Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/261

 touched here and there with something of a higher tone; but the whole scene drags, flags, halts onward at such a languid rate, that to pick out all the prettiest lines by way of sample would give a favourable impression but too likely to be reversed on further and fuller acquaintance.

Forget not to set down, how passionate, How heart-sick, and how full of languishment, Her beauty makes me Write on, while I peruse her in my thoughts. Her voice to music, or the nightingale: To music every summer-leaping swain Compares his sunburnt lover when she speaks; And why should I speak of the nightingale? The nightingale sings of adulterate wrong; And that, compared, is too satirical: For sin, though sin, would not be so esteemed; But rather virtue sin, sin virtue deemed. Her hair, far softer than the silkworm's twist, Like as a flattering glass, doth make more fair The yellow amber:—Like a flattering glass Comes in too soon; for, writing of her eyes, I'll say that like a glass they catch the sun, And thence the hot reflection doth rebound Against my breast, and burns the heart within. Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul Upon this voluntary ground of love!

"Pretty enough, very pretty! but" exactly as like and as near the style of Shakespeare's early plays as is the style of Constable's sonnets to that of Shakespeare's. Unless we are to assign to the Master every unaccredited song, sonnet, elegy, tragedy, comedy, and farce of his period, which bears the same marks of the same date—a date, like our own, of too prolific and imitative production—