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our author has founded entirely on passion: having therefore no superior object to thwart his attention from Nature, it may be easily supposed that a writer who could so eminently convey to our ideas the uncontaminated feelings of the heart, would here display the full meridian of his powers. When we consider too that the passion of love, the grand mover of the human soul, is for ever confounded with approximate impressions, a drama, calculated to evince its genuine principles, must be of infinite service to mankind. It is one of those few occasions on which tragedy may be employed with propriety to aid domestic virtue, and to which end Shakspeare has successfully employed it in the drama before us. But this is not the only moral in the play; the quarrels between the Montagues and the Capulets, which he has made the source of his catastrophe, form an interesting warning against the folly and injustice of hereditary prejudice and injury; at the same time that they instruct us how unjustly liable the public tranquillity is to be molested by private broils, in countries where a well regulated police does not interpose between the public and individuals.

Nothing of the kind can exceed the chaste refinement of these lovers' passion, sustained throughout by a sublimity of thought in the poet, which adds a highly becoming brilliancy and dignity to virtue. The garden scene stands unrivalled as a proof of this, in which a passion, at once drawn so purely, and coloured so highly from nature, discovers itself in both the lovers, that though the mind is absorbed in the tenderest interest, we cannot determine to which side it preponderates.

But though the poet has been thus successful in the main object of his drama, there are inferior points in which we have to lament the want of his usual attention. There certainly can be no necessity for the origin of the passion being presented in the play; but, on the contrary, its source is thereby rendered too abrupt, which makes it not retain all that interest, upon reflection, which a matured faith would acquire: nor, for the same reason, was there any necessity, by the mention of Rosaline, to apprize us that Juliet is not Romeo's first love, or that she had been affianced to Tybalt.

Though the distraction of the Capulets on Juliet's supposed death is finely marked, yet it certainly is an omission that none of them should ask, or trouble themselves about the cause of a dissolution in every respect so sudden and extraordinary. It would have been natural that some, if not all of them, should have suspected her of suicide; and it is not probable that any paroxysm of grief should

render them all, especially Paris, her intended husband, unmindful of some enquiry.

A neglect somewhat similar to this occurs when Romeo is informed of her decease. The author has here left too much to be filled up by the actor, if with consistency much can be done. Immediately that Balthazar tells him she is dead, he says,

Is it even so?-then I defy you stars !--

Thou know'st my lodging; get me ink and paper;

And hire post-horses;-I will hence to-night."

The two last of these three lines prove that the first is not exclamation enough. As they stand, he receives the information much too calmly; nor could he, on so momentary an impulse, have determined on the poison; of which determination, however, the last two lines are evidently the result. Had his grief been such as to deprive him of utterance, then he could not have given these immediate directions to his servants. Upon the whole, therefore, either a total stupefaction, or a longer phrenzy, succeeding such a shock, would have been more naturally characteristic.

Next to the hero and heroine, Mercutio is the best drawn character in the play; yet, though his courage, gaiety, and wit, are all of a superior cast, we perfectly agree with Dr. Johnson in scouting the literal adoption of the tradition handed down by Dryden, that Shakspeare was known to say, that be was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him!'

There are no characters on the stage more accurately drawn or more highly coloured than those of the Nurse and the Friar. Modern authors too frequently bestow great pains on some prominent character, while the rest are totally neglected: on the contrary, one of Shakspeare's greatest excellencies is, that every personage he introduces, from the monarch to his meanest attendant, has a consequence and consistency assigned him.

After all, the finest idea in this play is not Shakspeare's. Juliet's waking before Romeo dies, and the latter, therefore, in excess of joy, forgetting he has taken the poison, is one of the grandest conceptions the whole range of the drama can produce.

POETRY.

CHARACTER

OF THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM PITT,

PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN.

OF orators the first, that fame records
For depth of logic and well chosen words:
Statesman the brightest! who displays combin'd
Demosthenes and Euclid in his mind:

Blest Minister! his country born to save,
With Gallic threats unmov'd, divinely brave;
His firmness rising as the danger grows,
The scourge of Traitors, and all England's Foes.
Like Michael mounted, on celestial wings,
He fights for Heaven and for the Right of Kings;
Bold are his measures, yet with them agree
The sacred rights that make a nation free:
The plan of Order, studious to pursue,
Both to the People and the Monarch true;
Spurning alike, in unison with God,
The cant of Patriots and the Tyrant's rod;
In Freedom's circle there's a point divine,
But every circle has a crooked line:

To square the curve! a probleın tried in vain,
The compass of his wisdom made it plain.
Yet snarling critics shew their frightful mien,
And disappointed dunces vent their spleen.
Poets all seem unwilling to commend,

For PITT, they swear, ne'er was the Muse's friend.
But where's the bard, whose bright enchanting lays
Can charm a St. John, and deserve his praise?
Since of self-love the passion we admit,

Exalted Genius must be lov'd by PITT.

Burke, Jervis, Duncan, Trollope, Nelson, Hood,
Proclaim him generous for his country's good.
Mecanas, in his patronage sublime,

Who dignifies the heroes of his time;
Whilst on the main, by furious tempests tost,

The oldest pilots mourn their vessels lost,

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While the controul of Eolus disdain'd,
Rebellious billows rise, the winds unchain'd:
The infernal task of Jacobins perform,

PITT triumphs at the helm, and mocks the storm:
The port of splendid Glory, spite of those
Seditious fiends, that his great ends oppose;
Loud for Reform, which, when the mask is gone,
Means only to deform and crush the Throne:
I see him reach, from pole to pole, unfurl'd
All-conquering sails surround, and rule the world
France stripp'd of pride, for e'er lament her loss,
And Atheists forc'd to kneel before the cross.*

MINIATURE PORTRAIT

OF THE

RIGHT HON. HENRY DUNDAS,

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE, &C.

A Front that shews a temper clear from blame,
A radiant look, and a majestic frame:
A popular address, unmixt with art;

A soul, where Virtue reigns; a godlike heart,
Where Charity displays the noblest scene;
A mind, Olympus like, bright and serene :
Grace in his manners, dignity with ease,
Cautious, yet social, and inclin'd to please:
I need but name, on logic's strictest plan,
Our HENRY, to define a gentleman.
An Advocate, who ne'er perverted laws,
And only pleads to gain his Country's cause,
So competent a judge 'twixt right and wrong,
That Justice plac'd her scales upon his tongue:
An Orator, that shines without pretence,
Confin'd to truth, to argument and sense:
With scholars and philosophers ally'd,
The knowledge he possesses, not the pride;
Of Minister the wisdom; but I fear,
For such a task, too honest and sincere:
Of all the great, that heraldry records,
No matter whether Dukes or ancient Lords,
The high descent, but not the golden store,
The elegance of courtiers and no more.

The British Flag.

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BIOGRAPHICAL, LITERARY, AND SCIENTIFIC

MAGAZINE,

FOR

MARCH 1799.

CONDUCTED BY

ROBERT BISSET, L L. D.

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF OTHER LITERARY GENTLEMEN,

THIS NUMBER IS EMBELLISHED WITH A PORTRAIT OF

STANISLAUS AUGUSTUS,

LATE KING OF POLAND.

LONDON:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY

GEORGE CAWTHORN, BRITISH LIBRARY, NO, 132, STRAND; OLD ALSO BY MESSRS, RICHARDSON, ROYAL-EXCHANGE; W. WEST, PATERNOSTERROW; J. HATCHARD AND J. WRIGHT, PICCADILLY; P. HILL, EDINBURGH; AND ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.

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