excellence: to borrow the words of Pisanio himself in relation to his mistress, our poet makes "fear and niceness” to be

The handmaids of all women, or, more truly,

Woman its pretty self.

The ensuing explanation on the part of Iachimo, and her consequent reconciliation, demand our particular attention; the more, because, among other important misconceptions as to the qualities and the conduct of this personage, Hazlitt, in his examination of this play, has the following remark upon this passage:"Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes; and may shew, that where there is a real attachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice;" an observation which Mrs. Jameson, in her account of the character of Imogen, cites at full length, and sanctions, by telling us, "This is true."

But this version of the matter is nothing less than degrading both to the intellect and the delicacy of the heroine as portrayed by Shakespeare. It is talking as if, when, according to Hazlitt, she "pardons Iachimo, or, as Mrs. Jameson expresses it, is "pacified," she still believed that her Italian visitor had really intended to leave her husband slandered in her opinion, and her own purity stained. Had she continued so to believe, it would have been contamination to her to exchange another sentence with one whom she held to be so foul a villain. But he, "singular in his art," has with subtle dexterity converted, in her estimation, his very defamation of her husband and his insult to herself, into a precious testimony of his extreme solicitude for her dear lord's welfare-that most irresistible of all claims upon her kindly regard. He had spoken thus, only "to know if her affiance were deeply rooted," and to enable himself to carry back to her husband the more gratifying report of her incorruptible constancy. His eloquent eulogy of

Leonatus

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He sits 'mongst men like a descended god, &c.— has a double charm for her by contrast with the foulness of his previous imputations. She betrays no weakness of judgment in accepting this explanation from a man introduced to her, under her husband's own hand, as one of the noblest note," to whose kindnesses he was most infinitely obliged. Overlooking, though not quite forgetting, the liberty taken with herself, the revulsion of feeling in her generous breast makes her welcome the insinuating stranger with hardly less cordiality than before, though with the added reserve of a dignity and a delicacy too lately wounded.

How finely, too, does the reflection, shortly after, of one of the lords attending upon Cloten, prepare us for the added peril to her fame exhibited before us in the bedchamber scene:

Alas, poor princess,

Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur'st!
Betwixt a father by thy stepdame govern'd;
A mother hourly coining plots; a wooer,
More hateful than the foul expulsion is
Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act

Of the divorce he'd make! The heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour! keep unshak'd
That temple, thy fair mind! that thou mayst stand
To enjoy thy banish'd lord, and this great land.

How beautifully is the sentiment of these lines continued in her own brief orison, which immediately follows:

To your protection I commend me, gods!

From fairies, and the tempters of the night,

Guard me, beseech ye!—

as this, again, gives added effect to the stealing of Iachimo from his hiding-place—

Our Tarquin thus

Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd

The chastity he wounded.

With what wonderful art, indeed, has Shakespeare lavished every sort of homage upon this his favourite

model of a glorious woman-making even self-sufficient fatuity own her influence no less than selfish villany. After the Italian thief has breathed out his hymn to that lovely purity, so awful in its defencelessness, in those low accents suited to his midnight proceeding, how delightful is the change to that daybreak salutation from the booby prince's musicians, which seems to soar on the very wings of the lark—that "wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it "—combining, in its cheerful cadence and its luscious rhyme, its dews and its blossoms, the voluptuousness of midsummer with the buoyancy of spring. What a delicious comment upon fachimo's proud celebration of her sleeping charms, do we find in the closing strain of the serenade

With every thing that pretty bin,

My lady sweet, arise!

Arise, arise!

But the troubles of poor Imogen thicken around her it is just when she is most tormentingly 'sprighted by a fool," that she misses the precious bracelet:

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Go, bid my woman

Search for a jewel, that too casually

Hath left mine arm; it was thy master's: 'shrew me,
If I would lose it for a revenue

Of any king's in Europe. I do think

I saw't this morning: confident I am,

Last night 'twas on mine arm; I kissed it.

I hope it be not gone to tell my lord

That I kiss aught but he.

Why, let us ask, is this last most exquisitely significant sentence omitted in acting? Surely, surely the suppression cannot have been owing to any suspicion that something approaching to indelicacy here drops from the lips of Imogen! Yet, as no other motive seems conceivable for striking out a sentence of such peculiar dramatic force, and as mere wantonness can hardly have produced what would in that case be so senseless a mutilation, we are compelled to attribute it to misapprehension as to the

decorousness of the words themselves coming from the mouth of the heroine-a misapprehension which, in vindication of the poet's consistency, and the peculiar delicacy of mind so constantly preserved in this character, we feel it necessary distinctly to expose.

The palpable error, then, must here have been committed by the theatrical censor, whoever he be, of transferring to the mind of the heroine herself some suspicion of the fact whereof the auditor, at this point of the drama, is fully conscious-that the bracelet is really gone to testify against her. But there is not another word in the play which indicates that any such suspicion has once entered her mind. It is the pure innocence of her heart, and the ready playfulness of her fancy, that produce the touchingly sportive wish, that the jewel may not be gone to tell her lord she kisses "aught but he ;"-"aught," be it observed-not 66 'any one." The ideas suggested by this latter expression would have been as contaminating to her spotless soul, as the very imagination that such a charge could have been forged against her would have been foreign to her unsuspicious nature. Her words are clearly to be taken in their strictly literal sense, as a mere sally from the tender sportiveness of anxious affection. So far, then, from their being, as any deliberate suppresser of the sentence must have supposed them to be, of the nature of a conscious. double entendre, their delicate simplicity derives a higher charm by contrast with that compound sense which they necessarily assume in the mind of the auditor. Here, in short, we find one of the subtlest master-strokes of dramatic skill of which even a Shakespeare was capable; for, besides that exquisite significance which we have already pointed out, how much is this proscribed sentence needed, to give full effect to the exclamations of Pisanio, on perusing the next letter from his master:

How! of adultery? Wherefore write you not
What monster's her accuser? Leonatus ?
Oh, master! what a strange infection

Is fallen into thy ear? What false Italian
(As poisonous tongu'd as handed) hath prevail'd
On thy too ready hearing? Disloyal! no,
She's punish'd for her truth; and undergoes,
More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults
As would take in some virtue. Oh, my master!
Thy mind to her is now as low as were

Thy fortunes.--How! that I should murder her!
Upon the love, and truth, and vows, which I

Have made to thy command!

The letter

That I have sent her, by her own command

Shall give thee opportunity.

It is this letter, sent for this purpose, his presenting of which

Madam, here is a letter from my lord

draws from her another of those exquisitely characteristic effusions:

Bless'd be

Who? thy lord? that is, my lord? Leonatus? Oh, learn'd indeed were that astronomer That knew the stars as I his characters; He'd lay the future open! You good gods, Let what is here contain'd relish of love, Of my lord's health, of his content-yet not That we two are asunder-let that grieve him (Some griefs are med'cinable; that is one of them, For it doth physic love)—of his content, All but in that!- -Good wax, thy leave. You bees that make these locks of counsel! And men in dangerous bonds, pray not alike; Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet You clasp young Cupid's tables.- -Good news, gods! We know nothing that has been said upon the charms of epistolary correspondence between absent lovers that approaches this delicious passage, except the words of Heloise on the same subject, in the opening of the first of her celebrated letters.

Lovers,

Then, when her eye catches her husband's intimation of his landing in Cambria, and his wish that she should renew him with her eyes, how glorious the instant leaping forward of her heart—

Oh, for a horse with wings!

that she may fly