_Viola._ _A blank, my lord, she never told her love:_
She let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud.
Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. _Was not this love indeed?_
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed,
Our shews are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.

_Duke._ But died thy sister of her love, my boy?

_Viola._ I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too;--and yet I know not."--

Shakspeare alone could describe the effect of his own poetry.

"Oh, it came o'er the ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour."

What we so much admire here is not the image of Patience on a monument,
which has been generally quoted, but the lines before and after it. "They
give a very echo to the seat where love is throned." How long ago it is
since we first learnt to repeat them; and still, still they vibrate on the
heart, like the sounds which the passing wind draws from the trembling
strings of a harp left on some desert shore! There are other passages of
not less impassioned sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebastian,
whom she supposes to have already deceived her in a promise of marriage.

"Blame not this haste of mine: if you mean well,
Now go with me and with this holy man
Into the chantry by: there before him,
And underneath that consecrated roof,
Plight me the full assurance of your faith,
_That my most jealous and too doubtful soul_
_May live at peace_."

V

MILTON

Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm, and an
indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the bigotry of his
age, and his political prejudices were not very strong. In these respects,
as well as in every other, he formed a direct contrast to Milton. Milton's
works are a perpetual invocation to the Muses; a hymn to Fame. He had his
thoughts constantly fixed on the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy,
and of a perfect commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand just warm
from the touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its
character into his imagination; so that he devotes himself with the same
sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise
of virtue, or the good of his country. The spirit of th