heart of her one princely boy has burst-it is broken-and he is dead of the passion of shame-not for his mother's sake so much as his father's -"the young Prince, whose honourable thoughts, Thoughts high for one so tender, cleft the heart That could conceive, a gross and foolish sire Blemished his gracious dam!" In Her one royal girl is exposed to perish; and how touchingly is that story told by Antigonus, soliloquizing in a desert country near the sea! the lustre of virtue, and the gloom of agony, the childless widow-for though forgiving her husband all, she has pronounced a solemn divorce retires into seclusion from love and life, deep, dark, and incommunicable as the grave. Into that sixteen years' penance-not for her own sin, for she is pure, but for her husband's, with whom she doubtless has vowed to be reconciled on the bed of death (but Heaven brings, in its own good time, a more blissful reconciliation) -imagination fears, in its reverence, even for one moment to enter. It could not have been wholly unhappy, selfsustained as Hermione was by her devotion to one holy purpose; and that she acted right all hearts feel on her wondrous reappearance among the living as from the dead. That is the moment when we should have felt that Shakspeare had erred, if erred he had, in that her long sunless immurement. But our whole nature leaps up in a fit of joy, to hail the apparition; and, seeing that Hermione lives, we forgive Leontes, and sympathize with his undeserved happiness, for sake of her standing there serenely and spiritually beautiful, whom we in our ignorance had idly mourned as long ago blended with the insensate dust. When Hermione comes down from the pedestal, passionate as is the joy of Leontes witnessing that apparent miracle, it is but on her alone that we gaze and think. Paulina, not abruptly, but boldly, as was natural to her fearless character, says, "Hark a little while. Please you to interpose, fair madam; kneel, What says Hermione to Leontes on their reunion? Not one word. But Polixenes says, "She embraces him;" and Camillo, "She hangs upon his neck! If she pertain to life, let her speak too." The statue has stirred-moved-descended-and embraced; but it is yet silent. Camillo seems almost to discredit his eyes. He doubts "if she pertain to life." "Let her speak!" and her first found words are a prayer to the gods to bless her daughter. She does not doubt that it is her daughter. The faithful Paulina has told her it is; and the Oracle, who had pronounced herself innocent, would not, she knew, have beguiled her with false hopes that her child was in being. This is Hope-and this is Faith-and this-the peace that passeth all understanding-is their reward. We have been somewhat too hard on poor Leontes. We must not blame him for having breathed a disease. He has dree'd a rueful punishment. All the atonement that could be made for his crime he did make-and the heavens had been long hung with black over his head. His crown was worthless in his eyes-his throne the seat of misery. Never for one day, we may believe, had he not been haunted by the ghost of his little son, who died of a broken heart-of the baby exposed in the wild, and never heard of any more, either she or Antigonus. When Paulina says to him, on the arrival of Florizel at his court, "Had our Prince, Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had paired Well with this lord; there was not full a month Between their births. (As he from heaven merits it) with you, Worthy his goodness. What might I have been, Might I a son and daughter now have look'd on, Such goodly things as you!” "Sir, my liege, Your eye hath too much youth in't; not a month 'Fore your queen died, she was more He answers meekly, "a creature such earth His love for Hermione, whom, as Paulina somewhat harshly tells him, As, to seek through the regions of the he had "killed," suffers no abatement any more than his repentance and his remorse. They are all alike sincere. The memory of her beauty is fresh as ever after all those long, dreary, and dismal years; and when Paulina says to him, as he gazes on Perdita, ere she is known by him to be his daughter, "I thought of her Even in these looks I made!" were preternaturally beating in his heart, says, And how could he help it? For we are told afterwards of " the majesty of the creature in resemblance of the mother." His silence on first bebolding the supposed statue of Hermione, which he had brought Perdita to look at along with him, is affecting; his ejaculations, broken and passionate, are so too; and when Paulina, as he offers to kiss the statue, tells him to refrain, for that she will make it move, indeed descend, and take him by the hand, while all who think it unlawful business may depart, Leontes, as if some wild dim hope "Proceed! No foot shall stir." On receiving her embrace, he utters but a very few words, by joy struck mute. It would be unchristian not to forgive Leontes. Sweet IMOGEN! why madest thou with Posthumus a clandestine marriage? Because the queen was a wicked and cruel stepmother, and would have cared no more to poison blame attaches to a daughter on acthee in the palace than a rat. No count of any virtuous love-affair, who has a bad mother. But, besides, the provocation she suffered from that clumsy calf Cloten was loathof the manly Leonatus. For we are some, and loveable was the embrace assured on the word of a 66 gentleman," that he was For one his like, there would be something failing I do not In him that should compare. So fair an outward, and such stuff within, "All the learning that his time Could make him the receiver of he took As we do air, fast as 'twas minister'd, and In his spring became a harvest; lived in court, (Which rare it is to do,) most praised, most loved; A sample to the youngest; to the more mature, A glass that feated them; and to the A child that guided dotards; to his mis- Fair reader, canst thou blame Imogen? and hear how tenderly her husband speaks to her on the eve of his banishment. "My queen! my mistress! To be suspected of more tenderness O lady! weep no more; lest I give cause Than doth become a man!”’ "Write, my queen! And with mine eyes I'll drink the words you send, Though ink be made of gall!" But to deceive her father! The very contrary is the truth. Cymbelinesecond-wife-ridden-wished her to marry Cloten-but Imogen "chose an eagle, and did avoid a puttock." What else could his majesty expect? She tells him plainly, in justification of herself and husband, "Sir, It is your fault that I have loved Posthumus: You bred him as my play-fellow; and he is A man, worth any woman!" Is she too bold in thus speaking the truth to her father? The next moment her heart sinks, and when he asks her," Art thou mad?" She an swers 66 Almost, sir: heaven restore me! Would I were A neat-herd's daughter! and my Leon atus Our neighbour shepherd's son !" The Clandestine Marriage, then, is vindicated? It is-sacredly. For "she referred herself unto a poor but worthy gentleman." And though her husband is under ban, Imogen will not suffer even the Queen to look in his disparagement. Pisanio informs them that Čloten had drawn on his master, who rather played than fought, and the soul of the young wife is up, as she says sarcastically"To draw upon an exile! O brave sir! I would they were in Afric both together; Myself by with a needle, that I might prick The goer-back." Maid-bride-wife-and widow, all in one bright glimpse, and one black gloom of time! In her conjugal affection dutiful and beautiful, little doth that wicked stepmother know of the heart of Imogen. "Queen. Weeps she still, sayest thou? Dost thou think in time She will not quench, and let instructions enter, Where folly now possesses?" To the poisoner rock-fast love deserves no better name than" folly !" Lear, indeed, used almost the same word-but oh! with what other meaning, to his Cordelia! "See! my poor fool is dead!" And sets it so very bright a jewel in the crown of wedded faith to turn a deaf ear to the seducer? It sets none it did; but above the blackness of at all. Nor thought Shakspeare that Jachimo's guilt the soul of Imogen "star-bright appears." The cunsimplicity of the dove. But 'tis a ning of the serpent serves to shew the simplicity stronger to guard that holy bosom, than a sevenfold shield of ethereal temper. No temptation had she to sin. The " yellow Iachimo" was even a greater fool than knave. He knew not that "Virtue never may be moved, Though lewdness court her in the shape of heaven!" But in her dialogue with that dunce, (and clever as he was thought, he was the Prince of Dunces,) the lady's whole character flashed from out her burning eyes, while they withered the libeller of her liege-lord; and her whole character smiled again in the softened orbs, as from his false lips-true at least in this-she listened to the recital of her husband's virtues. We carry the remembrance of that scene along with us when we see her on her way to Milford-Haven-reading that heart-cleaving letter in the handwriting of her own Leonatus - praying passionatelyalmost proudly-and scarce upbraidingly for death from Pisanio's sword. Yet she more than submitsshe desires still to live. Her husband may be restored from his disand by her be more than forgiven. To love like her's life is sweet. Therefore she becomes Fidele, and an inmate of the outlaw's cave. ease "Flowers laugh before her in their beds, And fragrance in her footing treads!" Her presence beautifies the savage scenery of the forest; and the spirit of Love, breathing through that dim disguise, pervades the heroic hearts of her unknown brothers, uniting the bold and bright with the fearful and the fair, in the mysterious instinct of nature. She seems to die, and that dirge deepens at once our love and our sorrow, as we think of her now a spirit in heaven. So profound and perfect is our pity, as we listen to that poetry and that music-a forest hymn indeed!-that we are al most reconciled, even as Guiderius and Arviragus are, to Fidele's death. "Gui. Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages: Gui. No exorciser harm thee! And renowned be thy grave!" We remember that we used to think of old that Imogen's passion on finding what she believed was the dead body of Posthumus, was not enough intense. Boy-critics then were we on Shakspeare-now we are an old man. What is the truth? Imogen has awoke from a poisoned swoon-and has been bestrewed with flowers like one of the dead. As the Swoon has gone, on comes sleep, "Faith, I'll lie down and sleep !" Something human-like is beside her on the ground; and on the uncertain vision she says to herself, "but soft! no bedfellow!" Then seeing that it is indeed a body, she utters that beautiful exclamation bound up; but it relaxes its hold, and she now has the whole miserable use of her eyes. "The garment of Posthumus!" The human heart can suffer but a measure-in hers, it has been an overflowing one-of any one passion. Her actions, her words, are now calmer-they shew almost composure-she inspects the body of her husband with a fearful accuracy of love. I wake, Without me as within me; not imagined, felt. A headless man !" At that moment her emotion must be-horror. In it all her senses are "I know the shape of his leg; this is his hand; "But if there be Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity As a wren's eye, fear'd gods, a part of it!" Her fancy-her imagination-as she lies there half-entranced-are bewildered by and bewilder her passionand all the language then given utterance to in her strange agony is pitched wild and high, a wonderful wailing of poetry. "The dream's here still! it is even when and wickedness. His foot Mercurial; his Martial thigh; The brawns of Hercules; but his Jovial Murder in heaven! How? 'Tis gone !” face Had she seen him lying unmutilated in the majestic beauty of death, she would have poured out her heart in tenderest grief, and there would have been more of what is commonly called pathos in her lamentations. But the bloody neck-the sight, the touch of that extorts but one wild cry. "Murder in heaven!" "How? 'tis gone!" Who but a Siddons could have uttered these words in shrieks and moans! with suitable accompaniment of stony eyeballs, claywhite face, and the convulsive wringing of agonized hands! Out of the ecstasy of horror, and grief, and pity, and love, and distraction, and despair arise-indignation and wrath. Pisanio! towards his murderers. be all curses darted on thee! and that "irregulous devil, Cloten!" All is at once brought to light. The circumstantial evidence of their guilt is "strong as proof of Holy Writ," or rather she sees the murderers revealed, as in a lurid flash of lightning. Forgery! poisoning! assassination! "Damned Pisanio!" "Pisanio!" "Pisanio!" "Damned Pisanio!" "This is Pisanio's deed!" ""Tis he and Cloten!" "Pisanio's deed and Cloten's!" "O, 'tis pregnant, pregnant!" Thus she clenches the proof of their guilt by the iteration of their accursed names, the very sound of every syllable composing them being to her ears full of cruelty "Where is thy head? where's that? Ah me! where's that? Pisanio might have killed thee at the heart, And left this head on!" But, had his heart been stabbed, and his breast all blood-bedabbled, attendants, as she had done in the A very valiant Briton, and a good, Alas! There are no more such masters. I may wander "0! blood, Give colour to my pale cheek with thy From east to occident, cry out for service, same: Thy name well fits thy faith; thy faith thy name. Wilt take thy chance with me? I will not would her woe have been less wild? Then had she thought, "he might have spared the heart!" Distracted though she be, and utterly prostrate, what a majestic image crosses her brain, as she gazes on the majestic corpse! "From this most bravest vessel of the world Struck the main-top!" That we the horrider may seem to those Which chance to find us: O, my lord! my lord!" 66 Does she smear her face with his blood? A desperate fancy! In her horror she madly desires to look horrid; and all this world being terribly changed to her, she must be terribly changed too, and strike with affright "those which chance to find her." She has forgot the cave and its dwellers, that, as she was recovering from her swoon, kept glimmering before her eyes. She thinks no more that she was a cave-keeper, and cooked to honest creatures”—to her Guiderius and Arviragus have ceased to be -their beautiful images are razed out from her brain. She cares not on what part of the wide wild world she may be lying now; and her last words, ere once more stop the beatings of her heart, are, "O, my lord! my lord!" And who are "those who chance to find her?" Lucius, a captain, and other officers, and a soothsayer, conversing about the war. "Lucius. Soft, ho! what trunk is here, Without his top? The ruin speaks, that sometime It was a worthy building! How! a page! rather: For nature doth abhor to make his bed So felt Lucius-a veteran Roman general. But Imogen, a young British lady, "abhorred not to make her bed with the defunct, or sleep upon the dead;" she had said "but soft! no bedfellow!" Believing it was her husband's corpse she laid down her head, where it had often lain before, and there found oblivion. Fidele at once finds favour in the eyes of the Roman Lucius and his Find out the prettiest daizied plot we can, sans A grave! Come-arm him! Boy, he is By thee to us; and he shall be interred eyes." The scene is perfect. The flow and ebb of passion is felt by us to be obeying, like the sea, the mysterious law of nature. The huge waves of woe have subsided almost into a calm. The strength of love is now the support of Imogen's life-and the sense of duty. She has no wish either to die or to live; but her despair is no longer distraction; and having grieved till she could grieve no more, and reached the utmost limits of sorrow, there |