in the flight of Rosader to the same Forest, taking along
with him the old servant, who is called Adam Spencer, his carving of
love-verses in the bark of trees, his meeting with the disguised
Rosalynd, and the wooing and marrying that enrich the forest scenes.

Thus much may suffice to show that the Poet has here borrowed a good
deal of excellent matter. With what judgment and art the borrowed
matter was used by him can only be understood on a careful study of
his workmanship. In no one of his comedies indeed has he drawn more
freely from others; nor, I may add, is there any one wherein he has
enriched his drawings more liberally from the glory of his own genius.
To appreciate his wisdom as shown in what he left unused, one must
read the whole of Lodge's novel. In that work we find no traces of
Jaques, or Touchstone, or Audrey; nothing, indeed, that could yield
the slightest hint towards either of those characters. It scarce need
be said that these superaddings are enough of themselves to transform
the whole into another nature; pouring through all its veins a free
and lively circulation of the most original wit and humour and poetry.
And by a judicious indefiniteness as to persons and places, the Poet
has greatly idealized the work, throwing it at a romantic distance,
and weaving about it all the witchery of poetical perspective; while
the whole falls in so smoothly with the laws of the imagination, that
the breaches of geographical order are never noticed save by such as
cannot understand poetry without a map.

No one at all competent to judge in the matter will suppose that
Shakespeare could have been really indebted to Lodge, or to whomsoever
else, for any of the _characters_ in _As You Like It_. He merely
borrowed certain names and incidents for the bodying-forth of
conceptions purely his own. The resemblance is all in the drapery and
circumstances of the representation, not in the individuals. For
instance, we can easily imagine Rosalind in an hundred scenes not here
represented; for she is a substantive personal being, such as we may
detach and consider apart from the particular order wherein she
stands: but we can discover in her no likeness to Lodge's Rosalynd,
save that of name and situation: take away the similarity here, and
there is nothing to indicate any sort of relationship between the
heroines of the play and the novel. And it is considerable that,
though the Poet here borrows so freely, still there is