pitifull povertie prayeth for a penie, but puffed presumpcion passeth not a point." Indeed, there are many existing proofs of the excessive prevalence of alliteration in the end of the sixteenth century. Bishop Andrews is notorious for it. Florio seems to have been somewhat of a braggart, for he always signs his name "Resolute John Florio." But, according to the testimony of Sir William Cornwallis, he was far above the character of a fantastical pedant. Speaking of his translation of Montaigne (the book which has now acquired such interest by bearing Shakspere's undoubted autograph), Sir William Cornwallis says, "Divers of his (Montaigne's) pieces I have seen translated; they that understand both languages say very well done; and, I am able to say (if you will take the word of ignorance), translated into a style admitting as few idle words as our language will endure."* Holofernes, the pedant, who had "lived long on the almsbasket of words"-who had "been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps," was not the man to deserve the praise of writing "a style admitting as few idle words as our language will endure."

As far then as we have been able to trace, the original comedy of 'Love's Labour's Lost' might have been produced by Shakspere without any personal knowledge of the court language of Euphuism,-without any acquaintance with John Florio, and with a design only to ridicule those extravagances which were opposed to the maxim of Roger Ascham, the most unpedantic of schoolmasters, "to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do." The further intrinsic evidence that this comedy was a very early production is most satisfactory. Coleridge has a very acute remark (which in our minds is worth all that has been written about the learning of Shakspere) as to his early literary habits :—“ It is not unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions of this play afford, that, though Shakspere's acquirements in the dead languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those Toxophilus.

* Essays. 1600.

of a student. For a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, and his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had placed him ;-or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in the world as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditations." The frequent rhymes,-the alternate verses, the familiar metre which has been called doggrel (but which Anstey and Moore have made classical by wit, and by fun even more agreeable than wit)-lines such as

"His face's own margent did quote such amazes, That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes;"

the sonnets full of quaint conceits, or running off into the most playful anacreontics, the skilful management of the pedantry, with a knowledge far beyond the pedantry, and the happy employment of the ancient mythology, all justify Coleridge's belief that the materials of this comedy were drawn from the immediate employments of Shakspere's youth. Still the play, when augmented and corrected, might have received many touches derived from the power which he had acquired by experience. If it were not presumptuous to attempt to put our finger upon such passages, we would say that Biron's eloquent speech at the end of the fourth act, beginning

"Have at you then, affection's men at arms,"

and Rosaline's amended speech at the end of the play,

"Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,"must be amongst the more important of these augmentations.

CHARLES LAMB was wont to call 'Love's Labour's Lost' the Comedy of Leisure. It is certain that, in the commonwealth of King Ferdinand of Navarre, we have

"All men idle, all; And women too."

be living in an age when vows bound mankind to objects of pursuit that now present but the ludicrous side, to have had his dreams converted into very silly realities. The resistance of Biron to the vow of his fellows is singularly able,—his reasoning is deep and true, and ought to have turned them aside from their folly:

"Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;

Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books."

But the vow is ratified, and its abjuration will only be the result of its practical inconvenience. The "French king's daughter." the "admired princess," is coming to confer with the King and his court, who have resolved to talk with no woman for three years :

"So study evermore is overshot." But the "child of fancy" appears—the "fantastic"-the "magnificent"-the "man of great spirit who grows melancholy"-he who is "ill at a reckoning, because it fitteth the spirit of a tapster"-he who confesses to be a "gentleman and a gamester," because "both are the varnish of a complete man." How capitally does Moth, his page, hit him off, when he intimates that only "the base vulgar" call deuce-ace three! And yet this indolent piece of refinement is

"A man in all the world's new fashions planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;" and he himself has no mean idea of his abilities-he is "for whole volumes in folio." Moth, who continually draws him out to laugh at him, is an embryo wag, whose common sense is constantly opposed to his master's affectations; and Costard is another cunning bit of nature, though cast in a coarser mould, whose heart runs over with joy at the tricks of his little friend, this "nit of mischief."

The Princess and her train arrive at Navarre. We have already learnt to like the King and his lords, and have seen their fine natures shining through the affectations by

which they are clouded. We scarcely require, therefore, to hear their eulogies delivered from the mouths of the Princess's ladies, who have appreciated their real worth. Biron, however, has all along been our favourite; and we feel that, in some degree, he deserves the character which Rosaline gives him :

"A merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal : His eye begets occasion for his wit; For every object that the one doth catch The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and voluble is his discourse."

But, with all this disposition to think highly of the nobles of the self-denying court, the "mad wenches" of France are determined ! to use their "civil wits" on "Navarre and his bookmen," for their absurd vows; and well do they keep their determination. Boyet is a capital courtier, always ready for a gibe at the ladies, and always ready to bear their gibes. Costard thinks he is "a most simple clown;" but Biron more accurately describes him at length :

66

Why, this is he That kiss'd away his hand in courtesy: This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms; nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and, in ushering, Mend him who can: the ladies call him, sweet: The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet." | We are very much tempted to think that, in his character of Boyet, Shakspere had in view that most amusing coxcomb Master Robert Laneham, whose letter from Kenilworth, in which he gives the following account of himself, was printed in 1575 :-" Always among the gentlewomen with my good will, and when I see company according, then I can be as lively too. Sometimes I foot it with dancing; now with my gittern and else with my cittern; then at the virginals; ye know nothing comes amiss to me; then carol I up

a song withal, that by and by they come flocking about me like bees to honey, and ever they cry, Another, good Laneham, another.'

Before the end of Navarre's first interview with the Princess, Boyet has discovered that he is "infected." At the end of the next act, we learn from Biron himself that he is in the same condition. Away then goes the row with the King and Biron. In the fourth act we find that the infection has spread to all the lords; but the love of the King and 1 his courtiers is thoroughly characteristic. It may be sincere enough, but it is still love fantastical. It hath taught Biron "to rhyme and to be melancholy." The King drops his paper of poesy; Longaville reads his sonnet, which makes flesh "a deity;" and Dumain, in his most beautiful anacreontic, -as sweet a piece of music as Shakspere ever penned-shows "how love can vary wit." The scene in which each lover is detected by the other, and all laughed at by Biron, till he is detected himself, is thoroughly dramatic; and there is perhaps nothing finer in the whole range of the Shaksperean comedy than the passage where Biron casts aside his disguises, and rises to the height of poetry and eloquence. The burst when the "rent lines" discover "some love" of Biron is incomparably fine :

"Who sees the heavenly Rosaline, That like a rude and savage man of Inde,

At the first opening of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient

breast?"

The famous speech of Biron, which follows, is perhaps unmatched as a display of poetical ! rhetoric, except by the speeches of Ulysses to Achilles in the third act of 'Troilus and Cressida.' Coleridge has admirably described this speech of Biron. "It is logic clothed in rhetoric ;-but observe how Shakspere, in his twofold being of poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey profound truths in the most lively images-the whole remaining faithful to the character supposed to utter the lines, and the expressions themselves constituting a further de

some strange

and he therefore recommends pastime" to solace the dames. But "the gallants will be task'd."

King and Princess, lords and ladies, must make way for the great pedants. The form of affectation is now entirely changed. It is not the cleverness of rising superior to all other men by despising the "affects" to which every man is born--it is not the cleverness of labouring at the most magnificent phrases to express the most common ideas; but it is the cleverness of two persons using conventional terms, which they have picked up from a common source, and which they believe sealed to the mass of mankind, instead of employing the ordinary colloquial phrases by which ideas are rendered intelligible. This is pedantry-and Shakspere shows his excellent judgment in bringing a brace of pedants upon the scene. In O'Keefe's 'Agreeable Surprise,' and in Colman's Heir at Law,' we have a single pedant-the one talking Latin to a milk-maid, and the other to a tallow-chandler. This is farce. But the pedantry of Holofernes and the curate is comedy. They each address the other in their freemasonry of learning. They each flatter the other. But for the rest of the world, they look down upon them. “Sir,” saith the curate, excusing the "twice-sod simplicity" of Goodman Dull, "he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished." But Goodman Dull has his intellect stimulated by this abuse. He has heard the riddles of the "ink-horn" men, and he sports a riddle of his own :—

*Literary Remains,' vol. ii. p. 105.