by some Roman ladies, she produced her two boys as the only jewels she set her heart upon.

On the reciprocal affections of parent and child, Shakspeare has rivalled, if not surpassed the poets of antiquity. What can be deemed more powerful in sentiments and language, than some of the bursts of King Lear in regard to his daughters. For example

I tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, called you children,
You owe me no subscription; why then let fall
Your horrible displeasure—here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters joined
Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head

So old and white as this.

And again at the sight of the counterfeited Mad Tom

What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?

So Hamlet's interview with his mother is one of the most powerful scenes in any dramatic composition. His answer, also, when pressed to mitigate his grief for his father, is a great literary treat. The mode of repeating the last line but one was considered among Garrick's masterpieces of acting.

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not seems,
"Tis not alone my inky coat, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath;

No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. These, indeed, seem;
For they are actions that a man might play,
But I have that within which passeth show;
These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Though Fielding has paid a high compliment to Garrick, where he describes Partridge's feelings on witnessing the Ghost scene in Hamlet, yet he is generally supposed to have been inferior to Betterton in that scene. Betterton had conversed with the performer who had acted the part according to Shakspeare's own instructions; he looked so ghastly horrified, that one ghost caught the infection and could not go on with his part. From the description of Garrick's acting in Churchill's Rosciad, and other places, it would seem that his starts, and pauses, were more electrical even than the repetition of Shakspeare's words. Churchill contends that in this Garrick did no violence to nature.

Each start is nature, and each pause is thought.

There are some fine touches of parental affection in Barbantio's conduct to Desdemona; and still finer in Lady Constance's language concerning young Arthur, as in her answer to the priest.

He talks to me that never had a Son.

But, Janus-like, Shakspeare makes Lady Constance utter some rubbish, though mixed up with beauties, as in the following passage :

King P. You are as fond of grief as of your child.
Lady C. Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form,
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

If this stricture on Shakspeare appear unmerited, I doubt if any one will be found who will defend the following passage, occurring also in the midst of considerable beauties.

The Duchess of York prays the king to pardon her son, who had been guilty of treason, but the Duke of York unnaturally presses the king not to relent.

Duke.

Duchess. No word, like pardon, for king's mouth so meet. Speak it in French, king, say, pardonnez-moi. Duchess. Dost thou teach pardon, pardon to destroy?

That set'st the word itself against the word.

Speak pardon as 'tis current in our land

This chopping French I do not understand.

Shakspeare has a humorous description of Launce parting with his parents, which he relates by making his hat, staff and shoes represent the persons present. He is surprized at his dog not having wept, "which a Jew would have done;" he must have been a 66 very pebble-dog, with no more pity in him than a dog." One of the most humorous things written in any age or country is the scene, in which first Falstaff, in King Cambyses' vein, and then Prince Henry, takes off the old king, and supposes him to be lecturing his son upon the subject of his associates. But in the same play, as if to show the extraordinary versatility of his genius, Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Prince Henry the most becoming sentiments of filial piety, where he restores the crown to his father whom he supposed to have been dead.

Many pretty touches of parental tenderness are interspersed in the writings of our minor poets. The following are quo

tations extracted from longer passages on the same subject:

Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot.

Sweet babes! who like the little playful fawns
Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns

Thomson.

By your delighted mother's side,

Who now your infant steps shall guide ?

Ah! where is now the hand whose tender care,
To every virtue would have framed your youth,
And strewed with flowers the thorny ways of truth?
Lord Lyttleton.

How childhood in its winning years

Th' attempered soul to tenderness can move,
This thou canst tell; but not the hopes and fears
With which a parent's heart doth overflow;

The thoughts and cares inwoven with that love,
Its nature, and its depth, thou dost not, cans't not know.
Southey to his young Daughter.

My daughter! with thy name this song began.
My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end-

I see thee not,—I hear thee not, but none

Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend,
Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold,
My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! o'er the sea,
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,

As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me.

We may usefully compare the unhappy state of mind in the last extracted passage with that of persons who are contented to follow the course which nature has prescribed. Burns' "Cotter's Saturday Night :"

Then homeward all take off their several way,
The youngling cottagers retire to rest-
The parent pair their secret homage pay,

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request
That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest,

It is from

And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,
Would, in the way his wisdom sees the best,
For them, and for their little ones provide,
But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.

Compared with this, how poor religious pride,

In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide
Devotion's every grace, except the heart.
The power incens'd the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole,
But, haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleas'd, the language of the soul,
And, in his Book of life, the inmates poor enroll.

Burns has also described the toddling wee-things coming to meet the father on his return from work; this family incident is, however, best described by Gray :

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care

Nor children run to lisp their sire's return

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Nor shall we allow Burns to put us out of conceit with the sacerdotal stole," if it serve the village children to pluck, as they did that of Goldsmith's good Parson, in order to catch his parental smile.

66

In Gay's fable of the changeling it is given as a reason why Fairies would not change their children for those of mortals, that, Every mother prefers her booby to another." This predilection is found to exist, even where the child is not such a counterpart of the Parent as Dryden gives Flecknoe in Mac-Flecknoe. Benvenuto Cellini, the celebrated artist, whose little bell is now one of the principal curiosities exhibited at Strawberry Hill, used a similar argument to the