OLD MAN.

It is the kid which thou hast so often fed with the grains of the synmaka. He will not quit his benefactress.

SACONTALA.

Why dost thou weep, tender kid? I am forced to forsake our common home. When thou did'st lose thy mother, soon after thy birth, I took thee under my care. Return to thy manger, poor young kid, we must now part.

The farewell scene in Romeo and Juliet is very lightly touched by Bandello. It belongs wholly to Shakspeare. Bandello describes the parting of the lovers in the few following words:

"A la fine cominciando l'aurora a voler uscire ; si basciarono; estrettamente abbraciarono gli amanti, e pieni di lagrime e sospiri si dissero addio."

At length the dawn beginning to appear, the lovers kissed; they closely embraced one another, and full of tears and sighs bade each other adieu."

SHAKSPEARE'S FEMALE CHARACTERS.

Bring together Lady Macbeth, Queen Margaret, Ophelia, Miranda, Cordelia, Jessica, Perdita, Imogen, and the versatility of the poet's genius must excite our wonder. There is a charming ideality in Shakspeare's youthful female characters. The blind King Lear says to his faithful Cordelia,

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,

Ophelia, fantastically decked with straws and flowers, mistaking her brother for Hamlet, whom she loves, and who has killed her father, addresses him thus,

VOL. I.

T

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember;

I would give you some violets; but they withered all, when my father died."

In Hamlet, that tragedy of maniacs, that Royal Bedlam in which every character is either crazy or criminal, in which feigned madness is added to real madness, and in which the grave itself furnishes the stage with the skull of a fool; in that Odeon of shadows and spectres where we hear nothing but reveries, the challenge of sentinels, the screeching of the night-bird and the roaring of the sea, Gertrude thus relates the death of Ophelia who has drowned herself,

"

There is a willow grows askant the brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them :
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang; an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up :
Which time, she chaunted snatches of old tunes

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element; but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death."

The body of Ophelia is carried to the churchyard, and the guilty Queen, bending over the grave, exclaims:

"

Sweets to the sweet, farewell!

I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife ;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave."

The effect of all this is like the spell of enchantment.

Othello, in the delirium of his jealousy thus addresses Desdemona as she sleeps:

Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee-would thou

Had'st ne'er been born !"

The Moor when about to smother his wife, kisses her and says:

"O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice to break her sword.....

Be thus when thou art deal, and I will ki thee
And love thee after "

In the Winter's Tale we find the same poetic grace adapted to feelings of happiness. Perdita thus addresses Florizel :

Now, my fairest friend,

I would I had some flowers o' the spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenhood's growing:-O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold tulips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O these I lack,
To make you garlands of; and, my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er.

I'd have you do it ever; when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing, but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function....

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