.

2 In the degenerate ages after the Restoration.

before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the last king's 1 court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him.

As for Jonson, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in "Sejanus" and "Catiline." 2 But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represented Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially: perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanize our

1 Charles I. 2 Two of Jonson's most famous tragedies: they are literally crammed with translations from the Latin.

tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets: Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakspeare.

INDUSTRY AND APPLICATION.

Dryden.

Diligence, industry, and proper improvement of time, are material duties of the young. To no purpose are they endowed with the best abilities, if they want activity for exerting them. Unavailing, in this case, will be every direction that can be given them, either for their temporal or spiritual welfare. In youth, the habits of industry are most easily acquired; in youth, the incentives to it are strongest, from ambition and from duty, from emulation and hope, and from all the prospects which the beginning of life affords. If, dead to these calls, you already languish in slothful inaction, what will be able to quicken the more sluggish current of advancing years? Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure. Nothing is so opposite to the true enjoyment of life as the relaxed and feeble state of an indolent mind. He who is a stranger to industry may possess, but he cannot enjoy. For it is labour only which gives the relish to pleasure. It is the appointed vehicle of every good to man. It is the indispensable condition of our possessing a sound mind in a sound body. Sloth is so inconsistent with both, that it is hard to determine whether it be a greater foe to virtue, or to health and happiness. Inactive as it is in itself, its effects are fatally powerful. Though it appear a slowly-flowing stream, yet it undermines all that is stable and flourishing. It not only saps the foundation of every virtue, but pours upon you a deluge of crimes and evils. It is like water,

which first putrifies by stagnation, and then sends up noxious vapours, and fills the atmosphere with death. Fly, therefore, from idleness, as the certain parent both of guilt and of ruin. And under idleness I include not mere inaction only, but all that circle of trifling occupations in which too many saunter away their youth; perpetually engaged in frivolous society, or public amusements; in the labours of dress, or the ostentation of their persons. Is this the foundation which you lay for future usefulness and esteem? By such accomplishments do you hope to recommend yourselves to the thinking part of the world, and to answer expectations of your friends and your country? Amusements youth requires; it were vain, it were cruel to prohibit them. But, though allowable as the relaxation, they are most culpable as the business, of the young. For they then become the gulf of time and the poison of the mind. They weaken the manly powers. They sink the native vigour of youth into contemptible effeminacy.

Blair.

YORICK'S DEATH.

A few hours before Yorick breathed his last, Eugenius stept in, with an intent to take his last sight and last farewell of him. Upon his drawing Yorick's curtains, and asking how he felt himself, Yorick, looking up in his face, took hold of his hand, and, after thanking him for the many tokens of his friendship to him, for which, he said, if it was their fate to meet hereafter, he would thank him again and again, he told him, he was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip for ever. I hope not, answered Eugenius, with tears trickling down his cheeks, and with the tenderest tone that ever man spoke,-I hope not, Yorick, said he.Yorick replied, with a look up, and a gentle squeeze of Eugenius' hand, and that was all, but it cut Eugenius to his heart.-Come, come, Yorick, quoth Eugenius, wiping his eyes, and summoning up the

hand,-and

man within him,-my dear lad, be comforted,-let not all thy spirits and fortitude forsake thee at this crisis, when thou most wantest them;-who knows what resources are in store, and what the power of God may yet do for thee?—Yorick laid his hand upon his heart, and gently shook his head: for my part, continued, Eugenius, crying bitterly as he uttered the words,-I declare, I know not, Yorick, how to part with thee, and would gladly flatter my hopes, added Eugenius, cheering up his voice, that there is still enough of thee left to make a bishop,—and that I may live to see it.—I beseech thee, Eugenius, quoth Yorick, taking off his night-cap as well as he could with his left hand,—his right being still grasped close in that of Eugenius-I beseech thee to take a view of my head.-I see nothing that ails it, replied Eugenius. Then, alas! my friend, said Yorick, let me tell you, that it is so bruised and mis-shapened with the blows which have been so unhandsomely given me in the dark, that I might say with Sancho Panza, that should I recover, and "mitres thereupon be suffered to rain down from heaven as thick as hail, not one of them would fit it."-Yorick's last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips, ready to depart as he uttered this;-yet still it was uttered with something of a Cervantic tone; and as he spoke it, Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;-faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakspeare said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar!

Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was broke; he squeezed his hand,-and then walked softly out of the room, weeping as he walked. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door, he then closed them-and never opened them

more.

He lies buried in a corner of his church-yard, under a plain marble-slab, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph, and elegy

« EelmineJätka »