the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented,
if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under every
aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with
Shakspeare and his anachronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some
of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of
Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic
oracle and Julio Romano contemporary--what does it signify? he committed
no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a
turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is
true to the spirit and even to the _letter_ of history; where he
deviates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty
and more universal truth.

ALDA.

I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic
character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to
Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c.

MEDON.

Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like
catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture.

ALDA.

Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more
embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like
intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and
subjecting it to a chemical process.

MEDON.

Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette.
What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that
ever were--or are? She would put Lady ---- herself to school. But now
for the moral.

ALDA.

The moral!--of what?

MEDON.

Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose.

ALDA.

It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I
have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently
explained my own views, may I proceed?

MEDON.

If you please--I am prepared to listen in earnest.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Foster's Essay on the application of the word
_romantic_--_Essays_, vol. I

[2] Correspondence, vol. iii.

[3] An Oriental proverb

[4] In our own time, Madame de Stael, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet
Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi,
nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson.