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TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
These passages may not seem very characteristic at first sight, though we think they are so. We will give two, that cannot be mistaken. Patroclus says to Achilles,
"Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold.
And like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,
Be shook to air."
Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the approach of the morning that parts him from Cressida, says with much scorn,
"What! proffer'st thou thy light here for to sell?
Go, sell it them that smallé selés grave."
If nobody but Shakespear could have written the former, nobody but Chaucer would have thought of the latter.—Chaucer was the most literal of poets, as Richardson was of prose-writers.
