history of England the theorem above mentioned is more evident than anywhere else, which may be accounted for by the tranquil and uninterrupted agency of nationality. All the great commotions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries proceeded from the people, and whatever was great and excellent in those days, had the mark of its age and country upon it, and grew from the very heart of the nation. The genius of Great Britain never looked more like itself..

We are not going to expatiate here upon the origin of the British drama, nor shall we dwell on the grossnesses of that popular poetry struggling into a human shape in the latter half of the sixteenth century, it being our purpose not to consider its rise, but its decline. We cannot, however, avoid making a few short remarks upon the immediate predecessors of Shakspeare. If we compare the compositions of Marlow, Green, and their cotemporaries, rude as they undoubtedly were, but filled with the breath of life and genuine passion, with the dull and inanimate productions of the foregoing time, they should seem to have made towards perfection not a step, but a giant-stride. Marlow and Green, whose names are most commonly matched with that of Shakspeare, were fully aware of the true and the only end and destination of art: the creating of the ideal. But "overstepping the modesty of nature" they deviated in different ways. From all we know of these poets it should appear, that both of them indulged in wild and irregular habits, and gave themselves up to loose and frivolous principles. Such were never great poets. True poetry is the offspring of an harmonious combination of all the faculties of the mind, and arises, like an image on the surface of the water, from the deep of an unruffled soul. Marlow, on the contrary, and Green, the one reckless and rakish on purpose, the other now a libertine, now a penitent, both dying a miserable death, stand in a similar relation to Shakspeare as Reinhold Lenz and other youthful German poets of the eighteenth century to Goethe. Their respective characters also display themselves in their compositions. Marlow was no doubt master of all the magic of terror and pathos, but more frequently falling into turgidness of declamation, and at last, like one crying himself hoarse, be

coming exhausted and languid, does seldom arrive at his ends; the light-headed Green, being unequal to deeper conceptions, but distinguished for a flowing pen and a happy turn for merriment, always trying to make up what he wants in unity and depth of thought, by his arts of small-talk and nicety of dialogue, has no purposes worth while at all. The excellences of both, released from their faults, were concentrated and heightened in Shakspeare, whose poetry was the finishing touch and key-. stone of all that had been before him. However matchless in itself, it bore the features, and was tinctured with the manners, of the age. Not a form or subject of poetry, not a turn of verse and language in Shakspeare, that he did not draw from the existing store of his nation; his productions, sprung up from their native soil and nourished with its sap, were in the strictest sense of the word, nature's handy work. His genius was wholly devoted to his country and imbued with its spirit; he disdained even pretending to what is vulgarly falsely called originality, that is to say taking one's way off the common road of thought and sentiment, but only strove "to show the age and body of the time his form and pressure," by which means he not only became the model and standard of his age, but exemplary for all times to come.

There has at all times been a sort of poetry detached from public life and indulging in a kind of refined selfishness: this may also be found in periods of utter decay and depravity. But a poetry like that of Shakspeare and his coevals, sympathizing with all the glories and follies of the day, cannot well be conceived but in a healthy, vigorous, and active age. David Hume, to be sure, and other historians, are on no good terms with the time in review, because they took into account only the infirmities of the body politic, which brought on, a later date, the wellknown revolution. The reports given by the moralists of the time sound still worse. With zeal to be imparted only by religion, the Puritans took the field against the sins of mankind; wisdom cried out in the streets, and no man regarded it; thick volumes appeared against the favourite vices of the time; an old play partly written by Green, entitled "A Looking-glass for London and its Inhabitants," shows the

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seven deadly sins playing their pranks about town, and exhorts the people, in seven prophetic epilogues, to repent like the Ninevites in ashes and sackcloth; we are, in short, given to understand that there never existed, nor ever will, a time addicted to more enormous wickedness and debauchery. Be that as it may nations ought to be weighed on another scale. Taking the universal tenor of public and private life during Elizabeth's reign into consideration, and examining into the social condition of this period, we shall not be at a loss to account for its being called, to this time of day, the golden age of Old England. It was not richer than any other in glorious remembrances; but it was the epoch of a new existence and of remembrances quite popular; after long and doubtful struggles the nation then became of age, ripened into manhood, and formed as it were its plan of life; in fine, the whole life was tinctured with that cheerfulness which is the inseparable companion of a well-conditioned mind. This mighty fermentation and enthusiasm of spirits we must lay great stress upon against the reproaches of those moralists, who undoubtedly had good reasons for chiding, and ever will have, as long as men shall be made of flesh. I know but one moral disease of the national body: that lethargy and indifference which proves indolent to the most powerful impulses of the time, and instead of going along with mankind at large, confines itself to the narrow compass of self-sufficiency. On the other hand, there is but one national virtue worth the name, viz activity and industry, improving every proficiency of knowledge, and enlarging by their advances the boundaries of human destiny. From this point of view we shall be able to pass a sound judgment upon the importance of the Elizabethan age. All the mighty engines of modern civilization, the operations of which in the course of the 16th century were divided amongst the other countries of Europe, the recent diffusion of letters, the revival of classical learning, the reformation of church, the thriving of the third estate, the discovery of the new world, and the sea-voyages connected therewith, all of these coincided and worked conjointly in England, and what at first sight might have seemed derogatory to their progresses there, the nation's habitual un

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concern and coldness, which in the beginning suffered itself to be behind-hand with its rivals, at last turned out to be really advantageous. The English were not spoiled, as others were, by speedy and unexpected results, but gradually and laboriously got the better of competition abroad and reaction at home: and a circumstance the most important profited both by the example and failures of their adversaries. English affairs little prospered during the reigns of Henry the Eighth and his next successors; but when at last, in the happy time of Elizabeth, the ecclesiastical differences were composed, or at least palliated, and the external relations of the kingdom established upon a solid footing, the intellectual powers of the nation expanded and ripened spontaneously, without much encouragement or guidance, and arrived, in point of poetic literature, at classic perfection in no time. The year 1588, when the invincible armada of Spain was destroyed, also combined the greatest geniusses of dramatic literature, and was, perhaps, the date of Shakspeare's first productions. This may be called accidental: indeed, it was the same accident that assembled the three Greek tragedians around the trophies of Salamis. And this comparison we may push still farther. As the Greeks in the pride of their recent victories were carried beyond their wonted limits of war and commerce, likewise the English, in the time of Elizabeth, were seized with a spirit of bold and daring enterprize; they set their lives and goods on "the hazard of the die", and seeking in new worlds, where the boundaries of the earth, as by enchantment, daily expanded, for adventures and gold, lived more true poetry than the most fanciful errant-knights of the days of chivalry had ever dreamt of; it is from those days the fondness of travelling of the English dates, for rather than vegetate in the dull routine of an unimpassioned life, they journeyed over the continent, and whoever wished to be somebody, must have been tossed at least "on a Venetian gondola," and know how to season his discourse at home

With talking of the Alps, and Apennines,

The Pyrenean, and the river Po.

On the other side, this adventurous and roaming disposition of the people enhanced the ease and comfort of home. With

the third estate, in which, as may be imagined, the traditions of old Germany faster and deeper rooted than in the higher classes of society, the ancient worship of nature again arose with its gay and harmless, though pagan, rites, by which the most festival epochs of the year were celebrated, and unfeeling nature inspired with a living soul. What are the joys of our tradespeople and peasantry, their drudgery on working days, and their quaffing and dancing in hot and musty rooms on holydays, to the festive pageants of those times, to that merry hospitality of new-year's night and shrovetide, the greenwooddelights of Mayday, the mirth and practical jokes of sheepshearing and harvest-home, the symbolic customs of midsummernight, and, in short, to that happy succession of labour and joys! What a time for a poet! such a one as Shakspeare! A poet like him, in whom sensualness and ideality blended so wonderfully, as that the word was literally made flesh, could not well have been bred but in an age, when nature itself seemed endued with a soul susceptible of human feeling and sympathy, and, in a word, life was poetry.

This good-humour and gayety almost bordering on wantonness, which formed the most conspicuous feature of the nation's temper, was, however, qualified and regulated by a most exquisite soundness of principles and sentiments, hitting in all matters of consequence upon the right ways and the proper means. The reformation for instance, to which an arbitrary act of the most shameless and capricious despotism gave the first impulse, soon became an affair of national importance, and in spite of all penal statutes and cruel persecutions, there is scarcely to be found anywhere the like variety of religious sects and opinions. This also was owing to the perseverance and zeal of the lower orders, who since the wars of the roses had considerably increased in wealth, intellectual culture, and political influence. With them nature and good sense, which had long been banished from the feudal world, again returned. The spare remnants of chivalry, which our romantic commentators of Shakspeare have estimated rather highly, do not, really, tell much in the literature of the Elizabethan age. With the exception of a few, the aristocracy were not its leaders; nay, they did not even