The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

in the wind. My, best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: Misery a

posed in this age, make the realization of it; an invention which proposes to substitute for the languishing feeble motion which is involved in the study of books-the kind of book

He that will not work, neither shall he eat of this food. 'Up to the mountains,' for this is hunter's language, 'and he that strikes the venison first shall be lord of this feast.' It is an invention whereby the author will remedy for himself the complaint, that life is short, and art is long; whereby he will 'outstretch his span,' and make over, not his learning only but his living to the

and the sharp eye of the reviewer himself, is it not an ingenuity which serves after all to little purpose, which indeed defeats its own design? No, by no means. That disguise which was at first a necessity, has become the instrument of his power. It is that broad I of his, that I myself, with which he still takes all the world; it is that single, many-sided, vivacious, historical impersonation, that ideal impersonation of the individual human nature as it is-not as it should be-with all its 'weaved-up follies ravelled out,' with all its before unconfessed actualities, its infinite absurdities and contradictions, so boldly

chery, even now, for those who have unwound his clues, and traversed his labyrinths to the heart of his mystery,-for those who have penetrated to the chamber of his inner school, to come out and blab a secret with which he still works so potently; insensibly to

ch will only detect the mind that knows him, and his purposes already. The enigmatical form of the inculcation is the device whereby that mind will be compelled to follow his track, to think for itself his thoughts again, to possess itself of the inmost secret of his intention; for it

eserved for other modes of impression,-if the fact, that a new and infinitely artistic mode of writing, burying the secrets of philosophy in the most careless forms of the vulgar and popular discourse, did, in this instanc

e no necessity for accumulating any further evidence on this point. A passage or two more, at least, will suffice to put that beyond question. The extract

Be on what side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to jostle principles that are too manifest to be disputed; and yet, 'tis my notion, in public affairs [hear], there is no government so ill, provided it be ancient, and has been constant, that is not better than change and alteration. Our manners are infinitely corrupted, and wonderfully incline to grow worse: of our laws and customs, there are many that are barbarous and monstrous: nevertheless, by reason of the difficul

hers, we think that if we had turned our thoughts that way, we should ourselves have found it out as well as they. Knowledge, style, and such parts as we see in other works, we are readily aware if they excel our own; but for the simple products of the understanding, every one thinks he could have found out the like, and is hardly sensible of the weight and difficulty, unless-and then with much ado-in an extreme and incomparable distance; and whoever should be able clearly to discern the height of another's judgment, would be also able to raise his own to the same pitch; so that this is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to expect very little praise, a kind of composition of small repute. And, besides, for whom do you write?'-for he is merely meeting this common sense. His object is merely to make his reader confess, 'That was just what I was about to say, it was just my thought; and if I did not express it

ect of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION, and among other remarks, somewhat too far in advance of his time, he has let fall, by chance, such passages as these, which, of course, he stands ready to recall again in case any one is offended. ('These words are not mine, Hamlet.' 'Nor mine now.') 'To kill men, a clear and shining light is required, and our life is too real and essential, to warrant these supernatural and fantastic accidents.' 'After all 'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price to cause a man to be roasted alive upon them.' He does not look up at all, after making this accidental remark; for he is too much occupied with a very curious story, which happens to come into his head at that

ee;-thought is

are not always the most commodious to man; he is of too wild a composition. "We speak of all things by precept and resolution," he continues, returning again to this covert question of toleration, and Lord Bacon complains also that that is the method in his meridian. They make me hate things that are likely, when they impose them on me for infallibl

ches in regard to ciphers, and other questions not less interesting at that time;-there was a youth in France, whose family name was also English, living there with his eyes wide open, a youth who had found occasion to invent a cipher of his own even then, into whose hands that publication might well have fallen on its first appearance, and one on whose mind it might very naturally have made the impression here recorded. But let us return to the story.]-'I saw in my younger days, a report of a process, that Corras, a counsellor of Thoulouse, put in print, of a strange accident of two men, who presented themselves the one for the other. I remember, and I hardly remember anything else, that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful, and so far exceeding both our knowledge and his who was the judge, that I thought it a very bold sentence that conde

the chapter in which it is intimated that considering the natural human liability to error, a little more room for correction of blunders, a little larger chance of arriving at the common truth, a little more chance for growth and advancement in learning, would, perhaps, on the whole, be likely to conduce to the human welfare, instead of sealing up the human advancement for ever, with axe and cord and stake and rack, within the limits of doctrines which may have been, perhaps, the very wisest, the most learned, of which the world was capable, at the time when their form was determine

ung candidate for advancement was indiscreet enough to exhibit prematurely there, was made use of so successfully to his disadvantage, that for years his practical abilities were held in suspicion on that very account, as he complains. The reputation of a Philosopher in those days was quite as much as this legal practitioner was willing to undertake for his part. That of a Poet might have proved still more uncomfortable, and more difficult to sustain. His claim to a place in the management of affairs would not have been advanced by it, in the eyes of those old statesmen, whose favour he had to propitiate. However, he was happily relieved from any suspicion of that sort. If those paraphrases of the Psalms for which he chose to make himself responsible,-if those Hebrew melodies of his did not do the business

use, or of any applause but that of reason and conscience; sustaining himself with quotations from the Stoics, whose doctrines on this point he assumes as the precepts of a true and natural philosophy; and among others the following passage was quoted:-[Taken from an epistle of Seneca, but including a quotation from a letter of Epicurus, on the same subject.]-'Remember him who being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few persons, replied, "A few are enough for me. I have enough with one, I have enough with never a one." He said true; yourself and a companion are theatre enough to one another, or you to yourself. Let us be to you the whole people, and the w

thrown away.'-Was it not well becoming two consuls of Rome, sovereign magistrates of the republic, that commanded the world, to spend their time in patching up elegant missives, in order to gain the reputation of being well versed in their own mother tongue? What could a pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, who got his living by it? If the acts of Xenophon and Caesar had not far transcended their eloquence, I don't be

as alii, coe

o, et fulgentia

imperio pop

common-place book throughout in the most shameless and unconscionable manner. 'Rack his style, Madam, rack his style?' he said to Queen Elizabeth, as he tells us, when she consulted him-he being then of her counsel learned, in the case of Dr. Hayward, charged with having written 'the book of the deposing of Richard the Second, and the coming in of Henry the Fourth,' and sent to the Tower for that offence. The queen was eager for a different kind of advice. Racking an author's book did not appear to her coarse sensibilities, perfectly unconscious of the delicacy of an author's susceptibilities, a process in itself sufficiently murderous to satisfy her revenge. There must be some flesh and blood in the business before ever she could understand it. She wanted to have 'the question' put to that gentleman as to his meaning in the obscure passages in that work under the most impressive circumstances; and Mr. Bacon, himself an author, being of her counsel learned, was requested to make out a case of treason for her; and wishes from such a source were understood to be commands in those days. Now it happened that one of the managers and actors at the Globe Theatre, who was at t

tion of republics or other forms of government-if they cannot consent on that account to relinquish altogether the company of the Muses, must at least so far respect the prevailing opinion on that point, as to be able to sacrifi

es Terence himself confesses as much, and I should take it ill in any one that would dispossess me of that belief.' For, as he says in another place, in a certain deeply disguised dedication which he makes of the work of a friend, a poet, whose early death he greatly lamented, and whom he is 'determined,' as he says, 'to revive and raise again to life if he can:' 'As we often judge of the greater by the less, and as the very pastimes of great men give an honourable idea to the clear-sighted of the source from which they spring, I hope you will,

do, a baseness to write fair: but no

ut speaking well. The sages tell us, that as to what concerns knowledge there is nothing but philosophy, and as to what concerns effects nothing but virtue, that is generally proper to all degrees and orders. There is something like this in these two other philosophers, for they also promise ETERNITY to the letters they write to their friends, but 'tis after another manner, and by accommodating themselves for a good end to the vanity of another; for they write to them that if the concern of making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yet detain them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear the solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them; let them never trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have credit enough with posterity to assure them that, were there nothing else but the letters thus writ to them, those letters will render their names as known and famous as their own public actions themselves could do. [And that-that is the key to the correspondence between two other philosophers enigmatically alluded to here.] And besides this difference,' for it is 'these two other philosophers,' and not Pliny and Cicero, and not Seneca and Epicurus alone, that we talk of here, 'and besides this diff