The Moral Character of Shakespeare. 45 struggled into fame in his career, and when his purpose was effected retired from the scene. Repulses met him, but he said, 'Do not for one repulse forego the purpose That you resolve to effect.' Thus have we seen that a scrutiny of dates and facts enables us to remove the stains flung on the character of one endeared to us by his genius, by speculative writers who, interpreting his life too often by the gathered iniquity of their own hearts, have applied terms to his name which if translated would make him a patron of strumpetry, debauchery, usury, and selfish ostentation. Why, were such the case, is the word gentle so endearingly affixed to his name, and why are honesty and uprightness specially spoken of when he is named? The more we learn of Shakespeare the higher does our admiration. rise; the nearer we get to the truth the fairer the truth appears; and the blemishes daubed on his portrait come clean off from the original picture. We reverence our great men best when we draw the best lessons from their lives and works. To the moral character of Shakespeare's writings we may at another time direct attention, just now the lessons of his life are paramount in our regard. We have written with the aim of bringing these out in a new light, so let us here, with all possible brevity, outline the characteristics of one of the worthies of England. He was a man of original, healthy tastes, of fair position and education in the lower ranks of the middle class, though ultimately rising to the higher-of keen, observative mind, of fixed purpose and elevated views. He early felt and knew his genius, but as early fixed the aim and purpose of his life. His passions were active, though calmed by his contemplative nature. The avenue to moderate competence and honourable regard lay before him in the ardency of the public for theatrical novelties, and he entered on it as a way of life. But he affected no singularities, claimed no exemption from family ties or friendly relationships, sought no pre-eminence among his fellows or servility from them, paid his debts, maintained his rights, flattered no man, and asked flattery from none. Though not insensible to popular applause or posthumous honour, he smirched his 'scutcheon' with no vile means to gain either. He replied to Greene's taunts by the most effective arguments-the facts, Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucreece'and having done so, and proved his possession of poetic power, he went on his way in magisterial self-reliance. The applause of the Court did not move him to forego his designs, and the favour of the people did not make him stoop. He carefully revised revised his plays, yet never supervised their publication, and while the world was yet greedy to gain further enrichments from the storehouse of his mind, he voluntarily retired to his quiet native town, not to act the 'lion' there, but to enjoy life's leisure and pleasure, and shed around him the goods of fortune. There is a greatness to our mind in the thought of this 'world's wonder,' in the lofty grandeur of his own achievements, retiring from the very threshold of the Court to the modest duties of fatherhood and citizenship, as if, feeling himself a heaven-made gentleman, he had determined on being that indeed. We know of no duty he shirked, of no faith he violated, of no wrong he committed, of no vile characteristic or unworthy habit, of no chance he gave for the bite of 'back-wounding calumny.' This true reverence for duty, this observance of all matters of mark and likelihood among men, this modest bearingscorning only to do wrong, form lofty attributes of Shakespeare's moral character. Expose any other man as marked as he to the possible aspersions of malicious tongues; set any other man down in his native village, wealthy, famed, and honoured, and if the tongue of jealousy and slander be not whetted on his name and fame-if it be within human invention to manage it we shall have a case which will parallel that of Shakespeare; for he has passed the ordeal, and no proof, even demonstrated thinly,' can be brought out of the whole treasuries of history and tradition to blacken his fair fame. Let not, therefore, the name of Shakespeare be used to gild over the crimes and vices of others. Let no man use his character as a defence for neglect of social duties, or the perpetration of social wrongs. Let us rather remember what he has taught us: Mine honour is my life; both grow in one. ART. III.-WHAT WORK MAY DO. 1. Praying and Working. By Rev. William Stephenson. London: Alexander Strahan. 1862. 2. My Ministerial Experiences. By Rev. Dr. Büchsel, Berlin. London: Alexander Strahan. 1863. 3. The Spirit in the Word: Facts Gathered from a Thirty Years Ministry. By W. Weldon Champneys, M.A. Jackson and Halliday. 1862. MONGST many curious proverbs, quaint in their derivation, and pregnant in their meaning, which occur amongst Work and Happiness. 47 amongst the Spaniards, is one-apparently strange to be found amongst a fanatical people, predominated entirely by one idea, and fettered by the traditions of ages-which may be translated thus: 'Work, as thou wert to live for aye, Work and worship, in the true sense of the terms, not as they existed under the despotism of Philip II., should ever be indissolubly connected. Prayer, in midnight watchings, or in lonely cells, without being combined with unshrinking manly work, must generally be associated with humiliating failure. We have passed the days when virtue and piety were constrained to advocate the 'mutilated sacrifice' of a blind, unreasoning faith. It is the whole man, perfect in all his human relationships, with a healthy unprejudiced intellect, and a clear, unclouded reason, who may best consecrate himself to the service of his Creator, counting nothing mean, and nothing degrading, which may subserve the sublime ends of social or moral improvement. It has constantly been acknowledged by those who have studied the problems of this complex nature of ours, that there is a universal delight in energy and activity of all kinds, constituting one of the greatest and healthiest pleasures of our existence. Sir William Hamilton has defined happiness in rather pedantic, but exact language, to be the 'constant reflex of unimpeded activity,' and the Germans say of work, that it gives 'Kraft-Gefühl,' that is, it braces the system with a delightful consciousness of strength. Let us observe the man who has his mind filled with some great and good plan, or who is inspired with some project of usefulness. He carries with him, to a certain extent, an antidote against the poisons and malarias of this world. Arrows which fix in the hearts of others glance harmless from him. Little crosses have less power to hurt him. He is cheerful and hopeful. He is raised, if we may use the simile, like the Homeric Jupiter above the Trojan armies; far beyond the little entanglements and vexations which fret and annoy his fellow-men. A sanguine temperament is seldom under any circumstances. to be lamented; and it is never to be deplored, if it be guided into the right path and sustained by the mightiness of faith. In philanthropic matters as in everything else, there is truth in the old maxim, 'Nothing venture, nothing have,'-and a deep chord in every heart must vibrate to the Shakespearian motto "Tis not in mortals to command success; but we'll do more, Sempronius; we'll deserve it.' We We live in a world still glorious in some respects, but in which the infant suffers before it can discern right from wrong, and where the veteran is forced to groan in the anguish of his spirit. But we shall never get rid of evil by hopelessly bewailing it, or frantically wishing it out of our way. We cannot lessen its might by facing it with stoic hardihood, or ignoring it with epicurean complacency. Rather the good man's fortitude must be guided by the constant contemplation of suffering, and his determination strengthened by his efforts to ameliorate it. His courage must be stimulated and his enthusiasm sustained by the knowledge that he stands face to face with a thing to be subdued. It is not within the province of this paper to discuss the piety from which such emotions must spring, but history illustrates the force of the principle, showing how men in all ages have acted upon it according to their light. In one century we have Hildebrand, from the shades of his mountainous retreat gazing forth upon a world filled with iniquity and wrong, alone against the dignitaries of a powerful church, but opening his batteries of eloquence against the abuses of his times. In the next we see Bernard, a worn and weary man, poor in estate and weak in body, triumphing in the simple power of unadorned but heartfelt truth over the courtly and attractive Abelard, who had all the prestige of wealth and patronage in his favour, and all the devices of skilful logic and scholarly eloquence to endow him, but who was dishonest in character, and unprincipled in his teaching. Further on we have Luther, toiling in the noonday sun through the dusty road, and resting under the spreading branches of the tree which still bears his name, contending against principalities and powers, and uttering beneath the red sandstone walls of the magnificent episcopate at Worms his memorable words-'Here I stand; I can do no otherwise, so help me God.' It would be useless to multiply further instances. But these and such as these are examples of the grandest sights our world has ever seen, of men contending unsubdued for some noble God-taught truth. A Pascal persecuted and agonised by pain, dictating in isolated sentences the words of his celebrated 'Pensées ;'-a Howard dying alone and neglected on the pestiferous shores of the Black Sea; or a Henry Martyn abandoning the encouraging prospects of his youth to meet an early death under the burning Eastern sun; these are names never to be forgotten. Thank Heaven such men still exist, unknown and unappreciated it may be (we would not seek to draw them from seclusion), but they are the glory of their generation, the pillars pillars of society, bearing up its burdens on their shoulders, and never complaining of the weight. We have a glimpse in the books before us into the history of a few of these earnest workers. With their minor differences on theological subjects we do not propose to treat. In all main points their teaching was the same; and it is rather to their practical working we desire to draw attention. In his little volume entitled 'Praying and Working,' Mr. Stephenson has given us sketches of five German heroes, Falk, Wichern, Fliedner, Gossner, and Harms. These men had all successfully emerged from the peculiar aspect of romantic mysticism which was prevalent in Germany towards the commencement of the present century, and which was rather poetical in its phases than positively religious. They no longer united a daring independence of thought with a measure of dreamy enthusiasm. They no longer spent their days in weary self-analysis, and professed to value their peculiar opinions for their power in transforming the egotism and selfishness of their own personal characters. A pantheistic nature-worship, in which every man was to work out an individual possession of his own, had ceased to occupy their thoughts. They lived healthier, truer lives, in which vague yearnings and unsatisfactory ideals were forgotten in honest labour for the good of others. They were sincerely religious, but did not love their own souls so selfishly as to be entirely occupied with their own welfare. Pain, sorrow, and misery, they felt (with Bishop Butler) had a right to their assistance. A man's being friendless or neglected was a special recommendation to them, and the fact of his utter inability to return their favours was the best possible passport to their regard. Hungry-eyed men, clothed in rags, however defiant in expression, were their next of kin. Drunken degraded women, swearing as they dandled their infants on their knees, or huddled away in some dark corner from the daylight they hated to see, were the special objects of their pity. Little hollow-cheeked children, with the lines of premature care on their baby-faces, crushed by the Juggernaut of labour, or borne down by the burden of their parents' sins, were sought out and rescued by them. Their maxim it was, never to trample upon any human soul, though it seemed to be lying in the veriest mire. In the last spark of self-respect still remaining in the most abandoned natures was yet a hope for them. How different was this from the severity and hatred towards the sinner, to which some of the most earnest of men-even the noble-minded Dante-have in all ages of the world been betrayed. It was the same principle of Christian love which stirred Vol. 7.-No. 25. the D |