Schlegel and Ulrici reply in the affirmative, apparently because they were unwilling to attribute to the poet what they regard as discreditable ignorance.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the people of England had acquired but a scanty knowledge of geography, and in this science Shakespeare was perhaps rather behind than before his age. He makes Bohemia a maritime country, speaks of Aleppo as a seaport, and might therefore, without much scruple, have peopled in his imagination the southern shore of the Mediterranean with negroes, whom he might easily have confounded with the Moors. At any rate, this is what he does. It is not by any means his intention to bring Othello from the interior of Africa, peopled from time immemorial with servile races as deficient in intelligence as in beauty of form, seldom remarkable for courage, still less for generalship. We must lay no stress, therefore, on thick lips or sooty bosom, and assume Othello to be what he is called, Moor, instinct with the fiery valour and deep-rooted passions of the Arab race, easily betrayed where their preferences were concerned into the excesses of jealousy and rage.

In Christian realms attention was bestowed on the Hebrew people, partly because of the connexion of their history with that of the prevalent religion, but chiefly because of their universal presence throughout Christendom. Yet it was the attention of hatred to the thing hated. Familiarity produced no kindly feelings, no proclivity towards pleasant intercourse, no mutual respect or even tolerance; but, instead, practice of persecution on one side, and the feeling of deadly hatred and revenge on the other. It is sometimes suggested that Shakespeare in 'The Merchant of Venice' endeavours, in conformity with the natural

humanity of his disposition, to mitigate this state of things. But I think otherwise. Here and there in the play some touches of pity are experienced for the bated miser whose confidence in the wise laws of the State abates in no degree his hostility to all around him; but that the poet has no wish to soften the reciprocal animosity which Hebrew and Christian cherish towards each other is all along evident, and rendered indisputable by the catastrophe. I have said that Shakespeare loves everything in the creation, but I must make one exception-he does not like a Jew; and if a majority of mankind, whether Mohammedans, Pagans, or Christians, were in their secret conscience to put the question to themselves, they would probably find their feelings more akin to those of Shakespeare than they might think it philosophical to acknowledge. An explanation of this fact is often supposed to be discoverable in the history of the last eighteen hundred years, which represents the ancient race clutching desperately at their dying religion, while the younger nations, in the midst of whom they live, despise their creed and smile at their tenacity. But we must look deeper if we would solve the problem. The Japhetic mind differs so essentially from the Semitic that it seems almost impossible to transplant the characteristic ideas of the one into the other. Seated beside a Western Asiatic on some moonlit crag or sandhill in the desert, you may soon convince yourself of this if you touch on the fundamental beliefs of humanity. His ideas of God will immediately appear to be different from your ideas; he may denominate Him the compassionate, the merciful,' but he understands by these terms the compassion and mercy of a despot, who will have mercy on those on whom He will have mercy, while

those whom He will, He hardeneth. No arguments will in all likelihood convince your companion that we ought to believe, with the Greek poet, that we are all His offspring, and that His care and goodness extend to all alike; the Semitic man will contend that the Deity exhibits favouritism in His dealings with mankind, that He chooses this or that people on whom in preference to shower His blessings, to endue with the faculty to comprehend His nature, and to be the exponents of truth to the rest of mankind.

Shakespeare brings Shylock before us so palpably enveloped with Hebrew associations and traditions that we almost fancy we behold the Old Testament on the stage: Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, Laban, and their progeny, emerge from between the sand mounds and palm trees, and seem to be engaged in their primitive avocations before us. But are their sympathies ours? Are their feelings ours? Shylock speedily supplies us with an answer. Shakespeare heaps up in this man all the hateful qualities which, in the opinion of his contemporaries, characterised the Jew, and the whole tendency of the play is to expose him to derision and dislike. Christian audiences, whether Catholic or Protestant, would have been displeased had the case been otherwise; but this is not the reason of the poet's proceedings. He is evidently dealing with his own feelings and prejudices, and brings to bear all the resources of language and all the venom of poetry against the unhappy Jew. To defraud him of his money, his only safeguard against oppression, is not enough; he is a father, and, like David's victim, he has but one little ewe lamb, that he cherishes in his bosom. By the merciless dramatist this, the only object of his affections, is torn from him, not by

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external violence, which would have been more tolerable, but by her own heartless wantonness. While he is writhing under this wound, which gives tenfold sharpness to his revenge, the hope of gratifying which is now the only pleasure left him, the lady of Belmont, travestied into a lawyer, annihilates his last hope in life, and exhibits him to himself and the world as a hopeless and forlorn hypocrite.

Among the many lapses in Shakespeare's philosophy this is perhaps the most remarkable, since it is at variance with the general spirit of his teaching, as well as with his personal character. He is not here, what he is sometimes fondly called, the poet of all time, but a man of the seventeenth, or rather of the sixteenth, century, swayed by one of its worst prejudices -employing his art, not in the interest of humanity, but in that of ruthless oppression.

In one respect Shakespeare's teaching differs essentially from that which finds favour with many sophists of the present day he does not believe that one thing can be transmuted into another, or that any influence will suffice to impregnate certain natures with wisdom or goodness. The mould and the material being such or such, the result will inevitably correspond with the sources in which it originates. There are natures teachable and natures unteachable. Whatever the product of natural forces is, that it must essentially remain for ever, any variation in form or aspect notwithstanding. No art known to man could transform Iago into Romeo, Edmund into Hamlet, or Lady Macbeth into Ophelia. The types of being are unchangeable, so that the utmost that can be done is to conceal by education the nature of the internal forces. and to guard throughout life against those occasions

which, when they are evil, might make them blossom into action. Fancy and imagination have always played a great part in philosophy, but I know of no instance in which they have gone so far as in the doctrine of sexual selection, which teaches that the fancy of the peahen has produced the peacock's tail. It is no doubt probable that in great length of time, as an old Greek poet remarks, very improbable things should happen; but it demands an amount of faith scarcely reconcilable with reason to believe that length of time has changed a jellyfish into the Venus de' Medici or the Belvedere Apollo. Shakespeare certainly had no inkling of such a theory. He has presented us with the spawn of a devil and a witch, and shown the impracticability of implanting goodness in it:

Enter CALIBAN.

Cal. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd

With raven's feather from unwholesome fen

Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye

And blister you all o'er.

Pros. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,

Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins

Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,

All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch'd

As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging
Than bees that made 'em.

Cal.

I must eat my dinner.

This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother,

Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,

Thou strokedst me and madest much of me; wouldst give me

Water with berries in't, and teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee

And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle,

The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile :
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!