ception to the general character of the beauty that throws its rich The gentleness of Romeo evening light over the closing scenes. is apparent, even while he says "The time and my intents are savage-wild;" for he adds, with a strong effort, to his faithful Balthasar, “Live, and be prosperous, and farewell, good fellow." His entreaties to Paris-"O be gone!"-are full of the same tenderness. He is constrained to fight with him-he slays him—but he almost weeps over him, as "One writ with me in sour misfortune's book." The remainder of Romeo's speech in the tomb is, as Coleridge has put it, "the master example, how beauty can at once increase and modify passion." "O here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh." This is the one portion of the "melancholy elegy on the frailty of love, from its own nature and external circumstances,' "* which Romeo sings before his last sleep. And how beautifully is the corresponding part sung by the waking and dying Juliet ! "What's here? a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand? Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end : : O churl! drink all; and left no friendly drop, To help me after ?--I will kiss thy lips; To make me die with a restorative." They have paid the penalty of the fierce hatreds that were engendered around them, and of their own precipitancy. But their misfortunes and their loves have healed the enmities of which they were the victims. "Poor sacrifices!" Capulet may now say, "O, brother Montague, give me thy hand." They have left a peace behind them which they could not taste themselves. But their first "rash and unadvis'd" contract was elevated into all that was pure and beautiful, by their after sorrows and their constancy; and in happier regions their affections may put on that calmness of immortality which the ancients typified in their allegory of Love and the Soul.' *A. W. Schlegel. END OF VOLUME VII. London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street. |