speculations upon Shakespeare's opinions, as well as in those upon his taste, style, and knowledge. It has been shown, in the introductory remarks, in this edition, on the plays last referred to, that they were written some time after the accession of James I., when the great parliamentary and national struggle against the crown first commenced-when the royal authority and the rights of the people, in the republican sense of the term, began to be brought into collision-when the very principles of government were openly canvassed; when all those elements of the great approaching conflict of radically differing political opinions were fermenting in the public mind, and already entering into the popular elections. Although parties had not yet become finally arrayed in the distinct manner they became in the next reign, this state of things could not but familiarize the mind of a thinking man, however aloof from active participation in party, to general political reflection, and to make literary and poetical references to such topics, or exhibitions of such scenes, more acceptable to the public taste. Hence we find in those later dramas that the author looks more distinctly upon man as a member of a state, upon the various forms of civil polity, and upon the conflicts of party and revolutions of government, as influenced by political opinion. The English historical dramas, except the last one of the series, Henry VIII., were all written under the stern and steady rule of Elizabeth, and the author, still young, had grown up in a state of society where the only question of principle which had, during the memory of that generation or their fathers, divided the nation was that of religious difference; their only other notion of political party being that of the conflicts of rival houses, or of personal ambition. It is probably fortunate, not less for the spirited accuracy of historic delineations in these dramas, than for their dramatic and poetic effect, that this was the case.

Even when the insurrections, revolutions, and contests

under the Plantagenets really involved or affected the principles of freedom, and the substantial permanent rights and happiness of the subject, they did not (unless so far as the acquisition of Magna Charta and the subsequent appeals to it may be exceptions) take that form; but were struggles for immediate and practical objects, the redress of pressing grievances, the defence of chartered rights, or the overthrow of an oppressor. The divisions and dissensions, which, like the Wars of the Roses, deluged England with blood, had nothing in view beyond a change of rulers or of dynasty, neither attaining nor looking to, in the result, any object of a truly public nature, and leaving nothing to the faithful chronicler to record but (as old Hall says) "what misery, what murder, and what execrable plagues this famous region hath suffered."

Into all these conflicts, calling forth high energies and exhibiting stirring scenes and a crowd of majestic personages, the young dramatist entered with the very spirit and sympathies of the times, naturally assimilating his mind to that of the men of those days, and thus painting them and their deeds as they showed to their own generation, not as they now appear to the philosophical student of history. Thus he vehemently asserts, in the person of Richard II. and his adherents, the indefeasible, hereditary right of kings; but shortly after makes the successful usurper, Bolingbroke, equally ready to rebuke rebellion and "hurly-burly innovation," without troubling himself to discuss the truth of the doctrine, or the propriety of its application, in the mouth of either. His business was with the passions and actions of men, not with the principles of government; and the Wars of the Roses were more graphically and vividly described in the absence of any wish or design, however indirect or remote, to inculcate political opinion or political philosophy, of any sort or colour.

At a later period, the poet generalized more, depicting,

in Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar, the collisions of contending principles, or lecturing, with Ulysses, on "the unity and married calm of states."

[From Charles Cowden Clarke's "Shakespeare-Characters."*] The character of Sir John Falstaff is, I should think, the most witty and humorous combined that ever was portrayed. So palpably is the person presented to the mind's eye, that not only do we give him a veritable location in history, but the others, the real characters in the period, compared with him, appear to be the idealized people, and invented to be his foils and contrasts. As there is no romance like the romance of real life, so no real-life character comes home to our apprehensions and credulities like the romance of Sir John Falstaff. He is one grand identity. His body is fitted for his mind-bountiful, exuberant, and luxurious; and his mind was well appointed for his body-being rich, ample, sensual, sensuous, and imaginative. The very fatness of his person is the most felicitous correspondent to the unlimited opulence of his imagination; and but for this conjunction the character would have been out of keeping and incomplete. Fancy a human thread-paper with Sir John's amount of roguish accomplishment! No power of reasoning could induce a motion of sympathy with such a compound. In most men, wit is the waste-pipe of their spleen in contemplating the happiness of others; in Falstaff it is the main supply of a robust structure, and is the surcharge of fun and good temper. His wit is the offspring and heir to his love of laughter, the overflowing of his satisfaction with himself and his good terms with all men. He keeps both body and mind in one perpetual gaudy-day; his is the saturnalia, the carnival, of the intellect, and his body he rejoices with sack-posset, and his mind with jokes and roars of laughter; and with him *Shakespeare-Characters, by Charles Cowden Clarke (London, 1863),

P. 431 fol.

each acts upon and with the other-the true sign of a strong constitution. Falstaff's is not a "clay that gets muddy with drink;" his sensuality does not sodden and brutify his faculties, but it quickens their temper and edge. It gives wings to his imagination, and--to use his own words-fills it with “nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes." He is amenable to the charge of a host of vices, any one of which would strand and shipwreck an ordinary character. He is an indicted coward, a braggadocio, a cheat, a peculator, a swindler, and a liar, etc., and yet, withal, so far are we from voting him to Coventry for all his delinquencies, there are few of us who would refuse to "march through Coventry" with him, at the head of his scarecrows; and one reason for this tolerancenot to say this sleeve-laughing encouragement of his villainous courses on the part of all ranks and classes-is, that he himself appears to have adopted and indulged in them from an irrepressible love of humour and mad waggery. He is no hypocrite; and men, from instinct, and especially your men of the world, can extenuate many vices rather than that of hypocrisy. What bold impudence in that speech! "If my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent." He also tells the Lord Chief-Justice-who he knows well enough knows him-that he "lost his voice with hallooing and singing of anthems." His impudence is sublime; and that very impudence forms no insignificant item in his humour: for the grand secret of Falstaff's wit, and humour too, consists in an impenetrable and imperturbable self-possession. He proposes Bardolph-one of his rogues, as known as the church-steeple-to the silk-mercer as security for his payment. He is never thrown off his guard; or, if so, he is never foiled: he recovers himself like a rope-dancer. In the famous eleven buckram-men scene, when the tables are turned upon him, and his scouring-off laid bare, his resource is "Do you think I did not know ye? By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye.”

When his men, Pistol, Nym, and the rest, are accused before Justice Shallow of robbing Master Slender while he is drunk, Sir John takes upon himself to dismiss the charge against them with those remarkable words: "You hear all these matters denied, gentlemen:-you hear-the men deny it."...

With the genial spirit in which his sweet nature was conceived, Shakespeare contrives to throw in some dash of feeling-a motion of our common humanity-some extenuation, even in his worst characters; for, whatever they were besides, they were also men, and unmitigated evil belongs only to the origin of all evil-not to human nature. With the accurate perception, however, of true morality, he has not imparted to the character of Falstaff-attractive as it is for its sociality, wit, humour, and imagination-any of those intrinsic qualities which would set him up as an object of imitation of course in his convivialities, his roystering, and other laxities; but he has associated them with the meaner vices of profligacy, turning these to the fullest account in completing the character. Gross as the knight is, and wonderfully as the poet has relieved that grossness by the most brilliant flashes of wit and drollery, no mortal, it is to be presumed, ever arose from reading the plays in which he shines with a less firm appreciation of the wealth of virtue in all its senses; still less could any one desire to mimic his propensities. This cannot be said of some modern creations that might be instanced, which, from their sneers at sympathy and mutual confidence—their constant depreciation of the most generous feelings of our nature, inducing suspicion and distrust of all human profession, would go to sap the foundations of what alone can support the social fabric.

It was requisite to our poet that the dissolute young prince should, in his scenes of extravagance, have immediately about his person companions endowed with accomplishments sufficiently eminent to induce him to "daff the world aside, and