much later age. Though the offspring of genius run mad, they were, nevertheless, the offspring of genius; and the divinity that always stirs within genius was sure sometimes to speak out through them. Sparks of celestial fire dwelt in them, but so buried beneath cartloads of ashes and dirt, as to be hopelessly hidden from the general eye. Writers pandering to the passions of the multitude for bread or for noise, and trusting to the inexhaustible abundance of their stores, stopped not to assoil the finer elements of the baser alloy that encumbered them. In short, the English stage presented but a prodigious overgrowth of loathsome and poisonous weeds, whose rankness served but to approve the richness and raciness of the soil; and the gifted eye had not yet come, which was to detect and rescue those numerous herbs of heavenly virtues that redeemed the crop from utter worthlessness. That originality pervaded, or rather, constituted, the entire growth, probably need not be said; but it was originality divorced from excellence; without art, or order, or law. Nay, they were obliged to be original, for it is not in the nature of the human mind long to preserve prototypes for such monstrous creations; so that if their like ever existed before, they could not possibly have outlived the time that produced them. Genius, unwilling to be instructed by classical models, yet unable to attain excellence without such instruction; genius struggling through manifold and manifest obstructions of ignorance and depravity; genius huddling together a few scenes, peopled with strong but crude conceptions, and filled with low, grovelling humour, and truculent, stormful bombast, mixed with occasional bursts of the noblest

poetry, and winding up in pell-mell confusion, gave to a clapping and shouting mob-audience a chaos utterly incapable of a catastrophe.

Such, substantially, appears to have been the condition of the English stage, when Shakspeare entered the theatre. It was out of this dark, pestiferous, and lethiferous imbroglio of earth and heaven, of dirt and divinity, that the myriad-minded genius of England was to create the bright, breathing, blossoming world of a national drama, the finest and noblest ever seen. At the time of which I am speaking, it was customary for the playwrights, acting separately or conjointly, to get up rifaccimentos of these old plays. In this way, neglected stock-copies, as they were called, after having been justly consigned to oblivion, were drawn out from the obscurity of the theatrical wardrobe, and came under the soft pencillings or sharp prunings of some of the greatest names on the roll of English literature. Let us imagine Shakspeare, utterly unconscious of his yet slumbering powers, and merely pursuing his managerial duties or interests, bending over the dusty manuscript of one of these wretched performances. Under the impulse of his first creative transport, seizing the pen, he hurries whole scenes into deepest night, and proceeds to replace them with his own intense, burning conceptions. Under his pencil, pregnant with celestial hues, the canvas of the fable before him, cleared of its wretched daubs, becomes almost divine; and the genius of poesy, hovering round his movements,

"Adds the gleam,

The light that never was on sea or land,

The consecration and the poet's dream."

That happy hour was the obscure birth of his immortality. Without any throes of labour, or flutterings of vanity, or congratulations of friends, he meekly and quietly ushered into being the first fruits of his genius. Hitherto English literature had no Shakspeare, and was poor; henceforth it has a Shakspeare, and is unspeakably rich.

Had not Shakspeare's creative faculties been thus induced to brood over this chaotic heap of materials, until the mass became alive with the divinity issuing from him, his powers might have remained unknown both to himself and to the world. Engrossed in his theatrical labours, regardless of fame, and ignorant of his powers, he probably had little time, and less inclination, and no encouragement, to engage in the inventing of fables and the constructing of plots. Without the artist's hope, he was therefore without the artist's ambition; and probably had not presumed or suspected there was virtue enough in his pencil to pay the weaving of the canvas. To my mind, there is nothing in Shakspeare's character more admirable than that, without any of the modern cant about the artist's mission, as if this ought to exempt him from the ordinary cares and concerns of life; never mistaking the suggestions of vanity for the inspirations of genius, nor fancying himself honored by Heaven with any extraordinary messages to mankind, nor fearing lest he should fall below the work whereunto he was sent ;-thus nursing pride under an affectation of duty, and pleading conscience in behalf of conceit, and seeking, or sneaking, for some sphere commensurate with his great gifts ;-but acting as if on purpose to exemplify, that "wisdom is ofttimes nearer

when we stoop than when we soar," he should have poured forth all the glory of his genius in striving simply to gain an honest and an honorable livelihood. How many of those foul, misshapen, monstrous forms he drew forth from their dark prison-house, and moulded into the beauty, and animated with the breath of his genius, cannot be ascertained. Traces of his inimitable hand are perceptible in many plays published under the names of contemporary dramatists; several of those published in his own name, are known to have been regenerations of pre-existing stock-copies; and some which drew vitality from his embraces perished in the subsequent wreck of theatrical wealth. At the glance of his mind, the ready-made scene became the very sphere of humanity; and all the persons of the drama, together with their appropriate surroundings, came trotting from his imagination, seemingly of their own accord, and as if by the express ordering of nature herself. Viewing an old fable or play with the prophetic eye of genius, he at once saw all that it had, and all that it wanted; measured its utmost capabilities, and supplied its utmost demands. Not venturing, perhaps, to undertake the drudgery, he almost unconsciously achieved the divinity, of his art. With the skeleton of a drama before him, which another could furnish as well, he could clothe it with flesh and inform it with life, which none could furnish but himself. Its characterless personages he could endow with individuality; its wooden faces he could transfigure into faces of flesh and blood, bursting with expression and life; its sleepy dialogue he could electrify with passion, and melt its frozen numbers into liquid music : scarifying its tumidities, and clip

ping its excrescences, and moulding its disjointed members into an organic whole; now kindling a hidden spark into a blaze of splendour, now expanding an obscure bud into a glorious blossom, now letting in a flood of overpowering humour, or a gush of overpowering pathos, as the character or the occasion required;—he could endow it at once with all the truth of nature and all the beauty of art.

Meanwhile, there arose two parties among the playwrights, one thinking to revive the Classic drama, another to create what has since been called the Gothic, or Romantic drama. At the head of the former party was Jonson, who, though ten years younger than Shakspeare, begun his career as a writer about the same time. Being a profound student and ardent admirer of the ancients, this great man very naturally regarded the classic models as the only form compatible with dramatic excellence. His masculine judgment, instead of being the joint-workman of his creative faculties, became their king, if not indeed their tyrant. His vast learning, instead of cheerfully serving, gave law to his powerful genius; whereas genius finds its true perfection in being a law unto itself. His dramas, carefully yet freely moulded on the classic models, are doubtless among the best specimens we have in their kind; for the soul of poetry, which dwelt in him, was bound to shine through whatever form he chose to embody it in. In the noble dedication of one of his noblest performances, he says, "I have herein laboured to restore, not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal end of poesy, to inform men