usurpation over the wild aborigines of the new world; he felt a warm interest in the English colonization, in the creation of new nations, during the reign of James, Southampton was a prominent character in the Virginia Company, and shared with Sandys and Wyatt the merit of first founding the political freedom of the colonists. If it were indeed the poet's intention to give this historical back-ground to the story of Antonio's usurpation, it is a further evidence of his wide views of history and of his unbiassed mind, entirely free, as it was, from all false sentimentality. He shows the scrupulous philosophers, who doubted the lawfulness of colonization, the evils of policy and morality at home, where deeds quite as unnatural are practised, as could have been done there. He perceived that what happened in the new world at that time was necessary, that with the extension of mankind, superiority of spiritual and moral power would ever inundate the realms of rudeness and barbarism, streaming, as it were, into an empty space. Shakespeare has still further displayed the pure healthiness of his political and historical wisdom, in a scene of this play, in composing which he has evidently had before him a chapter of Montaigne's Essays (I. 10.) in Florio's translation (1603). He lets old Gonzalo, not in earnest, but in playful conversation, describe the system of the communists, socialists, and peace-congresses, and Alonzo give his opinion upon it. We will only quote the passage; it were a pity, to add a single word.

Gonzalo. I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things: for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; no use of service,

Of riches, or of poverty; no contracts,

Successions, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none:

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil:

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too; but innocent and pure:
No sovereignty: -

Seb. And yet he would be king on't.

Ant. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets
The beginning.

Gon. All things in common, nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour; treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth
Of its own kind, all foizon, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.

Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects?

Ant. None, man; all idle; whores and knaves. Gon. I would with such perfection govern, Sir, To excel the golden age.

Alonzo. Pr'ythee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me!

THE WINTER'S TALE.

According to a notice discovered by Malone, the Winter's Tale was first licensed for representation by Sir George Buck, who entered upon his office of Master of the Revels in October 1610; on the 15th of May 1611 Dr. Forman saw the play at the Globe; it must, therefore, have been produced between these dates, at the same time as the Tempest. It was acted at Whitehall on the 5th November 1611, four days after the Tempest. In the story, from which Shakespeare took the matter of the Winter's Tale, the exposure of Perdita on the sea, is like the expovery sure of Miranda and her father, described in the Tempest; the dramatist made an alteration in this part, to avoid repetition; Collier takes this as a proof, that the Tempest was written first; but it can only indicate, that the plan of both pieces was sketched at about the same time. The contemporaneous appearance of the two is further confirmed by a sarcasm of Ben Jonson's (in his Bartholomew Fair 1614) which alludes to both.*

* The often quoted passage in the Induction is as follows: "if there be never a Servant-monster i' the fayre, who can helpe it, he sayes; nor a nest of Antiques? He is loth to make Nature afraid in his playes, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries".

Shakespeare's source for the Winter's Tale is Greene's "History of Dorastus and Fawnia,” which appeared first in 1588, under the title Pandosto, but our poet used a later edition, probably that of 1609. Shakespeare in many passages borrowed words and whole speeches from this narrative; he changed the names of the personages, but kept, on the whole, close to the story, yet altering and enlarging it on some essential points. In Greene's narrative, the adventures of Dorastus and Faunia (Florizel and Perdita) are the main object, to which the earlier part only serves as an introduction. The king of Bohemia (Pandosto) is here the jealous husband; the king of Sicily (Egistus) is the visitor, whose royal hostess (Bellaria) is commanded by her spouse to do him all honour. Her newborn child is cast into the sea, and abandoned to the winds and waves by the jealous king of Bohemia, whose son dies, as in Shakespeare, according to the oracle, which is similar in purport here to that in the Winter's Tale; but the queen is really, and not merely apparently, taken from her husband by death. In Greene's narrative, the real matter only now begins. Dorastus is designed by his father for a Danish princess, but he is cold to all love. To be revenged for this, Cupid leads him, when engaged in hawking, to Faunia. The love of these two is only described by Shakespeare in its progress; in the other its origin is fully dwelt upon, in the manner of the Italian pastorals; the struggle between passion and the claims of rank is the main point; the triumph of love is the aim of the narrative. The pair escape on board a ship, before the king knows of the engagement; a servant of the Prince's, Capnio, answering to Shakespeare's Autolycus, brings the shepherd on board,

who is to discover the love-affair and to shew Faunia's trinkets to the king; a storm, not Camillo as in Shakespeare, drives the fugitives to Bohemia. Here Faunia's father falls in love with her, a situation, only slightly hinted at in Shakespeare; when all is explained, Pandosto (Leontes), overcome with melancholy on account of this love for his daughter and his former jealousy, is driven to self-destruction.

Shakespeare has done with this narrative, as he usually did with his bad originals, he has done away with some indelicacy in the matter, and some unnatural things in the form; he has given a better foundation to the characters and course of events; but to impart an intrinsic value to the subject as a whole, to bring a double action into unity, and to give to the play the character of a regular drama by mere arrangements of matter and alteration of motive, was not possible. The wildness of the fiction, the improbability and contingency of the events, the gap in the time, which divides the two actions between two generations, could not be repaired by any art. Shakespeare, therefore, began upon his theme in quite an opposite direction. He increased still more the marvellous and miraculous in the given subject, he disregarded more and more the requirements of the real and probable, and treated time, place, and circumstances with the utmost arbitrariness. He added the character of Antigonus and his death by the bear, Paulina and her second marriage in old age, the pretended death, the long forbearance and preservation of Hermione, Autolycus and his cunning tricks, and he increased thereby the improbable circumstances and strange incidents. He overleaped all limits, mixing up together Russian emperors and the Delphic oracle and Julio Romano, chivalry and heathen