tion of the poet's life. Song is the language of passion, and passion is the incubation of love. The poet's deity is love, not, like the ancient lares, a visible appellative and domestic ornament, but an idol enshrined within the heart.

This play contains little philosophy; there is little to describe, for the mere inconsistencies of passion are inseparable from the person. Speed preaches better on love than all the metaphysicians in the world. Julia, the doating Julia, forsaken by Proteus, determines on pursuing him :

"Luc. I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire; But qualify the fire's extreme rage,

Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.

"Jul. The more thou dam'st it up the more it burns; The current that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage,

But when his fair course is not hindered

He makes sweet music with the enamel'd stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays,

With willing sport, to the wide ocean.

Then let me go, and hinder not my course:

I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,

And make a pastime of each weary step,

Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest as, after much turmoil,

A blessed soul doth in elysium.”

This is quaint and comical, but might be advantageously applied. Compulsion and resistance are two of the greatest evils in propagating evils in the whole conduct of mankind. The child obeys when he should prefer, is compelled when he should be induced, resisted when he should be removed.

The discovery of Valentine's plot by the Duke is cleverly managed-evasion was impossible: the Duke advises with Proteus in favour of Thurio—

Duke. What might we do to make the girl forget
The love of Valentine, and love Sir Thurio.

Prot. The best way is to slander Valentine

With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent;

Three things that women highly hold in hate."

This aristocratic-looking passage may be a little offensive to timocratic eyes, for it is evident that falsehood is so associated with cow

ardice, and both with poor descent, that the latter unites with the two former into a sort of tri-headed monster. It is as certain that falsehood implies cowardice, as that poor descent means their hereditary pre-inclination. When virtue was the correlative of title, then did poor descent mean something else.

Applied to woman, this passage is beautifully true.- "One naturally born to fears," sexually timid, tremblingly sensitive, the dependence of woman is essential to love-a dependence which arises out of her nature, not her weakness, which exacts support without solicitation, associates her happiness inevitably with her protector, and constitutes through life a reciprocal bond. But with "falsehood" there is no confidence, with "cowardice" no protection, with "poor descent," or their pre-inclination, no hope; and these three are one, and form the first element of love. The forgotten Julia visits her lover in disguise, discovers his treachery, and forgives it.

There is something most redeemable in woman's love: however base and depraved the object of her passion, he becomes interesting, and we sympathize with her fondness; we feel that there must be a cause for that love-some better qualities and feelings which elicited it. Proteus is a villain, but we almost forgive him for the love of Julia. Sir Walter Scott, in that bold, masterly character, Bothwell,* by describing the packet of letters found upon him after his fearful death, gives at once a better mould to his history ; we look back to days lang syne, when the ferocious soldier was susceptible of softer feelings-we fancy him subdued with the sensibilities of love, and weeping over some fond, forgiving, heart-stricken girl. The love of youth is often a holy remembrance in age, and makes man proud under every change and condition of life. Little minds are incapable of passion; they possess merely admiration : but where love is one collected, exclusive, inordinate passion, it gives an unapproachable elevation to the character, and a dignity of manner superior to rule.

The play advances. Valentine becomes prince of outlaws, and saves his Silvia from the uncivil grasp of Proteus, "that friend of an ill fashion," who, craven-like, acknowledges and repents when too late to be a virtue, and is somewhat weakly pardoned by Valentine; but love and generosity are equally uncensurable. Julia, poor Julia! thine is the hardest lot; for though love may blind the eye, it cannot "" raze out the written trouble of the brain." Thurio, good night!

* See Old Mortality, vol. ii., p. 225.

III. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

There are some words, though not strictly onomatopeial, yet seem to have arisen out of the appellative, without search or derivation; as our words quick, giddy, glade, suck, comfort, glen, slow, slumber, &c., indeed nearly all the old Saxon words, to which our tongues seem organically adapted. Merry! the word sounds like fun. 66 Merry; gay of heart," says Johnson. Merry, Merry Wives of Windsor! The title is the theme; our hearts dance as we read it-Merry Wives! Young men hope what old men fear; but, Diana be praised! Englishwomen can be merry without sin.

Sir John, the only man who ever made grossness a virtue "I shall think the better of fat men as long as I've an eye to make difference of men's liking." Slender is the very incarnation of cowardice, the personal antithesis of a lover, the true transcript of a simpleton-not fool enough to pity, nor wit enough to despise, a thing to laugh at without offence, and to ridicule without cruelty. Nim and Pistol are nonpareils of humour. Mrs. Quickly, “I fancy I see her now". "Where, my lord,"- "In my mind's Horaeye, tio." The merry wives are examples to all sober ones. "Sweet Anne Page," she has brown hair, and speaks small, like a woman.” It is somewhat amusing to observe how the mustard-seed spirits of some men snatch a quarrel, Anne Page's "small talk" has occupied some hundreds of lines, pro and con, whether the poet meant small talk or nice talk.

"Mrs. Ford-Sir John? art thou there, my deer? my male deer?

Fal.-My doe with the black scut!-Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves; hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here."

How perfectly the character of this "creature of bombast" is kept up with the "Fat man" of Hen. IV. so completely resembling it. This boast to Mrs. Ford is the counterpart of the "eleven men in Lincoln Green." That potatoes are provocatives of love, is an old belief. The learned Brown does not mention this as one of the vulgar errors, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, though John Ayerton Paris, of digestive celebrity, puts such an hypothesis alongside with the lusty old proverb, "that 'tis good for the health to get drunk once a week."

Dr. Paris informs us that the supposed aphrodisiac quality of the potato arose from the circumstance of certain plants having acquired the names of others very different in their nature, but which

were supposed to possess a similarity in external character; thus our potato (Solanum tuberosum), when it was first imported into England by the colonists in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, gained its appellative from its supposed resemblance to an esculent vegetable at that time in common use, under the name of the Sweet Potato (Convolvulus Battatas), and which, like Eringo root, had the reputation of being able to restore decayed vigour. Without disputing this point in the true Malthusian spirit, let us merely cast an eye over the lovely land of green Erin, which is little else than one great big potato bed, and remember that her population has increased, within a few years, from two to eight millions by starving on potatos. If the worship of Venus were in vogue, we might change her appellative of Cyprian for Hibernian goddess; when some Donnybrook deity, approaching her altar, "mater sæva cupidinum," might offer up the first fruits of the soil:

"Illic plurima naribus

Duces sancta:* fidisque, et resonantium

Delectabere tibium

Mistis carminibus, non sine baculo.†

Illic bis pueri die

Numen cum teneris virginibus tuum

Laudantes, soleis sine

In morem saliûm ter quatient humum."-Hor., Ode i., lib. iv.

The discourse of the fairies is full of soft compliment to loyalty. The "garter's compass," honi soit qui mal y pense, sounds strange in fairy tongue-tempora mutantur.

"Evans. Where's Bede ?--Go you, and where you find a maid That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,

Rein up the organs of her fantasy,

Sleep she as sound as careless infancy.

Mr. Parker, in one of his admirable lectures, makes this striking remark, that" dreams are indicative of disease." There is no doubt of this truth: that is, the dreams are so faint in a healthy person, that no "remembrance is warranted." The facts, also mentioned by Mr. Parker, of sounds creating dreams corresponding in character to the particular noise is equally remarkable:

"drums in his ears,

Then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five fathoms deep."

"Subaudi fuma." Herbe sancta is a synonym of Tobacco. + Baculo: an immetrical paraphrase of shillalah.

VOL. V.NO. XVIII.

2 K

These phenomena Shakspeare seems perfectly, though wonderfully, to have observed. How philosophical, how beautiful, how true!" Rein up the organs of her fantasy," shut out the busy world, close up sensation, quiet as an infant's sleep.

There is so much humour and good-nature in the catastrophe of this play, that we feel no pain for the penalty of poor Sir John, who, indeed feels no pain for himself; but retires, Parthian-like, with his face to the enemy; while poor Sir Hugh "makes fritters of the King's English." Caius, Slender, Page, all are done," their arrow hath glanced" and struck home.

IV. MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

"This play," says Johnson, "is particularly darkened by the peculiarities of its author." Then is the "darkness visible," otherwise the remark arose from the Doctor's candour that it was a darkness that was felt, and which many others have felt, without the honesty to confess as much. Though, as a whole, the play is less compact, there are few more interesting, and none which contain more sublime passages. The plot is said to have been taken from an old tragedy of Promas and Cassandra, 1573.

The Duke yields his power to Angelo for the ostensible purpose of enforcing certain laws which were unwhipped, abused. That the Duke suspected the character of Angelo, and knew of the injuries of Mariana, appears evident. The disguise was assumed, the better to restore the one and punish the other.

"Duke.-Angelo, there is a kind of character in thy life That, to the observer, doth thy history

Fully unfold: thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper as to waste

Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.

Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues."

This is a fine comment on that kind of character which repudiating nature sets up a stern morality against all appetite, and which is secure until tempted. Goethe remarks that "he hated the man that had not the heart to commit some absurdity;" and never was there a more profound philosophical remark. From infancy to age we are puppets to opinion, victims to the worst of all evils-the evil of propriety, that spy of conventional rule, which