it;-the agonies of guilt combating with the sense of honour-agonies not merely excited by the vulgar dread of detection and of punishment which would have engrossed an ordinary mind, but sharpened by unappeasable remorse; which remorse, however, proves no hinderance to the commission of fresh crimes,-crimes which succeed each other as numerously, and as rapidly, as the visionary progeny of Banquo.-At first,'

What he would highly, he would holily:

but a familiarity with horrors soon cured this delicacy and in his subsequent and multiplied murders, necessity became apology. The whole presents an awful lesson on the terrible consequences of listening to the first slight suggestion of sin, and strikingly exemplifies that from harbouring criminal thoughts, to the forming black designs, and perpetrating the most atrocious deeds, the mind is led by a natural progress, and an unresisted rapidity.

The conflicting passions of the capricious Lear! tender and affectionate in the extreme, but whose irregular affections were neither controlled by nature, reason, or justice; a character weak and vehement, fond and cruel; whose kindness was determined by no principle; whose mind, governed by no fixed sense of right, but vibrating with the accident of the moment, and the caprice of the predominant humour; sacrificing the virtuous child, whose sincerity should have secured his affection, to the preposterous flattery of her unnatural sisters. These highly wrought scenes do not merely excite in the reader a barren sympathy for the pangs of self-reproach, of destitute age, and suffering royalty, but inculcate a salutary abhorrence of adulation and falsehood; a useful caution against partial and unjust judgment: a sound admonition against paternal injustice and filial ingratitude.

The beautiful and touching reflections of Henry IV. in those last soul-searching moments, when the possession of a crown became nothing, and the unjust ambition by which he had obtained it, every thing. Yet, exhibiting a prince still so far retaining to the last the cautious policy of his character, as to mix his concern for the state, and his affection for his son, with the natural dissimulation of his own temper; and blending the finest sentiments on the uncertainty of human applause and earthly prosperity, with a watchful attention to confine the knowledge of the unfair means by which he had obtained the crown to the heir who was to possess it. The wily politician predominating to the last moment, and manifesting rather regret than repentance; disclosing that the assumed sanctity with which he had been preparing for a crusade, was only a project to check those inquiries into his title to the crown, to which peace and rest might lead; and exhorting the prince, with a foreseeing subtlety which little became a dying monarch, to keep up quarrels with foreign powers, in order to wear out the memory of domestic usurpation; all this presents a striking exhibition of a superior mind, so long habituated to the devious paths of worldly wisdom and crooked policy, so as to be unable to desert them even in the pangs of dissolution.

The pathetic soliloquies of the repentant Wolsey, fallen from the pinnacle of wealth and power to a salutary degradation! A disgrace, which restored him to reason, and raised him to religion; which destroyed his fortune, but rescued his soul. His counsels to the rising statesman Cromwell, on the perils of ambition, and the precariousness of royal favour; the vanity of all attachment which has not religion for its basis; the weakness of all fidelity which has not the fear of God for its principle; and the perilous end of that favour of the courtier,

which is enjoyed at the dear price of his "integrity to heaven.'

The pernicious power of flattery on a female mind, so skilfully exemplified in that memorable scene in which the bloody Richard conquers the aversion of the princess Anne to the murderer of her husband, and of all his royal race! The deplorable error of the feeble-minded princess, in so far forgetting his crimes in his compliments, as to consent to the monstrous union with the murderer ! Can there be a more striking exemplification of a position we have ventured so frequently to establish, of the dangers to which vanity is liable, and of the miseries to which flattery leads?

The reflections of Henry VI. and of Richard II. on the cares and duties, the unsatisfactoriness and disappointment, attending great situations, the vanity of human grandeur while enjoyed, and the uncertain tenure by which it is held! These fine soliloquies preach powerfully to the hearts of all in high stations, but most powerfully to those in the highest.

The terribly instructive death-bed of cardinal Beaufort, whose silence, like the veil in the celebrated picture of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia by Timanthes, thrown over the father's face, penetrates the soul more by what it conceals, than could have been effected by any thing that its removal might have discovered.

These, and a thousand other instances, too various to be enumerated, too obvious to require specifying, and too beautiful to stand in need of comment, may, when properly selected, and judiciously animadverted on, not only delight the imagination, and gratify the feelings, but carry instruction to the heart.

The royal pupil may discern in Shakspeare an originality which has no parallel. He exhibits

humour the most genuine, and, what is far more extraordinary, propriety of sentiment, and delicacies of conduct, where, from his low opportunities, failure had been pardonable. A fidelity to character so minute, that it seems rather the accuracy of individual history, marking the incidental deviations, and delineating the casual humours of actual life, than the invention of the poet. Shakspeare has seized every turn and flexure of the ever-varying mind of man in all its fluctuating forms; touched it in all its changeful shades, and marked it in all its nicer gradations, as well as its more abrupt varieties. He exhibits the whole internal structure of man; uniting the correctness of anatomy with the exactness of delineation, the graces of proportion, and often the highest beauty of colouring.

But, with these excellencies, the works of this most unequal of all poets contain so much that is vulgar, so much that is absurd, and so much that is impure; so much indecent levity, false wit, and gross description, that he should only be read in parcels, and with the nicest selection. His more exceptionable pieces should not be read at all; and even of the best, much may be omitted. But the qualified perusal here suggested may, on account of his wonderful acquaintance with the human heart, be attended with peculiar advantages to readers of the class in question, one of whose chief studies should be that of mankind, and who, from the circumstance of station and sex, have few direct and safe means of acquiring a knowledge of the world, and an acquaintance with the various characters which compose it.

To the three celebrated Greek tragedians we have already adverted, as uniting, with the loftiest powers of genius, a general prevalence of virtuous, and often even of pious sentiments. The scenes with which they abound, of meritorious, of suffering, of

imprudent, of criminal, of rash, and of penitent princes; of royalty under every vicissitude of passion, of character, and circumstance, will furnish an interesting and not unprofitable entertainment. And Mr. Potter has put the English_reader in possession of these ancient bards, of Eschylus especially, in a manner highly honourable to his own taste and learning.

Most of the tragedies of Racine are admirably written, and are unexceptionable in almost all respects. They possess, though conveyed in the poor vehicle of French versification,* all the dramatic requisites, and to their author we can safely ascribe one merit superior even to that of the critical exactness with which he has regulated the unities of his plays by Aristotle's clock; we mean his constant care not to offend against modesty or religion. His Athalie exhibits at once a chef d'œuvre of the dramatic art, a proof of what exquisite poetic beauties the Bible histories are susceptible; a salutary warning to princes on the miseries attendant upon treachery, impiety, and ambition; and a lively instance, of not only the private value, but the great political importance, of eminently able and pious ministers of religion.

If the Italian language should form a part of the royal education, we might name Metastasiot as

*It is a curious circumstance in the history of French dramatic poetry, that the measure used by their best poets in their sublimist tragedies is the anapastic, which, in our language, is not only the lightest and most undignified of all the poetic measures, but is still more degraded by being chiefly applied to burlesque subjects. It is amusing to an English ear, to hear the Brutus of Racine, the Cid of Corneille, and the Orosmane and Orestes of Voltaire, declaim, philosophize, sigh, and rave in the precise measure of

A cobler there was, and he lived in a stall.

Pietro Metastasio, an Italian ecclesiastic, wrote several highly esteemed dramas for the imperial theatre at Vienna, where he died at the age of 84, in 1782.-ED.