may have shaken the early piece together again.

The play opens in "an open place in Verona "-perhaps the beautiful marketplace of that beautiful city. But there is nothing about Verona in the novel of Felismena, and only the name of the town, which Mr. Ruskin unpatriotically, and I venture to think erroneously, prefers to Edinburgh, occurs in the play. Shakespeare certainly gives us no "local color." The far-off hills and the river and the Roman theatre, so much less lovely to a Scot abroad than the lion crest of Arthur's Seat, the crowned ridge of "mine own romantic town," the Pentlands, the strait of sea, the low blue hills

of Fife, take no part, have no mention, in his Veronese comedy. Nor, in Verona, do we think of Valentine and Proteus, though of Romeo and Juliet, of Capulet and Montague, we cannot choose but think. In this open place, then, meet Valentine and Proteus, sworn friends. Valentine is going to the imperial court; Proteus cannot keep him at home.

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits." Later it appears that Valentine is only faring to the Duke's court at Milan: probably there has here been some botching and changing of an earlier drama. Proteus, who is in love with Julia at Verona, will not roam, but will be Valentine's

"beadsman," and pray for him "on a love-book." Proteus is always rich in protestations-Valentine mocks at Cupid. Then follows a conversation purely modish and fashionable; dull plays on words, such as then, apparently, were in vogue. The talk soon transmutes itself into poetry, and into an amorous soliloquy by Proteus; but when Speed, Valentine's clownish servant, appears with news of his embassy to Julia, we fall, unluckily, among the word-plays, and the dismal, not to say occasionally dirty japes which were able to amuse our ancestors. Shakespeare's native humor, as in Falstaff, or as in Launce, is humor eternal; but how ineffably tedious are his concessions to the New Humor of his age, to a comic euphuism! He is not for one age, but for all time; we must get into a severely historical state of mind before we can endure his fashionable badinage. Every age has its "topical" jokes, very evanescent or very unsavory. They assuredly do not keep well. Speed is one of the very worst offenders in this kind. We are told to note in the banter of Proteus that from the first he is only a sensual lover. But Helen holds the same kind of talk with Parolles, and no one bids us draw the same inference. The nonsense is contemporary nonsense; it pleased the "better vulgar," who, some one lately noted, talked euphuism then, as they talk psychological analysis and "problems" now. Our psychical analysis will be as dismally unedifying and unentertaining soon as euphuism and Elizabethan word-splitting are to-day. Our modish literary fashions have been imposed by a few noisy raffinés on that large class of readers who like to be in what is proclaimed as the fashion. Elizabethan audiences had their own preciosities, deplorably dismal to us, who have a new and equally evanescent set of phrases and foibles. A man of the world, Shakespeare gave them what they craved for, but to pretend to admire Speed now would be mere idolatry of the great, humorous, indifferent poet. As well as Scott knew that his "Gothic" was Wardour Street "Gothic," we may be sure that Shakespeare knew the worth of his own euphuism. It was in the air, it was in vogue, and they who live to please must please to live." Let us take Shakespeare as we find him and know him, and by all means let us turn over the leaf quickly when his

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especially courtly and Elizabethan motley is on. It is not his only wear. For the gallants of his time it was very well to borrow their wit from Speed and Proteus; the ladies might smile at it behind their masks. But for us I verily believe that this dreadful fashion of playing stupidly on words, this peculiarly "empty chaff," does more to make ladies like Helen Pendennis dislike Shakespeare, more to make foreigners, especially Frenchmen, contemn him, than any other blemish in his works. This is the body of death to which the immortal spirit of his poetry is chained. All works of human genius carry that body of death-or all but Homer's-the trite gnomic wisdom of the Greek tragedies, the topical jests and buffooneries of Aristophanes, the stilts of Corneille, the prodigiously high heels of Racine, the modishness of Pope, the rhetoric of Johnson, the sonorities of Gibbon, the adjectives of Mr. Ruskin-where am I to stop in the catalogue? I mean that all genius has its feet of clay, the alloy in its gold-all but the best lyrics and the Homeric poems. Shakespeare, too, has the alloy-we should not blink it-the alloy of a trick and an affectation which raged like a disease during his age in European literature. This it is that makes the Two Gentlemen of Verona the least commendable, perhaps, among his comedies.

The second scene, which brings us to Julia in her garden talking with her waiting-lady about her heart's interests, brings us acquainted with a charming and stainless heroine, cursed by that persistent constancy which is often the plague of Shakespeare's ladies. Had he found, in his own experience, that woman declines to be shaken off when once she loves, that her pertinacity is in inverse ratio to her pride? Most readers have a certain obscure prejudice against Anne Hathaway. Had Anne proved a crampon? Was Shakespeare compelled to marry her by reason of her importunity? Did she cling to him, like Julia to Proteus, in spite of considerable discouragement? We may guess that the gentle poet could do anything more easily than be ungentle to a woman. Perhaps a more probable explanation of this eternally recurring motive in his plays, the constancy of women, when a proud withdrawal were better as well as more dignified policy, was merely presented to

Shakespeare by the many old Italian plots in which it occurs. In them it is a frequent adventure, as it is, when one thinks of it, in the Scottish and the modern Greek popular ballads. The general sympathy seems to be with the forsaken lady when she attaches herself to her fugitive lover, like Simatha in Theocritus to Delphis. The situation, then, has a traditional popularity, though it is much less enjoyed by the modern world. Whatever the reason, Shakespeare makes many of his ladies tenacious and long-enduring of scorn beyond what we can admire, and Julia is one of those persistent mistresses. In real life it is almost impossible that a marriage forced on the bridegroom by the bride, who will take no refusal, should be other than unhappy. Shakespeare must have known that perfectly well. He disguises it by making the reluctant bridegrooms change their minds and hearts with lightninglike rapidity. Yet we cannot predict much happiness for the passionate and all-too-adhesive Julia. The scene in which Julia refuses to receive Proteus's letter from Lucetta,

"Dare you presume to harbor wanton lines? To whisper and conspire against my youth ?"is borrowed, as we saw, from the novel by Montemayor. Borrowed, too, is the ruse by which Lucetta stirs Julia's curiositydropping the letter, and pretending that it is directed to herself. Here the modern moralist may pause and warn the modern maid and bachelor unbetrothed against corresponding with each other. The practice was clearly thought unbecoming in Shakespeare's time, and “advantage seldom comes of it." To young persons about to begin letter-writing to other young persons of the opposite sex, let us repeat the solemn word of Mr. Punch--“Don't." It is the most perilous way of "keeping company," however attractive it may seem. Write nothing and burn every thing, should be our motto. The greatest flirt in an English novelist's tales is able to say, with thankful caution, that there is not a scrap of her handwriting to be found in Europe. If only the young will imitate Julia's original reserve, this unassuming study of the Two Gentlemen of Verona will not have been written in vain.

One of the prettiest scenes in the play is that in which Julia, after tearing the letter, collects and kisses the fragments.

"I'll kiss each several paper for amends. And, here is writ-kind Julia;-unkind Julia! Look, here is writ-love-wounded Proteus. Poor wounded name! my bosom, as a bed, Shall lodge thee, till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd;

And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss."

By these pretty childish tricks of love Julia wins all our hearts, and Shakespeare reveals himself for Shakespeare even in his earliest work.

In the third scene Antonio is moved to send his son Proteus from home, as others go.

"Some, to discover islands far away;

Some, to the studious universities." Thus Proteus, in the very moment of reading a love-letter from Julia, is sent off by Sir Antonio Absolute,

"For what I will, I will, and there an end." He is to go "to the Emperor's court," whereas, in fact, he travels no further than Milan-a trace of some botching and "working over" in the play.

In Milan we find Valentine, another Benedick, very much the slave of Silvia, despite his old contempt of Cupid. Silvia hardly wins us much at first, as she, poor lady, is in duty bound to banter with the unendurable Speed. Next we come to Proteus's parting with Julia. For so fiery a lover he bears himself with a threatening composure. Julia leaves him in silence, a fine exit, like the last speechless exit of Jocasta in the Edipus Tyrannus.

"What! gone without a word? Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak; For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it."

Launce, the renowned proprietor of Crab, the sourest-natured dog," comes in as a comic interlude. The "cruelhearted cur" belongs to Shakespeare's own and essential humor, consoling us, in some degree, for his fashionable facetiæ. In Milan we meet Valentine commending Proteus to the Duke, the father of his lady, Silvia:

"He is complete in feature and in mind,

With all good grace to grace a gentleman."

Proteus sees Silvia, and in a moment loses his heart, and has no desire to speak

of Julia.

"My tales of love were wont to weary you; I know you joy not in a love-discourse." There is all the grace and charm of Shakespeare's early manner in the reply and confession of the amorous Valentine: