's
character is _essentially tragic_; there is none of the proper timber
of comedy in him.

* * * * *

_The Merchant of Venice_ is justly distinguished among Shakespeare's
dramas, not only for the general felicity of the language, but also
for the beauty of particular scenes and passages. For descriptive
power, the opening scene of Antonio and his friends is not easily
rivalled, and can hardly fail to live in the memory of any one having
an eye for such things. Equally fine in its way is the scene of Tubal
and Shylock, where the latter is so torn with the struggle of
conflicting passions; his heart now sinking with grief at the account
of his fugitive daughter's expenses, now leaping with malignant joy at
the report of Antonio's losses. The trial-scene, with its tugging
vicissitudes of passion, and its hush of terrible expectation,--now
ringing with the Jew's sharp, spiteful snaps of malice, now made
musical with Portia's strains of eloquence, now holy with Antonio's
tender breathings of friendship, and dashed, from time to time, with
Gratiano's fierce jets of wrath, and fiercer jets of mirth,--is hardly
surpassed in tragic power anywhere; and as it forms the catastrophe
proper, so it concentrates the interest of the whole play. Scarcely
inferior in its kind is the night-scene of Lorenzo and Jessica, bathed
as it is in love, moonlight, "touches of sweet harmony," and
soul-lifting discourse, followed by the grave moral reflections of
Portia, as she approaches her home, and sees its lights, and hears its
music. The bringing in of this passage of ravishing lyrical sweetness,
so replete with the most soothing and tranquillizing effect, close
upon the intense dramatic excitement of the trial-scene, is such a
transition as we shall hardly meet with but in Shakespeare, and aptly
shows his unequalled mastery of the mind's capacities of delight. The
affair of the rings, with the harmless perplexities growing out of it,
is a well-managed device for letting the mind down from the tragic
height whereon it lately stood, to the merry conclusion which the play
requires. Critics, indeed, may easily quarrel with this sportive
after-piece; but it stands approved by the tribunal to which Criticism
itself must bow,--the spontaneous feelings of such as are willing to
be made cheerful and healthy, without beating their brains about the
_how_ and _wherefore_. It is in vain that critics tell us we ought to
"la