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Untitled Article
Unfinished sketches , indeed ! Concerning this finished work , the Examiner has an admirable article , from which we quote the following passage : — " Chateaubriand professes to retract his < former misjudgements' of Shakspeare . He no longer , that is , calls him a drunken savage or a ' gross buffoon . ' We have so recently had an opportunity of pointing out the infinite absurdities of the criticism , which is only reproduced in these volumes , that we shall simply remark on one or two new matters of opinion which present themselves . " The French critic does not know what to make of Shakspeare ' s women . He cannot understand the
' Maiden never bold , Of spirit so still and quiet , that her motion Blush'd at itself—"
he cannot comprehend why such characters as Desdemona , Ophelia , Miranda , and Imogen , are * all mere girls . ' Is there anything of merely girlish weakness in that wonderful union of timidity and boldness which is shown in those exquisite creations , when their fears are surrendered to love , and , strong in the purity and in the depth of their affections , they knit themselves , heart and soul , to the existences of others ? M . de Chateaubriand would measure a female character by the number of lines allotted to her , and therefore he justly prefers Kacine . He would have every woman a CJmnene , a Berenice , an Esther , a Zaire , an Amenaide . What , he asks , are such girls as Ophelia and Imogen to ' heroines who of themselves sustain the whole weight of a tragedy ? ' They ( the heroines ) walked ' a region loftier than the earth on which Desdemona and Juliet dwelt / Yes , and we will answer for it that the inhabitants of that earth
feel obliged by their not descending lower . i What are all Shakspeare ' s females in comparison with Esther T Exactly what nature was , and is , compared with Racine . We will not believe that ' Kacine is more natural than Shakspeare , ' or that the age of Racine had ' caught the true spirit of ancient Greece / till M . do Chateaubriand proves to us that a peruke of the court of Louis the Fourteenth is more natural than were the flowing locks of an Athenian , and more graceful than the nllet was that circled them . "
If all the nonsensical adulation of Racine ' s polished steelengraving were confined to the French , we should merely set it down to the score of national vanity , and a peculiarity of national bad taste , originating in a mistaken notion of true nature and true refinement . But the provoking part of this adulation is in the fact , that certain English critics of our time are striving with all the strength and talent they possess for other subjects , to promulgate a similar bad taste in this country . " But then , as ' a set-off to all objections / " pursues the Examiner , " we have a chapter devoted ' to the striking beauties of Shakspeare . ' Now this , we are obliged to say , is the worst of all . Some passages of Richard the Third , which are far from extraordinary , are selected as ' the sublimest points of tragedy , ' and the scene from Macbeth , in which the murder of Macdujfs ' wife and children is disclosed , having been
Untitled Article
592 Sketches of English Literature .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 592, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/4/
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