Hereafter in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”
Mr. Hudson says very acutely of the characters of As You Like It, that, “diverted by fortune from all their cherished plans and purposes, they pass before us in just that moral and intellectual dishabille, which best reveals their indwelling graces of heart and mind.” This, it seems to us, touches the inmost secret of the delight all mankind have in this play. There is a complete absence of restraint upon expression, and the tongues of all run of their own sweet will, in a region of perfect freedom. It is whim exalted into poetry. Of Touchstone, our critic remarks, that though he never touches so deep a chord as the poor fool in Lear, that “he is the most entertaining of Shakspeare’s privileged characters. . . . It is curious to observe how the poet takes care to let us know from the first, that beneath the affectations of his calling some precious sentiments have been kept alive; that far within the fool there is a secret reserve of the man, ready to leap forth and combine with better influences as soon as the incrustations of art are thawed and broken up.” Passing over some keen observations on Jaques and the class of character to which he belongs, we come to Mr. Hudson’s exquisite description of Rosalind, the style of which would alone tempt one to extract it. The ideal merriment of Rosalind—and after listening to her for an hour, it seems a misuse of the word merriment to apply it to glee less graceful, light and lark-like than her own—has rarely been touched with so delicate an analysis. “For wit,” he says, “this strange, queer, lovely being is fully equal, perhaps superior to Beatrice, yet nowise resembling her. A soft, subtle, nimble essence, consisting in one knows not what, ‘and springing up one can hardly tell how,’ her wit neither stings nor burns, but plays briskly and airily over all things within its reach, enriching and adorning them, insomuch that one could ask no greater pleasure than to be the continual theme of it. In its irrepressible vivacity it waits not for occasion, but runs on forever, and we wish it to run on forever: we have a sort of faith that her dreams are made of cunning, quirkish, graceful fancies. And her heart seems a perennial fountain of affectionate cheerfulness; no trial can break, no sorrow chill her flow of spirits; even her deepest sighs are breathed forth in a wrappage of innocent mirth; an arch, roguish smile irradiates her saddest tears. Yet beneath all her playfulness we feel that there is a firm basis of thought and womanly dignity, so that she never laughs away our respect.”
An edition of Shakspeare, edited so admirably as this—so convenient in its form, so elegant in its execution, and so cheap in its price—will, we hope, have a circulation over the country corresponding to its great merits.
Utterance; or, Private Voices to the Public Heart. A Collection of Home Poems. By Caroline A. Briggs. Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.
Our first impression of this volume we received from its title, and that impression was, of course, unfavorable, as the title certainly smacks of affectation. But it requires but a slight examination of the book to dissipate such a prejudice. It is a thoroughly genuine expression of a sensitive, thoughtful, artless, affectionate, and fanciful nature, and readily wins its way into the reader’s esteem. Even those passages which evince a sort of innocent ignorance of the conventions of society and letters, have a naïveté which charms while it amuses. The volume is a collection of short poems, ranged under the general titles of Voices of Affection, Voices of Grief, Voices of Cheer, Sacred Voices, and Voices of the Way, and one powerful Voice for the Poor, written in a measure whose movement has something of the fitful swiftness of the cold, wild wind, whose cruelty it deprecates. The following lines convey a vivid picture of desolation; the verse itself seeming to shudder in sympathy with the objects it holds up to pity:
Oh, the Poor!
The poor and old,
On the moor