SHAKSPEARE'S POEMS.

I OFTEN find a pleasant literary recreation in turning back to those neglected works of great men, that rank but secondary in merit to the performances from which they have derived a lasting reputation. Their earliest works, in which may be traced the unfoldings of future greatness, are to me particularly interesting, and shadow forth to imagination the intervening gradations by which they mounted to eminence. By most readers these are passed over, and in some instances forgotten, in the splendid labours of brighter and more mature genius. Yet if the study of the mind of man in its progressive advances be worthy of particular attention, and no one will affirm that it is not, nothing will better serve to develope its movements than a perusal of this part of our literature. The blaze of glory which encircles the dramatic writings of Shakspeare, has eclipsed his earlier poems, and few have ever read them through; yet they are not without great merit, and some of them are remarkable in that the traces of passages in his more celebrated works may be met with among them. It appears as if the first and last literary labours of Shakspeare had not been dramatic. Some of his sonnets prove (though he must have died in ignorance of the extent of his own great fame, and even without a guess at the lofty situation he was to occupy in the temple of immortality) that he had prophetic feelings that he should be remembered by his writings; for he plainly shews them in several places in those his last published works, written, perhaps, during his retirement at Stratford-on-Avon, when he had ceased to be concerned with the metropolitan theatre. He says in his fifty-fifth sonnet

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, &c.

Venus and Adonis appeared in 1593; his "Rape of Lucrece," in the following year. Romeo and Juliet can only be traced with certainty to the year 1595. These poems were therefore his first productions, and had he not written for the theatre, would have given him no inconsiderable reputation among the writers of his day, though they have been naturally thrown into shade by the dazzling lustre of his dramatic productions.

Johnson says that the dawn of Paradise Lost is to be found in Comus, and it is also certain that Shakspeare's knowledge of the human mind, and his wonderful skill in delineating the workings of passion, are to be clearly discovered in his Venus and Adonis. This poem, we are told, went through six impressions in thirteen years. Its whole cast is in unison with the taste of the time, and was suggested to its author, as some think, by the third book of the Fairy Queen. He calls it himself "the first heir of his invention." The subject forbade any delineation of manners; but the spell by which this poet above all others, commanded the mysterious emotions of the heart to come before him embodied in language, was never more potent than in the description of the love of Venus for her favourite.

This composition is agreeable to the coarseness of manners in the time of Elizabeth, being deficient in that delicacy which has happily been introduced by modern refinement. It is rather for the purpose of directing attention to the links which connect incipient genius with

maturity-the character of primitive attempts with more finished excellencies-to shew how the poet's genius may be traced from its juvenility to manhood, and to display, besides his surprising knowledge of our common nature, the great power of description of the author in his first productions, that I would draw the attention of the reader to this poem. It is not a proper book to be in all hands, and of late years has not been much read; nor can it be so in future, because it is out of keeping with our times, and is on a subject which the most pure pen could scarcely be expected to delineate and escape the censure of conveying indelicate impressions. It is to be perused by the discriminating and curious in literature, rather than by those who seek amusement only.

The story is simple:-Adonis goes to the chase, Venus meets him, and discovers her passion for him, which he resists-he is killed by a boar, and the goddess laments over him. There are a number of those quaint figures and conceits in the poem which appear in his dramatic works. Where Venus solicits a kiss of the youth, he is said to

raise his chin,

Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave;

and of the dimples on Adonis's cheek—

Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,
He might be buried in a tomb so simple:
Foreknowing well if there he came to lie,

Why there Love lived, and there he could not die.

The love of the goddess, her fruitless efforts to move the obdurate heart of the youth, her actions, her addresses to him, her solicitations, her ungovernable passion, have never been exceeded in truth and force of description by any poet. There is every where in the picture easy and beautiful drawing. In colouring, the artist knew every rainbow hue in nature, and dispensed all with the prodigality and confidence of a master. It satiates the eye with richness, but it is not overwrought; and, in contemplating it, one is more than ever disposed to wonder by what means the painter could have acquired such a knowledge of the subject and its details, unless he felt himself all which he represents others as feeling, and depicted every separate emotion as it arose in his own bosom. There is great inequality in the poem: some parts are written with carelessness, and are unvaried and formal; others are exquisitely beautiful. It is a work of genius not touched by a hand of critical skill and learning, but left with its sharpness of mould and defects of casting about it, noble in outline, and graceful in proportion.

Some of the descriptive passages are of rare elegance, as that where Venus recommends herself to Adonis, and describes the ethereal nature of love.

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green;
Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell❜d hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.
Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie,

These forceless flowers, like sturdy trees, support me :

Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky
From morn till night, e'en where I list to sport me.
Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be,

That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee?

The following is almost the "good night" in Romeo and Juliet :

Now let me say "good night," and so say you :

If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.
"Good night," quoth she, and ere he

says adieu !
The honey fee of parting tender'd is.

Is there any thing surpassing the picture of the horse of Adonis to be met with in the English language? The character, temper, and description of the animal, are wonderfully vigorous and spirited. To my feeling there is no pen, ancient or modern, that has more happily drawn that noble animal, except Job, whom the Poet doubtless had in his eye. As but few of my readers may recollect this description, I will give it here.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,

And now his woven girts he breaks asunder;

The bearing earth, with his hard hoof he wounds,
Whose hollow womb resounds like Heaven's thunder;
The iron bit he crushes 'tween his teeth,
Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-prick'd, his braided hanging mane
Upon his compass'd crest now stands on end:
His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,
As from a furnace, vapours doth he send:
His eye, which glisters scornfully, like fire,
Shews his hot courage, and his high desire.
Sometimes he trots, as if he told the steps,
With gentle majesty, and modest pride;
Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,

As who should say, "Lo! thus my strength is try'd :
And thus I do to captivate the eye

Of the fair breeder that is standing by."

What recketh he his rider's angry

stir,

His flatt' ring holla, or his stand, I say

What cares he now for curb or pricking spur?
For rich caparisons or trappings gay?
He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.
Look when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with Nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed :
So did his horse excel a common one
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.

Round-hoof'd, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight 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.

Sometimes he scuds far off, and there he stares;
Anon he starts at stirring of a feather.

To bid the wind abase he now prepares,

And where he run, or fly, they know not whither. For through his mane and tail the high wind sings, Fanning the hairs, which heave like feather'd wings. That of Venus depicting the fierceness of the boar is bold : His eyes like glow-worms shine when he doth fret, His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes.

That Shakspeare may be traced in Venus and Adonis is undeniable; there are numerous passages, particularly such as relate to love, that bear a strong resemblance to others interspersed throughout his plays. The mind of the observer will often discover the similarity by a sort of intuition, when the passage may not be verbally the same. There is often a certain character, a dim likeness connecting the resemblance of one passage in a writer with another; that, perhaps, for who knows the mysterious workings of intellect? may be of the same nature as the image which produced the second in the mind of the author from association with the first. I fancy such a resemblance in the following. "Sweet boy," she says, “this night I'll waste in sorrow,

For my

sick heart commands my eyes to watch:

Tell me, love's master, shall we meet to-morrow?"

Now the following occurs to me in Romeo and Juliet, and it is probable that this tragedy was his next performance.

Sweet, so would I :

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing,

Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow!

How like Shakspeare are these lines where Venus laments Adonis :-
Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
What face remains alive that's worth the viewing?
Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast

Of things long since, or any thing ensuing?

The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim,
But true sweet beauty lived and died with him!

How beautifully are the eyes of Venus described, as she is looking upon Adonis and weeping:

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,
Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

The Rape of Lucrece is by no means equal in merit to Venus and Adonis; yet there are some fine passages here and there, particularly in Lucretia's lamentation. The sonnets partake too much of the reigning taste of the time, though they do not bear any resemblance to those of Sir Philip Sidney, which are obscure and full of art. Shakspeare's are more natural, and are in a finer spirit of poetry as might have been expected. There is a plaintiveness about those of Sidney which is not to be found in Shakspeare's; but in those of the latter there are mastertouches of the poet. Still they have too much sameness; and if, as there is some reason to believe, they were his last productions, they are a little out of place from the pen of a man who had passed the fire of youth and the prime of manhood. Shakspeare, however, bowed to the reigning taste, and writ his sonnets, most likely, to an ideal mistress; if to a real one, the fair dame must have had a strong antipathy to the

marriage state, or the poet a curious faith in the efficacy of one argument for touching her heart. He woos his mistress constantly by representing how miserable it is for beauty to be childless, and rings the changes upon this theme through fifty sonnets. The presumption is, that Shakspeare knew nothing of Italian literature, and followed preceding examples among his own countrymen, who had no idea of any but the Petrarchian love-sonnet, deeming its use sacred to passion alone. Poets of his time had their ideal mistresses, if they had none of flesh and blood; and even at later periods they have puzzled their biographers to discover who the fair one might have been among their contemporaries, in the praises of whom they had been lavish, when the matchless being never existed out of their own imaginations*. If, however, the sonnets were the poet's later productions, as there is every reason to believe they were, it appears that he was repressed by some fancied rule from giving to them that variety of character which it was in his power to have done, and this rule must have been the example of preceding writers; and it is the more wonderful that they possess so little variety, when no poet, judging from his dramatic writings, had it more in his power to avoid sameness. That many of these sonnets are very beautiful must be acknowledged, in despite of conceits, and quibbles, and the sustaining a species of artificial love far removed from the natural affection which he best knew how to describe, and which was alone worthy his power of description; yet they merit close attention, they abound in passages that glow with imagination, and flow with singular ease. There is astonishing freedom of style in them for the period at which they were written; indeed it would be superfluous to remark, what has been often observed before, the vast debt our language owes to Shakspeare, in refining it and showing what it was capable of effecting. The following sonnet intimates again the poet's confidence in his own talents before alluded to:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date :
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or Nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest :
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

* There does not appear to me a shadow of ground for the conjectures of some late writers, respecting the origin and object of these sonnets. Shakspeare was past middle age when he wrote them, and they were published in 1609, during his lifetime. Conjecture may follow conjecture without end, but that which is certain is alone worthy of belief. Mr. Malone conjectured that Romeo and Juliet was written in 1591, but he could only substantiate its appearance in 1595. Some writers are too fond of inference where it is not needed. Shakspeare need not have been in love to have written his sonnets. Their object was doubtless ideal, because if sonnets were to be written at all, in those days, they must have been addressed to some mistress. It would be still more improbable to suppose he wrote them for another.