Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in any other author like them) have more of that local truth of imagination and character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence—‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring—_Where’s my serpent of old Nile?_’ Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning up resolution to risk another fight—‘It is my birthday; I had thought to have held it poor; but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ Perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony’s rage after his final defeat when he comes in, and surprises the messenger of Cæsar kissing her hand— ‘To let a fellow that will take rewards, And say God quit you, be familiar with, My play-fellow, your hand; this kingly seal, And plighter of high hearts.’ It is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped; but his low condition is not the true reason: there is another feeling which lies deeper, though Antony’s pride would not let him shew it, except by his rage; he suspects the fellow to be Cæsar’s proxy. Cleopatra’s whole character is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give of her— ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies.’ What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony’s messenger who brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him— ——‘There’s gold, and here My bluest veins to kiss!’— She had great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the strength of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp, she says with fondness— ‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep? As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle. Oh Antony!’ It is worth while to observe that Shakespear has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical horror, not less striking—partly perhaps to place the effeminate character of Mark Antony in a more favourable light, and at the same time to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind. Cæsar says, hearing of his rival’s conduct at the court of Cleopatra,