Must be half-workers? We are all bastards;
And that most venerable man, which I
Did call my father, was I know not where

When I was stamp'd; some coiner with his tools

wife

Made me a counterfeit: Yet my mother seem'd
The Dian of that time: so doth my
The nonpareil of this.-O vengeance, ven-
geance!

Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain'd,
And pray'd me, oft, forbearance: did it with
A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on 't
Might well have warm'd old Saturn; that I
thought her

As chaste as unsunn'd snow:-0, all the devils!

This yellow Iachimo, in an hour,-was 't not ?-
Or less, at first: Perchance he spoke not; but,
Like a full-acorn'd boar, a German one,
Cry'd, oh! and mounted: found no opposition
But what he look'd for should oppose, and she
Should from encounter guard. Could I find out

Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, Nice longings, slanders, mutability,

All faults that may be nam'd, nay, that hell knows,

Why, hers, in part or all; but rather, all:
For ev'n to vice

They are not constant, but are changing still
One vice but of a minute old, for one
Not half so old as that. I'll write against them,
Detest them, curse them :-Yet 't is greater skil.
In a true hate, to pray they have their will:
The very devils cannot plague them better."

[Exit.

This is the same idea that is more piously expressed by Sir Thomas More-"God could not lightly do a man more vengeance than in this world to grant him his own foolish wishes."

1

SCENE II.

"Our Tarquin thus Did softly press the rushes."

THE whole of this scene in its delicacy and beauty has some resemblance to the night scene in Shakspere's Tarquin and Lucrece. Indeed Shakspere, in one or two expressions, seems to have had his own poem distinctly present to his mind. For example:

"By the light he spies Lucretia's glove, wherein her needle sticks; He takes it from the rushes where it lies."

Again; Iachimo says of Imogen

"O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying!'

Lucretia is in the same way described as a monumental figure reposing upon a pillow:

"Where, like a virtuous monument she lies." The best illustration of this beautiful image is presented by Chantrey's exquisite monument of the Sleeping Children.

SCENE III.-"Hark, hark, the lark." Steevens asserts, without offering the slightest evidence in support of his assertion, that George

Peele was the author of this song. The mode, however, in which Cloten speaks of it, "A wonderful sweet air, with admirable sweet words to it," is not exactly in Shakspere's manner; and yet, if it had been the work of any other poet, the compliment from the mouth of such a character as Cloten would have been rather equivocal. In our poet's 29th Sonnet we have these lines :

"Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate." But in Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe, which was first printed in 1584, we have the image even more closely resembling the words of the song. Our readers will not object to see Lyly's poem entire.

"What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
O'tis the ravish'd nightingale.
Jug, jug, jug, jug, teureu she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick song! who is 't now we hear!
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat
Poor robin red-breast tunes his note;
Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing,
Cuckoo to welcome in the spring.
Cuckoo to welcome in the spring."

209

3 SCENE IV.—

"The roof o' the chamber With golden cherubins is fretted." Steevens calls this "a tawdry image." Douce justly says, "The poet has, in this instance, given a faithful description of the mode in which the rooms in great houses were sometimes ornamented." "Her andirons

4 SCENE IV.

(I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids," &c. We have no doubt that in this description Shak

spere literally describes some work of art which he had seen. At Knowle, one of the most interesting of ancient mansions, their are "andirons," of which the "two winking Cupids of silver" are not, indeed, "each on one foot standing," but in an attitude sufficiently graceful to show us that such furniture was executed not only of costly materials, but with a skill such as the Florentine artists applied to the ornamental appendages of the palaces of the great.

There be many Cæsars,

Ere such another Julius. Britain is

A world by itself; and we will nothing pay

For wearing our own noses.

Queen. That opportunity, Which then they had to take from us, to resume We have again-Remember, sir, my liege,

The kings your ancestors; together with
The natural bravery of your isle, which stands
As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in
With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters;
With sands that will not bear your enemies'
boats,

But suck them up to the top-mast. A kind of conquest

Cæsar made here; but made not here his brag
Of came, and saw, and overcame: with shame
(The first that ever touch'd him) he was carried
From off our coast, twice beaten; and his ship-

ping

(Poor ignorant baubles!) on our terrible seas, Like egg-shells mov'd upon their surges, crack'd As easily 'gainst our rocks: For joy whereof, The fam'd Cassibelan, who was once at point (0, giglot fortune!) to master Cæsar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright,' And Britons strut with courage.

:

Clo. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid Our kingdom is stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no more such Cæsars: other of them may have crooked noses; but to owe such straight arms, none.

a Rocks. The original reads oaks. We have no doubt of the propriety of the correction, which is Hanmer's. b Giglot. The term may be explained by its application to Joan of Arc, in the First Part of Henry VI.-"Young Talbot was not born To be the pillage of a giglot wench."