THE POEMS OF SHAKSPKARE. 461 



What fancy and observation is there, in the comparison for Lucrece 

 shrinking at the presence of Tarquin : 



' Wrapt and confounded in a thousand fears, 

 Like a new-killed bird, she trembling lies." 



And again in this perfection of a simile, 



" She the picture of true piety, 



Like a white bird beneath a gripe's sharp claws, 

 Pleads in a wilderness, where are no laws, 

 To the rough beast that knows no gentle right.'* 



But to quote beauties from Shakspeare, is to cut stars from the galaxy, 

 and in no part of his firmament do stars stand thicker than in Venus and 

 Afconis, and the rape of Lucrece. It is not, however, so much their 

 intrinsic merit that endears them, as that they are Shakspeare " all 

 over ;" not only that we meet in them the plenitude of his mind, and 

 the tone of his thoughts, but that we can trace the very turn of his 

 phrases. We have said enough, we hope, to prove that these poems 

 possess much of the peculiar merits of Shakspeare's genius. They have 

 also the characteristics of Shakspeare's language, which is perhaps more 

 than that of any other writer impregnated with his mind. This is the 

 mysterious and exclusive privilege of excellence, to impress its private 

 mark upon language without derogating from, but, on the contrary, 

 confirming its purity. We might produce from this folio of thought the 

 undoubted sketches of expressions or situations, which have been often 

 admired in Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello, the Richards, the Henrys ; 

 and perhaps exhibit some " etrennes" of all his immortal infants. But 

 our limits are already passed, and we refer to the poems. With respect 

 to two passages alone, we shall qualify our usual implicit confidence in 

 the reader's sagacity. In the stanza beginning " Now stole upon the 

 time, the dead of night," we have a key to the thane's rumination, be- 

 fore Duncan's murder, on " Tarquin's ravishing strides." The poet, 

 impressed with his own poetry, for the moment supposes Macbeth to 

 have written, or at least read, the rape of Lucrece. The original, too, of 

 that admirably effective scene in Henry IV., between Hotspur and his 

 wife, " God's me ! my horse ! what sayest thou, Kate ? what would'st 

 thou have with me ?" occurs in Venus and Adonis. It is in these 

 words : 



" Pity ! she cries, some favour, some remorse, 

 Away he springs, and hasteth to his horse. " 



The insight into the gradual development of genius, and the experience 

 from what small hints, or accidental circumstance, the finest growths of 

 intellect have been matured, are subjects of meditation, useful and en- 

 couraging to the aspirants in literature. 



But we have already allotted such space to two of his poems, that we 

 are, at present, unable to speak as we had intended, and as they deserve, 

 of the rest. His " deep-brained sonnets" would, in themselves, supply 

 matter for an Anthologia, and as contrasted with Milton's, (which in 

 power they far excel, tho' we confess they do not equally interest us) 

 may form the subject of some future essay. The Lover's Complaint is 



M.M. No. 11. 3N 



