speculations: Iago, Edmund, Richard, Macbeth, interpret other parts of his philosophy; while the Duke in 'Measure for Measure,' and the friar in Romeo and Juliet,' give expression to thoughts or fancies which would hardly have suited the utterance of speakers so iniquitous and turbulent. Raleigh and Bacon, with many of their contemporaries, looked with a kind of mystical awe on the surface of our planet, in which they rightly judged effects and resources lie concealed which may exercise and perhaps elude the sagacity of

man

To the last syllable of recorded time.

Shakespeare's friar is a devout adept in this department of philosophy. We make his acquaintance under pleasant auspices. He is faring forth from his cell, basket in hand, at the earliest break of dawn to cull herbs and flowers while all their virtues were supposed to be enhanced by being steeped in dew:

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels.

The fresh morning air seems to breathe about us as we read, and the speaker is thenceforward invested with our sympathies for ever; we feel that he is to play an important part in the strange drama, by the influence of which he is absorbed. He talks as if he held himself aloof from secular pursuits and passionate interests, but is immediately swept into the current, and borne along by it irresistibly, till it is swallowed up by death. Meanwhile almost every word he utters is suggestive of strange positions and conclusions, many of them of high import in Shakespeare's philosophy.

Let us listen to his own poetical exegesis of his system, many parts of which challenge objection, though at every step awakening thought:

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,
The day to cheer and night's dank dew to dry,
I must up-fill this osier cage of ours
With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb,
And from her womb children of divers kind
We sucking on her natural bosom find,
Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some and yet all different.
O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities:
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give,
Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified.
Within the infant rind of this small flower

Poison hath residence and medicine power:

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;
Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still
In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;
And where the worser is predominant,

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

In the early mythology of Hellas the earth, identified with nature and impregnated by the divine intellect, is represented as the mother of all things. Her image in the Ephesian temple was that of a woman with numerous breasts, which suggested to Shakespeare his beautiful description of the universal mother. He understood the mythology, however, in a too restricted sense, since even assuming the earth

to be synonymous with nature, chaos was the womb out of which it sprang, as Milton expresses it :

The womb of Nature

And perhaps her grave.

From this idea has sprung the modern theory of evolution, which owes its reception to the restlessness of the human mind, greedy of novelty, in form if not in substance, and always ready to sacrifice truth to vanity. But if God be essentially a creative being, and by His nature perfect, He must obviously be unchangeable, since the contrary condition of existence implies a being imperfect in itself but perpetually aiming at perfection.1 Man is never content with his actual state, and reasoning from himself to everything else, he is incapable of conceiving perfect contentment, unchangeableness, and eternal repose. To be weak is to be restless, and craving for that excitement which change gives; power is concentrated, undisturbed, uniform in action, exactly in proportion to its magnitude, and therefore we can conceive of supreme power as throwing forth from itself whatever exists in the state in which it is to exist for ever. We cannot conceive of the Deity as engaged in making perpetual experiments in order to discover ultimately what in all cases may be best. Shakespeare, however, here,

'The author of these Essays evidently did not accept the theories of Darwin with regard to evolution, nor those of Mr. Alfred Wallace on natural selection. It requires a thoroughly scientific mind to appreciate the arguments which trace us back to our true ancestor, the jellyfish. Our pride even makes us hesitate to accept the orang-utangs as our forefathers, though after studying their habits for many years whilst in modified captivity they did appear to us to have something very human about them. It is, on the other hand, more difficult to believe that man appeared on the earth fully equipped, as Pallas from the head of Jove.

as in The Tempest,' suggests the doctrine that nature is endued with a mere fleeting phenomenal existence, tending neither to better nor worse, but absolute extinction.

It does not, indeed, necessarily follow that the friar's notions are to be taken for Shakespeare's, which they may or may not be. Still, many of them at least recur so frequently in the plays that they certainly appear to be the natural products of his mind. The things which we find sucking, according to Laurence, the natural bosom of the earth are at the same time supposed to give to the earth some special good: which implies no slight confusion of ideas, since, as everything comes out of the earth, it can obviously give nothing to the earth. Animals, plants, and stones may be indeed employed as so many alembics to inhale and distil certain fluids or juices, which, being infused into barren soil, may render them fertile, or, considered in reference to man, may produce on his frame baneful or beneficial effects.

This double edge discoverable in terrestrial things suggests to the friar a notion analogous to what he finds in his theology. He has picked up a flower, and is gazing on it. His philosophising habit comes upon him; he is perplexed with the dissimilarity of its qualities it contains poison, and it contains balm; its odour refreshes and invigorates the sense, its taste is death. What then? Are we to stop here? No! He goes on to maintain that, as in herbs, so in man, there exist two hostile principles, which, in the quaint language of the time, he calls grace and rude will, and closes his soliloquy by saying that where the latter is predominant

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Here, then, is the philosophy of 'Romeo and Juliet.' Love, no matter how divine its origin, exists in various forms, and may be allied with various principles, with the sweet, calm, soothing, gentle influence of innocent preference, or with fiery tempestuous passion which sweeps everything before it, and exerts supreme power over the soul or perishes. Some German critics contemplate the love portrayed in 'Romeo and Juliet' as a moral delinquency and justify the catastrophe, instead of calling in the aid of misfortune, or referring to the suggestion that

Time and chance happen to us all.

Philosophy is so calm, sweet, and unassuming that, like a child in its mother's arms, it looks up at nature. and the Author of nature with loving trust, believing that all the knowledge which is good for it, it shall have. It does not even desire to obtain everything at once, but, finding its happiness in the process of acquisition, grows as the child grows, larger and stronger imperceptibly. Theology, on the contrary, is harsh and peremptory, and sure to be most positive about what it knows least. Shakespeare is the Plato of modern times, only upon the whole with less obscurity; his thirst for knowledge and his humanity are equal. Out of the womb of his imagination, therefore, he sends forth Juliet and her lover, equally pure and faithful, and though the complications in which they are involved, and which lead them speedily to death, appear sometimes to be of a doubtful character, they leave no soil upon their memories when they finally disappear from us in the monument. This, however, is not the decision of Ulrici, who maintains that Juliet's love betrays her into sin, corruption, and evil,