r the volume of young Paris' face
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscur'd in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story."
--_Romeo and Juliet_, I, iii, 81-92.

If we try to picture to ourselves the post-wedlock edition of Paris
described above, we shall see how a young man's imagination may run
away with his judgment. There are passages in this play as good,
perhaps, as anything which the author ever wrote; but if we compare
such fantastic imagery with the uniform excellence of the later
masterpieces, we shall see how much Shakespeare unlearned and outgrew.

+Character Study+.--Still more significant is the poet's development in
the conception of character. In no other way, probably, does an
observant mind change and expand so much as in this. For the infant
all men fall into two very simple categories:--people whom he likes
{91} and people whom he doesn't. The boy of ten has increased these
two classes to six or eight. The young man of twenty finds a few more,
and begins to suspect that men who act alike may not have the same
motives and emotions. But as the keen-eyed observer nears middle age,
he begins to realize that no two souls are exact duplicates of each
other; and that behind every human eye there lies an undiscovered
country, as mysterious, as fascinating, as that which Alice found
behind the looking-glass,--a country like, and yet unlike, the one we
know, where dreams grow beautiful as tropic plants, and passions crouch
like wild beasts in the jungle.

Great as he was, Shakespeare had to learn this lesson like other men;
but he learned it much better. In _Love's Labour's Lost_, generally
considered his earliest play, he has not led us into the inner selves
of his men and women at all, has not seemed to realize that they
possess inner selves. At the conclusion we know precisely as much of
them as we should if we had met them at a formal reception, and no
more. The princess is pretty and clever on dress parade; but how does
the real princess feel when parade is over and she is alone in h