beautiful and perfectly innocent as if beauty and innocence could not be dissociated! The French thing below is a curious instance of the inherent grossness of the French taste.* Titian's picture is made quite bestial.

I think Sir James Scarlett's speech for the defendant, in the late action of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, worthy of the best ages of Greece or Rome; though, to be sure, some of his remarks could not have been very palatable to his clients.

I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop at all.

* I wish this criticism were enough to banish that vile miniature into a drawer or cupboard. At any rate, it might be detached from the glorious masterpiece to which it is now a libellous pendant. — ED.

July 1. 1833.

MANDEVILLE'S FABLE OF THE BEES. BESTIAL THEORY. CHARACTER OF

IF I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant any thing more by his Fable of the Bees than a bonne bouche of solemn raillery, I should like to ask those man-shaped apes who have taken up his suggestions in earnest, and seriously maintained them as bases for a rational account of man and the world-how they explain the very existence of those dexterous cheats, those superior charlatans, the legislators and philosophers, who have known how to play so well upon the peacock-like vanity and follies of their fellow mortals.

By the by, I wonder some of you lawyers (sub rosa, of course) have not quoted the

"The lawyers, of whose art the basis
Was raising feuds and splitting cases,
Oppos'd all Registers, that cheats
Might make more work with dipt estates;
As 't were unlawful that one's own
Without a lawsuit should be known!
They put off hearings wilfully,
To finger the refreshing fee;
And to defend a wicked cause
Examined and survey'd the laws,
As burglars shops and houses do,

To see where best they may break through."

There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines; and those on the doctors are also very terse.

Look at that head of Cline, by Chantrey! Is that forehead, that nose, those temples and that chin, akin to the monkey tribe? No,

no. To a man of sensibility no argument could disprove the bestial theory so convincingly as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust.

1

I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the critics have poured out upon Bertram in "All's Well that ends Well." He was a young nobleman in feudal times, just bursting into manhood, with all the feelings of pride of birth and appetite for pleasure and liberty natural to such a character so circumstanced. Of course he had never regarded Helena otherwise than as a dependant in the family; and of all that which she possessed of goodness and fidelity and courage, which might atone for her inferiority in other respects, Bertram was necessarily in a great measure ignorant. And after all, her primâ facie merit was the having inherited a prescription from her old father the Doctor, by which she cures the King,—a merit, which supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in Bertram to make conclusive to him in such a matter as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry Helena as a very tyrannical act. Indeed, it must be confessed that her character is not very

delicate, and it required all Shakspeare's consummate skill to interest us for her; and he does this chiefly by the operation of the other characters, the Countess, Lafeu, &c. We get to like Helena from their praising and commending her so much.

In Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies the comic scenes are rarely so interfused amidst the tragic as to produce a unity of the tragic on the whole, without which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this is always managed with transcendant skill. The Fool in Lear contributes in a very sensible manner to the tragic wildness of the whole drama. Beaumont and Fletcher's serious plays or tragedies are complete hybrids, neither fish nor flesh, - upon any rules, Greek, Roman, or Gothic; and yet they are very delightful notwithstanding. No doubt, they imitate the ease of gentlemanly conversation better than Shakspeare, who was unable not to be too much associated to succeed perfectly in this.