Surely, we have in Falstaff the most perfect specimen of a man subject to the conditions which turn human life into a comedy; but how shall I speak of the master mind who created him, and the other characters I have mentioned, and not only these, but all the rest who contributed each one in his place to the full delineation of the subject of his plays, an interpretation of human life. I have only attempted to consider them from one point of view, namely, how they reveal to us the conditions which make human life a comedy, but they may be considered from many other standpoints, and from each they yield the same perfect result. When we add to these the tragedies, the historical plays, the romances, small wonder that we are overwhelmed with the spectacle, and conclude that the subject is beyond our power-that it takes a Shakespeare to understand Shakespeare.

I said at the outset, that Shakespeare, like any other man would be recognised, understood, defined, by means of his limitations. Have we discovered any ? Have we advanced on the road to discovery? Not far I fear. But I think we may claim one; at all events I will say that, as a result of my reading for the purpose of this paper, I have realised that it was as an Englishman that Shakespeare looked out upon life, and, as an Englishman he has described it. It matters not where the scene is laid, whether in Italy, in Cyprus, in Egypt, or Rome. The scenery is our lovely English countryside; the woods and forests are English; the flowers are of English growth; the very fairies own our own dear land as their native land.

His manhood is of the English type, with all its strength and weakness; his women- --the saucy Rosalind, the modest Imogen, the pure, the innocent Desdemona, Cordelia, Portia, Jessica, and all the others, lovable and unlovable-where shall we find their counterparts but in our own land? All these, the creatures of his brain, not only speak the English tongue, but frame their thoughts as English people are wont to do. His songs-there are not many of them are the blossoming of the healthy, happy English life of his day, simple and natural, and as spontaneous as the song of the birds which throng the hedgerows and woods of his own county of Warwickshire in the springtime of the year.

If the genus is human, true to Nature, available for all human kind, yet the species is English, and we are justified in claiming Shakespeare as the most perfect exponent of English life and character with all its strength, and all its weakness.

Yes, we justly boast our Shakespeare, but it must not be forgotten that if we have our Shakespeare, Shakespeare had his England, and perhaps, we get nearest to the man himself in those fine passages which are found in his historical plays, which treat

for

of the great aims and noble destinies of his native land example, the dying words of old John of Gaunt, with which I will conclude :

"This royal throne of Kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise ;

This fortress, built by nature for herself
Against infection, and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone, set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!" Gentlemen, I give you the Immortal Memory of England's greatest Son.

Sonnet.

(SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY, 1899.)

AIR are those mighty realms whose subjects speak

Great Shakespeare's tongue, and world-wide homage pay,

By reedy Avon, far Australian creek,

Indus, St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Rea,

Or there (where dusky Cleopatra strayed

With love-sick Antony, and held him thrall)—

The Nile !-last conquest which this tongue hath made,
Undreamed by Roman and misliked by Gaul!

But fairer still is Shakespeare's mightier sway
O'er Love, Ambition, Laughter, Hate, Despair,
Revenge (alack! for Shylocks of to-day!)—

This is his vaster Empire, viewless, rare!
Here Prospero reigns, sweet Ariel singeth yonder,
And we are Ferdinands-without Miranda!

I. A.

The Battle for Free Speech.

ONE of the most brilliant lawyers of our own day has remarked

that the great mass of business men are as unconscious of one of the most important statutory enactments affecting the daily transaction of business as they are of the pressure of the atmosphere. And in the same manner the average Englishman is not, as a rule, much troubled or concerned respecting the rights under which he lives, and moves, and has his being. As a general rule he is supremely unconscious of their existence. It is true these rights constitute his birthright. But birthrights which have no market value, and which are not capable of assignment, or realisation for cash, are apt to be overlooked by the modern spirit, in favour of the more pressing concerns of life. And so it happens that the wrongs, of which a long by-gone generation first became dimly conscious, against which another generation struggled, and to remove which it probably became necessary for another to suffer, are converted, in course of time, into the rights of succeeding generations, who, when consciously appreciating them at all, regard them as purely natural manifestations of the ordinary routine of life.

Man has been gifted with a tongue, and he likes to use it. To curb it is not one of the easiest of the Apostolic injunctions to observe. To woman, indeed, the necessity, or the wisdom, of any limitation of its energies must always remain a dark and unfathomed mystery. To talk is a common delight. It is true that language should be the dress of thought. But even when the mental processes of thought are unfamiliar, the sound of much talking may still be caught by an attentive and disciplined ear. To use a phrase frequently heard in common speech, most men, under some circumstances or other, like to have their say. Some desire to have their say in public; and herein, for many, lies the secret of the fascination of public work. Of course, this can only be the satisfaction, comparatively speaking, of the few. But if all the avenues of public speech are closed, the domestic forum offers opportunities which seldom appeal in vain. And so deep-rooted is the tendency of which we speak, that even the best of men become the objects of a nameless contempt if, now and again at any rate, they cannot succeed in having their say there!

The talkativeness of the race being then beyond dispute, it is interesting to trace the development of the various attempts which have been made, from time to time, to secure its repression. These attempts have usually been made either in the sacred name of religion, or in the interests of the State. And here we are met by what seems, at first sight, to be a strange anomaly. Before the

introduction of printing, speech was free. At any rate, it was free in the sense that it had never occurred to the wit of man to deliberately legislate for its suppression. It is true that the State has, in all times, constituted itself the guardian of religion, and considered itself as more or less responsible for the regulation of public worship. Dissent was a crime too long in our own country for this to be easily overlooked. With most Governments - ancient and modern alike—it has been accepted as a common maxim that there can only be one true form of worship. It has naturally followed, as the night the day, that this must be the one patronized by the Government itself. But human nature would be human nature no longer if the quality of perversity were withdrawn; and so, at all times, there has been more or less hesitation in recognising the wisdom and justice of the Government's position. Whereupon, while modern Governments have been disposed to exhaust the resources of refined civilisation, ancient Governments, with less restraint, were tempted to favourably consider the resources of torture, and the subtle influences of the branding-iron, the gibbet, and the stake. It was from this point of view, not, as is often wrongly imagined, on account of inherent ferocity, that the Romans condemned the early Christian martyrs. It is true that they regarded the Christians with something of the same contempt and indignation with which we, in these days, contemplate an Anarchist. But the assertion of belief in Christ meant death because it constituted the crime of high treason, and the essence of the offence was not the acknowledgment of Christ's claims, but the failure to acknowledge the religion of Rome. Again, apart from the restraints which have been considered necessary in the interests of religion, the technical freedom of speech may, perhaps, be said to have been infringed by such institutions as the ducking-stool, and other rough and ready expedients introduced in ancient times to restrain the wife with a grievance within something like reasonable comment on her lot. Putting aside, however, as beside our purpose, all consideration of restraints of a purely incidental character, it remains true that, until the introduction of printing, speech in this country was free.

The reason for any change of attitude on the part of those charged with the responsibility of government, lies mainly in the nature of the new craft. It may be admitted that the spoken and the written word are alike the vehicles of thought. But of all transitory things, speech is the most transitory. Its range is limited. The influences of speech may be, and are, incalculable, but they are influences which, from the nature of the case, can only be exerted within a very limited range. Writing is more permanent in its influence than speech; but its range is not appreciably wider. But with the introduction of printing a new

factor came into play, and men were not long in recognising its power. And as the capacities of printing for the communication and transmission of thought are immeasurably greater than those of speech, the history of the development, as the power of the press gradually grew, of those measures intended for its suppression, and the subsequent struggle to effect its freedom, became the history of the temporary bondage, and subsequent freedom, of speech itself. Since the era of the printing press, the fortunes of free speech and the press have been indissolubly linked together; and for the purposes of the historian they twain have become one flesh.

The story of the struggle of the press for its own freedom, and for that freedom of political discussion for which it stands, is a story which has had many twists and many turns. It is, indeed, a part, and a great part, of the struggle so long prolonged for the free and unfettered liberty of the subject. The story begins in the reign of Edward IV.—one of the most unprofitable periods the history of our country has to record. The country generally was quiet, but it was unsettled. The Wars of the Roses were doing their fell work. Many of those great houses which had exercised so great an influence on the destinies of the country, were near their inevitable downfall and ruin. Parliament itself, which had played so great a part in securing a large measure of constitutional liberty during the preceding reigns, was almost an exhausted force. had ceased to exercise any real and potent influence on the course of public affairs. Edward himself was beginning to exact, without any appeal to Parliament, those irregular contributions, which, under the generous name of "Benevolences", were destined to menace so seriously the constitutional rights of the people. Literature itself was at a low ebb. The Rev. Stopford Brooke says that the period of which we speak is the most barren in our literature. Mr. J. R. Green says, "Never had English literature fallen so low". The time of the New Learning was not yet. The spiritual life of the nation seemed to have gone out with the Lollards. Still, notwithstanding all this, the nation was not really stationary, much less decaying. The signs and indications of progress may be clearly discerned. Commerce was in its infancy, but it was already showing sturdy signs of vitality and life. Our maritime position was, as yet, only like a little cloud rising out of the sea, but it was destined to grow. The great centres of trade and commerce on the Continent were beginning to be conscious of English activity. English ships were ploughing new seas. Manufactures were beginning to spread. The seeds of certain progress, indeed, were being sown both here and abroad. The political upheaval in the East of Europe was making possible the revival of letters in Italy. Navigators were shaping their courses for new seas. The trackless