This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king

Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. Act iii. Sc. 2. This is a noble passage. Ten years later, when our poet produced Julius Cæsar, he had recourse again to the same image, and gave effect to it in a strain which nothing can surpass. The reader will know that I am referring to the speech of Antony, spoken by permission of Brutus and the other conspirators, over the body which they had stabbed to death :Antony. I have neither wit,* nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;

I tell you that which you yourselves do know :
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me : But were I Brutus,

And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that would move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

7. As there are thoughts which lie too deep for tears,' so there have been stages of human existence in which even desire for sympathy has become extinct; and nothing has seemed left to those whose hope was thus overclouded, but to wish that they had never been. This state of feeling, to which no faithful Christian should allow himself to be reduced, finds vent in expressions, the appalling sublimity of

* Malone reads 'writ,' which Johnson defends, not, I think, satisfactorily.

which has never been surpassed, in the 3rd chapter of the Book of Job:

After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
And Job spake and said:

Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man-child * conceived.

Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let† the blackness of the day terrify it.

As for that night, let darkness seize upon it, let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

Lo! let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day.

I think the readers of Shakspeare will agree with me that there is no one of all his characters from whom language of this kind would be more expected, or come with greater propriety, than from the Lady Constance in King John. And so we find that he has put into her mouth a speech which I cannot doubt was founded upon the poet's recollection of the foregoing passage of the Old Testament. When King Philip had announced that the marriage was agreed on between his son Lewis and the Lady Blanch, whereby young Arthur, the son of Constance, was to be excluded from succession to the English throne-speaking of the contract as one that would

*See above, p. 36.

But see margin.

ever reflect lustre upon the day then present, upon

which it had been made:

The yearly course, that brings this day about,
Shall never see it but a holyday :-

Constance broke in upon him, thus :

A wicked day, and not a holyday!

What hath this day deserved? What hath it done,
That it in golden letters should be set,
Among the high tides,* in the kalendar?
Nay, rather, turn this day out of the week,
This day of shame, oppression, perjury;
Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child
Pray that their burdens may not fall this day.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

And in Hamlet, written, according to Malone, in the same year as King John, viz. 1596, we find the sentiment of Job very nearly adopted, when he says to Ophelia, speaking of himself:

I could accuse me of such things that it were better† my mother had not borne me. Act iii. Sc. I.

To these passages may be added, from Timon of Athens, the last words spoken by Timon, as he goes out to put an end to his existence :

Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.

Act v. Sc. 2.

8. The striking sublimity with which Paul, when brought before Festus, replied to the Governor's exclamation, that he was beside himself,' by the simple denial, ' I am not mad, most noble Festus,’

*Times, seasons.

+ See Matt. xxvi. 24.

Acts xxvi. 25, was not likely to be lost upon our poet's imagination. In both the plays which I just now mentioned as contemporaneous, Hamlet and King John, it is copied with good effect. When the Queen accuses Hamlet, after the exit of the Ghost, which he had seen, of 'ecstacy,' he an

swers:

Ecstacy!

My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: It is not madness
That I have uttered.

Act iii. Sc. 4.

And in King John, when Pandulph says to Con

stance :

Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow,

her reply is :

Thou art not holy to belie me so ;

I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;

My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wife;
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost-

I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!

Act iii. Sc. 4.

9. The mention of S. Paul may remind us of another sublime passage in the writings of that Apostle, which appears to have been present to the mind of Shakspeare. I allude to the verse in the Epistle to the Galatians, i. 8 :

Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

Compare with this what we read in King John, in that most affecting of all scenes, between Hu

bert and Arthur, when the young Prince says to

him :

An* if an angel should have come to me

And told me, Hubert should put out mine eyes,
I would not have believed him.

Act iv. Sc. I.

Akin, in some degree, to the foregoing, are two remarkable passages in the First Part of King Henry IV. The former of these has perplexed the commentators more, I think, than it need have done, if they had considered the striking resemblance which it bears to a strain of bold and figurative language to be met with more than once in Holy Scripture. It is quite in keeping with the character of Hotspur to speak as follows :—

By heaven, methinks, it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

And pluck up drowned honour by the locks;

So he, that doth redeem her thence, might wear,
Without corrival, all her dignities.
Act i. Sc. 3.

We may be sure that Shakspeare had never seen the passage of Euripides which has been produced to justify and explain the so-called bombast' of these lines; and we may be no less certain that he had seen and studied those two grand chapters of Deuteronomy, and of the Epistle to the Romans, in which we read what I proceed to quote:

For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in Heaven;

* See above, p. 26.

T