cellencies. Melantius the general thus speaks of

his friend Amintor:

"His worth is great, valiant he is and temperate,'
And one that never thinks his life his own

If his friend need it: When he was a boy,

As oft as I returned (as, without boast,

I brought home conquest) he would gaze upon me,
And view me round, to find in what one limb
The virtue lay to do those things he heard;
Then would he wish to see my sword, and feel
The quickness of the edge, and in his hand
Weigh it. He oft would make me smile at this;'
His youth did promise much, and his ripe years
Will see it all performed."

A youth gazing on every limb of the victorious chief, then begging his sword, feeling its edge, and poising it in his arm, are attitudes nobly expressive of the inward ardour and ecstacy of soul: But what is most observable is,

"And in his hand

Weigh it-He oft, &c.”

By this beautiful pause, or break, the action and picture continue in view, and the poet, like Homer, is eloquent in silence. It is a species of beauty that shews an intimacy with that father of poetry, in whom it occurs extremely often.' Milton has an exceeding fine one in the description of his LazarHouse:

Despair

'Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch,
And over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook, but delay'd to strike," &c.

Paradise Lost, book xi. line 489.

9 See two noble instances at 1. 141 of the 13th Book of the Iliad, and in the application of the same simile a few lines below.

Seward.

.

As Shakspeare did not study versification so much as those poets who were conversant in Homer and Virgil, I don't remember in him any striking instance of this species of beauty. But he even wanted it not; his sentiments are so amazingly striking, that they pierce the heart at once; and diction and numbers, which are the beauty and nerves adorning and invigorating the thoughts of other poets, to him are but like the bodies of angels, azure vehicles, through which the whole soul shines transparent. Of this take the following instance. The old Belarius in Cymbeline is describing the in-born royalty of the two princes whom he had bred up as peasants in his cave :

"This Paladour, (whom

The king his father call'd Guiderius) Jove!
When on my three-foot stool I sit, and tell
The warlike feats I've done, his spirits fly out
Into my story: Say thus mine enemy fell,
And thus I set my foot on's neck—even then
The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,
Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture
That acts my words.".

Cymbeline, act iii. scene iii.

Much the same difference as between these two passages occurs likewise in the following pictures

of rural melancholy, the first of innocence forlorn, the second of philosophic tenderness :

"I have a boy

Sent by the gods I hope to this intent,

Not yet seen in the court. Hunting the buck
I found him sitting by a fountain-side,

Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst,
And paid the nymph again as much in tears;
A garland lay by him, made by himself
Of many several flowers, bred in the bay,
Stuck in that mystic order that the rareness
Delighted me: But ever when he turn'd

His tender eyes upon them, he would weep,
As if he meant to make them grow again.
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, I ask'd him all his story;
He told me, that his parents gentle died,
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,
Which gave him roots, and of the crystal springs
Which did not stop their courses; and the sun
Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light.
Then took he up his garland, and did shew,
What every flower, as country people hold,
Did signify; and how all, order'd thus,
Exprest his grief; and to my thoughts did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art
That could be wish'd, so that methought I could
Have studied it.”—

Philaster.

Jaques, in As You like It, is moralizing upon the fate of the deer gored by the hunters in their native confines :

"The melancholy Jaques grieves at that,

To-day my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequestered stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heaved forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Ďuke. But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

1 Lord. Oh, yes, into a thousand similies.
First, for his weeping in the needless stream;
Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more
To that which had too much; then being alone,
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends

'Tis right, quoth he, thus misery doth part
The flux of company: Anon a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him: Ay, quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, ye fat and greasy citizens,

'Tis just the fashion," &c.

As You like It, act ii. scene i.

Shakspeare is certainly much preferable, but 'tis only as a Raphael is preferable to a Guido-Philaster alone would afford numbers of passages similar to some of Shakspeare's, upon which the same observation will hold true, they are not equal to his very best manner, but they approach near it. As I have mentioned Jonson being in poetic energy about the same distance below our authors as Shakspeare is above them, I shall quote three passages which seem to me in this very scale. Jonson translates verbatim from Sallust great part of Catiline's speech to his soldiers, but adds in the close,

"Methinks, I see Death and the Furies waiting

What we will do; and all the Heaven at leisure
For the great spectacle. Draw then your swords:
And if our destiny envy our virtue

The honour of the day, yet let us care

To sell ourselves at such a price as may

Undo the world to buy us: and make Fate,
While she tempts ours, fear for her own estate."
Catiline, act v.

Jonson has here added greatly to the ferocity, terror, and despair of Catiline's speech, but it is consonant to his character both in his life and death. The image in the three first lines is extremely noble, and may be said to emulate, though not quite to reach, the poetic ecstacy of the following passage in Bonduca. Suetonius, the Roman general, having his small army hemmed round by multitudes, tells his soldiers, that the number of the foes

"Is but to stick more honour on your actions,
Load you with virtuous names, and to your memories
Tie never-dying time and fortune constant.
Go on in full assurance, draw your swords
As daring and as confident as justice.

The gods of Rome fight for ye; loud Fame calls ye
Pitch'd on the topless Apennine, and blows
To all the under world, all nations, seas,

And unfrequented desarts where the snow dwells;
Wakens the ruin'd monuments, and there

Informs again the dead bones with your virtues.”

The four first lines are extremely nervous; but the image which appears to excel the noble one of Jonson above, is Fame pitch'd on mount Apennine (whose top is supposed viewless from its stupendous height) and from thence sounding their virtues so loud that the dead awake, and are re-animated to hear them. The close of the sentiment is extremely in the spirit of Shakspeare and Milton; the former says of a storm

“That with the hurly Death itself awakes ;"

Milton in Comus, describing a lady's singing, says,

"He took in sounds that might create a soul
Under the ribs of Death."

To return to Shakspeare-With him we must soar far above the topless Apennine, and there behold an image much nobler than our authors' Fame:

"For now sits Expectation in the air,'

And hides a sword from hilts unto the point
With crowns imperial."-

Chorus in Henry V. act ii. scene i.

For now sits Expectation, &c.] See Mr Warburton's just ob servation on the beauty of the imagery here. But, as similar beauties do not always strike the same taste alike, another pas