successful pictures of women there are few that equal those of these Graver Comedies. What portrait of a woman could surpass Hermione, whose solidity of character and patience under injury have something of that monumental quality which seems to be indicated when she stands before her unjust but repentant husband as a statue, but ready to sink into his embrace? or than Imogen, who, when charged with unfaithfulness to her husband, asks with a pudency of virtue white as the innocence of infancy, "What is it to be false"? or than Isabella, whose glowing chastity cannot be moved even by the entreaties of a brother over whose head death is suspended, if she will not yield? These are not all the noble women of this group of plays, but I must not omit the very modern Paulina of A Winter's Tale, who has so tart a tongue for the self-importance and self-deception of men and is, at the same time, so tender and loyal a friend to the Queen she serves.

Side by side with these good women, we have in the Graver Comedies a group of nearly equally good men, mostly kings and princes, such as the Duke in Measure for Measure and the King of France in All's Well That Ends Well. Shakspeare was partial to the princely character, and he employs these royal figures as the mouthpiece for uttering his deepest thoughts on the course of the world and the management of man's life. For the same purpose he employs royal coun

cillors, like Gonzalo in The Tempest and Lafeu in All's Well That Ends Well-men whose wits have been sharpened by intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men and whose criticism of life has more of salt in it than that of their royal masters. From the lips of such characters there fall moral maxims and eloquent outbursts of wisdom highly characteristic of the poet; indeed, this is the feature which chiefly marks out the Shakspearean drama and lifts even the least considerable of Shakspeare's plays up into a region which is all his own.

Let me cull, almost at random, a handful of such choice sayings:

On the Seasonableness of Speech

The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness
And time to speak it in: you rub the sore
When you should bring the plaster.

On Blessings in Disguise—

Some falls are means the happier to arise.

On Providence

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

On Self-help

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Which we ascribe to Heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

On Obscure Virtue

From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by the doer's deed.

On Laws not enforced

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.

On Gentleness

Oh, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

On the principle, observed by St. Augustine, that past sins may be made the stepping-stones to virtue

They say, best men are moulded out of faults
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.

On Responsibility for Talents

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do

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

touched

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.

On Little Things—

He that of greatest works is finisher

Oft does them by the weakest minister.

So Holy Writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes.

On Popularity

I love the people,

But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and Aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
Who does affect it.

On Death, by one not prepared to die :—

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 region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned 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 incertain thoughts

Imagine howling :-'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

As has been already hinted, the comic element is not very prominent in these Graver Comedies; and, it must be added, what there is of it is not particularly successful. The author, indeed, strains after it; but it is gone, like the buoyant step of youth. Besides, a good deal of what was amusing to the audiences for which Shakspeare wrote is now like salt which has lost its savour. Unfortunately, too, it must be confessed that in nearly all of these plays a considerable part of the action turns on incidents and ideas which are to our minds revolting and nauseous, though to the playgoing public of Shakspeare's age they appear to have been acceptable and entertaining.

Parolles, in All's Well That Ends Well, is a kind of reproduction of the character of Falstaff, but his heavy wit is stiff as a poker in comparison with the nimble genius of that prince of jesters. There is, however, played on him a practical joke, which is rather amusing. He is a braggart and a coward; and his fellow-soldiers, to test his vaunted valour, propose to him an adventure, which he does not dare