In her journey thus disguised to Milford Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully: 

       —­My dear Lord,

Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee,
My hunger’s gone; but even before, I was
At point to sink for food.

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master: 

            —­And when
   With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha’ strew’d his grave,
   And on it said a century of pray’rs,
   Such as I can, twice o’er, I’ll weep and sigh,
   And leaving so his service, follow you,
   So please you entertain me.

Now this is the very religion of love.  She all along relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy.  Our admiration of her beauty is excited with as little consciousness as possible on her part.  There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead.  Arviragus thus addresses her: 

            —­With fairest flowers,
   While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
   I’ll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack
   The flow’r that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor
   The azur’d hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor
   The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander,
   Out-sweeten’d not thy breath.

The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her bed-chamber: 

            —­Cytherea,
   How bravely thou becom’st thy bed!  Fresh lily,
   And whiter than the sheets I That I might touch—­
   But kiss, one kiss—­Tis her breathing that
   Perfumes the chamber thus:  the flame o’ th’ taper
   Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids,
   To see th’ enclosed lights now canopied
   Under the windows, white and azure, laced
   With blue of Heav’ns own tinct—­on her left breast
   A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
   I’ the bottom of a cowslip.

There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,—­as that well—­known passage beginning, ’Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,’ sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial.

The character of Cloten, the conceited, booby lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with great humour and knowledge of character.  The description which Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her—­ ’Whose love-suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege’—­is enough to cure the most ridiculous lover of his folly.