, "kissed one another,--the wild waves being silent
the while." Even fairies do not kiss waves, than which no embrace could
be conceived less rewarding. Has any one remarked the echo of Marlowe
here, from _Hero and Leander_,

"when all is whist and still,
Save that the sea playing on yellow sand
Sends forth a rattling murmur to the land!"

But Marlowe, with all his gifts, could never have written the lyrical
parts of _The Tempest_. This song is in emotional sympathy with
Ferdinand, and in the truest sense dramatic, not a piece of pretty verse
foisted in to add to the entertainment.

Ariel's Second Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin
redbreast" in _The White Devil_, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it
tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls
it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any
language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's
Fourth Song,--"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative
genius of English poetry, recently delivered from Sycorax. If we glance
at Dry den's recension of _The Tempest_ we may be inclined to think that
the "wicked dam" soon won back her mastery. With all respect to Dryden,
what are we to think of his discretion in eking out Shakespeare's
insufficiencies with such staves as this:--

"Upon the floods we'll sing and play
And celebrate a halcyon day;
Great Nephew Aeolus make no noise,
Muzzle your roaring boys."

and so forth? What had happened to the ear of England in seventy years?

As a matter of fact the perfection of dramatic song scarcely survived
Shakespeare himself. The early Jacobeans, Heywood, Ford, and Dekker in
particular, broke out occasionally in delicate ditties. But most
playwrights, like Massinger, were persistently pedestrian. The only man
who came at all close to Shakespeare as a lyrist was John Fletcher,
whose "Lay a garland on my hearse" nobody could challenge if it were
found printed first in a Shakespeare quarto. The three great songs in
"Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's,
though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of
"Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be
the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their
sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection
gives them no aut