appalling ferocity. His wit and sarcasm were clear, bright, and sharp, like lightning, which illumes only to smite and blast. He had no faith; he despised mankind and poured scorn and contempt upon his victims. He could dissemble, play the hypocrite, quote "odd old ends stolen forth of Holy Writ,” and seemed a saint when most he played the devil. In the end, when surrounded by phantoms and realities, the cursed companionship of his own thoughts; when in his baffled sleep and tumultuous dreams he rises and shakes off the terrible shapes that infested his fiend-haunted soul,-it is only then that there is anything like heroism in his nature, or that his conscience afflicts him. What an awful abyss of despair is in these words!—

"There is no creature loves me,

And if I die no soul will pity me."

The poor erect 800 even he had

Robes

In history we hardly know of any tyrant so friendless. Nero's old nurse was faithful to him to the end, and strewed flowers on his tomb. squalid wretch Marat, who proposed to gibbets for the regeneration of France, his friends, who shed tears over his grave. pierre's poor landlord, in the Rue St. Honoré, loved him, and his brother died for him; but Richard is himself alone. After the death of Richard III the white and red roses were united by the accession of Henry VII and his marriage with Elizabeth of York, "the two succeeders of each Royal House," and peace was restored between the contending parties. 'King Henry VIII' is the last of the series of

English historical plays, of which we can only give a very brief notice. This drama was written partly by Shakspeare and partly by Fletcher. It is essentially a court drama. The actors are the supreme rulers, pontiffs, and ministers of State. The scenes are laid in the precincts of the court and palace. Shakspeare does not make Henry VIII the Bluebeard monarch, or the hero which some historians have done. He is perhaps more of a stage king than an historical figure. He is choleric, self-willed, and voluptuous. The King of the Reformation is hardly discernible in him; and the greatest epoch in England's history is scarcely alluded to by the poet. Shakspeare's character of Queen Katharine is drawn from history. She is the noblest woman that Shakspeare has portrayed in these historical dramas. Her celebrated speech for her defence is but a paraphrase of her own words from Holinshed. When cast off and spurned by her brutal royal consort-" a jewel that had hung for twenty years about his neck, yet never lost her lustre," she still retains her love as a faithful and devoted wife, and remained a queen in spirit to the end. How beautifully and poetically Shakspeare has described her fate in these words!

Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,

No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me

Almost no grave allow'd me; like the lily,

That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.”

What can be more affecting than her solicitude for a good name after her death?

"When I am dead, good wench,

Let me be us'd with honour; strew me over
With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm me,
Then lay me forth; although unqueen'd, yet like
A Queen, and daughter to a King, inter me."

Shakspeare has painted his women nearer perfection than his men. It has been said that he has no heroes, but only heroines. Nearly all his great characters are made better by the influence of women. They are not mere poetical abstractions; with few exceptions, they are the highest ideals of womanhood-Ophelia, Rosalind, Juliet, Viola, Miranda, Desdemona, Portia, Isabella, Cordelia, Imogen, Hermione, etc. Their very names call up their natures and breathe a poetical fragrance around them. Although the life-blood of immortal poetry flows in their veins, yet they are thoroughly domesticated on the earth, and make excellent maidens, lovers, wives, and mothers. Charles Lamb once told a friend that he would any day marry, old as he was, if he could only find one of Shakspeare's ideal women.

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

VOL. XXIV.

16

latter reflect the passions, prejudices, the average feeling, and the universal tone of society. Shakspeare had to write for the amusement of playgoers, 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 ennobling 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, nor pander to vice, nor revel in filth, like some of his contemporaries, who, even in their purity, are obscene. 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 "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 to-day, and will ever be so, as long as the "same heart beats in every human breast.' human breast." We cannot find in Shakspeare's writings that he belonged to any creed, sect, or party. He took a universal and equal view of human nature, and looked at the world through

all human eyes. Coleridge, quoting from a Greek author, called him "a myriad-minded man." We cannot identify him with any of his characters. He has been compared to one of the Arabian dervishes in the Eastern tales, of whom we read that he had the power to throw his soul into the body of another man, so as to become possessed of his sentiments and passions by adopting his identity. But Shakspeare did not project himself into the souls of others; he included those natures in himself. If any of his characters are inspired with life, they first of all inspired him, and he seemed as much under their influence as Goethe when he said, "I feel myself surrounded, nay, besieged, by all the spirits I ever conjured up." It is with feelings of primeval awe and wonder, free from theological trammels, that he approaches sacred things, and surveys the problems of man's life and destiny. He teaches us that "the web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together." Cheerfulness was one of the attributes of his genius, and, like all and only great souls, he could look bravely at the good end of evil things.

"For nought so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse;
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,

And vice sometime's by action dignified."

'Romeo and Juliet,' Act II, Sc. 3.

Hamlet is said to have been a closer translation of Shakspeare's own character than any other of his personations; if so, these perpetual soliloquies and