The superiority in point of numbers in the Shaksperean allusions may seem at the first glance to come of the vastly greater extent of surface of his writings. But this does not affect the question, since in at least five or six of the dramas there are not more than a dozen plantallusions, and these very often meagre ones. Among the plays specially deficient in regard to number of references are Julius Cæsar, Much Ado About Nothing, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona. Very few occur either in the Merchant of Venice, in Macbeth, in King John, King Richard the Third, and Measure for Measure. They arrive in plenty, on the other hand, in the Tempest, Love's Labour's Lost, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Cymbeline, and still increasingly in the Winter's Tale and the Midsummer Night's Dream. Not that all are of corresponding poetic eloquence, or fraught with pleasing associations. Often there is no more than the barest mention, and the word seems to serve no purpose but In all ages the poets

that of completing the measure. have been prone to introduce names of objects, and even epithets, for the sake purely of metre or euphony. Tu do so, when genius shines on every page, so far from being a sign of weakness, is in harmony with the wise deliberate repose never disdained or forgotten by Strength. The solitary Shaksperean botanical slip is, like all his other lapses, so palpable as to be detected on the instant. It occurs in the scene in Cymbeline, where Imogen, lying upon her bed, asleep and half disrobed, is contemplated by Iachimo. He notes her closed eyelids,

then,

White, and azure-laced

With blue of heaven's own tinct;

On her left breast,

A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip.

A certain amount of latitude is always permissible in descriptions designed to be vivid and picturesque, but it is going quite beyond the reality to say that the spots in the cup of the cowslip are "crimson." The nearest approach to that colour ever seen could only be described as rosy orange. Considering the infinite number of printers' and copyists' errors in the early editions of Shakspere, the famous "first folio" of 1623 taking precedence of all in point of inaccuracy;* considering, too, that in spite of all the criticism bestowed upon Shakspere we have not yet got the poet's exact words in many an obscure passage, nor even the general sense of the phrase this word "crimson" might at first sight be thought one of the terms awaiting correction. But there is no reason to doubt the authenticity, and we must be content to take it as the exception to the author's otherwise unbroken faithfulness to nature. This, in truth, is the only circumstance which justifies or even calls for

* "Perhaps," says the Rev. Joseph Hunter, in the preface to his New Illustrations of Shakspere, "Perhaps in the whole annals of English typography there is no record of any book of any extent, and any reputation, having been dismissed from the press with less care and attention than the first folio of 1623" (the first collective edition).

the present comment.

Never mind. We have no time

to spare for it. Set against this little slip,

Daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty,

or any one of a score of similar perfections, and it is a thousand times outweighted. Whoever else you may be disposed to quarrel with, never fall out with Shakspere; not even over a verbal error, any more than, if you would prosper, over a rule of life. Discover the misprints by all means; amend everything that is clearly not Shakspere's own; but let the blemishes pass. In works of noble art, before we attend to the flaws, it is no more than common-sense to make sure that we first perceive all the merits. Life is too short, opportunity too limited, for learning even a small portion of the great and glorious. Why, then, waste ever so little of either in search for blots and weaknesses? There is no real skill or cleverness in discovering the faulty. Far away more clever and creditable is it in any one to point out a feature of loveliness previously concealed or overlooked. Shakspere, above all men—the joy and solace of millions in days gone by, and who will be the joy and solace of millions yet unborn-is the last in the world who should be subjected to pert and ungrateful testing for defects. Look up, rather, when in his presence, as you do at York Minster, and hope that, with much reverence, you may some day be able to appreciate the full splendour. Not that we are to regard Shakspere as a kind of demigod, and to think even his failings amiable. They go

with other men's, and with our own, such as were he living, he could expose as readily, and with still greater reason. It is a matter of satisfaction, after all, that they exist. For while we love, and admire, and honour, no matter who, that may be good and worthy, it is always pleasant to feel that our love and honour are given to good old-fashioned flesh and blood, to a being of substance like our own, animated, sometimes perhaps disfigured, by the same passions, subject to the same deficiencies and failings. This is one of the grand secrets of the universality of men's fondness for Shakspere. While teaching us, as some author says, that love is the best of all things, "he reconciles us to our own defects.” With Shakspere we are always at our ease. His forehead touches the sky; his voice gathers tone from the immortals, but he still walks upon the earth and is one of ourselves. Deducting the one little exception referred to, Shakspere, in regard to his botany, though making no pretention to be scientific, may always be trusted— herein, perhaps, standing alone, at all events as compared with all earlier and all contemporary literature, and with the great mass of the poets of later ages. That several of his plant and flower names are vague, and have given rise to much conjecture and speculation, and that one or two are probably undeterminable, may unhesitatingly be conceded. Sometimes this comes of default of contemporary illustration; sometimes, in all likelihood, of the carelessness of copyists-for it is to be remembered that there is no such thing in existence as an original manu

Shakspere always Trustworthy.

9

script of any portion of the Shaksperean writings, and that before being printed they were exposed to every species of corruption. But when we have the unquestionably original words, pure and unvitiated, we can always read in faith, an assurance so much the more agreeable because sometimes, at the first blush, there may be disposition to demur. Take, for instance, the

pretty song in Love's Labour's Lost:—

When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

And Lady-smocks, all silver white,
Do paint the meadows with delight.*

Gather a Lady-smock as you tread the rising grass in fragrant May, and, although in individuals the petals are sometimes cream-colour, as a rule the flower viewed in the hand is lilac-pale, but purely and indisputably lilac. Where then is the silver whiteness? It is the "meadows," remember, that are painted. When, as often happens, the flower is so plentiful as to hide the turf, and most particularly if the ground be aslope, and the sun be shining from behind us, all is changed; the flowers are lilac no longer; the meadow is literally silverwhite. So it is always-Shakspere's epithets are like prisms; let them tremble in the sunshine, and we discover that it is he who knows best.

The actual number of different species of trees, plants,

* The above is the arrangement of the lines in the early editions; wrongfully, it would seem, nevertheless, and therefore, in most modern ones, corrected so as to give alternate rhymes, as in all the other verses of the song.