would ask, was there the slightest comparison between Shakespear, and either Chaucer or Spenser, as mere poets? Not any. The two poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and Lucrece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses. They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. The author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not of his subject,-not of what his characters would feel, but of what he shall say; and as it must happen in all such cases, he always puts into their mouths those things which they would be the last to think of, and which it shews the greatest ingenuity in him to find out. The whole is laboured, up-hill work. The poet is perpetually singling out the difficulties of the art to make an exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them. He is making perpetual trials of them as if his mastery over them were doubted. The images, which are often striking, are generally applied to things which they are the least like: so that they do not blend with the poem, but seem stuck upon it, like splendid patch-work, or remain quite distinct from it, like detached substances, painted and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. The speakers are like persons who have both leisure and inclination to make riddles on their own situation, and to twist and turn every object or incident into acrostics and anagrams. Every

thing is spun out into allegory; and a digression is always preferred to the main story. Sentiment is built up upon plays of words; the hero or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, but from the force of dialectics. There is besides a strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry, to make us see their feelings in the faces of the persons; and again, consistently with this, in the description of the picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those circumstances are chiefly insisted on, which it would be impossible to convey except by words. The invocation to Opportunity in the Tarquin and Lucrece is full of thoughts and images, but at the same time it is over-loaded by them. The concluding stanza expresses all our objections to this kind of poetry

"Oh! idle words, servants to shallow fools; Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators;

Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools;

Debate when leisure serves with dull debaters;

To trembling clients be their mediators:

For me I force not argument a straw,

Since that my case is past all help of law.”

The description of the horse in Venus and Adonis has been particularly admired, and not without reason:

"Round hoof'd, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eyes, small head and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, strait legs, and passing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide,

Look what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back."

Now this inventory of perfections shews great knowledge of the horse; and is good matter-offact poetry. Let the reader but compare it with a speech in the Midsummer Night's Dream where Theseus describes his hounds

"And their heads are hung

With ears that sweep away the morning dew"

and he will perceive at once what we mean by the difference between Shakespear's own poetry, and that of his plays. We prefer the Passionate Pilgrim very much to the Lover's Complaint. It has been doubted whether the latter poem is Shakespear's.

Of the sonnets we do not well know what to say. The subject of them seems to be somewhat equivocal; but many of them are highly beautiful in themselves, and interesting as they relate to the state of the personal feelings of the author. The following are some of the most striking

CONSTANCY.

"Let those who are in favour with their stars,

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.

Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread,
But as the marigold in the sun's eye;

And in themselves their pride lies buried,
For at a frown they in their glory die.
The painful warrior famous'd for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honour razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd:
Then happy I, that love and am belov'd,
Where I may not remove, nor be remov'd.”

LOVE'S CONSOLATION.

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my out-cast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,-and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

NOVELTY.

My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandis'd, whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new, and then but in the spring, When I was wont to greet it with my lays : As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, And stops his pipe in growth of riper days : Not that the summer is less pleasant now

Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,

And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."

LIFE'S DECAY.

"That time of year thou may'st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

In all these, as well as in many others, there is a mild tone of sentiment, deep, mellow, and sustained, very different from the crudeness of his earlier poems.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY C. H. REYNELL,

21, PICCADILLY.-1817.