SOOTH. The fingers of the powers above do tune The harmony of this peace. The vision 1 SCENE IV. ACT I. “I would have broke mine eye-strings," &c. IN Arthur Golding's Translation of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (1567) there is a description which might have suggested to Shakspere this beautiful passage :— "She lifting up her watery eyes beheld her husband stand She gat her to her empty bed with sad and sorry heart." 2 SCENE VI.—“ Whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather those flowers." The Queen, distilling herbs for wicked purposes, is a striking contrast to the benevolent Friar in Romeo and Juliet.' Shakspere has beautifully indicated the philosophy of the use or abuse by man of Nature's productions, in the Friar's soliloquy : "For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, and related them without shame, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings." We are by no means sure, however, that Shakspere meant to apply a sweeping denunciation to such experiments upon the power of particular medicines. There can be no doubt that the medical art being wholly tentative, it becomes in some cases a positive duty of a scientific experimenter to inflict pain upon an inferior animal for the ultimate purpose of assuaging pain or curing disease. It is the useless repetition of such experiments which makes hard the heart. It is the exhibition of such experiments in the lecture room which is "noisome and infectious." The Queen was unauthorised by her position to "Try the forces 4 SCENE VII. "Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight." Every one will remember the noble passage in 'Paradise Regained,' book iii. :— "He saw them in their forms of battle rang'd. How quick they wheel'd, and flying behind them shot Sharp sleet of arrowy show'rs against the face Of their pursuers, and overcame by flight." The editors of Milton refer to parallel passages in Virgil and Horace as amongst the images with which our great epic poet was familiar. The commentators of Shakspere suffer his line to pass without a single observation. In the same scene we have the following most characteristic expression in the mouth of a Roman : "As common as the stairs That mount the Capitol." Upon this Steevens remarks, "Shakspeare has bestowed some ornament on the proverbial 5 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! 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, given above. 6 SCENE III.-" Hark, hark, the lark," &c. 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 rich 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? "Her andirons 8 SCENE IV.' We have no doubt that in this description Shakspere literally describes some work of art which he had seen. At Knowle, one of the most interesting of ancient mansions, there 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. " SCENE I. "The fam'd Cassibelan, who was once at point (0, giglot fortune!) to master Caesar's sword, Made Lud's town with rejoicing fires bright." MALONE has the following observation upon this passage:-"Shakspere has here transferred to Cassibelan an adventure which happened to his brother Nennius. The same historie (says Holinshed) also maketh mention of Nennius, brother to Cassibelane, who in fight hap pened to get Caesar's sword fastened in his shield, by a blow which Cæsar struck at him."" Malone has here fallen into an error, from a too literal acceptance of Shakspere's words. To be once at point to master Caesar's sword, is to be once nearly vanquishing Cæsar. We can put our finger upon the passage in Holinshed's Chronicle' which Shakspere had in view: "Our histories far differ from this (Caesar's account), affirming that Cæsar, coming the second time, was by the Britains with valiancy and martial prowess beaten and repelled, as he was at the first, and specially by means that Cassibelane had pight in the Thames great piles of trees, piked with iron, through which his ships, being entered the river, were perished and lost. And after his coming a land he was vanquished in battle, and constrained to flee into Gallia with those ships that remained. For joy of this second victory (saith Galfrid) Cassibelane made a great feast at London, and there did sacrifice to the gods." The victory and the rejoicing are exactly in the same juxtaposition as in Shakspere. The Lud's town of the old chroniclers is London. They considered that London was the town of Lud; and, in a similar manner, that Lud-gate was the gate of Lud. The tradition that Lud rebuilt the ancient Troinovant is given in Spenser ('Faery Queen,' canto x. book ii.): "He had two sons, whose eldest, called Lud, Of Troinovant, 'gainst force of enemy, And built that gate, which of his name is hight." But Verstegan, in his very amusing 'Restitution of Decayed Intelligence concerning Britain,' objects to the connection both of Lud's town and Ludgate with King Lud : "As touching the name of our most ancient, chief, and famous city, it could never of Lud'stown take the name of London, because it had never anciently the name of Lud's-town, neither could it, for that town is not a British but a Saxon word; but if it took any appellation after King Lud, it must then have been called Caer-Lud, and not Lud's-town; but considering of how little credit the relations of Geffery of Monmouth are, who from Lud doth derive it, it may rather be thought that he hath imagined this name to have come from King Lud, because of some nearness of sound, for our Saxon ancestors having divers ages before Geffery was born called it by the name of London, he, not knowing from whence it came, might straight imagine it to have come from Lud, and therefore ought to be Caer-Lud, or Lud's-town, as after him others called it; and some also of the name of London, in British sound made it L'hundain, both appellations, as I am persuaded, being of the Britains first taken up and used after the Saxons had given it the name of London. 66 tus (or any such ancient writers) should call it by the name of Londinum (that having been, as it should seem, the Latin name thereof since it hath been called London), which appellation he could never have from the ancient Britains, sceing they never so called it. Julius Cæsar seemed not to know of the name of Londinum, but nameth the city of the Trinobants; and a marvel it is, that between the time of Cæsar and Tacitus, it should come to get the new name of Londinum, no man can tell how. To deliver my conjecture how this may chance to have happened, I am loth, for that it may peradventure be of some disallowed, and so, omitting it, I will leave the reader to note that the reign of King Lud, from whom some will needs derive the name of London, was before Julius Cæsar came into Britain, and not after, for Cæsar first entered Britain in the time of Cassibelan, who was brother unto Lud, and succeeded next after him; and in all likelihood, if Lud had given it after himself the new name of CaerLud, or, as some more fondly have supposed, of Lud's-town, Julius Cæsar, who came thither so soon after his death, could not have been so utterly ignorant of the new naming of that city, but have known it as well as such writers as came after him. "Evident it is, that our Saxon ancestors called it Lunden, (in pronunciation sounded London,) sometimes adding thereunto the ordinary termination which they gave to all wellfenced cities, or rather such as had forts or castles annexed unto them, by calling it Lundenbirig, and Lunden-ceaster, that is, after our latter pronunciation, Londonbury or Londonchester. This name of Lunden, since varied into London, they gave it in regard and memory of the ancient famous metropolitan city of Lunden, in Sconeland or Sconia, sometime of greatest traffic of all the east parts of Germany. "And I find in Crautzius that Eric, the fourth of that name, King of Denmark, went in person to Rome to solicit Pope Paschal the Second that Denmark might be no longer under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of Hambrough, but that the Archbishop of Lunden should be the chief Prelate of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the which in fine was granted. As for the name of Ludgate, which some will needs have so to have been called of King Lud, and accordingly infer the name of the city, I But here I cannot a little marvel how Taci- answer, that it could never of Lud be called |