pastoral from sliding into the ridiculous, as it has always a tendency to do. shown in the management of the incident of Phebe's love for Ganymede.

to us:

The same art is again Lodge thus presents it

"Ganimede, overhearing all these passions of Montanus, could not brook the cruelty of Phabe, but, starting from behind a bush, said, And if, damsel, you fled from me, I would transform you as Daphne to a bay, and then in contempt trample your branches under my feet. Phobe, at this sudden reply, was amazed, especially when she saw so fair a swain as Ganimede; blushing, therefore, she would have home gone, but that he held her by the hand, and prosecuted his reply thus: What, shepherdess, so fair and so cruel? Disdain beseems not cottages, nor coyness maids; for either they be condemned to be too proud, or too froward. Take heed, fair nymph, that in despising love you be not overreached with love, and, in shaking off all, shape yourself to your own shadow, and so with Narcissus prove passionate and yet unpitied. Oft have I heard, and sometime have I seen, high disdain turned to hot desires. Because thou art beautiful be not so coy: as there is nothing more fair, so there is nothing more fading: as momentary as the shadows which grow from a cloudy sun. Such, my fair shepherdess, as disdain in youth desire in age, and then are they hated in the winter that might have been loved in the prime. A wrinkled maid is like to a parched rose, that is cast up in coffers to please the smell, not worn in the hand to content the eye. There is no folly in love to-had I wist? and therefore be ruled by me, love while thou art young, lest thou be disdained when thou art old. Beauty nor time cannot be recalled, and if thou love, like of Montanus; for if his desires are many, so his deserts are great.

"Phoebe all this while gazed on the perfection of Ganimede, as deeply enamoured of his perfection as Montanus inveigled with hers: for her eye made survey of his excellent feature, which she found so rare, that she thought the ghost of Adonis had leapt from Elisium in the shape of a swain.'

Compare this with the fifth scene of the third act of As You Like It :

"Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?

I see no more in you, than in the ordinary
Of nature's sale-work :-Od 's my little life!
I think, she means to tangle my eyes too:-
No, 'faith, proud mistress, hope not after it ;
'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,
Your bugle eye-balls, nor your cheek of cream,
That can entame my spirits to your worship.-
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain?
You are a thousand times a properer man,
Than she a woman: 'T is such fools as you,
That make the world full of ill-favour'd children:

'Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her;

And out of you she sees herself more proper,
Than any of her lineaments can show her;-
But, mistress, know yourself; down on your knees,
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love:"

It is unnecessary for us to pursue this parallel farther. Shakspere follows Lodge, with scarcely a deviation, in the conduct of his story. We have the same incidents of the elder brother's exile,--his rescue from a savage beast by the courage of the brother he had injured,—and his passion for the banished daughter of the usurping king. We have, of course, the same discovery of Rosalind to her father, and the same happy marriage of the princesses with their lovers, as well as that of the coy shepherdess with her shepherd. The catastrophe, however, is different. The usurping king of Lodge comes out with a mighty army to fight his rebellious peers,—when the sojourners in the forest join the battle, the usurper is slain, and the rightful king restored. Shakspere manages the matter after a milder fashion :

"Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day
Men of great worth resorted to this forest,
Address'd a mighty power; which were on foot,
In his own conduct, purposely to take
His brother here, and put him to the sword:
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came;
Where, meeting with an old religious man,
After some question with him, was converted
Both from his enterprise, and from the world:
His crown bequeathing to his banish'd brother
And all their lands restor'd to them again
That were with him exil'd."

Dr. Johnson does not entirely disapprove of this arrangement; but he thinks that Shakspere lost a fit occasion for a serious discourse: "By hastening to the end of this work, Shakspere suppressed the dialogue between the usurper and the hermit, and lost an opportunity of exhibiting a moral lesson in which he might have found matter worthy of his highest powers." Shakspere, we venture to ima gine, hastened to the end of his work, as his work was naturally approaching its conclusion. His philosophy, according to his usual practice, accompanies his action; and he does not reserve his moral till the end. To him it can never be objected, "What tedious homily have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried, Have patience, good people!" His "moral lesson" is to be collected out of his incidents and his characters. Perhaps there is no play more full of real moral lessons than As You Like It. What in Lodge was a pastoral replete with quaintness, and antithesis, and pedantry, and striving after effect, becomes in Shakspere an imaginative drama, in which the real is blended with the poetical in such intimate union, that the highest poetry appears to be as essentially natural as the most familiar gossip; and the loftiest philosophy is interwoven with the occur rences of every-day life, so as to teach us that there is a philosophical aspect of the commonest things It is this spirit which informs his forest of Arden with such life, and truth, and beauty, as belongs to no other representation of pastoral scenes; which takes us into the depths of solitude, and shows us how the feelings of social life alone can give us

" tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything; '

which builds a throne for intellect "under the greenwood tree," and there, by characteristic satire, gently indicates to us the vanity of the things which bind us to the world; whilst he teaches us that life has its happiness in the cultivation of the affections,-in content and independence of spirit. It was by a process such as this that the novel of Lodge was changed into the comedy of Shakspere. The amalgamation of Jaques and Touchstone with Orlando and Rosalind is one of the most wonderful efforts of originality in the whole compass of poetical creation.

NOTE ON THE THEATRICAL COSTUME OF AS YOU LIKE IT.

Although Shakspere has not given a name either to the duchy in which the scene is laid, or the duke who has been deprived of it, we have one point to guide us in our selection of the costume of this exquisite comedy,-namely, the circumstance of an independent duchy in France. The action must therefore be supposed to take place before the union of the great fiefs to the crown, and consequently not later than the reign of Louis XII., whose marriage with Anne of Brittany incorporated that last and most independent province with the royal dominions. Illuminations of the reign of Charles VIII., the immediate predecessor of Louis XII., have been elsewhere suggested as furnishing a picturesque and appropriate costume for the usurping duke and his courtiers, and a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris (Rondeaux Chants Royal, No. 6989) as supplying the hunting dress of the time. Many of the former are engraved in Montfaucon's Monarchie Française,' and some figures from the latter will be found in Mons. Willemin's superb work, Monumens inédites, &c.' The dress of a shepherd of this period may be found in Pynson's 'Shepherd's Kalendar:' and the splendid Harleian MS., No. 4425, presents us with the ordinary habits of an ecclesiastic when not clad in the sacred vestments of his office or order. The late Mr. Douce, in his admirable dissertation on the clowns of Shakspere, has made the following remarks on the dress of this character:-"Touchstone is the domestic fool of Frederick, the duke's brother, and belongs to the class of witty or allowed fools. He is threatened with the whip, a mode of chastisement which was often inflicted on these motley personages. His dress should be a party-coloured garment. He should occasionally carry a bauble in his hand and wear ape's ears to his hood, which is probably the head dress intended by Shakespeare, there being no allusion whatever to a cock's head or comb."

* Costume of Shakespear's Comedy of As You Like It, by J. R. Planché.' 12mo., London, 1825.
↑ See also Modus le Roy. Livre de Chasse.' Folio, Chambery, 1486.