daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength-a malady
Most incident to maids-bold oxlips and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.

And, in the same play, Autolycus sings:
When daffodils begin to peer-

With hey! the doxy over the dale-
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year,

For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.1

Of course Shakspeare might have written such praises of country-life at any period of his history, for he had the experiences of his youth, spent in the country, to draw upon; but, occurring, as these do, in his later life,

1If the literary pilgrim happen to visit Stratford-on-Avon when the stream of visitors is not flowing, he may spend a delightful hour in the garden of the birth-house, where specimens are growing of the flowers, shrubs and trees mentioned in the plays. In one of those laborious books which only a German could have written I find it stated that there are a hundred-and-thirteen plants mentioned in Shakspeare's works; and there they stand everyone with chapter and verse. According to the same authority the animals mentioned are a hundred-and-forty-four. KLOEPPER, Shakespeare-Realien: AltEnglands Kulturleben im Spiegel von Shakespeares Dichtungen.

they may betoken either his yearning for the landscapes of Warwickshire or his enjoyment of them after his return.

The brightest element in these plays is the number of young people they contain, radiant with the bloom of youth and running over with animal spirits. These have been lost to their parents, and for a time their lot is obscured by misfortunes; but ultimately they are found and restored to their rightful condition. One would be glad to believe that these figures are a reflection of the poet's happiness in his own children, with whom he was reunited in the latter part of his life. Marina in Pericles, Miranda in The Tempest, with her lover Ferdinand, Perdita in The Winter's Tale, with her lover Florizel, Diana in All's Well That Ends Well, and Guiderius and Arviragus, the two sons of the king in Cymbeline, belong to this attractive group. The most charming of them all is Perdita. She is

a king's daughter, but, having been lost in infancy, she is brought up in the house of a shepherd, who is supposed to be her father. In this lowly household she is engaged in the offices of a milkmaid; but she is, as someone calls her, "the queen of curds and cream" and, as another observer says, "the prettiest lowborn lass that ever ran on the greensward". Her beauty has attracted the attention of the son of the

king of the land of her exile, who, in defiance of the supposed discrepancy of their conditions and the wrath of his father, has avowed his love and resolved to wed her. His vows are warm enough:—

When you speak, sweet,

I'd have you do it ever; when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,

To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that; move still, still so

And own no other function; each your doing,

So singular in each particular,

Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds
That all your acts are queens.

There is hardly a brighter page in Shakspeare's entire works than the festival of the sheep-shearing, when she presides over the scene, but so modestly that the old shepherd, her supposed father, has to rally her spirits by recalling the example of his own old wife:

Fie, daughter, when my old wife lived, upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook,
Both dame and servant; welcomed all, served all,
Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here
At upper end o' the table, now i' the middle;

On his shoulder, and his; her face o' fire

With labour, and the thing she took to quench it,
She would to each one sip. You are retired,
As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting. Pray you, bid
These unknown friends to 's welcome; for it is
A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself
That which you are, mistress o' the feast; come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,

As your good flock shall prosper.

Then ensue the revels of the country-festival, over which seems to blow the fresh air from the hills of everlasting youth, while the spirits of love, fun and melody attend the frolicsome rustics.

It seems to me, however, that another influence must have contributed to the creation of these bright figures in Shakspeare's imaginary world. It is on record that his fame as a dramatist secured for him the entrée to the higher ranks of society, and that he had several intimate friends among the nobility. In the existence of the wealthy and nobly-born there is no feature so prepossessing as the beauty and highspirit of their children. Whatever may be the effect of wealth and long descent on morals, there can be no question that breeding, as it is called, exercises the happiest influence on the physical development, imparting especially to the young in this section of society an external charm which nothing can surpass.

The exclamation of Miranda, in The Tempest, at sight of the courtiers, is exactly such as might have escaped from the breast of a poet born in the bourgeois class at sight of a group of young people in some lordly house :

Oh wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beautous mankind is! Oh brave new world, That has such people in't!

Shakspeare insists much, in these plays, on the effects of gentle blood. The lost children of queens and kings, though brought up as rustics, betray, by the refinement of their manners and by their soaring aspirations, that their origin has been regal. Thus, in Cymbeline, the lost sons of the King, though brought up by their banished uncle as huntsmen and unaware of their descent, are constantly revealing a spirit above their condition, so that their uncle exclaims:

How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature! These boys know little they are sons to the king, Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.

They think they're mine; and, though trained up thus meanly

I' the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit
The roofs of palaces; and nature prompts them,
In simple and low things, to prince it much beyond
The trick of others;