brook
to ford, that hardly can be thought to keep us out of Paradise. In the
garden-plot on whose wicket is inscribed _All's Well that Ends Well_, we
are hardly distant from Eden itself

About a young dove's flutter from a wood.

The ninth story of the third day of the Decameron is one of the few
subjects chosen by Shakespeare--as so many were taken by Fletcher--which
are less fit, we may venture to think, for dramatic than for narrative
treatment. He has here again shown all possible delicacy of instinct in
handling a matter which unluckily it was not possible to handle on the
stage with absolute and positive delicacy of feeling or expression. Dr.
Johnson--in my humble opinion, with some justice; though his verdict has
been disputed on the score of undeserved austerity--"could not reconcile
his heart to Bertram"; and I, unworthy as I may be to second or support
on the score of morality the finding of so great a moralist, cannot
reconcile my instincts to Helena. Parolles is even better than Bobadil,
as Bobadil is even better than Bessus; and Lafeu is one of the very best
old men in all the range of comic art. But the whole charm and beauty of
the play, the quality which raises it to the rank of its fellows by
making it loveable as well as admirable, we find only in the "sweet,
serene, skylike" sanctity and attraction of adorable old age, made more
than ever near and dear to us in the incomparable figure of the old
Countess of Roussillon. At the close of the play, Fletcher would
inevitably have married her to Lafeu--or rather possibly, to the King.

At the entrance of the heavenly quadrilateral, or under the rising dawn
of the four fixed stars which compose our Northern Cross among the
constellations of dramatic romance hung high in the highest air of
poetry, we may well pause for very dread of our own delight, lest
unawares we break into mere babble of childish rapture and infantile
thanksgiving for such light vouchsafed even to our "settentrional vedovo
sito" that even at their first dawn out of the depths

Goder pareva il ciel di lor fiammelle.

Beyond these again we see a second group arising, the supreme starry
trinity of the _Winter's Tale_, the _Tempest_, and _Cymbeline_: and
beyond these the divine darkness of everlasting and all-maternal night.
These seven lamps of the romantic drama have in them--if I may strain the
similitude a little further yet--more of lyric light than could fitly be
lent