ACT V., SCENE 4. P. 258. Arise, great sir, and give the tidings ear That are most dearly sweet and bitter. — The old copies have early instead of dearly. Corrected by Seward. P. 259. Forgets school-doing, being therein train'd, And of kind manage; then pig-like he whines At the sharp rowel, &c. — The old copies lack then. P. 260. When neither curb would crack, girth break, nor differing plunges Disroot his rider whence he grew, but that He kept him 'tween his legs, on his hind hoofs That Arcite's legs, &c. -The words Quickly uprearing, so are not in the old copies. The quarto gives the third and fourth lines thus: He kept him tweene his legges, on his hind hoofes on end he stands. Hence Weber concludes, as he well may, that "the first part of the second line was omitted by the compositor, being illegible in the manuscript." I think the sense of uprearing is fairly required; and we must suppose the movement of the horse to have been sudden, else the rider would have extricated himself from the saddle, and kept his upright posture. P. 260. Acknowledge to the gods Your thanks that you are living. - The old copies have Our instead of Your. VENUS AND ADONIS. E 66 `NTERED at the Stationers' on the 18th of April, 1593, by Richard Field, as his copy, licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Wardens." The poem was published by Field in the course of the same year; also a second time in 1594. The third edition was issued by John Harrison in 1596; the fourth, in 1600, by the same publisher; the fifth, by William Leake, 1602. After this time, it was often reprinted, and copies are known, bearing the dates of 1616 and 1620. This frequency of publication sufficiently attests the great popularity of the poem. It is often alluded to, also, by the Poet's contemporaries, and in such terms as show it to have been a general favourite. Meres, in his Wit's Treasury, 1598, speaks of it thus: As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet, witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare: witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends." The tenth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, as translated by Arthur Golding, probably furnished Shakespeare the story of Venus and Adonis. Golding's translation was first published complete in 1567, and reissued in 1572, 1584, 1587, and 1593; so that it must have had a large circulation when the poem was written. In the dedication of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare speaks of it as "the first heir of my invention"; yet he had then become so distinguished in the Drama as to be squibbed by Robert Greene, and patronized by the Earl of Southampton. A part of Greene's squib is quoted in the Life of the Poet, vol. i. page 25. Whether Shakespeare dated the heirship of his poem from the time of writing or of publishing, is uncertain: probably the former; and if so, then of course it must have been written several years before 1593. The general opinion refers the composition of the poem to the period before he left Stratford; but this is a point on which we are without evidence of any sort either way. The merit of Venus and Adonis, and indeed of the author's poems generally, sinks into littleness beside that of his dramas. We have already seen how great was its contemporary popularity. This excessive applause was followed by a long period of undue neglect or depreciation; but in later times the fashion has rather been to overpraise it. The poem abounds, indeed, in verbal and fantastical tricks and antics caught from the taste and custom of the age often it may be said of the author, that he 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 subtile 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 no 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." 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 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 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 patronage 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 Westminster. In 1624, he had the command of a small force against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, and died |