456 THE TOKUS OF SHAKSPEA.RK. 



sweet, that employ the mind during the pauses of action. There is a 

 perseverance in searching out the hidden corners of the soul, and an 

 exposition of the same thought in several ways, that seems, to us, per- 

 fectly distinguishable from the drawling prolixity, with which many of 

 the writers of Elizabeth love to gloat on the one idea. It looks like the 

 discursion of Genius gathering the armour of great achievements, or, as 

 Moore excellently expresses it, the " knight-errantry" of a mind in 

 search of noble ideas. We may accordingly, as we shall hereafter note, 

 here recognize many of his first draughts. If we look at the soliloquies 

 of Venus, her conversations with Adonis, of Lucrece and her maid, with 

 Tarquin, to herself, and compare them with the dialogues or monologues 

 of the best narrative poets Tasso, for instance, or Ariosto, or Milton, 

 or Spenser, or Homer, or Virgil we shall easily mark the difference of 

 the epic and dramatic spirits. In Shakspeare nothing goes to an end ; the 

 great scenic secret of cutting short the dialogue, the impassioned interrup- 

 tion, is every-where exemplified : 



" So let thy thoughts low vassals to my state. 

 No more, quoth he, by heaven I will not hear thee ; 

 Yield to my love. 



" Where did I leave ? No matter where, quoth he, 

 Leave me ; and then the story aptly ends ; 

 The night is spent." 



Another characteristic is the intelligent position of a word, and the 

 conveying of the state of the speaker's mind by an unstudied expression, 

 as of Venus's impatient desire in her immediate reply, 



' Now let me say good night, and so say you, 

 If you will say so, you shall have a kiss ; 

 Good night, quoth she, arid ere he says adieu, 

 The honey fee of parting tendered is." 



The incessant endeavour to supply the want of scenery by description 

 is very apparent, and the vivid delineations of attitude and look are evi- 

 dently the stage- directions of fancy. The very defects of these poems 

 spring from the dramatic nature of a mind, dissatisfied till it can make 

 us see the forms, as well as comprehend the souls of things. In a play 

 the action supplies the first half of this ; in a narrative, either the hope 

 of presenting this pantomime must be relinquished, or the task must 

 devolve on the poet. In this anatomy of appearances, this attempt 

 to make the reader a spectator, Shakspeare becomes at times tedious, 

 but it is, as his own Dogberry remarks, the tediousness of a king, and 

 he is welcome to bestow it on us. The long italic sentences with which 

 a German playwright interlards his lean dialogue, are a sort of poor-rate 

 levied on grimace for the support of famished imagination : Shakspeare' s 

 minute and powerful descriptions in these poems, are the remittances of 

 a speculative eye to an abounding fancy. Let us give an instance or 

 two, where, to use his own words, 



" This dumb play has his acts made plain." 



And we could not have a better than the two preceding stanzas of 

 Venus and Adonis : 



