has little of his consequence left.  But his cousin, Slender, makes up for the deficiency.  He is a very potent piece of imbecility.  In him the pretensions of the worthy Gloucestershire family are well kept up, and immortalized.  He and his friend Sackerson and his book of songs and his love of Anne Page and his having nothing to say to her can never be forgotten.  It is the only first-rate character in the play, but it is in that class.  Shakespeare is the only writer who was as great in describing weakness as strength.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

This comedy is taken very much from the Menaechmi of Plautus, and is not an improvement on it.  Shakespeare appears to have bestowed no great pains on it, and there are but a few passages which bear the decided stamp of his genius.  He seems to have relied on his author, and on the interest arising out of the intricacy of the plot.  The curiosity excited is certainly very considerable, though not of the most pleasing kind.  We are teased as with a riddle, which notwithstanding we try to solve.  In reading the play, from the sameness of the names of the two Antipholises and the two Dromios, as well from their being constantly taken for each other by those who see them, it is difficult, without a painful effort of attention, to keep the characters distinct in the mind.  And again, on the stage, either the complete similarity of their persons and dress must produce the same perplexity whenever they first enter, or the identity of appearance which the story supposes will be destroyed.  We still, however, having a clue to the difficulty, can tell which is which, merely from the practical contradictions which arise, as soon as the different parties begin to speak; and we are indemnified for the perplexity and blunders into which we are thrown by seeing others thrown into greater and almost inextricable ones.—­ This play (among other considerations) leads us not to feel much regret that Shakespeare was not what is called a classical scholar.  We do not think his forte would ever have lain in imitating or improving on what others invented, so much as in inventing for himself, and perfecting what he invented,—­not perhaps by the omission of faults, but by the addition of the highest excellences.  His own genius was strong enough to bear him up, and he soared longest and best on unborrowed plumes.—­The only passage of a very Shakespearian cast in this comedy is the one in which the Abbess, with admirable characteristic artifice, makes Adriana confess her own misconduct in driving her husband mad.

   Abbess.  How long hath this possession held the man?

   Adriana.  This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,
     And much, much different from the man he was;
     But, till this afternoon, his passion
     Ne’er brake into extremity of rage.