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The king would give no credit to the words of the oracle: he said it was a falsehood invented by the queen's friends, and he desired the judge to proceed in the trial of the queen; but while Leontes was speaking, a man entered and told him that the prince Mamillus, hearing his mother was to be tried for her life, struck with grief and shame, had suddenly died.

The flight of Polixenes enraged the jealous Leontes still more; he went to the queen's apartment, where the good lady was sitting with her little son Mamillus, who was just beginning to tell one of his best stories to amuse his mother, when the king entered, and taking the child away, sent Hermione to prison.

Is Mamillus not too precocious to be natural? Has Shakespeare welded the two parts of the story together in such a way as to unify the plot? Does Autolycus contribute anything to the development of the plot? How does it compare with "Julius Cæsar" or "Macbeth," for example, in the construction of the plot? Is the movement more rapid in the last half of the play or in the first?

Mamillus, though but a very young child, loved his mother tenderly; and when he saw her so dishonoured, and found she was taken from him to be put into a prison, he took it deeply to heart, and drooped and pined away by slow degrees, losing his appetite and his sleep, till it was thought his grief would kill him.

When Leontes heard that the queen was dead, he repented of his cruelty to her; and now that he thought his ill usage had broken Hermione's heart, he believed her innocent; and he now thought the words of the oracle were true, as he knew "if that which was lost was not found," which he concluded was his young daughter, he should be without an heir, the young prince Mamillus being dead; and he would give his kingdom now to recover his lost daughter: and Leontes gave himself up to remorse, and passed many years in mournful thoughts and repentant grief.

The legends say Horatius Cocles defended a bridge, single-handed, against the whole Etrurian armythat Mamillus, the ruler of Tuscalum, fought a battle at Lake Regillus, in which the cause of Tarquin was lostthe subject of the most beautiful of Macaulay’s laysand that Mutius Scævola attempted to assassinate Porsenna, and, as a proof of his fortitude, held his hand in the fire until it was consumed, which act converted Porsenna into a friend.