Lectures on the Philosophy of Modern History

strength of their resistance. The debates of the house of commons during this reign fill a volume and a half of the old parliamentary history." Essay on the Hist of the Engl. Gov. and Const. p. 43, 44. Lond. 1821. Lord J. Russell has also corrected a misrepresentation of Hume in regard to the imprisonment of Wentworth, by showing from the authority quoted by the historian, that the queen did not restore the imprisoned member, but referred his enlargement to the house. Ibid. p. 312.

(0) The expedition is said to have been delayed a year by a contrivance of Walsingham, by which the Spanish bills on the bank of Genoa were stopped during some time. Contin. of Henry, vol. 1. p. 153, note.

(p) From two numerations, one made in the year 1575, the other in the year 1583, it was ascertained that the number of men in England and Wales able to bear arms was about 1,172,000; which number, multiplied by 4, would prove the total population to have amounted to 4,688,000, or, if multiplied by 5, to 5,860,000. The population in the year 1377 has been estimated from the poll-tax to have amounted but to 2,253,203. The number of the people appears thus to have been doubled in the two intervening centuries. Chalmers's Estimate of the Comparative Strength of G. Britain, p. 12, 14, 37-39. Lond. 1804.

(g) The first dramatic composition after the old moralities was the low comedy entitled Gammer Gurton's Needle, first printed in the year 1551; the first tragedy, named Ferrex and Porrex, was composed in the year 1561. Pref. to Hawkins's Origin of the English Drama. In forming the English drama Shakespeare was followed by a crowd of poets, among whom Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher two literary partners, and Massinger, are still admired. Of these Ben Jonson, the earliest, was born ten years after Shakespeare, and Massinger, the last survivor, died twenty-four years after him. Dramatic composition appears to have attained to some considerable refinement about the same time in Italy, France, Spain, and England. The Amynta of Tasso was published in the year 1572, and the Pastor Fido in the year 1585: in France Garnier, who first gave some polish to the theatrical entertainments of that country, was the contemporary of Lope de Vega, who was born in the year 1562; and Corneille and Rotrou attained the age of manhood before the death of that distinguished dramatist of Spain. Sismondi de la Litt. du Midi de l'Europe, tome 4. p. 2, 3.

The question of the dramatic unities has been considered in the examination of the dramas of lord Byron in the 54th number of the Quarterly Review. In that dissertation it has

been shown, that these unities were not uniformly observed by the dramatists of Greece, that the unity of action alone was prescribed by Aristotle, that the restrictions of Grecian dramas were occasioned by the construction of their theatres, that they are suited only to those dramas in which the plots depend on extraordinary incidents, and that for dramas of character, in which the spectator is to be interested by a gradual development of the peculiar dispositions of men, as in the Hamlet, Othello, and Richard of Shakespeare, a wider range both of time and place is indispensably required. It is remarkable indeed that Aristotle speaks of manners or appropriate characters, as much inferior in importance to the action of the drama, which he conceives might even subsist without them; whereas Horace represents the apt delineation of character as the primary qualification of a dramatic poet. Shakespeare however has, in his Macbeth, gone beyond what even the Roman critic had imagined, for he has exhibited a character changing before the eyes of the spectator, as deeds of guilt exercise their corrupting influence on the soul. His praise is that he has been able to do, what Horace thought to be so difficult that he dissuades from the attempt, communia proprie dicere; that his characters are not abstractions, but living men with all the peculiarities of individual existence.

(r) Anquetil, writing of the year 1583, has remarked that the ceremonial of the court of England was then much more pompous than that of the court of France. L'Esprit de la Ligue, tome 2. p. 246. Paris 1791. The great encrease of comfort and luxury in England has been distinctly stated by Holinshed. Chron. vol. 1. fol. 85.

(s) For the establishment of this court provision had been accordingly made in the act of supremacy. Such however were the powers actually entrusted to it, that Hume has concluded his account of them with remarking, that it was a real inquisition, attended with all the iniquities, as well as cruelties, inseparable from that tribunal. "But," he adds, " prerogative in general, and especially the supremacy, were supposed in that age to involve powers, which no law, precedent, or reason, could limit and determine." Hist. of England, vol. 5. p. 279.

LECTURE LIV.

Of the history of Scotland, from the commencement of the Scotish kingdom in the year 843, to the accession of James VI. to the throne of England in the year 1603.