t
of an Achilles. Few dramatists of the time afford nobler passages of
description and reflection. Few are wiser, deeper, manlier in their
strain of thinking. But when we turn to the dramas from which these
grand things have been detached, we find extravagance, confusion, huge
thoughts lying in helpless heaps, sublimity in parts conducing to no
general effect of sublimity, the movement lagging and unwieldy, and the
plot urged on to the catastrophe by incoherent expedients. His
imagination partook of the incompleteness of his intellect. Strong
enough to clothe the ideas and emotions of a common poet, it was plainly
inadequate to embody the vast, half-formed conceptions which gasped for
expression in his soul in its moments of poetic exaltation. Often we
feel his meaning, rather than apprehend it. The imagery has the
indefiniteness of distant objects seen by moonlight. There are whole
passages in his works in which he seems engaged in expressing Chapman to
Chapman, like the deaf egotist who only placed his trumpet to his ear
when he himself talked.

This criticism applies more particularly to his tragedies, and to his
expression of great sentiments and passions. His comedies, though
over-informed with thought, reveal him to us as a singularly sharp,
shrewd, and somewhat cynical observer, sparkling with worldly wisdom,
and not deficient in airiness any more than wit. Hazlitt, we believe,
was the first to notice that Monsieur D'Olive, in the comedy of that
name, is "the undoubted prototype of that light, flippant, gay, and
infinitely delightful class of character, of the professed men of wit
and pleasure about town, which we have in such perfection in Wycherly
and Congreve, such as Sparkish, Witwond, Petulant, &c., both in the
sentiments and the style of writing"; and Tharsalio in "The Widow's
Tears," and Ludovico in "May-Day," have the hard impudence and cynical
distrust of virtue, the arrogant and glorying self-_un_righteousness,
that distinguish another class of characters which the dramatists of the
age of Charles and Anne were unwearied in providing with insolence and
repartees. Occasionally we have a jest which Falstaff would not disown.
Thus in "May-Day," when Cuthbert, a barber, approaches Quintiliano, to
get, if possible, "certain odd crowns" the latter owes him, Quintiliano
says, "I think thou 'rt newly married?" "I am indeed, sir," is the
reply. "I thought so; keep on thy hat, man, 't will be the less
perceived.