Shall bitterly begin his fearful date

With this night's revels, and expire the term

Of a despised life closed in my breast,

By some vile forfeit of untimely death."

In Juliet's garden Romeo speaks:

"But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,"

"It is my lady; O, it is my love!"

This is poetry which blinds the sense of right and overleaps all bounds. Juliet's wayward prattlings, she not knowing she is overheard, are natural and almost childlike :

"O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

O, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I'll no longer be a Capulet."

"Tis but thy name that is my enemy."

Mercutio dies to shield his friend Romeo, and

Romeo avenges his death on Tybalt. The tragedy deepens and draws towards its end. In their interview in the good Friar Laurence's cell, Romeo and Juliet are wed with the friar's solemn parting words.

Romeo is exiled, and on his sudden return to Verona comes the parting dialogue between the lovers:

Juliet-"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day :

It was the nightingale, and not the lark,

That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate-tree :
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."

Romeo-"It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east :
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops :

I must be gone and live, or stay and die."

Juliet-"Yond light is not day-light, I know it, I:

It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,

And light thee on thy way to Mantua :

Therefore stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone."
Romeo-"Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;

I am content, so thou wilt have it so.

I'll say yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:

I have more care to stay than will to go:
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.
How is't, my soul? let's talk: it is not day."
Juliet-"It is, it is; hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.

Some say the lark makes sweet division;

This doth not so, for she divideth us:

Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;
O, now I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day.
O, now be gone : more light and light it grows."
Romeo-"More light and light: more dark and dark
our woes."

The return of Romeo, the fatal mistake, the finding of Juliet, supposed by him to be dead, but lying in a trance at the Capulet tomb in the churchyard; Romeo's piercing and mad words addressed to Death, and his death and that of Juliet end this pathetic tragedy.

Romeo

"O, my love! my wife!

Death, that hath sucked the honey of the breath,

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;

Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

"Here's to my love! O true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die."

It is now needful for me regretfully to say that, as is the case sometimes with age, and in my case of an age extending far beyond the allotted period of three score and ten, that my eyesight has so failed that it is impossible for me to read a word, and this perhaps may go to excuse errors. I had naturally reserved for the last a more critical and extended treatment of a few of Shakespeare's greatest plays, and of Shakespeare himself as a dramatic author; but I am now obliged to give up the plan and only speak briefly of some great plays that remain.

SOME LAST GREAT PLAYS.

THE TEMPEST.

Prospero's Island still firmly stands, while the lost Atlantis has vanished. The majestic figure of Prospero differs entirely from the other persons

of the play, and there may be a shadow of a reason held by some, that in his soliloquy it is Shakespeare himself who speaks, as prophetic of his end. This I think is groundless; the words belong consistently to the character of the magician Prospero, who says:

"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves;
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid-
Weak masters though ye be--I have bedimm'd
The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar ; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic

I here abjure; and, when I have required