In our heart's table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?

"The hind that would be mated with the lion,

Must die for love."

"Men have died, and the worms have eaten them, but not for love." In any event it were better to die than to win, as Helena wins, a triumph worse than death. Having gained our hearts so far for Helena, Shakespeare very adroitly makes her a woman's woman, dear to her own sex, as perhaps Rosalind and Beatrix were not so dear. To this end he creates Bertram's admirable mother, the advocate of Helena as against her own son. How gracious must be the low-born maiden with "friends poor but honest" whom a feudal countess desires for the bride of her boy! This Countess has loved in her day, and is veterum haud immemor amorum. Helena's virtues in like sort conquer the Florentine widow. Her sex adores her: Helena must be good, and not too vivaciously bewitching, perhaps. Mrs. Jameson, the critic, owns herself overcome. Let us quote Mrs. Jameson: “There never was, perhaps, a more beautiful picture of a woman's love, cherished in secret, not self-consuming in silent languishment, not pining in thought, not passive and desponding over its idol,' — but patient and hopeful, strong in its own intensity, and sustained by its own fond faith. The passion here reposes upon itself for all its interest; it derives nothing from art or ornament or circumstance; it

has nothing of the picturesque charm or glowing romance of Juliet; nothing of the poetical splendour of Portia, or the vestal grandeur of Isabel. The situation of Helena is the most painful and degrading in which a woman can be placed. She is poor and lowly; she loves a man who is far her superior in rank, who repays her love with indifference, and rejects her hand with scorn. She marries him against his will; he leaves her with contumely on the day of their marriage, and makes his return to her arms depend on conditions apparently impossible. All the circumstances and details with which Helena is surrounded are shocking to our feelings and wounding to our delicacy, and yet the beauty of the character is made to triumph over all; and Shakespeare, resting for effect on its internal resources and its genuine truth and sweetness, has not even availed himself of some extraneous advantages with which Helena is represented in the original story." Hazlitt, a male critic, sings to the same tune. "The character of Helena is one of great sweetness and delicacy. She is placed" (that is, she goes and places herself) "in circumstances of the most critical kind, and has to court her husband both as a maiden and a wife; yet the most scrupulous delicacy of female modesty is not once violated" by this female d'Artagnan! And for what does Helena violate, as she does, every conceivable scruple of male as well as of female delicacy? For a pretty, plucky, wanton boy, whose courage and good looks cannot atone for his abject falseness, for his draggled honour. Dr. Johnson speaks out like a man. cannot reconcile myself to him—a man noble without

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generosity, and young without truth, who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate; when she is dead by his unkindness sneaks home to another marriage; is accused by a woman he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness."

In part the Doctor is wrong. The King could have married Bertram to the ugliest widow in his realm. Again, nothing in Bertram's life "became him like the leaving" Helena. It was his duty not to live in the loveless wedlock thrust upon him: though not to repel the enforced bride with lack of courtesy. For the rest, regardless of Hazlitt and Mrs. Jameson, my heart is with Dr. Johnson. Shakespeare makes Helena - her passion apart — delightful. She has tenderness, wisdom, gentleness, and even humour. Unlike Mr. Israel Gollancz, she appreciates Parolles. She holds with him a wit-combat, that is not very witty, or of a "scrupulous female delicacy." She has a just estimate of Parolles, who easily imposes on Bertram's stupid boyhood.

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"I know him a notorious liar,

Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;

Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him

That they take place when virtue's steely bones
Look bleak i' the cold wind.”

Shakespeare, then, to make Helena sympathetic, has robed her in all the virtues and graces. Her tact, the affair of Bertram apart, is faultless; her wisdom, goodness, delicacy, and humorous appreciation (the affair of Bertram apart) are exquisite. Unluckily the more of genius the poet lavishes on his heroine, the more incredi

ble does she become. This is not the woman to lose her heart to a pretty boy of fifteen, too young to go to the wars even in the age of the Renaissance. Younger than he have gallant soldiers made, in many a war. Helena, even if her mature wisdom could permit her to be tangled in Bertram's hair and fettered by his eye, for a while, would have plucked the passion out of her heart. On the contrary she gains "the hound" (thus freely speaks Herr George Brandes concerning Bertram) by means and tricks intolerable.

Herr Brandes has an explanation of Shakespeare's error, which perhaps he does not carry to its logical conclusion. The poet wrote "Love's Labour's Won" in youth, and in the light tone and rhyming method of which traces remain. In later years he found the world out of joint, became pessimistic, and unpacked his bosom in "Hamlet." But, his But, his company being far from prosperous, bright little modern pieces had to be produced. “The thing had to be done." So Shakespeare, still as one in doleful dumps, took up his old bright little piece, "Love's Labour's Won," and tried to make a comedy out of that. "But now it did not turn out a comedy; the time was past when Shakespeare's chief strength lay in his humour." Herr Brandes is inconsistent. He admits that the banter about virginity, between Parolles and Helena, is part of the original early "Love's Labour's Won." Certainly Shakespeare's strength did not always lie in his humour, in the early days when he created that scene. Again, Parolles, in "All's Well that Ends Well,” is regarded, as "in all probability, touched up and endowed

with new wit during the revision." Therefore Shakespeare had more wit to spend after writing "Hamlet” than in the early days when "his strength lay in his humour." Herr Brandes cannot have it both ways, one way in his first, the other way in his second volume. If Shakespeare lost his humour, it is impossible that Parolles should be "the first faint outline of the figure which, seven or eight years later, became the immortal Falstaff," for, in these years, Shakespeare was growing in humour as Falstaff was putting on flesh. Nor could Shakespeare's humour have been fading, if he later improved, after writing "Hamlet," in "All's Well that Ends Well," on the first draft of Parolles in "Love's Labour 's Won."

We cannot disengage Shakespeare's emotional development from his plays. Of course we might argue the matter out on these lines. The bilious, morbid postHamletian Shakespeare says:—

"They want a comedy do they? I'll give them a comedy! Naught is everything, and everything is naught. That is the humour of it; that is the humour of everything in this lazar house of a life, in all this empty imposture of a world! Ho, boy, a flagon of that poor creature, small beer! I'll take up that empty little babyish Love's Labour's Won' of my salad days. I shall make Helena a perfect woman, nobly planned to warn, to comfort, and command, and I shall show how her whole moral nature is upset, -as in this pitiful life it would certainly be, — by the eyes and curls of a pretty, profligate, false, mannerless wretch of a boy. She shall sink deeper than ever plummet sounds, she shall marry