as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness,— and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace-and is a thousand times more full of fancy, and imagery, and splendor, than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom,

and ridicule, and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists in existence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world, and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequalled perfection; but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb, or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown

out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets-but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator.

What other poet has put all the charm of a moonlight landscape into a single line?-and that by an image so true to nature, and so simple, as to seem obvious to the most common observation ?—

See how the Moonlight SLEEPS on yonder bank!

Who else has expressed, in three lines, all that is picturesque and lovely in a summer's dawn?-first setting before our eyes, with magical precision, the visible appearances of the infant light, and then, by one graceful and glorious image, pouring on our souls all the freshness, cheerfulness, and sublimity, of returning morning?

See, love! what envious streaks

Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East :
Night's candles are burnt out,-and jocund Day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

If the advocates for the grand style object to this expression, we shall not stop to defend it; but, to us, it seems equally beautiful, as it is obvious and natural, to a person coming out of a lighted chamber into the pale dawn. The

Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours so luxuriously blended and illustrated as in these few words of sweetness and melody, where the author says of soft music

O it came o'er my ear, like the sweet South

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour.

This is still finer, we think, than the noble speech on music in the Merchant of Venice, and only to be compared with the enchantments of Prospero's island; where all the effects of sweet sounds are expressed in miraculous numbers, and traced in their operation on all the gradations of being, from the delicate Ariel to the brutish Caliban, who, savage as he is, is still touched with those supernatural harmonies, and thus exhorts his less poetical associates

Be not afraid, the isle is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That if I then had waked after long sleep,
Would make me sleep again.-

word candle, we admit, is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs her silver lamp on high, in every schoolboy's copy of verses; but she could not be called the candle of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage before us much better as it is, than if the candles were changed into lamps. If we should read The lamps of heaven are quenched,' or wax dim,' it appears to us

that the whole charm of the expression would be lost.

Observe, too, that this and the other poetical speeches of this incarnate demon are not mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but explain his character, and describe his situation more briefly and effectually than any other words could have done. In this play, and in the Midsummer Night's Dream, all Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole treasury of natural and supernatural beauty poured out profusely, to the delight of all our faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with quotations; but we refer to those plays generally-to the forest scenes in 'As You Like it'-the rustic parts of the Winter's Tale-several entire scenes in Cymbeline and in Romeo and Juliet-and many passages in all the other plays-as illustrating this love of nature and natural beauty of which we have been speaking-the power it had over the poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who else would have thought, on the very threshold of treason and midnight murder, of bringing in so sweet and rural an image at the portal of that blood-stained castle?

This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve
By his loved masonry that heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here. No jutting frieze,
Buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird

Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle.

Nor is this brought in for the sake of an elaborate contrast between the peaceful innocence of this exterior, and the guilt and horrors that are to be enacted within. There is no hint of any such

suggestion, but it is set down from the pure love of nature and reality-because the kindled mind of the poet brought the whole scene before his eyes, and he painted all that he saw in his vision. The same taste predominates in that emphatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Macbeth says,

Look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under it.

And in that proud boast of the bloody RichardBut I was born so high:

Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top,

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.

The same splendour of natural imagery, brought simply and directly to bear upon stern and repulsive passions, is to be found in the cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon.

Will these moist trees

That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste

To cure thine o'er-night's surfeit?

No one but Shakspeare would have thought of putting this noble picture into the taunting address of a snappish misanthrope-any more than the following into the mouth of a mercenary murderer:

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

And in their summer beauty kissed each other.

Or this delicious description of concealed love into that of a regretful and moralizing parent.