458 THE POEMS OF SHAKESPEARE. 



arrival of Collatinus, in the restlessnes of woe, falls to perusing the pic- 

 ture of Troy. Sinon's figure arrests her eye, admirably described with 

 "Brow unbent that seemed to welcome woe, 



Cheeks neither red nor pule, but mingled so, 



That blushing red no guilty instance gave, 



Nor ashy pale, the fear that false hearts have. 



" This picture she advisedly perused, 

 And chid the painter for his wond'rous skill, 

 Saying some shape in Sinon's was abused, 

 So fair a form lodged not a mind so ill j 

 And still on him she gazed, and gazino still, 

 Such signs of truth in his plain face she spied, 

 That she concludes the picture was belied. 



* It cannot be, quoth she, that so much guile, 

 She would have said, can lurk in such a look, 

 But Tarquin's shape came to her mind the while, 

 And from the tongue can lurk from cannot took j 

 It cannot be she in that sense forsook, 

 And turned it thus, It cannot be, I find, 

 But such a face should bear a wicked mind, 

 For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, 

 So sober sad, so weary, and so mild, 

 As if with grief or travel he had fainted, 

 Came Tarquin to me ." 



This mental syntax, though quaintly and diffusely worded, is keenly ex- 

 pressive of Nature. 



The dramatic poet must, above all others, be a painter not only that 

 he may imagine judiciously the place of action as we may say, the 

 landscape*; but also that he may successfully group his figures that 

 he may be a master of theatrical effect. That Shakspeare was eminently 

 so, no one who has seen his plays represented can doubt, and there are 

 bright traces of this splendid pencil in the poems we are considering. 

 Heavens ! what majesty in the principal figures, what featured filling of 

 the back-ground in the description of Nestor addressing the Greeks. 

 No painter can by possibility surpass it. It is a happy combination of 

 Romano and Hogarth. The whole is too long to quote. Let these 

 scattered lines suffice : 



" There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand, 

 As 't were encouraging the Greeks to fight, 

 Making such sober action with his hand, 

 That it beguiled attention, charmed the sight. 

 In speech it seemed his beard, all silver white, 

 Wagged up and down, and from his lips did fly 

 Thin winding breath which curled up to the sky/' 



* Are we superstitious ? We cannot avoid an almost feline attachment for the 

 spots on which Shakspeare's spirit rested, such as we have never felt for the locali- 

 ties of other dramatists, however much they may have interested us for their per- 

 sona. But it is not only the sweet forest of Ardennes, or the enchanted cave of 

 Prosper, that we cherish, like its young deer, or native spirits, but the very den of 

 Timon, the very precincts of the Capitol, have as familiar an existence to our eye, 

 as though we had clung to the one in our adversity, or driven a nail into the other 

 in our consulship. 



