to the feminine modesty, the dignity, and the melody of this exquisite passage, may they be seventy times seven-fold delighted by the charms of their own native productions. "I thought," says Racine in his preface to Esther, " that I could fill up the whole of my dramatic action with such scenes as God himself has in a manner prepared." Racine justly thought so, for he alone possessed the harp of David consecrated to the scenes prepared by God.

Judging with an impartiality, the general character of foreign productions and our own (if indeed we are capable of judging foreign literary works, which I much doubt) it may be said that, though equal in power of thought, ours have the advantage of regularity and taste in composition. Genius creates, taste regulates. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste genius is but a sublime madness: the sure touch which draws from the lyre the exact tone it ought to render is more rare than even the faculty which creates. Talent and genius, diversely diffused, latent and unrecognized, as Montesquieu says "frequently pass through us without unpacking," they exist in equal proportion in all ages, but in the course of those ages, it is only among certain natures, and at certain periods of time, that taste is developed in its

purity. Before this period arrives, and after its conclusion, all will be imperfect through deficiency or excess. Hence the reason why finished productions are so rare; for they must necessarily emanate from the happy union of taste and genius. But this rare concurrence, like the concurrence of certain stars, seems to require the revolution of ages for its consummation, and then its duration is but momentary.

THE ERA OF SHAKSPEARE.

THE period of the appearance of a great genius should be well considered, to explain certain affinities of that genius, to show what it received from the past, gathered from the present, or left to the future. The extravagant imagination of the present age, which elevates every great name to the clouds, that morbid imagination which disdains reality, begot a Shakspeare after its own fashion. The son of the Stratford butcher is a giant, who has fallen from some Pelion upon Ossa in the midst of his barbarous countrymen, and by his seven-league strides left his cotemporaries far behind him. Nay, Shakspeare, we are told, is like Dante, a solitary comet which, having traversed the constellations of the ancient firmament, returns to the feet of the Deity, and says to him, like the thunder, "Here I am."

The extravagant and the romantic are not to be admitted into the domain of fact. Dante ap

peared in what may justly be called an age of darkness. The compass had then scarcely enabled the mariner to steer through the well known waters of the Mediterranean. America and the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope were yet undiscovered. The inventor of gunpowder had not changed the whole system of war, nor had the introduction of printing operated a complete metamorphosis in society, and the feudal system pressed with all the weight of its darkness upon enslaved Europe.

But when the mother of Shakspeare gave birth to her obscure son, there had already elapsed in the year 1564 two thirds of the famous age of human regeneration and reformation, of that age in which the principal discoveries of modern times were accomplished, the true system of the universe ascertained, the heavens and the earth explored, the sciences cultivated, and the fine arts carried to a pitch of perfection which they have never since attained. Great deeds and great men appeared in all parts. Families repaired to the woods of New England, to sow the seeds of a fertile independence; provinces broke the yoke of their oppressors, and raised themselves to the rank of nations.

On the thrones of Europe, after Charles V,

cis I and Leo X, there were seated Sixtus V,

Elizabeth, Henry IV, Don Sebastian, and that Philip, who, though surnamed the Cruel, was certainly not a vulgar tyrant.

In the list of illustrious warriors were Don John of Austria, the Duke of Alva, Admirals Vincero and John Andrew Doria, the Prince of Orange, the two Guises, Coligny, Biron, Lesdiguières, Montluc, and La Noue.

Among the magistrates, legislators, ministers of state, there were l'Hôpital, Harlay, Du Moulins, Cujas, Sully, Olivarez, Cecil, and d'Ossat.

Among the prelates and sectarians, scholars, and authors, we find the names of Carlo Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales, Calvin, Theodore de Beza, Buchanan, Tycho-Brahe, Galileo, Bacon, Cardan, Kepler, Ramus, Scaliger, Stephanus, Manutius, Justus Lipsius, Vida, Baronius, Mariana, Amyot, Du Haillan, Montaigne, Big

non,

Thomas d'Aubigny, Brantôme, Marot,

Ronsard, and hundreds besides.

Among the names eminent in art were those of Titian, Paulo Veronese, Annibale Caracchi, Sansovino, Julio Romano, Domenichino, Palladio, Vignole, Jean Goujon, Guido, Poussin, Rubens, Vandyke, and Velasquez. It was Michael Angelo's fate to live till the year which gave birth to Shakspeare.

So far from Shakspeare being a leader in the

VOL. I.

U