degree that is due only to their Maker: but this is a natural reaction from that idolatry of interest and self which pervades the rest of society, turning marriage into merchandise, and sacrificing the holiest instincts of nature to avarice, ambition, and pride.

The lovers, it is true, are not much given to reflection, because this is a thing that can come to them only by experience, which they are yet without. Life lies glittering with golden hopes before them, owing all its enchantment perhaps to the distance: if their bliss seems perfect, it is only because their bounty is infinite; but such bounty and such bliss "may not with mortal man abide." Bereft of the new life they have found in each other, nothing remains for them but the bitter dregs from which the wine has all evaporated; and they dash to earth the stale and vapid draught, when it has lost all the spirit that caused it to foam and sparkle before them. Nevertheless it is not their passion, but the enmity of their Houses, that is punished in their death; and the awful lesson we read in their fate is against that barbarism of civilization which makes love excessive by trying to exclude it from its rightful place in life, and which subjects men to the just revenges of Nature, because it puts them upon thwarting her noblest purposes. Were we deep in the ways of Providence, we might doubtless forecast from the first, that these two beings, the pride and hope of their respective friends, would, even because themselves most innocent, fall a sacrifice to the guilt of their families; and that in and through their death would be punished and healed those fatal strifes and animosities which have made it at once so natural and so dangerous for them to love.

It has been aptly remarked that the hero and heroine of this play, though in love, are not love-sick. Romeo, however, as we have seen, is something love-sick before his meeting with Juliet. His seeming love for Rosaline is but a matter of fancy, with which the heart has little or nothing to do. That Shakespeare so intended it, is plain from

what is said about it in the Chorus at the end of the first Act, especially the two quaint lines,

"Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,

And young affection gapes to be his heir."

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The same thing is worked out, with a higher grace of art and a much riper insight of nature, in the case of the lovesick Duke Orsino, of Twelfth Night, in his wordy, sighful quest of Olivia. There is evidently no soul-seizure nor any thing genuine about it; and Orsino himself knows it was only a mock-spell, as soon as he gets disenchanted.

Accordingly Romeo's first passion is airy, affected, fantastical, causing him to think much of his feelings, to count over his sighs, and play with language, as pleased with the figure he is making; which shows that his thoughts are not so much on Rosaline, or any thing he has found in her, as on a figment of his own mind, which he has baptized into her name, and invested with her form. This is just that sort of love with which people often imagine themselves about to die, but which they always manage to survive, and that, without any further harm than the making them somewhat ridiculous. For when a man is truly in love, it is not his own health, but the health of another person, that he thinks about. Romeo's love is a thing infinitely different. A mere idolater, Juliet converts him into a true worshipper; and the fire of his new passion burns up the old idol of his fancy. Love works a sort of regeneration upon him: his dreamy, sentimental fancy giving place to a passion that interests him thoroughly in an external object, all his fine energies are forthwith tuned into harmony and eloquence, so that he becomes a true man, with every thing clear and healthy and earnest about him. As the Friar suggests, it was probably from an instinctive sense that he was making love by rote, and not by heart, that Rosaline rejected his suit. The dream, though, has the effect of preparing him for the reality, while the contrast between them helps our appreciation of the latter.

Hazlitt pronounces Romeo to be Hamlet in love; than which he could not well have made a greater mistake. In all that most truly constitutes character, the two, it seems to me, have nothing in common. To go no further, Hamlet is all procrastination, Romeo all precipitancy: the one reflects so much that he cannot act; the other acts first, and does his reflecting afterwards. With Hamlet, it is a necessity of nature to think; with Romeo, to love: the former, studious of consequences, gets entangled with a multitude of conflicting passions and purposes; the latter, absorbed in one passion and one purpose, drives right ahead, regardless of consequences. It is this necessity of loving that, until the proper object appears, creates in Romeo an object for itself: hence the love-bewilderment in which he first comes before us. Which explains and justifies the suddenness and vehemence of his passion, while the difference between this and his fancy-sickness amply vindicates him from the reproach of inconstancy.

Being of passion all compact, Romeo of course does not generalize, nor give much heed to abstract truth. Intelligent, indeed, of present facts and occasions, he does not however study to shape his feelings or conduct by any rules: he therefore sees no use of philosophy in his case, unless philosophy can make a Juliet; nor does he care to hear others speak of what they do not feel. He has no life but passion, and passion lives altogether in and by its object: therefore it is that he dwells with such wild exaggeration on the sentence of banishment. Thus his love, by reason of its excess, exalting a subordinate into a sovereign good, defeats its own security and peace. Had he stayed himself more on general considerations of life; had he tempered his interest in the transient with a due thoughtfulness of the permanent; he would have been a wiser man indeed, but not so entire a lover.

Yet there is a sort of instinctive rectitude in his passion, which makes us rather pity than blame its excess; and we feel that death comes to him through it, not for it. We

can scarce conceive any thing more full of manly sweetness and gentleness than his character. Love is the only thing wherein he seems to lack self-control; and this is the very thing wherein self-control is least a virtue. He will peril his life for a friend, but he will not do a mean thing to save it; has no pride and revenge to which he would sacrifice others, but has high and brave affections to which he will not shrink from sacrificing himself. Thus even in his resentments he is in noble contrast with those about him. His heart is so preoccupied with generous thought, as to afford no room for those furious transports which prove so fatal in others where their swords jump in wild fury from the scabbards, his sleeps quietly by his side: but then, as he is very hard to provoke, so is he very dangerous when provoked. For so it is when Tybalt would force him to a duel:

"Romeo still speaks him fair, bids him bethink

How nice the quarrel is; and this he urges

With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow'd."

He will not be stung out of his propriety by words of insult. But when he learns that the mad fire-spouter has killed his bold friend Mercutio, and is coming back in triumph, then all his manhood boils with irrepressible energy:

"Away to heaven, respective lenity!

And fire-ey'd fury be my conduct now!
Now, Tybalt, take the villain back again
That late thou gav'st me; for Mercutio's soul
Is but a little way above our heads,

Staying for thine to keep him company :

Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him."

In all this affair he plays the man, and all the parts of honour are held true to their just aim; thus exemplifying in perfect form the great law of heroism, that he who rightly fears to do wrong has nothing else to fear.

Shakespeare has few passages in a higher pitch of eloquence than Romeo's soliloquy at the tomb; where we have a tempest of various emotions, love, sorrow, pity, regret,

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admiration, despair, all subdued and blended in a strain of the most plaintive, sweetly-solemn music:

"What said my man, when my betossèd soul
Did not attend him as we rode ? I think
He told me Paris should have married Juliet:
Said he not so ? or did I dream it so?
Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet,
To think it was so ?-O, give me thy hand,
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book!
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave,

A grave! O, no! a lantern, slaughter'd youth;
For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
How oft, when men are at the point of death,
Have they been merry !— O, my love! my wife !
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?
O, what more favour can I do to thee,
Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain,
To sunder his that was thine enemy?

Forgive me, cousin! - Ah, dear Juliet !
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous;
And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour ?
For fear of that, I still will stay with thee;

And never from this palace of dim night

Depart again: here, here will I remain

With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest;

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh."

With what vividness every article of this speech tells of the speaker's whereabout! All is surpassingly idiomatic of the spot, supremely characteristic of the man; not a thought, not an image, not a word, that could have come from any one but Romeo, or could have come from him at any other time, or in any other place. How prompt, how piercing, how kindling, his mental eye! seeing every thing