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of the Scriptures; and that the book which they should have looked to first and most for help in the illustration of his works, is the book which has been generally looked to last and least.

That the passage of S. Peter just referred to had attracted his attention is evident from a speech. of Prospero in the Tempest :

Our revels now are ended: these our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack* behind.

Act iv. Sc. I.

Compare also Isaiah li. 6, The heavens shall vanish away like smoke,' &c.

And now the curtain of our great teacher drops, as it ought, before the Judgment of the Last Day.† We know, though imperfectly, what we now are; we know not, even with the help of Revelation, what we shall be hereafter :

Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. 1 John iii. 2. Ophelia has caught this up in her touching way, where she says to the King, in Hamlet:—

i.e. A vapour. But, notwithstanding the elaborate argument of Horne Tooke, I should prefer to read track, supported as it is by the parallel in Timon of Athens, Act i. Sc. 1. † See above, p. 163.

Well, God 'ield* you! They say, the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table! Act iv. Sc. 5.

We can have no doubt that the last of these expressions (which, by-the-bye, Mr. Bowdler has omitted) is to be understood as a deranged person's version of 'May you be at God's table,' according to the Scriptural notion,' which represents the happiness of heaven under the figure of a feast, with God for our host. See Matt. viii. 11, Luke xii. 37. There can be no doubt, too, that the preceding clause in Ophelia's speech is taken from the latter clause of S. John's text. What if the eccentricity of thought, natural to mad people, should have converted-in the presence of the wicked king -the Christian's sonship to God, with which the apostle's text begins, into the owl's daughtership to the baker, which Ophelia first introduces? I am inclined to think this not impossible, more especially as the legend referred to is a Christian one, in which, according to Mr. Steevens, our Saviour being refused bread by the daughter of a baker (which again would suggest the notion of the blessedness of him that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God, Luke xiv. 15) is represented as punishing her by

* Yield, i. e. reward you.

† And classical also. Compare Virg. Ecl. iv. 62:

'Cui non risere Parentes,

Nec Deus hunc mensâ, Dea nec dignata cubili est.'

See also Hor. iv. Od. viii. 29, and elsewhere.

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turning her into an owl. Mr. Douce has given the story more at length, and represents it as still current among the common people in Gloucestershire.

But though 'it doth not yet appear what we shall be' in heaven, we know that comfort and happiness are to be looked for there, and only there. When the Queen, in King Richard II., says to the Duke of York,

For Heaven's sake, speak comfortable words;

he replies in language which many passages of the Bible fully justify:

Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts;

Comfort's in heaven: and we are on the earth,
Where nothing lives but crosses, care, and grief.
Act ii. Sc. 2.

Compare Job v. 7.

And yet we must not be impatient to quit this scene of trial, so long as our remaining here may tend in any way to promote God's glory, or to be serviceable to our fellow men. Shakspeare, from the mouth of Hamlet, will teach us this, after the measure of the wisdom and the love of this world; but we must go to the Bible, and sit at the feet of S. Paul, if we would learn it more perfectly. The Prince of Denmark, on the point of death, speaks to his friend Horatio:

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

Act v. Sc. 2.

:

The great apostle of the Gentiles, in bondage at
Rome, writes to his Philippian converts :—

I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to
be with Christ, which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the
flesh is more needful for you.
Phil. i. 23, 24.

Meanwhile may our names be written in the
Book of Life!' This expression, which is used
by S. John in the Revelation, xx. 15, xxi. 27, and
by S. Paul, Phil. iv. 3, could only have occurred
to one who had often in his hand the sacred volume,
which is to us in this world the Book of Life.' We
find it in King Richard II. The speaker is Mow-
bray, Duke of Norfolk :-

No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the Book of Life,
And I from heaven banished, as from hence!

Acti. Sc. 3.

But in order that our names may be written in that book, let it be remembered, ONE THING IS

but if our virtue' is indeed to be

Led on by heaven, and crowned with joy at last,

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act v. Sc. 3.

it must be learnt in the school of HIM Who hath

brought life and immortality to light through the
Gospel,' and Whose is the only Name under
Heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved.'

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CHAPTER III.

Of the Poetry of Shakspeare as derived from
the Bible.

COME now, in the last place, to speak of passages in which Shakspeare has been indebted to Holy Writ, not only for poetical diction and sentiment, but for some of the most striking and sublime images which are to be found in his works.

1. We are familiar with that simple, but most affecting apostrophe with which the vision of Isaiah

opens :

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. i. 2.

See also Deut. xxxii. 1, Jerem. ii. 12, vi. 19. All creation is summoned to listen to a tale of undutifulness, which was felt by the prophets to be without parallel. It was under the influence of a similar feeling that Hamlet exclaims upon his mother's hasty and incestuous marriage with his uncle, his father's murderer :

Heaven and earth!

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,