acquaintance with her beauty, gentleness, and modesty. The incoherent fragments of discourse, abrupt transitions, and absurd images, that ordinarily provoke levity, here awfully repress it:

They say that the owl was a baker's daughter-Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep to think they have laid him i'the cold ground. My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

That reader or spectator is little to be envied who could smile at Ophelia's distraction, which from gentle breasts must extort sighs, and sobs, and tears-those attributes of feeling that ennoble our nature.

If any thing could heighten our admiration of Shakespeare, after a careful examination of the life of the unfortunate Ophelia, it would be the exquisite contrivance of her death:

Your sister's drown'd, Laertes.

There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastick garlands did she make

Óf crown-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long-purples;
That liberal shepherds give another name,

Bat our cold maids do dead-men's-fingers call them:
There on the pendant bows her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;

H

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up,.
Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indu'd

Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

The admirable selection of plants which formed the fantastic crown of Lear, has been already noticed. The coronet wreath of the lovely Ophelia furnishes another instance of Shakespeare's knowledge and admiration of flowers.

The queen describes the garland as composed of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long-purples; and there ought to be no question that Shakespeare intended them all to have an emblematic meaning. "The crow-flower," is a species of lychnis, alluded to by Drayton, in his Polyolbion. It is the lychnis flos cuculi of Linnæus and Miller, and the 1. pulmaria sylvestris of Parkinson;-the l. cuculi flos of C. Bauhin. It is of considerable antiquity, and is described by Pliny under the name of adontitis. The more common English name is meadow-lychnis, or meadow-campion. It is sometimes found double in our own hedge-rowsbut more commonly in France, and in this form we are told by Parkinson, it was called "The fayre Mayde of France." It is to this name and to this variety that Shakespeare alludes in the present instance.

The "long-purples" are commonly called "deadmen's-hands" or " fingers."

Our cold maids do dead-mens'-fingers call them.

The "daisey" (or day's-eye) imports "the pure virginity," or "spring of life," as being itself "the virgin bloom of the year."

The intermixture of nettles requires no comment, their stinging properties have been already noticed.

Admitting the correctness of this interpretation, the whole is an exquisite specimen of emblematic, or picture-writing. They are all wild flowers, denoting the bewildered state of the beautiful Ophelia's own faculties; and the order runs thus, with the meaning of each term beneath:

CROW-FLOWERS. NETTLES. DAISIES. LONG-PURPLES.

Fayre mayde

stung to Her virgin | under the cold?
the quick bloom.
hand of death.

{th

"A fair maid stung to the quick, her virgin bloom under the cold hand of death."

It would be difficult to fancy a more emblematic wreath for this interesting victim of disappointed love and filial sorrow.

Sweets to the sweet, farewell!

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave.

DEMONOMANIA, OR OBSESSI,

HIMSELF.”

EDGAR.

66

ONE BESIDE

DEMONIACUS or Demoniaci be the Latin words. In Greke, it it is named, Demonici. In Englyshe, it is named, He or they the which be mad, and possessed of the devyll, or devylles; and their propertie is to hurt and kyll themselfe, or els to hurt and kyll any other thynge; therefore, let every man beware of them, and kepe them in a sure custody.

The cause of this matter.

This matter doth passe all maner sicknesses and diseases, and it is a fearefull and terrible thyng to see a devyll or devylles should have so muche and so greate a power over as it is specified of such persons dyvers tymes.

mnen,

Doctor Andrewe Boorde's Breviary of
Health, published in 1557.

The madness of Edgar is an assumption, but must have been drawn from suffering nature, and furnishes another proof of Shakespeare's intimate acquaintance with the varieties of madness.

"The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam Beggars, who with roaring voices Strike in their num'd and mortified bare arms

Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary:
And with this horrible object, from low farms
Poor pelting villages, sheep cotes, and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity."

Such counterfeits as Edgar describes were very common at the period at which Shakespeare

wrote.

Before the diffusion of a philanthropic spirit had provided a receptacle for lunatics that were incurable and dangerously disposed, they were suffered to wander and levy contributions by moving compassion or exciting alarm. The sentiment of pity has always been largely extended to those that are bereft of their reason; some weak and superstitions persons have even considered their incoherence to spring from inspiration, and believed their denunciations to be prophetic. By the considerate of the lower classes, they were generally relieved: but when their hallucinations were afloat, when fantastically arrayed they exhibited their ridiculous antics they became the mischievous sport of the younger of both sexes, and were hooted and chased from the village: and when their importunities were bolder, or they committed depredations, they fell under the serious displeasure of the magistrate and were "whipt from tything to tything, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned."

Although these wretched persons received the means of subsistence from private charity, yet