And the heart being thus universally corrupt, we are at no loss to account for the universality of actual sin. Bearing upon this point, there is a remarkable passage in Hamlet, which has caused no little stir among the commentators. It is in the dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius in Act ii. Sc. 2:

Ham. I would you were so honest a man.

Pol. Honest, my lord?

Ham. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

Pol. That's very true, my lord.

Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god, kissing carrion

The sense is there broken off; but with the help of Warburton's emendation* of the text-an emendation which Johnson commends so highly as to say of it, that it almost sets the critic on a level with the author'we can scarcely doubt that the poet's meaning was (as Warburton explains it) to vindicate the Providence of God from the false conclusions to which the prevalence of evil in the world might appear to give rise, and to represent the Deity as no more responsible for the corruption in man's heart than the sun is responsible for the maggots bred in a dead dog. In a latter part of

* The only difficulty in accepting it arises from the illative particle 'For.' And I am inclined to think we should read 'Nor;' and then the inference would be Nor is God to blame for this, any more than the sun, &c.

† See the parallel passage in Measure for Measure, Act ii. Sc. 2.

the same scene there is another dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius, in which the truest Christian philosophy, in reference to the same point, is again embodied. Hamlet has told Polonius to see the players well bestowed,' or, in other words, 'well used':

Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.

Ham. Much better, man! use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

And once more, in Act iii. Sc. 1, Hamlet says to Ophelia :

I am myself indifferent honest: but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne* me. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven! We are arrant knaves all: Believe none of us.

And if Hamlet could speak after this fashion, how much more Timon the misanthrope!

All is oblique :

There's nothing level in our cursed natures,

But direct villainy. Timon of Athens, Act iv. Sc. 3. A statement painfully strong, and yet not stronger, nor so strong, coming from a heathen, as that of S. Paul, in the third chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, or of the Psalmist whom he there quotes. A more temperate, and therefore, more exact representation of human frailty, as arising partly from

*See Matt. xxvi. 24.

natural corruption and partly from our own wilfulness, occurs in Troilus and Cressida ; but, though put also into the mouth of a heathen, it could scarcely have been written by one who was not familiar with Holy Scripture:

Something may be done that we will not;

And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,
When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,
Presuming on their changeful potency.

Act iv. Sc. 4.

The reader will be reminded of James i. 19; and of Rom. vii. 15-23; a passage which was evidently present to our poet's thoughts on another occasion, viz., in Hamlet, where the sentiment, ‘It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,' is transferred by Hamlet to his assumed madness, Act v. Sc. 2. How just, and like S. Paul again, are the reflections which pass between the two lords, in All's well, &c., respecting the origin, the course, and the result of wicked actions:

1st Lord. Now Heaven delay our rebellion: as we are in ourselves, how weak are we!

2nd Lord. Merely our own traitors. And as in the common course of all treasons, we still see them reveal themselves, till they attain to their abhorred ends; so he, that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream o'erflows* himself. Act iv. Sc. 3.

Our poet is still in the same vein, and gives the same testimony, in Measure for Measure :

* Johnson interprets this to mean 'betrays his own secrets in his own talk.'

Our natures do pursue,

(Like rats that ravin down their proper bane),

A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die. Act i. Sc. 3. Men are destroyed, when they suffer themselves to be enticed by unlawful pleasure, as rats are killed by the poison which is set for them to drink.

And, as the Church of England testifies, in her Ninth Article: This infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated;' a truth which our poet, a faithful son of the Church of England, thus represents :

Virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it, i. e. of the old stock. Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 1.

But if Shakspeare's views of the corruption of human nature were thus clear, and formed upon the teaching of Holy Scripture, so also was his perception of the method of its recovery, through Divine grace. This has been already shown in part, and will be seen more fully in the next section, when we come to speak of the doctrine of repentance. In the mean time, that we are not able of ourselves, and in our own strength alone, to subdue the evil which is so natural to us, we may gather sufficiently from Love's Labour's lost, where Biron declares that

Every man with his affects* is born,

Not by might mastered, but by special grace.

Act i. Sc. I.

Shakspeare, no doubt, had learnt his Catechism

* Affections and lusts.

well, and would remember the words- My good child, know this, that thou art not able to do these things of thyself, nor to walk in the commandments of God, and to serve Him, without His special grace.' And not only so; not even Aristotle, or Bishop Butler himself, has taught the theory and practise of the formation of moral habits more accurately than our poet has done, where Hamlet, seeking to disengage the Queen, his mother, from all intercourse with her wicked and incestuous husband, thus addresses her :

Refrain to-night,

And that shall lend a kind of easiness,

To the next abstinence: the next more easy: 1
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.

.

Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4.

But our poet would remind us further, that, if a virtuous habit is to be formed, the good purpose which is to lead to it must not be trifled with :

For

Purpose is but the slave to memory;
Of violent birth, but poor validity.

And, therefore, he justly argues :

That we would do,

Ibid. Sc. 2.

We should do, when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements, and delays as many,

As there are tongues, are hands, are instruments.

Ibid. Act iv. Sc. 7.

Before we quit this subject, I cannot refrain