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- VENUS
AND
ADONIS
13
and subject. Neither makes it easy to quarrel with the
conclusion that it was originally drafted while the poet's
quick sympathetic intelligence was first growing conscious
of its power. From the purely literary point of view the
work often reaches heights of poetic excellence, which
might have glorified the maturity of lesser men. But,
viewed in relation to Shakespeare's ultimate achievements,
it shows the promise of greatness more plainly than the
fruition. The signs of immaturity are not to be mistaken.
The lascivious temper which plays about the leading incidents
is more nearly allied to the ecstasies of adolescence than to
the ripe passion of manhood. There are many irrelevant
and digressive details which, though as a rule they bear
witness to marvellous justness of observation and to excep-
tional command of the rich harmonies of language, defy all
laws of artistic restraint. The metre, despite its melodious
fluency, is not always so thoroughly under command as to
^ avoid monotony and flatness. The luxuriance of the imagery
is one of the poem's most notable characteristics, and for the
most part it serves with precision its illustrative purpose. But
there are occasional signs of the juvenile tendency — of the
vagrant impulse — to accumulate figurative ornament for
its own sake. Nearly all the figures are, moreover, drawn
from a somewhat narrow round of homely experience, from
the sounds and sights of rural or domestic life. The < froward
infant stilPd with dandling', the changing aspects of the sky,
the timid snail creeping into its shell, the caterpillar devour-
ing foliage, are among the objects which are employed by
the poet to point his moral. All betray an alert familiarity
with everyday incidents of rustic existence. The fresh tone
and the pictorial clearness of the many rural similes in the
Fenus and Adonis seem, in fact, to embody the poet's early
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