Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,
Being prisoned in her eye, like pearls in glass;
Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,
Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass,
To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,
Who is but drunken when she seemeth drowned.
O hard-believing love, how strange it seems
Not to believe, and yet too credulous!
Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;
Despair and hope make thee ridiculous:

The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely;
In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought;
Adonis lives, and Death is not to blame;

It was not she that called him all-to-nought;
Now she adds honours to his hateful name;

*

She clepes him king of graves, and grave for kings;
Imperious supreme of all mortal things.

'No, no,' quoth she, 'sweet Death, I did but jest;
Yet, pardon me, I felt a kind of fear,
Whenas I met the boar, that bloody beast,
Which knows no pity, but is still severe :
Then, gentle shadow, (truth I must confess)
I railed on thee, fearing my love's decease.

"Tis not my fault; the boar provoked my tongue:
Be wreaked on him, invisible commander:
"Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong;
I did but act, he's author of thy slander:

Grief hath two tongues; and never woman yet
Could rule them both, without ten women's wit.'

* Entirely. The formation is common to many phrases amongst the early writers, and was employed to add force to the expression: as all-to-torn, very much torn; all-to-smash, smashed to pieces.

Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,

That, in the various bustle of resort,

Were all-to-ruffled, and sometimes impaired.-MILTON.-Comus.

Thus, hoping that Adonis is alive,
Her rash suspect she doth extenuate;
And that his beauty may the better thrive,
With Death she humbly doth insinuate;

*

Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs; and stories + His victories, his triumphs, and his glories.

'O Jove,' quoth she, 'how much a fool was I,
To be of such a weak and silly mind,

To wail his death, who lives, and must not die,
Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind!

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain;
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

Fie, fie, fond Love! thou art so full of fear,

As one with treasure laden, hemmed with thieves;
Trifles, unwitnessed with eye or ear,

Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.'
Even at this word she hears a merry horn,
Whereat she leaps, that was but late forlorn.

As falcon to the lure, away she flies;

The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light;

* Ingratiate herself with. Insinuate with was the usual form :What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play.-As You Like it, Epil.

Take the devil in thy mind, and believe him not; he would insinuate with thee, but to make thee sigh.-Richard III. i. 4.

†This verb, now employed chiefly in the passive participle, was formerly in common use. There are other examples of it in Shakspeare:

How worthy he is, I will leave to appear hereafter, rather than story him in his own hearing.—Cymbeline, i. 5.

He stories to her ears her husband's fame.-Rape of Lucrece. See ante, p. 43. The same image occurs in Belchier's Comedy of Hans Beer-pot (1618), and in The Lady of the Lake :

With that she rose like nimble roe,

The tender grass scarce bending.-Hans Beer-pot.

E'en the slight harebell raised its head,

Elastic from her airy tread.

SCOTT-Lady of the Lake.

And in her haste unfortunately spies

The foul boar's conquest on her fair delight;
Which seen, her eyes, as murdered with the view,
Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew:
Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain;
And there, all smothered up, in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again;

So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled
Into the deep dark cabins of her head;
Where they resign their office and their light
To the disposing of her troubled brain;
Who bids them still consort with ugly night,
And never wound the heart with looks again;
Who, like a king perplexèd in his throne,
By their suggestion gives a deadly groan;
Whereat each tributary subject quakes;
As when the wind, imprisoned in the ground,
Struggling for passage, earth's foundation shakes,
Which with cold terror doth men's minds confound:*
This mutiny each part doth so surprise,

That from their dark beds, once more, leap her eyes;

And, being opened, threw unwilling light

Upon the wide wound that the boar had trenched +
In his soft flank; whose wonted lily white

With purple tears, that his wound wept, was drenched:
No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed,
But stole his blood, and seemed with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth;
Over one shoulder doth she hang her head;
Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth;
She thinks he could not die, he is not dead.

* There was an earthquake in England in 1580, when Shakspeare was sixteen years old. † Cut; from trancher.

The conversion of substantives into verbs and adjectives, and of verbs into substantives, is of frequent occurrence in the writings of Shakspeare and his contemporaries. With the following exception,

Her voice is stopped, her joints forget to bow;
Her eyes are mad that they have wept till now.

Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly,

That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three;
And then she reprehends her mangling eye,

That makes more gashes where no breach should be:
His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled;
For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled.
'My tongue cannot express my grief for one;
And yet,' quoth she, 'behold two Adons dead;
My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone,
Mine eyes are turned to fire, my heart to lead.

Heavy heart's lead, melt at mine eyes' red fire!
So shall I die by drops of hot desire.

'Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!
What face remains alive that's worth the viewing?
Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast
Of things long since, or any thing ensuing?

The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim; But true-sweet beauty lived and died with him. 'Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear! Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you: Having no fair* to lose, you need not fear;†

The sun doth scorn you, and the wind doth hiss you;

however, I believe this is the only instance in which Shakspeare has used passion as a verb:

Madame, 'twas Ariadne passioning

For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight.

Two Gen. of Verona, i. 2.

*Beauty. One of the instances in which, by a common licence, an adjective is used as a substantive. There are other examples of this use of the word fair in Shakspeare:

Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.

Love's Labour Lost, iv. 1.

O heresy in fair, fit for these days.-Ib.

My decayed fair

A sunny look of his would soon repair.

Com. of Errors, ii. 1.

It appears from the corresponding rhyme, and the jingle in the

But when Adonis lived, sun and sharp air
Lurked like two thieves, to rob him of his fair;

'And therefore would he put his bonnet on,
Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep;
The wind would blow it off, and, being gone,
Play with his locks; then would Adonis weep:
And, straight, in pity of his tender years,

They both would strive who first should dry his tears.

'To see his face the lion walked along

Behind some hedge, because he would not fear* him:
To recreate himself, when he hath sung,

The tiger would be tame, and gently hear him :
If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey,
And never fright the silly lamb that day.

present line, that the word fear was pronounced in the time of Shakspeare as if it were written fare.'-MALONE. To draw a general conclusion from a particular instance is illogical and unsafe under any circumstances; but with the whole text of Shakspeare before him, and a competent knowledge of the contemporary literature, it is surprising Malone should have fallen into this error. Any attempt to determine the pronunciation of the language in the time of Shakspeare by the rhymes of the dramatic writers, or the jingles incidental to their verbal conceits, would be frustrated by a multitude of examples neutralizing each other. Instances can be found of every conceivable variety of pronunciation; and Malone might just as reasonably have inferred, from a line that occurs immediately afterwards, that there was pronounced theer, as, from this instance, that fear was pronounced fare:'Tis true, 'tis true; thus was Adonis slain : He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear, Who did not whet his teeth at him again, But by a kiss thought to persuade him there.

Within a few stanzas of this hasty note, there are two examples in which the word fear is pronounced exactly as at present:

Fie, fie, fond Love! thou art so full of fear,

As one with treasure laden, hemmed with thieves :
Trifles, unwitnessèd with eye or ear, &c.

To see his face the lion walked along

Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him:
To recreate himself, when he hath sung,

The tiger would be tame, and gently hear him, &c.

* Put him in fear.