While you and can my soul the tale believe,
Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave
Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive!

Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine,
And joyless borders of the frozen Rhine.
Ah! may no cold e'er blast my dearest maid,
Nor pointed ice thy tender feet invade!

WARTON.

He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest of something that may solace or amuse him; he proposes happiness to himself, first in one scheme and then in another; and at last finds that nothing will satisfy:

Jam neque Hamadryades rursum, nec carmina nobis
Ipsa placent: ipsæ rursum concedite sylva.
Non illum nostri possunt mutare labores ;
Nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus,
Sithonia que nives hyemis subeamus aquosæ ;
Nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo,
Ethiopum versemus oves sub sidere Cancri,
Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori.

But now again no more the woodland maids,
Nor pastoral songs delight-Farewell, ye shades-
No toils of ours the cruel god can change,
Though lost in frozen deserts we should range;
Though we should drink where chilling Hebrus flows,
Endure bleak winter's blasts, and Thracian snows;
Or on hot India's plains our flocks should feed,
Where the parch'd elm declines his sickening head;
Beneath fierce-glowing Cancer's fiery beams,
Far from cool breezes and refreshing streams.
Love over all maintains resistless sway,
And let us love's all-conquering power obey.

WARTON.

But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth Pastoral, I cannot forbear to give the preference to the first, which is equally natural and more diversified. The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old companion at ease in the shade, while himself was driving his little flock he knew not whither, is

such as, with variation of circumstances, misery always utters at the sight of prosperity:

Nos patriæ fines, & dulcia linquimus arva;
Nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra,
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas.

We leave our country's bounds, our much lov'd plains; We from our country fly, unhappy swains!

You, Tit'rus, in the groves at leisure laid,

Teach Amaryllis' name to every shade.

WARTON.

His account of the difficulties of his journey, gives a very tender image of pastoral distress:

-En ipse capellas

Protenus æger ago: hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco :
Hic inter densas corylos modo namque gemellos,
Spem gregis, ah! silice in nuda connixa reliquit.

And lo! sad partner of the general care,
Weary and faint I drive my goats afar!
While scarcely this my leading hand sustains,
Tir'd with the way, and recent from her pains;
For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past,
On the bare flints her hapless twins she cast,
The hopes and promise of my ruin'd fold!

WARTON.

The description of Virgil's happiness in his little farm, combines almost all the images of rural pleasure; and he, therefore, that can read it with indifference, has no sense of pastoral poetry:

Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt,
Et tibi magna satis; quamvis lapis omnia nudus,
Limosoque palus obducat pascua junco,
Non insuela graves tentabunt pabulæ fœtas,
Nec mala vicini pecoris contagia lædent.
Fortunate senex, his inter flumina nota,
Et fontes sacros, frigus captabis opacum,
Hinc tibi, quæ semper vicino ab limite sepes,

Hyblais apibus florem depasta salicti,
Sæpe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro.
Hinc altâ sub rupe canet frondator ad auras ;
Nec tamen interea rauca, tura cura palumbes,
Nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo.

Happy old man! then still thy farms restor'd,
Enough for thee, shall bless thy frugal board.
What though rough stones the naked soil o'erspread,
Or marshy bulrush rear its wat'ry head,

No foreign food thy teeming ewes shall fear,
No touch contagious spread its influence here.
Happy old man! here 'mid th' accustom'd streams
And sacred springs, you'll shun the scorching beams;
While from yon willow-fence, thy pasture's bound,
The bees that suck their flow'ry stores around,
Shall sweetly mingle, with the whispering boughs,
Their lulling murmurs, and invite repose:
While from steep rocks the pruner's song is heard;
Nor the soft-cooing dove, thy fav'rite bird,
Meanwhile shall cease to breathe her melting strain,
Nor turtles from th' aerial elm to plain.

WARTON.

It may be observed, that these two poems were produced by events that really happened; and may, therefore, be of use to prove that we can always feel more than we can imagine, and that the most artful fiction must give way to truth. I am, Sir,

T.

Your humble Servant,

DUBIUS.

N° 93. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1753.

Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,

Ut Magus; & modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis. HOR.

'Tis he who gives my breast a thousand pains,
Can make me feel each passion that he feigns;
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art;
With pity, and with terror tear my heart;

And snatch me, o'er the earth, or through the air,
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where. POPE.

WRITERS of a mixed character, that abound in transcendent beauties and in gross imperfections, are the most proper and most pregnant subjects for criticism. The regularity and correctness of a Virgil or Horace, almost confine their commentators to perpetual panegyric, and afford them few opportunities of diversifying their remarks by the detection of latent blemishes. For this reason, I am inclined to think, that a few observations on the writings of Shakspeare, will not be deemed useless or unentertaining, because he exhibits more numerous examples of excellencies and faults, of every kind, than are, perhaps, to be discovered in any other author. I shall, therefore, from time to time, examine his merit as a poet, without blind admiration, or wanton invective.

As Shakspeare is sometimes blameable for the conduct of his fables, which have no unity; and sometimes for his diction, which is obscure and

his

turgid; so his characteristical excellencies may possibly be reduced to these three general heads: lively creative imagination; his strokes of nature and passion; and his preservation of the consistency of his characters.' These excellencies, particularly the last, are of so much importance in the drama, that they amply compensate for his transgressions against the rules of Time and Place, which being of a more mechanical nature, are often strictly observed by a genius of the lowest order; but to pourtray characters naturally, and to preserve them uniformly, requires such an intimate knowledge of the heart of man, and is so rare a portion of felicity, as to have been enjoyed, perhaps, only by two writers, Homer and Shakspeare.

Of all the plays of Shakspeare, the Tempest is the most striking instance of his creative power. He has there given the reins to his boundless imagination, and has carried the romantic, the wonderful, and the wild, to the most pleasing extravagance. The scene is a desolate island; and the characters the most new and singular that can well be conceived: a prince who practises magic, an attendant spirit, a monster the son of a witch, and a young lady who had been brought to this solitude in her infancy, and had never beheld a man except her father.

As I have affirmed that Shakspeare's chief excellence is the consistency of his characters, I will exemplify the truth of this remark, by pointing out some master-strokes of this nature in the drama before us.

The poet artfully acquaints us that Prospero is a magician, by the very first words which his daughter Miranda speaks to him:

If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them: