twenty-two in number, in the Fourth Part, forming the first portion of the Sonnets to a Lady.

To the above statement it may be added, that these sonnets give rise to a curious comparison between three great national divinities or gods-Shakspere, Goethe, and Voltaire :-Voltaire, with his lady intellectual and his princely love; of them Carlyle has favoured us with his thoughts;-Goethe, with his lady of the stony heart and his ducal love; they may be left to the gentle handling of Mr. Lewes ;-Shakspere, with his lady of the raven black eyes and his lordly love; of these it may be said, the moral power is not dead, but sleepeth; and when in after-years in the sermon with Nature's own hand written, Antony and Cleopatra, Enobarbus and Octavia, and Cæsar, the impersonated moral force, appear upon the stage,1 the conviction forces itself on our minds, that though for a time, Shakspere fell a victim at the shrine of beauty, yet his affections and esteem remained true to "his country lass of low degree."

It may be inferred from several observations, that Shakspere in this affair was not, like Goethe, the pur

Lepidus is evidently Marlowe; and, strangest of all, Sextus Pompeius is William Herbert; and Menas, Thomas Thorpe. It is not probable, that Miss Anne Hathaway ever dreamt of being the sister of Cæsar and the wife of a greater than Cesar; but was Shakspere himself conscious of his own position in the world of poetry and thought? Certainly, this play proves it; but this self-consciousness is not in the least degree necessarily connected with pride or vanity; it is the repose, the calm majesty of the Olympian Jove; and when Antony acknowledges himself a Roman by a Roman valiantly vanquished, it is the Shakspere of 1593 acknowledging the moral supremacy and greatness of him of 1613.

suer, but the pursued; and his defence of his friend may be reasonably conjectured as the true statement of his own case, “when a woman woos," &c.; but, be that as it may, it is evident, from various sonnets describing the torments of an unlawful passion, that he had already awakened from his infatuation, even before his friend so haply cut the Gordian knot and released him from his Egyptian bondage. The various utterances about "harmful deeds," "bewailed guilt," &c., merely refer to his position as a player, and to the ordinary pleasures of social life, harmless amusements in themselves, but carried to excess, harmful deeds, and regarded, then as now, even in their most innocent form, by the stricter religious sects as sinsthe theatre the greatest crime of all. Coleridge says, Shakspere has no innocent adulteries, no interesting incests, no virtuous vice, like Beaumont and Fletcher, the Kotzebues of the day; "even the letters of women of high rank in his age were often coarser than his writings;" and a Hertfordshire incumbent points to the moral sympathies evoked by his creations, as the basis or foundation of the future Christianity of India.

There was once an attempt to prove, that Shakspere was brought up as a Catholic; he certainly new something about the Confessional, as may be seen by the following extract from the Lucrece, Stanza 51, when Tarquin has his hand on the chamber-door, he starts, frightened at the thought of his intended crime, but is instantly reassured :—

"Then Love and Fortune be my gods, my guide!
My will is back'd with resolution :

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried,
The blackest sin is clear'd with absolution."

The story, that he cut his wife off with an old bedstead, has been happily disproved by Mr. Knight, and thus what has always been regarded as a proof of his supposed profligacy, turns out to be a proof of his affection for his wife, "our pleasant Willy" to the last. Putting aside idle reports and after-dinner jokes, all evidence, worthy of credit, leads to the conclusion, that with one single exception, Shakspere's conduct through life was strictly moral and religious; as an atonement for this one error, he toiled twenty years in promoting the moral and intellectual development of his country and of the world at large, closing, as if by permission of Providence, his meritorious career with his "wonderful" Reply to the tale in the Sonnets.

As all the various theories and hypotheses with regard to the reality or unreality, &c., of the sonnets have arisen from the defective arrangement in the Edition 1609, I now lay before the public this new arrangement, and with the greatest respect, leave it to their judgment to decide, how far I may have solved the mystery, or may, at least, have assisted in throwing a little more light on the subject.

"Of all Shakspere's historical plays," says Coleridge, "Antony and Cleopatra is by far the most wonderful." "The epithet wonderful," observes Mr. C. Knight, "is unquestionably the right one to apply to this drama. It is too vast, too gorgeous, to be approached without some prostration of the understanding.”—Pictorial Shakspere; Tragedies, vol. ii. page 355.

It may perhaps be advisable, and more satisfactory to the reader to point out, how far the characters in the Sonnets and in the Play agree or tally one with another.

The two ladies readily answer for themselves— Cleopatra being, of course, the lady with the raven black eyes; and Octavia, Mrs. W. Shakspere.

Enobarbus also, the personal friend and favourite. officer of Antony, treacherous, repentant, and forgiven, is easily recognized as Lord Southampton, who was in after-life "a great captain in the Spanish wars, and in the Low Countries."

That Antony is Shakspere, and not the Mark Antony of history, cannot be better shown than by quoting a few lines from the Pictorial Shakspere : "Mark Antony, as Plutarch informs us, affected the Asiatic manner of speaking, which much resembled his own temper, being ambitious, unequal, and very rhodomontade.” "Antony," says Mr. C. Knight,

was of the poetical temperament—a man of high genius," &c. What can be more exquisite than his mention of Octavia's weeping at the parting with her brother?

The April 's in her eyes: it is love's spring,
And these the showers to bring it on.

And, higher still :—

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can

Her heart inform her tongue: the swan's down feather
That stands upon the swell at the full tide,

And neither way inclines.

This, we think,is not the "Asiatic manner of speaking.'

At Pompey's feast, "the dashing, clever, genial Antony," "hoaxes Lepidus with the most admirable fooling."

"The scene which terminates with Antony falling on his sword is in the highest style of Shakspere; but, be it observed, the poetry is all in keeping with the character of the man.'

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Ant. Eros, thou yet behold'st me.

Eros.

Ay, noble lord.

Ant. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish :

Eros.

A vapour, sometime like a bear, or lion,

A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon 't, that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants.

Ay, my lord.

Ant. That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water.

Eros.

It does my lord.

Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is
Even such a body; here I am Antony,

Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.

"The images describe the Antony, melting into nothingness; but the splendour of the imagery is the reflection of Antony's mind, which, thus enshrined in poetry, can never become "indistinct," will always "hold this visible shape."

Cæsar is the good Shakspere, who thus beautifully portrays the contest and ultimate ascendancy of his moral feelings over his evil inclinations :—

Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Cæsar's or mine?