Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours so luxuriously blended and illustrated as in these few words of sweetness and melody, where the author says of soft music O it came o'er my ear, like the sweet South That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour. This is still finer, we think, than the noble speech on music in the Merchant of Venice, and only to be compared with the enchantments of Prospero's island; where all the effects of sweet sounds are expressed in miraculous numbers, and traced in their operation on all the gradations of being, from the delicate Ariel to the brutish Caliban, who, savage as he is, is still touched with those supernatural harmonies, and thus exhorts his less poetical associates Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, word candle, we admit, is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs her silver lamp on high, in every schoolboy's copy of verses; but she could not be called the candle of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage before us much better as it is, than if the candles were changed into lamps. If we should read The lamps of heaven are quenched,' or wax dim,' it appears to us that the whole charm of the expression would be lost. Observe, too, that this and the other poetical speeches of this incarnate demon are not mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but explain his character, and describe his situation more briefly and effectually than any other words could have done. In this play, and in the Midsummer Night's Dream, all Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole treasury of natural and supernatural beauty poured out profusely, to the delight of all our faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with quotations; but we refer to those plays generally-to the forest scenes in 'As You Like it'—the rustic parts of the Winter's Tale-several entire scenes in Cymbeline and in Romeo and Juliet-and many passages in all the other plays-as illustrating this love of nature and natural beauty of which we have been speaking the power it had over the poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who else would have thought, on the very threshold of treason and midnight murder, of bringing in so sweet and rural an image at the portal of that blood-stained castle? This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle. Nor is this brought in for the sake of an elaborate contrast between the peaceful innocence of this exterior, and the guilt and horrors that are to be enacted within. There is no hint of any such suggestion, but it is set down from the pure love of nature and reality-because the kindled mind of the poet brought the whole scene before his eyes, and he painted all that he saw in his vision. The same taste predominates in that emphatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Macbeth says, Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it. And in that proud boast of the bloody Richard Our But I was born so high: aery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun. The same splendour of natural imagery, brought simply and directly to bear upon stern and repulsive passions, is to be found in the cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon. Will these moist trees That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, To cure thine o'er-night's surfeit? No one but Shakspeare would have thought of putting this noble picture into the taunting address of a snappish misanthrope-any more than the following into the mouth of a mercenary murderer : Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And in their summer beauty kissed each other. Or this delicious description of concealed love into that of a regretful and moralizing parent. But he, his own affection's counsellor, Is to himself so secret and so close, As is the bud bit with an envious worm, Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are than we feel their beauty and effect, and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and attractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality, he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen into the mouth of one who is not even a lover: It is her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus! the flame o'th' taper Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heaven's own tinct-on her left breast I' the bottom of a cowslip. EDINBURGH REVIEW. e Vol. xxviii, pp. 473-477. M No. XIV. ON SHAKSPEARE'S DELINEATION OF PASSION. IF SHAKSPEARE deserves our admiration for his characters, he is equally deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions. His passions do not at first stand displayed to us in all their height, as is the case with so many tragic poets, who, in the language of Lessing, are thorough masters of the legal style of love. He paints, in a most inimitable manner, the gradual progress from the first origin; "he gives," as Lessing says, "a living picture of all the most minute and secret artifices by which a feeling steals into our souls, of all the imperceptible advantages which it there gains, of all the stratagems by which every other passion is made subservient to it, till it becomes the sole tyrant of our desires and our aversions.' Of all poets, perhaps, he alone has pourtrayed the mental diseases, melancholy, delirium, lunacy, with such inexpressible and, in every respect, definite truth, that the |