simply himself, nothing more nor less than a poet. This undisturbed freedom, this independence and self-sufficiency, was the foundation of his greatness. Like Sophocles, who, in many respects, is his near intellectual kinfellow, he stood, supported by his own strength alone, on the borders of two ages; on a rich and luxurious domain of art, and in the midst of a great, noble, and enlightened nation. He had no object beyond that which his art required and allowed; he wished for nothing but to give loud utterance to what he saw within himself, and in the world around him-the sovereignty and grace of God in nature and history, all the depths of the human mind, the aspirations and despondings of the heart of man, and the equal grandeur and meanness of his nature. While, like Sophocles, he sought for the purely human, the highest and greatest came to him spontaneously.

It

For, in truth, Shakspeare was not only a great poet; he was also a great and noble man. He could not be one without the other. 66 Worthy, noble, and beloved," are, without exception, the epithets with which his contemporaries adorn his name. is a remarkable testimony to his worth, that, upon so brilliant a spirit, even though in other respects his lot was not raised so high as to be a mark of envy, yet the favourite of two monarchs, and the most celebrated poet of his age, the friend and beloved of the great and powerful,-envious malignity could still cast no stains. The very fact that his private life passed so unassumingly, in so noiseless and even a tenor, and unbroken by any remarkable incident or event, is evidence of the calmness with which the majestic stream of his mental development flowed on, and of the clear ætherial atmosphere, which, in general, must have breathed round his soul. This fact is of the greater weight, and more highly to be appreciated, the more true it is, as in a mind like. Shakspeare's, sinfulness, and the sensual desires and affections, must have been equally strong with its vigorous faculties and powers. When we read in his poems the violent outbreaks of passion, the deep piercing tone of feeling, the boiling tumult of the affections, and the ever-changing play of a rich glowing fancy, we cannot but suppose that the poet himself must have realized all that he describes with such vivid truth, or at least have borne its seed in his own bosom: and our wonder is the

greater at his moral energy, which never yet lost its supremacy amid such conflicting and rebellious elements of life.

Unfortunately, the accounts we have of Shakspeare's inner personal life are meagre in the extreme. On this point, again, we must be guided principally by his own poems. That a moral tone breathes through all Shakspeare's dramas-that the view of men and things which is advanced in them, and is the basis on which they are constructed, is strictly Christian, will be shown in the following section. Any direct personal reference, however, to the author himself, which may be drawn from them, must, from the very essence of dramatic art, be strained and arbitrary. His few lyrical pieces, and especially the sonnets, are much more valuable in this respect. In these we may still clearly discover many traces of the painful struggle which it cost him, at times, to maintain this moral empire over himself. We here see him summoning all his resolution to his aid; and his soul now rising and now falling, and again buoyed up on the wave of a rich inner life. We hear him thus exhorting

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Fool'd by those rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ?"

SONNET 146.

or seeking to arm it against the tempestuous attacks of sin, and the sensual lusts and passions; calling "lust in action,"

"The expense of spirit in a waste of shame;"

and averting his soul from its seductions by painting it as

"Perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame.
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight;
Past reason hunted, and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated."

SONNET 129.

We here see him, too, unwearied in the pursuit of truth, and

striving, even in private life, to be inviolably true, discerning, in truth alone-eternity (Sonnet 123); and, consequently, driving from himself and friends all flatterers, sycophants, and "suborned informers," (Sonnets 125, 82, 85, 86) and asking of himself, in surprise,

66

Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?

Why, with the time, do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed?"

SONNET 76.

of

We see him, in general, pervaded by a free and fresh energy life, but that, nevertheless, there were yet hours in which he fell into melancholy and painful despondency, during which he felt utterly wretched, and complained—

"The sun one early morn did shine, With all triumphant splendour on my brow; But out! alack! he was but one hour mine."

SONNET 33.

(See also Sonnets 30, 29, &c.)-times in which he wept over the transitoriness of all human grandeur, beauty, and nobleness (64). We see that, in like manner, he was generally, it is true, elevated by a calm consciousness of his own greatness and immortal mastership (Sonnets 55, 60, 63, 65, 81, 101, 107); while there were yet times at which his works appeared to him empty, mean, and worthless, and, giving way to a " dream of self-contempt," wished to be

-"Like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope."

SONNET 29.

and when he complained that his muse had not "grown in a growing age to bring a dearer birth," when in short he "in himself could nothing worthy prove" (32, 71, 72.)

Highly interesting are the three sonnets which I quote entire, because they not only vouchsafe to us a deep insight into the

inmost feelings of Shakspeare's soul, but likewise throw considerable light upon the mode and manner in which he regarded his position as a poet and actor.

110.

"ALAS, 'tis true, I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affection new.

Most true it is, that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays prov'd thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I never more will grind
On newer proof to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confin'd.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.

111.

"O, for my sake do you with fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,

Than public means, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd,
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand :
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysell, 'gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.

Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
Even your pity is enough to cure me.

112.

"Your love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow ?

You are my all-the-world, and I must strive

To know my shame and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,

That my steel'd sense or changes, right or wrong.

In the profound abysm I throw all care

Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.

Mark how with my neglect I do dispense :

You are so strongly in my purpose bred,

That all the world besides methinks are dead."

The first two of these sonnets are in the printed edition of Jaggard, which appeared in 1599. They therefore may be probably assigned to the year 1595-7-8, and to the same period, without doubt, belongs also the third, since it is evidently the tranquillizing conclusion to the other two, and suggested, secmingly, by the remonstrance of a friend. The second sonnet alludes distinctly to Shakspeare's position as a player, and clearly proves that the profession was already hateful to him, and on that account he at that early period meditated upon quitting it. The same sonnet, moreover, furnishes a ready explanation of the fact, that after this date he rarely appeared as an actor, and when he did so he undertook merely subordinate parts, such as that of Adam, in "As You Like It," and of the Ghost in "Hamlet." The two others, on the other hand, demonstrate that even subsequently to 1592, his compositions were still exposed to unfriendly remarks and criticism. The admission, however, which he makes in the first, that he had "looked on truth askance and strangely," can only refer to his earliest works, in which unquestionably there is much exaggeration and incompleteness. But that he should "have gone here and there" before he could discover the right path-whether he is alluding to the indiscretions, or to some unknown unsuccessful essays of his youth-that is the common fate of all great minds, who, in truth, can only go their own way, while that he "should have made himself a motley to the view," "gored his own thoughts," and "sold cheap what is most dear," is the confession of a poetic genius, who was well aware that his heart's best blood was flowing in his poems, but that the world was incapable of appreciating the rare excellence that was therein presented to them, and so corrupt as to tread under foot whatever is most