wishing-cap
    Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat
    Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood,
    And Sabra in the forest with Saint George! 
    The child, whose love is here, at least doth reap
    One precious gain, that he forgets himself.”

As far as I can determine the matter, As You Like It is, upon the whole, my favourite of Shakespeare’s comedies.  Yet I should be puzzled to tell why; for my preference springs not so much from any particular points or features, wherein it is surpassed by several others, as from the general toning and effect.  The whole is replete with a beauty so delicate yet so intense, that we feel it everywhere, but can never tell especially where it is, or in what it consists.  For instance, the descriptions of forest scenery come along so unsought, and in such easy, quiet, natural touches, that we take in the impression without once noticing what it is that impresses us.  Thus there is a certain woodland freshness, a glad, free naturalness, that creeps and steals into the heart before we know it.  And the spirit of the place is upon its inhabitants, its genius within them:  we almost breathe with them the fragrance of the Forest, and listen to “the melodies of woods and winds and waters,” and feel

    “The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,
    That have their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
    Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring.”

Even the Court Fool, notwithstanding all the crystallizing process that has passed upon him, undergoes, as we have seen, a sort of rejuvenescence of his inner man, so that his wit catches at every turn the fresh hues and odours of his new whereabout.  I am persuaded indeed that Milton had a special eye to this play in the lines,—­

    “And sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,
    Warbles his native wood-notes wild.”

To all which add, that the kindlier sentiments here seem playing out in a sort of jubilee.  Untied from set purposes and definite aims, the persons come forth with their hearts already tuned, and so have but to let off their redundant music.  Envy, jealousy, avarice, revenge, all the passions that afflict and degrade society, they have left in the city behind them.  And they have brought the intelligence and refinement of the Court without its vanities and vexations; so that the graces of art and the simplicities of nature meet together in joyous, loving sisterhood.  A serene and mellow atmosphere of thought encircles and pervades the actors in this drama; as if on purpose to illustrate how

    “One impulse from a vernal wood
      May teach you more of man,
    Of moral evil, and of good,
      Than all the sages can.”

Nature throws her protecting arms around them; Beauty pitches her tents before them; Heaven rains its riches upon them:  with “no enemy but Winter and rough weather,” Peace hath taken up her abode with them; and they have nothing to do but to “fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.”