character there is still an undercurrent of sense and virtue, a wisdom of nature, not dead, but asleep, whereby he may yet be recovered to manhood. So that, in effect, we are not unwilling to see him through her eyes, and, in the strength of her well-approved wisdom, to take upon trust, that he has good qualities which we ere unable of ourselves to discover. Thus the several parts are drawn into each other, and in virtue thereof are made to evolve a manifold rich significance; so that the characters of Helena and Bertram, as Shakespeare conceived them, cannot be understood apart from the others with which they are dramatically associated.

Coleridge incidentally speaks of Helena as Shakespeare's loveliest character;" and Mrs. Jameson, from whose judgment we shall take no appeal to our own, sets her down as exemplifying that union of strength and tenderness, which Foster describes in one of his Essays as being "the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity;' -a character, she adds, "almost as hard to delineate in fiction as to find in real life." Without either questioning or subscribing these statements, we have to confess, that for depth, sweetness, energy, and solidity of character, all drawn into one, Helena is not surpassed by any of Shakespeare's heroines. Her great strength of mind is finely apparent in that, absorbed as she is in the passion that shapes her life, scarce any of the Poet's characters, after Hamlet, deals more in propositions of general truth, as distinguished from the utterances of individual sentiment and emotion. We should suppose that all her thoughts, being struck out in such a glowing heat, would so cleave to the circumstances as to have little force apart from them; yet much that she says holds as good in a general application as in reference to her own particular. And perhaps for the same cause, her feelings, strong as they are, never so get the upper hand as to betray her into any self-delusion; as appears in the unbosoming of herself to the Countess, where we have the sweet reluctance of modesty yielding to a holy regard for truth. In her condition there is

much indeed to move our pity; yet her behaviour and the grounds thereof are such that she never suffers any loss of our respect; one reason of which is, because we see that her fine faculties are wide awake and her fine feelings keenly alive to the nature of what she undertakes. Thus she passes unharmed through the most terrible butward dishonours, firmly relying on her rectitude of purpose; and we dare not think any thing to her hurt, because she has taken the measure of her danger, looks it full in the face, and nobly feels secure in that apparelling of strength. Here, truly we have somewhat very like the sublimity of moral courage. And this precious, peerless jewel in a setting of the most tender, delicate, sensitive womanhood! It is a clean triumph of the inward and essential over the outward and accidental; her character oeing radiant of a spiritual grace which the lowest and ugliest situation cannot obscure.

There needs no scruple, that the delineation is one of extraor dinary power: perhaps, indeed, it may stand as the Poet's mas terpiece in the conquest of inherent difficulties; and it is observable that here for once he does not conquer them without betraying his exertions. Of course, the hardness of the task was to represent her as doing what were scarce pardonable in another, yet as acting on such grounds, from such motives, and to such issues. that the undertaking not only is but appears commendable in her. And the Poet seems to have felt, that something like a mysterious, supernatural impulse, together with all the reverence and authority of the good old Countess, were needful to bring her off with dignity and honour. And, perhaps, after all, nothing but success could vindicate her course; for such a thing, to be proper, must be practicable; and who could so enter into her mind as to see its practicability till it be done? — While on the subject we may as well remark, that though Helena is herself all dignity and delicacy, some of her talk with Parolles in the first scene is neither delicate nor dignified: it is simply a foul blemish, and we can but regret the Poet did not throw it out in the revisal; sure we are. that he did not retain it to please himself.

Almost every body falls in love with the Countess. And, truly one so meek, and sweet, and venerable, who can help loving her! or who, if he can resist her, will dare to own it? We can almost find in our heart to adore the beauty of youth; yet this blessed old creature is enough to persuade us that age may be more beautiful still. Her generous sensibility to native worth amply atones for her son's mean pride of birth: all her honours of rank and place she would gladly resign, to have been the mother of the poor orphan left in her care: Campbell says, "She redeems nobility by reverting to nature." Mr. Verplanck thinks, as well he may, that the Poet's special purpose in this play was to set forth the precedence of innate over circumstantial distinctions. Yet observe with what a catholic spirit he teaches this great lesson, recognizing the noble man in the nobleman, and telling us that none know so well how to prize the nobilities of nature, as those who, like the King and the Countess in this play, have experienced the nothingness of all other claims.

Dr. Johnson says, - I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram ; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate whet she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage: is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness." A terrible sentence indeed! and its vigour, if not its justice, is attested by the frequency with which it is quoted. In the first place, the Poet did not mean we should reconcile our hearts to Bertram, but that he should not unreconcile them to Helena; nay, that her love should appear to the greater advantage for the unworthiness of its

object. Then, he does not marry her as a coward, but merely because he has no choice; and does not yield till he has shown all the courage that were compatible with discretion. Nor does he leave her as a profligate, but to escape from what is to him an unholy match, as being on his side without love; and his profligacy is not so much the cause as the consequence of his fight and exile. Finally, he is not dismissed to happiness, but rather left where he cannot be happy, unless he have dismissed his faults. And, surely, he may have some allowance, because of the tyranny laid upon him, and that, too, in a sentiment where nature pleads loudest for freedom, and which, if free, yields the strongest motives to virtue; if not, to vice. For his falsehood there is truly no excuse, save that he pays a round penalty in the shame that so quickly overtakes him; which shows how careful the Poet was to make due provision for his amendment. His original fault, as already indicated, was an overweening pride of birth; yet in due time he unfolds in himself better titles to honour than ancestry can bestow; and, this done, he naturally grows more willing to allow similar titles in another. Thus Shakespeare purposely represents him as a man of very mixed character, in whom the evil for a while gets a sad mastery; and he takes care to provide the canon whereby he would have us judge him: "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipp'd them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherish'd by our virtues."

Several critics have managed somehow to speak of Parolles and Falstaff together. A foul sin against Sir John! Schlegel, however, justly remarks, that the scenes where our captain figures contain matter enough for an excellent comedy. Such a compound of volubility, impudence, rascality, and poltroonery, is he not a most illustrious pronoun of a man? And is it not a marvel that one so inexpressibly mean, and withal so fully aware of his meanness, does not cut his own acquaintance? But the greatest wonder about him is, how the Poet could run his own intellectuality into such a windbag without marring his windbag perfection. That the goddess whom Bertram worships does not whisper in his ear the unfathomable baseness of this "lump of counterfeit ore," is a piece of dramatic retribution at once natural and just. Far as the joke is pushed upon Parolles, we never feel like crying out, Hold enough! we make the utmost reprisals upon him without compunction; for "that he should know what he is, and be that he is" seems an offence for which infinite shames are a scarce sufficent indemnification.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

KING of France.

DUKE of Florence.

BERTRAM, Count of Rousillon.

LAFEU, an old Lord.

PAROLLES, a Follower of Bertram.

French Envoy,

French Gentleman,

serving with Bertram.

RINALDO, Steward to the Countess of Rousillon.

Clown, belonging to her Household.

A Gentle Astringer.

A Page.

COUNTESS of Rousillon, Mother to Bertrain.

HELENA, a Gentlewoman protected by the Countess

A Widow of Florence.

DIANA, Daughter to the Widow.

VIOLENTA,

MARIANA,

Neighbours and Friends to the Widow

Lords, attending on the King; Officers, Soldiers, &c., French and Florentine.

SCENE, partly in France, and partly in Tuscany.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

ACT I.

SCENE I. Rousillon.

A Room in the COUNTESS's Palace.

Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of Rousillon,
HELENA, and LAFEU, all in black.

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 generally 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.

Count. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment ?

Laf. He hath abandon'd his physicians, madam ;

Under the old feudal law of England, the heirs of great for tunes were the king's wards. The same was also the case in Normandy, and Shakespeare but extends a law of a province over the whole nation.

H.