luted, and much more so,
we hope, than ever were the English; but they debased not with their
gross vices their glorious tragedies. Nature in her higher moods alone,
and most majestic aspects, trod their stage. Buffoons, and ribalds, and
zanies, and "rude indecent clowns," were confined to comedies; and even
there they too were idealised, and resembled not the obscene samples
that so often sicken us in the midst of "the acting of a dreadful thing"
in our old theatre. They knew that "with other ministrations, thou, O
Nature!" teachest thy handmaid Art to soothe the souls of thy
congregated children--congregated to behold her noble goings-on, and to
rise up and depart elevated by the transcendent pageant. The Tragic muse
was in those days a Priestess--tragedies were religious ceremonies; for
all the ancestral stories they celebrated were under consecration--the
spirit of the ages of heroes and demigods descended over the vast
amphitheatre; and thus were Aeschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides, the
guardians of the national character, which, we all know, was, in spite
of all it suffered under, for ever passionately enamoured of all the
forms of greatness.

Forgive us--spirit of Shakespeare! that seem'st to animate that
high-brow'd bust--if indeed we have offered any show of irreverence to
thy name and nature; for now, in the noiselessness of midnight, to our
awed but loving hearts do both appear divine! Forgive us--we beseech
thee--that on going to bed--which we are just about to do--we may be
able to compose ourselves to sleep--and dream of Miranda and Imogen, and
Desdemona and Cordelia. Father revered of that holy family! by the
strong light in the eyes of Innocence we beseech thee to forgive
us!--Ha! what old ghost art thou--clothed in the weeds of more than
mortal misery--mad, mad, mad--come and gone--was it Lear?

We have found then, it seems--at last--the object of our search--a Great
Poem--ay--four Great Poems--"Lear"--"Hamlet"--"Othello"--"Macbeth." And
was the revealer of those high mysteries in his youth a deer-stealer in
the parks of Warwickshire, a linkboy in London streets? And died he
before his grand climacteric in a dimmish sort of a middle-sized
tenement in Stratford-on-Avon, of a surfeit from an overdose of
home-brewed humming ale? Such is the tradition.

Had we a daughter--an only daughter--we should wish her to be like

"Heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb."

In that one line has Wordsworth d