ameless in composition and coherence; while in _Love's Labour's Lost_
the fancy for the most part runs wild as the wind, and the structure of
the story is as that of a house of clouds which the wind builds and
unbuilds at pleasure. Here we find a very riot of rhymes, wild and
wanton in their half-grown grace as a troop of "young satyrs,
tender-hoofed and ruddy-horned"; during certain scenes we seem almost to
stand again by the cradle of new-born comedy, and hear the first lisping
and laughing accents run over from her baby lips in bubbling rhyme; but
when the note changes we recognise the speech of gods. For the first
time in our literature the higher key of poetic or romantic comedy is
finely touched to a fine issue. The divine instrument fashioned by
Marlowe for tragic purposes alone has found at once its new sweet use in
the hands of Shakespeare. The way is prepared for _As You Like It_ and
the _Tempest_; the language is discovered which will befit the lips of
Rosalind and Miranda.

What was highest as poetry in the _Comedy of Errors_ was mainly in rhyme;
all indeed, we might say, between the prelude spoken by AEgeon and the
appearance in the last scene of his wife: in _Love's Labour's Lost_ what
was highest was couched wholly in blank verse; in the _Two Gentlemen of
Verona_ rhyme has fallen seemingly into abeyance, and there are no
passages of such elegiac beauty as in the former, of such exalted
eloquence as in the latter of these plays; there is an even sweetness, a
simple equality of grace in thought and language which keeps the whole
poem in tune, written as it is in a subdued key of unambitious harmony.
In perfect unity and keeping the composition of this beautiful sketch may
perhaps be said to mark a stage of advance, a new point of work attained,
a faint but sensible change of manner, signalised by increased firmness
of hand and clearness of outline. Slight and swift in execution as it
is, few and simple as are the chords here struck of character and
emotion, every shade of drawing and every note of sound is at one with
the whole scheme of form and music. Here too is the first dawn of that
higher and more tender humour which was never given in such perfection to
any man as ultimately to Shakespeare; one touch of the by-play of Launce
and his immortal dog is worth all the bright fantastic interludes of
Boyet and Adriano, Costard and Holofernes; worth even half the sallies of
Mercutio, and half the dancing