Shakspeare and His Times [Vol. 1 of 2] / Including the Biography of the Poet; criticisms on his genius and writings; a new chronology of his plays; a disquisition on the on the object of his sonnets; and a history of the manners, customs, and amusements, superstitions, poetry, and elegant literature of his age

by Nathan Drake

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,

From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round,

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire."[381:D]

The Platonic doctrine or superstition relative to the harmony of the spheres, and of the human soul, was a favourite embellishment, both in prose and poetry, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, Milton, have all adopted it as a mode of illustration, and it forms, in the works of our great Dramatist, one of his most splendid and beautiful passages:

"How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of musick

Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,

Become the touches of sweet harmony.