This is noble painting, but it is something higher. When Antony goes on to compare himself to the cloud which "even with a thought the rack dislimns," we learn how the great poet uses his observation of nature. Not only do such magnificent objects as these receive an elevation from the poet's moral application of them, but the commonest things, even the vulgarest things, ludicrous but for their management, become in the highest degree poetical. Many a time in the low meadows of the Avon would Shakspere have seen the irritation of the herd under the torments of the gad-fly. The poet takes this common thing to describe an event which changed the destinies of the world : "Yon ribald nag of Egypt, : Whom leprosy o'ertake! i' the midst o' the fight, When vantage like a pair of twins appear'd, Both as the same, or rather ours the elder, The brize upon her, like a cow in June, When Hector is in the field, "The strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge, Brutus, speculating upon the probable consequences of Cæsar becoming king, exclaims: : The same object had been seen and described in an earlier play, without its grand association : "The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun." * The snake seems a liege subject of the domain of poetry. Her enamel skin is a weed for a fairy; † the green and gilded snake wreathed around the sleeping man is a picture. But what ordinary writer would not shrink from the poetical handling of a snail? It is the surpassing accuracy of the naturalist that has introduced the snail into one of the noblest passages of the poet, in juxtaposition with the Hesperides and Apollo's lute : "Love's feeling is more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails." § One of the grandest scenes of a tragedy of the mature poet is full of the most familiar images derived from an accurate observation of the natural world. The images seem to rise up spontaneously out of the minute recollections of a life spent in watching the movements of the lower creation. "A deed of dreadful note" is to be done before nightfall. The bat, the beetle, and the crow are the common, and therefore the most appropriate, instruments which are used to mark the approach of night. The simplest thing of life is thus raised into sublimity at a touch: ere "Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight;" "The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, the murder of Banquo is to be done. The very time is at hand : : The naturalist has not only heard the "drowsy hums" of the beetle as he wandered in the evening twilight, but he has traced the insect to its hiding-place. The poet associates the fact with a great lesson, to be content in obscure safety: Let it not be forgotten that the young Shakspere had to make himself a naturalist. Books of accurate observation there were none to guide him; for the popular works of natural history, of which there were very few, were full of extravagant fables and vague descriptions. Mr. Douce has told us that Shakspere was extremely well acquainted with one of these works- Batman uppon Titus Andronicus, Act II., Scene III. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Act II., Scene II. As You Like It, Act Iv., Scene III Cymbeline, Act III., Scene III. Bartholome his booke De proprietatibus rerum, 1582;' and he has ascertained that the original price of this volume was eight shillings. But Shakspere did not go to Bartholomeus, or to Batman (who made large additions to the original work from Gesner), for his truths in natural history. Mr. Douce has cited many passages in his Illustrations,' in which he traces Shakspere to Bartholomeus. We have gone carefully through the volumes where these are scattered up and down, and we find a remarkable circumstance unnoticed by Mr. Douce, that these passages, with scarcely an exception, refer to the vulgar errors of natural history which Shakspere has transmuted into never-dying poetry. It is here that we find the origin of the toad which wears "a precious jewel in his head;"* of the phoenix of Arabia;† of the basilisk that kills the innocent gazer; of the unlicked bear-whelp.§ But the truths of natural history which we constantly light upon in Shakspere were all essentially derived from his own observation. There is a remarkable instance in his discrimination between the popular belief and the scientific truth in his notice of the habits of the cuckoo. The Fool in Lear expresses the popular belief in a proverbial sentence : "For you trow, nuncle, The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long Worcester in his address to Henry IV., expresses the scientific fact without the vulgar exaggeration, a fact unnoticed till the time of Dr. Jenner by any writer but the naturalist William Shakspere : :- "Being fed by us, you used us so As that ungentle gull the cuckoo's bird That even our love durst not come near your sight." || The noble description of the commonwealth of bees in Henry V. was suggested, in all probability, by a similar description in Lyly's Euphues.' But Shakspere's description not only displays the wonderful accuracy of his observation, in subservience to the poetical art, but the unerring discrimination of his philosophy. Lyly makes his bees exercise the reasoning faculty-choose a king, call a parliament, consult for laws, elect officers; Shakspere says "they have a king and officers;" and he refers their operations to "a rule in nature." The same accuracy that he brought to the observation of the workings of nature in the fields, he bestows upon the assistant labours of art in the garden. The fine dialogue between the old gardener at Langley and the servants, is full of technical information. The great principles of horticultural economy, pruning and weeding, are there as clearly displayed as in the most anti-poetical of treatises. We have the crab-tree slip grafted upon noble stock (the reverse of the gardener's practice) in one play: in another we have the luxurious "scions put As You Like It, Act II., Scene I. Henry VI., Part II., Act II., Scene II. + Tempest, Act II., Scene II. § Ibid., Part III., Act II., Scene II. || See our Illustration of this passage, Henry IV., Part I., Act v., Scene I. ¶ Henry VI., Part II., Act III., Scene II. in wild and savage stock."* A writer in a technical periodical work seriously maintains that Shakspere was a professional gardener.† This is better evidence of the poet's horticultural acquirements than Steevens's pert remark, "Shakspeare seems to have had little knowledge in gardening."‡ Shakspere's philosophy of the gardener's art is true of all art. It is the great Platonic belief which raises art into something much higher than a thing of mere imitation, showing the great informing spirit of the universe working through man, as through any other agency of his will:— . Perdita's flowers! who can mention them, and not think of the wonderful union of the accuracy of the naturalist with the loveliest images of the poet? It has been well remarked that in Milton's Lycidas' we have "among vernal flowers many of those which are the offspring of Midsummer;" but Shakspere distinguishes his groups, assorting those of the several seasons. || Perhaps in the whole compass of poetry there is no such perfect combination of elegance and truth as the passage in which Perdita bestows her gifts-parts of which are of such surpassing loveliness, that the sense aches at them : "O, Proserpina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall From Dis's waggon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim, * Henry V., Act III., Scene v. Note on As You Like It, Act III., Scene 11. The Gardener's Chronicle, May 29, 1841. § Winter's Tale, Act IV., Scene III. || Patterson's Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's Plays.' Winter's Tale, Act IV., Scene III. Of all the objects of creation it is in flowers that Shakspere's genius appears most to revel and luxuriate; but the precision with which he seizes upon their characteristics distinguishes him from all other poets. A word is a description. The "pale primrose," the "azur'd harebell," are the flowers to be strewn upon Fidele's grave; but how is their beauty elevated when the one is compared to her face, and the other to her veins! Shakspere perhaps caught the sweetest image of his sweetest song from the lines of Chaucer which we have recently quoted; where we have the lark, and the fiery Phoebus drying the silver drops on the leaves. But it was impossible to have translated this fine passage, as Shakspere has done, without the minute observation of the naturalist working with the invention of the poet : server. The rosebud shrivels and dies, and the cause is disregarded by a common obThe poetical naturalist points out "the bud bit by an envious worm."t Again, the microscope of the poet sees "the crimson drops i' the bottom of a cowslip," and the observation lies in the cells of his memory till it becomes a comparison of exquisite delicacy in reference to the "cinque-spotted" mark of the sleeping Imogen. But the eye which observes everything is not only an eye for beauty, as it looks upon the produce of the fields; it has the sense of utility as strong as that which exists in the calculations of the most anti-poetical. The mad Lear's garland is a catalogue of the husbandman's too luxuriant enemies: : "Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds, Who could have conceived the noble picture in Henry V. of a country wasted by war, but one who from his youth upward had been familiar, even to the minutest practice, with all that is achieved by cultivation, and all that is lost by neglect; who had seen the wild powers of nature held in subjection to the same producing power under the guidance of art;-who had himself assisted in this best conquest of man?- |