Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1852-02-04

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| And seek them in these bowers, shake,
| Where winds sometimes our woods perhaps may
! But clustering care could never tempest make,
| Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us,
Saving of fountains that glide by us.
Here's no fantastic masque nor dance,
But Of our kids that frisk and prance,
| Nor seen,
| Unless upon the green
Two harmless lambs butting one the other,
Which done, both bleatng run each to his mother;
| And wounds are never found,
Save what the ploughshare gives the ground.
Go, let the diving negro seek
| For gems hid in some forlorn creek;
We all pearls scorn,
Save what the dewy morn
| Congeals upon each little spire OF grass,
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass;
| And gold ne 'er here appears,
Save what the yellow Ceres Bears
Shakespeare has often been charged with
plagiarism: assuredly in one sense, not with
out reason: he was superior TO the petty
vanity which mpells bookwrights TO strive
after originality, and to prefer a startling
paradox, or barren simlle, which they can
claim without dispute as their own, to the
weightiest truth or most brillian, image
which may have been suggested by another.
Shak speare read the book Of nature; but he
read other books too, and never hesita,ed
TO adopt and inlerweave with his own what
ever of beauty he found in either. !. is no
sIigh. distinction to be allowed the privilege
Of furnishing even the smallest Of the gems
which adoIn the diadem of Shakespeare, and
few authors would be willing 10 forfeit the
honour or to object to the appropriation
Shakespeare would seem TO have been fa-
miliar with the writings Of Raleigh, as seve-
raj instances occur in which remark able
expressions, and in one case The whole Of
one of his besl-known passages, have been
borrowe from the poems Of the accomplish
ed courier. One example of the former will
be sufficient:
That sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell, F"
nous exclamation of Macbeth, to be regarded
as an accidental coincidence. Again, who
will not instantly recognise in the following
lines the germ Of the solIloquv Of Jaques !?
II is headed "De Morte," and deserves to be
placed in juxlsposition with the more elab-
crate paraphrase of Shakespeare, as fair ex-
ample Of the readiness with which the dra-
mats, was wont to adapt to his purpose any
material lha, lie met with and could turn 10
account:- -
''Man's life's tragedy: his mothers womb,
From which he enters, is the trlng-room
This spacious earth the theatre; and the stage,
That country which he lives in passions rage,
Folly and vice are actors the first cry,
The prologue to the ensuing tragedy,
The former act consisteth of dumb shows:
The second, he to more perfection grows;
The third, he is a man, and doth begin
To nurture vice, and act the deeds of sin
L the fourth, declines i the fifth, diseases clog
And trouble him then Deaths his epilogue."
The corresponding passage, it will be re-
membered, is put in the mouth Of Jaques !;
and il is worth considering how far The
poet, while adopting the though. of The cour-
tier, may have made him further subservieni
to his purpose, by embodyng in the person
Of the caustic moralisl the character Of thai
remarkable man, whose personal and men,
tai qualities must have been as well known
at The time when "As You Like I,'' was
written, as the extraordinary vicissiludes of
fortune through which he passed.
Perhaps the most striking peculiarly Of
Shakespeare, is The lle-lke reality, the statu
esque individuality Of his characters-forc-
ing upon US the conviction that he was moi
so much indebted 10 the liveliness Of his
Imagination and fertility Of his invention as
TO his intimate knowledge of nature derived
from the living model. Such we know to
be the fact in those historical characters
whose lineamenis are we'll known. No
-, ,bo. I'll b;efo
careless Of geographical detail, needless of
occasional anachronism, he never falsifies
fact or msrepresents person. Even if we
had not contemporary authority to aties,
his accuracy, who would not realize he in
tense reality of his delinea,ions Of the hero
of Agincour,, of Wolsey, of Queen Kslha-
rine, or Of Beaufort? They are evidently
not sketches emansting from poets brain,
but sun-portraits, Daguerreo,yped by the
genius of Shakespeare; invested with all the
graceful ornaments that poetic imagery and
diclion can confer and not only engaging
our admiration for these, but claiming an!
sympathy from the irresistible conviction
that they are the genuine portraits of the
very men whose names they bear. The
same remark applies to his own historical
characters. The intense sympathy which
these excite, differing, not in degree bu. in
kind, from that which attaches 10 the cha
racler of every other poet, can only be re-
ferred TO our recognition of them as intense
ly faithful, though still poetic del,nea,ions
Of real beings.
Of course this remark applies to COM
para.ively small class Of Shakspeare's cha
racters as the ma jority of them are adopted
|-logeher with the plol-from the old
novels which he drsma,ized. However
much, therefore, they may have been en-
bellishcd and enriched in passing through