accomplishments of her ward, resolves upon her destruction, and bribes a wretch, named Leonine, to the commission of the deed. The dialogue which takes place on this occasion, between the ruffian and his intended victim, places the artless simplicity of the latter in a very pleasing point of view,

"Leon.
Mar.

Leon.

Come, say your prayers speedily.
What mean you?

If you require a little space for prayer,

I grant it: Pray; but be not tedious,

For the gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn

To do my work with haste.

Mar. Why, will you kill me?

Leon. To satisfy my lady.

Mar. Why would she have me killed?
Now, as I can remember,

I never did her hurt in all my life;

I never spake bad word, nor did ill turn

To any living creature: believe me,

I never kill'd a mouse, nor hurt a fly:

I trod upon a worm against my will,

But I wept for it. How have I offended,
Wherein my death might yield her profit, or
My life imply her danger?

Leon. My commission

Is not to reason of the deed, but do it.

Mar. You will not do't for all the world, I hope.
You are well favour'd, and your looks foreshow
You have a gentle heart. I saw you lately,

When you caught hurt in parting two that fought:
Good sooth, it show'd well in you; do so now:
Your lady seeks my life; come you between,
And save poor me, the weaker.” *

Marina snatched from this villain by the sudden intervention of pirates, is sold by them to the keeper of a brothel at Mitylene, a situation which appears to her still more dreadful than that from which she has so narrowly escaped. She laments that Leonine had

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. p. 305. Act iv. sc. 1.

or executed his orders, or that the pirates had not thrown her overbrad, and exclaims in language equally beautiful and appropriate,—

Would set me free from this unhallow'd place,

Though they did change me to the meanest bird
That flies i' the purer air." *

Indebted to her talents and accomplishments, which she represents to her purchasers as more likely to be productive than the wages of prostitution, she is allowed to quit the brothel uninjured, but under a compact to devote the profits of her industry and skill to the support of her cruel oppressors.

The mild fortitude and resignation which she exhibits during this humiliating state of servitude, and the simple dignity which she displays in her person and manners, are forcibly delineated in the following observations of Pericles, who, roused from his torpor by her figure, voice, and features, and interested in her narrative, thus addresses her:

Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. p. 341. Act iv. sc. 6. Much of the dialogue which passes among the worthless inhabitants of this bagnio, is seasoned with the strong and characteristic humour of Shakspeare. Boult, a servant of the place, being ordered to cry Marina through the market of Mitylene, describing her personal charms, is asked, on his return, how he found the inclination of the people, to which he replies,

"'Faith, they listened to me, as they would have hearkened to their father's testament. There was a Spaniard's mouth so watered, that he went to bed to her very description. "Barod. We shall have him here to-morrow with his best ruff on.

"Boult. To-night, to-night. But, mistress, do you know the French knight that Cowers i' the hams?

"Bawd. Who? Monsieur Veroles?

"Boult. Ay; he offered to cut a caper at the proclamation; but he made a groan at it, and swore he would see her to-morrow.” Act iv. sc. 3.

If," says Mr. Malone, alluding to the lines in Italics, "there were no other proof of

Shakspeare's hand in this piece, this admirable stroke of humour would furnish decisive Gvidence of it."

a picture which is rendered yet more touching by a subsequent trait; for Lysimachus informs us

she would never tell

Her parentage; being demanded that,
She would sit still and weep." †

To this delightful sketch of female tenderness and subdued suffering, nearly all the interest of the last two acts is to be ascribed, and we feel, therefore, highly gratified that sorrows so unmerited, and so well borne, should, at length, terminate not only in repose, but in positive happiness. The poet, indeed, has allotted strict retributory justice to all his characters; the bad are severely punished, while in Pericles and his daughter, we behold

"Virtue preserv'd from fell destruction's blast,

Led on by heaven, and crown'd with joy at last."

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. pp. 365, 366.

Twelfth Night will occur to every one.

Act v. sc. 1. The similar passage in

+ Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xxi. p. 371. Act v. sc. 1.

Ibid. p. 388.-Milton appears to have read Pericles with attention, and to have caught some of its phraseology, a circumstance strongly confirmatory of the genuineness of the play: thus Gower, in the opening lines, speaking of Antiochus, says,—

"This king unto him took a pheere,

Who died and left a female heir,

So buxom, blithe, and full of face,

As heaven had lent her all her grace;"

a passage which evidently hung on Milton's ear, when, in his L'Allegro, he is describing the uncertain origin of Euphrosyne : —

"Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,

So buxom, blithe, and debonair.”

Again, in the first edition of Lycidas, v. 157., a very significant epithet seems to have been copied from the same source:

-

To whom, may it now be asked, if not to Shakspeare, can this play with any probability be given? Has not the above slight analysis of its two principal characters, with the quotations necessarily adduced, fully convinced us, that in style, sentiment, and imagery, and in the outline and conception of its chief female personage, the hand of our great master is undeniably displayed?

We presume, therefore, both the external and internal evidence for much the greater part of this play being the composition of Shakspeare may be pronounced complete and unanswerable; and it now only remains to enquire, if there be sufficient ground for considering Pericles, as we have ventured to do in this arrangement, as the FIRST dramatic production of our author's

pen.

It is very extraordinary that the positive testimony of Dryden as to the priority of Pericles, especially if we weigh well the import of the context, should ever have admitted of a moment's doubt or controversy. Nothing can, we think, be more plainly declaratory than the lines in question, which shall be given at length:

"Where thou perhaps under the HUMMING tide :"
"The belching whale,

And HUMMING water must o'erwhelm thy corpse.”

Milton.

Pericles.

It is remarkable, that when Milton, in his second edition, altered the word to whelming, he still clung to his former prototype.

The notice may appear whimsical or trifling, but I cannot help observing here, that a few lines of the initiatory address of Gower irresistibly remind me of some of the cadences of The Lay of the Last Minstrel; for instance, this contemporary of Chaucer, alluding to the antiquity of his song, says,—

"It hath been sung at festivals,

On ember-eves, and holy ales;
And lords and ladies of their lives,
Have read it for restoratives: -
If you, born in these latter times,
When wit's more ripe, accept my rhymes,
And that to hear an old man sing,
May to your wishes pleasure bring,
I life would wish, and that I might
Waste it for you, like taper-light.

"Your Ben and Fletcher in their first young flight,
Did no Volpone, no Arbaces write:

But hopp'd about, and short excursions made
From bough to bough, as if they were afraid;
And each were guilty of some Slighted Maid.
Shakspeare's own muse his Pericles FIRST bore;
The Prince of Tyre was elder than The Moor:
'Tis miracle to see a first good play ;

All hawthorns do not bloom on Christmas-day.
A slender poet must have time to grow,

And spread and burnish, as his brothers do:
Who still looks lean, sure with some p- is curst,

But no man can be Falstaff fat at first.”

This passage, if it mean any thing, must imply, not only from the bare assertion of one line, but from all the accessory matter, that Pericles was the first young flight of Shakspeare, that it was the first offspring of his dramatic muse, his first play. That this was the meaning of Dryden, and not merely that Pericles was produced before Othello, will be further evident from recollecting the occasion of the Prologue whence these lines are taken. It was written to introduce the first play of Dr. Charles D'Avenant, then only nineteen years of age, and the bard expressly calls it "the blossom of his green years,' the "rude essay of a youthful poet, who may grow up to write," expressions which can assimilate it with Pericles only on the supposition that the latter was, like Circe, a firstling of dramatic genius.

That Dryden, who wrote this prologue in 1675, possessed, from his approximation to the age of Shakspeare, many advantages for ascertaining the truth, none will deny. When the former had attained the age of twenty, the latter had been dead but thirty-five years, and the subsequent connection of the modern bard with the stage, and his intimacy with Sir William D'Avenant, who had produced his first play in 1629, and had been well acquainted with Heminge and the surviving companions of Shakspeare, would furnish him with suffi

VOL. II.

*

Prologue to the Tragedy of Circe, by Charles D'Avenant. 1675.