And, as though he would teach this duty most effectually, he allots to Macbeth the odious task of attempting to decry it, and that in colloquy with one whom he designed to employ for the murdering of Banquo:

Your patience so predominant in your nature,
That you can let this go? Are you so gospeiled
To pray for this good man, and for his issue,
Whose heavy hand hath bowed you to the grave,

And beggared yours for ever? Macbeth, Act iii. Sc. 1.

On the other hand, it is assigned as a fitting office for one of the most charming and most perfect* of our poet's characters, to exemplify this difficult duty in the most trying of all circumstances. When it is suggested to Desdemona, in order to account for Othello's vile and cruel language towards her, that some one must have slandered her to him, she meekly replies

If there be any such, Heaven pardon him!

Othello, Act iv. Sc. 2.

There are two other points in regard to the duty of Prayer, which we should expect that Shakspeare would not overlook. One is, that our prayers should be real; not lip-service merely; and must proceed from a heart sincerely desirous to please

* In our admiration for Desdemona, however, we must not forget that her tragical end represents the unhappy issue of a marriage entered into by a daughter without her father's consent, and in deceitful opposition to his authority.

God. The other is, that, if we do not receive the things for which we pray, we ought not therefore to conclude that we have been unheard; for it often happens that the denial of our requests may prove a greater benefit to us than the granting of them would have been. Accordingly, the former of these points is brought before us in Hamlet, where the wicked king, after kneeling and attempting to pray, rises with the confession:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.

Act iii. Sc. 3.

And again, in Measure for Measure, the duplicity is exposed of professing to offer up prayer while the heart is bent upon yielding to temptation, in the person of the licentious Deputy :—

When I would pray, and think, I think and pray
To several subjects: Heaven hath my empty words;
Whilst my intention,* hearing not my tongue,
Anchors on Isabel.

Act ii. Sc. 4.

He had before said, in the consciousness of suffering himself to be overcome

I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross ;—

Ibid. Sc. 2.

words which, doubtless, contain a reference to the petition in the Lord's Prayer against temptation, as Mr. Henley has observed; but of which it is not

* Substituted by Warburton for invention.

easy to give altogether a satisfactory interpretation, if we must be content to take them as they stand.

The latter point, which I just now mentioned, is one with which scholars will be familiar, as forming the subject of that most remarkable production of heathen antiquity-the 10th Satire of Juvenalso vigorously imitated by Johnson; and, therefore, there is at least no impropriety in putting it, as Shakspeare has done, into a dialogue, in Antony and Cleopatra, between Sextus Pompeius and his friend Menecrates:

Pomp. If the great gods be just, they shall assist
The deeds of justest men.

Mene.

Know, worthy Pompey,

That what they do delay, they not deny.

Pomp. While we are suitors to their throne, decays

The thing we sue for.

Mene.

We, ignorant of ourselves,

Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers

Deny us for our good; so find we profit

By losing of our prayers.

Act ii. Sc. 1.*

SECT. 8. Of the Domestic Relations.

We should be glad to be able to feel assured that the marriage of our poet, though formed at such an early age (see above, p. 4 sq.), and in one respect disproportionate (his wife being eight years older than himself), did not prove an unhappy one. Doubtless it assisted to give him, when he was still young, his deep insight into female character; and

* See below, Additional Illustrations, p. 369.

the draught of his female personages, on the whole, would rather lead us to suppose, that as he had been prepossessed in favour of the gentler sex, so the experience which he afterwards enjoyed tended to confirm the first good impression. The views which he has expressed of the conjugal union are such as do him honour; and it is only fair, therefore, to conclude, that though he married early, he did not do so unadvisedly,* or without a due regard to the sacredness of the tie, which it is certain he had learnt in his maturer years to regard in its proper light.† Thus, in Twelfth Night, the priest describes the marriage of Sebastian and Olivia as

A contract of eternal bond of love,

Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,

It must, however, be confessed, that in one of his last-written plays, Twelfth Night, he has left us a warning against the step which he himself had taken-yet a warning put in such a way that, with true delicacy of feeling, it reflects upon himself more than upon her who had been the object of his choice :

Duke.

Let still the woman take

An elder than herself; so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart.

For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.

Then let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.

Act iv. Sc. 4.

† On Shakspeare in his own domestic relations, see Wise's Shakspere and his Birthplace, p. 72, sq.; and the interesting essay by Dr. Ingram in the Dublin Afternoon Lectures on English Literature, 1863, P 122, sq. Also see below, Addit. Illustr. p. 369.

!

Attested by the holy close of lips,

Strengthen❜d by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact

Sealed in my function:—

Act v. Sc. I.

Where Steevens has a note to the effect that 'in our ancient marriage ceremony the man received as well as gave a ring.' It is to be wished that he had produced some proof of this. In the meantime, I would observe that anciently the interchange of rings was a custom which belonged to the espousals, rather than to the solemnization of matrimony. And it would seem, from a subsequent speech of Sebastian, that the former alone were intended by our poet in the present case; an observation which may throw light, perhaps, upon the peculiar circumstances of Shakspeare's own nuptials, as made known through the discovery, in 1836, of his marriage license. Be this as it may, Jaques, in As you like it, will furnish us with a protest, by anticipation, delivered according to his own quaint humour, against the unholy practice of a mere secular contract between man and wife, too often acquiesced in at the present day :

Will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush, like a beggar? Get you to Church and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is: this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and, like green timber, warp, warp.

Act iii. Sc. 3.

* See below, Additional Illustrations, p. 369.