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A LETTER

ON

SHAKSPERE'S AUTHORSHIP

OF

The Two Noble Kinsmen.

A LETTER
ON
SHAKSPERE'S AUTHORSHIP
OF
The Two Noble Kinsmen;

AND ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKSPERE'S STYLE
AND THE SECRET OF HIS SUPREMACY.

BY THE LATE

WILLIAM SPALDING, M.A.,

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AND AFTERWARDS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC, RHETORIC, AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREW'S; AUTHOR OF 'A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE,' ETC., ETC.

New Edition, with a Life of the Author,

BY

JOHN HILL BURTON, LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF
'THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,' ETC., ETC.

PUBLISHT FOR

The New Shakspere Society

BY N. TRÜBNER & CO., 57, 59, LUDGATE HILL,

LONDON, E.C., 1876.

Series VIII. No. 1

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

FOREWORDS

This Letter by Prof. Spalding has always seemd to me one of the ablest (if not the ablest) and most stimulating pieces of Shakspere criticism I ever read. And even if you differ from the writer's conclusion as to Shakspere's part, or even hold that Shakspere took no part at all, in the Play, you still get almost as much good from the essay as if you accept its conclusions as to the authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen. It is for its general, more than for its special, discussions, that I value this Letter. The close reasoning, the spirited language, the perception and distinction of the special qualities of Shakspere's work, the investigation into the nature of dramatic art, the grasp of subject, and the mixt logic and enthusiasm of the whole Letter, are worthy of a true critic of our great poet, and of the distinguisht Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics, who wrote this treatise, that at once delights and informs every one who reads it. No wonder it carrid away and convinct even the calm judicial mind of Hallam.

Indeed, while reading the Letter, one can hardly resist the power of Prof. Spalding's argument, backt as it is by his well-chosen passages from the Play. But when one turns to the play itself, when one reads it aloud with a party of friends, then come doubt and hesitation. One begins to ask, 'Is this indeed Shakspere, Shakspere at the end of his glorious career, Shakspere who has just given us Perdita, Hermione and Autolycus'?

Full of the heavenly beauty of Perdita's flowers, one reads over The Two Noble Kinsmen flower-song, and asks, pretty as the fancy of a few of the epithets is, whether all that Shakspere, with the spring-flowers of Stratford about him, and the love of nature deeper than ever in his soul—whether all he has to say of the daisy—Chaucer's 'Quene of flourës alle'—is, that it is "smelless but most quaint"; and of marigolds, that they blow on death-beds[v:1], when one recollects his twenty-years' earlier

use of them in Lucrece (A.D. 1594):—

Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Show'd like an April daisy on the grass,
With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night.
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath'd their light,
And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
Till they might open to adorn the day.

Full of the ineffable charm and consistency of Miranda and Perdita, one asks of Emilia—Chaucer's daring huntress, virgin free, seeking no marriage-bed—whether Shakspere, at the crisis of her life, degraded her to a silly lady's-maid or shop-girl, not knowing her own mind, up and down like a bucket in a well, balancing her lovers' qualities against one another, saying she'd worn the losing Palamon's portrait on her right side, not the heart one, her left, &c.; and then (oh dear!) that Palamon might wound Arcite and spoil his figure! What a pity it would be!

Arcite may win me,
And yet may Palamon wound Arcite to
The spoyling of his figure. O what pitty
Enough for such a chance!

V. iii. 68-71, p. 81, ed. Littledale.

I say, is it possible to believe that Shakspere turnd a noble lady, a frank gallant nature, whose character he had rightly seizd at first, into a goose of this kind, whom one would like to shake, or box her ears well? The thing is surely impossible. Again, is it likely—and again, I say, at the end of his career, with all his experience behind him, that Shakspere would make his hero Palamon publicly urge on Venus in his prayer to her, that she was bound to protect him because he'd believd a wanton young wife's word that her old incapable husband was the father of her

child? Is this the kind of thing that the Shakspere of Imogen, of Desdemona, of Queen Catherine, would put forward as the crown of his life and work? Again I say, it can hardly be.

Further, when at one's reading-party one turns to the cleverest and most poetic-natured girl-friend, and says, 'This is assignd to Shakspere. Do you feel it's his?' She answers, 'Not a bit. And no one else does either. Look how people's eyes are all off their books. They don't care for it: you never see that when we're reading one of Shakspere's genuine plays.' Then when you note Prof. Spalding's own admission in his Letter, p. 81, that in Shakspere's special excellence, characterization, the play is—as of course it is—weak, and that it is to be compard on the one hand with his weaker early work, and on the other with his latest Henry VIII, more than half of which Fletcher wrote, you are not surpris'd to find that in 1840,[vii:1] seven years after the date of his Letter, Professor Spalding had concluded, that on Shakspere's having taken part in The Two Noble Kinsmen, his "opinion is not now so decided as it once was," and that by 1847 he was still less decided, and declared the question "really insoluble." Here is the full passage from his article on Dyce's "Beaumont and Fletcher," in the Edinb. Review, July 1847, p. 57:—

"In measuring the height of Beaumont and Fletcher, we cannot take a better scale than to put them alongside Shakespeare, and compare them with him. In this manner, an imaginary supposition may assist us in determining the nature of their excellence, and almost enable us to fix its degree. Suppose there were to be discovered, in the library of the Earl of Ellesmere, or in that of the Duke of Devonshire, two dramas not known before, and of doubtful authorship, the one being 'Hamlet,' and the other 'The Winter's Tale.' We should be at no loss, we think, to assign the former to Shakespeare: the judgment would be warranted alike by the consideration of the whole, and by a scrutiny of particular parts. But with regard to the other play, hesitation would not be at all unreasonable. Beaumont and Fletcher (as an eminent living critic has remarked to us) might be believed to have written all its serious parts, more especially the scenes of the jealousy of Leontes, and those beautiful ones which describe the rustic festival[vii:2]. Strange to say, a case of this kind has actually arisen. And the uncertainty which still hangs over it, agrees entirely with the hesitation which we have ventured to imagine as arising in the case we have supposed.

"In 1634, eighteen years after Beaumont's death, and nine after Fletcher's, there was printed, for the first time, the play called 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.' The bookseller in his title-page declared it to have

been 'written by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakespeare, gentlemen.' On the faith of this assertion, and on the evidence afforded by the character of the work, it has been assumed universally, that Fletcher had a share in the authorship. Shakespeare's part in it has been denied; though there is, perhaps, a preponderance of authority for the affirmative. Those who maintain the joint authorship, commonly suppose the two poets to have written together: but Mr Dyce questions this, and gives us an ingenious theory of his own, which assumes Fletcher to have taken up and altered the work long after Shakespeare's labour on it had been closed.

"The question of Shakespeare's share in this play is really insoluble. On the one hand, there are reasons making it very difficult to believe that he can have had any concern in it; particularly the heavy and undramatic construction of the piece, and the want of individuality in the characters. Besides, we encounter in it direct and palpable imitations of Shakespeare himself; among which the most prominent is the wretchedly drawn character of the jailor's daughter. On the other hand, there are, in many passages, resemblances of expression (in the very particulars in which our two poets are most unlike Shakespeare) so close, that we must either admit Shakespeare's authorship of these parts, or suppose Fletcher or some one else to have imitated him designedly, and with very marvellous success. Among these passages, too, there are not a few which display a brilliancy of imagination, and a grasp of thought, much beyond Fletcher's ordinary pitch. Readers who lean to Mr Dyce's theory, will desire to learn his grounds for believing that Fletcher's labour in the play was performed in the latter part of his life. It appears to us that the piece bears a close likeness to those more elevated works which are known to have been among the earliest of our series: and if it were not an unbrotherly act to throw a new bone of contention among the critics, we would hint that there is no evidence entitling us peremptorily to assert that Fletcher was concerned in the work to the exclusion of Beaumont.

"Be the authorship whose it may, 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is undoubtedly one of the finest dramas in the volumes before us. It contains passages which, in dramatic vigour and passion, yield hardly to anything—perhaps to nothing—in the whole collection; while for gorgeousness of imagery, for delicacy of poetic feeling, and for grace, animation, and strength of language, we doubt whether there exists, under the names of our authors, any drama that comes near to it.[viii:1] Never has any theme enjoyed the honours which have befallen the semi-classical legend of Palamon and Arcite. Chosen as the foundation of chivalrous narrative by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Dryden, it has furnished one of the

fairest of the flowers that compose the dramatic crown of Fletcher, while from that flower, perhaps, leaves might be plucked to decorate another brow which needs them not.

"If the admirers of Fletcher could vindicate for him the fifth act of this play, they would entitle him to a still higher claim upon our gratitude, as the author of a series of scenes, as picturesquely conceived, and as poetically set forth, as any that our literature can boast. Dramatically considered, these scenes are very faulty: perhaps there are but two of them that have high dramatic merits—the interrupted execution of Palamon, and the preceding scene in which Emilia, left in the forest, hears the tumult of the battle, and receives successive reports of its changes and issue. But as a gallery of poetical pictures, as a cluster of images suggestive alike to the imagination and the feelings, as a cabinet of jewels whose lustre dazzles the eye and blinds it to the unskilful setting,—in this light there are few pieces comparable to the magnificent scene before the temples, where the lady and her lovers pray to the gods: and the pathetically solemn close of the drama, admirable in itself, loses only when we compare it with the death of Arcite in Chaucer's masterpiece, 'the Iliad of the middle ages.'"

All this does but show how well-founded was the judgment which that sound scholar and able Shaksperian critic, Prof. Ingram,[ix:1] expresst in our Transactions for 1874, p. 454. My own words on pages 73, 64*,—written after short acquaintance with the play, and under stress of Prof. Spalding's and Mr Hickson's able Papers, and the metrical evidence—were incautiously strong. In modifying them now, I do but follow the example of Prof. Spalding himself. Little as my opinion may be worth, I wish to say that I think the metrical and æsthetic evidence are conclusive as to there being two hands in the play. I do not think the evidence that Shakspere wrote all the parts that either Prof. Spalding or Mr Hickson assigns to him, at all conclusive. If it could be shown that Beaumont[ix:2] or any other author wrote the suppos'd Shakspere parts, and that Shakspere toucht them up, that theory would suit me best. It failing, I accept, for the time, Shakspere as the second author, subject to Fletcher having spoilt parts of his conception and work.

The following scheme shows where Prof. Spalding and Mr Hickson agree, and where they differ:—

Mr Swinburne, when duly clothed and in his right mind, and not exposing himself in his April-Fool's cap and bells, will have something to say on the subject; and it will no doubt be matter of controversy to the end of time. Let every one study, and be fully convinct in his own mind.

To Mrs Spalding and her family I am greatly obligd for their willing consent to the present reprint. To Dr John Hill Burton, the Historian of Scotland, we are all grateful for his interesting Life of his

old schoolfellow and friend, which comes before the author's Letter. Miss Spalding too I have to thank for help. And our Members, Mrs Bidder—the friend of our lost sweet-natured helper and friend, Richard Simpson—and Mr *****, for their gifts of £10 each, and the Rev. Stopford Brooke for his gift of four guineas, towards the cost of the present volume.

To my friend Miss Constance O'Brien I am indebted for the annext Scheme of Prof. Spalding's argument, and the Notes and Index. The side-notes, head-lines, and the additions to the original title-page[xi:1] are mine. I only regret that the very large amount of his time—so much wanted for other pressing duties,—which Mr Harold Littledale has given to his extremely careful edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen for us, has thrown on me, who know the Play so much less intimately than he does, the duty of writing these Forewords. But we shall get his mature opinion in his Introduction to the Play in a year or two[xi:2].

F. J. Furnivall.

3, St George's Square, Primrose Hill,
London, N.W., Sept. 27-Oct. 13, 1876.

FOOTNOTES:

[v:1] Unsure myself as to the form of oxlip root-leaves, and knowing nothing of the use of marigolds alluded to in the lines

"Oxlips in their cradles growing,
Marigolds on death-beds blowing,"

also seeing no fancy even if there were fact in 'em, I applied to the best judge in England known to me, Dr R. C. A. Prior, author of the Popular Names of British Plants; and he says "I am quite at a loss for the meaning of cradles and death-beds in the second stanza.

"The writer did not know much about plants, or he would not have combined summer flowers, like the marigold and larkspur, with the primrose.

"I prefer the reading 'With hair-bells dimme'; for nobody would call the upright salver-shaped flower of the primrose a 'bell.' The poet probably means the blue-bell."

On the other hand, Mr Wm Whale of our Egham Nurseries writes: "The root-leaves of the Oxlip are cradle-shaped, but circular instead of long. The growth of the leaves would certainly give one an idea of the stem and Oxlip flowers being lodged in a cradle [? saucer].

"I have seen the marygold[v:A] in my boyish days frequently placed on coffins; and in a warm death-room they would certainly flower. The flowers named may be all called Spring-flowers, but of course some blowing rather later than others."

[v:A] This is called the Calendula officinalis, or Medicinal Marygold, not the African or French sorts which are now so improved and cultivated in gardens.

[vii:1] Edinb. Review, July 1840, no. 144, p. 468.

[vii:2] Surely the 'eminent living critic' made an awful mistake about this. Beaumont and Fletcher write Perdita's flowers, Florizel's description of her, Autolycus!

[viii:1] In the Edinburgh Review for April 1841, p. 237-8. Prof. Spalding says that in Fletcher's Spanish Curate, "The scene of defiance and threatening between Jamie and Henrique is in one of Fletcher's best keys;—not unlike a similar scene in 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.'" Act III. sc. i.

[ix:1] His Dublin 'Afternoon Lecture' of 1863, shows that he then knew all that I in 1873 was trying in vain to find a known Shaksperian editor or critic to tell me.

[ix:2] I name Beaumont because of his run-on lines, &c., and the power I find in some of the parts of his and Fletcher's joint dramas that I attribute to him.

[x:1] I cannot get over Chaucer's daisies being calld "smelless but most quaint." The epithets seem to me not only poor, but pauper: implying entire absence of fancy and imagination.—F. "Chough hoar" is as bad though.—H. L.

[xi:1] This was "A Letter / on / Shakspeare's Authorship / of / The Two Noble Kinsmen; / a Drama commonly ascribed / to John Fletcher. / Edinburgh: / Adam and Charles Black; / and Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman. / London. / M.DCCC.XXXIII."

[xi:2] See the opinion of Mr J. Herbert Stack, an old Fortnightly-Reviewer, in the [Notes] at the end of this volume.

SKELETON OF PROF. SPALDING'S LETTER.

Introduction. Name of the play (p. [2]). Historical evidence in favour of Shakspere's share in the play ([6]). Incorrectness of the first and second folios of his works ([7]). Internal evidence ([10]). Marked differences between Fletcher's and Shakspere's styles ([11]). Shakspere's versification ([11]); abruptness ([11]); mannerisms and repetitions ([12]); conciseness tending to obscurity ([13]); and rapid conception, opposed to Fletcher's deliberation and diffuseness ([14]); his distinct, if crowded, imagery, to Fletcher's vague indefiniteness ([15]). Shakspere's metaphors ([16]), classical allusions ([18]), reflective turn of mind ([20]), conceits ([22]), personification ([25]), all differ from Fletcher's manner ([26]).

Origin of the story of The Two Noble Kinsmen ([26]). Sketch of First Act, and reasons for assigning it to Shakspere ([27]). Outline of Second Act, assigned to Fletcher ([35]). First Scene of Third Act, Shakspere's ([40]); Plot of the rest ([41]). Fourth Act, Fletcher's ([44]). Description of Fifth Act, given to Shakspere, omitting one scene ([45]).

Points of likeness between Shakspere and contemporary dramatists ([56]). Impossibility of imitating him ([58]). Inferiority of the underplot ([60]). Reasons for supposing Shakspere chose the subject ([62]). His studies ([67]). Resemblance between classical and romantic poetry ([69]). Shakspere's plots contrasted with those of his contemporaries ([73]); his treatment of passion ([74]); unity of conception ([78]).

Poetical art compared with plastic ([83]). Greek plastic art aimed at expressing Beauty and affecting the senses ([84]); poetry, at expressing and affecting the mind ([86]); therefore poetry appeals to wider sympathies ([88]). Dramatic poetry the highest form of poetry ([92]).

Why Shakspere excelled ([93]). His representations of human nature both true and impressive ([94]); he delineated both its intellect and passion ([99]). His morality ([101]); his representations of evil ([104]).

Conclusion. Summary of the argument as to plot, scenic arrangements, and execution ([105]).

LIFE OF PROFESSOR W. SPALDING,

BY HIS SCHOOL-FELLOW AND FRIEND,

JOHN HILL BURTON, LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF 'THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,' ETC., ETC.

William Spalding was born on the 22nd of May in the year 1809, at Aberdeen. His father was a practising lawyer as a member of the Society of Advocates in that town, and held office as Procurator Fiscal of the district, or local representative of the law officers of the crown, in the investigation of crimes and the prosecution of criminals. Spalding's mother, Frances Read, was well connected among the old and influential families of the city. When he went to school, Spalding was known to be the only son of a widow. He had one sister who died in early life. Whatever delicacy of constitution he inherited seems to have come from his father's side, for his mother lived to the year 1874, and died in the house of her son's widow among her grown-up grandchildren.

Spalding had the usual school and college education of the district. He attended the elementary burgh schools for English reading, writing, and arithmetic, and passed on to Latin in the grammar school. In his day the fees for attendance in that school, whence many pupils have passed into eminence, were raised from 7s. 6d. to 10s. for each quarter of the year. Those who knew Spalding in later life, would not readily understand that as a school-boy he was noticeable for his personal beauty. His features were small and symmetrical, and his cheeks had a brilliant colour. This faded as he approached middle age, and the features lost in some measure their proportions. He had ever a grave, thoughtful, and acute face, and one of his favourite pupils records the quick glance of his keen grey eye in the active duties of his class. He was noticed in his latter years to have a resemblance to Francis and Leonard Horner, and what Sydney Smith said of the older and more distinguished of these brethren might have been said of Spalding's earnest honest face, that "the commandments were written on his forehead." When he had exhausted his five years' curriculum at the grammar school, Spalding

stepped on a November morning, with some of his school-fellows, and a band of still more primitive youth, from the Aberdeenshire moorlands, and the distant highlands, to enter the open door of Marishal College, and compete for a bursary or endowment. This arena of mental gladiatorship was open to all comers, without question of age, country, or creed. The arrangement then followed—and no doubt still in use, for it has every quality of fairness and effectiveness to commend it, was this—An exercise was given out. It then consisted solely of a passage in English of considerable length, dictated to and written out by the competitors, who had to convert it into Latin. The name of each competitor was removed from his exercise, and kept by a municipal officer. A committee of sages, very unlikely to recognise any known handwriting among the multitude of papers subjected to their critical examination, sorted the exercises in the order of their merits, and then the names of the successful competitors were found. My present impression is that Spalding took the first bursary. It may have been the second or the third, for occasionally a careless inaccuracy might trip up the best scholar, but by acclamation the first place was assigned to Spalding. Indeed, in a general way, through the whole course of his education he swept the first prizes before him. When he finished the four years' curriculum of Marishal College, he attended a few classes in the college of Edinburgh, where the instruction was of another kind—less absolute teaching, but perhaps opportunities for ascending into higher spheres of knowledge. It was a little to the surprise of his companions that he was next found undergoing those "Divinity Hall" exercises, which predicate ambition to be ordained for the Church of Scotland, with the prospect, to begin with, of some moorland parish with a manse on a windy hill and a sterile but extensive glebe, a vista lying beyond of possible promotion to the ministry of some wealthy and hospitable civic community. Spalding said little about his views while he studied for the Church, and nothing about his reasons for changing his course, as he did, after a few months of study in his usual energetic fashion. He had apparently no quarrel either with institutions or persons, stimulating him to change his design, and he ever spoke respectfully of the established Church of Scotland.

From this episodical course of study he brought with him some valuable additions to the large stores of secular learning at his command. He had a powerful memory, and great facilities for mastering and simplifying sciences as well as languages. He seemed to say to himself, like Bacon, "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." With any of his friends who strayed into eccentric by-paths of inquiry he was

sarcastic—almost intolerant, in denouncing their selection. Why abandon the great literature—the great sciences and the great arts—which the noblest and strongest intellects in all ages have combined to enrich and bring to perfection? Master all that has been done in these, in the first place, and then you may be permitted to take your devious course. In all the departments of study he seemed to pass over the intermediate agencies, to contemplate with something like worship the great leading spirits whose intellectual stature raised them far above the mob. So in literature, it was in Homer and Shakspeare that he delighted. In the sciences connected with the analysis and the uses of intellect, he looked to Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. In the exact sciences, to Galileo, Tycho Brache and Newton, and so on. In art, he could admit the merits of a Teniers, an Ostade, or a Morland, in accurately rendering nature, as he would admit the merit of an ingenious toy. He could not but wonder at the turbulent power of Rubens, but he was bitter on the purpose these gifts were put to, in developing unsightly masses of flesh, and motions and attitudes wanting alike in beauty and dignity. It was in Michel Angelo, Raphael, and Thorwaldsen, with a select group from those approaching near to these in their characteristic qualities, that the young student selected the gods of his idolatry.

This love of art was something new in Spalding's native district. There all forms of learning were revered, and many a striving rustic devoted the whole energies of his life to acquire the means of teaching his fellow-men from the pulpit or the printing press. But art was nought among them. Spalding was thoroughly attached to his native district, and could well have said, "I love my fathers' northern land, where the dark pine trees grow;" but when his thoughts ran on art, he would sometimes bitterly call the north of Scotland a modern Bœotia. This is not the place for inquiring how it came to pass, that neglect of art could keep company with an ardent love of letters, but it is remarkable that the district so destitute of the æsthetic, gave to the world some considerable artists. In the old days there was George Jameson; and in Spalding's own generation, Bœotia produced Dyce, Giles, Philips, and Cassy as painters, with Brodie as a sculptor. Spalding could not but see merit in these, for none of them gave themselves to vulgar or purely popular art. Still he panted after the higher altitudes, and it appeared to him at one time that in his friend David Scot he had found the practical master of his ideal field. Scot had, to be sure, grand conceptions, but he did not possess the gift that enabled the great masters to abstract them from the clay of the common world. He had the defect—and his friend seeing it, felt it

almost as a personal calamity—of lapsing into the ungainly, and even the grotesque, in his most aspiring efforts.

In approaching the time when the book to which this notice is prefixed was published, one is tempted to offer a word or two of explanation on its writer not appearing before the world earlier; and when he did appear choosing so unobtrusive a fashion for his entry. About the time when his college education ended, there was something like a revival of literary ambition in Aberdeen, limited to young men who were Spalding's contemporaries. A few of them appealed for the loudest blasts of the trumpet of fame, in grand efforts in heroic and satirical poetry, and their works may be found in the libraries of collectors curious in specimens of forgotten provincial literature. These authors were generally clever young men; and like others of their kind, they found in after life that verse was not the only path to fame or fortune. One of them became a distinguished pulpit orator. If Paley noticed, as an "only defect" in a brother clergyman, that he was a popular preacher, Spalding was apt to take a harsher view of such a failing; nor would he palliate it on the representation of one who was the friend and admirer of both, who pleaded the trials that a person so gifted is subjected to, noting that there were certain eminences that the human head could not reach without becoming dizzy—as, for instance, being Emperor of Russia, Ambassador at an oriental court, Provost of a Scotch "Burgh toon"—or a popular preacher. Another contemporary who courted and obtained popularity, and still, to the joy of his friends, lives to enjoy it, was less distasteful to Spalding, though trespassing on his own field of ambition as a Greek scholar and Homeric critic. But he made the distinction, that in this instance he thought the homage to popularity was natural to the man, moving in irresistible impulses unregulated by a system for bringing popularity in aid of success.

The lookers-on, knowing that Spalding was ambitious, expected to hear him in the tuneful choir, but he was dumb. He was once or twice, by those nearest to him, heard in song, and literally heard only, for it is believed that he never allowed any manuscript testimony of such a weakness to leave his custody. One satirical performance got popularity by being committed to memory. It was called "The fire-balloon." In the year 1828 there was an arousing of public sympathy with the sufferers by a great conflagration at Merimachi in North America. A body of the students who had imbibed from the Professor of Natural Philosophy an enthusiasm about aerostation, proposed to raise money for the sufferers by making and exhibiting a huge fire balloon. The effort was embarrassed by many difficulties and adventures affording opportunity for the satirist.

For instance, a trial trip was attempted, and one of "the committee," who was the son of a clergyman, got hold of the key of his father's church, and put its interior at the disposal of his colleagues. The balloon inflated and ascended. The problem of getting it down again, however, had not been solved. It got itself comfortably at rest in the roof of a cupola, and the young philosophers then had to wait until it became exhausted enough to descend.

The literary ambition of young Aberdeen found for itself a very sedate and respectable looking organ in "The Aberdeen Magazine," published monthly during the years 1831 and 1832, and still visible in two thick octavo volumes. Spalding was not to be tempted into this project, though there was a slight touch in it supposed, solely from internal evidence, to have come from him. A heavy controversy was begun by one calling himself "a classical reformer," who brought up foemen worthy of his steel. At the end of the whole was a sting in a postscript, more effective than anything in the unwieldy body it was attached to. P. S. As I am no great scholar, perhaps your classical Reformer will have the goodness to tell me where I can see The Works of Socrates. He seems to allude to them twice [reference to pages]. As he modestly tells us that he is a much better translator of Homer than Pope was, perhaps he will be kind enough to favour the world with a translation, to use his own words, of "those works which have immortalized the name of Socrates."[xvii:1]

The papers in the Aberdeen Magazine were not all of the sombre cumbrous kind. There was an infusion of fresh young blood, fired perhaps by the influence of Wilson and Lockhart in Blackwood's Magazine, but seeking original forms of its own. For the leader of this school, Spalding had both esteem and admiration, but it was for far other merits than those of the brisk unrestrained writer of fugitive literature. This was Joseph Robertson, afterwards distinguished as an archæologist. He survived Spalding eight years. No lines of study could well be in more opposite directions than those of the two men who respected each other. While Spalding revelled in all that was brightest and best in literature and art, Robertson devoted himself to the development of our knowledge about the period when the higher arts—those of the painter and the sculptor—had been buried with the higher literature, and the classic languages had degenerated, in the hands of those who, as Du Cange, whose ample pages were often turned by Robertson, called them, were "Scriptores mediæ et infimæ Latinitatis." The source of Spalding's admiration was that Robertson's writing was perfect of its kind, and led

to important and conclusive results. It was in this spirit that he wrote his own "Letter." It did not fulfil a high aspiration, but it must be perfect; and it was surely a moment of supreme happiness to him, when he found the unknown author sought for and praised by so cautious and reserved a critic as Hallam.

The "Letter" was published in 1833. It is characteristic of its author's distaste of loud applause, that whenever this, his first achievement in letters, saw the light, he fled, as it were, from the knowledge of what was said of it, and wandered for several months in Italy and Germany. This was an era in his life, for it gave him the opportunity of seeing face to face, and profoundly studying, the great works of art that had hitherto only been imaged in his dreams from copies and engravings. He at the same time studied—or rather enjoyed—nature. In his native north he had been accustomed to ramble among the Grampians at the head of the Dee, where the precipices are from 1500 to 2000 feet high, and snow lies all the year round. In these rambles he encountered hardships such as one would hardly have thought within the capacity of his delicate frame. He took the same method of enjoyable travelling in the Apennines—that of the Pedestrian.

He gave to the world a slight morsel descriptive of his experiences and enjoyments, in the Blackwood's Magazine of November, 1835. They were told in so fine a spirit, so free both from ungraceful levity and solemn pedantry, that the reader only regretted that they were too sparingly imparted. He thus announced his own enjoyment in his pilgrimage: "Among the ruined palaces and temples of Rome, and in the vineyards and orange-groves beside the blue sea of Naples, I had warmed my imagination with that inspiration which, once breathed upon the heart, never again grows cold. It did not desert me now as I entered this upper valley of the Apennines to seek a new colour and form of Italian landscape. Happy and elevating recollections thronged in upon me, and blended with the clear sunshine which slept on the green undulating hills." This fragment is the only morsel of autobiographic information left by its author, and therefore perhaps the following, taken from among many expressions of a genial spirit enjoying itself in freedom, may not be unacceptable. He has crossed the high-lying, bare plain of Rosetto, and reaches the village of Val san Giovanni, where "shelter was heartily welcome, the sun was set, snow-flakes were beginning to whirl in the air, and before we reached the village, a sharp snow-storm had set in." Here he is taking comfort to himself before a huge wood fire, when "a man entered of superior dress and appearance to the

rest, and behind him bustled up a little wretch in the government indirect-tax livery, who, never saying by your leave, pushed a chair to the fire for his master. The gentleman popped down, and turning to me, 'I am the Podestà,' said he. I made my bow to the chief magistrate of the place. 'I am the Potestà,' said he again, and our little squinting spy repeated reproachfully, 'His excellency is the Podestà.'

"I was resolved not to understand what they would be at, and the dignitary explained it to me with a copious use of circumlocution. He said he had no salary from the government—this did not concern me;—that he had it in charge to apprehend all vagabonds; this he seemed to think might concern me. He asked for my passport, which was exhibited and found right; and the Podestà proved the finest fellow possible. These villagers then became curious to know what object I had in travelling about among their mountains. My reader will by this time believe me when I say that the question puzzled me. My Atanasio felt that it touched his honour to be suspected of guiding a traveller who could not tell what he travelled for. He took on him the task of reply. Premising that I was a foreigner, and perhaps did not know how to express myself, he explained that I was one of those meritorious individuals who travel about discovering all the countries and the unknown mountains, and putting all down on paper; and these individuals always ask likewise why there are no mendicant friars in the country, and which the peasants eat oftenest, mutton or macaroni? He added, with his characteristic determined solemnity, that he had known several such inquisitive travellers. This clear definition gave universal satisfaction."[xix:1]

Soon after Spalding's return to Scotland, the late George Boyd, the sagacious chief of the Firm of Oliver and Boyd, thought he might serve him in a considerable literary project. It was the age of small books published in groups—of "Constable's Miscellany," "Lardner's Cyclopedia," "Murray's Family Library," and the like. With these Mr Boyd thought he would compete, in the shape of the "Edinburgh Cabinet Library," and Spalding was prevailed on to write for it three volumes, with the title, "Italy and the Italian Islands." The bulk of the contributions to such collections are mere compilations. But Scott, Southey, Macintosh, and Moore had enlivened them with gifts from a higher literature, and Spalding's contribution was well fitted to match with the best of these, though he had to content himself in the ranks of the compilers, until the discerning found a higher place for his book.

The same acute observer who had set him to this task found another

for him in "The History of English Literature." The Encyclopedia Britannica in the same manner drew him into contributions which developed themselves into two works of great value, on "Logic," and on "Rhetoric." That one of so original and self-relying a nature should have thus been led by the influence of others into the chief labours of his life, is explained by the intensity of his desire for perfection in all he did. Once induced to lift his pen in any particular cause, he could not lay it down again while there remained an incompleteness unfilled, or an imperfection unremedied.

In a review on his book on Logic, having detected, from "various internal symptoms of origin," the style and manner of a personal friend of his own, he wrote to the culprit in this characteristic form, "very many thanks for the notice. It may do good with some readers who don't know the corrupt motives by which it was prompted: and it strikes me as being exceedingly well and dexterously executed. I am quite sorry to think how much trouble it must have cost you to pierce into the bowels of the dry and dark territory, so far as the points you have been able to reach. I am afraid also that you had to gutta-percha your conscience a little, before it would stretch to some of your allegations, both about the work and about the science. I see already so much that I could myself amend—not in respect of doctrine, but in the manner of exposition—as to make me regret that I am not in a place where the classes of students are large enough to take off an edition, and so to give me by and by the chance of re-writing the book. Yet it is satisfactory to me to have got clearly the start of the publication of Hamilton's Lectures, and so to anticipate—for some of the points on which it will certainly be found that I have taken up ground of my own—the attention of some of the few men who have written on the science. Any of them who, having already looked into my book, shall attempt to master Hamilton's system when it appears in his own statement of it, are sure to find, if I do not greatly mistake, that I have raised several problems, the discussion of which will require that my suggestions be considered independently of Hamilton's, and my little bits of theory either accepted or refuted. I dare say I told you that early in the winter I had very satisfactory letters from Germany, and you heard that the book was kindly taken by some of the Englishmen it was sent to, and set on tooth and nail, though very amicably, by," &c.

Let us go back to the chronology of his personal history, after his one opportunity of seeing the world outside of Britain. He had joined the Bar of Scotland before this episode in his life, and on his return he took

up the position of an advocate prepared for practice. This was no idle ambitious attempt, for he had endured the drudgery of a solicitor's office for the mastery of details, and had thoroughly studied the substance of the law. His career now promised a great future. He was affluent enough to spurn what Pope called "low gains;" he had good connections, and became speedily a rising counsel. His career seemed to be in the line of his friend Jeffrey's, taking all the honours and emoluments of the profession, and occasionally relaxing from it in a brilliant paper in the Edinburgh Review.[xxi:1] To complete the vista of good fortune he took to be the domestic sharer of his fortunes a wife worthy of himself—Miss Agnes Frier, born of a family long known and respected on the Border. They were married on the 22nd of March in the year 1838.

Perhaps some inward monitor told him that the fortunes before him were too heavy to be borne by the elements of health and strength allotted to him. It was to the surprise of his friends that in 1838 he abandoned the bar, and accepted the chair of Rhetoric in Edinburgh. In 1845 he exchanged it for the chair of Rhetoric and Logic at St Andrews. The emoluments there were an inducement to him, since part of the property of his family had been lost through commercial reverses over which he had no control; and he was not one to leave anything connected with the future of his family to chance. It was a sacrifice, for he left behind him dear friends of an older generation, such as Jeffrey, Cockburn, Hamilton, Wilson, and Pillans. Then there were half way between that generation and his own, Douglas Cheape, Charles Neaves, and George Moir; while a small body of his contemporaries sorely missed him, for he was a staunch friend ever to be depended on. He was a

great teacher, and left a well-trained generation of scholars behind him. The work of the instructor, abhorred by most men, and especially by sensitive men, was to him literally the "delightful task" of the poet who has endured many a jibe for so monstrous a euphuism. Even while yet he was himself a student, if he saw that a companion was wasting good abilities in idleness or vapid reading, he would burden his own laborious hours with attempts to stimulate his lazy friend. Just after he had passed through the Greek class of Marishal College, a temporary teacher for that class was required. Some one made the bold suggestion of trying the most distinguished of the students fresh from the workshop, and Spalding taught the class with high approval. As years passed on, the spirit of the teacher strengthened within him. The traditions of the older university were more encouraging to the drilling process than Edinburgh, where the tendency was towards attractive lecturing. So entirely did the teacher's duty at last absorb his faculties, that the phenomenon was compared to the provisions in nature for compensating the loss by special weaknesses or deficiencies, and that the scholar, conscious that his own days of working were limited, instinctively felt that in imparting his stores to others who would distribute them after he was gone, he was making the most valuable use of his acquirements.

It was a mighty satisfaction to old friends in Edinburgh to hear that Spalding had condescended to seek, and that he had found, that blessed refuge of the overworked and the infirm, called a hobby. He was no sportsman. The illustrious Golfing links of St Andrews were spread before him in vain, though their attractions induced many a man to pitch his tabernacle on their border, and it was sometimes consolatorily said of Professors relegated to this arid social region, that they were reconciling themselves to Golf. The days were long past for mounting the knapsack and striding over the Apennines or even the Grampians. Spalding's hobby was a simple one, but akin to the instincts of his cultivated taste; it was exercised in his flower-garden. We may be sure that he did not debase himself to the example of the stupid floriculturist, the grand ambition of whose life is successfully to nourish some prize monster in the shape of tulip or pansy. He allied his gentle task of a cultivator of beautiful flowers, with high science, in botany and vegetable physiology.

Besides such lighter alleviations, he had all the consolations that the most satisfactory domestic conditions can administer to the sufferer. In his later days he became afflicted with painful rheumatic attacks, and the terrible symptoms of confirmed heart-disease. He died on the 16th of November, 1859.

FOOTNOTES:

[xvii:1] Aberdeen Magazine, II., 350.

[xix:1] Blackwood's Mag., Nov. 1835, p. 669.

[xxi:1] The following list of her father's contributions, drawn up by Miss Mary Spalding, is believed to be complete.

No. 144. July 1840. Recent Shaksperian literature. (Books by Collier, Brown, De Quincey, Dyce, Courtenay, C. Knight, Mrs Jameson, Coleridge, Hallam, &c.)

No. 145. October 1840. Introduction to the Literature of Europe, by Henry Hallam.

No. 147. April 1841. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. With an Introduction. By George Darley.

No. 164. April 1845. 1. The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakespeare. Edited by Charles Knight.—2. The Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems of William Shakespeare. Edited by Charles Knight.—3. The Works of William Shakespeare. The text formed from an entirely new collation of the old editions; with the various Readings, Notes, a Life of the Poet, and a History of the English Stage. By J. Payne Collier, Esquire, F.S.A.

No. 173. July 1847. The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. By the Rev. Alexander Dyce.

No. 181. July 1849. 1. Lectures on Shakespeare. By H. N. Hudson.—2. Macbeth de Shakespeare, en 5 Actes et en vers. Par M. Emile Deschemps.

ib. King Arthur. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. 2nd edition, London, 1849, 8vo.

A LETTER
ON
SHAKSPEARE'S AUTHORSHIP
OF THE DRAMA ENTITLED
THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN.

My dear L——, We have met again, after an interval long enough to have made both of us graver than we were wont to be. A few of my rarely granted hours of leisure have lately been occupied in examining a question on which your taste and knowledge equally incline and qualify you to enter. Allow me to address to you the result of my inquiry, as a pledge of the gratification which has been afforded me by the renewal of our early intercourse.

Proud as Shakspeare's countrymen are of his name, it is singular, though not unaccountable, that at this day our common list of his works should remain open to correction. The list of Shakspere's works is not yet settled. Are all his in his publisht "Works"? Every one knows that some plays printed in his volumes have weak claims to that distinction; but, while the exclusion even of works certainly not his would now be a rash exercise of prerogative in any editor, it is a question of more interest, whether there may not be dramas not yet admitted among his collected works, which have a right to be there, and might be inserted without the danger attending the dismissal of any already put upon the list. Six "Doubtful Plays:" none by Shakspere.A claim for admission has been set up in favour of Malone's six plays,[1:1] without any ground as to five of them, and [1:2]with very little to support it even for the sixth. Ireland's forgery, Vortigern. The folly of supposing Vortigern genuine.Ireland's impostures are an anomaly in literary history: even the spell and sway of temporary fashion and universal opinion are causes scarcely adequate to account for the blindness of the eminent men who fell into the snare. The want of any external evidence in favour of the

first fabrication, the Shakspeare papers, was overlooked; and the internal evidence, which was wholly against the genuineness, was unhesitatingly admitted as establishing it. The play of 'Vortigern' had little more to support it than the previous imposition.

There are two cases, however, in which we have external presumptions to proceed from; for there are traditions traceable to Shakspeare's own time, or nearly so, of his having assisted in two plays, still known to us, but never placed among his works. Shakspere said (absurdly) to have helpt in Ben Jonson's Sejanus.The one, the 'Sejanus', in which Shakspeare is said to have assisted Jonson, was re-written by the latter himself, and published as it now stands among his writings, the part of the assistant poet having been entirely omitted; so that the question as to that play, a very doubtful question, is not important, and hardly even curious. But the other drama is in our hands as it came from the closets of the poets, and, if Shakspeare's partial authorship were established, ought to have a place among his works. The Two Noble Kinsmen attributed to Shakspere and Fletcher; and rightly so.It is, as you know, The Two Noble Kinsmen, printed among the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, and sometimes attributed to Shakspeare and Fletcher jointly. I have been able to satisfy myself that it is rightly so attributed, and hope to be able to prove to you, who are intimately conversant with Shakspeare, and familiar also with the writings of his supposed co-adjutor, that there are good grounds for the opinion. It is unjustly excluded from Shakspere's Works.The same conclusion has already been reached by others; but the discussion of the question cannot be needless, so long as this fine drama continues excluded from the received list of Shakspeare's works; and while there is reason to believe that there are many discerning students and zealous admirers of the poet, to whom it is known only by name. The beauty of the work itself will make much of the investigation delightful to you, even though my argument on it may seem feeble and stale.

I. Historical or External Evidence.
II. External Evidence, p. [10].

The proof is, of course, two-fold; the first branch emerging [2:1]from any records or memorials which throw light on the subject from without; the second, from a consideration of the work itself, and a comparison of its qualities with those of Shakspeare or Fletcher. You will keep in mind, that it has not been doubted, and may be assumed, that Fletcher had a share in the work; the only question

is,—Whether Shakspeare wrote any part of it, and what parts, if any?

The Historical Evidence claims our attention in the first instance; but in no question of literary genuineness is this the sort of proof which yields the surest grounds of conviction. I. External Evidence.Such questions arise only under circumstances in which the external proof on either side is very weak, and the internal evidence has therefore to be continually resorted to for supplying the defects of the external. It is true that a complete proof of a work having been actually written by a particular person, destroys any contrary presumption from intrinsic marks; and, in like manner, when a train of evidence is deduced, showing it to be impossible that a work could have been written by a certain author, no internal likeness to other works of his can in the least weaken the negative conclusion. Historical evidence cannot exclude internal, unless the former is complete.In either case, however, the historical evidence must be incontrovertible, before it can exclude examination of the internal; and the two cases are by no means equally frequent. It scarcely ever happens that there is external evidence weighty enough to establish certainly, of itself, an individual's authorship of a particular work; but the external proof that his authorship was impossible, may often be convincing and perfect, from an examination of dates, or the like. Since, therefore, external evidence against authorship admits of completeness, we are entitled, when such evidence exclusively is founded on, to demand that it shall be complete. Where by the very narrowest step it falls short of a demonstration of absolute impossibility, the internal evidence cannot be refused admittance in contravention of it, and comes in with far greater force than that of the other. There may be cases where authorship can be made out to the highest degree, at least, of probability, by strong internal evidence coming in aid of an external proof equally balanced for and against; and even where the extrinsic proof is of itself sufficient [3:1]to infer improbability, internal marks may be so decided the opposite way, as to render the question absolutely doubtful, or to occasion a leaning towards the affirmative side. Internal evidence the true test for The Two N. K. These principles point out the internal evidence as the true ground on which my cause must be contested; but it was not necessary to follow them out to their full extent; for I can show you,

that the external facts which we have here, few as they are, raise a presumption in favour of Shakspeare's authorship, as strong as exists in cases of more practical importance, where its effect has never been questioned.

The Two N. K. printed in 1634 as by Fletcher and Shakspere.

The fact from which the maintainers of Shakspeare's share in this drama have to set out, is the first printing of it, which took place in 1634. In the title-page of this first edition,[4:1] the play is stated to be the joint work of Shakspeare and Fletcher. Steevens's doubts. It is needless to enumerate categorically the doubts which have been thrown, chiefly by the acute and perverse Steevens, on the credit due to this assertion; for a few observations will show that they have by no means an overwhelming force, while there are contrary presumptions far more than sufficient to weigh them down. A.D. 1634 was 18 years after Shakspere's death, 9 after Fletcher's. The edition was not published till eighteen years after Shakspeare's death, and nine years after Fletcher's; but any suspicion which might arise from the length of this interval, as giving an opportunity for imposture, is at once removed by one consideration, which is almost an unanswerable argument in favour of the assertion on the title-page, and in contravention of this or any other doubts. No motive to forge Shakspere's name, as he (Sh.) had then fallen into neglect. There was no motive for falsely stating Shakspeare's authorship, because no end would have been gained by it; for it is a fact admitting of the fullest proof, that, even so recently after Shakspeare's death as 1634, he had fallen much into neglect. Fletcher had become far more popular, and his name in the title-page would have been a surer passport to public favour than Shakspeare's. If either of the names was to be [4:2]fabricated, Fletcher's (which stands foremost in the title-page as printed) was the more likely of the two to have been preferred. It appears then that the time when the publisher's assertion of Shakspeare's authorship was made, gives it a right to more confidence than it could have deserved if it had been advanced earlier. If the work had been printed during the poet's life, and the height of his popularity, its title-page would have been no evidence at all.

And when the assertion is freed from the suspicion of designed imposture, the truth of it is confirmed by its stating the play to have been acted by the king's servants, and at the Blackfriars. 2 N. K. acted at the Blackfriars (in whose profits Shakspere had once a share). It was that company which had been Shakspeare's; the Globe and Blackfriars were the two theatres at which they played; and at one or the other of these houses all his acknowledged works seem to have been brought out. The fact of the play not having been printed sooner, is accounted for by the dramatic arrangements and practice of the time: the first collected edition of Shakspeare's works, only eleven years earlier than the printing of this play, contained about twenty plays of his not printed during his life; and the long interval is a reason also why the printer and publisher are different persons from any who were concerned in Shakspeare's other works. The hyperbolical phraseology of the title-page is quite in the taste of the day, and is exceeded by the quarto editions of some of Shakspeare's admitted works.

Custom of authors writing plays together.

Was the alleged co-operation then in itself likely to have taken place? It was. Such partnerships were very generally formed by the dramatists of that time; both the poets were likely enough to have projected some union of the kind, and to have chosen each other as the parties to it. Shakspere followed this custom, though rarely. Although Shakspeare seems to have followed this custom less frequently than most of his contemporaries, we have reason to think that he did not wholly refrain from it; and his favourite plan of altering plays previously written by others, is a near approach to it. Fletcher very often. As to Fletcher, his name is connected in every mind with that of Beaumont; and the memorable and melancholy letter of the three players,[5:1] proves him to have coalesced with other writers even during that poet's short [5:2]life. This is of some consequence, because, if the two poets wrote at the same time, it would seem that they must have done so previously to Beaumont's death; for Shakspeare lived only one year longer than

Beaumont, and is believed to have spent that year in the country. There is no proof that the drama before us was not written before Beaumont's death (1615), and it is only certain that its era was later than 1594. Fletcher's co-authors. After the loss of his friend, Fletcher is said to have been repeatedly assisted by Massinger: he joined in one play with Jonson and Middleton, and in another with Rowley. His sonship to a bishop, no hindrance. His superior rank (he was the son of a bishop) has been gravely mentioned as discrediting his connection with Shakspeare; but the same objection applies with infinitely greater force to his known co-operation with Field, Daborne, and the others just named; and the idea is founded on radically wrong notions of the temper of that age. Fletcher's burlesquing Shakspere is no argument against their having written together. There is scarcely more substance in a doubt raised from the frequency with which Shakspeare is burlesqued by Beaumont and Fletcher. Those satirical flings could have been no reason why Fletcher should be unwilling to coalesce with Shakspeare, because they indicate no ill feeling towards him. Shakspere pokes fun at Kyd, Peele, Marlowe. They were practised by all the dramatic writers at the expense of each other; Shakspeare himself is a parodist, and indulges in those quips frequently, not against such writers only as the author of the Spanish Tragedy, but against Peele and even Marlowe, his own fathers in the drama, and both dead before he vented the jests, which he never would have uttered had he attached to them any degree of malice. And therefore also Fletcher's sarcasms cannot have disinclined Shakspeare to the coalition, especially as his personal character made it very unlikely that he should have taken up any such grudge as a testy person might have conceived from some of the more severe.

But the circumstance on which most stress has been laid as disproving Shakspeare's share in the drama in question, is this. The 2 N. K. not in the First Folio of Shakspere's Works, 1623, put forth by Shakspere's fellows. While the first edition of it was not printed till 1634, two editions of Shakspeare's collected works had been published between the time of his death (1616) and that year, in neither of which this play appears; and it is said that its omission in the first folio (1623), in particular, is fatal to its claim, since Heminge and [6:1]Condell, who edited that collection, were Shakspeare's fellow-actors and the executors of his will, and must be presumed to have known perfectly what works were and what were not his. I have put this objection

as strongly as it can be put; and at first sight it is startling; but those who have most bibliographical knowledge of Shakspeare's works, are best aware that much of its force is only apparent. The omission in the second folio (1632) should not have been founded on; for that edition is nothing but a reprint of the contents of the first; and it is only the want of the play in this latter that we have to consider. But the First Folio is not of much authority. Now, you know well, that in taking some objections to the authority of the First Folio, I shall only echo the opinions of Shakspeare's most judicious critics. It was a speculation on the part of the editors for their own advantage, either solely or in conjunction with any others, who, as holders of shares in the Globe Theatre, had an interest in the plays: for it was to the theatre, you will remark, and not to Shakspeare or his heirs personally, that the manuscripts belonged. It was just a speculation for profit; The edition shews distinctly, that profit was its aim more than faithfulness to the memory of the poet, in the correctness either of his text or of the list of his works. Even the style of the preface excites suspicions which the work itself verifies. designd to put down the Quartos, which yet it copies. One object of it was to put down editions of about fifteen separate plays of Shakspeare's, previously printed in quarto, which, though in most respects more accurate than their successors, had evidently been taken from stolen copies: the preface of the folio, accordingly, strives to throw discredit on these quartos, while the text, usually close in its adherence to them, falls into errors where it quits them, and omits many very fine passages which they give, and which the modern editors have been enabled by their assistance to restore.

The Table of Contents of the First Folio of Shakspere's Works is of less worth.

Here it is, however, of more consequence to notice, that the authority of the Table of Contents of the Folio is worse than weak. The editors profess to give all Shakspeare's works, and none which are not his: we know that they have fulfilled neither the one pledge nor the other. There is no doubt but they could at least have enumerated Shakspeare's works correctly: but their knowledge and their design of profit did [7:1]not suit each other. It lets in two Plays that are not Shakspere's. They have admitted, for plain reasons, two plays which are not Shakspeare's. Their edition contains about twenty plays never before printed; it was evidently their interest to enlarge this part of their list as far as they safely could. 1 Henry VI, The pretended First Part of Henry VI., in

which Shakspeare may perhaps have written a single scene,[8:1] but certainly not twenty lines besides, had not been printed, and could be plausibly inserted; it does not seem that they could have had any other reasons for giving it a place. and Titus Andronicus.The Tragedy of the Shambles, which we call 'Titus Andronicus,' if it had been printed at all, had been so only once, and that thirty years before; therefore it likewise was a novelty; and a pretext was easily found for its admission. The editors then were unscrupulous and unfair as to the works which they inserted: professing to give a full collection, they were no less so as to those which they did not insert. Troilus and Cressida 'Troilus and Cressida,' an unpleasing drama, contains many passages of the highest spirit and poetical richness, and the bad in it, as well as the good, is perfectly characteristic of Shakspeare; it is unquestionably his. is not in the Table of Contents. It does not appear in Heminge and Condell's table of contents, and is only found appended, like a separate work, to some copies of their edition. Its pages are not even numbered along with the rest of the volume; and if the first editors were the persons who printed it, it was clearly after the remainder of the work. If they did print it, their manner of doing so shews their carelessness of truth more strongly than if they had omitted it altogether. They first make up their list, and state it as a full one without that play, which they apparently had been unable to obtain; they then procure access to the manuscript, print the play, and insert it in the awkward way in which it stands, and thus virtually confess that the assertion in their preface, made in reference to their table of contents, was untrue. At any rate, a part of their impression was circulated without this play. Pericles is not in the volume, and yet is in part Shakspere's. 'Pericles' also is wholly omitted by those editors; it appears for the first time in the third folio (1666), an edition of no value, and its genuineness rests much on the internal proofs, which [8:2]are quite sufficient to establish it. It is an irregular and imperfect play, older in form than any of Shakspeare's; but it has clearly been augmented by many passages written by him, and therefore had a right to be inserted by the first editors, upon their own principles. The editors of the First Folio put forth an incomplete book. These two plays then being certainly Shakspeare's, no matter whether his best or his worst, and his editors being so situated that

they must have known the fact, their edition is allowed to appear as a complete collection of Shakspeare's works, although its contents include neither of the two. They probably were unable to procure copies; but they were not the less bound to have acknowledged in their preface, that these, or any other plays which they knew to be Shakspeare's, were necessary for making up a complete collection. It in no view suited their purposes to make such a statement; and it was not made. We cannot trust the Editors of the First Folio. In short, the whole conduct of these editors inspires distrust, but their unacknowledged omission of those two plays deprives them of all claim to our confidence. The effect of that omission, in reference to any play which can be brought forward as Shakspeare's, is just this, that the want of the drama in their edition, is of itself no proof whatever that Shakspeare was not the author of it, and leaves the question, whether he was or was not, perfectly open for decision on other evidence. It leaves the inquiry before us precisely in that situation. Why Heminge and Condell could not procure the manuscripts of 'Troilus,' 'Pericles,' or the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' I am not bound to shew. As to the last, Fletcher may have retained a partial or entire right of property in it, and was alive at the publication of their edition. Difficulties at least as great attach to the question as to the other two rejected plays, in which the strength of the other proofs has long been admitted as counterbalancing them. But the argument serves my purpose without any theory on the subject. The First Folio no evidence against The Two Noble Kinsmen. The state of it entitles me, as I conceive, to throw the First Folio entirely out of view, as being no evidence one way or the other.

Laying the folio aside then, I think I have shewn that, in the most unfavourable view, no doubts which other circumstances can throw on the assertion made in the title-page of the first edition of the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' are of such strength as to ren[9:1]der the truth of it improbable. Strong internal evidence will prove it in part Shakspere's. Strong internal evidence therefore will, in any view, establish Shakspeare's claim. But, if the consideration first suggested be well-founded, (as I have no doubt it is,) namely, that the statement of the publisher was disinterested, there arises a very strong external presumption of the truth of his assertion, which will enable us to proceed to the examination of the internal marks with a prepossession in favour of Shakspeare's authorship.

As I wish to make you a convert to the affirmative opinion, it may be wise to acquaint you that you will not be alone in it, if you shall finally see reason to embrace it. Early annotators on Shakspere narrow-minded. Shakspeare, you know, suffered a long eclipse, which left him in obscurity till the beginning of last century, when he reappeared surrounded by his annotators, a class of men who have followed a narrow track, but yet are greater benefactors to us than we are ready to acknowledge. The commentators have given little attention to the question before us; but some of the best of them have declared incidentally for Shakspeare's claim; and though even the editors who have professed this belief have not inserted the work as his, this is only one among many evil results of the slavish system to which they all adhere. Yet Pope, Warburton, Farmer, believe The Two Noble Kinsmen genuine: so does Schlegel. We have with us Pope, Warburton, and above all, Farmer, a man of fine discernment, and a most cautious sifter of evidence. The subject has more recently been treated shortly by a celebrated foreign critic, the enthusiastic and eloquent Schlegel,[10:1] who comes to a conclusion decidedly favourable to Shakspeare.

II. Internal evidence.

There still lies before us the principal part of our task, that of applying to the presumption resulting from the external proof, (whatever the amount of that may be,) the decisive test of the [10:2]Internal Evidence. Do you doubt the efficacy of this supposed crucial experiment? It is true that internal similarities form almost a valueless test when applied to inferior writers; because in them the distinctive marks are too weak to be easily traced. Shakspere's work specially fit for the Internal Evidence test. But, in the first place, great authors have in their very greatness the pledge of something peculiar which shall identify their works, and consequently the test is usually satisfactory in its application to them; and, secondly and particularly, Shakspeare is, of all writers that have existed, that one to whose alleged works such a test can be most confidently administered; because he is not only strikingly

peculiar in those qualities which discriminate him from other poets, but his writings also possess singularities, different from, and opposite to, the usual character of poetry itself.

I cannot proceed with you to the work itself, till I have reminded you of some distinctive differences between the two writers whose claims we are to adjust, the recollection of which will be indispensable to us in considering the details of the drama. Differences between Shakspere and Fletcher to be discusst. We shall then enter on that detailed examination, keeping those distinctions in mind, and attempting to apply them to individual passages; and, when all the scenes of the play have thus passed successively before us, we shall be able to look back on it as a whole, and investigate its general qualities.

Shakspere's and Fletcher's versification contrasted.

The first difference which may be pointed out between Shakspeare and Fletcher, is that of their versification. You have learned from a study of the poets themselves, in what that difference consists. Shakspere's.Shakspeare's versification is broken and full of pauses, he is sparing of double terminations to his verses, and has a marked fondness for ending speeches or scenes with hemi-stitches. Fletcher's.Fletcher's rhythm is of a newer and smoother cast, often keeping the lines distinct and without breaks through whole speeches, abounding in double endings, and very seldom leaving a line incomplete at the end of a sentence or scene.[11:1] And the opposite taste of the two poets in their choice and arrangement [11:2]of words, gives an opposite character to the whole modulation of their verses. Modulation of Fletcher's verse: of Shakspere's.Fletcher's is sweet and flowing, and peculiarly fitted either for declamation or the softness of sorrow: Shakspeare's ear is tuned to the stateliest solemnity of thought, or the abruptness and vehemence of passion. The present drama exhibits in whole scenes the qualities of Shakspeare's versification; and there are other scenes which are marked by those of Fletcher's; the difference is one reason for separating the authorship.

Shakspere's images and words in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

You will notice in this play many instances of Shakspeare's favourite images, and of his very words. Is this a proof of the play having been his work, or does it only indicate imitation? In

Shakspeare's case, such resemblance, taken by itself, can operate neither way. Shakspere a mannerist in style, andShakspeare is a mannerist in style. He knew this himself, and what he says of his minor poems, is equally true of his dramatic language; he "keeps invention in a noted weed[12:1];" and almost every word or combination of words is so marked in its character that its author is known at a glance. wanting in variety. Shakspere repeats himself.But not only is his style so peculiar in its general qualities, as scarcely to admit of being mistaken; not only is it deficient in variety of structure, but it is in a particular degree characterised by a frequent recurrence of the same images, often clothed in identically the same words. You are quite aware of this, and those who are not, may be convinced of it by opening any page of the annotated editions. So far, then, this play is only like Shakspeare's acknowledged works. It is true, that one who wished to write a play in Shakspeare's manner, would probably have repeated his images and words as they are repeated here; but Shakspeare would certainly have imitated himself quite as often. The likeness to Shakspere in The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the repetitions of him, are likely to be by him. The resemblance could be founded on, as indicating imitation, only in conjunction with other circumstances of dissimilarity or inferiority to his genuine writings; and where, as in the present case, there seems to be reason for asserting that the accompanying circumstances point the work out as an original composition of his, this very likeness and repetition become a strong argument in support of those concomitant indications. [12:2]Such repetition is more or less common in all the play-writers of that age. The number of their works, the quickness with which they were written, and the carelessness which circumstances induced as to their elaboration or final correction, all aided in giving rise to this. Massinger also repeats himself much. Fletcher but little. But all are not equally chargeable with it; Beaumont and Fletcher less than most, Massinger to an extent far beyond Shakspeare, and vying with the common-places of Euripides. May not the professional habits of Shakspeare and Massinger as actors, have had some effect in producing this, by imprinting their own works in their memories with unusual strength? Fletcher and his associate were free from that risk.

Singularity of Shakspere's style.

It would not be easy to give a systematic account of those

qualities which combine to constitute Shakspeare's singularity of style. Some of them lie at the very surface, others are found only on a deeper search, and a few there are which depend on evanescent relations, instinctively perceptible to the congenial poetical sense, but extremely difficult of abstract prose definition. Several qualities also, which we are apt to think exclusively his, (such, for instance, as his looseness of construction,) are discovered on examination to be common to him with the other dramatic writers of his age. Such qualities can give no assistance in an inquiry like ours, and may be left wholly out of view. But I think the distinctions which I can specify between him and Fletcher are quite enough, and applicable with sufficient closeness to this drama, for making out the point which I wish to prove.

Qualities of Shakspere's style: energy, obscurity, abruptness, brevity (in late plays).

No one is ignorant that Shakspeare is concise, that this quality makes him always energetic and often most impressive, but that it also gives birth to much obscurity. He shows a constant wish to deliver thought, fancy, and feeling, in the fewest words possible. Even his images are brief; they are continual, and they crowd and confuse one another; the well-springs of his imagination boil up every moment, and the readiness with which they throw up their golden sands, makes him careless of fitly using the wealth thus profusely rendered. He abounds in hinted descriptions, in sketches of imagery, in glimpses of illustration, in abrupt and vanishing snatches of fancy. Shakspere never vague. But the merest hint that he gives is of force [13:1]enough to shew that the image was fully present with him; if he fails to bring it as distinctly before us, it is either from the haste with which he passes to another, or from the eagerness induced by the very force and quickness with which he has conceived the former. Milton and language. It has been said of Milton that language sunk under him; and it is true of him in one sense, but of Shakspeare in two. Shakspere's new meanings and new words.Shakspeare's strength of conception, to which, not less than to Milton's, existing language was inadequate, compelled him either to use old words in unusual meanings, or to coin new words for himself.[13:2] But his mind had another quality powerful over his style,

which Milton's wanted. Milton slow, Shakspere rapid, Milton's conception was comparatively slow, and allowed him time for deliberate expression: Shakspeare's was rapid to excess, and hurried his words after it. When a truth presented itself to his mind, all its qualities burst in upon him at once, and his instantaneousness of conception could be represented only by words as brief and quick as thought itself. specially in reflective passages. This cause operates with the greatest force on his passages of reflection; for if his images are often brief, his apophthegms are brief a thousand times oftener: his quickness of ideas seems to have been stimulated to an extraordinary degree by the contemplation of general truths. He forces speech to bear a burden beyond its strength. And everywhere his incessant activity and quickness, both of intellect and fancy, engaged him in a continual struggle with speech; it is a sluggish slave which he would force to bear a burden beyond its strength, a weary courser which he would urge at a speed to which it is unequal. He fails only from insufficiency in his puny instrument; not because his conception is indistinct, but because it is too full, energetic, and rapid, to receive adequate expression. It is excess of strength which hurts, not weakness which incapacitates; he is injured by the undue prevalence of the good principle, not by its defect. Shakspere's obscurity. The obscurity of other writers is often the mistiness of the evening twilight sinking into night; his is the fitful dimness of the dawn, contending with the retiring darkness, and striving to break out [14:1]into open day. Fletcher most unlike Shakspere. Scarcely any writer of Shakspeare's class, or of any other, comes near him either in the faults or the grandeur which are the alternate results of this tendency of mind; but none is more utterly unlike him than the poet to whom, some would say, we must attribute passages in this play so singularly like Shakspeare. Fletcher diffuse. Fletcher is diffuse both in his leading thoughts and in his illustrations. He amplifies, is elaborate, not vigorous. His intellect did not present truth to him with the instant conviction which it poured on Shakspeare, and his fancy did not force imagery on him with a profusion which might have tempted him to weave its different suggestions into inconsistent forms; he expresses thought deliberately and with amplification; he paints his illustrative pictures with a careful hand and by repeated touches;

his style has a pleasing and delicate air which is any thing but vigorous, and often reaches the verge of feebleness. Take a passage or two from the work before us, and do you say, who know Fletcher, whether they be his, or the work of a stronger hand.

Shakspere. Fletcher could not have written these passages,

He only áttributes
The faculties of other instruments
To his own nerves and act; commands men's ser|vice,
And what they gain in't, boot and glory too.
... What man
Thirds his own worth, (the case is each of ours,)
When that his action's dregged with mind assured
'Tis bad he goes about?—Act I. scene ii.

Dowagers, take hands:
[15:1]Let us be widows to our woes: Delay
Commends us to a famishing hope.—Act I. scene i.

I do not quote these lines for praise. The meaning of the last quotation in particular is obscure when it stands alone, and not too clear even when it is read in the scene. But I ask you, whether the oracular brevity of each of the sentences is not perfectly in the manner of Shakspeare. A fragment from another beautiful address in the first scene is equally characteristic and less faulty:—

Shakspere, not Fletcher.

[15:2]Honoured Hippolita,
Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain
The scythe-tusked boar; that, with thy arm as strong
As it is white, wast near to make the male
To thy sex captive, but that this thy lord
(Born to uphold creation in that hon|our
First Nature styled it in) shrunk thee in|to
The bound thou wast o'erflow|ing, | at once subdu|ing |
Thy force and thy affection;—Soldieress!
That equally canst poise sternness with pit|y;—
Who now, I know, hast much more power o'er | him
Than e'er he had on thee;—who owest[15:3] his strength
And his love too, who is a servant to
The tenor of thy speech!

Is this like Fletcher? I think not. It is unlike him in versification and in the tone of thought; and you will here particularly notice

that it is unlike him in abruptness and brevity. It is like Shakspeare in all these particulars.

Shakspere hardly ever vague,

I have said that Shakspeare, often obscure, is scarcely ever vague; that he may fail to express all he wishes, but almost always gives distinctly the part which he is able to convey. Fletcher unable to grasp images distinctly. Fletcher is not only slow in his ideas, but often vague and deficient in precision. The following lines are taken from a scene in the play under our notice, which clearly is not Shakspeare's. I would direct your attention, not to the remoteness of the last conceit, but to the want of distinctness in grasping images, and the inability to see fully either their picturesque or their poetical relations.

Fletcher, not Shakspere.

Arcite. We were not bred to talk, man: when we are armed,
And both upon our guards, then let our fur|y,
Like meeting of two tides, fly strongly from | us.

* * * * *

Palamon. Methinks this armour's very like that, Ar|cite,
Thou worest that day the three kings fell, but light|er.

Arc. That was a very good one; and that day,
I well remember, you out-did me, cous|in:
... When I saw you charge first,
Methought I heard a dreadful clap of thund|er
Break from the troop.

Pal. But still before that flew
The lightning of your valour.—Act III. scene vi.

Shakspere metaphorical, but seldom has long description.

[16:1]Shakspeare's style, as every one knows, is metaphorical to excess. His thought and imagination work together. His imagination is always active, but he seldom pauses to indulge it by lengthened description. I shall hereafter have occasion to direct your observation to the sobriety with which he preserves imagination in its proper station, as only the minister and interpreter of thought; but what I wish now to say is, that in him the two powers operate simultaneously. He goes on thinking vigorously, while his imagination scatters her inexhaustible treasures like flowers on the current of his meditations. His constant aim is the expression of facts, passions, or opinions; and his intellect is constantly occupied in the investigation of such; but the mind acts with ease in its lofty vocation, and the beautiful and the grand rise up voluntarily to do him homage. He never indeed consents to express those poetical ideas by themselves; but he shows that he felt their import and their

legitimate use, by wedding them to the thoughts in which they originated. Shakspere's truths and their imagery glorify one another. The truths which he taught, received magnificence and amenity from the illustrative forms; and the poetical images were elevated into a higher sphere of associations by the dignity of the principles which they were applied to adorn. Metaphor the strength of poetry; simile its weakness. Something like this is always the true function of the imagination in poetry, and dramatic poetry in particular; and it is also the test which tries the presence of the faculty; metaphor indicates its strength, and simile its weakness. Fletcher is diffuse in description and simile, loses the original thought in it, Nothing can be more different from this, or farther inferior to it, than the style of a poet who turns aside in search of description, and indulges in simile preferably to the brevity of metaphor, to whom perhaps a poetical picture originally suggested itself as the decoration of a striking thought, but who allowed himself to be captivated by the beauty of the suggested image, till he forgot the thought which had given it birth, and on its connexion with which its highest excellence depended. is poor in metaphor, and picturesque. Such was Fletcher, whose style is poor in metaphor. His descriptions are sometimes beautifully romantic; but even then the effect of the whole is often picturesque rather than poetically touching; and it is evident that lengthened description can still less frequently be dramatic. In his descriptions, it is observable that the poetical relations introduced in illustration [17:1]are usually few, the character of the leading subject being relied on for producing the poetical effect. Fletcher's and Shakspere's descriptions contrasted. Fletcher's longest descriptions are but elegant outlines; Shakspeare's briefest metaphors are often finished paintings. Where Shakspeare is guilty of detailed description, he is very often laboured, cold, and involved; but his illustrative ideas are invariably copious, and it is often their superfluity which chiefly tends to mar the general effect. Metaphor in The Two Noble Kinsmen is Shakspere's. In the play that you are to examine, you will find a profusion of metaphor, which is undoubtedly the offspring of a different mind from Fletcher's; and both its excellence and its peculiarity of character seem to me to stamp it as Shakspeare's. I think the following passage cannot be mistaken, though the beginning is difficult, and the text perhaps incorrect.

Instances of Shakspere's metaphors.

They two have cab|ined
In many as dangerous, as poor a corn|er—

Peril and want contending, they have skiffed
Torrents, whose raging tyranny and pow|er
I' the least of these was dreadful; and they have
Fought out together where Death's self was lodged,
Yet Fate hath BROUGHT THEM OFF. Their knot of love,
Tied, weaved, ENTANGLED, with so true, so long,
And with a finger of so deep a cun|ning,
May be outworn, never undone. I think
Theseus cannot be umpire to himself,
Cleaving his conscience into twain, and do|ing
Each side like justice, which he loves best.—Act I. scene iii.

The play throughout will give you metaphors, like Shakspeare's in their frequency, like his in their tone and character, and like his in their occasional obscurity and blending together.

Shakspere's classical images.

We have been looking to Shakspeare's imagery. You will meet with classical images in the 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.' Do not allow any ill-applied notion of his want of learning to convert this into an argument against his authorship. You will recollect, that an attachment of this sort is very perceptible in Shakspeare's dramas, and pervades the whole thread of his youthful poems. It is indeed a prominent quality in the school of poetry, which prevailed during the earlier part of his life, perhaps during the whole of it. In his early days, the study of [18:1]Grecian and Latin literature in England may be said to have only commenced, and the scenery and figures of the classical mythology broke on the view of the student with all the force of novelty. Elizabethan literature tinged with classicism.All the literature of that period is tinged with classicism to a degree which in our satiated times is apt to seem pedantic. It infected writers of all kinds and classes: translations were multiplied, and a familiarity with classical tales and history was sought after or affected even by those who had no access to the original language. Shakspeare clearly stood in this latter predicament, his knowledge of Latin certainly not exceeding that of a schoolboy: but the translated classics enabled him to acquire the facts, and he shared the taste of the age to its full extent. Shakspere's classical allusions.His admiration of the classical writers is vouched by the subjects and execution of his early poems, by numerous allusions in his dramas, particularly his histories, by the subjects chosen for some

of his plays, by one or two imitations of the translated Latin poets,[19:1] and by many exotic forms in his language, derived from the same secondary source. Correct tameness is the usual character of classical allusion in authors well versed in classical studies. Milton's classical allusions. Fletcher's.Even Milton, who has drawn the most exquisite images of this kind, has sometimes remembered only, where he should have invented: and Fletcher, whom we have especially to consider, is no exception to the rule; his many classical illustrations are invariably cold and poor. Shakspere's treatment of mythology. Shakspeare's mythological images have something singular in them. They are incorrect as transcripts of the originals, but admirable if examined without such reference; they are highly-coloured paintings whose subjects are taken from the simplicity of some antique statue. His Venus and Adonis. The 'Venus and Adonis' has some fine and some overcharged pictures thus formed from the hints which he derived from his books.[19:2] He received the mythological images but imperfectly, and his fancy was stimulated without being [19:3]clogged. Shakspere's treatment of classical mythology;He stood but at the entrance of those visionary forests, within whose glades the heroes and divinities of ancient faith reposed; he looked through a glimmering and uncertain light, and caught only glimpses of the sanctity of that world of wonders: and it was with an imagination heated by the flame of mystery and partial ignorance that he turned away from the scene so imperfectly revealed, to brood on the beauty of its broken contours, and allow fancy to create magnificence richer than memory ever saw. The occurrence of classical allusions here, therefore, affords no reason for doubting his authorship even of those passages in which they are found: and if we could trace any of his singularities in the images which we have, the argument in his favour would be strengthened by these. Most of the allusions are too slightly sketched to permit this; but one or two are like him in their unfaithfulness. We have "Mars' drum" in the 'Venus and Adonis'; and here beauty is described as able to make him spurn it: the altar of the same

deity is alluded to as the scene of a Grecian marriage. The "Nemean lion's hide" is here, as his nerve in 'Hamlet.' specially in Arcite's prayer in Act V. scene i. But the most characteristic use of this sort of imagery is in the prayer in the first scene of the Fifth Act. This scene is certainly Shakspere's. The whole tenor of the language, the solemnity and majesty of the tone of thought, the piling up of the heap of metaphors and images, and the boldness and admirable originality of their conception, all these are Shakspeare's; and the fact of this accumulation of feeling, thought, and imagination, being employed to create, out of a fragmentary classical outline, a picture both new in its features and gorgeously magnificent in its filling up, is strongly indicative of his hand, and strikingly resembles his mode of dealing with such subjects elsewhere.

Shakspere's tendency to reflection.

You will be furnished with a rule to guide your decision on many passages of the drama otherwise doubtful, by having your notice slightly directed to what will fall more properly under our consideration when we look back on the general scope of the play,—I mean Shakspeare's prevailing tendency to reflection. The presence of a spirit of active and inquiring thought through every page of his writings is too evident to require any proof. It is exerted on every object which comes under his notice: it is serious when its theme is lofty; and when the subject is familiar, [20:1]it is contented to be shrewd. His own active and inquiring thought, is the only quality of his own that he's given all his characters. He has impressed no other of his own mental qualities on all his characters: this quality colours every one of them. It is one to which poetry is apt to give a very subordinate place: and, in most poets, fancy is the predominating power; because, immeasurably as that faculty in them is beneath its unequalled warmth in Shakspeare, yet intellect in them is comparatively even weaker. With inferior poets, particularly the dramatic, inflation of feeling and profusion of imagery are the alternate disguises which conceal poverty of thought. Fletcher's thought, small beside Shakspere's.Fletcher is a poet of much and sterling merit; but his fund of thought is small indeed when placed beside Shakspeare's. Shakspere's worldly wisdom, and solemn thought. He has, indeed, very little of Shakspeare's practical, searching, worldly wisdom, and none of that solemnity of thought with which he penetrates into his loftier themes of reflection. Shakspere's Imagination the handmaid of his Understanding.This quality in Shakspeare is usually relieved by poetical decoration: Imagination is active powerfully

and unceasingly, but she is rebuked by the presence of a mightier influence; she is but the handmaid of the active and piercing Understanding; and the images which are her offspring serve but as the breeze to the river, which stirs and ripples its surface, but is not the power which impels its waters to the sea. As you go through this drama, you will not only find a sobriety of tone pervading the more important parts of it, but activity of intellect constantly exerted. Note the mass of general truths and maxims in this part of The Two Noble Kinsmen. But what demands particular notice is, the mass of general truths, of practical, moral, or philosophical maxims, which, issuing from this reflective turn of mind, are scattered through Shakspeare's writings as thick as the stars in heaven. The occurrence of them is characteristic of his temper of mind; and there is something marked in the manner of the adages themselves. They are often solemn, usually grave, but always pointed, compressed, and energetic;—they vary in subject, from familiar facts and rules for social life to the enunciation of philosophical truths and the exposition of moral duty. You will meet with them in this drama in all their shapes and in every page [of Shakspere's part of it].

Shakspere's reach of thought.

Shakspeare's reach and comprehension of thought is as remarkable as its activity, while Fletcher's is by no means great, and in this respect Massinger comes much nearer to him. The simplest fact has many dependent qualities, and may be related by [21:1]men of different degrees of intellect with circumstances differing infinitely, a confined mind seeing only its plainest qualities, while a stronger one grasps and combines many distant relations. Shakspeare's love of brevity would not have produced obscurity nearly so often, had it not been aided by his width of mental vision. Passages in The Two Noble Kinsmen too comprehensive for Fletcher. There are many passages in the play before us which seem to emanate from a mind of more comprehension than Fletcher's. Look at the following lines. The idea to be expressed was a very simple one. Hippolita is entreating her husband to leave her, and depart to succour the distressed ladies who kneel at her feet and his; and she wishes to say, that though, as a bride, she was loth to lose her husband's presence, yet she felt that she should act blameably if she detained him. Fletcher would have expressed no idea beyond that; but on it alone he would have employed six lines and two or three

comparisons. Hear how many cognate ideas present themselves to Shakspeare's mind in expressing the thought. The passage is obscure, but not the less like Shakspeare on that account.

Shakspere's pregnancy and obscurity.

Though much unlike|ly
I should be so transported, as much sor|ry
I should be such a suitor; yet I think,
Did I not, by the abstaining of my joy,
Which breeds a deeper longing, cure the sur|feit
That craves a present medicine, I should pluck
All ladies' scandal on me—Act I. scene i.

It would be well if Shakspeare's continual inclination to thought gave rise to no worse faults than occasional obscurity. It was not to be hoped that it should not produce others. His tone of thinking could not be always high and serious; and even when it flowed in a lofty channel, its uninterrupted stream could not always be pure. Shakspere's conceits and quibbles.His judgment often fails to perform its part, and he is guilty of conceit and quibble, not merely in his comic vein, but in his most deeply tragical situations. He has indeed one powerful excuse; he had universal example in both respects to justify or betray him. But he has likewise another plea, that his constant activity of mind, and the wideness of its province, exposed him to pe[22:1]culiar risks. A mind always in action must sometimes act wrongly; and the constant exercise of the creative powers of the mind dulls the edge of the corrective. It was not strange that he who was unwearied in tracing the manifestations of that spirit of likeness which pervades nature, should often mistake a resemblance in name for a community of essence,—that he whose mind was sensible to the most delicate differences, should sometimes fancy he saw distinction where there was none;—it was not strange, however much to be regretted, that he who left the smooth green slopes of fancy to clamber among the craggy steeps of thought, should often stumble in his dizzy track, either in looking up to the perilous heights above, or downwards on the morning landscape beneath him. Shakspere's faults. While the most glaring errors of the tropical Euphues are strained allegorical conceits, Shakspeare's fault is oftener the devising of subtle and unreal distinctions, or the ringing of fantastical changes upon words. Lyly's faults.

Lily's error was one merely of taste; Shakspeare's was one of the judgment, and the heavier of the two, but still the error of a stronger mind than the other; for the judgment cannot act till the understanding has given it materials to work upon, and those fanciful writers who do not reflect at all, are in no danger of reflecting wrongly. Shakspere's evil genius triumphs in his puns. Shakspeare's evil genius triumphs when it tempts him to a pun—it enjoys a less complete but more frequent victory in suggesting an antithesis; but it often happens that this dangerous turn of mind does not carry him so far as to be of evil consequence. It aids its quickness and directness of mental view, in giving to his style a pointed epigrammatic terseness which is quite its own, and a frequent weight and effect which no other equals. Where, however, this antithetic tendency is allowed to approach the serious scenes, it throws over them an icy air which is very injurious, while it often gives the comic ones a ponderousness which is altogether singular, and but imperfectly accordant with the nature of comic dialogue. Characteristics of his wit. The arrows of Shakspeare's wit are not the lightly feathered shafts which Fletcher discharges, and as little are they the iron-headed bolts which fill the quiver of Jonson; but they are weapons forged from materials unknown to the others, and in an armoury to which they had no access; their execution is [23:1]resistless when they reach their aim, but they are covered with a golden massiveness of decoration which sometimes impedes the swiftness of their flight. But whether the effect of these peculiarities of Shakspeare be good or evil, their use in helping an identification of his manner is very great. Contrast with Fletcher's.Nothing can be more directly opposite to them than the slow elegance and want of pointedness which we find in Fletcher, who is not free from conceits, but does not express them with Shakspeare's hard quaintness, while he is comparatively quite guiltless of plays on words. The following instances are only a few among many in the present drama, which seem to be perfectly in Shakspeare's manner, and to most of which Fletcher's works could certainly furnish no parallel, either in subject or in expression.

Passages by Shakspere, not Fletcher.

Oh, my petition was
Set down in ice, which, by hot grief uncan|died,
Melts into tears; so sorrow, wanting form,
Is pressed with deeper matter.—Act I. scene i.

Theseus speaks thus of the Kinsmen lying before him in the field of battle desperately wounded:—

Shakspere metaphors.

Rather than have them
Freed of this plight, and in their morning state,
Sound and at liberty, I would them dead:
But forty thousand fold we had rather have | them[24:1]
Prisoners to us than Death. Bear them speedi|ly
From our kind air, to them unkind, and min|ister
What man to man may do.—Act I. scene iv.

A lady hunting is addressed in this strain:

Oh jewel
O' the wood, O' the world!—Act III. scene i.

In the same scene one knight says to another,—

Shakspere metaphor.

This question sick between us,
By bleeding must be cured.

[24:2]And the one, left in the wood, says to the other, who goes to the presence of the lady whom both love—

You talk of feeding me, to breed me strength;
You are going now to look upon a sun,
That strengthens what it looks on.—Act III. scene i.

The two knights, about to meet in battle, address each other in these words:—

Pal. Think you but thus;
That there were aught in me which strove to shew
Mine enemy in this business,—were't one eye
Against another, arm opposed by arm,
I would destroy the offender;—coz, I would,
Though parcel of myself: then from this, gath|er
How I should tender you!

Arc. I am in la|bour
To push your name, your ancient love, our kin|dred,
Out of my memory, and i' the self-same place
To seat something I would confound.—Act V. scene i.

And afterwards their lady-love, listening to the noise of the fight, speaks thus:—

Shakspere metaphor.

Each stroke laments
The place whereon it falls, and sounds more like
A bell than blade.—Act V. scene v.

Shakspeare's fondness for thought, the tendency of that train of thought to run into the abstract, and his burning imagination, have united in producing another quality which strongly marks his style, and is more pleasing than those last noticed. Shakspere's personification of mental powers, passions. He abounds in Personification, and delights particularly in personifications of mental powers, passions, and relations. In Venus and Adonis. This metaphysico-poetical mood of musing tinges his miscellaneous poems deeply, especially the Venus and Adonis, which is almost lyrical throughout; and even in his dramas the style is often like one of Collins's exquisite odes. Fletcher uses it but little. This quality is common to him with the narrative poets of his age, from whom [25:1]he received it; but it is adopted to no material extent by any of his dramatic contemporaries, and by Fletcher less than any. Shakspere's distinctive use of Personification.The other dramatists, indeed, are full of metaphysical expressions, of the names of affections and faculties of the soul; but they do not go on as Shakspeare's kindling fancy impelled him to do, to look on them as independent and energetic existences. This figure is one of the most common means by which he elevates himself into the tragic and poetic sphere, the compromise between his reason and his imagination, the felicitous mode by which he reconciles his fondness for abstract thought, with his allegiance to the genius of poetry. The Two Noble Kinsmen is rich in personifications which must be Shakspere's. 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is rich in personifications both of mental qualities and others, which have all Shakspeare's tokens about them, and vary infinitely, from the uncompleted hint to the perfected portrait.

Instances of these.

Oh Grief and Time,
Fearful consumers, you will all devour!—Act I. scene i.

Peace might purge
For her repletion, and retain anew
Her charitable heart, now hard, and harsh|er
Than Strife or War could be.—Act I. scene ii.

A most unbounded tyrant, whose success
Makes heaven unfeared, and villainy assured
Beyond its power there's nothing,—almost puts
Faith in a fev|er,| and deifies alone
Voluble Chance.—Act I. scene ii.

This funeral path brings to your household graves;
Joy seize on you again—Peace sleep with him!

Act I. scene v.

Content and Ang|er
In me have but one face.—Act III. scene i.

Force and great Feat
Must put my garland on, where she will stick
The queen of flowers.—Act V. scene i.

Instances of Shakspere's Personification in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Thou (Love) mayst force the king
To be his subject's vassal, and induce
Stale Gravity to dance;—the pollèd bachelor,
Whose youth, (like wanton boys through bon|fires,)
[26:1]Has skipt thy flame, at seventy thou canst catch,
And make him, to the scorn of his hoarse throat,
Abuse young lays of love.—Act V. scene ii.

Mercy and manly Cour|age
Are bed fellows in his visage.—Act V. scene v.

Our Reasons are not proph|ets,
When oft our Fancies are.—Act V. scene v.

The hints which you have now perused, are not, I repeat, offered to you as by any means exhausting the elements of Shakspeare's manner of writing. They are meant only to bring to your memory such of his qualities of style as chiefly distinguish him from Fletcher, and are most prominently present in the play we are examining. In bits of the Two Noble Kinsmen several of Shakspere's distinctive qualities are often combin'd. When we shall see those qualities instanced singly, they will afford a proof of Shakspeare's authorship: but that proof will receive an incalculable accession of strength when, as will more frequently happen, we shall have several of them displayed at once in the same passages. Your recollection of them will serve us as the lines of a map would in a journey on foot through a wild forest country: the beauty of the landscape will tempt us not seldom to diverge and lose sight of our path, and we shall need their guidance for enabling us to regain it.

The story of Palamon and Arcite.

The story of Palamon and Arcite is a celebrated one, and, besides its appearance here, has been taken up by other two of our greatest English poets. Chaucer borrowed the tale from the Teseide of Boccaccio: it then received a dramatic form in this play; and from Chaucer's antique sketch it was afterwards decorated with the

trappings of heroic rhyme, by one who fell on evil days, the lofty and unfortunate Dryden. Character of the story of Palamon and Arcite. It treats of a period of ancient and almost fabulous history, which originally belonged to the classical writers, but had become familiar in the chivalrous poetry of the middle ages; and retaining the old historical characters, it intersperses with them new ones wholly imaginary, and, both in the Knightes Tale and in the play, preserves the rich and anomalous magnificence of the Gothic cos[27:1]tume. Theseus the centre of The Two Noble Kinsmen. The character round which the others are grouped, one which Shakspeare has introduced in another of his works, is the heroic Theseus, whom the romances and chronicles dignify with the modern title of Duke of Athens; and in this story he is connected with the tragical war of the Seven against Thebes, one of the grandest subjects of the ancient Grecian poetry.

First Act of Two Noble Kinsmen Shakspere's.

The whole of the First Act may be safely pronounced to be Shakspeare's. The play opens with the bridal procession of Theseus and the fair Amazon Hippolita, whose young sister Emilia is the lady of the tale. While the marriage-song is singing, the train are met by three queens in mourning attire, who fall down at the feet of Theseus, Hippolita, and Emilia. They are the widows of three of the princes slain in battle before Thebes, and the conqueror Creon has refused the remains of the dead soldiers the last honour of a grave. The prayer of the unfortunate ladies to Theseus is, that he would raise his powerful arm to force from the tyrant the unburied corpses, that the ghosts of the dead may be appeased by the performance of fitting rites of sepulture. The duty which knighthood imposed on the Prince of Athens, is combated by his unwillingness to quit his bridal happiness; but generosity and self-denial at length obtain the victory, and he marches, with banners displayed, to attack the Thebans.

This scene bears decided marks of Shakspeare.—The lyrical pieces scattered through his plays are, whether successful or not, endowed with a stateliness of rhythm, an originality and clearness of imagery, and a nervous quaintness and pomp of language, which can scarcely be mistaken. The Bridal Song can't be Fletcher's. The Bridal Song which ushers in this play, has several of the marks of distinction, and is very unlike the more formal and polished rhymes of Fletcher.

Act I. sc. i.
The Bridal Song is Shakspere's.

* * * * *

Primrose, first-born child of Ver,
Merry springtime's harbinger,
With her bells dim:
Oxlips in their cradles growing,
Marigolds on death-beds blowing,
Lark-heels trim:
All, dear Nature's children sweet,
Lie 'fore bride and bridegroom's feet,
[28:1]Blessing their sense:
Not an angel of the air,
Bird melodious or bird fair,
Be absent hence!

* * * * *

Dialogue in I. i. has the characteristics of Shakspere's style: is crowded,
obscure,
alliterative,
clear and yet confus'd,
has fulness and variety,
originality and true poetry.

But the dialogue which follows is strikingly characteristic. It has sometimes Shakspeare's identical images and words: it has his quaint force and sententious brevity, crowding thoughts and fancies into the narrowest space, and submitting to obscurity in preference to feeble dilation: it has sentiments enunciated with reference to subordinate relations, which other writers would have expressed with less grasp of thought: it has even Shakspeare's alliteration, and one or two of his singularities in conceit: it has clearness in the images taken separately, and confusion from the prodigality with which one is poured out after another, in the heat and hurry of imagination: it has both fulness of illustration, and a variety which is drawn from the most distant sources; and it has, thrown over all, that air of originality and that character of poetry, the principle of which is often hid when their presence and effect are most quickly and instinctively perceptible.

1 Queen. (To Theseus.) For pity's sake, and true gentility's,
Hear and respect me!

2 Queen. (To Hippolita.) For your mother's sake,
And as you wish your womb may thrive with fair | ones,
Hear and respect me!

3 Queen. (To Emilia.) Now for the love of him whom Jove hath marked
The honour of your bed, and for the sake
Of clear virginity, be advocate
For us and our distresses! This good deed
Shall rase you, out of the Book of Trespasses,
All you are set down there.

These latter lines are of a character which is perfectly and singularly Shakspeare's. Shakspere's gravity and seriousness. The shade of gravity which so usually darkens his poetry, is often heightened to the most solemn seriousness. The religious thought presented here is most alien from Fletcher's turn of thought.—The ensuing speech offers much of Shakspeare. Shakspere sometimes harsh and coarse. His energy, sometimes confined within [29:1]due limits, often betrays him into harshness; and his liking for familiarity of imagery and expression sometimes makes him careless though both should be coarse, a fault which we find here, and of which Fletcher is not guilty. His bold coinages of words: Here also are more than one of those bold coinages of words, forced on a mind for whose force of conception common terms were too weak.

to urn ashes;
to chapel bones.

1 Queen. We are three queens, whose sovrans fell before
The wrath of cruel Creon; who endured
The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites,
And pecks of crows, in the foul fields of Thebes.
He will not suffer us to burn their bones,
To urn their ashes, nor to take the offence
Of mortal loathesomeness from the blest eye
Of holy Phœbus, but infects the air
With stench of our slain lords. Oh, pity, Duke!
Thou purger[29:2] of the earth! draw thy fear'd sword,
That does good turns i' the world: give us the bones
Of our dead kings, that we may chapel them!
And, of thy boundless goodness, take some note,
That for our crowned heads we have no roof
Save this, which is the lion's and the bear's,
And vault to every thing.

Shakspere reflective.

We now begin to trace more and more that reflecting tendency which is so deeply imprinted on Shakspeare's writings:—

Theseus. ...
King Capanëus[29:3] was your lord: the day
That he should marry you, at such a seas|on
As it is now with me, I met your groom
By Mars's altar. You were that time fair;

Not Juno's mantle fairer than your tress|es,
Nor in more bounty spread: your wheaten wreath
Was then nor threshed nor blast|ed |: Fortune, at you,
Dimpled her cheek with smiles: Hercules our kins|man
(Then weaker than your eyes) laid by his club,—
He tumbled down upon his Némean hide,
[30:1]And swore his sinews thawed. O, Grief and Time,
Fearful consumers, you will all devour!

1 Queen. Oh, I hope some god,
Some god hath put his mercy in your man|hood,
Whereto he'll infuse power, and press you forth,
Our undertaker!

Theseus. Oh, no knees; none, wid|ow!
Unto the helmeted Bellona use | them,
And pray for me, your sol|dier.|—Troubled I am. (Turns away.)

A Shakspere fancy.
A Shakspere simile.

2 Queen. Honoured Hippolita, ...
... dear glass of la|dies!
Bid him, that we, whom flaming war hath scorch'd,
Under the shadow of his sword may cool us.
Require him, he advance it o'er our heads;
Speak it in a woman's key[30:2], like such a wom|an
As any of us three: weep ere you fail;
Lend us a knee;—
But touch the ground for us no longer time
Than a dove's motion when the head's pluckt off:
Tell him, if he i' the blood-siz'd field lay swol|len,
Shewing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,
What you would do!

* * * * *

Emilia. Pray stand up;
Your grief is written on your cheek.

Shakspere.

3 Queen. Oh, woe!
You cannot read it there: there,[30:3] through my tears,
Like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream,
You may behold it. Lady, lady, alack!
He that will all the treasure know o' the earth,
Must know the centre too: he that will fish
For my least minnow, let him lead his line
To catch one at my heart. Oh, pardon me!
Extremity, that sharpens sundry wits,
Makes me a fool.

Emilia. Pray you, say nothing; pray | you!
Who cannot feel nor see the rain, being in't,
Knows neither wet nor dry. If that you were
The ground-piece of some painter, I would buy | you,
To instruct me 'gainst a capital grief indeed;
(Such heart-pierced demonstration;) but, alas!

Being a natural sister of our sex,
Your sorrow beats so ardently upon | me,
That it shall make a counter-reflect against
My brother's heart, and warm it to some pit|y,
Though it were made of stone: Pray have good com|fort!

* * * * *

Shakspere simile,

[31:1]1 Queen. (To Theseus.) ... Remember that your fame
Knolls in the ear o' the world: what you do quickl|y,
Is not done rashly; your first thought, is more
Than others' labour'd meditance; your premed|itating,
More than their actions: but, (oh, Jove!) your ac|tions,
Soon as they move, as ospreys do the fish,
Subdue before they touch. Think, dear duke, think
What beds our slain kings have!

metaphor.

2 Queen. What griefs, our beds,
That our slain kings have none.

Theseus is moved by their prayers, but, loth to leave the side of his newly wedded spouse, contents himself with directing his chief captain to lead the Athenian army against the tyrant. The queens redouble their entreaties for his personal aid.

Shakspere personification.

2 Queen. We come unseasonably; but when could Grief
Cull out, as unpang'd Judgment can, fitt'st time
For best solicitation!

Theseus. Why, good la|dies,
This is a service whereto I am go|ing,
Greater than any war: it more imports | me
Than all the actions that I have foregone,
Or futurely can cope.

Shakspere metaphor,
force.

1 Queen. The more proclaim|ing
Our suit shall be neglected. When her arms,
Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall
By warranting moonlight corslet thee,—oh, when
Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall
Upon thy tasteful lips,—what wilt thou think
Of rotten kings or blubberd queens? what care,
For what thou feel'st not; what thou feel'st, being a|ble
To make Mars spurn his drum?—Oh, if thou couch
But one night with her, every hour in't will
Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and
Thou shall remember nothing more than what
That banquet bids thee to.

* * * * *

Theseus. Pray stand up:
I am entreating of myself to do

That which you kneel to have me. Perithous!
Lead on the bride! Get you, and pray the gods
For success and return; omit not any thing
In the pretended celebration. Queens!
Follow your soldier....
... [32:1](To Hippolita.) Since that our theme is haste,
I stamp this kiss upon thy currant lip:
Sweet, keep it as my token!...

Shakspere metaphor.

1 Queen. Thus dost thou still make good the tongue o' the world.

2 Queen. And earn'st a deity equal with Mars.

Shakspere.

3 Queen. If not above him; for
Thou, being but mortal, mak'st affections bend
To godlike honours; they themselves, some say,
Groan under such a mas|tery.|

Theseus. As we are men,
Thus should we do: being sensually subdued,
We lose our human title. Good cheer, la|dies!
Now turn we towards your comforts. (Exeunt.)

Act I. scene ii.

The second scene introduces the heroes of the piece, Palamon and Arcite. They are two youths of the blood-royal of Thebes, who follow the banners of their sovereign with a sense that obedience is their duty, but under a sorrowful conviction that his cause is unjust, and their country rotten at the core. The scene is a dialogue between them, occupied in lamentations and repinings over the dissolute manners of their native Thebes. has the characteristics of Shakspere. Its broken versification points out Shakspeare; the quaintness of some conceits is his; and several of the phrases and images have much of his pointedness, brevity, or obscurity. The scene, though not lofty in tone, does not want interest, and contains some extremely original illustrations. But quotations will be multiplied abundantly before we have done; and their number must not be increased by the admission of any which are not either unusually good or very distinctly characteristic of their author. Some lines of the scene have been already given.