In the world of Shakspeare we breathe freely. We feel ourselves in a healthy moral atmosphere, where wrong is wrong and right is right. These histories show us the line of suffering which runs parallel with the line of glory, the mutability of earthly greatness, the power of conscience, and the retribution which follow the footsteps of crime-"That retribution which walks with a foot of velvet and strikes with a hand of steel.' It has been said that Shakspeare painted human nature as he saw it in his own age; but his creations are untouched by time. He depicted the great passions more than the manners of the world. Manners are temporary, passions eternal. The customs and circumstances of life change; but men and their feelings remain. Therefore, his men and women are the people of today, and will ever be so, as long as "the same heart beats in every human breast." The storms of Time, which washes away the sand, clay, and rubbish of other poets, break their billows in vain on the adamantine rock of Shakspeare. We have not pointed out where in these plays there are deviations from the literal truth of History. As an artist, Shakspeare had sometimes to conform men to circumstances, and circumstances to men. Although he made use of the highest historical authorities of his time, and, perhaps, had access to records that are now lost to us, yet, it is probable that he was mistaken in some of his conceptions of character, and wrong sometimes in his judgments. But he never violates the internal, essential truth, so that the moral teaching and significance of these historical events remain unaltered.

These historical plays show us something of the sentiments, manners, amusements, and the poetical life of the nation in their author's time. It is the poet rather than the historian who is the exponent of the national life. The mere

history of the wars and of the public acts of a people, which fill the pages of the ordinary historian represent one phase, and that but a trivial and incomplete one of their existence; the amusements and recreations, the literary and artistic tastes represent another, the latter reflect the passions, prejudices, the average feeling and the universal tone of society. Shakspeare had to write for the amusement of play-goers, that which the multitude would listen to, otherwise his productions would not have been possible, for they who "live to please must please to live." But he wrote up to their taste, and turned his great artistic faculty to the highest purpose, the enobling and purifying of the national drama. Though he wrote here and there a line it might have been well to blot, yet he did not tamper with truth or pander to vice, nor revel in filth like some of his contemporaries. It is to Shakspeare that we mainly owe the preservation of the British drama.

What we have said of Shakspeare is true also of every great poet, that he is not only a creator but an interpreter as well; he gives us not only his own individual experience, but appropriates to himself the world, and expresses all the varieties of its outward and inward life. Therefore the poet and the historian ought to be studied together. No ancient historians have given us such glimpses into the actual life of their times, as the Greek and Latin poets-Homer, Aristophanes, Theocritus, and the great tragic poets among the former; Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Lucretius among the latter. Through their pages we are introduced into the bustling active life of the camp, the streets, the market, the law courts, and the pastoral life of the country, with the religion, the philosophy, and the habits of society as they were. Had it not been for these poets, we should have known comparatively little of the real life of these

great nations. Look again at the period of Chaucer, the latter part of the 14th and the earlier part of the 15th centuries. What chronicler or historian has left us such vivid delineations of the life of these times as we see in the Canterbury Tales? We are able, as it were, to shake hands and to make a personal acquaintance with our ancestors across five centuries. of time. Poetry is the handmaid of history, the reproducing imagination of the poet is as necessary, as the realistic understanding of the historian. Before studying these historical plays make the experiment of reading over Hume's, or any other historian's account of the period that Shakspeare has treated, then read and note the effect and lasting impressions which these immortal works produce upon the mind. We say this, not in disparagement of the historian, but rather to unite him with the poet. In the short space of a single lecture it would be presumptuous for us to pretend to have said anything about Shakspeare, that has not been said before. Though only the echo of an echo, if we shall help to inspire some interest in the study of the poet-historian, we shall not have uttered a sound in vain. And in conclusion, we say proudly, with Carlyle, "That the noblest thing we men of England have produced has been this Shakspeare."

writings of our greatest