"O then! advance of yours that phraseless hand,
Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise;
Take all these similes to your own command,
Hallow'd with sighs that burning lungs did raise;
What me, your minister, for you obeys,
Works under you; and to your audit comes
Their distract parcels in combined sums.

19

"Lo! this device was sent me from a nun,
A sister sanctified, of holiest note;
Which late her noble suit in court did shun,1o
Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote:
For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,
But kept cold distance; and did thence remove,
To spend her living in eternal love.

"But O, my sweet! what labour is't to leave
The thing we love not, mastering what not strives?
Paling the place which did no form receive; 20
Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves?
She that her fame so to herself contrives,
The scars of battle 'scapeth by the flight,
And makes her absence valiant, not her might.

21

"O, pardon me, in that my boast is true! The accident which brought me to her eye, Upon the moment did her force subdue,

18 That is, retired from the solicitation of her noble suitors. 19 Whose captivations were so great as to bewitch the flower of the nobility.— Coat, in the next line, probably means coat of arms; men of splendid heraldry.

H.

20 Securing within the pale of a cloister that heart which had never received the impression of love. The original has Playing, which Malone changed to Paling, that is, fencing. In the preceding line, the original misprints have instead of love. H.

21 Contrive was sometimes used as from the Latin contero, for wear away or spend. See The Taming of the Shrew, Act i. sc. 2 note 19.

H

And now she would the caged cloister fly;
Religious love put out religion's eye:
Not to be tempted, would she be immur'd,
And now, to tempt all, liberty procur'd.

"How mighty, then, you are, O, hear me tell!
The broken bosoms that to me belong

Have emptied all their fountains in my well,
And mine I pour your ocean all among:

I strong o'er them, and you o'er me being strong,
Must for your victory us all congest,

22

As compound love to physic your cold breast.

66

"My parts had power to charm a sacred nun,
Who, disciplin'd and dieted in grace,23
Believ'd her eyes, when they t'assail begun,
All vows and consecrations giving place.
O, most potential love! vow, bond, nor space,
In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine;
For thou art all, and all things else are thine.

"When thou impressest, what are precepts worth Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame,

How coldly those impediments stand forth

Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame!
Love arms our peace 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense,
'gainst shame;

And sweetens, in the suffering pangs it bears,
The aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears.

"Now, all these hearts that do on mine depend, Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine;

22 To congest is to heap together.

23 Of the original, some copies have I died, others, I dieted, which was changed to and dieted by Malone. -The original misprints sun for nun. The change is Malone's.

H.

24 The warfare that love carries on against rule, sense, and shame produces to the parties engaged a peaceful enjoyment.

And supplicant their sighs to you extend,

To leave the battery that you make 'gainst mine;
Lending soft audience to my sweet design,
And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath,
That shall prefer and undertake my troth."

This said, his watery eyes he did dismount,
Whose sights till then were levell❜d on my face;
Each cheek a river running from a fount
With brinish current downward flow'd apace.
O, how the channel to the stream gave grace !
Who, glaz'd with crystal, gate the glowing roses
That flame through water which their hue encloses.

O father! what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!
But with the inundation of the eyes,
What rocky heart to water will not wear?
What breast so cold, that is not warmed here?
O, cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath,
Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath!

For, lo! his passion, but an art of craft,
Even there resolv'd my reason into tears;
There my white stole of chastity I daff''d;
Shook off my sober guards, and civil fears;
Appear to him, as he to me appears,

All melting; though our drops this difference bore
His poison'd me, and mine did him restore.

In him a plenitude of subtle matter,

Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,"
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,

25 Cautel is deceit or fraud. See Coriolanus, Act iv sc. note 3.

H

Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,
In either's aptness, as it best deceives,

To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,
Or to turn white, and swoon at tragic shows:

That not a heart, which in his level came,
Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,
Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;
And, veil'd in them, did win whom he would main
Against the thing he sought he would exclaim:
When he most burn'd in heart-wish'd luxury,
He preach'd pure maid, and prais'd cold chastity.

Thus, merely with the garment of a Grace,
The naked and concealed fiend he cover'd;
That th' unexperienc'd gave the tempter place,
Which, like a cherubin, above them hover'd.
Who, young and simple, would not be so lover'd'
Ah me! I fell; and yet do question make
What I should do again for such a sake.

O, that infected moisture of his eye!

O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd!
O, that forc'd thunder from his heart did fly!
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd!
O, all that borrow'd motion, seeming owed,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray'd,
And new pervert a reconciled maid!

28 That is, that seemed real and his own.

26

INTRODUCTION

ΤΟ

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM.

Αν

"THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM, by W. SHAKESPEARE. London: Printed for W. Jaggard, and are to be sold by W. Leake, at the Greyhound in Paul's Church-yard, 1599." Such is the titlepage of a 16mo volume of thirty leaves, the contents of which are the same, and given in the same order, as in the pages following this Introduction; except that the last poem, entitled The Phoenix and Turtle," is taken, as will be seen by note 18, from another source. The collection was reprinted in 1612, with additions, and with a new title-page reading thus: "The Passionate Pilgrim; Or certain amorous Sonnets, between Venus and Adonis, newly corrected and augmented. By W. Shakespeare. The third Edition: Whereunto is newly added two Love-epistles, the first from Paris to Helen, and Helen's answer back again to Paris. Printed by W. Jaggard. 1612." In some copies of this edition, the words, By W. Shakespeare," are omitted from the title-page. It is here called "the third edition;" but of the second, if there were any, as there may have been, nothing has been seen in modern times.

66

The circumstances, which were somewhat peculiar, attending the issue of these two impressions, are thus stated by Mr. Collier: "In 1598 Richard Barnfield put his name to a small collection of productions in verse, entitled The Encomion of Lady Pecunia, which contained more than one poem attributed to Shakespeare in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1699. The first was printed by John, and the last by William Jaggard. Boswell suggests, that John Jaggard in 1598 might have stolen Shakespeare's verses, and attributed them to Barnfield; but the answer to this supposition is two-fold: First, that Barnfield formally, and in his own name, printed them as his in 1598; and next, that he reprinted them under the same circumstances in 1605, notwithstanding they had been in the mean time assigned to Shakespeare. The truth seems to be, that W. Jaggard took them in 1599 from Barnfield's publication