give it a half-unconscious utterance? Poor Juliet! She had nobody to sing this song for her. It bursts spontaneously

from her own lips.

I cannot but think that this view invests the passage with a melancholy charm, unsurpassed in its pathos by any situation in the whole range of the drama, except, perhaps, that of Iphigenia at the sacrificial altar. It is scarcely possible, indeed, that it can ever again awaken emotions so intense as it must have kindled in the days of Elizabeth and James; because its language does not call up in our minds the same associations as in the minds of our ancestors. The Hymeneal Mask has vanished from our customs, and its idiom has become a dead letter. To us the language is not a suggestion, but a study: to them it was fraught with a peculiar significance, and every image was coupled with an every-day reality. The very opening lines-so essentially epithalamic -must have conjured up, to an auditory in whose ears the phraseology was as "familiar as household words," the whole "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of honoured wedlock; and they would have instinctively imagined the magnificent and joyous solemnities that should have blessed the union of the only daughter of the rich and noble Capulet with the only son of the no less noble and wealthy Montague. But what was the scene before their eyes? Where was the bridal escort? where the assembled friends of "both their houses?" where the crowd of gay and gallant youths who should have homaged the beauty of the bride-and where, oh, where, the maidens that were her fellows to bear her company? Of all the customary pageant, but one solitary figure-the figure of the bride herself· is to be seen. All is solitude, and darkness, and silence. But one sound breaks the unnatural stillnessthe voice of that sweet, lonely girl, who like the young bird timidly practising, in the unfrequented shade, the remembered song of its kindred-" sits darkling" in her sequestered bower, and eases her impassioned heart in snatches of remem

bered song, which, in her mind, too, are associated with her situation.

And what a song it is!-sweet as the nightingale's that

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Nightly sings on yon pomegranate tree;

and ardent as, when in Eden,

"the amorous bird of night

Sung Spousal; and bid haste the evening Star

On his hill-top to light the bridal lamp:”

1

but it is sad and ominous withal; and, to the auditor familiar with its import, as portentous and melancholy as the fatal descant which, in poets' ears, preludes the departure of the dying swan. The loves of Hero and Leander were (as we have seen) presaged to an evil issue by the absence of the usual festive rights: a similar defect forebodes to those of Romeo and Juliet a like unhappy destiny.2

1 Though the Paradise Lost be not a hymeneal poem, this passage, in which the poet properly treats a hymencal subject in the appropriated style, might have been adduced, at page 3, as an additional illustration of the hymeneal character of the passages there quoted from the soliloquy. The same observation applies to a passage in the Tempest, just preceding the Prothalamic Mask in the first scene of the fourth act, where Ferdinand, having obtained Prospero's consent to his marriage with Miranda, disclaims any thought of anticipating the day

"When he shall think or Phoebus steeds are foundered,

Or night kept chained below."

2 The lively and cheerful images of this soliloquy are in striking contrast with the situation of the speaker, and serve to heighten the pity with which we anticipate the fate of the lovely and unconscious victim. By a similar resort to this lightning before death, the poet has, at a later period of the action, skilfully filled the mind of his hero with happy dreams and joyful presages, which throw the approaching catastrophe into deep and dark-shadowed relief:—

If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.

What heart in the auditory but must have been smitten with compassion for the bride? What eyes could have withheld from the poet the tribute of a flood of tears?

To my mind, this passage possesses, independently of its natural beauty, an artistical charm worthy of the highest admiration that consummate skill, I mean, with which the poet has contrived to pour forth from the lips of his young, and innocent, and enthusiastic heroine, the "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" of the most ardent passion, without overstepping the truth of nature, or leaving on the maidenly pureness of her character the slightest stain of immodesty. The feelings proper to her passion and situation are undoubtedly her own; but the expression of them is suggested by external circumstances, and the language in which they are clothed unconsciously borrowed from the conventional vocabulary used on such occasions by the noblest in the land, and in the hearing of the most virtuous.1

Such was the art-such the inexhaustible resources-of that poet, whom the civilized world at one time deemed an UNTUTORED BARBARIAN! 2

N. J. HALPIN.

My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne;

And, all this day, an accustomed spirit

Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

I dreamt my Lady came and found me dead, &c.

1 Ben Jonson informs us that it was "the most royal Princes, and greatest persons," who were "commonly the personators of these actions." -Introduction to the Hymenæi.

2 The critics of France pronounced the sentence, and the wits of England bowed to the decision. But that was in "the Augustan age" of both those literary empires.

ART. V.-John Wilson, the singer, in "Much ado about Nothing," a musical composer in Shakespeare's Plays.

Since I wrote the note on a passage in "Much ado about Nothing," Act ii., sc. 3, some farther information has reached me respecting John Wilson, the singer of the song in that play

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more," &c.

which information, I think, is worthy a place in the Papers of the Shakespeare Society. It will be remembered, perhaps, that in the 4to, 1600, of "Much ado about Nothing," the stage direction in the scene referred to is, "Enter Balthazar with music:" in the folio, 1623, besides some other changes of no consequence for our present purpose, it is, "Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Jack Wilson," which ascertains that Jack Wilson was the performer of the part of Balthazar, and the singer of the song.

Hitherto it does not seem to have been known, that John Wilson was not merely a singer, but a composer, and in all probability the composer of "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, as sung by him in the character of Balthazar. He certainly was the composer of the song in "Measure for Measure," Act iv., sc. 1,

"Take, O! take those lips away," &c.,

as is proved by a book of manuscript music, as old in some parts as the time of the Civil Wars, although in others it seems to have been written in the reign of Charles II. That song is there found with. Wilson's name at the end of it, as the author of the music: unluckily the manuscript says nothing regarding the authorship of the words, or we might from thence have been able to decide by whom they were written. As it is, the case stands precisely thus: one stanza

VOL. II.

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is found in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," while both are inserted in Beaumont's and Fletcher's "Bloody Brother," Act v., sc. 2; but, on the other hand, both are imputed to Shakespeare in the edition of his poems, printed in Svo., 1640. There is no doubt, however, that John Wilson was the composer of the song; and, as he certainly belonged to the company of players to which Shakespeare was attached, it may slightly strengthen the belief that one member of the association wrote the words of a song, to which another member wrote the music, especially when, as far as we know, it was not Shakespeare's practice (though it was that of some dramatists of his time) to adopt into his plays songs which had been written by others for other performances.1

We are without the same positive proof that Jack Wilson was the composer of

"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,"

in "Much ado about Nothing;" but, as he was the singer of it, it may not be too much to presume that he wrote the

As one proof out of many, the song inserted at the end of Middleton's "Mad World, my Masters," in the edition of 1640, may be mentioned. It begins

"O, for a bowl of fat canary!"

and is in fact borrowed from Lily's "Alexander. and Campaspe," as given in the impression of 1632. This is a circumstance not pointed out in the Rev. Mr. Dyce's edition of Middleton's Works, published in 1840, who seems, in this respect, merely to have followed the last impression of Dodsley's Old Plays, where the song is appended to Middleton's comedy for the first time. As "O, for a bowl of fat canary" is not found in the ancient editions of "Alexander and Campaspe" in 1584 and 1591, it was, very possibly, not by Lily, but it is quite clear that it was not by Middleton. Some other song-writer produced it, and it was employed both in "Alexander and Campaspe," and in "A Mad World, my Masters," because it was appropriate to both.