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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 PR 99.M75 
 
 Parochial lectures on English poetry and 
 
 3 1924 013 355 932 
 
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 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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s 
 
 01. 
 
PAROCHIAL LECTURES 
 
 ENGLISH POETRY, 
 
 OTHEE SUBJECTS. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. EDWAED MONRO, 
 
 INCUMBENT OF HARROW-WEALD, MIDDLESEX, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " PAROCHIAL WORK," " PAROCHIAL PAPERS," 
 
 " THE PARISH," &C. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 1856. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 C1LBEBT AND MVINdTON, FKINTERS, 
 
 ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. 
 
AS A TOKEN 
 
 OP THE SINCERE AND AFFECTIONATE GRATITUDE, 
 
 FELT BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 FOR THE KIND AND UNSWERVING FRIENDSHIP 
 
 OF MANY YEARS, 
 
 THESE LECTURES ARE DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 STEPHEN KENNARD, ESQ. 
 
 AND 
 
 THE INHABITANTS OF HAEEOW- WEALD, 
 
 AND ITS SURROUNDING NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The object of the following Lectures is to suggest 
 a few principles calculated to illustrate that style of 
 general literature which is in the present day fall- 
 ing so widely under the attention of youths of all 
 classes. The Lectures have, some of them, been de- 
 livered as portions of a parochial plan under the view 
 that the formation of literary taste in youth is an 
 important part of the clergyman's vocation. Some 
 of them appeared in a publication, called " The 
 Christian Student." If they should give any im- 
 pulse to the recognition of general literature as a 
 part of the subject-matter of parochial life, and of 
 the high vocation which the Church has in giving an 
 elevated moral tone to general education, or if they 
 should induce any to whom they are addressed to 
 pursue kindred studies, the object of their publication 
 will have been met. 
 
 Harrow- Weaid, 
 Mat, 1856. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. ' 
 
 PAGE 
 
 European Poetry 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 Shakspeare — Macbeth 30 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 Hamlet 63 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 As yon like it 102 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 Timon of Athena 122 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 Dante, Goethe, and Shakspeare 142 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 English History 154 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 The Constitutional Development of Rome and 
 
 England compared . 1 93 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 The Religion of the Classics 226 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 Conversations on Schools of English Poetry .... 280 
 
 LECTURE XI. 
 Schools of English Poetry 311 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 King Lear 387 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 EUROPEAN POETRY. 
 
 1. Poetry has ever been the pulse of society, Poetry the 
 and has throbbed coincidently with its health and society" 
 infirmity. When the latter has been in health, 
 the songs and lays of its poets have been strung 
 to a melody inspiring, earnest, and harmonious. 
 When the anatomj' of society has been breaking 
 up, or its health sinking into infirmity and ener- 
 vation, the pulse of poetry has beaten low, and its 
 throb has truly indicated the decline of national 
 power. When the fevered passions or morbid feel- 
 ings of mankind have led them to great undertakings, 
 which have called forth the ambition of rivalry or 
 the jealousy of race, poetry has become, for the time 
 being, a passionate expression of the spirit which 
 was working. We are led back by no uncertain 
 guide, when we follow the pathway in which poetry 
 
2 EUROPEAN TOETRY. 
 
 would direct us towards the condition of the man- 
 ners of its own time. 
 The Poet. From these circumstances we should expect that, 
 in every age and country, the poet would peculiarly 
 present to our eye, in brief epitome, the incidents and 
 characteristics of his age ; that he would become the 
 priest of his own generation, the " Vates" of his period 
 and of his own epoch of civilization. And more. The 
 poet is a centre to which all the energies and feelings 
 of a people float. He is as the eddy of the stream 
 which flows onwards between the banks of time, to 
 whose restless and disturbed whirlpool the waters 
 bear each passing object. The leaf, the stem, the 
 withered flower, the insects, all are borne to the dis- 
 turbed pool ; and the quiet, silent passage of hours 
 become concentrated in the tumultuous and noisy 
 torrent of the eddy. So to the poet float the cir- 
 cumstances and facts of a generation ; and, in his 
 more tumultuous mind, the agonies and strife, the 
 calm fleeting fancies, and the mournful memories of 
 the passing or the passed find a voice. 
 
 The poet is, by his very position, a man of deep 
 and varied feelings and energies. He is one who, by 
 the mere fact of his being, is the subject of desires 
 of expression which no one else of his day fully attains 
 to. He is one whose sensitive nature is ever open 
 and bared to assimilate the passing circumstance or 
 opinion. He is as one stretching out a hand to seize 
 some passing objeet and make it his own. But more 
 than this, he is bound as a poet to possess the power 
 of terse expression, and the facility of embodying in 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 3 
 
 brief epitome the wide and floating thoughts and 
 opinions of his age. 
 
 With this view, the historic arrangement of the 
 great poets of the world becomes a matter of high 
 philosophic interest, quite independently of the beau- 
 ties or the distinctive genius of the separate writers. 
 But before I attempt to show how, in successive 
 periods of the history of the world, vast, original, and 
 creative minds have been the true exponents of the 
 various stages of civilization generally, I will men- 
 tion the different forms which poetry has assumed in 
 the several nations, manifesting the peculiar condi- 
 tion of population, feeling, and manners. 
 
 2. We shall generally find, in the history of any The five 
 civilized people, that poetry will pass through five p ^y,° 
 phases, and we shall seldom have reason to derange 
 the order which we have once found suggested as the 
 type, in the greater nations of the world. 
 
 The earliest form of national poetry will be the 
 Ballad; this will extend and coalesce elements into 
 the Epic ; the Epic will spread itself into the wider 
 ramifications of the Dramatic ; the Dramatic rapidly 
 frays off into the Satiric ; and the Satiric, lastly, 
 breaks itself up into the thousand disjointed frag- 
 ments of what I will call the Lyric, although, strictly, 
 the Lyric is the earliest form in which a nation speaks 
 its poetry ; nevertheless, it will here express its fifth 
 condition also. While we shall have reason to see 
 that, as a fact, in nearly every remarkable country 
 in the world, this has been the order observed in 
 b 2 
 
4 EUROPEAN POETRY. 
 
 the procession of their poets, we shall find it useful to 
 notice the philosophy of the arrangement. 
 The Ballad, a. The earliest condition of every people is wild, 
 rude, undigested, unformed, unprotected by legislation, 
 unsystematic ; it will present to notice the exercise 
 of undisciplined feeling, the outbursts of uncontrolled 
 passion, and the oscillations of aboriginal or indi- 
 genous population between the extremes of tyranny 
 and licentiousness. In such periods of a nation's his- 
 tory we expect to find much that is more dazzling 
 and glowing to the mind's eye than we can find in 
 the advanced periods of civilization ; while, on the 
 other hand, the eye will be compelled to rest upon 
 shadows of a darker and more sombre hue than 
 those succeeding periods will present. The mere cir- 
 cumstance of the absence of national arrangement 
 and plan gives an unrestrained liberty to the expres- 
 sion of human feelings on all sides, which must con- 
 siderably interest the observer, while at times it will 
 tend to shock his sense of propriety, delicacy, and 
 even morality. 
 
 The condition of the government becomes the mould 
 in which all the forms and elements of the age is cast, 
 and preserves the type to the future. It is this state 
 of the national society which the Ballad form ex- 
 presses. The impetuous gush of unrestrained passion ; 
 the fervid glow of natural feeling ; the sudden out- 
 bursts of jealousy, vengeance, rage, or ambition ; the 
 love for brilliant descriptions of feats of arms ; the pres- 
 tige which clings to ancestral deeds of glory, lit by the 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 5 
 
 gleams of an already historic past, will be the natural 
 subject-matter for the poet of the early age of a 
 country. And it is that subject-matter which we 
 find the Ballad employed upon. It seeks to suggest 
 to the mind a broken and unconnected condition of 
 the human society, representing its separate elements 
 in their own intrinsic force ; but, inasmuch as they 
 were originally created to attain their perfection by 
 union and blending one with another, they will ap- 
 pear incongruous and imperfect in this separate state. 
 The Ballads of Chevy Chase and Fair Rosamond, 
 and many others which belong to the early periods 
 of English poetry, will at once show what I mean 
 when I speak of the Ballad casting around itself 
 the mantle which the national characteristics have 
 dropped upon it. In the same way it has been sug- 
 gested that the framework of the Roman society 
 was drawn out by the ballad-mongers of a now un- 
 ascertainable and unknown period ; and that we are 
 to consider the histories of Livy, and other historians, 
 as but the transcripts of forms of poetry which have 
 never reached the eye of modern ages. In the same 
 way Scotland, Spain, and Athens, are able to bring 
 forward from their historic records some of those very 
 fragmentary "swallow-flights" of poetry which have 
 borne to us, as on wings, the burthen of the land from 
 which they migrated to our own more hospitable day, 
 and while they indicate a floating condition in society, 
 fairly show the germ of a great and intellectual 
 people. The tales of the battles of the Cid, the war- 
 rior-generosity of the Moor and the Visigoth ; the 
 
6 EUROPEAN POETEY. 
 
 opportunities offered for the reciprocation of courtesy 
 and protection, through the period when the Pyre- 
 nees were the refuge of the banished cross, and the 
 champaigns of Castile and Asturias were shadowed 
 by the crescent-crested pavilions of the Moor, fur- 
 nished an opportunity for the pathetic and fervid mea- 
 sures of the Ballad, which few other countries in the 
 world have been able to afford. 
 The Epic. J. The next condition of the human society in a 
 nation will be the adjustment of the separate ele- 
 ments. Each will take its own place in the forma- 
 tion and consolidation of a perfect whole ; and by the 
 mere circumstance of occupying its own relative 
 place, rigid outlines will be melted off, and rough 
 edges will be either struck away or lost to sight. The 
 powers of feeling, passion, imagination, fancy, intel- 
 lect, and association will become like the separate 
 blocks which hitherto having stood in their colossal 
 independence, may have awakened admiration or 
 surprise, and now will lose their individuality by 
 lending their respective differences to elaborate the 
 perfect whole of the civil, political, and military 
 society. 
 
 This altered condition of the nation will of neces- 
 sity suggest an altered subject-matter to the " Vates" 
 of the national condition, and the more consolidated 
 form of the social body will produce from the poet a 
 more consolidated idea. 
 
 The Epic Poem is this. It is like the onward 
 bound of mighty waters, to which each separate 
 stream has contributed its auxiliary wave. The Epic 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 7 
 
 poem is to the Ballad what the consolidated society is 
 to the fragmentary elements of the early tribe or 
 wandering and uncertain populations of the forest 
 or the plain. 
 
 It will be manifest at once to every one, that this 
 condition of Grecian life is expressed in the famous 
 epic of Homer ; that the same condition of the life 
 of mediaeval Italy, in connexion with the influences of 
 the Church, is shown by the religious epic of Dante ; 
 and that in our own country, though some of our 
 epics have, owing to circumstances to be hereafter 
 explained, slid somewhat out of their position, the 
 epic period still approximates very nearly to that con- 
 dition of society which I have been describing ; and 
 Spenser may be fairly claimed as one of no small 
 power. 
 
 c. The next condition of the human society is that of TheDrama. 
 the more advanced social and individual development. 
 After the national idea has been consolidated, and 
 the cordon of legislation and conventional custom 
 been drawn round the restless forms of society, the 
 natural result is that individual genius, energy, and 
 characteristic will start forth from the more elabo- 
 rated mass. 
 
 It will be a third stage of national history in which 
 the observer will be called upon to watch the more 
 immediate workings of the man, the family, and the 
 social body, in their separate internal relations to 
 each other. 
 
 To use a further analogy, the separate colours 
 which have shone in their beauty in the painter's 
 
8 EUROPEAN POETfir. 
 
 studio have been applied to the canvas in such a way 
 as, while they lose their own individuality, to pro- 
 duce a general and harmonious whole. This achieved, 
 the painter brings forward, relieved by his back- 
 ground, the single figures of his historic composition, 
 and the separate forms which were intended to arrest 
 the interest of the spectator, start forth from the 
 canvas in their own distinct individuality. 
 
 This state of things in the national history will 
 divert the subject-matter of the poet. He no longer 
 utters the lengthened epic story of days gone 
 by; he no longer cares to embody by fictitious 
 personalities the separate elements of the human 
 mind and fancies ; he no longer delights to wander 
 through corridors hung with the escutcheons and 
 arms of nameless multitudes, and to repeople them 
 with the imaginary forms of fiction ; but it becomes 
 his noble and exalted vocation to study those sepa- 
 rate types of the human race which stand forward in 
 front of the national concentration, to depict their 
 characteristics, their dispositions, their convention- 
 alities, and their plots. This is the work of dramatic 
 poetry. 
 
 The Drama follows on the epic in the same manner 
 as the social body is developed from the political. It 
 is that period of our own country that Shakspeare 
 illustrates with an objective power rivalled by no 
 bard of ancient or of modern days. It is that period 
 of Spanish society which found its utterance in the 
 dramatic writings of Calderon. It was that condi- 
 tion of the Ionian race which found for its all but 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 9 
 
 inspired exponents the cold classic truths of Sopho- 
 cles, the vast dreamy conceptions of iEschylus, and 
 the tender and human pathos of Euripides. 
 
 It would occupy longer time than I have in this 
 Lecture to dwell on the details of this interesting 
 phase of national development. Suffice it now to 
 say that it is the highest condition of the political 
 and social body ; and, therefore, in one sense, it 
 may be considered to be the highest form to which 
 the effort of the poet can be directed. 
 
 d. A nation having reached the height of its political Satire. 
 and social greatness, naturally begins to degenerate. 
 the luxuries of life, the ease produced either by uni- 
 versal conquest, or successful colonization ; the con- 
 ventionalities of society, which have superseded alike 
 the simplicity of the moral sense, or the stern dicta 
 of conscience ; the unwieldy and overgrown condition 
 of bodies of men who hang together by fictitious and 
 fragile bonds, will of necessity produce unreality of 
 life and words ; men will be clinging to the opinions 
 and belief of days gone by, while their conduct will 
 daily belie their uttered creed. The very monuments 
 of the past will stand as silent reprovers of the dege- 
 nerate condition of a declining generation; and the 
 speechless statues of the heroes of days gone by, 
 which adorn the Capitol or grace the market-place, 
 will gaze down from stony and reproving eyes 
 upon men who have departed from the virtue to 
 which their self-devotion had given the impulse. In 
 such a state of things thoughtful men will detect 
 such gross inconsistency between the profession and 
 
10 E0EOPEAN FOETBr. 
 
 practice of the past and the present, that their spirit 
 will be roused to denounce the startling impostures 
 of their age and day. 
 
 The poet occupies this position. Unreality can 
 best be exposed to the irreligious through the medium 
 of satire and sarcasm, consequently the satiric form 
 of poetry will succeed the dramatic ; and the success- 
 ful sarcasm, terse ridicule, keen wit of the satirist, 
 aimed at the frail armour of the hypocrite, adorn the 
 literary period with a brilliancy and a pungency 
 which preceding epochs have not felt ; while to the 
 mind of the reader, they will mark with painful cer- 
 tainty the degeneracy of an age. 
 
 Aristophanes follows in the order of national thought 
 in the wake of the great Attic Tragedians ; and the 
 school of Pope, Addison, and Johnson, trod quickly 
 on the heels of the departing dramatists of the Eliza- 
 bethan period. The keen, yet lofty and sublime 
 satires of Juvenal, and the more jocular and volup- 
 tuous, yet scarcely less bitter sarcasms of Horace, 
 mark the similar period of Roman degeneracy and 
 unreality; while in Spain, the satires of Cervantes 
 become the type on which a school was founded. 
 Sarcasm finishes the tune on the lyre whose earlier 
 notes were strung to the music of the drama. 
 
 I might suggest in detail the parallels which will 
 stand out from the page of history from every nation 
 which has been remarkable for literary power; 
 but my object is rather suggestive than detailed; 
 rather to sketch the outline to be filled in, than to 
 attempt the more accurate delineation which falls 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 11 
 
 within the province of the historian or the philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 e. The age of national degeneracy must, in pro- The Lyric, 
 portion as it has followed in the wake of periods of 
 intellectual strength, suggest to thoughtful minds 
 painful doubts and scepticism; the departure from 
 ancient and received truth ; the hourly inconsistency 
 in practice of the professors of high principle ; the 
 little power that truth hitherto esteemed eternal, and 
 whose origin is lost in the indefinite mists and sha- 
 dows which gather round the mythological fountain 
 of a nation's history, has on its votaries ; the slight 
 hold which that truth seems able to have over the 
 morals of its disciples; the shrunken folds of the 
 tabernacle which once seemed able to cover beneath 
 its roof the yearning moral, religious, and intellectual 
 aspirations of man, will lead men to doubt of the 
 reality of every thing ; to become sceptical of all ac- 
 knowledged rules, and to desire to break away from 
 the limit which an apparently mistaken past has 
 thrown round the varied forms of expression. 
 
 This condition of popular history, however painful, 
 has been recorded in the annals of nearly every re- 
 markable country, and is at the present moment the 
 phase through which we are passing. The ray which, 
 as it were, shot from the source of light at first broken 
 and refracted by clouds and mists, became one when 
 those mists cleared away beneath the meridian sky of 
 national glory. By degrees the beam unimpeded 
 burst out in its refulgence and becoming separable 1 
 into its prismatic colours, in the varied forms of its 
 
12 EUROPEAN POETKY. 
 
 lustre seems to suggest the varied elements of the 
 human society, which we have spoken of as the 
 dramatic. But having played for a while upon the 
 object of its attraction, it becomes again refracted 
 into a thousand portions, and seems rather likely to 
 be lost in inextricable shadows, than again to be re- 
 duced to its elementary and original unity. 
 
 So the sceptical state of the mind and opinion of 
 a nation breaks it up into its aboriginal elementary 
 forms; though the figures at which we gaze no longer 
 assume the attitude of the rude "giants of those 
 days, 1 -' but of the pale and spectral anatomies and 
 shadowy manes of a worn-out and effoete population. 
 
 The poet will have to take down his lyre and 
 string it to a tune sympathetic with the national 
 and popular condition; he will find that his instru- 
 ment will no longer play the simple melody of olden 
 days, or the magnificent chords which celebrate 
 the zenith of his own poetic power. But its music 
 will float off from the separate strings in grotesque 
 and paradoxical harmonies, each one venturing into 
 the spheres, as if to find a unity in some other realm 
 beyond this lower world. 
 
 The Poetry which I will for brevity here call 
 the Lyric, will succeed the Satirical. The broken 
 forms of the sonnet and of the ode; the fanciful 
 extravaganzas of rhyme and rhythm ; the disturbed 
 arrangements of words, and syllables, and lines, so 
 turned as to express, like hieroglyphics, the barbarous 
 and disjointed thoughts of the day, such as those 
 present themselves to the eye from the pages of 
 
EUROPEAN POETEY. 13 
 
 Coleridge, Southey, Tennyson, Burns, and others 
 of our own period and nation. In the subjective 
 aspirations and soul-agonies of Goethe, in the pen- 
 sive intelligence of Schiller, in the plaintive pathos of 
 the songs of Petrarch, in the sweet luxurious songs 
 of Metastasio, in the pastoral idyls of Anacreon, and 
 the terse yet melting odes of the voluptuous Horace, 
 the Lyric style appears. 
 
 The Lyric form tells us that the unity of the epic 
 has past away, that the pungent stroke of the sati- 
 rist has done its work, having wounded the guilty 
 hearts of men, and that nothing is left to a people but 
 to utter its complaints or its longings in fragmentary 
 and disjointed melodies, like a bird, which smitten 
 in its bosom by the arrow in its rapid descent from its 
 pathway to the clouds, scatters on the wind its hun- 
 dred bleeding feathers to float and settle where the 
 uncertain air may bear them, memorials of a life and 
 a unity which once existed, but can exist no more. 
 
 Such is the condition of poetry through which we 
 are at this moment passing in England, and which 
 declares but too surely, the last throes of that agony 
 described too often on the walls of a nation, the 
 "Mme, Mme, Tekel, Upharsin'" of its political and 
 social life. " Thou hast been weighed in the balance, 
 and hast been found wanting." 
 
 3. It is a matter of interest to observe, that what The Poet's 
 the poet expresses with the greatest force, finds yet 
 parallel illustrations in every line of art, science, phi- 
 losophy, and thought. The painter breaks away 
 from the received rule of his craft ; the politician 
 
14 EUROPEAN POETEY. 
 
 dares with apparent inconsistency to combine seem- 
 ing contradictions in political philosophy, and to 
 gather up into one the separate threads which were 
 formed to weave the woofs of despotism and revolu- 
 tion. The orator borrows his images or his language 
 from realms which speakers of past days would have 
 counted as the dream-land of spectres and unrealities. 
 The musician breaks away from the bonds of conven- 
 tionality, and wanders oif into the wild, unlimited 
 realms where Beethoven takes his solitary pathway, 
 and where the sad monotonies of Mendelsohn are 
 heard wailing on the ear, summoning from his instru- 
 ment countless ripples of music, murmuring, rolling, 
 and complaining through the livelong night around 
 some single sandbank on the beach of time. 
 
 Styles of writing, too, show us the scepticism of the 
 age. One man departs, as far as possible, from the 
 cold and classic perfection of Addison, and creates gra- 
 phic and telling sentences which will neither parse nor 
 scan. Another will attempt to daguerreotype the con- 
 versation of a dinner party with such exactness, that 
 we lack the commonest ornament with which the 
 schoolboy would embellish his first attempt at an essay. 
 
 In many ways the Lyric finds itself one of a sister- 
 hood, and discovers kindred in every line of art and 
 science. The same motive impulse is at work with 
 all ; the same spring of action moves every energy ; 
 the same hollow chasm, yawning beneath the shell 
 over which poet, painter, philosopher, musician, 
 orator, politician, novelist, and conventionalist are 
 walking, accounts for the sepulchral reverberations of 
 
EUROPEAN POETEY. 15 
 
 their accents, and tells too plainly of the possibility 
 of a coming disorganization. Let the Eoyal Academy 
 tell its story ; let the floors of the House of Com- 
 mons reiterate the tale ; let the teaming printing- 
 houses of Murray, Longman, and Blackwood re-echo 
 the accents of the same announcement ; let the mourn- 
 ful cadences of the musician whom I just mentioned, 
 so lately gone to his honoured tomb, breathe forth 
 their plaintive accompaniment to the song which the 
 others sing. All will conspire to tell us that the 
 Lyric poet, standing on the fifth step of the great 
 national stair, which slants from the midnight of the 
 early past into the uncertain twilight of the unknown 
 future, too truly gazes into the fathomless abyss, and 
 too certainly foretels, however indirectly, the universal 
 unbelief which precedes dissolution. 
 
 4. It seems a law of God in his government of the National 
 world that what is true of the social body should be me nt an 
 true of the individual, and what is true of the world fP ltome of 
 
 ' the course 
 
 generally should be true of the social body ; the indi- ° f general 
 
 civilization. 
 vidual becomes the epitome in each movement of his 
 
 own mind and circumstance of that great plot of 
 which he forms a part in the world external to him- 
 self. We are often struck with similar consequences 
 arising from a certain line of conduct alike in nations 
 as in individuals. To the same principle may be 
 attributed the similar developments we find in some 
 great states of the world with that which we find 
 in the general advance of civilization. Athens, taken 
 as a whole, develops in miniature the advance of 
 
16 EUROPEAN POETEY. 
 
 general civilization, of which she formed a part, and 
 whose general development she simply aided as a 
 small portion of the whole. In the same way the en- 
 tire history of the Republic of Rome carries us 
 through processes similar to those through which we 
 are carried in the study of the civilization of the world. 
 To illustrate more clearly what I mean. In the 
 case of many governments there has been the same 
 gradual advance from monarchical to aristocratic 
 government, from aristocratic to popular, from popular 
 to tyrannical, from tyrannical to military despotism, 
 and from that to general anarchy and foreign subju- 
 gation. During some such progress in the civil and 
 political society of Athens, for instance, at certain 
 stages we find her arts and sciences flourishing, the 
 strengthening or weakening of her connexion with the 
 islands of the iEgean, and her relationships with Sparta 
 and Persia, each marking with regular pulsations the 
 different advances of her political theory. Having 
 passed through the separate stages of her own history, 
 she slid from the foreground of human notice, leaving 
 the ruins of her temples by the side of the relics of 
 her constitutional theories to influence and give sug- 
 gestions to future generations ; but though she left 
 but fragments behind her, she had accomplished her 
 own work in the general advance of the world's civi- 
 lization, and had presented to the eye an enamelled 
 miniature of that greater design of which she formed 
 in one sense a portion. The world as well as Athens 
 was to advance to perfected civilization through similar 
 successive changes in the theories of government ; 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 17 
 
 and was to see before its destiny was accomplished 
 the subversion of people and governments, the cradle 
 of whose infancy it had so carefully rocked, and the 
 early footsteps of whose advancing youth and man- 
 hood it had so anxiously supported and directed, 
 and that by the very hand which afterwards lay 
 the axe at their root, and dug the grave for their 
 burial. 
 
 We are now passing through a great phase of the 
 world's civilization; whether ours be one which is 
 symptomatic of the world's dissolution, is a question 
 for the studier of prophecy, or the inquirer into the 
 signs of the times. 
 
 Rome passed through each separate stage which 
 the world has gradually experienced since ; and from 
 the days of Servius Tullms to those of Constantine 
 and Justinian she saw the same transitions of oli- 
 garchical and popular influence, through one of which 
 she was aiding the general society of man to pass. 
 
 This principle which is seen at work in the advance Society seen 
 of the separate nations and the general society of man, Jure!™ 8 
 is also noticeable in the smaller expressions of the 
 family and individual. In the former, especially, we 
 find that the natural progress very much resembles 
 that of the great society of man ; while in the opening 
 out of personal character we notice the same fluctua- 
 tions between homage to the principles of authority 
 and respect, and the adoration offered to principles of 
 liberty and licentiousness, ending in that scepticism 
 with respect to all the received rules of life which in- 
 duces a man at the end of his days so often to accept 
 
 c 
 
18 EUROPEAN POETRY. 
 
 rule without reason, and authority without modification. 
 This similarity between the body politic and its sepa- 
 rate members, this integral copy which each figure 
 expresses of the general plot, of which strictly he 
 forms but a part, becomes interesting when applied 
 to the advance of literary and scientific improve- 
 ments. Applying this principle to the subject-mat- 
 ter in hand, we shall find that the same phases of 
 poetic expression consentaneous with the changes in 
 the national body exist alike in the separate state as 
 they do in the general advance of the taste and lite- 
 rature of the world at large. While in Greece 
 Homer was succeeded by Sophocles, and he, in order 
 of thought, by the more satirical writers, so, through 
 the advance of men of poetic power from the earliest 
 periods of the history of the world to the present, we 
 shall find that the ballad preceded the epic, the epic 
 the dramatic, the dramatic the satiric and the lyric. 
 The four There have been four great minds which have headed 
 gyeat Poets, the various advances of the great world-poets from the 
 beginning, Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and Goethe. 
 These will divide between themselves the attention of 
 mankind. But dropping for a moment the ancient 
 history of the world, and simply taking up that 
 period of mediaeval and modern history, which may 
 be considered to be in one sense the regeneration of 
 the intellectual vigour of mankind, we shall find it 
 interesting to divide poets generally into the classes 
 which have been suggested, and to take certain 
 master-spirits as the type and models of multitudes 
 who crowd around them, imitate their talent, or 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY 19 
 
 catch the radiations from their genius. Before the 
 days of the Gothic invasion, the world, represented 
 by the Roman people, had reached what might have 
 been thought the apex of political and intelligent 
 civilization. That condition of things broke away and 
 disappeared before the gigantic invasions from the 
 north-east of Asia. The effect of the Gothic inroad 
 was at once to blunt the keen edge of the human 
 intellect, to dull the lustre of the taste, to roughen 
 the high temper of art, and to cast a general depression 
 over the elevated aspirations of man. That this was 
 for a great purpose, connected with the final develop- 
 ment of the human race, it is not difficult to discern ; 
 but for a time the check appeared fatal, the mist chilled 
 so deeply the heart and life-blood of European 
 society, that it appeared to catch its death disease 
 from the very cause which perhaps fostered its 
 future strength. 
 
 I might compare the condition of human society 
 during the dark periods of the ninth, tenth, and 
 eleventh centuries to that of a multitude gathered 
 to explore some realm beyond a mountain range, 
 beyond which they hoped to find some philo- 
 sopher's stone which might solve the doubts and 
 inquiries of the human mind. Having overcome 
 difficulty after difficulty, and appeared to have all 
 but reached their object, an Egyptian darkness sunk 
 over the pioneers, within the shadows of which they 
 sunk as into the slumber of death ; though here and 
 there amid the shade forms moved to and fro, showing 
 signs not only of life, but of struggling effort to extri- 
 c 2 
 
20 EUROPEAN POETRY. 
 
 cate themselves from the opposing hindrances. They 
 were struggling to find a pathway to a dawn which 
 they believed would yet break out upon a morning sky. 
 
 Such was the condition of the human race during the 
 centuries to which I have referred. I am not denying 
 that there were not during those periods men of the 
 highest saintliness of life, gifted with genius and intel- 
 lect, of powers of scholastic learning, capable of arrow 
 flights of poetry, and deep knowledge of the human 
 heart. I am not denying that it would be a solecism 
 to apply, in the popular sense of the words, the term 
 "dark ages" to that period; but that, to a great 
 degree, "a darkness which could be felt" pervaded 
 the homes of those who dwelt amid the nations of 
 civilized Europe, there can be little doubt. We 
 should expect that if the world were to awaken to a 
 new life, and to reach a consummation similar to that 
 which it had reached in days gone by, that if there 
 were to be a dawn of a still brighter morrow than 
 the past of ancient history had shown, between the 
 centuries I have spoken of and our own day, there 
 would be a long and gradual breaking of light on the 
 homes of art, science, literature, and the manners 
 and arrangements of mankind. And such is the case. 
 
 Each nation of Europe may be considered as forming 
 a portion of the general whole which was developing 
 Western civilization. Each one lent its auxiliary 
 corps to accomplish the great victory. Italy natu- 
 rally would lead the van in the wake of such a move- 
 ment, inasmuch as upon her shores and plains had 
 first crouched the figures of the pioneers whom 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 21 
 
 I have imagined, and over her land had first sunk the 
 shades of the darkness. 
 
 We should consistently with the principle laid 
 down ahove, expect the ballad and the epic would 
 appear in that country on which was to burst the 
 morning of the new day of mankind- The stage of 
 dramatic poetry would naturally spring from those 
 countries an which the social rather than the political 
 life, the individual rather than the body politic, the 
 private combined with the public interest, were the 
 objects of immediate concern. The Saxon race 
 starts up claiming the second position in the great 
 movement, and we find it producing the third great 
 form of poetry, that of the Drama ; while Dante in 
 Italy used the epic, Shakspeare in England wrote in 
 the dramatic form. 
 
 We expect to find that some nation whose 
 slighter framework of society, whose rapid develop- 
 ment of consciousness, whose aims after glory and 
 success, rather than internal consolidation, would be 
 likely to bring about sudden and rapid reactions 
 of scepticism, indignation at evident inconsistency, 
 would be the one to occupy the fourth position in the 
 poetic order, the Satiric ; and we find France at once 
 ranging herself under the description just now given. 
 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries she 
 produced the satiric poetry of Rousseau, Corneille, and 
 Moliere, and these centuries trench on the periods 
 of the Drama in England and Spain. 
 
 Again, we look out to discover in what country we 
 are to expect the genius of the fifth development of 
 
22 EUROPEAN POETKY 
 
 poetry. The result of satire is scepticism. The peo- 
 ple whom we should expect to express this result, would 
 be one whose subjective nature and tendencies to make 
 research into the causes of things would have led 
 them to hesitate on the truth of principles, which the 
 shallower and keener school of satire had shown to 
 be false ; but which, though able to hold up to ridicule 
 as a suspected theory, they were unable to supersede 
 by a better. Germany answers to that description ; 
 the German mind in its subjectivity, its efforts at 
 self-philosophy, its dread of conventional formalism; 
 in its bold originality, and its tendency to hesitate 
 as to any external objective claims, starts forward 
 as at once the nation from whose ranks we should 
 expect the fifth class of poet, according to the above 
 arrangement, to step. We look ; and we do not look 
 long before we see the approach of Goethe and Schil- 
 ler, surrounded by those many disciples and precur- 
 sors, who either suggested or borrowed the concep- 
 tions of the author of Faust, or the historian of The 
 Thirty Years' War. • Goethe may be considered the 
 type poet of the Lyric school, and with it its sad 
 accompaniments — its scepticism, its hesitation, its 
 unhappiness, its unrest. 
 
 I have here then assigned to four nations of 
 modern and mediaeval history, the four stages of the 
 advance of civilization through the expressions of 
 poetry. To Italy, the province of the Epic; to 
 England, of the Dramatic ; to France, of the Satiric ; 
 and to Germany, of the Lyric. 
 
 The Ballad form still wants for this period its 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 23 
 
 nation and its poets. May we not look for them in 
 the wild flights of the Scandinavian bards, or in some 
 of those earlier flashes of poetic fancy which especi- 
 ally belonged to the genius and the circumstances of 
 the Spanish people ? This view will not only be in- 
 teresting as bringing before the mind's eye the great 
 poets of European history ; but also as assigning to 
 each several nation of our continent a place con- 
 nected with its own distinctive genius in the great 
 advance of civilization. 
 
 But I will return for a moment to Italy and her Italy and 
 poet. I mentioned the condition of society during the 
 tenth and eleventh centuries, as representing the con- 
 dition of men who were within reach of a long sought 
 object, and suddenly involved in difficulties which 
 appear inextricable. To carry on the same analogy, 
 there are forms beneath those shadows of many who 
 are struggling to come out into light, and to gaze 
 into the dawn of a brighter morning. One form 
 above others approaches from the realm of shades, 
 and by its persevering and painful energy extricates 
 itself from the darkness. His brow is illumined with 
 the light of the day into which he is bursting, and from 
 his countenance, like the lawgiver of old, he reflects the 
 beam to those whom he has left behind. He gazes with 
 melancholy eye on the world from which the waters 
 of a deluge were subsiding, sung like the dove of old 
 his plaintive cry, while he sought for the sole of his 
 foot a resting-place on the renovating world. In the 
 wake of that early pioneer, aroused by his cry at be- 
 holding the earth, around whose objects the waters 
 
24 EUROPEAN POETRY. 
 
 of ignorance were subsiding, one by one his com- 
 panions rise from their slumbers, they follow as men 
 just starting from the sleep of a long night, with wan- 
 dering eye and scarce determined countenance, their 
 great leader. The stern face, the compressed lip, the 
 melancholy eye, the frowning brow, the disappointed 
 sadness of the countenance of Dante, are what first 
 strike our notice. Behind him the figures of Petrarch, 
 Tasso, Ariosto, Alfieri, Boccaccio, and Metastasio, 
 follow their great countryman into the realms of the 
 new-born day. Far behind in the advancing day of 
 European literature is Shakspeare, grouped with the 
 dramatists of his own country, and Calderon and 
 Lopez de Vega from Spain. And there is the blind 
 eye of him whose soul would penetrate the rayless orb 
 to mingle with the genius of his master teacher, and 
 to imitate the subject-matter of the Divima Comedia, 
 and rearrange its idea in Paradise Lost. There too, 
 Oamoens, grasping in one hand the scroll of the his- 
 toric past, and in the other the harp to which he 
 tunes his melody. Further still, those who snarl on 
 our Satiric school ; and, still farther, he whose 
 thoughtful brow and contemplative eye, declare 
 Groethe, and by him the beaming intelligence of 
 the brow of Schiller. We see him too, who amid 
 the mountains of our own land borrowed the philoso- 
 phy of Germany, and sung it to a nobler tune, 
 and, with Wordsworth, him who in grotesque and 
 paradoxical strains seems to have lingered on the 
 threshold of the pantheistic school, and, arrested with 
 admiration, started alarmed at its result. Such, with 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 25 
 
 many more, come in lengthened procession, following 
 in the wake of Dante, into the world's resuscitated 
 life; the ark was opened, and the dove had flown 
 to her rest, and after her followed in her track all 
 those whose lays were suited to advance the cause of 
 mental and literary civilization. 
 
 We see in Dante also, when we examine him, the 
 poet who is the expressor of the more condensed 
 form of society. The Italian states were at this time 
 beginning to rearrange themselves after the disturb- 
 ance and anarchy produced by the Gothic invasion. 
 Concentrated efforts at legislation, visions of Italian 
 nationalism, had given a certain compactness to the 
 Italian states, which preceding centuries had lacked. 
 This condition Dante expresses as a poet. The 
 Church of Eome held peculiarly at this time 
 the populations of Italy and the South beneath 
 her great objective system, and in the minute 
 descriptions of the unseen world, which Dante brings 
 before our notice, more as if they were objects 
 of sight than of faith, we see in him the churchman 
 as we had before seen in him the poet of his day and 
 country. His style of poetry expresses the character 
 of his day, and at the same time assumes the tone of 
 the member of the Church; the subject-matter of 
 his poem was religious, and religious in Dante's 
 own way, on account of the influence which the 
 Church herself held over the consolidating polities 
 of Italy. 
 
 Dante may therefore be considered to illustrate, 
 not only a certain phase of Italian, but of European 
 
26 EUROPEAN POETRY. 
 
 mediaeval history. That phase when the separate ele- 
 ments of society were disentangling themselves from 
 the confusion consequent on the Gothic invasion, and 
 reorganizing under a new idea and form. It was at that 
 period that Venice was beginning to assert her claim to 
 the dominion of the waters ; that England was begin- 
 ning to consider the claims of her commonalty ; and 
 that other countries were beginning to value more set- 
 tled laws and systematic arrangement. Society was 
 hoping more to recognize a common end, and in- 
 asmuch as that condition was penetrated with an 
 ecclesiastical tone, Dante and his- poem may be con- 
 sidered fitly to express the mind and condition of 
 his age. 
 Shakspeare. But, as I said, from the political society the 
 individual and the social life gradually emerges; 
 the dramatist expresses this. Shakspeare in Eng- 
 land, and Calderon in Spain, become the great ex- 
 ponents of this condition of European civilization. 
 Theirs was the period of developing social life. In 
 England, the Wars of the Eoses had broken down 
 that aristocratic barrier which had stood between the 
 influence of the monarch and the people. One of 
 the first blows had been struck at the heart of 
 feudalism in France in the reign of Louis XI. The 
 advent of Henry of Navarre promised to reorganize 
 the social condition of France at the battle of Ivry ; 
 and on bloodless fields the English were accom- 
 plishing the same ends. Germany had thrust out 
 her various forms of social life and confederate 
 government. It was then that the struggles of the 
 
EUROPEAN POETEY. 27 
 
 Netherlander had won for their country a place on 
 the page of history; and Charles the Fifth had 
 oscillated to and fro in theological opinion, and from 
 the aristocratic to the popular cause. It was the 
 period of social influence, and of the advance of 
 individual forms from the great political masses of 
 the world. This is the. dramatic period of history, 
 and the dramatic period of poetry. Shakspeare 
 became its exponent in England, Calderon and 
 Lopez de Vega in Spain, Jodelle, Moliere, and 
 others, in France, Tasso and Manfredi in Italy; 
 
 This phase was gradually to pass away ; men who 
 had gained their standing showed that they were not 
 proof against the infirmities of humanity, or the tempt- 
 ations incident on success. The age of revolutions 
 followed, and closing, in England with the efforts of 
 William the Third, and in the North with the 
 struggles of Sweden, the multitude who had found a 
 temporary repose, abused their . time of rest, and 
 turned liberty into licentiousness, and self-govern- 
 ment into self-adulation. This state of things in 
 society paved the way for the impressions of unreality 
 and hypocrisy as to the reality of the state of things 
 generally. It offered an opportunity for the pungent 
 sarcasms of men who doubted of all high principles, 
 and it brought out from France her Satiric school, 
 Moliere, Oorneille, and Eacine. 
 
 This stage is ever shortlived. Mankind long 
 hesitate on the border-land between unreality and 
 nothingness, between hesitation and boundless scep- 
 ticism. France, the exponent of the school, claimed 
 
28 EUROPEAN POETEY. 
 
 her position as standing amongst the most brilliant, 
 the most transient of people. It was for that nation, 
 rising in intellectual effort and philosophic thought, 
 to bring her auxiliary poets to express hesitation 
 as to past principles which were pervading society. 
 The French Eevolution was among the earliest throbs 
 of the great political and human disease. The Eeign 
 of Terror, and the preachers of reason, were but 
 commentators on a text which had been learnt and 
 conned by every state of Europe. In England, more 
 silently, more cautiously, and more reservedly, the 
 same doubts were sapping the foundations of society, 
 and strong movements of sympathy were felt even 
 with the French Revolution. The tremendous events 
 consequent on the movements of Napoleon, showed 
 how the trust in ancient governments and the faith in 
 ancient laws were passing away, and the reign of scep- 
 tical thought succeeded rapidly to the proclamation 
 of the unreality and hypocrisy of the preceding 
 period. 
 Goethe. Germany became the exponent of the day, and 
 
 Goethe and Schiller sung in their lyric songs the 
 melancholy death-dirge of a world's trust in ancient 
 principles and objective truth. Germany found a 
 responsive voice in England, and the school which 
 was parallel in some elements of thought to Goethe 
 amongst ourselves, numbered amid its names the 
 writers of the Lake school, though tempered by the 
 Saxon caution, and kept in check by the independent 
 spirit of our race. 
 
 Each of these leading minds had their own 
 
EUROPEAN POETRY. 29 
 
 schools of disciples and imitators. Each have 
 from time to time found, as it were, out of their 
 due place men who have walked in their footsteps. 
 Milton's Epic followed Shakspeare's Drama, and 
 Byron's Satire trenches closely on the realms of 
 the lyric age. Cowper wrote in a transitionary 
 period, and Petrarch anticipates his age by sing- 
 ing lyrics to Laura; but the exceptions tend to 
 prove the rule, and the consciousness of anachronism 
 in the position of many of these, shows us that we 
 had stereotyped the rule of poetry, and were jealous 
 of the invasion of the territories of one by the linger- 
 ing footsteps of the other. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 Macbeth 1 . Macbeth divides with Hamlet, in many minds, 
 Hamlet. * ne claim to being Shakspeare's masterpiece. They 
 are, no doubt, each of them the work of a master- 
 hand, and have points of truth and power which give 
 them a fair claim to being the best and greatest of 
 our poet's touches; nevertheless there are no few 
 judges of first-rate power who look on Lear, Othello, 
 and Coriolarms as showing equal genius and per- 
 ception. 
 
 Macbeth is to Hamlet what the dramatist is to the 
 philosopher, what iEschylus is to Socrates, or Shak- 
 speare himself to Bacon. In the latter we have the 
 keen analysis of the working and spring of that form 
 which in the other stands before us, showing all the 
 changes and relationships without their immediate 
 and imminent causes. Hamlet reveals Shakspeare in 
 his studio, and Macbeth shows him in the market- 
 place. In Hamlet we sit with the poet in a cell, silent 
 
MACBETH. 31 
 
 and absorbed, keenly anxious while we watch the 
 delicate operation of dissecting and searching the 
 complex formation of the human being ; in Macbeth 
 we go forth with him into the world, and watch him 
 as he portrays to mankind the discoveries of the cell. 
 Hamlet is esoteric, and Macbeth exoteric; Hamlet is 
 the work of the hero, and Macbeth his shrine and 
 monument. Hamlet is the pale and spectral ana- 
 tomy; Macbeth the full figure, warm, coloured, and 
 natural. While we read Hamlet we tremble with 
 exquisite anxiety at the minute revelations of our 
 being ; while in studying Macbeth we stand asto- 
 nished and delighted with the magical representation. 
 In both cases it is human nature displayed in living 
 character; and in both the by-play and the sub- 
 ordinate personae exemplify and modify the central 
 idea. Lady Macbeth and Duncan are to Macbeth 
 what Ophelia and the Queen are to Hamlet ; they are 
 the shadows of the two extremes meeting on either 
 side. Hamlet is the analysis of man's moral history, 
 affected by his intellectual formation ; Macbeth is the 
 manifestation of that moral history, in its varied and 
 gradual development. They seem good counterparts 
 to each other, yet suited to affect different kinds of 
 conditions and readers. Hamlet will be valued by the 
 few ; while with the multitude Macbeth is sure to be 
 the most popular. 
 
 2. The tragedy of Macbeth describes the working Moral aim 
 of conscience, the gradual advance of the moral being betll 
 towards decay and despair: each step is accurately 
 
32 MACBETH. 
 
 portrayed, and each act shows a distinct and different 
 Moral ad- phase of blinded conscience. The conviction, strug T 
 
 d^Une™ d S les > and final decav of tne moral sense are wonder- 
 fully described, and show in Shakspeare a clear per- 
 ception of the moral history of man. While Mac- 
 beth himself manifests this gradual advance of the 
 decline and decay of the moral being, Lady Macbeth 
 stands in remarkable force by his side, showing the 
 condition of a conscience hardened from the first, 
 yielded to or listened to till the depraved mind sinks 
 into the melancholy of superstitious imbecility. She 
 is the dark shade which edges the picture of Mac- 
 beth, the black rim which strikes him out in keener 
 power. Duncan, on the other hand, and Macduff, 
 show the other extreme of the simplicity of virtue, 
 at once bending to the dictates of conscience, or de- 
 siring to obey it from a manly resolution for good. 
 They form the light against which Macbeth's cha- 
 racter stands out in dark and flowing outlines ; as, 
 indeed, all the inferior characters combined with the 
 plot of the play tend to do. 
 
 Three con- As an instance of the three conditions of character 
 
 ditions of ... . 
 
 conscience in this play — the one simple, the other from the- 
 described. g rat corni p^ an( j t ne third, Macbeth's, progressively 
 
 deteriorating, — take the following passages : 
 
 a. The speech of Duncan, so full of the quiet 
 
 simplicity of an innocent mind : 
 
 Dun. Welcome hither : 
 I have begun to plant thee, and will labour 
 To make thee full of growing. — Noble Banquo, 
 
MACBETH. 33 
 
 That hast no less deserved, nor must be known 
 No less to have done so ; let me infold thee, 
 And hold thee to my heart. 
 
 Ban. There if I grow, 
 The harvest is your own. 
 
 Bun. My plenteous joys, 
 Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves 
 In drops of sorrow — Sons, kinsmen, thanes, 
 And you whose places are the nearest, know, 
 We will establish our estate upon 
 Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter 
 The prince of Cumberland ; which honour must 
 Not, unaccompanied, invest him only, 
 But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine 
 On all deservers. — From hence to Inverness. 
 And bind us further to you. 
 
 Worthy Banquo ; he is full so valiant ; 
 And in his commendations I am fed ; 
 It is a banquet to me. Let us after him, 
 Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome : 
 It is a peerless kinsman. 
 
 6. The speech of Lady Macbeth, showing at 
 once her intriguing mind, from which the beam of 
 conscience has been for ever averted : 
 
 Enter Lady Macbeth, reading a Letter. 
 
 Lady Macb. They met me in the day of success ; and I have learned 
 by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal know- 
 ledge. When I turned in desire to question them further, they made 
 themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the 
 wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-haiVd me, Thane 
 of Cawdor ; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and 
 referred me to the coming on of time, with, Hail, king that shalt be ! 
 This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner ofgreat- 
 
 *nes8; that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being igno- 
 rant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and 
 
 farewell. 
 
 Glamis thou art, and Cawdor ; and shalt be 
 
 What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature ; 
 
 It is too full o' the milk o' human kindness, 
 
34 MACBETH. 
 
 To catch the nearest way : thou would'st be great; 
 
 Art not without ambition ; but without 
 
 The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, 
 
 That wouldst thou bodily ; wouldst not play false, 
 
 And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'dst have, great Glamis, 
 
 That which cries, Thus thou must do, if thou have it; 
 
 And that which rather thou dost fear to do, 
 
 Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, 
 
 That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, 
 
 And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
 
 All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
 
 Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
 
 To have thee crown'd withal. 
 
 c. And the opening of Macbeth's gradual decline 
 of moral character from the instant he begins to 
 reason with his conscience : 
 
 Mact. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well 
 It were done quickly: if the assassination 
 Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
 With his surcease, success ; that but this blow 
 Might be the be-all and the end-all here, — 
 But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, — 
 We'd jump the life to come. — But, in these cases, 
 We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
 Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
 To plague the inventor : this even-handed justice 
 Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
 To our own lips. He's here in double trust : 
 First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, 
 Strong both against the deed ; then as his host, 
 Who should against his murderer shut the door, 
 Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
 Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet- tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-off ; 
 And pity, like a naked new-born babe 
 Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin horsed 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, 
 That tears shall drown the wind. — I have no spur 
 
MACBETH. 35 
 
 To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
 Vaulting ambition, which o'er-leaps itself, 
 And falls on the other. 
 
 The following speech, in the second act, shows 
 the empire of conscience at an end, and its voice 
 sunk into a whisper; yet that whisper, though no 
 longer able to check his determined course, can scare 
 with its terrible warnings of the future. 
 
 These passages are a good index to the three 
 styles of character represented in the play. 
 
 2. But it is my point to show that in each act 
 Macbeth's character developes further towards per- 
 fect sin. 
 
 Maci. Go ; bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, 
 She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. [Exit Servant. 
 
 Is this a dagger which I see before me, 
 The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutch thee : — 
 I have thee not ; and yet I see thee still. 
 Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 
 To feeling as to sight ? Or art thou but 
 A dagger of the mind ; a false creation, 
 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 
 I see thee yet, in form as palpable 
 As this which now I draw. 
 Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going ; 
 And such an instrument I was to use. 
 Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, 
 Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still ; 
 And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, 
 Which was not so before. — There's no such thing : 
 It is the bloody business which informs 
 Thus to mine eyes. — Now o'er the one-half world 
 Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 
 The curtain'd sleep ; now witchcraft celebrates 
 Pale Hecate's offerings ; and wither'd murder 
 Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, 
 Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, 
 With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design 
 
 D 2 
 
36 MACBETH. 
 
 Moves like a ghost. — Thou sure and firm-set earth, 
 
 Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear 
 
 Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, 
 
 And take the present horror from the time, 
 
 Which now suits with it. — Whiles I threat, he lives ; 
 
 Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [A bell rings. 
 
 I go, and it is done ; the bell invites me. 
 
 Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell 
 
 That summons thee to heaven or to hell. 
 
 Balaam I will recommend the reader to study the great 
 
 Macbeth, similarity, in every stage of its development, be- 
 tween the character of Balaam in holy Scripture, 
 and that of Macbeth. 
 
 The working of conscience is the striking feature 
 in Macbeth. The gradual declension of moral inte- 
 grity is as intricate as it is useful as a study ; and 
 only the most skilful philosopher in human nature 
 can unravel the tangle at all successfully into a 
 clear thread. The boundary-lines between the states 
 of hope and despair, between decision and indecision, 
 sound and false judgment, are thin and evanescent 
 as the colours of moonlight, and it requires no in- 
 experienced eye to detect them; Shakspeare has 
 done so, and successfully. 
 
 Nemo repentefwit turpissimus ; and few illustrations 
 of the truth of this have been more vividly painted 
 than the picture of Macbeth. One slow yet decided 
 descent is described from the first act to the last. 
 Nothing too sudden; all slow, natural, but down- 
 ward : the strong, clear colours of truth ; the full 
 twilight of a fading conscience ; the not quite night 
 of a soul on the wall of whose chamber the hand- 
 
MACBETH. 37 
 
 writing of God's finger still glimmers; the dark 
 night without a ray, — are all described in this 
 tragedy. Reasoning with conscience now, then obey- 
 ing it ; observing, but fearing it ; crushing, and laugh- 
 ing at it, but bowing to its phantoms, and turning 
 round to stare with starting eyes at its beckoning 
 spectre far behind in the shadow, — are phases in 
 Macbeth's character. 
 
 The prophet Balaam is the one character in holy Balaam. 
 Scripture whose conscience is delineated in each 
 stage of its working. There are five distinct phases 
 described. Full conviction of truth in the refusal to go 
 with the princes. The attempt to overcome that con- 
 viction in the asking God if he might go. The check 
 of God's chastening providence, resisted though under- 
 stood, yet because it did not forcibly prevent, avoidable, 
 in the passage of the angel. The going aside to speak 
 with God, showing the subterfuge of the man, de- 
 termined to go wrong, but yet apologizing to the 
 phantom which has followed him. The declaration 
 to Balak that he could not act independently of 
 God, showing the last stage of the man determined 
 to do wrong, yet while doing it, doing it under protest. 
 Some of these stages may be traced in the cases 
 of Pharaoh, Ahab, and Judas, and in any wicked 
 man's life ; and faint appearances of the same may 
 be found in every man's life with regard to some 
 fault or other which he has had to subdue. 
 
 a. The same phases may be traced in the declen- First stage. 
 
 r 7t ■ ■ Knowledge 
 
 sion of Macbeth. The clear and full recognition of t truth. 
 the path of duty, and the dread of not walking in it, 
 
38 MACBETH. 
 
 is shown in the early part of his history in the speech 
 on the prediction of the witches : 
 
 Macb. Two truths are told, 
 As happy prologues to the swelling act , 
 
 Of the imperial theme. — I thank you, gentlemen. — 
 This supernatural soliciting 
 Cannot he ill, cannot be good. If ill, 
 Why hath it given me earnest of success, 
 Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor. 
 If good, why do I yield to that suggestion 
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, 
 Against the use of nature ? Present fears 
 Are less than horrible imaginings : 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
 Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
 Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 
 But what is not. 
 
 Ban. Look how our partner's rapt. 
 
 Macb. If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me, 
 Without my stir. 
 
 Ban. New honours come upon him 
 Like our strange garments : cleave not to their mould, 
 But with the aid of use. 
 
 Macb. Come what come may ; 
 
 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day. 
 
 Ban. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure. 
 
 Macb. Give me your favour ; my dull brain was wrought 
 With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains 
 Are register'd where every day I turn 
 The leaf to read them. — Let us toward the king. — 
 Think upon what hath chanced ; and, at more time, 
 The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak 
 Our free hearts each to other. , 
 
 Ban. Very gladly. 
 
 Macb. Till then, enough. 
 
 Here, in the full sight of the fair field of truth 
 and goodness, though already the seed is evidently 
 sown which is to spring up and give daily more and 
 more strength for evil, the spectre of sin stalks in 
 
MACBETH. 39 
 
 already through the gateway of his soul ; and though 
 it is but a glance, it is one which withers, scares, 
 and terrifies. The struggle, had commenced, though 
 the protest is for God; and the sword is thrown 
 into the balance, though .it is as yet weighed down 
 by the measures of truth and peace. How power- 
 fully the ail-but physical violence with which the 
 wicked feeling antagonises against the good, and the 
 confusion incident upon the struggle, is described ! 
 Contrast it with his speech in the last act : 
 
 Macb. I have almost forgot the taste of fears : 
 The time has been, my senses would have cool'd 
 To hear a night-shriek ; and my fell of hair 
 Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir 
 As life were in't : I have supped full with horrors ; 
 Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts, 
 Cannot once start me. 
 
 We see the decided change of the tone and feeling 
 of the moral agent. 
 
 Such is the result of truth shining through how- 
 ever dim and narrowed a grating on the charnel- 
 house of the heart, still having evil before it. 
 There is a hesitation on the border-land between 
 truth and falsehood, which is again in strong con- 
 trast with the following speech at the conclusion : 
 
 Macb. If thou speak'st false, 
 Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, 
 Till famine cling thee : if thy speech be sooth, 
 I care not if thou dost for me as much. 
 I pull in resolution, and begin 
 To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, 
 That lies like truth : fear not, till JBirnam wood 
 Do come to Dunsinane; — and now a wood 
 
40 MACBETH. 
 
 Comes toward Dunsinane. — Arm.-arm, and out 
 
 If this which he avouches does appear, 
 
 There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here. 
 
 I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun', 
 
 And wish th' estate of the world were now undone. 
 
 Ring the alarum-bell : — Blow, wind ! come, wrack ! 
 
 At least we'll die with harness on our back. 
 
 The strife in Macbeth's mind is like that in 
 Balaam's, when he protests for truth in the words 
 of Numbers xxii. 18, 19, and yet hesitates on the 
 edge of error. 
 Second 5. In the second act, the evening of his brief day 
 
 Apology. of trutn quickly closes in ; the strife in the dim 
 light between the evil spirit and the good becomes 
 fearful in the following dialogue : 
 
 Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. 
 Did not you speak ? 
 
 Macb. When ? 
 
 Lady M. Now. 
 
 Macb. As I descended ? 
 
 Lady M. Ay. 
 
 Macb. Hark! — 
 Who lies i' the second chamber ! 
 
 Lady M. Donalbain. 
 
 Macb. This is a sorry sight. {Looking on his hands. 
 
 Lady M. A foolish thought to say a sorry sight. 
 
 Macb. There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, Murder ! 
 That they did wake each other. I stood and heard them ; 
 But they did say their prayers, and address'd them 
 Again to sleep. 
 
 Lady M. There are two lodged together. 
 
 Macb. One cried, God bless us ! and Amen ! the other ; 
 As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands 
 Listening their fear. I could not say, amen 
 When they did say, God bless us. 
 
 Lady M. Consider it not so deeply. 
 
 Macb. But wherefore could I not pronounce amen ? 
 I had most need of blessing, and amen 
 Stuck in my throat. , 
 
MACBETH. 41 
 
 Lady M. These deeds must not be thought 
 After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 
 
 Macb. Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep ; 
 Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast ! 
 
 Lady M. What do you mean ? 
 
 Macb. Still it cried, Sleep no more ! to all the house : 
 Glamis hath murder' d sleep ; and therefore Cawdor 
 Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more t 
 
 Lady M. Who was it that thus cried ? Why, worthy thane, 
 You do unbend your noble strength, to think 
 So brain-sickly of things. — Go, get some water, 
 And wash this filthy witness from your hand. — 
 Why did you bring these daggers from the place ? 
 They must lie there. Go, carry them, and smear 
 The sleeepy grooms with blood. 
 
 Macb. I'll go no more : 
 I am afraid to think what I have done ; 
 Look on't again, I dare not. 
 
 Balaam's second stage was the proposal to ask God 
 if he might do wrong; so Macbeth's character is 
 now rapidly and less intricately developed. The 
 second stage is rather one of the man who, having 
 done the wicked deed, is horror-struck, — acknow- 
 ledges the need of recognition of God after rather 
 than before its committal. 
 
 c. The third act shows a vast advance in Mac- Third 
 
 beth's character. The day of terror, hesitation, visitation. 
 
 conviction, is past ; he is cheerful, firm, determined, 
 
 resolved. There is but little timidity in the following 
 
 expressions : 
 
 Enter Macbeth. 
 
 Lady M. How now, my lord ? Why do you keep alone, 
 Of sorriest fancies your companions making ? 
 
42 MACBETH. 
 
 Using those thoughts, which indeed should have died 
 With them they think on ? Things without remedy 
 Should be without regard : what's done is done. 
 
 Macb. We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it ; 
 She'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice 
 Remains in danger of her former tooth. 
 But let 
 
 The frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, 
 Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep 
 In the affliction of these terrible dreams 
 That shake us nightly : better be with the dead, 
 Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, 
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
 In restless ecstacy. Duncan is in his grave ; 
 After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well : 
 Treason has done his worst ; nor steel, nor poison, 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
 Can touch him further. 
 
 Lady M. Come on ; 
 Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks ; 
 Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night. 
 
 Macb. So shall I, love ; and so, I pray, be you ; 
 Let your remembrance apply to Banquo ; 
 Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue : 
 Unsafe the while that we 
 
 Must lave our honours in these flattering streams, 
 And make our faces vizards to our hearts, 
 Disguising what they are. 
 
 Lady M. You must leave this. 
 
 Macb. Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife ! 
 Thou know'st that Banquo and his Fleance lives. 
 
 Lady M. But in them nature's copy's not eterne. 
 
 Macb. There's comfort yet ; they are assailable ! 
 Then be thou jocund : ere the bat hath flown 
 His cloister'd flight ; ere, to black Hecate's summons, 
 The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums, 
 Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done 
 A deed of dreadful note. 
 
 Still, though the evil spirit no longer scares within, 
 the committed sin, taking a visible form without, 
 terrifies and unmans him : 
 
MACBETH. 43 
 
 Len. May it please your highness sit ? 
 
 [The Ghost of Banquo rises, and sits in Macbeth' s place. 
 
 Macb. Here had we now our country's honour roof d, 
 Were the graced person of our Banquo present ; 
 Whom may I rather challenge for unkindness, 
 Than pity for mischance ! 
 
 Rosse. His absence, sir, 
 Lays blame upon his promise. Please it your highness 
 To grace us with your royal company ? 
 
 Macb. The table's full. 
 
 Len. Here's a place reserved, sir. 
 
 Macb. Where? 
 
 Len. Here, my lord. What is't that moves your highness ? 
 
 Macb. Which of you have done this ? 
 
 Lords. What, my good lord ? 
 
 Macb. Thou canst not say, I did it : never shake 
 Thy gory locks at me. 
 
 Rosse. Gentlemen, rise ; his highness is not well. 
 
 Lady M. Sit, worthy friends. My lord is often thus, 
 And hath been from his youth : pray you, keep seat ; ■ 
 The fit is momentary ; upon a thought 
 He will again be well : if much you note him, 
 You shall offend him, and extend his passion ; 
 Feed, and regard him not. — Are you a man ? 
 
 Macb. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that 
 Which might appal the devil. 
 
 Lady M. O proper stuff ! 
 This is the very painting of your fear ; 
 This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, 
 Led you to Duncan. Oh, these flaws, and starts, 
 (Impostors to true fear,) would well become 
 A woman's story at a winter's fire, 
 Authorized by her grahdam. Shame itself ! 
 Why do you make such faces ? When all's done, 
 You look but on a stool. 
 
 Macb. Rrythee, see there ! behold ! look ! lo ! — How say you ? — 
 Why, what care I .' If thou canst nod, speak too. — 
 If charnel-houses and our graves must send 
 Those that we bury back, our monuments 
 Shall be the maws of kites. [ Ghost disappears. 
 
 Lady M. What ! Quite unmann'd in folly ? 
 
 Macb. If I stand here, I saw him. 
 
 Lady M. Fie, for shame ! 
 
 Macb. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time, 
 
44 MACBETH. 
 
 Ere human statute purged the gentle weal ; 
 Ay, and since too murders have been perform'd 
 Too terrible for the ear : the times have been, 
 That when the brains were out the man would die, 
 And there an end ; but now they rise again, 
 With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, 
 And push us from our stools : this is more strange 
 Than such a murder is. 
 
 Lady M. My worthy lord, 
 Your noble friends do lack you. 
 
 Maci. I do forget : — 
 Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends ; 
 I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing 
 To those that know me. Come, love and health to all ; 
 Then I'll sit down. — Give me some wine, fill full : 
 I drink to the general joy of the whole table, 
 And to our dear friend Ban quo, whom we miss ; [Ghost rises. 
 
 Would he were here ! To all, and him, we thirst, 
 And all to all. 
 
 Lords. Our duties and the pledge. 
 
 Maci. Avaunt ! and quit my sight ! Let the earth hide thee ! 
 Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ; 
 Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
 Which thou dost glare with ! 
 
 Lady M. Think of this, good peers, 
 But as a thing of custom : 'tis no other ; 
 Only it spoils the pleasure of the time. 
 
 Maci. What man dare, I dare : 
 Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear, 
 The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger, 
 Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves 
 Shall never tremble : or be live again, 
 And dare me to the desert with thy sword ; 
 If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me 
 The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow ! 
 
 The ghost, like the chastening and alarming visita- 
 tion of the angel to Balaam, reminds Macbeth of the 
 scaffold of -conscience which lies in ruins round his 
 soul ; but he pushes past it and goes on in the pur- 
 suit of his ambition. It is one remarkable fact of 
 our moral condition, that the pursuit of any one 
 
MACBETH. 45 
 
 fault, while it whets the appetite for itself as it 
 advances and receives satisfaction, at the same time 
 blinds the eye of the pursuer ; so that the very foot 
 may be on the edge of the precipice over which the 
 unhappy victim falls headlong, ere he perceives whi- 
 ther he is going. Nay, it is frequent that the work 
 of moral ruin has reached its last stage, while the 
 agent imagines that he is farther than ever from 
 the culminating point of his history. Balaam stood 
 on the edge of the hill from which he was about 
 to attempt to curse the holy people, when he 
 turned aside to consult God ; and the words of the 
 malediction were struggling to frame themselves into 
 syllables on his tongue, when he burst out into that 
 beautiful desire, that he might die the death of the 
 righteous, and that his last end might be like his ! 
 
 d. The effort in the fourth act to get rid of his Fourth 
 own individual and personal responsibility by going supersti- 
 aside to make an appeal to the power of the spiritual tiou- 
 world, and as it were to satisfy his own villany by 
 laying it at the door of fate, reminds us again 
 forcibly of Balaam's appeal to the Almighty before 
 his last sinful effort to justify his conduct, and to 
 make a protest in favour of the sincerity of his 
 
 desires. 
 
 Enter Macbeth. 
 
 Mact. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags ? 
 What is't you do ? 
 
 All. A deed without a name. 
 
 Maci. I conjure you, by that which you profess 
 (Howe'er you come to know it), answer me : 
 Though you untie the winds, and let them fight 
 Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 
 
46 MACBETH. 
 
 Confound and swallow navigation up ; 
 
 Though bladed corn be lodged, and trees blown down ; 
 
 Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; 
 
 Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
 
 Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
 
 Of nature's germins tumble all together, 
 
 E'en till destruction sicken, — answer me 
 
 To what I ask you. 
 
 1st Witch. Speak. 
 
 2nd Witch. Demand. 
 
 3rd Witch. We'll answer. 
 
 1st Witch. Say, if thoud'st rather hear it from our mouths, 
 Or from our masters ? 
 
 Macb. Call them ; let me see them. 
 
 1st Witch. Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten 
 Her nine farrow ; grease, that's sweaten 
 From the murderer's gibbet, throw 
 Into the flame. 
 
 All. Come, high or low ; 
 Thyself and office deftly show ! 
 
 Thunder. — An apparition of an armed head rises. 
 
 Macb. Tell me, thou unknown power, — 
 
 1st Witch. He knows thy thought ; 
 Hear his speech, but say thou nought. 
 
 App. Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Beware Macduff ; 
 Beware the thane of Fife. — Dismiss me : enough. [Descends. 
 
 Macb. Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks ; 
 Thou hast harp'd my fear aright : — But one word more : — 
 
 1st Witch. He will not be commanded : here's another, 
 More potent than the first. 
 
 Thunder. — An apparition of a bloody child rises. 
 
 App. Macbeth ! Macbeth ! Macbeth ! — 
 
 Macb. Had I three ears, I'd hear thee. 
 
 App. Be bloody, bold, and resolute : laugh to scorn 
 The power of man ; for none of woman born 
 Shall harm Macbeth. [Descends. 
 
 Macb. Then live, Macduff; what need I fear of thee ? 
 But yet I'll make assurance double sure, 
 And take a bond of fate : thou shalt not live ; 
 That I may tell pale-hearted fear, it lies, 
 And sleep in spite of thunder. What is this, 
 
MACBETH. 47 
 
 Thunder. — An apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, 
 rises. 
 That rises like the issue of a Mng, 
 And wears upon his baby brow the round 
 And top of sovereignty? 
 
 All. Listen, but speak not. 
 
 App. Be lion-mettled, proud ; and take no care 
 Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are : 
 Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until 
 Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 
 Shall come against him. [Descends. 
 
 Macb. That will never be : 
 Who can impress the forest ; bid the tree 
 Unfix his earth-bound root ? Sweet bodements ! Good ! 
 Rebellious head, rise never, till the wood 
 Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth 
 Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath 
 To time and mortal custom. — Yet my heart 
 Throbs to know one thing ; tell me (if your art 
 Can tell so much), shall Banquo's issue ever 
 Reign in this kingdom ? 
 
 All. Seek to know no more. 
 
 Macb. I will be satisfied : deny me this, 
 And an eternal curse fall on you ! Let me know. — 
 Why sinks that cauldron ? And what noise is this ? [Hautboys. 
 
 1st Witch. Show ! 2nd Witch. Show ! 3rd Witch. Show ! 
 
 All. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart ; 
 Come like shadows, so depart. 
 
 Eight Icings appear, and pass over the stage in order ; the last with a 
 glass in his hand : Banquo following. 
 
 Macb. Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo : Down ! 
 Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls : — And thy hair, 
 Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first : 
 A third is like the former : — Filthy hags ! 
 Why do you show me this ? — A fourth ? — Start, eyes ! ] 
 What ! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? 
 Another yet ? — A seventh ? — I'll see no more : — 
 And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass, 
 Which shows me many more ; and some I see, 
 That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry : 
 Horrible sight ! — Ay, now, I see, 'tis true ; 
 For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me, 
 And points at them for his. — What, is this so ? 
 
48 MACBETH. 
 
 Fifth stage, e. The fifth act shows a distinct advance in the 
 tion. moral ruin of Macbeth. The day of conviction has 
 
 closed ; the strife of good and evil is over ; the voice 
 of conscience no longer whispers with the faintest 
 echo round the corridor of his inmost being; the 
 desire for right throbs no more even with the faintest 
 pulse of expiring life ; the casuistry of a subtle rea- 
 soning is heard no longer pleading for pleasure at the 
 bar of a holier tribunal. All is over; and dark 
 despair settles down in the rayless dungeon of the bad 
 man's heart, mixed with a fearful looking-for of fiery 
 indignation ; and the condition of Macbeth is seen in 
 fearful juxtaposition with the awful and hopeless end 
 of Lady Macbeth : 
 
 Macb. How does your patient, doctor .' 
 
 Doct. Not so sick, my lord, 
 As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, 
 That keep her from her rest. 
 
 Macb. Cure her of that : 
 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ; 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain ; 
 And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
 Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart ? 
 
 Doct. Therein the patient 
 Must minister to himself. 
 
 Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.— 
 
 Come, put mine armour on ; give me my staff. 
 
 Seyton ; send out.— Doctor, the thanes fly from me. 
 Come, sir, despatch.— If thou couldst, doctor, cast 
 The water of my land, find her disease, 
 And purge it to a sound and pristine health, 
 I would applaud thee to the very echo, 
 
 That should applaud again. — Pull't off, I say. 
 
 What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, 
 
 Would scour these English hence ?— Hearest thou of them ? 
 
MACBETH. 49 
 
 And: 
 
 [A cry within of women. 
 
 Macb. Wherefore was that cry ? 
 
 Seyton. The queen, my lord, ia dead. 
 
 Macb. She should have died hereafter ; 
 There would have been a time for such a word. 
 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 3. There are few passages in fiction, dramatic or 
 epic, which are more fraught with awful teaching than 
 this tragedy. Few hands have more dexterously drawn 
 out the single threads of moral action from the tangled 
 web of violated conviction, than Shakspeare in this 
 celebrated play. The slow but sure advance to ruin ; 
 the clear view which the bystander has of the destruc- 
 tion which the unhappy victim does not see ; the 
 various efforts of conscience, reason, and self-jus- 
 tification and despair, to do their work, — present as 
 accurate and interesting a history of the man whose 
 will is bent on the pursuit of a sinful end as we have 
 on record. 
 
 4. The female characters of Shakspeare are won- The female 
 derfully various, but always true, consistent, and well c oi shakT 
 kept up ; and even when, by the possession and s P eare - 
 expression of some strong trait of character, they 
 resemble each other, they never merge into one 
 another. Margaret of Anjou,.Lady Constance, and 
 
50 MACBETH. 
 
 Their dis- Lady Macbeth, are all possessed of the same violent 
 female passions; but how clear is the line which 
 separates them from each other ! Miranda, Cordelia, 
 Desdemona, and Ophelia, all blend into the sweet 
 and tender colours of intense affection, but how little 
 the simplicity of Miranda has in common with Cor- 
 delia's knowledge of the world, or Desdemona's con- 
 fiding affection with Ophelia's sad insanity ! Though 
 the exquisite sorrow of the speech of Desdemona at 
 her undressing, reminds us a little of the wounded 
 reason of Ophelia, which lay bleeding with the sorrow 
 of disappointed devotion. Portia, Beatrice, and 
 Eosalind remind us constantly that the same hand 
 drew them ; but they stand as separate from each 
 other, and more so, than Diana Vernon, Catherine 
 Seyton, and Rose Bradwardine ; while Isabel, Queen 
 Katharine, and Volumnia stand closely side by side, 
 statues of female magnanimity. 
 
 The versatility of Shakspeare's knowledge of human 
 nature is shown in few instances, more than in the 
 diversified delineation of female characters, and in the 
 delicate and beautiful lines by which he separates 
 them from each other. 
 
 I spoke of Desdemona, Ophelia, and Miranda, 
 each full of all that is lovely, gentle, confiding, 
 patient, and devoted in woman; yet who but one 
 that had studied woman deeply, and had thrown him- 
 self, into a dream of dramatic description in which 
 he trusted almost blindly to a guiding hand of 
 instinct, could have painted the various shades of 
 character which each of these represent S Take their 
 
MACBETH. 51 
 
 separate modes of expression in describing their devo- Miranda, 
 tion to, or admiration of, those men whom they re- mona) an a 
 spectively loved : equally intense in their admiration, °P hella - 
 yet coming from such different characters. 
 
 a. The childish simplicity of Miranda on first 
 seeing man in Ferdinand, is expressed in the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Mira. What is't ? A spirit ? 
 Lord, how it looks about ! Believe me, sir, 
 It carries a brave form ': — But 'tis a spirit. 
 
 Pro. No, wench, it eats and sleeps, and hath such senses 
 As we have, such : this gallant which thou seest 
 Was in the wreck ; and but he's something stain'd 
 With grief, that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him 
 A goodly person : he hath lost his fellows, 
 And strays about to find them. 
 
 Mira. I might call him 
 A thing divine ; for nothing natural 
 I ever saw so noble 
 
 There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
 If the ill spirit have so fair an house, 
 Good things will strive to dwell with't. 
 
 Pro. Follow me. — [To Ferdinand. 
 
 Speak not you for him ; he's a traitor. — Come, 
 I'll manacle thy neck and feet together : 
 Sea-water shalt thou drink, thy food shall be 
 The fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots and husks 
 Wherein the acorn cradled : follow ! 
 
 Fer. No; 
 I will resist such entertainment, till 
 Mine enemy has more power. [He draws. 
 
 Mira. O dear father, 
 Make not too rash a trial of him, for 
 He's gentle, and not fearful. 
 
 Pro. What, I say, 
 My foot my tutor ! — Put thy sword up, traitor ; 
 Who mak'st a show, but dar'st not strike, thy conscience 
 Is so possess'd with guilt : come from thy ward ; 
 For I can here disarm thee with this stick, 
 And make thy weapon- drop. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 MACBETH. 
 
 Mira. Beseech you, father ! 
 Pro. Hence ; hang not on my garments. 
 Mira. Sir, have pity ; 
 I'll be his surety. 
 
 I do not know 
 
 One of my sex j no woman's face remember, 
 Save from my glass mine own ; nor have I seen 
 More that I may call men, than you, good friend, 
 And my dear father ; how features are abroad, 
 I am skill-less of ; but, by my modesty 
 ~(The jewel in my dower), I would not wish 
 Any companion in the world but you ; 
 Nor can imagination form a shape, 
 Besides yourself, to like of : but I prattle 
 Something too wildly, and my father's precepts 
 Therein forget. 
 
 b. Contrast these expressions with Ophelia's feel- 
 ings for Hamlet in the following : 
 
 Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
 The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 
 The observed of all observers ! quite, quite down ! 
 And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 
 That suck'd the honey of his music vows, 
 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ; 
 That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 
 Blasted with ecstasy : Oh, woe is -trie'! 
 To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! 
 
 Still the wondering, confiding, engrossed love of 
 woman, but all springing from a fountain so far 
 deeper down in the heart than the last ; every word 
 revealing that sad and plaintive melancholy which is 
 so absent from Miranda. To use her own exquisite 
 words, her reason is, " like sweet bells jangled ;" and 
 yet who has not seen, if not the fully developed cha- 
 racter in life, yet the counterpart of both 2 Miranda 
 
MACBETH. S3 
 
 is like the morning sun, and Ophelia the pensive 
 evening. 
 
 And take Desdemona, equally simple, loving, 
 single-minded, simple and devoted, yet more digni- 
 fied ; more of the matron, more of the serene noon 
 of life. 
 
 Dead. That I did love the Moor to live with him, 
 My downright violence and storm of fortunes 
 May trumpet to the world ; my heart's subdued 
 Even to the very quality of my lord : 
 I saw Othello's visage in his mind ; 
 And to his honours and his valiant parts 
 Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. 
 So that, dear lords, if I be left behind, 
 A moth of peace, and he to go to war, 
 The rites for which I love him are bereft me, 
 And I a heavy interim shall support 
 By his dear absence : let me go with him. 
 
 I might multiply passages ad infinitum contrasting 
 these three characters ; but with regret I forbear. 
 To follow and watch the touches of such an artist, to 
 enter his studio by twilight and detect the shadowy 
 forms from which he has drawn, and to compare 
 every line and find them correct, is an intellectual 
 luxury too fascinating and tempting. 
 
 Is there not in' Lucy Ashton, Amy Robsart, and comparison 
 Jeannie Deans an equal similarity and equal contrast ? Wlt cott ' 
 Though, while we feel that Lucy Ashton stands 
 unrivalled on the page of fictitious literature, as a 
 whole, the studio in which Scott has delineated his 
 female originals is inferior to that of Shakspeare. 
 
 Thie power of depicting woman, seeing her province 
 and her peculiar and distinctive features, belongs to 
 many master-minds. iEschylus and Sophocles have 
 
54 MACBETH. 
 
 no small claim to attention in this point of view. 
 The mind that could have conceived Olytemnestra 
 and Cassandra can be no unworthy rival of Shak- 
 speare. 
 
 One fact is remarkable in Shakspeare : he has left 
 his leading female characters much more solitary than 
 Scott has. The latter delighted in placing them side 
 by side almost as parallels. Eowena and Rebecca, 
 Jeannie and Effie, Rose and Flora, Amy and the 
 Queen, Minna and Brenda, are antiphonal voices of 
 woman responding from either side of the choir of 
 life. Shakspeare's women stand more alone and in 
 sublime solitude, while the subordinate characters 
 used in giving contrast never absorb or divide atten- 
 tion. He works singularly by contrast ; but it is not 
 in similar characters. Angelo and Isabel, or Regan 
 and Kent, strike out their lesson by contrast ; but 
 they do not stand on the same ground, or on the 
 same level, as do Scott's heroines. Shakspeare's 
 female characters rise like clear heavenly luminaries 
 in a dark sky, gentle or fiery as the case may be ; 
 while Scott's are like two lovely colours of a prism, 
 blending into union, yet in contrast. Lady Constance 
 rises as a column undisturbed, yet affected, by Elinor. 
 Emilia and the Duke but little absorb attention while 
 Desdemona and Isabel are before the eye. 
 Lady Mac- 5. Lady Macbeth looms by herself in awful and ter- 
 rible majesty. Clytemnestra, the Duke, Hamlet, Re- 
 gan, Gronerfl, Margaret of Anjou, and Medea, approach 
 and hang off from her. But she stands alone. With 
 the intrigue of Hamlet's mother she combines com- 
 
 beth. 
 
MACBETH. 55 
 
 manding intellect ; with the cruelty of the daughter of 
 Lear she combines greater consciousness and dignity ; 
 with the passion of Margaret of Anjou she retains 
 more art and reasoning and iself-command ; to the 
 hypocrisy of Olytemnestra she adds more conscious 
 knowledge of rectitude ; and with the rage of Medea 
 she unites singleness of purpose. Few characters 
 ever described can rival her ; she is unrestrained, 
 accomplished, and determined in vice ; she never 
 once flinches ; and the only failure of self-command 
 we see in her is, while unconscious, and haunted by 
 the spectre of her sins, she walks in sleep. 
 
 What scene in art or nature can excel that 
 sleep-walking, and the silence which follows the 
 mention of the death of Lady Macbeth? No- 
 thing in dramatic or fictitious writing can exceed 
 the arrangement and the scenic grandeur of the 
 description. Her entire absence through the whole 
 of the fourth act, and the mysterious statement of 
 the doctor ; her spectral appearance with the taper 
 in her sleep ; her ghost-like person, and then the 
 description of her death, only intimated at first by 
 her scream, — work up as appalling a picture of the 
 tragical end of the wicked as we have on record. 
 
 She enters the stage where Macbeth leaves it ; be- Contrast 
 fore she appears she has already reached the culmi- ^^ 
 nating point of wickedness and hardness of heart ; she 
 stands to Macbeth as Jezebel to Ahab. She appears 
 at first as the instrument of her husband, and in the 
 act of sin there is no hesitation ; no thrill or shudder 
 galvanizes the corpse of her conscience, — it is cold, 
 
56 MACBETH. 
 
 paralytic, and numb. The spirit of evil has seated him- 
 self in the throne of her heart, and drives her where he 
 will, — or rather, they two sit together, accomplices in 
 Her power sin, the flesh, and the devil. Her purpose is firm ; 
 she retains with a determined grasp the forceps with 
 which she is able, with singular keenness of mental 
 vision, to lay hold of the salient point of sinful cha- 
 racter. So unlike Macbeth, who continually shows 
 that nicker of life which the slumbering ember of 
 conscience is able to give to the fuel cast upon it. She 
 sees at a glance the whole future ; she is not unstable, 
 because not double-minded. Study the passage al- 
 ready quoted, in which she is described as reading 
 the letter, and deciding on Macbeth's future. 
 
 The same unflinching purpose of evil is shown 
 further in the instantaneous and rapid answer in 
 which she anticipates Macbeth : 
 
 Macb. My dearest love, 
 Duncan comes here to-night. 
 
 Lady M. And when goes hence ? 
 
 Macb. To-morrow, as he purposes — 
 
 Lady M. Oh, never 
 Shall sun that morrow see ! — 
 Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men 
 May read strange matters. To beguile the time, 
 Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye, 
 Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower, 
 But be the serpent under it. He that's coming 
 Must be provided for : and you shall put 
 This night's great business into my despatch ; 
 Which shall to all our nights and days to come 
 Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. 
 
 Macb. We will speak further. 
 
 Lady M. Only look up clear ; 
 To alter favour ever is to fear : 
 Leave all the rest to me. 
 
MACBETH. 57 
 
 The measured and worked-up flattery which she Her flat- 
 at once pours on Duncan at his entrance is a still 
 further touch of the picture of the finished sinner ; it 
 contrasts well with the more real and simple reception 
 of Macbeth. 
 
 Lady M. All our service 
 In every point twice done, and then done double, 
 Were poor and single business to contend 
 Against those honours deep and broad wherewith 
 Your majesty loads our house : for those of old, 
 And the late dignities heap'd up to them, 
 We rest your hermits. 
 
 While here is Macbeth's reception : 
 
 Macb. The service and the loyalty I owe, 
 In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part 
 Is to receive our duties ; and our duties 
 Are to your throne and state, children, and servants ; 
 Which do but what they should, by doing every thing 
 Safe toward your love and honour. 
 
 We can hardly leave Lady Macbeth as shown in Her raii- 
 the first act, without quoting the following passages, ery " 
 in which she rallies Macbeth; wherein she shows a 
 vigour of intellect, a refinement of idea, and a keen 
 power of raillery, added to an unflinching vigour of 
 purpose, which brings her out in contrast with the 
 weaker intellect of the Queen in Hamlet, the vulgar 
 coarseness of Regan, or even the impetuous military 
 passion of Margaret of Anjou. 
 
 Lady M. He has almost supp'd ; why have you left the chamber ? 
 
 Macb. Hath he ask'd for me .' 
 
 Lady M. Know you not he has ? 
 
 Macb. We will proceed no further in this business : 
 He hath honour'd me of late ; and I have bought 
 Golden opinions from all sorts of people, 
 Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, 
 Not cast aside so soon. 
 
58 MACBETH. 
 
 Lady M. Was the hope drunk 
 Wherein you dress'd yourself? Hath it slept since ? 
 And wakes it now, to look so green and pale 
 At what it did so freely ? From this time, 
 Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard 
 To be the same in thine own act and valour 
 As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou have that 
 Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, 
 And live a coward in thine own esteem ; 
 Letting ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would,' 
 Like the poor cat i' the adage ? 
 
 Macb. Pr'ythee, peace : 
 I dare do all that may become a man ; 
 Who dares do more is none. 
 
 Lady M. What beast was it, then, 
 That made you break this enterprise to me ? 
 When you durst do it, then you were a man ; 
 And to be more than what you were, you would 
 Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place 
 Did then adhere, and yet you would make both : 
 They have made themselves, and that their fitness now 
 Doth unmake you. I have given suck, and know 
 How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me : 
 I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
 Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
 And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, as you 
 Have done to this. 
 
 Macb. If we should fail, 
 
 Lady M. We fail ! 
 But screw your courage to the sticMng-place, 
 And we'll not fail. 
 
 Lady Macbeth's is a masterly character. Shak- 
 speare has looked steadily into the vast throng of 
 human nature, and singled out one who represents 
 a class, — an exaggeration in expression perhaps, but 
 clearly one of an existing class of women. 
 
 Few things connected with our moral nature float 
 to the surface, but they are there: drama brings 
 them to the surface. Men do not always say what 
 they think, or show what they feel ; but though this 
 
MACBETH. 59 
 
 may be the case, the same properties may. exist as 
 float to the surface in the description of fiction. On 
 the calm reflection upon a long course of life or a 
 number of acts, the impression left on the mind may 
 be exactly similar with regard to a character to that 
 which is given by the descriptions of the poet or the 
 novelist, though at first sight their's may appear an 
 exaggerated account. 
 
 The warnings of Lady Macbeth are arresting : we 
 learn from them that we may reach a condition of mind 
 where every reasoning power is perfect, where moral 
 purposes are firm, where conscience never smites, 
 where no external circumstances, no angel between 
 the walls of the narrow way, check our onward 
 career, where reason pleads clearly and soundly in 
 behalf of the line we pursue ; we may think all this a 
 sign of a sound condition, judging from the presence 
 of apparently healthy symptoms, while we may be, to 
 be brief, in the condition of Lady Macbeth. 
 
 6. Intimately connected with the force of moral Malcolm. 
 habit and the history of conscience is the character 
 of Malcolm. Calm, deliberating, and good, he follows 
 without haste or excitement the voice of conscience. 
 The absence of all hurry or rapidity about him places 
 him still more in the position of a foil to Macbeth. 
 There is a refreshment in reading his speeches' when 
 we leave the dark, subtle, and laboured suspicions 
 of Macbeth's ; our mind is relieved by the ease and 
 simplicity of the reasoning used by the Prince. The 
 following passage will show what I mean : 
 Macd. O Scotland ! Scotland ! 
 
60 MACBETH. 
 
 Mai. If such a one be fit to govern, speak : 
 I am as I have spoken. 
 
 Macd. Fit to govern ! 
 
 No, not to live. — O nation miserable, 
 With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd, 
 When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again ? 
 Since that the truest issue of thy throne 
 By his own interdiction stands accurs'd, 
 And does blaspheme his breed ? — Thy royal father 
 Was a most sainted king : the queen, that bore thee, 
 Oft'ner upon her knees than on her feet, 
 Died every day she lived. Fare thee well ! 
 These evils, thou repeat'st upon thyself, 
 Have banish'd me from Scotland. — O, my breast, 
 Thy hope ends here ! 
 
 Mai. Macduff, this noble passion, 
 
 Child of integrity, hath from my soul 
 Wip'd the black scruples, reconcil'd my thoughts 
 To thy good truth and honour. Devilish Macbeth 
 By many of these trains hath sought to win me 
 Into his power ; and modest wisdom plucks me 
 From over-credulous haste : But God above 
 Deal between thee and me ! for even now 
 I put myself to thy direction, and 
 Unspeak mine own detraction ; here abjure 
 The taints and blames I laid upon myself, 
 For strangers to my nature. I am yet 
 Unknown to woman ; never was forsworn ; 
 Scarcely have coveted what was mine own ; 
 At no time broke my faith ; would not betray 
 The devil to his fellow ; and delight 
 No less in truth, than life : my first false speaking 
 Was this upon myself: What I am truly, 
 Is thine, and my poor country's, to command : 
 Whither, indeed, before thy here-approach, 
 Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men, 
 All ready at a point, was setting forth : 
 Now we'll together ; and the chance, of goodness, 
 Be like our warranted quarrel ! Why are you silent ? 
 
 The 7. The scenes in which the witches appear must by 
 
 "\yitcji pc ■■„. ' 
 
 no means be placed aside in a philosophic view of this 
 
 drama. Passing by the conviction of belief in super- 
 
MACBETH. 61 
 
 natural appearances or agencies of this kind in 
 Shakspeare 1 s day, there is evidently in his mind an 
 intention of mingling the power of evil with the 
 human will, and shadowing forth the influence which 
 the unseen world has over the motives and feelings of 
 human action. He sees clearly how the spiritual 
 world has the power of suggesting evil, and, having 
 induced the unhappy being to commit sin, of confirm- 
 ing the habit, and binding closer the cords of its 
 slavery. Seen in this light, the resort of Macbeth a 
 second time to the witches has great significance. 
 They exercise a tyrannical influence over him. So 
 Satan and sin when once we are under their domi- 
 nion become awful and imperious masters. The 
 deeper our downward course the more complete 
 their power, till, as in Saul's case, the last resort to 
 them is on the day before the curtain finally drops. 
 
 It is hard to draw the line between the resistible 
 and irresistible power of the spiritual world over 
 us. It is hard to say when " Satan enters into us." 
 But it is clear that there is a time when some men 
 seem to be irresistibly under the control and influ- 
 ence of evil. 
 
 With these thoughts read the passage recording 
 the conversation between Macbeth and the Witches, 
 quoted above. 
 
 But I must draw to a conclusion. Macbeth re- 
 presents a grand moral tragedy ; a magnificent move- 
 ment of the soul towards its destiny. She appears 
 to us enshrined in the bodies, and expressed through 
 the characters of the varied persons of the tragedy. 
 
62 MACBETH. 
 
 She passes by us like a vessel heaving on a sea with 
 the land in sight ; cowering beneath storms, and 
 rising on the surge of life ; lashed with the foam of 
 temptation, and shuddering amid the breakers of sin : 
 at times rising superior to her difficulties, and set- 
 ting sail again for open sea, free and unencumbered 
 through a brief hour of successful effort. Here 
 seeming to ride into harbour, every difficulty over- 
 come, and every wave surpassed ; there sinking and 
 heaving amid the breakers of the midnight beach, 
 she misses the harbour, and the aim of the life-long 
 voyage is lost for ever. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 1. It is not now my object to discuss the many con- Titles of 
 jectures as to the origin of this play : whether some ^"^e's 
 play under the title of Hamlet had preceded the P la y s - 
 Hamlet of Shakspeare, from which he borrowed his 
 idea, and elaborated it in his own forge ; whether the 
 drama sprung from the story or Historie of Hamlet or 
 Hamleth, Prince of Denmark, found in records of 
 Danish historians ; or whether Shakspeare con- 
 structed the play on the type of the fables of the 
 Atreidse, are open questions. There is an apparent 
 obscurity about many of the titles of Shakspeare's 
 plays, they do not give clear intimations of the con- 
 tents of the dramas to which they are prefixed, or a 
 clear clue to the plot. Such are As you like it, The 
 Tempest, Measure for Measure, and Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream ; while many of the plays are headed 
 with his hero's name, as Macbeth or Hamlet. By 
 
64 HAMLET. 
 
 some this is considered merely as the caprice of the 
 author; but it has been suggested, with apparent 
 truth, that the choice of title has much intention. 
 In the periphrastic titles, the idea of the whole 
 drama is expressed and concentered in the terms, and 
 in no one character of the play; while the dramas 
 which bear single names seem to have the whole of 
 the intended idea expressed in the character the 
 name designates. Macbeth displays the gradual 
 declension of moral life, the advance of the evil influ- 
 ence of the inferior over the superior will, the loss of 
 primitive simplicity of character and aim, which are 
 all distinctly described in the gradual development of 
 Macbeth in each successive act. Macbeth himself 
 embodies the whole of the idea, and to the play the 
 title of Macbeth is accordingly given. In the same 
 way, Hamlet, Othello, and Lear, at once bring to 
 mind the respective ideas of unpoised feeling, jea- 
 lousy, and ingratitude, and consequently their names 
 are sufficient to express the idea of the play. In 
 these plays, too, the writer describes himself; his 
 own troubles are partly the troubles of his hero ; he 
 takes some trait out of his own character, and un- 
 consciously makes it the ruling trait in the character 
 of his hero. In the other plays, which are more 
 obscurely entitled, he seems to delight in making 
 one of his minor characters prominent, though not 
 professedly so ; thus in As you like it, although the 
 Duke is put forward as the principal, it is Jaques 
 which he has made the masterpiece of the play. 
 There is hardly a representation in Shakspeare which 
 
HAMLET. 65 
 
 surpasses the ' melancholy Jaques,' as far as it goes, 
 either in beauty or philosophy. 
 
 2. In Hamlet there are six characters more especi- Hamlet. 
 ally worthy of notice, — Hamlet, Ophelia, Laertes, ^ para ' 
 the King and Queen, Polonius, and the Ghost, — 
 each materially distinct from the other ; they stand 
 separate from any others in Shakspeare. It needs 
 little to show that the character of Hamlet differs 
 from any other which Shakspeare has described. He 
 has his parallels, but no equals, and no exact like- 
 nesses. Iago, Jaques, Othello, Macbeth, all have 
 their resemblance or points of sympathy with him ; 
 but none are an exact repetition of the vast con- 
 ception of the Prince of Denmark. Similar in the 
 tendency to philosophise, Jaques lacks sincerity and 
 depth, Othello lacks independence of character, and 
 Iago is too consummate a villain ; all distinctly dif- 
 ferent from Hamlet, yet having their angles of con- 
 tact. Ophelia brings to mind Desdemona, and yet 
 she is as distinct from her in essential features as 
 Hamlet is from Othello; both simple, trusting, de- 
 pendent even to death, the one is supported by an 
 inherent and conscious principle, which saves her 
 from the pathetic wreck of the other. The subordi- 
 nate characters of the play are kept admirably in 
 their places, each acting a distinct part, true to the 
 scene of life ; while all are perfect, none are al- 
 lowed to interfere with the prominence of the lead- 
 ing character. Laertes, the type of a noble and 
 high-minded youth of the day, is seen in admirable 
 contrast with Hamlet throughout; even the King 
 
66 HAMLET. 
 
 and Queen hold their respective walks of vice, and 
 betray different steps of the depraved or scheming 
 mind. 
 
 Such is a brief sketch of the views I propose 
 to elaborate more fully. I proceed at once to the 
 examination of Hamlet's own character, evidently one 
 of Shakspeare's greatest conceptions, and the master- 
 piece of his dramatic labours. There are one or two 
 thoughts which float to the surface of this investi- 
 gation, — the peculiarities and waywardness of Ham- 
 let, and the almost unwonted sadness and melancholy 
 which pervades him together with many other of the 
 heroes described by the poets of different ages. Why 
 is it that a tinge of sadness, rather than of cheer- 
 fulness, is found in nearly every great representation 
 of a poet's thought ? 
 Thecharac- 3. Every poet has a masterpiece, and Hamlet is 
 Hamlet. the masterpiece of Shakspeare. The leading cha- 
 racter may be a portrait of the author, or of some 
 one he has admired, or a mere ideal ; but it is 
 more than likely that it will be the reflection of the 
 poet in those deep hidden moments of his life, when 
 no human eye was on him, when none knew him ; 
 scarcely himself; those moments of unconscious self- 
 knowledge when men know themselves only as an 
 unseen but closely hovering presence which is more 
 intimate than self. No poet can describe any thing 
 so well as his own portrait. A man who appears 
 cunning in human nature, is simply one who well 
 watches himself; and there were passages in our 
 great dramatist's life, periods of trouble, weigh- 
 
HAMLET. 67 
 
 ing on a keen intellect and passionate disposition, 
 which might easily have resulted in that eccentric 
 waywardness, of which we have so magnificent 
 a representation in Hamlet. In fact, more cha- 
 racters will find angles of contact with Hamlet in 
 Shakspeare's plays than with any other. It is a type 
 character. There is just that dash of insanity, that 
 upset of the equipoise of a fine mind under trouble and 
 ill-usage in all our poet's remarkable characters, 
 which seem to point us naturally to the luminous 
 centre of Hamlet. Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Corio- 
 lanus, Jaques, Hotspur, to say nothing of Ophelia, 
 Constance, and Desdemona, have just that touch of 
 wildness which reminds us of various shades and 
 modifications of Hamlet ; and these are Shakspeare's 
 own characters, they are his distinctive personce. 
 Wolsey, Julius Csesar, Henry V., Isabella, and 
 Miranda, are majestic and splendid; but they are 
 not so essentially Shakspeare — they are all true, but 
 not so original. It would be a matter of no small 
 interest to compare them separately with Hamlet, 
 but we have not time. Scott has his own characters, Sir Walter 
 but they are not Shakspeare's. Ravenswood would 
 be true to Shakspeare, but he stands alone in Scott, 
 — powerful, true, awful, but a single sketch. The 
 even tenour of daily life, the prince, the peasant, or 
 the courtier, the soldier and the lover, Charles IT., 
 Dandy Dinmont, Leicester, Waverley, or Jeannie 
 Deans, are Scott's own. Scott was a painter of 
 social life, Shakspeare of man ; Scott was the histo- 
 rian of society, and Shakspeare the metaphysician. 
 f 2 
 
68 HAMLET. 
 
 To take another illustration. The pathetic phase of 
 human nature is especially the feature of Euripides ; 
 many of his beautiful characters will find a point 
 of contact with such a type as Polyxena. 
 
 What suggested to Shakspeare his type is an in- 
 teresting question ; if, as we suggested, most vivid 
 poets draw themselves, and stand opposite their own 
 easel, it is no hard thing to answer the question. The 
 possession of a transcendent genius, the conviction 
 which all such men have, that that genius is not 
 appreciated, early adversity, and harsh treatment, 
 the uneasiness and discontent arising from having 
 been the cause of his own troubles, are all points 
 which tend to produce in a great mind just that 
 irritable, wayward, affected temper we see in Hamlet. 
 It has been well said, that Job, Hamlet, and Pro- 
 metheus are comparable as characters to whom the 
 uneven course of Providence was a source of dis- 
 tress: it alarmed them, it unhinged them. This 
 seems Hamlet's character ; and there are just the 
 circumstances in Shakspeare's life and disposition to 
 make us feel that he thrust out Hamlet as a safety- 
 valve for the expression of himself. 
 
 But again, I said, that there is ever a tinge 
 of sadness rather than of cheerfulness in the great 
 representatives of the poet's thoughts. This is 
 easily explicable. Every deep feeling in a fallen 
 state must be sad in proportion as it is deep, because 
 every deep feeling is an echo of an unfallen state. 
 The poet is the priest of these feelings. He burns 
 to express them, and the most expressive man is the 
 
HAMLET. 69 
 
 most vivid poet. The deeper and fuller the water 
 which swells beneath the surface, the more tre- 
 mendous must be the effort with which it finds its 
 exit. But Hamlet is our aim, and his type of cha- 
 racter is Shakspeare's own; Achilles, Prometheus, 
 CEdipus, Dante himself, all the great characters of 
 poetic fiction have strong resemblance to Hamlet, 
 all are what some would call " half mad." There 
 is a very striking resemblance between Hamlet and 
 the description of the neyakoipvxoQ of Aristotle, and 
 in that character there are dashes of what some 
 would call madness. 
 
 It might not unfairly be suggested, that the basis 
 principle of this play is kindred to that of As you like it, 
 and the object of it is to bring out that dissatisfaction Object of 
 at the uneven course of Providence so peculiar to many Upsetof the 
 great minds, and so remarkably illustrated by that of ^^ of 
 the Prince of Denmark. With this view we may 
 imagine that while Hamlet himself represents that 
 kind of dissatisfaction in its extreme aspect, tending to 
 upset the equipoise of the human mind, Ophelia sha- 
 dows it out in another, but equally true form ; while 
 Laertes, the clowns, and Osric become various phases 
 of the same idea. In Hamlet the uneven course of 
 the world produces an indignation which, in effect, 
 dethrones the master-power of reason in the control 
 of his other faculties. I say vn, effect, because Hamlet's 
 peculiarity lay in the will. He affects, as many men 
 of vast power do, a kind of insanity, over the move- 
 ments and changes of which he has the entire con- 
 
70 HAMLET. 
 
 trol ; it is indeed an intense form of upuvsia ; and in 
 this, as well as other respects, Hamlet reminds us of 
 the description of the /utyaAoi/zux ? m *^ e e * n i cs * ^ n 
 the other hand, the uneven course of the world and 
 its treachery, and consequent calamities, altogether 
 unhinge the sweet and fragile intellect of the lovely 
 Ophelia. She is seen in beautiful contrast with 
 Hamlet in the unwillingness of her insanity, while 
 both of them, the victims of injury, resemble each 
 other strongly in their outward aspect. Before the 
 sense of wrong Ophelia's self-control gradually fades 
 away, paling off like the morning star before the 
 glare of lightning. Like the tendrils of some frail 
 vine, she clings with melancholy but vain tenacity 
 to the support which hitherto has enabled her to 
 retain her self-control. In every scene the perfect 
 unconsciousness of her approaching imbecility is 
 amongst the most exquisite touches of Shakspeare's 
 unrivalled pencil. While, on the other hand, the 
 vigorous will of Hamlet, the desperate delight with 
 which he revels in expressing the signs of conscious 
 insanity, his perfect power at times to dismantle 
 himself from it, is seen in contrast with the above 
 character, and displays another form of the action 
 of the human mind under the sense of injury, equally 
 graphic and equally true. Ophelia was wrapped 
 up in Hamlet, Hamlet was wrapped up in world- 
 wide justice; Hamlet seemed to fail Ophelia, and 
 justice failed Hamlet, and each took it in their own 
 way. True to her character, Ophelia's mental ruin 
 
HAMLET, 71 
 
 opens with expressions of unfeigned and innocent 
 surprise, while Hamlet's opens with the most bitter 
 sarcasm. Take the following scenes : 
 
 Pol. How now, Ophelia ? what's the matter ? 
 
 Oph. Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted ! 
 
 Pol. With what, in the name of heaven ? 
 
 Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber, 
 Lord Hamlet, with bis doublet all unbrac'd ; 
 No hat upon his head ; his stockings foul'd, 
 Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ankle ; 
 Pale as his shirt ; his knees knocking each other ; 
 And with a look so piteous in purport, 
 As if he had been loosed out of hell, 
 To speak of horrors, — he comes before me. 
 
 Pol. Mad for thy love ? 
 
 Oph. My lord, I do not know, 
 
 But truly I do fear it. 
 
 Pol. What said he ? 
 
 Oph. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard ; 
 Then goes he to the length of all his arm ; 
 And with his other hand thus, o'er his brow, 
 He falls to such perusal of my face, 
 As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so ; 
 At last, — a little shaking of mine arm, 
 And thrice his head thus waving up and down, — 
 He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, 
 That it did seem to shatter all his bulk 
 And end his being. That done, he lets me go : 
 And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, 
 He seem'd to find his way without his eyes ; 
 For out o' doors he went without their help, 
 And to the last bended their light on me. 
 
 And again : 
 
 Enter Hamlet, reading. 
 
 Queen. But look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading. 
 
 Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away ; 
 I'll board him presently : — oh, give me leave. — 
 How does my good lord Hamlet? 
 
 Ham. Well, god-'a-mercy. 
 
 Pol. Do you know me, my lord ? 
 
72 HAMLET. 
 
 Ham. Excellent well ; you are a fishmonger. 
 
 Pol. Not I, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man. 
 
 Pol. Honest, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man 
 picked out of two thousand. 
 
 Pol. That's very true, my lord. 
 
 Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good 
 kissing carrion, — Have you a daughter ? 
 
 Pol. I have, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun : conception is a blessing ; but 
 not as your daughter may conceive, — friend, look to 't. 
 
 Pol. How say you by that ? [Aside."] Still harping on my daughter ; 
 — yet he knew me not at first ; he said I was a fishmonger : he is far 
 gone, far gone : and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for 
 love ; very near this. I'll speak to him again. — What do you read, my 
 lord? 
 
 Ham. Words, words, words. 
 
 Pol. What is the matter, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Between who ? 
 
 Pol. I mean the matter that you read, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical slave says here, that old, men 
 have grey beards ; that their faces are wrinkled ; their eyes purging 
 thick amber, or plum-tree gum ; and that they have a plentiful lack of 
 wit, together with weak hams : all of which, sir, though I most power- 
 fully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set 
 down ; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you 
 could go backward. 
 
 Pol. Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. [Aside.'] 
 Will you walk out of the air, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Into my grave ? 
 
 Again : 
 
 Ham. Soft you, now ! 
 
 The fair Ophelia : — Nymph, in thy orisons 
 Be all my sins remember'd. 
 
 Oph. Good my lord, 
 
 How does your honour for this many a day ? 
 
 Ham. I humbly thank you ; well, well, well. 
 
 Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, 
 That I have longed long to re-deliver ; 
 I pray you now receive them. 
 
 Ham. No, no. I never gave you aught. 
 
HAMLET. 73 
 
 Oph. My honour'd lord, I know right well you did ; 
 And with them words of so sweet hreath compos'd 
 As made the things more rich : their perfume lost, 
 Take these again ; for to the noble mind, 
 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
 There, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Ha, ha ! are you honest ? 
 
 Oph. My lord ? 
 
 Ham. Are you fair ? 
 
 Oph. What means your lordship ? 
 
 Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no 
 discourse to your beauty. 
 
 Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with 
 honesty ? 
 
 Ham. Ay, truly ; for the power of beauty will sooner transform 
 honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can trans- 
 late beauty into his likeness : this was some time a paradox, but now 
 the time gives it proof. I did love you once. 
 
 Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 
 
 Again : 
 
 Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him ! 
 
 Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath 
 given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you 
 amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your 
 wantonness your ignorance : go to, I'll no more on't ; it hath made me 
 mad. I say, we will have no more marriages : those that are married 
 already, all but one, shall live ; the rest shall keep as they are. To a 
 nunnery, go. [Exit Hamlet. 
 
 Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
 The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 
 The observ'd of all observers ! quite, quite down ! 
 And I of ladies most deject and wretched, 
 That suck'd the honey of his music vows, 
 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ; 
 That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 
 Blasted with ecstasy : Oh, woe is me ! 
 To see what I have seen, see what I see ! 
 
 The passages showing this are numerous; one 
 
74 HAMLET. 
 
 more I cannot pass by, which completes the sad 
 wreck of Ophelia : 
 
 Enter Ophelia fantastically dressed with straws and flowers. 
 
 Laer. O heat, dry up my brains ! tears seven times salt 
 Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye ! — 
 By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, 
 Till our scale turns the beam. O rose of May ! 
 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia ! — 
 O heavens ! is 't possible a young maid's wits 
 Should be as mortal as an old man's life ? 
 Nature is fine in love ; and where 'tis fine, 
 It sends some precious instance of itself 
 After the thing it loves. 
 
 Oph. They bore him barefaced on the bier ; 
 Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny ; 
 And on his grave rains many a tear ! — 
 
 Fare you well, my dove ! 
 
 Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, 
 It could not move thus. 
 
 Oph. You must sing, Down a-down, an you call him a-down-a. 
 Oh, how the wheel becomes it ! it is the false steward, that stole bis 
 master's daughter. 
 
 Laer. This nothing's more than matter. 
 
 Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance ; pray, love, remem- 
 ber : and there is pansies, that's for thoughts. 
 
 Laer. A document in madness ; thoughts and remembrance fitted. 
 
 Oph. There's fennel for you, and columbines : — there's rue for you ; 
 and here's some for me : — we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays : — oh, 
 you must wear your rue with a difference. — There's a daisy : — I would 
 give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died : — 
 They say he made a good end, 
 
 " For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy," — 
 
 Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself 
 She turns to favour and to prettmess. 
 
 Oph. And will he not come again ? 
 And will he not come again ? 
 
 No, no, he is dead, 
 
 Go to thy death bed, 
 He will never come again. 
 
HAMLET. 75 
 
 His beard as white as snow, 
 All flaxen was his poll : 
 
 He is gone, he is gone, 
 
 And we cast away moan : 
 Gramercy on his soul ! 
 And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' you ! 
 
 Again : 
 
 Queen. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes. 
 Laer. Drown'd ! — Oh, where ? 
 Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook, 
 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ; 
 There with fantastic garlands did she come, 
 Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, 
 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
 But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them : 
 There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds 
 Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 
 When down the weedy trophies and herself 
 Pell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, 
 And, mermaid-like, a while they bore her up, 
 Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 
 As one incapable of her own distress, 
 Or like a creature native and indued 
 Unto that element : but long it could not be, 
 Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
 Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay; 
 To muddy death. 
 
 Laer. Alas, then, she is drown'd ? 
 
 Queen. Drown'd, drown'd. 
 
 Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, 
 And therefore I forbid my tears. 
 
 While the sense of injury bursts like a calamitous Laertes, 
 storm over the fine textures of Hamlet and Ophelia, 
 uprooting those exquisitely-formed fibres which were 
 only fit to bend before the softest breath, — it pro- 
 duces a different result on the more gnarled and 
 simple texture of Laertes, who bursts out with in- 
 dignation against the supposed wrongs he has suffered 
 from Hamlet. 
 
76 HAMLET. 
 
 Laer, Lay her i' the earth ; 
 
 And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 May violets spring ! I tell thee, churlish priest, 
 A minist'ring angel shall my sister be, 
 When thou liest howling. 
 
 Ham. What, the fair Ophelia ! 
 
 Queen. Sweets to the sweet : Farewell ! [Scattering flowers. 
 I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife ; 
 I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, 
 And not t' have strewed thy grave. 
 
 Laer. Oh, treble woe 
 
 Full ten times treble on that cursed head 
 Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense 
 Deprived thee of! — Hold off the earth a while, 
 Till I have caught her once more in mine arms : 
 
 ' [Leaps into the grave. 
 
 Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, 
 Till of this flat a mountain you have made, 
 To o'er-top old Pelion, or the skyish head 
 Of blue Olympus. 
 
 Ham. [advancing.'] What is he whose grief 
 Bears such an emphasis ? whose phrase of sorrow 
 Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand 
 Like wonder-wounded hearers ? this is I, 
 Hamlet the Dane. [Leaps into the grave. 
 
 Laer. The devil take thy soul ! [ Grappling with him. 
 
 The The effect of the same evil working on the mind of 
 
 Clowns. , ° 
 
 the uneducated, with that kind of dogged proverbial- 
 ism so true to nature, is expressed in the scene with 
 the Clowns. 
 
 The The effects of injury affecting even the mind of 
 
 the injurer is noticeable in some of the words of the 
 Queen ; while old Polonius illustrates the quiet and 
 meagre way in which the weak dependant on another's 
 will views wrongs external to himself. Osric must 
 not be forgotten : while Polonius yields to the world's 
 injurious course, Osric accepts it. 
 
 In brief, the tragedy of Hamlet seems to bring 
 
HAMLET. 77 
 
 out in varied shades of colours the different modes in 
 which the minds of mortals, vigorous or fragile, ele- 
 vated or grovelling, stand, or quail and shiver, before 
 that tempest of social disorder which to the Christian 
 alone becomes perfectly explicable, from his know- 
 ledge of the strife of good and evil necessary for the 
 probation of the saint. And while explicable to him, 
 it is illumined by that unfading star of hope, which 
 ever peers in unclouded lustre above the edge of the 
 darkest storms, and which sheds its ray of promise 
 over the land where " the ungodly shall not be able 
 to stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congre- 
 gation of the righteous." 
 
 4. But of the interior structure and analysis of 
 Hamlet's character. Hamlet presents us with four or 
 five very powerful features of delineation, showing in 
 different forms and phases the versatility of Shak- 
 speare's genius. There is a philosophy, a knowledge 
 of human nature — a perception of the forms of social 
 life and manners — a skill in wielding the weapon of 
 sarcasm and satire — a success in dramatic arrange- 
 ment, which make Hamlet a highly interesting and 
 useful study for the English scholar. 
 
 a. I will consider Hamlet's philosophy first. Shak- Hamlet's 
 speare has a remarkable power of taking a stand out- p ° sop y " 
 side Christianity, and of placing himself, through his 
 characters, in the position of the enlightened and in- 
 telligent heathen. The reflections on our fragile 
 estate, the uncertain searchings of the soul after its 
 future condition, its cravings for immortality, the 
 love of reality and the horror at injustice, the stern 
 
78 HAMLET. 
 
 elevation of purpose, the serenity of self-subjugation 
 and life-long self-sacrifice,— are, with many others, 
 instances of the philosophic tone of the beings whom 
 he invests with living reality. At the same time, 
 this implies no deficiency in Shakspeare as a Chris- 
 tian moralist. He is admirable under both views, 
 and shows his versatility in this as in other lines. 
 In Hamlet he takes his stand on the former of the 
 two positions, and his philosophy rather assumes 
 the view of the man external to the range of 
 Christian truth. This line has its use, especially in 
 dramatic writing ; and, though apparently, is not 
 really open to the charge of a writer belying his high 
 
 The pro- calling; by fulfilling a secondary vocation. The dra- 
 
 vinceofthe . J , , . , 
 
 dramatist, matist, among other duties, has to appeal successfully 
 
 to a vast range of persons. He has to address and 
 affect men of every degree and phase of moral condi- 
 tion ; he is essentially the teacher of the people, of 
 the multitude, of the untaught and the sceptical. It 
 is his work often to be exoteric, he has to reclaim or 
 correct the worst forms of humanity. He must do 
 this very often through appeals to the feelings and 
 natural impulses of our nature, which existed anterior 
 to Christianity or revelation. 
 
 With this aim, the dramatist must appreciate and 
 handle man singly, man in all his phases, man in 
 each step of his advance ; and the more perfect the 
 dramatist is, the more versatile will he be in the cha- 
 racters he represents, or the shades of character 
 through which he is felt. He speaks through man 
 ideal to man real, and the representation must be 
 
HAMLET. 79 
 
 coextensive with the object. Sophocles spoke to the 
 Athenians, and he spoke through vivid forms of the 
 Grecian mind, character, and history. None has 
 been more successful in this respect than Shakspeare ; 
 he speaks to all and affects all. The following pas- 
 sage may well stand as the preface to Hamlet's phi- 
 losophising mood : 
 
 Ham. I will tell you why ; so shall my anticipation prevent your 
 discovery of your secrecy to the king and queen. Moult no feather. I 
 have of late (but wherefore, I know not,) lost all my mirth, forgone all 
 custom of exercises : and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my dispo- 
 sition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promon- 
 tory ; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, — this brave o'er- 
 hanging — this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears 
 no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. 
 What a piece of work is a man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite 
 in faculty ! in form and moving, how express and admirable ! in 
 action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty 
 of the world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, what is this 
 quintessence of dust ? Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither ; 
 though, by your smiling, you seem to say so. 
 
 One' of the first tendencies of the philosopher is to 
 explore the limits of life, and to attempt to gaze 
 beyond that veil which hangs down between us and 
 the world unseen ; the transitory nature of the 
 earthly estate is the earliest subject of the soul's 
 lament and search. The opening of the following 
 well-known passage illustrates what I mean : 
 
 Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question : 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to 'suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them ! To die, — to sleep, — 
 No more ; and, by a sleep, to say we end 
 The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
 That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation 
 
80 HAMLET. 
 
 Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, — to sleep ; — 
 
 To sleep ! perchance to dream ; — ay, there's the rub ; 
 
 For in that Bleep of death what dreams may come, 
 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
 
 Must give us pause : there's the respect 
 
 That makes calamity of so long life ; 
 
 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 
 The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay, 
 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
 
 When he himself might his quietus make 
 
 With a bare bodkin ? who would these fardels bear, 
 
 To grunt and sweat under a weary life ; 
 
 But that the dread of something after death, 
 
 The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn 
 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will ; 
 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have, 
 
 Than fly to others that we know not of ? 
 
 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; 
 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ; 
 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
 
 With this regard, their currents turn away, 
 
 And lose the name of action. 
 
 The philosophic power of this passage is great. The 
 apprehensions of the future, the flashing conviction 
 that that future is mixed up with our acts here, the 
 power with which those apprehensions pale all earthly 
 sensations and feelings, the perplexity consequent on 
 the conviction, and at the same time the evident 
 tendency of the argument to settle down in truth, — 
 are all points displaying a powerful natural philo- 
 sophy. I say nothing here of the artistic expression 
 and arrangement of the passage, which in every line 
 is so affectingly beautiful. 
 
 The same philosophising tone on the transitory 
 nature of this life and its acts, and the under-current 
 
HAMLET. 81 
 
 of conviction that it is not the all for which we act 
 and live, is carried on in the conversation with 
 Horatio and the Clowns : 
 
 Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once : how 
 the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jawbone, that did 
 the first murder ! This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass 
 now o'er-reaches, one that would circumvent God ; might it not ? 
 
 Hor. It might, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Or of a courtier ; which could say, " Good morrow, sweet lord ! 
 How dost thou, good lord ? " This might be my lord Sucb-a-one, that 
 praised my lord Such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it ; might 
 it not ? 
 
 Hor. Ay, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Why, e'en so : and now my lady Worm's ; chapless, and 
 knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade. Here's fine revo- 
 lution, an we had the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more the 
 breeding, but to play at loggats with them ? mine ache to think on't. 
 
 1 Clo. A pick-axe and a spade, a spade, 
 For — and a shrouding sheet : 
 Oh, a pit of clay for to be made 
 
 For such a guest is meet. [Throws up a skull. 
 
 Ham. There's another : Why might not that be the skull of a 
 lawyer? Where be his quiddits now, bis quillets, bis cases, his te- 
 nures, and his tricks ? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to 
 knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him 
 of his action of battery ? Humph ! This fellow might be in's time 
 a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, 
 his double vouchers, his recoveries : is this the fine of his fines, and 
 the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt ? 
 will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double 
 ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures ? The 
 very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box ; and must the 
 inheritor himself have no more ? ha ! 
 
 And again : 
 
 Ham. Alas, poor Yorick! — I knew him, Horatio ; a fellow of infi- 
 nite jest, of most excellent fancy : he hath borne me on his back a thou 
 sand times ; and now how abhorred in my imagination it is ! my gorge 
 rises at it. Here hung those lips, that I have kissed I know not how oft. 
 Where be your gibes now ? your gambols ? your songs ? your flashes 
 of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar ? Not one 
 
82 HAMLET. 
 
 now, to mock your own grinning ? quite chap-fallen ? Now get you to 
 my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this 
 favour she must come ; make her laugh at that. — Pr'ythee, Horatio, 
 tell me one thing. 
 
 Hor. What's that, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth ? 
 
 Hor. E'en so. 
 
 Ham. And smelt so ? pah ! [Throws down the skull. 
 
 Hor. E'en so, my lord. 
 
 Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio ! Why may not 
 imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping 
 a bung-hole ? 
 
 Hor. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. 
 
 Ham. No, 'faith, not a jot ; but to follow him thither with modesty 
 enough, and likelihood to lead it. As thus ; Alexander died, Alex- 
 ander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust ; the dust is earth ; 
 of earth we make loam : and why of that loam, whereto he was con- 
 verted, might they not stop a beer-barrel ? 
 
 Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away : 
 Oh, that the earth, which kept the world in awe, 
 Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw ! 
 
 How touching, bow true, how keen are these re- 
 flections ! and yet distinctly we hear the murmur of 
 that deep under-voice of the soul which speaks of 
 the conviction that " life is more than meat, and the 
 body than raiment.'" 
 
 , I cannot conclude these reflections on this feature 
 of Hamlet's philosophy, without quoting the opening 
 of that agitated soliloquy on his father's death. 
 
 Ham. Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
 Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! 
 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 
 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! God ! O God ! 
 How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
 Fie on't ! O fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden, 
 That grows to seed ; things rank, and gross in nature, 
 Possess it merely. 
 
HAMLFT. 83 
 
 There is no other character of Shakspeare which views of 
 exactly answers to this in the tendency to keen and Death 1 " 1 
 anxious inquiry on the relative conditions of the soul 
 and the body. The speech of Olaudio in Measure for 
 Measure reminds us of it, but it proceeds from a dif- 
 ferent mind* 
 
 Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where j 
 To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 
 To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 
 Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts 
 Imagine howling ! — 'tis too horrible ! 
 The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death. 
 
 Hamlet is so agitated, so nervous, so wayward, so The end. 
 perplexed, so passionate at times, at times so calm, 
 and in the main so true in his conclusions ! His 
 character stands in this respect alone in litera- 
 ture ; and if any thing is needed to finish perfectly 
 the beautiful sketch truly to nature, the calm evening 
 after the stormy afternoon of Hamlet's life, the almost 
 entire hush of mind which lulled the parting agony, 
 the absence of any deep shadow of doubt in the 
 awful climax, the seeming stillness when "the tyranny 
 of life had overpast," depicted in the last scene and 
 words, achieve the entire completion of the masterly 
 design. 
 
 g 2 
 
84 HAMLET. 
 
 Ham. Oh, I die, Horatio j 
 
 The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit ; 
 I cannot live to hear the news from England, 
 * * * The rest is silence. [Dies. 
 
 Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince ; 
 And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! 
 
 An inferior master of man would have painted 
 the last scene of such a life as Hamlet's as a cli- 
 macteric of agony, and we turn over the page with 
 anxiety, as we pass on from the fervid soliloquies and 
 speeches we have quoted above to the conclusion. 
 We expect the death will be an exaggeration of the 
 life ; and the bird which has beat its wings so loudly 
 and tremulously against the wires of its cage will, 
 when the door is opened, burst through into the 
 boundless space beyond with agony or ecstasy. But 
 the fear was needless ; the cage lay empty, and the 
 bird was gone — " The rest is silence." 
 
 The wind of the stormiest day goes down at sun- 
 set ; and often the anxious soul which has been hur- 
 ried to and fro on the storm-clouds of doubt all day, 
 in the evening of death is still. 
 
 Thus the tragedy of Hamlet is a masterpiece of 
 that philosophy which the mind of man, standing in 
 a position anterior to revelation, has realised. No- 
 thing can be more vigorous and masculine than its 
 conceptions and its expression of them. 
 The know- 5. «. I will view the tragedy in another light, its 
 human display of the knowledge of human nature as pos- 
 nature. sessed by Shakspeare : this knowledge is an essen- 
 tial power of a dramatist, and indeed of any suc- 
 cessful writer. The power consists, in a writer of 
 
HAMLET. 85 
 
 this description, in seeing the varieties of human 
 character, as affected and elicited by the same cir- 
 cumstances influencing differently various persons. 
 The poet, who with the pencil of truth delineates 
 just the way in which each person will accept the 
 same circumstance according to his disposition, shows 
 that he is well versed in the science of human nature, 
 a science sadly neglected. We are in the habit of 
 reducing all things to a scientific arrangement rather 
 than the highest of all created things, man. It is 
 from this that we have such poor moral discipline 
 among us. The power to discern human nature 
 gives wisdom to the legislator, effect to the advocate, 
 life and truth to the writer, and influence to the 
 minister of God. The process of mastering it seems 
 hard to determine. It is with most of those who 
 possess it innate and intuitive. Some seem born 
 with the power and tendency to understand and dis- 
 criminate between characters almost without having 
 had the opportunity of observing them. The au- 
 thoress of Evelina wrote the most singular description 
 of human life before she had had the chance of study- 
 ing it. This genius is singularly possessed by Shak- 
 speare. There is a versatility, a distinctiveness, a 
 truth about his characters, which leaves each one as 
 separate from the other as the colours of the rainbow 
 are distinct, yet harmonising; and Hamlet particu- 
 larly shows this power. 
 
 I said the same circumstance affects differently The Grave 
 various characters: e.g. the contemplation of the 
 scene of death, and the memorials of man's mortality 
 
86 HAMLET. 
 
 and transitory sojourn here, affect variously men 
 as they view the deep and eternal relationships of 
 their fellow in connexion with the mere mechanical 
 process of life. The scene with the Clowns in the 
 churchyard is an illustration of this. 
 
 1 Clown. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen, but 
 gardeners, ditchers, and grave-diggers ; they hold up Adam's profession. 
 
 2 Clown. Was he a gentleman ? 
 
 1 Clown. He was the first that ever bore arms. 
 
 2 Clown. Why, he had none. 
 
 1 Clown. What, art thou a heathen ? How dost thou understand 
 the Scripture ? The Scripture says Adam digged ; could he have digged 
 without arms ? I'll put another question to thee ; if thou answerest 
 not to the purpose, confess thyself. 
 
 2 Clown. Go to. 
 
 1 Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the 
 shipwright, or the carpenter ? 
 
 2 Clown. The gallows-builder; for that frame outlives a thousand 
 tenants. 
 
 1 Clown. I like thy wit well ; in good faith, the gallows does well ; 
 but how does it do well ? It does well to those that do ill ; now, thou 
 doest ill to say that the gallows are built stronger than the Church : 
 argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To't again ; come. 
 
 2 Clown. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a car-> 
 penter ? 
 
 1 Clown. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke. 
 
 2 Clown. Marry, now I can tell. 
 
 1 Clown. To't. 
 
 2 Clown. Mass, I cannot tell. 
 
 The sad memorials which come in the way of their 
 mechanical daily occupations excite in the clown a 
 mere tendency to half-droll discussion. And, by the 
 way, how natural is the inclination in such men to 
 indulge in a kind of half-conceited philosophising on 
 such occasions ! Their class in life, the occupation, 
 their mode of mind, all become reasons for, and 
 therefore are proofs of, the truth to nature in these 
 
HAMLET. 87 
 
 remarks. How differently the same facts affect 
 Hamlet himself in the passage quoted above. 
 
 As a mere matter of speculation, the power of 
 seeing and discovering in such cases the various ways 
 in which one circumstance affects different people is 
 important ; but when we come to consider that men 
 should be treated on certain momentous occasions^ 
 according to their distinctive features, it becomes 
 more important still. As in the scene above, the 
 very circumstance which to one man leads to the 
 contemplation of the most sublimated reflections, 
 becomes to another but as the pearl cast before the 
 swine. 
 
 b. But, again, what can show more forcibly the 
 knowledge of human nature than the following con- 
 versation ? The natural depictment of the real and 
 would-be gentleman, the dash of elevated sentiment, The Gentle- 
 the keen sarcasm, the tendency to a slight scepticism man- 
 as to the relationships of human society, so natural 
 to the formed gentleman of a court are displayed by 
 Hamlet himself; while the tendency to adulation 
 and obsequiousness, true to every turn of expression, 
 is shown by Osric, who is pierced as by a sunbeam 
 and torn to tatters as by lightning, by the quick, 
 contemptuous philosophy of Hamlet. 
 
 Enter Osric. 
 
 Oe. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark. 
 
 Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. — Dost know this water-fly ? 
 
 Hor. No, my good lord. 
 
 Ham. Thy state is the more gracious, for 'tis a vice to know him ; 
 he hath much land, and fertile : let a beast be lord of beasts, and his 
 crib shall stand at the king's mess ; 'tis a chough, but, as I say, spacious 
 in the possession of dirt. 
 
88 HAMLET. 
 
 Os. Sweet lord, an your lordship were at leisure, I would impart a 
 thing to you from his majesty. 
 
 Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Your bonnet 
 to its right use ; 'tis for the head. 
 
 Os. I thank your lordship j 'tis very hot. 
 
 Ham. No, believe me, 'tis very cold ; the wind is northerly. 
 
 Os. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed. 
 
 Ham. But yet, methinks, 'tis very sultry and hot; or my com- 
 plexion — 
 
 Os. Exceedingly, my lord; 'tis very sultry, — as 'twere, — I cannot 
 tell how. — My lord, his majesty bade me signify to you, that he has 
 laid a great wager on your head : Sir, this is the matter — 
 
 Ham. I beseech you, remember. 
 
 [Hamiet moves him to put on his hat. 
 
 Os. Nay, good my lord ; for my ease, in good faith. Sir, here is 
 newly come to court Laertes ; believe me, an absolute gentleman, full 
 of most excellent differences, of very soft society, and great showing ; 
 indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or calendar of gentry, 
 for you will find in him the continent of what part a gentleman would 
 see. 
 
 Ham. Sir, his defmement suffers no perdition in you ; though, I 
 know, to divide him inventorially would dizzy the arithmetic of 
 memory ; and yet but raw neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, 
 in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great article ; and 
 his infusion of such dearth and rareness, as, to make true diction of 
 him, his semblable is his mirror ; and who else would trace him his 
 umbrage, nothing more. 
 
 There is a powerful delineation of nature here. 
 We have court-life in its two phases — if you will, its 
 two forms of unreality — the unreality of mere conven- 
 tional life, and the unreality of hypocrisy : both true 
 to the condition of society. Though the scene lies in 
 Denmark, and was written three centuries back, it de- 
 scribes Regent Street and St. James's of to-day and 
 of England. There is hardly a touch that can be 
 spared : there is hardly a word that can be omitted : 
 and the picture is all the finer by the continual con- 
 trast of Hamlet and Horatio. Whatever use there 
 
HAMLET. 89 
 
 may be in vivid satire, and the living description of 
 life, as it is so painted as not to offend by exaggera- 
 tion, and yet so given as that scarcely any intelligent 
 observer can fail to detect the vice, is fully gained by 
 this scene; and when read in connexion with the 
 remaining parts of the tragedy, so singular for the 
 verification of its descriptions, it is the more fasci- 
 nating and remarkable. 
 
 c. By way of a third illustration of this knowledge Laertes and 
 of human nature, I will take the exposure of the 
 frailties of a certain class of character, of which 
 Hamlet is a type, given in the advice of Laertes to 
 Ophelia ; advice so touchingly received by the simple 
 and childlike nature of his ill-fated but lovely sister. 
 
 Enter Laertes and Ophelia. 
 
 Laer. My necessaries are embark'd ; farewell. 
 And, sister, as the winds give benefit, 
 And convoy is assistant, do not sleep, 
 But let me hear from you. 
 
 Oph. Do you doubt that ? 
 
 Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, 
 Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood ; 
 A violet in the youth of primy nature, — 
 Forward, not permanent, — sweet, not lasting, 
 The perfume and supplianoe of a minute ; 
 No more. 
 
 Oph. No more but so ? 
 
 Laer. Think it no more ; 
 
 For nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
 In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now, 
 And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch 
 The virtue of his will ; but you must fear, 
 His greatness weighed, his will is not his own ; 
 For he himself is subject to his birth. 
 He may not, as unvalued people do, 
 
90 HAMI.ET. 
 
 Carve for himself; for on his health depends 
 The safety and the health of the whole state ; 
 And therefore must his choice be circumscrib'd 
 Within the voice and yielding of that body 
 Of which he is the head : then, if he says he loves you, 
 It fits your wisdom so far to believe it 
 •As he in his peculiar act and place 
 May give his saying deed, which is no further 
 Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. 
 Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, 
 If with too credent ear you list his songs, 
 Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open 
 To his unmaster'd importunity. 
 Fear it. Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister ; 
 And keep you in the rear of your affection, 
 Out of the shot and danger of desire. 
 The chariest maid is prodigal enough 
 If she unmask her beauty to the moon. 
 Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes ; 
 The canker galls the infants of the spring 
 Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd ; 
 And in the morn and liquid dew of youth 
 Contagious blastments are most imminent. 
 Be wary, then ; best safety lies in fear, 
 Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. 
 
 Oph. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep 
 As watchman to my heart ; but, good my brother, 
 Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, 
 Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
 Whilst, like a pufF'd and reckless libertine, 
 Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, 
 And recks not his own read. 
 
 Laer. Oh, fear me not ; 
 
 I stay too long. — But here my father comes. 
 
 The lustre of this passage exceeds all praise. 
 The truth to life, the freedom from all exaggera- 
 tion, the happy terms so expressive of the idea, 
 the modification of all excessive thoughts by their 
 being arrayed in the sober garb of real life, make it 
 the mirror of true description and sound advice. 
 Man is fickle by nature, not by intention, when con- 
 
HAMLET. 9] 
 
 trasted with the more constant heart of woman. 
 Circumstance, birth, society, all place him beyond his 
 own power, and form a new will alien to his natural 
 one ; and yet this does not affect nor interfere with 
 the sincerity of his purpose at any given time. The 
 power to see this, and consequently to estimate it at 
 its true value, and not to be severe at the apparent 
 fickleness, is part of the true knowledge of human 
 nature ; and shows the use in this instance by 
 Shakspeare speaking through the mouth of Laertes, 
 of its application to the wants and sorrows of man- 
 kind. There are few among the many boons that a 
 true knowledge of life confers more valuable, than 
 that it enables us to view with charity the frailties of 
 our fellow-man, attributing them to their true cause. 
 Many are the faults attributed to man, which are 
 rightly extenuated by Laertes; yet nothing but a 
 deep observation of human nature could have reached 
 these conclusions. As "their temple waxes, the 
 inward service of the mind and soul grows wide 
 withal." 
 
 Ophelia's inability to comprehend this phase in her 
 lover, — her own womanly affection unable to grasp 
 with its slender hold^, texture so gnarled, is promptly 
 expressed by her touching remarks. The difficulty 
 with which she is able to abide by her brother's 
 sound advice to " keep in the rear of her affections," 
 the pathetic " No more but so," and the simplicity 
 with which she accepts his counsel by the deprecation 
 of unreality, — " Do not show me the deep and thorny 
 way to heaven," &c. — are touches, if possible, more 
 
92 HAMLET. 
 
 true than those which bring out the character of 
 Hamlet himself. There are many more passages 
 which illustrate man in Hamlet, but few more worthy 
 of study than this. The lover, the woman, and the 
 brother are each of them where they should be, and 
 where they are in real life. Bold, unmanageable 
 eccentricity of will in the Prince of Denmark, frail 
 and truthful constancy in Ophelia, cool and discrimi- 
 nating scepticism in Laertes, make them each among 
 the masterpieces of philosophic art. 
 The accusa- d. Another scene which illustrates the same power 
 Queen. is that in which Hamlet accuses his mother of the 
 murder of his father. The two characters are in 
 contrast : the Queen's half-affected surprise ; her 
 half-real, half-assumed horror; the manifest dash 
 and mixture of truth which there is in her cha- 
 racter ; the way in which she at last writhes under 
 the knife of conviction ; her willingness to own 
 the fault, and yet the shallow hold that conviction 
 has on a heart hardened by a sinful practice — all 
 are true to life. The slight observers of man 
 would have feared to mingle the deep streams of a 
 better nature with the thin waters of villany and hy- 
 pocrisy. Ahab is the type in Holy Scripture of this 
 kind of character. Open far more to conviction than 
 our hasty conclusions and condemnations would lead 
 us to expect ; yet showing how little trustworthy that 
 was without a wider basis on which to ground the 
 structure. 
 
 Ham. Now, mother, what's the matter ? 
 
 Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 
 
HAMLET. • 93 
 
 Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended. 
 
 Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. 
 
 Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. 
 
 Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet ? 
 
 Ham. What's the matter now ? 
 
 Queen. Have you forgot me ? 
 
 Ham. No, by the rood, not so ; 
 
 You are the queen, thy husband's brother's wife ; 
 And, — would it were not so ! — you are my mother. 
 
 Queen. Nay, then I'll set those to you that can speak. 
 
 Ham. Come, come, and sit you down ; you shall not budge ; 
 You go not, till I set you up a glass 
 Where you may see the inmost part of you. 
 
 Queen. What wilt thou do ? Thou wilt not murder me ? 
 Help, help, oh ! 
 
 Polonius. [behind.'] What ho ! help I 
 
 Ham. [draws.'] How now ! a rat ? 
 Dead, for a ducat, dead ! 
 
 [Hamlet makes a pass through the arras. 
 
 Pol. [behind.] Oh, I am slain. [Falls and dies. 
 
 Queen. Oh me ! what hast thou done ? 
 
 Ham. Nay, I know not. 
 
 Is it the king ? [Lifts up the arras, and draws forth Polonius. 
 
 Queen. Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this ! 
 
 Ham. A bloody deed ; — almost as bad, good mother, 
 As kill a king, and marry with his brother. 
 
 Queen. As kill a king ! 
 
 Ham. Ay, lady, 'twas my word. 
 
 And again — 
 
 Ham. Rebellious hell, 
 
 If thou canst mntine in a matron's bones, 
 To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, 
 And melt in her own fire : proclaim no shame 
 When the compulsive ardour gives the charge ; 
 Since frost itself so actively doth burn, 
 And reason panders will. 
 
 Queen. Oh, Hamlet, speak no more : 
 
 Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul ; 
 And there I see such black and grained spots 
 As will not leave their tinct. 
 
 Ham. Nay, but to live 
 
 In the rank sweat of an unseamed bed, 
 
94* HAMLET. 
 
 Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love 
 Over the nasty sty ; — 
 
 Queen. Oh, speak to me no more ; 
 
 These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears ; 
 No more, sweet Hamlet. 
 
 Ham. A murderer, and a villain ; 
 
 A slave, that is not twentieth part the tythe 
 Of your precedent lord : — a vice of kings ; 
 A cutpurse of the empire and the rule ; 
 That from the shelf the precious diadem stole, 
 And put it in his pocket ! 
 
 Queen. No more, sweet Hamlet. 
 
 But while we might multiply passages to illustrate 
 this excellence in our poet, each character followed out 
 in itself throughout the play, first and last, is a beau- 
 tiful comment and essay on man. Whatever of wide- 
 minded charity, of calm and thoughtful judgment, of 
 sound foresight, of careful discrimination in showing 
 the dangerous headlands which shoot out threatening 
 destruction to unwary mariners in the treacherous 
 waters of human life, whatever of self-knowledge and 
 consequent self-conviction, may spring from the accu- 
 rate and close knowledge of human nature, all these 
 are among the excellences and virtues of the tragedy 
 of Hamlet. 
 Irony in 6. Hamlet displays the use of irony, so power- 
 
 ful and important a weapon in all effective human 
 intercourse. JLipwva 7rpoe tovq 7roXXouc, says Aris- 
 totle of the /ityaXoxpvxoQ. We find traces of this 
 power in all writings, from the sacred and inspired 
 rebukes of St. Paul to the successful satirist of a 
 passing day; without it, eloquence may be radiant 
 without being sparkling, and fascinating without 
 being telling. Reproof often is tame and powerless, 
 
HAMt,ET. 95 
 
 and accusation pales off into didactic strains, with- 
 out the stirring thrust of irony and sarcasm. With- 
 out it the description of the men and manners of 
 a day dwindles into a ballad or a treatise, while 
 with it it teems with living forms and radiates 
 with the gleams of reality. The vivid power of 
 contrast is essential to the man whose province it 
 is to set forth and express any particular form of 
 virtue or vice. The eye of the human mind sees by 
 contrast, and the hesitating judgment is often deter- 
 mined by a powerful edging of light against the rim 
 of shadow. It is by this means that satire becomes 
 so effective a mode of bringing forward to the mind 
 of an age or a society the vices and mistakes of its 
 members or its fashions. Irony is an instrument of 
 satire. 
 
 Another power which irony wields is that of 
 bringing home to the mind of its object the strong 
 consciousness of deficiency in a point which the attri- 
 bution of its existence makes the more forcible and 
 perceptible. Irony may be briefly described as 
 assuming as true the premises we intend to disprove, 
 when we speak in the temporarily assumed character 
 of the opponent. By way of illustration, it has been 
 suggested that if Bishop Butler had in his Analogy 
 assumed, for the argument's sake, that such ob- 
 jections against religion are valid, and had thence 
 proved the condition of the natural world to be 
 totally different from what we see it to be, his argu- 
 ment, though it would have been the same in sub- 
 stance, would have assumed an ironical form. Burke 
 
96 HAMLET. 
 
 has adopted this form in his famous defence of natural 
 society, in which, assuming the person of Boling- 
 broke, he proves, according to the principles of that 
 author, that the arguments he brought against eccle- 
 siastical would equally lie against civil institutions. 
 
 Again, irony will be used with power when a man 
 assumes the language or idea of his opponent, as 
 agreeing with a certain form which is simply ludi- 
 crous. There are, as I said, passages in Holy Scrip- 
 ture which remind us of this form, as the address of 
 Elijah to the prophets of Baal, and passages in St. 
 Paul's epistles, by which we feel that this form may 
 be used in the highest kind of argument and appeal. 
 
 Shakspeare has shown his knowledge of the weapon 
 in many of his plays, Goriolanus, JuUus Ccesar, 
 Othello, and Lear, all have striking illustrations of it, 
 and Hamlet's whole character is shaded and coloured 
 by its pencil. It appears in varied forms. Contempt, 
 affection, indignation, all evoke the power in Hamlet ; 
 he uses it to elicit varied expressions of feeling and 
 power. Two of the greatest characters of the world 
 of fiction possess this faculty in no small degree, 
 Achilles and Hamlet ; Prometheus, Clytemnestra, 
 show fine touches of it; Dante, in some striking 
 passages, shows his knowledge and value of its keen 
 power ; while inferior writers and inferior conceptions 
 lack its force, and with it a standing amid the first 
 delineators of human nature. 
 
 Hamlet shows his inclination to shake off Polonius, 
 of whom he has no measured contempt, in the follow- 
 ing dialogue, where, while the irony is of a trans- 
 
HAMLET. 97 
 
 parent character, still it belongs to that form of it Hamlet and - 
 which makes it a useful weapon to the man who is ° ° mu3- 
 wishing to show his contempt for another. Iroh y- 
 
 Pol. Do you know me, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Excellent well j you are a fishmonger. 
 
 Pol. Not I, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man. 
 
 Pol. Honest, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man 
 pick'd out of ten thousand. 
 
 Pol. That's very true, my lord. 
 
 Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kiss- 
 ing carrion, — Have you a daughter ? 
 
 Pol. I have, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Let her not walk i' the sun : conception is a blessing ; but as 
 your daughter may conceive, — friend, look to't. 
 
 Pol. How say you by that ? [Aside.'] Still harping on my daughter : 
 — yet he knew me not at first ; he said I was a fishmonger : he is far 
 gone, far gone : and, truly, in my youth I suffer'd much extremity for 
 love ; very near this. I'll speak to him again. — What do you read, my 
 lord? 
 
 Ham. Words, words, words. 
 
 Pol. What is the matter, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Between who ? 
 
 Pol. I mean the matter that you read, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Slanders, sir : for the satirical rogue says here, that old men 
 have grey beards ; that their faces are wrinkled ; their eyes purging 
 thick amber and plum-tree gum ; and that they have a plentiful lack of 
 wit, together with most weak hams : all of which, sir, though I most 
 powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it 
 thus set down ; for yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, if, like a crab, 
 you could go backward. 
 
 Pol. Though this be madness, yet there's method in it. [Aside.] 
 Will you walk out of the air, my lord ? 
 
 Ham. Into my grave ? 
 
 Pol. Indeed, that is out of the air. — How pregnant sometimes his 
 replies are ! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and 
 sanity could not so prosperously be deliver'd of. I will leave him, 
 and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my 
 daughter. — My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of 
 you. 
 
 H 
 
98 HAMLET. 
 
 Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more 
 willingly part withal ; except my life, except my life, except my life. 
 Pol. Fare you well, my lord. 
 Ham. These tedious old fools. 
 
 7. Hamlet's assumed madness is one continued ex- 
 pression of irony, and is continually making him use 
 forms and expressions which are furthest removed 
 from his true and sincere convictions. It takes a 
 deeper form, and is more touching in its results, 
 when used on Ophelia in the following well-known 
 scene : 
 
 Oph. Good my lord, 
 How does your honour for this many a day ? 
 Ham. I humbly thank you, well. 
 
 Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours 
 That I have longed long to re- deliver ; 
 I pray you, now receive them. 
 
 Ham. No, not I. 
 I never gave you aught. 
 
 Oph. My honour'd lord, you know right well you did ; 
 And with them words of so sweet breath composed, 
 As made the things more rich : their perfume lost, 
 Take these again : for to the noble mind 
 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
 There, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Ha, ha ! Are you honest ? 
 
 Oph. My lord ? 
 
 Ham. Are you fair ? 
 
 Oph. What means your lordship ? 
 
 Ham. That if you be honest and fair, you should admit no discourse 
 to your beauty. 
 
 Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with 
 honesty ? 
 
 Ham. Ay, truly ; for the power of beauty will sooner transform 
 honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can trans- 
 late beauty into his likeness : this was sometime a paradox, but now 
 the time gives it proof. I did love you once. 
 
 Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. 
 
 Ham. You should not have believed me ; for virtue cannot so inocu- 
 late our old stock, but we shall relish of it : I loved you not. 
 
HAMLET. 99 
 
 Oph. I was the more deceived. 
 
 Ham. Get thee to a nunnery : why wouldst thou be a breeder of 
 sinners ? I am myself indifferent honest ; but yet I could accuse me of 
 such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me : I am 
 very proud, revengeful, ambitious ; with more offences at my beck than 
 I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or 
 time to act them in : what should such fellows as I do crawling 
 between earth and heaven ? We are arrant knaves, all : believe none 
 of us : go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father ? 
 
 Oph. At home, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool 
 no where but in's own house. Farewell. 
 
 Oph. O help him, you sweet heavens ! 
 
 Ham. If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry : 
 Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. 
 Get thee to a nunnery! Farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, 
 marry a fool ; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make 
 of them. To a nunnery, go ; and quickly, too. Farewell. 
 
 Oph. Heavenly powers, restore him ! 
 
 Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath 
 given you x one face, and you make yourselves another : you jig, you 
 amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your 
 wantonness your ignorance. Go to ; I'll no more of 't : it hath made 
 me mad. I say we will have no more marriages : those that are married 
 already, all but one, shall live ; the rest shall keep as they are. To a 
 nunnery, go. [Esrit Hamlet. 
 
 Oph. Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
 The glass of fashion and the- mould of form, 
 The observed of all observers, quite, quite down ! 
 And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 
 That suck'd the honey of his music vows, 
 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ; 
 That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 
 Blasted with ecstasy : O woe is me, 
 To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! 
 
 It is scarcely possible to pass by these passages Ophelia, 
 without continually pausing to watch the admirable 
 depictment of Ophelia, always true, always consist- 
 ent. Shakspeare seems never to forget the type on 
 h 2 
 
100 HAMLET. 
 
 which she is suggested. The fine and delicate brush 
 with which her form is painted lies ever by, separate 
 from those which depict the rest ; and while the 
 painter's eye is wandering over fifty forms before him, 
 it is never for a moment confused, never at a loss to 
 find out Ophelia's shadowy and lovely original amid 
 the group which gazes over his easel. 
 Hamlet and The following scene may illustrate another form 
 g- of irony evoked by indignation, with which, after all, 
 Hamlet abounds : 
 
 King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius ? 
 
 Ham. At supper. 
 
 King. At supper ? Where ? 
 
 Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten : a certain convoca- 
 tion of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only empe- 
 ror for diet : we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for 
 maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service ; 
 two dishes, but to one table ; that's the end. 
 
 King. Alas, alas ! 
 
 Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and 
 eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. 
 
 King. What dost thou mean by this ? 
 , Ham. Nothing, but to show you how a king may go a progress 
 through the guts of a beggar. ' 
 
 King. Where is Polonius ? 
 
 Ham. In heaven ; send thither to see : if your messenger find him 
 not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you 
 find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the 
 stairs into the lobby. 
 
 King. Go seek him there. [To some Attendants. 
 
 Ham. He will stay till you come. [Exeunt Attendants. 
 
 King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety, — 
 Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve 
 For that which thou hast done, — must send thee hence 
 With fiery quickness : therefore, prepare thyself; 
 The bark is ready, and the wind at help, 
 The associates tend, and every thing is bent 
 For England. 
 
 Ham. For England ? 
 
HAMLET. 1.01 
 
 King. Ay, Hamlet. 
 
 Ham. Good. 
 
 King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. 
 
 Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. — But come ; for England ! — 
 Farewell, dear mother. 
 
 King. Thy loving father, Hamlet. 
 
 Ham. My mother : father and mother is man and wife j man and 
 wife is one flesh ; and so, my mother. Come, for England. 
 
 The conversation with his mother, and that with 
 Osric, already quoted, will illustrate further still the 
 irony of Hamlet's character. 
 
 But I have not time to multiply passages. The 
 depictment of this portion of Hamlet's character 
 shows a great power in Shakspeare; inasmuch as 
 irony implies, if well applied, not only great power of 
 conviction and reasoning, but a clear perception of 
 the various bearings of the question in hand. 
 
 Such are some of the thoughts suggested by this 
 great work. Its eccentricities are great, but its 
 beauties marvellous. I have passed by the advice to 
 the Players, and the questions raised by the Ghost 
 scene. The play is full of matter for men of every 
 turn of mind ; for none more than for those who have 
 any tendency so to blame the course of human events, 
 as to prevent their fellow- creatures in patiently bear- 
 ing God's providence, and who are inclined to impugn 
 the justice of God Himself. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 The lessons 1. Among many merits in this beautiful play, one 
 nature. of the most striking is the mode in which a number 
 of separate facts and parts are so arranged as to do 
 their own part each separately, and, when all are taken 
 together, to form one simple and powerful idea. The 
 wild and beautiful forest, the antlered deer sweeping 
 by the sylvan feast, the rustic life, the rural cottages, 
 the snake and lion in the jungle, the exiled Duke, 
 the grotesque courtesies, the melancholy Jaques, all 
 conspire to form one idea, that of Nature being the 
 refuge from the world to the distressed mind. God 
 provides in nature a resort for man from society. All 
 mankind bear some witness to this truth. The monk 
 and the anchorite have sought in the desert, the 
 forest, and the solitude, the refuge and sympathy 
 which man and society have denied them. The vast 
 lauras of Ladoga and Moscow, the mountain-habita- 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 103 
 
 tions of the ascetics of Mount Athos, and the Cau- 
 casus, have left their furrows on the soil of Russia 
 and the Euxine, which witness alike to the truth 
 and to its practice. The smiling plains of Nor- 
 mandy and Southern France, have afforded to kings, 
 and penitents, and men of austerer yearnings, the 
 refuge and opportunity which the world refused 
 them. Elijah's home was in the wilderness, when, 
 persecuted by man, he would draw nearer to God. 
 Our Blessed Lord resorted in the night of His Agony 
 to the glades of the garden, to hold communion 
 with his heavenly Father. 
 
 We know it ourselves. The moment of sorrow 
 which no other heart can dive deep enough to fa- 
 thom; the hour of bitter disappointment from broken 
 schemes and shattered plans ; the hour of man's in- 
 gratitude and that of the faithlessness and luke- 
 warmness of old friends, are moments when the coun- 
 try, the sunset, or the sea have a charm all their 
 own. Disappointed or wretched Jaques sought 
 the forest, Timon the desert, and Ophelia the 
 stream. 
 
 Nature, whether in the forms and colours of the 
 physical creation, or the tribes of more rational life, 
 affords a singular power of sympathy to the lonely, 
 the unhappy, and the disappointed. She is a copy 
 of the Great Original of the perfect state. She re- 
 presents with an all but sacramental power the ideas 
 of purity, repose, obedience to a great external law, 
 and silent reserve in the pursuit of that obedience. 
 Nature is full of hope ; she always has a future, 
 
104 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 whether it be in the pensiveness of the hues of sun- 
 set, the silent arm of the tree of the forest offering 
 shadow for repose, or the eternal monotony of the 
 boundless deep, ever the same in our weal or woe ; 
 whether it be in the outline of the everlasting hill, 
 which has such power of blending itself with our own 
 nature, as to represent the voice of a friend ever 
 and anon calling us back to the associations and feel- 
 ings of by-gone days, or in the myriad petals of flowers 
 obeying the law of their nature in turning to the sun 
 and closing beneath the dews of night ; whether it be 
 in the forest deer which gazes at us in mute silence 
 with large and tearful eye, expressive of dependence 
 on the child of Adam, and crouches in affectionate re- 
 cognition of that dependence ; or what not — in these, 
 and a thousand more, we find a home and a sympathy 
 in nature. 
 
 But more than this, nature "upbraideth not;" it 
 is emphatically said of God in contrast with man, 
 that when " He giveth, He upbraideth not. 11 The gift 
 of a fellow-creature, be it in material or kind office, 
 is often deteriorated by the voice of upbraiding. The 
 kindest friend, the most well-intentioned will often 
 cause a pang without intending it by a rough man- 
 ner, by reminding us of the inferiority of our position, 
 by making us feel we are placed under an obliga- 
 tion. Nature never does this. Her silent and speak- 
 ing lessons come home to the heart, and she " up- 
 braideth not." To the wicked and to the man living 
 without God she speaks in her more awful tones. , The 
 melancholy of the sea telling of infinity and eternity ; 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 105 
 
 the voiceless majesty of the lasting hill speaking of 
 majesty and judgment, the pensive hues of fading day 
 telling of life's brevity and uncertainty : these all 
 speak lessons the more awful, inasmuch as they are 
 tongueless. To the good, to the striving, to the weak, 
 she conveys her vast teaching without wounding, 
 when she applies the healing balm. It is in showing 
 this province of nature that As you Kke it is so 
 striking. 
 
 2. There are many ways in which men take nature. 
 Some dwell upon her with a mawkish and discon- 
 tented morbidity ; others see in her nothing but a 
 body without a soul, a husk without a kernel ; others 
 find in her lessons at every turn, " sermons in stones, 
 and good in every thing.'" The key-note to this 
 play is given in the speech of the Duke. 
 
 Duke Senior. Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile, 
 Hath not old custom made this life more sweet 
 Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court ? 
 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, 
 The seasons' difference ; as, the icy fang, 
 And churlish chiding of the winter's wind ; 
 "Which when it bites and blows upon my body, 
 Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say, — 
 This is no flattery : these are counsellors 
 That feelingly persuade me what I am. 
 Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
 -Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head ; 
 And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. 
 
 While the three classes of persons suggested above 
 dwell on physical nature consciously, there is another 
 
106 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 class of persons whose whole being and life are formed 
 by external nature without their being conscious of 
 her influence. To this class of persons belongs the 
 great mass of the poor, whose words, expressions, 
 and ideas are full of poetry to the bystander, re- 
 flected from the magic face of nature, while they do 
 not themselves intend the quarter of one thing they 
 say and express. I may mention another body of men 
 who are more or less unconsciously under the influence 
 of external nature, those who fly to her scenes for 
 amusement, merriment, and mere recreation, and who 
 are more really formed by her deeper influences than 
 they choose to own. 
 Five classes 3. Each of these classes have their representatives 
 
 represented . 
 
 in As you in As you like it. The Duke is a noble type of those 
 who read nature's lessons truly and well; Jaques, of 
 those who quaff her draught morbidly, and only drink 
 in poisons to their systems ; Oliver represents the 
 man indifferent to nature ; Oorin, Sylvius, William, 
 and Audrey represent the fourth class ; Eosalind and 
 Celia the fifth. 
 
 Jaques. I have already given the Duke's healthy and cheer- 
 
 ful view of the effect of external nature on the human 
 mind. The sad and melancholy garb in which she 
 robes herself to the highly sensitive yet somewhat 
 morbid disposition, is described in the following de- 
 scription of Jaques, amongst some of the most perfect 
 and truthful touches of Shakspeare's pen. 
 
 Duke Senior. Come, shall we go and kill us venison ? 
 And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools, — 
 Being native burghers of this desert city,— 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 107 
 
 Should, in their own confines, with forked heads, 
 Have their round haunches gor'd. 
 
 1 Lord. Indeed, my lord, 
 
 The melancholy Jaques grieves at that ; 
 And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp 
 Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you. 
 To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself, 
 Did steal behind him, as he lay along 
 Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out 
 Upon the brook that brawls along this wood : 
 To the which place a poor sequester'd stag, 
 That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt, 
 Did come to languish ; and, indeed, my lord, 
 The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans, 
 That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat 
 Almost to bursting ; and the big round tears 
 Cours'd one another down his innocent nose 
 In piteous chase : and thus the hairy fool, 
 Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, 
 Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, 
 Augmenting it with tears. 
 
 Duke S. But what said Jaques, 
 
 Did he not moralize this spectacle ? 
 
 1 Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similies. 
 First, for his weeping in the needless stream ; 
 Poor deer, quoth he, thou mate' at a testament 
 As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more 
 To that which had too much •' Then being alone, 
 Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends ; 
 "Fis right, quoth he ; this misery doth part 
 The flux of company : Anon, a careless herd, 
 Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, 
 And never stays to greet him ; Ay, quoth Jaques, 
 Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens : 
 'Tisjust the fashion : Wherefore do you look 
 Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there ? 
 Thus most invectively he pierceth through 
 The tody of the country, city, court, 
 Yea, and of this our life : swearing, that we 
 Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse, 
 To fright the animals, and to kill them up, 
 In their assign'd and native dwelling place. 
 Duke 8. And did you leave him in this contemplation ? 
 
108 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 2 Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting 
 Upon the sobbing deer. 
 
 Du&e S. Show me the place ; 
 
 I love to cope him in these sullen fits, 
 For then he's full of matter. 
 
 2 Lord. I'll bring you to him straight. 
 
 Nature, whether seen in her organized or unor- 
 ganized forms, does represent facts which may be 
 made food to the most discontented and dissatisfied 
 spirits — so may any thing. It does not, therefore, 
 follow that it is her natural teaching. The fulness of 
 matter with which Jaques' soul was bursting, is 
 aptly expressed. The man of allegorical eye looks 
 through a glass, like the eye of a fly, with a 
 thousand different phases : every object he studies 
 becomes refracted into almost countless portions. 
 There is a natural exuberance in the minds of 
 this kind of persons ; whether that exuberance is 
 fanciful or imaginative depends on the depth of the 
 character. The more real man will put forward a 
 vast expression of imagination; the shallower the 
 character, the more fanciful will be the demonstration. 
 Some men are always seeing to the bottom of things, 
 and their soul like the depth of an intensely clear 
 water reflects the exact imagery imminent over the 
 surface ; the one exactly reflects the other. Jaques 1 
 soul was already replete with imaginings, which 
 answered exactly to the multifarious phases of ex- 
 ternal objects. The following interview between the 
 Duke and Jaques tends further to develope his cha- 
 racter, and one of the central ideas of the play. 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 109 
 
 Duke Senior. Why, how now, monsieur ! what a life is this, 
 That your poor friends must woo your company ! 
 What ! you look merrily. 
 
 Jaques. A fool, a fool ! 1 met a fool i'the forest, 
 
 A motley fool ! — a miserable world ! — 
 
 As I do live by food, I met a fool ; 
 
 Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, 
 
 And rail'd on lady Fortune in good terms, 
 
 In good set terms, — and yet a motley fool. 
 
 Good-morrow, fool, quoth I : No, sir, quoth he. 
 
 Call me not fool, till heaven hath sent me fortune : 
 
 And then he drew a dial from his poke : 
 
 And looking on it with lack-lustre eye, 
 
 Says very wisely, It is ten o'clock : 
 
 Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags : 
 
 "Tis but an hour ago, since it. was nine; 
 
 And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven ; 
 
 And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, 
 
 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot, 
 
 And thereby hangs a tale. When I did hear 
 
 The motley fool thus moral on the time, 
 
 My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, 
 
 That fools should be so deep-contemplative ; 
 
 And I did laugh, sans intermission, 
 
 An hour by his dial. — O noble fool ! 
 
 A worthy fool ! Motley's the only wear. 
 
 Duke S. What fool is this ? 
 
 Jag. Oh worthy fool ! — One that hath been a courtier j 
 And says, if ladies be but young, and fair, 
 They have the gift to know it : and in his brain, — 
 Which is as dry as the remainder bisket 
 After a voyage,— he hath strange places cramm'd 
 With observation, the which he vents 
 In mangled forms : — O, that I were a fool ! 
 I am ambitious for a motley coat. 
 
 But more of him anon. 
 
 Orlando, also, takes his own view of the natural Orlando. 
 world. Unconscious, to a great degree, of its influ- 
 ence upon him, he avoids the didactic strains of either 
 of the other two ; he, nevertheless, borrows at every 
 
110 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 turn his vigorous imagery from the objects on which 
 they have made their sermons. 
 
 Orlando. I almost die for food, and let me have it. 
 
 Duke Senior. Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table. 
 
 Orl. Speak you so gently ? Pardon me, I pray you : 
 I thought, that all things had been savage here ; 
 And therefore put I on the countenance 
 Of stern commandment : But whate'er you are, 
 That in this desert inaccessible, 
 Under the shade of melancholy boughs, 
 Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time ; 
 If ever you have look'd on better days ; 
 If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church ; 
 If ever sat at any good man's feast ; 
 If ever from your eye-lids wip'd a tear, 
 And know what 'tis to pity, and be pitied ; 
 Let gentleness my strong enforcement be : 
 In the which hope, I blush, and hide my sword. 
 
 Duke S. True is it that we have seen better days : 
 And have with holy bell been knoll'd to church ; 
 And sat at good men's feasts ; and wip'd our eyes 
 Of drops that sacred pity hath.engender'd j 
 And therefore sit you down in gentleness, 
 And take upon command what help we have, 
 That to your wanting may be ministered. 
 
 The title. 4. Nature and man are, in fact, threads of one loom, 
 and form together one texture, framed by the Divine 
 Hand. What actual connexion may exist between 
 them, materially and physically, it may be the work of 
 some future age to develope more fully. Our present 
 perception of the relationship is quite strong enough 
 to induce us to pass our finger along the threads 
 till we reach the point at which they are no longer 
 separate, but one : both are but the external frame- 
 work beneath which mighty and eternal principles 
 lie; in man, those principles are active; in nature, 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 11] 
 
 passive. One internal fire glows beneath the surface 
 of each ; in man, that fire is volcanic ; in nature, it 
 is motionless. For the former, language, attitude, the 
 living expression of the eye and the mouth, the moral 
 action, the confirmed characteristic of the disciplined 
 disposition, are the craters through which that inter- 
 nal fire finds its vent. The painter, the poet, the 
 sculptor, the philosopher, the musician, pierce at 
 various points the external face of nature, and dis- 
 cover the element which otherwise would find no 
 active expression. Man is but the moving shrine, 
 like the ark of the Mosaic Church, bearing within 
 itself the eternal- principles of reverence, repose, joy, 
 cheerfulness, religious awe, devotion, gratitude, love ; 
 and the same principles lie passively enshrined in 
 the sunset, the mountain, and the sea. Conse- 
 quently, the successful painter is not the man who 
 minutely copies nature, but he who most successfully 
 elicits her passive fire, and brings to the surface the 
 principles she enshrines. 
 
 This may be effected by minute imitation, as we 
 have seen in some modern schools of painting among 
 ourselves, but it is more frequently achieved by the 
 power of perceiving the effect of combinations. The 
 painter who is most successful will be the man who 
 makes his spectator feel that the scene painted on 
 the canvas awakes a simultaneous throb in his own 
 inward nature. 
 
 It is this relation between man and the world around 
 him, which As you like it so successfully expresses. 
 5. But there is a further thought connected with this 
 
112 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 beautiful play. Its title is not without forcible mean- 
 The para- ing. The term, As you like it, seems to express that 
 fantastic form which life always appears to take, 
 whether in the individual or in society. There are 
 always certain lines with which we can circumscribe 
 the probabilities of our future career, but we must 
 leave a large margin on either side, for the erratic 
 movements of our destiny. We think society is 
 settled on a certain basis; we think our own life 
 may come within the range of certain rules drawn 
 from induction ; we look back after a few years and 
 scarcely one thing is as we expected ; calculation is 
 disappointed at every turn, and we laugh at the 
 fantastic distortion. Society becomes shuffled like a 
 pack of cards, and the structure of our own life has 
 fallen to pieces like the fragile edifices which chil- 
 dren rear with the same cards ; so much is this the 
 case that we might almost answer to a question as 
 to what life would be, "As you like it." Dukes, 
 ladies, gay gallants, plaintive philosophers, flattering 
 parasites, and grave counsellors, are all huddled to- 
 gether in almost grotesque drollery with herdsmen 
 and peasants, robbers and fools; while tyrants 
 occupy the throne of the just, and the wicked oust 
 the good. 
 
 The Duke, Orlando, Rosalind, Celia, Old Adam, 
 Jaques, and Touchstone, wandering or sleeping amid 
 the boughs of a primeval forest, form the scene which 
 we look at when the curtain draws up from As you 
 like it. But through this new idea, suggested by 
 our drama, the same stream continues to flow as 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 113 
 
 before ; nature is still co-mate with man. She too is 
 fantastic and undefinable. But while man's life is 
 thus paradoxical, things right themselves at last, 
 and the forest of "As you like it'" becomes the 
 pathway to "As it should be." Jaqiies is peculiarly 
 the mouthpiece , of this moral of the drama; he is 
 ever complaining of the fantastic nature of life and 
 society ; while the Duke, the type of calm common 
 sense, sees with confidence to the end. 
 The following dialogue is striking. 
 
 Orlando. Who's there? 
 
 Adam. What ! my young master ? — O, my gentle master, 
 O, my sweet master, — O you memory 
 Of old sir Rowland ! why, what make you here ? 
 Why are you virtuous ? Why do people love you ? 
 And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant ? 
 Why would you be so fond to overcome 
 The bony priser of the humorous duke ? 
 Your praise is come too swiftly home before you. 
 Know you not, master, to some kind of men 
 Their graces serve them but as enemies ? 
 No more do yours j your virtues, gentle master, 
 Are sanctified and holy traitors to you. 
 O, what a world is this, when what is comely 
 Envenoms him that bears it ! 
 
 Orl. Why, what's the matter ? 
 
 Adam. O unhappy youth, 
 
 Come not within these doors ; within this roof 
 The enemy of all your graces lives : 
 Your brother — (no, no brother ; yet the son — 
 Yet not the son ; — I will not call him son — 
 Of him I was about to call his father,) — 
 Hath heard your praises ; and this night he means 
 To burn the lodging where you use to lie, 
 And you within it : if he fail of that, 
 He will have other means to cut you off; 
 I overheard bim, and his practices. 
 This is no place, this house is but a butchery ; 
 Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it. 
 
1.14 AS yOU LIKE IT. 
 
 Orl. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go ? 
 
 Adam. No matter whither, so you come not here. 
 
 Orl. What, would' st thou have me go and beg my food ? 
 Or, with a base and boisterous sword, enforce 
 A thievish living on the common road ? 
 , This I must do, or know not what to do : 
 Yet this I will not do, do how I can ; 
 I rather will subject me to the malice 
 Of a diverted blood, and bloody brother. 
 
 Adam. But do not so : I have five hundred crowns, 
 The thrifty hire I sav'd under your father, 
 Which I did store, to be my foster-nurse, 
 When service should in my old limbs he lame, 
 And unregarded age in corners thrown ; 
 Take that : and He that doth the ravens feed, 
 Yea, providentially caters for the sparrow, 
 Be comfort to my age ! Here is the gold ; 
 All this I give you : Let me be your servant ; 
 Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty : 
 For in my youth I never did apply 
 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood ; 
 Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo 
 The means of weakness and debility ; 
 Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
 Frosty, but kindly : let me go with you ; 
 I'll do the service of a younger man 
 In all your business and necessities. 
 
 Orl. O good old man ; how well in thee appears 
 The constant service of the antique world, 
 When service sweat for duty, not for meed ! 
 Thou art not for the fashion of these times, 
 Where none will sweat, but for promotion ; 
 And having that, do choke their service up 
 Even with the having : it is not so with thee. 
 But, poor old man, thou prun'st a rotten tree, 
 That cannot so much as a blossom yield, 
 In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry : 
 But come thy ways, we'll go along together ; 
 And ere we have thy youthful wages spent, 
 We'll light upon some settled low content. 
 
 Adam. Master, go on ; and I will follow thee, 
 To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty. — 
 From seventeen years till now almost fourscore 
 Here lived I, but now live here no more. 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 115 
 
 This dialogue expresses that dissatisfaction of the 
 strange tosses of the lottery of life felt by an igno- 
 rant peasant, as the others express the same from 
 the refined and sentimental Jaques. 
 
 6. But while this play shines in the knowledge of Minuter 
 the fantastic nature of human accidents, it is remark- tions of 
 ably brilliant and powerful in its minute and separate ™"j ™* f 
 descriptions of the varied lot of man, and the chance expression. 
 and change of life. Nor is it simply this knowledge 
 that strikes us, but the peculiar power and facility with 
 which the poet conveys that knowledge to the reader, 
 the poetic and artistic beauty of these passages is 
 great. The whole is a masterpiece in the science 
 of human nature. The description of the seven ages 
 of man by Jaques, added to his beautiful soliloquy to 
 the wounded deer, together with the address of Or- 
 lando to the Duke,, together form some of the richest 
 and most complete passages in the English language. 
 Every power is brought to bear in the speech on the 
 seven ages ; we hardly know which to admire most, 
 the truth of the subject-matter, the beauty of allite- 
 ration, the rhythmical flow of words, the aptness of 
 epithets, the sublime and melancholy grandeur of the • 
 whole. It is the work alike of the philosopher and 
 the poet. I subjoin it : 
 
 Jaques. All the world's a stage, 
 
 And all the men and women merely players : 
 They have their exits, and their entrances ; 
 And one man in his time plays many parts, 
 His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant 
 Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms ; 
 And then, the whining school-boy, with his satchel, 
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
 I 2 
 
116 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 Unwillingly to school : And then, the lover ; 
 
 Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad 
 
 Made to his mistress' eye-brow : Then, a soldier ; 
 
 Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, 
 
 Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, 
 
 Seeking the bubble reputation 
 
 Even in the cannon's mouth : And then, the justice ; 
 
 In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd, 
 
 With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, 
 
 Full of wise saws and modern instances, 
 
 And so he plays his part : The sixth age shifts 
 
 Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon ; 
 
 With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side ; 
 
 His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide 
 
 For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice, 
 
 Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
 
 And whistles in his sound : Last scene of all, 
 
 That ends this strange eventful history, 
 
 Is second childishness, and mere oblivion ; 
 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. 
 
 Rosalind. 7. But I can hardly pass by the conversation be- 
 tween Rosalind and Orlando ; Rosalind is a favourite 
 character of Shakspeare ; she appears in somewhat 
 different form with slight but truthful variations in 
 Beatrice, and again in Portia. Her character par- 
 takes of the tone of the age of Shakspeare's writings, 
 when woman was, through the influence of France, 
 gaining that position in society which past centuries 
 had denied her. Francis the First introduced gal- 
 lantry into his court, which in the reign of Henry of 
 Navarre arrived at the more delicate forms of cour- 
 tesy. England caught the spirit, and the English 
 court recognized and venerated woman. The fact 
 of placing woman on a level with the other sex soon 
 brought out her peculiar powers, and none more so 
 than that of attracting or repelling men. This will 
 
AS YOU LIKE XT. 117 
 
 account for the vivid reality with which Beatrice and 
 Rosalind are described. I will transcribe a passage 
 from Much Ado about Nothing, and side by side with 
 it a parallel from As you like it. 
 
 Orl. My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise. 
 
 Ros. Break an hour's promise in love ? He that will divide a minute 
 into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the thousandth part of a 
 minute in the affairs of love, it may be said of him, that Cupid hath 
 clap'd him on the shoulder, but I warrant him heart-whole. 
 
 Orl. Pardon me, dear Rosalind. 
 
 Ros. Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight ; I had as 
 lief be woo'd of a snail. 
 
 Orl. Of a snail ? 
 
 Ros. Ay ; of a snail ; for though he comes slowly, he carries his house 
 on his head ; a better jointure, I think, than you can make a woman : 
 Besides, he brings his destiny with him. 
 
 Orl. What's that ? 
 
 Ros. Why, horns ; which such as you are fain to be beholden to 
 your wives for : but he comes armed in his fortune, and prevents the 
 slander of his wife. , 
 
 Orl. Virtue is no horn-maker ; and my Rosalind is virtuous. 
 
 Ros. And I am your Rosalind. 
 
 Cel. It pleases him to call you so ; but he hath a Rosalind of a 
 better leer than you. 
 
 Ros. Come, woo me, woo me ; for now I am in a holiday humour, 
 and like enough to consent : — What would you say to me now, an I 
 were your very very Rosalind ? 
 
 Orl. I would kiss, before I spoke. 
 
 Ros. Nay, you were better speak first, and when you were gravelled 
 for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss. Very good orators, 
 when they are out, they will spit ; and for lovers, lacking (God warn 
 us !) matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss. 
 
 Orl. How, if the kiss be denied ? 
 
 Ros. Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new matter. 
 
 Orl. Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress ? 
 
 Ros. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress : or I should 
 think my honesty ranker than my wit. 
 
 Orl. What, of my suit ? 
 
 Ros. Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit. Am not I 
 your Rosalind ? 
 
 Orl. I take some joy to say you are, because I would be talking of 
 her. 
 
118 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 Ros. Well, in her person, I say — I will not have you. 
 
 Orl. Then^ in mine own person, I die. 
 
 Ros. No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six thou- 
 sand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his 
 own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains dashed 
 out with a Grecian club ; yet he did what he could to die before ; and 
 he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many 
 a fair year, though Hero had turned nun, if it had not been for a hot 
 midsummer night ; for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in 
 the Hellespont, and being taken with the cramp, was drowned, and the 
 foolish chroniclers of that age found it was — Hero of Sestos. But these 
 are all lies ; men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten 
 them, but not for love. 
 
 Orl. I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind ; for, I pro- 
 test, her frown might Mil me. 
 
 Ros. By this hand, it will not kill a fly : But come, now I will be 
 your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition ; and ask me what you 
 will, I will grant it. 
 
 Orl. Then love me, Rosalind. 
 
 Ros. Yes, faith will I, Fridays, and Saturdays, and all. 
 
 Orl. And wilt thou have me ? 
 
 Ros. Ay, and twenty such. 
 
 Orl. What say'st thou ? 
 
 Ros. Are you not good ? 
 
 Orl. I hope so. 
 
 Ros. Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing ? — Come, 
 sister, you shall be the priest, and marry us. — Give me your hand, 
 Orlando : — What do you say, sister ? 
 
 Orl. Pray thee, marry us. 
 
 Cel. I cannot say the words. 
 
 Ros. You must begin, Will you, Orlando, — 
 
 Cel. Go to : Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind ? 
 
 Orl. I will. 
 
 Ros. Ay, but when ? 
 
 Orl. Why now ; as fast as she can marry us. 
 
 Ros. Then you must say, — I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. 
 
 Orl. I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. 
 
 Ros. I might ask you for your commission ; but, — I do take thee, 
 Orlando, for my husband : There a girl goes before the priest ; and, 
 certainly, a woman's thought runs before her actions. 
 
 Orl. So do all thoughts ; they are winged. 
 
 Ros. Now tell me, how long you would have her, after you have 
 possessed her. 
 
 Orl. For ever, and a day. 
 
AS. YOD LIKE IT. 119 
 
 Ros. Say a day, without the ever : No, no, Orlando ; men are April 
 when they woo, December when they wed. 
 
 And here from Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 Bene. Lady Beatrice, have yon wept all this while ? 
 
 Beat. Yea, and I will weep a while longer. 
 
 Bene. I will not desire that. • 
 
 Beat. You have no reason, I do it freely. 
 
 Bene. Surely, I do believe your fair cousin is wrong'd. 
 
 Beat. Ah, how much might the man deserve of me, that would right 
 her ! 
 
 Bene. Is there any way to show such friendship ? 
 
 Beat. A very even way, but no such friend. 
 
 Bene. May a man do it ? 
 
 Beat. It is a man's office, but not yours. 
 
 Bene. I do love nothing in the world so well as you ; Is not that 
 strange ? 
 
 Beat. As strange as the thing I know not : It were as possible for 
 me to say, I love nothing so well as you : but believe me not j and yet 
 I lie not j I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing : — I am sorry for my 
 cousin. 
 
 Bene. By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me. 
 
 Beat. Do not swear by it, and eat it. 
 
 Bene. I will swear by it, that you love me ; and I will make him eat 
 it, that says, I love not you. 
 
 Beat. Will you not eat your word ? 
 
 Bene. With no sauce that can be devised to it : I protest, I love thee. 
 
 Beat. Why then, God forgive me ! 
 
 Bene. What offence, sweet Beatrice ? 
 
 Beat. You have staid me in a happy hour ; I was about to protest, 
 I loved you. 
 
 Bene. And do it with all thy heart. 
 
 Beat. I love you with so much of my heart, that none is left to 
 protest. 
 
 Bene. Come, bid me do any thing for thee. 
 
 Beat. Kill Claudio. 
 
 Bene. Ha ! not for the wide world. 
 
 Beat. You kill me to deny it : Farewell. 
 
 Bene. Tarry, sweet Beatrice. 
 
 Beat. I am gone, though I am here ; — There is no love in you : — 
 Nay, I pray you, let me go. 
 
 Bene. Beatrice, — 
 
 Beat. In faith, I will go. 
 
 Bene. We'll be friends first. 
 
120 AS YOD LIKE IT. 
 
 Beat. You dare easier be friends with me, than fight with mine 
 enemy. 
 
 Bene. Is Claudio thine enemy ? 
 
 Beat. Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, 
 scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman ? — O, that I were a man ! 
 
 In spite of their similarity they are strikingly 
 different ; Rosalind is the coquette of the wood, as 
 Beatrice is of the circle of aristocratic society ; they 
 both dally with and defy their respective lovers ; there 
 are tender glances of affection about Rosalind, and 
 simplicity of character, which we do not find in the 
 more bold repartee of Beatrice. 
 
 But not to linger over the comparison of these two, 
 which is in itself a subject for a lecture, I will give 
 one passage illustrative of the powerful knowledge 
 manifested of external physical nature of which I 
 have spoken above. 
 Descrip- The story told by Oliver of seeing Orlando sleep, 
 nature. will give a specimen of the charm of these descrip- 
 tions. 
 
 OIL When last the young Orlando parted from you, 
 He left a promise to return again 
 Within an hour ; and, pacing through the forest, 
 Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, 
 Lo, what befel ! he threw his eye aside, 
 And, mark, what object did present itself ! 
 Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age, 
 And high top bald with dry antiquity, 
 A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, 
 Lay sleeping on his back : about his neck 
 A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself, 
 Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd 
 The opening of his mouth : but suddenly 
 Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself, 
 And with indented glides did slip away 
 Into a bush : under which bush's shade 
 A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 121 
 
 Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch, 
 When that the sleeping man should stir ; for 'tis 
 The royal disposition of that beast, 
 To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead : 
 This seen, Orlando did approach the man, 
 And found it was his brother, his elder brother. 
 
 Another beauty of this play is the exquisite General 
 chastity and expressiveness of the poetry ; there is 
 a singular euphony about it all, which it would be 
 hard to give illustrations of, inasmuch as the whole 
 teems with them ; but they are well worthy of notice. 
 
 Such is As you like it, a work which, though at first 
 sight a labyrinth of perplexing paths leading through 
 foliage and colours of a thousand hues, nevertheless, 
 when you have found the clue, it brings you to as 
 beautiful and concentrated a centre as you can wish 
 to reach. It maintains its power to the end, and 
 never flags, whether in the expression of deep but 
 mournful philosophy, in the healthy vigour of an ele- 
 vated morality, in its keen brilliance and flash of 
 wit, and its rich and minute painting of scenes of 
 nature. 
 
LECTURE Y. 
 
 SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 1. Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus are two 
 of Shakspeare's plays, which are much connected in 
 men's minds. They have a bond of union of con- 
 siderable interest, which makes them, to the admirers 
 of our great poet, matter of much attraction. 
 
 Timon of Athens was amongst Shakspeare's last, and 
 to some of his admirers his best play, Titus Androni- 
 cus amongst his first. They bear between them sin- 
 gular stamps of youth and age, experience and inex- 
 perience, hope and disappointment, the early and the 
 later fortunes and character of William Shakspeare. 
 
 Few of his works will bear a greater contrast than 
 these two. Titus Andronicus, horrible, and minute, 
 and elaborate in plot, scares while it attracts the 
 reader by the detail of the most improbable terrors ; 
 it is the ghost story of the nursery, or the tale of 
 the winter's evening round the hearth told to eager 
 Christmas boys. It satiates and nauseates the appe- 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 123 
 
 tite for the dreadful. All story, yet fervid, imagina- 
 tive, it is not without its poetical passages. It is pre- 
 eminently the work of a young artist. 
 
 Timon of Athens, on the other hand, has little plot, 
 and but one change of scene ; it cannot entertain, it 
 cannot amuse, it can only offer food to the appetite 
 of him, who, having himself walked through the paths 
 of life, and studied one class of its characters, delights 
 to see the vivid description of the scene he has 
 passed through daguerreotyped on the page of the 
 dramatist. The play could scarcely be acted, and it 
 is perhaps painful that the one great scene of life it 
 describes is borrowed from circumstances which, how- 
 ever true, form some of the worst phases of the 
 family of man. In brief, it is the work of advanced 
 life, when the brighter scenery has been drawn off, 
 and against the dull, faded, colourless back-ground 
 but two or three sable figures play their solemn 
 parts and are gone. Picture is the work of youth, 
 single forms the study of age. Imagination gives the 
 pencil to the boy ; reason, sometimes a warped one, 
 lends it to the aged, with which he colours with 
 neutral tint the glowing canvas of the youth. In point 
 of plot, this is the relation which Titus Andronicus 
 bears to Timon of Athens: and by the way it is 
 worthy of remark, how chastely beautiful, as works of 
 dramatic art, in point of plot, are Hamlet, Romeo and 
 Juliet, Lear, the works of Shakspeare's meridian, 
 when contrasted with these two extremes. Highly 
 beautiful, yet consistent in tale, they become the 
 brilliant frame to a masterpiece group of human life, 
 
124 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 which does not take off the eye from the portrai- 
 ture, while it gives it life, elasticity, brilliance, and 
 attractiveness. The plot does not outshine the de- 
 lineation of human character, nor is the delineation 
 of human character monotonous and heavy for lack 
 Titus An- of plot. Titus Andronicus is as a gold frame holding 
 
 dronicus . , 
 
 and Timon. a dull unmeaning picture, and our attention is drawn 
 off to the elaborate workmanship of the frame. Timon 
 of Athens is as an old picture leaning against a wall, 
 unattractive, and seldom calling the attention of 
 the passer-by to its really great beauties from its 
 inornate and unfinished appearance. It is undra- 
 matic. It achieves its aim through another instru- 
 ment than the one it professes to use. 
 
 Three painters may attempt to produce a sunset. 
 One may revel in the exuberant and ruddy colour 
 of every leaf and blade of grass, and leave but a 
 poor impression on the mind of the spectator of 
 the ideas conveyed of the scene of nature. The 
 second may be Ouyp or a Waterloo, who will 
 produce his effect by a few artistic touches, and 
 the spectator, no longer bewildered by diffuseness, 
 grasps the idea and is delighted. The third may 
 produce a picture untrue to every form and effect of 
 nature, yet from the intense feeling he yearns to ex- 
 press may by a single streak produce the desired 
 effect, but he is not an artist. The first of these 
 pictures will be as Titus Andronicus, the second as 
 Borneo and Juliet, the third as Timon of Athens. 
 
 2. The play before us bears the mark of a sus- 
 picious and misanthropic view of life, which must 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 125 
 
 have been the result of some supposed ill treatment 
 to the author from the hands of his fellow-creature. 
 The thoughts of the play are frequently linked to- 
 gether without order or connexion. The terms are 
 striking and sudden, while the abruptness of. the lan- 
 guage is extreme. Timon's character stands per- The misan- 
 fectly separate from any other of Shakspeare's, and m an!" C 
 is a masterpiece. It is round that one character 
 the whole plot circles. Indignation or suspicion of 
 our fellow-creatures is a favourite theme of Shak- 
 speare's. Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Angelo, Coriolanus, 
 Jaques, all show it in different forms, but the motive 
 which thrusts it out in each of these, is different to 
 that which impels Timon. His fault seems to have 
 been in the following a noble and generous disposition. 
 He formed before his eye brilliant pictures of hu- 
 man happiness and gratitude centering round him- 
 self. He was the sun who was to impart warmth and character 
 radiance to every other body, and to have the power 
 of attracting every other body into himself; but this 
 was all : when a cloud obscured that sun for a mo- 
 ment, there was no such principle left as to support 
 his continued feelings of philanthropy ; self and not 
 mankind had been his unconscious aim. As l° n g as 
 the benefit done to his fellow redounded to the glory 
 of self he rejoiced in the former, the moment self was 
 thwarted or obscured he had no care left for his fel- 
 low-creature. He acted on impulse, not on principle. 
 His nature was noble, his designs philanthropic ; but 
 his end was self, and his instrument philanthropy, 
 consequently, when its motive was removed, it sunk 
 
126 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 into misanthropy, and the impulse of benevolence 
 into the impulse of hate. He that loves his fellow 
 from self-interest will of necessity hate his fellow 
 when the same object requires it. There was no actu- 
 ally unkind feeling in Timon's nature towards a living 
 soul, but he had mistaken selfish generosity for 
 deep love, and, consequently, when he discovered his 
 mistake had nothing to fall back upon. He was the 
 dupe of himself and the world. The following view 
 of the " poet 11 expresses well enough his position : 
 
 Poet. I'll unbolt to yon. 
 
 You see how all conditions, how all minds, 
 (As well of glib and slippery creatures, as 
 Of grave and austere quality,) tender down 
 Their services to lord Timon : his large fortune, 
 Upon his good and gracious nature hanging, 
 Subdues and properties to his love and tendance 
 All sorts of hearts ; yea, from the glass-fac'd flatterer 
 To Apemantus, that few things loves better 
 Than to abhor himself : even he drops down 
 The knee before him, and returns in peace 
 Most rich in Timon's nod. 
 
 The vain ostentation of Timon is singularly well 
 described in the rapidity of his invitations to his ban- 
 quets. One brilliant phantom ever floated before 
 his eyes, — what Athens would think of Timon; his 
 was magnificent selfishness; it benefited thousands, 
 but only so long as it benefited self. How true to 
 nature is this character ! He loved to be a patron, 
 but he patronized the beggar and the wealthy alike. 
 His acts were for the sake of patronage, not for 
 the act itself. He loved to be the fountain from 
 which the beneficent stream of largesse flowed, but 
 he delighted to gaze on the brilliance of the fountain, 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 127 
 
 and cared but little for the direction of the stream. 
 The following scene describes well the kind of posi- 
 tion he loved to occupy : 
 
 Old Ath. Lord Timon, hear me speak. 
 
 Tim. Freely, good father. 
 
 Old Ath. Thou hast a servant named Lucilius. 
 
 Tim. I have so : What of him ? 
 
 Old Ath. Most noble Timon, call the man before thee. 
 
 Tim. Attends he here, or no ? — Lucilius ! 
 
 Enter LnciLius. 
 
 Luc. Here, at your lordship's service. 
 
 Old Ath. This fellow here, lord Timon, this thy creature, 
 By night frequents my house. I am a man 
 That from my first have been inclin'd to thrift ; 
 And my estate deserves an heir more rais'd, 
 Than one which holds a trencher. 
 
 Tim. Well; what further ? 
 
 Old Ath. One only daughter have I, no kin else, 
 On whom I may confer what I have got : 
 The maid is fair, o'the youngest for a bride, 
 And I have bred her at my dearest cost, 
 In qualities of the best. This man of thine ' 
 Attempts her love : I pr'ythee, noble lord, 
 Join with me to forbid him her resort ; 
 Myself have spoke in vain. 
 
 Tim. The man is honest. 
 
 Old Ath. Therefore he will be, Timon : 
 His honesty rewards him in itself, 
 It must not bear my daughter. 
 
 Tim. Does she love him ? 
 
 Old Ath. She is young, and apt : 
 Our own precedent passions do instruct us 
 What levity's in youth. 
 
 Tim. [to Lucilius.] Love you the maid ? 
 
 I/uc. Ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it. 
 
 Old Ath. If in her marriage my consent be missing, 
 I call the gods to witness, I will choose 
 Mine heir from forth the beggars of the world, 
 And dispossess her all. 
 
 Tim. How shall she be endow'd, 
 
 If she be mated with an equal husband ? 
 
128 T1M0N OF ATHENS. 
 
 Old Ath. Three talents, on the present ; in future, all. 
 
 Tim. This gentleman of mine hath serv'd me long ; 
 To build his fortune, I will strain a little, 
 For 'tis a bond in men. Give him thy daughter : 
 What you bestow, in him I'll counterpoise, 
 And make him weigh with her. 
 
 Old Ath. Most noble lord, 
 
 Pawn me to this your honour, she is his. 
 
 Tim. My hand to thee ; mine honour on my promise. 
 
 Luc. Humbly I thank your lordship. 
 
 Disrelish 3. Consistent with such a character is an utter 
 
 for busi- 
 ness. 
 
 disrelish for the detail and irksomeness of business. 
 The length of the purse, or the capability of the estate 
 from which this magnificent bounty flowed, were in- 
 tolerable subjects of investigation. Schemes so mag- 
 nificent as those of Timon's, cannot, as he thought, 
 be bound by the limitations of means and money. 
 He weighed against each other the benefit he con- 
 ferred on man, and the sordidness of a handful of gold 
 dust. He forgot that money was not merely coin, 
 but the representative of a vast principle, the power 
 of man in his social relation to his fellow. Such 
 characters are always inaccurate. 
 Magnifi- 4. Magnificence of design in the painter implies a 
 design. boldness of outline and a suggestive style of drawing 
 which is seldom, except in minds of peculiar power, 
 consistent with the capacity for minute colouring or 
 high finish. This trait, in characters of this class, 
 has been admirably hit ofi" by our poet in the descrip- 
 tion of Timon. The following passage, describing the 
 remonstrance of the faithful steward, and the mode in 
 which his master met it, will show what I mean : 
 
 Tim. You make me marvel : Wherefore, ere this time, 
 Had you not fully laid my state before me ; 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 129 
 
 That I might so have rated my expence, 
 As I had leave of means ? 
 
 Flav. You would not hear me, 
 
 At many leisures I propos'd. 
 
 Tim. Go to : 
 
 Perchance, some single vantages you took, 
 When my indisposition put you back ; 
 And that unaptness made your minister, 
 Thus to excuse yourself. 
 
 Flav. O my good lord ! 
 
 At many times I brought in my accounts, 
 Laid them before you ; you would throw them off, 
 And say, you found them in mine honesty. 
 When, for some trifling present, you have bid me 
 Return so much, I have shook my head, and wept ; 
 Yea, 'gainst the authority of manners, pray'd you 
 To hold your hand more close : I did endure 
 Not seldom, nor no slight checks ; when I have 
 Prompted you, in the ebb of your estate, 
 'And your great flow of debts. My dear-lov'd lord, 
 Though you hear now, (too late,) yet now's a time, 
 The greatest of your having lacks a half 
 To pay your present debts. 
 
 Tim. Let all my land be sold. 
 
 Flav. "Tis all engag'd, some forfeited and gone ; 
 And what remains will hardly stop the mouth 
 Of present dues : the future comes apace : 
 What shall defend the interim ? and at length 
 How goes our reckoning ? 
 
 Tim. To Lacedsemon did my land extend ? 
 
 Flav. O my good lord, the world is but a word ; 
 Were it all yours, to give it in a breath, 
 How quickly were it gone ? 
 
 Tim. You tell me true. 
 
 Flav. If you suspect my husbandry, or falsehood, 
 Call me before the exactest auditors, 
 And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me, 
 When all our offices have been oppress'd 
 With riotous feeders : when our vaults have wept 
 With drunken spilth of wine ; when every room 
 Hath blaz'd with lights, and bray'd with minstrelsy ; 
 I have retir'd me to a wasteful cock, 
 And set mine eyes at flow. 
 
 Tim. Pr'ythee, no more. 
 
 K 
 
130 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 Flail. Heavens, have I said, the bounty of this lord ! 
 How many prodigal bits have slaves, and peasants, 
 This night englutted ! Who is not Timon's ? 
 What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is lord Timon's ? 
 Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon ! 
 Ah ! when the means are gone, that buy this praise, 
 The breath is gone whereof this praise is made : 
 Feast-won, fast-lost j one cloud of winter showers, 
 These flies are couch'd. 
 
 Tim. Come, sermon me no further : 
 
 No villainous bounty yet hath pass'd my heart ; 
 Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. 
 Why dost thou weep ? Canst thou the conscience lack, 
 To think I shall lack friends ? 
 
 Ignorance 5. The same inaccuracy of mind which accounted 
 nature. f° r t ,ne unwillingness to examine into the capabilities 
 of his position, makes a man of this kind equally de- 
 ficient in the practical knowledge of human nature. 
 The day of reverse came, and Timon was astounded 
 at the new character in which all his friends appeared ; 
 his intercourse with them had been too splendid to 
 admit of any minute discrimination of motives or 
 shades of character. Every man he met wore one 
 universal mask of sunshine. He never cared, because 
 he was never called upon to look beneath that mask. 
 He only allowed himself to depend upon his fellow for 
 one thing, and that one thing his boundless means 
 easily purchased — flattery. Deeper he had never 
 looked, he had not needed it. There was no neces- 
 sity for him to read those painful chapters of human 
 nature ; the mode in which misfortune acts on others ; 
 want and poverty ; wayward tempers in the buffet of 
 those who will not give what they receive, and look 
 for a return for every favour. These sadder expe- 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 131 
 
 riences of human nature, which we all must learn, he 
 knew not. Some men think they may escape this 
 pang, and think it almost a virtue to do so. "We may 
 not do so, we may as well think a youth excused and 
 heroic for bursting from the irksome discipline of school 
 because it is painful. It is merely recklessness. Any 
 one might do it, but he is simply guilty of selfishness. 
 
 6. The next phase in Timon's history shows the Tne da y o( 
 
 f J trouble. 
 
 shallowness of his character. The day of trouble and 
 reverse soon overtakes him; he throws himself on 
 the creatures and victims of his ostentatious vanity. 
 True to the world, they refuse aid to the prodigal in 
 trouble. The rich citizen sends him to the fields to 
 feed swine; the impatience and irritation of Timon 
 pass all bounds, he invites them all to one last feast, 
 he dissembles his rage for the moment. The dishes 
 are uncovered, and they are found to contain hot 
 water ; the guests, scattered in confusion, leave the 
 room precipitately, under a storm of curses from 
 Timon. The benevolence and philanthropy which 
 could banquet hundreds, could not forgive one offence, 
 or brook one insult ; his affection for his fellow-crea- 
 ture was but as a veil woven of gossamers, which the 
 first shower would annihilate. 
 
 7. But the character is admirably pursued to its The change 
 
 to misan- 
 
 end. The sudden transition from one extreme to an- thropy. 
 other is ever the mark of shallow and unreal cha- 
 racters. Moderation and equanimity.are the charac- 
 teristics alike of the philosopher and the Christian. 
 The magnificent Timon becomes a misanthrope. The 
 city he had delighted to honour becomes the object 
 k 2 
 
132 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 of his bitterest vituperation. One of the finest dra- 
 matic touches of our poet is that which paints the 
 morose and passionate figure of Timon standing soli- 
 tarily outside the walls of that city, invoking maledic- 
 tions on its children, within whose walls three days 
 before the very same person had prodigally showered 
 his largesse on senator and beggar alike. The kind- 
 ness and benevolence that springs from genuine love, 
 like the atmosphere of the cathedral, warm in winter 
 and cool in summer, will ever be the same. Cordelia 
 is an admirable illustration of this, in her uniform 
 affection to Lear. 
 
 Tim. Let me look back upon thee, O thou wall, 
 
 That girdlest in those wolves ! Dive in the earth, 
 
 And fence not Athens ! Matrons, turn incontinent ; 
 
 Obedience fail in children ! slaves, and fools, 
 
 Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, 
 
 And minister in their steads ! to general filths 
 
 Convert o'the instant, green virginity ! 
 
 Do't in your parents' eyes ! bankrupts, hold fast ; 
 
 Rather than render back, out with your knives, 
 
 And cut your trusters' throats ! bound servants, steal ! 
 
 Large-handed robbers your grave masters are, 
 And pill by law ! maid, to thy master's bed ; 
 
 Thy mistress is o'the brothel ! son of sixteen, 
 
 Pluck the lin'd crutch from the old limping sire, 
 
 With it beat out his brains ! piety, and fear, 
 
 Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, 
 Domestick awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, 
 Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, 
 Degrees, observances, customs, and laws, 
 Decline to your confounding contraries, 
 And yet confusion live !— Plagues, incident to men, 
 Your potent and infectious fevers heap 
 On Athens, ripe for stroke I thou cold sciatica, 
 Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt 
 As lamely as their manners ! lust and liberty 
 Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth ; 
 That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. ] 33 
 
 And drown themselves in riot ! itches, Mains, 
 Sow all the Athenian bosoms ; and their crop 
 Be general leprosy ! breath infect breath ; 
 That their society, as their friendship, may 
 Be merely poison ! Nothing I'll bear from thee, 
 But nakedness, thou detestable town ! 
 Take thou that too, with multiplying banns ! 
 Timon will to the woods ; where he shall find 
 The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. 
 The gods confound (hear me, you good gods all,) 
 The Athenians both within and out that wall ! 
 And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow 
 To the whole race of mankind, high, and low ! 
 Amen. 
 
 Timon not only rushes to extreme of opinion, but 
 to excesses of altered life ; he changed Athens for a 
 wood, a palace for a cavern. There is a strength of 
 character about this which redeems Timon from 
 charges with which he might otherwise have been 
 assailed. 
 
 The stream once resisted never returns to its 
 course. The amazing reverse in his life, from the 
 affluent gratification of every want to reflection on 
 the laws of physical nature, is powerfully expressed 
 in the conversation with the thieves. 
 
 Characters which are simply and strongly impul- 
 sive when thwarted rush into excess in every thing. 
 The hand of feeling or impulse holds the reins of the 
 character with a vigour and independence which few 
 other powers can achieve. 
 
 8. Throughout the closing scenes of his career there Timon's 
 
 „ . 11 i m- sarcasm. 
 
 is a strong dash of sarcasm in all that Timon says. 
 This, too, is true to nature. Sarcasm is the offspring 
 of suspicion, and suspicion the daughter of distrust. 
 Timon had learned to distrust every thing. 
 
134 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 Timon's There is a melancholy grandeur about the death 
 
 of the misanthrope, with his grave on the beached 
 verge of the salt flood. 
 Power of 9. Shakspeare has shown in this play the power 
 character! 1 of bringing out truth by contrast. Apemantus and 
 Alcibiades stand as powerful supporters of the central 
 character, the one suspecting every body, the other 
 nobody. Apemantus is scarcely a caricature; his 
 utter and contemptuous distrust of the whole human 
 race and all human motives, is but too like what we 
 see in multitudes around us. Nevertheless his line 
 is a more simple one and more correct than that 
 of Timon's. Timon's misanthropy was as much the 
 offspring of impulse, and as little the result of prin- 
 ciple, as his philanthropy was. It was the violent 
 reaction of a thoroughly selfish nature, it was as 
 unfair as his previous generosity had been. There 
 was no exercise of judgment, no conviction of reason. 
 In Apemantus there were both — unfair and partial, 
 one-sided and warped, he yet had fixed a steady eye 
 on human action, and exercised over the narrow 
 area that came within his observation a keen judg- 
 ment. He viewed the human race wholly indepen- 
 dently of himself, Timon viewed them simply and 
 only with relation to himself. The following observa- 
 tions of Apemantus are worth studying, not only for 
 their truth to nature, but for the rapidity and occa- 
 sional brilliance of their repartee. 
 
 Tim. Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus ! 
 Apem. Till I be gentle, stay for thy good-morrow ; when thou art 
 Timon's dog, and these knaves honest. 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 135 
 
 Tim. Why dost thou call them knaves ? thou know'st them not. 
 
 Apem. Are they not Athenians ? 
 
 Tim. Yes. 
 
 Apem. Then I repent not. 
 
 Jew. You know me, Apemantus. 
 
 Apem. Thou knowest I do ; I call'd thee by thy name. 
 
 Tim. Thou art proud, Apemantus. 
 
 Apem. Of nothing so much, as that I am not like Timon. 
 
 Tim. Whither art going ? 
 
 Apem. To knock out an honest Athenian's brains. 
 
 Tim. That's a deed thou'lt die for. 
 
 Apem. Bight, if doing nothing be death by the law. 
 
 Tim. How likest thou this picture, Apemantus ? 
 
 Apem. The best, for the innocence. 
 
 Tim. Wrought he not well, that painted it ? 
 
 Apem. He wrought better, that made the painter ; and yet he's but 
 a filthy piece of work. 
 
 Pain. You are a dog. 
 
 Apem. Thy mother's of my generation ; What's she, if I be a dog ? 
 
 Tim. Wilt dine with me, Apemantus ? 
 
 Apem. No ; I eat not lords. 
 
 Tim. An thou should'st, thou'dst anger ladies. 
 
 Apem. O, they eat lords ; so they come by great bellies. 
 
 Tim. That's a lascivious apprehension. 
 
 Apem. So thou apprehend'st it : Take it for thy labour. 
 
 Tim. How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus ? 
 
 Apem. Not so well as plain-dealing, which will not cost a man a doit. 
 
 Tim. What dost thou think 'tis worth. 
 
 Apem. Not worth my thinking. — How now, poet ? 
 
 Poet. How now, philosopher ? 
 
 Apem. Thou liest. 
 
 Poet. Art not one ? 
 
 Apem. Yes. 
 
 Poet. Then I lie not. 
 
 Apem. Art not a poet ? 
 
 Poet. Yes. 
 
 Apem. Then thou liest: look in thy last work, where thou hast 
 feign'd him a worthy fellow. 
 
 Poet. That's not feign'd, he is so. 
 
 Apem. Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for the labour : 
 He that loves to be flattered, is worthy o'the flatterer. Heavens, that 
 I were a lord ! 
 
 Tim. What would'st do then, Apemantus ? 
 
 Apem. Even as Apemantus does now, hate a lord with my heart. 
 
136 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 Tim. What, thyself? 
 Apem. Ay. 
 Tim. Wherefore? 
 
 Apem. That I had no angry wit, to be a lord. — Art not thou a 
 merchant ? 
 Mer. Ay, Apemantus. 
 
 Apem. Traffick confound thee, if the gods will not ! 
 Mer. If traffick do it, the gods do it. 
 Apem. Traffick's thy god, and thy god confound thee ! 
 
 Trumpets sound. Enter a Servant. 
 Tim. What trumpet's that ? 
 Serv. "lis Alcibiades, and 
 
 Some twenty horse, all of companionship. 
 
 Tim. Pray entertain them ; give them guide to us. — 
 
 [Exeunt some Attendants. 
 You must needs dine with me : — Go not you hence, 
 Till I have thank'd you ; and, when dinner's done, 
 Show me this piece. — I am joyful of your sights. — 
 
 Enter Alcibiades, with his Company. 
 Most welcome, sir ! {They salute. 
 
 Apem. So, so ; there ! — 
 
 Aches contract and starve your supple joints ! — 
 That there should be small love 'mongst these sweet knaves, 
 And all this court'sy ! The strain of man's bred out 
 Into baboon and monkey. 
 
 Alcib. Sir, you have sav'd my longing, and I feed 
 Most hungrily on your sight. 
 
 Tim. Right welcome, sir ; 
 
 Ere we depart, we'll share a bounteous time 
 In different pleasures. Pray you, let us in. 
 
 Alcibiades. Alcibiades, on the other hand, represents the but- 
 terfly that lives on the honey of the gayest flowers ; 
 he had pierced human nature simply to exhaust its 
 sweets ; he cared little, and he knew less about the rest. 
 Gay, frivolous, and careless, he walked on the ice he 
 never tested, and which he trusted merely because its 
 surface glittered. If he had at all stopped to reflect 
 he would probably have laughed to scorn the ideas of 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 137 
 
 human virtue or consistency ; he did not stop to 
 think : therefore he acted as if he trusted all. Such 
 are the three characters brought out by contrast ; 
 they form classes, of which we meet representatives 
 in the daily walk of life. In the shrewd, suspicious, 
 worn-out commercialist how many an Apemantus ! 
 though without his biting sarcasms. In the glitter- 
 ing throngs of wealthy and fashionable life how many 
 a Timon is munificent while praised, and cruelly incre- 
 dulous at the slightest ebb of fortune ! Amongst 
 the youthful devotees to gaiety and profligacy, how 
 many an Alcibiades laughs along his line of life 
 delighted to be friends with every one up to a certain 
 point, but the moment he is asked to go beyond that 
 point, he laughs to scorn the ideas of virtue because 
 he has never realized them. Amid such a wreck of 
 ruins, how beautifully the character of the faithful 
 steward rises ! He loves Timon still, and to use his 
 own words, " bleeds inwardly for his lord." Despite 
 his evident fool-hardiness and selfishness, Timon be- 
 lieves in him, and in the intensity of his honest 
 fidelity 
 
 When every room 
 Hath blaz'd with lights, and bray'd with minstrelsy ; 
 He had retir'd to a wasteful cock, 
 And set his eyes at flow. 
 
 Despite the depth of Timon's adversity, he follows 
 him ; and despite his continual rejection of his 
 services, he clings to him. 
 
 Tim. Away ! what art thou ? 
 
 Flav. Have yon forgot me, sir ? 
 
138 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 Tim. Why dost ask that ? I have forgot all men ; 
 Then, if thou grant'st thou'rt man, I have forgot thee. 
 The Flav. An honest poor servant of yours. 
 
 Steward. Tim _ Then 
 
 I know thee not : I ne'er had honest man 
 About me, I ; all that I kept were knaves, 
 To serve in meat to villains. 
 
 Flav. The gods are witness, 
 
 Ne'er did poor steward wear a truer grief 
 For his undone lord, than mine eyes for you. 
 
 Tim. What, dost thou weep ? — Come nearer ; — then I love thee, 
 Because thou art a woman, and disclaim'st 
 Flinty mankind ; whose eyes do never give, 
 But thorough lust, and laughter. Pity's sleeping : 
 Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping ! 
 
 Flav. I beg of you to know me, good my lord, 
 To accept my grief, and, whilst this poor wealth lasts, 
 To entertain me as your steward still. 
 
 Tim. Had I a steward so true, so just, and now 
 So comfortable ? It almost turns 
 My dangerous nature wild. Let me behold 
 Thy face. — Surely, this man was born of woman. — 
 Forgive my general and exceptless rashness, 
 Perpetual-sober gods ! I do proclaim 
 One honest man, — mistake me not, — but one ; 
 No more, I pray, — and he is a steward. — 
 How fain would I have hated all mankind, 
 And thou redeem'st thyself : But all, save thee, 
 I fell with curses. 
 
 Methinks, thou art more honest now, than wise ; 
 For, by oppressing and betraying me, 
 Thou might'st have sooner got another service : 
 For many so arrive at second masters, 
 Upon their first lord's neck. But tell me true, 
 (For I must ever doubt, though ne'er so sure,) 
 Is not thy kindness subtle, covetous, 
 If not a usuring kindness ; and as rich men deal gifts, 
 Expecting in return twenty for one ? 
 
 Flav. No, my most worthy master, in whose breast 
 Doubt and suspect, alas, are plac'd too late ; 
 You should have fear'd false times, when you did feast : 
 Suspect still comes where an estate is least. 
 That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love, 
 Duty and zeal to your unmatched mind, 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 139 
 
 Care of your food and living : and, believe it, 
 
 My most honour'd lord, 
 
 For any benefit that points to me, 
 
 Either in hope, or present, I'd exchange 
 
 For this one wish, That you had power and wealth 
 
 To requite me, by making rich yourself. 
 
 The subordinate characters of the play help to 
 shade off its dark centre gradually and consistently 
 on either side. The man dishonest by profession, 
 the thief, the woman dishonest to herself and her 
 own virtue, and the fool who burlesques the whole 
 moral of the tale, are admirable complements to the 
 design. 
 
 10. There are some passages in the tragedy of Style 
 high poetic beauty in conception and expression. 
 The reference Apemantus makes to the change in 
 Timon's fortunes, when driven into the homeless 
 shelter of the wood, and to the objects of nature as 
 his attendants, is highly beautiful. 
 
 Apem. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself ; 
 A madman so long, now a fool : What, think'st 
 That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain, 
 Will put thy shirt on warm ? Will these moss'd trees, 
 That have out-lived the eagle, page thy heels, 
 And skip when thou point'st out ? Will the cold brook, 
 Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste, 
 To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit ? call the creatures, — 
 Whose naked natures live in all the spite 
 Of wreakful heaven ; whose bare unhoused trunks, 
 To the conflicting elements expos'd, 
 Answer mere nature, — bid them flatter thee. 
 
 The somewhat overdrawn analogies of theft have 
 their poetic beauty in the speech of Timon. 
 
 I'll example you with thievery : 
 The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction 
 
140 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 Robs the vast sea : the moon's an arrant thief, 
 And her pale fire she snatches from the sun : 
 The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves 
 The moon into salt tears : the earth's a thief, 
 That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen 
 From general excrement : each thing's a thief; 
 The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power 
 Have uncheck'd theft. 
 
 Amongst the most beautiful passages is that with 
 which Timon takes leave of the world. 
 
 Tim. Come not to me again : but say to Athens, 
 Timon hath made his everlasting mansion 
 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood j 
 Which once a day with his embossed froth 
 The turbulent surge shall cover ; thither come, 
 And let my grave-stone be your oracle. — 
 Lips, let sour words go by, and language end : 
 What is amiss, plague and infection mend ! 
 Graves only be men's works ; and death, their gain ! 
 Sun, hide thy beams ! Timon hath done his reign. 
 
 We are constantly reminded in the drama of Timon 
 of King Lear, but it lacks its high passion and ex- 
 alted conception, and, above all, its perfect dramatic 
 action. Though Flavius may vie with Kent, Lear 
 excites more sympathy than Timon, although neither 
 excite the compassion which Wolsey does. They are 
 all victims of ingratitude, but in each case the keen- 
 ness of our sympathy is blunted by the infirmities of 
 the sufferers. The ungrateful characters are more 
 natural than Regan and Goneril, and have an ease 
 about them which gives them a great reality. 
 
 Few plays have a truer and deeper moral, a moral 
 its very author needed to learn, though he had read 
 it too well. That moral is one we all need, to take a 
 true and healthy view of the conduct of others 
 
TIMON OF ATHENS. 141 
 
 towards us. Society is generally fair : ingratitude is 
 rare from a multitude or a body of persons, where 
 the motives' of the actor are jeally pure and disinter- 
 ested, fair and reasonable. Men in the world quickly 
 detect a second motive, and we cannot complain that 
 they desert us if we have made them the victims of our 
 second motives, however splendid they may be. If 
 we allow them to see that they have been immolated 
 on an altar, though built of gold, and offered up to 
 a principle however beneficent, if that principle be 
 ourselves, they will resent it. 
 
 True, there have been fearful violations of the. prin- 
 ciple. Miltiades, Camillus, Belisarius were victims 
 to popular or individual jealousy, and were sacrificed, 
 despite their deeds and their services. But they are 
 exceptions. Men are generally fair. 
 
 Timon's state is essentially morbid. He neither in 
 prosperity nor adversity acted a manly or noble part. 
 When he had fallen, restitution and humbly-borne 
 punishment should have been his resort ; but the 
 " beached surge " is, in his view of it, all but a suicidal 
 grave. 
 
LECTURE YI 
 
 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 Dante, 1. The poetry of the modern age of the human 
 
 andGoethe. race ^ s especially connected with three leading men : 
 Dante, Shakspeare, and Goethe — the Italian, the 
 Anglo-Saxon, and the German ; the religious, the 
 moral, and the philosophic ; these three are centres 
 around which countless circles coil. The kindred 
 spirits to these three express the several peculiarities 
 intellectual and religious of their respective countries 
 and ages. They may be considered as indices of their 
 own several times, as well as types of the schools of 
 poetry which occupy the attention of every student 
 of the literature of modern Europe. 
 Dante. 2. And first of Dante. His name is far famed ; 
 
 his life is well known ; his circumstances have 
 excited universal sympathy. His countenance, so 
 familiar to us on the canvas and in the bust, 
 expresses with painful accuracy the result of bitter 
 disappointment alike in circumstances and in the 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAKE. 143 
 
 man. The compressed lip, the anxious brow with its 
 lines made rigid by the chisel of disappointment, his 
 head-gear, the sternness of the features, all con- 
 spire to leave upon our memory the countenance of 
 a man who once seen is not soon forgotten. In 
 dealing with the Divina Comedia we must try it by 
 its own standard ; and if we would take a standard 
 for Dante's great literary celebrity, it must not be 
 borrowed from the same sources by which we test the 
 power of such men as Shakspeare, Milton, or Pope. 
 
 Dante, like Homer, lived in the earliest ages 
 of his own peculiar portion of the world's history. 
 His was especially the work of genius and creative , 
 power ; he had few or no aids. His circumstances 
 were depressing, and the surrounding objects of the 
 day conduced to scatter rather than to consolidate 
 the poet's attention. We therefore, as we do in the 
 case of Homer, stand astonished at the vast know- 
 ledge of human nature, at the compact arrangement 
 of the plot, at the mellifluous flow of the lan- 
 guage of his poetry, when we remember the disad- 
 vantages which he laboured under ; but when we are 
 told of the wanderings of his life we are inclined 
 to be even more surprised at the triumph which 
 he gained over self and the power which planned his 
 vast conception. Dante reminds us more than 
 most that great results in poetry especially spring 
 from necessity, that the birth-throes of the poet are 
 ever the most successful when the most agonizing, 
 and that the most beautiful creation of the mind will 
 
144 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 leave upon the brow the mark of the keenest hours 
 of anguish. 
 
 It was the blindness of more than one of the world's 
 poets which compelled them to search around them 
 to find the aptness of the analogy, the allegory, or the 
 simile by which they might make up for the deficiency 
 of their natural vision. It was the early trouble and 
 the early blight that came over the lives of more than 
 one of another class of poets, who had been born to 
 affluence, dignity, and honour, that compelled them 
 to strike out a new pathway for themselves; their 
 sorrows and disappointments, as their pioneers, led 
 them through the untraversed wilderness, and they 
 turned it into a garden blossoming with life. This is 
 not true only of the poet. No doubt the most effective 
 melodies in music have been the complaints of spirits 
 which longed to find freedom from captivity by 
 escaping on the note which rolled through the bars 
 of their cage. No doubt many of the most effective 
 touches which have been given to the harmonies of the 
 German, the Italian, and the English composers, 
 have expressed feelings too deep-down to find utter- 
 ance in ordinary language ; sorrows and desires too 
 acute to be syllabled in the letters of ordinary language. 
 Music has been the more successful means of expres- 
 sion for such men, inasmuch as its forms were to a cer- 
 tain degree unlimited, less arbitrary, more their own. 
 So on the painter's canvas the glow of twilight, 
 the working of human passion in the eye or the 
 attitude, the warmth of some wandering sunbeam 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 145 
 
 which has lost its way amid the flowers or the mosses 
 of the woodland bank, — these have been the means 
 used by the painter to unburthen a laden spirit, to 
 open the door of the ark and let the dove fly forth to 
 find a resting-place for her foot. 
 
 Such was the cause of the great poem of Dante ; 
 wrung as it was from his own wanderings, disap- 
 pointed affections, banishments, and ungratefully- 
 received services to his native country. „ Tried by this 
 standard we are the less surprised at the power of his 
 production. 
 
 3. But there are many points of view in which the 
 Divina Comedia must be looked upon. First, the- 
 scenery which the poet borrowed for his subject- 
 matter, the objects and forms of the realms of spirits. 
 This reminds us of the yearning which there is in the 
 dissatisfied soul to find a range for its wing through 
 some of those regions of thought which are unvisited 
 by the ordinary observer, and to brood and settle 
 down in that mysterious twilight, beneath which 
 the usual forms of life are unable to come out into 
 visible shape. There is a natural vent to the discon- 
 tented in mysticism, there is a pleasurable sensation 
 to the dissatisfied in seeking consolation and sym- 
 pathy amid beings with whom those who have created 
 dissatisfaction are supposed to have no intercourse. 
 The very child when disappointed of its toy will take 
 refuge in transcendentalisms, and he who has been 
 disappointed in the affection of an hour will refuse 
 the proffered refuge from a discontented temper. 
 
 That Dante, placed as he was, should have gone 
 
 K* 
 
146 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSFEARE. 
 
 to the eternal world to find a resting-place for his foot 
 is not remarkable. 
 
 But, secondly, he has peopled that realm with 
 forms so definite, with arrangements and figures and 
 plots so carefully elaborated, that we are induced to 
 ask the question why he should differ as materially 
 as he does with Milton, who betook himself to the 
 scenery of Paradise before it was lost, and followed 
 the supposed wanderings of our fallen parents. The 
 figures of the unseen world must be vague and uncer- 
 tain — the mere creatures of imagination. In the case 
 of Dante we feel that each separate form was copied 
 •from some definite original, and that some guiding 
 hand of truth directed his pen, and suggested the 
 creations of his imagination. We find the solution 
 to this difficulty in Dante's membership with the 
 church which held so firm a hold at his time over 
 the minds, and consequently over the imaginative crea- 
 tions of her children. Dogma gives definiteness to 
 moral action, and moral action has a reflex action on 
 the creative and contemplative faculty. He who sees 
 exactly how to act in cases of daily moral action is 
 able to define better the limits of speculative truth. 
 The beings of Paradise, heaven or hell, become as 
 definite to him as those who walk the earth; and 
 the inhabitants of the unseen world become as real 
 to him as those who gather round his home. 
 The distinctness of the theology of the Church 
 accounts for the definiteness of Dante's conceptions, 
 while the vague subjectivity of religion in England 
 during the life of Milton, the uncertainties of Puri- 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAKE. 147 
 
 tanism, the destruction, not only of the forms of 
 superstition, but even of the figures which repre- 
 sented the truths of objective Christianity and the 
 visible Church, will account for the unlimited and 
 generalized conceptions of the poet of Paradise 
 Lost, when compared with the author of the Divina 
 
 But more than this, Dante stood in a peculiar 
 position with regard to the past and the future. 
 Most great poets, except Homer, have had a past 
 to copy from, and have had the advantage of writing 
 in periods when the echoes of the voices which 
 have uttered their teaching have scarcely died 
 away. The great historic circumstances of age 
 and country, the events of dynasties, the falls and 
 the struggles of nations, have offered at once 
 to most poets events, which, occurring yesterday, 
 might be written upon to-day. But while Dante 
 lived in a period of many stirring circumstances in 
 our continent, literature and language were in 
 that rude and unascertained condition that he could 
 not be expected to deal with them as other leading 
 poets of the world have with their subject-matters : 
 added to which Dante had to be his own tutor in his 
 choice of subjects and in expression of sentiment. 
 Nearly every one has had the advantage of at least 
 a predecessor, who has struck off the first rough 
 edges from the block that he has got to carve into the 
 statue. Few great geniuses do their entire work by 
 themselves alone. Most of them have had their way 
 cleared by inferior minds. The schools of Sienna 
 
 K*2 
 
148 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 and Florence prepared the way for Eaphael; and 
 the political schemes of Halifax and Danby formed 
 the grammar from which Walpole, Pitt, or Fox 
 framed their political language. But Dante sprang 
 Minerva-like from his own age. Ready armed he 
 had no armour-bearer ; he blew himself the trumpet 
 for the battle, and he stepped forward to single com- 
 bat with the gigantic form of evil around him, like 
 the shepherd boy of old. He slung the unerring 
 stone that he had gathered from the brook, and his 
 success was as eminent as his courage and unaided 
 genius had been admirable. 
 
 4. It would be impossible on this occasion to do 
 more than to suggest some of the leading reasons for 
 which Dante has been so celebrated in the history of 
 the world and of Italy. One of these would be what 
 I adverted to just now, that he became the framer of 
 the Italian language ; rude and undigested, it lay in 
 separate and fragmentary portions, each one repre- 
 senting some different phase of the inhabitants of Italy. 
 The old Latin tongue degenerated but remaining as 
 the basis of the great Romance language, — the infu- 
 sion of the Gothic language, the new terms that were 
 introduced by the fashions and manners peculiar to the 
 age, — the Crusades, and the new notions which they 
 imported into Europe, all these several portions needed 
 some master-hand to arrange and put together. That 
 work is usually the poet's. He has to seek through 
 the realm of language for the apt and terse expression. 
 The selection of the beautiful in sound, the dis- 
 carding of expletives, and the necessity for exact- 
 
.DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAEE. 149 
 
 ness in tense and case, make the poet the man, above 
 others, suited to draw out and reconstruct the rude 
 elements of an infant tongue. It was this to a great 
 degree that early poets did for the Greek language ; 
 and much of the force and beauty of our own we owe 
 to Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Spenser. The old Scan- 
 dinavian bards transmitted a purer and more refined 
 language than they found ; and the Italian owes much 
 to Dante and to Petrarch. The terms and expressions 
 of the poem soon become the proverbial common-places 
 of the populace, and the images which express the 
 scenes of ideal life are applied to those of the real. 
 We can hardly estimate the difficulty that a man has 
 to struggle with who undertakes to write a poem like 
 the Divina Comedia without a ready form of language 
 at hand ; borrowing his forms from the unseen world, 
 and his language from an unsettled tongue. The 
 achievement, if successful, must rank him high in the 
 estimation of mankind ; and this the Divina Gomedia 
 has done for Dante. By the way the paradox of 
 this title is curious. It seems to have resulted from 
 an unwillingness in the mind of the poet to assert for 
 his work a claim of too high a style of poetic writing. 
 5. But with regard to Dante's subject-matter, for it 
 is in this that he so peculiarly claims the admiration 
 of mankind. He discarded at once the style which 
 lighter poetry delighted in, the subjects of which it 
 treated, and the oscillations of mere human affections, 
 and allowed his piercing genius and unlimited imagin- 
 ation to find their range in the world of the invisible 
 creation, and brought their grotesque figures before 
 
150 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSFEARE. 
 
 the eye of astonished Europe. However slightly, still 
 it is true, in this conception he was not entirely origi- 
 nal. The enormous fresh energy given to the system 
 of the Church in her influence over her members 
 through St. Francis and St. Dominic in the pre- 
 ceding century, had brought before the eager and 
 fevered minds of those whose intellectual powers had 
 been whetted in the seclusion of the cell the 
 figures and condition of the future in as tangible and 
 visible an outline as those of the present. It was na- 
 tural in such a state of society as Europe presented, 
 operated upon so strenuously by the Church, and- by 
 no other system with any thing like the same amount 
 of power, that the hopes and fears of men should be so 
 exclusively excited iowards that hereafter to which she 
 pointed, as to make them imagine that they almost saw 
 the beings who inhabit Paradise or Purgatory. It was 
 the great bourn to which each man was fast hasten- 
 ing. There were stored up the treasures of ages past, 
 and into it had been cast all the talents and powers 
 of the present, in the hope that they would yield vast 
 interest at the last day. A few writings of the same 
 kind had preceded the Divina Comedia ; they were 
 sketches for the great picture. The several writers 
 seemed to delight in showing a close knowledge of the 
 exact limit of every torment, and the infinitesimal 
 ratios that each bore to the rewards of heaven. 
 
 Such was the condition, not only of Italian society, 
 but of all the intelligent society of Europe. It had 
 been preparing for the great spiritual epic. It was 
 an ecclesiastical condition of society. It operated 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAEE, 151 
 
 just as the military struggles between the East and 
 West did on the poets of the earlier ages of society. 
 Dante as much gathered up the several portions of 
 the belief and interests of society, and expressed 
 them in the Divina Comedia, as any other epic poet 
 gathered up and arranged the thoughts of his own age 
 and country. 
 
 Sismondi mentions a curious circumstance of this 
 age. At Florence a public spectacle took place con- 
 sisting of torches representing the flames of Hell ; the 
 bed of Arno was converted into the gulph of perdi- 
 tion, in which were introduced the yells of real persons, 
 apparently exposed at different times to heat and 
 frost. Dante had not the advantage of great pre- 
 ceding historic incident ; but, to a certain degree, the 
 quarrels and factions of the separate Italian states 
 made up for this disadvantage, and he combined the 
 feelings of a very definite and fervid religion with the 
 actual forms of men who had recently passed away amid 
 party contentions. This union of time with eternity ; 
 the present with the future ; of Italy with Paradise, 
 and Florence with Purgatory : of men whose corpses 
 were scarcely chilled with their immortal souls on 
 the other side the barrier of death, formed as magni- 
 ficent a conception as a man could have given limits 
 to. We can imagine what its power must have been, 
 if we could conceive our own people under as full and 
 keen belief of the other world, as the Italians of the 
 thirteenth century were, having brought before them 
 on the stage the actual characters of the late great 
 European war as having received their final judg- 
 
152 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 ment, and occupying the place that is to be theirs for 
 ever ; Napoleon or Wellington, Louis XVI. or Robes- 
 pierre. 
 
 If we can conceive our own people imbued with an 
 implicit belief in the reality and truth of the repre- 
 sentation, we can imagine the estimate with which 
 Dante's poem was received by Europe. Dante 
 blended with the terrors of the Roman Catholic faith 
 the brilliant colours of Greek mythology by the force 
 of his own poetic imagination. The great copyist 
 and imitator of Dante has illustrated with terrible 
 force the poet's description in the "last judgment" 
 of Michael Angelo. 
 
 6. But the incidents of his life give Dante another 
 claim on the interests of mankind. He was born 
 in Florence in the year 1265, of the family of Al- 
 ghieri. At an early age he loved Beatrice, the beau- 
 tiful vision that fleeted to and fro before his mind 
 through the rest of his life. She died before she was 
 twenty-five. His passion for her, which he deemed to 
 be pure, sacred, and ennobling ; his keen sorrow at 
 her death, seem to have wrung out of him his great 
 poem. Poetry is ever as the odour that exudes from 
 the wounded leaf; till broken, though it contains it, it 
 yields no scent, but then bleeds to death, filling the 
 air with its perfume. So the crushed affections have 
 ever found a passage through the deepest poetry, and 
 the broken heart has been the vent for the most 
 intense aspirations. Beatrice constantly appears in 
 the Divina Comedia, now in the form of the loveliest 
 of women, and then in that of heavenly inspiration! 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 153 
 
 In the battle of Campaldino in 1289 Dante fought 
 against the Pisans, in the year immediately subse- 
 quent to the catastrophe of Count Ugolino. He after- 
 wards became magistrate of Florence. At the time 
 of the civil wars between the Bianchi and the Neri, 
 and when Charles of Valois visited Florence to ap- 
 pease the tumult, he banished Dante for having 
 favoured too much, as a magistrate, the faction of the 
 Bianchi. On leaving the city he was condemned to 
 be burnt alive ; he spent the remainder of his days in 
 wandering from court to court, broken-hearted and 
 disappointed alike in public and private life, but ever 
 preserving such indomitable pride as to cause con- 
 tinual discomfort between himself and his hosts. He 
 died in the year 1321 at Ravenna about the time of 
 our own Edward III., and the wars of the Planta- 
 genets against their ancient Suzerains in France. 
 Such were the incidents of the life of this remarkable 
 man. His death was bewailed throughout Italy, and 
 his memory has been respected throughout the civi- 
 lized and literary world ; he is the father of religious 
 allegory, the master of religious poetry in its objective 
 form ; he was the pioneer and regenerator of the in- 
 tellect at the close of the middle ages ; the creator of 
 the Italian language, and the successful harmonist of 
 the teaching of the church with the ordinary events 
 of mankind. 
 
 7. Thus while Dante, in the twelfth and thirteenth The times 
 centuries, gathered together the floating elements of ° an e ' 
 a semi-chivalrous and demi-religious condition of so- 
 ciety, and formed them into his great Epic, which 
 
*154 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 partially represents both those elements, he became at 
 the same time the exponent of a certain condition of 
 European society. The reigns of our own Edwards 
 and of the House of Lancaster in England, with the 
 parallel circumstances of France and continental 
 Europe, marked that period from which we should 
 expect a poem like the Divina Comedia. The Church 
 of Eome had seldom exercised so great and so des- 
 potic an influence over the minds of men ; she had 
 held the universal intellect of Europe in thrall. Gre- 
 gory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII. are 
 three such names as will scarcely find their parallel 
 in so short a space in the history of the world. The 
 influence of the Church of Eome in England during 
 the reign of Henry III., is a sufficient illustration of 
 the powerful impression of the Church on this period 
 generally ; while, at the same time, the strong mili- 
 tary genius of Europe found a vent first in the Crusades, 
 and secondly in the constant disputes between the mon- 
 archs of England and the descendants of Hugh Capet 
 in Paris. But the wakening dawn of intellect illu- 
 mined with a softer light than in other days the coun- 
 tenance of the warlike baron and his military vassal. 
 The spirit of marauding violence melted off into 
 chivalry, and the most intense feeling of which human 
 nature is capable, the passion of love, became the 
 motive and the aim of the warrior. Thus there were 
 three floating elements in society, — the influencing 
 genius of the Church of Eome, the high ambition 
 of military achievement, and the mellowing influence 
 of love, and these three are blent in the Divina 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *155 
 
 Comedia. They stood wide, separate, and simple, — 
 apart from each other, yet united ; they did not, in 
 order to be understood, need the analyzing knife of 
 him who searched into the secrets of human action, 
 nor the observant eye of him who watched the in- 
 tricacies of a largely-developed state of society. 
 
 But the period which followed this was one of a The times 
 totally different character. Society rapidly developed, S p ea re. " 
 its pathways became intricate. On Bosworth Field 
 the first Tudor had blown the trumpet-note of free- 
 dom and protection to trade ; the guild began to 
 rival the cavalcade of the military retainers, and the 
 Hdtels de ville cast their shadow on the castle of 
 the baron. What was true of England was true of 
 the Continent, and the republics of Venice and of 
 Genoa launched merchant fleets on the Adriatic and 
 the Mediterranean. The league of Cambray with 
 its formidable preparation was sufficient to show the 
 jealousy with which the feudal monarchs of Europe 
 eyed the rise of the cities of the sea. Ere long 
 Drake had traversed the world, and the wand of 
 Columbus had made a new continent start from the 
 Pacific. The age of colonies began, and hand-in- 
 hand commerce and colonization traversed the world. 
 
 With this a new condition of society set in. Men 
 no longer met for battle and extermination, but for 
 peaceful intercourse and the increase of the comforts 
 of life. The management of society became a science, 
 and the arrangements of social life a necessary 
 portion of the plans of the politician. Man knew 
 more of man as such; members of society stood 
 
*156 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAKE. 
 
 forward prominently in their respective relationships ; 
 and the father, the brother and the child, the sove- 
 reign, the soldier, and the courtier, became terms 
 expressing distinct ideas, each separate the one from 
 the other. The elements of society were no longer 
 simple, but complicated. Human life was no more 
 one long majestic flow of the epic poem ; but around 
 each separate centre of society were coiled the acts 
 of a dramatic plot. 
 
 Such was a normal condition of society through- 
 out Europe, and it marks the period of our own 
 House of Tudor. Of this spirit Shakspeare was the 
 poet in the same way in which Dante had been of the 
 immediately preceding condition of society. It was 
 natural that England should be the country from 
 which such a poet would spring. The tendency of 
 her own society and the vigorous determination with 
 which she was pursuing the objects of commercial 
 life had cast man with man in a remarkable man- 
 ner, and, more in our own country than in any other 
 of Europe, had given importance and dignity to the 
 separate relationships of life. In connexion with 
 those relationships we think of the great moral laws 
 with which they are bound up, and those great ori- 
 ginal principles on which they are founded — grati- 
 tude, reverence, forgiveness, reciprocal protection, 
 and the like. Each separate play of Shakspeare's 
 brings out a new relationship and a new principle ; 
 and in seeing how his writings represent the second 
 great epoch of regenerated society, it will be inte- 
 resting to examine their separate p^,rts. 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *157 
 
 8. One great virtue of Shakspeare's descriptions of 
 character is that they are so separate from each 
 other and so true to nature. This is true of hut 
 few great poets of the past in the way that it is of 
 him. It is true of some. The distinction between 
 Antigone and Ismene declares Sophocles to be a 
 discriminator of female character ; while the clear 
 outlines of Andromache and Hecuba deservedly give 
 to Homer a claim to a similar position. 
 
 It must be remembered that I am speaking now 
 not of the calibre of Shakspeare's genius generally, nor 
 of his peculiar powers of philosophic analysis, of mas- 
 terly expression, or of effective poetry ; I am dealing 
 with him, as with Dante and with Goethe, as being 
 the exponent of a certain age in the history of lite- 
 rature and developing civilization ; and in immediate 
 connexion with the mode in which he expresses the 
 social characteristics of those centuries that intervene 
 between the Italian and German poet my illustrations 
 must be borrowed from his pages. But before I pro- 
 ceed to give them, I will revert to what I have said 
 with respect to the fitness of England as the birth- 
 place, the cradle, and the school of dramatic poetry. In 
 proportion as a nation develops her social character- 
 istics, she will present to the eye of the poet that con- 
 dition which will be best described by him in the drama. 
 We have had many poets both before and since Shak- 
 speare, and many of them with apparently contrary 
 tendencies to him ; but exactly in that proportion as 
 they had not been strictly and genuinely English, they 
 have departed from his standard. The great father 
 
*158 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAKE. 
 
 of our British school, Chaucer, may be ranked in that 
 period of poetry which may be considered as the trans- 
 ition between the ballad and the epic; but he was 
 so more by the accidents of his age than by his own 
 inherent genius, which was dramatic The very plan 
 of his great work, The Canterbury Tales, clearly shows 
 this. He conceives a body of persons meeting at a 
 hostel; they each tell their own tale; there is the 
 priest, the merchant, the wife, the nun, the monk, 
 and the soldier ; they all tell their story with a dis- 
 tinctiveness and a separateness that makes us feel 
 we are reading a page of Shakspeare rather than of 
 Chaucer, of the Elizabethan rather than of the Plan- 
 tagenet period ; and were it not for the medley of the 
 different languages, out of which Chaucer had to form 
 his own, and from the constant Gallicism of his style, 
 we could be deceived into the idea that we were reading 
 the pages of the poet of Stratford rather than those of 
 the protege" of John of Gaunt. Passing over Chaucer 
 the few men of any note who intervene between him 
 and Spenser show the same dramatic tendency. They 
 delight especially in the poetry that describes the rela- 
 tion of man to man, naturally springing from the con- 
 dition of society in our own country, which was daily 
 setting in towards one of a strictly domestic character. 
 If we contrast the school, of which we may con- 
 sider Chaucer the chief, with the three great Ita- 
 lians who were writing near the same period, Dante, 
 Petrarch, and Boccaccio, we shall see more clearly 
 the truth of this position. If, however, we take 
 our stand on a ground as far on this side Shak- 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *159 
 
 speare as Chaucer was on the other, we shall find 
 the same apparent difficulty and the same solution. 
 Wordsworth appears any thing but dramatic; the 
 object of his intellectual contemplation is physical 
 nature, not man ; and where he does touch on man 
 he is not clear, distinctive, and analytic. But he was 
 not English in those respects in which he was undra- 
 matic. He was the disciple of the German school of 
 thought. ■ Very much the same might be shown of all 
 that school of poetry ranging from Dryden to Byron. 
 
 9. And now to return to our own great bard. In 
 the descriptions of social life he is clear, unmistake- 
 able, and accurate. 
 
 I will take, for instance, his appreciation of The cha- 
 woman in the varied phases of her more youthful of C s ^. cs 
 career. As distinct as and still more lovely than the s P eare ' s 
 
 J _ poetry. 
 
 colours of the prism, separate yet blending into 
 an elementary ray, are his imaginations of Ophe- 
 lia, Desdemona, Cordelia, Miranda, Portia in The 
 Merchant of Venice, and Beatrice. While Ophelia 
 represents the girl whose tenacity of affection can find 
 no stable support on which to lean, Desdemona de- 
 scribes woman in her youth and power, having found 
 the object worthy of her love, and determining to 
 cling to it even to death. Cordelia, with all her 
 peculiarity, represents fairly that equibalance in affec- 
 tion which is sometimes the property of a woman, 
 an affection which led her at first apparently to place 
 in the background the parent for the idea of the 
 husband, and at last induced her to leave for a 
 time that husband to die for the parent whom 
 
*160 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEA11E. 
 
 she had seemed to neglect. Miranda, with the 
 power to love has found no object, and when at 
 last she finds one, takes him for an angel or a 
 magician. The sweetest simplicity is the charm 
 of her character. Her affections wandered over the 
 realms of imagination in search of an ideal ; she 
 found one, and she stood astonished, delighted, and 
 satisfied. Portia, controlling her power to love, paused 
 before she gave it, and represents that class, in whom 
 the affections are under the control of reason. Bea- 
 trice, like Rosalind, possessed the feeling of love, 
 played with it as a toy, striving, though in vain, to 
 view it objectively to herself. 
 Female These six represent the principal characteristics of 
 
 'fSh'k™ woman ™ relation to her powers of affection. To see 
 speare. how clearly and distinctly Shakspeare has described 
 them, consider the passages which illustrate them, — 
 that, for instance, in which Ophelia, like the frailest 
 vine, reaches towards the support which, rising in 
 sight, so coyly eludes her every effort. If for a 
 moment there might be an impression that the 
 character of Ophelia is overdrawn, imagine those 
 multitudes who are born with powers and tendencies 
 for which they are never to find a satisfying object, 
 and we shall have little reason to condemn Hamlet 
 for unreality in this particular. 
 
 But each of his separate characters is based upon 
 an original moral principle. That of Ophelia rests 
 upon the truth that it is incumbent upon every one 
 to reciprocate, and not to trifle with the feelings of 
 another. 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAUE. *] 61 
 
 The central thought of Hamlet, on which the 
 play is fixed, and consequently, on which the fragile 
 column of Ophelia rests — oscillating and vibrating in 
 its sweet proportions — is that of the necessity of the 
 equipoise of the human mind, wittingly and consci- 
 ously upset in Hamlet, so unwittingly thrown off 
 their balance by Hamlet's rude unkindness in the fair 
 Ophelia, so well poised in Laertes. 
 
 The basis and foundation stone of Othello, from 
 which the character of Desdemona like a stately 
 column rises, is the virtue of trust and the vice of 
 suspicion. The great moral lesson of Lear, which as 
 a dark background throws out the luminous form of 
 Cordelia, is the virtue of grateful love, and the re- 
 ciprocal virtue of appreciating it, together with the 
 contradictories of each of them. Cordelia loved, 
 and Lear at first refused to appreciate it ; Cordelia 
 from grateful filial affection loved on still, and the old 
 man at last learnt to appreciate the lovely attribute. 
 The basis thought of The Tempest, which throws out 
 Miranda to our gaze, is the beauty of character that 
 may be produced alike by the deepest experience 
 in life, and the most complete inexperience. Pros- 
 pero had thoroughly seen man and the world, and, 
 having been disappointed in both, was yet able in the 
 evening of life to sit wrapped in calm repose, philoso- 
 phizing and soliloquizing on the fleeting phantoms of 
 them both, as they hurried colourless away into the 
 realms of distant twilight. His is the perfection of 
 the result of experience ; philosophy amid ruins ; 
 Socrates with the poison in his hand, yet preaching 
 
*162 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 eternal truth to coming ages. Miranda, having seen 
 nothing of man or the world, when she first saw them 
 was lost in admiration at their beauty. Hers was 
 guileless simplicity, the result of inexperience: a 
 gentle moth of evening gazing in musing ecstasy upon 
 the flame of coloured light seen for the first time. 
 Prospero rises like the stately oak of the forest, 
 triumphant in majestic power over the shocks of half 
 a decade of centuries. Miranda clings to him like 
 the ivy round the oak, for the first time out-topping 
 the boughs which hitherto concealed it from the 
 sunshine, and now seeming to frolic in the glorious 
 and new-found glory. 
 
 The leading lesson of As you tike it is, as I have 
 shown in a former lecture, the influence of natural 
 scenery on man. Eosalind starts up from amidst the 
 clinging eglantines and wandering brambles of the 
 forest. While Much Ado about Nothing has for 
 its substratum the great and important lesson, that 
 the will of man must, unless it be superseded by 
 a higher law, yield in spite of itself to the impulse of 
 nature and the arrangement of circumstance. 
 
 I will take six more of Shakspeare's female cha- 
 racters, equally based on original and moral lessons, 
 — Margaret of Anjou, Constance, Queen Catharine, 
 Brutus's Portia, Volumnia, and Lady Percy. These 
 all belong to the more heroic type of woman : the 
 Eoman matron and the British queen. 
 
 While the passion of Margaret of Anjou resembles 
 to a certain degree that of Lady Constance, it has its 
 very distinctive feature of difference. The intense 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *163 
 
 and fervid feeling of the former was a habitual con- 
 dition of mind which was ever seeking for an expres- 
 sion ; and whether she had mated with the weak scion 
 of Lancaster, or the courtly Suffolk, whether the 
 bloody battles of St. Albans or Tewkesbury had been 
 the scene of her life, or the vineyards of Provence 
 and the beautiful capital of the Two Sicilies, it would 
 have been the same. On the other hand, the high 
 passion of Lady Constance was the accident of her 
 nature ; rather the excessive outbreak of maternal 
 affection than the expression of a naturally violent 
 disposition. This contrast which is so frequently 
 seen in life between the settled bent of disposition 
 and the influence of accidental circumstance, is ad- 
 mirably pourtrayed by Shakspeare in Henry VI. and 
 King John. While in the same way the shades of 
 distinction are equally melting, yet defined, in the 
 affections of the matron and the wife, as instanced 
 in Catharine of Aragon, Lady Percy, and Brutus's 
 Portia. The first of these three expresses the 
 assertion of that right which every woman has a 
 claim to, and which is perfectly consistent with the 
 most admirable affection to her husband ; Lady Percy 
 represents that absorption of a woman's love in the 
 object of her worship, which kindles so lively an in- 
 terest in the bystander, and forms so essential a 
 characteristic in the description of woman. The claim 
 put forward by Portia is to the right of participation 
 in the secrets and inmost thoughts of her husband, 
 and which in the character of Cato's daughter is shown 
 to be consistent with dignity and independence. 
 l 2 
 
*164 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 10. But this is scarcely the place to catalogue the 
 characters of our great poet over against their leading 
 moral lessons ; though in concluding these remarks 
 on the general bearing of Shakspeare's poetry, it 
 might be as well to show upon what moral basis the 
 general lessons of his dramas seem to be founded. 
 ^°^ 1 c Macbeth seems to have been intended, as I 
 
 truths of 
 
 Shaks- have shown in a previous lecture, to illustrate the 
 poetry. gradual process of moral declension. Othello, the 
 culpability of a suspicious temperament, and the tre- 
 mendous power which a clever villain possesses to work 
 upon it. Lear, of course, the sin of ingratitude and 
 the querulousness of age. Julius Ccesar, the versatility 
 of Roman circumstance and character ; and Coriolanm 
 contains the single expression of the Roman aristo- 
 crat. Henry V. represents the high perfection to 
 which the English character can be produced, and 
 Which found so admirable an opportunity in the illus- 
 trious house of Lancaster. Henry IV. shows the 
 penitential attitude of a powerful mind convinced of 
 having erred : , and the certain retribution which will 
 follow even the royal penitent for the sins of usurpa- 
 tion and rebellion ; while the leading lesson of Richard 
 II. is the insane folly of imagining that even in the 
 highest walks of life we can substitute ideals for 
 reality, and walk securely merely because we have 
 draped ourselves in the folds of the mantle of an ab- 
 straction. Henry VIII. and King John are more 
 immediately historical plays finding their lead- 
 ing moral lesson in the by-play of their female cha- 
 racters ; the same may be said of Richard III. While 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *165 
 
 the three parts of Henry VI. bring before us, in rapid 
 succession, that vast array of aristocracy which were 
 led out, like victims to a holocaust, and offered be- 
 fore the altar of the rising commonalty of England. 
 
 Such was the genius of Shakspeare; such the 
 niche that he occupies in the great temple of philo- 
 sophic literature ; the painter of human nature in the 
 varied groups of advancing social life, for which both 
 his country and his age gave him so vast an aptitude. 
 
 11. I now turn to the third great poet of modern 
 ages, — Goethe. 
 
 It was the destiny of Germany to follow in Germany. 
 the wake of nations, and though no people were 
 more suited than hers to originate great designs, 
 it has rather been her lot to come late in the 
 order of time in the history of the world. It would 
 be a question of no ordinary interest, to investi- 
 gate the causes of that deep and subjective character 
 which has marked all her movements, and what it 
 was originally that severed her with so keen a 
 stroke from France, in some respects originally her 
 kindred state. France, the home and centre of 
 objective character, brilliant, shallow, and unfinished ! 
 In forms of government the contrast between 
 Germany and her neighbour is remarkable. But 
 even more remarkable still is the contrast between 
 Germany and France with respect to that deep sub- 
 jective thought and informal system which the chil- 
 dren of the former adopted. 
 
 It has been' in later ages that Germany has 
 developed this characteristic. Italy was intellectu- 
 
*166 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEABE. 
 
 ally the prevailing genius of the middle ages. Genius 
 there took the form of an easy objectivity, suggested 
 for the first time by the definite system of the 
 Church. Shakspeare is the poet of the transition 
 period. When the influence of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race was beginning to be peculiarly felt, the power of 
 that genius was exercised on the detail of social life. 
 But there is a deeper condition of man than either of 
 these — the mind and the moral sense. The image of 
 God in which he was created. It was the province of 
 Germany especially to attempt to fathom this depth. 
 She did so at the Reformation, when bringing the im- 
 mediate teaching of the Church of Rome to the stand- 
 ard of her own interior judgment she worked out that 
 result which broke up the unity and integrity of 
 Christendom. 
 Goethe. But the great poet of her mind was to rise later 
 
 of thought. m 0I "der of time, and Goethe did not write or 
 flourish until the conclusion of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Before he rose the German nation had been 
 impregnated by French philosophy, and the tenets 
 of Voltaire and the worship of reason. This 
 school which could satisfy the French mind be- 
 came too apparently shallow to satisfy Germany, 
 and the errors of the school were eradicated by 
 those who substituted for it a poetical and aesthetic 
 philosophy, along whose deeper stream of waters 
 Goethe and Schiller were rapidly carried. But the 
 waters soon divided into two separate channels : the 
 one reflecting images which were dreamy, fanciful, 
 and sensuous, and the other presenting to the eye of 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *167 
 
 society those more glorious images of nature, and 
 the depth of the human mind, which ere long deve- 
 loped into a system of more direct pantheism. It 
 is to this period and condition of thought in Germany 
 that Goethe belongs, and we see clearly mirrored 
 upon his poetry the condition of society in Germany 
 and the more thinking part of Europe at large. 
 
 The first effort of Goethe was in strict union with 
 the dislike borne by the German mind to objective 
 truth of any kind. Authority, law, order, govern- 
 ment, all equally became the objects of attack, 
 inasmuch as they were supposed to impose external 
 limits of an arbitrary nature upon the freedom and 
 originality of the deeper mind of man. Under 
 these influences Goethe wrote his Egmont; while 
 the Natural Daughter, his third work in point of 
 importance, is strongly tinged with those principles 
 which were so intimately mixed up with the French 
 revolution. About the same time his Stella and 
 other writings show that he had a sympathy with 
 that other school which I designated above as 
 dreamy, fanciful, and sensuous. But whatever pe- 
 culiarity or distinctiveness there was in Goethe's 
 writings, they are all combined and brought at 
 once to the eye in his Faust. This remarkable 
 work speaks the age and time of Goethe's age and 
 country. It expressed the consciousness that the 
 mind of man was limitless by external law, and that 
 heaven itself should be brought down to its judgment- 
 bar to receive its dicta and maxims. This ended 
 
*168 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 practically very much in the same kind of deism in 
 opposition to which Goethe's school set out. 
 
 In contrast with Shakspeare Goethe represents 
 the human being as simply governed by internal 
 law ; while Shakspeare appeals to the direct teaching 
 of Scripture and the Church; or to that great 
 external moral philosophy which has received the 
 common consent of mankind. Faust appears only to 
 recognize things as happening by chance. It denies 
 particular providence ; and moral necessity through- 
 out this masterpiece of the poet is not the result of 
 God's external law, but is a certain power working 
 in the mind and energizing upwards. Destiny, con- 
 sequently, and fate are not with Goethe as they are 
 with Shakspeare, the result of an action between 
 the divine and human will ; but it is the consequence 
 of the deep destination of man, which lies without 
 itself, and in connexion with his own individual na- 
 ture,. In Goethe's idea God is the operating cause 
 of all things, the Supreme Being — that is all. 
 Faust. Another feature of Faust is the peculiar mode in 
 
 which Goethe treats external nature, which is best 
 seen in contrast with Shakspeare's mode of treating of 
 the same in Midsummer Nighfs Dream, The Tempest, 
 and As you like it. Shakspeare treats of it in its con- 
 crete form, erecting principles upon its facts. Goethe, 
 on the other hand, discovers certain innate ideas and 
 abstractions in the human mind, of which the objects of 
 nature are but the illustrations ; and this various mode 
 of the treatment of natural scenery leads ; to very 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAKE. *169 
 
 important differences in the result. Here, then, are 
 three leading features of Goethe's peculiar school 
 of thought : the one affecting his views of law ; the 
 second, his views of God ; and the third, his views of 
 nature ; and the combination of these three principles 
 coalescing with each other, in the mode in which 
 Goethe treats them, forms a school of thought in the 
 world quite as distinctive and important as that of 
 Dante or of Shakspeare. 
 
 The history of Goethe's mind is this ; he is inte- 
 rested in attributing religion to the gradual inte- 
 rior working of the mind; that mind must per- 
 sonally and for each individual search into every 
 thing, test every thing by its own standard, reject 
 or accept every thing according to its own deci- 
 sion, reach its own results either of failure or 
 success without reference to an external standard or 
 dependence on an external grace. Faust is an illus- 
 tration of all this ; his own intuitive perceptions; of 
 truth; his reasonings with them, his trial of them 
 by his own interior standard ; his discussions with 
 Mephistophiles ; his tremendous descent from theo- 
 retic philosophy to practical profligacy; his keen 
 susceptibility of external temptations; his sad 
 pleadings with Margaret ; his final fall, and his sub- 
 sequent despair ; all of them together present a wild 
 and terrible picture, like some of those storm pieces 
 of Panini's, or Annibale Caracci's, over which no ray 
 of light is beaming amid the tossing boughs and 
 rolling clouds, except where the lurid light of the 
 tempest gathers on the horizon. 
 
*170 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 No internal struggle of the separate Divine Spirit ; 
 no portraiture of external Christianity ; no grace from 
 heaven ; no pardon or hope illumined for a moment his 
 solitary and individual path. Placed in a situation of 
 the direst temptation, he seeks to discover truth for 
 himself, and to pursue it unaided. The desire to seek 
 truth becomes gradually weaker than the longing to 
 do wrong : no preventing grace crosses his pathway. 
 He falls, and with him drags down to ruin an innocent 
 being ; having done this, remorse but no repentance 
 occupies his soul, and the curtain drops. 
 
 Such is Faust, and such is Goethe. The style of 
 Goethe is like the pictures of Boccaccio, dreamy, 
 melancholy, and softened ; not requiring those keen, 
 rigid, and fiery expressions of Shakspeare, which 
 belong peculiarly to objective poetry. The poetry of 
 Goethe has generally the same caste, and the same 
 moral bearing. He belongs peculiarly to his own 
 age and country. The opinions of the past were 
 dying out. 
 
 The fervid and glowing objects which Dante saw, 
 belonged especially to the keen faith which man had 
 in the portraiture which the Church gave of the 
 objects of Eternity. Shakspeare fell back upon the 
 condition of man and social order; a step retro- 
 gressive in one sense as compared with the position 
 of Dante. But the volcano had not yet done heav- 
 ing ; credit was yet to be shaken in a belief in any 
 settled external rule which might govern man ; and 
 the intuitions of the separate and individual mind 
 were by degrees to be looked upon as the only source 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEAEE. *1 71 
 
 of truth. This school came in the natural course of 
 things after the other two, and if we consider society 
 as reaching an end through development and progress, 
 the poetry of Goethe will be nearly among the last 
 steps in its advance. The fact however is otherwise, 
 for while society oscillates in her advance between the 
 extremes of despotism and anarchy, truth is one, 
 simple, and eternal. The school of thought repre- 
 sented by Goethe is untrue to eternal Truth in the 
 proportion in which it was affected by the social 
 and political developments of man only. 
 
 12. If I were simply dwelling upon the works of Dante, 
 three individuals and nothing more, the view that I a nd Goethe.' 
 have been taking might appear fanciful ; but inasmuch 
 as these three — Dante, Shakspeare, and Goethe, — are 
 the exponents of three world-wide principles, and 
 more than that, of three distinct stages of the advance 
 of civilization, it is otherwise. It would be scarcely 
 possible for any observant mind, to study the history 
 of the last eight centuries of European society, with- 
 out feeling that the centres around which all the 
 great circles of civilization coil were the periods 
 of the Italian, the English, and the German poets. 
 The soul of man, taught by the external law of 
 God; the estate of man, formed by the arrange- 
 ment of human circumstance; the mind of man, 
 formed by its own instinctive reflections and aspi- 
 rations, are the three elements alike of the indi- 
 vidual and of the collective body. Dante repre- 
 sents the first of these; our own dramatist the 
 second ; and the German philosopher the third. The 
 
*172 DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEABE. 
 
 leading circumstances belonging to the age of each, 
 catch the reflection of the same light. The wars of 
 the Crusades had scarcely ceased to echo along the 
 shores of Eastern Europe when Dante began to write. 
 The wars of the Roses and the struggles of the 
 reign of Louis XL, signs as they were of the im- 
 proved estate of mankind, marked the period of 
 Shakspeare. While the mind of man, freed from 
 the shackles which age had imposed upon it, was 
 striving to the heaven of its new-found liberty at the 
 close of the eighteenth century, which marks the 
 period of Goethe. 
 
 I have dwelt at greater length on these three poets, 
 not only from their several intrinsic merits which are 
 great ; not so much because they are the centres of 
 three distinct schools of thought and modes of ex- 
 pression ; not because they succeed each other in the 
 natural steps of advance in the history of poetry ; not 
 because they represent the three nations of the world, 
 which, with the exception of one, have by their chac 
 racteristics mainly influenced civilization; but be- 
 cause they occupy the true and noblest position of 
 the poet, that of the exponent, and the developer of 
 the principles of their respective periods. 
 
 Poets have ever been, in this way, the index of 
 their own times ; and if any one wished to find, in a 
 short compass, the history of any given period in his 
 own or other countries, he could scarcely do better 
 than to select the leading poets of each period, and 
 minutely study the internal evidence which they give. 
 And though I have taken Dante, Shakspeare, and 
 
DANTE, GOETHE, AND SHAKSPEARE. *173 
 
 Goethe, it is not that there are not very many others 
 who would with equal force illustrate the principle 
 under consideration. When the scarcely-arranged 
 elements of society lay scattered around the civilized 
 portions of the early world; and natural affections, 
 acts of heroism, and occasionally godlike virtues, 
 stood out in their separate distinctness in the as 
 yet complicated conditions of society, Homer became 
 the exponent of that state of things, and thereby 
 stood forward as the historian of his own period. 
 And when, in the advance of English civilization, 
 the unsettled conditions of language, the undeter- 
 mined relationships of the varied bodies of the eccle- 
 siastical and civil community, and the unsettled 
 aims of the Plantagenets had hitherto prevented the 
 consolidation of the English character, Chaucer rose, 
 and by his masterly descriptions stereotyped for after 
 ages the condition of his own day. The position of 
 the poet is full of responsibility ; he must to the re- 
 trospective eye of the future occupy a position from 
 the prominence of which he may shrink now. He is 
 not only a great moral teacher, but he is bound fairly 
 and truthfully to preserve to after ages the forms 
 which belong to the scenes and the period in which 
 he is acting. 
 
LECTUEE TIL 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Analytic 1. If we can imagine • an intelligent being coming 
 
 plied to BP " from a world where only barren rocks and deserts of 
 history sand meet the eye, and where vegetation had never 
 been known ; if we can imagine his arrival upon our 
 earth for the first time ; and if day after day, watch- 
 ing a plant, he were to observe its gradual develop- 
 ment, its bud, its blossom, and at length its maturity 
 in the seed, — we might suppose that the first question 
 which such an intelligent being would ask would be, 
 " What is that from which this plant comes ? What 
 is that which gives to it its peculiar developing cha- 
 racteristic, its tendency to progress ? What is it that 
 endows it with the capability of gradually opening 
 itself, and of becoming one day more than it was on 
 the day before?" And such question would find its 
 solution in the original seed of the plant. Now in 
 the same manner as such a person would be led to 
 ask these questions, so if, taking up a history of any 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 155 
 
 other country and opening it, we find that certain 
 changes appear to have taken place as the history 
 advanced ; that the complexion of events happening 
 in one age differ materially from those transpiring in 
 another; that, according to the record we hold in 
 our hand, the constitution and government of that 
 nation are by no means the same one century as they 
 were a century before, — we ask, " What was the be- 
 ginning of this ? from whence did it spring ? What 
 was the seed from which this progressive government 
 has burst ? What was the first embryo from which 
 this power of development issued ? since not only is 
 there a manifest capacity for growth and increase, 
 but also a tendency to open out in one certain direc- 
 tion." And here lies the point of the study of his- 
 tory. Its tales and facts, however brilliant; its 
 pictures of characters and events, however gorgeous ; 
 its pageant of passing centuries and empires moving 
 on from their infancy to their dissolution, — may arrest 
 with their vivid imagery the imagination of a youth, 
 or engage the interest of a man : but this is not their 
 point ; when they have achieved this, they have not 
 gained their true end. The legend of Coriolanus, the 
 winter march of Hannibal over the precipices of Mount 
 Oenis, the dreamy glory of Cleopatra and Mark An- 
 tony, may rivet the attention and delight the fancy of 
 the reader of Roman history ; but their true work is 
 something beyond, their true province is to be the 
 food of the philosophic mind. 
 
 2. The tale of the Mons Sacer, the tragedy of Vir- 
 ginia, the sedition of Gracchus, to a thinking mind 
 
156 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 mark distinct changes in constitutional history, while 
 to the casual and unintelligent reader they are merely 
 a string of brilliant and disconnected facts. The 
 youngest English child has pored delighted over the 
 story of the Lion-hearted Islander and the battle of 
 Ascalon, and has been able to point to the page 
 where the accounts of Oressy and Poictiers filled him 
 with pride at the greatness of English chivalry ; he 
 will pass on to the Wars of the Roses, and pity the 
 tragedy of the religious Henry VI., and the martyr- 
 dom of Charles Stuart ; but to the philosophic mind 
 these facts become keys to the constitutional history 
 of our country, and the names of Richard I., Ed- 
 ward III., and Henry V. are mixed up with manifest 
 tendencies in the characters and habits of the people 
 they ruled : names become the indices of principles, 
 and great events become merged in their motive his- 
 tory, which lies beneath their gorgeous surface. 
 
 The chief aim and object, then, must be to fasten 
 on and to classify facts, and to discern principles 
 from those facts; and this is the manner in which 
 one who is anxious and in a position to benefit his 
 country will use the incidents of historic truth. From 
 those facts he will discover principles, constitutional 
 tendencies, lessons of experience, from which he will 
 be able to benefit his people by evoking a constitution 
 which has been framed originally according to some 
 inherent wants, and by avoiding such rocks and 
 quicksands as such facts show other statesmen to 
 have split on. With this view, national events be- 
 come invested with an importance which passes esti- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 157 
 
 mation ; and the knowledge of the past becomes es- 
 sential to the guidance and direction of the present. 
 
 To the thinking mind it is at once matter of in- 
 quiry, How is it that in the successive ages of Eoman 
 greatness and decline I trace the same tendency still 
 moving on, the same claims to some original right ; 
 a claim and a tendency which those shocks which 
 well-nigh shivered to the dust the Eternal City age 
 after age have never been able to obliterate or de- 
 stroy; alike existing in her infant condition, alike 
 when she was mistress of the known world, alike when 
 she lay a heap of ruins under the masses of northern 
 invasions ; a tendency claimed as a constitutional pri- 
 vilege by the Plebs on Mons Sacer, by the advocates 
 of the Agrarian law, in the struggles of the Gracchi ; 
 and far onwards, by the strange and evanescent rule 
 of Rienzi the Tribune ? The inquiring mind asks the 
 question, and he finds its solution in the constitution 
 of Servius Tullius. In the same manner the interior 
 history of the struggles of King John with his barons, 
 the legislation of Edward I., the policy of Elizabeth, 
 and the convulsions of the reign of Charles I., lead 
 our attention up to some constitutional germ, some 
 original seed, from which the whole national plant 
 has sprung, and which it is the object of this lecture 
 to trace and to discover. 
 
 The natural question of a thoughtful mind will be, 
 " What was the beginning of this government \ on 
 what are the various claims of contending parties 
 fixed % what tangle are they trying to unravel V If 
 we examine in the most cursory manner the parlia- 
 
158 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 mentary struggles of the reign of Charles Stuart, the 
 attempted resistance of the House of Commons against 
 the demands of Elizabeth Tudor, or the continual de- 
 sire of Henry VII. to support the interest of the last 
 estate,— we shall immediately see that the occasion 
 of it all was an assertion in each instance by one 
 party or the other of claims and rights founded on 
 some inherent constitutional structure. If the con- 
 stitution was such as we find it to have been in the 
 reign of the first Charles and the first James, what 
 was it in the earliest beginning which gave these dif- 
 ferent characters, and made each party imagine they 
 had a right to assert their various claims ? 
 
 This will be the true thread of our history from 
 Henry Plantagenet to the present day; the hand 
 which has given a complexion to all the events of 
 successive reigns and dynasties. In resisting this 
 original constitution some of the greatest convulsions 
 were excited, which shook the firmness of the most 
 secure thrones. In managing and guiding this were 
 called out the talents, policy, intrigues, and pecu- 
 liarities of personal characters among our sovereigns ; 
 and in yielding to this from time to time has been 
 sometimes the salvation, and at other times the ruin, 
 of the monarch who adopted the one course or the 
 other. It was this constitutional tendency which 
 called out into full play the powers of intrigue and 
 diplomacy so skilfully used by the Tudors, and which 
 proved the ruin of the more conscientious and scru- 
 pulous Stuart ; and the struggles which marked the 
 first centuries of English history have continued in 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 159 
 
 different forms within the memory of the youngest 
 amongst us. 
 
 Led on by these manifest appearances to inquire 
 into causes, we are induced to apply the same process 
 which the chemist would in the discovery of a poison- 
 ous element in a compound, or a logician in his dis- 
 section of an argument : we reduce our subject-matter 
 into its constituent parts. 
 
 It will appear that there has been one distinct ten- 
 dency from the beginning towards the development 
 of the power and influence of the Commons. 
 
 We at once find that our population is principally 
 divided into two classes, the one of which appears 
 very much to swell that estate whose development 
 has been the cause of so many constitutional agita- 
 tions ; and by passing our eye along the lines of our 
 population, we arrive at last at the original division 
 into Norman and Saxon, which in the earliest times 
 was nearly as much the cause of agitation among the 
 inhabitants of England, as the rivalry of the old three 
 tribes and the plebs and populus enfranchised by Ser- 
 vius Tullius became at Rome. 
 
 3. The Britons, as you know, are esteemed to have The Bri- 
 been the first inhabitants of England. They were 
 rude and wild, fond of a wandering and unsettled life, 
 much under the influence of the Druids, who were 
 their priests, who ministered at their altars, ordered 
 their religious duties, and educated the young ; they 
 seem to have been alike judges in criminal matters as 
 they were arbiters in religious ceremonies ; they prac- 
 tised human sacrifices, and were deeply and violently 
 
160 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 attached to the most degraded form of idolatry which 
 ever marked mankind, except perhaps in the case of 
 the original Gauls. 
 
 But I should first remind you that there have been 
 three vast masses of population which have at various 
 times spread themselves over Europe ; three succes- 
 sive billows which rolled onwards towards the western 
 portion of our continent, until arrested by the shores 
 of the Atlantic. The Celts, the Goths, and the Scla- 
 vonians, in their own successive times, poured forth 
 their hordes over those countries which to this mo- 
 ment retain their names, their languages, their habits 
 of life, and their modes of government. 
 The Celta. 4. The Celts were the first who placed the Danube 
 behind them in their passage from Asia to the West ; 
 and lingering awhile on the fertile banks of our great 
 continental rivers, they were impelled onward by the 
 Gothic invasions, till they stood astonished on the 
 shores of a vast and untraversed ocean. Checked by 
 the Atlantic in their front, and pressed by the Goths 
 in their rear, the Celts were driven into this side of 
 Europe as their final settlement ; and their pursuers 
 were soon compelled to meet the same fate by the 
 advance of the great Sclavonic population. 
 
 In the earliest dawn of history we find the Celts 
 occupying the greater part of Europe ; they are re- 
 ferred to by Herodotus, and described by Csesar ; at 
 the time of the latter they occupied Spain, Gaul, and 
 Britain. This island they seem to have invaded at 
 various times, and to have settled on the banks of the 
 Thames ; separated into ten tribes, south of the Se- 
 
ENGLISH HISTOKY. 161 
 
 vera and that river, they divided with the aboriginal 
 inhabitants the island we inhabit. Rude in life and 
 dress and manners, these Celtic colonists, a branch 
 of the Belgse, were far advanced in civilisation beyond 
 their aboriginal neighbours in the North; for they 
 were satisfied with the caves of the earth for their 
 homes, and the shelter of heaven alone for the cover- 
 ing of their bodies. We know little of the mode of 
 government adopted by these original inhabitants; 
 they were quarrelsome and rapacious, and seem to 
 have been governed by chieftains elected by their 
 tribes. Despite their barbarity, they had received 
 and had been converted to Christianity, as some say, 
 by St. Paul himself, and were already distinguished 
 for some theological controversy. Such were the 
 original inhabitants of England ; allied by their Celtic 
 origin to the occupiers of Brittany, they have had 
 but slight influence on the government or features of 
 the country they claimed as their own from the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 Very different from the original races of Greece, Compari- 
 who, rising from the green valleys of Thessaly, and Greek abo- 
 pouring through the rocky defiles of Pindus and ri si nes - 
 Olympus, spread their adventurous tribes of wanderers 
 into Arcadia, which opened before them like a second 
 Thessaly. Taking root where they first settled, their 
 original charaeter, as from a seed, sent forth that 
 plant which threw out from its leaves and blossoms 
 the refinements, the luxuries, the taste, the literature 
 of ancient Greece, borrowed and copied by the Eter- 
 nal City, pointed to as the standard of truth and 
 
 M 
 
162 ENGLISH HISTOEY. 
 
 taste by the philosophic train of Lorenzo de 1 Medicis, 
 and gazed on now with respect and admiration, 
 though their temples are ruins, and their language 
 corrupt. The aboriginal tribes of Greece were Hel- 
 lenic, and the civilisation of her proudest day was 
 Hellenic still. Not so with Britain. There is a chasm 
 between her aboriginal and Celtic history and that of 
 her Saxon and Norman invaders, which has prevented 
 her earliest tendencies from affecting the constitutions 
 or manners of later days. 
 
 I have made this reference to the aboriginal races 
 and earliest colonists of our island, not from its im-' 
 mediate connexion with the subject of this lecture, 
 but from the interest of the parallel which may be 
 drawn from the influence which such aborigines have 
 had, or have not had on the future constitutions of 
 their countries. 
 Roman in- 5. At an early period the Britons were conquered by 
 the Romans, who remained here for about five hundred 
 years, and in that time attempted, but in vain, to adopt 
 the same successful and generous system which they 
 used in other countries, to leave their subjugated po- 
 pulation the use of their own customs and laws. The 
 eagles of Rome soared over victories as noble, in the 
 forests of Hertfordshire and Shropshire, as they had 
 ever done in Gaul or the East ; but they were opposed 
 by a determination as resolute and more persevering? 
 and the names of Cassivelaunus, Oaraetacus, and 
 Boadicea, have earned as high a place in the rank of 
 patriotic warriors as Arminius, Mithridates, or Ju- 
 gurtha. It was in the bosoms of British warriors 
 
 vasion. 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 163 
 
 that some of the proudest soldiers of Borne first tried 
 their steel, and in the woods of our own Sussex and 
 Kent that Theodosius and Oonstantius first wore the 
 purple. But splendid victories and triumphs were not 
 sufficient to subdue a people who preferred liberty to 
 life, and death to the dishonour of their homes ; and 
 the spirit that burst from the proud soul of Carac- 
 tacus on the lofty sides of Caer Caradoc, when he 
 inspired his troops who lined the river with the same 
 energy which breathed in himself, continued to swell in 
 the bosoms of British chieftains for years after Carac- 
 tacus had been led a chained captive before Claudius 
 in Borne. 
 
 Partly overcome by the perseverance of these in- 
 domitable foes, the Bomans relinquished England, 
 leaving behind them but few marks save the ruins of 
 stupendous fortifications and the lines of their camps 
 and roads. The ditch of Hadrian and the wall of Se- 
 verus are still visited by travellers to Scotland ; the 
 camp of Caesar may still be traced where he defeated 
 Cassivelaunus at St. Albans. Caesar, Tacitus, and 
 Suetonius will tell you much of Boman Britain. My 
 object in this lecture is to trace up to its original 
 head the constitution of England, and the Boman 
 conquest is scarcely a link in the chain : they made 
 but little impression on the savage mind ; they sub^ 
 jugated, but did not mould it ; and Britain remained 
 what it was before, except that its spirit was nearly 
 gone, and its natural energies exhausted. 
 
 No sooner were the Bomans gone, called away by Saxon in- 
 the sinking fabric of their own empire at home, than 
 m 2 
 
164 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the Scots and Picts invaded England from the North ; 
 and the troubled inhabitants, after having more than 
 once recalled the Eomans to their aid, at length were 
 induced to invite Hengist and Horsa, two Saxon 
 pirates, to aid them against their troublesome foes. 
 It was done by the last king Vortigern in an evil 
 hour, and the Saxons coming to help remained to 
 subjugate : England became the home of the Saxons, 
 and the mountains of Wales and the extremities of 
 Cornwall received the displaced aborigines. The 
 Saxons came from the continent, and brought with 
 them those manners and customs which they had 
 learnt amid the convulsions of Europe, and which be- 
 came the foundation of the wisest and soundest of 
 governments. It is not my object to dwell on the 
 Saxon history at this moment ; it will be well to 
 remind you that for the sake of knowing something 
 of their institutions you should study the constitution 
 of their Wittenagemot. 
 The Nor- 6. In the year 1066, William of Normandy landed 
 with a vast army at Pevensey in Sussex, and marched 
 straight to Hastings. Harold the Saxon king was 
 feasting with his thanes and vassals at York, where 
 he had been holding high wassail after the defeat of 
 the Norwegians. He placed the wine-cup from his 
 lips at the entrance of a breathless messenger who 
 came to announce the terrible fact, that a fleet had 
 been seen riding on the waters of the English Chan- 
 nel, and the Normans were already approaching the 
 shores of England. The king exchanged his goblet 
 for his sword, and left his throne for his war-horse, 
 
 mans, a.d. 
 1066. 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 165 
 
 and with his thanes around him hastened to London ; 
 the towns he passed through emptying out their in- 
 habitants to follow in his career. He reached Has- 
 tings, and fought the memorable battle which cost 
 him his life and his people the crown. William as- 
 cended the throne of England by conquest, and, 
 according to his own view, by right. 
 
 As my object is to place before you in brief the 
 various changes in the constitution of England during 
 the different Houses and Sovereigns who reigned 
 over England, I must strictly bear in view my aim. 
 Of two of the races we have mentioned hitherto, we 
 find small trace in manners, constitutions, or usages. 
 The absence of trace is the point which makes them 
 worthy of note. The Saxons have left traces and 
 clear ones, though I have not touched on them, since 
 it is in their union and connexion with the new 
 element introduced by the Normans that they became 
 prominent in the form of government which at this 
 moment exists. Before we trace this connexion 
 between these two races, and the result on ourselves, 
 it will be important to say a word on the origin of the 
 Normans themselves. 
 
 7. It was between the years 300 and 400 after Origin of 
 Christ that the columns of the vast and majestic mans _ 
 temple, beneath whose roof Rome had attempted to 
 enclose the world, began to fail under the weight of 
 the stupendous structure, and to totter and bend to 
 their fall. Already conscious of its huge and un- 
 wieldy size, Oonstantine had planted the seat of em- 
 pire nearer to the centre of his dominions; and the 
 
166 KNGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 throne from which the successor of Augustus was for 
 the future to rule mankind was planted in such a po- 
 sition that he who sat on it might bring within the 
 range of his sway the rocky defiles of Persia, at the 
 same time with the pillars of Hercules' and the isles 
 of Thule. But the movement was effectual only for a 
 moment ; the edifice was too cumbrous to be supported 
 by any device or policy, and the first shock its columns 
 received brought the whole in ruins to the earth. 
 
 The Gothic The unexplored forests of the North poured 
 forth their countless hordes towards the Mediter- 
 ranean, succeeding each other in such amazing ra- 
 pidity as overwhelmed the astonished warriors of 
 Constantinople and Rome. Under various names, 
 but with similar customs, minds, and habits, they 
 drove the ancient inhabitants from their homes, and 
 defeated in some severe battles the tried warriors of 
 the ancient city. The Vandals settled in Africa ; the 
 Visigoths in Spain and Southern Gaul, dividing their 
 realm by the gigantic barriers of the Pyrenees ; the 
 Burgundians occupied the fertile banks of the Rhone; 
 the Ostrogoths occupied nearly all Italy; Hungary 
 still by its name tells the story of its early possession 
 by the Huns. The vast vacuum created by these un- 
 ceasing invasions was filled up by the onward roll of 
 a new billow of population in the shape of the Scla- 
 vonians, who were the ancestors of the present Rus- 
 sians and kindred states. 
 
 ciovis, a.v. In the year 486, Clovis, chief of some Germans 
 who belonged to the same race as those just men- 
 tioned, invaded and occupied Gaul, defeating in 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY, 167 
 
 his passage the last Roman legion, who strove to 
 retain their hold on the province where the first 
 Caesar had won his empire, and Julian been arrayed 
 with the purple. Thus began the first French 
 dynasty resulting from the northern invasion, and one 
 of the successive races which rolled in upon the 
 evacuation of this distant province by the Romans.. 
 Clovis was good, but his sons and successors bad; 
 and his weak descendant, Chilperic III., in the year 
 752, was so infirm of purpose and principle, that he 
 ended his days in a dungeon. Pepin Heristal, mayor 
 of the palace, and duke of Austrasia, gave his talents 
 to his son Charles M artel, a name for ever famous in 
 history for that battle where, under his guidance, a 
 small army of Franks met and opposed 300,000 Sa- 
 racens, who, having swept across Northern Africa, 
 had entered Europe at the Straits of Gibraltar, and 
 were even now breaking through the barrier of the 
 Pyrenees to subjugate Europe and root out the 
 Church. The hosts of the Saracens were scattered 
 before the arms of Charles Martel, and it was his 
 glory to achieve the triumph of the cross over the 
 crescent. His son Pepin succeeded to the throne of 
 the captive Chilperic, a.d. 752, authorised by the 
 Pope in consideration of his rescuing the Church 
 from the violence and invasions of the Lombards : for 
 whieh act the head of the Church conferred on Pepin 
 the crown of the Franks, and in return receiyed from 
 the victorious monarch that portion of Italy which still 
 
 bears the name of the States of the Church. Charle- Charle- 
 magne, a.d. 
 magne succeeded Pepin, 768, and founded an empire 768. 
 
168 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 by the conquest of Lombardy, Spain, Belgium, and 
 Hungary, which has scarcely ever been equalled, 
 though ambitiously emulated, by succeeding warriors 
 and kings. It was needful to mention these facts 
 with regard to France to introduce the Normans. 
 
 8. Another vast eruption burst out from the North. 
 From the Arctic mountains and indented shores of 
 Norway ; it poured forth on Northern Europe, drove 
 Alfred from his throne, and settled a Norman or 
 Northman government in Italy itself. 
 
 It is said that Charlemagne, towards the end of 
 his reign, gazing from a southern port on the 
 waters of the Mediterranean, discerned a fleet round- 
 ing the points of Spain. He learnt they were Nor- 
 mans, and the. monarch of half the world shed tears 
 at the prospect of the calamities which he prophesied 
 these enterprising adventurers would bring on his 
 successors. His bodings were realised in the reign of 
 Charles the Charles the Bald, a.d. 860, when Hollo the Norman 
 860.' appeared on the Seine with his predatory vassals; 
 Having placed his forts on the banks of the river, 
 and left his garrisons, he returned, bribed by the 
 alarmed and weak successor of Charlemagne. The 
 bribe served rather as an invitation than a check; 
 for the following year the monarch was compelled to 
 save his capital from the advancing Normans by a 
 second and third bribe ; till at last, finding his cause 
 hopeless, he made a compact with the successful in- 
 vader, and ceded to Rollo the rich province which 
 bears the name of Normandy. The Normans were 
 baptized, and became powerful, and for a while faith- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 169 
 
 ful vassals of the sovereigns of Pari3. The Dukes of 
 Normandy did homage to the King of France, and 
 the accession of Hugh Capet did not affect the rela- Hugh Ca- 
 tions of this fief to the crown. Six proud duchies did pe ' 
 homage to the descendants of Capet, and six ail-but 
 royal banners floated beneath the banner of France, 
 — the Counts of Flanders and Champagne, the Dukes 
 of Normandy and Burgundy, the Count of Toulouse 
 and the Duke of Aquitaine. Of all these the Dukes 
 of Normandy were proudest and most imperious, and 
 the accession of William to the crown of England by 
 no means diminished their pretensions or their pride. 
 In the year 1066, the Duke of Normandy, the de- 
 scendant of Rollo, and the vassal of Philip I., 
 demanded by right, which he nevertheless felt it 
 would be needful to enforce by arms, the throne of 
 England. The death of Harold and the activity of 
 William, united with other causes not now within 
 our province, gave to the conqueror the position he 
 aimed at. 
 
 9. We have now to trace the progress of those 
 elements of our constitution which from that day to 
 this have been blended in that vast machinery we see 
 now at work. 
 
 The Saxons had sunk into depression of all kinds, state of the 
 their counsels were distracted with disputes, their ge- 
 neral character depraved, their energies weakened, 
 and the greater and bolder elements of their character 
 hidden below a surface which presented no respect- 
 able aspect. The Norman conqueror found more 
 than one rival for the crown : Edgar Atheling, the 
 
170 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 grandson of Edmund Ironside, on Harold's death, 
 was proclaimed king by the Witan, and Stigand of 
 Canterbury supported and pressed his claim. Edwin 
 and Morcar, two powerful Saxon chiefs, raised the 
 standard of rebellion alike against Edgar and Wil- 
 liam ; and the Saxons were divided among themselves, 
 as well as attacked by a foreign foe. It took but a 
 short time for a powerful and mail-clad invader, aided 
 with the high civilisation of the continent, the proudest 
 and most independent vassal of the sovereign of Paris, 
 to put down the feeble opposition of a divided and 
 enervated people. Edgar, Edwin, and Morcar soon 
 united in laying down their arms and their pretensions 
 at the feet of the conqueror ; Stigand took the oath, 
 and bands of yielding thanes lined the streets as 
 William passed through his new metropolis. 
 
 His policy at first was alike wise and apparently 
 generous. Like the Romans of old, he pretended to 
 leave the subdued people under their own institutions, 
 and to beguile them into the vain hope that they 
 were but the same people and the same government 
 under a new king and another dynasty. 
 Saxon Con. He found in England, and he left as he found, the 
 
 stitution. 
 
 Wittenagemot, or parliament, the earl, the knights 
 the sheriff, the division of hundreds, and the county 
 courts, the power to elect members in cities and 
 boroughs. Through these exhausted arteries he seemed 
 at first to be impelling a new and healthful tide of 
 blood, and the only change which at first met the eye 
 was the fact that Normans were admitted to aid in 
 working out the old Saxon constitution. But the de- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 171 
 
 lusion soon passed away ; William returned to Nor- 
 mandy ; and his barons, restrained by no regard fof 
 the government, and using the power their position 
 gave them, laid violent hands on the wealth of the 
 conquered, and answered all appeals with the sword* 
 William was absent, and his strange absence at such a 
 crisis can only be accounted for by a reference to the 
 depth of his political character. His true object was the 
 subjugation of the Saxons and the destruction of their 
 government ; an event which, in his presence, if he 
 were to retain the character of justice or honour, 
 could not quietly take place ; for he held the crown, 
 according to his own assertion, by right, not by vic- 
 tory, and consequently was bound to consider himself 
 as the Saxon king. He could trust the turbulence 
 and avarice of his barons, when his own iron hand 
 was removed ; and a sharp rebuke, or a momentary 
 'punishment, would be sufficient to avenge the injuries 
 of his new subjects, whose power and independence 
 was fast dwindling away before the violent attacks of 
 their foes. William returned, and secretly rejoiced 
 over the confusion he found. It gave him the oppor- 
 tunity of seizing Saxon lands, on the plea of insurrec- 
 tion and resistance of his barons' power ; and by de- 
 grees the lands of the Saxons became the property of 
 William the Norman. 
 
 10. Having thus taken the first important step to- 
 wards the subjugation of the Saxons, and at last 
 unmasked his real intentions as to the people he had 
 proposed to rule as a matter of hereditary right, the 
 next step was the division of lands among his barons, 
 
172 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 which were wrung from the injured Saxons. To one 
 he gave the Isle of Wight and the county of Here- 
 ford ; Chester was allotted to a second ; Shrewsbury 
 and Hampshire had a third as their owner ; Waltheof 
 had Northampton; Sweyn, Lincoln; Norfolk, Lei- 
 cester ; and Buckingham became the fiefs of different 
 barons. The discomfited Saxons many of them fled to 
 Constantinople, and found a refuge amid the dreamy 
 splendour of the empire of the East. Others lingered 
 around the home of their fathers, unwilling and unable 
 to rend the ties of early association and habit. Every 
 effort at resistance became vain ; and even the exploits 
 of Hereward the Saxon became but the solitary act 
 of a single man ; an interesting biographical sketch 
 rather than a history which affected a nation. 
 
 As an instance of Saxon heroism and character, I 
 will quote the account of Mr. Turner, taken from the 
 narration of the Conqueror's secretary \ 
 
 " Hereward's father was Leofric, Lord of Brunne, 
 in Lincolnshire; a nobleman who had become very 
 illustrious for his warlike exploits. He was a relation 
 of the great Earl of Herford, who had married the 
 king's sister. 
 Hereward " Hereward was the son of this Leofric and his 
 wife Ediva. He was tall and handsome, but too war- 
 like, and of an immoderate fierceness of mind. In 
 his juvenile plays and wrestlings he was so ungovern- 
 able that his hand was often raised against every 
 one, and every one's hand against him. When the 
 youths of his age went to wrestling and such other 
 
 1 Ingulf, pp. 67, 68. 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 173 
 
 sports, unless he triumphed over all, and his play- 
 fellows conceded to him the laurel of victory, he very 
 often extorted by his sword what he could not gain 
 by his muscular strength. 
 
 " The youths of his neighbourhood complaining of 
 this conduct, his father's anger was excited against 
 him. Leofric stated to King Edward the many in- 
 tolerable tricks that had been practised even upon 
 himself, and his excessive violence towards others. 
 Upon this representation* the Confessor ordered him 
 into banishment. 
 
 " Hereward, thus exiled, went fearlessly to North- 
 umbria, thence to Cornwall, . thence to Ireland, and 
 afterwards to Flanders ; and every where most bravely 
 carrying himself, he soon obtained a glorious and 
 magnificent reputation. 
 
 " In every danger intrepidly pressing forward, and 
 happily escaping; in every military conflict always 
 throwing himself on the bravest, and boldly conquer- 
 ing, — it was doubtful whether he was more fortunate 
 or brave. His victories over all his enemies were 
 complete, and he escaped harmless from the greatest 
 battles. 
 
 " Becoming so illustrious by his military successes, 
 his valiant deeds became known in England, and were 
 sung through the country. The dislike of his parent, 
 relatives, and friends was changed into the most 
 ardent affection. 
 
 " In Flanders he married a noble lady, Turfrida, 
 and had by her a daughter, who lately married (I am 
 transcribing Ingulf) an illustrious knight, a great 
 
174 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 friend to our monastery, and lord of Depyng and 
 the paternal inheritance of Brunne and its appur- 
 tenances. 
 
 " The mother of Turfrida coming to England with 
 her husband, with his permission forsook all earthly 
 pomp, and became a nun in our monastery of Croy. 
 land. 
 
 " Hereward returning to his native soil with his 
 wife, after great battles and a thousand dangers, fre- 
 quently dared and bravely terminated, as well against 
 the King of England as the earls, barons, prefects, 
 and presidents, which are yet sung in our streets 
 (says Ingulf) ; and having avenged his mother with 
 his powerful right hand, at length, with the king's 
 pardon, obtained his paternal inheritance, and ended 
 his days in peace, and was very lately buried near his 
 wife in our monastery.'" 
 Feudal sys- \y e h aV e seen the first step towards Saxon subju- 
 gation. The poor inhabitants, harassed and reviled 
 by rapacious and mail-clad strangers, were glad to 
 come to any compromise for the sake of peace ; and 
 in many cases the Anglo-Saxon proprietor gave up 
 the greater portion of his estate, that he might retain 
 the remainder in peace as the vassal of his proud and 
 insolent invader. The great families gradually dis- 
 appeared and sunk into insignificance; many were 
 killed in the struggles they made for freedom, and 
 many more sighed out a wretched existence in the 
 dungeon of a long captivity. Very many formed 
 part of the far-famed Varangian guard, who, beneath 
 the banner of the Greeks, displayed the Saxon courage 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 175 
 
 and perseverance against another branch of the Nor- 
 mans, fighting in the East under Robert Guiscard. 
 In twenty years from the battle of Hastings the Eng- 
 lish had lost most of their land and property. 
 
 Very large portions had fallen to the king himself; Doomsday- 
 and Doomsday-Book remains as a record of the t h e jj ew 
 amazing change in the owners of property through- Forest - 
 out England. The stories of the New Forest are 
 known to you all: it was laid desolate to afford 
 amusement to the new monarch; and the scene of 
 his cruel pleasures became the death-place of his son 
 and successor. The forest-laws were cruel ; and the 
 laws which made forfeitures scarcely avoidable, and 
 fines as large as taxes, poured such a treasure into 
 William's coffers, that he had a daily income of 1060^ 
 
 This was the first step in the subjugation of the 
 Saxons ; the second was the introduction of the feudal 
 system as it had been known and used in France. 
 This system had existed under the Saxons in a modi- 
 fied form ; but it was applied by the Conqueror with 
 a vigour and energy which tended to cast still further 
 into the thrall of vassalage the Saxon population, and 
 to bring out into clearer and more vivid light the 
 Norman proprietors of the soil and the Saxon lands '. 
 
 It is worth remark, that William introduced into 
 England a very different feudal system from that 
 which he himself had lived under in France; the 
 principal difference being, that he compelled all the 
 vassals to look more immediately to himself than 
 the successors of Hugh Capet were ever able to 
 2 See Lingard, vol. ii. p. 45. 
 
176 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 achieve in their relationship with the great duehies 
 that acknowledged them as the chief lords of the 
 realm. 
 
 The reason is twofold ; the lands and territories of 
 the great lords of France were enormous in extent, 
 while those held by the English were small and com- 
 paratively insignificant. The plains of Normandy and 
 the countship of Toulouse far exceeded Shropshire or 
 Kent ; consequently, the kings of France would find 
 it a harder task to keep their vassals within due 
 bounds, than William did those whose fiefs were so 
 small and inconsiderable. Then, too, the English 
 barons had received their possessions directly from 
 William ; to him they owed their broad lands, their 
 honours, their Saxon vassalage ; they were bound to 
 him by ties which did not affect one of the proud 
 lords of France, who held their fiefs independently of 
 the Carlovingian throne. 
 
 These were the principal changes made in the exist- 
 ing government of England during the first Norman 
 reign. A Saxon constitution still existing in name 
 and framework, and filled out by Norman and foreign 
 governors, who grafted on to it their own systems. 
 This was the germ of our own constitution ; this the 
 seed from which the present style of government has 
 sprung. A Saxon people still living in England, 
 though reduced to vassalage, and still recognised as 
 forming a part of the government, though so oppressed 
 that, during the reign of the Conqueror, they were 
 scarcely more than a name. 
 Events of 11. The principal events which occupied the re- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 177 
 
 mainder of William's reign were, the rebellions of his William i.'s 
 Norman barons, and the disturbances caused in Eng- reign * 
 land by his vassals. His brother Odo, Bishop of 
 Bayeux and Earl of Kent, raised pretensions and an 
 insurrection, which ended in his own arrest and im- 
 prisonment. The last days of William were darkened 
 by the well-known rebellion of his sons, whose dis- 
 putes embittered his declining years. He died a.d. 
 1087. He was bold, enterprising, and prudent, am- 
 bitious beyond all bounds, and deeply subtle and 
 politic. He gained and maintained his influence over 
 the violent spirits of his day by a strange and unusual 
 mixture of decision with a deep subtlety; scarcely 
 open to the feeling of pity, and in name as well as 
 appearance terribly austere. 
 
 12. His conduct with regard to the Church exactly His con- 
 manifested the leading points of his character. The church. 
 most determined spirit which, perhaps, ever guided 
 the crosier of St. Peter, at that day directed the 
 affairs of the Church of Rome. Rising up in a day 
 of darkness and corruption never paralleled since the 
 day of Pentecost, when the Church was reaping the 
 ill effects, as she had for a fleeting moment reaped 
 the good, of the principles of Charlemagne's govern- 
 ment, groaning under a feudalism of the worst form ; 
 ' — Gregory VII. appeared on the stage on which ^,/«-A&~^ 
 Henry IV. of Germany was acting the dark and vio- 
 lent tragedy of his reign. Surrounded with a disso- 
 lute episcopate and corrupt priesthood, he, single- 
 handed, ejected many from their false positions ; and 
 Henry IV. was compelled to kneel three days and 
 
 N 
 
]?8 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 nights cold and barefoot, at the gate of Canossa, a 
 penitent and an outcast. Yet the man who triumphed 
 over power in its plenitude, and vice in its darkest 
 excess, William I. dared to resist, and successfully 
 withstood. He refused to permit the authority of the 
 Pope to be recognised in his dominions without special 
 permission ; he resisted the decisions of national and 
 provincial synods being carried into effect, and re- 
 strained the enunciation of excommunications. 
 The consti- ] 3. Such was the character and conduct of the 
 
 tational . 
 
 history f first Norman. The amount of constitutional history 
 reisn ' involved in his reign was small. It consists in this : 
 an existing form of government was found, tolerated, 
 and moderated by invaders, who mixed with it a form, 
 and that a different one, of their own; the latter, 
 being that of the conqueror, was predominant. But 
 there was an energy and vigour in the people, and 
 the existing government of the Saxons continually 
 pressed upwards to find its level ; and it was the con- 
 tinual presence of this race, who, to a certain degree, 
 have formed a class and estate in our society, which 
 has given our constitution one of its peculiar charac- 
 teristics. Their relation to the barons placed the 
 monarch in a position which, without the existence of 
 the subject and oppressed Saxons, he could not have 
 occupied ; they enabled him to play a game with his 
 second estate on which he could not otherwise have 
 ventured. And this accounts for the predominance 
 of the power of the crown during the reigns of the 
 Norman House ; the features of this period being the 
 ascendancy of the prerogative of the crown, caused . 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 179 
 
 by the character of the kings, and the obscure, sub- 
 jugated position of the Saxons. 
 
 14. William Rufus succeeded William the Con- William n. 
 queror. His reign was short, and his acts violent. A-D ' 1087 ' 
 Lanfranc supported, and Odo resisted his claim to 
 the crown ; the one justified by the advice of the late 
 monarch, the other by partiality for the cause of Ro- 
 bert the elder brother. Rufus, like all the Norman 
 kings, was a usurper. Robert was Duke of Nor- 
 mandy. A war broke out early between him and his 
 brother, which originated in the invasion of England 
 by Robert, and his defeat by his more powerful 
 brother. A war succeeded in Normandy, which ended 
 in the junction of that province to the English crown. 
 The generous and open-hearted Robert espoused the 
 cause of the Crusade ; and Rufus, by intrigue and re- 
 fined policy, overreached his simpler brother, and 
 concluded a treaty largely to his own advantage. The 
 fulfilment was delayed ; but at length William over- 
 came opposition, and occupied Normandy without 
 further difficulty. His next wars were with Malcolm 
 of Scotland. The violent occupation of Carlisle by 
 the King of England was the immediate cause of the 
 outbreak ; a battle was fought, and a victory won by 
 the English on this side the border, and Malcolm the 
 king was slain in battle. The year a.d. 1098 was 
 marked by an outbreak in Wales. The king marched 
 against it with a large force; but found at length 
 that he pursued a flying and harassing foe, who were 
 fast defeating his prospects by leading him on amid 
 the swamps and morasses of Snowdon and the moun- 
 n 2 
 
180 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 tain-ranges of Llanberris. William, in despair, gave 
 up the effort, and contented himself with building a 
 range of castles across the frontier, by which he might 
 check and coerce the troublesome inhabitants. 
 
 The dispute with St. Anselm marked the end of 
 this monarch's reign. The see of Canterbury had been 
 left vacant that the king might seize the revenues of 
 that church, and Ealph Flambard, a man of profligate 
 life, occupied and used the sacred treasure. On his 
 supposed death-bed Rufus relented, and St. Anselm 
 was summoned from Bee in Normandy to rule the 
 Church in England ; he came reluctantly, and at the 
 earnest desire of the king, gave up retirement and his 
 monastery for a public life and the mitre of Canter- 
 bury. With the king's recovery his good intentions 
 vanished ; and viewing St. Anselm with a jealous eye, 
 he at once broke with him on the point of investiture. 
 St. Anselm appealed, and at length went to Eome, 
 and in his absence William II. met with a violent 
 death in the New Forest. The cause of his death 
 was uncertain : the arrow of a hunter, the dark agency 
 of an evil spirit, private and intended assassination, 
 have each been assigned as the cause of his death. 
 He was violent and passionate in the extreme, sensual 
 and profligate; witty and agreeable in society, and 
 generous and brave on many occasions of his life. He 
 bore the distinctive features of the Norman character, 
 — obstinacy, violence, and a determination to retain 
 the independence of his own prerogative. 
 
 15. Such was his life and character; and the in- 
 fluence of his reign on the constitution must have 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. ]8L 
 
 much resembled that of William the Conqueror. The 
 Saxons, who were preparing to form the third great 
 estate of the realm, were still bound down by a cruel 
 and severe tyranny ; still striving to rise against then- 
 oppressors into those places of profit and authority 
 which they had originally occupied; intelligent, in- 
 dustrious, and long-sighted, they waited in slavery 
 the, day when their descendants should rule as their 
 fathers had done. They perhaps saw through the 
 flimsy nature of the bond which connected the monarch 
 with his barons, and expected, what soon ensued, its 
 forcible severance; they foresaw the weight which 
 their support would give the one party or the other, 
 and expected, what was actually the case, that the 
 fact of their situation would give either party power 
 to overwhelm the other. A struggle was coming, in 
 which they saw that they would remain the sole gainers 
 if they were wise. They were patriotic and generous 
 enough to remain under a severe tyranny, and to en- 
 dure a galling chain, rather than risk, by too sudden 
 an effort at independence, the future glory and freedom 
 of their race. William's violent ^temper awed, and 
 his many expeditions employed, his barons, and gave 
 them no time to feel the yoke which his iron hand 
 imposed on them; though there were moments of 
 breathing, when at intervals they murmured at the 
 exactions of the crown, and began to look around 
 them for an opportunity to lower its pretensions and 
 dispute its authority. Meanwhile the Saxons around 
 their homes and estates were gradually growing into 
 importance by an infant trade and a use of agriculture, 
 
182 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 which at once made them useful to their proud lords, 
 and attracted their admiration. This the Saxons saw 
 and watched, and felt that their true policy would be 
 actually to side with the second against the first 
 estate, and to ingratiate themselves with the one in 
 order to free themselves from the oppression of the 
 other. The reign of John, and the plains of Runny- 
 mede saw the effect and the wisdom of this policy. 
 Constitu- The constitutional features of Eufus's reign, then, 
 toryofthe will be his full retention of the prerogatives of the 
 wiham II crown > by arming and employing his barons ; and 
 thereby his giving time and opportunity to the Saxons 
 to advance in their pursuits, and to win the favour of 
 their immediate oppressors. There were few actual 
 constitutional changes and developments in the reign 
 of the second Norman ; and what there were tend to 
 illustrate the truth of the position I advanced above, 
 that the individual character of the monarch and the 
 family were the great and influencing features of the 
 Norman House. Firm, determined, obstinate, and 
 tyrannical, their object was to keep their own indivi- 
 dual power, and to preserve the prerogative of the 
 crown they wore ; their aim was the subjugation of 
 the turbulent barons who dwelt close around them, 
 and were continually inclined to dispute and question 
 the right and power of the king to rule their order : 
 they still viewed him as scarcely more than a feudal 
 chief, and no Norman had ever ascended the throne 
 otherwise than as a usurper. 
 Henry I. 1 6. .Henry I. ascended the throne a.d. 1100. His 
 first acts were popular: he recalled St. Anselm, and 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 183 
 
 espoused the cause of the clergy : he abolished many- 
 serious exactions of his brother ; he gave many bene- 
 fits to the barons, and signed on the day he was 
 crowned a charter which restored to the Saxons those 
 laws and privileges which his father had granted them. 
 Well educated, intelligent, and prudent, he saw and 
 sympathised with the growing liberty of the nation, 
 and at least yielded to, if he did not assent to, the 
 pressure after freedom and independence. He married 
 Matilda, the niece of Edgar Atheling, and daughter 
 of Malcolm, King of Scotland, thereby uniting the 
 Norman and Saxon lines. The opening events of his 
 reign were connected with the turbulence and in- 
 vasions of his brother Robert, whom he finally de- 
 feated and imprisoned. His intercourse with Louis 
 of France, beginning with a visit from that prince to 
 England ; a sworn friendship, followed by an enmity 
 and a challenge to private combat from Louis; an 
 interview between Henry and the Pope towards a 
 reconciliation ; and a war with France, occupied the 
 chief part of his reign. The death of his only son by 
 drowning in the effort to save his sister, darkened its 
 concluding days, and he was only for a time diverted 
 by the marriage of his daughter Matilda to the Em- 
 peror of Germany. She returned to England, and 
 was afterwards married to Fulk, Earl of Anjou, with 
 whose humbler lot the daughter of a king and the 
 widow of an emperor grew soon discontented, and 
 their domestic life was embittered by disputes and 
 quarrels. Henry procured her to be appointed his 
 successor. He died a.d. 1135, leaving the affairs of 
 
184 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Matilda in the hands of the Count of Gloucester, his 
 own natural son. Such were the events of his life. 
 The constitution of England received more changes 
 in his reign than in those of either of his prede- 
 cessors, though these changes arose again chiefly from 
 the peculiar character of the individual monarch. 
 
 Henry's reign was a remarkable epoch in English 
 history. Learned and large-minded, he acted a very 
 different part to that of his father or his brother. His 
 acts as a statesman were different from his conduct 
 as an individual, since profligacy and many immo- 
 ralities cast a shade on his private character. When 
 he first ascended the throne, he discovered at a glance 
 his position with regard to the different orders under 
 him : he saw if he was to curb the second order, he 
 must conciliate the lower; and they, long-sighted 
 and determined, were only waiting these very oppor- 
 tunities to rise to their true position. Henry granted 
 a charter, by which he confirmed the constitution and 
 laws of the Confessor, purified the debased coinage, 
 relieved the Saxons from some of the heavier parts of 
 the feudal system, insisted on the institution of the 
 courts of the hundreds, and trials according to those 
 wise codes which had made the Anglo-Saxons famous, 
 but which had been repressed by the two preceding 
 monarchs. He granted many privileges to his barons 
 in their relation as vassals to the crown, but annexed 
 to each privilege was the condition, that the same 
 should be extended to their inferior vassals also. 
 
 Constitu- TJ . 
 
 tional Ms- His own insecure title to the crown compelled him 
 to>y of his thus to conc ;i; ate tlie p e0 pi e . and tlie constitutional 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 185 
 
 history of his reign was marked especially by the 
 public recognition of the national laws, and those 
 enactments of the Conqueror which had been over- 
 whelmed by the tyranny of himself and Rufus. The 
 joy of the people was short-lived, and the patience 
 and willingness of the Saxons to sacrifice their own 
 freedom for their children's liberty was again called 
 into requisition. 
 
 Henry once firmly seated on the throne, broke his 
 engagement and forgot his charter ; but the charter 
 still existed, as one out of many of those records of 
 the constitution of England and the recognised free- 
 dom of the people, to which successive agitators have 
 from age to age appealed against individual tyranny 
 and usurpation. To that charter, among others, the 
 Wentworths of Elizabeth's reign, and the Prynnes 
 and Hampdens of Charles's, appealed as to the foun- 
 dation of our constitutional rights : the rights of the 
 commons in the reigns of the Normans were recog- 
 nised, not granted — renewed, not created; and the 
 first step of Henry I.'s reign was the bringing out 
 more fully the recognised freedom of the Anglo- 
 Saxons, who began almost to compose a third estate. 
 The king was inclined to favour them from his own 
 defective title, and his dread of successive attacks of 
 the barons ; while the latter were continually looking 
 out for the co-operation of the Saxons to help them 
 to subdue and curb the growing power and supposed 
 prerogative of the crown. 
 
 To make a brief sketch of his political acts I will 
 sum them up thus : 
 
186 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 1. The Normans had disused the courts of Saxon 
 law ; Henry compelled their being fully used. 
 
 2. He so vigorously punished crime by whatever 
 order or race it was done, that he won for himself the 
 title of the " Lion of Justice," and made the people 
 imagine that they had a king who was especially a 
 commons' 1 king. 
 
 3. The debased coinage was purified, and customs 
 used by the two preceding kings repressed. 
 
 4. The king's journeys through England had been 
 hitherto more like the progress of an hostile army, 
 leaving desolation and bringing terror ; the system of 
 purveyance had been used to such an extent, as to 
 destroy the peace and ruin the patience of the Saxons 
 through whose lands they passed. All this was 
 amended. 
 
 Such was the reign of Henry Beauclerc, decidedly 
 favourable to the rise of that order whose efforts 
 were to regain a position which they occupied an- 
 terior to the Conquest. He found them depressed to 
 the last degree, but still claiming their ancient and 
 unforgotten privilege. They called it the laws of the 
 Confessor ; it was the idea of a liberty which they 
 had had handed down from immemorial time. The 
 seed had been sown in ages long ago, and the fair 
 and stately plant had grown up free and flourishing 
 to heaven ; but its branches became withered, and its 
 colour tarnished ; a rock had been hurled upon this 
 stately stem, which had crushed it to the earth ; it 
 was crushed, but not broken ; beaten down, but not 
 destroyed ; hidden from view, but existing still ; and 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY, 187 
 
 by degrees it wound its way amid the chinks and 
 crevices of the impending weight, and the flower of 
 Saxon independence at length broke out, pale and 
 sickly : it crept into view in the reign of the first 
 Henry, and by degrees, pursuing its irresistible pro- 
 gress, rose into a plant beneath whose boughs and 
 branches the rock which had crushed it was hidden 
 and well-nigh lost. 
 
 Henry's charters and reliefs acknowledged the ex- 
 istence and aided the advance of the Saxon constitu- 
 tion. The Saxons themselves became strengthened 
 by the support of the barons, who were striving to 
 make friends with them against the king, who was 
 himself at the same moment stretching out his hand 
 over the heads of the second estate to grasp those of 
 the injured Saxons. Remember, the Saxon name is 
 throughout synonymous with what is called recognised 
 and constitutional liberty. 
 
 1 7. We pass on to Stephen, another usurper ; the 
 son of Adela, and grandson of the Conqueror : he oc- 
 cupied a disquieted throne, and passed an agitated 
 and disputed reign. 
 
 Stephen ascended the throne 1135. The law of Stephen, 
 hereditary succession was not decided on, and he oc- 
 cupied with a doubtful claim the throne of Henry 
 Beauclerc. Cherished by that king, he stung the 
 bosom of his patron by ejecting his daughter Ma- 
 tilda. 
 
 His mother Adela had married Stephen, Earl of 
 Blois. Himself bold, affable, courteous, and conde- 
 scending, he was alike the favourite of the baron and 
 
]88 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 knight, whose admiration he gained in war and tour- 
 ney; and of the meaner vassal, whose troubles he 
 stooped to relieve, and whose favour he cared to cul- 
 vate. His reign of nineteen years was marked by 
 trouble and civil war : the cause of the Queen Ma- 
 tilda roused the King of Scotland ; and though the 
 battle of the Standard honoured the arms of Eng- 
 land, the day of Stephen's glory was short-lived and 
 embittered. Matilda's partisans kept the kingdom in 
 a state of ferment, and gave continual exercise to the 
 discontented barons to rise and make party against 
 the king and the crown. Often defeated, and once 
 imprisoned, Stephen lost the prestige of his former 
 valour and chivalrous reputation ; and the dungeon 
 of Bristol Castle broke the spirit, and death at Can- 
 terbury terminated the glory of the hero of Tinche- 
 Brai. His brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester, and 
 the first legate of the Pope to England, wavered in 
 his adherence, and Stephen and Matilda at times en- 
 joyed the favour of the powerful ecclesiastic. At 
 length an agreement was made between the contend- 
 ing parties ; and it was settled that on the event of 
 Stephen's death, Henry, the son of Matilda, instead 
 of Eustace, the son of Stephen, should succeed 
 without dispute to the crown on condition that 
 Stephen should hold it during his life. The civil wars 
 of his reign had given an opportunity for the inde- 
 pendent and determined rule of the barons, which 
 was aided and urged on by the pressure of the Saxons 
 from below. Hitherto the permission to build castles 
 had been confined but to a favoured few ; but the 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 189 
 
 disturbances of the civil war enabled them to reticu- 
 late this island with strong and impregnable for- 
 tresses, from whose walls they might defy the king 
 and reduce the power of the crown. Had his reign 
 been undisturbed by civil war, Stephen might have 
 conciliated his barons as Henry had done before him ; 
 for he had some of his tact, and more of his reputation 
 as a knight. The hero of many a well-fought field, 
 who had won his spurs from a royal hand, might have 
 had sufficient merit to make them forget his tyranny 
 and his asserted prerogative ; but ill fortune lost him 
 his place, and Stephen died after a reign in which the 
 power of the crown had received a stroke from which 
 it never wholly recovered. 
 
 18. One great fact in this reign, which had an im- The Ba- 
 portant result in the relation of the crown to the rons ' 
 second estate, was the opportunity given to the ba- 
 rons to raise castles : it gave them independence and 
 protection against law ; and the walls of their dun- 
 geons became witnesses to scenes of barbarity and 
 cruelty which scarcely had disgraced the purple of 
 Constantinople and the reign of Heraclitus l . In these 
 castles the haughty chief defied the king ; and Eng- 
 land presented the appearance of a return to the 
 primeval condition of society, when each individual 
 considered himself free to elect his own ruler and 
 chief. This circumstance strongly affected the con- 
 tending parties in England : the power of the crown 
 was checked, and the Saxon feudatories, which had 
 gradually swelled in number round the fortresses of 
 
 1 Lingard, ii. 185. 
 
190 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 then 5 lords, became generally so useful to them from 
 their knowledge of agriculture, and power to provide 
 for the wants of social life, that the Norman baron 
 became in his turn dependent on his Saxon serf. The 
 latter, clear-headed, long-sighted, and striving to hand 
 down to after ages a constitution as free as his fore- 
 fathers left them, saw the advantage, and immediately 
 combined with the barons against the crown. Henry 
 Beauclerc foresaw and feared this, and in his wisdom 
 averted the blow by conciliating the people; and 
 Stephen, in his turn, granted a charter of rights to 
 the third estate. 
 
 There is a remarkable parallel in the history of 
 nations and the advance of society, and you can 
 scarcely help being struck with the similarity of po- 
 sition of the Saxons at this time and the plebs of 
 Rome at the time of Servius Tullius : there, as here, 
 a race of intelligent and persevering, though overruled 
 people, were gradually forming round the homes of 
 their powerful and tyrannical lords ; at first growing 
 up beneath their shadow, but by degrees sending out 
 branches which overshadowed and eclipsed the order 
 they were at first subservient to. 
 
 I said Stephen gave the people a charter. It was one 
 which confirmed to them much which Henry Beauclerc 
 had given, and the laws and customs of the idolised 
 Confessor were again enforced and secured to them 
 with greater definiteness than they were before. Here 
 was a gradual and distinct advance. The laws of the 
 Confessor were synonymous with popular freedom 
 and rights ; and the monarch who granted a charter 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 191 
 
 which recognised those laws was one who was com- 
 pelled to yield to some pressure from below. 
 
 19. This brings us to the end of the Norman General re. 
 sovereigns of England. My object has been to Norman 
 mark the constitutional progress of England through Houee - 
 their rule, and the influence they had in depressing 
 or raising it. That constitutional history has been 
 synonymous vvith the rise of the commons, and these 
 commons were the Saxon people. The principal* 
 feature during these reigns was the preservation of 
 that element under depression, and its gradual rise in 
 spite of opposition. That gradual rise may be attri- 
 buted to the wide chasm which was daily opening 
 between the king and the barons, as well as to the 
 peculiar character of the Saxon people; while the 
 opposition may be attributed to the desire of the 
 Normans to subjugate the conquered population. 
 
 The characters of these monarchs were determined, 
 firm, and self-willed ; they kept both the estates at a 
 distance from them, in order to keep up in full the 
 prerogative of the crown. But this very character 
 which perpetuated the distance between the king and 
 the second estate, tended also to raise a third ; for 
 the victories of the monarch had so alienated and 
 enraged the barons, that they were driven to make 
 common cause with any power against their tyrants. 
 The Saxon population were at hand, and with them 
 they readily coalesced. This produced a reaction on 
 the part of the crown, which, fearing the influence of 
 this junction, attempted to conciliate the lower order 
 
192 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 by granting charters and re-asserting the laws and 
 customs of the Confessor. 
 
 We find that the personal character of our sove- 
 reigns down to the last Stuart affected the constitu- 
 tional history of their day. The gentler nature of the 
 Plantagenets gave greater scope and opportunity for 
 the rise of the lower bodies ; while the ambition and 
 determined character of the Tudors prevented the 
 "commons from actually occupying that position which 
 they were on the eve of asserting when the dismal 
 period of the house of York came to its close. In 
 the same way, the character of individuals among 
 them gave a complexion to their age. The fierceness 
 of William, the violence of Rufus, kept down the 
 barons ; Beauclerc, with greater enlargement of mind 
 and view, made his reign signalised by the first strug- 
 gles of the commons to freedom ; while from Stephen's 
 weakness the barons wrested a power which they 
 compelled John to acknowledge as their right. 
 
LECTURE Till. 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OP ROME AND 
 ENGLAND COMPARED. 
 
 1. There are few things more interesting or strik- National 
 ing than the mode in which the events of different sim " arit J r - 
 nations resemble one another. . In point of fact, the 
 history of one people usually has, more or less, the 
 features of the history of another ; and if you review 
 ancient, mediaeval, or modern times, you will find that 
 not only all the great nations of these three periods 
 possess striking points of similarity with one another, 
 but also that the governments in general of ancient 
 and modern days have singular features of similarity. 
 But although this may be the case, there will still be 
 features of dissimilarity in each, which would be seen 
 upon a slight comparison one with another. 
 
 2. The causes of these differences are very appa- Causes of 
 rent. Variety of climate will be one. The burning J^ 00 a " 
 sun of southern Europe has tended to form a cha- Climate. 
 
 o 
 
194 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 racter of rapid and vivacious feeling, of vivid and 
 glowing passion, of intense consciousness, of a keen 
 imaginative energy, co-existent with a certain physical 
 indolence, which ends in results very different to those 
 produced under the very same forms of government 
 among the people of the north. The latter, who 
 from a colder climate have become constitutionally 
 more active in their disposition, more phlegmatic in 
 their temperament, possessed of less consciousness of 
 the principles which lead them, are far less keen in 
 their imaginations, their feelings, and their tempers. 
 The swarthy inhabitants of the coasts of the Medi- 
 terranean or the plains of Lombardy, the Neapolitan 
 peasant, and the Spaniard who traces the ancestry of 
 a thousand years beneath the peaks of the Pyrenees 
 of Asturias, will present a difference of character to 
 the most cursory observer when contrasted with the 
 sailor of the Baltic or the descendants of Norwegian 
 pirates. This will be at once accounted for by the 
 genial warmth or the bracing atmosphere of the home 
 of the one or of the other. Thus climate will account 
 to a great extent for the difference in the constitu- 
 tional developments of governments compared with 
 each other, and the various modes of conduct pursued 
 by men placed in otherwise similar circumstances. 
 Surface of Not only does climate account for differences ; the 
 surface of the soil will be a cause of much contrariety. 
 We shall generally find that the inhabitants of a coun- 
 try who are enclosed within vast mountain-ranges, 
 which for ever shut out the distant view, possess feel- 
 ings, and are governed by principles, on which the 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 195 
 
 inhabitants of dead level lands seldom act. The one 
 have the boundaries of their eyesight limited by a vast 
 chain of physical nature, which effects a reaction upon 
 their moral being, and they become to a certain de- 
 gree narrow-minded in their views and perceptions, and 
 lack that largeness of idea possessed by the inhabit- 
 ants of the plain. They become deeply attached to 
 home, and the isolated events of their own clan, 
 canton, or family are to them all-absorbing. "While 
 the occupiers of a country bounded by no mountain 
 limits to restrain the eyesight or limit the imagina- 
 tion, become large-minded and expansive, generous 
 in judgment, and vigorous in plan ; for they are com- 
 pelled to a continual defence of a frontier against a 
 surrounding world, and have been engaged with it in 
 the great struggle of mercantile effort or military ex- 
 ploit. In the one, intense love of home, the constant 
 contemplation from childhood of one well-known 
 mountain-ridge, seen in all the changes of season, 
 sunshine and cloud, and associated with every vicissi- 
 tude of life ; the deep interest realised in the fellow- 
 inhabitants of their own limited district, ignorance of 
 the societies or customs which exist beyond their im- 
 mediate range, — will produce a character full of that 
 local attachment and determined self-devotion so well 
 illustrated in the national struggles of Switzerland, 
 Scotland, or the Tyrol. 
 
 The dead flats of Holland and Belgium, and the 
 
 boundless levels of France, have, on the other hand, 
 
 formed a people energetic in intercourse with the world 
 
 around, and marked with all the enterprise and large- 
 
 o 2 
 
196 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 minded aims which have characterised the populations 
 of those countries. We see this cause in operation in 
 the English character. That coolness and independ- 
 ence, that conscious power and firm expectation of suc- 
 cess, the absence of excitement and anxiety concerning 
 the affairs and movements of other nations, are the 
 natural product of a sea-girt people, who have been 
 able to gaze indifferently on the concerns of an agitated 
 world, and count their own position well-nigh impreg- 
 nable. The consequence is, that at the very moment 
 when other states are discussing questions of war and 
 peace, invasion or cession, and the walls of their 
 chambers echo with the arguments drawn from the 
 supposed intentions and powers of neighbouring king- 
 doms, the floor of our own House of Commons is oc- 
 cupied with members debating on free trade and 
 education. While domestic concerns bear the rela- 
 tion of one to ten in the discussions of other states, 
 with us the ratio is reversed, and home policy is all- 
 engrossing, even in days when a world is in arms. 
 This must react on the character of a people ; and 
 we shall find that peculiar domesticity of life, atten- 
 tion to individual interests and the virtues of social 
 life, mark our own people above all other populations 
 of the earth. Thus insular position, and consequent 
 indifference to continental concerns, account in part 
 for our natural disposition. 
 
 In the same way we are struck with the contrast 
 presented by inhabitants of certain districts when 
 compared with men occupying the same kind of ter- 
 ritory; we are struck with the fact, that while the 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 197 
 
 Swiss, Welsh, and Scotch have always presented in- 
 dependence and vigour of character, the inhabitants 
 of the lake-districts of Cumberland and Westmore- 
 land have presented the contrary. There has been an 
 absence of point and vigour about them, which would 
 seem to destroy the inductive argument we should 
 have drawn from the above facts — that heroism be- 
 longs to a mountain home. But a slight investigation 
 will show us that the peculiarities of a mountain soil 
 producing luxuriantly and easily, is a sufficiently 
 counterbalancing fact to account for this difference of 
 disposition. An easy soil has enervated the character 
 and produced an Italian softness beneath the shadows 
 of Skiddaw and Helvellyn ; a genial earth has coun- 
 teracted the effect of a mountain-range. In most 
 mountain districts, the rugged surface or the unculti- 
 vated bog compel a life of hardship on the laborious 
 inhabitant ; the absence of these features in the soil 
 of Westmoreland has at once produced a softer people 
 and an unwarlike character. Thus territorial limits 
 and surface of soil affect considerably the develop- 
 ments of governments which have sprung up in con- 
 nexion with them. 
 
 Again, it is manifest that aboriginal race will make Aboriginal 
 a great difference in the history of a people. There 
 are races as distinct, which form the origin of the 
 nations of Europe, as there are distinctive features 
 upon the face of the countries in which they live. 
 The scenery and the habits of years are felt to a re- 
 mote generation, and the picture which is once painted 
 on the character of a people with the vivid pencil of 
 
198 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 scenery and national interest cannot easily be effaced; 
 the mind of the forefather becomes the type of the 
 remotest descendant, and the children of five cen- 
 turies reflect the tastes, modes of judgment, and na- 
 tional peculiarities, which received their first shape in 
 aboriginal history. The father transmits to his child 
 the caste of mind he has formed for himself; and the 
 people of Tarentum and Rhegium to the days of the 
 Epirot invasion manifested the characteristics which 
 were first formed by the Thessalian valley or the hills 
 of Arcadia. The Tarentines were celebrating Pe- 
 lasgic games when the hostile fleet anchored off their 
 city, and Heraclea opened her gates to Pyrrhus as to 
 an adventurer of whose kin they were proud. The 
 people of southern Italy were never exclusively Italian, 
 nor lost the Pelasgic mind beneath an Italian sky. 
 So, again, it would be absurd to expect that the 
 people who sprang from a Pelasgic root would be 
 similar to those derived from a Saxon origin, as dif- 
 ferent from the Greek as the eastern is from the 
 western character. The polished mind of the inhabit- 
 ants of the Peloponnese, their large intellectual re- 
 finement, their delight in the dance beneath their own 
 genial sun, their highly wrought taste, which was in 
 early days nourished and fanned by the objects which 
 grew up around them, were all probably to result in a 
 character distinct from that formed by the calm, 
 settled, far-seeing, cautious, and business-like mind of 
 the Saxon. The latter aimed at the useful rather than 
 the beautiful, was ever cautious of failure, and deve- 
 loped the intellect more than the imagination. What 
 
ENGLISH HISTOEY. 199 
 
 we should have expected to have probably been the 
 case, we actually find. The inhabitants of the Greek 
 cities of ancient Apulia are distinct from those who 
 dwell along the shores of the German Ocean and the 
 Baltic ; inasmuch as the former owe their origin to 
 the old Pelasgi, and the latter to those tribes which, 
 under various names, burst forth from the forests 
 and shores of northern Europe, and to one phase of 
 which belongs the Saxon people from whom we have 
 ourselves partially sprung. 
 
 3. I have thus suggested to you three causes for Rome and 
 the differences which prevail in various governments ng 
 among mankind. I will proceed to contrast the 
 growth of the English constitution with that of the 
 Roman republic. 
 
 There are few people more strictly resembling each 
 other than the Italians and the English. I believe 
 there are few governments which have been described 
 which have so many points of similarity as the re- 
 public of Rome and the constitution of England from 
 the first days of William the Conqueror down to the 
 constitution of William III. But while their points 
 of similarity are striking, upon the other hand there 
 are remarkable points of difference, such as might 
 naturally be expected from the operation of the three 
 causes which I have just hinted at, in combination with 
 many others I have not referred to. It seems to be a 
 fact forced on our attention by the study of history — 
 I am not here defending a principle, but asserting a 
 fact — that the tendency of all governments is towards 
 the extension of the democratic element. Govern- 
 
200 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 ments, if they are progressive ones, that is, if they owe 
 their origin to what in natural history resembles a seed 
 gradually developing and opening itself out, develope 
 towards popular rather than towards despotic forms. 
 A pure despotism will very likely remain a despotism 
 to the end ; and if, as in the East, the inert character 
 of the population, kept in subjection by the arbitrary 
 conduct of their rulers, has shown no tendency to de- 
 velopment, it is to be accounted for, not by the fact 
 of the government being unable in itself to progress, 
 but to the character of the people being so depressed 
 and bowed down by oppression and tyranny, as to 
 be unable even to suggest to itself the idea of pro- 
 gress. The despotic form may contain theoretically 
 the more perfect truth : therein we find the recog- 
 nition of the great type of all governments, the rela- 
 tion of the parent to the child, shadowing forth the 
 position of God to ourselves: but de facto it has 
 usually been the case that the subject has at length 
 rejected the status pupillaris, and reached a day when 
 he felt he might put aside the full parental control. 
 But I will not here discuss the question of propriety 
 or expediency ; I am concerned with a fact, and as 
 with a fact I must deal with it. In all the govern- 
 ments of Europe we shall find this tendency to demo- 
 cratic development, and peculiarly so in the case of 
 those two with which I am now especially concerned 
 — the republic of Rome and the constitution of Eng- 
 land. 
 Differences 4. There have been many countries, in both an- 
 m repu - c j ent and m0( j ern tj megj w hi c h have been the theatres 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 201 
 
 on which various theories of government more or less 
 democratic have been tried and tested ; and while all 
 present certain very strong features of similarity, 
 they scarcely in one case are without some equally 
 striking point of difference. Amongst others which 
 have exhibited this form, I remind you of Athens, 
 France, and America, as well as Rome and England. 
 Switzerland and the Italian republics would each of 
 them suggest their own peculiarities ; but I would 
 call your attention simply to the five suggested. If 
 you compare their developments, their origin, and 
 their results, you will find in them five striking dif- 
 ferences. 
 
 The Athenian republic was the natural offspring Athens. 
 of the Ionian character. Light, easy, gay, and re- 
 fined ; appreciating taste and intellect in a high de- 
 gree, and ever willing to pay it homage ; each in- 
 dividual counting refined taste his inalienable heri- 
 tage, and its absence unworthy of his race, — the 
 inhabitants of Attica, the members of her phyles and 
 demes, while their originality, freedom, and inde- 
 pendence of character inspired them with dread of 
 the theory of despotic power, and became an impetus 
 towards democratic development, at the same time 
 from veneration of intellect, taste, or talent were often 
 made the willing slaves of a temporary master-mind 
 or an intellectual few. The tendency in that country 
 was ever towards timocracy. She gave up her rule by 
 kings to change it for archons ; but the archons were 
 annually elected to preserve the integrity of the com: 
 monwealth, while the public assembly and the senate 
 
202 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 were alike witnesses of the votes and freedom of the 
 people. When she gave up her kings, she established 
 permanent archons, restricted by a vttsvQwos, the 
 power of electing whom lay in an aristocratic council ; 
 showing us that Athens, like other countries, passed 
 through the transition of oligarchical rule. The ar- 
 chons soon became annual, and powers of appeal were 
 granted by Solon, which at once recognised the 
 liberty of the people. That lawgiver established a 
 timocracy in Athens, with the recognition of property 
 as the highest standard. Athens was a republic in 
 theory, while in fact it was the tyranny of a highly 
 intelligent oligarchy. 
 France. In the case of modern France, while there is a 
 
 people constantly aiming at freedom of government, 
 they are as frequently and as surely succumbing to 
 a despotism as complete as any nation has ever been 
 enthralled in. Recur to that period so stained with 
 bloodshed, and the horrors of civil war, the times of 
 Louis XVI.; or pass on to some years later, when 
 Charles X. was driven from his throne and his 
 country, and compelled to live and die an exile ; or 
 to recent occasions, when, impelled by a fretful desire 
 after an imaginary freedom of government, the French 
 cast off all the titles which implied supreme authority, 
 yet within a short period of the first of those efforts 
 by their own act placed themselves under the domn 
 nion not of a chief magistrate, nor an ordinary gover- 
 nor, but one who was invested with the regalia of 
 empire, and you see the tendency of the French 
 people. While the tendency of Athenian republican- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 203 
 
 ism was towards oligarchical rule, that of France has 
 been towards individual despotism. 
 
 But pass on from France, and consider the Ame- America, 
 rican republic. You will there find this singular 
 fact, — that a large body of people have now for 
 many years been possessed of and worked out for 
 themselves the idea of a republic, not having much 
 deviated from their original constitution, nor, like 
 France, so deeply deluged their soil with the blood- 
 shed of civil war, nor been stigmatised to all posterity 
 with the same charge of changeableness and fickle- 
 ness of character. In whatever respect America may 
 be viewed, however charged with the absence of in- 
 tellectual energy or true political wisdom, it cannot 
 be charged with the changeableness or the vacilla- 
 tion with which France has been marked. 
 
 We have, then, in these three republics the con- 
 trasts of republicanism with an oligarchical and de- 
 mocratic tendency, whose pervading spirit was de- 
 velopment of taste and intellect ; republicanism with 
 a despotic and military tendency, whose impulse was 
 national glory ; and republicanism with no tendency 
 to deviation, whose acknowledged and steady aim is 
 social equality. 
 
 5. Such is the character of the three republics of 
 Athens, France, and America. Now follow out more 
 in detail the history of Eome and England. In com- 
 paring Eome with England, you will mark this fea- 
 ture of difference. There has been in England tion of the 
 from the days of William the Conqueror a constant roya it y . 
 
204 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 jealousy for the preservation of the titles and insignia 
 as well as the fact, of monarchy. Whatever may 
 have been the character of the revolutions which have 
 shaken England,— whether in the slight popular 
 outbursts of the reigns of Richard II. or Henry 
 IV. ; in the efforts to throw off an individual sove- 
 reign on the score of tyranny or oppression ; in the 
 great wars of York and Lancaster, really impelled 
 as they were by the rise of the Saxon population; 
 in the great rebellion against Charles Stuart, when a 
 dynasty tottered to its fall ; or in the time of William 
 III., when the constitution became finally established 
 in its democratic tendency, — you will find that there 
 was always preserved among us the notion of heredi- 
 tary monarchy, and not only the title, but the respect 
 due to royalty. While in the case of Rome, no 
 sooner had the first efforts been made at popular 
 representation and republican government, than the 
 title of king was swept away from the state ; and so 
 great was the jealousy lest that title should be revived, 
 that a consul yielded his chair, simply because he bore 
 the name, and in his veins there flowed the blood of 
 him who had once been a king. In this respect there 
 is therefore a material difference between the repub- 
 lic of Rome and the constitution of England. 
 
 There are one or two striking advantages which 
 are gained from this determined preservation of the 
 title, appearance, and the fact of royalty. The fact 
 of a reigning monarch, however much the govern- 
 ment may be tending towards popular representation, 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 205 
 
 produces order throughout a country, and creates in 
 the minds of the people notions of regularity and dis- 
 cipline ; it creates that feeling which every political 
 economist, and every legislator, has been anxious to 
 preserve — the feeling of respect and reverence for 
 something. That feeling has been preserved in this 
 country to a higher degree than in any other which 
 has had the same democratic tendency, because we 
 have jealously preserved throughout the theory of 
 monarchical government. Although it may appear 
 somewhat paradoxical, still it is not the less true, 
 that the fact of a reigning monarch, is the surest 
 preservative of the liberties of the people. When the 
 recognised ruler is set aside, there is at once a clear 
 stage for individual talent, energy, and power to take 
 their share in the struggle of the great tournament of 
 mankind. The fact of an authorised monarch noi 
 holding the reins of government in his hands, is not 
 by any means synonymous with the fact of those reins 
 being thrown away ; it too often means that they 
 are thrown upon the neck of the people ; and he who 
 is the strongest, the cleverest, and has the greatest 
 power to influence his fellow, is the man who will 
 grasp the reins and drive the chariot of the state 
 whither he will. While the recognised monarch oc- 
 cupies the seat of that chariot, and holds the reins in 
 his own hands, the true liberties of the people are 
 preserved, and the tyranny of the few is most surely 
 held in abeyance. The removal of the monarch from 
 the chief rule in Borne simply opened the people to a 
 more destructive and ruinous tyranny from the oli- 
 
206 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 garchical party; and in France the departure of 
 Louis XVI. simply left a clear stage for the bloody 
 scenes of ambition enacted by Robespierre, Marat, 
 and Danton, until the contest of rivalry ceased 
 beneath the despotic sway of Napoleon. In the 
 midst of withering conscriptions and taxation the 
 people of France had to remember even the days of 
 Louis XVI. as a season of comparative liberty and 
 repose. Therefore it is that, while France has talked 
 of republicanism, she has tended to military despo- 
 tism ; while she has over and over again weltered in 
 the blood of her citizens, aiming at the misty light 
 which passed before her eyes, unsubstantial and un- 
 real, of an excess of civil liberty, she has resulted 
 often in military despotism; while England, slowly 
 but surely progressing, has reached what France 
 never reached, and has been less deluged with the 
 blood of her people in civil war. 
 Contrast of 6- I said above that there were distinct differences 
 EnTsh and * n *ke character of nations, and I attributed these 
 character, differences to three causes. These causes will apply 
 to the Italian and the English character. The Italian 
 character is vivacious, passionate, conscious, keen in 
 feeling, highly vindictive, capable of intense feelings of 
 envy and jealousy, united with a considerable amount 
 of foresight and practical knowledge, and philosophy 
 in the management of mankind. The English charac- 
 ter, upon the other hand, is slow, thoughtful, cautious, 
 phlegmatic, not anxious to propose an end before 
 secure of the means of attaining it ; unconscious of 
 the definite principles upon which it acts, but more 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 207 
 
 surely gaining the end in view than the inhabitants 
 of the southern countries of Europe. That difference 
 of character will probably account for the following 
 fact, namely, that while the Eoman constitution simply 
 took about three hundred years to begin, continue, 
 and in a certain sense to reach its end, the English 
 has taken nearly a thousand years to go over the 
 same ground and through many of the same pro- 
 cesses. The difference of national character will to 
 a great degree account for this. 
 
 7. Upon examining the two constitutions, you Origin of 
 will find a resemblance between the origin of the Ro- constitu- 
 man and English people. In the case of Rome there tlon8 ' 
 was an aboriginal population which was gathered 
 upon the Tiber, and which formed the nucleus of that 
 vast system which has since been denominated the 
 Roman empire. Round this small nucleus of abo- 
 riginal population there gathered a band of warriors 
 from a neighbour state, powerful in arms, deter- 
 mined in courage, possessed of ability to control those 
 who might be thrown in contact with them. These 
 two bodies formed the germ of the Roman consti- 
 tution. You know the story of Romulus told by 
 Livy, and either denied or imagined to be figura- 
 tive by many writers of modern times ; of the reigns 
 of Romulus, Numa, and Tullus ; of their wars, and 
 the progress of their civil improvements; and how 
 that, among other things, Romulus, the first king, 
 opened an asylum into which he invited the crimi- 
 nals, renegades, and fugitives of the neighbour states 
 of Italy, by which means he hoped to gather around 
 
208 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 himself and his small military government something 
 like a population. This was the embryo of Rome ; 
 an aboriginal population, hordes gathered in from the 
 neighbouring tribes by invitation, and a small warlike 
 body of invaders commanded by Romulus. The con- 
 querors soon formed themselves into three aristocratic 
 tribes. The Rhamnes, the foundation of Romulus; 
 the Tatienses, the result of the coalition with the Sa- 
 bines ; and the Luceres, which were the consequence 
 of an alliance and amalgamation with Alba Longa. 
 
 Attracted by the growing power and celebrity of 
 the rising state, there came visitors and settlers from 
 many neighbouring countries, and among others from 
 Etruria ; a country remarkable, alike for its high at- 
 tainments in arts, its political economy, its religious 
 lore, and its powers of legislation. To such as these, 
 attracted by the growing greatness of Rome, there 
 was added a fourth population, which gathered with- 
 out the walls of the infant society, were desirous of 
 being protected beneath its shadow, and of allying 
 their interests with those of the governor of the new 
 city. Thus in the beginning of the Roman state there 
 were four elements of population, — aboriginal, refugee, 
 emigrant, and conqueror. 
 Early state I now turn to the case of England, where the em- 
 society, bryo societies who were the germ of our present 
 constitution bore some similarity to the case above 
 described. In the year 1066, a people occupied the 
 soil of this country who for five hundred years had 
 wielded the sceptres of our county sovereignties, and 
 by degrees had brought under one system of general 
 
ENGLISH HISTOliy. 209 
 
 legislation the populations of Anglo-Saxon Britain. 
 Though not aboriginal, they had made England their 
 home, and deserved the advantageous returns of a 
 productive soil, a sea-girt island, and a commanding 
 position, in reward for the industry, perseverance, 
 good sense, and practical intelligence scarcely rivalled 
 by any other race. Whatever were the national 
 greatness and political foresight which the states of 
 Etruria possessed in Italy, they were at least shared 
 with them by the Saxon population of England. The 
 latter, if inferior in taste, refinement, and religious 
 perceptions, at least were their rivals if not superiors 
 in the arrangements for .internal commerce and the 
 severer rules of social life ; and the germ which 
 sprung up into so gigantic a plant in the days of the 
 Roman commonwealth finds a fair parallel in the ele- 
 ments of Saxon greatness. 
 
 Upon that Saxon population the chivalry of Nor- 
 mandy poured, headed by William and his vassal 
 barons. You know how at the battle of Hastings 
 William conquered Harold, and how in the course 
 of a few years we find that in England, as in Rome, 
 the germ of a constitution began, formed of two dis- 
 tinct elements of national character, the conquerors 
 and the conquered. The one, the invaders ; the other 
 composed of those who, from love of the soil and 
 country, and bound by strong local association, or 
 other motives, preferred remaining beneath the ty- 
 ranny of the foreign invader to deserting the home of 
 their childhood and the scene of their early energies. 
 So, in the composite nature of their early inhabit- 
 
210 ENGLISH HISTORY - . 
 
 ants, the states of Rome and England bore a re- 
 semblance to each other. It was the fusion of those 
 two populations which gave the character to the after 
 history of the two countries ; and as water gradually 
 rising to its level, the Saxon energy burst upwards, 
 and gave the real complexion to the constitution of 
 England of later days, as the people of Rome, the 
 offspring of the inferior germ in the primary popula- 
 tion, gave the character to the events and progress 
 of the commonwealth. But to pass on. 
 Depression 8. The natural consequence was, that the more 
 rior popu powerful conqueror tyrannised over the weaker popu- 
 lation in Jations which were sheltered beneath them : and the 
 
 each. ' 
 
 Norman baron soon treated with the same contempt 
 and insolence the humbled Saxons, as the three tribes 
 of ancient Rome had oppressed those who were sha- 
 dowed beneath their walls. But there must come a 
 day when an energetic and intelligent people will find 
 their position ; there must come a day when any body 
 of persons possessed of high powers will find ready to 
 rise from their number individuals prepared, at the 
 cost of life and the risk of death, to assert their true 
 liberty. Tyranny and oppression may for awhile para- 
 lyse the energies of a people whose hearts aspire to 
 freedom, but the day will come when the chained lion 
 will start from his slumber and burst his shackles. 
 Every great national spirit will find its type in some 
 individual character who will stake his all in the cause 
 of liberty. In the days of Servius Tullius, " the com- 
 mons' 1 king " of Rome, the plebs asserted their inde- 
 pendence and rights. He had long looked with sym- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 211 
 
 pathy on the unhappy condition of the inferior popu- 
 lation. He saw them full of energy and good will to 
 devote every power to the improvement of the con- 
 dition of the country, and possessed of a force of 
 character far beyond that of the members of three 
 tribes. He saw them able and willing to cultivate the 
 soil, to farm the lands, and if opportunity offered, pre- 
 pared to establish intercourse with the other towns 
 around. But he saw that energy depressed and 
 withered by the tyranny of the aristocratical oli- 
 garchy, who held the reins of government in their 
 own hands, and who from motives of self-interest were 
 determined to oppress the commons. Servius, full of 
 large sympathies, determined on their emancipation, 
 and framed his memorable constitution for their re- 
 dress and permanent freedom. He recognised the 
 people as a part of the state, and allowed them a 
 certain voice in the management of the affairs of 
 Rome. It is not within my object here to give 
 an account of the constitution of Servius: you will 
 find it well described in Dr. Arnold's History of 
 Home. 
 
 In England there is in the conduct and position 
 of William the Conqueror an analogy with that of 
 Servius. He soon discovered that he had to deal 
 with a people whom he might depress but could 
 not crush, injure but never extirpate, and who 
 have shown in each successive century that they are 
 a people, however much for a time they might be 
 subdtfed, who would assert their independence, and 
 eventually gain their standing among the nations of 
 p 2 
 
212 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the earth,— the Anglo-Saxon population of England. 
 The first effort of the Conqueror was to crush them 
 with an iron hand ; but finding that effort vain, as it 
 . had been to suppress the rising energies of the Bo- 
 man people, he recognised their charters and constitu- 
 tions, and acknowledged them as an integral part 
 of the nation. He embodied the laws of Edward the 
 Confessor in his own, and flattered the pride while he 
 attempted to allay the suspicions of the Saxons, by 
 giving a prominent position in his legislation to the 
 codes of Saxon lawgivers. I am not now concerned 
 with the intentions of William in granting these 
 charters and constitutions, nor with the many in- 
 stances in which he may have enacted them for his 
 own selfish purposes, nor the rapacity with which he 
 followed out his system of plunder. I deal only with 
 the simple fact, that as the successors of Romulus 
 were compelled to do justice to the claims of the 
 people of Rome, and as Servius Tullius yielded to 
 their cry, so William I. and the barons of England 
 were compelled by the demands of the Saxon people 
 to recognjse for them the form of constitutional go- 
 vernment. 
 Third step. 9. The next great change is significant. Tarqui- 
 theoUrar- ™ us Superbus, aided by a proud oligarchy, who as- 
 shy in each, sisted him for their own ends, crushed for awhile the 
 embryo government granted by Servius Tullius ; and 
 far from their homes and the lands which they had 
 cultivated, in the mines of the Apennines of central 
 Italy or the Ligurian Alps, in rayless caverns and 
 subterranean excavations, the people of Rome en- 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 213 
 
 dured a tyranny the like of which they had never 
 imagined before. But when Tarquin passed away, 
 and the people hoped again to have their rights re- 
 cognised, we find that they were no longer governed 
 by a single king, but became subject to an aristo- 
 cratic few. What occurred in England after the 
 time of William I. will bear comparison with these 
 circumstances. After the reigns of William I. and 
 his sons, Stephen of Blois, his grandson, a monarch 
 weak in judgment and purpose, though of no small 
 physical courage, finding that he was unable to keep 
 in check the barons, gave them the permission, 
 which they would soon have extorted, to build castles. 
 Having attained this point, they made strenuous 
 efforts not only to crush the Saxon population, but, 
 on the other hand, to restrain the prerogative of the 
 crown. " The king of England," they argued, " was 
 simply duke of Normandy ; the monarch of England 
 was in Normandy their peer ; his tyranny was intole- 
 rable, and contrary to the compact with which they 
 had agreed to follow the Conqueror to Hastings." 
 
 There was, in fact, the same aristocratic struggle 
 to depress the popular movement in England, as in 
 the days of Brutus to depress the popular party at 
 Rome. The attempt at aristocratical or oligarchical 
 government succeeded at Rome, while in England it 
 to a great degree failed. In Rome they had abolished 
 the notion of individual rule, which was protective of 
 the liberties of the people; while in England the 
 monarch became and continued the protector of con- 
 stitutional liberty. 
 
214 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Fourth 10. Proceed to the next stage in the constitu- 
 
 te of The tional history of Eome, and you will find that, bowed 
 debt. down by the oppressive cruelty of their rulers, the 
 
 people were compelled to borrow money largely. The 
 day had passed when, protected by the beneficent 
 laws of Servius, the people possessed the lands 
 watered by the Tiber, and cultivated their corn on 
 the Oampagna. There had been a day when the 
 cultivation of those banks showed the industry, the 
 energy, and perseverance of a great people. But 
 during the invasion of the Etrurians under Porsenna, 
 they were robbed of their lands, and the unfortunate 
 people were compelled to borrow money of their lords 
 at Eome. In a short time sprung up the system of 
 clientela ; and so powerful was the ascendancy of the 
 creditors over the people, that they were not only em- 
 powered to exact payment of the debt, but in default 
 were able to deprive them of their liberties, and 
 compel them to labour as slaves of the soil, until they 
 had repaid the amount of the debt, and were even 
 authorised to take an equivalent weight of flesh if 
 the debtor were insolvent, a custom referred to in 
 Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice. Such tyranny was 
 not likely to last; laws for the relief of debtors 
 were passed in the time of Menenius Agrippa, and 
 the secession to Mons Sacer freed the people for 
 awhile from their oppressive masters. But while they 
 exacted the right to have their freedom asserted by 
 law, they acted the part of a wise, moderate, and 
 patriotic people. They demanded no more than they 
 felt they could justly claim ; and having received a 
 
ENGLISH HISTOBY. 215 
 
 promise which they thought they might reasonably 
 trust, they returned to their allegiance, their offices, 
 and the city, to receive the fulfilment of the promise, 
 and to return a submissive obedience. 
 
 In the same way in England, something parallel to 
 this occurred in the reign of Henry II. and the Plan- 
 tagenets. The barons, corresponding to the aris- 
 tocracy of Rome, had gained such power over the 
 Saxon population, that they had, in spite of the 
 energy, perseverance, and determination which they 
 manifested, tied up their hands by means of oppres- 
 sive debts, and weakened the energies of their minds 
 by a state akin to actual thraldom. Henry II., 
 enlightened in mind, though with the faults of the 
 Plantagenet dynasty, educated in France, and tinged 
 with the spirit of chivalry, saw the cruelties and op- 
 pression under which the people suffered, and granted 
 them charters which freed them from the oppres- 
 sion of the barons, very analogous to those given 
 by the promise of Menenius Agrippa to the people 
 of Rome. 
 
 ] 1. At this stage of the progress of the cohstitu Fifth step. 
 tions, another change took place ; one which did i aw3 . 
 occur in Rome, and something very similar to it in 
 England, — the effort to gain freedom of land by agra- 
 rian laws. Give to a man freedom of body, and the 
 question will arise, where is he to live? Give him 
 freedom of body, " where," he will ask, " am I to gain 
 my support? The God who made me formed this 
 world to support me; and the corn which grows 
 upon yonder hill, or the common which lies unenclosed 
 
216 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 beyond it, were given as much by Him for my sup- 
 port, as was the free air of heaven for daily life. You 
 have given me freedom of body, you must now give 
 me the means of supporting that body." And this 
 was the cry which has brought about many an agra- 
 rian law, and among others at Rome that of Spurius 
 Cassius. That law compelled the higher orders first 
 to yield part of the conquered lands for the cultivation 
 of the people, and a certain quantity on the banks of 
 the Tiber for the same purpose ; it also provided that 
 upon all the lands still left as common lands only a 
 certain number of cattle should be fed. In that way 
 and with this protection the people of Eome obtained 
 their freedom, first of person and then of land. 
 
 In the same way, a similar cry gave some of the most 
 important features to the Magna Charta obtained in 
 the reign of King John. The people of England 
 having realised a certain freedom of life, liberty, and 
 limb, found that they were unable to obtain support, 
 owing to large tracts of the country lying unculti- 
 vated, for the maintenance of extensive hunting-forests. 
 Groaning beneath this oppression, they spoke through 
 the means of the barons, who they knew must be 
 heard ; and John was compelled to answer them in 
 the famous Magna Charta, among some of the lead- 
 ing characters and clauses of which is an assertion of a 
 certain freedom to the people to cultivate and to use 
 the common lands of England. It was an ancient 
 theory, that every citizen should be a landholder, and 
 that the whole territory of the state should be divided 
 amongst the citizens. A part of the land could still, 
 
ENGLISH - HISTORV. 217 
 
 except in the case of over-population, be left unculti- 
 vated. This part was kept for pasture, and a rent 
 paid for its use, which swelled the state revenue. 
 When new land was gained by conquest, the richer 
 parts were let by the state to some individual who 
 paid his rent to the state, and had the power to 
 underlet the land as if he had been the proprietor. 
 These were considered as tenants at will ; and when 
 new citizens were added to the state, this land was to 
 be re-divided. The same custom prevailed in Greece 
 according to Thucydides, and among the Africans 
 according to Herodotus. English law is jealous of 
 individual right, Roman law of the right of the state : 
 consequently, when English law would have permitted 
 the leaseholder to continue his possession, the Ro- 
 man continually asserted the right of the state to 
 eject at will. 
 
 After the expulsion of Tarquin, there was great 
 need of an agrarian law. The burghers had full pro- 
 mise of large tracts as tenants at will ; the people had 
 lost by Etrurian conquests all their lands beyond the 
 Tiber, and had benefited nothing by the acquisitions 
 of years. Spurius Cassius proposed at this juncture 
 his agrarian law for ejection of the burghers 1 tenants 
 at will, and the re-division of the land. His efforts 
 were in the end successful ; but they raised the in- 
 dignation of the burgher population, and resulted in 
 his own assassination. I do not mean that any exact 
 parallel to this is in the constitutional history of Eng- 
 land, but it is not without its counterpart in certain 
 clauses of Magna Charta; though in that instance 
 
218 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 ihe crown rather than the aristocracy was the party 
 from whom the people had to extort their rights. 
 Extai 9 ? ep - 12. Having gained liberty of person and liberty of 
 of the fran- land, the next step that will be taken will be towards 
 freedom of voice in the government of the country. 
 This was granted in Rome by the rogation of Publilius 
 Volero. When a man feels freedom of person and 
 freedom of land, he recognises in himself a member 
 of the body politic. He looks from his own land to 
 his neighbour's, he argues that one tract of land be- 
 longs to one man, and another tract to another, and 
 he realises the fact that he has become one of a dis- 
 tinct social body. He has become a lord of the soil ; 
 he feels that he is the citizen of a country, and that 
 he should have a voice in its government. At Rome 
 that right was recognised by the law proposed by 
 Volero, a tribune who asserted for persons of a cer- 
 tain amount of property the right to vote in the Oo- 
 mitia. He followed out, in fact, the embryo consti- 
 tution of Servius Tullius. Not that the rogation 
 of Volero gave the franchise to the Roman people 
 for the first time, but it considerably opened it out, 
 and freed it from abuse. The fact was, owing to the 
 votes of the people having been hitherto given in the 
 centuries for the election of tribunes, great influence 
 and intimidation had been used by the burghers and 
 aristocratic party. Volero proposed that these votes 
 should for the future be given in their tribes, which 
 would free them from much oppression. This bill, 
 though violently opposed, was carried, and became 
 one of the great foundations of the Roman republic. 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 219 
 
 A similar proceeding to this is to be found in English 
 history at the beginning of Henry III.'s reign, and 
 further still in the reigns of Edward I. and Ed- 
 ward III., in which reigns the Saxon population as- 
 serted with something of the same determination, 
 though more cautiously and less directly than the 
 people of Rome, the same right. " Having given us 
 freedom of life, of land and soil, give us now freedom 
 of voice." The Wittenagemote was the foundation 
 of this system, Henry Plantagenet recognised the 
 principle by repeated charters, and King John an- 
 nexed the claims of the people to Magna Charta. It 
 is hard to say when exactly it was that the House of 
 Commons received its exact shape, and when the re- 
 presentative system strictly began ; this will be more 
 properly the province of another lecture ; but it was 
 during the three reigns I have referred to that some 
 of its chief developments were made. 
 
 13. Having achieved this freedom of vote, as well Seventh 
 
 6 . step. Writ- 
 
 as the freedom of life and land, the next desire was ten laws. 
 to have some seal, or written charter, to which they 
 might appeal in confirmation of the liberties which 
 they had gained. There was no settled national code 
 at Rome, and the people cried out loudly for one. 
 They demanded a revision of old floating laws, and 
 the compilation of a new body, and to have a national 
 code framed for all classes without distinction. It 
 was not that absolutely there was no written law at 
 Rome, but there was a want of unity and compre- 
 hensiveness about their plan. Terentilius proposed 
 to send to Greece for a code. You know the story 
 
220 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 of the Decemvirs, the mission to Athens, the copy of 
 the legislation of Solon, and how the laws of the 
 Twelve Tribes became the seal of the constitution of 
 Rome. In the same way towards the end of the 
 reign of Edward II., and especially in the reign of 
 Richard II. and Henry V., we find the same ten- 
 dency in England. Men argued thus : " we have got 
 our rights acknowledged, but we want actual, known, 
 and recognised laws, which may be appealed to by 
 ourselves, and referred to by posterity." Written laws 
 may require further protection still, and may be but 
 an imperfect guarantee for the liberty of the subject ; 
 still, till we have them we have no existing form we 
 can appeal to, and in an infant constitution liberty 
 will sink without it. Floating law and precedent may 
 have weight in an advanced condition of constitutional 
 liberty, but they will be a mockery in a government 
 which has scarcely a precedent to refer to, or a poli- 
 tical theory of more than fifty years' standing. After 
 this followed the Valerian law, which was one of the 
 important steps in the recognition of the people as a 
 part of the legislature : not unlike in its character to 
 the Publilian law mentioned above, and the Horten- 
 sian law which was passed about the same time. The 
 Suetonian law, which asserted boldly for the com- 
 mons the right of the tribunate, showed a superior 
 wisdom to that law which had proposed by a nega- 
 tion to give up one-half the tribunate to the patri- 
 cians on condition that the people might share the 
 higher magistracies with them. Very analogous to 
 this, says Dr. Arnold, was the will in the commons of 
 
ENGLISH HISTOKY. 221 
 
 Edward III.'s reign, to yield the voice in questions of 
 war and peace to the crown, on condition they might 
 have entire control over their own peculiar province, 
 questions relating to taxation. The entire possession 
 by one class of power is more important than one 
 shared with another, and that a stronger party. 
 
 14. The people of Rome and England having thus Eighth 
 obtained liberty of body, liberty of land, liberty of taction of 
 vote, and a written law which guaranteed these pos- caste " 
 sessions, what is the next step ? The natural ques- 
 tion which arises in the minds of the lower order 
 is this : " Having been placed in all respects in the 
 position of those above us, why should there be any 
 rigid line of demarcation between us? Why may 
 not the plebeian marry with the patrician, and 
 occupy the curule chair? Why should the officers 
 of government be gathered from one order in 
 the state, while the lower is excluded? We are a 
 large and important majority; our industry, trade, 
 and intelligence have made Rome what it is, and 
 without us she would be the head without the body ; 
 the secession of Mons Sacer lives in our memory, and 
 the terrors of Volscian wars and iEquian invasions 
 still echo round us to remind us of the alarm inspired 
 by a disobeyed conscription of the army : this shows 
 our power ; Rome is what she is owing to us ; with- 
 out us Rome would no longer be Rome ; we by de- 
 parture could create a new Rome more easily than 
 those who remained behind could retain one. Then 
 why should our inferiority be daily brought before us, 
 not by the custom of society only or voluntary regu- 
 
222 ENGLISH HISTOEY. 
 
 lations, but by severe political enactments and cruel 
 restrictive laws? at least acknowledge for us the 
 power and right to coalesce with the ' patres ' if we 
 will, and leave it to the choice of society hereafter, 
 whether either party shall avail themselves of that 
 liberty.'" The consequence of this was in Rome, that 
 a law proposed by Oanuleius was passed, that one of 
 the consuls should be elected from the plebeians, and 
 the privilege of intermarriage between the two classes 
 conceded. 
 
 Parallel to this were the events in the reign of 
 Henry V. and Henry VI., and during the reigns 
 generally of the dynasties of York and Lancaster. 
 A war of which many a city and village still bear 
 the marks, and all parts of England the sad memo- 
 rials— To wton-field, Tewkesbury, and St. Alban's — 
 will to the latest posterity tell of the frightful car- 
 nage of civil strife, how Englishmen could fight with 
 Englishmen, and the flower of our aristocracy and a 
 chivalrous nobility could be blighted and left to wither 
 in the dust. And what was the reason of these wars ? 
 To a great degree the determination of the lower order, 
 who, having gained a certain definite standing in the 
 nation, saw between them and the king a body of no- 
 bility filling up every station of importance in the king- 
 dom, and who were bent on rising themselves. The 
 same spirit which compelled the legislative enactments 
 of Canuleius at Rome, urged on our English commons 
 to seek by force what they found it hard to get re- 
 cognised as a right ; and the slower course of long 
 civil wars, whose nerve to a great degree was supplied 
 
ENGLISH HISTORY. 223 
 
 by the mind and temper of the middling class, occu- 
 pied the same period and achieved the same end in 
 the English constitution which a more decisive legis- 
 lative enactment accomplished in that of Rome. The 
 middling class of both countries had reached much the 
 same point of temper and mind, had very much the 
 same difficulties to struggle with, and found much 
 the same opposition offered. The long Plantagenet 
 dynasty and the accompanying aristocratical supre^ 
 macy galled the neck of the burgess class in Eng- 
 land, in much the same way as the oligarchical party 
 at Rome had irritated and oppressed the people. One 
 reason of the different mode by which Rome and 
 England reached this end was the fact, that in the 
 former the barrier between the two classes was a 
 matter of direct legislative enactment and prohibition, 
 while in the latter it was rather the indirect feeling 
 of society at large. It has been the case in nearly 
 all the southern nations of Europe, that actual laws 
 have kept up the separation of the two orders. 
 
 15. That law having been passed, the next great Ninth step, 
 step sought to be obtained was the ' power of appeal. 1 appea i. 
 The ' power of appeal,' however slight it may seem, 
 is one of the greatest and most essential parts of the 
 constitution of any country. However much you 
 may give the people courts of judicature, the power 
 of voting, recognition in parliament, and the secu- 
 rity of written laws to protect their liberty, there 
 is little true freedom without the power of appeal. 
 There have been easy means found of hindering the 
 rights of the people from being attended to. At 
 
224- 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Rome the Valerian law brought about that power of 
 appeal from an inferior to a superior judgment. In 
 the same way in England — though it may not syn- 
 chronise exactly with the same period at Rome — you 
 will find our courts of appeal were established ; so 
 that now, if in one court a judgment is given, af- 
 fecting the properties or rights of any individual, with 
 which he may be dissatisfied, he may carry his appeal 
 to a higher court and before a higher tribunal. If 
 that tribunal shall give what seems an unfair judg- 
 ment, he may carry his appeal higher still, to some- 
 thing nearer the monarch himself; and there is no 
 limit, until you reach the monarch himself, to the 
 power of the English people to appeal for their liber- 
 ties and their rights. 
 Tenth step. 16. The next great feature in the Roman consti- 
 tional re- tution was the fixing by the Licinian rogations those 
 form - laws which were already passed for the government 
 
 of Rome. The claim of the people was somewhat 
 similar to this : You have given us all these laws and 
 liberties, but they are in danger of becoming obso- 
 lete ; rank and power will always contrive, unless 
 guarded by checks, to oppress the people. What 
 the Licinian laws were to Rome in the three great 
 rogations of Licinius, so were our own Reform Bill or 
 bills analogous to it passed anterior and posterior to 
 the constitution settled by William III. 
 
 17. It will be seen that in the remarks which I 
 have made there is a large gulf which I have passed 
 over in the English constitutional history. I have 
 taken next to no notice of the Stuart dynasty, 
 
ENGLISH HISTOEY. 225 
 
 or the events of the, reigns of James I. or our 
 Charles I. I am not aware that any exact parallel 
 exists in the Roman constitution to that particular 
 phase in our own history, attributable to the fact to 
 which I have previously referred, namely, to our 
 having preserved the fact of royalty while Rome 
 threw it aside. 
 
 During the reigns of the Tudors, especially in those 
 of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, you 
 will find that the developments of that body of people 
 in England who represented the artisans and the 
 merchants have parallels in many enactments of the 
 Roman commonwealth immediately after the war 
 with Pyrrhus, when the republic had reached the 
 apex of its strength, and her inter-social system was 
 becoming established. 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 1 ? e i! n nf est ■"•• Few things are more interesting than the study 
 sics. of the minds and thoughts of other men of long-ago 
 
 far-off countries. The description of the natural and 
 beauties of other parts and climes, the wars and bat- 
 tles of old heroic days, and the philosophies and reli- 
 gious principles of men who stood on the threshold of 
 gospel truth, are all of them arresting, not only to 
 the man but to the boy. If the story of the Iliad, — 
 the combats of Diomede, the tricks of Ulysses, were 
 first brought to the notice of a youth as a tale of three 
 thousand years ago, belonging to a far distant land, and 
 were to appear to him in a language which he could 
 easily comprehend, he would at once be charmed with 
 the idea. Or still more, if a religious and reflecting 
 youth were to have the philosophies of Plato or Aris- 
 totle brought before him for the first time as the 
 works of minds who, seeking truth by their own holi- 
 ness, effort and the light of conscience, had sha- 
 dowed forth the doctrine of the Trinity or the nature 
 of moral virtue, he would be at once attracted by the 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 227 
 
 thought and induced to pursue the study. The Iliad 
 might be as engrossing as a novel of Sir Walter 
 Scott, the odes of Horace as charming as the poetry 
 of Moore, or the ideas of Greek philosophers as aston- 
 ishing as the discoveries of scientific truth made by a 
 savage. The reason why youths have not had this 
 feeling about the classics has been to a very great 
 degree from the uninteresting mode used in bringing 
 classical works before the minds of boys ; and very 
 much mistaken alarm has been aroused as to the 
 moral effect of such writings, from the low view which 
 has been taken of the tragedian or philosopher who 
 are really searching after the jewel of eternal wisdom 
 in mines not yet illumined by the light of the gospel. 
 2. There are numberless advantages accruing to the 
 use of classical literature and dead languages as the 
 great instruments of education. The strength of in- 
 tellect, elevation of aim, refinement of taste, accuracy 
 of diction, closeness of reasoning they tend to pro- 
 duce, are on all hands acknowledged. But all these 
 advantages are likely to be thrown useless aside, either 
 by men, on the one hand, who see no value at all in 
 classical learning, or by those, on the other hand', 
 who view it simply as an educational instrument, and 
 have their eyes blinded to its moral tendency. The 
 one line must enervate, the other materialise, the 
 education of our age and country. Let us view man- 
 kind from the beginning as God's work, his intellect 
 and imagination consecrated through successive cen- 
 turies to his service, as by degrees the dawn of the 
 everlasting morning broke along the heights of Hy- 
 a 2 
 
228 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 mettus or the seven hills. Let us view it as one whole, 
 each successive mind and age, like new and polished 
 shafts, rising in their separate and fragile loveliness 
 to rear one vast temple to contain the knowledge of 
 God, and waiting to receive their concentration in 
 the roof which was to enclose them all beneath one 
 shelter, to strengthen them all for one vast design, to 
 destroy their separate individuality in the integrity 
 of the eternal unity of God manifest in the flesh ; — 
 realise this, and Homer and iEschylus, Plato and 
 Aristotle, become but pillars farther or less remote 
 from the shrine of revealed truth, and not only inter- 
 esting but essential studies for the mind of him who 
 would contemplate and adore the perfect counsels of 
 God. 
 
 The morbid dread of classical study referred to 
 above results from a lack of an enlarged view alto- 
 gether. God's work is one, and we must not reject 
 the study of any part of it. It would be as absurd 
 to refuse instruction from a leaf, or from the contem- 
 plation of the insect world, on the ground that we 
 have a higher and completer form of revelation, as to 
 reject classical knowledge merely because it has been 
 superseded. To say nothing of the vast intellectual 
 strength gained by its study, and the interest it 
 affords in a way no other study can, the writer of 
 antiquity suggests practical truths in forms, and 
 new combinations, which would never have been 
 expressed without him. God's dealing with the his- 
 tory of man generally in his gradual advance two thou- 
 sand years ago is the same as it is with man individu- 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 229 
 
 ally ; and though nothing is more earnestly to be de- 
 precated than the retrograde movement of the day 
 of -Lorenzo de Medici, this is widely different from 
 imbibing what strength we can from those earlier 
 fountains which spring up among the thicker shadows 
 of heathenism. 
 
 3. Without further preface, I will give a few illus- 
 trations of the truth of what is here stated, and first 
 from the great moralist of antiquity, Sophocles, drawn 
 from the " Antigone." Take for example the speech 
 of Hsemon and the ensuing dialogue. 
 
 In this admirable speech and the lines following Sophocles, 
 there are clear indications of a firm and vigorous ra iuy and 
 perception of truths dawning on the mind of Sopho- seyere tow 
 cles. There is a striking, moral, social, and political vernment. 
 bearing in them ; while the axioms of a definite philo- 
 sophy are propounded with lucid and nervous power 
 by Hsemon, they are seen in vivid contrast with the 
 imbecile utilitarianism of Creon, worthy of Shak- 
 speare's power of eliciting the light of truth by the 
 shadow of counterfeit or falsehood. The strong 
 religious feeling with regard to the sacred nature of 
 the civil polity shows the ancient impression of the 
 sanctity and ecclesiastical nature of civil government ; 
 while the perfect equilibrium of Hsemon's mind, 
 oscillating evenly between love for his father and 
 stern perception of truth, reflects an ideal of filial 
 duty, which is no unworthy type of the holy tale of 
 Jonathan and Saul. These passages especially bring 
 out the highest heathen perception of the realisation 
 of the sacred truth involved in the fifth command- 
 
230 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 ment, and might well be illustrated by many passages 
 of the Proverbs, which express the modifications of 
 filial affection, deference, forbearance, and resistance. 
 
 Hcemon. Father, the gods implant wisdom in man, the highest of all 
 possessions as many as exist. But I should neither be able, nor know- 
 how to express that you do not say these things aright. For another, 
 indeed, it might be proper. For your interest, then, I have been 
 accustomed to consider every thing that any one says or does, or has to 
 blame : for your eye terrifies a common citizen from using those words 
 which you would not be pleased to hear. To me, father, there is no 
 possession more honourable than your prosperity : for what is a greater 
 ornament of glory to children than a father flourishing ? or what to a 
 father than his children ? Do not, now, bear this disposition of mind 
 only in yourself, that what you say and nothing else is right. For 
 whosoever thinks that he himself alone has wisdom, or a tongue, or a 
 soul, such as no other, these men, when laid open, have been seen to 
 be empty. For, if there is any judgment with me too, though a 
 younger man, I say, that it is far the best for a man to be by nature 
 full of knowledge : but if not, for it is not wont to incline this way, 
 it is also honourable to learn from those that advise well. 
 
 Creon. Shall the city dictate to me what it is proper for me to 
 ordain ? 
 
 Hcemon. Do you see how you have spoken this like a very young 
 man? 
 
 Creon. For does it become any other man than me to rule this 
 state ? 
 
 Hcemon. Nay, that is not the state which is dependent on one man. 
 
 Creon. Is not the state deemed the possession of its ruler ? 
 
 Hcemon. No doubt : in an uninhabited land at least you might rule 
 alone. 
 
 Creon. Oh, utterly basest of wretches ! quarrelling with your father? 
 
 Hcemon. For I see you committing the sin of injustice. 
 
 Creon. Do I sin in paying reverence to my own dominion ? 
 
 Hcemon. You do not pay reverence when trampling under foot at 
 least the honours of the gods. 
 
 Homer. 4. I will select a passage from Homer, who, 
 
 while he stands as the most remote among the pillars 
 that bear up the roof of that temple in which the 
 counsels of God were enshrined in the mind and con- 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 231 
 
 science of man, is nevertheless among the most colos- 
 sal and beautiful of all the portions of the structure ; 
 and while we advance along the vista of columns 
 which lead from the farthest nave towards the choir 
 in which the hearts of poets and the sage song 
 of philosophers were attuned to the melody of perfect 
 truth, there is not one which has so impressed our soul 
 as the first and the earliest among them all, the blind 
 Ionian bard. In mentioning him we must not forget 
 him who like a rude column stands opposite, — Hesiod. 
 In passing it is important to remember the pecu- 
 liar province of the two : — that of Hesiod was the 
 introduction of the earliest and simplest notion of 
 divinity, applied through the medium of sacred 
 seasons to the human race, while that of Homer was 
 to strike out the second primeval thought, — viz. the 
 human race elevated through godlike virtues to the 
 throne of divinity. As an illustration of the latter, I 
 will make a few comments on the character and 
 lament of Andromache. 
 
 To Homer seems to have been assigned the pro- The eleva- 
 vince of the elevation of human nature generally to man sym / 
 those high sympathies, which he has represented as P. ath y and 
 existing in the various phases of the Divine Being 
 brought before us in his fabulous deities. It may be 
 an interesting question whether or no he erected his 
 theogony for the purpose of illustrating the highest 
 condition of humanity? Was Mars painted for 
 the sake of being the type on which Hector was 
 to be moulded, Jupiter but the ideal on which 
 Agamemnon was to be formed, Achilles assimi- 
 
232 THE BELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 lating to the notion of Apollo ? While perhaps the 
 
 female tendernesses of Helen, Andromache, or Hecuba 
 
 were rendered celestial by their approximation to 
 
 celestial beings. With this view, we cannot but read 
 
 the lament of Andromache with the deepest interest. 
 
 It is the highest phase of motherly and conjugal 
 
 tenderness kept continually in check by the elevated 
 
 sentiments of the Trojan patriot. For instance, what 
 
 can be more touching and pathetic than her expressed 
 
 conviction of her husband's glory in the following 
 
 lines : 
 
 Some Greek whose father press'd the plain, 
 Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain, 
 In Hector's blood his vengeance shall enjoy, 
 And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy : 
 For thy stern father never spared a foe. 
 
 Or, again, her tender solicitude for him expressed in 
 the last six lines of the speech : 
 
 Why gavest thou not to me thy dying hand ? 
 
 And why received I not thy last command ? 
 
 Some word thou would'st have spoke, which sadly dear, 
 
 My soul might keep or utter with a tear : 
 
 Which never, never could be lost in air, 
 
 Fix'd in my heart, and oft repeated there. 
 
 Pope's Iliad, book zziv. 934. 
 
 And at the same time how striking is the way in 
 which maternal affection divided the sovereignty of her 
 heart with the feelings of a wife, exemplified in the 
 opening address to her son ; while all the time her 
 own disinterestedness and evident desire simply to 
 fulfil the duties of her situation bring before us the 
 perfect ideal of a woman, neither yielding, on the one 
 side, to those weak unrealities of her sex with which 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 233 
 
 so many a novelist has robed his heroine, nor, on the 
 
 other hand, to those sterner virtues, which, as with 
 
 the heroines of Sophocles, while they may be true, 
 
 are at least not the normal condition of woman. In 
 
 fine, there is reality and integrity in Homer's de- 
 
 pictment of Andromache, which comes nearer to 
 
 the type of woman, as described in Holy Scripture, 
 
 than any other heathen illustration of it that I am 
 
 aware of. So Homer well occupies his position 
 
 amongst the first of those primeval pillars which 
 
 supported the temple. 
 
 But I am not here asserting for Homer the mere The cha - 
 
 . . racter of 
 
 virtue of successfully delineating a poetical cha- woman true 
 
 racter in woman. Much more : he has described j^ ad e 
 
 the perfect character of woman in such remarkable 
 
 assimilation to holy women of old depicted in the 
 
 Bible, as to make us feel that God had enlightened 
 
 both his understanding and his judgment. Woman, 
 
 as set forward in Scripture is any thing but what the 
 
 world calls heroic ; and the world, whether through 
 
 poetry, drama, fiction, or history, whether speaking 
 
 through the tongue of Sophocles, Horace, Petrarch, 
 
 Shakspeare, or Scott, always shows a tendency to 
 
 make woman heroic. The woman of the Bible is 
 
 depicted by Rachel watering her sheep, Rebecca 
 
 going down to a strange land to fulfil the duties of a 
 
 wife, Rizpah the daughter of Aiah keeping watch 
 
 over the dead who had sprung from her womb, Ruth 
 
 only anxious to die for Naomi, and the Blessed 
 
 Virgin simply concerned in fulfilling the vocation of 
 
 her domestic calling. They are essentially women 
 
234 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 whose beauty did not consist " in plaiting the hair, 
 wearing of gold, or putting on of apparel, but in the 
 ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, being in subjec- 
 tion to their own husbands, calling them lord." 
 Such most essentially was Andromache, and such a 
 character no other poet of the heathen world but 
 Homer has so exactly drawn ; woman as she is, and 
 woman as she ought to be, and not woman as the 
 world would make her. His description shines with 
 the still, calm glow of moderation, and quickly pales 
 the lurid glare of fictitious and poetical imagination. 
 The princess plying her distaff, tender in love to her 
 infirm father-in-law, jealous and proud of the glory of 
 her husband, conjuring up vivid pictures of the future 
 and possible destiny of her orphan child, brings before 
 the mind a character which the painter of Ophelia 
 and Jeannie Deans might safely study. 
 
 5. The faces of human beings are infinitely various ; 
 
 no two men are exactly alike. You may describe on 
 
 paper all the possible forms of the human visage which 
 
 the pencil of Lavater could devise, and no two will be 
 
 exactly similar. Some shade of thought, some line 
 
 of character — a curve, a turn, a smile, a frown — will 
 
 similarity just prevent exact similitude. In this respect the 
 
 of charac- human face is but the index of the human mind : no 
 
 *"• two minds are alike, and no two characters have ever 
 
 existed among mankind exactly similar ; the soldier, 
 
 the philosopher, the mechanic have appeared in every 
 
 different form and shade of delineation, but each man 
 
 is found afterwards to have occupied his own place and 
 
 that of no one else. He has not been a mere repetition; 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 235 
 
 he stands alone. This is essentially true in writers ; 
 poets, novelists, dramatists, historians, philosophers, 
 have their own individual province and separate sta- 
 tion ; they stand on their own pedestal in the great 
 gallery of mankind. They may be classed in schools, 
 and we may discover the point of contact in each ; 
 but every separate member of his school will be dis- 
 tinct, clear, and unlike any other member of it. So 
 with the past : Sophocles has not the same work as 
 Euripides, nor Juvenal as Horace; Dante and 
 Petrarch walk in different lines ; and Wordsworth 
 and Southey are each of them distinct and separate 
 expressions of a generally similar idea. 
 
 There may be a deep moral in this. God has 
 ordered it for the expression of his will and counsels 
 in all their possible applications. Each man fills his 
 own place here, as he will hereafter : mankind set 
 forth in a long procession from the garden of creation, 
 sent forth by the divine Being, each bearing his own 
 torch, which emitted some tint of colour, some ray of 
 light which his predecessors did not. Of course some 
 have abused their power ; some have had their torches 
 given them, and they have lit them from the flame of 
 sin, not the fires of divine truth: but these are men who 
 have failed in their probation, like Judas among the 
 twelve, or Nicholas among the seven. We have a 
 distinct idea of each writer of other days as we have 
 of the separate faces of those we have known and 
 loved in the days of childhood. 
 
 6. Among these, few are more clear, distinct, and Virgil, 
 well-known than Virgil. His lovely imagery, his deep 
 
236 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 appreciation of nature in all her forms, his accurate 
 observations of every fall of shadow or light, his 
 exquisite touches of human affection, are well- 
 known beauties in the ideas of the poet of the ^Eneid. 
 I will content myself with suggesting one or 
 two observations with regard to his peculiar pro- 
 vince. For vigorous conception or description 
 of character, for masterly origination, for sustain- 
 ing a deep interest in his heroes, he of course yields 
 the palm to Homer without hesitation. In every line 
 we see the poet of nature, who at the will of the 
 emperor was compelled to become heroic, — the mind 
 suited to be that of the writer of the Georgics, forced 
 to become the writer of the iEneid. One of his 
 leading characteristics and beauties is the introduction 
 of that deep, softening, religious tone in the mention 
 and application of natural beauties, which reminds us 
 of the sacramental view of the works of creation 
 taught by Christianity. 
 
 Nature is a sacrament : it is but an outward form 
 which enshrines a deep inward being; it is one of 
 the avenues by which we approach God and eternal 
 truth ; and by the intuition of his own moral sense 
 Nature de- Virgil seems especially to have perceived and applied 
 vSgU. y tms truth. The works of nature, the effects of 
 sunlight and shadow, the passing cloud, the pensive 
 evening, the radiant morning, the tree, the flower, or 
 the stream, all fling their mantle over our deeper 
 feelings and passions, and give, a tone to them. 
 They have the power of deepening the impressions 
 of the human mind for good, if used for good, while 
 
THE BEXIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 237 
 
 they can be made to be the instruments of evil to 
 those who study them with an eye impure. Passions 
 and feelings may be made more fascinating or more 
 debasing, as they are described by the pen of Byron or 
 Wordsworth, Petrarch or Dante, Horace or Virgil. 
 
 Few things are more perplexing than the judgment 
 we would form on the iEneid : so many parts of it 
 are so rich in imagery, so vivid in description, so 
 tender and pathetic in their expression of human 
 feeling, that we cannot do aught but delight in 
 them, and we dwell with regret on the necessity 
 of the iEneid being ever looked on as a mere 
 
 school book. But it has its faults with its virtues, Faulta ° f 
 
 .... the Maeid. 
 
 and they are apparent. It lacks originality m expres- 
 sion of human character. It is a copy of a great 
 original ; and whenever, in delineation of human cha- 
 racter, it attempts originality, it fails. There is a 
 stiflhess and coldness in its characters, which always 
 sends us away from them with a feeling of annoy- 
 ance. The religious characters are prude ; the war- 
 like ones have a dash of effeminacy, which 
 reminds us of the well-known object of Hotspur's 
 aversion. They evidently result from a mind unable to 
 read character correctly, or to form high estimates of 
 real greatness. Virgil, however, has his own religious 
 character; he does his own peculiar work, and 
 teaches his own lessons. 
 
 a. I spoke of his view of external nature ; he 
 sees in it a sacramental energy, its being a close 
 link between the world seen and unseen. A vail, 
 light, thin, transparent, let down between us and the 
 
238 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Eternal. Its tones and effects enshrine realities for 
 the soul as well as the taste. 
 
 h. Another feature in Virgil's religious tone is his 
 high respect for the rites of religion, a feature very much 
 in common with other writers of antiquity. There is a 
 minuteness of detail, a reverence of treatment, a cir- 
 cumstantial accuracy in the descriptions, which, 
 while they may sometimes, in his case, savour of lack 
 of expansiveness of mind, still betoken considerable 
 reality of religious reverence. It is, in fact, the per- 
 ception of the sacramental nature of religion ; and, if 
 studied with an attentive and docile mind, would help 
 to correct that spirit of irreverence and rationalism 
 which tends now-a-days to subvert the formal portions 
 of religion. 
 Reverence. The close and reverential description of sacred rites 
 for which the iEneid is remarkable, belongs very much 
 to that class of mind which is peculiarly Virgil's ; we 
 see in it the tendency to narrowness and superstition. 
 Some men are specially used to view and mark the 
 signs of nature in such way as to make them forget 
 the primary cause. There may be a want of width, 
 a want of large comprehensiveness in these views of 
 religion; a certain smallness, uncharitableness, and 
 false logic in such minds, so as to create a feeling of 
 dislike, and to repel any strong sympathies. But the 
 religious tone of the poem, despite this, is eminent in 
 the direction pointed out above, and not the less 
 useful from the fact of its having the apparent excess 
 of its own tendency so plainly suggested for our 
 warning. Of course much may be explained by the 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 239 
 
 peculiar philosophic school to which Virgil belonged, 
 and the master-mind at whose feet he sat. I would 
 suggest the burial of Misenus as a specimen of the 
 above-mentioned tendency. In brief, Virgil fails in 
 bringing out the religious man as one adorning reli- 
 gion, while he casts the warmth of religion over all he 
 touches. He is not a deep or true discerner of cha- 
 racter ; he sees religion in its rigid rule more than in 
 its influence and application. 
 
 c. Again, however much they may be borrowed, at The state 
 least he has given views or suggestions with reference parted, 
 to the departed which make him valuable as a witness 
 to the condition of heathen knowledge. He has lent 
 his own powers to the expression of already expressed 
 convictions ; there are gleams here and there in the 
 sixth book in the visit to the infernal regions which 
 flicker unmistakeably over the ground of truth. The 
 conscious existence of the departed, their state and 
 place, their connexion with the present and the past, 
 the relation of cause and effect between their state 
 there and their acts here, the description of Elysium, 
 and the future expectation of its inhabitants, — cannot 
 be read by any reflecting mind without suggesting 
 recollections of Christian truth, and showing how 
 deeply the seed of these truths has been laid in the 
 original nature of man. 
 
 Who can read the following passages without 
 feeling this ? 
 
 Occupat Mueas aditum custode sepulto, 
 ; Evaditque celer ripam irremeabilis undse. 
 Continuo audita voces, vagitus et ingens, 
 
240 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Infantumque animse fluentes in limine primo : 
 Quos dulcis vitffi exsortes, et ab nbere raptos, 
 Abstulit atra dies, et fiinere mersit acerbo. 
 Hos justa falso damnati crimine mortis. 
 Neo vero has sine sorte datse, sine judice, sedes. 
 Qusesitor Minos umam movet ; ille silentum 
 Conciliumque vocat, vitesque et crimina discit. 
 
 Froxima deinde tenent moesti loca, qui sibi letum 
 Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi 
 Projecere animas. Quam vellent sethere in alto 
 Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores ! 
 Fas obstat, tristique palus inamabilis unda 
 Alligat, et novies Styx interfiisa coercet. 
 
 Nee procul liinc partem fusi monstrantur in omnem 
 Lugentes campi ; sic illos nomine dicunt. 
 Hie, quos duros amor crudeli tabe peredit, 
 Secret! celant calles, et myrtea circum 
 Silva tegit : curse non ipsa in morte relinquunt. 
 
 Power of d. Another lesson Virgil reminds us of or teaches 
 is the deep and holy association which winds around 
 the scenes and people of the past ; that deep, pen- 
 sive melancholy which so inexplicably hangs, like a 
 beautiful colourless drapery, over so many of the ob- 
 jects and companions of life — inexplicable and inde- 
 finite, still real and true as the being, it envelops, and 
 which is really nothing but that connexion which every 
 created thing, and the soul of man peculiarly, has 
 with the state of immortality. 
 
 Youthful e. Nor can we pass by the beautiful touches of human, 
 ien sup. an( j especially youthful friendships which so adorn 
 the pages of the iEneid. In the well-known tale of 
 Nisus and Euryalus, we are reminded of that deep, 
 disinterested affection which does and can exist 
 among mankind, and which, existing among the young, 
 binds with so firm a cord the whole composite of 
 after-life. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 241 
 
 Ssevit atrox Volscens, nee teli conspicit usquam 
 
 Auctorem, nee quo se ardens immittere possit. 
 
 Tu tamen interea calido mihi sanguine pcenas 
 
 Persolves amborum, inquit : simul ense recluso 
 
 Ibat in Euryalum. Turn vero exterritua, amens 
 
 Conclamat Nisus ; nee se celare tenebris 
 
 Amplius, aut tantum potuit perferre dolorem : 
 
 Me, me, adsum, qui feci, in me convertite ferrum, 
 
 O Rutuli, mea fraus omnis ; m'Tri! iste nee ausus, 
 
 Nee potuit ; coelum hoc et conscia sidera tester ; 
 
 Tantum infelicem nimium dilexit amicum. 
 
 Talia dicta dabat : sed viribus ensis adactus 
 
 Transabiit costas, et Candida pectora rumpit. 
 
 Volvitur Euryalus leto, pulchrosque per artu9 
 
 It cruor, in que humeros cervix collapsa recumbit : 
 
 Perpureus veluti quum flos, succisus aratro, 
 
 Languescit moriens : lassove papavera eollo 
 
 Demisere caput, pluvia quum forte gravantur. 
 
 At Nisus ruit in medios, solumque per omnes 
 
 Volscentem petit : in solo Volscente moratur. 
 
 Quern circum glomerati hostes, bine comminus atque bine 
 
 Proturbant. Instat non secius, ae rotat ensem 
 
 Fulmineum ; donee Rutuli»clamanti8 in ore 
 
 Condidit adverso, et moriens animam abstulit hosti. 
 
 Turn super exanimem sese projecit amicum > 
 
 Confossus, placidaque ibi demum morte quievit. 
 
 To youth Virgil speaks in such passages with 
 unusual force ; he is the champion of youthful loves 
 between companions of peril or pleasure ; and all that 
 is heroic, high-minded, and disinterested, is bound up 
 in the charm of his description. 
 
 With these thoughts we cannot put Virgil's iEneid 
 down, and feel it has done its work when it has 
 simply instructed us in the exquisite use of epithets, 
 or in the flow of its melodious measures. Its lessons 
 lie deeper ; though like pearls at the bottom of the 
 stream, they are made the brighter and clearer from 
 
242 THE BELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 the pellucid medium through which our sense detects 
 them. 
 
 Horace. 7. It is easier to assign a distinct religious place 
 
 and office to Homer, Sophocles, or Virgil, than to 
 Horace. Horace, the sweet and fascinating poet, 
 the favourite of the schoolboy toiling at his desk at 
 school, as well as of the old man whose hairs have 
 grown grey in the strifes and trouble of life, — Horace, 
 while he is thus universally popular, gives us great 
 difficulties when we would give him a place among 
 the writers whom God sent forth, his witnesses 
 to the heathen world. But we are convinced he has 
 his vocation, and no one who reads or knows Horace 
 can for a moment doubt his distinctiveness and pecu- 
 liarity. He reminds us of Byron and Burns, and 
 especially of the latter. He has many of the faults 
 of both ; but he has points of merit above either. 
 
 His beau.- His odes, of which I more particularly speak, have 
 a sweet, pathetic, melancholy ; show a deep expe- 
 rience in the chance and change of human life, a 
 touching appreciation of the companionship existing 
 between nature and the soul, a yearning for some- 
 thing beyond this state, dashed with a conviction 
 that there is a hereafter, a kindly generosity, — all 
 which make us willing to give him a high place 
 in our estimation. But we are arrested; there 
 is a something so unsatisfactory when we look 
 closer ; a strong infidel tone here and there, a way- 
 wardness and fickleness, a fanciful paradox about 
 him, a sensuality so lascivious, that we are startled, 
 
 ties 
 
THE KELIGT0N OF THE CLASSICS. 243 
 
 and are inclined to lay him down, saying, " How can a 
 Christian be benefited by Horace ?" 
 
 There are so many points of interest about the 
 Eoman poet which do bear to a useful end, that it is 
 hard to select those which are the more important. 
 
 a. Among others we must be struck with the Recogni- 
 continual and abiding sense of the uncertainty and brevity of* 
 brevity of all human pleasures, which reflection to Ufe - 
 Horace is like a handwriting on the wall of the 
 banquet-room, declaring the "days are numbered;" 
 added to this, the places are not few where the poet 
 seems to be under no slight conviction that there is a 
 "weighing in the balance," and a being "found 
 wanting." There is stirring truth here. The flowers 
 and garlands of the most brilliant banquet, however 
 bright to sight, must lie faded and withered under 
 to-morrow's sun. There is a shadow upon every 
 feast ; — it is well if it be the shadow of the Cross. 
 
 This is a spirit we want to realise : we, too, cannot 
 eat our feast without the bitter herbs. And though, 
 in a poet like Horace, we may see the handwriting 
 without seeing or knowing the hand which writes it ; 
 see the shadow, without seeing the Cross which casts 
 it ; still the witness is worth its weight ; it tends to 
 make us reflect, and checks us, however slightly, in 
 too exuberant and unmodified a strain of joy ; and 
 though the world see but a Damocles' dagger over 
 their heads, still they see what is there, and fear not 
 without cause. 
 
 This apprehensive spirit makes many poets. Byron 
 and Burns have it strongly, and few more than 
 r 2 
 
244 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Horace. In it consists, to a great degree, the poetical 
 mind, and without a vein of it no true poetry can 
 exist : its just appreciation and its right aim belong 
 to the faithful Christian only. 
 
 Take these odes as instances of this feature in 
 Horace : 
 
 Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas 
 
 Regumque turres. O beate Sesti, 
 Vita; summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam. 
 
 Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque Manes, 
 Et domns exilis Plutonia ; quo simul means, 
 
 Nee regna vini sortiere talis ; 
 Nee tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet juventus 
 
 Nunc omnis, et mox virgines tepebunt. 
 
 Or this : 
 
 Navita Bosphorum 
 Poenus perhorrescit, neque ultra 
 
 Cseca timet aliunde fata : 
 Miles sagittas et celerem fugam 
 Parthi ; catenas Parthus et Italuin 
 Robur ; sed improvisa leti 
 Vis rapuit rapietque gentes. 
 Quam prime furvae regna Proserpinse, 
 Et judicantem viilimus iEacurn, 
 Sedesque discretas piorum et 
 
 iEoliis fidibus querentem. x 
 
 Or: 
 
 Visendus ater flumine languido 
 Cocytos errans, et Danai genus 
 Infame, damnatusque longi 
 Sisyphus iEolides laboris. 
 Linquenda tellus et domus et placens 
 Uxor, neque harum, quas colis, arborum 
 Te, prarter invisas cupressos, 
 Ulla brevem dominum sequetur. 
 Absumet hseres Csecuba dignior 
 Servata centum clavibus ; et mero 
 Tinget pavimentum superbo, 
 Pontifieum potiore cosnis. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 245 
 
 b. Another charm which we find in the odes of Love of 
 Horace is that which Mr. Keble in his Prelections has 
 so ably reminded us of as being one of the distinc- 
 tive features of our poet, his appreciation of country 
 retirement and the effect of country habits. I do 
 not mean that he places before us his own particular 
 mode or aim in such enjoyment in any very imitable 
 form, but he does contrive to appreciate in a singular 
 manner those points of simplicity, freedom from 
 worldliness of spirit, kind social intercourse and reci- 
 procal hospitality, which are so strikingly the features 
 and results of well-used country life. The power to 
 appreciate this is something ; and perhaps that kind 
 of continual conviction, which is so sadly breathed in 
 many of the odes, that he was appreciating what he 
 could not realise, and suggesting what he could not 
 fully follow, gives rather an additional force to his 
 testimony. Take, as a beautiful instance, Ode 29, 
 lib. hi. : 
 
 Fastidiosam desere copiam et 
 Molem propinquam uubibus arduis ; 
 Omitte mirari beatse 
 
 Furmun et opes strepitumque Romse. 
 Plerumque grata? divitibus vices 
 Mundseque parvo sub lare pauperum 
 Ccense sine aulseia et ostro 
 Sollicitam explicuere frontem. 
 Jam claims occultum Andromeda; pater 
 Ostendit ignem, jam Procyon furit 
 Et stella vesani Leonis, 
 Sole dies referente siccos : 
 Jam pastor umbras cum grege languido 
 Rivumque fessus quserit et horridi 
 Dumeta Silvani ; caretque 
 Ripa vagis taciturna ventis. 
 
246 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Few passages can more concisely bring before us 
 the image of that kind of life which belongs to the 
 country, though, of course, we might multiply places 
 ad infinitum which treat on this point. Horace here 
 again reminds us frequently of Burns. 
 
 There are many ways of appreciating country life. 
 Virgil loves it as the farmer as well as through the 
 eye of the philosopher ; Wordsworth extols it in its 
 highest and most metaphysical beauty ; Shelley paints 
 its scenes with the pencil of the poetic artist ; Homer 
 dwells on it as the brilliant and shining sphere of imagi- 
 nation and fancy. It is the work of Horace to see in 
 it that singular aptitude which it has for soothing the 
 careworn and pleasure- worn mind of man. It is in his 
 opinion an antidote to excitement, a modifier of over- 
 sensuous pleasure, and in this point of view it is that 
 he puts it forward with a very happy force for the 
 contemplation of youth. His mode of treatment 
 reminds us again frequently of passages in As you like 
 it, in which play Shakspeare brings out much the 
 same aspect of country life. Take Act ii. scene 1, the 
 opening speech of the Duke : 
 
 Duke S. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, 
 Hath not old custom made this life more sweet 
 Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court ? 
 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, 
 The seasons' difference — as the icy fang, 
 And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, 
 Which when it bites and blows upon my body, 
 Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, 
 This is no flattery,— these are councillors 
 Which feelingly persuade me what I am. 
 Sweet are the uses of adversity ; 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 247 
 
 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head ; 
 And this our life, exempt from public haunt, 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in every thing. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, how the voices of nature 
 still whisper in faintest accents round the mind of 
 those who are living far from God. How many a 
 pillar, fair and uninjured, still rises amid the ruins of 
 a fallen and in such cases unrestored nature ! and 
 the very fact of the witness borne by such as Horace 
 to the soothing and sanctifying power with which 
 God has invested country life, if brought home happily 
 by the teacher, may go very far to engraft into the 
 minds of youth most important truths. Horace as 
 a poet, if treated rightly, is likely to , improve and 
 elevate the mind ; remembering always, that " to the 
 pure all things are pure," and that at the door of 
 those who either teach or read the odes incautiously 
 will lie the blame of making Horace merely an 
 incentive to vice. 
 
 Whether we can assign to Horace the position of 
 a primarim in the world of poetry may be a question 
 scarcely admitting of much deliberation. He would 
 find it difficult to retain his position in the opinion of 
 many well-qualified judges even as a second-rate poet ; 
 but while this is the case, he makes an importunate 
 claim on our attention by the very remarkable way in 
 which he has become a text-book to mankind, and his 
 expressions recognised phrases in educated society. 
 Men of every age and every clime have set the stamp 
 of their approval on the brilliant yet often melan- 
 
248 THE KELIGI0N OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 choly lyric poet of the Eternal City. Caesar and 
 Maecenas, the Florentine or the German, in ancient, 
 medieval, or modern times, have expressed common 
 • thoughts in the proverbialisms of Horace. He must 
 have something in him. 
 
 c. Amongst his virtues I will rank his very strong 
 sense of the tendency of the outward circumstances 
 of life to form strong moral habits in man, as well as 
 his veneration for the character so built up. That 
 he fell far short of the standard of perfection is 
 manifestly true; but this, in some respects, makes 
 his testimony more valuable. 
 
 The heathen mind was ever casting fathoming-lines 
 to feel beneath itself the stable rock of truth, and 
 many was the boat that put out on that wide sea 
 which " toiled all night " and found no rest ; but to 
 many our Lord vouchsafed to grant a pilotage, though 
 the hand that guided the, vessel was unseen, and 
 many were those who moored their Vessels on some- 
 Human cir- thing like a settled anchorage. In this restless search 
 
 cumstance . 
 
 and moral after truth, philosophers naturally tried every portion 
 of the world and society around them ; and numbers 
 of them, more or less, discovered the peculiar apt- 
 ness of human circumstance to form elevated hu- 
 man character, and to proceed from that discovery 
 to the conviction that such was the intention of 
 the moral Governor of the world. That true virtue 
 consisted in a moderation oscillating between ex- 
 tremes, was another truth discovered by the sages of 
 antiquity. Both of these truths were appreciated by 
 Horace. He says : 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum 
 Semper urgendo, neque, dum procellas 
 Cautus horrescis, nimium premendo 
 
 Litus iniquum. 
 Auream quisquis mediocritatem 
 Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti 
 Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda 
 
 Sobrius aula. 
 
 The 16th Ode of the 2nd book gives an apt illustra- 
 tion of this feeling : 
 
 Vivitur parvo bene, cui patemum 
 Splendet in mensa tenui salinum : 
 Nee leves somnos timor aut cupido 
 
 Sordidus aufert. 
 Quid brevi fortes jaculamur sevo 
 , Multa ? Quid terras alio calentes 
 
 Sole mutamus ? Patrice quis exsul 
 
 Se quoque fugit ? 
 Scandit seratas vitiosa naves 
 Cura : nee turmas equitum relinquit : 
 Ocior cervis, et agente nimbos 
 
 Ocior Euro. 
 Lsetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est 
 Oderit curare, et amara lento 
 Temperet risu. Nihil est ab omni 
 
 Parte beatum. 
 Abstulit clarum cita mors Achillem, 
 Longa Tithonum minuit senectus ; 
 Et mihi forsan, tibi quod negarit, 
 
 Porriget hora. 
 
 The true moderation and independence of cha- 
 racter resulting from the due use of external circum- 
 stances is again forcibly expressed in the well-known 
 Ode 3, book iii. : 
 
 Justum et tenacem propositi virum, 
 
 Non civium ardor prava jubentium, 
 
 Non vultus instantis tyranni, 
 
 Mente quatit solida, neque Auster, 
 Dux inquieti turbidus Hadriee, 
 Nee fulminantis magna manus Jovis : 
 
250 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Si fractus illabatur orbis, 
 Impavidum ferient ruinse. 
 
 While, again, the independence of such a character 
 of the results which accrue to our transitory and un- 
 certain condition, reminding us of that description of 
 the just man in the Psalms, that "he fears no evil 
 tidings, but his heart standeth fast," is again ex- 
 pressed in Ode 22, book i. : 
 
 Integer vitse scelerisque purus 
 
 Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque arcu, 
 
 Nee venenatis gravida sagittis, 
 
 Fusee, pharetra : 
 Sive per Syrtes iter aestuosas, 
 Sive facturus per inhospitalem 
 Caucasum, vel quse loca fabulosus 
 
 Lambit Hydaspes. 
 
 In fact, I might multiply passages nearly as numer- 
 ous as the Odes themselves, which would show how 
 powerfully the Roman poet, in the midst of a life, 
 peculiarly in his own case enthralled by circum- 
 stances, was yet able to perceive the aptness of those 
 circumstances to form in men the power of independ- 
 ence, and, as it were, with one hand to sever the 
 chain, which, with the other, they have bound round 
 their hearts and lives. The 112th Psalm is brought 
 to our mind in a review of these passages, especially 
 the 6th, 7th, and 8th verses : 
 
 For he shall never be moved : and the righteous shall be had in 
 everlasting remembrance. 
 
 He will not be afraid of any evil tidings : for his heart standeth fast, 
 and believeth in the Lord. 
 
 His heart is established, and will not shrink, until he see his desire 
 upon his enemies. 
 
 Indeed, Horace seems almost to have anticipated the 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 251 
 
 truth contained in the well-known passage of Bishop 
 Butler, " Our nature corresponds to our outward con- 
 dition. Without this correspondence, it would be 
 almost impossible to have human life and happiness," 
 &c. 
 
 It may be said that all poets, more or less, and Byron, 
 amongst them the most degraded, have been con- 
 scious of the shadows of these truths passing over the 
 disc of their perceptions. Even Byron teems with 
 reflections of a similar kind, though no one was ever 
 more the sport of the wind and wave of circumstance 
 than the heroes and the writer of the Corsair or the 
 Giaour. Still there is a power in the expressions of 
 these convictions by Horace which is almost unique. 
 It is pathetic to watch the impulses of a mind so un- 
 happy as his own, which impelled him continually to 
 read his own death-warrant, and to return the verdict 
 of "guilty" upon nearly every phase and act of his 
 own life. %i 
 
 To an objector against the study of Horace for 
 Christian youth, we answer, that to the libertine, the 
 voluptuary, or the would-be profligate, the sensuous 
 pursuer of appetite or ease, there can scarcely be a 
 more powerful and arresting voice than that of one 
 who has drunk to the dregs of their poisoned cup, 
 and yet at every turn is compelled to cry out in lan- 
 guage so unequivocal as the passage which we quoted, 
 his conviction of his own mistake. The power of 
 contrast is great ; the criminal who condemns him- 
 self is a better monitor than the inconsistent judge 
 on the throne. There is a greater arresting force in 
 
252 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 the words of Angelo, when, in the pursuit of his 
 wicked intention, he owns, 
 
 Heaven hath my empty words ; 
 Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, 
 Anchors on Isabel : Heaven in my mouth, 
 As if I did but only chew his name ; 
 And in my heart, the strong and swelling evil 
 Of my conception, 
 
 than in the didactic measures of Isabel and the Duke. 
 " Out of thine own mouth will I condemn thee, thou 
 wicked servant," is the sacred proverb for the most 
 invincible form of conviction. 
 Penal con- 8. Again, Horace sees with peculiar keenness that 
 of sin. property of sin so discerned by all the heathen world, 
 and illustrative of the second commandment, that 
 God visits on the children the sins of the fathers to a 
 remote generation. This impression, ever protruding 
 itself like a spectre peering in at the window of the 
 room where revellers would be gay, seems to haunt 
 and modify every contemplation of the more thought- 
 ful of antiquity. It is God^s judgment on sin, setting 
 its seal on the pliant wax of our inward nature. It 
 is the continual cry from the voice of one unseen 
 asserting the necessity of repentance, atonement, and 
 absolution : 
 
 Delicta majorum immeritus lues, 
 Bomane, donee templa refeceris 
 ./Edesque labentes Deorum, et 
 Foeda nigra simulacra fumo : 
 Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas : 
 Hinc omne principium, hue refer exitum : 
 Di multa neglecti dederunt 
 Hesperiae mala luctuosae. 
 
 ance. 9. While speaking of the moral bearing of the Odes 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 253 
 
 of Horace, it would be impossible to pass by those 
 wonderful passages which put forward with such force 
 the necessity and the nature of repentance : 
 
 O qnisquis volet impias 
 
 Csedes et rabiem tollere civicam, 
 Si quaeret " Pater Urbium " 
 
 Subscribi statuis, indomitam audeat 
 Refrenare licentiam, 
 
 Clarus postgenitis : quatenus — heu nefas ! 
 Virtutem incolumem odimus, 
 
 Sublatam ex oculis quaerimus invidi. 
 Quid tristes querimonise, 
 
 Si non supplicio culpa reciditur ; 
 Quid leges sine moribus 
 
 Vanae proficiunt, si neque fervidis 
 Pars inclusa caloribus 
 
 Mundi nee Boreas nnitimum latus 
 Duratseque solo nives 
 
 Mercatorem abigunt, horrida callidi 
 Vincunt sequora navitae, 
 
 Magnum pauperies opprobrium jubet 
 Quidvis et facere et pati, 
 
 Virtutisque viam deserifarduae ? 
 Vel nos in Capitolium, 
 
 Quo clamor vocat et turba faventium, 
 Vel nos in mare proximum 
 
 Gemmas et lapides, aurum et inutile, 
 Summi materiem mali, 
 
 Mittamus, scelerum si bene pcenitet. 
 Eradenda cupidinis 
 
 Pravi sunt elementa et tenerse nimis 
 Mentes asperioribus 
 
 Formandae studiis. 
 
 The Christian could hardly describe more power- 
 fully, or in more masculine language, the necessity of 
 a radical and entire repentance ; while the connexion 
 between the after-state and the acts of the present 
 are expressed in the Ode to Mercury : 
 
 Audiat Lyde scelus atque notas 
 Virginum pesnas et inane lymphse 
 
254 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Dolium fdndo pereuntis imo 
 
 Seraque fata, 
 Quae manent culpas etiam sub Oreo. 
 Impiae, — nam quid potuere majus ? — 
 Impiae sponsos potuere duro 
 
 Perdere ferro. 
 Una de multis face nuptiali 
 Digna perjurum fuit in parentem 
 Splendide mendax et in omne virgo 
 
 Nobilis aevum, 
 " Surge," quae dixit juveni marito, 
 " Surge, ne longus tibi somnus, unde 
 Non times, detur : socerum et scelestas 
 
 Falle sorores, 
 Quae velut nactae vitulos leaense 
 Singalos eheu lacerant : ego illis 
 Mollior nee te feriam neque intra 
 
 Claustra tenebo. 
 Me pater saevis oneret catenis, 
 Quod viro clemens misero peperci ; 
 Me vel extremos Numidarum in agros 
 
 Classe releget, 
 I, pedes quo te rapiunt et aura:, 
 Dum favet nox et Venus, i secundo 
 Omine et nostri memorem sepulchro 
 
 Scalpe querelam. 
 
 The Odes on Eegulus and Cleopatra are the offspring 
 of no mind which took a low view of moral truth. 
 
 However much convinced, as a matter of specula- 
 tion, of the inevitable consequences of sin, it is very 
 often that a certain boding in the individual mind, 
 much more than the truth itself, makes that truth 
 Apprehen- a practical reality ; and it is to that apprehensiveness 
 on the mind of the guilty that remarks like these will 
 give point and life. Stored, in fact, as the memory of 
 most youths at our public schools and universities are 
 with passages of Horace, and firm as the hold must 
 be which he will, from habit and prestige, have over 
 
 siveness. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 255 
 
 the mind of the educator, we cannot but feel that it 
 is peculiarly the duty of the latter to put strongly 
 forward the power of passages like these ; and though 
 we should desire much of Horace's more objectionable 
 writing to filter through the mind and memory of a 
 boy, there will be a power in the remaining portion 
 which will frequently in after-life suggest solemn 
 warnings and anxious convictions. 
 
 10. There are few stronger tendencies in man than 
 that which leads us to consider every body in the excess 
 of their own position ; with many, the whole world is 
 composed of angels or devils. There are ways of ac- 
 counting for it ; but this is not my object at the pre- 
 sent moment. I am speaking to a fact. Few things 
 more show a well-regulated judgment than the power 
 to see some good in every body, except he be repro- 
 bate ; and the power to see evil in the very best, 
 without being discouraged or made uncharitable. A Bad and 
 common illustration of the above-mentioned tendency racters. 
 might be taken from the inclination men have to take 
 for granted that if a man is a sensualist or a profli- 
 gate, he has no redeeming quality. Men, in fact, go 
 in the exact contradiction to the conduct of Him 
 who did not " break the bruised reed or quench the 
 smoking flax." There is some good in the very worst 
 of men until the flame of life has finally flickered out, 
 and in few men more than those who, having allowed 
 themselves to indulge in the excess of strong feelings, 
 passions, and appetites, have deserved the name of 
 libertines. There are few of us who can recollect 
 in school life some old companion who, in many an 
 
256 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 unguarded moment, did not betray under an exterior 
 of sensuality some tender affection for parent, brother, 
 or home — some touching regard for the holier forms 
 of external nature — some good association blent with 
 things of sight or sound, which showed that the reed, 
 however bruised, was not broken, and the spark, how- 
 ever feeble, was not quenched. Ahab was a bad man 
 atid a sensualist, but he humbled himself in dust and 
 ashes, and was often open to the keenest and most 
 sensitive convictions. Many evils arise from the de- 
 termination not to see- these better points of human 
 nature ; but few more than this — namely, that by 
 refusing to recognise these germs of a holier purpose, 
 we often prevent that very seed which God has placed 
 in the soul from bursting upwards through the in- 
 cumbrance of a rank soil, and bearing the fruit of 
 an upright and holy life. 
 
 Horace's Domestic affections are amongst the strongest 
 
 domestic , . 
 
 feelings. better traits of a sensualist ; and while we must con- 
 demn Horace for many sad vices, we cannot turn away 
 without admiration from the pathetic touches which 
 show his tender regard for his father, his gratitude 
 for what he had done for him, and his full recognition 
 of the debt he owed him. Take the two following 
 passages from the Satires in illustration of what I 
 have said : 
 
 Atqtd si vitus mediocribus ac mea paucis 
 Mendosa est nature, alioqui recta (velut si 
 Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore nsevos) ; 
 Si neque avaritiam, neque sordes, aut mala lustra 
 Objiciet vere quisquam mihi j purus et insons 
 (Ut me collaudem) si et vivo carus amicis ; 
 Causa fiiit pater his, qui macro pauper agello 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 257 
 
 Noluit in Flavi ludum me mittere, magni 
 
 Quo pueri, magnis e centurionibus orti, 
 
 Leevo suspensi loculos tabulamque lacerto 
 
 Ibant octonis referentes Idibus sera ; 
 
 Sed puerum est ausus Romam portare docendum 
 
 Artes, quas doceat quivis eques atque senator 
 
 Semet prognatos. Vestem servosque sequentes, 
 
 In magno ut populo, si qui vidisset, avita 
 
 Ex re prseberi sumptus mihi crederet illos. 
 
 Ipse mihi custos incori'uptissimus omnes 
 
 Circum doctores aderat. Quid multa ? pudicum 
 
 (Qui primus virtutis honos) servavit ab omni 
 
 Non solum facto, verum opprobrio quoque turpi : 
 
 Nee timuit, sibi ne vitio quis verteret ohm, 
 
 Si prseco parvas, aut (ut fuit ipse) coactor 
 
 Mercedes sequerer ; neque ego essem questus. At hoc nunc 
 
 Laus illi debetur, et a me gratia major. 
 
 Nil me poeniteat sanum patris hujus : eoque 
 
 Non, ut magna dolo factum negat esse suo pars* 
 
 Quod non ingenuos habeat clarosque parentes, 
 
 Sic me defendam. Longe mea discrepat istis 
 
 Et vox et ratio : nam si natura juberet 
 
 A certis annis aevum remeare peractum, 
 
 Atque alios legere ad fastum quoscunque parentes ^ 
 
 Optaret sibi quisque ; meis contentus honestos 
 
 Fascibus et sellis nollem mihi sumere ; demens 
 
 Judicio vulgi, sanus fortasse tuo, quod 
 
 Nollem onus haud unquam solitus portare molestum. 
 
 Insueyit pater optimus hoc me, 
 Ut fugerem exemplis vitiorum quaeque notando. 
 Cum me hortaretur, parce, frugaliter, atque 
 Viverem uti contentus eo quod mi ipse parasset ; 
 ' Nonne vides, Albi ut male vivat Alius ? utque 
 Barrus inops ? — Sapiens, vitatu quidque petitu 
 Sit melius, causas reddet tibi j mi satis est, si 
 Traditum ab antiquis morem servare, tuamque, 
 Dum custodis eges, vitam famamque tueri 
 Incolumem possum : simulac duraverit setas 
 Membra animumque tuum nabis sine cortice.* 
 
 If every youth who studies Horace would learn 
 from passages like these honestly to recognise and 
 cherish those better emotions of his soul towards his 
 
258 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 parent and his home, and mark them as indications of 
 a higher nature, it might go far, by the blessing of 
 God, to counteract the effect of those passions which 
 other portions of the writings of Horace are calcu- 
 lated to stimulate. 
 ^Eschylus. 11. If we keep clearly in mind the view, that each 
 separate writer, whether of antiquity or modern days, 
 has his own distinct vocation, and that that vocation is 
 the gradual development of God's perfect will to man, 
 it becomes a matter of very considerable interest to 
 see wherein various members of certain classes of 
 writers differ from each other. Thus while Shak- 
 speare, Dante, and Spenser, had in a certain sense a 
 similar vocation in their own period, it becomes in- 
 teresting to assign to each their relative stations as 
 the proclaimers of the threefold idea of religion, dis- 
 played in the object of faith, which was the work of 
 Spenser — the moral government of God, the work of 
 Dante — and the true relation of man to man, the 
 work of Shakspeare. And the fact of these three 
 writers having lived at the dawn of a great political 
 and social development of the human race, adds con- 
 siderably to their political and religious influence, 
 affecting, as no doubt they did, the spirit of their 
 age. 
 
 A relationship to each other, very similar to the 
 three writers just mentioned, is apparent between the 
 three celebrated Greek tragedians. They also lived 
 in a period in the history of the human race of great 
 development and advance; and without being fanciful, 
 we might perhaps attribute, as we have above, to 
 
THE E.ELIGI0N OF THE CLASSICS. 259 
 
 these three similar distinct provinces : iEschylus is ^Eschylus, 
 the tragedian of religious faith, Sophocles proclaims fnd Euri!' 
 the moral government of God, while Euripides is the P ides - 
 preacher of duties owed from man to man. 
 
 1 2. Dim, vast, and shadowy are the figures that peer 
 through the mists in which iEschylus wrote. They 
 stand forth like the giants of the elder world, dreamy 
 and undefined ; the pencil which has portrayed them 
 is bold and vigorous in every touch, as are the beings 
 it describes ; and yet in spite of their vastness, and 
 to a certain degree their indistinctness, there are 
 minute touches in these figures, which radiate as from 
 the point of a diamond, beams of the most brilliant 
 truth. iEschylus wrote for his country, a castigator The pro- 
 of her sins, and a true patriot. His dramas are vast jEschvlus 
 allegories, conveying the sternest and most awful 
 religious truths ; and the pointed moral of every tra- 
 gedy speaks in the thrilling words of the prophet of 
 old to the wrought-up audience, " Thou art the man." 
 Athens, the light and beautiful centre of the Ionian 
 race, gathered to herself every floating gossamer of 
 scepticism and profligate refinement. The bright and 
 elegant trifles of a vain but prosperous people were 
 calculated to startle and appal a thoughtful and philo- 
 sophic mind. The ignorance which afterwards deve- 
 loped into an altar " to the unknown God " was al- 
 ready at work, and producing its necessary result, 
 — recklessness of consequences, and a severance in 
 the mind of the Athenian between moral action and 
 an after Judgment. In a state placed as Athens 
 was, political wickedness was synonymous with reli- 
 s 2 
 
260 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 gious ; and infidelity with regard to the true prin- 
 ciples of political integrity often synonymous with 
 infidelity in higher matters. To this state of things 
 it was that ^Eschylus addressed himself with varied 
 tones, though not very wide in their compass, in tra- 
 gedies, only some of which are preserved to us. A 
 thoughtful and religious mind noticing the evil ad- 
 verted to above, will naturally do what iEschylus 
 did ; assert boldly the truth with regard to the nature 
 of God, and specially his relationship to the human 
 being, as that of One who "by no means spared the 
 guilty," and " visited the sins of the fathers on the 
 children to the third and fourth generation."" 
 
 The dark hopelessness in which the human race 
 must lie if the tale of their destinies stopped here, led 
 iEschylus to pierce more deeply into the mist that 
 hung down between him and eternity, and, however 
 unconsciously to himself, to shadow forth, by the per- 
 mission of God, a dispensation of atonement as well 
 as one of punishment, a gospel as well as a law. Of 
 course, many of his views are, if we may use the word, 
 hampered with distinctive heathen doctrines. While 
 the earlier portions of the truth just adverted to are 
 so vigorously and powerfully expressed in his trage- 
 dies, the latter portion of it, namely, the suggestion 
 of the necessity of vicarious punishment, is carried 
 out in the well-known characters of the Prometheus 
 Vinctus. 
 
 God has spoken to man in clearer and clearer ac- 
 cents from the beginning of the creation. Every 
 nation has done its work. Athens developed the in- 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 261 
 
 tellect, Rome the social nature, while to Jerusalem 
 was committed the spiritual instruction of the human 
 race. Every truth has been in germ from the begin- 
 ning, and has here and there shot up with more or 
 less vigour along the bank of the undulating stream 
 of partial inspiration: whether each preacher and 
 prophet was conscious of the deep truths he pro- 
 claimed, is a different question ; the greatest truths 
 have been propounded often by men not conscious of 
 them. 
 
 ] 3. iEschylus in the Prometheus has wonderfully Prometheus 
 portrayed the doctrine of the Atonement. It has Vmctus- 
 been in proportion as men have realised the idea of 
 the participation of God with our nature, that their 
 views of religion have become enlarged, practical 
 and real ; and one great reason of the shallow 
 and mystical religion of late days amongst us, has 
 been the neglect of the great doctrine of the Incar- 
 nation. 
 
 The incarnation of a superior Being ; his sympathy 
 with suffering ; the coincidence and sympathy of the 
 better part of creation with Him ; the assaults of the 
 powers of evil upon Him as upon the human race ; 
 the application of the unhappy and disconsolate to 
 that superior Being, in suffering, and receiving com- 
 fort from Him ; the final and extreme penalty of the 
 vicarious Sufferer, yet " not seeing corruption," as in 
 the case of Prometheus, by an indomitable will which 
 prefigured the resurrection, — the " Holy One not left 
 in hell," nor finally held down by the bonds of the 
 evil one ; — these points may be traced in the Prome- 
 
262 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 theus, and contrasted with the highest and most reve- 
 rential of all subject-matters. 
 
 His entire sympathy with our human nature in all 
 its sufferings and its feelings is powerfully enough 
 shown. Divine in state and origin, himself raised 
 above humanity by his own natural position, he is 
 represented as sharing every human sensation, and 
 participating in the nature he came to redeem. 
 
 There, too, is the sympathy of the objects of ex- 
 ternal nature with him in his sufferings. While the 
 darkness which shrouded the cross in the hour of 
 our Lord's death, the sermon on the lily of the field, 
 and the garden in which He suffered His agony and 
 His burial, are all of them instances of the union of 
 external nature with His humanity, the coincidence 
 of one with the other. 
 Adoption of 1. His participation in human nature and its suffer- 
 ture. an Da * m § s ' s expressed in many statements of Prometheus. 
 In more than one passage we have added to the pos- 
 session of suffering human nature a remarkable co- 
 incidence with the words of Holy Scripture, "Lo, 
 I come ! a body hast Thou prepared Me," spoken of 
 the Saviour willingly offering Himself for the sins of 
 the world. It is hardly possible but that the most 
 casual observer should be struck with the similarity 
 of the outbursts of benevolent agony from Prome- 
 theus, without recollecting Him who " willingly offered 
 Himself for the sins of the people ; who was not 
 ashamed to call us brethren; who in all our afflic- 
 tions was afflicted, and was tempted in all points like 
 as we are, yet without sin." 
 
THE KELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 263 
 
 2. But the reason why Prometheus undertook his Compas- 
 labour of love is, if possible, more remarkable in its S1C 
 coincidences when he describes himself as gazing 
 down on the race of mortals, seeing them grasping at 
 shadows, seeking rest and finding none, striving after 
 knowledge but failing in their pursuit, and groping 
 their way in the darkness to seek an uncertain light 
 which ever flits before them. Excited to compassion 
 
 by this mournful spectacle, Prometheus tells us that 
 he came to save mankind, and to give them the know- 
 ledge that might bring peace. Who is not struck 
 again in some of the speeches of Prometheus, substi- 
 tuting one want for another, with the many simili- 
 tudes of Scripture which bring before us the love of 
 the Good Shepherd, gazing down on the wandering 
 sheep ; the yearning of Him who first loved us, and 
 who came to seek and to save that which was lost, by 
 coming " to lead captivity captive, and to receive gifts 
 for men \ " 
 
 3. But the next point in the Atonement to which Sympathy 
 I referred above, is the coincidence of external na- na tar e . 
 ture with the incarnate Lord. The assumption of 
 
 the human form by the Son of God at once sanctified 
 the visible form of creation, and gave it a sacramental 
 energy. The resurrection of Christ, the first-fruits, 
 is distinctly mentioned by St. Paul as bound up with 
 the removal of the curse from the whole material 
 world ; " the whole creation groaneth, and travaileth 
 in pain together until now :" in which passage he is 
 speaking of the resurrection of Christ as the hope of 
 creation ; for, says he, " the earnest expectation of 
 
264 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons 
 of God." Now of this sympathy of nature with the 
 atoning body of Christ there are many illustrations. 
 The three hours' darkness on the cross, showing, as 
 Origen beautifully puts it, the unwillingness of the 
 sun to gaze on its Creator in suffering; the earth 
 that quaked at the moment of His dying, and the 
 wave of Gennesaret, which on its pathless surface 
 made a path for Him to tread, where man had never 
 trodden before ; the withered fig-tree shrivelled at 
 His word ; and the cloud that came down to receive 
 Him out of sight, — are glorious instances of the 
 union of external nature with that incarnate God who 
 " made darkness His secret place, and at the bright- 
 ness of whose presence thick clouds passed, hail- 
 stones, and coals of fire." 
 
 So the Ocean is described as coming to sympa- 
 thize with Prometheus. The Chorus describes. the 
 approach of the objects of creation. Visible nature 
 is viewed as a part and parcel of the visible human 
 nature, and both united in the sympathy of Pro- 
 metheus. 
 
 4. Another point of interest is the assault of the 
 powers of evil alike on the sufferer and the Saviour. 
 The violence of Jupiter on the human race, and other 
 races of beings, is shown in the sorrowful lament of Io. 
 The tempt- The violence shown to Prometheus himself is well 
 enough described in the speeches of Kparog and Vul- 
 can in the opening of the tragedy, and the threats of 
 Mercury in his concluding speeches at the end. Thus 
 the same violent power, represented here by Zeus and 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 265 
 
 bis satellites, which by a mysterious providence had 
 sufficient strength, by temptation and infliction of 
 death, " to bruise the heel " of an incarnate rescuer, 
 was at the same time the tormentor, through the 
 same process of temptation and trial, of the race 
 which that liberator came to redeem, thereby making, 
 as it were, " both Him that sanctifieth and them who 
 are sanctified one ; for which cause He is not ashamed 
 to call them brethren." 
 
 5. But this leads us to a still more remark- Attraction. 
 able portion of the Incarnation, — the natural re- 
 course which the sufferers of the human race have 
 to a Redeemer in suffering. Attracted by the odour 
 which broke from the bruised reed of His humanity, 
 the wounded of the world's highway gather around 
 the water of life in which it grows, to receive the 
 balm that drops for the healing of their wounds. The 
 exceeding bitter cry of the Man of Sorrows, echoing 
 along the borders of the wilderness, attracts to itself 
 the hosts of sorrowers who seek for the sympathy and 
 the counsel which fellow-suffering and experience alone 
 can give : " Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It was to the 
 outcast Lord that the outcast Mary came ; it was to 
 the crucified Redeemer the crucified thief appealed ; 
 on His ear the widow's voice never sounded in vain ; 
 and children rejoiced in His presence, who had be- 
 come like a little child. 
 
 I make the transition with reverence and awe, 
 when we remind the reader of the visit of the goaded 
 
266 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Vicarious 
 suffering. 
 
 Resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 Io to the suffering Prometheus, asking for sympathy 
 with her sorrow, and guidance in her despair. 
 
 6. The next point of the Atonement is the tre- 
 mendous and final achievement of the vicarious suffer- 
 ing. After our Lord had suffered from childhood 
 vicariously in temptation, agony, obloquy, insult, pri- 
 vation and tears, the stupendous sacrifice of Mount 
 Calvary perfected the whole in the words, " It is 
 finished ! " Again with a reverential hand we would 
 draw up the veil, and behold in the end of Prome- 
 theus the awful completion of his prolonged vicarious 
 suffering. And his determination to receive the full 
 vial of wrath ; with his recognition of the completion 
 of the whole. 
 
 7. There is but one more point to complete the 
 similarity to the great doctrine, namely, the inherent 
 power of the incarnate God to rise again, — the im- 
 possibility that He who had in Him the seed of 
 eternal life could " remain in hell," or that His 
 "soul could see corruption." Our incarnate God 
 has died for our sins, and risen again for our justi- 
 fication ; and the indomitable will of Prometheus, 
 and his statement that he knew the day of his 
 delivery would at last dawn, and that Jove could 
 not prevent it, by which the aim of his vicarious suf- 
 fering would be accomplished, and the human race as 
 well as their liberator released, are an evidence of the 
 great truth of the resurrection involved in the Pro- 
 
 A subject like this is fitted for a volume, and not a 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 267 
 
 paper ; but if the foregoing remarks have tended at 
 all to draw up for the Christian student that veil 
 which when drawn up reveals to us antiquity as a 
 realm of shadows, each preceding in their noiseless 
 and majestic movement some vast figure which has 
 cast them before its own approach, — it is enough ; at 
 least, it must to the Christian elevate the position 
 of those great teachers "who beheld Him, though 
 not nigh ; who saw Him, though not now ;" those 
 " Greeks " who, however unconsciously, desired to 
 " see Jesus." 
 
 14. What the Prometheus did, or might be imagined The Aga- 
 to do, for doctrinal truth, the Agamemnon might do for 
 practical, though a very high and elevated doctrine is 
 mixed up with that tragedy also. As a masterpiece, 
 the Agamemnon stands higher than the Prometheus, 
 and brings out more fully the dramatic power and 
 knowledge of human nature of its writer. There is 
 far greater contrast of character. It finds its range 
 among human beings, as the Prometheus did among 
 those of another world. It brings out, with wonderful 
 force and electric power, the various capacities and 
 passions of our nature. Few delineations can be 
 stronger of hypocrisy, villany, and dissimulation, than 
 what we have in Clytemnestra ; or of grandeur and 
 magnanimity, than in Agamemnon; of wild impas- 
 sioned frenzy, than in Cassandra. In these three 
 characters human nature is brought out with the, 
 knowledge and observation of a casuist, and the force 
 and fire of life. 
 
 And while the piece displays this contrast of cha- 
 
268 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 racter, its dramatic effect is of the same majestic and 
 imposing kind, of which iEschylus was so much the 
 master. ' The weary watchmen, worn out with years 
 of watching for the return of Agamemnon ; the toils 
 laid by Olytemnestra ; the sudden blaze of the beacon 
 which tells the approach of the expected but doomed 
 conqueror ; the grand description of the fall of Troy, 
 sung by the chorus, to prepare the way for his ap- 
 proach ; the long narrations by the herald of the 
 dangers which the coming king and his host had en- 
 countered, — all raise expectation to its highest pitch, 
 when Agamemnon enters. His brief stay on the 
 stage, his approach with his raving captive Cassandra, 
 and his majestic single-mindedness, work and keep up 
 just that elevated excitement which the early fore- 
 shadowings had prepared us for ; and the awful and 
 troubled shrieks and gushes of prophetic warning 
 uttered by Cassandra, wound up by the death-scream 
 of the king in the distance, the drawing up of the 
 curtain displaying the figure of Olytemnestra standing 
 by the side of her murdered husband, complete the 
 dramatic effect.' 
 
 But my aim is not to examine it critically, drama- 
 tically, or even as a study of human nature ; we speak 
 to its moral bearing on mankind, and in this respect 
 it is eminently to be considered. 
 
 Athens, the city of the Ionian race, rejoiced and 
 exulted in a people whose spirits were more elastic 
 than her atmosphere, and whose expectations were as 
 buoyant as the breezes from Hymettus ; careless and 
 indifferent to all the graver concerns of life, the light 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 269 
 
 Athenian brooked but little the advice of the grave 
 and thoughtful — and yet few had more to guide her, 
 — and resented as an insult a check to her ambition 
 or her schemes of aggrandizement. Alcibiades was 
 the type of the Athenian, and the idol. iEschylus, 
 with others loving their country, trembling for its 
 reckless and undisciplined natural character, and 
 versed deeply himself in the knowledge of nature and 
 the course of Providence, threw himself into the gap, 
 and boldly tried to stay the headlong career ; thus 
 making the drama alike a moral and intellectual wea- 
 pon. The drama was to the Greek the great reli- 
 gious instrument ; and iEschylus threw into it the 
 whole force of his colossal intellect. The certain 
 downfal of the proud and spoilt child of fortune, was 
 the point which he longed to press ; and he did it in 
 the fate of the great conqueror of Troy. 
 
 To show that sins committed and unexpiated will 
 have their punishment even in remote descendants, 
 and that if perpetuated and not repented of, they will 
 bring down awful retribution at last, was his aim. 
 The old tragic tales of the house of Atreus, the long 
 series of. calamities springing up from the raising of 
 that seed, was the happy illustration, and Agamem- 
 non owed his fate to this. Athens too had sins un- 
 atoned by repentance, and the hand of divine ven- 
 geance might hang over her. The boding chorus ; 
 the shudderings which shook even their song of tri-, 
 umph ; the calamities which affected even the return 
 of the conqueror ; the wild wailings of Cassandra, — 
 all utter separate notes of the dirge of impending 
 
270 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 vengeance, and must have deeply struck the Athenian 
 audience with the fragile nature of human greatness, 
 and the inevitable punishment of sin. " Be sure your 
 sin will find you out." 
 
 The moral 15. The great moral of the play is divisible into 
 
 the Aga- the following heads : 
 
 memnon. j rp ne description of human grandeur and mag- 
 nificence. 
 
 2. The awful apprehension which exists of the cer- 
 tainty of divine retribution somewhere for sins com- 
 mitted even in remote generations. 
 
 3. The strong bodings, which are partly inspira- 
 tions, of that coming woe. 
 
 4. Its fall. 
 
 5. The perpetrators of that retribution being often 
 most intimate with even part of the sufferer, or him- 
 self. 
 
 6. And the retribution which ever will fall on the 
 instrument of divine vengeance. 
 
 " Be sure your sin will find you out :" such seems 
 the magnificent moral of this drama, and the trilogy 
 to which it belongs. 
 
 The description of the grandeur of the mortal is 
 the work of the herald. The boding of retribution is 
 that of Cassandra and the chorus. The fall is in 
 Agamemnon himself. The instrument is Clytem- 
 nestra ; and the avenger of that instrument is Ores- 
 tes. Israel suffered for their own sins and those of 
 their forefathers. But while the cry of prophets 
 uttered through the streets the doom of the sacred- 
 city and the people of God, Nebuchadnezzar, its in- 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 271 
 
 strunient, himself fell punished for his own sins and 
 those of his princely house. Here is the plan. 
 
 a. The magnificence of the exploits of the ap-pianofthe 
 proaching conqueror, whose coming is announced, n ^ aem ' 
 and the blaze of beacon from hill to hill, is thus de- 
 scribed. The chorus, reminded by this of their de- 
 parture for the war, break forth into song. 
 
 After uttering this memorial cry, Clytemnestra 
 comes in describing her device for gaining information 
 of her husband's approach, the beacon-light she has 
 directed to be lit on each intervening point. The 
 passage is full of life, and brings the living reality of 
 the scene before the mind. 
 
 These brilliant descriptions of preparation tend to 
 swell the sail of magnificence which is wafting the 
 vessel of Agamemnon home. The speech of Cly- 
 temnestra in its high and ornate finish, and its almost 
 manifest dissimulation and unreality, might well match 
 with Lady Macbeth's on a somewhat similar occasion, 
 on the entrance of Duncan. This completes the de- 
 scription of human grandeur, which has reached its 
 apex in Agamemnon, and brings us to the second 
 point of our moral, — the expectation of evil. 
 
 b. There is an indefinite and indescribable appre- 
 hension of coming evil planted in the human breast, 
 as much an instinct as self-preservation or social 
 order. All know it. To the wicked it is an ever- 
 hanging Damocles' dagger, shadowing the glitter of 
 every feast ; to the good it is the bitter herb of the 
 Passover, checking and modifying human joy. We 
 all know the feeling. It oozes up like a dull fluid, 
 
272 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 clouding the clearness of the waters of enjoyment. It 
 equalises the condition of the prosperous and the un- 
 happy, by shading and diluting the cup of the former 
 with the apprehension of approaching change, while 
 its absence from the latter extracts one bitter drop 
 from his draught. The social meeting echoes the 
 melancholy sigh of that voice, and the clear warm 
 summer day brings with it an excitement which takes 
 off its joy. It is the apprehension of change. No 
 feeling was more predominant in the mind of the 
 thoughtful heathen. We all know the story of the 
 king in Herodotus, who was advised to throw away 
 his greatest treasure, lest his prosperity should be too 
 exuberant. Artabanus' advice to Xerxes was sage as 
 it was unpalatable. And this feeling is a true one. 
 It is a call from the end of that long dark corridor 
 where Death stands beckoning us on : we may not 
 disregard it. It often comes on account of our faults, 
 and is the boding trumpet of punishment. This feeling 
 is remarkably appealed to and recognised in the 
 Agamemnon. The exceeding magnificence of the king, 
 the grand return of the army, the high tone of Cly- 
 temnestra, excites alarm and apprehension in the 
 bosom of the chorus ; and even their most joyous song 
 is broken ever and anon by the plaint of woe. 
 
 In the play before us we find a sufficiently striking 
 instance of that boding and apprehension mingled 
 with gratitude and success of which I spoke. 
 
 c. The entrance of Agamemnon is the immediate 
 prelude to his fall, and the hurling of the bolts of divine 
 vengeance on the wicked. This is made the more 
 
THE &ELIGI0N OF THE CLASSICS. 273 
 
 telling from the great moderation displayed by the 
 king, and his rather checking than encouraging Cly- 
 temnestra's extreme and hypocritical adulation. 
 
 This pale shading off into twilight, instead of the 
 sudden transition from the noonday blaze of success 
 into the cold dim night of remorse, is in itself the 
 more dramatically effective. There is just that 
 moderation about Agamemnon's manner which, after 
 the high-wrought expectation and consequent dread 
 of chastisement, makes all the more astounding the 
 subsequent calamity. It is the' hush which immediately 
 precedes the outburst of the tempest, whose lowering 
 and dense clouds have been gathering for hours under 
 the distant heralding of winds, which makes the 
 electric crash the more stupendous. The entrance of 
 Cassandra in her captivity and her wild prophetic 
 cries, form the immediate preparation for the fall of 
 vengeance. 
 
 d. But retribution is coming. The cloud gathers 
 beyond the hill which is soon to cover the brief calm- 
 ness of the murderer's day of guilty success ; a worm 
 is already gnawing at the root of the flower ; 
 vengeance looms like a spectral figure peering out 
 against the lurid glow of Clytemnestra's horizon. 
 Nebuchadnezzar punished Israel; but the word of 
 prophecy went forth on the day of his success, 
 that he should eat grass like an ox. Belshazzar 
 drank from vessels of gold when the handwriting 
 blazed on the wall of the banquetrchamber. Orestes 
 will come. 
 
 Such is this wonderful tragedy. We might linger 
 
274 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 for hours on its beauties ; but our province is briefly 
 to suggest to the Christian student those points which 
 make it so evidently suitable to the study of the 
 Christian. While the Prometheus presents the field 
 which smiles with the promise of hope suggested by a 
 great doctrinal truth, the Agamemnon harrows and 
 ploughs the soil for its reception, by showing the 
 necessity of the doctrine from the woeful condition 
 of man without it. To speak with reverence and 
 caution, the Agamemnon stands in something of 
 the same relation to the Prometheus as the Law to the 
 Gospel. 
 Comedy. 16, F ew things are more perverted or mistaken 
 than comedy. To most men it simply brings to mind 
 the idea of a ludicrous juxta-position of persons and 
 circumstances, and for no other end than amusement; 
 and too often is added to this the idea of good held up 
 to ridicule, and sin made droll rather than vile. And, 
 judging by this standard, we often are inclined to con- 
 demn, or feel surprise at, many of Shakspeare's 
 comedies, which scarcely, from the first to the last 
 page, excite a ludicrous sensation ; or if they do, it is 
 by the introduction of some character under whose 
 veil of drollery we feel lies concealed a vein of philo- 
 sophic intention, which half destroys the droller effect, 
 — some fool, clown, or buffoon, whose very saws and 
 apparently meaningless witticisms seem intended as 
 quaint expressions of a knowledge of traits in human 
 nature which do not meet the eye. There is a stateli- 
 ness and majesty, a really grave and awful moral, in 
 such plays as Measure for Measure and the Merchant 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 275 
 
 of Venice, and even in the Taming of the Shrew and As 
 you like it, which tried by the popular standard of 
 comedy at once fail in the balance; while in the 
 fantastic exhibitions of the Midsummer NigMs Dream, 
 and even of the Merry Wives of Windsor, are inter- 
 spersed solemn and didactic statements, borrowed from 
 the highest flights of moral and philosophic poetry* 
 which startle and solemnize. Tried by the standard 
 of the Critic or the Rivals, these performances hardly, 
 in the public mind, stand in the category of comedy ; 
 and still more is that the case when we try them 
 by the standard of the comedies of a still later day, 
 written and acted to pander to the corrupt taste of 
 our own time. 
 
 All this leads us to the natural question of " What 
 is comedy ? " and in the answer to that we may have 
 to discover that, tested by any really old and philo- 
 sophic type, Shakspeare and such-like are the true 
 ones, and others the false. The original form of 
 comedy then, it is clear enough, is embodied under 
 the heads of new and old comedy, with the transition 
 state of middle comedy ; the two old elements were 
 those of fantastic arrangement of beings or cir- 
 cumstances and strong personal satire or invective on 
 individuals. Midsummer NigMs Dream is a specimen 
 of a form of comedy built on the old hypothesis, 
 fantastic and impossible beings, or collocations of 
 them, arranged to point a moral ; perhaps the present 
 forms of pantomime are still lingering types of this old 
 idea. As comedy advanced into its later stages, it 
 became more distinctly didactic, and its plan became 
 x 2 
 
276 THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 more and more subservient to the object of morals, 
 of which Shakspeare's Measure for Measure and 
 Merchant of Venice would be specimens ; but it 
 still avoided the mere subserviency to popular fancy, 
 and a depraved lust for amusement, or worse, to 
 which we now so frequently see it degraded. The 
 Beggar's Opera, and the Conscious Lovers, high as the 
 reputation and ability of their authors are, will 
 scarcely stand free of the last charge. 
 IhanUi"' ^^ e m ' x t ure °f the didactic, satirical, and comic 
 Venice. powers of the following passage will show what is 
 meant : 
 
 Por. A pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine ; 
 The court awards it, and the law doth give it. 
 
 Shy. Most rightful judge ! 
 
 Por. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast ; 
 The law allows it, and the court awards it. 
 
 Shy. Most learned judge ! — A sentence; come, prepare. 
 
 Por. Tarry a little ; there is something else. — 
 This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood ; 
 The words expressly are, a pound of flesh : 
 Take then thy bond, take then thy pound of flesh ; 
 But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed 
 One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods 
 Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate 
 Unto the state of Venice. 
 
 Gra. O upright judge ! — Mark, Jew ; O learned judge ! 
 
 Shy. Is that the law ! 
 
 Por. Thyself shall see the act : 
 For, as thou urgest justice, be assured 
 Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir'st. 
 
 Gra. O learned judge ! — Mark, Jew ; a learned judge ! 
 
 Shy. I take this offer, then : — Pay the bond thrice, 
 And let the Christian go. 
 
 Bass. Here is the money. 
 
 Por. Soft! 
 The Jew shall have all justice ; — soft !— no haste ;— 
 He shall have nothing but the penalty. 
 
 Gra. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge ! 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 277 
 
 Por. Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh. 
 Shed thou no blood ; nor cut thou less nor more, 
 But just a pound of flesh : if thou tak'st more 
 Or less than a just pound, be it but so much 
 As makes it light or heavy in the substance, 
 Or the division of the twentieth part 
 Of one poor scruple, — nay, if the scale do turn 
 But in the estimation of a hair, — 
 Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate. 
 Gra. A second Daniel ! a Daniel, Jew ! — 
 Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip. 
 
 Por. Why doth the Jew pause ? Take thy forfeiture. 
 Shy. Give me my principal, and let me go. 
 Bass. I have it ready for thee : here it is. 
 Por. He hath refused it in the open court ; 
 He shall have merely justice, and his bond. 
 
 Gra. A Daniel, still say I ; a second Daniel ! — 
 I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. 
 Shy. Shall I not have barely my principal ? 
 Por. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture, 
 To be so taken at thy peril, Jew. 
 
 Shy. Why, then, the devil give him good of it ! 
 I'll stay no longer question. 
 
 Por. Tarry, Jew ; 
 The law hath yet another hold on you. 
 It is enacted in the laws of Venice, — 
 If it be proved against an alien, 
 That by direct or indirect attempts 
 He seek the life of any citizen, 
 The party 'gainst the which he doth contrive 
 Shall seize one half his goods ; the other half 
 Comes to the privy coffer of the state ; 
 And the offender's life lies in the mercy 
 Of the duke only, 'gainst all other voice. 
 In which predicament, I say, thou stand'st : 
 For it appears by manifest proceeding 
 That, indirectly and directly too, 
 Thou hast contrived against the very life 
 Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr'd 
 The danger formerly by me rehearsed. 
 Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the duke. 
 
 Gra. Beg that thou mayest have leave to hang thyself : 
 And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state, 
 Thou bast not left the value of a cord ; 
 
278 THE UELTGT0N OF THE CLASSICS. 
 
 Therefore, thou must be hang'd at the state's charge. 
 
 Duke. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit. 
 I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it : 
 For half thy wealth, it is Antonio's ; 
 The other half comes to the general state, 
 Which humbleness may drive unto a fine. 
 
 For. Ay, for the state ; not for Antonio. 
 
 Shy. Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that : 
 You take my house, when you do take the prop 
 That doth sustain my house ; you take my life, 
 When you do take the means whereby I live. 
 
 For. What mercy can you render him, Antonio ? 
 
 Gra. A halter gratis ; nothing else, for God's sake. 
 
 Ant. So please my Lord the duke and all the court, 
 To quit the fine for one half of his goods, 
 I am content, so he will let me have 
 The other half in use, — to render it, 
 Upon his death, unto the gentleman 
 That lately stole his daughter. 
 Two things provided more, — That, for this favour, 
 He presently become a Christian ; 
 The other, that he do record a gift, 
 Here in the court, of all he dies possess'd, 
 Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter. 
 
 Duke. He shall do this, or else I do recant 
 The pardon that I late pronounced here. 
 
 For. Art thou contented, Jew ? What dost thou say ? 
 
 Shy. I am content. 
 
 For. Clerk, draw a deed of gift. 
 
 Shy. I pray you give me leave to go from hence ; 
 I am not well ; send the deed after me, 
 And I will sign it. 
 
 Duke. Get thee gone, but do it. 
 
 Gra. In christening thou shalt have two godfathers; 
 Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, 
 To bring thee to the gallows, not the font. [Exit Shylock. 
 
 The true and elevated aim of comedy seems then to 
 be rather the representation of another side of life to 
 that which tragedy represents — its other walk, its 
 other phase, its other aim and end ; the children in 
 the market-place piping rather than weeping to the 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE CLASSICS. 279 
 
 passing traveller. Aristophanes is an able instance of Aristopha- 
 the true aim of comedy ; and tried by this standard, 
 we shall find an apology for Shakspeare's peculiar 
 style of comedy, tested by which he will stand far 
 above the Beggar's Opera or even the Rivals. 
 
 But I have already gone beyond the bounds of a 
 lecture. I must consider the wide range opened by 
 the subject of comedy at another time. 
 
 Very noble and elevating is the study of the writers 
 of the past, when we view that past as the dawn of a 
 great future in which we are living ; when we study 
 each inspiring thought of philosophers and poets 
 with the feelings of him who remembers with delight, 
 in the evening of a happy day, the pulses of the 
 early dawn, each one fuller till the sun arose from the 
 horizon. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 CONVERSATIONS ON SCHOOLS OF 
 ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Youth and 1. Poetky is peculiarly the property of youth. 
 Schoolboy days and college days, how they are mixed 
 up with the first deep, consuming passion of the love 
 of poetry ! How proud we were when we first felt we 
 could appreciate poetry ! How we talked of poets ; 
 dilated on this poet and that, the merits and character 
 of one and another! How many a long summer 
 evening among haycocks, or sitting in a little room 
 with the window open, with one companion and no 
 candle, and the bat whirling outside, and the yellow 
 glow of sunset melting off to cool the dewy twilight, 
 — how many such scenes we remember, when we sat 
 and talked of poetry ! or the long hot walk with that 
 one friend whom we meant always to love, and in 
 loving whom we first learnt what love meant when we 
 were both sixteen, and we always have loved him, and 
 always shall ! No friendship like schoolboy friendship ! 
 How many such scenes are mixed up with Byron, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 281 
 
 Scott, Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Burns ! 
 That odd, fantastic Ancient Mariner — those efforts to 
 understand the Excursion — which is the best, the 
 Giaour or the Corsair f — the lordly roll of Marmion, 
 and yet the half contempt we had for it — the battle 
 for Byron when people would abuse him ; — oh, how we 
 remember it all ! 
 
 " And the young men of this age say they too have 
 poets equal to ours whom we used to read and fight 
 about. We are always hearing of ' Tennyson's last,' 
 and Longfellow and Browning, and I know not who. 
 Why, you will as soon make us believe that our 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge and Lake-school age were 
 not superior to what we heard our fathers talk about, 
 ' the first appearance of Marmion and Lalla Rookh? 
 as to make us think the men of this day equal to 
 those of ours. There are no poets left alive ; with 
 Wordsworth died the last, and his last work was a 
 failure. Those plays of his — a mistake. 'The Pre- 
 lude, 1 to be sure, is interesting, but posthumous." 
 
 The boat in which our friends were talking was 
 lazily gliding under the moon between Vevay and 
 Chillon. The oars had long lain still ; the lights of 
 Lausanne glimmered on the hill ; the night was still, 
 and as hot as a few miles from Italy could make it, 
 and the Dent de Midi stood dreamily out like a 
 spectre of the south, gazing over the water to see 
 what we are doing. A few sounds of voices made 
 silence audible in Vevay, and M. Monafs hotel 
 gleamed with its terraces of lights. 
 
282 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 "Do you think poets go in schools?" said Mordaunt, 
 as he held his hand in the water. 
 
 " Yes, certainly," answered Charlemont, who 
 seemed a kind of authority in the party. 
 
 " Well, schools or no schools, I stick to it there are 
 no poets now, and have not been since the Lake 
 school," said the first speaker. 
 
 " I think the poets of this day form another school 
 not unlike the Lake school, but having very distinct 
 features of their own ; quite a school, though belong- 
 ing to and having marks of the age we live in." 
 Schools of " Well, I don't know any thing about your schools," 
 said Deville, who was leaning over the prow, darting 
 after moonbeams in the water ; " there's nothing to 
 me like jolly old Scott." 
 
 "There's only one poet in the world," whined 
 out a sad voice from the bottom of the boat ; — 
 " Byron !" 
 
 " Leave those two boys to themselves," cried 
 Mordaunt, " and do let us have a little sensible talk. 
 Who are your poets of to-day ; and what do you 
 mean by the school of to-day ! " 
 
 " Well," said Charlemont, " take Tennyson and 
 Longfellow, who is just beginning to be known, and 
 Browning and Moir. I will undertake to form a 
 school of poetry for to-day within as definite limits, 
 and giving as much reason to account for their 
 peculiarities, as you can for your Lake school." 
 
 " Done ! " said Mordaunt. 
 
 "Oh, dear!" cried the voice at the bottom. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 283 
 
 " Shade of Byron, appear, at such an idea ! That 
 fellow Tennyson! '" 
 
 " ' Breathes there a man with soul so dead ! ' " 
 shouted Deville at the prow. 
 
 " I will give three," said Charlemont, " and you 
 shall give three. Here are mine. Here is one from 
 Tennyson's In Memoriam, his last and greatest work ; 
 it expresses in separate pieces all the ways and modes 
 of sorrow and regret for one gone. 
 
 The path by which we twain did go, ^ M 
 
 Which led by tracts that pleased us well : nam. 
 
 Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, 
 
 From flower to flower, from snow to snow. 
 
 And we with singing cheer'd the way, 
 
 And crown'd with all the season lent, 
 
 From April on to April went, 
 And glad at heart from May to May ; 
 
 But where the path we walk'd began 
 
 To slant the fifth autumnal slope, 
 
 As we descended following hope, 
 There sat the shadow feared by man ; 
 
 Who broke our fair companionship, 
 
 And spread his mantle dark and cold, 
 
 And wrapt thee formless in its fold, 
 And dull'd the murmur on thy lip. 
 
 And bore thee where I could not see, 
 
 Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste ; 
 
 And think that somewhere in the waste 
 The shadow sits and waits for me. 
 
 In Memoriam, c. 22. 
 
 " And now I will give one from Longfellow, the 
 American poet. * 
 
 There is no flock, however watch'd and tended, Longfellow. 
 
 But one dead lamb is there ! 
 There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
 
 But has one vacant chair ! 
 
284 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 The air is fall of farewells to the dying, 
 
 And mournings for the dead : 
 The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 
 
 Will not be comforted. 
 
 Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 
 
 Not from the ground arise ; 
 But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
 
 Assume this dark disguise. 
 
 We see but dimly through the mists and vapours ; 
 
 Amid these earthly damps, 
 What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers, 
 
 May be heaven's distant lamps. 
 
 There is no death ! what seems so is transition ; 
 
 This life of mortal breath 
 Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, 
 
 Whose portal we call Death. 
 
 She is not dead, the child of our affection, 
 
 But gone into that school 
 Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
 
 And Christ himself doth rule. 
 
 In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 
 
 By guardian angels led, 
 Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, 
 
 She lives whom we call dead. 
 
 Day after day we think what she is doing 
 
 In those bright realms of air ; 
 Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 
 
 Behold her grown more fair, 
 
 Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 
 
 The bond which nature gives ; 
 Thinking that our remembrance, tho' unspoken, 
 
 May reach her where she lives. 
 
 Not as a child shall we again behold her ; 
 
 For when with raptures wild 
 In our embraces we again enfold her, 
 
 She will not be a child ; 
 
 But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion, 
 
 Clothed with celestial grace ; 
 And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 
 
 Shall we behold her face. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 285 
 
 And tho' at times impetuous with emotion, 
 
 And anguish long suppress'd, 
 The swelling heart heaves, swelling like the ocean 
 
 That cannot be at rest, — 
 
 We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 
 
 We may not wholly stay ; 
 By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 
 
 The grief that must have way. 
 
 By the Fireside : Resignation. 
 
 " And here is one from Moir, and then I have done 
 with my examples. 
 
 And hast thou sought thy heavenly home, Delta. 
 
 Our fond dear boy ? 
 The realms where sorrow dare not come, 
 
 Where life is joy ? 
 Pure at thy death as at thy birth, 
 Thy spirit caught no taint of earth ; 
 Even by its bliss we mete our dearth, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 Thou wast a vision of delight, 
 
 To bless us given ; 
 Beauty embodied to our sight, 
 
 A type of heaven. 
 So dear to us thou wast, thou art 
 Even less thine own self, than a part 
 Of mine and of thy mother's heart, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 Gem of our hearth, our household pride, 
 
 Earth's undented, 
 Could love have saved, thou hadst not died, 
 
 Our dear sweet child. 
 Humbly we bow to fate's decree, 
 Yet had we hoped that time should see 
 Thee mourn for us, not us for thee. 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 Do what I may, go where I will, 
 
 Thou meet'st my sight ; 
 There dost thou glide before me still, 
 
 A thing of light. 
 
286 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 I feel thy breath upon my cheek, 
 I see thee smile, I hear thee speak, 
 Till, oh ! my heart is like to break, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 Methinks thou smil'st before me now 
 
 With glance of stealth, 
 The hair thrown back from thy full brow, 
 
 In buoyant health ; 
 I see thine eyes' deep violet light, 
 Thy dimpled cheek, carnation'd bright, 
 Thy clasping arms so round and white, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 Even to the last thy every word, — 
 
 To glad, to grieve, — 
 Was sweet as sweetest song of bird 
 
 On summer's eve. 
 In outward beauty undecay'd, 
 Death o'er thy spirit cast no shade, 
 And like the rainbow thou didst fade, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 We mourn for thee, when blind black night 
 
 The chamber fills ; 
 We pine for thee, when morn's first light 
 
 Reddens the hills : 
 The sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, 
 All to the wallflower and wild pea, 
 Are changed : we saw the world through thee, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 And though perchance a smile may gleam 
 
 Of casual mirth, 
 It doth not own, whate'er may seem, 
 
 An inward birth. 
 We miss thy small step on the stair, 
 We miss thee at thine evening prayer, 
 j All day we miss thee, — every where, 
 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 Farewell, then, — for a while, farewell, — 
 
 Pride of my heart ; 
 It cannot be that long we dwell 
 
 Thus torn apart. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 287 
 
 Time's shadows like the shuttle flee, 
 And dark howe'er life's night may be, 
 Beyond the grave I'll meet with thee, 
 Casa Wappy. 
 
 " Well," said Charlemont, " there they are ; what 
 do you think of them 2 These are some of the poets 
 of to-day." 
 
 " Very beautiful in many points ; Tennyson seems 
 to me affectedly obscure, but I feel there is a 
 remarkable refinement and chasteness, especially in 
 the first two. But how can they be called a school ? 
 what bond of union is there in them ? and yet in such 
 way as to separate them from the Lake school ? " 
 
 " That is the very point I will come to," said 
 Charlemont. 
 
 " ' Charge, Chester, charge ! On, Stanley, on ! " 
 shouted Deville, irritably, at the helm. 
 
 " ' Would that the desert were my dwelling-place !'" 
 moaned the bottom voice. 
 
 " My dear Lovel," said Deville, " we are brothers 
 in adversity ; I vote we make common cause." 
 
 " Pray hold your tongue. Common cause between 
 all that is deep and sublime and your vulgar jingle V 
 was Lovel's reply. 
 
 " Vulgar jingle ! — selfish misanthrope !" 
 
 But our more philosophic friends went on, and 
 Charlemont promised to proceed to assign a bond of 
 similarity between his poets, and to give them the 
 place of a school with certain definite features, virtues, 
 and vices. 
 
 " Well," said Mordaunt, "they are very beautiful, 
 I grant, very. I never thought I could like Tennyson; 
 
288 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 he always seemed to me so affected and odd ; but 
 that is wonderfully beautiful, so chaste and deep. It 
 seems to me to have more pensiveness and less rest- 
 lessness in it than his earlier books; still it is 
 ' melancholy — coldly melancholy. Then that Moir — 
 Delta, wasn't he, in Blackwood ? — he's very simple 
 and touching — very. But where's your school? 
 How do you make them into a school, Charlemont?" 
 " Stay, stay a moment," said his companion ; " I 
 must have your specimens first; for remember, 
 contrast is essential to giving a definition of a school. 
 Now, then, for your Lake poets — your school of 
 the earlier poets of this movement century — let us 
 see now." 
 
 " Scott wrote in George the Fourth's reign, I think," 
 said Deville, still catching moonbeams in the water ; 
 but he got no answer. 
 
 " I say, old fellows," cried Lovel at the bottom, 
 " remember ' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' 
 Byron cuts your Lake fellows all to rags." 
 
 2. " Well," said Mordaunt, " here they are ; three 
 to three. I'll test mine by them, though they are 
 thought of at the moment. But remember there 
 are three leading poets of this school — Words- 
 worth, Southey, and Coleridge. They each have 
 their distinctive features, yet they have their chain 
 which binds them together; they each of them 
 in their versification have tried to break away from 
 the style and conventionalities of the previous 
 schools. The thaw had set in after a long frost, 
 and the waters of that thaw bid fair to flood the 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 289 
 
 world with a new deluge of thoughts and expressions. 
 Wordsworth was the poet who cast a mantle of moral 
 philosophy over the external form of the material 
 world. Coleridge, a man of a metaphysical turn of 
 mind, saw man and nature through the medium of' 
 his own disposition ; and Southey examined with 
 the eye of a historian man and creation. Here is 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Ode on the Intimations of Mortality from the Becol- Words- 
 hctions of Early Childhood. 
 
 There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, The Ode to 
 
 The earth, and every common sight, Immor- 
 
 To me did seem telit y- 
 
 Apparell'd in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it hath been of yore ; 
 
 Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
 
 By night or day, 
 The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 
 
 ii. 
 
 The rainbow comes and goes, 
 And lovely is the rose ; 
 The moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 
 Waters on a starry night 
 Are beautiful and fair ; 
 The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 
 But yet I know, where'er. I go, 
 That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth. 
 
 ; m. 
 
 Now while the birds thus sing a joyous song, 
 
 And when the young lambs bound 
 
 As to the tabor's sound, 
 
 To me alone there came a thought of grief : 
 
 A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 
 
 And again I am strong. 
 
 U 
 
290 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ; 
 No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ; 
 I hear the echoes through the mountains throng, 
 The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, 
 And all the earth is gay : 
 Land and sea 
 Give themselves to jollity, 
 
 And with the heart of May 
 Doth every beast keep holiday ; — 
 Thou child of joy, 
 Shofit round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 
 Shepherd-boy ! 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, 
 The Soul that rises with us, our Life's star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar ; 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness ; 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home ; 
 Heaven lies about as in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boy ; 
 But he beholds the light and whence it flows, 
 
 He sees it in his joy : 
 The youth who daily further from the East 
 
 Must travel, still is nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended : 
 At length the man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 Behold the child among his new-born blisses, 
 A six-years' darling of a pigmy size ! 
 See where 'mid work of his own hand he lies 
 Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses ; 
 "With light upon him from his father's eyes : 
 See at his feet some little plan or chart, 
 Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
 Reap'd by himself with newly learned art. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 291 
 
 A wedding or a festival, 
 
 A mourning or a funeral ; 
 
 And this hath now his heart, 
 
 And onto this he frames his song; 
 Then will he fit his tongue 
 To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 
 
 But it will not be long 
 
 Ere this be thrown aside, 
 
 And with new joy and pride 
 The little actor cons another part, 
 Filling from time to time his ' humorous stage,' 
 With all the persons down to palsied age 
 That life brings with her in her equipage ; 
 
 As if his whole vocation 
 
 Were endless imitation. 
 
 vm. 
 Thou whose exterior semblance doth deny 
 
 Thy soul's immensity ; 
 Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep 
 Thy heritage ; thou eye among the blind, 
 That deaf and silent read'st the eternal deep, 
 Haunted for ever by the eternal mind ; 
 
 Mighty prophet ! Seer blest, 
 
 On whom those truths do rest, 
 Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 
 In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
 Thou over whom thy immortality 
 Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, 
 A presence which is not to be put by ; 
 Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 
 Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height ; 
 Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
 The years to bring the inevitable yoke ; 
 Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife : 
 Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight ; 
 And custom lie upon thee with a weight, 
 Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 
 
 And now for Coleridge, the metaphysical describer Coleridge, 
 of man and nature. 
 
 Hymn, be/ore Sunrise in the Vale of Chamowni. Hymn be- 
 
 Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star . r un ' 
 
 t In his steep course ? so long he sterns to pause 
 
 u 2 
 
292 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 On thy bald awful head, sovereign Blanc ! 
 
 The Arve and Aveiron at thy base 
 
 Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form, 
 
 Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines 
 
 How silently ! Around thee and above, 
 
 Deep is the air, and dark substantial black : 
 
 An ebon mass, methinks thou piercest it. 
 
 As with a wedge. But when I look again, 
 
 It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, 
 
 Thy habitation from eternity. 
 
 Oh ! dread and silent mount, I gazed upon thee, 
 
 Till thou, still present in the bodily sense, 
 
 Did'st vanish from my thought ; entranced in prayer, 
 
 I worshipped the invisible alone. 
 
 • • • • 
 Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise 
 
 Thou owest, not alone those swelling tears, 
 Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy. Awake, 
 Voice of sweet song ! awake, my heart, awake ! 
 Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn, 
 Thon first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale, 
 Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night, 
 And visited all night by troops of stars, 
 Or when they climb the sky or when they sink : 
 Companion of the morning star at dawn, 
 Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn 
 Co-herald, wake ! oh, wake, and utter praise ! 
 Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ? 
 Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light ? 
 Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ? 
 
 * » » » 
 Ye icefalls, ye that from the mountain's brow 
 
 Adown enormous ravines slope amain, 
 
 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, 
 
 And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge, 
 
 Motionless torrents ; silent cataracts ; 
 
 Who made you glorious as the gate of heaven 
 
 Beneath the keen full moon ? who bade the sun 
 
 Clothe you with rainbows ? who with living flowers 
 
 Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet ? 
 
 " God ! " let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
 
 Answer ; and let the ice-plains echo " God !" 
 
 " God !" sing ye meadows, streams, with gladsome voice, 
 
 Ye.pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ; 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 293 
 
 And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder " God !" 
 
 Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost, 
 Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest, 
 Ye eagles playmates of the mountain storm, 
 Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds, 
 Ye signs and wonders of the elements, 
 Utter forth " God !" and fill the hills with praise. 
 
 Thou too, hoar mount, with thy sky-pointing peaks, 
 Oft from whose feet the avalanche unheard, 
 Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, 
 Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast : 
 Thou too again, stupendous mountain, thou, 
 That as I raise my head awhile, bow'd low 
 In adoration, upward from thy base, 
 Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears, 
 Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud 
 To rise before me ; — rise, oh, ever rise, 
 Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth ; 
 Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills, 
 Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, 
 Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky, 
 And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 
 Earth with her thousand voices praises God. 
 
 And here is Southey. 
 
 The Dead Friend. 
 
 Southey. 
 
 The Dead 
 Friend. 
 
 Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 
 Descend to contemplate 
 The form that once was dear, 
 
 The spirit is not there, 
 Which kindled that dead eye, 
 Which throbb'd in that cold heart, 
 Which in that motionless hand 
 Hath met thy friendly grasp. 
 The spirit is not there ; 
 It is but lifeless, perishable flesh 
 That moulders in the grave. 
 Earth, air, and water's minist'ring particles, 
 Now to the elements 
 Resolved, their uses done. 
 
294 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 
 Follow thy friend beloved : 
 The spirit is not there. 
 
 11. 
 
 Often together have we tatk'd of death : 
 How sweet it were to see 
 All doubtful things made clear ; 
 How sweet it were, with powers 
 
 Such as the Cherubim, 
 To view the depth of heaven. 
 Oh, Edmond, thou hast first 
 Begun the travel o.f Eternity. 
 
 I look upon the stars, 
 And think that thou art there, 
 Unfetter'd as the thought that follows thee. 
 
 m. 
 And we have often said how sweet it were, 
 With unseen ministry of angel power, 
 To watch the friends we loved. 
 Edmond, we did not err ; 
 Since I have felt thy presence, thou hast given 
 
 A birth to holy thought, 
 Hast kept me from the world unstain'd and pure. 
 Edmond, we did not err : 
 Our best affections here, 
 They are not like the toys of infancy ; 
 The soul outgrows them not, 
 We do not cast them off. 
 Oh, if it could be so, 
 It were indeed a dreadful thing to die. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Not to the grave, not to the grave* my soul, 
 Follow thy friend departed, 
 But in the lonely hour, 
 But in the evening walk, 
 Think that he companies thy solitude, 
 Think that he holds with thee 
 Mysterious intercourse ; 
 And though remembrance wake a tear, 
 There will be joy iu grief. 
 
 " There they are ; now then, Charlemont, for your 
 school.'" 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETltY. 295 
 
 " We have got an interesting task," said Charle- 
 mont, " very — we have the two divisions of the last 
 great school of English poets, and which so forcibly 
 bear the impress of the national mind and the spirit 
 of the day. You have taken the poets of the French 
 Revolution ; a day which, for its deep stirring of the 
 human mind and thought, is one of the most remark- 
 able which the page of history will narrate. You 
 have chosen this section of the latter school : I have 
 selected our own period, a section with a very dis- 
 tinctive character of its own, bearing on its face the 
 stamp of the results of a long peace, international 
 communion, developed intellect, advanced commerce, 
 mechanical power, and general civilization- The 
 school is full of great and appalling faults ; and as 
 a Christian I cannot but condemn, still I must feel 
 they form a distinct school of very beautiful poetry. 
 On this school I will proceed to give my own opinion ; 
 then you shall give yours. But, hark ! the chimes of 
 Lausanne strike twelve : let us draw into Vevay. 11 
 
 " Oh, no, no ; stay out ; what can be lovelier than 
 the moon on the waters \ it will help our thoughts. 11 
 
 " Very well ;" and they drew in their oars, and 
 with the moon shining down on the silvery shield of 
 the blue lake, while the Dent d'Oche hung over them, 
 wrapped in still shadows, and the far distant Dent 
 de Midi shone with its crest of snow, calmly looking 
 up into the night-sky, and a few lights still glimmered 
 in Vevay and the boatmen's cottages on the other 
 side, they resigned themselves to quietness and moon- 
 light. 
 
296 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 The young friends moored their boat in a little bay 
 which lay secluded from observation, and shadowed 
 over with the forests of pines which clothe the hills in 
 all directions ; and leaping out, they sat down on a 
 sandy shore, while the moon continued sleeping on 
 the distant snowy peaks, and their boat idly heaved on 
 the quiet water. The night was very warm, though 
 late ; Lovel preferred lying at the bottom of the boat; 
 he fancied a small white cloud, which he saw over 
 Lausanne, would ere long cross the moon, and he 
 wished to fancy himself the lover in the Siege of 
 Corinth. Charlemont and M or daunt sat down on the 
 sand, and the former began as follows : — 
 
 " I promised to give you my theory of the schools 
 of English poetry, and to draw some definite lines of 
 demarcation between the earlier and later schools of 
 this age. Before I do this, I will lay down one or two 
 rules about English poetry, which it will be important 
 to remember. 
 The five 3. There have been five great schools or centres of 
 
 schools. .__, ,, , 
 
 English poetry ranging from Shakspeare downwards, 
 for I will not go back so far as Chaucer to-day. To 
 take a brief view of later schools of poetry, I will say 
 that from the great Elizabethan period to the present 
 day there have been five, circling around Shakspeare, 
 Pope, Cowper or Goldsmith, Wordsworth, and Ten- 
 nyson ; and these five periods embraced five epochs of 
 English history, marked five periods of English life, 
 manners, thought, and general social action. Shak- 
 speare's was the age of the Reformation ; Pope's that 
 of the stagnation of general feeling and taste in the age 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETKY. 297 
 
 marked by the decline of the Stuarts ; Cowper's the 
 transition period at the conclusion of George III.'s 
 reign, when mankind was beginning to wake from 
 the lethargy of years; Wordsworth's the period of 
 revolution ; and Tennyson's an age which bears the 
 mark of a long peace, and the tone consequent 
 on it. Each school of poetry, I am anxious to show, 
 bears the peculiar stamp of its own age, and is the 
 representative of its own period in its distinctive 
 features. 
 
 But before I show this, I will remind you that these 
 schools have their own inherent features independently 
 of the external marks and accidents of their age. To 
 Shakspeare, who nearly stands alone in his period, I 
 will add Milton, though belonging to a different period 
 and caste of sentiment. All poets describe, in some 
 form or other, man and his relationships. Their work 
 is to search into the structure of the race of which 
 they are members, and so bring to the surface the 
 hidden things of the soul and mind ; to see the 
 separate parts, and to attempt at a legislation for the 
 life and manners of man. 
 
 In this great work Shakspeare stands prominent Shakspeare. 
 as a magnificent and diversified sketcher of the human 
 race grouped together in all the grotesque or gigantic 
 tableaux of dramatic representation. He is the 
 Michael Angelo of poets : the human race is on his 
 canvass ; man stands out from the frame in living 
 energy; Iago, Hamlet, Isabella, Falstaff, Lear, 
 Cordelia, Miranda, are arranged in bold and lucid 
 outline. Like that marvellous sketch of the Murder 
 
298 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 of the Innocents in the National Gallery, so the 
 human race are grouped by Shakspeare. I do not 
 mean he is a sketcher only ; he is full of detail, 
 accurate, versatile, and natural. Homer and Shak- 
 speare join hands over the waste of more than two 
 thousand years, without a rival or a competitor. If 
 Shakspeare is the gigantic portrait-painter of man, 
 
 Milton. Milton is his sculptor ; his images are cold, majestic, 
 severe, colossal, and beautiful. He has carved a 
 magnificent ideal of a man, an angel, and a devil, and 
 ranged them there in the great statue-gallery of the 
 human race. 
 
 Pope. The second school circles round Pope, which will 
 
 range from Dryden on to Addison. Pope, Swift, and 
 Johnson moralize on man. They are to Shakspeare 
 what Euripides may have been to Homer : they take 
 his magnificent conceptions and work on them ; they 
 take his outlines and fill them up, or rather they lay 
 colour on his pencil-lines, and illuminate with gold- 
 leaf the delineations he has prepared for its reception : 
 they are to him what talent is to genius, or the 
 copyist to the conceiver of the original. He went out 
 and sketched from nature in the broad daylight: 
 they copy, touch up, elaborate, take for granted and 
 moralize ; make saws out of his suggestions, maxims 
 out of his hints, rules out of his laws. I do not mean 
 they copied Shakspeare directly, or perhaps ever 
 thought about him ; but such is the relation their 
 school bears to his : chilly, regular, exact, formal, and 
 precise, his failures are their virtues, and his weak- 
 nesses their props. They revel in what he discards, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 299 
 
 and dress themselves often in what he had taken pains 
 to fling away. The ornament on which they pride 
 themselves becomes a mark of suspicion in a play of 
 Shakspeare ; and rhymes are at once the essence of 
 some later poets of the early Georgian period, while 
 they leave a mark of doubt and possible spuriousness 
 on parts of Bichard II. Shakspeare's dispensable and 
 sometimes infirm accident is their essence. The 
 gigantic sketch of Michael Angelo dwindles down into- 
 a copy by one of a fifth-rate school, who studies in the 
 same studio and works from the same subjects. 
 There is a picture of West's in the anteroom of the 
 National Gallery ; that picture is to Michael Angelo 
 what some later schools of human nature are to 
 Shakspeare's. 
 
 But this state of things could not go on for ever ; 
 man must think again : a tide of thought was setting 
 in, and on its waves it brought up a school of more 
 original and thoughtful poets. Shakspeare's.lesson 
 must be thought over again, his vast outlines and 
 figures reconstructed or re-adapted. Man must be 
 painted with new backgrounds, and his relationships 
 with God, his fellow, and himself re-adapted. Man 
 was the same, for there had been no new creation 
 since the days of Shakspeare, and no one could add 
 a figure which he had omitted; he had left no 
 vacuum: but the whole might be re-adjusted, newly 
 grouped, and new features brought to light. Morland 
 painted animals, and so did Landseer, and they copied 
 often from the same originals : but Landseer's is 
 all but a new idea. Michael Angelo sketched figures, 
 
300 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 and so did Raphael ; but they are not the same. The 
 school which was to reproduce man was the school of 
 the French Revolution; but there must be a transition, 
 and, as Mr. Macaulay very truly suggests, Oowper and 
 
 Cowper. Byron were the extremes of the passing school. Oow- 
 per stood on the further bank of the stream which 
 watered the territory and age on which the school of 
 accurate measures lingered, and longed, though scarcely 
 dared, to take the leap ; he saw a fair land beyond, a 
 land which by its wild uncultivated expanse gave a 
 scope for enterprise, genius, and originality ; as the 
 born-lover of nature who has been imprisoned within 
 the walls and walks of some regular and terraced 
 Dutch garden, is palled to weariness by the irksome 
 regularity, and pants for the freedom of the hill or the 
 
 Byron. plain he sees beyond. Byron took the leap, and stood 
 first on the other side ; he hesitated, lingered, and 
 yearned after the past. These men form the transi- 
 tion school. Pope could not have written Crazy Kate, 
 still less have known or described the inward workings 
 of the Giaour. The new school was to bring out to 
 the surface the feelings, imagination, and experience 
 of the human race. An earthquake had shaken 
 society, and portions of the structure had been hurled 
 to the surface which had scarcely been seen before : 
 an analytic tendency set in, causes and motives began 
 to be examined ; the watch was to be pulled to 
 pieces to see the machinery; nothing was to be 
 taken on trust, all to be doubted of at first. Even 
 Shakspeare had not done this ; but the revulsions 
 of society during George III.'s reign naturally 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 301 
 
 caused it. But this school had two sections, a 
 conservative and a radical phase ; the Lake school 
 were of the former, Tennyson's of the latter. Words- 
 worth, Coleridge, and Southey conserved principles, 
 while they analyzed the subjects of them ; they made 
 the examination under protest; they dissected the 
 human being with their hand on the knife, but their 
 eye on heaven ; they pushed out boldly and farther 
 into the sea at twilight, but they feared quite to cut 
 away the cable from the rock. They were conservative- 
 radicals in poetry. 
 
 Such is a brief view of the schools of English poetry 
 considered with reference to their interior thought. 
 The school I have called the school of Pope will bear 
 three divisions : that which circled round Dryden 
 at the conclusion of the Stuarts; that which cir- 
 cled round Pope ; and that which circled round 
 Goldsmith. It would be hereafter very interest- 
 ing to compare these sections and their component 
 parts. 
 
 4. That you may have some idea of the three schools 
 while I am speaking of them, in passing, I will give 
 you a specimen of some of their members ; but will 
 first give you Addison's own review of the poets Addison. 
 before him, which will be interesting. 
 
 Since, dearest Harry, yon will needs request View of the 
 
 A short account of all the muse possest, Poets. 
 
 That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times, 
 Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes : 
 Without more preface, writ in formal length, 
 To speak the undertaker's want of strength, 
 I'll try to make their several beauties known, 
 And show their verses' worth, though not my own. 
 
302 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 Long had our dull forefathers slept supine, 
 Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful nine ; 
 Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose, 
 And many a story told in rhyme and prose. 
 But age has rusted what the poet writ, 
 Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit : 
 In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain, 
 And tries to make his readers laugh in vain. 
 
 Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage, 
 In ancient tales amused a barbarous age ; 
 An age that yet uncultivate and rude, 
 Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued 
 Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods, 
 To dens of dragons, and enchanted woods. 
 But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, 
 Can charm an understanding age no more ; 
 The long -spun allegories fulsome grow, 
 While the dull moral lies too plain below. 
 We view well pleased at distance all the sights, 
 Of arms and palfries, battles, fields, and fights, 
 And damsels in distress, and courteous knights ; 
 But when we look too near, the shades decay, 
 And all the pleasing landscape fades away. 
 
 Great Cowley then (a mighty genius) wrote, 
 O'errun with wit, and lavish of his thought ; 
 His turns too closely on the reader press : 
 He more had pleased us had he pleased us less. 
 One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes 
 With silent wonder, but new wonders rise : 
 As in the milky way a shining white 
 O'erflows the heavens with one continued light, 
 That not a single star can show his rays, 
 Whilst jointly all promote the common blaze. 
 * * * * 
 
 But Milton next, with high and haughty stalks, 
 Unfetter'd in majestic numbers walks : 
 No vulgar hero can his muse engage, 
 Nor earth's wide scene confine his hallow'd rage. 
 See ! see ! he upwards springs, and towering high 
 Spurns the dull province of mortality, 
 Shakes heaven's eternal throne with dire alarms, 
 And sets th' Almighty Thunderer in arms. 
 Whate'er his pen describes I more than see, 
 Whilst every verse, array'd in majesty, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 303 
 
 Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws, 
 And seems above the critic's nicer laws. 
 
 * * * * 
 But now, my muse, a softer strain rehearse, 
 
 Turn every line with art, and smoothe thy verse; 
 The courtly Waller next commands thy lays : 
 Muse, tune thy verse with art to Waller's praise. 
 While tender airs and lovely dames inspire 
 Soft melting thoughts, and propagate desire ; 
 So long shall Waller's strains our passions move, 
 And Saccharissa's beauty kindle love. 
 Thy verse, harmonious bard, and flattering song, 
 Can make the vanquish'd great, the coward strong. 
 Thy verse can show ev'n Cromwell's innocence, 
 And compliment the storm that bore him hence. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Nor must Roscommon pass neglected by, 
 That makes e'en rules a noble poetry : 
 Rules whose deep sense and heavenly numbers show 
 The best of critics, and of poets too. 
 Nor, Denham, must we e'er forget thy strains, 
 While Cooper's Hill commands the neighbouring plains. 
 
 But see where artful Dryden next appears, 
 Grown old in rhyme, but charming e'en in years : 
 Great Dryden next, whose tuneful muse affords 
 The sweetest numbers and the fittest words. 
 Whether in comic sounds or tragic airs 
 She forms her voice, she moves our smiles or tears. 
 If satire or heroic strains she writes, 
 Her hero pleases, and her satire bites. 
 From her no harsh unartful numbers fall ; 
 She wears all dresses, and she charms in all. 
 
 And here is a specimen from Pope's Essay on Man. Pope. 
 
 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan ; Essay on 
 
 The proper study of mankind is man. Man. 
 
 Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, 
 A being darkly wise and rudely great, — 
 With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, 
 With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, — 
 He hangs between ; in doubt to act or rest ; 
 In doubt to deem himself a god or beast ; 
 In doubt his mind or body to prefer ! 
 Born but to die, and reasoning but to err ; 
 
304 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 
 Whether he thinks too little or too much ; 
 Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd ; 
 Still by himself abus'd or disabus'd ; 
 Created half to rise, and half to fall ; 
 Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 
 Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd ; 
 The glory, jest, and riddle of the world ! 
 
 Go, wondrous creature ! mount where science guides : 
 Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; 
 Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, 
 Correct old time, and regulate the sun ; 
 Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere, 
 To the first good, first perfect, and first fair : 
 Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, 
 And quitting sense call imitating God : 
 As eastern priests in giddy circles run, 
 And turn their heads to imitate the sun. 
 Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule — 
 Then drop into thyself, and be a fool ! 
 
 Thomson. Thomson, who lived in the early part of the ■ 
 
 teenth century, felt the power of external nature, but 
 expressed his thoughts in the measured rhythm of 
 the age to which he belonged. 
 
 How chang'd the scene ! In blazing height of noon, 
 The sun, oppress'd, is plung'd in thickest gloom, 
 Still horror reigns, a dreary twilight round, ' 
 
 Of struggling night and day malignant mix'd. 
 For to the hot equator crowding fast, 
 Where, highly rarefied, the yielding air 
 Admits their stream, incessant vapours roll, 
 Amazing clouds on clouds continual heap'd ; 
 Or whirl'd tempestuous by the gusty wind, 
 Or silent borne along, heavy, and slow, 
 With the big stores of streaming oceans charg'd. 
 Meantime, amid these upper seas, condens'd 
 Around the cold aerial mountain's brow, 
 And by conflicting winds together dash'd, 
 The thunder holds his black tremendous throne ! 
 From cloud to cloud the rending lightnings rage ; 
 Till, in the furious elemental war 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 305 
 
 Dissolv'd, the whole precipitated mass 
 Unbroken floods and solid torrents pours. 
 
 Young was born in 1681; a grand and pensive Young, 
 melancholy pervades his works, they were the off- 
 spring of domestic sorrow. He was a stern moralist, 
 and bears the marks of his own age. 
 
 Night, sable goddess, from her ebon throne, 
 In rayless majesty, now stretches forth 
 Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. 
 Silence how dead ! and darkness how profound ! 
 Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds ; 
 Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse 
 Of life stood still, and nature made a pause, 
 An awful pause, prophetic of her end. 
 And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd ; 
 Fate ! drop the curtain ; I can lose no more. 
 
 Dryden, " the great high priest of all the nine,'" Dryden. 
 was born in 1631. He was laureate to Charles II., 
 and a proselyte to Some under James II. His power 
 of satire is keen, and the brilliance of his rapid de- 
 scription gave it fire. Take the following ode : — 
 
 'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won 
 By Philip's warlike son : 
 
 Aloft in awful state 
 
 The godlike hero sate 
 On his imperial throne : 
 
 His valiant peers were placed around, 
 Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound 
 
 (So should desert in arms be crown'd) : 
 The lovely Thais by his side 
 Sate like a blooming Eastern bride, 
 In flower of youth and beauty's pride. 
 
 Happy, happy, happy pair ! 
 
 None but the brave, 
 
 None but the brave, 
 
 None but the brave deserves the fair. 
 
306 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Happy, happy, happy pair ! 
 
 None but the brave, 
 
 None but the brave, 
 
 None but the brave deserves the fair. 
 
 ii. 
 Timotheus, placed on high 
 
 Amid the tuneful quire, 
 
 With flying fingers touch'd the lyre : 
 The trembling notes ascend the sky, 
 
 And heavenly joys inspire. 
 The song began from Jove, 
 Who left his blissful seats above 
 (Such is the power of mighty love). 
 A dragon's fiery form bely'd the god, 
 Sublime on radiant spires he rode, 
 
 When he to fair Olympia press'd, 
 
 And while he sought her snowy breast : 
 Then round her slender waist he curl'd, 
 And stamp'd an image of himself, a sovereign of the world. 
 The listening crowd admire the lofty sound ; 
 A present deity, they shout around : 
 A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound : 
 
 With ravish'd ears 
 
 The monarch hears, 
 
 Assumes the god, 
 
 Affects to nod, 
 And seems to shake the spheres. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 With ravish'd ears 
 The monarch hears, 
 Assumes the god, 
 Affects to nod, 
 And seems to shake the spheres. 
 
 in. 
 The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung, 
 Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young : 
 The jolly god in triumph comes ; 
 Sound the trumpets ; beat the drums. 
 Flush'd with a purple grace 
 He shows his honest face ; 
 Now give the hautboys breath : he comes, he comes : 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETEY. 307 
 
 Bacchus, eyer fair and young, 
 
 Drinking joys did first ordain : 
 Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, 
 Drinking is the soldier's pleasure : 
 
 Rich the treasure, 
 
 Sweet the pleasure, 
 Sweet is pleasure after pain. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, 
 Drinking is the soldier's pleasure : 
 
 Rich the treasure, 
 
 Sweet the pleasure, 
 Sweet is pleasure after pain. 
 
 To show a little what I meant by the character of Milton. 
 Milton's poetry, I append this description, that we 
 may see him with the rest : — 
 
 Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, 
 Godlike erect, with native honour clad, 
 In naked majesty, seem'd lords of all : 
 And worthy seem'd ; for in their looks divine 
 The image of their glorious Maker shone, 
 Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure ; 
 Severe, but in true filial freedom plac'd, 
 Whence true authority in men : though both 
 Not equal, as their sex not equal seem'd : 
 For contemplation he, and valour form'd ; 
 For softness she, and sweet attractive grace : 
 He for God only ; she for God in him. 
 His fair large front and eye sublime declared 
 Absolute rule : and hyacinthin locks 
 Round from his parted forelock manly hung 
 Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad ; 
 She, as a veil, down to the slender waist 
 Her unadorned golden tresses wore, 
 Dishevel'd, but in wanton ringlets wav'd, 
 As the vine curls her tendrils ! which imply'd 
 Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, 
 And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd — 
 Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, 
 And sweet reluctant amorous delay. 
 Nor those mysterious parts were then conceal'd ; 
 
 x 2 
 
308 CONVERSATIONS ON 
 
 Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame, 
 Of nature's works i honour dishonourable ! 
 Sin-bred ! how have ye troubled all mankind 
 With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure, 
 And banish'd from man's life his happiest life, 
 Simplicity and spotless innocence ! 
 So pass'd they naked on, nor shunn'd the sight 
 Of God or angel, for they thought no ill. 
 So hand in hand they pass'd, the loveliest pair 
 That ever since in love's embraces met ; 
 Adam, the goodliest man of men since born 
 His sons ; the fairest of her daughters Eve. 
 
 I have much more to say : in fact, I have been 
 drawn on far beyond what I expected by those 
 remarks. I wish to go on showing you the way in 
 which each poet, and especially each school of poetry, 
 bears the stamp of its own day; the political and 
 social history of its period. Yes, in fact, the poet is 
 the index of his time. But I must now content 
 myself with the historical sketch I have just given, 
 without touching at what I had hoped to have gone 
 into, — the peculiar and distinctive features of Words- 
 worth's and Tennyson's schools. 
 
 Charlemont ceased speaking ; Mordaunt and 
 Deville had been listening in profound attention. 
 The exquisite quiet of the night; the streams of 
 moonbeams which reposed on each little ripple of 
 the Lake of Geneva, which moved like the gentle 
 pulse of an eyelid ; the warm genial air, and the 
 rullock of the little boat on the water's edge, had all 
 conduced to add to the sweet stillness of the occupa- 
 tion and the hour. 
 
 " Most interesting ! " said Mordaunt rising ; " I 
 long to hear more." 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 309 
 
 " To-morrow," said Oharlemont, " we will walk to 
 Clarens and continue our discussion." 
 
 Next day the friends resolved to walk to Ohillon in- 
 stead of the route they had determined on. The walk 
 from Vevay to Chillon most men know — lovely for a 
 hundred objects of beauty and many associations ; 
 there is scarcely a scene on earth lovelier than that 
 extent of country which makes Ohillon its centre. It 
 contains nearly all that can make nature lovely : soft 
 and rugged mountains fringed by purple forests, 
 bordered by the pure whiteness of eternal snow ; the 
 tall and majestic pine, mellowed by the fragile and 
 ever-smiling birch; buildings, from the most pic- 
 turesque chalet to the well-known tower of Lausanne, 
 keeping sentinel above the blue waters ; while what 
 words can describe that lovely sheet of blue, the placid 
 calmness only broken beneath the midday heat by the 
 onward rush of the rapid Ehone ! 
 
 " Oh, let us go to Chillon," cried Mordaunt, " and 
 sit beneath one of its old bastions, and talk of our 
 English poets." 
 
 " Come along," said Oharlemont ; " there could not 
 be a better thought or a better place." 
 
 And the friends hiring a boat rowed to Ohillon, 
 and landing close under its ruin sat down in the 
 most retired nook they could find, and resumed their 
 discussion. 
 
 "Now for Tennyson and Wordsworth," said 
 Oharlemont, " and their two sections of schools, and 
 the way in which they represent the spirit of their own 
 day." 
 
310 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 " Oh," cried Mordaunt, " stay a moment ; we must 
 have a little more background filled up first. I know 
 so little about the previous poets of England, and 
 before I can get any very clear idea of the subject, do 
 tell me more ; it was so very interesting what you 
 said last time about Shakspeare and Pope, and I feel 
 it threw so much light on the present subject, that I 
 think knowing more would throw more still. Half 
 the difficulty I feel about this kind of thing consists 
 in not knowing the whereabouts of it." 
 
 " Well," said Charlemont, " if you come to that, 1 
 ought to go into the matter of Cowper and Byron 
 more fully, and many more I have adverted to; 
 besides, my sketch of the Georgian poets was most 
 slight." 
 
 " Very well, never mind a little delay before we 
 reach Tennyson ; do go back to the early poets first, 
 and give me an idea about them, their names, their 
 principles, and their type." 
 Eariypoets. " As you like," said Charlemont ; " now for it." 
 
LECTURE XL 
 
 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY, 
 
 1. Southey tells us in his edition of British 
 Poets, that he considered Dr. Aikin, in his Select 
 Works of the British Poets, had ended just where 
 he ought to have begun. Dr. Aikin had taken 
 those poets which usually meet the eye and engage 
 the attention of the casual reader ; but the elder 
 poets, the fathers of our poetry, were untouched by 
 him. Southey, accordingly, filled up the vacuum, and 
 gives us several passages from Chaucer in Edward 
 III.'s reign, to Habington and Lovelace in James 
 I.'s and Charles I .'a reigns. These will, of course, 
 embrace the important galaxy of which Shakspeare 
 was the most brilliant constellation ; and it will 
 comprise Chaucer, Spenser, and Drayton, the Faery 
 Queene and the Polyolbion. Before I go into their 
 varied style and principles, I will mention the most 
 important of their works. Chaucer is the first of 
 English poets, the parent and author of the rest ; and 
 
312 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 as the child is the father to the man, so, however 
 peculiar and difficult to us may be the crude expres- 
 sions or thoughts of our early poets, they deserve 
 peculiar attention, as standing as the great fore- 
 fathers of a race which now rival the dramatic or 
 satirical writers of Athens or Rome. But more of 
 them hereafter. 
 
 Chauner. Chaucer was born at Lpndon, received marks of 
 attention from Edward III., and was brought into 
 trouble from his connexion with the Lollards; he 
 died in 1400, and his remains lie in Westminster 
 Abbey ; his great work is the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 Skelton. Another poet is Skelton, who was tutor to Henry 
 
 VIII., and died 1529. ' The power, the strange- 
 ness,' says Southey, 'the volubility of his language, 
 the intrepidity of its satire, and perfect originality of 
 his manner, made Skelton one of the most extraordi- 
 nary poets of any age or country ; the first moralities 
 in our language which bear the name of their author 
 are by Skelton.' 
 
 Surrey. Another in the list is the well-known Howard 
 
 Earl of Surrey, beheaded 1 546. He was a peer of 
 Henry VIII.'s court : his refined and elegant poetry 
 told strongly on the literature and future of his age : 
 he was the first who wrote blank verse or sonnets in 
 our own language. 
 
 Sackviiie. Sackville, Earl of Dorset, was again a peer and 
 poet, and shone in the court of Elizabeth; he is sup- 
 posed to have suggested to Spenser many forms of 
 poetical expression which he so successfully used. Be- 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 313 
 
 fore I pass on to Spenser himself I will mention Tusser, 
 whose quaint, but in many respects true maxims of 
 husbandry, are known to many, and become in a cer- 
 tain sense a witness of the condition of things and 
 opinions of the day in which he lived. 
 
 After Gascoigne, who was again one of the Eliza- Gascoigne. 
 bethan poets, comes the far-famed Spenser, the Spenser. 
 poet of religious allegory, and the author of the 
 Faery Queme. His work was published towards 
 the end of Elizabeth's reign. Without at this mo- 
 ment making any comment on his famous allegory, 
 I will give the following passage from it, describing 
 the arrival of the knight at the hospital : 
 
 Eftsoones unto an holy hospitall, 
 
 That was foreby the way, she did him bring ; 
 
 In which seven bead-men, that had vowed all 
 
 Their life to service of high heavens King, 
 
 Did spend their daies in doing godly thing : 
 
 Their gates to aE were open evermore, 
 
 That by the wearie way were traveiling ; 
 
 And one sate wayting ever them before, 
 
 To call in commers-by that needy were and pore. 
 
 The first of them, that eldest was and best, 
 Of all the house had charge and governement, 
 As guardian and steward of the rest : 
 His office was to give entertainement 
 And lodging unto all that came and went ; 
 Not unto such as could him feast againe, 
 And double quite for that be on them spent ; 
 But such as want of harbour did constraine : 
 Those for Gods sake his dewty was to entertaine. 
 
 The second was as almner of the place : 
 
 His office was the hungry for to feed, 
 
 And thirsty give to drinke ; a worke of grace : 
 
314 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 He feard not once himselfe to be in need, 
 
 Ne car'd to hoord for those whom he did breede : 
 
 The grace of God he layd np still in store, 
 
 Which as a stocke he left unto his seede : 
 
 He had enough ; what need him care for more ? 
 
 And had he lesse, yet some he would give to the pore. 
 
 The third had of their wardrobe custody, 
 
 In which were not rich tyres nor garments gay, 
 
 The plumes of pride and winges of vanity, 
 
 But clothes meet to keep keene cold away : 
 
 And naked nature seemely to aray : 
 
 With which bare wretched wights he dayly clad 
 
 The images of God in earthly clay ; 
 
 And if that no spare clothes to give he had, 
 
 His owne cote he would cut, and it distribute glad. 
 
 The fourth appointed by his office was 
 
 Poore prisoners to relieve with gratious ayd, 
 
 And captives to redeeme with price of bras 
 
 From Turkes and Sarazins, which them had stayd ; 
 
 And though they faulty were, yet well he wayd, 
 
 That God to us forgiveth every howre 
 
 Much more then that why they in bands were layd ; 
 
 And he, that harrowd hell with heavie stowre, 
 
 The faulty soules from thence brought to his heavenly bowre. 
 
 The fift had charge sick persons to attend, 
 And comfort those in point of death which lay ; 
 For them most needeth comfort in the end, 
 When Sin and Hell and Death doe most dismay 
 The feeble soule departing hence away : 
 All is but lost, that living we bestow, 
 If not well ended at our dying day. 
 O man ! have mind of that last bitter throw ; 
 For as the tree does fall, so lyes it ever low. 
 
 The sixt had charge of them now being dead, 
 
 In seemely sort their corses to engrave, 
 
 And deck with dainty flowres their brydall bed. 
 
 That to their heavenly Spouse both sweet and brave 
 
 They might appeare, when he their soules shall save. 
 
 The wondrous workmanship of Gods owne mould, 
 
 Whose face he made all beastes to feare, and gave 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETEY. 315 
 
 All in his hand, even dead we honour should. 
 
 Ah, dearest God, me graunt I dead he not defould ! 
 
 The seventh, now after death and burial done, 
 Had charge the tender orphans of the dead 
 And wydowes ayd, least they should be undone : 
 In face of iudgement he their right would plead, 
 Ne ought the power of mighty men did dread 
 In their defence ; nor would for gold or fee 
 Be wonne their rightfull causes downe to tread : 
 And, when they stood in most necessitee, 
 He did supply their want, and gave them ever free. 
 
 After Brooke, one of James I.'s peer-poets in 1610, Brooke, 
 whose writings are difficult, but employed on deep 
 and momentous subjects, comes Drayton, famous for Drayton, 
 his Polyolbion, who, being born in 1563 and dying 
 in 1631, again shines in the reign of James I. His 
 Polyolbion contains a sketch of England, her towers 
 and ruins, country and scenery. 
 
 Donne follows in the reign of James L, whose life Donne, 
 has been written in the well-known work of Isaac 
 Walton. Drummond, Fletcher, and Withers are 
 three more poets, who lead us on to Charles I^s 
 reign. 
 
 I will close this rapid sketch with the following Habington. 
 
 quotation from Habington : 
 
 Like the violet, which alone 
 Prospers in some happy shade, 
 My Castra lives unknown, 
 To no looser eye hetray'd ; 
 
 For she's to herself untrue 
 
 Who delights i' th' public view. 
 
 Such is her beauty, as no arts 
 Have enrich'd with horrow'd grace. 
 Her high birth no pride imparts, 
 For she blushes in her place. 
 
516 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Folly boasts a glorious blood ; 
 She is noblest, being good. 
 
 Cautious, she knew never yet 
 
 What a wanton courtship meant ; 
 
 Not speaks loud to boast her wit, 
 
 In her silence eloquent. 
 Of herself survey she takes, 
 But 'tween men no difference makes. 
 
 She obeys with speedy will 
 Her grave parents' wise commands ; 
 And so innocent, that ill 
 She nor acts nor understands. 
 Women's feet run still astray, 
 If once to ill they know the way. 
 
 She sails by that rock, the court, 
 Where oft honour splits her mast ; 
 And retiredness thinks the fort 
 Where her fame may anchor cast. 
 Virtue safely cannot sit 
 Where vice is enthron'd for wit. 
 
 She holds that day's pleasure best 
 Where sin waits not on delight ; 
 Without mask, or ball, or feast, 
 Sweetly spends a winter's night. 
 O'er that darkness whence is thrust 
 Prayer and sleep, oft govern lust. 
 
 She her throne makes reason climb, 
 
 While wild passions captive lie ; 
 
 And each article of time, 
 
 Her pure thoughts to Heaven fly : 
 
 All her vows religious be, 
 
 And her love she vows to me. 
 
 2. With this general sketch of English poets of 
 days gone by, and these illustrations of them, I must 
 for the present be satisfied ; and simply proceed to 
 give something like a classification of those modern 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 317 
 
 poets with whose lives as well as writings we, or 
 our fathers, have been familiar ; and about whom, 
 consequently, we need something like a principle 
 when we study their works. It might be well, then, 
 for the sake of an intelligible theory, to divide the 
 different modern poets according to those different 
 elements of the human mind which they illustrate. 
 
 There can be but little doubt, that, in the history The succes- 
 of nations as of individuals, different powers of the ofhuman S 
 human being are brought out in succession ; nor deve J°P- 
 is this alone the case, but also in various stages 
 of the development of the natural mind, there are 
 returns to the same cycle of expression. Thus in the 
 individual beginning from early childhood, the power 
 of imitation is amongst the first exercised ; the 
 powers of sensation come the next in order, opening 
 themselves out to the impressions which they may 
 receive from the objects of the external world ; the 
 feelings follow next, affection, gratitude, love of the 
 beautiful, the fresh, the free, the happy, the pursuit 
 of the noble, the courageous and the manly ; passion 
 occupies the fourth stage, when boyhood is melting 
 into youth, and the love of the chivalrous for its own 
 sake takes the form of the love of the chivalrous for 
 the sake of the other sex ; but passion leads to ruin, 
 unless it be bent by principle towards its legitimate 
 objects ; and intellect, the powers of reason and the 
 force of observation, the inclination rather to see 
 man and nature through the mind's eye than through 
 that of passion, comes in to ^occupy the vacuum 
 
318 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETKY. 
 
 caused by exhausted or subdued passion, and fasci- 
 nates the man as the other had absorbed the youth. 
 A period of suspicion, expressed by satirical remark, 
 intervenes between this and the following stage. 
 Experience has, in many cases, taught the man to 
 doubt where he trusted, and to hesitate where he 
 asserted dogmatically ; the next and last power called 
 forth, if it may deserve such a title, is sometimes 
 that of a painful condition of scepticism, too often 
 following alike on the national period, as on the indi- 
 vidual mind, of suspicion. 
 
 I have here sketched the different stages of man 
 in connexion with the development of his different 
 powers. The infant, the child, the boy, the youth, 
 the man, the middle-aged, and the old, — the seven 
 ages. Of these Goldsmith may be said to represent 
 the school of imitation, Keats and Shelley of sensa- 
 tion, Scott of feeling, Byron of passion, the Lake 
 School and Wordsworth of intellect, Carlyle's school 
 of suspicion, and some living writers that of doubt. 
 I will proceed to examine these seven schools of 
 modern poetry, assigning to each their several clus- 
 ters of names. Nor is this division and the order 
 in which I take its different parts altogether arbi- 
 trary, for, as I said above, while it is apparent that 
 the human being passes through these stages in suc- 
 cession, the collective body of the human society will 
 represent the same succession on an enlarged scale. 
 By way of illustration, the early form of a state, 
 when but an aboriginal tribe, imitates the neigh- 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 319 
 
 bouring communities. Its next development is that 
 in which the feelings are worked upon by the op- 
 portunities of deeds of daring and heroic action, 
 which are sung in the ballad and the fragmentary 
 poetry of early days. Such was Eome under her 
 kings ; Athens in the days of Codrus ; the chivalry 
 of Arthur and his knights ; the exploits of the Cid, 
 ere the ancient Goth consolidated with the Moorish 
 element brought out the mediaeval and modern Spa- 
 niard. The hard intellect comes out in the later 
 period of national importance, when the philosopher 
 adumbrates religious creed, and the politician devises 
 legislative philosophy. Such was Athens under So- 
 lon or Socrates ; Rome, when she produced Cicero or 
 Juvenal ; and England under the Lancasters and 
 the Tudors, alike warriors and legislators. Perhaps 
 the interval between the last and the penultimate 
 stage of national society might be filled in by that 
 period, in which the love of country has become a 
 passion, and the lighter elements of heroic feeling 
 been consolidated and directed to one point — 
 patriotism. 
 
 After the intellectual period of a nation's history, 
 the stage which precedes its fall will often be marked 
 by that hesitating policy, which indicates the break-up 
 of old principles, and is itself initiated by the tone of 
 satire and suspicion. Such was France in the age of 
 Louis XIV. and XVI. Athens under the influence 
 of Philip of Macedon and the oratory of Demos- 
 thenes ; Rome, in the days of Tiberius ; and, perhaps, 
 our own country now. 
 
•320 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 3. In applying the above theory to the schools of 
 poetry, I, of course, take for granted, that about the 
 period to which I refer there was a re-awakening from 
 the slumber which had succeeded the exhaustion cre- 
 ated by the struggle witnessed by the houses of Tudor 
 and Stuart ; so that in one sense English society was 
 beginning a fresh epoch of its existence, and was 
 passing through very much that same cycle which I 
 Goldsmith have referred to above. I have mentioned Goldsmith 
 eighteenth as the type of the earliest school of this period ; so 
 century, masterly as he is in his own line, and embodying so 
 powerfully the peculiar merits of the writers of his 
 day. His " Deserted Village " appeared in the year 
 1770, about the time that Gray died, whom we may 
 well place as a member of the same school, and a rival 
 of the fame of Goldsmith. Smollett is also a poet as 
 well as novelist of this period, writing about the 
 middle of the eighteenth century. With the same 
 body of men we may class Thomson, never to be 
 forgotten as a poet, though of third-rate power. He 
 died at the time when Goldsmith was beginning to be 
 known, and was more the companion of Gray than that 
 writer ; but his distinctive features are much the same 
 as those of Gray and Goldsmith : his power was far 
 below them. Young, the author of " Night Thoughts" 
 and the "Revenge," while his birth is earlier than 
 that of any I have mentioned, belongs more strictly to 
 another school of thought. I have here then mentioned 
 the leading poets of the eighteenth century, as Gay, 
 the author of the Beggars' Opera, belongs more strictly 
 to the seventeenth ; and Cowper I have intentionally 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 321 
 
 omitted, as belonging to the transition school of 
 English poetry. 
 
 I have called this the school of imitation. It 
 was not the period yet for the school of passion, 
 since the long lethargy which had enfeebled the 
 public mind, during the earlier reigns- of the house 
 of Brunswick and that of Queen Anne, had produced 
 a languor in the flow of general thought, which 
 prevented the stirring up of those objects which 
 are attractive to passion ; and which the more 
 tumultuous years of the close of the eighteenth, and 
 beginning of the nineteenth century stirred up. And 
 the same paralysing influence kept in abeyance those 
 searching powers of the intellect, which were so 
 called into play by the agitated circumstances of the 
 earlier part of this century. Truth had not yet 
 become sufficiently defined to make scepticism pro- 
 bable, nor was opinion sufficiently formed to call out 
 movement. Nevertheless all the powers which be- 
 long to the human mind lay in germ in many a man 
 of the period, and those objects of man and of nature 
 which lay around them were so replete with suggestion, 
 that they could not but notice and study them : what 
 therefore they lost in one direction, they gained in 
 another. The power that was called into action was 
 intensified by the mere fact of the abeyance of the 
 other powers ; and the beauties of nature, and the 
 sorrows and faults of man, became to them matters of 
 such profound interest, that they described and pour- 
 trayed them with an unrivalled force : they were truly 
 sketchers from nature, and were satisfied with that. 
 
 Y 
 
322 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 They delighted in the delineation of objects of nature 
 so arranged as to express an idea. They were conse- 
 quently imitators of what they saw: describers of 
 reality : the poets of things as they were. This is 
 their distinctive genius, and their forte. But while 
 this is the peculiar field of their genius, they have a 
 power of expression all their own ; with the highest 
 polish in point of language, the most chaste and clas- 
 sical choice of words, with a religious attention to the 
 claims of terseness, antithesis, and alliteration, their 
 pieces stand forward with a finish so high, that, read by 
 their side, the productions of our modern poets and of 
 the Laureate himself stand at disadvantage. They took 
 nature in all her moods, and caught her asleep ; they 
 took her portrait while she was in a state of trance ; 
 so that no lineament, no expression is wanting. 
 Gray. 4. Perhaps in these distinctive features, taken alto- 
 
 gether, Gray excels the most, and I accordingly 
 append his " Ode on the Spring," which embodies 
 more imitative beauty in a short space, than any other 
 poet since the days of Horace. Every word is a 
 matter of choice and successful judgment, while the 
 eye seems at every instant to be studying the por- 
 traiture of things as they are. 
 
 Ode to ^° ■ where the rosy-hosom'd hours, 
 
 Spring. Fair Venus' train appear, 
 
 Disclose the long expected flowers, 
 And wake the purple year ! 
 The Attic warbler pours her throat, 
 Responsive to the cuckoo's note, 
 The untaught harmony of spring : 
 While, whispering pleasure as they fly, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH l'OETRY. 323 
 
 Cool zephyrs, through the clear blue sky, 
 Their gather'd fragrance fling. 
 
 Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch 
 A broader, browner shade ; 
 Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech 
 O'er-canopies the glade, 
 Beside some water's rushy brink 
 With me the muse shall sit and think, 
 At ease reclined in rustic state, 
 How vain the ardour of the crowd, 
 How low, how little are the proud, 
 How indigent the great 1 
 
 Still is the toiling hand of care ; 
 
 The panting herds repose : 
 
 Yet hark, how through the peopled air 
 
 The busy murmur grows ! 
 
 The insect youth are on the wing, 
 
 Eager to taste the honied spring, 
 
 And float amid the liquid noon : 
 
 Some lightly o'er the current skim, 
 
 Some show their gaily-gilded trim 
 
 Quick glancing to the sun. 
 
 To contemplation's sober eye, 
 
 Such is the race of man : 
 
 And they that creep, and they that fly, 
 
 Shall end where they began. 
 
 Alike the busy and the gay, 
 
 But flutter through life's little day, 
 
 In fortune's varying colours drest : 
 
 Brush'd by the hand of rough mischance, 
 
 Or chill'd by age, their airy dance 
 
 They leave, in dust to rest. 
 
 Methinks I hear, in accents low, 
 
 The sportive, kind reply ; 
 
 Poor moralist ! and what art thou ? 
 
 A solitary fly! 
 
 Thy joys no glittering female meets, 
 
 No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, 
 
 No painted plumage to display : 
 
 On hasty wings thy youth is flown : 
 
 Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone — 
 
 We, frolic while 'tis May. 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 But however exquisite this Ode may be, and 
 sufficient to establish the claim of its simple-minded 
 writer to the Laureateship which he refused, and 
 the fame which he won ; it is impossible to pass by 
 the " Elegy " which I here quote, that it may be 
 perused in illustration of the principles above laid 
 down. 
 
 The The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
 
 Churchyard The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
 
 The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
 And leaves the world to darkness and to me. 
 
 Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
 And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 
 Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
 And drowsy tinkliugs lull the distant folds : 
 
 Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower, 
 The moping owl does to the moon complain, 
 Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
 Molest her ancient solitary reign. 
 
 Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
 Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 
 The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 
 
 The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
 The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
 The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 
 
 For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
 Or busy housewife ply her evening care : 
 No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
 Or climb his knees, the envied kiss to share. 
 
 Oft did the harvest to his sickle yield, 
 
 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 
 
 How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 
 
 How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 
 
 Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 
 
 Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; 
 
 Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, 
 
 The short and simple annals of the poor. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 325 
 
 The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Await alike the inevitable hour, 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
 Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, 
 If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, 
 Where through the long drawn aisle and fretted vault, 
 The peeling anthem swells the note of praise. 
 
 Can storied urn or animated bust, 
 Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 
 Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, 
 Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 
 
 Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 
 Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 
 Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
 Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre. 
 
 But knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 
 Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unrol ; 
 Chill penury repress'd their noble rage, 
 And froze the genial current of the soul. 
 
 Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 
 The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear ; 
 Full many a flower is bom to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 
 
 Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast 
 The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 
 Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 
 Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 
 
 Th' applause of listening senates to command, 
 The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 
 To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 
 And read their history in a nation's eyes, 
 
 Their lot forbade ; nor circumscribed alone 
 Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; 
 Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, 
 And shut the gates of mercy on mankind ; 
 
 The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
 To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 
 Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride 
 With incense kindled at the muse's flame. 
 
326 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
 Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray ; 
 Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 
 They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 
 
 Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect, 
 Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 
 With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, 
 Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 
 
 Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlettered muse, 
 The place of fame and elegy supply : 
 And many a holy text around she strews. 
 That teach the rustic moralist to die. 
 
 For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
 This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, 
 Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
 Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind ? 
 
 On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 
 Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 
 Ev'n from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
 Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires. 
 
 For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead, 
 Dost in these lines their artless tale relate ; 
 If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 
 Some kindred spirit shall enquire thy fate, 
 
 Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
 " Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 
 Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 
 To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 
 
 " There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
 That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 
 His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
 And pore upon the brook that hubbies by. 
 
 " Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
 Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove, 
 Now drooping woeful wan, like one forlorn, 
 Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love, 
 
 " One morn I miss'd him on the accustom'd hill, 
 Along the heath, and near his favourite tree ; 
 Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 
 Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 327 
 
 " The next, with dirges due in sad array, 
 Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. 
 Approach and read, for thou canst read, the lay 
 Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 
 
 THE EPITAPH. 
 
 Here rests his head upon the lap of earth, 
 A youth to fortune and to fame unknown, 
 Fair science frown'd not on his humble birth, 
 And melancholy mark'd him for her own. 
 
 Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
 
 Heaven did a recompence as largely send ; 
 
 He gave to misery all he had, a tear ; 
 
 He gain'd from heaven, 'twas all he wish'd, a friend, 
 
 No further seek his merits to disclose, 
 Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
 There they alike in trembling hope repose, 
 The bosom of his Father and his God. 
 
 5. If there be any contrast between Gray and Gold- 
 smith, it would be in favour of the higher polish and 
 finish of the lines of the former, and the greater 
 chasteness throughout. Both poets are alike for the 
 pensive view which they take of the world around, 
 partly owing to their disposition and circumstances, 
 which were in some respects very similar. Gray, the 
 more high-minded man of the two, was at an early 
 age the friend of Horace Walpole. He was professor 
 of modern history at Cambridge, but showed, through- 
 out his life, a lack of energy ; he died at fifty-five, 
 having written little, but established a great fame. 
 His life was written by Mason, who, building a rustic 
 arbour in his own garden sacred to his friend, in- 
 scribed on it the following lines : — 
 
 In this favourite haunt 
 I place the urn, the bust, the sculptured lyre ; 
 
328 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETKY. 
 
 And fix this votive tablet fair inscribed 
 
 With numbers worthy thee, for they are thine. 
 
 Under the urn on a tablet was written this stanza 
 from the first edition of the Elegy : — 
 
 Here scatter'd oft, the loveliest of the year, 
 By hands unseen, are showers of violets found ; 
 The redbreast loves to build and warble here, 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 
 
 Goldsmith. Such was Gray : Goldsmith excels him in versatility 
 of subject, and a greater masculine vigour of style, 
 though he resembles him in many points of his 
 disposition. He was a Dublin man. His poetry 
 shows the same power of what I have above called 
 imitation from the scenes of nature and man. I take 
 the following passages from the " Traveller," which 
 show his powers of description, to which I append the 
 letter with which he sent it ; worth studying as an 
 instance of his style of prose writing. 
 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 His Letter! I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire no new 
 force from the ceremonies of a dedication ; and, perhaps, it demands 
 an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline 
 giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly 
 written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be 
 only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of 
 it, when the reader understands that it is addressed to a man who, de- 
 spising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, 
 with an income of forty pounds a year. 
 
 I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. 
 You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and 
 the labourers are but few ; while you have left the field of ambition, 
 where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying 
 away. But of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the 
 times, from different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of 
 party, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. 
 
 Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations : but 
 in a country verging on the extremes of refinement, painting and music 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 329 
 
 come in for a share. As these offer the feeble mind a less laborious 
 entertainment, they at first rival poetry, and at length supplant her ; 
 they engross all that favour once shown to her, and, though but younger 
 sisters, seize upon the elder's birthright. 
 
 Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in 
 greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. 
 What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse, 
 and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapests, and iambics, alliterative care 
 and happy negligence ! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it ; 
 and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to 
 s»y ; for error is ever talkative. 
 
 But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous ; I mean party. 
 Party entirely distorts the judgment, and destroys the taste. When 
 the mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in 
 what contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that 
 seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human 
 flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, 
 makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. 
 Such readers generally admire some half-witted thing, who wants to 
 be thought a bold man, having lost the character of a wise one. Him 
 they dignify with the name of poet ; his tawdry lampoons are called 
 satires : his turbulence is said to be force, and his frenzy fire. 
 
 What reception a poem may find which has neither abuse, party, 
 nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know. 
 My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have 
 attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to show 
 that there may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed 
 from our own, that every state has,a particular principle of happiness, 
 and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. 
 There are few can judge better than yourself how far these positions 
 are illustrated in this poem. I am, 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 Your most affectionate brother, 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 Far to the right where Apennine ascends, The Tra- 
 
 Bright as the summer, Italy extends ; veller. 
 
 Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side, 
 Woods over woods in gay theatric pride ; 
 While oft some temple's mould'ring tops between, 
 With venerable grandeur mark the scene. 
 
 Could nature's bounty satisfy the breast, 
 The sons of Italy were surely blest. 
 
330 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Whatever fruits in different climes are found, 
 That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground ; 
 Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 
 Whose bright succession decks the varied year ; 
 Whatever sweets salute the northern sky 
 With vernal lives, that blossom but to die ; 
 These, here disporting, own the kindred soil, 
 Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil ; 
 While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand, 
 To winnow fragrance round the smiling land. 
 
 But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, 
 And sensual bliss is all the nation knows. 
 In florid beauty groves and fields appear : 
 Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. 
 Contrasted faults through all his manners reign : 
 Though poor, luxurious ; though submissive, vain : 
 Though grave, yet trifling ; zealous, yet untrue ; 
 And e'en in penance planning sins anew. 
 All evils here contaminate the mind, 
 That opulence departed leaves behind ; 
 For wealth was theirs, not far removed the date, 
 When commerce proudly flourish'd through the state ; 
 At her command the palace learnt to rise, 
 Again the long-fall'n column sought the skies ; 
 The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n nature warm, 
 The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form : 
 Till, more unsteady than the southern gale, 
 Commerce on other shores display'd her sail ; 
 While nought remain'd of all that riches gave, 
 But towns unmann'd, and lords without a slave : 
 And late the nation found with fruitless skill, 
 Its former strength was but plethoric ill. 
 
 My soul turn from them, turn we to survey 
 Where rougher climes a nobler race display ; 
 Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, 
 And force a churlish soil for scanty bread ; 
 No product here the barren hills afford, 
 But man and steel, the soldier and his sword. 
 No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, 
 But winter lingering chills the lap of May ; 
 No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, 
 But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 331 
 
 Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm, 
 Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. 
 Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, 
 He sees his little lot the lot of all j 
 Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, 
 To shame the meanness of his humble shed ; 
 No costly lord, the sumptuous banquet deal, 
 To make him loath Kis vegetable meal ; 
 But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, 
 Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. 
 Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose, 
 Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes ; 
 With patient angle trolls the finny deep, 
 Or drives his vent'rous ploughshare to the steep ; 
 Or seeks the den where snow-tracts mark the way, 
 And drags the struggling savage into day. 
 At night returning, every labour sped, 
 He sits him down the monarch of a shed ; 
 Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys 
 His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze ; 
 While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard, 
 Displays her cleanly platter on the board : 
 And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, 
 With many a tale repays the nightly bed. 
 
 To men of other minds my fancy flies, 
 Embosoiu'd in the deep where Holland lies. 
 Methinks her patient sons before me stand, 
 Where the broad ocean leans against the land, 
 And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 
 Lift the tall rampart's artificial pride. 
 Onward methinks, and diligently slow, 
 The firm-connected bulwark seems to grow ; 
 Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, 
 Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. 
 While the pent ocean rising o'er the pile, 
 Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile ; 
 The slow canal, the yellow blossom'd vale, 
 The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, 
 The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, 
 A new creation rescued from his reign. 
 
 But the " Deserted Village, 1 ' the immortal English 
 
332 SCHOOLS OF EKGLISH POETRY. 
 
 poem of the eighteenth century, deserves reading 
 throughout : I select the following passages : 
 
 Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour, 
 Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power. 
 Here, as I take my solitary rounds, 
 Amidst thy tangling walks, and ruin'd grounds, 
 And, many a year elapsed, return to view 
 Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 
 Remembrance wakes with all her busy train, 
 Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 
 
 In all my wand'rings round this world of care, 
 In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
 I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 
 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
 To husband out life's taper at the close, 
 And keep the name from wasting by repose : 
 I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
 Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, 
 Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
 And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 
 And, as a hare whom hounds and homs pursue, 
 Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, 
 I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
 Here to return — and die at home at last. 
 
 Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close. 
 Up yonder hill the village murmur rose ; 
 There, as I pass'd with careless steps and slow, 
 The mingling notes came soften'd from below ; 
 The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
 The sober herd that low'd to meet their young, 
 The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
 The playful children just let loose from school, 
 The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whisp'ring wind, 
 And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; 
 These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 
 And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made. 
 But now the sounds of population fail, 
 No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, 
 No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, 
 But all the bloomy flush of life is fled. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 333 
 
 All but yon widow'd, solitary thing, 
 That feebly bends beside the plashy spring ; 
 She, wretched matron, forced, in age, for bread, 
 To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, 
 To pick her wint'ry fagot from the thorn, 
 To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn ; 
 She only left of all the harmless train, 
 The sad historian of the pensive plain. 
 
 Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, 
 And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; 
 There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
 The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 
 A man he was, to all the country dear, 
 And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 
 Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
 Nor e'er had changed, nor wish'd to change, his place ; 
 Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power, 
 By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour ; 
 Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize, 
 More bent to raise the wretched than to rise. 
 His house was known to all the vagrant train, 
 He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain ; 
 The long-remembered beggar was his guest, 
 Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 
 The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, 
 Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd ; 
 The broken soldier, kindly bid to stay, 
 Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away ; 
 Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, 
 Shouldered his crutch, and show'd how fields were won. 
 Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow, 
 And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 
 Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 
 His pity gave ere charity began. 
 
 Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
 And even his failings lean'd to virtue's side ; 
 But in his duty prompt at every call, 
 He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all. 
 And, as a bird each fond endearment tries, 
 To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, 
 He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 
 Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. 
 
 Beside the bed where parting life was laid, 
 And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismay'd, 
 
334 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 The rev'rend champion stood. At his control 
 Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
 Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 
 And his last falt'ring accents whisper'd praise. 
 At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
 His looks adorn'd the venerable place ; 
 Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, 
 And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray. 
 The service past, around the pious man, 
 With ready zeal, each honest ru9tic ran ; 
 Even children followed with endearing wile, 
 And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile. 
 His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, 
 Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distrest ; 
 To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 
 But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. 
 As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
 Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on his head. 
 
 * * * * 
 But past, is all his fame. The very spot 
 
 Where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot. 
 Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, 
 Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, 
 Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired, 
 Where gray-beard mirth, and smiling toil retired, 
 Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound, 
 And news much older than their ale went round. 
 
 Imagination fondly stoops to trace 
 The parlour splendours of that festive place ; 
 The white-wash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor, 
 The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door ; 
 The chest contrived a double debt to pay, 
 A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; 
 The pictures placed for ornament and use, 
 The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ; 
 The hearth, except when winter chill'd the day, 
 With aspen boughs, and flowers and fennel gay, 
 While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show, 
 Ranged o'er the chimney, glisten'd in a row. 
 
 * * * * 
 Where, then, ah ! where shall poverty reside, 
 
 To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 335 
 
 If to some common's fenceless limits stray'd, 
 He drives his nock to pick the scanty blade ; 
 Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, 
 And even the bare-worn common is denied. 
 
 If to the city sped, what waits him there ? 
 To see profusion that he must not share ; 
 To see ten thousand baneful arts combined 
 To pamper luxury, and thin mankind ; 
 To see each joy the sons of pleasure know, 
 Extorted from bis fellow-creature's woe. 
 Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, 
 There the pale artist plies the sickly trade : 
 Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, 
 There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. 
 The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign, 
 Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train ; 
 Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, 
 The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 
 Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 
 Sure these denote one universal joy ! 
 Are these thy serious thoughts ? Ah ! turn thine eyes, 
 Where the poor houseless shiv'ring female lies. 
 She once, perhaps, in village plenty bless'd, 
 Has wept at tales of innocence distress'd ; 
 Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 
 Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn : 
 Now lost to all ; her friends, her virtue fled, 
 Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, 
 And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 
 With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, 
 When idly first, ambitious of the town, 
 She left her wheel, and robes of country brown. 
 
 Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, 
 Do thy fair tribes participate her pain ? 
 Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, 
 At proud men's doors they ask a little bread ! 
 
 Good heaven ! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day, 
 That call'd them from their native walks away ; 
 When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 
 Hung roHnd the bowers, and fondly look'd their last, 
 And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain 
 For seats like these beyond the western main ; 
 
336 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 And shudd'ring stUl to face the distant deep, 
 Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep. 
 The good old sire, the first prepar'd to go 
 To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe ; 
 But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, 
 He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave. 
 His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 
 The fond companion of his helpless years, 
 Silent, went next, neglectful of her charms, 
 And left a lover's for a father's arms. 
 With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, 
 And bless'd the cot where every pleasure rose ; 
 And kiss'd her thoughtless babes with many a tear, 
 And clasp'd them close, in sorrow doubly dear ; 
 Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief, 
 In all the silent manliness of grief. 
 
 Smollett. 6. It would be impossible to pass by Smollett, the 
 well-known author of "Roderick Random " and 
 " Humphrey Clinker," and the founder of the " Criti- 
 cal Review.'" He also shines in that close power of 
 description, which I have made the distinguishing 
 feature of the eighteenth century school. 
 
 ODE TO LEVEN WATER. 
 
 On Leven's banks, while free to rove, 
 And tune the rural pipe to love ; 
 I envied not the happiest swain 
 That ever trod th' Arcadian plain. 
 
 Pure stream, in whose transparent wave 
 My youthful limbs I wont to lave ; 
 No torrents stain thy limpid source, 
 No rocks impede thy dimpling course, 
 That sweetly warbles o'er its bed, 
 With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread ; 
 While, lightly poised, the scaly brood 
 In myriads cleave thy crystal flood : 
 The springing trout in speckled pride, 
 The salmon, monarch of the tide ; 
 The ruthless pike, intent on war, 
 The silver eel, and motled par. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 337 
 
 Devolving from thy parent lake, 
 A charming maze thy waters make, 
 By bowers of birch, and groves of pine, 
 And edges flower'd with eglantine. 
 Still on thy banks so gaily green, 
 May num'rous herds and flocks be seen, 
 And lasses chaunting o'er the pail, 
 And shepherds piping in the dale, 
 And ancient faith that knows no guile, 
 And industry embrown'd with toil, 
 And hearts resolved, and hands prepared, 
 The blessings they enjoy to guard. 
 
 7. In the same year lived the extraordinary and Chatterton. 
 famous Chatterton, illustrious alike for the brilliance 
 of his genius, and the melancholy nature of his death : 
 he died at seventeen by his own hand, disappointed at 
 not receiving the reward he expected at the hands of 
 the public for his ability. He is called " the Boy of 
 Bristol,'" and he published a great number of composi- " 
 tions under the feigned title of " Rowley," a supposed 
 monk of the fifteenth century, but which were un- 
 doubtedly the produce of his own genius, which few 
 in his own age was able to rival. The following 
 Elegy on February will give an idea of his style and 
 his satire : 
 
 Begin, my muse, the imitative lay, February. 
 
 Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string ; 
 Attempt no number of the plaintive Gray, 
 Let me, like midnight cats, or Collins, sing. 
 
 If in the trammels of the doleful line, 
 The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend : 
 Come, brooding melancholy, power divine, 
 And ev'ry unfonn'd mass of words amend. 
 
 Now the rough Goat withdraws his curling horns, 
 And the cold Wat'rer twirls his circling mop : 
 Swift sudden anguish darts through alt'ring corns, 
 And the spruce mercer trembles in his shop. 
 
338 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Now infant authors, madd'ning for renown, 
 Extend the plume, and hum about the stage, 
 Procure a benefit, amuse the town, 
 And proudly glitter in a title-page. 
 
 Now, wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace 
 Defies the fury of the howling storm ; 
 And whilst the tempest whistles round his face, 
 Exults to find his mantled carcase warm. 
 
 Now rumbling coaches furious drive along, 
 Full of the majesty of city dames, 
 Whose jewels, sparkling in the gaudy throng, 
 Raise strange emotions and invidious flames. 
 
 Now merit, happy in the calm of place, 
 
 To mortals as a highlander appears, 
 
 And conscious of the excellence of lace, 
 
 With spreading frogs and gleaming spangles glares : 
 
 Whilst envy, on a tripod seated nigh, 
 In form a shoe-boy, daubs the valued fruit, 
 And darting lightnings from his vengeful eye, 
 Raves about Wilkes, and politics, and Bute. 
 
 Now Barry, taller than a grenadier, 
 Dwindles into a stripling of eighteen ; 
 Or sabled in Othello breaks the ear, 
 Exerts his voice, and totters to the scene. 
 
 Now Foote, a looking-glass for all mankind, 
 Applies his wax to personal defects ; 
 But leaves untouch'd the image of the mind, 
 Hie art no mental quality reflects. 
 
 Now Drury's potent king extorts applause, 
 And pit, box, gallery, echo, " How divine !" 
 Whilst versed in all the drama's mystic laws, 
 His graceful action saves the wooden line. 
 
 Now — but what further can the muses sing ? 
 Now dropping particles of water fall ; 
 Now vapours riding on the north wind's wing, 
 With transitory darkness shadow all. 
 
 Alas ! how joyless the descriptive theme, 
 When sorrow on the writer's quiet preys ; 
 And like a mouse in Cheshire cheese supreme, 
 Devours the substance of the less'ning bays ! 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 339 
 
 Come, February, lend thy darkest sky, 
 
 There teach the winter'd muse with clouds to soar : 
 
 Come, February, lift the number high ; 
 
 Let the sharp strain like wind through alleys roar. 
 
 Ye channels, wand'ring through the spacious street, 
 
 In hollow murmurs roll the dirt along, 
 
 "With inundations wet the sabled feet, 
 
 Whilst gouts responsive join th' elegiac song. 
 
 Ye damsels fair, whose silver voices shrill 
 
 Sound through meand'ring folds of echo's horn : 
 
 Let the sweet cry of liberty be still, 
 
 No more let smoking cakes awake the morn. 
 
 O winter ! put away thy snowy pride ; 
 
 O spring ! neglect the cowslip and the bell ; 
 
 O summer ! throw thy pears and plums aside ; 
 
 O autumn ! bid the grape with poison swell. 
 
 The pension'd muse of Johnson is no more 1 
 
 Drown'd in a butt of wine bis genius lies : 
 
 Earth ! Ocean ! Heaven ! the wond'rous loss deplore, 
 
 The dregs of nature with her glory dies. 
 
 What iron stoic can suppress the tear ! 
 
 What sour reviewer read with vacant eye ! 
 
 What bard but decks his literary bier ! 
 
 Alas ! I cannot sing — I howl — I cry. 
 
 It is difficult, within the limits of a lecture like 
 this, to do more than to mention the names of those 
 who in this century formed a school, of which Gold- 
 smith was the centre. Grainger and Penrose, amongst 
 other names, demand a certain degree of attention. 
 
 It is impossible to pass by Young, who, born at an Young, 
 earlier period of the seventeenth century, embodies 
 some of the characteristics of the school under con- 
 sideration. The same pensive melancholy with a 
 more masculine philosophy marks his "Night 
 Thoughts ;" he is more of a philosopher and meta- 
 physician, and less of a descriptive poet than those I 
 have been mentioning above. He is a stern moralist, 
 z 2 
 
340 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 whose aim rather is to raise the tone of the mind, 
 than to complain of the injustice and inequality of 
 those existing around him. He was the author of 
 the far-famed "Night Thoughts," and of the tragedies 
 " Busiris " and " The Bevenge," from the first of 
 which I select the following passage : 
 
 The Night " When the cock crew, he wept," smote by that eye 
 
 Thoughts. Which looks on me, on all ; that power who bids 
 
 This midnight sentinel, with clarion shrill, 
 Emblem of that which shall awake the dead, 
 Rouse souls from slumber, into thoughts of heaven. 
 Shall I, too, weep ? Where then is fortitude ? 
 And fortitude abandon'd, where is man ? 
 I know the terms on which he sees the light ; 
 He that is born is listed ; life is war ; 
 Eternal war with woe. Who bears it best 
 Deserves it least. On other themes I'll dwell. 
 Lorenzo ! let me turn my thoughts on thee, 
 And thine, on themes may profit there, 
 Where most they need. Themes, too, the genuine growth 
 Of dear Philander's dust. He thus, though dead, 
 May still befriend — what themes ? time's wondrous price, 
 Death, friendship, and Philander's final scene. 
 So could I touch these themes, as might obtain 
 Thine ear, nor leave thy heart quite disengaged, 
 The good deed would delight me ; half impress 
 On my dark cloud an Iris ; and from grief 
 Call glory — dost thou mourn Philander's fate ? 
 I know thou say'st it : says thy life the same ? 
 He mourns the dead, who lives as they desire. 
 Where is that thirst, that avarice of time, 
 (O glorious avarice !) thought of death inspires, 
 As rumour'd robberies endear our gold ? 
 O time ! than gold more sacred ; more a load 
 Than lead, to fools ; and fools reputed wise. 
 What moment granted man without account ? 
 What years are squander'd, wisdom's debt unpaid ! 
 Our wealth in days, all due to that discharge. 
 Haste, haste, he lies in wait, he's at the door, 
 Insidious death ! should his strong hand arrest, 
 No composition sets the prisoner free. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 341 
 
 Eternity's inexorable chain 
 
 Fast binds ; and vengeance claims tbe full arrear. 
 
 How late I shudder'd on the brink ! how late 
 Life call'd for her last refuge in despair ! 
 That time is mine, O Mead ! to thee I owe ; 
 Fain would I pay thee with eternity. 
 But ill my genius answers my desire ; 
 My sickly song is mortal, past thy cure. 
 Accept the will ; — that dies not with my strain. 
 
 For what calls thy disease, Lorenzo ? not 
 For Esculapian, but for moral aid. 
 Thou think' st it folly to be wise too soon. 
 Youth is not rich in time, it may be poor ; 
 Part with it as with money, sparing ; pay 
 No moment, but in purchase of its worth : 
 And what its worth, ask death-beds ; they can tell. 
 Fart with it as with life, reluctant ; big 
 With holy hope of nobler time to come ; 
 Time higher aim'd, still nearer the great mark 
 Of men and angels ; virtue more divine. 
 
 Is this our duty, wisdom, glory, gain ? 
 
 (These heaven benign in vital union binds) 
 And sport we like the natives of the bough, 
 When vernal suns inspire ? Amusement reigns 
 Man's great demad : to trifle is to live : 
 And is it then a trifle, too, to die ? 
 
 Thou say'st I preach, Lorenzo, 'tis confest. 
 What if, for once, I preach thee quite awake ? 
 Who wants amusement in the flame of battle ? 
 Is it not treason, in the soul immortal, 
 Her foes in arms, eternity the prize ? 
 Will toys amuse when medicines cannot cure ? 
 When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes 
 Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight, — 
 As lands and cities, with their glittering spires, 
 To the poor shatter'd bark, by sudden storm 
 Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there, — 
 Will toys amuse ? No ; thrones will then be toys, 
 And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale. 
 Redeem we time ? — Its loss we dearly buy. 
 
 8. I must now pass to the second school I men- Keats. 
 tioned, that which follows next in order : I called it 
 the school of sensation, of which I will consider Keats 
 
342 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 the centre, and to which I will attach Shelley; 
 although standing somewhat out of order according 
 to the above arrangement. Like many other poets, 
 a cloud of sorrow darkened the day of Keats. With 
 many faults, he was not perhaps valued as he should 
 have been, and less valued than he esteemed to be his 
 due. His poetry has many errors to the eye of the 
 Christian, as it is often impregnated with a tone 
 amounting to Pantheism. It is peculiarly sensitive, 
 and is formed out of materials furnished through the 
 senses : what Wordsworth did for the union of nature 
 and the mind, he did for the union of nature and 
 sense. He delights, as Shelley does, in describing 
 the most curious sensations of which the human being 
 can be conscious. His Endymion, the Eve of St. Agnes, 
 and Hyperion are among his most remarkable works. 
 The following passage from the Endymion, and that 
 which follows it from the Eve of St. Agnes, will 
 illustrate what I have said of him above : — 
 
 Endymion. And as I sat, over the light bine hills 
 
 There came a noise of revellers : the rills 
 Into the wide stream came of purple hue — 
 
 'Twas Bacchus and his crew ! 
 The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills 
 From kissing cymbals made a merry din — 
 
 'Twas Bacchus and his kin ! 
 Like to a moving vintage down they came, 
 Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame ; 
 All madly dancing through the pleasant valley, 
 
 To scare thee, Melancholy ! 
 O then, O then, thou wast a simple name ! 
 And I forgot thee, as the berried holly 
 By shepherds is forgotten, when in June 
 Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon : — 
 
 I rush'd into the folly ! 
 
SCHOOLS QF ENGLISH POETRY. 343 
 
 Within this car, aloft, young Bacchus stood, 
 Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood, 
 
 With sidelong laughing ; 
 And little rills of crimson wine imbrued 
 His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white 
 
 For Venus' pearly bite ; 
 And near him rode Silenus on his ass, 
 Pelted with flowers as he on did pass 
 
 Tipsily quaffing. 
 
 Whence came ye, merry damsels ! whence came ye, 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 Why have ye left your bowers desolate, 
 
 Your lutes and gentler fate ? 
 " We follow Bacchus ! Bacchus on the wing, 
 
 A conquering ! 
 Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide, 
 We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide :— 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 
 To our wild minstrelsy ! " 
 
 Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs ! whence came ye, 
 So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
 Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left 
 
 Your nuts in oak tree cleft ? 
 " For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree ; 
 For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms, 
 
 And cold mushrooms ; 
 For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth ; 
 Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth ! 
 Come hither, lady fair, and joined be 
 
 To our mad minstrelsy ! " 
 
 Over wide streams and mountains great we went, 
 And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent, 
 Onward the tiger and the leopard pants, 
 
 With Asian elephants : 
 Onward these myriads — with song and dance, 
 With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance, 
 Web-footed alligators, crocodiles, 
 Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files, 
 Plump infant laughers, mimicking the coil 
 Of seamen, and stout galley-rowers' toil : 
 With toying oars and silken sails they glide, 
 
 Nor care for wind and tide. 
 
344 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 The following lines from the Eve of St. Agnes are 
 full of beautiful description. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Eve of ^ casement high and triple-arch'd there was, 
 
 St. Agnes. ^ garlan( j ei j ^^ carven imageries, 
 
 Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
 And diamonded with panes of quaint deyice,_ 
 Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, 
 As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings j 
 And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
 And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
 ' A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
 She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, 
 Save wings, for heaven : — Porphyro grew faint : 
 She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Anon his heart revives : her vespers done, 
 Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees ; 
 Unclasps her warm jewels one by one ; 
 Loosens her fragrant boddice ; by degrees 
 Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
 Half-hidden, like a mermaid in seaweed, 
 Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 
 In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, 
 But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, 
 In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay, 
 Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd 
 Her soothed limbs and soul fatigued away ; 
 
 ■ Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day ; 
 Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain ; 
 Clasp'd like a missal where swart paynitns pray j 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
 
 As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 345 
 
 But it would be unfair not to give an instance 
 from his Hyperion. 
 
 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Hyperion. 
 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 
 
 Sat grey-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, 
 
 Still as the silence round about his lair ; 
 
 Forest on forest hung about his head 
 
 Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, 
 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, 
 
 But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. 
 
 A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more 
 
 By reason of his fallen divinity 
 
 Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds 
 
 Fress'd her cold finger closer to her lips. 
 
 Along the margin-sand large footmarks went, 
 No further than to where his feet had stray'd, 
 And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ; 
 
 While his bow'd head seem'd listening to the earth, .. 
 
 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. 
 
 It seem'd no force could wake him from his place ; 
 But there came one, who with a kindred hand 
 Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low 
 With reverence, though to one who knew it not. 
 She was a goddess of the infant world ; 
 By her in stature the talj Amazon 
 Had stood a pigmy's height : she would have ta'en 
 Achilles by the hair and bent his neck ; 
 Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel. 
 Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, 
 Pedestal'd haply in a palace-court, 
 When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore. 
 But oh ! how unlike marble was that face ! 
 How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 
 Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self ! 
 There was a listening fear in her regard, 
 As if calamity had but begun ; 
 As if the vanward clouds of evil days 
 Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 
 
346 SCHOOLS OE ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Was with its stored thunder labouring up. 
 
 One hand she press'd upon that aching spot 
 
 Where beats the human heart, as if just there, 
 
 Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain : 
 
 The other, upon Saturn's bended neck 
 
 She laid, and to the level of his ear 
 
 Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake 
 
 In solemn tenor and deep organ tone : 
 
 Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue 
 
 Would come in these like accents ; O how frail 
 
 To that large utterance of the early gods ! 
 
 " Saturn, look up ! — though wherefore, poor old king ? 
 
 I have no comfort for thee, no not one : 
 
 I cannot say, ' O wherefore sleepest thou ?' 
 
 For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth 
 
 Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God ; 
 
 And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, 
 
 Has from thy sceptre pass'd ; and all the air 
 
 Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. 
 
 Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 
 
 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house ; 
 
 And thy sharp lightning, in unpractised hands, 
 
 Scorches and burns our once serene domain. 
 
 O aching time ! O moments big as years ! 
 
 All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth, 
 
 And press it so upon our weary griefs 
 
 That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 
 
 Saturn, sleep on : — O thoughtless, why did I 
 
 Thus violate thy slumb'rous solitude ? 
 
 Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes ? 
 
 Saturn, sleep on ! while at thy feet I weep." 
 
 Shelley. 9. Another writer of this school of thought is 
 
 Shelley, equally unhappy in his religious tone, and in 
 the circumstance of his life: the "Sensitive Plant" will 
 show in many respects that he belongs to the school 
 of describers of sensation to which Keats also does. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 The Sensi- A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, 
 
 tive Plant. And the young winds fed it with silver dew, 
 
 And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
 And closed them beneath the kisses of night. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 347 
 
 And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 
 Like the spirit of love felt every where ; 
 And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast 
 Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 
 
 But none ever trembled and panted with bliss 
 In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 
 Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, 
 As the companionless Sensitive Plant. 
 
 The snowdrop, and then the violet, 
 
 Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 
 
 And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent 
 
 From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 
 
 Then the pied wind-flowers, and the tulip tall, 
 And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 
 Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, 
 Till they die of their own dear loveliness ; 
 
 And the Naiad-like ]ily of the vale, 
 Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, 
 That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 
 Through their pavilions of tender green ; 
 
 And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, 
 Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 
 Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, 
 It was felt like an odour within the sense ; 
 
 And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, 
 Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 
 Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, 
 The soul of her beauty and love lay bare ; 
 
 And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, 
 As a Msenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, 
 Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 
 Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky ; 
 
 And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, 
 The sweetest flower for scent that blows ; 
 And all rare blossoms from every clime 
 Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 
 
 And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 
 Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom, 
 With golden and green light slanting through 
 Their heaven of many a tangled hue. 
 
348 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETKY. 
 
 Broad water lilies lay tremulously, 
 
 And starry river-buds glimmered by, 
 
 And around them the soft stream did glide and dance 
 
 With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 
 
 And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, 
 Which led through the garden along and across, 
 Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, 
 Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, 
 
 Were all pared with daisies and delicate bells 
 As fair as the fabulous asphodels ; 
 And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too, 
 Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 
 To roof the glowworm from the evening dew. 
 
 And from this undented Paradise 
 The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes 
 Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 
 Can first lull, and at last must awaken it) 
 
 When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, 
 As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, 
 Shone smiling to heaven, and every one 
 Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun ; 
 
 For each one was interpenetrated 
 With the light and the odour of its neighbour shed, 
 Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, 
 Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere. 
 
 But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit 
 Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, 
 Received more than all, it loved more than ever, 
 Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver ; 
 
 For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower, 
 Radiance and odour are not its dower : 
 It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, 
 It desires what it has not, the beautiful ! 
 
 The light winds which from unsustaining wings 
 Shed the music of many murmurings ; 
 The beams which dart from many a star 
 Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar ; 
 
 The plumed insects swift and free, 
 Like golden boats on a sunny sea, 
 Laden with light and odour, which pass 
 Over the gleam of the living grass ; 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETKY. 349 
 
 The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 
 Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, 
 Then wander like spirits among the spheres, 
 Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ; 
 
 The quivering vapours of dim noontide, 
 Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, 
 In which every sound, and odour, and beam, 
 Move as reeds in a single stream ; 
 
 Each and all like ministering angels were, 
 For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, 
 Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by 
 Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. 
 
 And when evening descended from heaven above, 
 And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, 
 And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, 
 And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, 
 
 And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowu'd 
 In an ocean of dreams without a sound ; 
 Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress 
 The light sand which paves it, consciousness ; 
 
 (Only over head the sweet nightingale 
 
 Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, 
 
 And snatches of its Elysian chant 
 
 Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant) 
 
 The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 
 Up-gather'd into the bosom of rest ; 
 A sweet child weary of its delight, 
 The feeblest and yet the favourite, 
 Cradled within the embrace of night. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 There was a power in this sweet place, 
 An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling grace 
 Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream, 
 Was as God is to the starry scheme. 
 
 A lady, the wonder of her kind, 
 Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind, 
 Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion 
 Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, 
 
350 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETBY. 
 
 Tended the garden from morn to even : 
 And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, 
 Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, 
 Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth. 
 
 She had no companion of mortal race, 
 But her tremulous breath and her flushing face 
 Told, whilst the moon kissed the sleep from her eyes, 
 That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise : 
 
 As if some bright spirit, for her sweet sake, 
 Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake, 
 As if yet around her he lingering were, 
 Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. 
 
 Her step seem'd to pity the grass it prest : 
 You might hear by the heaving of her breast, 
 That the coming and going of the wind 
 Brought pleasure there, and left passion behind. 
 
 And wherever her airy footstep trod, 
 Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 
 Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep, 
 Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep. 
 
 I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet 
 Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet ; 
 I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 
 From her glowing fingers through all their frame. 
 
 She sprinkled bright water from the stream 
 On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; 
 And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 
 She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. 
 
 She lifted their heads with her tender hands, 
 And sustain'd them with rods and ozier bands ; 
 If the flowers had been her own infants, she 
 Could never have nursed them more tenderly. 
 
 Arid all killing insects and gnawing worms, 
 And things of obscene and unlovely forms, 
 She bore in a basket of Indian woof, 
 Into the rough woods far aloof, 
 
 In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full, 
 The freshest her gentle hands could pull 
 For the poor banish'd insects, whose intent, 
 Although they did ill, was innocent. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 351 
 
 But the bee and the beam-like ephemeris, 
 Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss 
 The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she 
 Make her attendant angels be. 
 
 And many an antenatal tomb, 
 Where butterflies dream of the life to come, 
 She left clinging round the smooth and dark 
 Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 
 
 This fairest creature, from earliest Spring, 
 Thus moved through the garden, ministering 
 All the sweet season of summertide, 
 And ere the first leaf looked brown — she died. 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 Three days the flowers of the garden fair 
 Like stars, when the moon is awakened, were, 
 Or the waves of Baiie, ere luminous 
 She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. 
 
 And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant 
 Felt the sound of the funeral chant, 
 And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, 
 And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low ; 
 
 The weary sound and heavy breath, 
 And the silent motions of passing death, 
 And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, 
 Sent through the pores of the coffin plank ; 
 
 The dark grass, and flowers among the grass, 
 Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass ; 
 From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, 
 And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. 
 
 The garden, once fair, became cold and foul, 
 Like the corpse of her who had been its soul, 
 Which at first was lively, as if in sleep, 
 Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 
 To make men tremble who never weep. 
 
 Swift summer into the autumn flow'd, 
 And frost in the mist of the morning rode, 
 Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, 
 Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 
 
352 schools or English poetky. 
 
 The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson now, 
 Paved the turf and the moss below ; 
 The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, 
 Like the head and the skin of a dying man. 
 
 And Indian plants, of scents and hue 
 The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, 
 Leaf after leaf, day after day, 
 Were massed into the common clay. 
 
 And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red, 
 And white with the whiteness of what is dead, 
 Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past ; 
 Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. 
 
 And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds 
 Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds, 
 Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, 
 Which rotted into the earth with them. 
 
 The water-blooms under the rivulet 
 Fell from the stalks on which they were set ; 
 And the eddies drove them here and there, 
 As the winds did those of the upper air. 
 
 Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks 
 Were bent and tangled across the walks ; 
 And the leafless network of parasite bowers 
 Massed into ruin ; and all sweet flowers. 
 
 Between the time of the wind and the snow, 
 
 All lothliest weeds began to grow, 
 
 Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, 
 
 Like the water -snake's belly, and the toad's back. 
 
 And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, 
 And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, 
 Stretched out its long and hollow shank, 
 And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. 
 
 And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, 
 Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 
 Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, 
 Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 
 
 And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, 
 Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 
 Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 
 With a spirit of growth had been animated. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 353 
 
 Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, 
 Till the thick stalk stuck like a murder's stake, 
 Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 
 Infecting the winds that wander by. 
 
 Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, 
 Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, 
 And at its outlet flags, huge as stakes, 
 Dam'd it up with roots knotted like water-snakes. 
 
 And hour by hour, when the air was still, 
 The vapours arose which have strength to kill : 
 At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, 
 At night they were darkness no star could melt. 
 
 And the unctuous meteors from spray to spray 
 Crept and flitted in broad noonday 
 Unseen ; every branch on which they alit 
 By a venomous blight was burned and bit. 
 
 The Sensitive Plant, Uke one forbid, 
 Wept, and the tears within each lid 
 Of its folded leaves, which together grew, 
 Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 
 
 For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 
 By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; 
 The sap shrank to the root, through every pore, 
 As the blood to a heart that will beat no more. 
 
 For winter came ; the wind was his whip : 
 One choppy finger was on bis lip :- 
 He had torn the cataracts from the hills, 
 And they clank'd at his girdle like manacles ; 
 
 His breath was a chain which, without a sound, 
 The earth, and the air, and the water bound ; 
 He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne, 
 By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone. 
 
 Then the weeds, which were forms of living death, 
 Fled from the frost to the earth beneath ; 
 Their decay, and sudden flight from the frost, 
 Was but like the vanishing of a ghost ! 
 
 And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant 
 The moles and the dormice died for want : 
 The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air, 
 And were caught in the branches naked and bare. 
 
 A a 
 
354 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 First there came down a thawing rain, 
 And its dull drops froze on the boughs again, 
 Then there steam'd up a freezing dew, 
 Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew ; 
 
 And a northern whirlwind, wandering about, 
 Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 
 Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff, 
 And snapp'd them off with his rigid griff. 
 
 When winter had gone and spring came back, 
 
 The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wrack ; 
 
 But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels, 
 
 Rose like the dead from the ruin'd charnels. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
 Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, 
 Ere its outward form had known decay, 
 Now felt this change — I cannot say. 
 
 Whether that lady's gentle mind, 
 No longer with the form combined 
 Which scatter'd love, as stars do light, 
 Found sadness where it left delight, 
 
 I dare not guess ; but in this life 
 Of error, ignorance, and strife, 
 Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
 And we the shadows of the dream, 
 
 It is a modest creed, and yet 
 Pleasant if one considers it, 
 To own that death itself must be, 
 Like all the rest, a mockery. 
 
 That garden sweet, that lady fair, 
 And all sweet shapes and odours there, 
 In truth have never pass'd away : 
 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed j not they. 
 
 For love, and beauty, and delight, 
 There is no death, nor change : their might 
 Exceeds our organs, which endure 
 No light, being themselves obscure. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 355 
 
 It would be hard to mention these two names 
 without connecting with them that of Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Keats has peculiarities and great faults, but few 
 poems are more pregnant than his, and certainly no 
 man was more unjustly treated by the critics of his 
 day. The very passages which are quoted from 
 his works in the celebrated article in the Quarterly 
 are a defence for the poet, and a condemnation of 
 his reviewer. Under much rugged exterior and 
 pedantry of style, and despite many grave faults he 
 conceals a genuine beauty and originality. He was 
 essentially the poet of sensation, and in every mode 
 in which passing objects touched and affected the 
 muse, he finds some power in the suggestive illustra- 
 tion of words to express the feelings for those already 
 more than conscious of the sensation. We are told 
 that the character of nature and the analysis of its 
 influence on man, were not fully attempted or under- 
 stood by the ancients. In. this respect Keats and 
 his school write in advance of those mythological 
 and classical schools which they so eagerly follow in 
 other respects. Whatever strange and mysterious 
 feelings we have been conscious of under the influ- 
 ence of nature, the vast and brilliant dressing of 
 summer and autumn, the magic power of the 
 forms of architecture, gray with the moss of the 
 past, or sublime with the massive grandeur of 
 the present, — whatever power there was in sound 
 to stir the inmost depths of the heart, the mo- 
 notony of the sea, the flash of its ceaseless waters, 
 the bubble of fountains, and the rolling of the 
 a a 2 
 
356 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 brooks ; — whatever there was which spoke of the 
 supernatural in the vista of the forest, or the deso- 
 late wold, Keats and his school described. The 
 passages quoted from Keats's poems in the Quar- 
 terly of 1818, are sufficient to illustrate my meaning : 
 
 Such the sun, the moon, 
 Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon 
 For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 
 With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 
 That for themselves a cooling covert make 
 'Gainst the hot season ; the mid forest brake, 
 Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms : 
 And such, too, is the grandeur of the dooms 
 We have imagined for the mighty dead. 
 
 For 'twas the morn : Apollo's upward fire 
 Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre 
 Of brightness so unsullied, that therein 
 A melancholy spirit well might win 
 Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine 
 Into the winds : rain-scented eglantine 
 Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun ; 
 The lark was lost in him ; cold springs had run 
 To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass ; 
 Man's voice was on the mountains ; and the mass 
 Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold, 
 To feel this sunrise and its glories old. 
 
 Leigh Hunt is considered the leading mind of this 
 school, although in coarseness he surpasses Keats, 
 and is scarcely less inferior in affectation. Many 
 passages may suffice to show his style and his points 
 of agreement or disagreement with Keats. 
 
 10. The third phase which I suggested was that 
 of feeling, the intermediate state between the impres- 
 sions made on the child, and the stirring, the beau- 
 tiful, and the tender, in passion ; in the history of 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 357 
 
 the man the child receives the impressions of nature 
 and forms, which become implanted in him by the 
 hand of association ; the boy becomes conscious of 
 something more — feeling, the noble, the brave, the 
 generous, the free, the kind ; while the youth plunges 
 into the deep silent waters of passion. This inter- 
 mediate stage is represented by Scott. Men de- 
 lighted in the sparkling, generous feelings of his 
 poetry. They were more intelligible than the myste- 
 ries of Keats, more healthy and safe than the deep 
 heart-stirrings of Byron. But when Ohilde Harold 
 and its successors appeared on the field, the fame 
 of the author of "the Lay" as a poet began to 
 wane, and the melancholy forms which Byron con- 
 jured up fascinated the eye and absorbed the atten- 
 tion ; the voices by which he spoke addressed feelings 
 in tones uttered in more than questionable terms — 
 still he spoke to deeper feelings, and what was a great 
 secret of success, he uttered what multitudes had felt 
 and could not express. 
 
 The appearance of the Lay of the Last Minstrel 
 was received with unanimous plaudits of delight. It 
 was a beam which sparkled on a hundred ripples of 
 the superficial waters of daily life, and charmed all. 
 Marmion was received with nearly equal acclamation, 
 and the appearance of the Lady of the Lake was 
 hailed with greater enthusiasm than either. 
 
 As an appeal to the feelings of the chivalrous in 
 youth, how beautiful is the following passage from 
 the Lay. 
 
358 
 
 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Marmion. 
 
 Chivalrous 
 feeling. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Behind Lord Howard and the Dame, 
 Fair Margaret on her palfrey came, 
 
 Whose footcloth swept the ground ; 
 White was her whimple, and her veil, 
 And her loose locks a chaplet pale 
 
 Of whitest roses bound ; 
 The lordly Angus, by her side, 
 In courtesy to cheer her tried ; 
 Without his aid, her hand in vain 
 Had strove to guide her broidered rein. 
 He deem'd, she shudder'd at the sight 
 Of warriors met for mortal fight ; 
 But cause of terror, all unguess'd, 
 Was fluttering in her gentle breast, 
 When, in their chairs of crimson placed, 
 The Dame and she the barriers graced. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Prize of the field, the young Buccleuch 
 An English knight led forth to view ; 
 Scarce rued the boy his present plight, 
 So much he long'd to see the fight. 
 Within the lists, in knightly pride, 
 High Home and haughty Dacre ride ; 
 Their leading staffs of steel they wield, 
 As marshals of the mortal field : 
 While to each knight their care assign' d 
 Like vantage of the sun and wind. 
 Then heralds hoarse did loud proclaim, 
 In king and queen, and wardens' name, 
 
 That none, while lasts the strife, 
 Should dare, by look, or sign, or word. 
 Aid to a champion to afford, 
 
 On peril of his life ; 
 And not a breath the silence broke, 
 Till thus th' alternate heralds spoke : 
 
 XIX. 
 
 ENGLISH HERALD. 
 
 Here standeth Richard of Musgrave, 
 Good knight and true, and freely born, 
 
 Amends from Deloraine to crave, 
 For foul despiteous scathe and scorn, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 359 
 
 He sayeth, that William of Deloraine 
 
 Is traitor false by Border laws ; 
 This with his sword he will maintain, 
 
 So help him God, and his good cause 1 
 
 xx. 
 
 SCOTTISH HERALD. 
 
 Here standeth William of Deloraine, 
 Good knight and true, of noble strain, 
 Who sayeth, that foul treason's stain, 
 Since he bore arms, ne'er soil'd his coat : 
 And that, so help him God above, 
 He will on Musgrave's body prove, 
 He lyes most foully in his throat. 
 
 LORD DACRE. 
 
 Forward, brave champions, to the fight ! 
 Sound trumpets ! 
 
 LORD HOME. 
 
 " God defend the right ;" 
 Then, Teviot ! how thine echoes rang, 
 When bugle-sound and trumpet-clang 
 
 Let loose the martial foes, 
 And in mid list, with shield poised high, 
 And measured step and wary eye, 
 
 The combatants did close. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Ill would it suit your gentle ear, 
 
 Ye lovely listeners, to hear 
 
 How to the axe the helms did sound, 
 
 And blood pour'd down from many a wound ; 
 
 For desperate was the strife, and long, 
 
 And either warrior fierce and strong. 
 
 But, were each dame a listening knight, 
 
 I well could tell how warriors fight ; 
 
 For I have seen war's lightning flashing, 
 
 Seen the claymore with bayonet clashing, 
 
 Seen through red blood the war-horse dashing, 
 
 And scom'd, amid the reeling strife, 
 
 To yield a step for death or life. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 'Tis done, 'tis done ! that fatal blow 
 
 Has stretch'd him on the bloody plain ; 
 He strives to rise — Brave Musgrave, no ! 
 
 Thence never shalt thou rise again ! 
 
360 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETB.Y. 
 
 He chokes in blood — some friendly hand 
 
 Undo the visor's barred band, 
 
 Unfix the gorget's iron clasp, 
 
 And give him room for life to gasp ! 
 
 O, bootless aid ! — haste holy Friar, 
 
 Haste, ere the sinner shall expire ! 
 
 Of all his guilt let him be shriven, 
 
 And smooth his path from earth to heaven. 
 
 In haste the holy Friar sped ; — 
 His naked foot was dyed with red, 
 
 As through the lists he ran ; 
 Unmindful of the shouts on high, 
 That hail'd the conqueror's victory, 
 
 He raised the dying man ; 
 Loose waved his silver beard and hair, 
 As o'er him he kneel'd down in prayer 
 And still the crucifix on high 
 He holds before his darkening eye ; 
 And still he bends an anxious ear, 
 His faltering penitence to hear ; 
 
 Still props him from the bloody sod, 
 Still, even when soul and body part, 
 Pours ghostly comfort on his heart, 
 
 And bids him trust in God 1 
 Unheard he prays ; — the death pang's o'er !- 
 Richard of Musgrave breathes no more. 
 
 And if Scott shone in the appeal to chivalrons 
 feelings, in his appreciation of natural scenery he is 
 if possible superior. 
 
 The well-known opening of the Lady of the Lake 
 scarcely needs quotation. 
 
 The Ladyof Then through the dell his horn resounds, 
 
 the Lake. From vain pursuit to call the hounds, 
 
 Natural Back limp'd, with slow and crippled pace, 
 
 scenery. The sulky leaders of the chase ; 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 361 
 
 Close to their master's side they press'd, 
 With drooping tail and humbled crest ;+ 
 But still the dingle's hollow throat 
 Prolong'd the swelling bugle-note. 
 The owlets started from their dream, 
 The eagles answer'd with their scream, 
 Round and around the sounds were cast, 
 Till echo seem'd an answering blast ; 
 And on the hunter hied his way, 
 To join some comrades of the day ; 
 Yet often paused, so strange the road, 
 So wondrous were the scenes it show'd. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The western waves of ebbing day 
 Roll'd o'er the glen their level way ; 
 Each purple peak, each flinty spire, 
 Was bathed in floods of living fire. 
 But not a setting beam could glow 
 Within the dark ravines below, 
 Where twined the path, in shadow hid, 
 Round many a rocky pyramid, 
 Shooting abruptly from the dell 
 Its thunder-splinter'd pinnacle ; 
 Round many an insulated mass, 
 The native bulwarks of the pass, 
 Huge as the tower which builders vain 
 Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain. 
 Their rocky summits, split and rent, 
 Form'd turret, dome, or battlement, 
 Or seem'd fantastically set 
 With cupola or minaret, 
 Wild crests as pagod ever deck'd, 
 Or mosque of eastern architect. 
 Nor were these earth-born castles bare, 
 Nor lack'd they many a banner fair ; 
 For, from their shiver'd brows display'd, 
 Far o'er the unfathomable glade, 
 All twinkling with the dew-drop sheen, 
 The briar-rose fell in streamers green, 
 And creeping shrubs of thousand dyes, 
 Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild, 
 Each plant or flower, the mountain's child, 
 
362 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Here eglantine embalm'd the air, 
 Hawthorn and hazel mingled there ; 
 The primrose pale, and violet flower, 
 Found' in each cliff a narrow bower ; 
 Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, 
 Emblems of punishment and pride, 
 Group'd their dark hues with every stain, 
 The weather-beaten crags retain. 
 With boughs that quaked at every breath, 
 Gray birch and aspen wept beneath ; 
 Aloft, the ash and warrior oak 
 Cast anchor in the rifted rock ; 
 And higher yet, the pine-tree hung 
 His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung 
 Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high, 
 His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky. 
 Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, 
 Where glistening streamers waved and danced, 
 The wanderer's eye could barely view 
 The summer heaven's delicious blue ; 
 So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
 The scenery of a fairy dream. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Onward amid the copse 'gan peep 
 A narrow inlet, still and deep, 
 Affording scarce such breadth of brim, 
 As served the wild-duck's brood to swim ; 
 Lost for a space, through thickets veering, 
 But broader when again appearing, 
 Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face 
 ( Could on the dark-blue mirror trace ; 
 And farther as the hunter stray'd, 
 Still broader sweep its channels made. 
 The shaggy mounds no longer stood, 
 Emerging from entangled wood, 
 But wave encircled, seem'd to float, 
 Like castle girdled with its moat ; 
 Yet broader floods extending still, 
 Divide them from their parent hill, 
 Till each, retiring, claims to be 
 An islet in an inland sea. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And now, to issue from the glen, 
 
 No pathway meets the wanderer's ken, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 363 
 
 Unless he climb, with footing nice, 
 
 A far-projecting precipice. 
 
 The broom's tough roots his ladder made, 
 
 The hazel saplings lent their aid ; 
 
 And thus an airy point he won, 
 
 Where, gleaming with the setting sun, 
 
 One burnish'd sheet of living gold, 
 
 Loch-Katrine lay beneath him roll'd ; 
 
 In all her length far winding lay, 
 
 With promontory, creek, and bay, 
 
 And islands that, empurpled bright, 
 
 Floated amid the livelier light ; . 
 
 And mountains, that like giants stand, 
 
 To centinel enchanted land. 
 
 High on the south, hugh Ben-venue 
 
 Down to the lake in masses threw 
 
 Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'd, 
 
 The fragments of an earlier world ; 
 
 A wildering forest feather'd o'er 
 
 His ruin'd sides and summit hoar, 
 
 While on the north, through middle air, 
 
 Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare. 
 
 But Scott is inimitable in graphic description of 
 stirring circumstance. The fall of Eokeby may well 
 be placed side by side with a scene in the Siege of 
 Corinth by his great and successful rival. They are 
 worth reading together. 
 
 And where is Bertram ? — Soaring high, Eokeby. 
 
 The gen'ral flame ascends the sky ; Graphic 
 
 In gather'd group the soldiers gaze description. 
 
 Upon the broad and soaring blaze, 
 
 When, like infernal demon, sent 
 
 Red from his penal element, 
 
 To plague and to pollute the air, — 
 
 His face all gore, on fire his hair, 
 
 Forth from the central mass of smoke 
 
 The giant form of Bertram broke ! 
 
 His brandish'd sword on high he rears. 
 
 Then plunged among opposing spears ; 
 
364 SCHOOtS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Round his left arm his mantle truss'd, 
 Received and foil'd three lances' thrust. 
 Nor these his headlong course withstood, 
 Like reeds he snapp'd the tough ash-wood. 
 In vain his foes around him clung ; 
 With matchless force aside he flung 
 Their boldest, — as the bull, at bay, 
 Tosses the ban-dogs from his way, 
 Through forty foes his path he made, 
 And safely gain'd the forest glade. 
 
 Scarce was this final conflict o'er, 
 When from the postern Redmond bore 
 Wilfrid, who, as of life bereft, 
 Had in the fatal Hall been left. 
 Deserted there by all his train ; 
 But Redmond saw, and turn'd again. — 
 Beneath an oak he laid him down, 
 That in the blaze gleam'd ruddy brown, 
 And then his mantle's clasp undid ; 
 Matilda held his drooping head, 
 Till, given to breathe the freer air, 
 Returning life repaid their care. 
 He gazed on them with heavy sigh, — 
 " I could have wish'd ev'n thus to die ! " 
 No more he said — for now with speed 
 Each trooper had regain'd his steed ; 
 The ready palfreys stood array'd, 
 For Redmond and for Rokeby's Maid ; 
 Two Wilfrid on his horse sustain, 
 One leads his charger by the rein. 
 But oft Matilda look'd behind, 
 As up the vale of Tees they wind, 
 Where far the mansion of her sires 
 Beacon'd the dale with midnight fires. 
 In gloomy arch above them spread, 
 The clouded heaven lower'd bloody red ; 
 Beneath, in sombre light, the flood 
 Appear'd to roll in waves of blood. 
 Then, one by one, was heard to fall 
 The tower, the donjon-keep, the hall. 
 Each rushing down with thunder sound, 
 A space the conflagration drown'd ; 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 365 
 
 Till, gath'ring strength, again it rose, 
 Announced its triumph in its dose, 
 Shook wide its light the landscape o'er, 
 Then sunk — and Rokeby was no more 1 
 
 Byron's fall of Corinth can scarcely be said to 
 excel this. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 The foe came on, and few remain Byron. 
 
 To strive, and those must strive in vain : Siege of 
 
 For lack of further lives, to slake CSrinth. 
 
 The thirst of vengeance now awake, 
 
 With barbarous blows they gash the dead, 
 
 And lop the already lifeless head, 
 
 And fell the statues from their niche, 
 
 And spoil the shrines of offerings rich, 
 
 And from each other's rude hands wrest 
 
 The silver vessels saints had bless'd. 
 
 To the high altar on they go ; 
 
 Oh, but it made a glorious show ! 
 
 On its table still behold 
 
 The cup of consecrated gold ; 
 
 Massy and deep, a glittering prize, 
 
 Brightly it sparkles to plunderers' eyes : 
 
 That mom it held the holy wine, 
 
 Converted by Christ to his blood so divine, 
 
 Which his worshippers drank at the brake of day, 
 
 To shrive their souls ere they join'd in the fray. 
 
 Still a few drops within it lay ; 
 
 And round the sacred table glow 
 
 Twelve lofty lamps, in splendid row, 
 
 From the purest metal cast ; 
 
 A spoil — the richest, and the last. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 So near they came, the nearest stretch'd 
 ' To grasp the spoil he almost reach'd, 
 When old Minotti's hand 
 Touch'd with the torch the train — 
 
 'Tis fired ! 
 Spire, vaults, the shrine, the spoil, the slain, 
 The turban'd victors, the Christian band, 
 All that of living or dead remain, 
 Hurl'd on high with the shiver'd fane, 
 In one wild roar expired ! 
 
366 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 The shatter'd town — the walls thrown down — 
 The waves a moment backward bent — 
 The hills that shake, although unrent, 
 
 As if an earthquake pass'd — 
 The thousand shapeless things all driven 
 In clond and fame athwart the heaven, 
 
 By that tremendous blast — 
 Proclaim'd the desperate conflict o'er 
 On that too long afflicted shore : 
 Up to the sky like rockets go 
 All that mingled there below : 
 Many a tall and goodly man, 
 Scorch'd and shrivell'd to a span, 
 When he fell to earth again 
 Like a cinder strew'd the plain : 
 Down the ashes shower like rain ; 
 Some fell in the gulf, which received the sprinkles 
 With a thousand circling wrinkles ; 
 Some fell on the shore, but, far away, 
 Scatter'd o'er the isthmus lay ; 
 Christian or Moslem, which be they ? 
 Let their mothers see and say ! 
 When in cradled rest they lay, 
 And each nursing mother smiled 
 On the sweet sleep of her child, 
 Little deem'd she such a day 
 Would rend those tender limbs away. 
 Not the matrons that them bore 
 Could discern their offspring more ; 
 That one moment left no trace 
 More of human form or face 
 Save a scatter'd scalp or bone : 
 And down came blazing rafters, strown 
 Around, and many a falling stone, 
 Deeply dinted in the clay, 
 
 All blacken'd there, and reeking lay. < 
 
 All the living things that heard 
 That deadly earth-shock disappear'd : 
 The wild birds flew ; the wild dogs fled, 
 And howling left the nnburied dead ; 
 The camels from their keepers broke ; 
 The distant steer forsook the yoke — 
 The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain, 
 And burst his girth, and tore his rein ; 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 367 
 
 The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh, 
 Deep-mouth'd arose, and doubly harsh ; 
 The wolves yell'd on the cavern'd hill 
 Where echo roll'd in thunder still ; 
 The jackal's troop, in gather'd cry, 
 Bay'd from afar complainingly, 
 With a mix'd and mournful, sound, 
 Like crying babe, and beaten hound : 
 With sudden wing, and ruffled breast, 
 The eagle left his rocky nest, 
 And mounted nearer to the sun, 
 The clouds beneath him seem'd so dun ; 
 Their smoke assail'd his startled beak, 
 And made him higher soar and shriek — 
 Thus was Corinth lost and won ! — 
 
 Scott's appreciation of the tenderest sensations 
 of love are very powerful and true. The closing 
 scene in Rokeby stands nearly by itself for powerful 
 contrast and tender pathos. 
 
 And now he pours his choice of fear Rokeby. 
 
 In secret on Matilda's ear ; Tender 
 
 " And union form'd with me and mine, feeling. 
 
 Ensures the faith of Rokeby's line. 
 
 Consent, and all this dread array, 
 
 Like morning dream, shall pass away ! 
 
 Refuse, and, by my duty press'd, 
 
 I give the word, thou know'st the rest. 
 
 Matilda, still and motionless, 
 
 With terror heard the dread address, 
 
 Pale as the sheeted maid who dies 
 
 To hopeless love a sacrifice ; 
 
 Then rung her hands in agony, 
 
 And round her cast bewilder'd eye. 
 
 Now on the scaffold glanced, and now 
 
 On Wycliffe's unrelenting brow. 
 
 She veil'd her face, and, with a voice 
 
 Scarce audible,— " I make my choice ! 
 
 Spare but their lives ! — for aught beside, 
 
 Let Wilfrid's doom my fate decide. 
 
368 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRJT. 
 
 He once was generous ! " — As she spoke, 
 Dark Wycliffe's joy in triumph broke : — 
 " Wilfrid, where loiter'd ye so late ? 
 Why upon Basil rest thy weight ? — 
 Art spell-bound by enchanter's wand ? 
 Kneel, kneel, and take her yielded hand ; 
 Thank her with raptures, simple boy ! 
 Should tears and trembling speak thy joy ?" — 
 " O hush, my sire ! to prayer and tear 
 Of mine thou hast refused thine ear ; 
 But now the awful hour draws on, 
 When truth must speak in loftier tone." 
 
 XXX. 
 
 He took Matilda's hand ; — " Dear maid, 
 
 Couldst thou so injure me," he said ; 
 
 " Of thy poor friend so basely deem, 
 
 As blend with him this barb'rous scheme : 
 
 Alas ! my efforts made in vain, 
 
 Might well have saved this added pain. 
 
 But now, bear witness, earth and heaven, 
 
 That ne'er was hope to mortal given, 
 
 So twisted with the strings of life, 
 
 As this— to call Matilda wife ! 
 
 I bid it now for ever part, 
 
 And with the effort bursts my heart." 
 
 His feeble frame was worn so low, 
 
 With wounds, with watching, and with woe. 
 
 That nature could no more sustain 
 
 The agony of mental pain. 
 
 He kneel'd — his lip her hand had press'd,— 
 
 Just then he felt the stern arrest. 
 
 Lower and lower sunk his head, — 
 
 They raised him, — but the life was fled ! 
 
 Then, first alarm'd, his sire and train 
 
 Tried ev'ry aid, but tried in vain. 
 
 The soul, too soft its ills to bear, 
 
 Had left our mortal hemisphere, 
 
 Had sought in better world the meed, 
 
 To blameless life by Heaven decreed. 
 
 Marmion. The melancholy and mysterious part of our nature 
 The feeling finds also in Scott a powerful exponent. The doom 
 
 of melan- . . 
 
 choiy. of Constance in Marmion is well known. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 369 
 
 " Yet dread me, from my living tomb, 
 Ye vassal slaves of bloody Rome ! 
 If Marmion's late remorse should wake, 
 Full soon such vengeance will he take, 
 That you shall wish the fiery Dane 
 Had rather been your guest again. 
 Behind, a darker hour ascends ! 
 The altars quake, the crosier bends, 
 The ire of a despotic king 
 Rides forth upon destruction's wing ; 
 Then shall these vaults, so strong and deep, 
 Burst open to the sea-wind's sweep ; 
 Some traveller then shall find my bones, 
 Whitening amid disjointed stones, 
 And, ignorant of priests' cruelty, 
 Marvel such reliques here should be." 
 
 Fix'd was her look, and stern her air ; 
 
 Back from her shoulders stream'd her hair ; 
 
 The locks, that wont her brow to shade, 
 
 Stared up erectly from her head ; 
 
 Her figure seem'd to rise more high ; 
 
 Her voice, despair's wild energy 
 
 Had given a tone of prophecy. 
 
 ■Appall'd the astonish'd conclave sate ; 
 
 With stupid eyes, the men of fate 
 
 Gazed on the light inspired form, 
 
 And listen'd for the avenging storm ; 
 
 The judges felt the victim's dread ! 
 
 No hand was moved, no word was said, 
 
 Till thus the abbot's doom was given, 
 
 Raising his sightless balls to heaven : — 
 
 " Sister, let thy sorrows cease ; 
 
 Sinful brother, part in peace ! " — 
 
 From that dire dungeon, place of doom, 
 Of execution too, and tomb, 
 
 Paced forth the judges three ; 
 
 Sorrow it were, and shame, to tell 
 
 The butcher-work that there befell, 
 
 When they had glided from the cell 
 
 Of sin and misery. 
 
 a b 
 
370 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY". 
 
 An hundred winding steps convey- 
 That conclave to the upper day ; 
 But, ere they breathed the fresher air, 
 They heard the shriekings of despair, 
 
 And many a stifled groan : 
 With speed their upward way they take, 
 (Such speed as age and fear can make,) 
 And cross'd themselves for terror's sake, 
 
 As hurrying, tottering on. 
 Even in the vesper's heavenly tone, 
 They seem'd to hear a dying groan, 
 And bade the passing knell to toll 
 For welfare of a parting soul. 
 Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung, 
 Northumbrian rocks in answer rung ; 
 To Warkworth cell the echoes roll'd, 
 His beads the wakeful hermit told ; 
 The Bambrough peasant raised his head, 
 But slept ere half a prayer he said ; 
 So far was heard the mighty knell, 
 The stag sprung up on Cheviot Fell, 
 Spread his broad nostril to the wind, 
 Listed before, aside, behind ; 
 Then couch'd him down beside the hind, 
 And quaked among the mountain fern, 
 To hear that sound so dull and stern. 
 
 Before leaving Scott it would be well to quote the 
 introduction to the Lay, among the first, but the 
 most beautiful of his poetical touches. 
 
 The Lay of The way was long, the wind was cold, 
 
 the Last The minstrel was infirm and old ; 
 
 Minstrel. Hi s wither'd cheek, and tresses gray, 
 
 Simplicity Seem'd to have known a better day ; 
 
 and pathos. The harp, his sole remaining joy, 
 
 Was carried by an orphan boy ; 
 
 The last of all the bards was he, 
 
 Who sung of Border chivalry ; 
 
 For, well-a-day ! their date was fled, 
 
 His tuneful brethren all were dead ; 
 
 And he, neglected and oppress'd, 
 
 Wish'd to be with them and at rest. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 371 
 
 No more, on prancing palfrey borne, 
 He caroll'd, light as lark at morn ; 
 No longer courted and caress'd, 
 High placed in hall, a welcome guest, 
 He pour'd, to lord and lady gay, 
 The unpremeditated lay : 
 Old times were changed, old manners gone ; 
 A stranger fill'd the Stuarts' throne ; 
 The bigots of the iron time 
 Had call'd his harmless art a crime. 
 A wandering harper, scorn' d and poor, 
 He begg'd his bread from door to door ; 
 And tuned, to please a peasant's ear, 
 The harp, a king had loved to hear. 
 
 He pass'd where Newark's stately tower 
 Looks out from Yarrow's birchen bower : 
 The minstrel gazed with wishful eye — 
 No humbler resting place was. nigh. 
 With hesitating step, at last, 
 The embattled portal-arch he pass'd, 
 Whose pond'rous grate, and massy bar, 
 Had oft roll'd back the tide of war, 
 But never closed the iron door 
 Against the desolate and poor. 
 The duchess mark'd his weary pace, 
 His timid mien, and reverend face, 
 And bade her page the menials tell, 
 That they should tend the old man well : 
 For she had known adversity, 
 Though born in such a high degree ; 
 In pride of power, in beauty's bloom, 
 Had wept o'er Monmouth's bloody tomb. 
 
 When kindness had his wants supplied, 
 And the old man was gratified, 
 Began to rise his minstrel pride : 
 And he began to talk anon, 
 Of good Earl Francis, dead and gone, 
 And of Earl Walter, rest him, God ! 
 A braver ne'er to battle rode : 
 And how full many a tale he knew, 
 Of the old warriors of Buccleuch ; 
 And, would the noble duchess deign 
 To listen to an old man's strain, 
 
 Bb 2 
 
372 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Though stiff his hand, his voice though weak, 
 He thought e'en yet, the sooth to speak, 
 That, if she loved the harp to hear, 
 He could make music to her ear. 
 
 The humble boon was soon obtain'd ; 
 The aged minstrel audience gain'd. 
 But, when he reach'd the room of state, 
 Where she, with all her ladies sate, 
 Perchance he wish'd his boon denied : 
 For, when to tune his harp he tried, 
 His trembling hand had lost the ease 
 Which marks security to please ; 
 And scenes, long past, of joy and pain, 
 Came wildering o'er his aged brain — 
 He tried to tune bis harp in vain. 
 The pitying duchess praised its chime, 
 And gave him heart, and gave him time, 
 Till every string's according glee 
 Was blended into harmony. 
 And then, he said, he would full fain 
 He could recall an ancient strain, 
 He never thought to sing again. 
 It was not framed for village churls. 
 But for high dames and mighty earls ; 
 He had play'd it to King Charles the Good, 
 When he kept court at Holyrood ; 
 And much he wish'd, yet fear'd, to try 
 The long-forgotten melody. 
 
 Amid the strings his fingers stray'd, 
 And an uncertain warbling made, 
 And oft he shook his hoary head : 
 But when he caught the measure wild, 
 The old man raised his face and smiled ; 
 And lightened up his faded eye, 
 With all a poet's ecstacy ! 
 In varying cadence, soft or strong, 
 He swept the sounding chords along : 
 The present scene, the future lot, 
 His toils, his wants, were all forgot : 
 Cold diffidence, and age's frost, 
 In the full tide of song were lost ; 
 Each blank, in faithless memory void, 
 The poet's glowing thought supplied ; 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 373 
 
 And, while his harp responsive rung, 
 'Twas thus the Latest Minstrel sung. 
 
 The supposed imitators of Scott generally turned 
 out to be himself, and the poems which started up 
 claiming to be of his school were generally his own 
 productions. 
 
 11. I turn to the school of passion, which again Byron, 
 has one leading expression, Byron. Passion. 
 
 From the many passages in Lord Byron's poetry 
 which would illustrate what I "mean by calling his 
 the school of fervid passion, I select one tinged with 
 that pensive melancholy of tone, which so characterises 
 and gives such a charm to much that he has written. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And Kaled — Lara — Ezzelin are gone, Lara. 
 
 Alike without their monumental stone ! 
 
 The first, all efforts vainly strove to wean 
 
 From lingering where her chieftain's blood had been ; 
 
 Grief had so tamed a spirit once too proud, 
 
 Her tears were few, her wailing never loud ; 
 
 But furious would you tear her from the spot 
 
 Where yet she scarce believed that he was not, 
 
 Her eye shot forth with all the living fire 
 
 That haunts the tigress in her whelpless ire ; 
 
 But left to waste her weary moments there, 
 
 She talk'd all idly unto shapes of air, 
 
 Such as the busy brain of Sorrow paints, 
 
 And woos to listen to her fond complaints : 
 
 And she would sit beneath the very tree 
 
 Where lay his drooping head upon her knee ; 
 
 And in that posture where she saw him fall, 
 
 His words, his looks, his dying grasp recall ; 
 
 And she had shorn, but saved her raven hair, 
 
 And oft would snatch it from her bosom there, 
 
 And fold, and press it gently to the ground, 
 
 As if she stanch'd anew some phantom's wound. 
 
 Herself would question, and for him reply ; 
 
 Then rising, start, and beckon him to fly 
 
374 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 From some imagined spectre in pursuit ; 
 Then seat her down upon some linden's root, 
 And hide her visage with her meagre hand, 
 Or trace strange characters along the sand — 
 This could not last — she lies by him she loved ; 
 Her tale untold — her truth too dearly proved. 
 
 Or the despair attendant on blighted affection ex- 
 pressed in the following passage of the Corsair : 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The Cor- ^ e r eaeh'd his turret door — he paused — no sound 
 
 sair. Broke from within ; and all was night around. 
 
 He knock'd, and loudly — footstep nor reply 
 
 Announced that any heard or deem'd him nigh ;. 
 
 He knock'd — but faintly — for his trembling hand 
 
 Refused to aid his heavy heart's demand. 
 
 The portal opens — 'tis a well-known face — 
 
 But not the form he panted to embrace. 
 
 Its lips are silent — twice his own essay'd, 
 
 And fail'd to frame the question they delayed ; 
 
 He snatch'd the lamp— its light will answer all — 
 
 It quits his grasp, expiring in the fall. 
 
 He would not wait for that reviving ray — 
 
 As soon could he have Enger'd there for day ; 
 
 But, glimmering through the dusky corridore, 
 
 Another chequers o'er the shadow'd floor ; 
 
 His steps the chamber gain — his eyes behold 
 
 All that his heart believed not— yet foretold f 
 
 xx. 
 
 He turn'd not — spoke not— sunk not— fix'd his loot, 
 
 And set the anxious frame that lately shook : 
 
 He gazed — how long we gaze despite of pain, 
 
 And know, but dare not own, we gaze in vain ! 
 
 In life itself she was so still and fair, 
 
 That death with gentler aspect wither'd there ; 
 
 And the cold flowers her colder hand contam'd, 
 
 In that last grasp as tenderly were strain'd 
 
 As if she scarcely felt, but feign'd a sleep, 
 
 And made it almost mockery yet to weep t 
 
 The long dark lashes fringed her lids of snow. 
 
 And veil'd— thought shrinks from all that lurk'd below— 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. .375 
 
 Oh ! o'er the eye Death most exerts his might, 
 And hurls the spirit from her throne of light ; 
 Sinks those blue orbs in that long last eclipse, 
 But spares, as yet, the charm around her lips — 
 Yet, yet they seem as they forbore to smile, 
 And wish'd repose — but only for a while ; 
 But the white shroud, and each extended tress, 
 Long — fair — but spread in utter lifelessness, 
 Which, late the sport of every summer wind, 
 Escaped the baffled wreath that strove to bind ; 
 These — and the pale pure cheek, became the bier — : 
 But she is nothing — wherefore is he here ? 
 
 XXI. 
 
 He ask'd no question — all were answer'd now 
 By the first glance on that still, marble brow. 
 It was enough — she died — what reck'd it how ? 
 The love of youth, the hope of better years, 
 The source of softest wishes, tenderest fears, 
 The only living thing he could not hate, 
 Was reft at once— and he deserved his fate, 
 But did not feel it less ; — the good explore, 
 For peace, those realms where guilt can never soar : 
 The proud — the wayward — who have fix'd below 
 Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe, 
 Lose in that one their all — perchance a mite — 
 But who in patience parts with all delight ? 
 Full many a stoic eye and aspect stem 
 Masks hearts where grief hath little left to learn ; 
 And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost, 
 In smiles that least befit who wear them most. 
 
 12. Having given instances of what I have called the 
 four earlier schools, which represent in their succession 
 different phases of the human mind, I pass on to that 
 fifth school of poetry which marks the more vigorous 
 intellect of the age which gave it birth, and was in 
 our own country the offspring of that period when 
 the mind was assuming its independence, and as- 
 serting for itself the right to take bold and original 
 flights. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey seem 
 
worth. 
 
 376 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 to mark a recoil from the more sensitive School of 
 days just gone by. 
 Words- No one can read Wordsworth's sonnets without 
 
 feeling that there is a terseness of expression, a vigour 
 of thought, and an effort to grasp a healthy and real 
 philosophy, a masculine view of the connexion between 
 man and physical nature, which rank him highly 
 as an intellectual poet, and leave us in no surprise 
 that in a day of the wide-spread appreciation of intel- 
 lectual pursuits, the old poet of Rydal water was 
 summoned to Oxford, to receive his degree. The 
 poets of the eighteenth century had become some- 
 what wearisome from their lack of originality and 
 elasticity in the form in which they expressed their 
 thoughts ; there was a freshness about Wordsworth ; 
 he ventured into a new world ; he took flight into a 
 wider sphere, and strove to reconcile the apparent 
 difficulties which existed in religion by testing it 
 with the manifest course of Providence in the world 
 and the mind of man. By way of an illustration 
 of his style, seen under this aspect, I take one or two 
 of the passages from those poems, which were in 
 point of structure his own peculiar forte, his sonnets- 
 While the above-mentioned object was the aim of 
 Wordsworth, it was that of Southey to connect the 
 study of history with the more elevated principles of 
 religion ; his well-known poems of Madoc, the Curse 
 of Kehama, and Thalaba — intended originally to 
 form portions of a great work on the different reli- 
 gions of the world— indicate that Southey viewed 
 history as Wordsworth did nature, through a certain 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 377 
 
 religious atmosphere ; while Coleridge, another writer 
 of the same school, studied metaphysics and the 
 interior workings of the mind through the same 
 medium. The following quotations from Wordsworth 
 illustrate his own style. 
 
 TO SLEEP, 
 
 gentle sleep ! do they belong to thee, 
 These twinklings of oblivion ? Thou dost love 
 To sit in meekness, like the brooding dove, 
 
 A captive never wishing to be free. 
 
 This tiresome night, O Sleep ! thou art to me 
 
 A fly, that up and down himself doth shove 
 
 Upon a fretful rivulet, now above, 
 
 Now on the water vex'd with mockery. 
 
 1 have no pain that calls for patience, no ; 
 Hence am I cross and peevish as a child : 
 Am pleased by fits to have thee for my foe, 
 Yet ever willing to be reconciled ; 
 
 O gentle creature ! do not use me so, 
 But once and deeply let me be beguiled. 
 
 Words- 
 worth's 
 Sonnets. 
 
 Fond words have oft been spoken to thee, Sleep ! 
 And thou hast had thy store of tenderest names ; 
 The very sweetest, Fancy culls or frames, 
 When thankfulness of heart is strong and deep ! 
 Dear bosom-child we call thee, that dost steep 
 In rich reward all suffering ; halm that tames 
 All anguish ; saint that evil thoughts and aims 
 Takest away, and into souls dost creep, 
 like to a breeze from heaven. Shall I alone, 
 I surely not a man ungently made, 
 Call thee worst tyrant by which flesh is crost ? 
 Perverse, self-will'd to own and to disown, 
 Mere slave of them who never for thee pray'd, 
 Still last to come where thou art wanted most 1 
 
 A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by, 
 One after one ; the sound of rain, and bees 
 
378 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, 
 Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky ; 
 I thought of all hy turns, and yet I lie 
 Sleepless ! and soon the small birds' melodies 
 Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees ; 
 And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. 
 Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay, 
 And could not win thee, Sleep ! by any stealth : 
 So do not let me wear to-night away : 
 Without thee what is all the morning's wealth ? 
 Come, blessed barrier between day and day, 
 Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! 
 
 TO THE SUPREME BEING. 
 
 The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed 
 
 If Thou the spirit give by which I pray : 
 
 My unassisted heart is barren clay, 
 
 That of its native self can nothing feed : 
 
 Of good and pious works thou art the seed, 
 
 That quickens only where thou say'st it may : 
 
 Unless thou shew to us thine own true way 
 
 No man can find it : Father ! thou must lead. 
 
 Do Thou, then, breathe those thoughts into my mind 
 
 By which such virtue may in me be bred, 
 
 That in thy holy footsteps I may tread ; 
 
 The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind, 
 
 That I may have the power to sing of thee, 
 
 And sound thy praises everlastingly. 
 
 Coleridge. The following is Coleridge's : 
 
 FROST AT MIDNIGHT. 
 
 The frost performs its secret ministry, 
 
 Unhelp'd by any wind. The owlet's cry 
 
 Came loud — and hark, again ! loud as before. 
 
 The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, 
 
 Have left me to that solitude, which suits 
 
 Abstruser musings : save that at my side 
 
 My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 
 
 'Tis calm indeed ! so calm, that it disturbs 
 
 And vexes meditation with its strange 
 
 And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, 
 
 This populous village ! Sea, and hill, and wood, 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 379 
 
 With all the numberless goings on of life, 
 Inaudible as dreams ! the thin blue flame 
 Lies on my low burnt fire, and quivers not ; 
 Only that film, which flutter'd on the grate, 
 Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. 
 Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature 
 Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, 
 Making it a companionable form, 
 Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit 
 By its own moods interprets, every where 
 Echo or mirror seeking of itself, 
 And makes a toy of Thought. 
 
 ButO! how oft, 
 How oft, at school, with most believing mind, 
 Fresageful, have I gazed upon the bars, 
 To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft 
 With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt 
 Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, 
 Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang 
 From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, 
 So sweetly, that they stirr'd and haunted me 
 With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear 
 Most like articulate sounds of things to come ! 
 So gazed I, till the soothing things I dreamt 
 Lull'd me to sleep, and sleep prolong'd my dreams ! 
 And so I brooded all the following morn, 
 Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye 
 Fix'd with mock study on my swimming book : 
 Save if the door half open'd, and I snatch'd 
 A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, 
 For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, 
 Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, 
 My playmate when we both were clothed alike ! 
 
 Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, 
 Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 
 Fill up the interspersed vacancies 
 And momentary pauses of the thought ! 
 My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart 
 With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, 
 And think that thou shalt learn far other lore 
 And in far other scenes ! For I was rear'd 
 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 
 
380 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY'. 
 
 And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. 
 But thou, my babe ! shalt wander like a breeze 
 By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags 
 Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, 
 Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores 
 And mountain crags : so shalt thou see and hear 
 The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible 
 Of that eternal language, which thy God 
 Utters, who from eternity doth teach 
 Himself in all, and all things in Himself. 
 Great universal Teacher ! He shall mould 
 Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask. 
 
 Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, 
 Whether the summer clothe the general earth 
 With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing 
 Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch 
 Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch 
 Smokes in the sun-thaw ; whether the eve-drops fall 
 Heard only in the trances of the blast, 
 Or if the secret ministry of frost 
 Shall hang them up in silent icicles, 
 Quietly shining to the quiet Moon. 
 
 Tennyson. 1 3. These writers had felt the shock which on all 
 sides had been given to old institutions and esta- 
 blished opinions, and they paved the way for the in- 
 troduction of that school which I designated as that of 
 scepticism, which may be considered as the School of 
 the present age. The application of the term scepti- 
 cism would here be wide : it would apply to a dis- 
 trust not only in old modes of thought, which may 
 be the subject-matter of poetry, but also to the 
 metres and measures in which such matter is ex- 
 pressed, and to the very forms of grammar and the 
 received rules of prosody. In illustration of which 
 observations I give some passages from Tennyson 
 and Longfellow, poets of our day, which will sum- 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 381 
 
 ciently illustrate my meaning. The following from 
 " In Memoriam " are well known : 
 
 The path by which we twain did go, In Memo- 
 
 Which led by tracts that pleased us well, r ' am - 
 
 Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, 
 
 From flower to flower, from snow to snow : 
 
 And we with singing cheer'd the way, 
 
 And crown'd with all the season lent, 
 
 From April on to April went, 
 And glad at heart from May to May : 
 
 But where the path we walk'd began 
 
 To slant the fifth autumnal slope, 
 
 As we descended following Hope, 
 There sat the Shadow fear'd of man ; 
 
 Who broke our fair companionship, 
 
 And spread his mantle dark and cold ; 
 
 And wrapt thee formless in the fold, 
 And dull'd the murmur on thy lip ; 
 
 And bore thee where I could not see 
 
 Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste ; 
 
 And think, that somewhere in the waste 
 The Shadow sits and waits for me. 
 
 And again, 
 
 Thy spirit ere our fatal loss 
 
 Did ever rise from high to higher ; 
 
 As mounts the heavenward altar-fire, 
 As flies the lighter thro' the gross. 
 
 But thou art turn'd to something strange, 
 And I have lost the links that bound 
 Thy changes ; here upon the ground, 
 
 No more partaker of thy change. 
 
 Deep folly ! yet that this could be — 
 
 That I could wing my will with might 
 To leap the grades of life and light, 
 
 And flash at once, my friend, to thee : 
 
382 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 
 
 For tho' my nature rarely yields 
 
 To that vague fear implied in death ; 
 
 Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, 
 The howlings from forgotten fields ; 
 Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor 
 
 An inner trouble I behold, 
 
 A spectral doubt which makes me cold, 
 That I shall be thy mate no more, 
 Tho' following with an upward mind 
 
 The wonders that have come to thee, 
 
 Through all the secular to-be, 
 But evermore a life behind. 
 
 And again, 
 
 XV. 
 
 To-night the winds began to rise 
 
 And roar from yonder dropping day : 
 
 The last red leaf is whirl' d away, 
 The rooks are blown about the sMes ; 
 The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd, 
 
 The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
 
 And wildly dash'd on tower and tree 
 The sunbeam strikes along the world : 
 And but for fancies, which aver 
 
 That all thy motions gently pass 
 
 Athwart a plane of molten glass, 
 I scarce could brook the strain and stir 
 That makes the barren branches loud ; 
 
 And but for fear it is not so, 
 
 The wild unrest that lives in woe 
 Would dote and pore on yonder cloud 
 That rises upward always higher, 
 
 And onward drags a labouring breast, 
 
 And topples round the dreary west, 
 A looming bastion fringed with fire. 
 
 The following expresses with strange power the 
 idea of unrest : 
 
 X. 
 
 I hear the noise about thy keel ; 
 
 I hear the bell struck in the night ; 
 
 I see the cabin-window bright ; 
 I see the sailor at the wheel. 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 383 
 
 Thou bringest the sailor to his wife, 
 
 And traveled men from foreign lauds ; 
 
 And letters unto trembling hands ; 
 And, thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. 
 
 So bring him : we have idle dreams : 
 
 This look of quiet flatters thus 
 
 Our home-bred fancies : O to us, 
 The fools of habit, sweeter seems 
 
 To rest beneath the clover sod, 
 
 That takes the sunshine and the rains, 
 
 Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
 The chalice of the grapes of God ; 
 
 Than if with thee the roaring wells 
 
 Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine ; 
 
 And hands so often clasp'd in mine, 
 Should toss with tangle and with sheila. 
 
 There is a sad and plaintive power in the following, 
 which expresses too truly the sorrows of multitudes : 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 My love has talk'd with rocks and trees ; 
 
 He finds on misty mountain -ground 
 
 His own vast shadow glory-crown'd ; 
 He sees himself in all he sees. 
 
 Two partners of a married life — 
 
 I look'd on these and thought of thee 
 
 In vastness and in mystery, 
 And of my spirit as of a wife. 
 
 These two — they dwelt with eye on eye, 
 
 Their hearts of old have beat in tune, 
 
 Their meetings made December June, 
 Their every parting was to die. 
 
 Their love has never past away ; 
 
 The days she never can forget 
 
 Are earnest that he loves her yet, 
 Whate'er the faithless people say. 
 
 Her life is lone, he sits apart, 
 
 He loves her yet, she will not weep, 
 
 Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep 
 He seems to slight her simple heart. 
 
384 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETKY. 
 
 He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, 
 
 He reads the secret of the star, 
 
 He seems so near and yet so far, 
 He looks so cold : she thinks him kind. 
 
 She keeps the gift of years before, 
 
 A wither'd violet is her bliss ; 
 
 She knows not what his greatness is ; 
 For that, for all, she loves him more. 
 
 For him she plays, to him she sings 
 
 Of early faith and plighted vows ; 
 
 She knows but matters of the house, 
 And he, he knows a thousand things. 
 
 Her faith is fixt and cannot move, 
 
 She darkly feels him great and wise, 
 She. dwells on him with faithful eyes, 
 
 ' I cannot understand : I love.' 
 
 14. The following passages from Longfellow must 
 be the concluding ones which I quote : 
 
 FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS. 
 
 Longfellow. When the hours of day are number'd, 
 
 And the voices of the Night 
 Wake the better soul, that slumber'd, 
 To a holy, calm delight; 
 
 Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
 And, like phantoms grim and tall, 
 
 Shadows from the fitful fire-light 
 Dance upon the parlour wall ; 
 
 Then the forms of the departed 
 
 Enter at the open door ; 
 The beloved, the true-hearted, 
 
 Come to visit me once more : 
 
 He, the young and strong, who cherish'd 
 
 Noble longings for the strife, 
 By the road-side fell and perish'd, 
 
 Weary with the march of life ! 
 
 They, the holy ones and weakly, 
 
 Who the cross of suffering bore, 
 Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
 
 Spake with us on earth no more ! 
 
SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETRY. 385 
 
 *-v 
 And with them the Being Beauteous, 
 
 Who unto my youth was given, 
 More than all things else to love me, 
 
 And is now a saint in heaven. 
 
 With a slow and noiseless footstep, 
 
 Comes that messenger divine, 
 Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
 
 Lays her gentle hand in mine. 
 
 And she sits and gazes at me 
 
 With those deep and tender eyes, 
 Like the stars, so still and saint-like, 
 
 Looking downward from the skies. 
 
 Utter'd not, yet comprehended, 
 
 Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, 
 Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 
 
 Breathing from her lips of air. 
 
 O, though oft depress' d and lonely, 
 
 All my fears are laid aside, 
 If I but remember only 
 
 Such as these have lived and died ! 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE. 
 
 WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST. 
 
 Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
 
 Life is but an empty dream ! 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 
 And tilings are not what they seem. 
 
 Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 
 
 And the grave is not its goal ; 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul. 
 
 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
 
 Is our destined end or way; 
 But to act, that each to-morrow 
 
 Finds us farther than to-day. 
 
 Art is long, and time is fleeting, 
 
 And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
 
 Still like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave. 
 
 CC 
 
386 SCHOOLS OF ENGLISH POETEY. 
 
 In he world's broad field of battle. 
 
 In the bivouac of Life, 
 Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 
 
 Be a hero in the strife ! 
 
 Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! 
 
 Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
 Act, — act in the living Present ! 
 
 Heart within, and God o'erhead ! 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time ; 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 
 Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
 A forlorn and shipwreck' d brother, 
 
 Seeing, shall take heart again. 
 
 Let us, then, be up and doing, 
 
 With a heart for any fate ; 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labour and to wait. 
 
 This last expresses that vigorous and healthy view 
 of human action mingled with the tenderest touches 
 of feeling, which is so essentially the characteristic 
 of Longfellow. Of Pope and others of his immediate 
 school in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, 
 I have said but little. 
 
 This general view of the modern schools of English 
 poetry*may form an outline for those to fill in who 
 are interested in the pursuit of so important a study. 
 The poet's mind is ever the mirror of his day, and 
 he reflects in picturesque miniature or exaggeration 
 the forms which are ever passing before him ; but 
 while he does this he gives them a shape, a con- 
 sistency, a unity of plan which they frequently do not 
 possess in themselves. 
 
LECTUEE XII. 
 
 KING LEAR. 
 
 1. One great interest attached to the study of similarity 
 the past is the opportunity which it gives of seeing ° n ^ p r ^ 8t 
 that the mind of man is ever the same, despite all sent - 
 the changes of circumstances in the world, all national 
 distractions and the passage of centuries. It is the 
 same soil which produces the first result; and yields 
 the vast harvest for the final judgment ; with this 
 difference, that here it yields its slow and weakly 
 germs beneath the cold mist of early morning, 
 gives them a richer luxuriance and a more brilliant 
 lustre under the more unclouded ray of noon, or 
 there rears the sickly crop as beneath the softer hues 
 of moonlight. The ancient, mediseval, and modern 
 phases of history but reproduce similar results, or 
 manifest an advance in the same first growth. The 
 revered of icenturies, the minds of Socrates, Thales, or 
 Solon, find their likenesses now, and the tact and plan 
 c c 2 
 
388 KING LEAR. 
 
 which marked the energy and won the laurels of 
 Themistocles or Lysander, find their counterpart in 
 the struggles of the eighteenth century. Cleon's 
 mantle has fallen on many a modern republican ; and 
 the consecration of the drama is owed alike to 
 jEschylus, Calderon, and Shakspeare. But while 
 this is true and interesting, it is still more so that 
 the feelings and passions of man are the same, un- 
 altered by the shocks of circumstances and the ad- 
 vance of time. The indestructible portion of man 
 asserts its vitality and power amid the decay and 
 ruin of the works of man. The universality of 
 charity and love in all ages are as a light back- 
 ground from which the dark ruins of human plans 
 and works stand out. 
 
 The father and the wife were the same at the siege 
 of Troy as at that of Sebastopol ; woman's heroism 
 burst forth against the machinations of Ulysses or 
 Oreon, as at the sieges of Saragossa or Orleans. The 
 mother is the mother still, whether described by 
 Homer or Shakspeare, whether the figure is that of 
 Andromache or of Lady Constance. 
 
 The world and man are the same. We do not 
 see the deep tracery of our original nature wiped out 
 by the hand of time. The handwriting on the world 
 has ever been one, inscribed by the Creator to be in- 
 terpreted by the prophet. 
 
 With this view it is interesting to take some of the 
 instances of this similarity. I will suggaet, for ex- 
 ample, Old age, with its infirmities and faults, its 
 
KING LEAS. 389 
 
 reliefs and consolations, as shown by Homer, Sopho- 
 cles, Cicero, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and others, wit- 
 nesses, in the advancing race of man, to the truths 
 of our deep inward nature. 
 
 I will instance in the case of Lear. 
 
 2. King Lear is a splendid exaggeration of Lear an ex- 
 truth. It is consistent in every part. What Lear's 
 excess is to Cordelia's excess, Lear is to Cordelia. 
 It is truth to nature. We never, or at least 
 scarcely ever, see such extreme senility manifested by 
 rage, fickleness, madness, fondness, and folly as in 
 Lear ; yet we have constantly seen the germs of all, 
 and more, combined in one character. 
 
 There is no trait which Shakspeare gives Lear 
 which does not exist in most old men: yet such 
 an excess is rare. Only circumstances could bring 
 it out in common life, and the concurrence of those 
 circumstances is unusual. It is the dramatist's 
 licence to choose his own. We seldom see such cool 
 decision and unswerving resolution combined with 
 real affection and fidelity ; so much religion and so 
 sad an end as in Cordelia: still they all are some- 
 thing like what we see daily. The character is 
 not inconsistent. Groneril and Regan are exagge- The cha- 
 rations, but they speak to the world the " asides " « L ea r." 
 of many amongst us. The same irritability at old age 
 when hankering after the forms of the long past ; the 
 same ingratitude to those who have been much to us, 
 the same advantage taken of others, are matters of 
 constant occurrence. But we do not see them mani- 
 fested in such excess, or so signally and awfully pun- 
 
390 KING LEAR. 
 
 ished. Kent's fidelity is beautiful and true, scarcely 
 over-touched. Edgar's too is natural. Gloucester and 
 Edmund belong to the highly-coloured dreams of the 
 slumbers of exaggeration : but they, like Lear and 
 Cordelia, are the figures of troubled sleep remem- 
 bered and borrowed from the scenes of daily life. 
 
 Lear then is a splendid exaggeration of truth ; but 
 what is that truth ? Like all of Shakspeare's plays, 
 Lear pourtrays a leading feature of moral philosophy. 
 One great and powerful attribute is described and 
 brought out in vast strength by the force of contrast. 
 Ingratitude is the leading form of the tragedy, and 
 peers like a dark cloud in all its keenness and 
 force against the sunlight of the purest and noblest 
 gratitude. Kent and Gloucester bring out Goneril 
 and Regan. So Othello's suspicion is seen against 
 Desdemona's trusting love ; and Ophelia's real mad- 
 ness against Hamlet's feigned insanity. 
 
 But while this is Shakspeare's main object in Lear, 
 there are others equally striking. One of which 
 I would specially illustrate now. 
 The attri- 3. Lear expresses admirably the character of the 
 
 butesofold r . . J 
 
 age. old man. Old age has its virtues and vices, its force 
 
 and its weaknesses, and Lear embodies all, especially 
 the latter. "lama very foolish fond old man," 
 expresses the whole design. It is Lear's epitome of 
 himself, from the hour in which he resigned his crown 
 to the hour of his dying. 
 
 We have other depictments of old age. Priam, 
 
 * Laertes and OSdipus, Anchises, Sir Harry Lee and 
 
 Winterblossom, are all essentially old men, and 
 
KING LEAR. 391 
 
 show many of the traits of old age. The Vicar of 
 Wakefield is a stereotyped character of the patri- 
 arch ; and Shakspeare's King in AWs well that ends 
 well, is drawn with attention and skill. But none 
 surpass Lear. 
 
 4. The attributes of old age are many. 
 Decrepitude, and the desire to " crawl towards the 
 
 grave ;" the wish to drop the cares and coils of state ; 
 the changeableness and fickleness of senility; the 
 forgetfulness of the acts or impressions of the past 
 day or even hour ; the rapid oscillations of forgiveness 
 and anger, and anger and forgiveness; of violence 
 and calmness, of stillness and storm ; the easy crash 
 with which the roof of the temple of reason falls in ; 
 the dependence at last on the dear and still living 
 affections of earlier and younger days ; the sor- 
 rows of disappointed domestic love : these are the 
 features of the old man, all of which appear in 
 Lear. While in contrast no character of youth 
 could better have been poised against the King than 
 that of Cordelia. Her reserve against his garrulity ; 
 her self-command against his ungoverned violence ; 
 her calmness against his rage, and her forgiveness for 
 his injuries, her power to protect when he was help- 
 less, are lights which bring out his shadows ; colours 
 which complete the prism of life. 
 
 5. It is difficult to discriminate in King Lear be- Depend- 
 tween the two leading ideas, both of which seem to on°youthf e 
 have been prominent in Shakspeare's mind, the pecu- 
 liarities and faults of old age and the principle of 
 gratitude, though there is a point at which these 
 
392 KING LEAE. 
 
 converging lines meet in this drama. Gratitude is a 
 feeling very often blunted in the decline of life, and 
 around the kindliness and affection of those who in 
 youth strive to relieve the infirmities of age the 
 flashes of temper, caprice and irritability, with their 
 accustomed group of pallid forms, play and glance 
 and cluster. In this point of view the lines of King 
 Lear converge to a common centre. Amongst 
 other attributes of age, dependence on and fond- 
 ness for the young is very prominent, and that 
 in such a way as greatly to excite our surprise, 
 in cases where the old man's mind has once been 
 remarkable for vigour and energy, and that of 
 the younger person on whom he doats may have 
 been remarkable for lightness and folly. There can 
 hardly be a more striking illustration of this than in 
 the touching description of Priam's discourse with 
 Helen on the wall of Troy ; when she, the cause of 
 all her country's woes, was yet his support and 
 guide, going to gaze upon the warriors of Greece. 
 The same touching dependence of old age — once 
 strong and vigorous — upon youth, is also forcibly 
 displayed in Sophocles in his (Edipus Coloneus, in 
 which the old King in his wanderings is described as 
 being so dependent on his youthful guide. 
 
 One special .passage from King Lear shows how 
 strongly Shakspeare appreciated this truth, where 
 first Lear in his indignation declared what expec- 
 tation he had fixed on the relation that his daughter 
 was to occupy towards him in after life ; and again, 
 another effective instance is on Lear's departure to 
 
KING LEAR. 393 
 
 perish with Cordelia, where the king shows how he 
 depended on Cordelia for life and companionship in 
 his captivity. 
 
 Reg. I am glad to see your highness. 
 
 Lear. Regan, I think you are ; I know what reason 
 I have to think so : if thou should'st not be glad, 
 I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb, 
 Sepulch'ring an adultress.— O, are you free? [To Kent. 
 
 Some other time for that. — Beloved Regan, 
 Thy sister's naught : O Regan, she hath tied 
 Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here, — 
 
 [Points to his Heart. 
 I can scarce speak to thee ; thou'lt not believe, 
 Of how deprav'd a quality — O Regan ! 
 
 Reg. I pray you, sir, take patience ; I have hope, 
 You less know how to value her desert, 
 Than she to scant her duty. 
 
 Lear. Say, how is that ? 
 
 Reg. I cannot think, my sister in the least 
 Would fail her obligation : If, sir, perchance, 
 She have restrain'd the riots of your followers, 
 'Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end, 
 As clears her from all blame. 
 
 Lear. My curses on her ! 
 
 Reg. O, sir, you are old ; 
 
 Nature in you stands on the very verge 
 Of her confine : you should be rul'd, and led 
 By some discretion, that discerns your state 
 Better than you yourself : Therefore, I pray you, 
 That to our sister you do make return ; 
 
 Say, you have wrong'd her, sir. 
 
 • * * • 
 
 Lear. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames 
 Into her scornful eyes ! Infect her beauty, 
 You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun, 
 To fall and blast her pride ! 
 
 Reg. O the blest gods ! 
 
 So will you wish on me, when the rash mood's on. 
 
 Lear. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse ; 
 Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give 
 Thee o'er to harshness ; her eyes are fierce, but thine 
 Do comfort, and not burn : 'Tis not in thee 
 To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train, 
 
394 KING LEAR. 
 
 To bandy hasty words,'to scant my sizes, 
 And, in conclusion, t*K>ppose the bolt 
 Against my coming in : thou better know'st 
 The offices of nature, bond of childhood, 
 Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude ; 
 Thy half o'the kingdom hast thou not forgot, 
 Wherein I thee endow'd. 
 
 The above-quoted speech to Regan shows how, when 
 beaten from one refuge, old age will betake itself to 
 another. The old man delights in the sunny cheer- 
 fulness of the young. When the warlike intrigues of 
 Joab, the martial dignity of Abner, the music of his 
 harp, and the melody of the sacred song, when even 
 the queenly dignity of Bathsheba had scarcely any 
 attractions left for the aged king of Israel, David 
 found delight in Abishag, the young virgin. 
 
 It is as much part of our nature to delight in contra- 
 dictories as in assimilations to ourselves. The appre- 
 ciation of this tends to throw light on an error fre- 
 quently made ; men are bent on imagining that it shows 
 a perversion in nature if contradictories in disposi- 
 tion appear to agree. The fact is that we often as 
 much take pleasure in finding contraries and foils for 
 ourselves as we do in finding objects of sympathy. So 
 it frequently happens that the man chooses for the 
 partner of his life one unlike himself, and that old 
 age delights really more in the freshness, energy, and 
 vivacity of the young with whose to-morrow it is 
 to have no part, than in the aged, the experienced, 
 and the disciplined who shared with him his yester- 
 day, and with him is about to pass away from the 
 crowded stage of human circumstance. 
 
KING LEAH. 395 
 
 While old age is petulant and ungrateful, it is Mistaken 
 too rapid in its judgments, and constantly deceived in tiona of old 
 its decisions. Like the child who, beaten by the hand age ' 
 of one, nestles in the bosom of another whose smile 
 may encourage and whose caress may entice, and at 
 the first rough word will seek another refuge, so men, 
 in their second childhood, if repelled by an adverse 
 look, will imagine that they will find an infallible 
 protection in the kindness of another. The long 
 lessons of the uncertain nature of human affections 
 learnt in the school of mid-life are forgotten ; the im- 
 pressions of old days alone are remembered ; and the 
 result in the old man is much what it is in the child, 
 though the cause that made the latter unsuspicious 
 was the morning mist which shrouded the future of 
 its pathway, while over the past road of the former 
 the shades of twilight have deepened into night. The 
 one forgets what the other never had — experience. 
 
 It is with feelings like these that Lear is described 
 as flying, first to Groneril, and then, with such cer- 
 tain expectation, to Began. The impressions on 
 life of the affectionate, the kindly, and the true, have 
 left their names written in characters of fire, in- 
 scribed in the days of youth and living on till second 
 childhood. Some sweet and glowing memory of 
 Began's early tenderness lingered on the mind of 
 Lear, and he flew to Eegan's bosom, as to, if not an 
 accustomed, a certain refuge. But he was mistaken, 
 Began repelled him as Goneril had done before. 
 
 Lear. Who stock'd my servant ? Regan, I have good hope 
 Thou didst not know of t.— Who comes here ? 0, heavens, 
 
396 KING LEAE. 
 
 Enter Goneb.il. 
 
 If you do love old men, if your sweet sway 
 
 Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, 
 
 Make it your cause ; send down, and take my part ! — 
 
 Art not asham'd to look upon this beard ? — [To Gonebil. 
 
 O, Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand ? 
 
 Gon. Why not by the hand, sir ? How have I offended ? 
 All's not offence, that indiscretion finds, 
 And dotage terms so. 
 
 Lear. O, sides, you are too tough ! 
 
 Will you yet hold. — How came my man i'the stocks ? 
 
 Corn. I set him there, sir : but his own disorders 
 Deserv'd much less advancement. 
 
 Lear. You! did you? 
 
 Reg. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. 
 If, till the expiration of your month, 
 You will return and sojourn with my sister, 
 Dismissing half your train, come then to me ; 
 I am now from home, and out of that provision 
 Which shall be needful for your entertainment. 
 
 Lear. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd ? 
 No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose 
 To wage against the enmity o'the air ; 
 To be a comrade with a wolf and owl, — 
 Necessity's sharp pinch ! — Return with her ? 
 Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took 
 Our youngest born, I could as well be brought 
 To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg 
 To keep base life afoot : — Return with her ? 
 Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter 
 To this detested groom. [Looking on the Steward. 
 
 Gon. At your choice, sir. 
 
 Lear. I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad ; 
 I will not trouble thee, my child ; farewell : 
 We'll no more meet, no more see one another : — 
 But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter ; 
 Or, rather, a disease that's in my flesh, 
 Which I must needs call mine : thou art a boil, 
 A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, 
 In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee ; 
 Let shame come when it will, I do not call it : 
 I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot, 
 Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove : 
 
KING LEAR. 397 
 
 Mend, when thou canst ; be better, at thy leisure : 
 I can be patient ; I can stay with Regan, 
 I, and my hundred knights. 
 
 Reg- Not altogether so, sir ; 
 
 I look'd not for you yet, nor am provided 
 For your fit welcome : Give ear, sir, to my sister ; 
 For those that mingle reason with your passion, 
 Must be content to think you old, and so — 
 But she knows what she does. 
 
 Lear. Is this well spoken now ? 
 
 Reg. I dare avouch it, sir : What, fifty followers ? 
 Is it not well ? What should you need of more ? 
 Yea, or so many ? sith that both charge and danger 
 Speak 'gainst so great a number ? How, in one house, 
 Should many people, under two commands, 
 Hold amity ? 'Tig hard : almost impossible. 
 
 6. Few things can be more affecting than that scene Bodings of 
 where both his daughters turned against their fond 
 old father. The concluding words of Lear, on learn- 
 ing that Regan too had turned against him, are full 
 of the deepest pathos; as leaning on the fool, his 
 constant companion, he turned and said, " Oh, fool, 
 I shall go mad!" And here we must be struck, in 
 passing, with that characteristic of age, which leads 
 it to anticipate the great breakrup of its powers. It 
 has come to the verge of those energies which have 
 so long been showing a tendency to dissolve. And 
 as a man becomes conscious of the approach of 
 death by some inward boding, or some inexplicable 
 impression that the physical powers are becoming 
 weaker in their grasp of the principle of life ; so the 
 mind becomes conscious that it is approaching the 
 extremity of its own power and energy. The con- 
 viction of having any of our faculties in full force is a 
 very trustworthy sign of their health and vigour. 
 
398 KING LEAK. 
 
 When they really are breaking up, the internal con- 
 viction of it is a safe and trustworthy guide. Like that 
 wild bird of the evening, which, we are told, hovers 
 over the solitude of the wold, and on seeing the 
 passing traveller, sets up its boding shriek and flits 
 before him, striving to attract his notice, until it 
 droops its restless wing over the carrion which rots 
 beneath the twilight, so the spectre of dissolution 
 seems to flit uncertainly before the consciousness of 
 the aged, and strives to attract attention to the ap- 
 proach of decay. The river that we follow under the 
 shadows of evening, when beneath the gathering shade 
 we are unable to observe its depth with the eye, 
 yet tells us by the altered sounds of its waters 
 that its depth is shallower, and that it is approach- 
 ing its quiet exit to the deep : so when no ascer- 
 tained power of observation can be made available, 
 an intuitive conviction tells the aged that their powers 
 are becoming shallower, and that the stream of life is 
 rushing to the boundless deep of its eternal future. 
 Circumstance, disappointment, and decay, alike serve 
 to form the tones of that intuitive announcement ; 
 and the old man, in the moment of the bitterness of 
 his disappointment, turns round to the companion of 
 his life with Lear's complaint, " I shall go mad." In 
 the case of Lear the presentiment became awfully 
 verified, and the curtain draws up in' the next scene 
 over the common, and before the storm whose pitiless 
 fury was beating on the white hairs of the " foolish 
 fond old man." The boding had become a reality, 
 the impression* had become a substance ; and under 
 
KING LEAR. 399 
 
 the immediate influence of disappointment and trou- 
 ble the powers of old age had broken up, and Lear 
 had " gone mad." In connexion with his pathetic an- 
 nouncement of this expectation to the fool, read the 
 following passages, which describe the fulfilment of 
 the prediction. 
 
 Lear. Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks ! rage ! blow ! 
 You cataracts, and hurricanoes, spout 
 Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks ! 
 You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, 
 Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunder-bolts, 
 Singe my white head ! And thou, all-shaking thunder, 
 Strike flat the thick rotundity o'the world ! 
 Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, 
 That make ingrateful man ! 
 
 Fool. O, nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this 
 rain-water out o'door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' bless- 
 ing ; here's a night pities neither wise men nor fools. 
 
 Lear. Rumble thy bellyfull ! Spit, fire ! spout, rain ! 
 Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters : 
 I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness, 
 I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, 
 You owe me no subscription ; why then let fall 
 Your horrible pleasure ; here I stand, your slave, 
 A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man : — 
 But yet I call you servile ministers, 
 ' That have with two pernicious daughters join'd 
 Your high-engender'd battles, 'gainst a head 
 So old and white as this. O ! O ! 'tis foul ! 
 
 Fool. He that has a house to put his head in, has a good head-piece. 
 The cod-piece that will house, 
 
 Before the head has any, 
 The head and he shall louse ; — 
 
 So beggars marry many. 
 The man that makes his toe 
 
 What he his heart should make, 
 Shall of a corn cry woe, 
 And turn his sleep to wake. 
 for there was never yet fair woman, but she made mouths in a glass. 
 
400 KING LEAK. 
 
 Enter Kent. 
 Lear. No, I will be the pattern of all patience, I will say nothing. 
 Kent. Who's there ? 
 
 Fool. Marry, Here's grace, and a cod-piece ; that's a wise man, and 
 a fool. 
 
 Kent. Alas, sir^ are you here? things that love night, 
 Love not such nights as these ; the wrathful skies 
 Gallow the very wanderers of the dark, 
 And make them keep their caves : Since I was man, 
 Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, 
 Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never 
 Remember to have heard : man's nature cannot carry 
 The affliction, nor the fear. 
 * Lear- Let the great gods, 
 
 That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, 
 Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, 
 That hast within thee undivulged crimes, 
 Unwhipp'd of justice : Hide thee, thou bloody hand ; 
 Thou perjur'd, and thou simular man of virtue 
 That art incestuous : Caitiff, to pieces shake, 
 That under covert and convenient seeming 
 Hast practis'd on man's life ! — Close pent-up guilts, 
 Rive your concealing continents, and cry 
 These dreadful summoners grace. — I am a man, 
 More sinn'd against, than sinning. 
 
 Kent. Alack, bare-headed ! 
 
 Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel ; 
 Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest ; 
 Repose you there : while I to this hard house, 
 (More hard than is the stone whereof 'tis rais'd ; 
 Which even but now, demanding after you, 
 Denied me to come in,) return, and force 
 Their scanted courtesy. 
 
 Lear. My wits begin to turn. 
 
 Old age 7. But if old age is conscious of the approaching 
 
 youth, decay of its powers, in its second childhood it lives 
 
 its life again in its return to the recollections and 
 
 vivid impressions of past days; it spends the days 
 
 gone by once more in recollection and association, 
 
KING LEAR. 401 
 
 and camps amidst their scenes with a purity and a 
 joy which it never knew when it actually sojourned 
 amongst them. The scenes that exist again in re- 
 collections retain the lustre of the past and only 
 lose the counterbalancing disadvantages. So the 
 grandsire delights in his children's children, and re- 
 enacts the parent's life without its troubles and 
 anxieties. Few things are more beautiful in life than 
 the way in which an old man is able to suit himself 
 to the cheerfulness of children. It may in somg 
 cases be that the weaker mind can no longer grasp 
 higher or deeper things; but very often it is that 
 that cloud which rose so soon after sunrise in the 
 morning of life, and brooded heavily over its me- 
 ridian, has been entirely drawn up and dispersed be- 
 fore the sunset ; and in the evening of life the soul's 
 sky is serene and cloudless, giving to the spirit a 
 foretaste of that freedom and peace which it is about 
 to inherit for ever. The two parts of life that are in- 
 teresting are youth and old age — middle life has but 
 few charms. And when old age not only shows the 
 power, when freed from the cares of life, to participate 
 in the cheerfulness of youth, but also flies to it as a 
 refuge, it rises like some hoar mountain, beautiful 
 with the colour of the herbage and flowers of spring, 
 spreading themselves coyly along its rudest furrows. 
 In illustration of this, take the following exquisite 
 passage expressive of Lear's feeling towards Cor- 
 delia : — 
 
 Cor. We are not the first, 
 
 Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst. 
 
 D d 
 
402 KING LEAR. 
 
 For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down ; 
 
 Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. — 
 
 Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters ? 
 
 Lear. No, no, no, no ! Come, let's away to prison : 
 We two alone will sing like birds i'the cage : 
 When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, 
 And ask of thee forgiveness : So we'll live, 
 And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh 
 At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues 
 Talk of court news ; and we'll talk with them too, — 
 Who loses, and who wins ; who's in, who's out ; — 
 And take upon us the mystery of things, 
 As if we were God's spies : And we'll wear out, 
 In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, 
 •That ebb and flow by the moon. 
 
 Edm. Take them away. 
 
 Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, 
 The gods themselves throw incense.. Have I caught thee ? 
 He that parts us, shall bring a brand from heaven, 
 And fire us hence, like foxes. Wipe thine eyes ; 
 The goujeers shall devour them, flesh and fell, 
 Ere they shall make us weep : we'll see them starve first. 
 Come. [Exeunt Lear and Cordelia, guarded. 
 
 It would be a matter of much interest to show the 
 similarity of treatment which " old age" has received 
 from all those who have treated it with thought and 
 care, and especially the writers to whom I referred 
 above. 
 
 That study at least reminds us of this, man is the 
 same ; and that which gives force, truth, and reality 
 to the poet or the historian is the accurate study and 
 delineation of human life. 
 
WORKS BY REV. EDWARD MONRO. 
 
 PAROCHIAL WORK. 
 
 SERMONS ON THE MINISTRY. 
 
 THE PARISH : a Poem. 
 
 . DAILY STUDIES DURING LENT. 
 
 PLAIN SERMONS ON THE BOOK OF COMMON 
 PRAYER. 
 
 REASONS EOR REMAINING- IN THE ENGLISH 
 CHURCH, Ac. 
 
 [Published by J. H. Parker and Son.] " 
 
 SACRED ALLEGORIES: 
 The Dark Riyeb. 
 The Vast Aemt. 
 The Combatants. 
 The Reyellebs, &c. 
 The Jottbney Home. 
 
 PRACTICAL SERMONS ON THE CHARACTERS 
 OP THE OLD TESTAMENT. 2 vols. ♦ 
 
 HARRY AND ARCHIE. 
 
 STORIES OP COTTAGERS. 
 
 WALTER THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
WORKS BY REV. EDWAED. MONRO. 
 
 BASIL THE SCHOOLBOY. 
 
 LEONARD AND DENNIS : a Tale of the "War. 
 
 PARISH TEACTS : 
 
 "Waoteeiitg "Willie. 
 Old Robert G-ray. 
 Baptismal Service. 
 Midsummer Eve. 
 
 THE CHUECH AND THE MILLION. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN STUDENT. A Second Edition 
 preparing. 
 
 PEACTICAL SEEMONS ON THE CHAEACTERS 
 OE THE OLD TESTAMENT. A Third Volume- 
 just ready. 
 
 [Published by Masters.] 
 
 MANUAL AND SEEMONS EOE THE WAR. 
 
 PAROCHIAL PAPERS. 
 
 PAROCHIAL LECTURES ON SHAKSPEARE, 
 HISTORY, Ac. (Just ready) 
 
 [Published by Rivingtons.] 
 
 % In course of preparation. 
 
 DAILY READINGS for ADVENT and CHRISTMAS, 
 with the view of bringing specially before the mind 
 the Opinions and "Writings of the Church with regard 
 to our Blessed Lord's Second Advent. . ,