Quickly-the English which we still speak -they habited their thoughts in barbaric, classic, exotic raiment of every dye. They "have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps," as Moth says in this play, with what looks curiously like a reference to the remark of Eschylus that his tragedies were "scraps from the great feast of Homer." That was "the humor of it"--a humor which is always reappearing. The language of the Précieuses of Molière has a contemporary dictionary to itself, a lexicon not so big, to be sure, as that of Liddell and Scott, or of Facciolati. In our own day we have

at any price, adjectives hunted up in dictionaries, all "too too vain, too too vain," as Armado hath it. This very phrase "too too" was reborn some ten years ago, and made mirth for the mockers. We need not fall back, in a violent reaction, on "russet yeas, and honest kersey noes," but let us try to tell a plain tale, to write English once again. Let us prefer, with Costard, one that "is a marvel lous good neighbor, insooth, and a very

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good bowler," to critics whose knowledge of literature is apparently bounded by Mr. Rossetti and Mr. Ruskin in the remote past, and half a dozen affected modern novelists in the present. Love's Labor's Lost ought to form part of compulsory education in schools, colleges, and newspaper offices. The age is rich in representatives of Armado and Holofernes, in authors whose English is a deplorable jargon, obviously difficult to write,

"Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth," he was perilously near Crashaw's way; indeed, he often wanders in that willowwood of false conceit.

As to the original source of Love's Labor's Lost, of the story in it, nothing seems to be known. In Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library (1875, vol. I. pp. 1, 2), a tale is quoted from Monstrelet about Charles, King of Navarre, who made some exchanges of territory with the French monarch, and bargained also for "two hundred thousand gold crowns of the coin of our lord the King." This may be the father of Ferdinand, King of Navarre, in the comedy, the sovereign who never heard of the receipt of the French gold. For the rest, the plot cannot be shown to be older than Shakespeare. It is the converse of the late-alas that we should say "late"-Laureate's "Princess," and the "Princess” may have been suggest ed by Love's Labor's Lost. In the mod ern poem it is the lady who founds a college for maids, and banishes all men from its precincts, while it is the Prince who comes a-wooing. In Love's Labor's Lost this is all reversed; it is the King of Navarre who binds his friends "to vows impossible" in his enthusiasm for study, while the Princess and her ladies break in on the bachelors' Academe, and rout their great resolves. Shakespeare was probably well acquainted with Rabelais's learned Abbey of Thelema, where men and women are studious, indeed, but under no vow save Fay ce que vouldras.

"O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep; Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep," as Biron says. He is called Berowne in the Oxford Shakespeare. This may be very proper and learned, but Berowne reminds us too much of plain Browne, and we shall call him Biron. The King is a taking figure; with his great hunger and thirst for learning, he should have been a Wolf or a Casaubon, not a prince to "war against his own affections,

And the huge army of the world's desires,”— lines with the accent of Marlowe. His plan of a three years' seclusion is the old ideal of the English universities. But the rule "not to see ladies" has been sadly broken. Rosaline, Maria, Katharine, Jaquenetta, have all come to the college, and some twenty years ago the young Fellows got married in clusters. Good or bad (a matter that may be argued), the old rule was for cloisters, not courts.

"Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others' books."

The bookworms are a minute minority in this world, and all mankind is prepared to laugh when the women come. The poet of the Greek anthology was reading Hesiod when Doris passed that

way.

Nor are nobles

Instantly he threw down his roll. "Old Hesiod, what are thy works to me?" he cried, and ran after pretty Doris. The King had quite forgot that the French Princess was coming "about surrender up of Aquitain," and we guess that not "vainly comes the admired Princess hither" to play Doris's part. only aimed at by Love's arrows. Armado, "a refined traveller of Spain," "a man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight,” has detected the clown Costard in flagrant breach of his new monastic vows. Costard was seen with Jaquenetta in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park;" and this Armado calls "that obscene and most preposterous event."

Love's Labor's Lost is not very frequently acted, but Costard must be delightful on the stage, when, after Armado's letter describes him as "that base minnow of thy mirth," he ejaculates "Me!" Again, "he consorted with-with,-O with-but with this I passion to say wherewith-" Cost. With a wench.

So Costard is handed over for safe cus

tody to Armado, and we meet that hero, with his knavish attendant Moth. And here we learn that Armado is not invulnerable: Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard."

Indeed, the knight "does betray himself with blushing" when Jaquenetta is consigned to him. This maid is like a rough early sketch for Audrey, as Costard is for Touchstone, and Rosaline and Biron are studies for Benedick and Beatrice. Like most great artists, even Shakespeare has his types, which he occasionally repeats with variations. The painters have been specially remarkable for their favorite faces; with those of Leonardo, Botticelli, Luini, every one is acquainted. Scott has certain moulds of characterparallel characters we may call them which recur again and again, and Shakespeare, though much less frequently, reproduces his types. The second act introduces the French Princess with her ladies. In the quarto the acts are not divided, and the division as we have it is far from regular. The Princess, from her ladies' descriptions of the Navarre gentlemen, learns that "they are all in love." Rosaline is not captious like Beatrice; of Biron (with whom she has danced in Brabant once") she says,

"A merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal." Indeed, Biron's mirth is more limited by the becoming than that of Shakespeare's wits in general. The ladies mask before the Navarrese enter -a useful aid to stage confusions. Masking, even in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was a very common practice. The gallants threw the ends of their cloaks over their faces. The Papers of the Mures of Caldwell show how late in the last century the Edinburgh ladies wore masks. Perhaps they had less desire of concealment than regard for their complexions in the bitter northeast winds of the gray town. In spite of masks, Biron and Rosaline recognize each other as old partners. Their "wit combat" in brief rhyming lines is less attractive than the skirmishes of Benedick and Beatrice. Naturally the parties of France and Navarre fall in love with each other the bookish King is captured, and captives are his bookmen." The following scenes with Moth, Costard, and

Armado continue the purpose of the comedy, the rational hind breaks his jests on the knight's euphuisms, and receives remuneration," "the Latin word for three farthings." Like some words brought in by the Précieuses in France, "remuneration" has held its own, and is, perhaps, more classical than "compensation" in the sense of "payment." Then follows one of Shakespeare's scenes of tricky ambush-the Princess lying in wait for Navarre, and opening the letter, carried by Costard, which Armado has written to Jaquenetta. Costard makes a knavish blunder, and insists that it is from Biron to Rosaline. The Princess retires, the scene is left to a new pedant, Holofernes, Sir Nathaniel, and Dull the constable, ancestor, probably, of "the young woman named Dull" in the Pilgrim's Progress. The humor of Holofernes is an outrageous taste for synonymes and Latin quotations. He is thought to be a caricature of Florio, the translator of Montaigne. The idea was originated by Warburton, and is opposed by Collier. "The only apparent offence by Florio was a passage in his Second Fruits (1591), where he complained of the want of decorum in English representations. The provocation was evidently insufficient, and we may safely dismiss the whole conjecture as unfounded." In a similar way Paris recognized Trissotin (in Les Femmes Savantes) as the Abbé Cotin, and, later, discovered M. Caro in a personage of Le Monde où l'on s'ennuie. Perhaps Holofernes's best thing is his tribute to Virgil. "I salute thee, Mantovano," as the Laureate says, Holofernes might say: "Old Mantuan! old Mantuan! who understandeth thee not, loves thee not!" Holofernes has this essential mark of the pedant, that he loves his learning less for its own sake than because he meets other people to whom it is caviare. To oblige Jaquenetta, Nathaniel reads a letter, which she supposes to be from Armado to herself, but which is really from Biron to Rosaline. Jaquenetta is sent to bear it to the King, and Holofernes promises to prove Biron's verses to be very unlearned, neither savoring of poetry, wit, nor invention." But love has taught Biron "to rhyme, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy." The King enters, not observing Biron, and drops his own rhyme and his melan