derful Arabian Dervise, who dived into the body of each, and in that way became familiar with the thoughts and secrets of their hearts, He was a man of obscure origin, and, as a player, limited in his acquirements. But he was born evidently with an universal genius. His eyes glanced at all the varied aspects of life, and his fancy pourtrayed with equal talents the king on the throne, and the clown who crackles his chesnuts at the Christmas fire. Whatever note he takes, he strikes it just and true, and awakens a corresponding chord in our own bosoms. Gentlemen, I propose the memory of William Shakspeare."

Glee. "Lightly tread the hallowed ground."

It is scarcely possible to read this extempore effusion of cordial applause, and from such a quarter, without being almost insensibly drawn into a comparison between two writers, who, if not in the very form of their productions, yet in many of the attributes of exalted genius, are closely allied.

Excellence, indeed, as well in the structure of the romance as of the drama, must be chiefly based on an intimate knowledge of the diversities of human character, and on the capability of unfolding this knowledge in the most distinct and impressive manner; qualities which, I may venture to affirm, have nowhere been found in greater perfection, or clothed in more attractive colours than in the dramas of Shakspeare, and the romances of Scott.

It will not therefore, I trust, be deemed irrelevant, if, on an occasion like this, and whilst the praise of Shakspeare is as it were flowing warm from the lips of living genius, I close this volume and the series of portraits of Shakspeare, by a short parallel between him and his celebrated eulogist, as far at least as will apply to their very superior merit in the conception and maintenance of character.

The comparison, indeed, as including the wide range of historical, female, humorous, and imaginative characters, may be said to embrace a large portion of what constitutes the first order of talent; for pre-eminence in characterization, whether employed in bringing forward existing, or in moulding new forms, is assuredly one of the most valuable, and at the same time one of the most rare of intellectual gifts.

To reproduce with vigour, and to support with consistency throughout a series of important action, and the play of all the passions, some of the most prominent characters of history, is perhaps, of all the achievements of poetry and romance, the most difficult. The peculiarly successful efforts of Shakspeare in this department are well known. In English history his regal characters of John, Richard the Second, Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth; his Constance and his Katherine; and of inferior rank, his Falconbridge, Hotspur, Wolsey, John of Gaunt, Beaufort, Gloster, Warwick, &c. &c., need only to be

mentioned to be praised; whilst in Roman story, his Brutus, Antony, and Coriolanus, are not less faithful or less brilliant portraits.

If we now turn to our celebrated contemporary, it will be found that he has little occasion in this department to shrink from a comparison with his great predecessor; for, independent of spirited sketches of Charles the Second, Cromwell, and the Pretender, he has given us elaborate and full length pictures of Richard the First, Mary of Scotland, Elizabeth, and James the First, of which the costume and keeping are presented with almost matchless fidelity and force. A nearly equal degree of praise may be extended to his delineations of foreign regal character in the persons of Saladin and Louis the Eleventh; nor has he represented with a less discriminating pencil the powerful thanes of his native land, a Montrose, a Murray, and Argyle, or the more subtile and licentious nobles of England, as Leicester, Buckingham, &c. &c.

It has been affirmed of Shakspeare by some critics of no mean note, that he has not exhibited his usual variety and originality in drawing the female character; ascribing the deficiency in a great degree to the custom, in his day, of not admitting actresses on the stage, the parts of women being always personated by boys. It

It is somewhat extraordinary that the admirable Collins, than whom no one has better appreciated, in other respects, the genius of Shakspeare, appears to have entertained a similar

requires, however, but a slight inspection of his dramas to prove this opinion to be utterly without foundation; and, indeed, to establish what in truth is really the case, that in no writer do we meet with a more interesting and discriminative portraiture of female manners. Setting aside the gloomy portion of the picture, as exemplified in the dark characters of Regan, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, &c., and dwelling only on its loveliest lights, into what a paradise of varied beauty and

erroneous supposition of his deficiency in exhibiting the female character; for on noticing Fletcher's succession to the theatre as a dramatic poet, he draws the following comparison between himand his great predecessor :

Of softer mould the gentle Fletcher came,

The next in order, as the next in name;

With pleas'd attention, 'midst his scenes we find
Each glowing thought that warms the female mind;
Each melting sigh, and every tender tear,
The lover's wishes, and the virgin's fear.

His

every strain the Smiles and Graces own;
But stronger Shakspeare felt for man alone:
Drawn by his pen, our ruder passions stand
Th' unrivall'd picture of his early hand.

EPISTLE TO SIR THOMAS HANMER. May I be allowed in this place to mention the very excellent edition of Collins, which has just fallen into my hands, under the superintendence of the Rev. Alexander Dyce, A.B.? It is by many degrees the most complete and satisfactory edition of Collins which we possess; for besides the biography of Johnson, and the commentary of Langhorne, it contains a large body of illustrative notes, biographical and critical, by the editor and his friends, all the various readings, and a numerous selection of parallel passages.

excellence are we instantly admitted! Where shall we look for more exquisite creations than this great magician has brought before us in the chaste love and fidelity of Juliet and Desdemona, in the romantic tenderness of Imogen and Viola, in the filial affection of Cordelia and Ophelia, in the naïveté and simplicity of Perdita and Miranda, in the vivacity and wit of Rosalind and Beatrice, and in the sublimity of virtue in Isabella and Portia?

It is to the pages of Sir Walter Scott that we must again revert for a rival display of talent in this the most delightful province of characterization, his romances abounding in the richest and most diversified forms of female tenderness, constancy, and heroism. He had early given indeed, in his metrical pieces in this department of fiction, some very interesting sketches of the kind, and especially in his portraits of Ellen in the “Lady of the Lake," and of Edith in the "Lord of the Isles," both touched with a graceful and truly fascinating pencil. But it is to his prose romances that we must turn for the most decided proofs of his originality in delineating the varied attractions of the fair sex. There, whether we recal to mind the picture of disastrous or unrequited love in the sufferings of Amy Robsart, Lucy Ashton, and Effie Deans; the frolic archness, irresistible good humour, and ever-shifting buoyancy of spirit, in Mysie Happer, Brenda Troil, and Catharine Seyton; the intellectual, disinterested, and lovely features of Diana Vernon; the firmness and self-devotedness