By cruel, cruel thee quite overthrown!

Cap. Despis'd, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd !—
Uncomfortable time! why cam'st thou now

To murder, murder our solemnity?

All this, indeed, may well, as Coleridge suggests, move a laugh in the auditor-but it is a bitter laugh, and an instructive one-till we are restored to gravity by the worthy Friar's interposition; who, both knowing Juliet and knowing her deplorers, rebukes them so justly and so significantly :

Peace, ho, for shame! confusion's cure lives not

In these confusions.

The heavens do low'r upon you, for some ill;
Move them no more, by crossing their high will.

Even the following scene of mutual banter between the Nurse's man Peter and the musicians, with whom the whole matter resolves itself into "Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone," and "Come, we'll in here, tarry for the mourners, and stay dinner," but completes the picture of comparative indifference in all about her to Juliet's happiness and fate, which prepares us for the more lively appreciation of Romeo's intensely and exquisitely sympathetic effusions and conduct on the same occasion,-when the care of Friar Laurence, that visible Providence of the lovers, after triumphing over those two first blows of their fortune, the duel with Tybalt and the threatened marriage with Paris, is defeated by the unlucky detention of the messenger bearing his letter of explanation to Romeo, and the arrival of the servant of the latter, acquainting his master with the seeming fact.

8.-REUNION OF THE LOVERS.-TRIUMPH OF LOVE.— CONCLUDING REFLECTION.

On the other hand, how exquisitely does the following soliloquy of Romeo, in his exile, express to us the opposite state of his mind, absorbed in the recollection of his last meeting and parting with his bride, and so feeding wholly upon blissful memory and hope:

If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne;
And, all this day, an unaccustom'd spirit

Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

I dreamt, my lady came and found me dead

(Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think),
And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips,
That I reviv'd, and was an emperor.

Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!

Reunion with his Juliet, we see, is his one engrossing idea, his one exclusive aspiration. His servant suddenly brings him intelligence of his lady's death and burial. His aspiration remains unaltered-it is still reunion with Juliet; only, now, suspense is changed into certainty-wish into resolve:

Is it even so?—then I defy you, stars!

Thou know'st my lodging-get me ink and paper,
And hire post-horses-I will hence to-night.

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night

Let's see for means.- -O mischief, thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

I do remember an apothecary, &c.

The famous passage of description which follows, has been spoken of, by Coleridge* amongst others, as

*Lit. Rem.,' vol. i. p. 158.

being justified, on such an occasion, chiefly by its poetic beauty. This, however, is a great mistaking of Shakespeare's dramatic spirit. It is in earnest pursuit of his immediate purpose-to procure the means of self-destruction-that Romeo is led to glance rapidly over the picture of that "penury" which lately "noting" he had said to himself

An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,*
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.

The same steady earnestness of purpose pervades every line of his dialogue with the Apothecary himself. Although,

Being holiday, the beggar's shop is shut,

yet he proceeds at once to make his application, confident that the idea of a providential customer must bring the starving shopkeeper forth at his summons:What, ho! apothecary!

Ap.

Who calls so loud?

Rom. Come hither, man.-1 see that thou art poor.Hold, there is forty ducats.-Let me have

A dram of poison-such soon-speeding geer

As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;

And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath
As violently, as hasty powder fir'd

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Ap. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law

Is death to any he, that utters them.

Rom. Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,

And fear'st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,

Need and oppression stareth in thy eyes,

Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;

*Not "Whose sale were present death in Mantua," as it is constantly given in the "acting play." This is one of those seemingly slight verbal alterations which involve an essential perversion of the meaning of a passage. Romeo is in no state of mind to be idly speculating upon contingent obstacles, as we see that even Coleridge suspects him of doing. It is his knowledge that the sale of poisons is certainly prohibited in Mantua by a standing law, that gives to his descriptive soliloquy that perfect dramatic propriety which has been somewhat idly though very generally contested.

The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
Ap. My poverty, but not my will, consents.
Rom. I pray thy poverty,* and not thy will.
Ap. Put this in any liquid thing you will,
And drink it off; and, if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would despatch you straight.

Rom. There is thy gold-worse poison to men's souls,
Doing more murders in this loathsome world,

Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell;
I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.—
Farewell-buy food, and get thyself in flesh.-
Come, cordial, and not poison-go with me
To Juliet's grave, for there must I use thee!

In all this scene, the tenacious clinging to life which mere physical destitution commonly exhibits, throws into more prominent relief that eager longing for death which attends the pure desolation of the heart. To lie in "Juliet's grave," we see, is Romeo's one unvarying end and purpose, to which every syllable of his well-argued pleading with the apothecary is strictly subservient.

The same determined coolness of a deliberate and inexorable resolve-arguing strength, not weakness, of character-firmness, not rashness-comes out more strikingly and intensely, as the moment of its fulfilment approaches, in the parting scene with his servant Balthasar, at the burial-place of the Capulets:

Give me that mattock, and the wrenching-iron.
Hold, take this letter; early in the morning

See thou deliver it to my lord and father.
Give me the light. Upon thy life I charge thee,
Whate'er thou hear'st or seest, stand all aloof,

And do not interrupt me in my course.

Why I descend into this bed of death,

*Not "I pay thy poverty," as we always hear it so emphatically delivered on the stage, as it is printed in most later editions,—and, we regret to see, is retained by Mr. Collier; while Mr. Knight very properly restores the reading of the second quarto and the first folio. Even without such strong documentary support, the first suggestion of the word pray, in this context, should have procured its adoption by every editor. The relation here is between Romeo's earnestly repeated prayer and the apothecary's consent: the moment for paying him is not yet arrived.

Is, partly, to behold my lady's face;

But chiefly, to take thence from her dead finger
A precious ring—a ring that I must use

In dear employment.-Therefore, hence, begone.-
But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry

In what I further shall intend to do,

By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint,

And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs :
The time, and my intents, are savage-wild,

More fierce and more inexorable far

Than empty tigers, or the roaring sea!

Bal. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.
Rom. So shalt thou shew me friendship.-

that:

-Take thou

Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow.

But this fatal fixedness of purpose exhibits itself most intensely of all in the scene that immediately follows with Paris, whom we find again thrusting himself where he has no business. How expressively are the two respective modes contrasted, in which the would-be husband and the real one regard their lady's sepulchre. The self-complacent prettiness of the

count's

Sweet flower, with flowers I strew thy bridal bed;
Sweet tomb, that in thy circuit dost contain
The perfect model of eternity, &c.

sets off most admirably the passionate despair of Romeo's ensuing apostrophe, while breaking open the

vault:

Thou détestable maw, thou womb of death,
Gorg'd with the dearest morsel of the earth,
Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,

And, in despite, I'll cram thee with more food!

But most effectively of all is the intensity of this final aspiration shown, in its struggle with and triumph over that inherent tenderness and generosity of the hero's nature which make him so earnestly conjure the intruding youth, whose identity he does not yet recognize, to molest him no further. With what consummate art does the following passage portray to us that impatient strife in his bosom, between the apprehension of being interrupted in his final irrevo