ciently out of place, dramatically speaking, but full of the most exquisite poetry :

"And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care
He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles :

The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

*

"By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still;
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;

And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing bell.

"Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way;

Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay."

Passages of this kind, full of the fresh scents and sounds of the country, lend great colouring to the supposition that "Venus and Adonis" was written before Shakespeare left Stratford; moreover, in his dedication to the Earl of Southampton, he calls it "the first heir of my invention." With the same careful touch that he paints the hunted hare, he also describes the courser of Adonis, of which he gives a description of quite technical accuracy. Professor Dowden here calls upon us to notice the attention which Shakespeare bestowed upon the outward world. His studies of landscapes and of animals, though of minor importance, are preludes to his great study of mankind. With his eye fixed upon reality, he was cautiously feeling his way, each day discovering some new aspect of nature until he grasped the whole of it. It was by this slow but sure progress that he became a great master-very different in this respect from those idealistic poets, who, wishing to astonish

mankind with some splendid audacity, construct the world à priori instead of studying it, and never lay hold of it otherwise than partially and superficially.

Shakespeare has been reproached with having debased and degraded the mythological riches of his subject in not presenting Venus as a goddess instead of as a mere beautiful amorous wanton; but the reproach is singularly wanting in perception, for it is precisely this that gives life to his picture. While rejecting the cold mythological verbiage of the Renaissance, he has kept the material and voluptuous spirit of its paganism, and produced this admirable picture of a woman, which has justly been compared to a painting by Titian for richness and depth of colour.

But side by side with passages of real beauty in "Venus and Adonis" we find many far-fetched conceits, which could only suit the taste of the admirers of "Euphues;" after the death of Adonis, for example, Venus makes a funeral oration, and says :

"But when Adonis lived, sun and sharp air
Lurk'd like two thieves to rob him of his fair.

"And therefore would he put his bonnet on,
Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep;
The wind would blow it off, and, being gone,
Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep:
And straight, in pity of his tender years,

They both would strive who first should dry his tears.

"To see his face the lion walk'd along

Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him;

To recreate himself, when he hath sung,

The tiger would be tame, and gently hear him;
If he had spoke the wolf would leave his prey,
And never fright the silly lamb that day.

"But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar,
Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave,

Ne'er saw the beauteous livery that he wore:
Witness the entertainment that he gave;

If he did see his face, why then I know

He thought to kiss him, and hath kill'd him so."

This too-caressing boar who killed Adonis with a kiss had not been seen out hunting as the hare had; and the yet young and inexperienced poet mingled the fresh beauties of a sketch drawn from nature with the flat and insipid commonplaces of an artificial fancy. In many places in his poem, and notably in the description of the boar, Shakespeare followed Ovid, invariably adding, however, great amplification in the shape of long paraphrases. Those who think that it touches Shakespeare's honour to show that he was a good scholar as well as a great poet, will be grieved to learn that instead of having had recourse to the original work in Latin, he made use of Golding's translation, as becomes evident from a comparison of the texts. The principal charm of the poem, it may be added, lies in the dexterity of the workmanship and the music of its sounds.

Like "Venus and Adonis" the poem of "Lucrece has its source in antiquity. The story of Lucretia is told by Ovid in his "Fasti," and is also to be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in Livy, in Dion Cassius, and in Diodorus of Sicily. A translation of Ovid's "Fasti" into English verse appeared before the year 1570. But without going back to the ancients, Shakespeare may very well have known the story through popular tradition: all through the Middle Ages Lucretia was continually quoted as an illustrious example of conjugal fidelity, and a little indication that Shakespeare derived the story from Gothic sources would seem to be afforded by his making his Romans knights. Lucrece, before stabbing herself, says to her husband's friends

"You, fair lords,

Shall plight your honourable faiths to me,

With swift pursuit to venge this wrong of mine;

For 'tis a meritorious fair design

To chase injustice with revengeful arms:

Knights, by their oaths, should right poor ladies' harms."

And the poet proceeds :

"At this request, with noble disposition

Each present lord began to promise aid,

As bound in knighthood to her imposition."

The legend of Lucrece is found in Chaucer, and English literature in the sixteenth century had produced several poems on on the same subject prior to Shakespeare's; the two best-known ballads are "The Touching Complaint of Lucretia" and "The Death of Lucrece."

The poem consists of two hundred and sixty-five stanzas of seven lines each, so that Shakespeare takes eighteen hundred and fifty-five lines to relate a history that Ovid, who is not generally looked upon as a concise writer, tells in one hundred and forty lines. Nor is its length the sole defect of "Lucrece," for it is also marred by an exaggerated indulgence in the style then so much in vogue in Italy, which Shakespeare himself, later on, characterized as

"Taffata phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,
Figures pedantical."

Take, as an example of these fantastic graces, the lines in which the poet describes Lucrece asleep :

"Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,

Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss;

Who therefore angry, seems to part in sunder,
Swelling on either side to want his bliss."

Here we have a jealous pillow, of a fiercer temperament, apparently, than that of the wild boar in love with Adonis. But the most striking point of all in "Lucrece "

is the way in which the author of this tedious poem so long drawn out, everywhere avoids the slightest approach to dramatic action and movement: it would be impossible to be less of a forerunner of "Macbeth" and of "Othello." The only passage that has been discovered in which anything of the great dramatic psychology of Shakespeare's plays reveals itself, is that in which Lucrece, overwhelmed with shame, after a night of wild despair, calls a young groom, and giving him the letter she has written to recall her husband, charges him to hasten with it to Collatinus in the camp. Bashful and timid, the young man blushes as he stands before her; but Lucrece, full of her own thoughts, imagines that it is on account of her dishonour, and remains confused and trembling before the groom whom her own presence abashes.*

Rhetoric, or the art of speaking much and saying little, occupies a large place in the poem of "Lucrece : to make so slight a subject fill so large a frame it was necessary to piece it out with a prolixity capable of extending its story indefinitely, and the narrative is interrupted by reflections at every step. Before his crime, Tarquin continues for fifty-six lines "justly to control his thoughts unjust;" and after the crime, Lucrece gives vent in two hundred and seventy-three lines to her complaints against Tarquin, and against Night, Time, and Opportunity. She bethinks herself of

"A piece

Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy;

Before the which is drawn the power of Greece,
For Helen's rape the city to destroy."

This gives the poet a fine opportunity to describe the picture, to recall the story of "perjured Sinon" as told by Virgil, and to compare the fate that menaced the

* Guizot.