Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/299

JULIETS RUNAWAY, ONCE MORE the Sun to banish fell night and its damnations. Having chanced, then, to observe the close reflection in Shakespeare's mind of the Faustus prototype—quite as close, the instinct feels, as that which connects the Garden Tower in New York with the Giralda Tower of Seville, and equally no more a plagiarism—observing this, it is borne in upon me that he made Juliet call upon night to spread her close curtain,

that, in other words, the Sun whose steeds she bids gallop apace, the sun which Faustus calls "Fair Nature's eye," may "wincke" for the nonce, and let the lovers "doe their amorous rights."

But if any one insists upon retaining the plural "eyes," doubting that successive misprints should occur, then I would read

the eyes of Nature at night being indubitably the stars, whose "winckeing" or twinkling serves only to make darkness romantically visible, and bewrays lovers no more than would a mist of tropical fireflies.

Some experience of printing and script-reading fortifies me against the most obvious exception to [285]