obscuring, but to reveal, happiness the grave, earnest, unresisting Desdemona died: she had no other reproach for a husband. But Imogen lives on, her native spirit sustaining herher heart still hoping for the noble revenge of declaring her purity to the world—and more than all-to her world—the too credulous Posthumous.

And how beautifully does her story interweave into the conduct of the play. Many of Shakespere's dramas are so inartificial in construction, that, from their very naturalness, we are sometimes tempted to call the plot either meagre or clumsy, but here arrangement seems as obvious as in the most finished opera. Viola's story, the one graceful relief in the merry confusion of Twefth Night, is as a burst of bird-like music, gushing through the shower-sorrow of a May morning-the tale of Desdemona, grave from the very commencement, gathers gloom as it goes, gradually deepening round our heart as her bright and holy love is lost in the black clouds of distrust and dishonor, until the lightning-flash glitters by and she fails a rein, where erewhile she stood a beacon. So true of woman's history is this that we cannot help thinking sometimes, she is intended as the earthly beckoner to our after-being- here passion is ever at war with beauty, there they will be at peace. Imogen's history is less ideal than either Viola's or Desdemona's. Her love-intense and pure as it is-is thoroughly of earth, her constancy is not the impassive purity of the marble, but the generous life-giving love of a warm and earnest woman-and to repeat the thought we have before suggested-how beautifully does her story weave into the play-the link of connection throughout-the sweet note repeated to restore the thought-the key to the harmony of the music-the central light in the picture, diffusing its gradual brightness over all the rest, group after group, until from each gentle thought or graceful trait in the composition, we ever return to her delicate and noble nature.

But we must not longer keep our readers from the play itself. Our introduction to Imogen is in the parting scene between her and Posthumous; she chides him for the abruptness of his leavetaking.

Nay, stay a little :

Were you but riding forth to air yourself,

Such parting were too petty.

They exchange gifts, his being a bracelet

A manacle of love

I'll place it, says the lover-husband

Upon this fairest prisoner.

How beautiful is this exclamation of Imogen on his departure. When shall we see again?

The king interrupts them; Posthumous leaves her; how proudly she speaks of him to her father.

He is

A man worth any woman; over-buys me
Almost the sum he pays.

But she has not only the anger of the king, but the importunities of a suitor to bear with--the foolish Cloten-we recommend all pertinacious lovers to study this character, and if they have a grain of roguery in them, the better the lesson, for in Cloten Shakespere has made vice most especially ridiculous-his folly relieves his villany, we should else hate, but we now only laugh at him.

The fourth scene of the first act we should like to give entire. Imogen is talking to her husband's servant, who is describing his master's departure.

IMOGEN.

If he should write
And I not have it, 'twere a paper lost
As offer'd mercy is. What was the last
That he spake to thee!

PISANIO. Twas-" His queen, his queen."
IMOGEN. Then wav'd his handkerchief?
PISANIO. And kiss'd it, madam.

IMOGEN. Sen eles linen! happier than I
And that was all?

How she hangs upon every word.

PISANIO. No, madam! for so long

As he could make me with his eye or ear
Distinguish him from others, he did keep
The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief
Still wearing, as the fits and stirs of his mind
Could but express how slow his soul sail'd on
How swift his ship.

IMOGEN. Thou should'st have made him

As little as a crow, or less, ere left

To after-eye him.

PISANIO. Madam, so I did

IMOGEN. I Would have broke my eye-strings, crack'd them, but
To look upon him, 'till the diminution

Of space hath pointed him sharp as my needle,

Nay, followed him, till he had melted from

The smallness of a gnat to air; and then
Have turn'd mine eye and wept.

Is not the portrait beautiful. Byron seems to have had the picture in his eye in Medora, the best woman he ever painted. But Imogen goes on to ask

When shall we hear from him?

Heeding not the reply—which she well anticipates

With his next vantage,

She complains

I did not take my leave of him, but had

Most pretty things to say; 'ere I could tell him
How I could think on him, at certain hours

Such thoughts and such: or I could make him swear
The shes of Italy would not betray

Mine interest and his honor: or have charg'd him,
At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,

To encounter me with orisons, for then

I am in heaven for him; or ere I could

Give him that parting kiss, which I had set

Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father

And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north

Shakes all our buds from growing.

We pass rapidly over the scene between the husband and Iachimo, the "villain" of the drama, but not without a word on the conduct of Posthumous. On his first introduction to the wily Italian, he is drawn into making his wife's purity the subject of a wager. Cunningly as Iachimo taunts him, he had no right to test a wife's honor thus. If she withstood the temptation, would she forget the insult-if she fell, could there be for him a fitter punishment for so heartless a course-and if she fell-it would be scarcely harm to say-she fell by her husband's wrong. Little as we are disposed to give the gentler sex any undue superiority in love, we think there are few women, selfish enough, or foolish enough to wish for such a step as this.

Iachimo departs on his manly mission. He arrives at an hour when Imogen is full of care-the queen, her step-mother is false to her her father is still cold and unyielding-Cloten still annoys her and her husband is banished. The time for Iachimo is well chosen-and he uses his occasion adroitly. At first sight, her beauty arrests him. Every word he utters, by the turn of the expression, by the abruptness or incoherence of his phrase, is a tribute to her charms, whilst by a transition so delicate and so natural, that it is difficult to separate it from the context, he alarms her jealousy, whilst he administers to her self-love.

Had I this cheek

To bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch,
Whose every touch, would force the feeler's soul
To the oath of loyalty ;-

Should I join gripes with hands
Made hard with hourly falsehood (falsehood, as

With labor)

"Falsehood, as with labor" true to the letter! How close and comprehensive an observer was Shakespere-but the thought might have been carried further-the plain, cold, even hardness of the false palm, differs wholly from the rough, warm grasp of honest labor.

Iachimo hints but without her understanding him-at the revenge the coarse always seek

Be revenged.

Womanly, wife-like, true, her answer

Revenged!

How should I be revenged?

Iachimo then utters his hitherto half concealed thought. Its grossness is met as we should have expected from her character. Her tempter thus foiled, persuades her that the tale is feigned -and it is easy to make the good believe you better than you seem-praises her for her constancy, and, restored to her favor, asks her to take charge of a chest of plate for him, which she has placed in her own chamber.

Now we come to the principal incident in the drama. Imogen is sleeping in this chamber, where, Iachimo lies, in the trunk, concealed.

In color delicious as the tints of Titian-in fancy subtle as the similes of Shelley-as the fairy-music of Sphor streaming over the sense, does this lovely scene come before us. What strikes one at once, in this beautiful description, is, that although Shakespere intended to paint a being chaste as Dian herself, there is nothing sculpturesque about it. It is sleeping life— life where the repose is that in which the woman's love hallows and deepens the beauty of every flush and line.

Iachimo stores his memory with the picture — imploring "her sense to be"

as a monument

Thus in a chapel lying!

But he turns from the examination of wall, picture, window, or even the open book where last her hands were laid, to the loveenshrined saint before him-and how delicately does the pure mind of Shakespere use his glorious materials. Woman and flowers-her child-like truth carrying him at once to the fields for his imagery:

on her left breast

A mole cinque spotted, like the crimson drops

I' the bottom of a cowslip:

The Italian removes the bracelet, that "manacle of love" from her arm and returns to the chest. We next see him with Posthumous. In the meanwhile a scene occurs between Imogen and Cloten. The interview is of so stormy a character that we can scarcely think it is the same Imogen that has charmed us by her sweetness and gentleness. She breaks from him by addressing Pisanio.

I am sprighted with a fool,

Frighted and anger'd worse; go, bid my woman

Search for a jewel, that too casually

Hath left my arm.

How jealously she speaks of the safety of the bracelet.

Last night 'twas on mine arm: I kiss'd it:

I hope it be not gone, to tell my lord

That I kiss aught but him.

The drama moves more rapidly. The tale of Iachimo has its full effect upon the credulous husband, who is sudden in his revenge, and directs Pisanio to convey her to a forest in Wales, sending his wife a letter at the same time-couched in the language of love, and apparently coming from the place to which he sends her. Well Shakespere understood the effect of a letter from the loved one—well he knew the tenderness with which every minute particular is cherished. Thus Imogen apostrophises the seal of the epistle—

Blest be

You bees that make these locks of counsel.

Her spirit is at once at the trysting place:

O for a horse with wings!

And again as she seeks the quickest mode of transit