Unto that element; but long it could not be, The body of Ophelia is carried to the churchyard, and the guilty Queen, bending over the grave, exclaims : "Sweets to the sweet, farewell! I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife; The effect of all this is like the spell of enchantment. Othello, in the delirium of his jealousy thus addresses Desdemona as she sleeps: O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee-would thou Had'st ne'er been born!" The Moor when about to smother his wife, kisses her and says: "O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee In the Winter's Tale we find the same poeti grace adapted to feelings of happiness. Perdita thus addresses Florizel : "Now, my fairest friend, I would I had some flowers o' the spring, that might That come before the swallow dares, and take To this Florizel replies: "When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever ; when you sing, Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you and own In Cymbeline, Imogen being accused of infidelity to Poshumus, exclaims : "False to his bed! What is it to be false? When Arviragus enters the cave, bearing Imogen, as if dead, in his arms, Guiderius says: “O sweetest, fairest lily! My brother bears thee not the one half so well Belarius exclaims : "O melancholy! Whoever yet could sound thy bottom? find The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare Imogen throws herself on the neck of Poshumus, when he is convinced of his unfounded jealousy, and he exclaims: How now, my child! What mak'st thou me a dullard in this act? Wilt thou not speak to me? Your blessing, Sir," replies Imogen at his feet. I have quoted the above passage, merely as examples of beauty of style, without reference to the merits of the plays from which they are taken. I have not attempted to paint the heartmoving madness of Ophelia, the resolute love of Juliet, the nature, the affection and the terror of Desdemona, when Othello awakens her and declares his intention of killing her, or the piety, tenderness and generosity which characterise Imogen: in all this the romantic takes place of the tragic, and the picture appeals more forcibly to the senses than to the soul. CLASSIC MODELS. FULL and complete justice being rendered to suavities of pencilling and harmony, I must say that the works of the romantic era gain much in being quoted by extracts. A few pages fertile in beauty are generally interspersed through a mass of barrenness. To read Shakspeare from beginning to end is to fulfil a pious but wearisome duty to departed genius. The cantos of Dante form a rhymed chronicle in which beauty of diction does not always compensate for dulness. The merit of the monuments of classic literature is of a contrary kind. It consists in the perfection of the whole and the just proportion of parts. There is another truth which must likewise be acknowledged. All Shakspeare's young female |