And so, intending other serious matters,
After distasteful looks, and these hard fractions,
With certain half-caps and cold moving nods,
They froze me into silence.

In the Comedy of “As you Like It," from which we have already extracted some beautiful pieces, occurs the following song which requires no apology for its insertion in this place:—

SONG.

I.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude:

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly!
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

II.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remember'd not.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! &c.

Hence Shakspere elsewhere expresses, we doubt not, his real sentiments in the following language:—

I hate ingratitude more in a man

Then lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
Or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption,
Inhabits our frail blood.

And in relation to the followers of Timon of Athens, we would not omit the following lines, so admirably descriptive of the Athenian's so-called friends. Our great dramatist says:

That, sir, which serves for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.

And in the "Passionate Pilgrim," the sentiments of our poet in relation to the faithless and ungrateful are of as much importance in our times as they were in the days when Timon lived, or in that flourishing Elizabethan period in which our dramatist himself flourished, and wrote these lines:—

Every one that flatters thee,

Is no friend in misery:

Words are easy like the wind,

Faithful friends are hard to find.

Every man will be thy friend,

Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend ;

But if store of crowns be scant,

No man will supply thy want;
If that one be prodigal

Bountiful they will him call:
And with such like flattering;
"Pity but he were a king."

MUSIC.

FROM THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

Lorenzo.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica: look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Enter Musicians.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn;

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.

Jessica.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

Lorenzo.

The reason is, your spirits are attentive;
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze,

By the sweet power of music; therefore, the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
And is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

From the many passages in relation to the charms of music which occur in the pages of Shakspere, we are led to suppose that the poet himself indulged in the practice of the art. Hence in the Twelfth Night we have the following:

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.-
That strain again, it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.

And in the admirable Comedy of The Tempest, the power of music is thus recognised:

Where should this music be? i' the air, or the earth?
It sounds no more:-and sure, it waits upon
Some god of the island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters;
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air.

LAVINIA AT HER LUTE.

Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sew'd her mind:
But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;
A craftier Tereus hast thou met withal,
And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,
That could have better sew'd than Philomel.
O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon a ?ute,

And make the silken strings delight to kiss them;
He would not then have touched them for his life!
Or, had he heard the heavenly harmony,
Which that sweet tongue hath made,

He would have dropped his knife, and fell asleep,
As Cerberus at the Thracian poet's feet.