There is, moreover, one thing in his work which is of considerable literary interest. Unlike almost all his contemporaries, he is hardly at all'Italianate.' The Italian influence, which for a full century coloured English poetry, is scarcely discernible in him, and he is thus an interesting example of an English poet with bardly any foreign strain in him except, as has been said, a certain inge of classical study.

G. SAINTSBURY.

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

[From Albion's England, Bk. iv. Cap. 22.]

'See, valiant war-friends yonder be the first, the last, and all The agents of our enemies: they henceforth cannot call

:

Supplies for weeds at Normandy by this in porches grow:
Then conquer these would conquer you, and dread no further foe.
They are no stouter than the Brutes, whom we did hence exile:
Nor stronger than the sturdy Danes, our victory erewhile :
Nor Saxony could once contain, or scarce the world beside,
Our fathers who did sway by sword where listed them to bide.
Then do not ye degenerate, take courage by descent,
And by their burials, not abode, their force and flight prevent.
Ye have in hand your country's cause, a conquest they pretend,
Which (were ye not the same ye be) even cowards would defend.
I grant that part of us are fled, and linked to the foe,
And glad I am our army is of traitors cleared so,
Yea, pardon hath he to depart that stayeth malcontent:
I prize the mind above the man, like zeal hath like event.
Yet troth it is no well or ill this island ever had,

But through the well or ill support of subjects good or bad.
Not Caesar, Hengest, Swayn, or now (which ne'ertheless shall fail)
The Norman bastard (Albion true) did, could, or can prevail.
But to be self-false in this isle a self-foe ever is,
Yet wot 1, never traitor did his treason's stipend miss.
Shrink who will shrink, let armour's weight press down the bur-
dened earth,

My foes with wondering eyes shall see I over-prize my death.
But since ye all (for all, I hope, alike affected be,
Your wives, your children, lives and land, from servitude to free)
Are armed both in show and zeal, then gloriously contend
To win and wear the home-brought spoils of victory the end.
Let not the skinner's daughter's son possess what he pretends,
He lives to die a noble death that life for freedom spends.'
As Harold heartened thus his men, so did the Norman his;
And looking wishly on the earth Duke William speaketh this:

'To live upon, or lie within, this is my ground or grave,
My loving soldiers, one of twain your duke resolves to have:
Nor be ye, Normans, now to seek in what you should be stout,
Ye come amidst the English pikes to hew your honours out.
Ye come to win the same by lance, that is your own by law;
Ye come, I say, in righteous war revenging swords to draw.
Howbeit, of more hardy foes no passed fight hath sped ye,
Since Rollo to your now-abode with bands victorious led ye,
Or Turchus, son of Troylus, in Scythian Fazo bred ye.
Then worthy your progenitors ye seed of Priam's son,
Exploit this business: Rollons, do that which ye wish be done.
Three people have as many times got and foregone this shore,
It resteth now ye conquer it not to be conquered more:
For Norman and the Saxon blood conjoining, as it may,
From that consorted seed the crown shall never pass away.
Before us are our armed foes, behind us are the seas,
On either side the foe hath holds of succour and for ease;
But that advantage shall return their disadvantage thus,
If ye observe no shore is left the which may shelter us.
And so hold out amidst the rough, whil'st they hale in for lee,
Whereas, whilst men securely sail not seldom shipwrecks be.
What should I cite your passed acts, or tediously incense
To present arms? your faces show your hearts conceive offence,
Yea, even your courages divine a conquest not to fail;
Hope, then, your duke doth prophesy, and in that hope prevail.
A people brave, a terrene Heaven, both objects worth your wars
Shall be the prizes of your prow's, and mount your fame to stars.
Let not a traitor's perjur'd son extrude us from our right,
He dies to live a famous life, that doth for conquest fight.'

WILLIAM

SHAKESPEARE.

[WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was born at Stratford on Avon in April 1564; there also he died, April 23rd (old style), 1616. The following are the titles of his poems, with the dates of p. blication: Venus and Adonis, 1593; The Rape of Lucrece, 1594; The Passionate Pilgrim (a miscellany which includes only a few pieces by Shakespeare), 1599; The Phoenix and the Turtle (printed with pieces on the same subject by other poets of the time, at the end of Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Complaint), 1601; Sonnets, 1609; A Lover's Complaint (in the same volume with the Sonne:s), 1609 ]

Shakespeare's genius was not one of those which ripen overearly. At thirty he was hardly past his years of apprenticeship as a dramatic craftsman ; in comedy he was experimenting in various directions; in historical tragedy he submitted to the influence of his great fellow, Christopher Marlowe, who had risen to eminent stature while Shakespeare was still in his growing years; in pure tragedy he was feeling after a way of his own which should ennoble terror by its union with tenderness and beauty. It was at this time that his first essay as a non-dramatic poet was made. At what precise date the Venus and Adonis was written we cannot be certain; but no good reason appears for supposing that Shakespeare brought it up with him from Stratford, or indeed that it was written earlier than the year 1592. The first heir of my invention'—so its author describes the poem; but, in accordance with the feeling of his own day, he would naturally set aside his plays, none of which he had printed or thought of printing, as indeed mere plays-not works, not any part of literature proper,-while the Venus and Adonis, which was to give him rank among the poets of his time, he would regard as the first legitimate child of his imagination. Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton -young, clever, gallant, generous—had already honoured the rising dramatist with his notice, and to him Shakespeare dedicated 'his unpolished lines,' promising to take advantage of all idle hours

until he have some 'graver labour' to present. The graver labour followed in 1594, and was offered to his patron with words of strong devotion. The two poems, the Venus and the Lucrece, may be looked on as companion pieces, belonging to the same period, presented to the same person, exhibiting the same characteristics of style.

Shakespeare's delight in beauty and his delight in wit, in the brightness and nimbleness of the play of mind, are manifest in all his earlier writings. Such delight was indeed part of the age as well as of the individual. The consciousness of new power proper to the Renaissance period, the bounding energy, the sense that all the human faculties were emancipated, resulted in great achievement, and no less in strange extravagance; the lust of the eye was under slight restraint, and every clever fancy might caper as it pleased. In choosing the subject of his first poem, Shakespeare sought the most beautiful creatures which imagination had ever conceived for pasture of man's eye. What female figure so superb in loveliness as that of the queen of Love? What mortal companion can she have comely to perfection save the boy Adonis? But the common way of love, in which the man woos the woman, has been the theme of every poet; how much more 'high fantastical' were the woman to woo the man, and spend all her wit, and all her ardour, and all her arts in striving to overcome his indifference? Thus the subject of Venus enamoured, and the coldness of the boy Adonis, gave scope both to the poet's passion for beauty and his passion for ingenuity. Shakespeare attempts two things-first, to paint with brilliant words the chosen figures, and their encounterings; secondly, to invent speeches for them in which the war of wit shall be maintained with glittering conceit, and high-wrought fantasy. The subject did not lay hold of him, compelling him to utterance; rather he laboured hard to make the most of it, viewing it on this side and on that; to use the word of his contemporaries, he 'subtilized' with it, until he could subtilize no farther. A couple of ice-houses these two poems of Shakespeare have been called by Hazlitt- they are' he says, 'as hard, as glittering, and as cold.' Cold indeed they will seem to anyone who listens to hear in them the natural cry of human passion. But the paradox is true, that for a young poet of Elizabeth's age to be natural, direct, simple, would have been indeed unnatural. He was most happy when most fantastical; he spun a shining web to catch conceits inevitably as a spider casts his

t