charms and whose merits he has here undertaken to personify and to celebrate.

First of all, then, let us observe, how studiously the poet has insulated the moral and intellectual beauty of the attachment between the heroine and her lover, amid the weakness, wickedness, and meanness of the court which surrounds them. It sparkles in lustre, like the diamond which Imogen places on the finger of her husband; it trembles in loveliness, like the parting kiss which she "had set between two charming words." Her mother dead, her brothers stolen in their infancy, how must the heart and mind of Imogen have grown up in sympathy with her orphan playmate, so brave and gentle, so graceful, intelligent, and accomplished. How pure and perfect their reciprocal affection, is beautifully shown in the two passages, where Imogen says of Posthumus to her father

He is

A man worth any woman-overbuys me
Almost the sum he pays,—

and where Posthumus says to Imogen,

As I my poor self did exchange for you
To your so infinite loss, &c.

This is the very religion of true and happy love— it thinks not of giving-imagines not that it gives at all-it is all boundless gratitude for what it

receives.

This lady "fair and royal," in uniting herself to this "poor but worthy gentleman," has but been true to her early affections and her matured judgment; the folly, inconsistency, and falsehood, lie all in her weak father, ruled by her wicked stepmother, who would fain marry the heiress of the kingdom to her worthless and booby son. Thus the dramatist has taken care to shew his heroine, from the very beginning, notwithstanding her clandestine marriage, free from the taint of disobedient self-will. By drawing the character of Cloten, too, at full length, shewing it in thorough contrast with that of Posthumus and in

utter repugnance to that of Imogen, we are made yet more forcibly to feel how fully and how justly her intellect has sanctioned her own disposal of her heart.

That intellect, indeed, not only beams serenely above the agitation of her own feelings, tenderly thrilling as that agitation is; but the light of it, radiant in her words, discovers to us the true aspect of every character about her. She is not only the most exquisitely feeling, but the most keenly penetrating person of the drama,-not only the finest poet of the piece, but the noblest moralist also. How admirably do her very first words hit off the whole character of her stepmother,

Oh

Dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant
Can tickle where she wounds!

How convincingly does she state her father's cruel
folly! And how truly expressed are the respec-
tive characters of her husband and her suitor in
the metaphor, "I chose an eagle, and did avoid a
puttock." And then, what a charming developement
of this parallel of hers do we find in the following
passage of her subsequent altercation with Cloten,
wherein, still to borrow her own expression, she is
"sprighted with a fool, frighted, and anger'd worse:”-
You sin against
Obedience, which you owe your father. For,
The contract you pretend with that base wretch
(One bred of alms, and foster'd with cold dishes,
With scraps o' the court), it is no contract, none—
And though it be allow'd in meaner parties
(Yet who than he more mean?) to knit their souls
(On whom there is no more dependency
But brats and beggary) in self-figur'd knot;
Yet you are curb'd from that enlargement by

Cloten.

The consequence o' the crown; and must not soil
The precious note of it with a base slave-
A hilding for a livery-a squire's cloth-
A pantler-not so eminent.

Imogen.

Profane fellow!
Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more

But what thou art besides, thou wert too base
To be his groom : thou wert dignified enough,

H

Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made
Comparative for your virtues, to be styl❜d
The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated
For being preferr'd so well.

How delicious, again, the dignified familiarity of her communing with her husband's faithful servant Pisanio, and his affectionate veneration for her, making him proof against all the temptations held out by the ambitious and crafty stepmother, to induce him to avail himself of the place he holds in his lady's confidence, to incline her to forget his banish'd lord, Who cannot be new-built, nor has no friends So much as but to prop him.

The dramatist, we see, was sensible that the refinement, no less than the constancy, of affectionate feeling, was a quality indispensable to the personage whom, in the character of a confidential servant, both to his hero and his heroine, he designed to be the guardian genius of their mutual faith and love, amid those formidable trials of both which were to make the leading interest of the drama. To no vulgar follower, however steadily attached-to none but a delicate as well as intelligent spirit-could Imogen have been represented as unbosoming all her sweetest and tenderest emotions of affection and solicitude for her absent lord. How beautifully is this interesting position of Pisanio, as the one sure medium of communication between two such hearts, first brought before us in that early scene where, after being anxiously sent back by his departing master to attend upon his otherwise unprotected mistress, she, in turn, despatches him to the haven, to bring her the very, very latest intelligence of his master's safety. And how her clear, bright imagination keeps pace with her ardent feeling, in the scene where Pisanio so expressively describes her lord's embarkation:

I would have broke mine eye-strings; crack'd them, but
To look upon him; till the diminution

Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
Nay, follow'd him, till he had melted from

The smallness of a gnat to air; and then

Have turn'd mine eye, and wept!-But, good Pisanio,
When shall we hear from him?

Again, how clearly does she render to us all the bearings of her position, as well as the whole cast of the feelings resulting from it, in the brief soliloquy:— A father cruel, and a step-dame false;

A foolish suitor to a wedded lady,

That hath her husband banish'd';-Oh, that husband,
My supreme crown of grief-and those repeated
Vexations of it! Had I been thief-stolen

As my two brothers, happy!-but most miserable
Is the desire that's glorious!—Bless'd be those,
How mean soe'er, that have their honest wills,
Which seasons comfort!

How effectively, too, this precedes the appearance of
Iachimo, introduced to her by Pisanio-

Madam, a noble gentleman of Rome
Comes from my lord with letters.—

and her delighted agitation in opening and perusing them

So far I read aloud

But even the very middle of my heart

Is warm'd by the rest, and takes it thankfully.

Let us mark the beautiful clearness of intellect, as well as purity of heart, which she manifests throughout this trying scene. Already, in treating the character of Iachimo, we have shown how her interest and her confidence are bespoken, absolutely commanded, for that visitor by the terms of her husband's letter which he bears-how the door is closed in her mind against all suspicion of the Italian's character and intentions, by her beloved Leonatus's own hand. She feels the kindest solicitude for one whom her husband owns as his benefactor. His abstracted and disordered behaviour first of all makes her fear that he is unwell,-next, that something ill has befallen her husband. It is from no weak simplicity, but through the most logical deductions, that she accepts all his exclamations and disclosures as sincere, until, oppressed by the sense of calamity

rather than of wrong, she so simply and beautifully says, "My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain ;" and adds, in answer to her informant, who goes on, adding to her load of already intolerable anguish, "Let me hear no more!" Iachimo, we see, here overacts his part. The disgusting detail into which he immediately enters, as to the way in which, he says, her husband spends the money drawn from her own coffers, instead of strengthening her conviction and rousing her resentment, as he had anticipated, has precisely the contrary effects. It both affords her time to recover from the first stunning shock given to her mind by such a communication acting upon the unguarded confidence into which she had been betrayed, and, by the very overcharging of the picture which he draws, begins to awaken her incredulity as to the truth of the representation. And so soon as he has ventured on his insulting proposal, how finely does the clear activity of her intellect appear in her instant call for the faithful Pisanio, whom her treacherous visitor has designedly sent away on a feigned errand, to look after his own servant.

Such a demonstration as this, from any woman in the like circumstances, whatever consciousness of physical weakness it may shew, is an eminent proof of moral energy and ready self-possession. It is one of the many instances, in the course of Shakespeare's developement of this character, which shew her so remarkably endowed with practical as well as speculative wisdom. A weak woman, intellectually speaking, would first of all have given vent to her indignation against the seducer: but the first thing which occurs to the firm, clear mind of Imogen is, not what she is called upon to say in this extraordinary emergency, but what it behoves her to do. She is instantly conscious, in herself, less of the insulted princess than of the woman who needs personal protection: for the highest heroism in woman, according to Shakespeare, is, at the same time, the most essentially feminine: he admitted not the virago into his ideal of female