brightness that dazzled while it led us to something less visionary, perhaps, yet hardly more tangible; when everything seemed bright, and the dullest day had no power to damp us, when we tossed our caps, why we knew not. At that time SHAKESPEARE to us was unalloyed pleasure without much thought. Even the subtleties of Hamlet were no bar to our enjoyment of the play, and his most intricate passages were no puzzle to us. We were charmed by the music of his words, his natural scenes and stories captivated our senses and won our love. We could not dip very deep, but what we saw was enough to satisfy, and time gave us strength to see more; and then, when turning over the leaves, our attention might have been arrested by that charming pastoral poem of his, As You Like It, we found ourselves at home in its woodland scenery and cool retreats; we stood face to face with nature in her freshest garb, we trod the grass in the company of the sweet friendship of Celia and Rosalind, and breathed the balmy air of the glens and glades of the Forest of Arden. In fancy we heard the bugle note of the forester, and watched the flight of the birds; and the happy hum of the insects, with the delicate scents of the forest, were borne into our dreamy senses as we enjoyed the romantic scenes of the play. There we saw our harmonious relation to nature, and the little part we played in the great whole. We found the tongues of the trees, and enjoyed ourselves under the monarch of the woods, whose antique roots peeped out upon the brook that brawled along, and as the babbling waters rush over its musical bed we listen to the sermon of the stones, and felt, as the books of the running brooks lay open before us, that there was good in everything. Then perhaps we wander into King Lear, and instead of the soft breathing of peace and content we have just left we find a strong contrast the war of the elements; the bad weather; the terrible storm, the howling tempest, the fearful hurricane; the tearing up of trees by the roots, the tearing up of the soul's fondest hopes; the drowning rain, the flood of ignorance and vice in the two daughters of Lear; the startling whirlwind, the terrible curse; then across this dark and stormy background we see, in peaceful opposition, the pure white figure of Cordelia, like oil on troubled waters. All nature seems to talk to us through his pages, because we find he makes all nature speak for him, and sympathise with his subject. If the great Julius is in danger, portentous stars do fall and meteors cross the sky; Macbeth kills his king, and lamentings are heard in the air. The English are impatient for battle and the cripple tardy-gaited night is watched away in long and weary minutes. Juliet meets her love and the night is all too short, envious streaks do lace the severing clouds, and the lark's song is harsh; and so it is, the song that nature sings is tuned to the chords of our own hearts; if they are discordant then all things are so, and SHAKESPEARE understanding this, beneath his pen she teems with tongues and living images from many faces; he makes her yield up her treasures and add to his descriptions with sympathetic voice; she lives, breathes, and has new being under his magic touch. So, rambling through his works, and staying to read here and there, like bees gathering honey, we begin to feel his power and to understand his deep knowledge of ourselves. We see the unrivalled excellence of his many female characters: so healthy, so full of warm blood, so life-like and lofty in their intellect and affections that we look upon them as real friends, and their influence on our youthful minds is scarcely less. We become acquainted with Imogen and shake hands with Portia. In whatever humour we may happen to be we find a trusty companion in his pages: we enjoy the sparkling Beatrice, and sympathise with the more sober Hero; we laugh with the playful Maria, and wonder at the devoted Juliet; we grow fond of Olivia and Viola, and deep in the study of these noble conceptions we find ourselves on the threshold of the sweetest literary enjoyment we ever had in our lives. Well, time goes on and we begin to notice the great variety of his knowledge and his cheerful mode of expressing it. One by one we drop across his clowns, and admire the wisdom mixed with their fooling. What healthy laughter there is in them! What numerous variety! Begining with the mere dolt, then on to his Speeds, his Launces, his Grumios, and his Dromios, then the companion and jester, as the fool in Lear, we find all sorts, from the low comedian to the gentleman of culture, culminating in the creation of that prince of jesters, the philosopher hidden under the motley coat of Touchstone, full of refined grace and tasteful humour. Besides his clowns we meet with many eccentric characters, who contribute by their mistakes, their whims, and jovial fun, to that beautiful distinctive power in man, the ability to laugh, such as Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Costard, Elbow, and Froth, Dogberry and Verges, Slender, Malvolio, and Christopher Sly, whose mock servant said, "Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life." This cheerful humour runs all through his writings, it is carried into serious subjects; we find it in SHAKESPEARE, as in real life, side by side with gravity. Rather a cultured sample of his companion fool is the Clown in Twelfth Night; he plays a good jest on his mistress, when she gets impatient with him and bids the servants take the fool away. Clo. Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady. Oli. Go to, you're a dry fool; I'll no more of you: besides you grow dishonest. Clo. Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry; bid the dishonest man mend himself; if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him: Anything that's mended is but patched : virtue, that trangresses, is but patched with sin; and sin, that amends, is but patched with virtue: If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, What remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty's a flower :-the lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I say again, take her away. Clo. Misprision in the highest degree !-Lady, Cucullus non facit monachum; that's as much as to say, I wear not motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool. Oli. Can you do it? Clo. Dexterously, good madonna. Oli. Clo. Make your proof. I must catechize you for it, madonna; Good my mouse of virtue, answer me. Oli. Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I'll ’bide your proof. Clo. The more fool you, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.-Take away the fool, gentlemen. And so we find SHAKESPEARE is ever provoking healthy laughter, is ever cheerful, and in his most playful moments, the good lessons he conveys are deep and striking without any show of superior virtue on his part; we find them like flowers in unlikely places, more looked at and marked from the contrast of their surroundings. We might say that the great majority of his characters minister to this mirth-giving faculty in some form or other. Gonzalo says, "Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause-so have we all—of joy." Gratiano says, "With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." Then crowning all this fun we find Falstaff, that wonderful creation, so round and complete in its perfect finish, so consistent in all its parts. We make up to him and his pilfering companions; we laugh at his wit and begin to wonder why SHAKESPEARE dismisses him in disgrace; but, after looking at the character more closely, we discover that, though he is such a pleasing companion, he is a scamp at heart; there is no real bottom in him. Strip him of his wit and good humour there is nothing left; now and then the better man shines through, but poor Jack is thoroughly unprincipled. Why he would not pay his hostess for the dozen holland shirts she bought him, and abused her by calling them filthy dowlas, and said he had given them away to bakers' wives who had made bolters (sieves) of them. Then look at that remarkable tavern bill of his, found in his pocket while asleep at the "Boar's Head;" it is worth reading: “Item, a capon, 2s. 2d.; item, sauce, 4d.; item, sack (two gallons), 5s. 8d.; item, anchovis and sack, after supper, 2s. 6d. ; item, bread, 1⁄2d." Two gallons of sack to one halfpenny worth of bread. Certainly he gives a very graphic description of himself when he says to the young prince "Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the days of innocency Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villany. Thow seest I have more flesh than another man, and, therefore more frailty." In fact he is the wittiest, the fattest, and one of the vilest characters in the book. Then we see why the Prince forsakes him, and why SHAKESPEARE makes Poins say, in asking after Falstaff's bodily health, "Marry, the immortal part needs a physician, but that moves not him; though that be sick, it dies not." His themes are legion. Among his many subjects, take for instance that of time, how he keeps jogging our memory of its fleeting hours. When we look at the quantity and quality of his work we are led to the conclusion that he could not have wasted much time; he is always hanging around its great value, pointing to its rapid flight, regretting its destructive effect on ourselves and everything connected with us, hinting at its proper use, and rousing us to renewed activity, while it is yet day. I know of no subject he mentions more frequently, or with greater effect. to see the minutes how they run, He is always recurring to it in some form or other-its quick march, its slow dragging hours-according to circumstances. We meet with such words as "the lazy foot of time," "sure-footed time," "alldevouring time," "time honoured," "time-bewasted," "time the nurse and breeder of all good;" then we have "the whips and scorns of time," and "time that takes survey of all the world must have a stop." In fact it so leavens the whole lump that it is difficult to pick out a passage. On our quick'st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals ere we can effect them. The Twelfth Sonnet is a very fine sample of this feature: When I do count the clock that tells the time, When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence We might put the Seven Ages in the same category- -our time divided into seven parts. Then there is the playful description of time, travelling in divers places with divers persons: how he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized, and ambles with a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gout how he gallops with a thief to the |