To the best bride-bed will we, Trip away; Make no stay: vity, 6“ Now the hungry lion roars :”–Upon the songs of Puck and Oberon, Coleridge exclaims, “ Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, and spontaneity! So far it is Greek; but then add, O! what wealth, what wild rangings and yet what compression and condensation of English fancy! In truth, there is nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines, or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless diamond.”—Literary Remains, vol. ii., p. 114. LOVERS AND MUSIC. LORENZO and JESSICA, awaiting the return home of PORTIA and NE RISSA, discourse of music, and then welcome with it the bride and her attendant. Lor. The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, Lor. And they did make no noise,--in such a night In such a night In such a night In such a night In such a night And in such a night And in such a night Jes. I would out-night you, did nobody come; Jes. Enter STEPHANO. Step. Stephano is my name; and I bring word Lor. Who comes with her ? Lor. Sweet soul, let ’s in, and there expect their coming. [Exit STEPHANO. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon the bank! Enter MUSICIANS. [Music. Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn; Jes. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive : * Patines (Patine, Paténe, Ital.) have been generally understood to mean plates of gold or silver used in the Catholic service. A new and interesting commentator, however (the Rev. Mr. Hunter), is of opinion that the proper word is patterns. Enter PORTIA and NERISSA, at a distance. Por. That light we see is burning in my hall; Ner. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less : Ner. It is your music, madam, of the house Por. Nothing is good I see without respect; Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, [Music ceases. That is the voice, Por. He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, Dear lady, welcome home, 13 7 " In such a night as this,” &c.—All the stories here alluded to,– Troilus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido and Æneas, Jason and Medea, are in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. It is pleasant to see our great poet so full of his predecessor. He cannot help, however, inventing particulars not to be found in his original. 8 And sigh'd his soul, &c. Clarke's Chaucer, vol. ii., p. 151. 9 « And saw the lion's shadow.”—Thisbe in Chaucer does not see the shadow before she sees the beast (a fine idea !); nor does she in Ovid. In both poets it is a lioness seen by moonlight. “With bloody mouth, of strangling of a beast.” Metam., lib. iv., v. 97. 10 “Stood Dido with a willow in her hand.”—The willow, a symbol of being forsaken, is not in Chaucer. It looks as if Shakspeare had seen it in a picture, where it would be more necessary than in a poem. 11 “ Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs.”—Shakspeare has here gone from Chaucer to Gower. Warton, in his Observations on the Faerie Queene, vol. i., p. 361, edit. 1807, has noticed a passage in Gower's story, full of imagination. The poet is speaking of Medea going out upon the business noticed by Shakspeare. Thus it fell upon a night, She glode* forth, as an adder doth. 12 “ There's not the smallest orb.”—The warbler of wood-notes wild” has here manifestly joined with Plato and other learned spirits to suggest to Milton his own account of the Music of the Spheres, which every reader of taste, I think, must agree with Mr. Knight in thinking “less perfect in sentiment and harmony.”—Pictorial Shakspeare, vol. ii., p. 448. The best thing in it is what is observed by Warton : that the listening to the spheres is the recreation of the Genius of the Wood (the speaker) after his day's duty, “when the world is locked up in sleep and silence.” * Glode, is glided. If Chaucer's contemporary had written often thus, his name would have been as famous. |