"O begone! By Heaven, I love thee better than myself, For I came hither armed against myself. Stay not; begone!--live, and hereafter say A madman's mercy bade thee run away." With all the qualities and emotions which can inspire affection and esteem,--with all the advantages that birth, heaven, and earth could at once confer,--with the most honourable feelings and the kindliest intentions,--he is eminently an unlucky man. The record of his actions in the play before us does not extend to the period of a week; but we feel that there is no dramatic straining to shorten their course. Everything occurs naturally and probably. It was his concluding week; but it tells us all his life. Fortune was against him; and would have been against him, no matter what might have been his pursuit. He was born to win battles, but to lose campaigns. If we desired to moralize with the harsh-minded satirist, who never can be suspected of romance, we should join with him in extracting as a moral from the play "Nullum habes numen, si sit prudentia; sed te Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, cœloquê locamus;" and attribute the mishaps of Romeo, not to want of fortune, but of prudence. Philosophy and poetry differ not in essentials, and the stern censure of Juvenal is just. But still, when looking on the timeless tomb of Romeo, and contemplating the short and sad career through which he ran, we cannot help recollecting his mourning words over his dying friend, and suggest as an inscription over the monument of the luckless gentleman, "I THOUGHT ALL FOR THE BEST." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Was Sir Walter thinking of his own case when he wrote this passage? See his Life by Lockhart, vol. i. p. 242. His family used to call Sir Walter _Old Peveril_, from some fancied resemblance of the character.] [Footnote 6: Is there not a line missing?] [Footnote 7: Rosaline was niece of Capulet. The list of persons invited to the ball is "Signior Martino, and his wife and daughters; County Anselm[o], and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vetruvio; Signior Placentio, and his lovely nieces; Mercutio, and his brother Valentine; Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters; _My fair niece Rosaline_; [and] Livia; Signior Valentio, and his cousin Tybalt; Lucio, and the lively Helena." I have altered _Anselme_ to the Italian form _Anselmo_, and in the seventh line inserted _and_. I think I may fairly claim this list as being in verse. It is always printed as prose.] [Footnote 8: Is there not some mistake in the length of time that this sleeping-draught is to occupy, if we consider the text as it now stands to be correct? Friar Lawrence says to Juliet, when he is recommending the expedient,