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SHEPHERD.

Turn ower to the Ghost, sir-gin ye please.

"By Heaven, I'll make a Ghost of him that lets me."

NORTH.

Lo! Young Hamlet, beckoned away by the Ghost, who stands in the distance, dim and shadowy, ghostly indeed and king-like too, is bursting from his friends, whose admonitory, dissuasive countenances interpret their fears. There is nothing of rage or violence, you see, James, in his deportment -nothing but the self-transcending energy of one, whose fate cries out. Never did art produce a finer sample of manly beauty in its vernal summer. We can see that his downy cheek is smooth and blooming as a virgin's; and yet he is the man complete the soldier, scholar, courtier-the beloved of Ophelia-" the beautiful, the brave." Perhaps he is even too beautiful-not that he is effeminate-but the moody, moon-struck Hamlet must needs have had a darker and a heavier brow.

Which is Horautio?

SHEPHERD.

NORTH.

That. Horatio, here and throughout, is a sensible, gentlemanlike young man-and Marcellus a fair militia officer.

SHEPHERD.

Eh! here's the soliloquy !

NORTH.

To say that it is a picture of Hamlet uttering that soliloquy, would be to attribute to the pencil a skill which it does not possess. But it is evidently the picture of a man speaking -reasoning to himself—a rare advantage over the generality of theatrical portraits, which generally stare out of the canvas or paper, just as if they were spouting to the pit, or familiarly eyeing the gallery. Hamlet stands in the centre-his body firm and erect, his head downcast, hands slightly raised. He is manifestly in a state of inward conflict, and strong mental exertion-not in a passive day-dream, or brown study. On the one side Ophelia sits sewing her hands suspended, her countenance marked with affectionate anxiety. On the other, the King and Polonius, watching, one with malicious, the other with curious intentness. Retzsch has admirably

represented the popular idea of Polonius ;-but when he visits England, he may perhaps find, among our venerable Nobles, a more adequate representative of the Polonius of Shakspeare.

SHEPHERD.

Was ye speakin' the noo, sir, for I didna hear your vice?

NORTH.

Beauty, Innocence, and Sorrow, each in their loveliest dress, unite in the simple figure. Most wonderful and excellent is the art, that with a few strokes of the pencil, can produce a being whom at once we know, and love, and pity. Hamlet, seated at her feet, his eye fixed like a Basilisk on the King, with uplifted finger, expounds "the Mouse Trap." -"He poisons him in the garden for his estate. You shall see anon, how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife." The King, with averted face, draws back his chair, as in the act of rising.-The Queen, a royal matron, still noble and beautiful-though guilt, and care, and years, have set their several marks upon her,-holds up her hands in astonishment-but shows no fear.-She evidently was not privy to the murder. The rest of the audience are merely amazed, or it may be, chagrined at the interruption of their entertainment. Ophelia, pensive and heart-broken, yet thinking no evil, scarce perceives what is passing.

Puir creter!

SHEPHERD.

NORTH.

But, look here, my dear Shepherd-look here. The King is praying-no, pray he cannot-the picture tells it. We compassionate even this miscreant under the severest of all Heaven's judgments.-Not so does Hamlet. "Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid bent," is clearly blazoned in his own act and visage. That was one of the speeches which Shakspeare, had he lived in these days, would not have written-nor would he, in the golden days of Queen Bess, or King Jamie, have put into the mouth of Hamlet, had he meant to represent him as a sane and exemplary youth. Yet I know not whether the notion of retributive vengeance as a propitiation to the departed, will not justify even this horrid scruple. The speech, whatever it were meant for, certainly is a tremendous satire on revenge.

SHEPHERD.

It gars me grue and greet.

NORTH.

After the last confirmation of the king's guilt, Hamlet, fooled to the top of his bent by successive intruders, and screwing up his spirits for the interview with his mother, not only is, but confesses himself maddened.

"Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such business as the bitter day
Would quake to look on."

He even contemplates, while he deprecates, the possibility of his "heart losing its nature." Just then, "at the very witching time of night," "when hell itself breathes out contagion to this world," he crosses the chamber where the king is kneeling. The opportunity strikes him, but his natural disinclination to action intervenes, with somewhat of a secret consciousness, that the moment of repentance is not the time of vengeance. Still, so utterly are his feelings envenomed against the poor culprit, and so strangely his moral sense perplexed by "supernatural soliciting," that even remorse itself is turned to cruelty, and he vindicates the adjournment of the blow by arguments, which certainly "have no relish of salvation in them," but which, perhaps, sounded less impious in an age, when every stanch Protestant, no less than his Catholic cousin, thought himself bound to believe in the eternal perdition of their dissentient neighbours.

SHEPHERD.

I can look at it nae langer; turn ower, sir, turn ower to Ophelia !

NORTH.

Here it is, the madness of Ophelia ! She is still lovely -still the same Ophelia-but how changed! Her aspect tells of fierce conflicting woes-but they are passed. Surely that bereavement of reason, which to man appears so cruel, is a dispensation of mercy! She scatters her flowers-rue, for remembrance, and pansies for thoughts-and warbles snatches of old songs-such as she may have overheard in her childhood, without knowing what the words imply, only that they tell of love and death-of faithless love and death untimely !

VOL. I.

N

IGNORAMUS ON THE FINE ARTS.

No. I.

"PAINTING is a mystery."

Strange that an art, which addresses the most perfect of the senses, should not be plain as daylight. Yet the more pictures I see, the more I read and hear, and reflect about painters and their works, the more I am convinced that Pompey, the clown, is right in his observation. The more I seem to know, the nearer I approach the Socratic conviction that I know nothing!

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I speak not of the mystery of making pictures, but of that which involves their merits and demerits when made. That there should be technical secrets, mysteries of the craft, is no more than might be expected. I can easily conceive that to paint air may be as difficult as to raise the wind, and that I never could do by whistling,-that middle tint, like other happy middles, is hard to hit, and harder to keep, that a true carnation is as skilful a compound as a haggis,—that to group a picture successfully may be as delicate a concern as to marshal a country dance at a country assembly, (and that would puzzle a modern herald, or seneschal of the olden time),—

that the inner light of the Venetian colourists may be as unaccountable as the inward illumination of the elect, nay, I apprehend and appreciate the science and dexterity which can distinguish a horse from a crocodile, and a tree from a birch-broom. As for chiaroscuro, tone, keeping, contour, repose, &c., they are words which I venerate and understand as well as your worthy præcentor doth Selah, Michtham, Negonoth, or Hallelujah. Yet I doubt not they have a meaning, as precise and categorical as the polarity of moral truth. Of the executive difficulties of art I may be allowed to judge,―inasmuch as, after many years' self-instruction, and six lessons from an itinerant drawing-master, I never could represent a joint-stool in just perspective, or delineate the correct profile of a gibbet. As for colouring, though I was early aware that light and shade in nature do not lie in jagged patches, like the skin of a spotted negro, nor resemble London snow, or a damsel in a white gown newly emerged from the embraces of a chimneysweeper, that Spring, the lightsome lassie, does not wear green grogram, nor Autumn invest her maturer charms in a red and yellow Manchester print,-I was totally unable to make any practical use of the knowledge, except indeed to convince myself that a precocious passion for pencils and colour-boxes is no infallible sign of a genius for the fine arts.

In truth, I am well contented to be ignorant of the mechanical arcana of art. Secrets of practice are profitable to none but practitioners. When I look on a fine picture, I would gladly forget the laborious,

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