myriad-minded poet, an ordinary lover of poetry can but touch the theme with humility and reserve. Feeling, then, how much there is to say about Shakespeare-whose works are in themselves a literature and how impossible it is to say it adequately, I shall content myself with making a few concise remarks, and with referring the student to the best sources of information open to him for the study of this incomparable poet. Moreover, this reticence is in accordance with the purport of my volume. Shakespeare's genius is expressed almost entirely in the dramatic form, and in these pages the drama is "out of court." Neither Shakespeare's youthful poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," nor his beautiful but obscure sonnets, would claim much attention from us apart from the plays. In these may be found in richest abundance every element of poetry-imagination, fancy, wit, humour, pathos, dignity of thought, aptness of expression, the loveliest strains of melody, the largest sagacity, and a creative power, the highest possession of the poet-which has never been surpassed. No man can venture to say that he has mastered Shakespeare. As well might he imagine, after visiting a scene of great loveliness or sublimity, that he had. learnt every lesson Nature can teach him. The works of all great poets, indeed, will yield much in beauty of blossom and wealth of fruit to the man who studies them most heartily; but the time may perhaps come when he has gained all they have to give him. This can never be the case with Shake speare. Great though he be, it is sheer idolatry and folly to write of him as a faultless poet. His faults are on the surface, and are due for the most part to his superabundant vitality, and in a measure to the influences of his age. The reader is sometimes offended by grossness of language and of plot, and sometimes irritated by the poet's love of puns and quibbles. Happily for England and for the honour of our literature, Shakespeare is, in the main, a thoroughly moral writer. He paints vice with the hand of a master, but he does not glorify it; he is coarse in expression, but the spirit that pervades his poetry is pure and on the side of virtue. His intellect is robust, and he has at the same time the gentleness and tenderness we admire so much in women. The highest minds, it has been said, are never wholly masculine, and Shakespeare's sweetness is as conspicuous as his strength. We see this in the pure womanliness of his feminine characters-in Rosalind and Juliet, in Imogen and Perdita, in Beatrice and Desdemona, in Isabella and Portia. And it may be seen, too, in his tender love of nature, a love which lights up pages of tragic horror or of coarse worldliness, so that the reader still feels the grateful warmth of the sunshine, and sees the steadfast beauty of the stars. The lavish prodigality of this wonderful poet reminds us of Nature herself. scatters his gifts broadcast, as if he had no fear of exhausting the matchless resources of his genius. And yet it cannot be said that there is much in He his plays, certainly not in his later plays, which can be called waste, or which fails to contribute to the action of the drama. It is possible in certain cases to write of a man's poetry as something apart from his art as a dramatist. We can do so, for instance, in writing of Ben Jonson or of Dryden, but with regard to Shakespeare this is impossible. There are dramatists who are not poets, and poets who, when writing plays, have not given scope to their poetical genius. In Shakespeare, as I have said. already, the poet predominates over the dramatist, or rather the poetry is so interfused with the action. of the drama that the two are linked together inseparably. Of all his plays the most purely poetical are, perhaps, the "Midsummer Night's Dream," the "Tempest," and the "Winter's Tale;" and it is remarkable that the two last-mentioned plays belong to the latest season of his poetical activity. Lyric verse of the most enchanting beauty is scattered over his thirty-five dramas, and in this department of poetry, as in most others, Shakespeare stands without a rival. Yet he was not without great competitors in that wonderful age of song, and John Fletcher, the dramatic associate of Beaumont, had upon rare occasions a voice almost equal to that of Shakespeare himself. Poets could sing in Shakespeare's time, and several of his fellowdramatists sang with a bird-like impulse that seemed like "unpremeditated art." By degrees this art was lost, and with rare exceptions the poets John Fletcher, 1579-1625. F of the eighteenth century were not singers. Indeed, the voice of song was mute before that century began. There is, for example, no greater contrast in our poetical literature than between the artificial songs of Dryden and the musical notes of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Ben Jonson. Listen to one of Dryden's songs and then to one of Fletcher's. "Go, tell Amynta, gentle swain, I would not die, nor dare complain ; "A sigh or tear perhaps she'll give ; But love on pity cannot live. Tell her that hearts for hearts were made, And love with love is only paid. Tell her my pains so fast increase, That soon they will be past redress. But ah! the wretch that speechless lies, In eight peerless lines Fletcher sings the deathsong of a maid dying for love. "Lay a garland on my hearse Of the dismal yew, Maidens, willow branches bear; "My love was false, but I was firm Upon my buried body lie Another illustration of Fletcher's genius as a lyrist shall be given here, because there is nothing more interesting than to note how one poet is indebted to another. The origin of Milton's "Il Penseroso" is to be found in the following lovely lines: "Hence all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! O sweetest melancholy ! "Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, A look that's fastened to the ground, Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; As a lyrist, Fletcher was a younger brother to Shakespeare, and therefore, although he will not claim separate attention, it is not irrelevant to have |