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Unto that element; but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death."

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;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.”

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
Justice to break her sword... . . . . . .

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee
And love thee after."

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
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenhood's growing :-O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold tulips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one! O these I lack,
To make you garlands of; and, my sweet friend,
To strew him o'er and o'er.

To this Florizel replies:

"When you speak, sweet,

I'd have you do it ever ; when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; to give alms;

Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,

To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wave o'er the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing, but that; move still, still so,
No other function..

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In Cymbeline, Imogen being accused of infidelity to Poshumus, exclaims :

"False to his bed! What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there, and to think on him?
To weep 'twixt clock and clock ?"

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
As when thou grew'st thyself."

Belarius exclaims :

"O melancholy!

Whoever yet could sound thy bottom? find

The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare
Might easiliest harbour in!....

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Imogen throws herself on the neck of Poshumus, when he is convinced of his unfounded jealousy, and he exclaims:

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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

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