The last specimen which we shall select from this poem, would alone preserve it from oblivion, were it necessary to protect from such a fate any work which bears the mighty name of Shakspeare. Indeed, whether we consider this extract in relation to its diction, its metre, its sentiment, or the sublimity of its close, it is alike calculated to excite our admiration:— "Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring; Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers; The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing; What virtue breeds, iniquity devours: We have no good that we can say is ours, But ill-annexed opportunity Or kills his life, or else his quality. O, Opportunity! thy guilt is great: 'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason; Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get; Whoever plots the sin, thou point'st the season; 'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason; And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him." We have already seen, that, in the passages quoted from contemporary writers in favour of _Venus and Adonis_, the _Rape of Lucrece_ has, with the exception of two instances, been honoured with equal notice and equal approbation. Here, therefore, it will only be necessary to add those notices in which the latter production is the exclusive object of praise. Of these, the earliest[38:B] is to be found in the first edition of _Drayton's_ "Matilda, the faire and chaste Daughter of Lord Robert Fitzwater," published in 1594, a few months, or probably weeks, after the appearance of the _Rape of Lucrece_. In this impression, and _solely_ in this impression, the Heroine thus eulogises the composition of our bard:— "Lucrece, of whom proud Rome hath boasted long, Lately reviv'd to live another age, And here arriv'd to tell of Tarquin's wrong, Her chaste denial, and the tyrants rage, Acting her passions on our stately stage, She is remember'd, all forgetting me, Yet I as fair find chaste as ere was she."[39:A] The year following Drayton's Matilda, a work was printed in quarto, under the title of _Polimanteia_, in the margin of which Shakspeare's _Lucrece_ is thus cursorily mentioned. "All praise-worthy Lucretia, Sweet Shakspeare."[39:B] The next separate notice of this poem occurs in some verses prefixed to the second edition of "Willobie his Avisa," which appeared in 1596. They are subscribed _Contraria Contrariis Vigilantius Dormitanus_, and open with the allusion to Shakspeare's Lucrece:— "In lavine land though Livie boast, There hath beene seene a constant dame; Though Rome lament that she have lost The garland of her rarest fame, Yet now ye see that here is found As great a faith in English ground.