PARLOUS. Act I., Sc. 3.

"A parlous knock."

Parlous is merely a corruption of perilous.

PILCHER. Act III., Sc. 1.

"Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears? Pilcher is here used for the scabbard; pilch is still used for a sort of wrapper for young children. The Anglo-Saxon pylce was a fur garment.

POOR JOHN. Act I., Sc. 1.

"Thou hadst been poor John."

Poor John was the hake, a fish nearly allied to the cod, salted and dried.

PRICK-SONG. Act II., Sc. 4.

'He fights as you sing prick-song."

Prick-song was music pricked or noted down, so as to be read according to rule, and thus by rule would Tybalt fight.

PRINCOX. Act I., Sc. 5.

"You are a princox."

Princox, from the Latin præcox, is a forward boy, a young coxcomb.

PUMP. Act II., Sc. 4.

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Why, then is my pump well flowered."

A pump was a shoe, and we yet retain the name. The ribbons in the pump were formed into ornamental shapes, as flowers. PUTTEST UP. Act III., Sc. 3.

"Thou puttest up thy fortune and thy love." Puttest up is probably used in the sense of puttest aside. R. Act II., Sc. 4.

"R is for the dog."

Erasmus has told us the meaning of R being called the dog's letter: "R litera quæ in Rixando, prima est, canina vocatur." The old writers formed a verb from the noise of a dog, as in Nashe (1600), who has, "They arre and bark at night against the moon."

REBECK. Act IV., Sc. 5.

"What say you, Hugh Rebeck?"

The rebeck was a musical instrument, a three-stringed violin. RUSHES. Act I., Sc. 4.

"Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels."

Though carpets for the floor were known in Italy, they were not in use in England in the time of Elizabeth, whose pre

sence-chamber is described by Hentzner as being spread with hay, by which he meant rushes.

SAUCY MERCHANT. Act II., Sc. 4.

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'What saucy merchant was this?"

It has been pointed out by Steevens, that merchant was used in contradistinction to gentleman, in the same way as we now use chap., which is a contraction of chapman.

SCALES. Act I., Sc. 2.

"But in that crystal scales."

Scales, a pair of scales in modern language, is used as a noun singular.

SCATH. Act I., Sc. 5.

"This trick may chance to scath you."

Scath, from the Anglo-Saxon sceath, is hurt, damage, injury. SLIP. Act II., Sc. 4.

"What counterfeit did I give you?

The slip, sir, the slip."

The slip, and the counterfeit, were alike terms for false coin. Robert Greene, in his 'Thieves Falling Out,' says, "therefore he went and got him certain slips, which are counterfeit pieces of money, being brass, and covered over with silver, which the common people call slips."

STINTED. Act I., Sc. 3.

"It stinted, and said-Ay."

Stinted is the past participle of the Anglo-Saxon standan, to stand, stop, or stay. The word is often used by our old writers, but frequently in the forms of stent, or stynt: as in Chaucer, 'The Knight's Tale'

"All stenten is the mourning, and the tears."

SUIT. Act I., Sc. 4.

"And then dreams he of smelling out a suit."

The courtier's solicitation at court was called a suit, he was a suitor; a process is a suit at law.

SWASHING. Act I., Sc. 1.

"Remember thy swashing blow."

See 'As You Like It.'

TEEN. Act I., Sc. 3.

"To my teen be it spoken."

Teen is sorrow, or vexation.

TORCH. Act I., Sc. 4.

"Give me a torch."

Rooms of state were formerly lighted by waxen torches borne by attendants, and thus Romeo desires to be a candle

holder, and look on." It was not a merely servile office in England, for the torches were held by gentlemen pensioners while a play was acted before Elizabeth in King's College Chapel, Cambridge.

TOWARDS. Act I., Sc. 5.

"We have a trifling foolish banquet towards."

Towards is ready, at hand.

TYBALT. Act II., Sc. 4.

"More than prince of cats."

In the old tale of Reynard the Fox, Tybert is the name of the cat.

UNMANN'D. Act III., Sc. 2.

"Hood my unmann'd blood."

Unmann'd is a term used in hawking. To man a hawk is to render her familiar with the falconer, and was sometimes used in the general sense of training.

PLOT AND CHARACTERS.

"Of the truth of Juliet's story, they (the Veronese) seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact-giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partlydecayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." Byron thus described the tomb of Juliet to his friend Moore, as he saw it at the close of autumn, when withered leaves had dropped into the decayed sarcophagus, and the vines that are trailed above it had been stripped of their fruit. His letter to Moore, in which this passage occurs, is dated the 7th November. But this wild and desolate garden only struck Byron as appropriate to the legend-to that simple tale of fierce hatreds and fatal loves which tradition has still preserved, amongst those who may never have read Luigi da Porto or Bandello, the Italian romancers who give the tale,

and who, perhaps, never heard the name of Shakspere. To the legend only is the blighted place appropriate. For who that has ever been thoroughly imbued with the story of Juliet, as told by Shakspere,-who that has heard his "glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which ennobles the soul and gives to it its highest sublimity, and which elevates even the senses themselves into soul," *. who that, in our great poet's matchless delineation of Juliet's love, has perceived "whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous on the first opening of the rose," + -who, indeed, that looks upon the tomb of the Juliet of Shakspere, can see only a shapeless ruin amidst wildness and desolation?

A grave? O, no: a lantern,

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light."

In 'Romeo and Juliet' the principle of limiting the pathetic according to the degree in which it is calculated to produce emotions of pleasure, is interwoven with the whole structure and conduct of the play. The tragical part of the story, from the first scene to the last, is held in subjection to the beautiful. It is not only that the beautiful comes to the relief of the tragic, as in 'Lear' and 'Othello,' but here the tragic is only a mode of exhibiting the beautiful under its most striking aspects. Shakspere never intended that the story of Romeo and Juliet' should lacerate the heart. When Mrs. Inchbald, therefore, said in her preface to the acted play, "Romeo and Juliet' is called a pathetic tragedy, but it is not so in reality-it charms the understanding and delights the imagination, without melting, though it touches, the heart," she paid the highest compliment to Shakspere's skill as an artist, for he had thoroughly worked out his own idea.

Coleridge has described the homogeneousness-the totality of interest-which is the great characteristic of this play, by one of those beautiful analogies which could only proceed from the pen of a true poet :

A. W. Schlegel's Lectures.

+ Ibid.

"Whence arises the harmony that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes,-in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours in the heaths, ferns, and lichens, the leaves of the beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging autumn to returning spring,—compared with the visual effect from the greater number of artificial plan tations ?-From this, that the natural landscape is effected, as it were, by a single energy modified ab intra in each component part. And as this is the particular excellence of the Shaksperian drama generally, so is it especially characteristic of the 'Romeo and Juliet.'"*

Schlegel carried out the proofs of this assertion in an Essay on 'Romeo and Juliet'; † in which, to use his own words, he "went through the whole of the scenes in their order, and demonstrated the inward necessity of each with reference to the whole; showed why such a particular circle of characters and relations was placed around the two lovers; explained the signification of the mirth here and there scattered; and justified the use of the occasional heightening given to the poetical colours." Schlegel wisely did this to exhibit what is more remarkable in Shakspere than in any other poet, “the thorough formation of a work, even in its minutest part, according to a leading idea-the dominion of the animating spirit over all the means of execution." § The general criticism of Schlegel upon 'Romeo and Juliet' is based upon a perfect comprehension of this great principle upon which Shakspere worked. The following is the close of a celebrated passage upon 'Romeo and Juliet,' which has often been quoted;—but it is altogether so true and so beautiful, that we cannot resist the pleasure of circulating it still more widely :—

"Whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous on the first opening of the rose, is breathed into this poem. But, even more rapidly than the earliest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, it hurries on from the first timidly