dows: one may name it a tragical Rembrandt." xii. (now xxv.) vol. iii. p. 208. Lect. (u) p. 191. "It is wonderful" says Weber, "to find Mr. Steevens join with the last editors of Beaumont and Fletcher in accusing them of having sneered at Shakspeare, when they assumed the very innocent and common privilege of parody." The passages in which their great master is sportively imitated are in the mock heroical vein,” and as The instances are these, Woman-Hater, Act iii. sc. 1. a parody on Hamlet:-The Knight of the Burning Pestle, first a parody on Macbeth, followed by "Sooth, George, his very ghost would have folks beaten." Act. v. sc. 1.Secondly, in the Prologue, a repetition nearly verbatim of Hotspur's bravura speech," By Heaven! methinks, it were an easy leap;" and thirdly, what none of the editors, as far as I know, have noticed, a parody on an incident in Romeo and Juliet-when Luce feigns death and is conveyed out of her father's house in a coffin.-In The Scornful Lady, Act. ii. sc. 1. Sir Roger says, in allusion to Hamlet's famous soliloquy: To sleep, to die; to die, to sleep; a very figure, Sir.' The same play contains a reference as has been supposed, to Lear: This fellow, with his bluntness, hopes to do More than the long suits of a thousand could.' In The Noble Gentlemen, Act. iii. sc. 4. is what Theobald calls a flirt on Henry the Fifth, Act. iii. sc. 1.-Weber an "innocent parody." In The Woman's Prize, Act. v. sc. 14. "Let's remove our places" has been said to be plainly a sneer at Hamlet: and Petruchio's declaration, "Something I'll do; but what it is I know not." Act. ii. sc. 4. ditto at Lear; a suggestion which Mr. Dyce rebuts by Nonsense; there is more of compliment than ‘sneer'in these recollections of Shakspeare." Besides these there may my Father has himself elsewhere observed, "to parody is not to satirize." Why should it be thought that B. and F. meant to detract from the great man by such mimicries, any more than to disparage Spenser, whose Faery Queen is so freely parodied in The Knight of the Burning Pestle? I would not urge against this notion how little cause the younger dramatists had, in their day, to envy Shakspeare; or that they appear to have been amiable and kindly persons, because the human heart has many folds and windings, and the hearts of men that lived three hundred years ago are not easily perused throughout; but it seems to me, that the passages themselves refute the charge of malicious intention. Would the gall of enmity and poison of envy have thus been poured forth in the form of festive lemonade and rum-punch? can we imagine that it would have been exhaled in a spirit of innocuous fun and jollity? There is be others, but I have not observed any, except a sentence at the end of The Beggar's Bush, which none of the editors seem to understand: Mr. Dyce thinks that Steevens has not hit the meaning by any of his conjectures. Higgen winds up a swaggering, canting speech with the words the spirit of Bottom is grown bottomless.' He has just declared that he will not turn the wheel for Crab the rope-maker,' but have a free course and go seek his fortune in England. Perhaps therefore his words mean only this; "Though I am but a clown, like Bottom, my spirit is not to be confined: the resources of my courage and ingenuity are endless." In Act ii. sc. 1. of this play there is another good natured parody on Henry the Eighth. Mason remarks on the absurdity of the supposition, that such allusions were meant for serious sarcasm: but so far was the notion carried, that Meed even found ridicule of Ophelia's catastrophe in Savil's speech at the end of Act iii. of The Scornful Lady: 'I will run mad first; if that get not pity, always something piquant in the allusion to well-known impressive tragic passages in the midst of comedy. Shakspeare himself puts an expression of Marlowe's into the mouth of Pistol in mimicry of "Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia!" Tamburlaine, Part II. Act iv. sc. 4. -a line parodied by many of our early dramatists. If the author of Tamburlaine had been the lesser play-wright, and the author of Henry IV. the greater, commentators would perhaps have exclaimed, "What an envious ill-conditioned slave was that Shakspeare to sneer at the divine Marlowe!" (v) p. 205. Sir H. Davy made his great discovery, the decomposition of the fixed alkalies and detection of their metallic bases, in October of 1807. In March 1808, Mr. C. was in the midst of that course of Lectures to which, in my belief, he refers in this record, as appears from a letter of Sir Humphry Davy to Mr. Poole of Nether Stowey, published in the life of that distinguished philosopher by Dr. Paris, vol. i. p. 224. It seems to have been mainly through Davy's advice and intervention, that my father was induced to give this course of Lectures. In August 1807, he wrote thus to Mr. Poole: "If Coleridge is still with you, be kind enough to let him know, that I wrote nearly a week ago two letters about Lectures, &c. &c. The Managers of the Royal Institution are very anxious to engage him; and I think he might be of material service to the public and benefit to his own mind, to say nothing of the benefit his purse might also receive. In the present condition of society his opinions in matters of taste, literature and metaphysics, must have a healthy influence; and unless he soon becomes an actual member of the living world, he must expect to be hereafter brought to judgment for hiding his light." Vol. i. p. 262. These feelings of affectionate interest were reciprocated by my father, who followed Sir Humphry's brilliant career in a triumphant and gratulant spirit. "I rejoice," said he, in a letter to Mr. Purkis, "in Davy's progress. There are three suns recorded in Scripture:-Joshua's that stood still; Hezekiah's that went backward; and David's that went forth and hastened on his course, like a bridegroom from his chamber. May our friend's prove the latter! It is a melancholy thing to see a man like the sun in the close of the Lapland summer, meridional in his horizon; or like wheat in a rainy season, that shoots up well in the stalk but does not kern. As I have hoped, and do hope more proudly of Davy than of any other man, &c. my disappointment would be proportionally severe." Dr. Paris tells the following anecdote in proof of "the fascinations of Davy's style." "A person having observed the constancy with which Mr. Coleridge attended these lectures, was induced to ask the poet, what attractions he could find in a study so unconnected with his known pursuits. I attend Davy's lectures,' he said, 'to increase my stock of metaphors.'"* I doubt not the charms of Sir Humphry's style or my father's delight in it—a poetical turn of thought and temperament was plainly the cement, which united the poetic philosopher and the philosophic poet-or philosopher and poet-in such special sympathy: but that the latter sought to enrich his metaphoric storehouse by borrowing ready-made tropes and figurative expressions from his friend, if so the story is to be understood, I doubt exceedingly. My father was fond of illustrating mental facts by physical analogies, of explaining and adorning metaphysical subjects by images obtained from the Realm of Nature at the hands of the physical Sciences, especially chemistry;-I believe it was the mere material for metaphoric language that he sought to gather from the lips of his friend. Even this however could have been but a secondary inducement to my father to attend the discourses of the great philosophic genius of the day: he loved knowledge * Vol. i. p. 128. for its own sake too well to seek it principally for any but its own sake alone. (w) p. 208. See note s. (x) p. 209. Mr. Strachey, in a recently published Essay on Hamlet, wherein he maintains that "Coleridge is our true guide in the study of Shakspeare," and observes how "immeasurably more profound his criticisms are than those of Schlegel or Goethe," extracts the two foregoing paragraphs, prints the last sentence, "He mistakes the seeing his chains, &c." in italics, and proceeds to say:-" This masterly view of Hamlet's character needs no recommendation of mine; it is, I suppose, universally recognized by all students of Shakspeare in the present day as the criticism. But I would call attention to the passages of it, which I have marked with italics. Though Coleridge is supported by Goethe, Schlegel, and all the commentators I know of in the present and previous centuries, in his assertion that Hamlet delays action till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and accident, I must hesitate to agree to his conclusion. Nay, presumptuous as I feel it to be, to set myself against such an array of authorities, I must believe that Hamlet, being exactly the character that Coleridge describes him, does yet end by mastering that characteristic defect, and that he dies not a victim, but a martyr,-winning, not losing, the cause for which he dies." Mr. Strachey endeavours to shew that this was Shakspeare's direct intention, in reference to which the whole plot of the drama is constructed that he meant to represent Hamlet as doubly a conqueror in death,-not only as an avenger and punisher of another's crime, but as a victor over his own besetting sin of irresolution. Analyzing the conclusion of the play he alleges, that Hamlet has come once more into the king's presence, not with any plan for the execution of his just vengeance, but with, what is much better, the faith that an opportunity will present itself, and the resolution to seize it instantly." "Nothing but the knowledge that he was dying, that now or never must the blow be |