or the arch-fiend himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far less subtle and audacious seducer would have sufficed. Cressida is another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in stronger colours. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas, polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in history of the enormities of certain women, perfect scarecrows and ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves in our secure virtue, and thank God that we are not as others are -but the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource-they frighten us into reflection—they make us believe and tremble. On the other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite simplicity—they have so little external pretension-and are so unlike the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more "than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal!" We are flattered by the perception

of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues: not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we persuade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a happier state of things, and perhaps, some time or other, may be. They are not stuck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, for us to admire and wonder at-they are not mere poetical abstractions-nor (as they have been termed) mere abstractions of the affections,—

But common clay ta'en from the common earth,
Moulded by God, and tempered by the tears
Of angels, to the perfect form of-woman.

MEDON.

Beautiful lines!-Where are they?

ALDA.

I quote from memory, and I am afraid inaccurately, from a poem of Alfred Tennyson's.

MEDON.

Well, between argument, and sentiment, and

logic, and poetry, you are making out a very plausible case. I think with you, that in the instances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet and Othello, and others,) that the want of comparative power is only an additional excellence; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation, we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff.

ALDA.

No; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman—any such compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral sentiments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist in nature we might find it in Shakspeare; but a moment's reflection shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of faculties in a female.

MEDON.

It strikes me, however, that his humorous

women are feebly drawn, in comparison with some

of the female wits of other writers.

ALDA.

Because his women of wit and humour are not introduced for the sole purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the author; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom wit is only a particular and occasional modification of intellect. They are all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral agents; and then witty, as if by accident, or as that French duchess said of herself, " par la grâce de Dieu." As to humour, it is carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly; in the termagant Catherine; in Maria, in "Twelfth Night;" in Juliet's nurse; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page. What can exceed in humorous naiveté, Mrs. Quickly's upbraiding Falstaff, and her concluding appeal-" Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings?" Is it not exquisite

*The Duchesse de Chaulnes.

-irresistible? Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page are both "merry wives," but how perfectly discriminated! Mrs. Ford has the most good-natureMrs. Page is the cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief in her mirth. In all these instances, I allow that the humour is more or less vulgar; but a humorous woman, whether in high or low life, has always a tinge of vulgarity.

MEDON.

I should like to see that word vulgar properly defined, and its meaning limited-at present it is the most arbitrary word in the language.

ALDA.

Yes; it is a convenient "exploding word," and in its general application signifies nothing more than 66 see how much finer I am than other people!"* but in literature and character, I shall adhere to the definition of Madame de Staël, who

*See Forster's Essay on the application of the word ro mantic.-Essays, vol. i.