mingles with the murmurs of the parent life in which it is enveloped.* Now, what does extraordinary growth imply ?+ It implies capacity for obtaining the materials of growth; in this case materials for the growth of intellect, of imagination, of the will, of the emotions. It means, therefore, capacity of seeing many facts, of meditating, of feeling deeply, and of controlling such feeling. It implies the avoidance of injuries which interfere with growth, escape from enemies which bring life to a sudden end; and therefore strength, and skill, and prudence in dealing with the world. It implies a power in the organism of fitting its movements to meet numerous external co-existences and sequences. In a word, we are brought back once again to Shakspere's resolute fidelity to the fact. By virtue of this his life became a success, as far as success is permitted to such a creature as man in such a world as the present. It seems much that the needy youth who left his native town probably under pressure of poverty, should at the age of thirty-three have become possessor of New Place at Stratford, and from year to year have added to his worldly dignity and wealth. Such material advancement argues a power of understanding, and adapting oneself to the facts of the material world. But that was not the chief success in the life of Shakspere. When Wordsworth * See the valuable criticism of Shakspere's style as contrasted with Fletcher's in "A letter on Shakspere's Authorship of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,'" 1833 (by Mr Spalding), pp. 13-18. The criticism applies with special propriety to Shakspere's later style. + In my answer to this question, I borrow several expressions from Herbert Spencer's Biology. thought of "mighty poets in their misery dead," when in sudden mood of dejection he murmured to himself, We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness, he thought of Chatterton and of Burns, not of Shakspere. The early contemporaries of Shakspere-Marlowe and Greene one of them a man of splendid genius, failed as Chatterton failed. It must have appeared to Shakspere (who well enough understood honest frolic) a poor affair, a flimsy kind of idealism—this reckless knocking of a man's head against the solid laws of the universe. The protest against fact, against our subjection to law made by such men as Marlowe and Greene, was a vulgar and superficial protest. Shakspere could get no delight from the insanity of sowing wild oats. His insanity was of a far graver and more terrible kind. It assumed two forms the Romeo form and the Hamlet form-abandonment to passion, abandonment to brooding thought-two diseases of youth, each fatal in its own way; two forms of the one supreme crime in Shakspere's eyes, want of fidelity to the fact. The noble practical energy of Shakspere was tempted to self-betrayal on the one hand by the supremacy of blind desire; on the other hand, by the sapping in of thought upon the will and active powers. The struggle between self-will and reason, between "blood" and "judgment," appears in all his writings to be ever in the back-ground, a theme ready at any moment, if permitted, to become prominent. And Shakspere's profoundest and most sympathetic psychological studyHamlet-represents in detail the other chief temptation to which he was, it would seem, subjected. In all the later plays his eye is intently fixed upon the deep insoluble questions suggested by human character and destiny, fixed with a brooding wistfulness, which yet, we perceive, he became, as years went on, more and more able to control. Shakspere's central self pronounced in favour of sanity -in favour of seeing things as they are, and shaping life accordingly. He bought up houses and lands in Stratford, and so made a protest superficial, indeed, yet real, against the Romeo and the Hamlet within him. But the idealist within him made Shakspere at all times far other than a mere country magnate or wealthy burgher. It remained, after all, nearly the deepest part of him : Hamlet. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins? Hamlet. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. And Prospero declares the end of the whole matter : We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Shakspere's devotion to material interests was the least part of the protest made against his temptation to extravagance of soul. There are more important facts than those of the material life. Shakspere cast his plummet into the sea of human sorrow, and wrong, and loss. studied evil. He would let none of that dark side of life escape from him. He denied none of the bitterness, the sins, the calamity of the world. He looked steadily He at Cordelia strangled in the arms of Lear; and he summoned up a strenuous fortitude, a stoical submission to make endurable such a spectacle. But at the same time over against Edmund he retained his loyalty to good; and the monstrous sisters he saw the invincible loyalty of a Kent, the practical genius of an Edgar in the service of good, and the redeeming ardour of a Cordelia. Rescuing his soul from all bitterness, he arrived finally at a temper strong and self-possessed as that of stoicism, yet free from the stoical attitude of defiance; a temper liberal, gracious, charitable, a tender yet strenuous calm. The "Venus and Adonis" is styled by its author in the dedication to the Earl of Southampton, "the first heir of my invention." Gervinus believes that the poem may have been written before the poet left Stratford. Although possibly separated by a considerable interval from its companion poem "The Rape of Lucrece" (1594), the two may be regarded as essentially one in kind.* The speciality of these poems as portions of Shakspere's art has perhaps not been sufficiently observed. Each is an artistic study; and they form, as has been just observed, companion studies-one of female lust and Mr Furnivall notes in the Venus and Adonis the following pictures from Shakspere's youthful life at Stratford,—the horse (7. 260-318); the hare-hunt ( 763-768); the overflowing Avon (72); the two silver doves (366); the milch doe and fawn in some brake in Charlecote Park (875-6); the red morn (453); the hush of the wind before it rains (458); the many clouds consulting for foul weather (972); the nightowl (531); the lark (853). The Lucrece, he adds, "must have been written some time after the 'Venus,' as its proportion of unstopt lines is 1 in 10-81 (171 such lines to the poem's l. 1855) against the 'Venus's' 1 in 25-40 (47 run-on lines in 1,194)." Preface by F. J. Furnivall to Shakespeare Commentaries by Gervinus (ed. 1874). + Coleridge touches upon the fact, and it is noted by Lloyd. D boyish coldness, the other of male lust and womanly chastity. Coleridge noticed "the utter aloofness of the poet's own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and the analyst ; " but it can hardly be admitted that this aloofness of the poet's own feelings proceeds from a dramatic abandonment of self. The subjects of these two poems did not call and choose their poet, they did not possess him and compel him to render them into art. Rather, the poet expressly made choice of the subjects, and deliberately set himself down before each to accomplish an exhaustive study of it. If the Venus and Adonis sonnets in "The Passionate Pilgrim" be by Shakspere, it would seem that he had been trying various poetical exercises on this theme. And for a young writer of the Renascence, the subject of Shakspere's earliest poem was a splendid one, as voluptuous and unspiritual as that of a classical picture by Titian. It included two figures containing inexhaustible pasture for the fleshly eye, and delicacies and dainties for the sensuous imagination of the Renascence, the enamoured Queen of Beauty, and the beautiful, disdainful boy. It afforded occasion for endless exercises and variations on the themes, Beauty, Lust, and Death. In holding the subject before his imagination Shakspere is perfectly cool and collected. He has made choice of the subject, and he is interested in doing his duty by it in the most thorough way a young poet can, but he remains unimpassioned, intent wholly upon getting down the right colours and lines upon his canvas. Observe his determination to put in accurately the details of each object; to omit nothing. Poor Wat, the hare, is described in a |