a bad liver, a dull eye and a sharp nose are the visible marks of a shrew." Monsieur D'Olive, 1606, v., 1.

By means of that noble and precious sense, the sight, Man beholds not only the works of God on earth, but, raising his eye above, he contemplates the still more marvellous splendours, suspended in that "most excellent canopy, the air," that "most majestical roof fretted with golden fire." Indeed, it is to the eye alone, of all the senses, that man is indebted for his power of exploring the heavens, and without this organ the sublime science of astronomy could not be pursued.

THESEUS. The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.
Midsummer Night's Dream, v.,
The eye sees not itself,

BRUTUS.

But by reflection, by some other things.

1.

Julius Caesar, i., 2.

Sir John Davies, in one of his poems, has the same thought :

"Is it because the mind is like the eye,

Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees;

Whose

rays reflect not, but spread outwardly;

Not seeing itself, when other things it sees?"

Nosce Teipsum; or, The Immortality of the Soul, 1599.

Again, in one of John Marston's comedies

:-

"Thus few strike sail until they run on shelf;

The eye sees all things, but its proper self."

Parasitaster; or, The Fawn, 1606.

From the singular success with which the human eye quietly expresses passing sentiments and feelings it is a happy simile of the poet to compare it to a book. In Love's Labour Lost, "ladies eyes" are called books. (iv. 3.) In King John, we have the "table of her eye," (ii., 2.) in allusion to the parchment memorandum books of old, which were called tables.

"Oh! how she watches in the young one's face,

As though its very soul her heart could trace;

And read by the blue index of the eye,

The hopes, the sorrows of its infancy!"

Busby's Poems, p. 12.

BIRON. I will not love: if I do, hang me: i' faith, I will not.

O, but

her eye, by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes, but for her two eyes. * * * By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy.

KING. [reads] So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not
To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,
As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote
The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows:
Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright

Through the transparent bosom of the deep,
As doth thy face through tears of mine give light;
Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep:

No drop but as a coach doth carry thee,

So ridest thou triumphing in my woe;

Do but behold the tears that swell in me,

And they thy glory through thy grief will show:
But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep
My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.
O queen of queens, how far dost thou excel!
No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell.

LONGAVILLE. [reads] Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye
('Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,)
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

Vows for thee broke, deserve not punishment.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive :
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.

Love's Labour Lost, iv., 3. Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes. Romeo and Juliet, ii., 3.

"Yea tell ine, how many soules have lost their libertie through the sight of the eyes? Doe not men say that that little wanton, that blind archer, doth enter into our hearts by this doore, and that love is shaped by the glittering glimces which issue out of the eyes, or rather by certain subtile and thin spirits, which passe from the heart to the eye through a straight and narrow way very secretly, and having deceived this porter, doe place love within, which by little and little doth make itselfe lord of the house, and casteth reason out of doores.-Surphlet's Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight. 4to, 1599, p. 12.

The impressions received through the eye, are often more lasting and more vividly retained by the mind than those received through any other organ.

HAMLET. My father,—methinks I see my father.
HORATIO.

Where,

Hamlet, i., 2.

Hamlet, i., 5,

Make thy two eyes like stars, start from their spheres.

Made me compare with Hermia's sphery eyne.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted,
In the distraction of this madding fever.

Sonnets, cxix.

That is, how have mine eyes been convulsed during the frantic Malone thinks that the participle

fits of my feverous love!

fitted is not used by any other author in the sense in which it is here employed.

KING HENRY. Her tears will pierce into a marble heart.

King Henry VI., Part III., iii., 1.

So, in Ovid :

Beg her with tears thy warm desires to grant;
For tears will pierce a heart of adamant."

BUSHY.

Art of Love, Book i., 743.

Sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which rightly gaz'd upon,
Show nothing but confusion, ey'd awry,
Distinguish form: so your sweet majesty,
Looking awry upon your lord's departure,
Finds shapes of grief, more than himself, to wail;
Which look'd on as it is, is nought but shadows
Of what it is not."

Richard II., ii., 2.

It appears to me that the "perspectives" referred to here are merely curious drawings and paintings which are so ingeniously executed, that, if placed either horizontally or perpendicularly, they appear ridiculously unintelligible to the eye; but which if placed at a certain slant before the beholder assume an intelligible and pleasing character. I possess an old and rare engraving of King Charles the First, about a yard in length and only a few inches in width, which if looked at in the ordinary way is a confused absurdity, but if placed before the eye at a certain angle, is directly seen to be a beautiful portrait of the unfortunate monarch. However, as the sense of the above passage has been greatly disputed, I append the notes of the several commentators.

"This is a fine similitude, and the thing meant is this. Amongst mathematical recreations, there is one in optics, in which a figure is drawn wherein all the rules of perspective are inverted; so that, if held in the same position with those pictures which are drawn according to the rules of perspective, it can present nothing but confusion: and to be seen in form, and under a regular appearance, it must be looked upon from a contrary station; or as Shakespeare says, 'ey'd awry.' '"- Warburton.

-

"Dr. Plot's History of Staffordshire, p. 391, explains this perspective, or odd kind of 'pictures upon an indented board, which, if beheld directly you only perceive a confused piece of work; but, if obliquely, you see the intended person's picture;' which, he was told, was made thus: 'The board being indented, [or furrowed with a plough-plane], the print or painting was cut into parallel pieces equal to the depth and number of the indentures on the board, and they were pasted on the flats that strike the eye holding it obliquely, so that the edges of the parallel pieces of the

C

print or painting exactly joining on the edges of the indentures, the work was done."--Tollet.

"The following short poem, by Ben Jonson, would almost persuade one that the words rightly and awry [perhaps originally written aright and wryly] had exchanged places in the text of our author:

'Lines prefixed to Melancholike Humours, in Verses of Divine Natures, Set Downe by Nich. Breton, Gent., 1600:

'In Authorem.

'That thou wouldst finde the habit of true passion,
And see a minde attir'd in perfect strains;
Not wearing moodes, as gallants doe a fashion

In these pide times, only to showe their braines ;
Looke here on Breton's worke, the master print,
Where such perfections to the life doe rise :
If they seeme wry, to such as looke asquint,
The fault's not in the object, but their eyes.
For, as one comming with a laterall viewe
Unto a cunning piece-wrought perspective
Wants facultie to make a censure true:

So with this author's readers will it thrive:
Which, being eyed directly, I divine,

His proofe their praise will meete, as in this line !'"

(Steevens.)

"So in Hentzner, 1598, Royal Palace, Whitehall: 'Edward VI. Angliæ regis effigies, primo intuitu monstrosum quid repræsentans, sed si quis effigiem rectâ intucatur, tum vera depræhenditur !'"-Farmer.

"The perspectives here mentioned, were not pictures, but round chrystal glasses, the convex surface of which was cut into faces, like those of the rose-diamond; the concave left uniformly smooth. These chrystals— which were sometimes mounted on tortoise-shell box lids, and sometimes fixed into ivory cases-if placed as here represented, would exhibit the different appearances described by the poet.

“The word shadows is here used in opposition to substance, for reflected images, and not as the dark forms of bodies, occasioned by their interception of the light that falls upon them."-Henley.

Blindness is greatly compensated for in some people, by their sense of touch acquiring so exquisite a degree of perfection, that they almost seem to see with their hands :

O dear son, Edgar,
Might I but live to see thee in my touch,

I'd say, I had my eyes again.

King Lear, iv., 1.