It is clear, from several sonnets, that she had | tongue!" He calls on her for her reproaches; given him a portrait of herself before she went, nay, he exclaims— and desired him to keep the original "Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight, Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside!" Let us, if possible, not misjudge this bewildering passion. Stronger it seems to grow as the danger of loss comes nearer. In this woman, whoever she was, he seems to have fancied that he worshipped at least the image of a better nature; and if it is permitted us to find, in this unexpected view we have of Shakspeare in his fondest, and most passionate, and most despairing moments, that, divinely intellectual as he was, he was at heart also one of the most affectionate and sensitive of beings-we may forgive the weakness of our nature if betrays, for the strength with which it reassures us. Viewed for the purposes, and in sustainment of the hopes, of humanity, it "I am a worthless boat, is not a loss to know that "he who, in the omniHe of tall building, and of goodly pride!" potence of genius, wielded the two worlds of He tells her, however, at the close, of one conso-reality and imagination in either hand-who was, lation, should the worst of his fears be realised-in conception and in act, scarce less than a GOD, "if he thrive, and I be cast away, "With the gentle closure of his breast!" What powers of fascination this woman must have had! The original does indeed remain there, occupying that home till all was waste and void within it, and his own heart had no place of strength or refuge! It was during this absence he first discovered her connection with some other eminent poet of the time. Here (as he ever does in speaking of himself) he teaches a lesson of noble modesty. He writes to her to say he had heard this- "Oh, how I faint when I of you do write, Knowing a better spirit doth use your name." Again, was in passion and suffering not more than a MAN. The worst was this-my love was my decay!" She would seem to have granted his last bitter These fears were indeed realised, but yet he request in all the triumphant recklessness of her struggles with his passion. I now mark a change nature. The poet is dissatisfied. We cannot in her style of addressing him. Secure of him dictate any mode of torture, and then thank the now, past doubt, seeing how completely she has torturer for compliance. There is something enslaved him, she assumes the language of re-touchingly dechirant in the natural and piteous proach. There is wonderful consolation in this, contradiction the following gives to what he had when we feel we have been committing an injury. before solicited :"He does not write so often." "Why?" Shakspeare answers, with an allusion to his new rival "When your countenance filled up his line, Then lack'd I matter-that enfeebled mine." In another sonnet, referring to the same reproach, he mingles most sweetly the language of love with a slight bitterness There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise!" Another instance of this occurs, when, under cover of a jest, he intimates her strength of will— "Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press * * * * * If I might teach thee wit, better it were, And yet he feels that these requests are needless,-and implores at last for "patience, tame to sufferance." That is his only resource. Rousseau proposed in his "Emilius," to educate a perfectly reasonable being, one who should "LOVE AND BE WISE. Behold one of the wisest of men! There must be contradiction in these terms. Love AND SUFFER!! Try as he will to escape, he canFor nothing hold me so it please thee hold, not. Wisdom does not help him. The same That nothing me a something sweet to thee; exquisite and delicious sensibility which had Make but my name thy love, and love that still, made his pleasure a transport, makes his disapAnd then thou lov'st me-for my name is WILL.” * pointments agonies indescribable,-yet he endures But she has ascertained her success in this as-them, and loves on. "Whence," he passionately sumption of the language of offence, and does not fail to follow it up. He reasons against this in vain; he then calls her "tyrannous." She ceases, we may suppose, to upbraid him, but betrays coldness in her looks. Exquisitely natural is the change which follows from him-" Wound me," he says, "not with thine eye, but with thy asks "Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, That in the very refuse of thy deeds There is such strength and warrantise of skill, That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds? Who taught thee how to make me love thee more, The more I hear and see just cause of hate?" Was it the very wonderful power of his imSonnet 136. "Will" was the name by which Shak-agination that did this? Was he able, as it were, speare always passed among his friends at the theatre. to abstract evil from itself by combining it with The older and more serious gentlemen were invariably all the forms of imagination? There was still in addressed with dignity, such as "Mr. Bryan," Pope," &c. But this woman, through all her successive sins and shames, a power of amazing fascination and beauty. This his fancy clung to. But her beauty she * "Mr. "Marlow, renowned for his rare art and wit, Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit. Mellifluous Shakspeare, whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and passion, was but Will!" VOL. XXVII. SEPTEMBER, 1835.-38 *Memoirs of the Loves of the Poets, Vol. 1. p. 241, made common Not the less was that beauty. | markable men with whom she. has managed to Some one (the late Mr Hazlitt, I believe) said of associate herself for ever, I shall speak at greater Peg Woffington that she flung away the gem of length in the next chapter of these confessions, on her beauty, but its value was not destroyed. SO THE FRIEND OF SHAKSPEARE. It had the deepest for the beauty of this woman (quasi beauty and effect of all upon the poet, though at first he strugfor its power of fascination)—that even at last gles to contest with it. He thinks he must hate remained for the poet. In the very dirt of Lon- her: he tries all the excuses he can for that he don streets she may have flung that diamond, but still loves her. Cruel is the agitation with which still the poet could again for his imagination re- the passions of this love act and react upon each claim it, a diamond as it was lost. To all else other! But he submits again!— he was obliged desperately to shut his eye, and "Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, to cheat himself into the fancy that "then do mine eyes best see." For this he was content that they should "behold and see not what they see," that they should "what the best is, take the worst to be," and so "keep anchor'd in the bay where all men ride." The "wide world's common-place" she might have become, but yet for him she existed still,- -so all-redeeming and all-powerful was the action of her beauty! "How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame Which for their habitation choose out thee!" Her accomplishments, too, must have been great, And he adds an exquisite line with those dancing chips O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait." Kill me with spites; yet we must not be foes!" So difficult was it in Shakspeare to surrender even this habit of loving. But that seldom fails to remain in affectionate hearts, though the reason for it has been discovered imaginary, and to exist no more. Love has everlasting memories, and memories still carry in their train the possibility of having, what has been too sweet to part with utterly, again restored. I may close here for the present the story of the mistress of Shakspeare. I shall have other occasions to render it more complete, but they occur in the subjects to which my succeeding chapters will be devoted, and must be treated of there. I may say here, however, before quitting it, that after her intrigue with his friend, the bitterness of their intercourse would seem to have been great on both sides. She has wronged him so deeply that nothing remains for her but to complete it by adding dislike to her injury, and thus visiting upon him in the last effectual shape the sin of her own This rankles in his breast, till it leaves him no injustice. This would seem to have been the end. more vain excuses for his passion. It becomes a raging "fever," and he calls on "death to end it." "Past cure I am, now reason is past care, And frantic mad with evermore unrest; My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, At random from the truth vainly express'd; For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night." Tragedy, it has been said, opens the chambers It will have been seen, by many of the recent to us that can affect our common nature. "It exof the human heart, by leaving nothing indifferent passages I have quoted, that Shakspeare's persua- cites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions sion not only of her faithlessness, but almost of wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of her " commonness," now fully existed.* She imagination, or the temptation of circumstances; had given him, indeed, too many fatal proofs of it. The last and bitterest seems to have been the betrayal of his young and passionately beloved friend into her power. Of this strange passage in the "story of this woman's days," and of the re and corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of often has Shakspeare illustrated this in his amazcrimes to which they have led others." How ing writings; behold him illustrating it in himself! See the chambers of his own heart open, "a sphere of humanity." It is this which has induced me to endeavour to take advantage of the "key" with which he had himself "unlocked" that mighty heart. It is for others to determine whether I have succeeded.* Here, at least, is sufficient in these confessions to balance their *The descent was, as I have already remarked, a matter of course. "A woman, when she has once stepped astray, seldom pauses in her downward career till guilt grows fate, that was but choice before." There is a remarkable exception to this, however, in the case of Nell Gwynn-a most delightful account of whose life may be seen in the book from which the above observation is taken, "The Beauties of the Court of Charles the Second," by Mrs. Jameson. There, too, is Nell's glow- * I have at least had the honour of suggesting an artiing picture, among a set of loves and graces equally glow-cle on the sonnets of Shakspeare to an accomplished ing, and only less bewitching. The book is a rich gal- French writer; and I have to thank an able critic in the lery. For the pleasantest and most characteristic sketches" Morning Herald," for an admirable notice of the of them in the world, see Sir Ralph Esher. subject. forth works on a variety of subjects, and to a variety of classes. We need not tell how remarkable it is for a man whose professional and public career has been so multiform as his, to do this, when we have the matter so forcibly put by himself in the dedication of the volume before us; a dedication not more beautiful in respect of its language, than of its precise and forcible thought, and eloquent sentiment. The discourse is dedicated to Earl Spencer, from which we learn, among other things, that it was, with some exceptions, written at the end of 1830, in 1831, and the latter part of 1833, a portion being added in the autumn of 1834. "In those days," says his lordship, "I held the great seal of work while many cares of another kind pressed this kingdom; and it was impossible to finish the upon me. But the first leisure that could be obtained was devoted to this subject, and to a careful revision of what had been written in a season less auspicious for such speculations." It would appear that at one time the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, over which he has taken a great charge, contemplated publishing a new edition of Dr. Paley's popular work, with copious and scientific illustrations, but afterwards abandoned the scheme. His lordship, however, regarded it as expedient to carry the plan into execution by individual exertion, Sir C. Bell agreeing to share the labour of the illustrations. The present volume is the preliminary discourse in this undertaking. Our opinion of the performance we shall at once, and in a few sentences, give, and next proceed to exhibit some of its details. We verily believe that Lord Brougham is at any time, at a week's warning, able to undertake any one of some dozen or so of professorships, in One great object which the author has had in any one of our universities. It would matter view, was to define more precisely than had been little what were the duties of the chair, whether done before, the place and claims of Natural Thebelonging to classical learning, to moral or theology among the various branches of human knowexact sciences. In one week, at least, whatever ledge, and to show that it is a kind of knowledge rust may have gathered over past acquirements not different from either physical or moral science. would be rubbed off, and with a heartiness in the employment, approaching to a passion, would he proceed in the work of renewal and polish, wherein the vast variety and riches of his knowledge would be made to shine with a pristine light. His lordship is assuredly one of the most remarkable men of the age; not that he is the greatest in any thing, but that he is great, and not less than second, in very many things. We take another striking view of his eminence; we think, if his genius were to be shortly and most accurately described, it would be by calling it the genius of activity. We cannot figure to ourselves such a phenomenon as that of Lord Brougham, so long as life and health are spared, becoming indolent. There is to us little originality in the work, His lordship and laziness are irreconcilable ene- taking the word in its highest or most usual apmies. We have heard the suggestion, that at an plication, as consisting in important inventions or era such as the present, when so many are daily discoveries. It might, perhaps, be characterised beating their brains in quest of a happy subject as a matchless display of genius, were any great for a literary work, in the shape of a heroic tale, argument of a decidedly new order brought to nothing could afford a finer scope for variety, ac- bear on natural theology-a field that has so tivity, and splendour, than to make the learned variously and ably been cultivated. But there is lord's history and career the ground-work of such another species of originality, which is often not a book. There would be nothing common-place less valuable than that of creating: this consists in it; there would be enough of stir-of vagaries in forming a new combination of what already and extravagances-but still more of brilliant exists, or in exhibiting with greater force, clearachievement in the service of virtue and mankind, ness, and simplicity, what many hands have preto gain the highest interest that any hero can ever viously been employed upon. This last excellence claim. We know of no public man who could be belongs in a remarkable degree to the work before beheld in so many different positions to such ad- us. The author, by a luminous arrangement, and vantage; there is no one farther removed from the application of a mind of uncommon precision insipidity: one thing we may be sure of, when and power, has, within a narrow compass, brought his race has been finished on earth, (and distant the subject of which he treats before the reader may that period be,) he will furnish to some bio- so plainly, and delightfully, that we venture to grapher a splendid theme. The mere enumeration declare it was never before so popularly treated, of his literary works, their character and history, unless by Dr. Paley, while it possesses a philosowill alone be matter enough for a charming vo- phical character for which that able writer's work lume. It appears, indeed, from what his lordship, is not remarkable. We hesitate not to say, that not long ago announced publicly, that the world Lord Brougham's style of treating natural theology does not know one half of his writings; and that, as a science, and showing that it is no less, just for many years, he has been constantly sending as truly as physical or moral knowledge can be called by such a name, is not only original, but and mineral kingdoms; the heavenly bodies; the mindperfectly satisfactory.. Another striking feature in for we are supposing him to be so far capable of reflec the work, consists in the riches which a mind of tion, as to know that the proof of the mind's separate uncommon activity, acquirements, and penetra- existence is, at the least, as short, plain, and direct, as tion, has taken delight in lavishing upon his sub-that of the body, or of external objects. Under the second ject. We need scarcely add, that the style of head he would range generally whatever objects of examination are not directly perceived by the senses, or felt language employed throughout the discourse is by consciousness. close and energetic. It is also as calm and dignified as philosophy can require. Neither sarcasm nor indignant irony were necessary; so that, as a dispassionate piece of reasoning, it seems to us a model not unworthy to be classed with the highest human efforts on the subject discussed-confessedly one of surpassing magnitude and value; for natural theology is essential even to the support of revelation. "But a moment's reflection will show both how very short a way this classification would carry our inaccurate logician, and how entirely his principle fails to support him even during that little part of the journey. Thus the examination of certain visible objects and appearances enables us to ascertain the laws of light and of vision. Our senses teach us that colours differ, and that their mixture forms other hues; that their absence is black, their combination in certain proportions white. We are in the same way enabled to understand that the organ of vision performs its functions by a natural apparatus, re In proceeding to the contents of this volume, it would be wrong to pass unnoticed the accuracy and ease with which certain terms are explained,sembling, though far surpassing, certain instruments of our own constructing, and that therefore it works on the upon a close and perfect understanding of which same principles. But that light, which can be perceived the discourse alone can be properly understood: directly by none of our senses, exists, as a separate body, such as those of theology and religion-the for- we only infer by a process of reasoning from things mer being the science, the latter its subject. The which our senses do perceive. So we are acquainted terms moral, intellectual, ethical, mental, natural with the effects of heat; we know that it extends the and material, with others, are put upon a footing dimensions of whatever matter it penetrates; we feel its of easy acceptation, so as to be employed through-effects upon our own nerves when subjected to its operaout the performance always in the same sense. It is necessary, also, for the reader to remember particularly, as told by its author, that this is not a treatise of natural theology; that it has not for its design an exposition of the doctrines whereof natural theology consists. Its object is, first, to explain the nature of the evidence upon which it rests, to show that it is a science, the truths of which are discovered by induction, like the truths of natural and moral philosophy, partaking of the nature of each. The second object of the discourse is, to explain the advantages attending the study of natural theology. The former part is divided again into seven sections. The first is introductory, and treats, says the author, of the kind of evidence by which the truths of physical and psychological science (that which belongs to the existence of mind), are investigated, and shows that there is as great an appearance of diversity between the manner in which we arrive at the knowledge of different truths in those inductive sciences, as there is between the nature of any such inductive investigation, and the proofs of the ontological (that which treats of the existence and attributes of the Creator) branches of natural theology. But that diversity is proved to be only apparent; and hence it is inferred, that the supposed difference of the proofs of natural theology may also be only ap parent. tion; and we see its effects in augmenting, liquefying, separate substance we do not know, except by reasoning and decomposing other bodies; but its existence as a and by analogy. Again, to which of the two classes must we refer the air? Its existence is not made known by the sight, the smell, the taste; but is it by the touch? Assuredly a stream of it blown upon the nerves of touch produces a certain effect; but to infer from thence the existence of a rare, light, invisible, and impalpable fluid, is clearly an operation of reasoning, as much as that which enables us to infer the existence of light or heat from their perceptible effects. But furthermore, we are accustomed to speak of seeing motion; and the reasoner whom we are supposing would certainly class the phenomena of mechanics, and possibly of dynamics generally, known immediately by the senses. Yet assuredly noincluding astronomy, under his first head, of things thing can be more certain than that the knowledge of motion is a deduction of reasoning, not a perception of sense; it is derived from the comparison of two positions; the idea of a change of place is the result of that comparison attained by a short process of reasoning; and the estimate of velocity is the result of another process of reasoning and of recollection. Thus, then, there is at once excluded from the first class almost the whole range of natural philosophy.”—pp. 20--23. But, continues the author, are we quite sure that any thing remains, which, when severely examined, will stand the test? The existence of variously illuminated and while the diversity of light is only certainly known by seeing objects colour is an object of sense, the existence of light is an inference of reason. "The careless enquirer into physical truth would certainly think he had seized on a sound principle of classi fication, if he should divide the objects with which phi- "But the very idea of diversity implies reasoning, for losophy, natural and mental, is conversant, into two it is the result of a comparison, and when we affirm that classes-those objects of which we know the existence white light is composed of the seven primary colours in by our senses or our consciousness; that is, external ob- certain proportions, we state a proposition which is the jects which we see, touch, taste, and smell, internal ideas result of much reasoning-reasoning, it is true, founded which we conceive or remember, or emotions which we upon sensations or impressions upon the senses; but not feel-and those objects of which we only know the ex-less founded upon such sensations is the reasoning which istence by a process of reasoning, founded upon something originally presented by the senses or by conscious. This superficial reasoner would range under the first of these heads the members of the animal, vegetable, ness. makes us believe in the existence of a body called light. The same may be said of heat, and the phenomena of heated bodies. The existence of heat is an inference from certain phenomena, that is, certain effects produced on our external senses by certain bodies or certain changes so as to secure this position for the little speck or sac in which those senses undergo in the neighbourhood of question, in order to its receiving the necessary heat from those bodies; but it is not more an inference of reason the hen-could he proceed otherwise than by placing it than the proposition that heat extends or liquefies bodies, in the lighter liquid, and suspending that liquor in the for that is merely a conclusion drawn from comparing heavier, so that its centre of gravity should be above the our sensations occasioned by the external objects placed line or plane of suspension? Assuredly not; for in no in varying circumstances. other way could his purpose be accomplished. This position is attained by a strict induction; it is supported by the same kind of evidence on which all physical truths rest. But it leads by a single step to another truth in natural theology; that the egg must have been formed by some hand skilful in mechanism, and acting under the knowledge of dynamics."-pp. 33, 34. "But can we say that there is no process of reasoning even in the simplest case which we have supposed our reasoner to put-the existence of the three kingdoms, of nature, of the heavenly bodies, of the mind? It is certain that there is in every one of these cases a process of reasoning. A certain sensation is excited in the mind through the sense of vision; it is an inference of reason that this must have been excited by something, or must have had a cause. That the cause must have been external, may possibly be allowed to be another inference which reason could make unaided by the evidence of any other sense. But to discover that the cause was at any the least distance from the organ of vision, clearly required a new process of reasoning, considerable experience, and the indications of other senses; for the young man whom Mr. Cheselden couched for a cataract at first believed that every thing he saw touched his eye. Experience and reasoning, therefore, are required to teach us the existence of external objects; and all that relates to their relations of size, colour, motion, habits, in a word, the whole philosophy of them, must of course be the result of still longer and more complicated processes of reasoning. So of the existence of the mind; although undoubtedly the process of reasoning is here the shortest of all, and the least liable to deception, yet so connected are all its phenomena with those of the body, that it requires a process of abstraction alien from the ordinary habits of most men, to be persuaded that we have a more undeniable evidence of its separate existence than we even have of the separate existence of the body."-PP 23-25. The second section of the discourse continues the application of the same argument, and compares the physical branch of natural theology with physics, wherein is shown that they are not only closely allied one to the other, but are to a very considerable extent identical; for it is fairly argued that the same induction of facts which leads us to a knowledge of the structure of the eye, and its functions in the animal economy, leads us to the knowledge of its adaptation to the properties of light, which if not a truth in natural theology, is a position from which, by the shortest possible process of reasoning, we arrive at a theological truth-namely, that the instrument so successfully performing a given service by means of this curious structure, must have been formed with the knowledge of the properties of light. Of the numberless instances that have been advanced by writers on this subject, of design and knowledge being evinced in the works and functions of nature, we cannot remember any more accurately and beautifully detailed than the following: The third section under the first part of the discourse, compares the psychological branch of natural theology with psychological science, and shows that both rest alike upon induction. The author here complains, and not without cause, of the modern writers upon the subject in hand, having confined themselves to the proofs afforded by the visible and sensible works of nature, while the evidence furnished by the mind and its operations have been overlooked; and attributes this omission to the doubts which men are prone to entertain of the mind's existence independent of matter. By modern writers must certainly be meant those of an established fame in these speculations, such as Smith, Reid, Clarke, and Paley ; for within these late years there have been some first-rate works in which the evidence has been detected and explained. But not to cavil on this point, our author declares the existence of mind to be evidenced more certainly and irrefragably than the existence of matter. Many of the perceptions of matter which we derive through the senses are deceitful: the inferences drawn concerning it are sometimes erroneous. Indeed, it is, perhaps possible that matter should have no existence, since all the sensations and perceptions which we have of the material world may be only ideas in our minds. But that the thing or the being which we call "I" and "we," should have no existence, he considers to be a contradiction in terms, and that of the two existences, that of mind as independent of matter is more certain than that of matter independent of mind. This is a part of the work of unsurpassed power. The fourth section shows that the argumentum à priori is unsound in a great degree-that is, it is insufficient to the purpose to which it is applied, that it serves only to a limited extent, and that to this extent it is in reality not distinguishable from induction, or the argumentum à posteriori, which has previously been considered. The fifth section treats of the second or moral deontological (that which belongs to the doctrine of the Creator's will respecting the duty of his creatures) branch of natural theology, and shows that it rests upon the same kind of evidence which "When a bird's egg is examined, it is found to consist moral science does, and is, strictly speaking, as of three parts; the chick, the yolk in which the chick is much a branch of inductive knowledge. The placed, and the white in which the yolk swims. The means of investigating the probable designs of the yolk is lighter than the white; and it is attached to it at two points, joined by a line, or rather plane, below the Deity are by the author stated to be-the nature centre of gravity of the yolk. From this of the human mind, and the attributes of the Creament it must follow that the chick is always uppermost, tor. The subject treated of in the third section, roll the egg how you will; consequently, the chick is viz. the existence of the sentient principle in man, always kept nearest to the breast or belly of the mother is naturally resumed, and the doctrine of the imwhile she is setting. Suppose, then, that any one ac- materiality, and consequently the immortality of quainted with the laws of motion had to contrive things the soul, are considered. Through this entangling arrange |