THE COMPARISON CONTINUED.

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through the luminous ether of his poetry, and heard in his larger utterance, are often so changed in their translated shape, that they are as difficult to identify as it may be to recognise in another world many glorified spirits that once dwelt obscure and dim in this. Also the personages live so intensely in his Poetry, who have only come to us as phantoms in history, that it is no marvel we should have lost their likeness. In the present instance, the identification of the fact in the fiction is easy, for not only has the Poet used the thoughts and expressions of Essex and dramatised his death-scene, but he has also rendered the very incidents of Essex's trial, his bearing before his Peers, and given an estimate of persons and circumstances exact in application.

First Gent. To his accusations

He pleaded still not guilty, and alleged
Many sharp reasons to defeat the law.
The King's Attorney on the contrary,

Urged on the examinations, proofs, confessions
Of divers witnesses; which the Duke desired
To have brought viva voce to his face:

At which appeared against him his surveyor;
Sir Gilbert Peck, his chancellor; and John Carr,
Confessor to him; with that devil-monk,

Hopkins, that made this mischief."

Here is obvious reference to the brutal vehemence of Coke, the Attorney-General, to the private examinations of the confederates, whose depositions were taken the day before the trial of Essex and Southampton; to the confession of Sir Christopher Blount, who had been Essex's right-hand man in his fatal affair; to the treachery of Mr. Ashton, Essex's confessor; and a most marked and underlined allusion to Cuffe, the Jesuitical plotter of

6

treason, the chief instigator and evil tempter of Essex : the man that made this mischief.'

A closer scrutiny would yield further proof, that in this scene our Poet was working directly from the life of his own time. The lines

'Nor will I sue, altho' the king have mercies,

More than I dare make faults-'

give utterance to a prominent fact in Essex's case. And the allusions to the Irish Deputyship and the trick of state,' which was 'a deep envious one,' most probably have personal application to Essex, and Mountjoy, and possibly to Cecil.

For myself, I feel half ashamed to be decomposing Shakspeare's poetry in this way; taking the instrument in pieces to see whence the music came. It looks like filching a light for the purpose of playing the detective's part. And yet, every touch of his personal relationships, and every authentic footprint are precious to me and important to my subject. Also, this identification unites with the other internal evidence in proof that King Henry VIII.' was written during the life of Elizabeth. The fate of Essex must have profoundly affected Shakspeare, and I feel that it was yet fresh in his memory when he wrote the Prologue,' with its iteration of the truth of the scenes represented. The play was composed quite in time to be that Enterlude of King Henry VIII.' which was entered in the Stationers' Books under date Feb. 12th, 1604-5; but not performed, I think, until after the accession of James. The allusions to him and the glories of his reign, I hold to be an afterthought, interpolated to meet the players' exigency. But surely not by Shakspeare? How could his dramatic instinct have tolerated the proclamation of James as Elizabeth's heir in a Prophecy?

THE MAN SHAKSPEARE:

A

RE-TOUCHED PORTRAIT.

IN retelling an old story, my plea is that I adduce fresh evidence; novel facts; and bring new witnesses into the Court of Criticism. We are now able for the first time to see round the character of Shakspeare in its completeness, without misgivings respecting those back slums of his London life, in which he has been supposed to have got so sadly bemired. We no longer need fear lest he should have cast and fixed a black shadow of himself as his sole personal portrait bequeathed to us. We can look him full in the face in clear honest daylight, untroubled by the moody mists and fantastic shadows, and bat-like suspicions that have so long haunted the twilight uncertainty, to learn at last that our man of men who seemed something more than human in his wisdom of life was not miserably unwise in his own life; did not wantonly profane the beauty of his work, nor wilfully flaw and stain one of our loftiest statues of humanity. Once for all we are now able to silence those who fancied that they had gotten on the blind side of the great seer, and, at least, caught the god kissing carrion,' whilst on his visit to our earth.

Three hundred years have passed by since the little

child opened its eyes on the low ceiling and bare walls of the poor birth-place at Stratford-on-Avon, to grow up into that immortal god-send of a man whom we call William Shakspeare. In all this long procession of years we meet with no other such face looking out on us; the eyes rainy or sunny with the tears and laughters of all time! No other such genius has come to transfigure English literature. All this while the world has been getting hints of what the man Shakspeare was, and how infinitely wonderful and precious was the work he did; how richly ennobling to us was the legacy of his name! Innumerable writers have thrown what light they could upon his page to help the world on its way; but, as Coleridge says, no comprehension has yet been able to draw the line of circumscription round this mighty mind so as to say to itself I have seen the whole.' And, how few of all who read his works, or continually repeat his name, have any adequate or even shapeable conception of the man! He who, of all poets, comes nearest home to us with his myriad touches of nature, is the most remote in his own personality. We only reach him figuratively at best. We think of him as the chief star of the Elizabethan group, large and luminous above the rest; but we do not get at the man in that way, however we may stand on tiptoe with longing, having no glass to draw the planet Shakspeare sufficiently close to us, so that we might make out the human features amid the dazzle of his glory, and see his 'visage in his mind.' We know that somewhere at the centre sits the spirit of all this brightness, however veiled in light. Throbs of real mortal life, pulses of pleasure and pain, first made the light with their motion, and still shoot forth every sparkle of splendour-every evanescence of lovely colour-every gleam of grace. Shakspeare's own life-Shakspeare himself-is at the heart of it all! Although a miracle of a

THE ENGLAND OF HIS TIME.

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man, and, as a creative artist, just the nearest to an earthly representative of that Creator who is everywhere felt in His works, nowhere visible; yet he was a man, and one of the most intensely human that ever walked our world. And it is my present purpose to try briefly to get at the man himself, and make out his features so far as our means will allow, by extracting what spirit of Shakspeare we can from his works, taking advantage of the fresh facts to be derived from this reading of the sonnets, and clothing that spirit as best we may : a grain of human colour, a touch of real life being of more value for my purpose than all the husks of Antiquarianism.

That Spanish Emperor who fancied he could have improved the plan of creation if he had been consulted, would hardly have managed to better the time, and place, and circumstances of Shakspeare's birth. The world could not have been more ripe, or England more readythe stage of the national life more nobly peopled—the scenes more fittingly draped-than they were for his reception. It was a time when souls were made in earnest, and life grew quick within and large without. The full-statured spirit of the nation had just found its sea-legs and was clothing itself with wings. Shakspeare's starting-place for his victorious career was the fine vantage ground which England had won when she had broken the strength of the Spaniard, burst the girdle they had sought to put round her, and sat enthroned higher than ever in her sea-sovereignty-breathing an ampler air of liberty, strong in the sense of a lustier life, and glad in the great dawn of a future new and limitless.

Into a mixed, multiform, many-coloured world was William Shakspeare born, three hundred years ago. Old times and an old faith had been passing away, like the leaves of autumn wearing their richest colours, and every rent of old ruin was the rift of a new life. England was picturesque to look on in her changing tints, as is