us to detest, or clothes impurity in the garb of virtue." In his sonnets and dramas he forbids

“... Fond

Lascivious metres to whose venom sound

The open ear of youth does always listen."

—Richard III., ii. 1.

His heroes are brave, good, and true. But their goodness is based, not on Puritan self-complacency, or, negatively, on the absence of temptation, but on self-conflict, waged and won for God's sake and through His grace.

In an age of doubt and despondency, single sentences of Shakespeare speak like the voice of conscience. Against unbelief, he warns us that

reverence is the angel of the world." The philosophy of the day is "excellent foppery." Against novelties he tells us "to stick to the journal course," and he never allows us to be "out of countenance with one's nativity," or to fear in the hour of darkness if our souls are prepared. Hence he performs the poet's cleansing of the sick soul; and comparable charm and power, not only by aid of his matchless genius, but because his mind is filled with the eternal forms of truth and beauty, and his ideals are divine.

Ripeness is all." true function, the he does so with in