of our Lord's words, given in the first act of "Measure for Measure." Read the words of the blessed Saviour on the impolicy of hiding the talent, and then read the duke's address to Angelo:

Duke. Angelo,

There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to th' observer, doth thy history
Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues: nor Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence,

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use.*

It is specially worthy of notice that Shakespeare mades constant reference in all his works to a life to come. The poet seems to be constantly making an effort to unite men to two states of existence. This is especially true in "Henry the Sixth," "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," and "Macbeth." Too much, in our opinion, has been made of Shakespeare's indebtedness to the Bible. That he was familiar with the Scriptures, and that the revelations made therein lay at the foundation of his belief in a future life, is, without doubt, true, very true; but his philosophy embraces science and the loftiest thoughts of uninspired men. It is worthy of remark that Shakespeare uses the word "conversion" in the old-fashioned Methodist sense. But there is no such use of the Bible as is implied in the statement that the Scriptures suggested his religious thoughts. Bishop Wilberforce has said: "If we take the entire range of English literature, and put together what our best authors have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, we shall not find in all united so much evidence of the Bible having been read as we find in Shakespeare." This is the proper way of putting the matter. Shakespeare was a reader, it may be a lover, of the Bible. But the man is narrow, if not fanatical, who bases upon these admitted facts an "Measure for Measure," Act i, Scene 1.

argument to prove that Shakespeare was a pious man or a religionist in any sense. He was, doubtless, endued with religious sentiment, and had penetration enough to see in the word of God a wonderful corroboration and illustration of those truths to which he was most anxious to give universal currency. There are in Shakespeare some most remarkable adaptations of inspired thought. In addition to the passage already quoted from "Measure for Measure," who does not call to mind the speech of Ulysses in "Troilus and Cressida"?

Ulysses. But when the planets

In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents? what mutiny?
What raging of the sea? shaking of earth?
Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixure?

This is almost a paraphrase of Luke xxi, 25-26. In fact, Shakespeare is always reminding us of the Bible. No wonder that careless readers confound their quotations, and seek to extenuate their inexcusable ignorance by the plea, "I was sure it was either in Shakespeare or the Bible." Shakespeare reminds us of the Bible, not by his direct quotations, but by a similar simplicity of diction.

Of all the poets who have enriched our vocabulary, we owe the most to Shakespeare.

Our great poet, Milton, has remarkable opulence of expression, but we are told that his vocabulary is limited to eight thousand words; Dante has only five thousand eight hundred; whereas Shakespeare has fifteen thousand! Look into Mrs. Cowden Clarke's "Concordance," and stand amazed. Forty per cent. of his words are from the Latin, and some of those he has incorporated into our mother tongue are very choice. The greater part, however, are Saxon and monosyllabic. A late writer in "Lippincott's Magazine" says that of these fifteen thousand, six thousand only appear once. "On every average page of Shakespeare," he says, "you are greeted and gladdened by at least five new words that you never saw before in his writings, and that you will never see again— speaking once and then for ever holding their peace. Each

not only rare, but a nonsuch. Five gems just shown and then snatched away."

Shakespeare unlocks to us a vast store-house of epithets, and it is only by a careful study of this greatest master of the language that we can know the richness and copiousness of the mother tongue. The marvelous suggestiveness of these epithets is what will strike every thoughtful reader.

In one short passage of four lines, we have epithets that do the work of a painter:

Duke S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,-
Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor❜d.

Let the student take a few of the abstract nouns, and see what he makes of them. Sighs are blood-consuming; disdain is sour-eyed; gentleness is milky; despair is black; rage is tiger-footed; pomp, painted; fear, shuddering; jealousy, green-eye'd; scorn, salt; sorrow, gnarled; envy, lean-faced; discontent has murmuring lips; virtue, steely bones; emulation, pale and bloodless; a flatterer is glass-faced; a powerless man has corky, pithless arms; hypocrites are onion eye'd; pestilence is red; the winds scold; winter is sap-consuming; fortune has an ivory hand; ambition vaults; slow men have leuden legs; homely men are tripe-visaged; reputation is a bubble; hills are heaven-kissing; death is dusty. The writer has made a list of thousands of these epithets, and they are a continual marvel to him. They would have been published, but the fate of Holofernes, the learned school-master, and the still sadder fate of Sir Nathaniel, the wise curate, have, in an admonitory way, stayed the compiler's hand. These worthies, it will be remembered, charge each other with having been to "a great feast of languages," and as having "stolen the scraps " of Nathaniel, thus:

Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical fantasms, such insociable and point-devise companions; such ruckers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt d, e, b, t; not d, e, t; he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf. This is abhominable (which he would call abominable): it insinuateth me of insanie.'

On the return of Titus Andronicus from a successful campaign, Marcus is represented as exhorting him to put on the white robe of those named for the empire:

Mar. Titus Andronicus, the people of Rome,
Whose friend in justice thou hast ever been,
Send thee by me, their tribune, and their trust,
This palliament of white and spotless hue;
And name thee in election for the empire,
With these our later deceased emperor's sons:
Be candidatus, then, and put it on,

And help to set an head on headless Rome.*

With such a source the phrase we have italicised ceases to be slang.

Lear, when addressing Gloucester, says:

Get thee glass eyes;

And, like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not.t

Similar advice has been given in our day, and those who gave it allowed the multitude to suppose it new. Phrases which some of us were sure had their birth in our own day, are some of them more than two hundred years old. We recognize one such in Henry the Eighth. The king, frowning or his flatterers, says:

But know I come not

To hear such flattery now, and in my presence;
They are too thin and bare to hide offenses. †

The most astounding feature of these plays is the almost incredible number of subjects that the writer has touched with his wonder-working wand. In his "Student's Shakespeare," lately published, the writer of this article has collated Shakespeare's thoughts on no less than five thousand subjects, and the rich mine is far from being exhausted. The most astounding thing about it all is that there is no repetition, either of thought or phraseology. No ringing of the changes on a few favorite ideas or characters. It has been said that Byron could only paint two portraits. The one was a rake, the other a misanthrope. So with the great living authors. They have a few characters with whom they seem to be in love, and they "King Lear," Act iv, Scene 6.

* "Titus Andronicus," Act i, Scene 2.

"Henry the Eighth," Act v, Scene 2.

repeat them with slight variations again and again. It is said of Dickens that he had to keep within the smoke of London, and that he was lost outside. Scott had to keep on his native heather, but Shakespeare sweeps through all lands and ages, and gives us pictures of all of human kind.

A distinction must be made between the plays of Shakespeare as they were written by him and as they are rendered on the stage. Swinburne tells us that the best passages in "Hamlet" are never given on the stage. Lear, as acted on the boards, has a miserable love story, written by one Nahum Tate, running all through it. It has been affirmed that there are not twenty consecutive lines from the great poet to be found in any version used by "the profession." His plays, we are told, have to be cut down to the level of the actors. Many of the things to which exceptions are taken at times, it is suspected, were never written by Shakespeare. The interpolations, in stage parlance, are called "gags," and were extemporized by actors to suit the tastes of their audiences.

There are some things which Shakespeare has treated originally and almost prophetically-certainly he has treated them in advance of his times. It will be remembered that Shakespeare died more than half a century before Newton gave to the world his theory of gravitation. Yet he makes Cressida say: The strong base and building of my love Is as the very center of the earth, Drawing all things to it.*

Before Harvey made his name immortal by proclaiming his great discovery of the circulation of the blood, Shakespeare's Brutus said to Portia :

You are my true and honorable wife;

As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.†

It is only as yesterday that even scholars began to use with any degree of frequency the word heredity, but how much of it we have in Shakespeare. So with regard to insanity. The greatest of our modern physicians have recourse to Shakespeare for instruction in the diagnosis of this mysterious state. So, in regard to conscience, both the platform and the pulpit

*"Troilus and Cressida," Act iv, Scene 2.
"Julius Cæsar," Act ii, Scene 1.