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around him and formed his environment, he carried them to the summit of excellence. The topstone of Bunker Hill Monument is highest only because it rests on every block underneath; the lowest and smallest helps to hold it there.

Character. Norman by the father, Saxon by the mother, Shakespeare had the English duality. He combined the Oriental soaring of the first with the grip and exactitude of the second. Imperfectly educated, he had as much culture as he wanted, and of whatever kind he wanted. All the classicism then attainable he got cheap-ready-made. Like Goethe, he set little store by useless learning. Yet who can reckon all that he knew of man and of history? Such minds have no need to be taught; they are full, and overflow, by the revelations of their seer's madness.

A nature affectionate and kind,' witty in conversation, brilliantly gay; extreme in joy and pain; so exquisitely sensitive, that, like a perfect harp, it vibrated at the slightest touch; with an imagination so broad, that it grasped all the complexity of human lot, its laughter and its tears; so copious, that he never erased what he had written; so glowing, that it set at defiance the Unities which imprisoned it, and produced in their stead a fantastic pageant,—a medley of forms, colors, and sentiments; with sympathies so embracing, so urgent, that he became transfused into all that he conceived, and gave to a multitude of diverse individualities each a separate soul.

Without doubt, in his youth, he was not a pattern of propriety. His Venus and Adonis is little else than a debauch. As a dramatist he is certainly neither a professed religionist, nor a pronounced reformer. He copies at random the high and the low. He holds the mirror up to all that is the whole reality. While the lower half of the far-spread glass is therefore blotched, we believe that the upper half is his ultimate and essential self. With advancing years, he evidently dwells more upon the great characters of his tragedies, and gives increased light to moral issues. More and more, as he grows older, he tightens the strands in the colossal harp of his nature and strikes the resonant wires with a firmer plectrum. Deeper and deeper sink the pangs of affection misplaced, the memory of hours misspent. Conscience is ill at ease with the world. Thus again and

1. My darling Shakespeare,' 'Sweet swan of Avon.'-Ben Jonson.

again he alludes to the infamy of his marriage. If the fact, without the form, exists before—

All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be ministered,

No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-eyed disdain and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both; therefore take heed
As Hymen's lamps shall light you.'

Joy alternates with sadness, transports with melancholies:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day,
As after sun-set fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lic,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

Here are the last notes struck within the hearing of this world:

I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting.

Influence. Upon universal sympathy, upon historical inquiry, upon linguistic development, he has left a potent and enduring impress. His works and the Bible, both models of Teutonic simplicity, are the great conservators of English speech.

He infused into the early drama a spirit of high art; gave it order, symmetry, elevation; informed it with true airy wit and rich but subtle humor; made it an opulent and unfailing fount of entertainment and instruction.

He has revealed, in fresh, familiar, significant, and precise details, the complete condition of civilization: and thus to attain. nature truthfully in the balance of motives and the issues of action, is in the most vital of all ways to be moral; to be a propagator, though by indirection, of the morality that governs and illuminates the world; else is nature immoral and in fellowship with impurity.

1 Shakespeare's will.

Consider the mental activity of which he is the occasion; how far, and for how many, he has enlarged the circle of study and reflection; the fund of maxims, observations, and sentiments, that relate to whatever is interesting, important, or lofty in human life, and whose infinite variety age cannot wither nor custom stale. Art, science, history, politics, physics, philosophy, shall tax him for illustration while the tide of human feelings and passions shall continue its course.

Shakespeare is like a great primeval forest, whence timber shall be cut and used as long as winds blow and leaves are green.

PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD.

CHAPTER VII.

FEATURES.

Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history.-Emerson.

Politics.-European civilization had merged in two essential facts, free inquiry and centralization of power; the first prevailing in religious society, the second in civil. Before these two could be reconciled, a struggle between them was inevitable. On the one hand, royalty declared itself superior to the laws; on the other, the spirit of liberty was passing from the public mind. to the state. When, in 1603, James, the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England, ascended the throne, the decisive hour was fast approaching when either the king must become absolute, or the parliament preponderant. He alternately enraged and alarmed them by his monstrous claims, and excited their scorn by his concessions; kept discontent alive by his fondness for worthless and tyrannical favorites; provoked derision by his cowardice, his pedantry, his ungainly person, and his uncouth manners. The dignity of government was weakened, loyalty was cooled, and revolution was fostered. Under his son and successor Charles I, the struggle went on. He inherited his father's theories, with a stronger disposition to carry them into effect. He imposed and collected illegal taxes, made forced loans; was artful, capricious, and winding; entered into compacts which he had no intention of observing; was perfidious from habit and on principle. The commons put on a sterner front. Parliament after parliament was dissolved, each more intractable than the former. Then he attempted to rule without one, and for eleven years an interval utterly without precedent-the Houses were not convoked. Yielding at length to the pressure of necessity, he summoned them in 1640, but quickly dismissed them when they would have considered the grievances of the nation. The

opposition grew fiercer. In November of the same year, without money, without credit, without authority even in his own camp, he yielded again; and then met the ever-memorable body known as the Long Parliament. Again he broke faith with his council, with his people; and in August, 1642, the sword was drawn. Charles, driven to Scotland and by the Scots surrendered to his English subjects, expiated his crimes with his blood. The soul of the revolutionary party was Cromwell, whose warrior saints, devotedly attached to their leader, were bent on the establishment of a free and pious commonwealth. Having destroyed the king, they vanquished in turn the Parliament, which, having outlived its usefulness, and forgetting it was the creature of the army, exasperated the latter by its dictation. The victorious chief became king in everything but name. The government, though in form a republic, was in truth a military despotism; but the despot was wise and magnanimous, and the glory of England, grown dim in the two preceding reigns, shone again, with a brighter lustre than ever. Cromwell's death, in 1658, brought

the rule of Puritanism to an end. The master had been a temporary necessity. His system, acknowledged by all to be necessary, was acceptable to none. The soldiers, against whom, while united, plots and risings of malcontents were ineffectual, now released from the control of that mighty spirit, separated into factions. Weary of strife, and terrified at the prospect of renewed civil warfare, the country sought again the shelter of the monarchy, and invited the return of its exiled prince. Charles II was proclaimed, and the Restoration was accomplished.

From 1641 dates the corporate existence of the two great parties which have ever since contended for the direction of public affairs. The royalists, comprising the nobles, the gentry, and the prelacy, were called Cavaliers, from their gallant bearing and equestrian skill. The opposition, comprising a few of the peers, the bulk of citizens and yeomen, and the Nonconformists, were called Roundheads, from the Puritan fashion of wearing closely cropped hair. The names were afterwards changed to Tory and Whig, and these, still later, to Conservative and Liberal; but the principles have remained essentially the same. The watchword of the first is Order; that of the second, Progress.

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