love, graced him with the show of their dutiful favours. To feed their eyes, and to make the beholders pleased with the sight of most rare and glistening objects, he had appointed his own daughter Alinda to be there, and the fair Rosalynd, daughter unto Gerismond, with all the beautiful damsels that were famous for their features in all France."

But after the tournament. Lodge returns to his original; and we have a succession of contests of brute force between the younger and the elder brother, which Shakspere altogether rejects. Rosader, upon returning home with a troop of young gentlemen, is shut out of the house by his brother's order; but he kicks down the door, breaks open the buttery, and revels with his companions till they have despatched five tuns of wine in his brother's cellar. This is literally the story of Gamelyn; which has, however, the pleasant accompaniment of the young gentleman breaking the porter's neck and throwing him into a well seven hundred fathoms deep. These events are followed, both in the old tale and the novel, by the elder brother chaining the younger to a post in the middle of his hall, where he continues two or three days without meat. The story thus proceeds :

"Which Adam Spencer, the old servant of Sir John of Bourdeaux, seeing, touched with the duty and love he ought to his old master, felt a remorse in his conscience of his son's mishap; and therefore, although Saladyne had given a general charge to his servants that none of them upon pain of death should give either meat or drink to Rosader, yet Adam Spencer in the night rose secretly, and brought him such victuals as he could provide, and unlocked him, and set him at liberty."

| Shakspere has avoided all this; and he has given us instead one of the most delightful of all his scenes. It is said that he played the character of Adam himself. Oldys tells a story of a relation of the poet,-an old man who lived after the restoration of Charles II.,-describing "the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This was unquestionably the Adam of 'As You Like It;' and to us there is no tradition of Shakspere so pleasing as that in the following noble lines his lips uttered what his mind had conceived:

"I have five hundred crowns,
The thrifty hire I saved under your father,
Which I did store, to be my foster nurse,
When service should in my old limbs lie lame,
And unregarded age in corners thrown;
Take that: and He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,
Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold;
All this I give you: Let me be your servant;
Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty:
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly: let me go with you;
I'll do the service of a younger man
In all your business and necessities."

The beauty of Rosalynd, according to

"Then seide at last this Gamelyn
That stodè boundin strong,
Adam Spencer, methinkith that
I fastè al to long."

Gamelyn being released, he and Adam
Spencer effect a considerable slaughter of
the elder brother's friends, in which particular
Lodge nowise hesitates to follow his original.

makes the usurping king resolved to banish her. Her cousin defends her; and the despot banishes them both. We need scarcely point out how judiciously Shakspere has made Celia self-banished through her friendship. He has not varied the circumstances of their departure as related by Lodge:

"Alinda grieved at nothing but that they might have no man in their company, saying, it would be their greatest prejudice in that two

women went wandering without either guide or attendant. Tush (quoth Rosalynd), art thou a woman, and hast not a sudden shift to prevent a misfortune? I, thou seest, am of a tall stature, and would very well become the person and apparel of a page: thou shalt be my mistress, and I will play the man so properly, that (trust me) in what company soever I come I will not be discovered. I will buy me a suit, and have my rapier very handsomely at my side, and, if any knave offer wrong, your page will show him the point of his weapon. smiled, and upon this they agreed, and presently gathered up all their jewels, which they trussed up in a casket, and Rosalynd in all haste provided her of robes; and Alinda being called Aliena, and Rosalynd Ganimede, they travelled along the vineyards, and by many by-ways at last got to the forest side, where they travelled by the space of two or three days without seeing any creature, being often in danger of wild beasts, and pained with many passionate sorrows."

At this Alinda

But where is Touchstone? We find him not in Lodge. Steevens tells us, "the characters of Jaques, the Clown, and Audrey, are entirely of the poet's own formation."

"Ay, now am I in Arden!" Touchstone thought that when he was at home he was in a better place. But here is the home of every true lover of poetry. What a world of exquisite images do Shakspere's pictures of this forest call up! He gives us no positive set descriptions, of trees, and flowers, and rivulets, and fountains, such as we may cut out and paste into an album. But a touch here and there carries us into the heart of his living scenery. And so, whenever it is our happy lot to be wandering

"Under the shade of melancholy boughs," we think of the oak beneath which Jaques lay along,

"whose antique root peeps out Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;" and of the dingle where Touchstone was with Audrey and her goats; and of the "Sheepcote fenced about with olive-trees," where dwelt Rosalind and Celia; and of the hawthorns and brambles upon which Orlando

The description

hung odes and elegies. which Lodge gives us of Arden leaves no such impression; it is cold and classical, vague and elaborate:

"With that they rose up, and marched forward till towards the even, and then coming into a fair valley (compassed with mountains, whereon grew many pleasant shrubs) they descried where two flocks of sheep did feed. Then, looking about, they might perceive where an old shepherd sat (and with him a young swain) under a covert most pleasantly situated. The ground where they sat was diapered with Flora's riches, as if she meant to wrap Tellus in the glory of her vestments: round about, in the form of an amphitheatre, were most curiously planted pine-trees, interseamed with lemons and citrons, which with the thickness of their boughs so shadowed the place, that Phoebus could not pry into the secret of that arbour; so united were the tops with so thick a closure | that Venus might there in her jollity have dallied unseen with her dearest paramour. Fast by (to make the place more gorgeous) was there a fount so crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana with her Dryades and Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings. In this glorious arbour sat these two shepherds (seeing their sheep feed) playing on their pipes many pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous chat.”

Nothing can measurably superior was the art of Shakspere more truly show how imto the art of other poets than the comparison of such a description as this of Lodge with the incidental scene-painting of his forest of Arden. It has been truly and beautifully said of Shakspere,-" All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his support and recommend, each other. His fruits crushed into baskets-but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth." But there are critics of another caste, who object to Shakspere's forest of Arden, situated, as they hold, "between the rivers Meuse and Moselle." They maintain that its geographical position ought to have been known by Shakspere; and that he is

* 'Edinburgh Review,' vol. xxviii.

consequently most vehemently to be reprehended for imagining that a palm-tree could flourish, and a lioness be starving, in French Flanders. We most heartily wish that the critics would allow poetry to have its own geography. We do not want to know that Bohemia has no seabord; we do not wish to have the island of Sycorax defined on the map; we do not require that our forest of Arden should be the Arduenna Sylva of Cæsar and Tacitus, and that its rocks should be "clay-slate, grauwacke-slate, grauwacke, conglomerate, quartz-rock, and quartzose sandstone." We are quite sure that Ariosto was thinking nothing of French Flanders when he described how

We are equally sure that Shakspere meant to take his forest out of the region of the literal, when he assigned to it a palm-tree and a lioness. Lady Morgan tells us, "The forest of Ardennes smells of early English poetry. It has all the greenwood freshness of Shakspere's scenes; and it is scarcely possible to feel the truth and beauty of his exquisite 'As You Like It,' without having loitered, as I have done, amidst its tangled glens and magnificent depths."+ We must venture to think that it was not necessary for Shakspere to visit the Ardennes to have described

"An old oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age,

And high top bald with dry antiquity;" and that, although his own Warwickshire Arden is now populous, and we no longer meet there a "desert inaccessible," there are fifty places in England where, with the As You Like It' in hand, one might linger

Orlando Furioso,' book i., stanza 78, Harrington's Translation. • The Princess,' a novel, vol. iii. p. 207.

"from noon to dewy eve," and say, “Ay, now am I in Arden."

Shakspere, as it appears to us, has not only taken the geography of his Arden out of the real, but has in the same way purposely perplexed the chronology of his comedy. In Lodge's 'Rosalynd' the geography is somewhat more perplexed; for it is minute enough to belong apparently to the real, while it is essentially untrue. Adam and Rosader travel from Bordeaux to the forest of Arden: "Rosader and Adam, knowing full well the secret ways that led through the vineyards, stole away privily through the province of Bordeaux, and escaped safe to the forest of Arden." Secret or public, the ways must have been sufficiently wearisome which led completely across France from the Garonne to the Meuse. This is one of the many examples of the disregard of exactness which we find in Shakspere's contemporaries. But here the inexactness looks only like a blunder: in Shakspere's forest of Arden we have nothing definite, and therefore we readily pass into the imaginative. In the same way, Lodge presents us with King Gerismond and King Torismond, kings of France. Shakspere idealises these persons into dukes. We thus are thrown out of the limits of real history, unless we strain a point to come within those limits. We grant that this idealising is very perplexing to the stage representation of this and other plays; but it must be remembered that this perplexity arises from the altered condition of the stage itself. Its scenes must now be copied from nature; its dresses must now be true to a quarter of a century in the doublet and the hose. We do not object to this in its place; and we hold that when the poet deals with the real it is our duty to follow him with the minutest scrupulosity. But with the same reverence for his guidance we maintain that, when he proclaims by tokens not to be mistaken that he has entered the regions of imagination, we are not to take him out of those regions and surround him with the boundaries of time and space. The view which Ulrici takes of the extent to which the ideal prevails in 'As You Like It' has our

perfect concurrence:-" Separately, nothing appears directly opposed to reality: no supernatural, or un-natural, beings or appearances. Separately, every character, situation, and incident, might belong to common actuality; it is only through the lions and serpents in a European forest that it is lightly indicated to us that we tread the soil of poetic fancy. And yet more distinctly does the entire play in its development,-the involutions and proportion of the parts to the whole, the oneness of the relations and situations, the actions and circumstances,-render it clear that this drama is by no means intended as a representation of common actuality; but rather of life as seen from a peculiar and poetical point of view."

We have already said that the deviations which Shakspere made in the conduct of his story, from the original presented to him in Lodge's Rosalynd,' furnish a most remarkable example of the wonderful superiority of his art as compared with the art of other men. But the additions which he has made to the story of Rosalynd' evince even a higher power: they grow out of his surpassing philosophy. To this quality Lodge sets up no pretensions. When the younger brother

of the novelist has fled from his home with his faithful servant--when his Rosalynd and Alinda have been banished from the court they each enter into the pastoral life with all imaginable prettiness; and there in the forest wild they encounter native pastoral lovers, and a dethroned king and his free companions leading the hunter's life without care or retrospection. Alinda and Rosalynd have now become Aliena and Ganimede; and when they sojourn in the forest they find the verses of despairing shepherds graven upon tall beech-trees, and hear interminable eclogues recited between Montanus and Coridon. How closely Shakspere follows the incidents of his original may be gathered from the address of Lodge's Aliena to one of these poetical swains:

"Therefore let this suffice, gentle shepherd: my distress is as great as my travail is dangerous, and I wander in this forest to light on some cottage where I and my page may dwell: for I mean to buy some farm, and a flock of sheep,

and so become a shepherdess, meaning to live low, and content me with a country life; for I have heard the swains say that they drank without suspicion, and slept without care. Marry, mistress, quoth Coridon, if you mean so, you came in good time, for my landlord intends to sell both the farm I till and the flock I keep, and cheap you may have them for ready money: and for a shepherd's life (oh, mistress!) did you but live awhile in their content, you would say the court were rather a place of sorrow than of

solace. Here, mistress, shall not fortune thwart

you, but in mean misfortunes, as the loss of a few sheep, which, as it breeds no beggary, so it can be no extreme prejudice: the next year may mend all with a fresh increase. Envy stirs not us, we covet not to climb, our desires mount not above our degrees, nor our thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot harbour in our cottages, nor do our homely couches know broken slumbers: as we exceed not in diet, so we have enough to satisfy; and, mistress, I have so much Latin, satis est quod sufficit.

"By my truth, shepherd (quoth Aliena), thou makest me in love with your country life, and therefore send for thy landlord, and I will buy thy farm and thy flocks, and thou shalt still under me be overseer of them both: only for pleasure sake I and my page will serve you, lead

the flocks to the field, and fold them. Thus will I live quiet, unknown, and contented." Again, when Rosader and Adam enter the forest, and in their extremity of distress encounter the merry company of banished courtiers, we have the exact prototype of the action of Orlando and Adam of Shakspere:

"Rosader, full of courage (though very faint), rose up, and wished A. Spencer to sit there till! his return; 'for my mind gives me,' quoth he, 'I shall bring thee meat.' With that, like a madman, he rose up, and ranged up and down the woods, seeking to encounter some wild beast with his rapier, that either he might carry his friend Adam food, or else pledge his life in Gerismond, the lawful King of France, banished pawn for his loyalty. It chanced that day that by Torismond, who with a lusty crew of outlaws : lived in that forest, that day in honour of his birth made a feast to all his bold yeomen, and frolicked it with store of wine and venison, sitting all at a long table under the shadow of lemon-trees. To that place by chance fortune

conducted Rosader, who seeing such a crew of brave men, having store of that for want of which he and Adam perished, he stepped boldly to the board's end, and saluted the company thus:

"Whatsoever thou be that art master of these lusty squires, I salute thee as graciously as a man in extreme distress may: know that I and a fellow friend of mine are here famished in the forest for want of food: perish we must, unless relieved by thy favours. Therefore, if thou be a gentleman, give meat to men, and to such as are every way worthy of life. Let the proudest squire that sits at thy table rise and encounter with me in any honourable point of activity what

soever, and if he and thou prove me not a man, send me away comfortless. If thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will have amongst you with my sword; for rather will I die valiantly, than perish with so cowardly an extreme. Gerismond, looking him earnestly in the face, and seeing so proper a gentleman in so bitter a passion, was moved with so great pity, that, rising from the table, he took him by the hand and bade him welcome, willing him to sit down in his place, and in his room not only to eat his fill, but be lord of the feast. 'Gramercy, sir,' quoth Rosader, 'but I have a feeble friend that lies hereby famished almost for food, aged, and therefore less able to abide the extremity of hunger than myself, and dishonour it were for me to taste one crumb before I made him partner of my fortunes: therefore I will run and fetch him, and then I will gratefully accept of your proffer.' Away hies Rosader to Adam Spencer, and tells him the news, who was glad of so happy fortune, but so feeble he was that he could not go; whereupon Rosader got him up on his back, and brought him to the place." Exact, also, is the resemblance between the Rosader of Lodge, wandering about and carving on a tree "a pretty estimate of his mistress's perfections," and the Orlando of Shakspere, who in the same manner records

"The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she." Literal is the copy, too, we have in Shakspere

of the situations of the lovers when Rosalind passes with Orlando as the merry page :—

"As soon as they had taken their repast, Rosader, giving them thanks for his good cheer, would have been gone; but Ganimede, that was

loth to let him pass out of her presence, began thus:-Nay, forester,' quoth she, 'if thy business be not the greater, seeing thou sayest thou art so deeply in love, let me see how thou canst Woo. I will represent Rosalynd, and thou shalt be as thou art, Rosader. See in some amorous eclogue, how if Rosalynd were present, how thou couldst court her; and while we sing of love Aliena shall tune her pipe and play us melody.' 'Content,' quoth Rosader; and Aliena, she, to show her willingness, drew forth a recorder, and began to wind it."

Far different, however, is the characterisation arising out of these similar circumstances. Lodge gives us a "wooing eclogue betwixt Rosalynd and Rosader;" wherein the lover thus swears in the good heroic vein :—

"First let the heavens conspire to pull me down,

And heaven and earth as abject quite refuse

me;

Let sorrows stream about my hateful bower, And retchless horror hatch within my breast; Let beauty's eye afflict me with a lower, Let deep despair pursue me without rest, Ere Rosalynd my loyalty disprove, Ere Rosalynd accuse me for unkind." The beloved of Shakspere uses no such holiday vows; but is contented with, "By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous." It is the wit and vivacity of Rosalind, opposed to the poetical earnestness of Orlando, that prevents the pastoral from sliding into the ridiculous, as it has always a tendency to do. The same art is again shown in the management of the incident of Phebe's love for Ganimede. Lodge thus presents it to us:

"Ganimede, overhearing all these passions of Montanus, could not brook the cruelty of Phebe, 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.' Phebe, when she saw so fair a swain as Ganimede; at this sudden reply, was amazed, especially 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