As burning fevers, agues pale and faint, Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood, The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint Disorder breeds by heating of the blood: Surfeits, impostumes, grief, and damn'd despair— And not the least of all these maladies, But in one minute's sight brings beauty under— As mountain snow melts with the mid-day sun." * * * * * "Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast The sun ariseth in his majesty; Who doth the world so gloriously behold, That cedar tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. Venus salutes him with this fair good morrow: O thou clear god, and patron of all light, From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow The beauteous influence that makes him bright."[27:A] If we compare the _Venus and Adonis_ of Shakspeare with its classical prototypes; with the _Epitaphium Adonidis_ of Bion, and the beautiful narrative of Ovid, which terminates the tenth book of his Metamorphoses, we must confess the inferiority of the English poem, to the former in pathos, and to the latter in elegance; but if we contrast it with the productions of its own age, it cannot fail of being allowed a large share of relative merit. It has imbibed, indeed, too many of the conceits and puerilities of the period in which it was produced, and it has lost much interest by deviating from tradition; for, as Mr. Steevens has remarked, "the common and more pleasing fable assures us, that ———— "when bright Venus yielded up her charms, The blest Adonis languish'd in her arms;"[28:A] yet the passages which we have quoted, and the general strain of the poem, are such as amply to account for the popularity which it once enjoyed. That this was great, that the work was highly valued by poetic minds, and, as might be supposed, from the nature of its subject, the favourite of the young, the ardent, and susceptible, there are not wanting several testimonies. In 1595, John Weever had written at the age of nineteen, as he informs us, a collection of Epigrams, which he published in 1599[28:B]; of these the twenty-second is inscribed _Ad Gulielmum Shakspeare_, and contains a curious though quaint encomium on some of the poet's earliest productions:— "Honie tong'd Shakspeare, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them, and none other, Their rosie-tainted features clothed in tissue, Some heaven-born goddesse said to be their mother. _Rose-cheeckt Adonis with his amber tresses, Faire fire-hot Venus charming him to love her_, Chaste Lucretia virgine-like her dresses, Proud lust-stung Tarquine seeking still to prove her."[28:C]