Was ever book, containing such vile matter,
So fairly bound?-Oh, that Deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!*

The Nurse, having never had any real liking for Romeo, readily catches up by itself the strain of reproach which we have just heard intermingled with that of admiration in Juliet's exclamations under her first agonizing surprise :

There's no trust,

No faith, no honesty in men; all perjur'd,

All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers!—

Ah, where's my man? give me some aqua-vitæ.—
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows, make me old!—
Shame come to Romeo!

This unqualified vituperation from the lips of the Nurse gives for the moment, by the resistance which it arouses, an exclusive ascendancy to the opposite current of feeling in Juliet's bosom :

Blister'd be thy tongue

For such a wish!-he was not born to shame :

*Mrs. Jameson (vol. i, p. 196) remarks upon this passage in the same manner that we have seen her doing upon Romeo's antithetical exclamations under the most violent conflict of feelings produced by his hopeless passion for Rosaline-which she terms "descanting in pretty phrases.' In this effusion of Juliet's, the fair critic finds only one of those 66 'particular passages" in which her "luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into excess."--"The warmth and vivacity of Juliet's fancy," she adds, "would naturally, under strong and unusual excitement, and in the conflict of opposing sentiments, run into some extravagance of diction." And to complete her illustration, she makes the same questionable sort of reference to Coleridge that we have already seen her making to Madame de Staël. She quotes a dozen lines from a part of his poetical writings which has not the remotest relation to the matter in hand

"Perhaps 'tis pretty, to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other," &c.and adds, "These lines seem to me to form the truest comment on Juliet's wild exclamations against Romeo." Coleridge himself, on the contrary, thought with us, that this passage expresses "the audible struggle of the mind with itself." (Lit. Rem.' ii, 156.) Only think, indeed, of the heart of Juliet, under this its direst trial, uttering mere prettinesses! The awfully rigorous logic of intense passion in a spirit wherein passion and intellect are equally great, is a thing which, in this writer's Shakespearian criticisms, we constantly find escaping her apprehension.

Upon his brow shame is asham'd to sit;
For 'tis a throne where honour may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal earth.-

Oh, what a beast was I, to chide at him!

Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill'd your cousin?
Jul. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?-
Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it!

The struggle, however, is not yet over in her breast.
She goes on-

But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin ?

And now that her mind can once find leisure to put
this question to itself, it instantly and firmly grasps
the true nature of the fact:-
:-

That villain cousin would have kill'd my husband.—
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring;
Your tributary drops belong to woe,

Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.

My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;

And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my husband;
All this is comfort-

This very comfort, however, serves but to deliver her over, like her bridegroom, to the one absorbing, desolating idea:

Wherefore weep I, then?

Some word there was, worser than Tybalt's death,

That murder'd me: I would forget it fain;

But oh, it presses to my memory,

Like damned, guilty deeds to sinners' minds

Tybalt is dead, and Romeo-banished.

That banished, that one word banished,

Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts

is

To speak that word,

father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,

All slain, all dead! Romeo is banished

There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,

In that word's death-no words can that woe sound! And now the Nurse, who, for her own part, would easily have reconciled herself to Romeo's total separation from her young mistress, once more feels her instinctive fondness worked upon by the excess of Juliet's desolation, to seek for her the only available relief:

Hie to your chamber-I'll find Romeo
To comfort you.-I wot well where he is.
Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.—
I'll to him- he is hid at Laurence' cell.

Jul. Oh, find him! give this ring to my true knight,
And bid him come to take his last farewell.

That unison of feeling, through all its various fluctuations whether gentle or violent, which we have already pointed out as existing so remarkably between this pair, is forcibly indicated in the present instance by the simple words that follow between the Nurse and the Friar:

Nurse. O holy friar, O tell me, holy friar,

Where is my lady's lord? where's Romeo?

Fri. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.
Nurse. Oh, he is even in my mistress' case,
Just in her case!

Fri.

O woful sympathy!
Piteous predicament!

The following exclamations of Romeo, be it well observed, betray no consciousness whatever of guiltiness in the affair of the duel-excepting, indeed, that involuntary guilt, of bearing the name of one of the rival houses from whose bickerings his own superior nature had kept him alien:

:

Rom. Spak'st thou of Juliet?-how is it with her?-
Doth she not think me an old murderer,

Now I have stain'd the childhood of our joy

With blood remov'd but little from her own?

Where is she? and how doth she? and what says

My conceal'd lady to our cancell'd love?

Nurse. Oh, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps; And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,

And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,

And then down falls again.

Rom.

As if that name,

Shot from the deadly level of a gun,

Did murder her, as that name's cursed hand

Murder'd her kinsman.--O tell me, friar, tell me,

In what vile part of this anatomy

Doth my name lodge?—tell me, that I

The hateful mansion!

may sack

The Friar's long remonstrance and exhortation—

Art thou a man, &c.

Hold thy desperate hand—

is all in vain. In vain does he add

What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew'st Tybalt; there art thou happy too:
The law, that threaten'd death, becomes thy friend,
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
A pack of blessings lights upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array.

All this "happiness" goes for nothing with his pupil, until he comes to tell him in the end

Go, get thee to thy love as was decreed;
Ascend her chamber; hence, and comfort her:
But look, thou stay not till the watch be set,
For then thou canst not pass to Mantua;
Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time
To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back
With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.

The storm is now allayed for the moment-and that moment, in the contemplation of the lovers, is eternity:

Nurse. My lord, I'll tell my lady you will come.
Rom. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.
Nurse. Here, sir, a ring she bade me give you, sir.
Rom. How well my comfort is reviv'd by this!

If, under the desolating idea of present separation, they were unable to look beyond it for a happier future, well may they see no morrow to this night of their now assured union-the more so for the agonizing suspense which they have just gone through. However, the morrow comes inexorably, and with it their parting scene-respecting which it would be mere impertinence to offer a word of explanation to the reader, whom it can never fail to remind of that melodious unison which we have already remarked in the passages of their courtship and their nuptials:

Jul. Wilt thou be gone!-It is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree;
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops:
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Jul. Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I:
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua :
Therefore stay yet-thou need'st not to be gone!
Rom. Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say, yon grey is not the morning's eye,
"Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay than will to go;-
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.-
How is't, my soul?-let's talk-it is not day.

Jul. It is, it is-hie hence-be gone-away!
It is the lark, that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say, the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us!
Some say, the lark and loathed toad change eyes;
Oh, now I would they had chang❜d voices too!-
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day.
Oh, now be gone-more light and light it grows!

Rom. More light and light-more dark and dark our woes!
Nurse (entering). Madam!

Jul. Nurse?

Nurse. Your lady mother's coming to your chamber:

The day is broke; be wary, look about.

[Exit.

Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out!
Rom. Farewell, farewell!-one kiss, and I'll descend.

Jul. Art thou gone so?-my love!-my lord!-my friend!

I must hear from thee every day i' the hour-
For in a minute there are many days:
Oh, by this count I shall be much in years,
Ere I again behold my Romeo!

Rom. Farewell!-I will omit no opportunity
That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.