A lofty strain of impiety pervades the characters of this play, apparently so supported by moral dignity as to be placed above the reach of censure. Our poet improves with experience.

Tullus Aufidius no more regards religion than Coriolanus. Sanctuary, church, prayers, and sacrifices are with him only so many 'rotten' principles or 'privileges' which do stop men's fury.

detail.

The doctrine of necessity is further explained in this play in The citizens and Coriolanus carry it to the issue of non-responsibility. Shakspere again alters Plutarch to introduce his own blasphemy.

TIMON OF ATHENS.

This play is prolific in instances borrowed from Scripture, and appropriated with our author's usual freedom. In the person of Alcibiades we have another reasoner against the divine precept of passive endurance, and not only precept but example is given against the doctrine. Timon leaves Athens using the words of Jesus on leaving Jerusalem, with the variation of Timon wishing what Jesus merely predicted. Timon's wood-soliloquy is drawn both from the Old and New Testaments, and introduces the child Jesus under the anti-christian epithet of 'bastard.'

Besides other coincidences in events and circumstances, Timon's revulsion of feeling from philanthropy to misanthropy, is something like the character of Jesus-warm in its affections towards the world, wishing peace and good-will towards men, willing to nestle them under his wings, but in consequence of their rejection of him, heaping denunciations on them and prophesying of them every ill.

Timon is a thorough materialist—with him human ‘nature grows towards the earth, and is fashioned for the journey dull and heavy.' Alcibiades speaks of him as becomes his character and opinions. He informs the senate that it hath pleased time and fortune to lie heavy on Timon, who, his fate aside, was a man of comely virtues. Timon's materialism is consistent, and he, consequently, defies the gods he disbelieves -he gives them ironical thanks for empty dishes at dinner. When he blesses the breeding sun, he improves on Hamlet,

inasmuch as Timon extends its powers from life to morals, and implores it to touch the several fortunes of men. So deep is his own disbelief, that he considers that the priest himself does not believe. In the many minute comparisons which Timon institutes between men and beasts, so fine was the opportunity afforded our author for touching on, and illustrating man's spiritual superiority, that it may safely be inferred that the point could not have been unintentionally neglected.

Timon is an illustration of the law of necessity, in which he believes. His abused philanthropy generates his misanthropy. But his materialism never forsakes him-he dies as he lived, and erects his

Everlasting mansion

Upon the beached verge of the salt flood.

WINTER'S TAle.

Indicative points of irreligion, questions of metaphysics, necessity, and other knotty topics of speculation, our author, by his long experience, now puts on and off as easily as a glove.

Winter's Tale is another illustration of nature changed by natural causes. In its execution, we have again 'the word set against the word.' The 'verily' of Jesus, here facetiously designated the limber vow,' is elaborately argued to be an oath, consequently involving its originator in the charge of inconsistency in putting it forth as a substitute for swearing. Nihil ex nihilo fit is again brought into discussion. The superintendence of powers divine' is sceptically put by Hermione in the usual form of disbelievers. When Antigonus promises belief in (what was a religious point in Shakspere's days) the walking of spirits, he condescends to be superstitiously squared by it.' Dead and rotten' is still the material end of life shadowed forth. Autolycus is a kind of resurrection of Barnardine, who, before he believes in the life to come, 'must sleep out the thought of it.' We have Hume's liberty and necessity in an homoeopathic quantity. Florizel talks Lucretian philosophy, and gives a recipe for making new religions. The animus of these desultory strictures is expressed by Paulina-'It is required men do arake their faith."'

THE TEMPEST.

In every way is the Tempest worthy of the distinction assigned it as the final performance of our author. In every way is it in perfect keeping, in religion and philosophy, with the preceding plays.

First are we introduced to a bawling blasphemous' boatswain our author never proceeds without the aid of one of these characters. Fate is besought to keep him to his destiny by the old counsellor of Naples. Though neither reverencing God nor man, and preferring to labour for his safety to praying for his preservation, yet he is spared.

İnnumerable times has Shakspere insisted on the natural goodness of the human heart (in opposition, be it observed, to original sin); but a more perfect illustration than any yet given, was wanting to enforce the idea fully, and Miranda is presented as an unsophisticated child of nature, in whom the finest sentiments of humanity spontaneously arise. Her sympathy for the shipwrecked crew is the purest and most touching imaginable, and she reproaches the supineness of heaven with a pathos that comes recommended by all the graces of which impiety is susceptible. She exclaims :

Had I been any god of power, I would

Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er

It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and
The freighting souls within her.

Providence and accidents most strange' are jointly put down by Shakspere as the deliverers of the crew from danger. This amalgamation of divine and natural causes is what a man of his sagacity could not undesignedly make. Separately he has sometimes used one, and sometimes the other, but it is easy to see how immensely the balance preponderates where he adheres to natural causes.

Caliban proposes the murder of Prospero after the manner of Jael. Trinculo, as Cassio drunk, has recourse to the Lord's Prayer to spice his speeches.

Prospero's speech on the dissolution of all things, viewed in the light of Shakspere's philosophy, as we have displayed it, is far more intelligible than by the commentators' version,

and a signal and brilliant consummation of the poet's materialistic teachings. In language most laboured, unequivocal, and emphatic, we are told that the great globe and all humanity shall dissolve, and leave no wreck of identity behind. To prevent ambiguity in the supposition that only matter is the pageant that shall fade, it is reiterated that 'we are such stuff as dreams' are made of-that when 'our revels are ended, our little life is rounded by a sleep;' enforc ing the same material idea peculiar to Seneca and Cicero-to ancient and modern atheists.

Prospero has the same lofty morality as his daughter, and seems to think that the sight of evil would be the cure of the spirit of evil in the uncorrupted condition of our nature.

From Prospero and Caliban, Shakspere has delineated the characters of the Tempest in his usual vein, and with more than his usual piquancy, giving his peculiarities of philosophy, moral and religious, with a finish worthy of his last production, whether it be so or not.

THE POEMS OF SHAKSPere.

A few words will suffice to characterise these poems, and to establish their coincidences with our author's other productions. Everywhere we discover analogies or germs of ideas developed in the plays: Malone agrees as to the marked conformity between the poems and the plays on the subject of death, Venus calls it an earth worm'- -an 'eternal sleeping.' With Homer and Shelley, death is painted as the 'brother of sleep.' The Sonnets talk of 'death's dateless night.' We leave this vile world' only with vilest worms to dwell'-to descend to the grim care of Death.'

Our poet has been, on account of these poems, compared to Ovid. True it is that in point of lasciviousness he coincides but too well with the known freedom of unbelievers. Venus reasons in two places, in the language of Isabella, in Measure for Measure; her sentiments on suicide are Cleopatra's; she would conquer herself after the manner of Brutus and Antony. The materialism of thought throughout these poems may be extensively identified.

Lucrece's 'immortality' is her fame-so is our poet's own eternity. In the sonnets, immortal life is memory. Bound

less as is our poet's fertility of thought, he seldom avails himself of strictly religious terms, retaining them at the same time in their pure sense. Once when he alludes to the 'judgment,' the thought has a mundane turn. The phrases of religion, of which many are introduced in these poems, are either prostituted to carnal love, or placed in contrast with Love's superior potency, which is our poet's 'idolatry.' He borrows from the Lord's Prayer to hallow' it. In fine, to use his own words, Religion's love puts out religion's eye.

Unfaulteringly is the theory of necessity also illustrated. Lucrece reproaches opportunity' as a god. Love is often deified, and Time' declared the tutor both of good and bad.' No faith in natural causes can be stronger than this. Men are compared to wax, on whom are stamped any semblance. Necessitarians have never gone farther in their analogies.

Having now completed such general summary of the particulars of the plays and poems as seemed necessary to inform the reader of the nature and scope of the work, we proceed to the examination, and to present in detail the facts and arguments here epitomised.