When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires! ... One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun. The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in Shakspeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class, just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,--so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors!-- Yes, madam!--Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c. In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,--these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common 'copula' of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellencies and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio! Act i. sc. 5. 'Tyb'. It fits when such a villain is a guest; I'll not endure him. 'Cap'. He shall be endur'd. What, goodman boy!--I say, he shall:--Go to;-- Am I the master here, or you?--Go to. You'll not endure him!--God shall mend my soul-- You'll make a mutiny among my guests! You will set cock-a-hoop! you'll be the man! 'Tyb'. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame. 'Cap'. Go to, go to, You are a saucy boy! &c.-- How admirable is the old man's impetuosity at once contrasting, yet harmonized, with young Tybalt's quarrelsome violence! But it would be endless to repeat observations of this sort. Every leaf is different on an oak tree; but still we can only say--our tongues defrauding our eyes--'This is another oak-leaf!' Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene: Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo's love with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination. Ib.