SHAKESPEARE DIVERSIONS.*

EVERYBODY now-a-days admires, or professes:to admire, Shake- speare. Whether the zeal of the worshippers is always according to knowledge is quite another matter, but of the universal diffu- sion of the cult there can be no question ; and even the small minority who think differently have very rarely the courage of their opinions, and far from evincing any desire for martyrdom, prefer to throw the veil of a judicious reticence over their lack of sympathy with the fashionable enthusiasm. Few and far between are those who would venture to make publicly such a confession of faith as we remember to have seen several years since in a book, where the author boldly expressed a doubt (expressing it, more- over, in such a manner as to amount to a negative assertion) whether any one for his or her own pleasure had ever really read through one of the Plays l The current of public favour sets, in. deed, so strongly the other way, that it is of indiscriminate panegyric, rather than of neglect or want of appreciation of their idol, that the real votaries of the poet should feel inclined to complain. True it is that,-

. "As learned commentators view In Homer more than Homer knew,"

there is a far too common tendency to insist upon discovering deep didactic purpose in everything Shakespeare wrote,—to regard his works as metaphysical treatises, and himself as a scholar composing in his study elaborate illustrations of psychic phenomena, forgetting that he was a playwright, who had above all things to keep constantly before his eyes the necessity of pleasing his audience at the Globe Theatre. But this is an error with which, beyond recognising its existence, we have no present concern ; nor is it exclusive of or even antagonistic to the other. The name of Shakespeare is enough ; anything that bears this imprimatur immediately becomes to some people the subject of such extravagant and undiscriminating eulogy, that one is tempted to suspect that intrinsic merit, whether positive or relative, has very little to do with the matter, and that the work of an inferior artist might easily be passed off under the ntagni nomenis umbra, which, indeed, has been proved in the case of Henry VIII., where, as 11lr. Fleay has pointed out, consider- able portions of the• play, including, at least, one of the most passages, were written by Fletcher. Love's

generally admired

Labour's Lost, again, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona are admirable pieces (the former, in particular, abounding in comic situations, overflowing with witty and brilliant dialogue, and literally sparkling with epigram), but the criticism can hardly be judicious which, in speaking of them, employs, as is some- times the case, language which would be perfectly in place applied to the author's maturer comedies. Some people seem to think that, where Shakespeare is concerned, they fail in a duty if they omit to praise whatever comes in their way ; nay, they will upon occasion have recourse to invention for the whole thing, subject as well as eulogy, as, for instance, a critic who goes into eastacies over the beauty and appositeness of the epithet " gilded," which, ho says, Hamlet applies, in conjunction with Waterfiy, to Osric ; while any one may see for himself that it is nothing but a * Shakeepeare Mneraions. Loudon: Daldy, Imbititor, and Co.

trick of the memory, and that the word is a mere subjective

"A gilded ' of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the ' praise-betuuddled ' brain."

Very remarkable, too, is the variety of methods which Shake- speare's admirers adopt of testifying their admiration, for his many-sidedness, wonderful as it is, does not seem to cover the whole case. Beside the dissertations on his special attainments in half-a-dozen different branches of knowledge, which prove the universality of the genius that evoked them ; beside the numerous editions of his complete works, the expositions of individual plays, the ponderous volumes of commentaries, the monographs on his principal and the collective criticisms on his subordinate characters, which prove the sincerity and general diffusion of the wish to render homage ; to say nothing of the collections of quotations, which prove nothing in particular except their com- pilers' diligent use of the concordance, there exist other evidences, which bear yet more irrefragable, because unintentional witness to the power he wields. Surely of all the incense laid on his shrine, the most delicate is offered by those who, with no conscious thought of the poet, and treating of subjects quite foreign to his sphere, yet betray in their very phraseology the depth of the in-

fluence his writings exercise over their minds. When, for ex- ample, in Baron de Hiibner's Ramble Round the World, the Pre- sident of the United States is spoken of as the Indians' "Big

Father," does it not seem probable that there was floating in the translator's mind a vague recollection of Fluellen, and his defence of the same epithet, when he applies it to Alexander of Macedon, in his comparison of that potentate to Harry of Monmouth. " Why, 1 pray you, is not pig great ? the pig, or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations." That, at any rate, is the most charitable and graceful way of accounting for what must otherwise be considered merely a clumsy translation, which, how-

ever, truth compels us to add, it may very well be, for the book abounds with them. Traduttori, traditori!

Others there are who use Shakespeare's name as the Koran was employed by the acute tactician who affixed it to the point of his lince,—the odd part of the thing being that, as this astute

stratagem enabled 'Ann to win his battle, or at least to prevent his enemy from winning it, so the manoeuvre is, to judge by its frequent repetition, found equally successful by those who prac- tise it in our day. It would be very unfair to place Mr. Jacox,

without reservation, in this category, yet it cannot be denied that, like Launcelot Gobboes father, he doth something smack, some- thing grow to, he hath a kind of taste ; for though "Shakespeare Diversions" is, on the face of it, a somewhat vague title, and one which, in the absence of any more precise indication as to the character of the diversions, and the nature and closeness of their connection with Shakespeare, may be held to cover a tolerably extensive area, the reader can hardly proceed far in the perusal of this book without being reminded of 'Amr and his Koran. No doubt some of the papers of which it is composed contain a groat deal of valuable criticism of the poet (seldom, indeed, if ever original—for the author is as careful as his great subject to withhold his own opinions ; the one shrouding his indi- viduality in a cloud of quotations as effectually as the other hides, so to speak, the features of his own countenance beneath the dramatic mask with which he covers them—but), collected from various sources, mostly of the highest authority. But there are many, on the other hand, especially Dogberry, some of the chap- ters on Polonius, and nearly the whole of the section entitled Maberia Medica," where the thread that binds them to Shake- speare is of the slightest, and which present rather the appear- ance of a vehicle for the heterogeneous contents of a well-stored common-place book. One anecdote provokes another, or some one word or idea in the story he is telling suggests another to the author's mind, till the reader is fairly overpowered by the profusion of anecdote, bewildered by the wealth of illustration,

It really becomes a matter of some difficulty to select an example from the mass, but perhaps the following, which occurs in the chapter on Othello's soldierly simplicity of speech, will serve. After enumerating some exceptions to the soldierly lack of polished eloquence, as Julian, Valentinian, and 'Ali—the second

of whom, by the way, might with more propriety have been reckoned on the other side, Mr. Jacox proceeds :—

" When Du Molay was called on to defend the Order of his imperilled brotherhood, the Templars, ho professed himself an unlearned man, incompotont for such a task, at any rate without counsel to aid him, but ho would do, and did, his best. Gerald do Cans had just two days before him made a like reply, deprecatory and remonstrant : ho was a simple soldier, lie told the Court, without house, arms, or land ; he bad neither ability nor knowledge to defend the Order. Shan O'Neil was urgent with Queen Bess that her Majesty should make every allowance for his inbred rudeness and incivility. To go to our gracious Sovereign,. before whom all words must be bickered ever either with gilding or with sugar, is such a confectionery matter as clean baffles my poor old" English brain,' quoth honest Blount, in Kenilworth. Cwur do Lion, in the Talisman, makes this his style of apology to the assembled princes : 'Richard is a soldier—his hand is ever readier than his tongue, and his tongue is but too much used to the rough language of his tra:de.' So, again, the noble Constable De Lacy, in Scott's other Tale of the Cru- saders : ' I have been too long trained in camps and councils to express. my meaning otherwise than simply and plainly.' And that blunt soldier, Le Balafre, in Quentin Durward, though he could make a shift to express himself intelligibly enough to King Lewis, to whose familiar- ity he was habituated, breaks down altogether in his attempt to address- an assembly,—a veritable man of war, not words."

In the above extract, it will be observed, the examples, being all historical, or taken from what may be called the classics of fiction, are such as the reader may be supposed to be familiar with, or at any rate, lie well within his reach ; but this is not always, or even usually, the case. The author, like the Clown in Twelfth, Night, is for all waters, and frequently goes very far a-field for his illustrations ; " Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus" too- light, and everything in the shape of a book that comes his way,. from a Greek tragedy to the last new novel, is immediately laid under contribution, the consequence naturally being that one is• apt to find the company rather mixed, and stumbles occasionally upon names and things in curious juxtaposition. That our author is fully aware, moreover, of his own propensity to digression and fond- ness for miscellaneous parallels is everywhere apparent, both from the not uncommon allusions to flying off at a tangent and the like, and the designation of " this cold collation of scraps and sundries," which he somewhere bestows on one of his collections of parallels.- Once, too, he pulls himself together in this fashion :- "' When the time for doubt comes, then let us ascertain the doubtful- point,' &c.—But our illustrations are becoming as vagrom ' as the men Dogberry desired to be ' comprehended,' and it is more than time to have done with them. As the Frenchman said when told that his wife had given birth to twins, ' We must put a stop to this."

Space forbids any attempt to follow Mr, Jacox through his- devious wanderings, but there is just one incidental expression which must not pass unchallenged. Why is Dryden alluded to simply as a " vigorous rhymester ?" The power of expressing his- thoughts in vigorous rhyme was one of the excellences to which the poet may lay claim, but surely it is a perversion of language to speak of the author of Alexander's Feast merely as a vigorous rhymer, even without the additional contempt implied by the interpolated letters ? In the very lines in con- nection with which the words are used occurs an instance of a fault with which Dryden is far more justly chargeable,—viz., his proneness to disregard his original, and to substitute, whether, as is generally assumed, from negligence or, which is more probable, from confidence in his own power, words and ideas of his own for those of the author whom he claims to interpret. Other passages might easily be adduced to prove that Chaucer's opinion of the medical fraternity was none of the highest, but here Chaunteclere confines his expression of distrust to the medicine, whereas it is- against its administrance that the Cock in Dryden's apologuer hurls his defiance. There is another well-known instance in the description of Lycurgus, in Palamon and Arcite. For the rest, Mr. Jacox's style is lively and agreeable, some of his illustrations- are apt, and many of his stories amusing, as indeed it is difficult to see how, on any known theory of chances, they can fail to be r Here is one. Starting from the comical anxiety of Dogberry to be written down an ass, after expatiating, in his usual fashion, upon things in genetial and matters asinine in particular, be tells- of a Lord Privy Seal who got laughed at in the French Court for describing himself as Le petit sceau (sot) d'Angleterre, and goes- on,— " But others besides Englishmen have raised like matter for mirth. The Italian at Vienna, for example, who was telling a lady how long he- had been travelling, and who, pronouncing French after the manner a his nation, said: &if un tine h Paris, of un doe al Londres, et un use a Rome.' Mon cher Abbe,' replied the lady, paraft quo vous avez en; un due portent'" In conclusion, to those who are not misled by the title into ex- pecting much criticism (though a good deal even of this may be- found in the later chapters), but prefer lively gossip and anecdote —who are in quest, in fact, of more diversion than Shakespeare. —Shakespeare Diversions may safely be recommended.