attainable Swansea! The cold boiled leg of mutton and cider which they that evening sate down before, in the boat-house, and ate with an appetite surpassed only by those who were shut up in the Tower of Famine, existed like a splendid and happy vision in their memories for more than twenty years. "We have extended the account of this journey somewhat beyond what we originally intended, in order that all young readers' (as good Mr Newberry's books say or used to say) may see how one of the high and crowned kings of tragedy was accustomed to travel: before they resolve irrevocably to enrol themselves under those ragged and tawdry colours which float above the English Drama-a sign and prophecy of the player's fortunes!" Kean's first child, a boy, to whom he gave the name of Howard, was born at Swansea, on the 13th of September 1809. About two years after, his second son, the present Mr Charles Kean, was born at Waterford. By this time the habits of the husband and father seem to have become those of a confirmed drunkard; the friends which he made by his talents he constantly lost by his misconduct; and the misery of the wretched family was now greater than ever. "It is needless (proceeds our author) to repeat the every-day wants and troubles which the poor actor and his family, day after day, encountered in this and other peregrinations. Their long journeys, in all weathers, their arrivals, weary and foot-sore, at the squalid public-houses where they put up,their scanty meals,-their visits to the pawnbroker and the Jew, their hopeless appeals to the public taste, the cries of the children (from fatigue or want of food),—the tears of the woman, and the She saw no curses of the man,-all these, fifty times repeated, would make but an unprofitable and tedious history, We content ourselves with giving a few facts, illustrative of our hero's forlorn condition; without exhibiting, at every turn, the poverty and wretchedness of his course. At York, as we have said, he arrived, utterly destitute. So extreme was his need, that he wished to enlist as a common soldier, and actually presented himself, for that purpose, to an officer attached to a regiment at York, who very goodnaturedly dissuaded him from his design. He was, perhaps, as desperate of attaining the objects of his ambition, at this particular time, as at any period of his chequered life. And with his despair, his wife's despondency naturally kept pace. hope of extricating her infants from the load of misery and want which oppressed them. More than once, she has knelt down by the side of her bed, in which the two half-famished children lay, and prayed that they and herself might at once be released from their sufferings. Happily, they were relieved by the intervention of a friend. The wife of a Mr Nokes (then a dancing-master at York), heard of their extreme distress, and went with a heart brimful of benevolence to their aid. She was shown up to the room where Mrs Kean and the children were, and after having ascertained the truth of the report concerning their condition, she spoke kindly to them all, put something in Mrs Kean's hand, wished her good morning, and left the house. On her departure, Mrs Kean opened the paper which this excellent woman had left, and discovered that she had given her a five pound bank note! She threw herself on her knees, and fainted. They had been rescued from absolute starvation." At last, in the summer of 1813, while Kean was acting at Teignmouth, he attracted the notice of Dr Drury (formerly head-master of Harrow) and this eventually led to his introduction to the committee of management at Drury lane. But some of the hardest sufferings of his life had still to be undergone on the very eve of his triumphant conquest of fame and fortune.. So poor was he at this time, that having sent forward his wife and their eldest child, who was ill, in the coach, from Barnstaple to Dorchester, on their way to London, he was himself obliged to follow on foot with the youngest on his back. At Dorchester he sustained a terrible blow by the death of the poor little boy Howard, who seems to have been a child of much promise, and was the pride and darling of his father. And then when he at last found himself in London, a misunderstanding with the authorities at Drury Lane suddenly dashed the cup of hope to the ground, while he had it at his lips. The negotiation which had been begun was broken off, and he was left, without an engagement, to starve. After giving a long letter, which he wrote to Dr Drury, detailing the usage he had met with, the author proceeds : "From the 6th of November 1813, to the 26th of January, 1814, Kean remained at his lodgings, No. 21 Cecil street, in the Strand, in much the same state of commotion that he appears to have been in at the time of writing the foregoing letter. During this period, he did not receive a single shilling from the theatre (except the sum of 81. before alluded to, which was sent to Dorchester), and he neither earned nor borrowed money from any other quarter. He lived-he, his wife, and child-in the most penurious way; sometimes disposing of a few clothes; sometimes, and not unfrequently, being indebted for their food to the untiring kindness of the Misses Williams, with whom they lodged; and occasionally undergoing a course of starvation. They had meat once a week, if possible; but their aliment was generally of the poorest sort, and taken in the slenderest quantities. The necessity of supporting the child as tenderly as might be, doubled their difficulties; and something of that pride "which flesh is heir to," prevented their acknowledging the extremity of their distress to their excellent hostesses. These ladies, with a generous delicacy, forbore to ask them for any rent during the first three months of their residence in London, and even resorted to expedients to furnish them with a meal, now and then, when the desperate condition of the poor players became too manifest for concealment. When Mrs Kean apologised for the rent being still unpaid, Miss Williams (instead of adopting the promptly into the street) cheered her up; told her landlord's usual remedy, and ejecting her debtors edly as to the future renown and prosperity of her that they could wait; and prophesied, good-naturThere is something about Mr Kean, Ma'am,' said she, which tells us he will be a great husband. man. At last, the state of affairs at Drury constantly getting worse, induced the Committee to turn their attention once more to Kean. The result was that he was announced for the part of Shylock, on Wednesday the 26th of January 1814. We wish we had room to quote our author's animated and cordial account of the public events of that night, so celebrated in the annals of the stage. We must content ourselves with giving a part of its still more interesting domestic history. That day Kean had had, what he had not always, a dinner. "His courage," says our author, "was to be braced, and his voice strengthened, by a little generous diet. Accordingly, his wife produced before him, (by the usual alchemy, we suppose, some rapid conversion of velvet or satin into silver,) a beef-steak and a pot of porter." On this he dined heartily. "After dinner," the narrative goes on, "Kean prepared for the awful evening. His He tied up stock of properties' was very scanty. his wig and collar, however, and an old pair of black silk stockings, in a pocket-handkerchief, thrust them into his great-coat pocket, and trudged through the snow to Drury Lane." During the hours of performance Mrs Kean had remained waiting the result at home. "It may be imagined," proceeds the author, "how much anxiety must have prevailed, when not only the fame of her husband, but the very existence of himself and family hung on the event. For, to be damned in London is to be damned in the country; and the actor who once earned his humble crust in the provinces, whilst untried at the fastidious bar of the metropolis, is by no means sure of regaining his old position, if, on being tried, he should be found wanting. The hours, therefore, passed gloomily enough. At last, about half-past ten o'clock, the Misses Williams, also Mr Hewan and Mr Watts (two artists who lodged in the house), returned. The first comer was Mr Hewan, in reply to whose knock, Mrs Kean ran down to the door, and, in breathless haste, demanded to know their fate." The announcements of Mr Hewan and Mr Watts were all that could be desired; but we must pass them over. "Next followed the Misses Williams, exulting in the accomplishment of their prophecies; and, finally, about eleven o'clock, arrived the hero of the night himself. He ran up stairs, wild with joy, and cried out, Oh, Mary! my fortune's made: now you shall ride in your carriage.' A mighty change had been wrought in a brief period. Four or five hours before, he said, on quitting the house, that he wished he was going to be shot. Now, all the gloom of the morning dissipated and forgotten, he seemed to tread on air. He told his wife, indeed, that when he found the audience going with him,' he was inspirited and exalted to such a degree, that he could not feel the stage under him.' His sensations had now sunk a little,-almost to a rational level. In order, however, that everyone might be a partaker of the new happiness, even the child (the present Mr Charles Kean) was taken out of his cradle and kissed by his father, who said, Now, my boy, yo shall go to Eton.' Kean had always been ambitiou that his son should have an aristocratic education and the project seemed now no longer improbable. During the remainder of the night, and, indeed, until four o'clock in the morning, Kean and his wife sate together, congratulating each other on their good fortune; he talking of what he would do, what he would play next, and forming schemes of all sorts for the future. Once, indeed, his mind was touched with a melancholy recollection; for he said, 'Oh! that Howard was alive now!-but he is better where he is.' With this exception there was nothing to cast a shade over his golden dreams." During the remainder of this season Kean appeared in Richard III, in Hamlet, and in Othello -and, by his wonderful success, brought a gain to the treasury of the theatre of not less than twenty thousand pounds. For his happiness, as well as for his glory, he ought to have died now. The latter part of his history is only a sad and sickening tale of blackguardism, disgrace, and ruin. The evil of his nature seems at this period to have completely overpowered and extinguished whatever was good in him. Such an utter abandonment to brutality and selfishness is scarcely on record; though the philosophic reader will set off against it the frightful disadvantages, in a moral point of view, of a poor, fatherless, half-owned, vagabond childhood. For the particulars, we must send our readers to the work itself, from which we have already extracted much more largely than with our limited space we should be excused in doing, except in the case of a publication of unusual interest. LORD BROUGHAM ON NATURAL THEOLOGY. A Discourse of Natural Theology. By Henry Lord Brougham. Post 8vo. C. Knight. [Concluded from No. 62.] We now proceed to place before our readers a few more extracts from this interesting work. The very powerful chapter in which Lord Brougham contends for the separate existence of the mind, independently of the body, supplies so much matter of great interest, that we hardly know what to select. Perhaps the following passage on the phenomena of dreams may be most acceptable to our Readers. The "The bodily functions are in part suspended during sleep, that is, all those which depend upon volition. The senses, however, retain a portion of their acuteness; and those of touch and hearing, especially, may be affected without awakening the sleeper. consequence of the cessation which takes place of all communication of ideas through the senses, is that the action of the mind, and, above all, of those powers connected with the imagination, becomes much more vigorous and uninterrupted. This is shown in two ways-first, by the celerity with which any impression upon the senses, strong enough to be felt without awaking, is caught up and made the groundwork of a new train of ideas, the mind instantlyaccommodating itself to the suggestions of the impression, and making all its thoughts chime in with that; and, secondly, by the prodigiously long succession of images that pass through the mind, with perfect distinctness and liveliness, in an instant of time. undeniable certainty, because of daily occurrence. "The facts upon this subject are numerous, and of Every one knows the effect of a bottle of hot water instantly dream of walking over hot mould, or ashes, applied during sleep to the soles of the feet: you or a stream of lava, or having your feet burnt by coming too near the fire. But the effect of falling asleep in a stream of cold air, as in an open carriage, varies this experiment in a very interesting, and, indeed, instructive manner. You will, instantly that the wind begins to blow, dream of being upon some exposed point, and anxious for shelter, but unable to reach it; then you are on the deck of a ship, suffering from the gale-you run behind a sail for shelter, and the wind changes, so that it still blows upon you-you are driven to the cabin, but the ladder is removed, or the door locked. Presently you are on shore, in a house with all the windows open, and endeavour to shut them in vain; or, seeing a smith's forge, you are attracted by the fire, and suddenly a hundred bellows play upon it, and extinguish it in an instant, but fill the whole smithy with their blast, till you are as cold as on the road. If you from time to The common classification of the senses which makes the touch comprehend the sense of heat and cold, is here adopted; though, certainly, there seems almost as little reason for ranging this under touch, as for ranging sight, smell, hearing, and taste under the same head, time awake, the moment you fall asleep again, the same course of dreaming succeeds in the greatest variety of changes that can be rung on our thoughts. "But the rapidity of these changes, and of the succession of ideas, cannot be ascertained by this experiment: it is most satisfactorily proved by another. Let any one who is extremely overpowered with drowsiness as after sitting up all night, and sleeping none the next day-lie down, and begin to dictate: he will find himself falling asleep after uttering a few words, and he will be awakened by the person who writes repeating the last word, to show he has written the whole; not above five or six seconds may elapse, and the sleeper will find it at first quite impossible to believe that he has not been asleep for hours, and will chide the amanuensis for having fallen asleep over his work-so great apparently will be the length of the dream which he has dreamt, extending through half a lifetime. This experiment is easily tried: again and again the sleeper will find his endless dream renewed; and he will always be able to tell in how short a time he must have performed it. For suppose eight or ten seconds required to write the four or five words dictated, sleep could hardly begin in less than four or five seconds after the effort of pronouncing the sentence; so that, at the utmost, not more than four or five seconds can have been spent in sleep. But, indeed, the greater probability is, that not above a single second can have been so passed; for a writer will easily finish two words in a second; and suppose he has to write four, and half the time is consumed in falling asleep, one second only is the duration of the dream, which yet seems to last for years, so numerous are the images that compose it." From these and other facts, the author is disposed to conclude that we only dream during the moment of transition into and out of sleep. The following passage, from the same chapter, will be very cheering to our more aged readers. "The changes which the mind undergoes in its activity, its capacity, its mode of operation, are matter of constant observation, indeed of every man's experience. Its essence is the same; its fundamental nature is unalterable; it never loses the distinguishing peculiarities which separate it from matter; never acquires any of the properties of the latter; but it undergoes important changes, both in the progress of time, and by means of exercise and culture. The development of the bodily powers appears to affect it, and so does their decay; but we rather ought to say, that, in ordinary cases, its improvement is contemporaneous with the growth of the body, and its decline generally is contemporaneous with that of the body, after an advanced period of life. For it is an undoubted fact, and almost universally true, that the mind, before extreme old age, becomes more sound, and is capable of greater things, during nearly thirty years of diminished bodily powers; that, in most cases, it suffers no abatement of strength during ten years more of bodily decline; that, in many cases, a few years more of bodily decrepitude produce no effect upon the mind; and that, in some instances, its faculties remain bright to the last, surviving the almost total extinction of the corporeal endowments. It is certain that the strength of the body, its agility, its patience of fatigue, indeed all its qualities, decline from thirty at the latest; and yet the mind is improving rapidly from thirty to fifty; suffers little or no decline before sixty; and therefore is better when the body is enfeebled, at the age of fifty-eight or fifty-nine, than it was in the acme of the corporeal faculties thirty years before. It is equally certain, that while the body is rapidly decaying, between sixty or sixty-three and seventy, the mind suffers hardly any loss of strength in the generality of men; that men continue to seventyfive or seventy-six in the possession of all their mental powers, while few can then boast of more than the remains of physical strength; and instances are not wanting of persons who, between eighty and ninety, or even older, when the body can hardly be said to live, possess every faculty of the mind unimpaired. We are authorised to conclude, from these facts, that unless some unusual and violent accident interferes, such as a serious illness or a fatal contusion, the ordinary course of life presents the mind and the body running courses widely different, and in great part of the time in opposite directions; and this affords strong proof, both that the mind is independent of the body, and that its destruction in the period of its entire vigour is contrary to the analogy of nature." The consideration that the phenomena of mind afford ample and almost untouched evidence of design in the Creator, frequently brings Lord Brougham into contact with the materialists, whose fundamental positions are demolished in passing, in a few nervous passages of reasoning and illustration which, in other hands, might have formed the basis of several volumes. The following extract contains what the author himself describes as "the strongest of all the arguments both for the separate existence of mind, "The body is constantly undergoing change in all life. Yet But And yet "But observe how strong the inferences arising The distinct existence of mind, and its continued From any "Upon the particulars of a future state-the kind of existence reserved for the soul-the species of its occupations and enjoyments-Natural Theology is, of course, profoundly silent; but not more silent than Revelation. We are left wholly to conjecture, and in a field on which our hopelessness of attaining any certain result is quite equal to our interest in the success of the search. Indeed, all our ideas of happiness in this world are such as rather to disqualify us for the investigation, or what may more fitly be termed the imagination: Those ideas are, for the most part, either directly connected with the senses, or derived from our condition of weakness here, which occasions the formation of connexions for mutual comfort and support, and gives to the feebler party the feeling of allegiance, to the stronger the pleasure of protection. Yet may we conceive that, hereafter, such of our affections as have been the most cherished in life shall survive and form again the delight of meeting those from whom death has severed us that the soul may enjoy the purest delights in the exercise of its powers, above all, for the investigation of truth-that it may expatiate in the full discovery of whatever has hitherto been most sparingly revealed, or most carefully hidden from its view that it may be gratified with the sight of the useful harvest reaped by the world from the good seed which it helped to sow. We can only conjecture or fancy. But these, and such as these, are pleasures in which the gross indulgences of sense have no part, and which are even removed above the less refined of our moral gratifications: they may, therefore, be supposed consistent with a pure and faultless state of spiritual being. 66 Perhaps the greatest of all the difficulties which we feel in forming such conjectures, regards the ideas in this world are so adapted to a limited contiendless duration of an immortal existence. All our nuance of life-not only so moulded upon the scheme of a being incapable of lasting beyond a few years, but so inseparably connected with a constant change even here-a perpetual termination of one stage of existence and beginning of another—that we cannot easily, if at all, fancy an eternal, or even a long-continued, endurance of the same faculties, the same pursuits, and the same enjoyments. All here is in perpetual movement-ceaseless change. There is nothing in us or about us that abides an hournay, an instant. Resting-place there is none for the foot-no haven is provided where the mind may be still. How then shall a creature, thus wholly ignorant of repose-unacquainted with any continuation at all in any portion of his existence so far abstract his thoughts from his whole experience as to conceive a long, much more a perpetual, duration of the same powers, pursuits, feelings, pleasures? Here it is that we are the most lost in our endeavours to reach the seats of the blessed with our imperfect organs of perception, and our inveterate and only habits of thinking." The second part of the "Discourse" is much shorter than that to which our attention has been hitherto confined. It is divided into three sections, the first of which treats of the pleasures which attend the study of Natural Theology in common with all other scientific pursuits; the second describes the pleasures and improvement peculiar to the study which forms the main subject of the work; and the third explains the connection between natural aud revealed religion, showing the service which natural theology renders to the doctrines of revelation. The length to which our notice has already extended, only leaves us room to extract one short passage from the second section of this portion of the work. "The universal recurrence of the facts on which Natural Theology rests, deserves to be regarded as increasing the interest of this science. The other sciences, those of Physics at least, are studied only when we withdraw from all ordinary pursuits, and give up our meditations to them. Those which can only be prosecuted by means of experiment, can never be studied at all without some act of our own to alter the existing state of things, and place nature in circumstances which force her, by a kind of question, as Lord Bacon phrases it, to reveal her secrets. Even the sciences which depend on observation have their fields spread only here and there, hardly ever lying in our way, and not always accessible when we would go out of our way to walk in them. But there is no place where the evidences of Natural It Religion are not distributed in ample measure. is equally true, that those evidences continually meet us in all the other branches of science. A discovery made in these almost certainly involves some new proofs of design in the formation and government of the universe." LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT, 22 LUDGate street, From the Steam-Press of C. & W. REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street. LONDON JOURNAL AND THE PRINTING MACHINE. SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1835. THE LONDON JOURNAL. TO ASSIST THE INQUIRING, ANIMATE THE STRUGGLING, AND STRAWBERRIES. Ir our article on this subject should be worth little (especially as we are obliged to be brief, and cannot bring to our assistance much quotation or other helps) we beg leave to say, that we mean to do little more in it than congratulate the reader on the strawberry-season, and imply those pleasant interchanges of conventional sympathy, which give rise to the common expressions about the weather or the state of the harvest,-things which everybody knows what everybody else will say about them, and yet upon which everybody speaks. Such a charm has sympathy, even in its commonest aspect. A. A fine day to-day. B. Very fine day. A.-But I think we shall have rain. And so the two speakers part, all the better pleased with "with There is Strawberry weather, for instance, which is as good a point of the weather to talk about, as rain or sun. If the phrase seems a little forced, it is perhaps not so much as it seems; for the weather, and fruit, and colour, and the birds, &c. &c., all hang together; and for our parts, we would fain think, and can easily believe, that without this special degree of heat (while we are writing) or mixture of heat and fresh air, the strawberries would not have their special degree of colour and fragrance. The world answers to the spirit that plays upon it, as musical instruments to musician; and if cloud, sunshine, and breeze (the fine playing of nature) did not descend upon earth precisely as they do at this moment, there is good reason to conclude, that neither fruit, nor anything else, would be precisely what it is. The cuckoo would want tone, and the strawberries relish. Do you not like, reader, the pottle of strawberries? And is it not manifest, from old habit and association, that no other sort of basket would do as well for their first arrival? It" carries" well it lies on your arm like a length of freshness; then there is the slight paper covering, the slighter rush tie, the inner covering of leaves; and when all these give place, fresh, and fragrant, and red lie the berries,-the best, it is to be feared, at the top. Now and then comes a half-mashed one, sweet in its over-ripeness; and when the fingers cannot conveniently descend further, the rest, urged by a beat on the flat end, are poured out on a plate; and perhaps agreeably surprise us with the amount. From the Steam-Press of C. & W. REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street] No. 65. Meantime the fingers and nails have got coloured as And What matter of fact is this! And how everybody quoth Richard the Third to the Bishop, in that scene of Sir John Suckling, in his richly-coloured portrait of "Eyes full and quick, Strawberries deserve all the good things that can be A fruit so very useful and delightful deserves a better name; though the old one is now so identified with its beauty, that it would be a pity to get rid of it. Nobody thinks of straw, when uttering the word strawberry, but only of colour, fragrance, and sweetness. The Italian name is Fragola,-fragrant. The English one originated in the custom of putting straw between the fruit and the ground, to keep it dry and clean; or perhaps, as Mr Phillips thinks, from a still older practice among children, of threading the wild berries upon straws of grass. He says, that this is still a custom in parts of England where they abound, and that so many "straws of berries" are sold for a penny. "Io per me d'esse, a boccon ricchi e doppi E di Fragole un' avida satolla Mi purga il sangue, e avviva ogni midolla. For my part, I confess I fairly swill And stuff myself with strawberries: and abuse And wonder how any sane head can chuse The Almost all the writers of Italy who have been worth anything, have been writers of verse at one time or another.-Prose-writers, historians, philosophers, doctors of law and medicine, clergymen,—all have contributed their quota to the sweet art. poet of the strawberries was a Jesuit, a very honest man too, notwithstanding the odium upon his order's name, and a grave, eloquent, and truly christian theologian, of a life recorded as "evangelical." It is delightful to see what playfulness such a man thought not inconsistent with the most sacred aspi. rations. The strawberry to him had its merits in the creation, as well as the star; and he knew how to give each its due. Nay, he runs the joke down, like a humourist who could do nothing else but joke if he pleased, but gracefully withal, and with a sense of Nature above his Art, like a true lover of poetry. His poem is in two cantos, and contains upwards of nine hundred lines, ending in the following bridal climax, which the good Jesuit seems to have considered the highest one possible, and the very cream even of strawberries and sugar. He has been apostrophising two young friends of his, newly married, of the celebrated Venetian families Mocenigo and Loredano, and this is the blessing with which he concludes, pleasantly smiling at the end of his gravity: "A guesta coppia la serena pace Eternamente intorno scherzi e voli : Non dal sua fianco un solo di s' involi; E a dire che ogni cosa lieta vada, Su le Fragole il zucchero le cada. MILTON is always interesting; but the new edition of his works by Sir Egerton Brydges gives a new gloss to him at the moment, like a shower of rain upon a laurel-tree; and, as Sir Egerton, in the Life which constitutes his first volume, has dealt rather in a certain fondness of criticism (with which, and his antiquarian reminiscences, we strongly sympathise) than in the usual routine of biography, we here extract Mr Todd's account of the person and manners of the great poet. We think there can be little doubt, that Milton, however estimable and noble at heart, was far from perfect in his notions of household government, and exacted somewhat too much submission to be loved as he wished. His wife (a singular proceeding in the bride of a young poet) absented herself from him in less than a month after their marriage, that is to say, during the very honeymoon;) and stayed away the whole summer with her relations: he made his daughters read to him in languages which they did not understand; and in one part of his works he piques himself, like Johnson, on being a good hater. Now "good haters," as they call themselves, are sometimes very good men, and hate out of zeal for something they love; neither would we undervalue the services which such haters may have done mankind. They may have been necessary; though a true christian philosophy proposes to supersede them, and certainly does not recommend. But as all men have their faults, so these men are not apt to have the faults that are least disagreeable, even to one another; for it is observable that good haters are far from loving their brethren, the good haters on the other side; and their tempers are apt to be infirm and overbearing. In the most authentic portraits of Milton, venerate them as we must, we cannot but discern a certain uneasy austerity, we fear, even a peevishness, -a blight of something not sound in opinion and feeling. "Milton, in his youth, is said to have been extremely handsome. He was called the Lady of his College; an appellation which Mr Hayley says he could not relish and I may add, that he might be less inclined to be pleased with the title, as, at that period, the appearance of effeminacy was attacked from the pulpit. We live in an age,' says Bishop Lake, wherein it is hard to say, whether in clothes men grow more womanish, or women more mannish!' Milton had a very fine skin and fresh complexion. His hair was of a light brown; and, parted on the foretop, hung down in curls upon his shoulders. His features were regular; and when turned of forty, he has himself told us, he was generally allowed to have had the appearance of being ten years younger. He has also represented himself as a man of moderate stature, neither too lean nor too corpulent; and so far endued with strength and spirit, that as he always wore a sword, he wanted not, while light revisited his eyes, the skill or the courage to use it. His eyes were of a greyish colour; which, when deprived of sight, did not betray their loss. At first view, and at a small distance, it was difficult to know that he was blind. The testimony of Aubrey respecting the person of Milton is happily expressed His harmonicall and ingeniose soul did lodge in a beautifull and well-proportioned body." Milton's voice was musically sweet, as his ear was musically correct. Wood describes his deportment to have been affable, and his gait erect and manly, bespeaking courage and undauntedness. Of his figure in his declining days, Richardson has left the following sketches: An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr Wright, found John Milton, in a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbowchair, and dressed neatly in black, pale but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalkstones. He used also to sit in a gray coarse cloth coat, at the door of his house near Bunhill fields, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as well as in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished parts as well as quality.' A "His domestic habits were those of a sober and tem- "It has been observed by Dr Newton, that all who that he was affable and instructive in conversation, of CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S BY WILLIAM HAZLITT. NO. XIX.HENRY V. This appears HENRY V is a favourite monarch with the English war on and deposed the descendant of this very Hugh Capet, on the plea that he was a usurper and illegitimate. What would the great modern catspaw of legitimacy and restorer of divine right have said to the claim of Henry and the title of the descendants of Hugh Capet? Henry V, it is true, was a hero, a king of England, and the conqueror of the king of France. Yet we feel little love or admiration for him. He was a hero, that is, he was ready to sacrifice his own life for the pleasure of destroying thousands of other lives: he was a king of England, but not a constitutional one, and we only like kings according to law; lastly, he was a conqueror of the French king, and for this we dislike him less than if he had conquered the French people. How then do we like him? We like him in the play. There he is a very amiable monster, a very splendid pageant. As we like to gaze at a panther catch a pleasing horror from their glistening eyes, or a young lion in their cages in the Tower, and their velvet paws, and dreadless roar, so we take a very romantic, heroic, patriotic, and poetical delight in the boasts and feats of our younger Harry, as they appear on the stage and are confined to lines of ten syllables; where no blood follows the stroke that wounds our ears, where no harvest bends beneath horses' hoofs, no city flames, no little child is butchered, no dead men's bodies are found piled on heaps and festering the next morning-in the orchestra! So much for the politics of the play; now for the poetry. Perhaps one of the most striking images in all Shakspeare is that given of war in the first lines of the Prologue. "O for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels Rubens, if he had painted it, would not have improved upon this simile. The conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely relating to the sudden change in the manners of Henry V, is among the well-known Beauties of Shakspeare. It is indeed admirable both for strength and grace. It has sometimes occurred to us that Shakspeare, in describing "the reformation " of the Prince, might have had an eye to himself— i « Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it, ELY. The strawberry grows underneath the And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best This is at least as probable an account of the progress of the poet's mind as we have met with in any of the Essays on the Learning of Shakspeare.' Nothing can be better managed than the caution which the king gives the meddling Archbishop, not to advise himself rashly to engage in the war with France, his scrupulous dread of the consequences of that advice, and his eager desire to hear and follow it. "And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, Or nicely charge your understanding soul That make such waste in brief mortality. Another characteristic instance of the blindness of human nature to everything but its own interests is the complaint made by the king of "the ill neighbourhood" of the Scot in attacking England when she was attacking France. "For once the eagle England being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weazel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs." It is worth observing that in all these plays, which give an admirable picture of the spirit of the good old times, the moral inference does not at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but on the dignity or meanness of the persons committing them. "The eagle England" has a right "to be in prey," but "the weazel Scot' has none "to come sneaking to her nest," which she has left to pounce upon others. Might was right, without equivocation or disguise, in that heroic and chivalrous age. The substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among the refinement and abuses of modern philosophy. To be concluded next week. FINE ARTS. Wanderings through North Wales. By Thomas Roscoe, with Engravings by W. Radclyffe after Cox, Creswick, and Cattermole. Part III. Tilt. Simpkin and Marshall. AN amusing number. The illustrations are, we think, an improvement on the former numbers. Though still rather hard, they are broader in the effect. Bolingbroke's false homage to Richard II' is one of Cattermole's best designs; the attitudes, it is true, bear too obvious an appearance of study, and Richard is not young enough, nor is the levity of his character sufficiently marked; but there is his weakness; and Bolingbroke's mixed deference and indifference tell the story well. The lovely Flower of Dolbadern' is very pleasingly shadowed forth by Creswick; Cader Idris, from Kinsmer Abbey,' by Cox, is a rare union of majesty and beauty; mountains never look so beautiful as when they are seen over trees. Gallery of Portraits. Part XXXVII. Charles Knight. CONTAINS three very different but familiar names, beginning with a head of the energetic and acute Herschell, with a fine, successful, happy look about his face, and an habitual contractedness between the brows. Next is the melancholy and sensitive countenance of the good Romilly; Lawrence seldom put so much sentiment in his pictures as he has in this. Lastly, there is the head of all heads, the inexhaustible head of Shakspeare. The engraving is from the Chandos head. We must own we, however, we prefer the monument, which bears the most probable show of authenticity. The Poetical Works of John Milton. Edited by Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart., with Imaginative Designs by J. M. W. Turner, R.A. Vol. I. Macrone. A VERY handsome volume. We cannot, however, say much for the illustrations. The head of Milton is a very poor version of the fine portrait with which we are all familiar; and the design in the title-page is in Turner's worst manner. There is a certain shining splendour in it, but neither imagination nor common sense; the worlds look like so many balloons, or like a lumi nous orrery at the theatre; and the "heavenly host" is a very human concourse of ricketty individuals-it is like "chorus of knights" at the Opera House. Ancient Picture.—We saw a picture, the other day, at Messrs Paul and Bartleys', Bucklersbury, which lies at their house, for sale. Lionardo da Vinci is claimed as the artist; but, we should think, unadvisedly. One of the heads, Joseph of Arimathea, is certainly in his manner; but the very imperfect drawing of parts, and the deficiency of an effective chiaro scurco, of which he was the father, render us very doubtful of his having had any share in it. Nor will the elaborate colour and finish allow us to suppose it a young work. In Da Vinci's paintings, too, there is an unceasing action in all the figures, almost amounting to restlessness, which we do not perceive in this. For these reasons, in spite of the monogram, we cannot but doubt that the painter of it is as yet to be identified. Indeed monograms are so obscure and arbitrary, that it requires much additional evidence to establish a picture; they did not always even consist of the initials of the artist's name, and, if they did, Lionardo is not the only painter with L. D. V. to his initials. There was a Spanish painter, for instance, Luis de Vargas, who flourished about the same time; or rather later. And is the picture decidedly Italian? The colouring of the whole figure of the Virgin, the white drapery on her head, and the drapery about the middle of the body, in harsh, small folds, are very like what we have seen in Spanish pictures. Be it Italian, Spanish, or of any other country, it is a fine picture, and old, and, we doubt not, really valuable. The gilt background is not necessarily the addition of some repairer, as a cotemporary has imagined; but was in use among early painters; if we mistake not, even Titian has used it. The finish, as we have observed, is most elaborate and minute, and yet the effect is broad and solid, and the colour bold and powerful. CHARACTERISTIC SPECIMENS OF THE ENGLISH POETS. NO. III. CHAUCER (CONTINUED.) HIS PATHOS. CHAUCER'S pathos is true nature's it goes directly to its object. His sympathy is not fashioned and clipped by modes and respects; and herein, indeed, he was lucky in the comparatively homely breeding of his age, and in the dearth of books. His feelings Observe the were not rendered critical and timid. second line, for instance, of the following verses. The glossaries tell us that the word "swelt" means fainted— died. There may be a Saxon word with such a meaning, but luckily for nature and Chaucer, there is another Saxon word, swell, of which swell'd is the past tense, and most assuredly this is the word here; as the reader will feel instantly. No man, however much in love, faints "full oft a day;" but he may swell, as the poet says, that is to say, heave his bosom and body with the venting of his long-suspended breath, and say, Alas! The fainting is unnatural; the sigh and the heaving is most natural, and most admirably expressed by this homely word. We have, therefore, spelt it accordingly, to suit the rest of the orthography. THE UNHAPPY LOVER. (From the Knight's Tale.) Then would he weepe; he mighté not be stent. that is, could not be stopped; the wilful, washing, self-pitying tears would flow. music is exquisite. This touch about the Dryden, writing for the court of Charles the Second, does not dare to let Arcite weep, when he hears music. He restricts him to a gentlemanly sigh He sighs when songs or instruments he hears. The cold ashes, which have lost their fire (we have the phrase still, "as pale as ashes) " he turns to "sapless boxen leaves" (a classical simile); and far be it from him to venture to say "swell." No gentleman ever " 'swell'd;" certainly not with sighing, whatever he might have done with drinking. But instead of that, the modern poet does not mind indulging him with a good canting common-place, in the style of the fustian tragedies. He raved with all the madness of despair: Dry sorrow in his stupid eyes appears, It was not sufficient, that upon the principle of extremes meeting, the excessof sorrow was unable to (1) More. "Mo" is still to be found in the old version of the Psalms. weep, that even self-pity seemed wasted. When the fine gentlemen of the court of Charles the Second, and when Charles himself, wept, (see Pepys) it was when they grew maudlin over their wine, and thought how piteous it was that such good eaters and drinkers should not have everything else to their liking. But let us not run the risk of forgetting the merits of Dryden, in comparing him with a poet so much the greater. THE SAME LOVER DYING. Alas the woe! alas the painés strong That I for you have suffer'd, and so long! Alas the death! alas mine Emily! Alas, departing of our company! Alas mine heartés queen! Alas my wife! Alas, it is to be observed, was the common expression of grief in those days; and all these repetitions of it only shew the loud, wilful, self-commiseration natural to dying people of a violent turn of mind, as this lover was. But he was also truly in love, and a gentleman. See how he continues : Mine heartés lady, ender of my life! What is this world? What asken men to have? How admirably expressed the difference between warm social life, and the cold solitary grave! How piteous the tautology" Alone-withouten any company!" Farewell, my sweet ;-farewell, mine Emily He has had an unjust quarrel with his rival and once beloved friend, Palamon :- I have here, with my cousin Palamon, As in this world right now ne know I none SIMILE OF A MAN LED TO EXECUTION. (From the Man of Law's Tale.') The virtuous Constance, wrongfully accused, stands pale, and looking about her, among a king's courtiers. Have ye not see, sometime, a pale face So stant Custance, and looketh her about. The same Constance, accused by the king's mother of having produced him a monstrous child, is treated as above, against the will of the Constable of the realm, who is forced to obey his master's orders. Weepen both young and old in all that place, (1) So surely guide my soul. (2) A lady's servant, or lover. (5) Thy sending-the lot thou scndest. 39 |