"It may not be improper to produce the following glaring instance of the absurdity of introducing long and minute descriptions into tragedy. When Romeo receives the dreadful and unexpected news of Juliet's death, this fond husband, in an agony of grief, immediately resolves to poison himself. But his sorrow is interrupted, while he gives us an exact picture of the apothecary's shop from whom he intended to purchase the poison :

'I do remember an apothecary,' &c. I appeal to those who know anything of the human heart, whether Romeo, in this distressful situation, could have leisure to think of the alligator, empty boxes, and bladders, and other furniture, of this beggarly shop, and to point them out so distinctly to the audience. The description is, indeed, very lively and natural, but very improperly put into the mouth of a person agitated with such passion as Romeo is represented to be."

The criticism of Warton, ingenious as it may appear, and true as applied to many "long and minute descriptions in tragedy," is here based upon a wrong principle. He says that Romeo, in his distressful situation,

had not "leisure" to think of the furniture

of the apothecary's shop. What then had he leisure to do? Had he leisure to run off into declamations against fate, and into tedious apostrophes and generalizations, as a less skilful artist than Shakspere would have made him indulge in? From the moment he had said,

"Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. Let's see for means,"

the apothecary's shop became to him the object of the most intense interest. Great passions, when they have shaped themselves into firm resolves, attach the most distinct importance to the minutest objects connected with the execution of their purpose. He had seen the apothecary's shop in his placid moments as an object of common curiosity. He had hastily looked at the tortoise and the alligator, the empty boxes, and the

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Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him." When he did need a poison, all these documents of the misery that was to serve him came with a double intensity upon his vision. The shaping of these things into words was not for the audience. It was not to produce a long and minute description in tragedy" that had no foundation in the workings of nature. It was the very cunning of nature which produced this description. Mischief was, indeed, swift to enter into the thoughts of the desperate man; but, the mind once made up, it took a perverse pleasure in going over every item of the circumstances that All had suggested the means of mischief. other thoughts had passed out of Romeo's mind. He had nothing left but to die; and everything connected with the means of his death was seized upon by his imagination with an energy that could only find relief in words.

Shakspere has exhibited the same knowledge of nature in his sad and solemn poem of 'The Rape of Lucrece,' where the injured wife, having resolved to wipe out her stain by death,

"calls to mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy." She sees in that painting some fancied resemblance to her own position, and spends the heavy hours till her husband arrives in its contemplation.

"So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow."

It was the intense interest in his own resolve which made Romeo so minutely describe his apothecary. But, that stage past, came the abstraction of his sorrow:"What said my man, when my betossed soul Did not attend him as we rode? I think He told me Paris should have married Juliet."

to publish a tract called 'The School of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of the commonwealth,' thus describes a play of his time:-"The Jew, shown at the Bull, representing the greedyness of worldly choosers, and the bloody minds of usurers." Mr. Skottowe somewhat leaps to a conclusion that this play contains the same plot as 'The Merchant of Venice:'"The loss of this performance is justly a subject of regret, for, as it combined within its plot the two incidents of the bond and the caskets, it would, in all probability, have thrown much additional light on Shakspeare's progress in the composition of his highly finished comedy."* As all we know of this play is told us by Gosson, it is rather bold to assume that it combined the two incidents of the bond and the caskets. The combination of these incidents is perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of Shakspere's dramatic skill. "In the management of the plot," says Mr. Hallam, "which is sufficiently complex without the slightest confusion or incoherence, I do not conceive that it has been surpassed in the annals of any theatre." The rude dramatists of 1579 were not remarkable for the combination of incidents. It was probably reserved for the skill of Shakspere to bring the caskets and the bond in juxtaposition. He found the incidents far apart, but it was for him to fuse them together. We cannot absolutely deny Mr. Douce's conjecture that the play mentioned by Gosson might have furnished our poet with the whole of the plot; but it is certainly an abuse of language to say that it did furnish him, because the Jew shown at the Bull deals with "worldly choosers," and the "bloody minds of usurers." We admit that the coincidence is curious.

Warton first drew attention to a ballad which he considers was written before 'The Merchant of Venice,' 'A new Song, shewing the cruelty of Gernutus, a Jew, who, lending to a merchant an hundred crowns, would have a pound of his flesh because he could not pay him at the time appointed.'

*Life of Shakspeare,' vol. i. p. 330.

This curious production is printed in Percy's 'Reliques.'

Warton's opinion of the priority of this ballad to 'The Merchant of Venice' is thus expressed :-" It may be objected that this ballad might have been written after, and copied from, Shakespeare's play. But, if that had been the case, it is most likely that the author would have preserved Shakespeare's name of Shylock for the Jew; and nothing is more likely than that Shakespeare, in copying from this ballad, should alter the name from Gernutus to one more Jewish... Our ballad has the air of a narrative written before Shakespeare's play; I mean, that, if it had been written after the play, it would have been much more full and circumstantial. At present, it has too much the nakedness of an original."* The reasoning of Warton is scarcely borne out by a new fact, for which we are indebted to the researches of Mr. Collier. Thomas Jordan, in 1664, printed a ballad, or romance, called 'The Forfeiture;' and Mr. Collier says "So much does Shakespeare's production seem to have been forgotten in 1664, that Thomas Jordan made a ballad of it, and printed it as an original story (at least without any acknowledgment), in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie,' in that year. In the same scarce little volume he also uses the plot of the serious part of 'Much Ado about Nothing,' and of 'The Winter's Tale,' both of which had been similarly laid by for a series of years, partly, perhaps, on account of the silencing of the theatres from and after 1642. The circumstance has hitherto escaped observation; and Jordan felt authorized to take such liberties with the story of 'The Merchant of Venice,' that he has represented the Jew's daughter, instead of Portia, as assuming the office of assessor to the Duke of Venice in the trial-scene, for the sake of saving the life of the Merchant, with whom she was in love."+ Now, it is remarkable that this ballad by Jordan, which was unquestionably written after the play, is much less full and circumstantial than the old ballad of 'Gernutus;' so that Warton's

* Observations on the Fairy Queen,' 1807, vol. i. p. 182. New Particulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' p. 36.

argument, as a general principle, will not hold. It appears to us that 'Gernutus' is, in reality, very full and circumstantial; and that some of the circumstances are identical with those of the play. Compare, for example,

"Go with me to a notary, seal me there Your single bond; and in a merry sport," &c. with

"But we will have a merry jest,

For to be talked long;

You shall make me a bond, quoth he,
That shall be large and strong."

And, again, compare

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'Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?" with

"The bloudie Jew now ready is

With whetted blade in hand."

But the ballad of 'Gernutus' wants that remarkable feature of the play, the inter

vention of Portia to save the life of the Merchant; and this, to our minds, is the strongest confirmation that the ballad preceded the comedy. Shakspere found that incident in the source from which the balladwriter professed to derive his history:—

"In Venice towne not long agoe,

A cruel Jew did dwell,
Which lived all on usurie,

As Italian writers tell."

It was from an Italian writer, Ser Giovanni, the author of a collection of tales, called 'Il Pecorone,' written in the fourteenth century, and first published at Milan in 1558, that Shakspere unquestionably derived some of the incidents of his story, although he might be familiar with another version of the same tale. An abstract of this chapter of the 'Pecorone' may be found in Mr. Dunlop's 'History of Fiction;' and a much fuller epitome of a scarce translation of the tale, printed in 1755, was first given in Johnson's edition of Shakspere, and is reprinted in all the variorum editions. In this story we have a rich lady at Belmont, who is to be won upon certain conditions; and she is finally the prize of a young merchant, whose friend, having become surety for him to a Jew, under the same penalty as in the play,

is rescued from the forfeiture by the adroitness of the married lady, who is disguised as a lawyer. The pretended judge receives, as in the comedy, her marriage ring as a gratuity, and afterwards banters her husband, in the same way, upon the loss of it.

Some of the stories of Il Pecorone,' as indeed of Boccaccio, and other early Italian writers, appear to have been the common property of Europe, derived from some Oriental origin. Mr. Douce has given an extremely curious extract from the English Gesta Romanorum,'-"a Manuscript, preserved in the Harleian Collection, No. 7333, written in the reign of Henry the Sixth," in which the daughter of "Selestinus, a wise emperor in Rome," exacts somewhat similar conditions, from a knight who loved her, as the lady in the 'Pecorone.' Being reduced to poverty by a compliance with these conditions, he applies to a merchant to lend him money; and the loan is granted under the following covenant:" And the covenaunt shalle be this, that thou make to me a charter of thine owne blood, in condicion that yf thowe kepe not thi day of payment, hit shalle be lefulle to me for to draw awey alle the flesh of thi body froo the bone with a sharp swerde, and, yf thow wolt assent hereto, I shalle fulfille thi wille." In this ancient story the borrower of the money makes himself subject to the penalty without the intervention of a friend; and, having forgotten the day of payment, is authorised by his wife to give any sum which is demanded. The money is refused by the merchant, and the charter of blood exacted. Judgment is given against the knight; but, "the damysell, his love, whenne she harde telle that the lawe passid agenst him, she kytte of al the longe her of hir hede, and claddie hir in precious clothing like to a man, and yede to the palys." The scene that ensues in the 'Gesta Romanorum' has certainly more resemblance to the conduct of the incident in Shakspere than the similar one in the 'Pecorone.' Having given a specimen of the language of the manuscript of Henry the Sixth's time, which Mr. Douce thinks was of the same period as the writing, we shall continue the story in orthography which will present fewer difficulties to many