lties, that we are left
only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own
sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the
catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of
absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for
heaven--our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!--O who, after
sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life
prolonged? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?--a crown upon
that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath?--on
which the deep dread bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent
their fury? O never, never!

Let him pass! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer.

In the story of King Lear and his three daughters, as it is related in
the "delectable and mellifluous" romance of Perceforest, and in the
Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia
defeats her sisters, and replaces her father on his throne. Spenser, in
his version of the story, has followed these authorities. Shakspeare has
preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some
lost tradition. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and
bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been
thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have
altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia
into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of
the play--exit with drums and colors flying--to be married to Edgar. Now
any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous
impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be
imagined. "I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, "what ideas of art and
dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure
tack a double conclusion to a tragedy--a melancholy one for hard-hearted
spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce
manners depicted in this play, the extremes of virtue and vice in the
persons, belong to the remote period of the story.[64] There is no
attempt at character in the old narratives; Regan and Goneril are
monsters of ingratitude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by her filial
piety; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite
distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human
being; we ha