That what you speak is in your conscience washed As pure as sin with baptism. K. Henry V. Act i. Sc. 2. And, in Othello, the villainous Iago is made to represent Desdemona's influence to be such, that it would be easy for her, if she wished To win the Moor-wer't to renounce his baptism— Act ii. Sc. 3. The judicious reader will be surprised—and not, I think, well pleased to learn that Mr. Bowdler, in his Family Shakspeare,' has seen reason to omit the latter of these two lines. And passing from the first scene of the Christian life to the last, from baptism to burial, we find, in Cymbeline, the rationale of interment with the head towards the east alluded to, and also the beautiful custom of strewing the grave with flowers described in language no less beautiful. The two brothers, Guiderius and Arviragus (Cadwal) are engaged in burying Fidele : Guid. Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the east: The 'reason' could not properly have been, in the mouth of a Pagan, the Christian one; and therefore no further explanation is given: Arvig. Whilst summer lasts, and I I'll sweeten thy sad grave. With fairest flowers, live here, Fidele, Thou shalt not lack The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azured hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom * not to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the ruddock † would, Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, [Re-enter Belarius. Bel. Here's a few flowers; but about midnight, more: SECT. 15. Of Politics-Peace and War. We cannot conceive of Shakspeare otherwise than as a Conservative and a Royalist-if the anachronism involved in the use of both names may be pardoned. On the one hand, we are sure that he loved his country no less than the Prophets of old loved their chosen land, from the enthusiastic descriptions which he has given of it and its inhabitants : This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land. King Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1. Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them! Nought shall make us rue If England to itself do rest * See above, p. 18. but true. King John, Act v. Sc. 7. + Redbreast. On the other hand, we may safely attribute to him a deep reverence for antiquity; and we need not doubt that the precept of Solomon, My son, fear thou the Lord and the King, and meddle not with them that are given to change,' Prov. xxiv. 21, approved itself thoroughly to his large heart and marvellous understanding. How just is the sentiment which ascribes to Reverence,' or due regard for subordination, the power that keeps peace and order in the world, to borrow the gloss of Johnson upon the words that follow! . Tho' mean and mighty, rotting Together, have one dust; yet Reverence (That ANGEL of the world) doth make distinction Cymbeline, Act iv. Sc. 2. The same sentiment, in regard to the value and importance of gradations in human society, is enlarged upon and enforced, in Troilus and Cressida, most appropriately, by Ulysses : Oh, when Degree is shaken, Which is the ladder to all high designs, Then enterprise is sick. How could communities. The primogeniture, and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, And hark what discord follows; each thing meets In mere oppugnancy. Act i. Sc. 3. And where shall we find a more effective protest against the spirit of innovation and continual change, or the value of antiquity and custom more truly estimated and described, than in what follows? A rash political movement is objected to— As tho' the world were now but to begin, The ratifiers and props of every word. Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5. The critics have been somewhat puzzled by 'word,' as here used, and have proposed to alter it; Warburton suggesting 'ward,' Johnson 'weal,' and Tyrwhitt 'work.' Had any one of them read the Bible as attentively, and known it as well as Shakspeare did, I imagine he would have recognized the expression as borrowed, probably, from Scripture, where' word' occurs not unfrequently as put for thing.' The Greeka, properly word, and so translated in Matt. xviii. 16-' that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established' is translated 'thing' in Luke i. 37, 'With God no thing shall be impossible;' in the Prayer Book, Office for Visitation of the Sick, however, the old and more exact translation is retained, 'We know, O Lord, that there is no word impossible with Thee.' The truth is, that word and work, or deed, though very different, as we know, in the case of man, are synonymous with regard to God, and therefore synonymously used in the Book of God. There are no scenes which our poet appears to have taken more pleasure in depicting than those in which he satirizes mob-government; whether at Rome, as in Coriolanus, or at London, as in the Second Part of King Henry VI. (see, especially, Act iv. Sc. 2, where Jack Cade is introduced); in both which he teaches us by example, how Headstrong liberty is lashed with woe. Comedy of Errors, Act ii. Sc. 1. Again: his moral estimate of a mere worldly politician, without faith in God, as the Governor of the world, may be gathered from an observation of Hamlet, in the grave-diggers' scene, where, when one of the clowns had thrown up a skull, he says— This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now overreaches, one that would circumvent God, might it not? Act v. Sc. 1. Surely not too bold a supposition, when we consider how statesmen have been known to act in defiance of God's laws. I have already had occasion, much oftener than I could have wished, to invite my reader's attention to the manner in which omissions and even alterations of our poet's words have been made, in The Family Shakspeare.' But what will be thought of the strange obtuseness (for I can call it nothing less) which has changed the name of God' into the word 'anybody' in the foregoing quotation— a change by which the ne plus ultra of bathos is fathered upon Shakspeare, and the grand meaning |