THE METEOROLOGY OF SHAKESPEARE. 581 



So exceptional are these lines to all other references to the south wind that in 

 Knight's Cabinet Edition an amendment is proposed. The editor would read 

 "sound" for "south." 



It is scarcely necessary to say that this emendation involves greater difficul- 

 ties than the one it is intended to remove. Shakespeare assuredly would never 

 have likened a strain of music to a "sound," nor spoken of a sound carry.ing 

 along with it the odours of the violets. 



But how comes the poet to couple the south wind with fogs? We know that 

 fogs are exclusively connected with the " polar current," i. e., nortlierly or east- 

 erly winds, though of course so gentle as to be only just perceptible. The mo- 

 ment the wind turns to the south or southwest London breathes afresh, and finds 

 that the threatened doom of the great city is not yet. Besides, one of the pas- 

 sages quothed is self contradictory. " Foggy south puffing with wind and rain ! " 

 Puffing wind and rain, from whatever quarter, dispel a fog. 



Nor are the charges of unhealthiness brought against the south much better 

 founded. The southwest wind, especially, blowing as it does over a wide ex- 

 panse of ocean, is exceedingly unlikely ever to have wafted any pestilence to the 

 shores of England. AVe think of the proverb still current in Yorkshire and Lin- 

 colnshire : 



'■ When the wind is in the west 

 The weather is the best ; 

 When the wind is in the east 

 It's neither good for man nor beast." 



It is still possible that as fens and marshes were much more abundant in the 

 Elizabethan age than they are now, and that as the south wind is generally accom- 

 panied by warm weather, malaria may have been more common in times of south- 

 erly winds than when the weather was colder. But in all other respects we can- 

 not do other than pronounce the epithets which Shakespeare applies to the 

 south wind grossly libelous, and the traditions upon which they are founded in- 

 stances of loose observation. We should, indeed, be glad to escape coming to 

 this unfavourable conclusion ; for our great poet, though his attention was mainly 

 fixed upon human passion and human character, had yet a keen eye for external 

 Nature, as we shall show below. The Ancient Britons are said to have applied 

 the name "cloudy or misty sea " to the German Ocean, from the fact that winds 

 blowing from that quarter were apt to bring fog and gloom. But if the south wind 

 was little admired in the Elizabethan days, the northern wind fared no better. 

 Shakespeare would not have committed himself by writing an ode like that perpe- 

 trated by Kingsley. The longing which some people in these days profess for a 

 good old-fashioned winter, and the opinion of the "bracing " character of a north- 

 easter, are, we suspect, notions of somewhat modern origin, and are often chim- 

 ney-corner aspirations, about as real as Jamie Thompson's praises of early rising. 

 Shakespeare shows no love for winter : 



