he soared longest and best on unborrowed plumes. The only passage of a very Shakspearian cast in this comedy is the one in which the Abbess, with admirable characteristic artifice, makes Adriana confess her own misconduct in driving her husband mad.

"ABBESS. How long hath this possession held the man?
ADRIANA. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,
And much, much different from the man he was;

But, till this afternoon, his passion

Ne'er brake into extremity of rage.

ABBESS. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck at sea?
Bury'd some dear friend? Hath not else his eye

Stray'd his affection in unlawful love?

A sin prevailing much in youthful men,
Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing

Which of these sorrows is he subject to?

ADRIANA. To none of these, except it be the last :
Namely, some love, that drew him oft from home.

ABBESS. You should for that have reprehended him.
ADRIANA. Why, so I did.

ABBESS. But not rough enough.

ADRIANA. As roughly as my modesty would let me.

ABBESS. Hapily, in private.

ADRIANA. And in assemblies too.

ABBESS. Ay, but not enough.

ADRIANA. It was the copy of our conference :

In bed, he slept not for my urging it;

At board, he fed not for my urging it;
Alone it was the subject of my theme;
In company, I often glanc'd at it;

Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.

ABBESS. And therefore came it that the man was mad :

The venomed clamors of a jealous woman

Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.

It seems, his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing:

And therefore comes it that his head is light.

Thou say'st his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings:

Unquiet meals make ill digestions,

Therefore the raging fire of fever bred:

And what's a fever but a fit of madness?

Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls:
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue,

But moody and dull melancholy,

Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair;

And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life;
In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest
To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast:
The consequence is then, thy jealous fits
Have scar'd thy husband from the use of wits.

LUCIANA. She never reprehended him but mildly,
When he demeaned himself rough, rude and wildly. —
Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?
ADRIANA. She did betray me to my own reproof."

Pinch the conjuror is also an excrescence not to be found in Plautus. He is indeed a very formidable anachronism.

"They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac'd villain,

A meer anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler and a fortune-teller,

A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,

A living dead man."

This is exactly like some of the Puritanical portraits to be met

with in Hogarth.

DOUBTFUL PLAYS OF

OF

SHAKSPEARE.

WE shall give for the satisfaction of the reader what the celebrated German critic, Schlegel, says on this subject, and then add a very few remarks of our own.

"All the editors, with the exception of Capell, are unanimous in rejecting Titus Andronicus as unworthy of Shakspeare, though they always allow it to be printed with the other pieces, as the scape-goat, as it were, of their abusive criticism. The correct method in such an investigation is first to examine into the external grounds, evidences, &c., and to weigh their worth; and then to adduce the internal reasons derived from the quality of the work. The critics of Shakspeare follow a course directly the reverse of this; they set out with a preconceived opinion against a piece, and seek, in justification of this opinion, to render the historical grounds suspicious, and to set them aside. Titus Andronicus is to be found in the first folio edition of Shakspeare's works, which it is known was conducted by Heminge and Condell, for many years his friends, and fellow-managers of the same theatre. Is it possible to persuade ourselves that they would not have known if a piece in their repertory did or did not actually belong to Shakspeare? And are we to lay to the charge of these honorable men a designed fraud in this single case, when we know that they did not show themselves so very desirous of scraping everything together which went by the

name of Shakspeare, but, as it appears, merely gave those plays. of which they had manuscripts in hand? Yet the following circumstance is still stronger: George Meres, a contemporary and admirer of Shakspeare, mentions Titus Andronicus in an enumeration of his works, in the year 1598. Meres was personally acquainted with the poet, and so very intimately, that the latter read over to him his sonnets before they were printed. I cannot conceive that all the critical scepticism in the world would be sufficient to get over such a testimony.

"This tragedy, it is true, is framed according to a false idea of the tragic, which by an accumulation of cruelties and enormities degenerates into the horrible, and yet leaves no deep impression behind the story of Tereus and Philomela is heightened and overcharged under other names, and mixed up with the repast of Atreus and Thyestes, and many other incidents. In detail there is no want of beautiful lines, bold images, nay, even features which betray the peculiar conception of Shakspeare. Among these we may reckon the joy of the treacherous Moor at the blackness and ugliness of his child begot in adultery; and in the compassion of Titus Andronicus, grown childish through grief, for a fly which had been struck dead, and his rage afterwards when he imagines he discovers in it his black enemy, we recognize the future poet of Lear. Are the critics afraid that Shakspeare's fame would be injured, were it established that in his early youth he ushered into the world a feeble and immature work? Was Rome less the conqueror of the world because Remus could leap over its first walls? Let any one place himself in Shakspeare's situation at the commencement of his career. He found only a few indifferent models, and yet these met with the most favorable reception, because men are never difficult to please in the novelty of an art before their taste has become fastidious from choice and abundance. Must not this situation have had its influence on him before he learned to make higher demands on himself, and by digging deeper in his own mind, discovered the richest veins of a noble metal? It is even highly probable that he must have made several failures before getting into the right path. Genius is in a certain sense infallible, and has nothing to learn;

but art is to be learned, and must be acquired by practice and experience. In Shakspeare's acknowledged works we find hardly any traces of his apprenticeship, and yet an apprenticeship he certainly had. This every artist must have, and especially in a period where he has not before him the example of a school already formed. I consider it as extremely probable, that Shakspeare began to write for the theatre at a much earlier period than the one which is generally stated, namely, the year 1590. It appears that, as early as the year 1584, when only twenty years of age, he had left his paternal home and repaired to London. Can we imagine that such an active head would remain idle for six whole years without making any attempt to emerge by his talents from an uncongenial situation? That in the dedication of the poem of Venus and Adonis he calls it 'the first heir of his invention,' proves nothing against the supposition. It was the first which he printed; he might have composed it at an earlier period; perhaps, also, he did not include theatrical labors, as they then possessed but little literary dignity. The earlier Shakspeare began to compose for the theatre, the less are we enabled to consider the immaturity and imperfection of a work as a proof of its spuriousness, in opposition to historical evidence, if we only find in it prominent features of his mind. Several of the works rejected as spurious may still have been produced in the period betwixt Titus Andronicus, and the earliest of the acknowledged pieces.

"At last, Steevens published seven pieces ascribed to Shakspeare in two supplementary volumes. It is to be remarked, that they all appeared in print in Shakspeare's life-time, with his name prefixed at full length. They are the following :—

"1. Locrine. The proofs of the genuineness of this piece are not altogether unambiguous; the grounds for doubt, on the other hand, are entitled to attention. However, this question is immediately connected with that respecting Titus Andronicus, and must be at the same time resolved in the affirmative or negative.

"2. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. This piece was acknowledged by Dryden, but as a youthful work of Shakspeare. It is most undoubtedly his, and it has been admitted into several of the