by his insolence: Guiderius kills him, and cuts off his head. When Belarius and the princes return to their cave, they discover the apparently dead body of Imogen. The headless trunk of Cloten, and the senseless Imogen are laid together:

"Thersites' body is as good as Ajax,
When neither are alive."

On recovery from the effects of the opiate, Imogen finds herself, as she imagines, near the corpse of her husband; for, in order to add insult to the injury he meditated on her person, Cloten had clothed himself in the dress of Posthumus, Imogen having once said, that she held the meanest of her husband's garments in more respect than the person of her silly admirer. Abandoning herself to grief, she falls in agony upon the body, where she lays insensible till found by the Roman-general Caius Lucius, who takes her as his page; as the lady in Westward for Smelts is discovered destitute by King Edward, and received into his service as a page.

To account for the appearance of a Roman army in England, in the reign of Cymbeline, Shakspeare is obliged to represent it as coming to enforce a neglected payment of tribute; forgetting that Holinshed asserts, in the first place, that Cymbeline "was at liberty to pay his tribute or

not ;" and secondly, that both "Cymbeline and his father Theomantius lived in quiet with the Romans, and continuallie to them paid the tributes." The war between Rome and England respecting tribute was in the reign of Guiderius "the first sonne of Kymbeline."

Both Iachimo and Posthumus arrived in England with the Roman forces. Posthumus, however, determined not to bear arms against his country, quits the Romans and follows the British force as a peasant. An engagement ensues, and Cymbeline is on the point of being destroyed; when Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Posthumus, place themselves in a lane, stop the victorious progress of the Roman arms, and convert defeat into a triumph. This service completed, Posthumus resumes the character of a Roman, and as such, is made prisoner with Lucius, Iachimo, and others. Imogen follows the fortunes of her master Lucius, and remains a prisoner with him.

It is left to the last scene of the last act to unravel the almost inextricable maze into which the plot is by this time woven.

Cymbeline, seated in his tent, with Belarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus by his side, as the preservers of his throne, commands the Roman prisoners to be brought into his presence. Imogen attends on Lucius as his page.

In the progress of the scene, Cymbeline is so powerfully affected by the appearance of the page, that he promises to grant whatever the boy shall ask. Imogen's eye had been caught by the ring on the finger of Iachimo, which she knew to be the one given by her to Posthumus: she demands therefore, that Iachimo shall "render of whom he had it." In Westward for Smelts, the lady under the protection of King Edward demands how a small crucifix of gold, once hers, came into the possession of the man by whom her husband had been deceived.

Bending under the weight of guilt, Iachimo makes full confession of his villany: Posthumus rushes forward, Imogen declares her sex, and mutual explanations and reconciliations ensue.

Belarius now also avows himself, and discovers the two noble youths who had fought with him, and by their valour preserved the British throne, to be the sons of Cymbeline, he having stolen them in their infancy, and reared them as his own in solitude. Guiderius and Arviragus are recognised and acknowledged, and Belarius is pardoned.

The play of Cymbeline, then, is the junction of a modern Italian novel and an ancient British story. Either tale set off with such episodes as adorn the Twelfth Night, and other dramas,

would have furnished an interesting play; but the events in Cymbeline, though curiously interwoven, are often "perplexed beyond self-explication," as Imogen says of Pisanio's face. The charms which Shakspeare has thrown over the nakedness of his original stories make the reader regret that his attention is ever distracted. How beautiful is the development of Imogen's character; how rich and spirited the dialogue, particularly the scene between Posthumus and Iachimo, after the return of the latter to Rome!. The fine poetry which the dramatist has lavished upon Iachimo is an excuse for having left him the same common place villain that he appears in the novel; and where in Boccacio, or in any other writer, is the wretchedness of impure love so beautifully displayed, as in one of the speeches of this hypocrite, during his conversation with Imogen? The ancient British story is adorned with many beauties. Though the king and queen are dull, and prate too much, yet Cloten is interesting. He is a natural fool; yet he often talks with the wit of one of Shakspeare's professed fools. He loves Imogen, for she is fair and royal; but he hates her because she despises his person; and Shakspeare makes his hatred predominate, because vanity is the characteristic of a fool. What vigour and vitality are thrown over the

monkish chronicle by the fable of the Cambrian gentlemen :-Belarius, full of valuable axioms and sentences, embittered indeed by a world that had disgraced him, and Guiderius and Arviragus, with glorious enthusiasm and lofty hopes, piercing through the meanness of their estate.