frequent. This savage spirit of revenge denotes a barbarous people; though, perhaps, it was increased by the prevailing factions and civil commotions.-Hume's History, chap. XVIII.

By the provisions of the Statute of Heretics (1401) 'a refusal to abjure, or a relapse after abjuration, enabled [the bishops] to hand over the heretic to the civil officers and by these... he was to be burned on a high place before the people. The statute was hardly passed before William Sawtre, who had quitted a Norfolk rectory to spread the new Lollardism, became its first victim.'-Green's Short History, chap. V. ¿ VI.

What amazing things, fortunately, those two statutes are to us!

The two parts of Henry IV constitute one of the finest of the Shakespearian dramas. The variety of character is astonishing, and yet there is no great female character portrayed. Dame Quickly reminds us of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet; Lady Percy suggests both Imogen and Rosalind, perhaps, but she is the equal of neither. The discussions of the principal characters by Dowden (Shakespeare: his Mind and Art), Hudson (Life, Art and Characters of Shakespeare), and Gervinus (Shakespeare Commentaries), are very interesting. Very instructive, too, is the comparison of Henry IV with Macbeth. They are both ambitious usurpers: Macbeth has no spur but vaulting ambition; Henry has behind him the moral sense of the people, and just private claims: Macbeth plunges from crime to crime to preserve himself; Henry descends to unjust, crimeful expedients of policy, but to save the State as well as himself; Macbeth, untrue to himself in the very beginning, ends by becoming heartlessly untrue to his wife, guilty and suffering for his sake, the only creature left to love him; Henry, never really false to himself, ends surrounded by his sons and his officers of state, and reconciled to Prince Hal, of whom he doubted most: Macbeth dies desperate, fighting like a beast in the toils: Henry dies comforted and in the Jerusalem chamber, having attained, as it were, the sanction and reward of the long-contemplated crusade for which his knight-errant soul yearned: both men deteriorate in character, Macbeth hopelessly so-his life was for himself: Henry not beyond excuse-his life was for the State and society as well as for himself: both men have expressed in words that are immortal the longing for rest that comes to the uneasy soul, and the

insufficiency of pomp or power to make amends for wrongs done to conscience. (Macbeth, II, ii; III, ii; V, v : 1 Henry IV: I,i: 2 Henry IV: III, i; IV, v.) Of Prince Hal and Hotspur and Falstaff, so much has been so well written that but little need be here said. They stand in a sort of whimsical inverse moral and intellectual relation to one another. Hotspur is, so to speak, an aspiration; honor as he conceives it is his breath and being; not to be known and praised as Hotspur-he would rather not be at all. Prince Hal has also a profound desire for honor, but not merely as Hotspur conceives it; his desire is governed by strong common sense; it is the deed he craves, and not the name of doing it; it is enough for him to know within himself that he is capable; his intense pride and self-respect scorns the 'bubble reputation,' but not the fact underlying it. Falstaff's selfish intellect despises honor, both name and deed, which can neither heal a wound in his fat paunch, nor refresh him in the absence of good sherris sack. On the other hand, Hotspur, though not deficient in intelligence, does not see clearly what he is doing because of his predominant mood; Prince Henry, in the clear light of common sense, sees everything and everybody just as they are; Falstaff is intellectually a giant, and, as far as his sympathies go, shows the discursive mind of Hamlet. He is limited by lack of moral nature; he has no morals to speak of; his God is his belly, and his belly is so big that he has no room for any bowels of righteousness; his conscience has all gone to kidney, and no longer disturbs him. He is well-nigh as subtle as Hamlet, as witty as Mercuti, as quaint as Touchstone; he is Falstaff. But he is all wrong; he must bring down his own punishment, and when it does come, it is irretrievable.

Gervinus institutes something of a comparison between Prince Henry and Bassanio, and it is one which may be followed with interest and profit; not less on this account perhaps than on others, that the characters in Henry IV all seem to underrate the Prince, but the reader feels his real worth, and estimates him more justly all the while, whereas in the Merchant of Venice all the characters esteem as well as estimate Bassanio at his real worth, while most readers seem to undervalue him. Is Shakespeare, as well as Antonio and Gratiano

and Launcelot and the large-souled Portia, wrong about this handsome, elegant young 'Venetian, a scholar and a soldier,' or are some of us wrong? Would Portia be the woman to mistake the man of

her choice?

For the condition of contemporary Europe see the histories of Green, Hallam, Gibbon, Hume, Gairdner's Houses of Lancaster and York (Epochs of History Series). See also Chevy Chase and the Battle of Otterbourne in Percy's Reliques of English Poetry; Ellis's Early English Poetry; Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great; Canterbury Chimes, or Chaucer Tales Retold, with its quaint illustrations. WM. TAYLOR THOм.

Shakespeare Societies.

Such a holy witch

That he enchants societies into him;
Half all men's hearts are his.

-Cymbeline, I, vi, 166.

MONTREAL SHAKESPEARE CLUB.-Feb. 7th.-Essay Night.Subject: King Richard III.-(1) Mr. C. A. Duclos read the Introductory Sketch,' in which after some general remarks he maintained the magnificence of the dramatic conception of Richard. He was too great a character to be regarded as a mere villain. Grandly selfish, he compelled our admiration like Milton's Satan. His great insight into the human heart was exhibited in his dialogue with the Lady Anne, in which Richard wins her by concentrating her thoughts upon himself, by causing her to hate him intensely, knowing well that hate is nearer to love than is indifference. (2) The Rev. Dr. Norman (an honorary member) in his 'Sidelights upon Richard III' took a very favorable view of the play. He considered Richard to have been the original of Milton's Satan; held that the scene of Anne's wooing was open to criticism; and that the play itself was admirable, not only for its high moral tone, but because it always took well with the gods. (3) Mr. E.

Lafleur contributed a paper upon Richard III. His age was a reign of terror and Richard himself its consummate incarnation. He is already a fully developed villain in 3 Henry VI, his evil nature being in part the result of physical deformity. Still his character is so drawn (the reader here compared the play with Byron's Deformed Transformed) that we feel no sympathy with Richard. Like Iago and Macbeth, Richard is an intellectual character; but Richard's intelligence is of a practical nature, that of Macbeth is philosophical, of Iago, cynical. Richard's career compares best with that of Macbeth; but Macbeth is partly led on by the witches, and in Macbeth there is a conflict of conscience. Richard's inner life is more like Iago's with a difference. If both are cynical sceptics, Richard is a Frederick, Iago a Voltaire. Again Richard is rapid and unreflective in action; while Iago acts leisurely, taking an æsthetic pleasure in his victims' tortures. The paper concluded with a comparison of the deaths of the three villains. After (4) 'Some Remarks upon the Play' by Mr. W. R. Millar, in which he accepted the opening soliloquy as true to nature and dwelt on Queen Margaret's troubled career, (5) the Secretary (Mr. R. W. Boodle) read a note upon 'Richard III and the True Tragedy of King Richard.' After contrasting Shakespeare's play with the early chronicle play, the reader distinguished between the tragedy of character and the tragedy of destiny, of which latter the present play was a well-marked type. The vitality of the tragedy of destiny, including at one extreme Eschylus's Agamemnon, at the other George Eliot's Spanish Gipsy-was insisted upon.

Meeting of March 21st.-Essay Night.-Subject: Troilus and Cressida.-(1).The 'Introductory Essay' was read by the Secretary (Mr. R. W. Boodle), who, by tracing the pedigree of the Trojan story through the main mediæval authorities upon the subject, showed that, like Heywood in his Iron Age, Shakespeare had merely told it as he found it. The Trojan bias was inherited, and there was no conscious attempt to burlesque the Homeric account. It was doubtful whether Shakespeare had ever read Chapman's translation, and we find the Trojan story given in outline in the Rape of Lucrece very much as it is in the play. The graft of the love episode of Troilus

and Cressida upon the ancient legend was characteristically mediæval and should be compared with the story of Pelleas and Ettarre in the Arthurian legend. In answer to the questions, how the play was to be classified, and in what mood it was written, the essayist considered it to be a cry from the Aleian plain, upon which Shakespeare was then wandering, like Bellerophon, 'devouring his own soul.' The essay concluded with a discussion of the personalities supposed to be traced in the play. The character of Ajax was the 'purge' given by Shakespeare to Ben Jonson, and for different reasons the reader believed Thersites to be intended for Marston rather than Dekker. (2) Mr. E. W. Arthy next contributed an essay upon 'Cressids.' The phase of character depicted in Cressida was rather Elizabethan than Homeric or Hellenic. In the heroic as well as in the classical period, such a character would have been impossible. The absence of fixed rule of conduct apart from the sense of the beautiful, the Hellenic belief in the Divine as prompting strong feeling, and the high admiration for mere physical charm-all these resulted in great freedom of relations. between the sexes, paralleled only by the Italy of the Renaissance, though even here conduct that was natural to the Greek became defiant and morbid in one over whom the influence of Christianity had passed. (3) Mr. A. D. Nicolls read upon 'Shakespeare's Heroes Regarded from the Point of View of Courage.' After quoting Aristotle's definition, the essayist reviewed the different heroes of the play by the light of it. Ajax's courage was merely physical, Agamemnon a leader of men, Ulysses remarkable for intellectual qualities; even though Achilles possessed great fighting qualities, he was despicable. Hector alone in this play comes near to our idea of courage. (4) Mr. N. T. Rielle then concluded the evening with a paper entitled 'Thersites,' whom he considered to be subjectively the embodiment of Shakespeare's mental development at a certain stage-that of maturity of mind, looking at life from a pessimistic standpoint, the result of satiety and vanished youth. From this point of view, as representing a stage of his creator's mental growth, Thersites reminded the reader of V. Hugo's Valjean, just as from another point of view Troilus and Cressida might be called Shakespeare's Sappho; the spiritual is here