'T is her breathing that

Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper
Bows toward her, and would underpeep her lids
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied

Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tinct!"

The preservation of her feminine character under her masculine attire; her delicacy, her modesty, and her timidity, are managed with the same perfect consistency and unconscious grace as in Viola. And we must not forget that her "neat cookery," which is so prettily eulogized by Guiderius

"He cut our roots in characters,

And sauc'd our broths, as Juno had been sick,
And he her dieter "-

formed part of the education of a princess in those remote times..

The catastrophe of this play has been much admired for the peculiar skill with which all the various threads of interest are gathered together at last, and entwined with the destiny of Imogen. It may be added that one of its chief beauties is the manner in which the character of Imogen is not only preserved, but rises upon us to the conclusion with added grace: her instantaneous forgiveness of her husband before he even asks it, when she flings herself at once into his arms

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"Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?”—

and her magnanimous reply to her father, when he tells her that by the discovery of her two brothers she has lost a kingdom

"No-I have got two worlds by 't"—

clothing a noble sentiment in a noble image, give the finishing touches of excellence to this most enchanting portrait.

On the whole, Imogen is a lovely compound of goodness, truth, and affection, with just so much of passion and intel

lect and poetry as serve to lend to the picture that power and glowing richness of effect which it would otherwise have wanted; and of her it might be said, if we could condescend to quote from any other poet with Shakspeare open before us, that "her person was a paradise and her soul the cherub to guard it."*

[From Charles Cowden-Clarke's "Shakespeare-Characters.” †]

It is not my purpose to enter upon a discussion of the small dramatic proprieties, as these are observed or ignored in the play of Cymbeline. They who are interested in the rigidities, perhaps the fussiness, of criticism,-who take more pleasure in detecting a lapse in the unity of such a composition as this, who would rather pride themselves upon exposing a deficiency in its chronology than in displaying its incomparable force and beauty of passion and fancy, of tenderness, imagery, and splendour of language,-are referred to the supplementary notices of the Johnsonian school of criticism. For myself, I care not one straw about the violation of the unities: I am content to be wafted on the wings of the poet's imagination, and to be with him to-day in Rome and to-morrow watching the weary pilgrimage of the divine Imogen towards Milford-Haven. It is enough for me that the play is one of the most romantic and interesting of Shakespeare's dramas; and this we say of every drama of his, as we read them in succession. The romance itself of this story is sublimated by an intensity of passion and heartennobling affection and endurance that I have yet to see excelled. Of all his heroines, no one conveys so fully the ideal of womanly perfection as Imogen. We have full faith in the love and steadfast endurance of Desdemona: we believe that * Dryden.

From the unpublished "Second Series" of the Shakespeare-Characters (see 2 Hen. IV. p. 18), kindly sent to us by Mrs. Mary Cowden-Clarke for publication here.

she would have borne more than her lord's jealousy in her personal love for him; but Imogen has given us the proof that nothing could quench the pure flame of affection and devotedness in her heart; not even the charge of disloyalty and the atrocity of assassination. The triumph of self-reliance in the consciousness of holy virtue and of artless innocence was never more grandly carried out than in Imogen's steadfastness of purpose to go on and meet her husband after she has read his treacherous letter to their servant

Pisanio, enjoining him to put her to death. It may be said, indeed, and for the thousandth time, that "No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character-the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespeare: no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from affectation and disguise: no one else ever so well showed how delicacy and timidity, when driven to extremity, grow romantic and extravagant;" and there are few who cannot identify this testimony to their character,-not, of course, to the letter, but in the full spirit of Imogen's conduct. The homily of dear old Chaucer, when dismissing his narrative of the world-noted Griselda, may well be applied to our nation's Imogen:

"This story is said, not for that wivès should
Follow Grisild' as in humility,

For it were importàble though they would;
But for that every wight in his degree
Shouldè be constant in adversity

As was Grisilda; therefore Petrarc writeth

This story, which with high style he inditeth."

Before proceeding to the inferior agents in this drama, I would say a few words upon the character of Posthumus.

That he was unworthy of the love of such a being as Imogen need only be stated. We need only be reminded that when Iachimo assays her constancy with the account of her husband's infidelities, she gives utterance to no stronger re

ply than the celebrated one, “My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain"-not "forgotten me;" not "forgotten his wife:" Imogen is too high-souled a lover and woman to utter a selfish reproach. Yet, when Posthumus receives the scandal of her disloyalty, it should be borne in mind that the proofs produced, and sworn to, by Iachimo were enough to stun even a devout lover. Real charity (or love), it is true, "endureth all things, hopeth all things," and Posthumus should still have proved for himself: but what I mainly feel to be an inconsistency in his character is that he is not reconcilable with himself a perilous charge to venture against even the humblest of Shakespeare's creations, and which I would gladly fail to substantiate: nevertheless, in the first scene of the play, a friend describes him as

"a creature such

As to seek through the regions of the earth

For one his like, there would be something failing

In him that should compare: I do not think

So fair an outward, and such stuff within,

Endows a man but he."

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'You speak him far" (says the Second Gentleman).

"I do extend him, sir, within himself;

Crush him together, rather than unfold

His measure duly."

This fair report he certainly justifies in his leave-taking with Imogen; and subsequently maintains it in the wager with Iachimo for the inviolability of her honour and truth. In short, he gives every proof of being noble and magnanimous to the core. Is it then reconcilable with rational probability that a man so endowed should so damn himself as, with the same ink, and the self-same pen, to write a treacherous letter to the woman he had adored, appointing her to meet him, and another to their servant, suborning him to be her murderer? His first resolution, upon encountering Iachimo's proofs, that in the torment of his passion he would return to her father's court and "tear her limb-meal," is not

irreconcilable with a generous, although an ungovernable temper; but coolly, and deliberately, and upon reflection to turn assassin by deputy! Can such a contradiction exist in a man so described as Posthumus has been described to us? The man who could reflectively compass the life of her whom he had adored beyond all the beings on earth was not the character to dismiss her slanderer, and the author of all their misery, with so godlike a punishment as this:

"The power that I have on you is to spare you;

The malice towards you to forgive you: live,

And deal with others better."

The divine spirit of this conclusion (as Mr. Charles Knight says) "is perfect Shakespeare." It is so; but I cannot feel it to be perfect Posthumus.

In the original story of Boccaccio, from whence the play was taken, the punishment of the slanderer better accords with the revengeful nature of Posthumus; and, indeed, with the frightful spirit of retribution that crowns the otherwise perfect-the divine-tales of the great Florentine. “He was fastened naked to a stake, smeared with honey, and left to be devoured by flies and locusts:" a revenge in character; for the Italians have a proverb, actually inculcating the vice of revenge as a virtue: it is, "He who cannot revenge himself is weak; he who will not is despicable." Imogen (thank Heaven!) was one of our own women. And yet, with all the objection here suggested against his character-structure, I am in candour bound (and I rejoice in my duty) to testify that Posthumus, in the clearing of his wife's innocence, does prostrate his soul in the very mire of self-reproach and despair. His rejoinder to the confession of Iachimo's treachery is enormous in its remorse; and,—I must acknowledge,— atoning and complete; as, in its spirit, it harmonizes with the impulsiveness of his nature. But,-good Heaven!-how perfectly divine is the scene of their reunion! She, with her char