might have been a sister of Shakspere's Perdita or Miranda. Like them, she is a child of high estate removed from courtly surroundings into a way of life more simple, more free, where objects and interests are few, natural, and enduring. As with them, a courtly lover comes to make discovery of his rustic princess, and she returns to the place assigned her by her birth. Like Perdita, she is queen of the country side, mistress of rural junketings, the prettiest lass that ever ran on the green sward, and nothing that she does

"But smacks of something greater than herself."

We think of her as she stood upon the hillock when first seen by Calidore, crowned with flowers, clad in home-made green, and environed with a garland of lovely maidens; the lusty swains pipe and sing her praises, "and oft rejoice and oft for wonder shout." We think of her as she meekly leads her little flock at her old foster father's bidding, as she tends at supper while the princely Calidore sits and cannot choose but follow her with his eyes, as she gathers strawberries in the green wood with her rival lovers, as she graciously receives the rustic presents of Coridon, squirrel and sparrow, or looks on while the Knight of Courtesy, a shepherd for the nonce, pulls the rugged teats of her mother ewes. We remember her in the dimness of the brigand's cave, and how joy came to her with the clear voice of Calidore, and again as she stood half arrayed and all amazed at that moment when old Melissa espied the rosy mark upon her breast, and ran in haste, as one dismayed yet full of joy, to tell her mistress that the long lost babe was found.

The Faerie Queene" is not, however, a legend solely of good women. Being bound by fealty to all womankind," Spenser has not permitted himself to shrink from presenting ideals of feminine weakness, folly, shame, and vice. There is the false and foul Duessa; there is Acrasia, that Circean enchantress who changes her lovers from men to swine; and Phædria, the lightest of idle bubbles on the Idle Lake; and Hellenore, whose shameless coquetry soon turns to a thing of grosser name; and the superb, wanton Malecasta; and Lucifera, queen of spiritual pride; and Philotime, queen of worldly ambition; and Radigund, the revoltress against the obedience of her sex; and the brutal Argante; and Mirabella, with her little hard and shallow heart; and the blind and malevolent Abessa; and the grisly hags Envy and Detraction. Spenser broadly divides the evil from the good. If he does not make an imaginative inquest into complex problems of life and character, he serves us perhaps more by his high yet serene ardour on behalf of all that is excellent and against all that is ignoble. The only passage in the "Faerie Queene" touched with cynicism, the story put with dramatic propriety into the mouth of the Squire of Dames, is derived from Ariosto.

Y

SHAKSPERE'S PORTRAITURE OF WOMEN.

FOR a critic to say anything of Shakspere that has not been said already is as hard as it would be for a poet to sing a new song about the sun. But we vivify our old impressions by rearranging them; each reflects the light, flinging a gleam or a sparkle on its neighbour, and when we alter the position of this or that, nothing seems to remain quite the same; we have given our kaleidoscope a turn. On this account, if on no other, we may value the chronological method of studying an author's works of late pursued so industriously; it has been a new way of arranging our knowledge, and so it has reanimated our dulled impressions. Even, if another mode of study should supersede this, as is not unlikely, it will have done some service in its day.

Mrs Jameson, in her eloquent volumes of criticism, "The Characteristics of Women," grouped Shakspere's heroines under a kind of psychological classification: there were the "characters of intellect," and the "characters of passion and imagination," and the "characters of the affections." And thus Miranda and Juliet came hand in hand to greet us; and again, Hermione and Desdemona. Let us see whether we can feel the old immortal beauty in some degree afresh, and cheat ourselves into supposing that we are making some small discoveries about Shakspere, and the growth

of his character and genius, by glancing along his portraits of women in the order in which they were actually conceived by him. We shall at least spend an hour in the best possible company. These ideal figures cannot fail to quicken our sensibility for what is beautiful in real life; there are hidden or marred ideals all around us in the actual men and women, in the commonplace lives of the street, the market, and the fireside. If we knew every motion of an Imogen or a Cordelia, it might be possible to detect the heart of one of these beating under a modern gown. We do not remove from the real world when we pass into the world of true imagination; rather we train our eyes to make the most precious discoveries in the region of every-day fact.

But why not go to a woman to hear about women? Why expect to learn as much from Shakspere as from George Eliot or Jane Austen? It is true that there were secrets known to Jane Austen and George Eliot at which even Shakspere only guessed; secrets of womanly fortitude in petty things, which are properly known only to those who feel where the shoe pinches; secrets of feminine weakness visible to keen eyes which are tempted by no chivalric sentiment to blink the fact. The commonplaces of masculine satire on woman have something clumsy and stupid about them; it is well to have them near us as stones to fling on occasion, but they seldom hit the mark. If the barbed dart is to quiver in the flesh, it should be aimed by a sister's hand; she is aware at what precise points the armour is unjointed. But, on the other hand, there are many truths which

each sex can best tell about the other. Our personality does not consist solely or chiefly in the little hard central kernel, which we call the ego: we effuse ourselves, and live more in this active expanded self than in the midmost cell of our being. And each sex dilates and discovers itself chiefly in presence of the opposite sex. Therefore, a man may know some things about women of which a woman is hardly aware, and (if we would only believe it) a woman may know a good deal about men which a man will stoutly deny, yet which is most certain; only, women are seldom courageous enough to tell us what they know, and we are pleased by this timidity, choosing to live on in our fool's paradise. Each sex holds the mirror up to the other, and what matter if it be a magic mirror? We may call Charlotte Brontë's admirable M. Paul Emanuel a woman's hero; and so he is, for he is a man reflected in a woman's magic mirror. But one of our sex who would understand the potency of manhood, will by no means waste his time if he studies the character of M. Paul Emanuel. He will see manhood, presented indeed in a magic mirror, but raying out its fierce undeniable attractions, and grappling with myriad spiritual tentacles the feminine heart. Could we have conceived it so? And in like manner we may say of Shakspere's heroines, who are women beheld in the most wonderful of magic mirrors, that they are more perfectly feminine than any woman could have found it in her heart or brain to make them. By what art of divination could she have guessed all the potency of her sex?

There are poets and artists whose genius brings forth