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carries. Rae plays the adulterous Suffolk, and proves how likely he is to act amiss. Wallack, as young Clifford, towers above his sex." Mr. Maywood is more miserable in Henry VI. than winters or wet nights, or Death on a pale horse, or want of money, or deceitful friends, or any other crying evil.

The comic parts are sadly mangled, owing to illness of Munden and Oxberry. Jack Cade dies of a lock-jaw; and Dick the butcher is become a grave man. Mrs. Glover chews the blank verse past endurance; her comedy is round and comfortable; her tragedy is worse than death.

One thing we are convinced of on looking over the three parts of Henry, from which this play is gleaned; which is, that Shakespeare was the only lonely and perfectly happy creature God ever formed. He could never have a mate,-being most unmatchable.

III.

MARGINALIA FROM THE FOLIO.

A Midsummer Night's Dream.1

These are the forgeries of jealousie,
And never since the middle Summers spring
Met we on hil, in dale, forrest, or mead,
By paved fountaine, or by rushie brooke,

Or in the beached margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling Winde,

But with thy braules thou hast disturb'd our sport.
ACT II [SCENE 1].

THERE is something exquisitely rich and luxurious in
Titania's saying "since the middle summer's spring" as

In this play there are but two pages which show any trace of Keats's hand. They are in Act II, and bear the above note.

if bowers were not exuberant and covert enough for fairy sports until their second sprouting-which is surely the most bounteous overwhelming of all Nature's goodnesses. She steps forth benignly in the spring and her conduct is so gracious that by degrees all things are becoming happy under her wings and nestle against her bosom : she feels this love and gratitude too much to remain selfsame, and unable to contain herself buds forth the overflowings of her heart about the middle summer. O Shakespeare thy ways are but just searchable! The thing is a piece of profound verdure.

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I have (as when the Sunne doth light a-scorne)
Buried this sigh, in wrinkle of a smile :

ACT I [SCENE 1].

I have not read this copy much and yet have had time to find many faults-however 'tis certain that the Commentators have contrived to twist many beautiful passages into commonplaces as they have done with respect to "a scorn" which they have hocus pocus'd into "a storm" thereby destroying the depth of the similetaking away all the surrounding atmosphere of Imagery and leaving a bare and unapt picture. Now however beautiful a Comparison may be for a bare aptness— Shakespeare is seldom guilty of one-he could not be content to "the sun lighting a storm," but he gives us Apollo in the act of drawing back his head and forcing a smile upon the world-"the Sun doth light a-scorn."

1

Troylus and Cressida is much underlined throughout, and has the above note at the opening of the first Act. The reading a storm is persisted in in the Globe edition.

Pandarus. But to proove to you that Hellen loves him,
she came and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin.

Cressida.-Juno have mercy, how came it cloven?
ACT I [SCENE 2].

A most delicate touch-Juno being the Goddess of Childbirth.

Sith every action that hath gone before,
Whereof we have Record, Triall did draw
Bias and thwart, not answering the ayme :
And that unbodied figure of the thought
That gave 't surmised shape.

ACT I [SCENE 3].

The genius of Shakespeare was an in[n]ate universality-wherefore he had the utmost atchievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze. He could do easily Man's utmost. His plans of tasks to come were not of this world-if what he purposed to do hereafter would not in his own Idea "answer the aim" how tremendous must have been his Conception of Ultimates.

Blunt wedges rive hard knots: the seeded Pride
That hath to this maturity blowne up

In ranke Achilles, must or now be cropt,

Or shedding breed a Nursery of like evil
To over-bulke us all.

ACT I [SCENE 3].

"Blowne up" &c. One's very breath while leaning over these pages is held for fear of blowing this line away -as easily as the gentlest breeze

Robs dandelions of their fleecy Crowns.

Sweete, rouse yourselfe; and the weake wanton Cupid
Shall from your necke unloose his amorous fould,

And like a dew drop from the Lyons mane,
Be shooke to ayrie ayre.

ACT III [SCENE 3]

Wherefore should this ayrie be left out?'

King Lear.2

Goneril.-You see how full of changes his age is...

ACT I, SCENE 1.

How finely is the brief of Lear's character sketched in this conference-from this point does Shakspeare spur him out to the mighty grapple-" the seeded pride that hath to this maturity blowne up" Shakspeare doth scatter abroad on the winds of Passion, where the germs take b[u]oyant root in stormy Air, suck lightning sap, and become voiced dragons-self-will and pride and wrath are taken at a rebound by his giant hand and mounted to the Clouds-there to remain and thunder

evermore

... though she's as like this, as a Crabbe's like an Apple,...

ACT I, SCENE 5.

"Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty."

[LEAR, ACT II, SCENE 4]

Regan. Was he not companion with the riotous Knights
that tended upon my Father?

Gloster.-I know not Madam, 'tis too bad, too bad.
Bastard.-Yes Madam, he was of that consort.

ACT II, SCENE 1.

This bye-writing is more marvellous than the whole ripped up contents of Pernambuca-or any buca whatever-on the earth or in the waters under the earth.

1 Echo answers why? But it is left out of even the Globe edition, perhaps the best of the popular editions.

King Lear is copiously marked throughout, but has only these three notes.

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