pinch your ear, and admonish you to return | everything that makes a people. In short, to the point from which, in discursive gyra- England, properly the name of the land, is tions, you and Seward have beenintended to be, at the same time, the name NORTH. Like an Eagle giving an Eaglet of the Nation. lessons how to fly

BULLER. That, I believe, sir, is the common impression. Hitherto it has been mine. NORTH. Let it be erased henceforth and forever.

BULLER. It is erased-I erase it.

NORTH. Read henceforth and forever high and palmy State. Write henceforth and forever State with a towering Capital. RES! "Most high and palmy State" is precisely and literally" Rerum Pulcherrima.

err.

SEWARD. At your bidding-you cannot

NORTH. I err not unfrequently-but not now, nor I believe this evening. Horatio, the Scholar, speaks to the two Danish Soldiers. They have brought him to be of their watch because he is a Scholar-and they are none. This relation of distinction is indeed the ground and life of the Scene.

"Therefore I have entreated him, along

With us to watch the minutes of the night;
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes, and speak to it."、

NORTH. You know, Talboys, that Scholars were actual Conjurors, in the medieval belief, which has tales enow about Scholars in that capacity. Horatio comes, then, possessed with an especial Power; he knows how to deal with Ghosts-he could lay one, if need were. He is not merely a man of superior and cultivated intellect, whom intellectual inferiors engage to assist them in an emergency above their grasp-but he is the very man for the work.

TALBOYS. Have not the Commentators said as much, sir?

NORTH. Perhaps probably-who? If they have in plenitude, I say it again-because I once did not know it or think of it

and I suppose that a great many persons die believing that the Two resort in the way of general dependence merely on Horatio. TALBOYS. Í believed, but I shall not die believing so.

Non-Scholars. And show me the living Scholar who could speak as Horatio spake. Touching the matter that is in all their minds oppressively, he will transport their minds a flight suddenly off a thousand years, and a thousand miles or leagues-their untutored minds into the Region of History. He will take them to Rome-"a little ere"-and, therefore, before naming Rome, he lifts and he directs their imagination-"In the most high and palmy STATE." There had been Four Great Empires of the World-and he will by these few words evoke in their minds the Image of the last and greatest. And now observe with what decision, as well as with what majesty, the nomination ensues—or ROME.

TALBOYS. I feel it, sir.

NORTH. Try, Talboys, to render "State" by any other word, and you will be put to it. You may analogize. It is for the Republic and City, what Realm or Kingdom is to us

at once place and indwelling Power. "State"-properly Republic-here specifically and pointedly means Reigning City. The Ghosts walked in the City-not in the Republic.

TALBOYS. I think I have you, sir—am not sure.

NORTH. You have me-you are sure. Now suppose that, instead of the solemn, ceremonious, and stately robes in which Horatio attires the Glorious Rome, he had said simply, "in Rome," or "at Rome," where then his tuxaywya-his leading of their spirits? Where his own scholar-enthusiasm, and love, and joy, and wonder? All gone? And where, Talboys, are they who, by here understanding "state" for "condition"-which every man alive does

TALBOYS. Every man alive?

NORTH. Yes, you did-confess you did. Where are they, I ask, who thus oblige Horatio to introduce his nomination of Rome

thus nakedly and prosaically? Every hackneyer of this phrase-state-as every man alive hackneys it-is a nine-fold Murderer. He murders the Phrase; he murders the Speech; he murders Horatio; he murNORTH. Therefore, the scholarship of Ho-ders the Ghost; he murders the Scene; he ratio, and the non-scholarship of Bernardo murders the Play; he murders Rome; he and Marcellus, strike into the life, soul, es- murders Shakspeare-and he murders Me. sence, ground, foundation, fabric, and organization of this First Ghost Scene-sustain and build the whole Play.

TALBOYS. Eh?

TALBOYS. I am innocent.

NORTH. Why, suppose Horatio to mean"in the most glorious and victorious condition of Rome, on the Eve of Cæsar's death, NORTH. Eh? Yes. But to the point in the graves stood tenantless"—You ask— hand. The Ghost has come and gone; and WHERE? See where you have got. A stothe Scholar addresses his Mates the twory told with two terminations of Time, and

none of Place! Is that the way that Shak- | ease." The line here objected to is the life speare, the intelligent and intelligible, recites of the description-and instead of offence, it a fact? No! But my explanation shows is the clenching of the pathos. First of all, the Congruity or Parallelism. "In the most it is that which the poets always will high and palmy State," that is, City of have and the critics wont-the NecessiRome-ceremonious determination of Place tated-the Thing itself-the Matter in -"a little ere the mightiest Julius fell," hand. It shapes features - characterizes ceremonious determination of Time. that particular Murrain. Leave it out—' the TALBOYS. But is not the use of State, sir, one Ox drops dead in the furrow, and the for City, bold and singular? Ploughman detaches the other.' It's a great pity, and very surprising-but that is NO PLAGUE. Suddenly he falls, and blood and foam gush mixed with his expiring breath. That is a plague. It has terror-affrightsensible horror-life vitiated, poisoned in its fountains. Vomit-a settled word, and one of the foremost, of the reversed, unnatural vital function. Besides, it is the true and proper word. Besides, it is vivid and picturesque, being the word of the Mouth. Effundit (which they would prefer-I do not mean it would stand in the verse) is general-might be from the ears. Vomit in itself says mouth. The poor mouth! whose function is to breathe, and to eat grass, and to caress-the visible organ of life-of vivification-and now of mortification. Taken from the dominion of the holy powers, and given up to the dark and nameless destroyer.

NORTH. It is. For Verse has her own Speech-though Wordsworth denies it in his Preface and proves it by his Poetry, like his brethren Shakspeare and Milton. The language of Verse is rapid-abrept and abrupt. Horatio wants the notion of Republic; because properly the Republic is high and palmy, and not the wood, stone, and marble. So he manages an expeditious word that shall include both, and strike you at once. The word of a Poet strikes like a flash of lightning-it penetrates-it does not stay to be scanned-"probed, vexed, and criticised,"-it illuminates and is gone. But you must have eyes-and suffer nobody to shut them. I ask, then-Can any lawful, wellbehaved Citizen, having weighed all this, and reviewed all these things, again violate the Poesy of the Avonian Swan, and his own muse-enlightened intelligence, by lending hand or tongue to the convicted and condemned VULGARISM?

TALBOYS. Now, then, and not till now, we Three know the full power of the lines

"Scilicet et Rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma, Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces."

NORTH. Another word anent Virgil. Mr. Alison says "There is a still more surprising instance of this fault in one of the most pathetic passages of the whole Poem, in the description of the disease among the cattle, which concludes the Third Georgic. The passage is as follows:

"Ecce autem duro fumans sub vomere Taurus
Concidit, et mixtum spumis vomit ore cruorem
Extremosque ciet gemitus; it tristis arator,
Mærentem abjungens fraternâ morte juvencum,
Atque opere in medio defixa relinquit aratra."

The unhappy image in the second line is less calculated to excite compassion than disgust, and is singularly ill-suited to the tone of tenderness and delicacy which the Poet has everywhere else so successfully maintained, in describing the progress of the loathsome dis

Vomit ore Cruorem!" The verse moans and groans for him-it may have in it a death rattle. How much more helpless and hopeless the real picture makes Arator's distress! Now, "it tristis" comes with effect.

SEWARD. Yes, Virgil, as in duty bound to do, faced the Cattle Plague in all its horrors. Had he not, he would have been false to Pales, the Goddess of Shepherds-to Apollo, who fed the herds of Admetus. So did his Master, Lucretius-whom he emulated-equalled, but not surpassed, in execution of the dismal but inevitable work. The whole land groaned under the visitation— nor was it confined to Cattle-it seemed as if the brute creation were about to perish. But his tender heart, near the close, singled out from the thousands, one yoke of Steersin two lines and a half told the death of one -in two lines and a half told the sadness of its owner-and in as many lines more told, too, of the survivor sinking, because his brother "was not"—and in as many more a lament for the cruel sufferings of the harmless creature-lines which, Scaliger says, he would rather have written than have been honored by the Lydian or the Persian king.

BULLER. Perhaps you have said enough, Seward. It might have been better, perhaps, to have recited the whole passage.

NORTH. Here is a sentence or two about | struck then. Homer.

BULLER. Then you are off. Oh! Sirwhy not for an hour imitate that Moon and those Stars? How silently they shine! But what care you for the heavenly luminaries? In the majestic beauty of the nocturnal heavens vain man will not hold his peace.

SEWARD. Is that the murmur of the faroff sea?

NORTH. It is the tide, may be, is on its return-is at "Connal's raging Ferry"-from Loch Etive-yet this is not its hour-'tis but the mysterious voice of Night.

BULLER. Hush!

NORTH. By moonlight and starlight, and to the voice of Night, I read these words from Mr. Alison-"In the speech of Agamemnon to Idomeneus, in the Fourth Book of the Iliad, a circumstance is introduced altogether inconsistent both with the dignity of the speech, and the Majesty of Epic Poetry:

"Divine Idomeneus! what thanks we owe

To worth like thine, what praise shall we be

stow!

To Thee the foremost honors are decreed,
First in the fight, and every graceful deed.
For this, in banquets, when the generous bowls
Restore our blood, and raise the warriors'
souls,

But he was somewhat too dainty-schooled-school-nursed and schoolborn. A Judge and critic of Poetry should have been caught wild, and tamed; he should carry about him to the last some relish of the wood and the wilderness, as if he were ever in some danger of breaking away, and relapsing to them. He should know Poetry as a great power of the Universe-a sun-of which the Song-whosoever-only catches and fixes a few rays. How different in thought was Epos to him and to Homer! Homer paints Manners-archaic, simple manners. Everybody feelseverybody says this-Mr. Alison must have known it-and could have said it as well as the best

SEWARD. But the best often forget it. They seem to hold to this knowledge better now, Mr. North; and they do not make Homer answerable as a Poet, for the facts of which he is the historian-Why not rather accept than criticise?

NORTH. I am sorry, Seward, for the Achæan Chiefs who had to drink dairpovthat is all. I had hoped that they had helped themselves.

SEWARD. Perhaps, sir, the Stint was a custom of only the oivov yεpourtov a ceremonious Bowl-and if so, undoubtedly with Though all the rest with stated rules be bound, religious institution. The Feast is not honUnmixed, unmeasured, are thy goblets crown-orary-only the Bowl: for anything that ap

ed.'"

SEWARD. That is Pope. Do you remember Homer himself, sir?

NORTH. I do.

Ιδομενεῦ, πέρι μέν σε τίω Δαναών ταχυπώλων, ἡμὲν ἐνὶ πτολέμῳ ἡδ' ἀλλοίῳ ἐπὶ ἔργῳ, ἥδ' ἐν δαιθ ̓, ὅτε πέρ σε γερούσιον αἴθοπα οἶνον Αργείων οἱ ἄριστοι ἐνὶ κρητήρσι κέρωνται. εἴπερ γάρ τ' άλλοι γε καρη ομόωντες Αχαιοί δαιτρὸν πίνωσιν, σὺν δὲ πλεῖον δέπας αἰεὶ ἔστηχ' ὥσπερ ἐμοὶ, πιέειν, ὅτε θυμὸς ἀνώγοι, ἀλλ' ὅρσευ πόλεμόνδ', οἷος πάρος εύχεο εἶναι.

I believe you will find that in general men praise more truly, that is, justly, deservedly, than they condemn. They praise from an impulse of love-that is, from a capacity. Nature protects love more than hate. Their condemnation is often mere incapacity-want of insight. Mr. Alison had elegance of apprehension-truth of taste-a fine sense of the beautiful-a sense of the sublime. His instances for praise are always well-often newly chosen, from an attraction felt in his own genial and noble breast. The true chord VOL. XVIII. NO. II.

pears, Agamemnon, feasting his Princes, might say, "Now, for the Bowl of Honor"— and Idomeneus alone drinks. Or let the whole Feast be honorific, and the Bowl the sealing, and crowning, and characterizing solemnity. Now the distinction of the Stint, and the Full Bowl, selected for a signal of different honoring, has to me no longer anything irksome. It is no longer a grudged and scanted cheer-but lawful Assignment of Place.

TALBOYS. The moment you take it for Ceremonial, sir, you don't know what profound meaning may, or may not be in it. The phrase is very remarkable.

NORTH. When the "Best of the Argives" mix in the Bowl "the honorific dark-glowing wine," or the dark-glowing wine of honorwhen, ors-quite a specific and peculiar occasion, and confined to the wine-you would almost think that the Chiefs themselves are the wine-mixers, and not the usual ministrants― which would perhaps express the descent of an antique use from a time and manners of still greater simplicity than those which Homer describes. Or take it merely, that in great solemnities, high persons do the func

17

tions proper to Servants. This we do know,
that usually a servant, the Tausus, or the
voxos, does mix the Bowl. By the way,
alboys, I think you will not be a little
amused with old Chapman's translation of
passage.

TALBOYS. A fiery old chap was George.
NORTH. It runs thus-

NORTH. The Homeric, heroic manners! Heyne has a Treatise or Excursus-as you know-on the durapxeia-I think he calls it— of the Homeric Heroes--their waiting on themselves, or their self-sufficiency-where I think that he collects the picture.

SEWARD. I am ashamed to say I do not know it.

NORTH. No matter. You see how this

"O Idomen, I ever loved thyself past all the connects with the scheme of the Poem-in Greeks,

which, prevalent or conspicuous by the am

In war, or any work of peace, at table, every-plitude of the space which it occupies, is the

where;

For when the best of Greeks, besides, mix

ever at our cheer

My good old ardent wine with small, and our inferior mates

Drink ever that mixt wine measured too, thou drink'st without those rates

Our old wine neat; and ever more thy bowl
stands like to mine;

To drink still when and what thou wilt; then
rouse that heart of thine;
And whatsoever heretofore thou hast assumed
to be,

This day be greater."

TALBOYS. Well done, old Buck! This fervor and particularity are admirable. But, methinks, if I caught the words rightly, that George mistakes the meaning of yepousov honorary; he has yepwv yepovros, an old man, singing in his ears; but old for wine would be quite a different word.

spicuous, too, by its moment in action. This individual prowess of heroes in field-con

is another and loftier mode of the αυτάρκεια. The human bosom is a seat or fountain of power. Power goes forth, emanates in all directions, high and low, right and left. The Man is a terrestrial God. He takes counsel with his own heart, and he acts. "He conversed with his own magnanimous spirit"-or as Milton says of Abdiel meeting Satan-" And thus his own undaunted heart explored."

SEWARD. Yes, Mr. North, the man is as a terrestrial God; but-with continual recognition by the Poet and his heroes--as under the celestial Gods. And I apprehend, sir, that this two-fold way of representing man, in himself and towards them, is that which first separates the Homeric from and above all other Poetry, is its proper element of grandeur, in which we never bathe without coming out aggrandized.

NORTH. Seward, you instruct me bySEWARD. Oh, no, sir! You instruct me

NORTH. And he makes Agamemnon commend Idomeneus for drinking generously and honestly, whilst the others are afraid of their cups as Claudius, King of Denmark, might praise one of his strong-headed courtiers, and laugh at Polonius. Agamemnon does NORTH. We instruct each other. For not say that Idomeneus' goblet was not mixed this the heroes are all Demigods-that is, -was neat-rather we use to think that the son of a God, or Goddess, or the Descendwine was always mixed-but whether "with ant at a few Generations. Sarpedon is the small," as old Chapman says, or with water, son of Jupiter, and his death by Patroclus is I don't know but I fancied water! But perhaps the passage of the whole Iliad that perhaps, Seward, the investigation of a Gre- most specially and energetically, and most cian Feast in heroic time, and in Attic, be- profoundly and pathetically, makes the Gods comes an exigency. Chapman is at least de-intimate to the life and being of men--pretermined and wisely-to show that he is not afraid of the matter-that he saw nothing in it altogether inconsistent with the dignity of the speech and the majesty of Epic Poetry."

sents the conduct of divinity and humanity with condescension there, and for elevation here. I do not mean that there is not more pomp of glorification about Achilles, for whom Jupiter comes from Olympus to Ida, and Vulcan forges arms-whose MotherGoddess is Messenger to and from Jupiter, and into whose lips, when he is faint with toil and want of nourishment--abstaining in his passion of sorrow and vengeance-Minerva, descending, instils Nectar. But I doubt if there be anything so touching--under this relation-and so intimately aggran