But yet--and here for once the phrase abhorred by Cleopatra does not
"allay the good" but only the bad "precedence"--if ever amends could be
made for such unnatural show of seeming forgetfulness ("out on the
seeming! I will write against it"--or would, had I not written enough
already), the poet most assuredly has made such amends here. At the
sunrise of Perdita beside Florizel it seems as if the snows of sixteen
winters had melted all together into the splendour of one unutterable
spring. They "smell April and May" in a sweeter sense than it could be
said of "young Master Fenton": "nay, which is more," as his friend and
champion Mistress Quickly might have added to mine host's commendatory
remark, they speak all April and May; because April is in him as
naturally as May in her, by just so many years' difference before the
Mayday of her birth as went to make up her dead brother's little lot of
living breath, which in Beaumont's most lovely and Shakespeare-worthy
phrase "was not a life; was but a piece of childhood thrown away." Nor
can I be content to find no word of old affection for Autolycus, who
lived, as we may not doubt, though but a hint or promise be vouchsafed us
for all assurance that he lived by favour of his "good masters" once more
to serve Prince Florizel and wear three-pile for as much of his time as
it might please him to put on "robes" like theirs that were "gentlemen
born," and had "been so any time these four hours.
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