still less with derision. That he entertained indeed a just sense of the dignity and responsibility of their sacred office, and of the mischiefs that must ensue whenever it is disgraced by insufficiency, or perverted by unfaithfulness; that he regarded them as ambassadors for Christ, and as intercessors, through Him, in behalf of man, we need no further proof than the speech of Prince John of Lancaster, in the Second Part of King Henry IV. He is addressing Scroop, Archbishop of York, who had joined the Earl of Northumberland's party against King Henry, the Prince's father, in the Forest of Gualtree :

My Lord of York, it better showed with you,
When *that your flock, assembled by the bell,
Encircled you to hear with reverence
Your exposition on the holy text,

Than now to see you here an iron man,†
Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum,
Turning the word to sword, and life to death.
That man that sits within a monarch's heart,
And ripens in the sunshine of his favour,
Would he abuse the countenance of the king,
Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach,
In shadow of such greatness! With you, lord bishop,
It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken,
How deep you were within the BOOKS OF GOD?
To us, the speaker in His parliament;

To us, the imagined voice of GOD HIMSELF;
The very opener and intelligencer

Between the grace, the sanctities of Heaven,

*

See above, Pt. I. ch. i. p. 22.

† i. e. clad in armour.

And our dull workings.* O! who shall believe,
But you misuse the reverence of your place;
Employ the countenance and grace of Heaven,
As a false favourite doth his prince's name,
In deeds dishonourable? You have taken up,t
Under the counterfeited zeal of God,

The subjects of His substitute, my father;

And both against the peace of Heaven and him,
Have here upswarmed them.
Act iv. Sc. 2.

After reading this speech, it is sad to think that the same Prince John, in the next scene, would seem to father upon God his own treachery towards the rebels, when he says:—

Heaven, and not we, hath safely fought to-day.

So prone are we all to make religion the cloak, or even the minister of sin!

But our poet, however well disposed towards the clergy, does not fail to preach out of his own pulpit, that if they would retain the respect to which they are entitled by their office, they must themselves give good heed to the instruction which they deliver to others. Thus, King Henry VI. rebukes his great-uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester :

Fye, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach,
That malice was a great and grievous sin :

And will not you maintain the thing you teach,
But prove a chief offender in the same?

K. Henry VI. 1st Part, Act iii. Sc. 1.

Or, as S. Paul expresses it, Thou which teachest

6

* i. e. Labours of thought.'-Steevens.

+ Levied.

another, teachest thou not thyself?' Rom. ii. 21. Thus too the amiable Ophelia, when she had listened to the good advice of her brother Laertes, assures him :—

I shall the effect of this good lesson* keep,

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.†

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3.

At the same time, our poet is not unreasonable. He knew that the duty of the clergy requires them to teach, and that charitable allowance is to be made for them, if, not in wilfulness or in hypocrisy, but from the imperfection incident to our common nature, they fall short, in practice, of their own lessons:

If to do were as easy as to know what to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 2. An observation which must find an echo in every clergyman's breast.

* It was a saying of the pious Bp. Wilson, that the only true proof of a good sermon is its making people better. Shakspeare has anticipated the remark, in substance, when he writes, in the Merchant of Venice:

'Portia. Good sentences, and well pronounced!
Nerissa. They would be better, if well followed.'

Act i. Sc. 2.

† 'Heeds not his own lessons.'-Pope. Read counsel.

There can be no reasonable doubt that Shakspeare was a member of the Reformed Church of England; in other words, that he was a true Catholic Christian; and as such, a Protestant against the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome. Yet, strange to say, the attempt has been made to represent him as a Romanist! So at least it would seem from the Copy of Shakspeare's Will' which used to be exhibited not many years ago-and perhaps still is in the room at Stratford-upon-Avon, where the so-called Shakspeare's relics' are preserved and shown to visitors. That this 'copy' is a forgery has been proved by comparing it with the real will, which is deposited in Doctors' Commons, from which the document commonly prefixed to editions of our poet's works, and truly called 'Shakspeare's Will,' is taken. The supposititious document has a preamble much longer than the genuine one; from which also it differs widely both in tone and expression -the differences being mostly such as to leave no doubt that the forger's design was to claim our poet for the Romish Church! That such a claim is utterly groundless might be proved abundantly from the internal evidence of his works. Not to lay stress upon the expression Popish tricks and ceremonies' in Titus

*

But see Supplementary Note at end of the volume.

† See Preface to Religious and Moral Sentences from Shakspeare, by a member of the Shakspeare Society, 1843.

Mr. Bowdler has altered this into idle tricks.'

Andronicus, Act v. Sc. 1 (because that play, as I have said before, is most probably not Shakspeare's), it is sufficient to refer to the character of Cardinal Beaufort in the First Part of King Henry V1., and to the manner in which the pretended supremacy of the Pope is not only repudiated in King John, but, moreover, is shown, in King Henry VIII., to be destructive of the just authority of the episcopate. I allude to the passage in which the Earl of Surrey begins his charge against Wolsey :—

First, that, without the king's assent or knowledge,
You wrought to be a legate, by which power
You maimed the jurisdiction of all bishops.

Act iii. Sc. 2.

It is remarked by A. W. Schlegel, in his admirable Lectures on Dramatic Literature, that Shakspeare, amidst the rancour of religious parties, takes a delight in painting the condition of a monk, and always represents his influence as beneficial.*. With regard to the monk in Romeo and Juliet, I quite agree that the discourse of the pious old man is full of deep meaning.' But what are we to think of the duke disguised as a monk, in Measure for Measure, and who, according to Schlegel, carries out the disguise so perfectly, that, 'contrary to the well-known proverb, the cowl (in his case) seems really to make a monk?' Ministering to Claudio in prison, and encouraging him against the fear of death, he is made to say :—

* Vol. ii. p. 169. + Ibid. p. 188. See above, p. 108.