how quickly every thing becomes confused and perverted as soon as one of the laws of life—a perfectly external and apparently unimportant law-is broken by a freak of nature; as soon as but the difference of the outward form—by means of which the perception of the senses distinguishes one individual from another—is destroyed. The psychological improbability spoken of above is introduced into this general confusion and complication like an integral part of the whole. . . .

It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that I do not at all wish to maintain that these more philosophical than poetical considerations—although in my opinion they are not very different-were the directly conscious motives that induced the young poet to choose the subject, and that guided him in its development. But I do believe that his innate appreciation for the beautiful, his fine feeling for unity and harmony, or, in other words, that a genial instinct (it may be unconsciously) compelled him to make the attempt even to outdo Plautus's "Comedy of Errors," by introducing a second and exactly similar pair of twins; by this means, as well as by a number of secondary motives, he was able to carry the errors and confusion to the highest possible pitch, and to make them affect all the circumstances and relations of life. It is only by means of this exaggeration that the subject obtains that deeper significance already alluded to, and thereby a central point which gives unity to the confused variety of persons, scenes, relations, and incidents, and which holds all the several parts together. Of course, in such a state of things, it could not be devoid of improbabilities, devoid of strange occurrences and wonderful coincidences. But Shakespeare, by the very foundation which he has given to the whole the romantic history of the family of Ægeon, and the distant, foreign locality which he makes the scene of the play -has taken care that common reality is removed from our sight, and has given us to understand that the question here

does not concern this world, but a free, poetical creation, the picture of life, so to say, in the mirror of an unbridled fancy. It is only in the mirror of fancy that life could appear so perfectly dependent upon external form and sensuous observation; only within the comic view of life that this conception could be right; only when regarded from the one point of view, from the comic side, that it could appear so. For, true as it is that life is thus dependent, still it is not true that life is merely and wholly dependent upon sensuous experience; it is not true that human knowledge is only sensuous, a perception dependent on the eye and ear. The one-sidedness of this conception, therefore, contains within itself its own corrective; "error" in the end destroys itself, and a scene of general recognition brings every thing into order and into the right groove. We see that "error" may indeed, as it were, momentarily take entire hold of life, but must ultimately give way to truth, which eventually not only carries off the victory, but also leads us out of the darkness of delusion and confusion to where we recover the good which had long been missed and sought for in vain.

[From Charles Cowden-Clarke's "Shakespeare-Characters."· **] The Comedy of Errors is principally derived from the Menæchmi of Plautus; and Hazlitt says it is "not an improvement on it." The plot of the original play consists in the perplexities occasioned by the two principal characters being so like each cther as to defy all discrimination; and to this perplexity Shakespeare has added a "confusion worse confounded" in giving to each of the brothers Antipholus a servant - the two Dromios — equally verisimilar with their masters; and in thus heaping improbability upon improbability he has extended a comedy into a legitimate farce.

*From the unpublished "Second Series" of the Shakespeare-Characters (see 2 Hen. IV. p. 18), kindly sent to us by Mrs. Mary CowdenClarke for publication here.

The reading of the play is like threading the mazes of a dream; where people and things are the same and not the same in the same moment. The mistakes, crosses, and vexations in the plot so rapidly succeed that to keep the course of events distinct in the mind is almost as desperate an achievement as following all the ramifications of a genealogical tree; and-may it be said?-about as useful. The piece, however, is amusing; and although our intellectual remuneration for the time expended is not remarkable, yet we should bear in mind that it is essentially a drama of action and circumstance; and if it could be effectually represented, the result would be infinitely ludicrous.

Hazlitt speaks of the "formidable anachronism" committed by Shakespeare in introducing Pinch, the schoolmaster and conjurer, in Ephesus. It should appear, however, that our Poet has offered a greater violence to consistency in establishing a convent and a lady abbess under the nose of the goddess Diana. Nevertheless, there is an admirably characteristic dialogue, and quite in his own manner, between the Abbess and Adriana, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus, in which the shrewd old lady makes the jealous woman confess that her own injudicious treatment of her husband's vagaries has driven him mad:

“Abbess. How long hath this possession held the man?
Adriana. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,

And much different from the man he was;

But till this afternoon his passion

Ne'er brake into extremity of rage.

Abbess. Hath he not lost much wealth by wrack of sea?
Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye

Stray'd his affection in unlawful love?

A sin prevailing much in youthful men,
Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing.
Which of these sorrows is he subject to?

Adriana. To none of these, except it be the last;
Namely, some love that drew him oft from home.

Abbess. You should for that have reprehended him.

Adriana. Why, so I did.

Abbess.

Ay, but not rough enough.

Adriana. As roughly as my modesty would let me.

Abbess. Haply, in private.

Adriana.

Abbess. Ay, but not enough.

And in assemblies too.

Adriana. It was the copy of our conference:

In bed he slept not for my urging it;

At board he fed not for my urging it;
Alone, it was the subject of my theme;
In company I often glanced it;

Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.

Abbess. And thereof came it that the man was mad.

The venom clamours of a jealous woman

Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.

It seems his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing,

And thereof comes it that his head is light.

Thou say'st his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings:

Unquiet meals make ill digestions;

Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;

And what 's a fever but a fit of madness?

Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls :
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue

But moody and dull melancholy,

Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,
And at her heels a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?
In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest
To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast.

The consequence is then thy jealous fits

Have scar'd thy husband from the use of wits."

Luciana, the sister of Adriana, says in exculpation :

"She never reprehended him but mildly,

When he demean'd himself rough, rude, and wildly.-
Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?

Adriana. She did betray me to my own reproof."

Balthazar, the sober, sedate friend of Antipholus of Ephesus, is like a first sketch of the staid and serious Antonio, the "Merchant of Venice." He commences with a similar air of sadness; and the judicious remonstrance which the

Ephesian merchant addresses to his young friend, bidding him have patience and forbearance with his wife's apparent caprice, is in the same tone of quiet resignation of character which distinguishes the Venetian merchant.

Pinch (whom we cannot afford to part with for the sake of avoiding the anachronism pointed out by Hazlitt—who, by the way, was himself too good a judge of excellence seriously to give up the character on that score) affords a pleasant instance of Shakespeare's gay exaggeration in humour; the high spirits of an author taking shape in his writing, as it were. The description of the fellow is capital:

They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac'd villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man. This pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer;
And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 't were, outfacing me,
Cries out, I was possess'd."

That touch of the "no face" sets the man, with his attenuated vacant countenance and gloring eyes, palpably before us.

It forms an interesting examination to observe the way in which the two greatest comic dramatic geniuses that ever lived-Shakespeare and Molière-have each treated a similar subject. Both writers have taken a comedy of Plautus; a comedy curiously alike in main particular—that of perfect resemblance of person in the pairs of heroes. Shakespeare took the Roman's comedy where the likeness between the twin brothers Menæchmus forms the groundwork; and Molière took the play where the precise doubling of the parts of Amphytrion and Sosia by Jupiter and Mercury occasions the dramatic intrigue. The task of adapting the Latin author's humours to English apprehension of drollery, and the rendering them appreciable to French taste, has been felici