say, as Dogberry does, with half deprecating, half patronizing air, to a nobleman who told him that he was tedious, Truly for my own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship." Elbow lacks the force and self-possession of Dogberry. Feeble-minded, modest, and well meaning, as well as ignorant, he is rather the type of "Goodman Verges" in his youth.

But, to return a moment to Angelo. The naturally formal and unbending character of his mind is shown in the manner of his answer, when the Provost (Act II. Sc. 2), seeking assurance for the act, asks if it be really his will that Claudio shall die on the morrow. reply simply 'yes;' but,

He does not

"Did I not tell thee yea? Hadst thou not order?

Why dost thou ask again?"

He cannot conceive of a scruple or doubt entertained by a subordinate, after he has received orders from his superior. Immediately afterward, giving directions about poor Juliet, then hourly looking for the birth of her child, he uses no term of pity, does not even call her by her name, but designates her by an epithet which is at once opprobrious, technical, and suited to lips "of wisest censure ;" and coldly adds, with a scrupulous regard for propriety, and an equally scrupulous disregard of the appeals of sympathy for such an improper person, no matter what her extremity,

"Let her have needful, but not lavish means."

This is before he has seen Isabella, and ere the cold surface of his soul has been ruffled by passion; for we learn afterward, from his own lips, that he has never yet been moved by woman's beauty:

"this virtuous maid

Subdues me quite. Ever till now

When men were fond, I smiled, and wondered how."

And he has prided himself, too, on this insensibility to female charms; for when Isabella first comes before him, and the Provost is about to retire, Angelo calls to him-

Stay awhile." There is no need that his subordinate should remain; but Angelo wishes to show how unmoved he will be by the tears and the charms of this beautiful young woman. What Isabella says of him in the last scene, is more than half true :

"I partly think

A due sincerity govern'd his deeds

Till he did look on me,"

for when he leaves her, after their first interview, and she says,

he replies,

"Heaven keep your honour safe,"

"Amen,

For I am that way going to temptation
Where prayers cross."

What blindness and prejudice must it be which calls so truthful and carefully drawn a character "unindividualized." Had Shakespeare not left us Angelo, one strongly marked type would have been wanting in his panorama of mankind. The same may be said of one other character in the comedy; but that one will be considered. elsewhere.

The poetry of this play should ever protect it against such judgments as that passed by Mr. Hunter. In no one of Shakespeare's works, not even in Hamlet itself, does that marvellous interfusion of imagination and philosophy, of brilliant fancy and sober thought, taking form in words used with a daring mastery which at once astonishes, delights, and satisfies, which is the grand and peculiar char

acteristic of Shakespeare's graver moods, and which we call, for want of any other term, Shakesperian, more command our wondering admiration. There is more of it in the great tragedies, for in those there was more occasion for it; but even there it exists only in greater quantity, not in higher perfection, and in no one of the other comedies is it found scattered with so profuse a hand. It seems ruthless to pluck such jewels from their setting; but to avert the prejudice which threatens to cast into the shadow of neglect one of the grandest works of the greatest Poet,-a prejudice largely due to the litteratrices of the last century, and worthy of the women and the period when Dorimants and Mirabels made love to Aramintas and Flippantas,-it may be pardonable. Are these passages among those which give "little pleasure?"

"Duke. Heaven doth with us, as we with torches d
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd,

But to fine issues: nor nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence,

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use."

Act I. Sc. 1.

"Claud. As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope by the immoderate use
Turns to restraint: Our natures do pursue
(Like rats that ravin down their proper bane)

A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die."

"Isab. Could great men thunder

Act I. Sc. 3.

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet;

For every pelting, petty officer,

Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder.-
Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle:-But man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority:

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence,-like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastick tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal."

Act II. Sc. 2.

Or is it in these words, addressed by the Duke to Claudio upon his approaching death, words fraught with such a wealth of wisdom for the living or the dying, that the critics seek in vain for pleasure?

"Duke. Be absolute for death: either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life,

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
Servile to all the skiey influences,

That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st,

Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool:

For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn'st toward him still: Thou art not noble;

For all the accommodations that thou bear'st,

Are nurs'd by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant;
For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork

Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,

And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st

Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains

That issue out of dust: Happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;

And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange affects,
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;

For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee: Friend hast thou none:

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,

The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,

For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth, nor age;
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant.

That bears the name of life?

What's yet in this
Yet in this life

Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even."

Act III. Sc. 1.

These passages, which are but specimens of numbers like them, some of less bulk, but all of nearly equal beauty, scattered up and down the play, and so interwoven with the structure of the scene that to take them out would be to rend them, show what golden thoughts the poet built into this drama. But besides and beyond these, there is one passage which rivals, if it do not surpass, in sublimity and power any other which came from Shakespeare's pen. It is this.

"Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot:

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be, worse than worst,
Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts
Imagine, howling!"

Act III. Sc. 1.

Where else is there language so laden with meaning,— so suggestive of thought? Who else would have dared the expression "to lie in cold obstruction?" for who else would have seen that those two words "cold obstruction" tell the whole tale of utter dissolution, which the next two lines illustrate and vary with words and thoughts but little less condensed and pregnant. What a wonderful, strange fit