Shakespeare does indeed impress us rather as proceeding by rule and imitation, than by the free inspiration of genius and nature : he is not himself, but rather what others had been before him; and we have repeatedly seen, especially in our Introductions to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, Titus Andronicus, and Pericles, that the same is almost equally true of his earlier dramas. He had not then found himself, and perhaps it was only by working awhile as others had done, that he could find himself. The inferiority, then, of the poems grew not so much from the conditions of the work, as from the state of his own mind: it was not merely because they were not dramas, but partly be cause his genius was not then mature, that they fall below the measure of his powers. But, much as the poems carry the air of imitations, they show, withal, that he could not imitate without surpassing his models. Venus and Adonis abounds in verbal and fantastical tricks and antics caught from the taste and fashion of the age: often it may be said of the Poet, that he 66 appears singling out the difficulties of the art, to make an exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them." But what fulness of life and spirit there is in it! what richness and delicacy of imagery! what fresh, and airy, and subtle turns of invention and combination! Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria, has the following remarks upon it: "In the Venus and Adonis, the first and most obvious excellence is the perfect sweetness of the versification; its adaptation to the subject; and the power displayed in varying the march of the words without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of preserving a sense of melody predominant. The delight in richness and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently original, and not the result of an easily imitable mechanism, I regard as a highly favourable promise in the compositions of a young man. The man that hath not music in his soul' can indeed never be a genuine poet. Imagery; affecting incidents; just thoughts; interesting personal or domestic feelings; and with these the art of their combination or intertexture in the form of a poem; may all, by incessant effort, be acquired as a trade, by a man of talents and much reading, who has mistaken an intense desire of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius. But the sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift of imagination; and this, together with the power of reducing multitude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by some one predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and improved, but can never be learnt. It is in this sense that Poeta nascitur, non fit. "A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very remote from the private interests and circumstances of the writer himself. At least I have found, that where the subject is taker It immediately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the excellence of a particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and often a fallacious pledge, of genuine poetic power. In the Venus and Adonis, this proof of poetic power exists even to excess. is throughout as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious, even than the characters themselves, not only of every outward look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view; himself, meanwhile, unparticipating in the passions, and actuated only by that pleasurable excitement, which had resulted from the energetic fervour of his own spirit, in so vividly exhibiting what it had so accurately and profoundly contemplated. I think I should have conjectured, that even the great instinct which impelled the Poet to the drama was secretly working in him, prompting him by a series and never-broken chain of imagery, always vivid, and, because unbroken, often minute; by the highest effort of the picturesque in words, of which words are capable higher perhaps than was ever realized by any other poet, even Dante not excepted; to provide a substitute for that visual language, that constant intervention and running comment, by tone, look, and gesture, which in his dramatic works he was entitled to expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of those characters by consummate actors. You seem to be told nothing, but to see and hear every thing. "Hence it is, that from the perpetual activity of attention re quired on the part of the reader; from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of the thoughts and images; and, above all, from the alienation, and, if I may hazard such an ex pression, the utter aloofness of the Poet's own feelings, from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst; that though the very subject cannot but detract from the pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on a moral account. Instead of doing as Ariosto, and as, still more offensively, Wieland has done; instead of degrading and deforming passion into appetite, the trials of love into the struggles of concupiscence, Shakespeare has here represented the animal impulse itself so as to preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the reader's notice among the thousand outward images, and now beautiful, now faneiful circumstances, which forms its dresses and scenery; or by diverting our attention from the main subject by those frequent witty or profound reflections, which the Poet's ever-active mind has deduced from, or connected with, the imagery and the incidents. The reader is forced into too much action to sympathize with the merely passive of our nature. As little can a mind thus roused and awakened be brooded on by mean and indistinct emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep upon the surface of a lake, while a strong gale is driving it onward in waves and billows." TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TICHFIELD. RIGHT HONOURABLE: I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor 1 This nobleman, the third Earl of Southampton, was born the 6th of October, 1573, became a student of St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1585, and proceeded Master of Arts in 1589. Three years later, he was admitted to the same degree at Oxford. At the time of this dedication, 1593, he was twenty years of age. He was early distinguished for his attachment to literature, his patror age of Shakespeare having begun before the taking of his degree at Oxford. In his dedication of The Rape of Lucrece, 1594, the Poet delicately intimates the favours he had already received from his youthful patron. In 1597 Southampton embarked as a volunteer in the expedition against Spain, under Essex, being appointed captain of one of the principal ships. He afterwards had the command of a squadron, and was knighted by Essex for his gallantry in a situation of great peril. The next year he went with Essex into Ireland, and was there made General of the Horse; but the Queen would not suffer him to hold the place, as he had married a cousin of Essex without her consent. On the fall of Essex, he was sent to the Tower, where he was kept during the rest of Elizabeth's reign. Not long after his release, he was made governor of the Isle of Wight; but, being secretly accused of too great intimacy with the Queen, King James had him arrested: the accusation, however, being unsustained, he was discharged, and afterwards retired in disgust to Spa. He was with Lord Herbert of Cherbury at the siege of Rees; returned to England in 1619, and was appointed a member of the Privy Council: but he again incurred the royal displeasure by going with the popular party, and was for a short time in the custody of the Dean of WestminIn 1624 he had the command of a small force against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, and died of a fever at Bergenop-Zoom, on the 10th of November that year. He received many tributes and testimonies of honour from the scholars and higher wits of his time; but his friendship for Shakespeare has given his name and character an abiding interest. Camden tells us that he was as well known for his love of letters as for his military exploits, ster. how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden: only, if your Honour seem but pleased, I account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. But, if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a god-father, and never after ear so barren a land,2 for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to your honourable survey, and your Honour to your heart's content; which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the world's hopeful expectation. Your Honour's in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. and Sir John Beaumont, after commending his public and private virtues, speaks of his liberality to men of genius and learning as his highest title to praise: "I keep that glory last, which is the best; Who had a name in arts, in verse or prose." H. 2 To ear is the old word for to plough: hence earable or ara ble. So in All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. sc. 3: «He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to inn the crop." See, also, King Richard II., Act iii. sc. 2, note 15. H. VENUS AND ADONIS. Vilia miretur vulgus, mihi flavus Apollo ARGUMENT. Venus in vain endeavours to inspire her favourite Adonis with a mutual passion, and to dissuade him from a too eager pursuit of the pleasures of the chase. The youth rejects the overtures, and disregards the advice of the goddess, and is mortally wounded by a wild boar his body is changed into a flower called anemone by his disconsolate mistress, who, after tenderly lamenting his untimely death, is conveyed in the clouds to Paphos. EVEN as the sun with purple-colour'd face |