according to Charles Lamb, we should read a Restoration Comedy, with a consciousness that what we are reading is all a myth: there never have been such characters: they are as impossible and non-existent as the light "that never was" in Wordsworth's poem.

Lucrece is perfectly different. Here the poet is at once an artist and a preacher: his achievement, if not his aim, is purely didactic. For no more terrible picture was ever drawn of the utter desolation and ruin wrought by unbridled, unreasoning impulse. Each phase of the passion is anatomized with the pitiless detail of minute realism. Simple enough in its beginning, the story works up with a gradual crescendo of horror to its tragic climax, and when the end comes no one, not the dullest of prosaicists, can be blind to the poet's purpose. And Lucrece is no petty tale of evil-doing, no "modern instance" of crime and shame. Shakespeare makes us feel throughout that a royal house and fame hang in the balance and are lost, and that if the sin be great the consequences will be great in proportion. Significant in this connection is the introduction of the old-world story of Troy's fall. At first sight lines 1380-1580 seem rather an excrescence, an interpolation that brings in an element of unreality. But it is not so. Interesting intrinsically as suggesting, if not showing, that Shakespeare was familiar with Virgil's narrative, the lines have a very direct bearing on the development of the story. Lucrece dishonoured is like "cloud-kissing Ilium" dismantled: in Ovid's words, hæc facies Troja cum caperetur erat. The comparison heightens the desolation of Lucrece, lends picturesqueness to the pity of her state, quickens our conception of the tragedy that has brought red ruin in its train. And if it is so for us, especially must it have been so for an Elizabethan reader, since the Troy legend was the story par excellence of the medieval world, the conte which overshadowed and eclipsed all others. To repeat ourselves: Lucrece is an essentially didactic poem, and its didacticism is emphasized and increased at every turn by the dramatic power of the writer. To hold the mirror up to lust, to paint the horrors of unbridled passion, to show for all time that the

wages of sin is death-this is the direct tendency of the Rape of Lucrece.

We have considered the ethical import of the two poems, and seen that the contrast between them is very marked. On other grounds they have much in common. First and foremost, each is a perfect example of the narrator's art. The rhymes may at times seem careless; we may come across thingsespecially in Venus and Adonis-which we could wish away. But the stanzas never lag: the writer is never at a loss. The story advances from point to point with the swing and sweep, the lilt and facile grace, of true creative power. The effortless ease with which the narrative is maintained through a long series of stanzas seems to us the most characteristic and signal excellence of the poems.

But it is not their only excellence. The artist's sense of light and shade and variety of effect, dramatic representation of scene and situation-notably in Lucrece, -the many minute touches that build up the fabric of characterization-all these are qualities in which Venus and Adonis and Lucrece are rich with the true Shakespearean richness. And to these must be added the extraordinary verbal beauty of the verse. Here they are linked with the early plays, with Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream. We have the same elaborate harmonies, the "linked sweetness long drawn out," the cadences, the "dying falls," the splendid eloquence, the lyric charm and rapture of Shakespeare's earliest, most purely poetic, style. Finally-to conclude these ambages et longa exorsa—we may note in Venus and Adonis the use which the poet makes of nature. The poem is full of the sights and sounds of the country and of country life. The red morning (line 453), the gathering clouds that consult for foul weather (972), the hare-hunt, the fall of the wind before rain comes, the empty eagle tiring on her prey (55-60), the closing-in of the day (530-533) these and many similar touches point to a close knowledge of the life of the fields; and we could ill do without the fresh sweet wind, as from Shakespeare's own Stratford commons, that clears and relieves the sometimes too sultry atmosphere.

Venus and Adonis was published in Quarto in 1593, with the following title-page: "VENUS AND ADONIS | Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flauus Apollo | Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. LONDON Imprinted by Richard Field, and are to be sold at the signe of the White Greyhound in | Paules Church-yard. 1593.|" According to the Cambridge editors this edition is "printed with remarkable accuracy, doubtless from the author's own manuscript." In 1594 a second Quarto, identical with the first, was printed, and a third edition, in Octavo, appeared in 1596; while between 1596 and 1636 the poem was reprinted no less than eight times, a sufficiently striking proof of its popularity.

The actual date of the composition of Venus and Adonis we cannot determine. It was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1593, and Shakespeare himself speaks of it as the first heire of my invention," a vague description which might imply that the poem had preceded all his plays, and been written before he came up to London from Stratford.

Probably, however, the phrase just quoted should not be pressed; by "invention" he may have meant lyric or narrative verse as opposed to dramatic work, or he may have been contrasting printed with unprinted work; and on the whole it is safest to conclude that the year of the publication of Venus and Adonis was also the year of its composition. The source of the poem was pretty certainly Ovid's Metamorphoses, where, in book x., the legend of Venus and Adonis is told, with various divergences from the story as given by Shakespeare. Whether the poet

read Ovid in the original or in Golding's translation is an open and unanswerable question. Professor Baynes, in his well-known papers on Shakespeare's classical learning, argues strongly for the former view, and for myself I see no reason to doubt that Shakespeare read his Ovid as a scholar would read the author of the Metamorphoses. To discuss the point would be to touch on the vexed and well-worn subject of the poet's "little Latin, and less Greek;" the reader must turn to Farmer's essay or Professor Baynes' articles in Fraser's Magazine, vol. xxi. (1880), pp. 83-102, and pp. 619-641. It should be noticed that Constable treated the Venus and Adonis myth in a beautiful poem first published in England's Helicon (see Bullen's Reprint, pp. 215-219); and according to Dr. Furnivall, “Lodge has three stanzas in his Glaucus and Scilla, 1589, on Adonis's death, and Venus coming down to his corpse" (Leopold Shakspere, Introduction, p. xxxi.). Sedley's ridiculous effusion on the same subject I have mentioned in the notes. Venus and Adonis, like Lucrece, is dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, the patron of Daniel, Chapman, and other men of letters. A very elaborate account of Southampton is given in Mr. Massey's Secret Drama of the Sonnets (1888), pp. 318-342. We may just note that he was born in 1573; was a ward of Lord Burghley; graduated as Master of Arts at Cambridge-from St. John's College -in 1589; became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, whose favour, however, he lost through his connection with Elizabeth Vernon, a cousin of the ill-starred Essex; and may conceivably have been the "onlie begetter" of the Sonnets.

343

EVEN as the sun with purple-colour'd face
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase;
Hunting he lov'd, but love he laugh'd to scorn:
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-fac'd suitor gins to woo him.
"Thrice-fairer than myself," thus she began,
"The field's chief flower, sweet above compare,
Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,
More white and red than doves or roses are;
Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,
Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.
"Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,
And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;
If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed
A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know:

10

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,
The precedent of pith and livelihood,
And, trembling in her passion, calls it balm,
Earth's sovereign salve to do a goddess good:

Being so enrag'd, desire doth lend her force
Courageously to pluck him from his horse. 30
Over one arm the lusty courser's rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;

She red and hot as coals of glowing fire, He red for shame, but frosty in desire. The studded bridle on a ragged bough Nimbly she fastens :-0, how quick is love!The steed is stalled up, and even now To tie the rider she begins to prove: Backward she push'd him, as she would be thrust,

40

And govern'd him in strength, though not in lust.

So soon was she along as he was down,
Each leaning on their elbows and their hips:
Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,
And gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips;

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuff'd, or prey be gone;
Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends she doth anew begin.

Forc'd to content, but never to obey,
Panting he lies, and breatheth in her face;
She feedeth on the steam as on a prey,
And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace;

60

Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,
So they were dew'd with such-distilling showers.

Look how a bird lies tangled in a net,
So fasten'd in her arms Adonis lies;
Pure shame and aw'd resistance made him fret,
Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:

Rain added to a river that is rank
Perforce will force it overflow the bank.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,
And to a pretty ear she tunes her tale;
Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,
'Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale;

70

Being red, she loves him best; and being white, Her best is better'd with a more delight.

80

Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;
And by her fair immortal hand she swears,
From his soft bosom never to remove,
Till he take truce with her contending tears,
Which long have rain'd, making her cheeks all
wet;

And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.
Upon this promise did he raise his chin,
Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in;
So offers he to give what she did crave;

But when her lips were ready for his pay,
He winks, and turns his lips another way. 90

1 Winks, closes the eyes.

Never did passenger in summer's heat More thirst for drink than she for this good turn. Her help she sees, but help she cannot get; She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn: "O, pity," gan she cry, "flint-hearted boy! 'Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy? "I have been woo'd, as I entreat thee now, Even by the stern and direful god of war, Whose sinewy neck in battle ne'er did bow, Who conquers where he comes in every jar; Yet hath he been my captive and my slave, And begg'd for that which thou unask'd shalt have.

100

O, be not proud, nor brag not of thy might, For mastering her that foil'd the god of fight! "Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red,The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine:What see'st thou in the ground? hold up thy head: Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies; Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?

"Art thou asham'd to kiss? then wink again, 121 And I will wink; so shall the day seem night; Love keeps his revels where there are but twain; Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight:

These blue-vein'd violets whereon we lean Never can blab, nor know not what we mean. "The tender spring upon thy tempting lip Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted: Make use of time, let not advantage slip; Beauty within itself should not be wasted:

130

Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time.

"Were I hard-favour'd, foul, or wrinkled-old, Ill-nurtur'd, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,

2 Foul, ugly.