ids of the waters) and like
the Graces; some steering the helm, others tending the tackle and ropes
of the barge, out of the which there came a wonderful passing sweet
savour of perfumes, that perfumed the wharf's side, pestered with
innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all
along the river side; others also ran out of the city to see her coming
in. So that in the end there ran such multitudes of people one
after another to see her, that Antonius was left post alone in the
market-place, in his imperial seat to give audience."--NORTH'S
_Plutarch, Life of Antonius_, p. 763. Ed. of 1676.

_Enobarbus._ When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart
upon the river of Cydnus.

_Agrippa._ There she appeared, indeed; or my reporter devised well for
her.

_Eno._ I will tell you.
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 lovesick; with them the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, (cloth of gold, of tissue,)
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork Nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-color'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

_Agr._ Oh, rare for Antony!

_Eno._ Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthron'd i' th' market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air, which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in Nature.

_Antony and Cleopatra_. Act II. Sc. 2.

The operations of Shakespeare's creative imagination are rarely to be
observed more distinctly than in such instances as this, where we see
the precise source from which he drew, in all its original limitations
and native character. Books were to him like ingots of gold, which,
pa