Shepherd. Fie, daughter! When my old wife liv’d, upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook,—
Both dame and servant; welcomed all, serv’d all;
Would sing her song, and dance her turn; now here,
At upper end o’ the table, now i’ the middle;
On his shoulder, and his; her face o’ fire
With labour; and the thing she took to quench it,
She would to each one sip.
What a poet, and what a painter! Now a Raphael, or Michael Angelo; now a Jan Steen or a Teniers. Here also is Autolycus, the most exquisite of impudent vagabonds, better even than the Brass of Sir John Vanbrugh; selling his love ballads, so without indecency, “which is strange,” and another ballad of a singing Fish, with “five justices’ hands to it,” to vouch for its veracity. But, above all, here is Perdita:—
The prettiest low-born lass that ever
Ran on the green sward.
No shepherdess, but Flora,
Peering in April’s front.
Perdita, also, though supposed to be a shepherdess born, is a Sicilian princess, and makes our BLUE JAR glisten again in the midst of its native sun and flowers.
O Prosèrpina!
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let’st fall
From Dis’s waggon!—
(“Waggon,” be it observed, was as much a word of respect in those days as “chariot” is now.)
Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
Or Cytherea’s breath;
bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one. O, these I lack
To make you garlands of; and, my sweet friend,
[Turning to her lover.
To strew him o’er and o’er.
Florizel.What! like a corse?
Perdita. No: like a bank, for love to lie and play on.
Not like a corse; or if,—not to be buried,
But quick, and in mine arms.
Shelley has called a woman “one of Shakspeare’s women,” implying by that designation all that can be suggested of grace and sweetness. They were “very subtle,” as Mr. Wordsworth said of the French ladies. Not that they were French ladies, or English either; but Nature’s and refinement’s best possible gentlewomen all over the world. Tullia d’Aragona, the Italian poetess, who made all her suitors love one another instead of quarrel, must have been a Shakspeare woman. Gaspara Stampa was another; and we should take the authoress of Auld Robin Gray for one.
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,
and Lucy, Countess of Bedford, must have been such. So was Mrs. Brooke, who wrote Emily Montague; and probably Madame Riccoboni; and certainly my Lady Winchelsea, who worshipped friendship, and green retreats, and her husband;—terrible people all, to look upon, if the very sweetness of their virtue did not enable us to bear it.