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.

Duke. 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 enerabout 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,

दह

your swords:

"Methinks, I see Death and the Furies waiting
What we will do; and all the Heaven at leisure
For the great spectacle. Draw then
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 forsays of a storm

mer

"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 observation on the beauty of the imagery here. But, as similar beauties do not always strike the same taste alike, another pas

As we shall now go on to the second class, and quote passages where the hand of Shakspeare is not so easily discerned from our authors', if the reader happens to remember neither, it may be entertaining to be left to guess at the different hands. Thus each of them describing a beautiful boy :

"Dear lad, believe it,

For they shall yet belie thy happy years
That say thou art a man: Diana's lip

Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe
Is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound,
And all is semblative a woman's part."

The other is,

"Alas! what kind of grief can thy years know?

Thy brows and cheeks are smooth as waters be
When no breath troubles them: Believe me, boy,
Care seeks out wrinkled brows and hollow eyes,
And builds himself caves to abide in them.”

The one is in Philaster, vol. x. page 169; the other in Twelfth-Night, act i. scene 4.-In the same page of Philaster there is a description of love, which the reader, if he pleases, may compare to two descriptions of love in As You like It-both by Silvia, but neither preferable to our authors'. I can

sage in this play, that seems to deserve the same admiration, is rejected by this great man as not Shakspeare's. The French King, speaking of the Black Prince's victory at Cressy, says,

While that his mountain sire, on mountain standing,
66 Up in the air crown'd with the golden sun,”

Saw his heroic seed, and smil'd to see him

Mangle the work of nature. Henry V. act ii. scene 4.

I have marked the line rejected, and which seems to breathe the full soul of Shakspeare. The reader will find a defence and explanation of the whole passage in a note on Thierry and Theo doret, act IV. scene I. vol. XII.-Seward.

not quote half of those which occur in the play of Philaster alone, which bear the same degree of likeness as the last-quoted passages, i. e. where the hands are scarce to be distinguished; but I will give one parallel more from thence, because the passages are both extremely fine, though the hands, from one single expression of Shakspeare's, are more visible; a prince deprived of his throne and betrayed, as he thought, in love, thus mourns his melancholy state:

"Oh! that I had been nourish'd in these woods
With milk of goats and acorns, and not known
The right of crowns, nor the dissembling trains
Of women's looks; but digg'd myself a cave,
Where I, my fire, my cattle, and my bed,
Might have been shut together in one shed;
And then had taken me some mountain girl,
Beaten with winds, chaste as the harden'd rocks
Whereon she dwells; that might have strew'd my bed
With leaves and reeds, and with the skins of beasts
Our neighbours; and have borne at her big breasts
My large coarse issue !"

In the other, a king thus compares the state of roy alty to that of a private life :

"No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd, and vacant mind,

Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid Night, the child of hell:
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse;
And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave.
And (but for ceremony) such a wretch
Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep,
Hath the forehand and 'vantage of a king."

4 Juvenal, Sat. vi.-Seward.