And in King Henry IV. 1st Part, Palestine is

described as

Those holy fields,

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,

Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed

For our advantage on the bitter cross. Act i. Sc. I. It is remarkable, too, how fully our poet recognized the glorious truth, which too many, alas! have endeavoured to obscure, viz. that Redemption is no partial gift; that as the disease, which it was mercifully designed to cure, is universal, so the application of the remedy is universal also according to the teaching of S. Paul, that

:

As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. Rom. v. 18 and 12.

The universality of the disease is indicated in Measure for Measure, where the virtuous Isabella thus speaks to Angelo, the wicked Lord Deputy, in the Duke's absence :

Alas! Alas!

Why, all the souls that * are, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O think on that;

And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

* The common reading is 'were,' which is interpreted to refer to Adam and Eve; but I agree with Warburton in substituting ‘are.' To confine the meaning to Adam and Eve, appears to me to render what follows illogical.

The critics-Warburton, Johnson, Malone, and Holt White-have severally offered different explanations of these last words; but I am inclined to think they have all missed the poet's meaning. 'Like man new made,' means, I believe, like man redeemed,* like the redemption of man; and the words are to be understood as put, per epexegesin, in reference to the entire clause in the preceding line. Thus, Isabella says in effect :-' Your merciful act will be like the mercy shown in the redemption of the world, whereby mankind, lost and condemned to death (as her brother Claudio was), are restored to life.' And so the universality of the remedy will also be implied in those words, as it is plainly stated in these which follow, from King Henry VI. 2nd Part:

Now, by the death of HIM that died for all!

Act i. Sc. I.

This all-important subject-the extent of evil, and its cure-will receive further elucidation in the next and subsequent sections.

SECT. 4. Of Human Life, and of The World'

It was worthy of the position which Wolsey had held in church and state, that his voice should be made the instrument, at the close of his career, to recommend, in a few words, all the great points of

*

Young, in The Complaint, Night iv., speaks of man' re-made

for redeemed."

the highest Christian morality, however he himself had fallen short in his own practice of them. I refer to the speech in which he gave his final charge to Cromwell:

Love thyself last. Cherish those hearts that hate* thee.
Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not.

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy COUNTRY'S,
THY GOD'S, AND TRUTH'S; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.

King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Here we have duty to God, to our neighbour, to our country; renunciation of self; love of enemies; the practical study of truth, of justice, of integrity, of peaceableness; all these strung together like so many pearls upon one thread, in a manner that may remind us of S. Paul's delineation of charity, or of the summaries of moral duty, which we read in the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and in the concluding chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians.

Nor was it less worthy of the highest officer in a king's household, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius, that in sending forth his son into the world he should thus give him lessons for life; lessons which again may remind us of those given to their respective sons, under circumstances more or less similar,

*

Warburton proposed to read 'wait,' for reasons which rightly, I think, appeared unsatisfactory to Steevens.

by King James, by Sir Walter Raleigh, by Lord Burleigh, by the Earl of Strafford,* and to his nephew, afterwards Lord Camelford, by the Earl of Chatham :

There—my blessing† with you ;—–

[Laying his hand upon Laertes' head.]

And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

!

Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: TO THINE own self be TRUE;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell;—my blessing season this in thee!

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3.

In the foregoing injunction respecting hearing and speaking, especially when taken in connection with one which I have not quoted, viz.

Beware of entrance to a quarrel-(See below, App. p. 366.)

See K. James' works, and a collection entitled Practical Wisdom, or the Manual of Life, published in 1824.

† See below, Sect. 8.

+ Opinion.

§ In one of the lines here omitted ( For the apparel, &c.') our poet probably had in view Ecclesiasticus xix. 30, quoted by Mr. Todd.

we may fancy that we hear an echo to the precepts of S. James:

Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. James i. 19.

And it would be easy to produce Scriptural parallels to other parts of the same passage, especially from the Book of Proverbs; but in so doing I should be losing sight of the object which I have now more immediately in hand. The design of this section is not to enter into the details, of which human life and Christian duty are made up, but to prepare the way for entering upon such details in the sections that are to follow. A general view has been taken of the subject proposed; and now, before we proceed further into particulars, it will be necessary to notice some abstruser points which lie at the root of all moral action for us Christians; such as the corruption of nature, already touched upon in the last section; the need of grace; and the theory of the formation of moral habits: and then to say something of the world,' and of life, as it is seen at different stages and in several conditions; and of the duty of preserving the gift which God has given us.

How beautiful is the description, in Winter's Tale, given by Polixenes, of the innocent boyhood of himself and Leontes, which, with poetical exaggeration, he represents to have been free