initiation into the camp. Not a word of his įmitation. Besides, I say the rhythm requires initiation,' and is lame as the verse now stands. *Two or three tales, each in itself independent of the others, and united only by making the persons that are the agents in the story the relations of those in the other, as when a bind-weed or thread is twined round a bunch of flowers, each having its own root—and this novel narrative in dialogue— such is the character of Massinger's plays - That the juxta-position and the tying together by a common thread, which goes round this and round that, and then round them all, twine and intertwine, are contrived ingeniously-that the component tales are well chosen, and the whole well and conspicuously told; so as to excite and sustain the mind by kindling and keeping alive the curiosity of the reader that the language is most pure, equally free from bookishness and from vulgarism, from the peculiarities of the School, and the transiencies of fashion, whether fine or coarse; that the rhythm and metre are incomparably good, and form the very model of dramatic versification, flexible and seeming to rise out of the passions, so that whenever a line sounds immetrical, the speaker may be certain he has recited it amiss, either that he has misplaced or misproportioned the emphasis, or The notes on Massinger which follow were transcribed from a copy of that dramatist's works, belonging to Mr. Gillman. I do not know whence the first was taken by the original editor. 43 neglected the acceleration or retardation of the voice in the pauses (all which the mood or passion would have produced in the real Agent, and therefore demand from the Actor or {translator '}) and that read aright the blank verse is not less smooth than varied, a rich harmony, puzzling the fingers, but satisfying the ear- these are Massinger's characteristic merits. Among the varieties of blank verse Massinger is fond of the anapæst in the first and third foot, as: « Tě your more | thăn ma | sculině rea | săn that commands 'ěm|| —”* The Guardian, Act i. sc. 2. Likewise of the second Pæon (~—ʊʊ) in the first foot followed by four trochees (− v) as: "So greedily | lõng for, | know their | The emphasis too has a decided influence on the metre, and, contrary to the metres of the Greek and Roman classics, at least to all their more common sorts of verse, as the hexameter and hex and pentameter, Alchaic, Sapphic, &c. has an es Gifford divides the lines in question thus: "Command my sensual appetites. As vassals to Calip. Your more than masculine reason, that commands them." But it is obviously better to make the first line end with 66 vassals," so as to give it only the one over-running syllable, which is so common in the last foot. sential agency on the character of the feet and One instance only of this I re power of the verse. collect in Theocritus: τα μὴ καλὰ καλὰ πέφανται, unless Homer's "Apes," Apes, may (as I believe) be deemed another-For I cannot bring my ear to believe that Homer would have perpetrated such a cacophony as 'Ωρες, "Αρες. "In fear | my chaasteetee | may be | sus In short, musical notes are required to explain Massinger-metres in addition to prosody. When a speech is interrupted, or one of the characters speaks aside, the last syllable of the former speech and first of the succeeding Massinger counts but for one, because both are supposed to be spoken at the same moment. "And felt the sweetness of"t." 66 How her mouth runs over" Ib. ib. Emphasis itself is twofold, the rap and the drawl, or the emphasis by quality of sound, and that by quantity the hammer, and the spatula - the latter over 2, 3, 4 syllables or even a whole line. It is in this that the actors and speakers are generally speaking defective, they cannot equilibrate an emphasis, or spread it over a number of syllables, all emphasized, sometimes equally, sometimes unequally. LECTURE VIII. Don Quixote. CERVANTES. ORN at Madrid, 1547;-Shakspeare, 1564; put day, 23rd of April, 1616,-the one in the sixty-ninth, the other in the fifty-second, year of his life. The resemblance in their physiognomies is striking, but with a predominance of acuteness in Cervantes, and of reflection in Shakspeare, which is the specific difference between the Spanish and English characters of mind. I. The nature and eminence of Symbolical writing ; II. Madness, and its different sorts, (considered without pretension to medical science); To each of these, or at least to my own notions respecting them, I must devote a few words of explanation, in order to render the after critique on Don Quixote, the master work of Cervantes' and his country's genius, easily and throughout intelligible. This is not the least valuable, though it may most often be felt by us both as the heaviest and least entertaining portion of these critical disquisitions for without it, I must have foregone one at least of the two appropriate objects of a Lecture, that of interesting you during its delivery, and of leaving behind in your minds the germs of afterthought, and the materials for future enjoyment. To have been assured by several of my intelligent auditors that they have reperused Hamlet or Othello · with increased satisfaction in consequence of the new points of view in which I had placed those characters-is the highest compliment I could receive or desire; and should the address of this evening open out a new source of pleasure, or enlarge the former in your perusal of Don Quixote, it will compensate for the failure of any personal or temporary object. I. The Symbolical cannot, perhaps, be better defined in distinction from the Allegorical, than that it is always itself a part of that, of the whole of which it is the representative. “Here comes a sail,”—(that is, a ship) is a symbolical expression. "Behold our lion!" when we speak of some gallant soldier, is allegorical. Of most importance to our present subject is this point, that the latter (the allegory) cannot be other than spoken consciously; -whereas in the former (the symbol) it is very possible that the general truth represented may be working unconsciously in the writer's mind during the construction of the symbol;—and it proves itself by being produced out of his own mind,the Don Quixote out of the perfectly sane mind of Cervantes; and not by outward observation, or his as |