As level as the cannon to his blank,

Transports his poison'd shot-may miss our name,

And hit the woundless air."

Ibid., iv. 1.

"Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it."

Macbeth, ii. 1.

"O thou day o' the world,

Chain mine arm'd neck; leap thou, attire and all,
Through proof of harness to my heart, and there
Ride on the pants triúmphing!”

Ant. and Cleo., iv. 8.

"For his bounty,

There was no Winter in 't; an Autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping: his delights
Were dolphin-like; they show'd his back above
The element they liv'd in: in his livery
Walk'd crowns and crownets."

Ibid., v. 2.

"The ample proposition that hope makes

In all designs begun on earth below

Fails in the promis'd largeness: checks and disasters Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd."

66 Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away.”

Troil. and Cres., i. 3.

"Be as a planetary plague, when Jove

Will o'er some high-vic'd city hang his poison
In the sick air."

"Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes;

Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes, Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, Shall pierce a jot."

"Common mother, thou,

Whose womb unmeasurable, and infinite breast,

Teems, and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,
Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff'd,
Engenders the black toad and adder blue,
The gilded newt and eyeless venom'd worm;
Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate,
From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root !"

"What, think'st

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,

Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip where thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,
To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit?"

"O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce
'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler
Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars!
Thou ever young, fresh, lov'd, and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow
That lies on Dian's lap! thou visible god,

That solder'st-close impossibilities,

And mak'st them kiss! that speak'st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!

Think, thy slave man rebels; and by thy virtue

Set them into confounding odds, that beasts

May have the world in empire ! "

Timon of Athens, iv. 3.

Shakespeare's boldness in metaphors is pretty strongly exemplified in some of the forecited passages; but he has instances of still greater boldness. Among these may be named Lady Macbeth's

"Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry Hold, hold!"

Here "blanket of the dark runs to so high a pitch, that divers critics, Coleridge among them, have been staggered by it, and have been fain to set it down as a corruption of the text. In this they are no doubt mistaken the meta

phor is in the right style of Shakespeare, and, with all its daring, runs in too fair keeping to be ruled out of the family. Hardly less bold is this of Macbeth's

"Heaven's cherubin, hors'd

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind."

With these I suspect may be fitly classed, notwithstanding its delicacy, the following from Iachimo's description of Imogen, when he comes out of the trunk in her chamber: "The flame o' the taper

Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,

To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied

Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd

With blue of heaven's own tinct."

Also this, from the soliloquy of Posthumus in repentance for the supposed death of Imogen by his order:

"My conscience, thou art fetter'd

More than my shanks and wrists: you good gods give me

The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,

Then free for ever!"

I add still another example; from one of old Nestor's speeches on the selection of a champion to fight with the Trojan hero:

"It is suppos'd,

He that meets Hector issues from our choice:
And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,

Makes merit her election; and doth boil,
As 'twere from forth us all, a man distill'd
Out of our virtues."

are, to my

All these and I could quote a hundred such thinking, instances of happy and, I will add, even wise audacity: at least, if there be any overstraining of imagery, I can easily shrive the fault, for the subtile felicity involved in them. They are certainly quite at home in the millennium of poetry which Shakespeare created for us; albeit I

can well remember the time when such transcendent rap

tures were to me as

"Some joy too fine,

Too subtle-potent, tun'd too sharp in sweetness,
For the capacity of my ruder powers."

It would be strange indeed if a man so exceedingly daring did not now and then overdare. And so I think the Poet's boldness in metaphor sometimes makes him overbold, or at least betrays him into infelicities of boldHere are two instances, from The Tempest, v. 1:

ness.

And here is another, of perhaps still more questionable character, from Macbeth, i. 7:

"His two chamberlains

Will I with wine and wassail so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only."

What, again, shall be said of the two following, where
Coriolanus snaps off his fierce scorn of the multitude?—

"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,

That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourselves scabs ?"

"So shall my lungs

Coin words till their decay against those measles,
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them.'

Either from overboldness in the metaphors, or from some unaptness in the material of them, I have to confess that

my mind rather rebels against these stretches of poetical prerogative. Still more so, perhaps, in the well-known passage of King Henry the Fifth, iv. 3; though I am not sure but, in this case, the thing rightly belongs to the speaker's character:

"And those that leave their valiant bones in France,

Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,

They shall be fam'd; for there the Sun shall greet them,
And draw their honours reeking up to heaven;
Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,
The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.
Mark, then, abounding valour in our English;
That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing,
Break out into a second course of mischief,
Killing in rélapse of mortality."

But, whatever be the right mark to set upon these and some other instances, I find but few occasions of such revolt; and my only wonder is, how any mere human genius could be so gloriously audacious, and yet be so seldom chargeable with passing the just bounds of poetical privilege.

Metaphors are themselves the aptest and clearest mode of expressing much in little. No other form of speech will convey so much thought in so few words. They often compress into a few words what would else require as many sentences. But even such condensations of meaning did not so it appears · always answer Shakespeare's purpose: he sometimes does hardly more than suggest metaphors, throwing off several of them in quick succession. We have an odd instance of this in one of Falstaff's speeches, Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, i. 2: "Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it: and yet cannot he see, though he have his own lantern to light him." Here we have a thick-coming series of punning metaphors, all merely suggested. So Brutus, when hunting after reasons for killing Cæsar: "It is the bright