No one can read the Sonnets without being made aware that the author was thoroughly acquainted with the struggle between the spirit and the flesh described in the seventh chapter of Romans. In sombre dramas like Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida it can be seen how intimately he was familiar with the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the natural heart; and the workings of conscience have never, in all literature, been described to the life as in Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third and Macbeth. But it is in the happier dramas, such as The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest, that the presence of Christian sentiment is most powerfully felt. Again and again he dwells not only with emphasis but with deep feeling on the need of the divine mercy for all, even the best of men having nothing else to depend upon in view of the Judgment Day. This thought, so characteristic of the Reformation—indeed, what but it was the Reformation?—is not only exquisitely expressed in The Merchant of Venice but wrought into the very substance of that great drama, in which Shylock stands for the principle that the pound of flesh is to be extracted to have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in them all united, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used, as we have found in Shakspeare alone". The author was Bishop of St. Andrews, and had been tutor to Mr. Gladstone. He had chosen a fine theme, and he executed his task with ability and thoroughness; but here and there he injures his argument by overdoing it; and it is difficult to believe that this sentence is not a case in point.

the last scruple, but the wise and gentle Portia is the exponent of a nobler and a thoroughly biblical philosophy. A passage like the speech of Portia, already quoted, on "the quality of mercy" shows how deep was the sympathy of Shakspeare with the views of the relation of sinful human beings to a holy God which were republished by the Reformers but were first heard-again to quote the words of the poet

in those holy fields

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross.

The electrifying effect of a passage like the following on an audience which had passed through the experiences of Elizabeth's reign can easily be imagined :

Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name

So slight, unworthy and ridiculous,

To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.

Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England Add thus much more-that no Italian priest

Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;

But, as we under Heaven are supreme head,
So, under Him, that great supremacy
Where we do reign do we alone uphold,
Without the assistance of a mortal hand.
So tell the Pope, all reverence set apart
To him and his usurped authority.

No isolated quotations can, however, do justice to the religious depth of Shakspeare's view of the world. In all his dramas God is immanent in human life. Not only is there a conscience in man's nature speaking as the voice of God, but there is a righteousness at the heart of things incessantly working its way to the surface. Goodness, however it may be depressed and impeded, is always on the way to victory; but wickedness, however lofty for the present its pretensions may be, is always verging towards downfall and exposure. Nor is God only immanent in the world: He is at the same time sovereign above it and omnipotent around it. This earthly life, with all the visible frame of things, is only an islet in the ocean of eternity, and the day will come when the islet will be submerged and will disappear; but man will still continue and still be under the rule of God through the long ages of eternity.

Sir Sidney Lee, author of the standard Life of Shakspeare, who is unsympathetic towards the religious element in the dramatist, is rendered uneasy by the fact, that a preacher, "doubtless," he says, "of puritan proclivities," was entertained at Shakspeare's residence in 1614. He seems to forget that, at that time, a preacher, even if a Puritan, would have been a clergyman and would have officiated in the Anglican Church. What difficulty is there in supposing such a person to have been entertained at the New Place when on a visit to the town? Let us hope that he was a con

genial spirit, and that the hospitality was enjoyed by both host and guest. That Puritanism was spreading at Stratford when Shakspeare returned to the town is proved by a deliverance against stage-plays by the Corporation at this very time.

However little Shakspeare may have been estimated at his true worth by his fellow-townsmen during the years when he was moving about amongst them as an ordinary citizen, there was appropriate dignity in at least the last act, when he was buried in a grave seventeen feet deep in the chancel of the Parish Church, The spot, in itself, would indicate that the buried man had been a person of consequence, even had there not been erected, before 1623, on the wall above the grave, a bust of the poet in the act of writing, which still survives in a state of excellent preservation.

This represents a man of wellknit frame, with a strong face and high sloping forehead, and, though not executed with a great deal of skill, it must, it may be presumed, have been sufficiently like the original to justify its erection. A decided resemblance to it is borne by a portrait now preserved in a fireproof safe in the birth-house, which displays much spirit and is probably to be preferred to all other representations; but whether it was copied from the bust or the bust from it cannot now be ascertained.1 A portrait, also preserved

This is the portrait reproduced as frontispiece to the present volume. I prefer it for the reasons stated; but connoisseurs do not, as a rule, value it highly.

1

at Stratford, from which the frontispiece prefixed to the first folio edition of the works was copied, exhibits a certain amount of resemblance to the bust; and its truth to the original was certified in the strongest terms in lines accompanying the woodcut from the pen of Ben Jonson. Thus both of these likenesses are authenticated; but all other representations of the lineaments of the man are more or less conjectural. Certain it is that, even in outward aspect, he was a good specimen of manhood, agreeable in conversation and gentle in manners. "Gentle" was, indeed, the term which occurred most naturally to his contemporaries when they wished to characterize him.1

Was Shakspeare himself conscious of being the genius we now know him to have been? or were his contemporaries aware how great a personality they had amongst them?

In the Sonnets the author frequently promises that his lines will immortalise him to whom they were addressed; but at that time every sonneteering poetaster was making the same boast to his patron. From the

1 Shakspeare's last Will and Testament, after a few words of introduction, proceeded: "First, I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ to be made partaker of life everlasting". Sir Sidney Lee remarks that this was a conventional form; this is true; but so is Mr. Carter's remark, that it was a Puritan, not a Catholic form.