SCENE I.-Rousillon. 4 Room in the Countess's Palace.

Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON,

HELENA, and LAFEU, in mourning.

Count. In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.

Ber. And I, in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death anew: but I must attend his majesty's command, to whom I am now in ward,' evermore in subjection.

Laf. You shall find of the king a husband, madam;-you, sir, a father: He that so gencrally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted, rather than lack it" where there is such abundance.

a Mr. White observes that this purely French construction is noteworthy." Vous trouverez de le Roi un mari."

b Lack it. This is the reading of the old copies; but Theobald, Hanmer, and others, have slack it.

Ber. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?

Laf. A fistula, my lord.

Ber. I heard not of it before.

Laf. I would it were not notorious.—Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

Count. His sole child, my lord; and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises: her dispositions she inherits, which make fair gifts fairer ; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity, they are virtues and traitors too: in her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness."

Laf. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

Count. 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.b The remembrance of her

To understand this passage we must define the meaning of "virtuous qualities.' The Countess has distinguished between "dispositions" and "fair gifts." By the one is meant the natural temper and affections-by the other the results of education. In like manner "virtuous qualities" mean the same as "fair gifts"-they are the acquirements which might find a place in "an unclean mind," as well as in one of honest "dispositions." Then "they are virtues and traitors too"-they are good in themselves, but they betray to evil, by giving the "unclean mind" the power to deceive. The "virtuous qualities" in Helena are unmixed with any natural defect-"they are the better for their simpleness.' The concluding expression, "she derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness," is one of the many examples of Shakspere's beautiful discrimination as a moralist. How many that are honest by nature can scarcely be called good! "Goodness," in the high sense in which our poet uses it, can only be "achieved."

"

But

b"To season," says Malone, "has here a culinary sense; to preserve by salting." Upon this, Pye, in his 'Comments upon the Commentators,' says, "Surely, this coarse and vulgar metaphor neither wanted nor merited a note." why "coarse and vulgar"? The "culinary sense" of Malone may raise up associations of the kitchen, which are not perfectly genteel; but suppose he had said "chemical sense" would the metaphor have been itself different? We would rather make our estimate of what is "coarse and vulgar" upon the authority of Shakspere himself than upon that of Mr. Pye. With our poet this was a favourite metaphor, repeated almost as often as "the canker" of the In the Rape of Lucrece we have,

rose.

"But I alone, alone must sit and pine,

Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine."

In Romeo and Juliet,

"Jesu Maria! What a deal of brine

Hath wash'd thy sallow cheek for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!"

father never approaches her heart but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena-go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow, than to have."

Hel. I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too.

Laf. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy to the living.

Hel. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.b

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Laf. How understand we that?

Count. Be thou blest, Bertram! and succeed thy father

In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue,

Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness Share with thy birth-right! Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend

Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,

But never tax'd for speech. What heaven morc will,

That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,

Fall on thy head! Farewell.-My lord,
'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
Advise him.

"And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine: all this to season

A brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting, in her sad remembrance."

The metaphor which these critics call "coarse and vulgar" and "culinary" has the sanction of the very highest authority, in whose mouth the most familiar allusions are employed in connexion with the most sacred things: "Ye are the salt of the earth."

a Malone here points out an inaccuracy of construction, and says the meaning is-lest you be rather thought to affect a sorrow than to have. This construction can scarcely be called inaccurate. It belongs not only to Shakspere's phraseology, but to the freer system upon which the English language was written by the most correct writers in his time. We have lost something in the attainment of our present precision.

b Tieck assigns this speech, and we think correctly, to Helena, in the belief that she means it as a half-obscure expression, which has reference to her love for Bertram. Such are her first words-"I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too." In the original copies, and in most modern editions, the passage before us is given to the Countess. In her mouth it is not very intelligible; in Helena's, though purposely obscure, it is easily comprehensible. The living enemy to grief for the dead is Bertram; and the grief of her unrequited love for him destroys the other grief-makes it mortal. To this mysterious expression of Helena, Lafeu addresses himself when he says, "How understand we that?"

Than those I shed for him. What was he like ?

I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in 't but Bertram's.
I am undone; there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a

Hel. And no.

Par. Are you meditating on virginity?

Hel. Ay. You have some stain" of soldier in you; let me ask you a question: Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him?

Par. Keep him out.

Hel. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.

Par. There is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.

Hel. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers up!-Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?

Par. Virginity, being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase; and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 't is too cold a companion; away with it.

Hel. I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

Par. There's little can be said in 't; 't is against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself; and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by 't: Out with 't: within ten year it will make itself two, which is a goodly increase: and the principal itself not much the worse: Away with 't.

Hel. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

Par. Let me see: Marry, ill, to like him that

answers by a sarcastic allusion to the Monarcho-an Italian who figured in London about 1580, possessed with the notion that he was sovereign of the world. (See Love's La bour's Lost, Act Iv., Sc. 1.)

a Stain-tincture;-you have some slight mark of the soldier about you.

b We print the text as in the folio. It is commonly read ten; which the Cambridge editors adopt. Mr. White proposes "within one year."