Bacon says one cause of Atheism is the scandal of priests, which had already operated in producing the Reformation, and its next step, infidelity. The writings of the Italians, such as Boccaccio's, which Shakspere consulted, made the scandal of the priesthood the subjects of their pen, for the purpose of producing in others the infidelity which already existed in themselves. Another cause, he says, 'is a custom of profane scoffing in holy matters, which doth by little and little deface the reverence of religion.' Shakspere was certainly amenable to this, as a producer of Atheism.

Bacon remarks, They that deny a god, destroy a man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body: and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.' We shall often have occasion to remark, in the examination of Shakspere's plays, the tendency he shows to depreciate the theological estimation of man, and compare him rather to the beast by his qualities in common with the animal, than to a god, by the great and many differences of his nature and superiority over the lower animals. Besides, he draws comparisons, between man and the nature he imputes to supreme beings, derogatory of all divinity.

There were three parties into which the men of those times were divided-the popish, the puritanical, the irreligious or sceptical. Marlowe belonged to the last for certain; and nearly all the dramatists may be said to have belonged to it. Raleigh had the reputation of being a member of it; but along with Bacon and other statesmen, whilst indulging in speculative opinions, they would consider religion as a matter of policy. Whilst the puritanical party were suffering imprisonment and death, they accused the authorities of granting illegal impunity to all the pleasures of the people in the theatrical quarter on Sundays; doubtlessly done by the authorities in order to neutralise, by amusement, the effects of religious propagandism, and the melancholy sourness of spirit which Shakspere accuses the Puritans of introducing into society, and which had its political consequences. James the First is especially charged with favouring the Roman Catholics from feeling more affection towards their principles, and out of hatred to Puri

tanism; which, he said, preferred the pains and penalties of this life, and consigned all but themselves to hell in the next world; an opinion which gained for them from Shakspere the character of madmen, stocking hell with more devils than its vastness could hold.' This exclusiveness of spirit they carried into practice when they came into power.

The Brownists, the prevalent sect of Puritans in Shakspere's time, were the precursors of the triumphant independents of the commonwealth. It was, however, when Shakspere wrote, of the worst party to be; however dangerous, on the other hand, it might be to set up as a politician. I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician,' says Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Indeed, the humanity of Shakspere might feel for the persecuted, and hold in abhorrence the politician who was the persecutor, instead of being, as the enlightened rulers of the day were disposed to be, merely the counteractors. It might appear to him as bad to act according to political expediency as to be one of its victims, though, as the enemies of the theatre and as distasteful to him, he was engaged in satirising them. Whatever inference he wished to be drawn from it by mention of their name, their hanging on the gallows would strongly impress Shakspere. The spectacle of Brownists amongst the Protestants, of Papists suffering capital punishment for opinion's sake, alternately presented to the eyes of the public, would create a party hostile to all religion, whilst an occasional Atheist burnt would teach the irreligious to keep their opinions to themselves, or caution them in administering infidelity as medicinable.' Such a physician in opinion we think was Shakspere (no politician, like Bacon); he exceeded in quantity and quality the doses which many modern practitioners, suspected of free-thinking, have dared to prescribe to their patients.

It has been observed, that the changes which the families of Bacon and other statesmen (going from Popery to Protestantism, and vice versa, through all the shades of differences during the sixteenth century) must have naturally disposed their minds to scepticism. Shakspere's father was sent up as a recusant in 1592, for not attending church. Amidst the disputes whether it was from old age, poverty,

or being a Roman Catholic, people have forgotten to think whether it was not from holding the same opinions about religion as his son, who makes Glo'ster accuse Winchester, afterwards Beaufort, in Henry VI., that he had nothing to do with religion, for he never went to church: and Falstaff to say that he did not recollect when he had seen the inside of a church.'

The irreligious party at the end of the Tudor and beginning of the Stuart dynasty, must have formed the professed free-thinkers of the Commonwealth. Their names are given by Hume, in his History of England, as Deists, Who denied entirely the truth of revelation, and insinuated that all the various sects, so heated against each other, were alike founded in folly and in error. Martin, Challoner, Harrington, Sidney, Wildman, Nevil, were esteemed the heads of this small division. The Deists were perfectly hated by Cromwell, because he had no hold of enthusiasm by which he could govern or overreach them; he therefore treated them with great rigour and disdain, and usually denominated them the heathens.'

The Bacons and the Shaksperes, the philosophers and scoffers, as well as the Papists, were extinguished by the Puritans. The theatre gave way to the pulpit, the actor and dramatist to the preacher. The philosophical and political school of infidelity had no chance against the fanaticism of Cromwell at the head of the religious spirit of the age.

Next to the living, the dead who converse with the living, through the medium of books, are to be regarded as the society who form men's opinions. Critics have decided that Shakspere was acquainted with Lucretius, Plutarch, Aristophanes, Lucian, and others among the ancients who abounded in speculations on the nature of things and pleasantries on religion. If Shakspere did not derive his knowledge from the originals, he did from translations, and he would have been assisted by contemporary dramatists— university men, who must have been acquainted with the dead languages and ancient authors.

Among the moderns, he was certainly well acquainted with the two most irreligious authors known to his times.

He was well versed in Boccaccio, and was indebted to him for the stories of some of his plays. We owe to Italy the revival of literature, and, therefore, it is probable that whatever was contained in its writings would be re-echoed by those of other countries of Europe which succeeded it in letters.

Naude, the librarian of Cardinal Mazarin, says of Boccaccio-As to religion, I believe that Boccaccio had none, and that he was a perfect Atheist.'

Montaigne (a favourite writer with Shakspere) was sceptical, and speculative on the doctrines of religion. We think we have proved in one of the plays, the adoption of a passage from Montaigne, which would coincide with Shakspere's sentiments of a future state. Montaigne is said to ridicule the systems of divinity in his chapter upon Raimond de Sebonde.

Montaigne observes, that the weakness rather than strength of our judgment is our assistance in religion. The things that we are the most ignorant of are the most proper to be deified.' All which sentiments are embodied in the speech of Theseus, in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Though Pope says Shakspere was obliged to please the lowest of the people, and to keep the worst of company,' yet admitting this circumstance as a motive not to be religious, as producing an indulgence in coarse jokes, and the ridicule of sacred things, yet we must say that he tried to elevate the sentiments and morals of the people. However disinclined to the supernatural and liable to ridicule revelation, yet in the mention of them he will draw a moral congenial to his own opinions. He has a system which may be drawn from his works, which he contrasts with the notions of mankind taken from Revelation, and which he represents as doing what revelation and a future state proposes to do for the benefit of mankind, and which he seems to think sufficient to supply its place. The fear of the consequences of immorality he does not release men from, but strongly insists upon it; and, putting aside religious con-. siderations, he has more than any author exalted the love of humanity. However he may indulge in invective against the artificial systems of religion, and be found even speak

ing against Christianity, yet in his material and natural speculations he endeavours to give philosophical consolation to mankind, to inculcate submission to inevitable circumstances, and encourage scientific investigation into the nature of things.

But it cannot be contended that Shakspere did not inculculcate an indifference to a future state-and abstractedly deny it. Upon some of the abstruse metaphysical questions which he moots, his speculations may have fallen innoxious of effect, even if perceived by the common mind— but the questions of life and death must have come home to every bosom producing results which must have been obvious and intended.

The first dramatic representations in England were miracle plays. Craik's Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England tells us-The subject of the miracle plays were all taken from the histories of the Old and New Testaments, or from the legends of Saints and Martyrs; and, indeed, it is probable that their original design was chiefly to instruct the people in religious knowledge.' The morals, or moral plays, succeeded, in which all the characters were allegorical. The vices and the virtues were impersonated. The devil of the miracles became the vice of the morals-though in character he was still introduced to undergo his tribulations, to the satisfaction of the audience in seeing the enemy of mankind always overcome. More especially the morals, but even the miracle plays, were written and represented down to the very end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. Collier gives an account of Lupton's moral' All for Money' -in the title called a moral and pitiful comedy;' in the prologue, a pleasant tragedy.' The catastrophe is sufficiently tragical. Judas, in the last scene, coming in (says the stage direction, like a damned soul in black, painted with flames of fire and a fearful vizard') followed by Dives, 'with such like apparel as Judas hath,' while Damnation (another of the dramatis persona) pursuing them, drives them before him, and they pass away, making a pitiful noise,' into perdition.

What a transition to the plays of Shakspere, whilst these