It is incredible to Mr. Dowden that Shakspere could have put his "saddest and most thoughtful soliloquies" into the mouth of a "boy of seventeen." We are apt to underrate very much the precocity of boys of seventeen. I venture to say that sad and thoughtful questionings of the mysteries of life are more common among boys under twenty than among men of thirty. Byron’s Hours of Idleness is sadder and more thoughtful than his Don Juan. Men of mature years take their troubles in a different spirit. Romeo was yet in the springtime of life when he resolved to—
"shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh."