inasmuch as Timon extends its powers from life to morals, and implores it to touch the several fortunes of men. So deep is his own disbelief, that he considers that the priest himself does not believe. In the many minute comparisons which Timon institutes between men and beasts, so fine was the opportunity afforded our author for touching on, and illustrating man's spiritual superiority, that it may safely be inferred that the point could not have been unintentionally neglected. Timon is an illustration of the law of necessity, in which he believes. His abused philanthropy generates his misanthropy. But his materialism never forsakes him-he dies as he lived, and erects his Everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood. WINTER'S TALE. Indicative points of irreligion, questions of metaphysics, necessity, and other knotty topics of speculation, our author, by his long experience, now puts on and off as easily as a glove. Winter's Tale is another illustration of nature changed by natural causes. In its execution, we have again the word set against the word.' The 'verily' of Jesus, here facetiously designated the limber vow,' is elaborately argued to be an oath, consequently involving its originator in the charge of inconsistency in putting it forth as a substitute for swearing. Nihil ex nihilo fit is again brought into discussion. The superintendence of powers divine' is sceptically put by Hermione in the usual form of disbelievers. When Antigonus promises belief in (what was a religious point in Shakspere's days) the walking of spirits, he condescends to be 'superstitiously squared by it.' 'Dead and rotten' is still the material end of life shadowed forth. Autolycus is a kind of resurrection of Barnardine, who, before he believes in the life to come, 'must sleep out the thought of it.' We have Hume's liberty and necessity in an homoeopathic quantity. Florizel talks Lucretian philosophy, and gives a recipe for making new religions. The animus of these desultory strictures is expressed by Paulina-'It is required men do awake their faith.' THE TEMPEST. In every way is the Tempest worthy of the distinction assigned it as the final performance of our author, In every way is it in perfect keeping, in religion and philosophy, with the preceding plays. First are we introduced to a 'bawling blasphemous' boatswain—our author never proceeds without the aid of one of these characters. Fate is besought to keep him to his destiny by the old counsellor of Naples. Though neither reverencing God nor man, and preferring to labour for his safety to praying for his preservation, yet he is spared. Înnumerable times has Shakspere insisted on the natural goodness of the human heart (in opposition, be it observed, to original sin); but a more perfect illustration than any yet given, was wanting to enforce the idea fully, and Miranda is presented as an unsophisticated child of nature, in whom the finest sentiments of humanity spontaneously arise. Her sympathy for the shipwrecked crew is the purest and most touching imaginable, and she reproaches the supineness of heaven with a pathos that comes recommended by all the graces of which impiety is susceptible. She exclaims : Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and Providence and accidents most strange' are jointly put down by Shakspere as the deliverers of the crew from danger. This amalgamation of divine and natural causes is what a man of his sagacity could not undesignedly make. Separately he has sometimes used one, and sometimes the other, but it is easy to see how immensely the balance preponderates where he adheres to natural causes. t Caliban proposes the murder of Prospero after the manner of Jael. Trinculo, as Cassio drunk, has recourse to the Lord's Prayer to spice his speeches. Prospero's speech on the dissolution of all things, viewed in the light of Shakspere's philosophy, as we have displayed it, is far more intelligible than by the commentators' version, and a signal and brilliant consummation of the poet's materialistic teachings. In language most laboured, unequivocal, and emphatic, we are told that the great globe and all humanity shall dissolve, and leave no wreck of identity behind. To prevent ambiguity in the supposition that only matter is the pageant that shall fade, it is reiterated that we are such stuff as dreams' are made of that when our revels are ended, our little life is rounded by a sleep;' enforcing the same material idea peculiar to Seneca and Cicero to ancient and modern atheists. 6 Prospero has the same lofty morality as his daughter, and seems to think that the sight of evil would be the cure of the spirit of evil in the uncorrupted condition of our nature. From Prospero and Caliban, Shakspere has delineated the characters of the Tempest in his usual vein, and with more than his usual piquancy, giving his peculiarities of philosophy, moral and religious, with a finish worthy of his last production, whether it be so or not. THE POEMS OF SHAKSPERE. A few words will suffice to characterise these poems, and to establish their coincidences with our author's other productions. Everywhere we discover analogies or germs of ideas developed in the plays. Malone agrees as to the marked conformity between the poems and the plays on the subject of death. Venus calls it an 'earth worm'- an 'eternal sleeping.' With Homer and Shelley, death is painted as the 'brother of sleep.' The Sonnets talk of 'death's dateless night.' We leave this vile world' only with vilest worms to dwell'―to descend to the 'grim care of Death.' Our poet has been, on account of these poems, compared to Ovid. True it is that in point of lasciviousness he coincides but too well with the known freedom of unbelievers. Venus reasons in two places, in the language of Isabella, in Measure for Measure; her sentiments on suicide are Cleopatra's; she would conquer herself after the manner of Brutus and Antony. The materialism of thought throughout these poems may be extensively identified. Lucrece's 'immortality' is her fame-so is our poet's own eternity. In the sonnets, immortal life is memory. Bound-" less as is our poet's fertility of thought, he seldom avails himself of strictly religious terms, retaining them at the same time in their pure sense. Once when he alludes to the judgment,' the thought has a mundane turn. The phrases of religion, of which many are introduced in these poems, are either prostituted to carnal love, or placed in contrast with Love's superior potency, which is our poet's 'idolatry.' He borrows from the Lord's Prayer to 'hallow' it. In fine, to use his own words, 'Religion's love puts out religion's eye.' Unfaulteringly is the theory of necessity also illustrated. Lucrece reproaches 'opportunity' as a god. Love is often deified, and 'Time' declared the tutor both of good and bad.' No faith in natural causes can be stronger than this. Men are compared to wax, on whom are stamped any semblance. Necessitarians have never gone farther in their Lanalogies. Having now completed such general summary of the particulars of the plays and poems as seemed necessary to inform the reader of the nature and scope of the work, we proceed to the examination, and to present in detail the facts and arguments here epitomised. TITUS ANDRONICUS. There are, however, scattered here and there, many strokes something resembling his [Shakspere's] peculiar manner, though not his best manner, which, as they could not be imitated from him, would incline one to believe this might possibly be his most juvenile performance, written and acted before his poetical genius had had time to unfold and form itself.-Revisal. MERES, the contemporary and, some say, the friend of Shakspere, put this play in the list of the poet's works. Collier and Ulrici, the latest of writers on Shakspere, have allowed it to be one of his earliest performances. The reviewer of Ulrici, in the Athenæum, says-'It is, according to an intuitive conviction which we feel, and which is sometimes superior to even the most logical reasoning, not the work of a young poet at all, but of one who had "supped full" of similar fancies, and familiarised his mind with their morbid indulgence a man of genius, no doubt, but to whose perverse taste the universe was not only a fallen, but an unredeemed, creation. Such, at no time, was a characteristic of the Shakspearian disposition.' According to the opinion of Hallam, such was at one time the character of Shakspere. We could give innumerable instances both of juvenility and passages similar to those in other plays, but we must confine ourselves to our purpose. People who have an opinion of Shakspere's religious veneration 'might well wish to repudiate this drama. It has always appeared to be the most openly impious of all his plays. It seems to us professedly written against the gods. Religion is the cause which produces the catastrophe-it is the cause of wrong, the cause of retribution. An avowed |