his works in the order of their production, as further enquiry will, in all probability, never alter. If we take a number of passages from the known works of his 'prentice hand, the early comedies, such, for instance, as Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and compare them with selections from the great tragedies of his matured powers, like Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth, and again with others from The Tempest and The Winter's Tale, creations of the calm sunset of his life, a clearly marked change will be observable in the nature and rhythmic movement of the verses. In the first set the numbers flow with a smoothness approaching the monotony of rhymed heroics; extra syllables rarely occur, the tenth usually has an emphatic accent, and the pause comes regularly at the end of the line: the verses are end-stopt, as they have been appropriately called. In the other selections we shall find this regularity gradually disappearing. Light and weak endings and extra syllables occur in increasing numbers; the pauses are, for the most part, removed from the end, and find place in any part of the line, even varying; the sense as well as the sound is continuous from one line to the next; the verse is run-on, as it is called, to distinguish it from the former kind. These marked characteristics are clearly discernible in the following selections:

The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns ;
The current, that with gentle murmur glides

Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so, by many winding nooks he strays,

With willing sport to the wild oce-an.

"Two Gentlemen of Verona."

The air is full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds, methought, would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me: that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

Tempest."

O Proserpina,

For the flowers now that, frighted, thou lett'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength,- a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one!

ད

"Winter's Tale."

The proportion of run-on to end-stopt lines has been ascertained by Mr. Furnival to be one in eighteen in Love's Labour's Lost, and to gradually

increase to one in two in Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale. According to Professor Ingram there is no single light or weak ending in the Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors, and only one in Midsummer-Night's Dream. They begin to appear plentifully in Macbeth, and in the later plays they amount to from five to seven per cent. of the whole number of endings. Again, in his early plays the youthful poet made free use of rhyme, but gradually discarded it as his skill in rhythmic melody grew. In Love's Labour's Lost there are two rhymed lines to each one without; but in the Tempest there is only one couplet throughout, and in Winter's Tale not one.

The blank verse of Shakspere's latest plays, we thus see, is the result of careful labour and ripened judgment, directed by an instinctive sense and faculty divine for beauty and melody. His choicest efforts are inimitable, and remain unique in our literature, for they defy analysis; their beauty must be felt rather than reasoned. out. The clear sweet ring of his lyrics is perhaps equalled by some of his contemporaries, and nearly approached by Burns and Shelley, but the grace and ever-varying music of his rhythmic numbers must be regarded as a lost art.

THE SONNET.

THE Sonnet, being a distinct kind of poem, demands separate treatment, and is therefore not dealt with here as a mere fourteen-line stanza. Besides, its nature and construction are so complex, and it occupies at the present time such an important and popular part in our poetic literature, that a more detailed account of its position in verse seems desirable.

The form of the sonnet is of Italian origin, and came into use in the fifteenth century, towards the end of which its construction was perfected, and its utmost melodious sweetness attained in the verse of Petrarch and Dante. In the perfect Italian type it consists of fourteen decasyllabic lines, which are divided into two unequal groups of eight and six lines, the former the octave, the latter the sestet. The octave is made up of two quatrains, and the sestet of two tercets. The rhymes throughout are unequally blended, and in the normal type are rigidly adhered to, their arrangement being based upon well-tested laws of melody. In the octave only two rhymes are admissible, one for the first, fourth, fifth and eighth lines, the other for the second, third, sixth, and seventh. The tercet

admits of three pairs of rhyme, the first and fourth lines, the second and fifth, and the third and sixth. This arrangement may be illustrated as follows, the letters a, b, c, d, e representing the rhymes in succession:

Octave a, b, b, a-a, b, b, a.
Sestet c, d, e-c, d, e.

The subject matter of the poem should consist of one idea, or one emotion elaborately and continuously wrought out throughout, and complete in itself. The principal idea should be stated in the first quatrain, and illustrated and elaborated in the second; then follows a pause. In each of the two tercets it should be again treated differently, and brought to a close with a dignity fully equal to the opening note, combined with epigramatic force.

The following example is constructed on the pure Petrarchan model, and is an ingenious and amusing illustration of the build of the sonnet itself. It is an English version of Lope de Vega's Sonnet on the Sonnet, by Mr. James Y. Gibson:

To write a sonnet doth Julia press me;

I've never found me in such stress or pain;
A sonnet numbers fourteen lines, 'tis plain,
And three are gone ere I can say, God bless me !

I thought that spinning lines would sore oppress me,
Yet here I'm midway in the last quatrain:

And if the foremost tercet I begin,

The quatrains need not any more distress me.