atheist is introduced upon the stage to utter blasphemies; and all the characters, those in the beginning pious, join in the general vomit of impieties. The black atheist, no doubt, is a bad character-a devil who loves evil for its own sake; but he is a black, the natural enemy of the whites, and Shakspere ends by giving him a touch of love. He is a father before he dies, and the infant joins him to humanity, which shews he had social and affectionate feelings sufficient to have made him, under circumstances differently disposed, a member of a civilised community.

Byron cannot take vice in a character more abhorrent to man than in the type of Cain, the first murderer; yet he has made him the vehicle of his own irreligious sentiments, and has not feared to contrast him with his victim Abel, who was religious, and commands our pity.

What was said of Marlowe, by Green, might certainly be said of the author of Titus Andronicus. He speaks of his ' atheist, Tamburlaine, daring God out of heaven,' and 'blaspheming with the mad Priest of the Sun.' So that one of themselves can attach the sentiments of the character to the writer. The character and the sentiments were the author's choice, and he was to be made responsible for them. There was not the doctrine then, that form what characters you please, give them what sentiments you like, the dramatis persona were accountable; the man who made them was not amenable to moral criticism. Shakspere does give us an atheist; but the religious Titus Andronicus dares God out of heaven more than the atheist Aaron, who, consistent in his disbelief, offends by his actions and opinions more than by his reproaches.

Nowhere does Shakspere, to use one of his own expressions, less 'spare to gird the gods' than in Titus Andronicus. By some, the play has been imputed to Marlowe, probably from its similarity to his plays and impiety. If Shakspere equals him in having an atheist, and making many of his characters talk the sort of atheism attributed to Tamburlaine, it may be said, Shakspere 'blasphemes with a mad priest' when he makes the Duke, in Measure for Measure, take the character of one, and talk the very contrary of what was to be expected from his profession. Under these circumstances,

little more will be required on our part than to let the play speak for itself. We think there is also a poetical moral in this play, which, had it been historically true, would probably have stopped the cruelty and barbarism of the Roman triumphs which the world suffered under their sway. May be Shakspere's love of humanity and abhorrence of oppression, prompted him in fiction to avenge the cause of suffering humanity, and give an instance of retributive justice on a nation.

Marcus Andronicus, in his speech for his brother, as worthy of the empire, says, 'he is surnamed the Pious.' Titus, leading the Queen of the Goths in triumph, has borne along the dead bodies of his sons to give them burial. Lucius, one of the surviving sons, for superstitious reasons, demands the proudest prisoner of the Goths in sacrifice to the manes of his brothers.

Titus. I give him you, the noblest that survives;
The eldest son of this distressed Queen.

This introduces the strongest and finest feeling of the human kind-maternal affection: which, violated, is to be the justification for the subsequent vengeance of Tamora; and the want of mercy, of forgiveness in Titus, is to be the cause of all his misfortunes. Aaron, who accompanies them, and against whom, like Iago, we do not hear anything before he is brought upon the stage, is in love with Tamora-is linked to the cause of the Goths-and from this barbarous usage, has a motive to vow vengeance against the Romans, and hold humanity in detestation.

Tamora. Stay, Roman brethren ;-gracious conqueror,
Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed,

A mother's tears in passion for her son:
And, if thy sons were ever dear to thee,
O, think my sons to be as dear to me.
Sufficeth not, that we are brought to Rome,
To beautify thy triumphs, and return
Captive to thee, and to thy Roman yoke;
But must my sons be slaughter'd in the streets,
For valiant doings in their country's cause?
O! if to fight for king and commonweal
Were piety in thine, it is in these.
Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood.

Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?
Draw near them then in being merciful:
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son.

Titus. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me.
These are their brethren, whom you Goths beheld
Alive, and dead; and for their brethren slain
Religiously they ask a sacrifice :

To this your son is mark'd, and die he must,
T'appease their groaning shadows that are gone.

Here we have this pagan, Tamora, calling the Romans brothers, and using the sentiment of loving your neighbour as yourself, doing as you would be done unto, in order to induce the natural feelings of pity towards a mother and her son. She pleads that Roman triumphs would be sufficient without ending in blood, and she asks, why must her sons be slaughtered in the streets for fighting in their country's cause? If it was piety in his sons, it was in her's; which was again the Tuquoque argument-think of others as for yourself.

Not only this application of circumstances to yourself" will be used by Isabella, in Measure for Measure, but the persuasion for mercy put into the mouth of Tamora is the same used by Isabella, and Portia in the Merchant of Venice. Only the same writer could have conformed so exactly to the same sentiment and expression. Besides, it is Shakspere's morality in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline. The charity which he inculcated ought to have no bounds here or hereafter, visible or invisible; and the consequences of the infringement of it, he is going to give as a moral and example.

Titus, in answer, says, the Romans have no other brethren than themselves, whom the Goths see alive and dead. His sons say they will hew the limbs of her son to pieces on the fire. Tamora's reply conveys a bitter satire on their religion.

Tamora. O cruel, irreligious piety!

Chiron. Was ever Scythia half so barbarous ?
Demetrius. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome.
Alarbus goes to rest, and we survive

To tremble under Titus' threat'ning look.`

Then, madam, stand resolv'd; but hope withal,
The self-same gods, that arm'd the queen of Troy
With opportunity of sharp revenge

Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent,
May favour Tamora, the queen of Goths,

(When Goths were Goths, and Tamora was queen,)
To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.

Whilst one son explains, by his comparison between Rome and Scythia, the justice between nations, which Shakspere would interpret, the other son satirises religion by introducing his own, no less than his mother did that of her foes. It is done in the peculiar style of Shakspere, and sets religion against religion to bring on universal destruction.

Lucius comes in to say they have offered the incense of the entrails of the son of the Queen of the Goths to heaven, and it only remains to bury their brethren.

Titus. Let it be so, and let Andronicus
Make this his latest farewell to their souls.
In peace and honour rest you here, my sons,
Rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest,
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps :

Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells;

Here grow no damned grudges, here no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.

Who will not recognise in this farewell speech of Andronicus to his son's remains, the material conclusions of Shakspere on the same occasion in Macbeth, Cleopatra, and Hamlet? There is peculiar and extensive similarity between their sentiments and those cited; but death is scarcely ever mentioned by Shakspere but in words to the same effect as in the last line. Moschus, who flourished 272 years before Christ, in an elegy on the death of his preceptor, Bion,' has a sentiment similar to this of Shakspere.

But we, the great, the brave, the learned, and the wise,
Soon as the hand of death has closed our eyes,

In tombs forgotten lie, no suns restore,

We sleep, for ever sleep, to rise no more.

Dr. Beattie, in the first edition of his poem, used some expressions which would admit of a similar interpretation-the denial of a future state. On its being mentioned to him by a friend, he erased the words in a second edition.

Titus commences by killing his own son, which further justifying his subsequent misfortunes, is in imitation of Brutus, made to satirise Roman virtue. The Queen of the Goths

has a different theme.

Tamora. I'll find a day to massacre them all;
And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I sued for my dear son's life;
And make them know what 'tis to let a queen
Kneel in the streets, and beg for grace in vain.

Tamora thus declares and justifies her intentions when Saturnine upbraids her with not seeking revenge. Aaron appears, and says he will guide Tamora to the ruin of the Roman commonwealth. His hatred is against it, and not against individuals. He says,

Hark, Tamora, the empress of my soul,

Which never hopes more heav'n than rests in thee;

a sentiment given by Shakspere to lovers-the reader will find it in Othello.

Tamora tells Lavinia, that her father's cruelty is the reason she will show no pity to her. Lavinia introduces the scriptural fact of ravens feeding people, as it is by Antigonus in the Winter's Tale. It makes no impression on Tamora, who is not inspired with humanity any more than Titus was the hearts of mankind are left untouched, though beasts, it is asserted, have been taught divine pity. This, in this place, seems the moral of Shakspere.

Marcus, on seeing the cruelties that have been practised upon his niece, says,

If I do wake, some planet strike me down,
That I may slumber in eternal sleep!

Aaron says,

Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace,

Aaron will have his soul black like his face.

Titus. O hear! I lift this one hand up to heav'n,

And bow this feeble ruin to the earth;

If any power pities wretched tears,

To that I call. What, wilt thou kneel with me?