of the soul of Mark Antony. Take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of the regal style of love-making.

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Cleopatra. If it be love indeed, tell me how much? Antony. There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.

Cleopatra. I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.

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Antony. Then must thou needs find out new heav'n, new earth."

The rich and poetical description of her person beginning

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick"-

seems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the battle, and "like a doating mallard" follows her flying

sails.

Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in any other author like them) have more of that local truth of imagination and character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence-" He's speaking now, or murmuring-Where's my serpent of old Nile?" Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning

H

up resolution to risk another fight" It is my birth-day I had thought to have held it poor; but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra." Perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony's rage after his final defeat when he comes in, and surprises the messenger of Cæsar kissing her hand

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“To let a fellow that will take rewards,

And

say God quit you, be familiar with,
My play-fellow, your hand; this kingly seal,
And plighter of high hearts."

It is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped; but his low condition is not the true reason: there is another feeling which lies deeper, though Antony's pride would not let him shew it, except by his rage; he suspects the fellow to be Cæsar's proxy.

Cleopatra's whole character is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give of her

Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal
Her infinite variety Other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies."

What a spirit and fire in her conversation

unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him

"There's gold, and here

My bluest veins to kiss!"—

She had great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the strength of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp, she says with fondness

"Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse asleep?

As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.
Oh Antony !"

It is worth while to observe that Shakespear has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical horror, not less striking-partly perhaps to place the effeminate character of Mark Antony in a more favourable light, and at the same time to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind. Cæsar says, hearing of his rival's conduct at the court of Cleopatra,

"Antony,

Wert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer. Thou did'st drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle

Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge,

Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st. On the Alps,

It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on and all this,
It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not."

The passage after Antony's defeat by Augustus, where he is made to say

"Yes, yes; he at Philippi kept

His sword e'en like a dancer; while I struck
The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and 'twas I
That the mad Brutus ended"-

is one of those fine retrospections which shew us the winding and eventful march of human life. The jealous attention which has been paid to the unities both of time and place has taken away the principle of perspective in the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from distance, from contrast, from privation, from change of fortune, from long-cherished passion; and contrasts our view of life from a strange and

a smartly contested, three hours' inaugural disputation on its merits by the different candidates for theatrical applause.

The latter scenes of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA are full of the changes of accident and passion. Success and defeat follow one another with startling rapidity. Fortune sits upon her wheel more blind and giddy than usual. This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of Antony with Eros.

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Antony. Eros, thou yet behold'st me?

Eros. Ay, noble lord.

Antony. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish,

A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,

A towered citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon't, that nod unto the world

And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,

They are black vesper's pageants.

Eros. Ay, my lord.

Antony. That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

As water is in water.

Eros. It does, my lord.

Antony. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body," &c.

This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry in Shakespear. The splendour of the imagery, the semblance of reality, the lofty range