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WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE. 


IN   PREPARATION. 


THE    LIFE 

OF 

HIS    EMINENCE 

CA  RD  IN  A  L     WISE  MA  N. 


Any  persons  possessing  Manuscripts,  Letters,  fyc.,  or 
having  the  knowledge  of  any  facts  of  importance  con- 
nected with  the  life  of  His  Eminence,  are  requested  to 
communicate,  by  letter,  with  the  Right  Reverend  H.  E. 
Manning,  D.D.,  care  of  Messrs.  Hurst  and  Blackett, 
13,  Great  Marlborough  Street,  London. 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE. 


BY 


HIS  EMINENCE 


CARDINAL  WISEMAN. 


LONDON: 
HURST  AND  BLACKETT,  PUBLISHERS, 

SUCCESSORS   TO  HENRY  COLBURN, 
13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

1865, 

The  right  of  Translation  ;'.s-  reserrrd. 


PREFACE. 


TN  the  autumn  of  last  year  a  communication  was 
made  to  His  Eminence  the  late  Cardinal  Wise- 
man by  H.  Bence  Jones,  Esq.,  M.D.,  as  Secretary 
of  the  Eoyal  Institution  of  Great  Britain,  request- 
ing him  to  deliver  a  lecture  before  that  society. 
The  Cardinal,  with  the  prompt  kindness  usual  to 
him,  at  once  assented.  The  Shakespeare  Tercen- 
tenary seemed  to  prescribe  the  subject,  which  His 
Eminence  therefore  selected. 

The  following  pages  were  dictated  by  him  in  the 
last  weeks  of  his  life.  The  latter  part  was  taken 
down  in  the  beginning  of  January  ;  the  earlier  part 
was  dictated  on  Saturday  the  fourteenth  of  that 
month.  It  was  his  last  intellectual  exertion,  and  it 
overtaxed  his  failing  strength. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Clifford,  Chaplain  to  the  Hospital 
of  S.  John  and  S.  Elizabeth,  who  acted  as  his 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE. 


i. 


have  been  some  men  in  the  world's 
-*•  history — and  they  are  necessarily  few — who 
by  their  deaths  have  deprived  mankind  of  the 
power  to  do  justice  to  their  merits,  in  those  par- 
ticular spheres  of  excellence  in  which  they  had 
been  pre-eminent.  When  the  "  immortal"  Raphael 
for  the  last  time  laid  down  his  palette,  still  moist 
with  the  brilliant  colours  which  he  had  spread 
upon  his  unfinished  masterpiece,  destined  to  be 
exposed  to  admiration  above  his  bier,  he  left  none 
behind  him  who  could  worthily  depict  and  trans- 
mit to  us  his  beautiful  lineaments  :  so  that  posterity 
has  had  to  seek  in  his  own  paintings,  among  the 
guards  at  a  sepulchre,  or  among  the  youthful 
disciples  in  an  ancient  school,  some  figure  which 
may  be  considered  as  representing  himself. 

B 


2  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

When  his  mighty  rival,  Michelangelo,  cast  down 
that  massive  chisel  which  no  one  after  him  was 
worthy  or  able  to  wield,  none  survived  him  who 
could  venture  to  repeat  in  marble  the  rugged 
grandeur  of  his  countenance  ;  but  we  imagine  that 
we  can  trace  in  the  head  of  some  unfinished  satyr, 
or  in  the  sublime  countenance  of  his  Moses,  the 
natural  or  the  idealized  type  from  which  he  drew 
his  stern  and  noble  inspirations. 

And,  to  turn  to  another  great  art,  when  Mozart 
closed  his  last  uncompleted  score,  and  laid  him 
down  to  pass  from  the  regions  of  earthly  to  those 
of  heavenly  music,  which  none  had  so  closely  ap- 
proached as  he,  the  science  over  which  he  ruled 
could  find  no  strains  in  which  worthily  to  mourn 
him  except  his  own,  and  was  compelled  to  sing  for 
the  first  time  his  own  marvellous  Requiem  at  his 
funeral.* 

No  less  can  it  be  said  that  when  the  pen  dropped 
from  Shakespeare's  hand,  when  his  last  mortal  ill- 
ness mastered  the  strength  of  even  his  genius,  the 
world  was  left  powerless  to  describe  in  writing  his 
noble  and  unrivalled  characteristics.  Hence  we 
turn  back  upon  himself,  and  endeavour  to  draw 

*  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  celebrated  Cimarosa. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  3 

from  his  own  works  the  only  true  records  of  his 
genius  and  his  mind.* 

We  apply  to  him  phrases  which  he  has  uttered 
of  others  ;  we  believe  that  he  must  have  involun- 
tarily described  himself,  when  he  says, 

"  Take  him  all  in  all, 
We  shall  not  look  upon  his  like  again  ;" 

or  that  he  must  even  consciously  have  given  a  re- 
flection of  himself  when  he  so  richly  represents  to 
us  "  the  poet's  eye  in  a  fine  phrenzy  rolling." 
("  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  act  v.,  scene  1.) 

But  in  fact,  considering  that  the  character  of  a 
man  is  like  that  which  he  describes  "as  com- 
pounded of  many  simples  extracted  from  many 
objects"  ("  As  You  Like  It,"  act  iv.,  scene  1), 
we  naturally  seek  for  those  qualities  which  enter 
into  his  composition  ;  we  look  for  them  in  his  own 

*  Even  in  his  lifetime  this  seems  to  have  been  foreseen. 
In  1664  an  Epigram  addressed  to  "Master  William  Shake- 
speare," and  first  published  by  Mr.  Halliwell,  occurred  the 
following  lines  : — 

"  Besides  in  places  thy  wit  windes  like  Magander, 
When  (whence)  needy  new  composers  borrow  more 
Thence  (than)  Terence  doth  from  Plautus  or  Menander, 
But  to  praise  thee  aright  I  want  thy  store. 
Then  let  thine  owne  words  thine  owne  worth  upraise 
And  help  t'  adorne  thee  with  deserved  baies." 

HALLIWELL'S  Life  of  Shakespeare,  p.  160. 

B  2 


4  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

pages ;  we  endeavour  to  cull  from  every  part  of  his 
works  such  attributions  of  great  and  noble  qualities 
to  his  characters,  and  unite  them  so  as  to  form  what 
we  believe  is  his  truest  portrait.  In  truth,  no 
other  author  has  perhaps  existed  who  has  so  com- 
pletely reflected  himself  in  his  works  as  Shake- 
speare. For,  as  artists  will  tell  us  that  every 
great  master  has  more  or  less  reproduced  in  his 
works  characteristics  to  be  found  in  himself,  this  is 
far  more  true  of  our  greatest  dramatist,  whose 
genius,  whose  mind,  whose  heart,  and  whose  entire 
soul  live  and  breathe  in  every  page  and  every  line 
of  his  imperishable  works.  Indeed,  as  in  these 
there  is  infinitely  greater  variety,  and  consequently 
greater  versatility  of  power  necessary  to  produce 
it,  so  must  the  amount  of  elements  which  enter  into 
his  composition  represent  changeable  yet  blending 
qualities  beyond  what  the  most  finished  master 
in  any  other  art  can  be  supposed  to  have  pos- 
sessed. 

The  positive  and  directly  applicable  materials 
which  we  possess  for  constructing  a  biography  of 
this  our  greatest  writer,  are  more  scanty  than 
have  been  collected  to  illustrate  the  life  of  many 
an  inferior  author.  His  contemporaries,  his  friends, 
perhaps  admirers,  have  left  us  but  few  anecdotes 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  5 

of  his  life,  and  have  recorded  but  few  traits  of 
either  his  appearance  or  his  character.  Those  who 
immediately  succeeded  him  seem  to  have  taken 
but  little  pains  to  collect  early  traditions  concern- 
ing him,  while  yet  they  must  have  been  fresh  in 
the  recollections  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  and 
still  more  of  his  fellow-townsmen.* 

It  appears  as  though  they  were  scarcely  conscious 
of  the  great  and  brilliant  luminary  of  English  litera- 
ture which  was  shining  still,  or  had  but  lately  passed 
away  ;  and  as  though  they  could  not  anticipate 
either  the  admiration  which  was  to  succeed  their 

*  As  evidence  of  this  neglect  we  may  cite  the  "Journal "  of 
the  Rev.  John  "Ward,  Incumbent  of  Stratford-upon-Avon, 
to  which  he  was  appointed  in  1662.  This  diary,  which  has 
been  published  by  Doctor  Severn,  "  from  the  original  MSS.," 
preserved  in  the  library  of  the  Medical  Society  of  London, 
contains  but  two  pages  relating  to  Shakespeare,  and  those 
contain  but  scanty  and  unsatisfactory  notices.  I  will  quote 
only  two  sentences : 

"  Remember  to  peruse  Shakespeare's  Plays — bee  much 
versed  in  them,  that  I  may  not  bee  ignorant  in  that  matter, 
whether  Dr.  Heylin  does  well,  in  reckoning  up  the  dramatick 
poets  which  have  been  famous  in  England,  to  omit  Shakes- 
speare"  (p.  184).  Shakespeare's  daughter  was  still  alive 
when  this  was  written,  as  appears  from  the  sentence  that  im- 
mediately follows  :  it  seems  to  us  wonderful  that  so  soon 
after  the  Poet's  death  a  shrewd  and  clever  clergyman  and 
physician  (for  Mr.  Ward  was  both)  should  have  known  so 
little  about  his  celebrated  townsman's  works  or  life. 


6  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

duller  perceptions  of  his  unapproachable  grandeur, 
or  the  eager  desire  which  this  would  generate,  of 
knowing  even  the  smallest  details  of  its  rise,  its 
appearance,  its  departure.  For  by  the  biography 
of  Shakespeare  one  cannot  understand  the  re- 
cords of  what  he  bought,  of  what  he  sold,  or  the 
recital  of  those  acts  which  only  confound  him  with 
the  common  mass  which  surrounded  him,  and 
make  him  appear  as  the  worthy  burgess  or  the 
thrifty  merchant ;  though  even  about  the  ordinary 
common-place  portions  of  his  life  such  uncertainty 
exists,  that  doubts  have  been  thrown  on  the  very 
genuineness  of  that  house  which  he  is  supposed  to 
have  inhabited. 

Now,  it  is  the  characteristic  individualizing 
quality,  actions,  arid  mode  of  executing  his  works, 
to  whatever  class  of  excellence  he  may  belong, 
that  we  long  to  be  familiar  with  in  order  to  say 
that  we  know  the  man.  What  matters  it  to  us 
that  he  paid  so  many  marks  or  shillings  to  pur- 
chase a  homestead  in  Stratford-upon- Avon?  The 
simple  autograph  of  his  name  is  now  worth  all  the 
sums  that  he  thus  expended.  One  single  line  of 
one  of  his  dramas,  written  in  his  own  hand,  would 
be  worth  to  his  admirers  all  the  sums  which  are 
known  to  have  passed  between  him  and  others. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  7 

What  has  become  of  the  goodly  folios  which  must 
have  once  existed  written  in  his  own  hand? 
Where  are  the  books  annotated  or  even  scratched 
by  his  pen,  from  which  he  drew  the  subjects  and 
sometimes  the  substance  of  his  dramas  ?  What 
Vandalism  destroyed  the  first,  or  dispersed  the 
second  of  these  valuable  treasures  ?  How  is  it 
that  we  know  nothing  of  his  method  of  composi- 
tion? Was  it  in  solitude  and  sacred  seclusion, 
self-imprisoned  for  hours  beyond  the  reach  of  the  tur- 
moil of  the  street  or  the  domestic  sounds  of  home  ? 
Or  were  his  unrivalled  works  produced  in  scraps 
of  time  and  fugitive  moments,  even  perhaps  in  the 
waiting-room  of  the  theatre,  or  the  brawling  or 
jovial  sounds  of  the  tavern  ? 

Was  he  silent,  thoughtful,  while  his  fertile  brain 
was  seething  and  heaving  in  the  fermentation  of 
his  glorious  conceptions  ;  so  that  men  should  have 
said — "  Hush !  Shakespeare  is  at  work  with  some 
new  and  mighty  imaginings!"  or  wore  he  always  that 
light  and  careless  spirit  which  often  belongs  to  the 
spontaneous  facility  of  genius  ;  so  that  his  comrades 
may  have  wondered  when,  and  where,  and  how  his 
grave  characters,  his  solemn  scenes,  his  fearful 
catastrophes,  and  his  sublime  maxims  of  original 
wisdom,  were  conceived,  planned,  matured,  and 


8  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

finally  written  down,  to  rule  for  ever  the  world  of 
letters  ?  Almost  the  only  fact  connected  with  his 
literary  life  which  has  come  down  to  us  is  one 
which  has  been  recorded,  perhaps  with  jealousy, 
certainly  with  ill-temper,  by  his  friend  Ben  Jonson — 
that  he  wrote  with  overhaste,  and  hardly  ever 
erased  a  line,  though  it  would  have  been  better 
had  he  done  so  with  many. 

This  almost  total  absence  of  all  external  informa- 
tion, this  drying-up  of  the  ordinary  channels  of 
personal  history,  forces  us  to  seek  for  the  character 
and  the  very  life  of  Shakespeare  in  his  own  works. 
But  how  difficult,  in  analysing  the  complex  consti- 
tution of  such  a  man's  principles,  motives,  passions, 
and  affections,  to  discriminate  between  what  he  has 
drawn  from  himself,  and  what  he  has  created  by 
the  force  of  his  imagination.  Dealing  habitually 
with  fictions,  sometimes  in  their  noblest,  sometimes 
in  their  vilest  forms — here  gross  and  even  savage, 
there  refined  and  sometimes  ethereal,  how  shall  we 
discover  what  portions  of  them  were  copied  from 
the  glass  which  he  held  before  himself,  what  from 
the  magic  mirrors  across  which  flitted  illusive  or 
fanciful  imagery  ?  The  work  seems  hopeless.  It 
is  not  like  that  of  the  printer,  who,  from  a  chaotic 
heap  of  seemingly  unmeaning  lead,  draws  out 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  U 

letter  after  letter,  and  so  disposes  them  that  they 
shall  make  senseful  and  even  brilliant  lines.  It  is 
more  like  the  hopeless  labour  of  one  who,  from  the 
fragments  of  a  tesselated  pavement,  should  try  to 
draw  the  elegant  and  exquisitely  tinted  figure 
which  once  it  bore. 

This  difficulty  of  appreciating,  and  still  more  of 
delineating,  the  character  of  our  great  poet,  makes 
him,  without  perhaps  an  exception,  the  most  difficult 
literary  theme  in  English  letters. 

How  to  reduce  the  subject  to  a  lecture  seems 
indeed  a  literal  paradox.  But  when  to  this  diffi- 
culty is  added  that  of  an  impossible  compression 
into  narrow  limits  of  the  widest  and  vastest  com- 
pass ever  embraced  by  any  one  man's  genius,  it 
must  appear  an  excess  of  rashness  in  anyone  to 
presume  that  he  can  do  justice  to  the  subject  on 
which  I  am  addressing  you. 

It  seems,  therefore,  hardly  wonderful  that  even 
the  last  year,  dedicated  naturally  to  the  tercen- 
tenary commemoration  of  William  Shakespeare, 
should  have  passed  over  without  any  public  eulogy 
of  his  greatness,  in  this  our  metropolis.  It 
seemed,  indeed,  as  if  the  magnitude  of  that  one 
man's  genius  was  too  oppressive  for  this  generation. 
It  was  not,  I  believe,  an  undervaluing  of  his  merits 


10  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

which  produced  the  frustration  of  efforts,  and  the 
disappointment  of  expectations,  that  seemed  to  put 
to  rout  and  confusion,  or  rather  to  paralyse  the  ex- 
ertions so  strenuously  commenced  to  mark  the  year 
as  a  great  epoch  in  England's  literary  history.  I 
believe,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  dimensions  of 
Shakespeare  had  grown  so  immeasurably  in  the 
estimation  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  that  the  pro- 
portions of  his  genius  to  all  that  had  followed  him, 
and  all  that  surround  us,  had  grown  so  enormously 
in  the  judgment  and  feeling  of  the  country,  from 
the  nobleman  to  the  workman,  that  the  genius  of 
the  man  oppressed  us,  and  made  us  feel  that  all  our 
multiplied  resources  of  art  and  speech  were  un- 
equal to  his  worthy  commemoration.  No  plan 
proposed  for  this  purpose  seemed  adequate  to  attain 
it.  Nothing  solid  and  permanent  that  could 
either  come  up  to  his  merits  or  to  our  aspirations 
seemed  to  be  within  the  grasp  either  of  the  arts  or 
of  the  wealth  of  our  country.  The  year  has  passed 
away,  and  Shakespeare  remains  without  any  monu- 
ment, except  that  which,  by  his  wonderful  writings, 
he  has  raised  for  himself.  Even  the  research  after 
a  site  fit  for  the  erection  of  a  monument  to  him,  in 
the  city  of  squares,  of  gardens,  and  of  parks, 
seemed  only  to  work  perplexity  and  hopelessness. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  11 

Presumptuous  as  it  may  appear,  the  claim  to 
connect  myself  with  that  expired  arid  extinct  move- 
ment is  my  only  apology  for  my  appearing  before 
you.  If,  a  year  after  its  time,  I  take  upon  myself 
the  eulogy  of  Shakespeare,  if  I  appear  to  come 
forward  as  with  a  funeral  oration,  to  give  him,  in  a 
manner,  posthumous  glory,  it  is  because  my  work 
has  dropped  out  of  its  place,  and  not  because  I 
have  inopportunely  misplaced  it.  In  the  course 
of  the  last  year,  it  was  proposed  to  me,  both 
directly  and  indirectly,  to  deliver  a  lecture  on 
Shakespeare.  I  was  bold  enough  to  yield  my 
assent,  and  thus  felt  that  I  had  contracted  an  ob- 
ligation to  the  memory  of  the  bard,  as  well  as  to 
those  who  thought  that  my  sharing  what  was  done 
for  his  honour  would  possess  any  value.  A  task 
undertaken  becomes  a  duty  unfulfilled.  When, 
therefore,  it  was  proposed  to  me  to  perform  my 
portion  of  the  homage  which  I  considered  due  to 
him,  though  it  was  to  be  a  month  too  late,  I  felt 
it  would  be  cowardice  to  shrink  from  its  perform- 
ance. 

For  in  truth  the  undertaking  required  some 
courage  ;  and  to  retire  before  its  difficulties  might 
be  stigmatised  as  a  dastardly  timidity.  It  is  a 
work  of  courage  at  any  time  and  in  any  place  to 


1 2  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

undertake  a  lecture  upon  Shakespeare,  more  in  fact 
than  to  venture  on  the  delivery  of  a  series.  The 
latter  gives  scope  for  the  thousand  things  which 
one  would  wish  to  say — it  affords  ample  space  for 
apposite  illustration,  and  it  enables  one  to  enrich 
the  subject  with  the  innumerable  and  inimitable 
beauties  that  are  flung  like  gems  or  flowers  over 
every  page  of  his  magnificent  works.  But  in  the 
midst  of  public,  or  rather  universal,  celebration  of 
a  national  and  secular  festival  in  his  honour,  in  the 
presence  probably  of  the  most  finished  literary 
characters  in  this  highly-educated  country,  still 
more  certainly  before  numbers  of  those  whom 
the  nation  acknowledges  as  deeply  read  in  the 
works  of  our  poet  as  the  most  accomplished  critic 
of  any  age  has  been  in  the  writings  of  the  Classics 
— men  who  have  introduced  into  our  literature  a 
class-name — that  of  "  Shakespearian  scholars,'7 — to 
have  ventured  to  speak  on  this  great  theme  might 
seem  to  have  required,  not  courage,  but  temerity. 
Why,  it  might  have  been  justly  asked,  do  none  of 
those  who  have  consumed  their  lives  in  the  study 
of  him,  not  page  by  page,  but  line  by  line,  who 
have  pressed  his  sweet  fruits  between  their  lips 
till  they  have  absorbed  all  their  lusciousness,  who 
have  made  his  words  their  study,  his  thoughts  their 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  13 

meditation,  why  does  not  one  at  least  among  them 
stand  forward  now,  and  leave  for  posterity  the 
record  of  his  matured  observation  ?  Perhaps  I 
may  assign  the  reason  which  I  have  before,  that 
they  know,  too,  the  unapproachable  grandeur  of  the 
theme,  and  the  rare  powers  which  are  required  to 
grasp  and  to  hold  it. 

Be  it  so  ;  but  at  any  rate  if  in  the  presence  of 
others  so  much  more  capable  it  would  have  been 
rash  to  speak,  to  express  one's  thoughts,  when 
there  is  no  competition,  may  be  pardonable  at 
least. 

And  yet,  when  everybody  else  is  silent,  it  may  be 
very  naturally  asked  have  I  a  single  claim  to  put 
forward  upon  your  attention  and  indulgence  ?  I 
think  I  may  have  one  ;  though  I  fear  that  when  I 
mention  it,  it  may  be  considered  either  a  paradox 
or  a  refutation  of  my  pretensions.  My  claim,  then, 
to  be  heard  and  borne  with  is  this — that  I  have 
never  in  my  life  seen  Shakespeare  acted  ;  I  have 
never  heard  his  eloquent  speeches  declaimed  by 
gifted  performers  ;  I  have  not  listened  to  his  noble 
poetry  as  uttered  by  the  kings  or  queens  of 
tragedy  ;  I  have  not  witnessed  his  grand,  richly- 
concerted  scenes  endowed  with  life  by  the  graceful 
gestures,  the  classical  attitudes,  the  contrasting 


14  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

emotions,  and  the  pointed  emphasis  of  those  who 
in  modern  times  may  be  considered  to  have  even 
added  to  that  which  his  genius  produced  ;  I  know 
nothing  of  the  original  arid  striking  readings  or 
renderings  of  particular  passages  by  masters  of 
mimic  art ;  I  know  him  only  on  his  flat  page,  as  he 
is  represented  in  immoveable,  featureless,  unemo- 
tional type. 

Nor  am  I  acquainted  with  him  surrounded, 
perhaps  sometimes  sustained,  but,  at  any  rate, 
worthily  adorned  and  enhanced  in  accessory  beauty 
by  the  magic  illusion  of  scenic  decorations,  the 
splendid  pageantry  which  he  simply  hints  at,  but 
which,  I  believe,  has  been  now  realised  to  its 
most  ideal  exactness  and  richness — banquets, 
tournaments,  and  battles,  with  the  almost  deceptive 
accuracy  of  costume  and  of  architecture.  When  I 
hear  of  all  these  additional  ornaments  hung  around 
his  noble  works,  the  impression  which  they  make 
upon  my  mind  creates  a  deeper  sense  of  amaze- 
ment and  admiration,  how  dramas  written  for  the 
"  Globe "  Theatre,  wretchedly  lighted,  incapable 
of  grandeur,  even  from  want  of  space,  and  without 
those  mechanical  and  artistical  resources  which 
belong  to  a  later  age,  should  be  capable  of  bearing 
all  this  additional  weight  of  lustre  and  magnificence 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  15 

without  its  being  necessary  to  alter  a  word,  still 
less  a  passage,  from  their  original  delivery.*  This 
exhibits  the  nicely-balanced  point  of  excellence 
which  is  equally  poised  between  simplicity  and 
gorgeousness  ;  which  can  retain  its  power  and 
beauty,  whether  stript  to  its  barest  form  or  loaded 
with  exuberant  appurtenances. 

After  having  said  thus  much  of  my  own  pro- 
bably unenvied  position,  I  think  I  shall  not  be 
wrong  in  assuming  that  none  of  Shakespeare's 
enthusiastic  admirers,  one  of  whom  I  profess  myself 
to  be,  and  that  few  of  my  audience  are  in  this 

*  The  chorus,  which  serves  as  a  prologue  to  "  King  Henry 
V.,"  shows  how  Shakespeare's  own  mind  keenly  felt  the 
deficiencies  of  his  time,  and  almost  anticipatingly  wrote 
for  the  effects  which  a  future  age  might  supply  : 

"  But  pardon,  gentles  all, 
This  flat  unraised  spirit  that  hath  dar'd, 
On  this  unworthy  scaffold,  to  bring  forth 
So  great  an  object.     Can  this  cock-pit  hold 
The  vasty  fields  of  France  ?     Or  may  we  cram 
Within  this  wooden  O  the  very  casques 
That  did  affright  the  air  at  Agincourt. 

Piece  out  our  imperfections  with  your  thoughts  ; 

Into  a  thousand  parts  divide  one  man, 

And  make  imaginary  puissance  : 

Think,  when  we  talk  of  horses,  that  ye  see  them 

Printing  their  proud  hoofs  i'  the  receiving  earth ; 

For  'tis  your  thoughts  that  now  must  deck  our  kings." 


16  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

exceptional  position.  They  will  probably  consider 
this  a  disadvantage  on  my  side  ;  and  to  some  extent 
I  must  acknowledge  it — for  Shakespeare  wrote  to 
be  acted,  and  not  to  be  read. 

But  on  the  other  hand  is  it  not  something  to 
have  approached  this  wonderful  man,  and  to  have 
communed  with  him  in  silence  and  in  solitude,  face 
to  face,  alone  with  him  alone ;  to  have  read  and 
studied  and  meditated  on  him  in  early  youth,  with- 
out gloss  or  commentary,  or  preface  or  glossary  ? 
For  such  was  my  good  or  evil  fortune  ;  not  during 
the  still  hours  of  night,  but  during  that  stiller  por- 
tion of  an  Italian  afternoon,  when  silence  is  deeper 
than  in  the  night,  under  a  bright  and  sultry  sun, 
when  all  are  at  rest,  all  around  you  hushed  to  the 
very  footsteps  in  a  well-peopled  house,  except  the 
unquelled  murmuring  of  a  fountain  beneath  orange 
trees,  which  mingled  thus  the  most  delicate  of 
fragrance  with  the  most  soothing  of  sounds,  both 
stealing  together  through  the  half-closed  windows 
of  wide  and  lofty  corridors.  Is  there  not  more  of 
that  reverence  and  that  relish  which  constitute  the 
classical  taste  to  be  derived  from  the  concentration  of 
thought  and  feelings  which  the  perusal  of  the  simple 
unmarred  and  unoverlaid  text  procures  ;  when  you 
can  ponder  on  a  verse,  can  linger  over  a  word,  can 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEAPE.  17 

repeat  mentally  and  even  orally  with  your  own 
deliberation  and  your  own  emphasis,  whenever 
dignity,  beauty,  or  wisdom  invite  you  to  pause,  or 
compel  you  to  ruminate  ? 

In  fact,  were  you  desired  to  give  your  judg- 
ment on  the  refreshing  water  of  a  pure  fountain, 
you  would  not  care  to  taste  it  from  a  richly-jewelled 
and  delicately-chased  cup ;  you  would  not  con- 
sent to  have  it  mingled  with  the  choicest  wine,  nor 
flavoured  by  a  single  drop  of  the  most  exquisite 
essence  ;  you  would  not  have  it  chilled  with  ice, 
or  gently  attempered  by  warmth.  No,  you  would 
choose  the  most  transparent  crystal  vessel,  how- 
ever homely ;  you  would  fill  at  the  very  cleft  of 
the  rock  from  which  it  bubbles  fresh  and  bright, 
and  drink  it  yet  sparkling,  and  beading  with  its 
own  air-pearls  the  walls  of  the  goblet.  Nay,  is 
not  an  opposite  course  that  which  the  poet  himself 
censures  as  "  wasteful,  ridiculous  excess  ?" 

"  To  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily ; 
To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet. 

Or  with  a  taper  light 

To  seek  the  beauteous  eye  of  heaven  to  varnish." 

("  King  John,"  act  iv.,  scene  2.) 

You  will  easily  understand,  from  this  long  and 
almost  apologetic  preamble,  in  the  first  place,  that 

c 


18  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

I  take  it  for  granted  that  I  am  addressing  an 
audience  which  is  not  assembled  to  receive  elemen- 
tary or  new  information  concerning  England's 
greatest  poet.  On  the  contrary,  I  believe  myself 
to  stand  before  many  who  are  able  to  judge,  rather 
than  merely  accept,  my  opinions,  and  in  the  pre- 
sence of  an  assembly  exclusively  composed  of  his 
admirers,  thoroughly  conversant  with  his  works. 
A  further  consequence  is  this,  that  my  lecture  will 
not  consist  of  extracts — still  less  of  recitations  of 
any  of  those  beautiful  passages  which  occur  in 
every  play  of  Shakespeare.  The  most  celebrated 
of  these  are  present  to  the  mind  of  every  English 
scholar,  from  his  school-boy  days  to  his  maturer 
studies. 


II. 


It  would  be  superfluous  for  a  lecturer  on  Shake- 
speare to  put  to  himself  the  question,  What  place 
do  you  intend  to  give  to  the  subject  of  your  dis- 
course in  the  literature  of  England  or  of  Europe  ? 
Whatever  difference  of  opinion  may  exist  elsewhere, 
I  believe  that  in  this  country  only  one  answer  will 
be  given.  Among  our  native  writers  no  one 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  19 

questions  that  Shakespeare  is  supremely  pre-emi- 
nent, and  most  of  us  will  probably  assign  him  as 
lofty  a  position  in  the  whole  range  of  modern 
European  literature.  Perhaps  no  other  nation 
possesses  among  its  writers  any  one  name  to  which 
there  is  no  rival  claims,  nor  even  an  approximation 
of  equality,  to  make  a  balance  against  it.  Were 
we  to  imagine  in  England  a  Walhalla  erected 
to  contain  the  effigies  of  great  men,  and  were  one 
especial  hall  to  contain  those  of  our  most  eminent 
dramatists,  it  must  needs  be  so  constructed  as  to 
have  one  central  niche.  Were  a  similar  structure 
prepared  in  France,  it  would  be  natural  to  place 
in  equal  prominence  at  least  two  figures,  or,  in 
classical  language,  two  different  muses  of  Tragedy 
and  of  Comedy  would  have  to  be  separately  repre- 
sented. But  in  England,  assign  what  place  we 
may  to  those  who  have  excelled  in  either  branch 
in  mimic  art,  the  highest  excellence  in  both  would 
be  found  centered  in  one  man ;  and  from  him  on 
either  side  would  have  to  range  the  successful 
cultivators  of  the  drama. 

But  this  claim  to  so  undisputed  an  elevation 
does  not  rest  upon  his  merits  only  in  this  field  of 
our  literature.  Shakespeare  has  established  his 
claim  to  the  noblest  position  in  English  literature  on  a 

c  2 


20  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

wider  and  more  solid  basis  than  the  mere  composi- 
tion of  skilful  plays  could  deserve.  As  the  great 
master  of  our  language,  as  almost  its  regenerator, 
quite  its  refiner — as  the  author  whose  use  of  a  word 
stamps  it  with  the  mark  of  purest  English  coinage — 
whose  employment  of  a  phrase  makes  it  household 
and  proverbial — whose  sententious  sayings,  flowing 
without  effort  from  his  mind,  seem  almost  sacred, 
and  are  quoted  as  axioms  or  maxims  indisputable — 
as  the  orator  whose  speeches,  not  only  apt,  but, 
natural  to  the  lips  from  which  they  issue,  are  more 
eloquent  than  the  discourses  of  senators  or  finished 
public  speakers — as  the  poet  whose  notes  are  richer, 
more  wondrously  varied  than  those  of  the  greatest 
professed  bards — as  the  writer  who  has  run 
through  the  most  varied  ways  and  to  the  greatest 
extent  through  every  department  of  literature  and 
learning,  through  the  history  of  many  nations,  their 
domestic  manners,  their  characteristics,  and  even 
their  personal  distinctives,  and  who  seems  to  have 
visited  every  part  of  nature,  to  have  intuitively 
studied  the  heavens  and  the  earth — as  the  man,  in 
fine,  who  has  shown  himself  supreme  in  so  many 
things,  superiority  in  any  one  of  which  gains  reputa- 
tion in  life  and  glory  after  death,  he  is  pre-eminent 
above  all,  and  beyond  the  reach  of  envy  or  jealousy. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  21 

And  if  no  other  nation  can  show  us  another  man 
whose  head  rises  above  all  their  other  men  of  letters, 
as  Shakespeare  does  over  ours,  they  cannot  pretend, 
by  the  accumulation  of  separated  excellences,  to  put 
in  competition  with  him  a  type  rather  than  a  reali- 
zation of  possible  worth.  Until,  therefore,  some 
other  writer  can  be  produced,  no  matter  from 
what  nation,  who  unites  in  himself  personally  these 
gifts  of  our  bard  in  an  equally  sublime  degree,  his 
stature  overtops  them  all,  wherever  born  and  how- 
ever celebrated. 

The  question,  however,  may  be  raised — Is  he  so 
securely  placed  upon  his  pedestal  that  a  rival  may 
not  one  day  thrust  him  from  it  ? — is  he  so  secure 
upon  his  throne  that  a  rebel  may  not  usurp  it  ? 
To  these  interrogations  I  answer  unhesitatingly — 
Yes. 

In  the  first  place,  there  have  only  been  two  poets 
in  the  world  before  Shakespeare  who  have  at- 
tained the  same  position  with  him.  Each  came  at 
the  moment  which  closed  the  volume  of  the  period 
past  and  opened  that  of  a  new  epoch.  Of  what 
preceded  Homer  we  can  know  but  little ;  the  songs 
by  bards  or  rhapsodists  had,  no  doubt,  preceded 
him,  and  prepared  the  way  for  the  first  and  great- 
est epic.  This,  it  is  acknowledged,  has  never  been 


22  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

surpassed ;  it  became  the  standard  of  language,  the 
steadfast  rule  of  versification,  and  the  model  of 
poetical  composition.  His  supremacy,  once  attained, 
was  shaken  by  no  competition ;  it  was  as  well  as- 
sured after  a  hundred  years  as  it  has  been  by  thou- 
sands. Dante  again  stood  between  the  remnants 
of  the  old  Roman  civilization  and  the  construction 
of  a  new  and  Christian  system  of  arts  and  letters. 
He,  too,  consolidated  the  floating  fragments  of  an 
indefinite  language,  and  with  them  built  and 
thence  himself  fitted  and  adorned  that  stately 
vessel  which  bears  him  through  all  the  regions  of 
life  and  of  death,  of  glory,  of  trial,  and  of  perdi- 
tion. 

A  word  found  in  Dante  is  classical  to  the  Italian 
ear ;  a  form,  however  strange  in  grammar,  traced 
to  him,  is  considered  justifiable  if  used  by  any 
modern  sonneteer.*  He  holds  the  place  in  his 
own  country  which  Shakespeare  does  in  ours  ;  not 
only  is  his  terza  rima,  considered  inimitable,  but  the 
concentration  of  brilliant  imagery  in  our  words, 
the  flashes  of  his  great  thoughts  aud  the  copious 
variety  of  his  learning,  marvellous  in  his  age,  make 
his  volume  be  to  this  day  the  delight  of  every 

*  Any  one  acquainted  with  Mastrofini's  "  Dictionary  of 
Italian  Verbs"  will  understand  this. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  23 

refined   intelligence  and  every  polished  mind  in 
Italy. 

And  he,  too,  like  Homer,  notwithstanding  the 
magnificent  poets  who  succeeded  him,  has  never 
for  a  moment  lost  that  fascination  which  he  alone 
exercises  over  the  domain  of  Italian  poetry.  He 
was  as  much  its  ruler  in  his  own  age  as  he  is  in 
the  present. 

In  like  manner  the  two  centuries  and  more 
which  have  elapsed  since  Shakespeare's  death  have 
as  completely  confirmed  him  in  his  legitimate  com- 
mand as  the  same  period  did  his  two  only  real  pre- 
decessors. No  one  can  possibly  either  be  placed  in 
a  similar  position  or  come  up  to  his  great  qualities, 
except  at  the  expense  of  the  destruction  of  our 
present  civilization,  the  annihilation  of  its  past 
traditions,  the  resolution  of  our  language  into  jar- 
gon, and  its  regeneration,  by  a  new  birth,  into 
something  "more  rich  and  strange"  than  the 
powerful  idiom  which  so  splendidly  combines  the 
Saxon  and  the  Norman  elements.  Should  such  a 
devastation  and  reconstruction  take  place,  whether 
they  come  from  New  Zealand  or  from  Siberia, 
then  there  may  spring  up  the  poet  of  that  time 
and  condition  who  may  be  the  fourth  in  that  great 
series  of  unrivalled  bards,  but  will  no  more  inter- 


24  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

fere  with  his  predecessor's  rights  than  Dante  or 
Shakespeare  does  with  those  of  Homer. 

But  further,  we  may  truly  say  that  the  legislator 
of  a  people  can  be  but  one,  and,  as  such,  can 
have  no  rival  beyond  his  own  shores.  Solon, 
Lycurgus,  and  Numa  are  the  only  three  men  in 
profane  history  who  have  reached  the  dignity  of 
this  singular  title.  The  first  seized  on  the  cha- 
racter of  the  bland  and  polished  Athenians,  and 
framed  his  code  in  such  harmony  with  it,  that  no 
subsequent  laws,  even  in  the  periods  of  most  cor- 
rupt relaxation,  could  efface  their  primitive 
stamp,  cease  to  make  the  Kepublic  proud  of  their 
lawgiver's  name. 

Lycurgus  understood  the  stern  and  almost 
savage  hardihood  and  simplicity  of  the  Spartan 
disposition,  and  perpetuated  it  and  regulated  it  by 
his  harsh  and  unfeeling  system,  of  which,  notwith- 
standing which,  the  Lacedaemonian  was  proud.  And 
so  Numa  Pompilius  comprehended  the  readiness  of 
the  infant  Republic,  sprung  from  so  doubtful  and 
discreditable  a  parentage,  to  discover  a  noble  de- 
scent, and  connect  its  birth  and  education  with  gods 
and  heroes,  took  hold  of  this  weakness  for  the 
sanction  of  his  legislation,  and  feigned  his  confer- 
ences with  the  nymph  Egeria  as  the  sources  of  his 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  25 

wisdom.      No  ;   whatever  may  become  of   kings, 
legislators  are  never  dethroned. 

And  so  is  Shakespeare  the  unquestioned  legisla- 
tor of  modern  literary  art.  No  one  will  contend 
that,  without  certain  detriment,  it  would  be  possi- 
ble for  a  modern  writer,  especially  of  dramatic 
fiction,  to  go  back  beyond  him  and  endeavour  to 
establish  a  pre-Shakesperian  School  of  English 
literature,  as  we  have  the  pre-Raphaelite  in  art. 
Struggle  and  writhe  as  any  genius  may — even  if 
endowed  with  giant  strength — it  will  be  but  as  the 
battle  of  the  Titans  against  Jove.  Huge  rocks  will 
be  rolled  down  upon  him,  and  the  lightning  from 
Shakespeare's  hand  will  assuredly  tear  his  laurels, 
if  it  do  not  strike  his  head.  Byron  could  not  appre- 
ciate the  dramatic  genius  of  Shakespeare  ;  perhaps 
his  sympathies  ranged  more  freely  among  Corsairs 
and  Suliotes  than  among  purer  and  nobler  spirits. 
Certainly  he  speaks  of  him  with  a  superciliousness 
which  betrays  his  inability  fully  to  comprehend 
him.*  And  yet  would  "  Manfred  "  have  existed  if 

*  Lord  Byron  thus  writes  to  Mr.  Murray,  July  14th, 
1821  : —  "  I  trust  that  Sardanapalus  will  not  be  mistaken 

for  a  political  play You  will  find  all  this  very 

unlike  Shakespeare ;  and  so  much  the  better,  in  one  sense, 
for  I  look  upon  him  to  be  the  worst  of  models,  though  the 
most  extraordinary  of  writers." — MOORE'S  Life  of  Lord  Byron. 


26  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  romantic  drama  and  the  spirit-agency  of 
Shakespeare  had  not  given  it  life  and  rule  ?  So  in 
other  nations.  I  shall  probably  quote  to  you  the 
sentiments  of  foreign  writers  of  highest  eminence 
concerning  Shakespeare,  not  as  authorities,  but 
as  illustrations  of  what  I  may  say. 

Singularly  enough,  the  greatest  of  German 
modern  writers  has  nowhere  recorded  a  full  and 
deliberate  opinion  on  our  poet.  But  who  can 
doubt  that  "Gotz  von  Berlichingen  with  the  Iron 
Hand,"  and  even  the  grand  and  tender  "  Faust," 
and  no  less  Schiller's  "  Wallenstein,"  belong  to  the 
family  of  Shakespeare,  are  remotely  offsprings  of  his 
genius,  and  have  to  be  placed  as  tributary  garlands 
round  his  pedestal.  To  imagine  Shakespeare  even 
in  intention  removed  from  his  sovereignty,  would 
be  a  treachery  parallel  only  to  that  of  Lear  de- 
throned by  his  own  daughters. 

But  still  more  may  we  say  that,  in  all  such  posi- 
tions as  that  which  we  have  assigned  to  Shakespeare, 
there  has  always  been  a  culminating  point  to 
which  succeeds  decline — if  not  downfall.  It  is  so 
in  art.  Immediately  after  the  death  of  Eaphael, 
and  the  dispersion  of  his  school,  art  took  a  down- 
ward direction,  and  has  never  risen  again  to  the 
same  height.  And  while  he  marks  the  highest 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  27 

elevation  ever  reached  in  the  arts  of  Europe,  a 
similar  observation  will  apply  to  their  particular 
schools.  Leonardo  and  Luini  in  Lombardy ;  the 
Carracci  in  Bologna  ;  Fra  Angelico  in  Umbria ; 
Garofalo  in  Ferrara,  not  only  take  the  place  of 
chiefs  in  their  respective  districts,  but  mark  the 
period  from  which  degeneracy  has  to  date.  And 
so  surely  is  it  in  our  case,  whatever  may  have  been 
the  course  of  literature  which  led  up  to  Shake- 
speare, without  pronouncing  judgment  on  Spenser, 
or  arare  Ben  Jonson,"  it  is  certain  that  after  him, 
although  England  has  possessed  great  poets,  there 
stands  not  one  forward  among  them  as  Shake- 
speare's competitor.  Milton,  and  Dryden,  and 
Addison,  and  Eowe  have  given  us  specimens  of 
high  dramatic  writing  of  no  mean  quality ;  others 
as  well,  and  even  these  have  written  much  and 
nobly,  in  lofty  as  in  familiar  verse ;  yet  not  one  has 
the  public  judgment  of  the  nation  placed  on  a  level 
with  him.  The  intermediate  space  from  them  to 
our  own  times  has  left  only  the  traces  of  a  weak 
and  enervated  school.  It  would  be  unbecoming  to 
speak  disparagingly  of  the  poets  of  the  present  age  ; 
but  no  one,  I  believe,  has  ventured  to  consider 
them  as  superior  to  the  noble  spirits  of  our  Augus- 


28  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

tan  age.     The  easy  descent  from  the  loftiest  emi- 
nence is  not  easily  reclimbed. 

Surely,  then,  we  may  consider  Shakespeare,  as 
an  ancient  mythologist  would  have  done,  as  "  en- 
skied  "  among  "  the  invulnerable  clouds,"  where 
no  shaft,  even  of  envy,  can  assail  him.  From  this 
elevation  we  may  safely  predict  that  he  never  can 
be  plucked. 


III. 

The  next  point  which  seems  to  claim  attention 
is  the  very  root  of  all  that  I  have  said,  or  shall 
have  still  to  say.  To  what  does  Shakespeare  owe 
this  supremacy,  or  whence  flow  all  the  extraordi- 
nary qualities  which  we  attribute  to  him  ?  You 
are  all  prepared  with  the  answer  in  one  single 
word — his  GENIUS. 

The  genius  of  Shakespeare  is  our  familiar 
thought  and  ready  expression  when  we  study  him, 
and  when  we  characterise  him.  Nevertheless, 
simple  and  intelligible  as  is  the  word,  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  analyse  or  to  define  it.  Yet 
everything  that  is  great  and  beautiful  in  his 
writings  seems  to  require  an  explanation  of  the 
cause  to  which  it  owes  its  origin. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  29 

One  great  characteristic  of  genius  easily  and 
universally  admitted  is,  that  it  is  a  gift,  and  not 
an  acquisition.  It  belongs  inherently  to  the  person 
possessing  it ;  it  cannot  be  transmitted  by  heri- 
tage ;  it  cannot  be  infused  by  parental  affection  ; 
it  cannot  be  bestowed  by  earliest  care  ;  neither 
can  it  be  communicated  by  the  most  finished 
culture  or  the  most  studied  education.  It  must  be 
congenital,  or  rather  inborn  to  its  possessor.  It  is 
as  much  a  living,  a  natural  power,  as  is  reason  to 
every  man.  As  surely  as  the  very  first  germ  of 
the  plant  contains  in  itself  the  faculty  of  one  day 
evolving  from  itself  leaves,  flowers,  and  fruit,  so 
does  genius  hold,  however  hidden,  however  un- 
seen, the  power  to  open,  to  bring  forth,  and  to  ma- 
ture what  other  men  cannot  do,  but  what  to  it  is 
instinctive  and  almost  spontaneous.  It  may  begin 
to  manifest  itself  with  the  very  dawn  of  reason  ; 
it  may  remain  asleep  for  years,  till  a  spark,  per- 
haps accidentally,  kindles  up  into  a  sudden  and  ir- 
repressible splendour,  that  unseen  intellectual  fuel 
which  has  been  almost  unknown  to  its  unambitious 
owner. 

In  our  own  minds  we  easily  distinguish  between 
the  highest  abilities  or  the  most  rare  attainments, 
when  the  fruit  of  education  and  of  application,  and 


30  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE, 

what  we  habitually  distinguish  as  the  manifestation 
of  genius.  But  still  we  do  not  find  it  so  easy  to 
reduce  to  words  this  mental  distinction ;  the  one, 
after  all,  however  gracefully  and  however  brightly, 
walks  upon  the  earth,  adorning  it  by  the  good  or 
fair  things  which  it  scatters  on  its  way  ;  the  other 
has  wings,  and  flies  above  the  surface — it  is  like 
the  aurora  of  Homer  or  of  Thorwaldsen,  which,  as 
it  flies  above  the  plane  of  mortal  actions,  sheds 
down  its  flowers  along  its  brilliant  path,  upon 
those  worthy  to  gaze  upwards  towards  it.  We 
connect  in  our  minds  with  genius  the  ideas  of 
flashing  splendour  and  eccentric  movement.  It  is 
an  intellectual  meteor,  the  laws  of  which  cannot 
be  defined  or  reduced  to  any  given  theory.  We 
regard  it  with  a  certain  awe,  and  leave  it  to  soar 
or  to  droop,  to  shine  or  disappear,  to  dash  ir- 
regularly first  in  one  direction  and  then  in  another  ; 
no  one  dare  curb  it  or  direct  it ;  but  all  feel  sure 
that  its  course,  however  inexplicable,  is  subject 
to  higher  and  controlling  rule.  But  in  order  to 
define  more  closely  what  we  in  reality  understand 
by  genius,  it  may  be  well  to  consider  its  action  in 
divided  and  more  restricted  spheres  of  activity. 
For  although  we  habitually  attribute  this  singular 
quality  to  many,  and  often  but  on  light  grounds, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  31 

it  is  seldom  that  we  do  so  seriously  and  deliberately 
without  some  qualifying  epithet.  We  speak  of  a 
military  genius,  of  a  mechanical  genius,  of  a 
poetical  genius,  of  a  musical  genius,  or  of  an  ar- 
tistic genius.  All  these  expressions  contain  a 
restrictive  clause.  We  do  not  understand  when 
we  use  them  that  the  person  to  whom  they  were 
attributed  possessed  any  power  beyond  the  limits 
of  a  particuler  sphere.  We  do  not  mean  by  the 
use  of  the  word  genius  that  the  soldier  knew 
anything  of  poetry,  or  the  printer  of  mechanism. 
We  understand  that  each  in  his  own  profession  or 
stage  of  excellence  possessed  a  complete  elevation 
over  the  bulk  of  those  who  followed  the  same  pur- 
suits ;  a  superiority  so  visible,  so  acknowledged, 
and  so  clearly  individual,  that  no  one  else  con- 
sidered it  inferiority,  still  less  felt  shame  at  not 
being  able  to  rise  to  the  same  level.  They  gather 
round  them  acknowledged  disciples  and  admirers, 
who  rather  glory  to  have  been  guided  by  their 
teaching,  and  formed  on  their  example. 

And  in  what  consisted  that  complete  though  limit- 
ed excellence?  If  I  might  venture  to  express  a  judg- 
ment, I  would  say  thatgenius  in  these  different  courses 
of  science  or  art  may  be  defined  a  natural  sympathy 


32  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

with  all  that  relates  to  each  of  them,  with  the 
power  of  giving  full  and  certain  execution  to  the 
mental  conception.  The  military  genius  is  one  who, 
either  untrained  by  studious  preparation,  or  else 
starting  out  of  the  lines  in  which  many  were  ranged 
level  with  himself,  seizes  the  staff  of  command,  and 
receives  the  homage  of  comrades  and  superiors. 
While  others  have  been  plodding  through  the  long 
drill  of  theory  and  of  practice,  he  is  found  to  have 
discovered  a  new  system  of  the  science,  bold,  irre- 
gular, but  successful.  But  to  possess  this  genius, 
there  must  be  a  universal  sympathy  with  all  that 
relates  to  its  own  peculiar  province.  The  military 
genius  of  which  we  are  speaking  must  embrace 
or  acquire  that  which  relates  to  the  soldier's  life 
and  duty,  from  the  dress  of  the  single  soldier,  from 
his  duties  in  ^  the  sentry-box,  or  on  the  picquet,  to 
the  practice  of  the  regiment  and  the  evolutions  of 
a  field-day  ;  from  the  complete  command  of  tens  of 
thousands  on  the  battle-field,  with  an  eagle's  eye 
and  a  lion's  heart,  to  the  scientific  planning,  on  the 
chessboard  of  an  empire,  of  the  campaign,  which  he 
meditates  move  by  move  and  check  by  check,  till 
the  final  victory  is  crowned  in  the  capital  city. 
He  who  has  not  given  proof  of  his  being  equal  to 
all  this,  has  not  made  good  his  claim  to  military 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  oo 

genius.  But  such  a  one  will  find,  wherever  he 
puts  his  hand,  generals  and  marshals,  each  able  to 
command  a  host,  or  to  take  his  place  in  his  rough- 
est of  enterprises. 

I  need  not  pass  through  other  forms  of  genius  to 
reach  similar  results  ;  Stephenson,  from  the  labour  of 
the  mine,  creating  that  system  of  mechanical  motion, 
which  may  be  said  to  have  subdued  the  world,  and 
bound  the  earth  in  iron  links ;  Mozart,  giving 
concerts  at  the  age  of  seven,  that  astonished  grey- 
headed musicians ;  Raphael,  before  the  ordinary 
age  of  finished  pupilage,  master  of  every  known 
detail  in  art  of  oil  or  fresco,  drawing,  expression,  and 
grand  composition ;  Giotto,  caught  in  the  field  as  a 
young  shepherd  by  Cimabue,  drawing  his  sheep  upon 
a  stone,  and  soon  becoming  the  master  of  modern 
art.*  These  and  many  others  repeat  ^to  us  what  I 
have  said  of  the  military  genius — an  inborn  capa- 
city, comprehensive  and  complete,  with  the  power 

*  The  early  manifestation  of  artistic  power  is  so  frequent 
and  well  known,  that  it  would  be  superfluous  to  enumerate 
other  instances.  The  expression  "  ancK  io  son  pittore"  is 
become  proverbial.  One  of  the  Carracci,  on  being  translated 
from  an  inferior  profession  to  the  family  studio,  was  found 
at  once  to  possess  the  pictorial  skill  of  his  race.  At  the  pre- 
sent, Mintropp  at  Diisseldorf,  and  Ackermann  at  Berlin, 
are  both  instances  of  very  high  artists,  the  one  in  drawing 
the  other  in  sculpture,  both  originally  shepherds. 


34  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

of  fully  carrying  out  the  suggestions  of  mind.  Had 
there  been  a  single  portion  of  their  pursuits  in 
which  they  did  not  excel,  if  the  result  of  their 
work  had  not  exhibited  the  happy  union  and 
concord  of  the  many  qualities  requisite  for  its  per- 
fection, they  never  would  have  attained  the  attri- 
bution of  genius. 

If  this  sympathy  with  one  branch  of  higher  pur- 
suits passes  beyond  it  and  associates  with  it  a 
similar  facility  of  acquisition  and  execution  in 
some  other  and  distinct  art  or  science,  it  is  clear 
that  the  claim  to  genius  is  higher  and  more  exten- 
sive. Raphael  was  before  the  world  a  painter,  but 
he  could  scarcely  have  been  so  without  embracing 
every  other  department  of  art.  Before  the  science 
of  perspective  was  matured  or  popularly  known, 
when,  in  consequence,  defects  are  to  be  found  in 
the  disposition  of  figures,  and  in  the  adjustment  of 
aerial  distances,*  his  architecture  shows  an  in- 
stinctive familiarity  with  its  rules  and  proportions ; 
a  proof  that  he  possessed  an  architectural  eye.  And 
consequently  the  one  statue  which  he  is  supposed 
to  have  carved,  and  the  one  palace  which  he  is 

*  See  Mr.  Lloyd's  article  on  "  Raphael's  School  of  Athens," 
in  Mr.  Woodward's  Fine  Art  Quarterly  Review,  January  1864, 
p.  67. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  35 

said  to  have  built,  show  how  easily  he  could  have 
undertaken  and  executed  beautiful  works  in  either 
of  those  two  classes  of  art.  In  Orcagna  and 
Michelangelo  we  have  the  three  branches  of  art 
supremely  united ;  and  the  second  of  these  adds 
poetry  and  literature  to  his  artistic  excellence.  In 
like  manner,  Leonardo  has  left  proof  of  most  varied 
and  accurate  mechanical  as  well  as  literary  genius. 
It  is  evident,  however,  that  while  a  genius  has 
its  point  of  concentration,  every  remove  from  this, 
though  wider,  will  be  fainter  and  less  complete. 
We  may  describe  it  as  Shakespeare  himself  de- 
scribes glory,  and  say  : 

"  Genius  is  like  a  circle  in  the  water, 
Which  never  ceaseth  to  enlarge  itself, 
Till,  by  broad  spreading  it  disperse  to  naught." 

("  Henry  VI.,"  act  i.,  scene  3.) 

The  sympathies  with  more  remote  subjects  and 
pursuits  will  be  rather  the  means  of  illustration, 
adornment,  and  pleasing  variety,  than  for  the 
essential  requirements  of  the  principal  aim.  But 
though  less  minute  in  their  application,  in  the 
hand  of  genius  they  will  be  wonderfully  accurate 
and  apt. 


36  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 


IV. 


All  that  I  have  been  saying  is  applicable  in  the 
most  complete  and  marvellous  way  to  Shakespeare's 
genius.  His  sympathies  are  universal,  perfect  in  their 
own  immediate  use,  infinitely  varied,  and  strikingly 
beautiful,  when  they  reach  remoter  objects.  And 
hence,  though  at  first  sight  he  might  be  classified 
among  those  who  have  displayed  a  literary  genius, 
he  stretches  his  mind  and  his  feelings  so  beyond 
them  on  every  side,  that  to  him,  almost,  perhaps, 
beyond  any  other  man,  the  simple  distinctive, 
without  any  qualification,  belongs.  No  one  need 
fear  to  call  Shakespeare  simply  a  grand,  a  sublime 
genius. 

The  centre-point  of  his  sympathies  is  clearly  his 
dramatic  art.  From  this  they  expand,  for  many 
degrees,  with  scarce  perceptible  diminution,  till 
they  lose  themselves  in  far  distant,  and,  to  him,  un- 
explored space.  This  nucleus  of  his  genius  has 
certainly  never  been  equalled  before  or  since.  Its 
essence  consists  in  what  is  the  very  soul  of  the 
dramatic  idea,  the  power  to  throw  himself  into  the 
situation,  the  circumstances,  the  nature,  the 
acquired  habits,  the  feelings,  true  or  fictitious, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  37 

of  every  character  which  he  introduces.  This 
forms,  in  fact,  the  most  perfect  of  sympathies.  We 
do  not,  of  course,  use  the  word  in  that  more  usual 
sense  of  harmony  of  affection,  or  consent  of  feeling. 
Shakespeare  has  sympathy  as  complete  for  Shylock 
or  lagOj  as  he  has  for  Arthur,  or  King  Lear.  For 
a  time  he  lives  in  the  astute  villain  as  in  the  inno- 
cent child  ;  he  works  his  entire  power  of  thought 
into  intricacies  of  the  traitor's  brain ;  he  makes  his 
heart  beat  in  concord  with  the  usurer's  sanguinary 
spite,  and  then,  like  some  beautiful  creature  in  the 
animal  world,  draws  himself  out  of  the  hateful  evil, 
and  is  himself  again  ;  and  able,  even,  often  to  hold 
his  own  noble  and  gentle  qualities  as  a  mirror,  or 
exhibit  the  loftiest,  the  most  generous,  and  amiable 
examples  of  our  nature.  Arid  this  is  all  done  with- 
out study,  and  apparently  without  effort.  His 
infinitely  varied  characters  come  naturally  into 
their  places,  never  for  a  moment  lose  their  pro- 
prieties, their  personality,  and  the  exact  flexibility 
which  results  from  the  necessary  combination  in 
every  man  of  many  qualities.  From  the  beginning 
to  the  end  each  one  is  the  same,  yet  reflecting  in 
himself  the  lights  and  shadows  which  flit  around 
him. 

This  extraordinary  versatility  stands  in  striking 


38  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

contrast  with  the  dramatic  productions  of  other 
countries.  The  Greek  tragedian  is  Greek  through- 
out— his  subjects,  his  mythology,  his  sentences,  play 
wonderfully  indeed,  but  yet  restrictedly,  within  a 
given  sphere.  And  Rome  is  but  the  imitator  in 
all  its  literature  of  its  great  mistress  and  model. 

"  Graiis  eloquium,  Graiis  dedit  ore  rotundo, 
Musa  loqui." 

Even  through  the  French  school,  with  the  strict 
adhesion  to  the  ancient  rule  of  the  unities,  seems  to 
have  descended  the  partiality  for  what  may  be 
called  the  chastely  classical  subjects.  Not  so  with 
Shakespeare. 

Who,  a  stranger  might  ask,  is  the  man,  and 
where  was  he  born,  and  where  did  he  live,  that  not 
only  his  acts  and  scenes  are  placed  in  any  age,  or 
in  any  land,  but  that  he  can  fill  his  stage  with  the 
very  living  men  of  the  time  and  place  represented, 
make  them  move  as  easily  as  if  he  held  them  in 
strings  ;  and  make  them  speak  not  only  with  general 
conformity  to  their  common  position,  but  with 
individual  and  distinctive  propriety,  so  that  each 
is  different  from  the  rest  ?  Did  he  live  in  ancient 
Rome,  strolling  the  Forum,  or  climbing  the  Capitol  ; 
hear  ancient  matrons  converse  with  modest  dignity  ; 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  39 

listen  to  conspirators  among  the  columns  of  its 
porticos  ;  mingle  among  senators  round  Pompey's 
statue  ;  or  with  plebeians  crowding  to  hear  Brutus 
or  Antony  harangue  ?  Was  he  one  accustomed 
to  idle  in  the  Piazza  of  St.  Mark,  or  shoot  his 
gondola  under  the  Eialto  ?  Or  was  he  a  knight 
or  even  archer  in  the  fields  of  France  or  England 
during  the  period  of  the  Plantagenets  or  Tudors, 
and  witnessed  and  wrote  down  the  great  deeds  of 
those  times,  and  knew  intimately  and  personally 
each  puissant  lord  who  distinguished  himself  by 
his  valour,  by  his  wisdom,  or  even  by  his  crimes  ? 
Did  he  live  in  the  courts  of  princes,  perchance 
holding  some  office  which  enabled  him  to  listen  to 
the  grave  utterances  of  kings  and  their  counsellors, 
or  to  the  witty  sayings  of  court  jesters  ?  Did  he 
consort  with  banished  princes,  and  partake  of  their 
sports  or  their  sufferings  ?  In  fine,  did  he  live  in 
great  cities,  or  in  shepherds'  cottages,  or  in  fields 
and  woods ;  and  does  he  date  from  John  and  live 
on  to  the  eighth  Henry — a  thread  connecting  in 
himself  the  different  epochs  of  mediaeval  England  ? 
One  would  almost  say  so  ;  or  multiply  one  man 
into  many,  whose  works  have  been  united  under 
one  man. 

This  ubiquity,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  of  Shake- 


40  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

speare's  sympathies,  constitutes  the  unlimited 
extent  and  might  of  his  dramatic  genius.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  where  a  boundary  line  could 
at  length  have  been  drawn,  beyond  which  nothing 
original,  nothing  new,  and  nothing  beautiful,  could 
be  supposed  to  have  come  forth  from  his  mind. 
We  are  compelled  to  say  that  his  genius  was  inex- 
haustible. 


V. 

This  rare  and  wonderful  faculty  becomes  more 
interesting  if  we  follow  it.  into  further  details. 

I  remember  an  anecdote  of  Garrick,  who,  in 
company  with  another  performer  of  some  eminence, 
was  walking  in  the  country,  and  about  to  enter  a 
village.  "  Let  us  pass  off/7  said  the  younger 
comedian  to  his  more  distinguished  companion, 
"  as  two  intoxicated  fellows."  They  did  so, 
apparently  with  perfect  success,  being  saluted 
by  the  jeers  and  abuse  of  the  inhabitants.  When 
they  came  forth  at  the  other  end  of  the  village,  the 
younger  performer  asked  Garrick  how  he  had  ful- 
filled his  part.  "  Very  well/'  was  the  reply, 
"  except  that  you  were  not  perfectly  tipsy  in  your 
legs." 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  41 

Now,  in  Shakespeare  there  is  no  danger  of  a 
similar  defect.  Whatever  his  character  is  intended 
to  be,  it  is  carried  out  to  its  very  extremities. 
Nothing  is  forgotten,  nothing  overlooked.  Many 
of  you,  no  doubt,  are  aware  that  a  controversy  has 
long  existed,  whether  the  madness  of  Hamlet  is 
intended  by  Shakespeare  to  be  real  or  simulated. 
If  a  dramatist  wished  to  represent  one  of  his  per- 
sons as  feigning  madness,  that  assumed  condition 
would  be  naturally  desired  by  the  writer  to  be  as 
like  as  possible  to  the  real  affliction.  If  the  other 
persons  associated  with  him  could  at  once  discover 
that  the  madness  was  put  on,  of  course  the  entire 
action  would  be  marred,  and  the  object  for  which 
the  pretended  madness  was  designed  would  be  de- 
feated by  the  discovery.  How  consummate  must 
be  the  poet's  art,  who  can  have  so  skilfully  de- 
scribed, to  the  minutest  symptoms,  the  mental 
malady  of  a  great  mind,  as  to  leave  it  uncertain  to 
the  present  day,  even  among  learned  physicians 
versed  in  such  maladies,  whether  Hamlet's  madness 
was  real  or  assumed. 

This  controversy  may  be  said  tohavebeenbrought 
to  a  close  by  one  of  the  ablest  among  those  in  Eng- 
land who  have  every  opportunity  of  studying  the 
almost  innumerable  shades  through  which  alien  a- 


42  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

tion  of  mind  can  pass.*  And  so  delicate  are  the 
changeful  characteristics  which  Shakespeare  de- 
scribes, that  Dr.  Conolly  considers  that  a  twofold 
form  of  disease  is  placed  before  us  in  the  Danish 
prince.  He  concludes  that  he  was  labouring  under 
real  madness,  yet  able  to  put  on  a  fictitious  and 
artificial  derangement  for  the  purposes  which  he 
kept  in  view.  Passing  through  act  by  act  and 
scene  by  scene,  analysing,  with  experienced  eye, 
each  new  symptom  as  it  occurs,  dividing  and 
anatomatising,  with  the  finest  scalpel,  every  fibre 
of  his  brain.  He  exhibits,  step  by  step,  the  tran- 
sitionary  characters  of  the  natural  disease  in  a 
mind  naturally,  and  by  education,  great  and  noble, 
but  thrown  off  his  pivot  by  the  anguish  of  his 
sufferings  and  the  strain  of  aroused  passion.  And 
to  this  is  superadded  another  and  not  genuine 
affection,  which  serves  its  turn  with  that  estranged 
mind  when  it  suits  it  to  act,  more  especially  that 
part  which  the  natural  ailment  did  not  suffice  for. 

*  "  A  Study  of  Hamlet,"  by  John  Conolly,  M.D.,  London, 
1863.  In  p.  52  the  author  quotes  Mr.  Coleridge  and  M. 
Killemain  as  holding  the  opinion  that  Shakespeare  has  "con- 
trived to  blend  both  (feigned  and  real  madness)  in  the  ex- 
traordinary character  of  Hamlet ;  and  to  join  together  the 
light  of  reason,  the  cunning  of  intentional  error,  and  the  in- 
voluntary disorder  of  a  soul." 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  43 

Now,  Dr.  Conolly  considers  these  symptoms  so  ac- 
curately as  well  as  minutely  described,  that  he 
throws  out  the  conjecture  that  Shakespeare  may 
have  borrowed  the  account  of  them  from  some  un- 
known papers  by  his  son-in-law,  Dr.  Hall. 

But  let  it  be  remembered  that  in  those  days 
mental  phenomena  were  by  no  means  accurately 
examined  or  generally  known.  There  was  but 
little  attention  paid  to  the  peculiar  forms  of  mono- 
mania, or  to  its  treatment,  beyond  restraint  and 
often  cruelty.  The  poor  idiot  was  allowed,  if 
harmless,  to  wander  about  the  village  or  the 
country  to  drivel  or  gibber  amidst  the  teasing  or 
ill-natured  treatment  of  boys  or  rustics.  The  poor 
maniac  was  chained  or  tied  in  some  wretched  out- 
house, at  the  mercy  of  some  heartless  guardian, 
with  no  protector  but  the  constable.  Shakespeare 
could  not  be  supposed,  in  the  little  town  of  Strat- 
ford, nor  indeed  in  London  itself,  to  have  had  oppor- 
tunities of  studying  the  influence  and  the  appear- 
ance of  mental  derangement  of  a  high-minded  and 
finely-cultivated  prince.  How  then  did  Shake- 
speare contrive  to  paint  so  highly-finished  and  yet 
so  complex  an  image  ?  Simply  by  the  exercise  of 
that  strong  sympathetic  will  which  enabled  him  to 
transport,  or  rather  to  transmute,  himself  into 


44  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

another  personality.  While  this  character  was 
strongLy  before  him  he  changed  himself  into  a 
maniac ;  he  felt  intuitively  what  would  be  his  own 
thought,  what  his  feelings,  were  he  in  that  situation; 
he  played  with  himself  the  part  of  the  madman, 
with  his  own  grand  mind  as  the  basis  of  its  action ; 
he  grasped  on  every  side  the  imagery  which  he  felt 
would  have  come  into  his  mind,  beautiful  even 
when  dislorded,  sublime  even  when  it  was  grovel- 
ling, brilliant  even  when  dulled,  and  clothed  it  in 
words  of  fire  and  of  tenderness,  with  a  varied 
rapidity  which  partakes  of  wildness  and  of  sense. 
He  needed  not  to  look  for  a  model  out  of  himself, 
for  it  cost  him  no  effort  to  change  the  angle  of  his 
mirror  and  sketch  his  own  countenance  awry.  It 
was  but  little  for  him  to  pluck  away  the  crown 
from  reason  and  contemplate  it  dethroned. 

Before  taking  leave  of  Dr.  Conolly'smost  interesting 
monography,  I  will  allow  myself  to  make  only  one 
remark.  Having  determined  to  represent  Hamlet 
in  this  anomalous  and  perplexing  condition,  it  was 
of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  course  and  end  of 
this  sublime  drama,  that  one  principal  incident  should 
be  most  decisively  separated  from  Hamlet's  reverse 
of  mind.  Had  it  been  possible  to  attribute 
the  appearance  of  the  Ghost,  as  the  Queen, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  45 

liis  mother,  does  attribute  it  in  the  fifth  act, 
to  the  delusion  of  his  bewildered  phantasy,  the 
whole  groundwork  of  the  drama  would  have 
crumbled  beneath  its  superincumbent  weight. 
Had  the  spectre  been  seen  by  Hamlet,  or  by  him 
first,  we  should  have  been  perpetually  troubled 
with  the  doubt  whether  or  not  it  was  the  hallucina- 
tion of  a  distracted,  or  the  invention  of  a  deceitful 
brain.  But  Shakespeare  felt  the  necessity  of  making 
this  apparition  be  held  for  a  reality,  and  therefore 
he  makes  it  the  very  first  incident  in  his  tragedy, 
antecedent  to  the  slightest  symptom  of  either 
natural  or  affected  derangement,  and  makes  it  first 
be  seen  by  two  witnesses  together,  and  then  con- 
jointly by  a  third  unbelieving  and  fearless  witness. 
It  is  the  testimony  of  these  three  which  first 
brings  to  the  knowledge  of  the  incredulous  prince 
this  extraordinary  occurrence.  One  may  doubt 
whether  any  other  writer  has  ever  made  a  ghost 
appear  successively  to  those  whom  we  may  call  the 
wrong  persons,  before  showing  himself  to  the  one 
whom  alone  he  cared  to  visit.  The  extraordinary 
exigencies  of  Shakespeare's  plot  rendered  necessary 
this  unusual  fiction.  And  it  serves,  moreover, 
to  give  the  only  colour  of  justice  to  acts  which 


46  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

otherwise  must  have  appeared  unqualified  as  mad 
freaks  or  frightful  crimes. 

What   Dr.   Conolly   has    done  for  Hamlet  and 
Ophelia,  Dr.   Bucknill  had  previously   performed 
on  a  more  extensive  scale.     In  his  "  Psychology  of 
Shakespeare/'*  he   has  minutely  investigated  the 
mental  condition  of  Macbeth,  King  Lear,  Timon, 
and  other  characters.     On  Hamlet  he   seems  in- 
clined to  take  a  different  view  from  Dr.  Conolly  ; 
inasmuch  as  he  considers  the  simulated  madness 
the  principal  feature,  and   the   natural   unsound- 
ness  which  it  is  impossible  to  overlook  as  second- 
ary.    But   this    eminent  physician,    well    known 
for  his  extensive  studies  of  insanity,   bears  similar 
testimony  to  the  extraordinary  accuracy  of  Shake- 
speare's delineations  of  mental  diseases ;  the  nicety 
with  which  he  traces  their  various  steps  in  one  in- 
dividual, the  accuracy  with  which  he  distinguishes 
these  morbid  affections  in  different  persons.     He 
seems  unable  to  account  for  the  exact  minuteness 
in  any  other  way  than  by  external  observation. 
He  acknowledges  that  "  indefinable  possession  of 
genius,  call  it  spiritual  tact  or  insight,  or  whatever 
term  may  suggest  itself,  by  which  the  great  lords 
of   mind  estimate  all  phases  of  mind   with  little 

*  Page  58  and  100. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  47 

aid  from  reflected  light,"  as  the  mental  instrument 
through  which  Shakespeare  looked  upon  others 
at  a  distance,  or  within  reach  of  minute  observation. 
Still  he  seems  to  think  that  Shakespeare  must  have 
had  many  opportunities  of  observing  mental  pheno- 
mena. I  own  I  am  more  inclined  to  think  that  the 
process  by  which  the  genius  of  Shakespeare  reached 
this  painful  yet  strange  accuracy  was  rather  that 
of  introversion  than  of  external  observation.  At 
any  rate,  it  is  most  interesting  to  see  eminent  phy- 
sicians maintaining  by  some  means  or  other  that 
Shakespeare  arrived  by  some  sort  of  intuition  at 
the  possession  of  a  psychological  or  even  medical 
knowledge,  fully  verified  and  proved  to  be  exact 
by  the  researches  two  centuries  later  of  distinguished 
men  in  a  science  only  recently  developed.  Mrs. 
Jameson  has  well  distinguished  the  different  forms 
of  mental  aberration  in  Shakespeare's  characters, 
when  she  says  that  "  Constance  is  frantic,  Lear  is 
mad,  Ophelia  is  insane."* 


VI. 

This  last  quotation  may  serve  to  introduce   a 
*  Characteristics  of  Women.     New  York,  1833,  p.  142. 


48  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

further  and  a  more  delicate  test  of  Shakespeare's 
insight  into  character.  That  a  man  should  be  able 
to  throw  himself  into  a  variety  of  mind  and 
characters  among  his  fellow-men,  may  be  not  un- 
reasonably expected.  He  has  naturally  a  com- 
munity of  feelings,  of  passions,  of  temptations,  and 
of  motives  with  them.  He  can  understand  what 
is  courage,  what  ambition,  what  strength  or  feeble- 
ness of  mind.  Inward  observation  and  matured 
experience  help  much  to  guide  him  to  a  concep- 
tion and  a  delineation  of  the  character  of  his  fellow- 
men.  But  of  the  stronger  emotions,  the  wilder 
passions,  the  subdued  gentleness  and  tenderness, 
the  heroic  endurance,  the  meek  bearing,  and  the 
saintly  patience  of  the  woman,  he  can  have  had  no 
experience.  Looking  into  himself  for  a  reflection, 
he  will  probably  find  a  blank. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  in  his  female  cha- 
racters Shakespeare  is  not  equal  to  himself.  The 
work  to  which  I  have  just  alluded  meets,  I  think, 
completely,  this  objection,  which,  I  believe,  even 
Schlegel  raises.  It  required  a  lady,  with  mind 
highly  cultivated,  with  the  nicest  powers  of  dis- 
crimination, and  with  happiness  of  expression,  to 
vindicate  at  once  Shakespeare  and  her  sex.  The 
difficulty  of  this  task  can  hardly  be  appreciated 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  49 

without  the  study  of  its  performance.  Its  great 
difficulty  consists  in  the  almost  family  resemblance 
of  the  different  portraits  which  make  up  Shake- 
speare's female  gallery.  There  is  scarcely  any 
room  for  events,  even  for  incident,  still  less  for 
actions,  say  for  bold  and  unfeminine  deeds. 
Several  of  the  heroines  of  Shakespeare  are  sub- 
jected to  similar  persecutions,  and  almost  the  same 
trials.  In  almost  every  one  the  affections 
and  their  expression  have  alone  to  interest  us. 
From  Miranda,  the  desert-nurtured  child  in  the 
simplicity  of  untempted  innocence,  to  Isabella,  in 
her  cloistered  virtue,  or  Hermione,  in  her  unyield- 
ing fortitude — there  are  such  shades,  such  vary- 
ing yet  delicate  tints,  that  riot  two  of  these  numer- 
ous conceptions  can  be  said  to  resemble  another. 
And  whence  did  Shakespeare  derive  his  models  ? 
Some  are  lofty  queens,  others  most  noble  ladies, 
some  foreigners,  some  native ;  different  types  in 
mind  and  heart,  as  in  the  lineament  or  complexion. 
Where  did  he  find  them  ?  Where  did  he  meet 
them  ?  In  the  cottages  of  Stratford,  or  in  the 
purlieus  of  Blackfriars  ?  Among  the  ladies  of  the 
Court,  or  in  the  audience  in  his  pit?  No  one  can 
say — no  one  need  say.  They  were  the  formations 
of  his  own  quickened  and  fertile  brain, which  required 


50  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

but  one  stroke,  one  line,  to  sketch  him  a  portrait  to 
which  he  would  give  immortality.  Far  more  diffi- 
cult was  this  success,  and  not  less  completely  was  it 
achieved,  in  that  character  which  medical  writers 
seem  hardly  to  believe  could  be  but  a  conception. 
We  may  compare  the  mind  of  Shakespeare  to  a 
diamond  pellucid,  bright,  and  untinted,  cut  into 
countless  polished  facets,  which,  in  constant  move- 
ment, at  every  smallest  change  of  direction  or  of 
angle,  caught  a  new  reflection,  so  that  not  one 
of  its  brilliant  mirrors  could  be  for  a  moment  idle, 
but  by  a  power  beyond  its  control  was  ever  busy 
with  the  reflection  of  innumerable  images,  either 
distinct  or  running  into  one  another,  or  repeated 
each  so  clearly  as  to  allow  him,  when  he  chose,  to 
fix  it  in  his  memory. 


VII. 

We  may  safely  conclude  that,  in  whatever  con- 
stitutes the  dramatic  art  in  its  strictest  sense, 
Shakespeare  possessed  matchless  sympathies  with 
all  its  attributes.  The  next  arid  most  essential 
quality  required  for  true  genius  is  the  power  to 
give  outward  life  to  the  inward  conception.  With- 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEAPE.  51 

out  this  the  poet  is  dumb.  He  may  be  a  "  mute 
inglorious  Milton"  ;  he  cannot  be  a  speaking,  noble 
Shakespeare.  I  should  think  that  I  was  almost 
insulting  such  an  audience,  were  I  to  descant 
upon  Shakespeare's  position  among  the  bards  and 
writers  of  England,  and  of  the  modern  world. 
Upon  this  point  there  can  scarcely  be  a  dissentient 
opinion.  His  language  is  the  purest  and  best,  his 
verses  the  most  flowing  and  rich  ;  and  as  for  his 
sentiments,  it  would  be  difficult  without  the  com- 
mand of  his  own  language  to  characterise  them. 
No  other  writer  has  ever  given  such  periods  of 
sententious  wisdom. 


I  have  spoken  of  genius  as  a  gift  to  an  individual 
man.  I  will  conclude  by  the  reflection  that  that 
man  becomes  himself  a  gift ;  a  gift  to  his  nation ;  a 
gift  to  his  age  ;  a  gift  to  the  world  of  all  times. 
That  same  Providence  which  bestows  greatness, 
majesty,  abundance,  and  grace,  no  less  presents, 
from  time  to  time,  to  a  people  or  a  race,  these  few 
transcendent  men  who  mark  for  it  periods  no  less 
decisively,  though  more  nobly,  than  victories  or 
conquests.  On  England  that  supreme  power  has 
lavished  the  choicest  blessings  of  this  worldly  life  ; 

E  2 


52  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

it  has  made  it  vast  in  dominion,  matchless  in 
strength ;  it  has  made  it  the  arbiter  of  the  earth, 
and  mistress  of  the  sea ;  it  has  made  it  able  to 
stretch  its  arm  for  war  to  the  savage  antipodes, 
and,  if  it  chose,  its  hand  for  peace  to  the  utter 
civilised  West ;  it  has  brought  the  produce  of 
North  and  South  to  its  feet  with  skill  and  power, 
to  transform  and  to  refashion  in  forms  graceful  or 
useful,  to  send  them  back,  almost  as  new  creations, 
to  its  very  source.  Industry  has  clothed  its  most 
barren  plains  with  luxuriant  crops ;  and  with  Titan 
boldness  hollowed  its  sternest  rocks,  to  plunder 
them  of  their  ever-hidden  treasures.  Its  gigantic 
strength  seems  but  to  play  with  every  work  of 
venturesome  enterprise,  till  its  cities  seem  to  the 
stranger  to  overflow  with  riches,  and  its  country  to 
be  overspread  with  exuberant  prosperity. 

Well,  these  are  great  and  magnificent  favours  of 
an  overruling,  most  benignant  Power ;  and  yet  there 
is  a  boast  which  belongs  to  our  country  that  may 
seem  to  be  overlooked.  Yet  it  is  a  double  gift 
that  that  same  creating  and  directing  rule  has 
made  this  country  the  birthplace  and  the  seat  of 
the  two  men  who,  within  a  short  period,  were  made 
the  rulers  each  of  a  great  and  separate  intellectual 
dominion,  never  to  be  deposed,  never  to  be  rivalled, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  53 

never  to  be  envied.  To  Newton  was  given  the 
sway  over  the  science  of  the  civilised  world  ;  to 
Shakespeare  the  sovereignty  over  its  literature. 

The  one  stands  before  us  passionless  and  grave, 
embracing  in  his  intellectual  grandeur  every  portion  of 
the  universe,  from  the  stars,  to  him  invisible,  to  the 
rippling  of  the  tiny  waves  which  the  tide  brought 
to  his  feet.  The  host  of  heaven,  that  seemed  in 
causeless  dispersion,  he  marshalled  into  order,  and 
bound  in  safest  discipline.  He  made  known  to  his 
fellow-men  the  secret  laws  of  heaven,  the  springs  of 
movement,  and  the  chains  of  connection,  which 
invariably  and  unchangeably  impel  and  guide  the 
course  of  its  many  worlds. 

In  this  aspect  one's  imagination  figures  him  as 
truly  the  director  of  what  he  only  describes — as  the 
leader  of  a  complicated  army,  who,  with  his  staff, 
seems  to  draw  or  to  send  forward  the  wheeling  bat- 
talions, intent  on  their  own  errands,  combining  or 
resolving  movements  far  remote  ;  or,  under  a  more 
benign  and  pleasing  form,  we  may  contemplate  him, 
like  a  great  master  in  musical  science,  standing  in 
the  midst  of  a  throng,  in  which  are  mingled  to- 
gether the  elements  of  sublirnest  harmonies,  con- 
fused to  the  eye,  but  sweetly  attuned  to  the  ear, 
mingling  into  orderly  combination  and  flowing 


54  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

sequence,  as  they  float  through  the  air,  which, 
though  he  elicit  not  nor  produce,  he  seems  by  his 
outstretched  hand  to  direct,  or,  at  least,  he  proves 
himself  fully  to  understand.  For  what  each  one 
separately  does,  unconscious  of  what  even  his  com- 
panion is  doing,  he  from  afar  knows,  and  almost 
beholds,  understanding  from  his  centre  the  concerted 
and  sure  results  of  their  united  action.  And  so 
Newton,  from  his  chamber  on  this  little  earth,  with- 
out being  able  more  than  the  most  helpless  insect 
to  add  power  or  give  guidance  to  one  single  element 
in  the  composition  of  this  universe,  could  trace  the 
orbits  of  planet  or  satellite,  and  calculate  the  oscil- 
lations and  the  reciprocal  influences  of  celestial 
spheres. 

Then  his  directing  wand  seems  to  contract  itself 
to  a  space  within  his  grasp.  It  becomes  that  magic 
prism  with  which  he  intercepts  a  ray  from  the  sun 
on  his  passage  to  earth ;  and  as  a  bird  seizes  in  its 
flight  the  bee  laden  with  its  honey,  and  robs  it  of 
its  sweet  treasure — even  so  he  compels  the  mes- 
senger of  light  to  unfold  itself  before  us,  and  lay 
bare  to  our  sight  the  rich  colours  which  the  rainbow 
had  exhibited  to  man  since  the  deluge,  and  which 
had  lain  concealed  since  creation,  in  every  sunbeam 
that  had  passed  through  our  atmosphere.  And 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  55 

further  still,  he  bequeathes  that  wonderful  alembic 
of  light  to  succeeding  generations,  till,  in  the  hand 
of  new  discoverers,  it  has  become  the  key  of  Na- 
ture's laboratory,  in  which  she  has  been  surprised 
melting  and  compounding,  in  crucibles  huge  as 
ocean,  the  rich  hues  with  which  she  overlays  the 
surfaces  of  suns  and  stars,  yet,  at  the  same  time, 
breathes  its  delicate  blush  upon  the  tenderest  petals 
of  the  opening  rose. 

And  all  the  laws  and  all  the  rules  which  form 
his  code  of  nature  seem  engraved,  as  with  a  dia- 
mond point,  upon  a  granite  surface  of  the  primi- 
tive rocks — inflexible,  immoveable,  unchangeable  as 
the  system  which  they  represent. 

Beside  him  stands  the  Ruler  of  that  world, 
which,  though  even  sublimely  intellectual,  is  go- 
verned by  him  with  laws  in  which  the  affections, 
even  the  passions,  the  moralities,  and  the  anxieties 
of  life  have  their  share ;  in  which  there  is  no  seve- 
rity but  for  vice,  no  slavery  but  for  baseness,  no 
unforgivingness  but  for  calculating  wickedness. 
In  his  hand  is  not  the  staff  of  authority  ;  whether 
it  take  the  form  of  a  royal  sceptre  or  of  a  knightly 
lance,  whether  it  be  the  shepherdess's  crook  or  the 
fool's  bauble,  it  is  still  the  same,  the  magician's 
wand.  Whether  it  be  the  divining  rod  with  which 


56  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

he  draws  up  to  light  the  most  hidden  streams  of 
nature's  emotions,  or  the  potential  instrument  of 
Prosperous  spells,  which  raises  storms  in  the  deep  or 
works  spirit-music  in  the  air,  or  the  wicked  imple- 
ment with  which  the  witches  mingle  their  unholy 
charm,  its  cunning  and  its  might  have  no  limit 
among  created  things.  But  it  is  not  a  world  of 
stately  order  which  he  rules,  nor  are  the  laws  of 
unvarying  rigour  by  which  it  is  commanded.  The 
wildest  paroxysms  of  passion,  the  softest  delicacy 
of  emotions  ;  the  most  extravagant  accident  of  for- 
tune, the  tenderest  incidents  of  home;  the  king  and 
the  beggar,  the  sage  and  the  jester,  the  tyrant  and 
his  victim  ;  the  maiden  from  the  cloister  and  the 
peasant  from  the  mountains;  the  Italian  school- 
child  and  the  Roman  matron ;  the  princes  of  Den- 
mark and  the  lords  of  Troy — all  these  and  much 
more  are  comprised  in  the  vast  embrace  of  his  do- 
minions. Scarcely  a  rule  can  be  drawn  from  them, 
yet  each  forms  a  model  separately,  a  finished  group 
in  combination.  Unconsciously  as  he  weaves  his 
work,  apparently  without  pattern  or  design,  he  in- 
terlaces and  combines  in  its  surface  and  its  depth 
images  of  the  most  charming  variety  and  beauty ; 
now  the  stern  mosaic,  without  colouring,  of  an  an- 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  57 

cient  pavement,  now  the  flowing  and  intertwining 
arabesque  of  the  fanciful  east;  now  the  rude  scenes 
of  ancient  mediaeval  tapestry  like  that  of  Beauvais, 
and  then  the  finished  and  richly  tinted  production 
of  the  Gobelins  loom. 

And  yet  through  this  seeming  chaos  the  light  per- 
meates, and  that  so  clear  and  so  brilliant  as  equally 
to  define  and  to  dazzle.  Every  portion,  every 
fragment,  every  particle,  stands  forth  separate  and 
particular,  so  as  to  be  handled,  measured,  and 
weighed  in  the  balance  of  critic  and  poet.  Each 
has  its  own  exact  form  and  accurate  place,  so  that, 
while  separately  they  are  beautiful,  united  they  are 
perfect.  Hence  their  combinations  have  become 
sacred  rules,  and  have  given  inviolable  maxims 
not  only  to  English  but  to  universal  literature. 
Germany,  as  we  have  seen,  studies  with  love  and 
almost  veneration  every  page  of  Shakespeare  ;  na- 
tional sympathies  and  kindred  speech  make  it  not 
merely  easy  but  natural  to  all  people  of  the  Teutonic 
family  to  assimilate  their  literature  to  that  its  high- 
est standard.  France  has  departed,  or  is  fast  de- 
parting, from  its  favourite  classical  type,  and  adopt- 
ing, though  with  unequal  power,  the  broader  and 
more  natural  lines  of  the  Shakespearian  model. 


58  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

His  practice  is  an  example,  his  declarations  are 
oracles. 

Still,  as  I  have  said,  the  wide  region  of  intellec- 
tual enjoyment  over  which  our  great  bard  exerts 
dominion,  is  not  one  parcelled  out  or  divided  into 
formal  and  state-like  provinces.  While  the  student 
of  science  is  reading  in  his  chamber  the  great 
"  Principia"  of  Newton,  he  must  keep  before  him 
the  solution  of  only  one  problem.  On  that  his  mind 
must  undistractedly  rest,  on  that  his  power  of  thought 
be  intensely  concentrated.  Woe  to  him  if  imagina- 
tion leads  his  reason  into  truant  wanderings  ;  woe 
if  he  drop  the  thread  of  finely-drawn  deductions  ! 
He  will  find  his  wearied  intelligence  drowsily  floun- 
dering in  a  sea  of  swimming  figures  and  evanescent 
quantities,  or  floating  amidst  the  fragments  of 
a  shipwrecked  diagram.  But  over  Shakespeare 
one  may  dream  no  less  than  pore  ;  we  may  drop 
the  book  from  our  hand  and  the  contents  remain 
equally  before  us.  Stretched  in  the  shade  by  a 
brook  in  summer,  or  sunk  in  the  reading  chair  by 
the  hearth  in  winter,  in  the  imaginative  vigour 
of  health,  in  the  drooping  spirits  of  indisposition, 
one  may  read,  and  allow  the  trains  of  fancy  which 
spring  up  in  any  scene  to  pursue  their  own  way, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  59 

and  minister  their  own  varied  pleasure  or  relief  ;  and 
when  by  degrees  we  have  become  familiar  with  the 
inexhaustible  resources  of  his  genius,  there  is  scarcely 
a  want  in  mind  or  the  affections  that  needs  no  higher 
than  human  succour,  which  will  not  find  in  one  or 
other  of  his  works  that  which  will  soothe  suffering, 
comfort  grief,  strengthen  good  desires,  and  present 
some  majestic  example  to  copy,  or  some  fearful 
phantom.  But  when  we  endeavour  to  contem- 
plate all  his  infinitely  varied  conceptions  as 
blended  together  in  one  picture,  so  as  to  take  in, 
if  possible,  at  one  glance  the  prodigious  extent 
of  his  prolific  genius,  we  thereby  build  up  what 
he  himself  so  beautifully  called  the  "  fabric  of 
a  vision,"  matchless  in  its  architecture,  as  in  the 
airiness  of  its  materials.  There  are  forms  fantas- 
tically sketched  in  cloud-shapes,  such  as  Hamlet 
showed  to  Polonius,  in  the  midst  of  others  rounded 
and  full,  which  open  and  unfold  ever-changing 
varieties,  now  gloomy  and  threatening,  then 
tipped  with  gold  and  tinted  with  azure,  ever- 
rolling,  ever-moving,  melting  the  one  into  the 
other,  or  extricating  each  itself  from  the  general 
mass.  Dwelling  upon  this  maze  of  things  and 
imaginations,  the  most  incongruous  combinations 


60  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

come  before  the  dreamy  thought,  fascinated,  spell- 
bound, and  entranced.  The  wild  Ardennes  and 
Windsor  Park  seem  to  run  into  one  another,  their 
firs  and  their  oaks  mingle  together ;  the  boisterous 
ocean  boiling  round  "  the  still  vexed  Bermoothes" 
runs  smoothly  into  the  lagoons  of  Yenice ;  the  old 
grey  porticos  of  republican  Rome,  like  the  transi- 
tion in  a  dissolving  view,  are  confused  and  entangled 
with  the  slim  and  fluted  pillars  of  a  Gothic  hall ; 
here  the  golden  orb,  dropped  from  the  hand  of  a 
captive  king,  rolls  on  the  ground  side  by  side  with 
a  jester's  mouldy  skull — both  emblems  of  a  common 
fate  in  human  things.  Then  the  grave  chief  justice 
seems  incorporated  in  the  bloated  Falstaff ;  King 
John  and  his  barons  are  wassailing  with  Poins 
and  Bardolph  at  an  inn  door ;  Coriolanus  and  Shy- 
lock  are  contending  for  the  right  of  human  sensi- 
bilities ;  Macbeth  and  Jacques  are  moralising 
together  on  tenderness  even  to  the  brute.  And  so 
of  other  more  delicate  creations  of  the  poet's  mind 
— Isabella  and  Ophelia,  Desdemona  and  the  Scotch 
Thane's  wife  produce  respectively  composite  figures 
of  inextricable  confusion.  And  around  and  above 
is  that  filmy  world,  Ariel  and  Titania  and  Peas- 
blossom  and  Cobweb  and  Moth,  who  weave  us  a 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  61 

gossamer  cloud  around  the  vision,  dimming  it 
gradually  before  our  eyes,  in  the  last  drooping 
of  weariness,  or  the  last  hour  of  wakefulness. 


APPENDIX. 


PROPOSAL   FOR   A   TERCENTENARY 
MEMORIAL  OF  SHAKESPEARE. 

"VTEARLY  one  quarter  of  the  year  especially  dedi- 
cated to  the  commemoration  of  our  greatest 
Poet  has  passed  away,  without  anything  approach- 
ing to  a  practical  determination  on  the  mode  of 
permanently  celebrating  it  having  been  reached. 
London  and  Stratford-upon-Avon  still  hold  con- 
tending claims,  and  it  will  be  difficult  to  adjust 
them. 

Nor  can  we  consider  passing  and  unenduring 
tributes  to  his  memory  and  fame  sufficient  for 
marking  so  important  an  epoch.  Speeches, 
oratorios,  theatrical  representations,  and  such 
other  demonstrations  of  admiration,  will  end  with 
the  breath  that  utters  them,  leaving  not  a  wrack 
behind,  nor  any  vestige  by  which  posterity  may 


64  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

be  able  to  judge  of  our  age's  appreciation  of  Shake- 
speare, or  of  our  power  to  give  it  any  lasting  ex- 
pression. 

Hence  it  seems  agreed  on  all  sides  that  a  monu- 
ment must  be  erected  to  him  worthy  of  our  time 
and  of  his  country  ;  such  that,  should  art  advance 
or  decline,  it  will  at  least  show  forth  our  love  and 
reverence  for  the  Bard  by  proving  that  we  did  our 
very  best  to  honour  him. 

In  our  momentary  or  apparent  embarrassment, 
it  can  hardly  be  presumptuous  to  put  forward  a 
new  suggestion,  not  intended  to  interfere  with  this 
idea,  but  designed  to  make  it  more  complete. 

And  first  let  us  assume  that  no  monument,  of 
whatever  form,  that  may  be  proposed  and  accepted, 
can  possibly  be  completed  within  the  Shakespearian 
year.  If  it  have  to  be  a  mere  statue,  and  no  com- 
petition be  permitted,  no  artist  of  any  reputation 
would  undertake  to  prepare  first  his  bozz.etto  to  be 
approved,  then  his  model,  and,  lastly,  his  perennial 
statue  in  marble  or  bronze,  with  its  becoming  pe- 
destal, rich  in  relief,  so  that  it  could  be  set  up 
within  the  twelvemonth.  Still  less  could  this  haste, 
inconsistent  with  perfection,  be  used  in  a  memorial 
of  a  more  complicated  character,  and  involving  the 
concurrence  of  various  arts.  If  fresco,  for  instance, 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  65 

have  to  be  employed,  the  architect  must  have 
finished  his  work  thoroughly  before  the  painter  can 
commence. 

These  preliminary  remarks  are  here  introduced 
to  anticipate  and  disarm  any  objections,  on  the 
score  of  required  time,  to  the  proposal  about  to 
be  submitted  to  public  judgment. 

We  will  now  ask  leave  to  make  some  observa- 
tions on  the  characteristics  which  a  monument 
worthy  of  its  proposed  object  should  present. 

First,  if  possible,  it  should  not  be  altogether 
local.  A  monument  fixed  and  permanent  in  one 
only  place  necessarily  offers  limited  enjoyment  and 
improvement  only  to  a  few.  Stratford  does  not 
lie  in  the  line  of  general  circulation  ;  and  if  the 
house  and  tomb  of  the  great  Poet  attract  compara- 
tively but  few  pilgrims,  we  can  hardly  expect  a 
greater  confluence  of  them  to  visit  a  modern  me- 
morial. London,  on  the  other  hand,  is  too  vast 
for  any  one  centre  to  collect  its  inhabitants ; 
while  the  many  who  travel  to  it  from  afar  have 
generally  occupations  or  engagements  of  a  different 
character  from  the  curiosity  or  devotion  that  would 
lead  them  to  any  point  of  the  metropolis  for  the 
purpose  of  seeing  Shakespeare's  Tercentenary 
Monument.  And,  seen  once,  it  would  be  scarcely 

F 


66  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

ever  revisited.  It  may,  therefore,  be  worth  while 
to  consider  whether  such  a  memorial,  connected 
most  specially  with  the  present  year,  could  not  be 
devised  as  would  be  within  the  reach  of  many, 
which  the  merchant  of  Liverpool  and  Manchester, 
or  the  educated  country  gentleman  who  seldom 
brings  his  family  to  London,  could  enjoy,  and 
transmit  to  his  children  as  a  valuable  demonstra- 
tion of  what  England  could  do,  and  did,  for  the 
greatest  of  her  authors  in  1864. 

Further,  it  may  be  observed  that  a  mere  statue 
or  other  sculptured  monument  will  employ  not 
only  few  men  who  give  lustre  to  the  period,  but 
will  necessarily  present  to  futurity  only  an  inade- 
quate means  of  ascertaining  what  many  would  be 
willing  to  do  in  order  to  hand  down  their  names 
as  tributaries  to  that  genius  who  can  better  inspire 
them  than  any  other  native  writer,  if  scope  were 
given  them  to  bring  the  immense  resources  of  art 
possessed  by  the  age  and  country  to  converge 
on  one  point — the  leaving  a  memorial  of  him 
worthy  both  of  the  commemorators  and  of  the 
commemorated. 

In  other  words,  the  monument  should  not  be 
partial  or  limited,  but  embrace  and  transmit  to 
after-ages  a  fair  exhibition  of  many  combined 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  67 

powers,  never  before  united  to  honour  any  one 
else. 

But  still  more,  we  must  not  forget  that  Shake- 
speare's character  and  merits  belong  essentially  to 
our  literature.  A  literary  monument  seems  there- 
fore naturally  called  for ;  or  at  any  rate  literature 
should  be  the  groundwork  of  anything  done  to 
celebrate  the  name  highest  in  its  ranks. 

Now,  who  will  venture  to  do  for  Shakespeare 
what  he  has  done  for  himself  ?  He  may  indeed 
say,  what  Horace  did,  that  he  has  erected  "  a 
monument  more  enduring  than  brass,"  that  in  his 
day  "  he  accomplished  a  work  which  neither  the 
elements  in  their  fury,  nor  fire,  nor  hostile  steel, 
nor  consuming  time  will  ever  destroy."  Yet, 
whatever  is  so  far  proposed  to  be  done  cannot  be 
more  lasting  than  bronze,  nor  exempt  from  these 
destructive  agencies.  Let  our  monument  partake 
of  the  imperishableness  which  the  poet  has  gained  ; 
and  let  all  our  puny  efforts  go  no  further  than  to 
add  grace  and  give  increased  honour  to  him  and 
his  works. 

The  simple  and  obvious  way  of  meeting  these 
requisites  and  conditions  seems  to  be — 

The  publication  of  such  an  edition  of  Shake- 

F  2 


68  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

speare's   complete   works   as   in  its   text,  its   typo- 
graphy, and  its  illustration  should  be  unrivalled. 

Let  us  offer  a  few  more  detailed  remarks  on  this 
proposal. 

I.  THE  TEXT.  The  selection  of  the  purest  text 
must  be  entrusted  to  a  small  committee  or  sub- 
committee of  Shakespearian  scholars  of  acknow- 
ledged pre-eminence ;  and  this  should  be  so  chosen 
and  edited  as  to  form,  for  ever,  the  admitted 
standard  of  the  Poet's  works. 

It  should  be  printed  without  notes,  beyond  any 
various  reading  of  real  consequence  and  weight,  at 
the  foot  of  the  page.  A  short  "  argument  "  may 
be  prefixed  to  each  drama  ;  though,  as  the  edition 
would  not  be  intended  for  learners,  this  might  be 
dispensed  with. 

An  entire  volume  might  contain  a  glossary  in 
alphabetical  order  for  the  whole  of  Shakespeare's 
works ;  and  an  "  apparatus/'  as  it  used  to  be 
called,  comprising  a  carefully  prepared  catalogue 
of  editions,  and  of  every  work,  book,  pamphlet,  or 
paper,  that  has  ever  appeared,  at  home  or  abroad, 
on  his  writings.  Whatever  is  known  of  his  life, 
and  all  remaining  memorials  of  him,  would  find  a 
place  in  this  supplementary  volume. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  69 

We  need  hardly  add  that  this  edition  would 
include  the  sonnets,  and  any  other  compositions 
connected  with  Shakespeare's  name. 

II.  THE  TYPOGRAPHY.  It  would  be  presump- 
tuous in  us  to  suggest  anything  on  this  head, 
further  than  to  express  a  hope,  or  rather  an  assur- 
ance, that  this  great  requisite  for  carrying  out  our 
proposal  would  be  undertaken  by  one  or  more  of 
those  great  masters  in  the  art  of  printing  who 
abound  in  England,  and  have,  already  produced 
works  which  place  the  press  of  this  country  on  a 
level,  at  least,  with  that  of  any  other.  In  type,  in 
paper,  in  perfection  of  press-work,  it  would  go  hard 
with  us  indeed  if  we  could  not  bring  forward  in 
honour  of  Shakespeare  such  a  specimen  of  typo- 
graphical skill  and  taste  as  has  never  yet  been 
witnessed.  We  feel  sure  that  it  would  be  accepted 
by  the  present  generation,  and  treasured  by  ages 
to  come,  as  the  unrivalled  production  of  the  press, 
rising  as  superior  to  every  previous  effort  as  the 
author  whom  it  perpetuates  is  to  all  other  writers 
in  our  language. 

And  that  it  will  probably  never  be  reached  in 
times  to  come  may  be  secured  by  the  union,  in  this 
publication,  of  abilities  not  easily  brought  together, 


70  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

except  by  such  a  grand  national  undertaking.     To 
this  great  point  we  proceed. 

III.  THE  ILLUSTRATIONS.  These  we  will  classify 
under  four  distinct  heads. 

1.  To  each  play  should  be  prefixed  an  engraving 
of  an  appropriate  sketch,  expressly  drawn  by  some 
artist  of  the  highest  class  and  of  acknowledged  re- 
putation. Thirty-two  or  thirty -four  will  be  required ; 
and  we  may  hope  that,  without  requiring  dupli- 
cates from  any  one,  the  United  Kingdom  can 
furnish  artists  equal  to  their  production.  It  need 
not  be  said  that  these  drawings  should  be  of 
exquisite  finish,  works  of  love,  worthy  of  their  in- 
tention, and  of  the  place  they  are  destined  to 
hold  in  connection  with  the  greatest  name  in  our 
literature. 

Naturally  a  scene  would  be  chosen  for  each  sub- 
ject which  would  suggest  a  perfect  and  character- 
istic composition ;  and  which  of  Shakespeare's 
dramas  contains  not  one  such  at  least,  in  a  true 
artist's  estimation?  Indeed,  much  has  already 
been  done  in  preparation  for  such  an  application  of 
British  art.  Our  annual  exhibitions  seldom  fail  to 
present  to  us  subjects  taken  from  our  national  Bard. 
We  have  seen  "Hamlet  with  the  Players,"  "Wolsey 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  7  1 

at  the  Abbey-Gate,"  "  Ophelia  floating  on  the 
Stream,"  "Malvolio,"  "Puck,"  and  fifty  other  cha- 
racters have  given  subjects  to  smaller  paintings.  Nor 
must  we  forget  "  King  Lear  and  his  Daughters  " 
among  the  frescoes  of  our  greatest  public  building. 

But  these  greater  illustrations  need  riot  be 
necessarily  historical ;  every  branch  of  art  may 
find  its  place.  Will  not  the  "  beeches  and  ferns  " 
of  England  be  characteristic  of  Windsor  Forest, 
better  than  a  mere  scene  in  its  play  ?  And  have 
we  not  an  artist  from  whom  "  The  Tempest"  would 
receive  a  pictorial  description  worthy  to  stand  side 
by  side  with  Shakespeare's  text  ? 

Perhaps  the  great  difficulty  to  be  here  en- 
countered is  in  the  engraving  of  such  works.  For 
they  must  not  be  entrusted  to  xylography ;  and, 
before  evanescent  photography  has  driven  the 
immortalizing  graver  from  the  field  of  art,  let  us 
in  this  work  leave  to  posterity  a  specimen  of  our 
prowess  on  copper  or  steel. 

From  the  purest  line-engraving  to  the  more 
popular  and  more  complicated,  though  less 
artistic,  processes  by  which  so  much  effect  is  pro- 
duced in  modern  calchography,  let  us  put  on  record 
for  ever  what  the  art  of  Marc  Antonio  could  do  in 


72  WILLIAM  SHAKESFEARE. 

England  in   1864.     The  style  of  each  artist  will 
naturally  suggest  that  of  its  engraving. 

2.  Each   act,    if   possible,   should  have   in  the 
middle  of  the  page  one  polychrome  picture,  such  as 
adorn  so  admirably  Mr.  James  Doyle's  "  Annals/' 
in  which  the  costumes,  arms,  furniture,  dwellings, 
architecture  of  the  piece,  with  the  arts  and  customs 
of  its  place  and  time,  may  be  accurately  repre- 
sented.    From  these  smaller  illustrations  the  play 
ought  to  be  able  to   be    acted    by    any    persons 
wishing  to  be  exact  in  scenery  and  costume  in  any 
country. 

3.  The  perfection  to  which  art  has  arrived  in 
colour-printing  would  enable  us  to  complete  our 
illustrations  by  borders  such  as  have  never  before 
been  produced.       It  would  enable  many   artists 
who  represent  amongst  us  decorative  art,  illumina- 
tion, and  arabesque,  once  so  highly  prized,  to  con- 
tribute their  share  towards  this  intended  work,  and 
add  to  its  singular  beauty. 

Each  play  would  have  its  own  border,  deco- 
rating two  pages,  or  an  open  leaf,  in  colour. 

Now,  it  is  one  of  the  great  gifts  and  glories  of 
Shakespeare  to  have  touched  with  his  wand  of  light 
every  period  of  civilized  art,  from  the  early  dawn 
of  literature  to  his  own  time.  To  record  this 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  73 

universality  of  connection  between  his  writings  and 
art,  it  is  proposed  that  the  borders  should  com- 
memorate the  character  of  art  flourishing  in  the 
country  and  period  to  which  the  drama  belongs. — 
We  will  make  a  rough  outline  of  the  connections 
which  would  result. 

Artistic  periods.  Plays. 

ARCHAIC  GREEK  AND  ASIATIC 
(JEgina  and  Lycian  Mar- 
bles), Troilus  and  Cressida. 
CLASSICAL  GREEK,  Comedy  of  Errors — Timon. 
ETRUSCAN  (Corioli  and  ancient 

Rome),  Coriolanus. 

CLASSICAL   ROMAN  (Baths  of 

Titus,  $'C.),  Julius  Caesar. 

EGYPTIAN,  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 

CELTIC  (interlacing,  as  in  Irish),  King  Lear — Cymbeline. 
SCANDINAVIAN,  Hamlet. 

MEDIAEVAL   ENGLISH  £MSS.),  John  to  Richard  III. 
SCOTCH,  Macbeth. 

FRENCH,  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well. 

SPANISH,  Love's  Labour  Lost. 

RENAISSANCE    (Loggie,    Giulio 

Clovio,  #c.),  Henry  VHI. 

ITALIAN  CINQUECENTO,  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,, 

Taming  of  the  Shrew,  Ro- 
meo and  Juliet. 
VENETIAN,  Othello — Merchant  of  Venice. 

The   whole  history  of  decorative  art,  which  may 


74  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

be  called  the  history  of  taste,  would  thus  be  as- 
sociated from  its  dawn  to  the  commencement  of  its 
decay  with  our  great  Bard.  He  will  be  shown  to 
have  sung  of  whatever  in  time  or  place  was  worthy 
of  his  genius.  Sometimes  solid  monuments,  like 
"  the  Stones  of  Venice/'  will  have  to  guide  the 
artist's  pencil ;  but  often,  as  in  the  matchless  series 
of  English  historical  plays,  our  own  manuscripts, 
with  their  splendid  illuminations,  will  give  a  com- 
plete course  of  our  decorative  art. 

And  after  historical  decoration  shall  have  been 
thus  exhausted,  there  will  still  remain  six  or  seven 
plays,  unattached,  so  to  speak,  in  which  would  be 
room  for  the  Flora,  the  Fauna,  and  the  Fairydom 
of  Shakespeare  to  disport  round  the  margins  of  his 
ample  page  under  the  luxurious  but  judicious 
guidance  of  poetical  artists. 

4.  There  would  still  remain  occupation  for  wood- 
engraving,  in  titles,  initial  letters,  and  tail-pieces, 
analogous  to  the  subjects  of  the  plays. 

Naturally  the  binding  will  be  made  to  recall  the 
periods  when  the  taste  and  beauty  of  the  outward 
covering  gave  earnest  of  the  splendour  which  it 
protected. 

IV.  THE  MANAGEMENT  OF  THIS  PROPOSAL.  There 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  75 

is  not  the  slightest  idea  of  proposing  any  interfer- 
ence with  the  existing  Centenary  Committee,  which 
includes  in  itself  probably  all,  at  any  rate  most,  of 
the  persons  best  capable  of  carrying  this  scheme 
into  successful  execution. 

All  that  would  be  required  from  it  would  be  a 
delegation  of  some  of  its  functions  to  sub-com- 
mittees, which  would  work  harmoniously  together, 
settle  the  details  of  what  is  here  presented  only  in 
block,  obtain  co-operation,  distribute  the  work,  and 
set  it  a-going.  But  the  groundwork  of  such  sub- 
committees exists,  and  may  easily  be  built  on. 
Probably,  in  any  other  country,  no  small  part 
would  have  been  allotted,  in  what  the  country 
wished  to  do,  to  such  societies  as  have  a  national 
character  and  representation  for  such  undertakings. 
In  England  too,  had  science  been  in  question- 
had  it  been  proposed  to  erect  a  memorial  to 
Newton,  still  more,  had  it  been  suggested  to  com- 
bine with  it  a  perfect  edition  of  his  works,  no  one 
can  doubt  that  the  leaders  in  such  a  movement 
would  have  been  the  great  scientific  Societies,  such 
as  the  Royal  and  the  Astronomical. 

And  here,  why  should  not  the  established,  and 
now  recognized,  Committee  for  the  Shakespeare 
Memorial  call  in  the  assistance  of  such  Societies  as 


76  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

that  of  Literature,  or  the  Philological,  for  the  text, 
and  of  the  Koyal  Academy  for  the  illustration,  of 
the  work  that  has  been  described  ?  These  bodies 
could  not,  indeed,  act  corporately,  but  they  could 
depute  a  certain  number  of  persons  to  represent 
them,  active  and  able,  as  well  as  willing,  to  devote 
themselves  to  the  undertaking  ;  and  either  belong- 
ing to  them  already,  or  easily  created  honorary 
members. 

Such  a  compound,  not  over-numerous,  committee 
once  formed,  would  suggest,  without  jealousy,  the 
addition  of  other  representative  members ;  for  ex- 
ample, from  the  Universities,  from  the  British 
Museum,  and  from  other  learned  associations  in 
London  and  in  other  cities.* 

V.  We  will  throw  into  our  concluding  section  a 
few  miscellaneous  observations. 

1.  It  might  seem  selfish  to  confine  our  tribute 
to  Shakespeare  to  the  efforts  and  contributions  of 
our  own  country.  We  should  not  refuse  advice  or 
offers  of  assistance  from  abroad.  Should  we  find 
an  insufficiency  of  artists  willing  to  give  a  helping 
hand  at  home,  we  feel  sure  that  the  land  of  Schlegel 
and  of  Schiller,  of  the  critics  and  poets  who  have 

*  As  the  Arundel,  the  Surtees,  &c. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  77 

so  thoroughly  appreciated  our  Bard,  would  be  as 
ready  to  illustrate  his  beauties  with  the  pencil  as  it 
has  been  with  the  pen.  The  schools  of  Munich  and 
of  Berlin,  of  Vienna  and  Diisseldorf,  could  furnish 
men  who  would  not  refuse  to  assist  us  if  necessary. 
But,  though  we  feel  sure  on  this  point,  would  it 
not  be  a  gracious  offer  to  make  to  any  of  these 
great  schools,  that  it  would  undertake  the  entire 
illustration,  on  the  plan  adopted,  of  some  one  play, 
congenial  to  German  taste  and  character  ? 

2.  The  proposed  plan  will,  no  doubt,  be  expen- 
sive, for  though,  doubtless,  the  noble  and  patriotic 
feelings  of  many  artists  will  impel  them  to  work 
for   the   national   glory  and   their   admiration  of 
Shakespeare,  much   must  be   adequately  remune- 
rated ;    and   the   mechanical    labour    cannot    be 
obtained  free-cost.     But  the  scheme  ought  to  be 
remunerative.     No  one,  who  is  able,  will  grudge  a 
subscription,    which,    being   spread    over   several 
years,  will  give  a  return,  in  the  shape  of  an  un- 
equalled Memorial  of  the  Tercentenary  Commemo- 
ration of  our  Poet,  one  portable,  personal,  and  at 
all  times  accessible.     Let  due  calculations  be  made 
for  something  magnificent,  if  you  please ;  then  add 
margin  enough  to  help  or  originate  other  purposes. 

3.  For  instance,  we  cannot  but  fear  that  the 


78  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

attempt  to  provide  a  monument  out  of  the  common 
line  of  such  memorials  may  fail  from  many  causes. 
A  statue  of  Shakespeare  must  represent  Shakes- 
peare, and  nothing  more.  He  is  too  familiar  to  us 
as  himself  to  be  idealized,  attitudinized,  or  thrown 
into  raptures.  The  noble,  well-known  face  must 
be  before  us ;  and  there  must  be  no  startling,  or 
allegorical,  still  less  mythological,  accompaniments. 
All  this  reduces  a  sculptured  monument  to  a  small 
compass.  If  erected  in  a  vast  open  space,  you 
must  either  make  it  colossal,  or  it  will  dwindle 
down  to  disproportion.  Let  the  Achilles,  in  the 
Park,  be  a  warning  to  us  not  to  attempt  the 
gigantic. 

It  has  struck  us  that  the  most  suitable  site  for 
a  statue  of  Shakespeare  should  combine  several 
conditions  easily  attainable.  It  should  be  in  a 
central  position,  among  his  people,  and  daily  visi- 
ble without  effort,  especially  by  those  whose  very 
occupation  is  to  honour  him  and  recognize  his 
merits.  It  should  be  amidst  buildings  that  can 
give  it  right  proportions  even  to  unpractised  eyes, 
which  have  no  scale  of  dimensions  without  the  fa- 
miliar measures  of  ordinary  objects.  It  should  be 
placed  where  these  objects  would  be  in  natural 
correlation  with  him  whom  it  represents. 


WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE.  79 

Such  a  site,  it  appears  to  us,  is  to  be  found  in 
the  area  in  front  of  the  British  Museum,  our 
only  and  noble  temple  of  our  literature  and  of 
ancient  art.  A  statue  in  bronze,  of  large  propor- 
tions, placed  on  a  noble  pedestal,  adorned  with  two 
inscriptions  in  English  and  in  Latin,  and  two 
relievos  representing  in  some  way  the  character  of 
his  unrivalled  genius,  would,  if  placed  there,  be 
visible  all  day  and  every  day,  to  every  passer-by, 
without  jealous  guardianship ;  would  be  saluted  by 
every  student  as  he  passed  on  to  pursue  his  own 
studies,  and  by  the  tens  of  thousands  who  yearly 
visit  the  Galleries,  and  would  be,  where  it  should 
be,  at  the  very  gate  of  that  realm  over  which  the 
memory  of  Shakespeare  reigns  supreme. 

4.  Indeed,  it  would  show  the  way  to  that  real 
Memorial  of  himself,  which  the  Poet  has  raised, 
and  which,  in  its  most  perfect  and  precious  form, 
would  be  preserved  within. 

For  we  would  finally  suggest  that  two  copies  of 
the  proposed  edition  of  Shakespeare's  works  should 
be  printed  on  vellum. 

One  should  have  incorporated  in  it  all  the 
original  drawings,  plain  or  coloured,  furnished  by 
the  artists  of  every  class  for  its  embellishment. 
Thus  posterity  would  be  able  to  see,  not  in  trans- 


80  WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE. 

cripts,  however  accurate,  but  in  the  very  pencil- 
strokes  of  the  artist,  the  character  and  perfection 
of  his  work. 

The  second  copy  the  committee  would  naturally 
offer  as  a  worthy  tribute  to  the  Sovereign  whose 
reign  has  been  especially  graced  by  the  occurrence 
in,  we  may  hope,  its  yet  long  duration,  of  the 
Tercentenary  Commemoration  of  England's  first 
literary  Son. 


N.  CARD.  WISEMAN. 


London,  March  22nd,  1864. 


THE   END. 


LONDON:    PRINTED  BY  MACDONALD  AND  TUQWELL,  BLENHEIM  HOUSE. 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSES.  HURST  AND  BLACKE1TS 

LIST   OF  NEW    WORKS. 


VOLS.  IIT.  &  IV.  OF  HER  MAJESTY'S  TOWER. 

By  W.  HEPWORTH  DIXON.  DEDICATED  BY  EXPRESS 
PERMISSION  TO  THE  QUEEN.  Completing  the  Work.  Demy 
8vo.  30s.  Third  Edition. 

CONTENTS  :— A  Favourite ;  A  Favourite's  Friend ;  The  Countess  of  Suffolk ;  To  the 
Tower ;  Lady  Catherine  Manners ;  House  of  Villiera ;  Eevolution ;  Fall  of  Lord 
Bacon ;  A  Spanish  Match ;  Spaniolizing ;  Henry  De  Vere ;  The  Mutter  of  Hol- 
land ;  Sea  Affairs  ;  The  Pirate  War  ;  Port  and  Court ;  A  New  Eomanzo ;  Move 
and  Counter-move ;  Pirate  and  Prison ;  In  the  Marshalsea ;  The  Spanish  Olive  ; 
Prisons  Opened;  A  Parliament;  Digby,  Earl  of  Bristol;  Turn  of  Fortune;  Eliot 
Eloquent;  Felton's  Knife;  An  Assassin;  Nine  Gentlemen  in  the  Tower;  A 
King's  Kevenge  ;  Charles  I. ;  Pillars  of  State  and  Church ;  End  of  Wentworth ; 
Laud's  Last  Troubles ;  The  Lieutenant's  House ;  A  Political  Eomance ;  Phi- 
losophy at  Bay ;  Fate  of  an  Idealist ;  Britannia ;  Killing  not  Murder;  A  Second 
Buckingham ;  Eoger,  Earl  of  Castlemaine  ;  A  Life  of  Plots  ;  The  Two  Penns ; 
A  Quaker's  Cell ;  Colonel  Blood ;  Crown  Jewels ;  King  and  Colonel ;  Eye  House 
Plot ;  Murder ;  A  Patriot ;  The  Good  Old  Cause ;  James,  Duke  of  Monmouth ; 
The  Unjust  Judge ;  The  Scottish  Lords ;  The  Countess  of  Nithisdale ;  Escaped; 
Cause  of  the  Pretender ;  Eeformers  and  Eeform ;  Eeform  Eiots ;  Sir  Francis 
Burdett;  A  Summons  to  the  Tower;  Arthur  Thistlewood;  A  Cabinet  Council; 
Cato  Street ;  Pursuit ;  Last  Prisoners  in  the  Tower. 


"Mr.  Dixon's  lively  and  accurate  work."— Times. 

"  This  book  is  thoroughly  entertaining,  well-written,  and  instructive." — Examiner. 

"These  volumes  will  place  Mr.  Dixon  permanently  on  the  roH  of  English  authors 
who  have  rendered  their  country  a  service,  by  his  putting  on  record  a  truthful  and 
brilliant  account  of  that  most  popular  and  instructive  relic  of  antiquity.  '  Her 
Majesty's  Tower;'  the  annals  of  which,  as  related  in  these  volumes,  are  by  turns 
exciting  and  amusing,  while  they  never  fail  to  interest.  Our  ancient  stronghold 
could  have  had  no  better  historian  than  Mr.  Dixon." — Post. 

"By  his  merits  of  literary  execution,  his  vivacious  portraitures  of  historical 
figures,  his  masterly  powers  of  narrative  and  description,  and  the  force  and  grace- 
ful ease  of  his  style,  Mr.  Dixon  will  keep  his  hold  upon  a  multitude  of  readers." — 
Illustrated  News. 

"These  volumes  are  two  galleries  of  richly  painted  portraits  of  the  noblest 
men  and  most  brilliant  women,  besides  others  commemorated  by  English 
history.  The  grand  old  Eoyal  Keep,  palace  and  prison  by  turns,  is  revivified  in 
these  volumes,  which  close  the  narrative,  extending  from  the  era  of  Sir  John  Eliot, 
who  saw  Ealeigh  die  in  Palace  Yard,  to  that  of  Thistlewood,  the  last  prisoner  im- 
mured in  the  Tower.  Few  works  are  given  to  us,  in  these  days,  so  abundant  in 
originality  and  research  as  Mr.  Dixon's." — Standard. 

"This  intensely  interesting  work  will  become  as  popular  as  any  book  Mr. 
Dixon  has  written." — Messenger. 

"  A  work  always  eminently  readable,  often  of  fascinating  interest." — Echo. 

"The  most  brilliant  and  fascinating  of  Mr.  Dixon's  literary  achievements." — Sun. 

"Mr.  Dixon  has  accomplished  his  task  well.  Few  subjects  of  higher  and  more 
general  interest  than  the  Tower  could  have  been  found.  Around  the  old  pile 
clings  all  that  is  most  romantic  in  our  history.  To  have  made  himself  the  trusted 
and  accepted  historian  of  the  Tower  is  a  task  on  which  a  writer  of  highest  reputa- 
tion may  well  be  proud.  This  Mr.  Dixon  has  done.  He  has,  moreover,  adapted 
his  work  to  all  classes.  To  the  historical  student  it  presents  the  result  of  long 
and  successful  research  in  sources  undiscovered  till  now ;  to  the  artist  it  gives  the 
most  glowing  picture  yet,  perhaps,  produced  of  the  more  exciting  scenes  of  national 
history ;  to  the  general  reader  it  offers  fact  with  all  the  graces  of  fiction.  Mr. 
Dixon's  book  is  admirable  alike  for  the  general  view  of  history  it  presents,  and  for 
the  beauty  and  value  of  its  single  pictures." — Sunday  Times. 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSRS.    HUliST    AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW    WORKS—  Continued. 


DIARY  OF  THE  BESIEGED   RESIDENT   IN 

PARIS.  Reprinted  from  "THE  DAILY  NEWS."  With  several 
NEW  LETTERS  and  PREFACE.  1  vol.  8vo.  15s. 

" '  The  Diary  of  a  Besieged  Ecsidentin  Paris'  will  certainly  form  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  records  of  a  momentous  episode  in  history." — Spectator. 

"The  title  of  this  work  is  familiar,  and  as  we  have  reason  to  know  pleasantly 
familiar,  to  our  readers.  To  them  a  large  portion  of  the  contents  of  the  volume 
are  well  known  in  the  necessarily  fragmentary  and  interrupted  form  in  which 
they  first  appeared  in  our  columns.  In  the  continuous  shape  in  which  they  are 
now  presented,  with  the  gaps  filled  up  by  the  insertion  in  the  proper  place  of  let- 
ters which  arrived  too  late  for  publication,  they  will  not,  we  believe,  be  less  accept- 
able. Of  the  characteristic  of  these  letters  it  is  not  for  us  to  speak.  The  unprece- 
dented interest  which  they  excited  as  they  appeared,  and  the  demand  for  their 
republication  which  has  been  urged  from  many  quarters,  are  a  better  criticism 
than  any  which  it  would  be  becoming  in  us  to  offer.  We  will  only  add  that,  in  its 
collected  form,  the  '  Diary  of  a  Besieged  Besident '  fills  a  large  and  handsome 
volume  of  nearly  four  hundred  pages." — Daily  News. 

IMPRESSIONS    OF    GREECE.     By  the  RIGHT 

HON.  SIR  THOMAS  WYSK,  K.C.B.,  Late  British  Minister  at  Athens. 
With  an  Introduction  by  Miss  WYSE,  and  Letters  from  Greece  to 
Friends  at  Home,  by  DEAN  STANLEY.  8vo.  15s. 

LIFE      AND      ADVENTURES      OF     COUNT 

BEUGNOT,  Minister  of  State  under  NAPOLEON  I.  Edited  from  the 
French.  By  Miss  C.  M.  YONGE,  author  of  the  "  Heir  of  Redclyffe," 
&c.  2  vols.  8vo.  (In  April) 

LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  WILIAM  BEWICK, 

THE  ARTIST.  By  THOMAS  LANDSEER,  A.E.  2  vols.  8vo,  with 
Portrait  by  SIR  EDWIN  LANDSEER,  R.A.  (Just  Ready.) 

THE  FALL  OF  THE   SECOND   EMPIRE ;    or, 

ROMANCE  AND  REALITY  OF  IMPERIAL  FRANCE.  By  AJZAMAT-BATUK, 
Special  Correspondent  of  "  THE  PALL  MALL  GAZETTE."  2  vols. 
post  8vo.  (Just  Ready.) 

FAIR  FRANCE :    IMPRESSIONS  OF  A  TRAVELLER. 

By  the  Author  of  "JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN,"  &c.     8vo.     15s. 

"  A  book  of  value  and  importance,  and  which  is  very  agreeable  reading.  It  is 
bright  and  spirited,  and  evinces  as  much  as  ever  the  acuteness  of  perception  and 
the  powers  of  observation  of  the  writer." — Post. 

"  A  pleasant  book,  conceived  in  a  large,  kindly,  and  liberal  spirit." — Daily  News. 

"  This  volume  will  be  found  pleasant  reading.'' — Athrnxum. 

"  A  good  book  on  France  is  just  now  most  welcome,  and  this  is  emphatically  a 
good  book.  It  is  charmingly  readable."— Globe, 

"  This  is  a  truly  fascinating  volume.  The  book  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  present 
crisis.  It  is  La  Belle  France : — Paris,  with  its  quiet  churches  and  its  gay  carnival 
crowds,  and  the  old  provincial  cities  like  Caen  and  Chartres — that  is  here  described 
as  it  was  before  the  black  waves  of  invasion  rolled  over  the  land.  Years  must  pass 
before  it  will  be  possible  for  any  to  see  Fair  France  as  our  author  was  privileged 
to  see  her ;  and  this  lends  a  special  interest  to  the  pictures  here  presented  to  us. 
There  is  much  that  is  very  beautiful  and  charming  in  these  recollections.  This  it 
is  hardly  necessary  to  say  to  any  who  know  and  can  appreciate  the  author  of 
'  John  Halifax.'  "—Echo. 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSRS.   HURST   AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW   WORKS— Continued. 


FREE  RUSSIA.  By  W.  HEP  WORTH  DIXON,  Author 

of  "  New  America,"  "  Her  Majesty's  Tower,"  &c.     Third  Edition. 
2  vols.  8vo,  with  Coloured  Illustrations.     30s. 

"  Mr.  Dixon's  book  will  be  certain  not  only  to  interest  but  to  please  its  readers 
and  it  deserves  to  do  so.  It  contains  a  great  deal  that  is  worthy  of  attention,  and 
is  likely  to  produce  a  very  useful  effect  The  ignorance  of  the  English  people 
with  respect  to  Russia  has  long  been  so  dense  that  we  cannot  avoid  being  grateful 
to  a  writer  who  has  taken  the  trouble  to  make  personal  acquaintance  with  that 
seldom-visited  land,  and  to  bring  before  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen  a  picture  of 
its  scenery  and  its  people,  which  is  so  novel  and  interesting  that  it  can  scarcely 
fail  to  arrest  their  attention." — Saturday  Review. 

"  We  claim  for  Mr.  Dixon  the  merit  of  having  treated  his  subject  in  a  fresh  and 
original  manner.  He  has  done  his  best  to  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  vast  country 
which  he  describes,  and  he  has  visited  some  parts  of  the  land  with  which  few 
even  among  its  natives  are  familiar,  and  he  has  had  the  advantage  of  being 
brought  into  personal  contact  with  a  number  of  those  Russians  whose  opinions 
are  of  most  weight.  The  consequence  is,  that  he  has  been  able  to  lay  before 
general  readers  such  a  picture  of  Russia  and  the  Russian  people  as  cannot  fail  to 
interest  them." — Athenaeum. 

"  Mr.  Dixon  has  invented  a  good  title  for  his  volumes  on  Russia.  The  chapter  on 
Lomonosoff,  the  peasant  poet,  is  one  of  the  best  in  the  book,  and  the  chapter  on 
Kief  is  equally  good.  He  gives  an  interesting  and  highly  picturesque  account  of 
the  working  of  the  jury  system  in  a  case  which  he  himself  saw  tried.  The  de- 
scriptions of  the  peasant  villages,  and  of  the  habits  and  manners  of  the  peasantry, 
are  very  good;  in  fact,  the  descriptions  are  excellent  throughout  the  work."— Times, 

"  Mr.  Dixon  has  succeeded  in  producing  a  book  which  is  at  once  highly  valuable 
and  eminently  readable.  In  our  judgment  it  is  superior  to  any  work  that  has 
proceeded  from  Mr.  Dixon's  pen,  and  we  heartily  recommend  it  to  our  readers^ 
The  information  he  conveys  is  very  great,  his  judgments  are  evidently  the  result 
of  much  reflection,  and  his  style  is  singularly  forcible  and  picturesque." — Standard. 

"  We  heartily  commend  these  volumes  to  all  who  wish  either  for  instruction  or 
relaxation. ' ' — Examiner. 

"  In  these  picturesque  and  fascinating  volumes,  Mr.  Dixon  carries  his  readers 
over  a  wide  range  of  country,  from  the  Arctic  Sea  to  the  southern  slopes  of  the 
Ural  range,  from  the  straits  of  Yenikale  to  the  Gulf  of  Riga,  and,  by  the  force  of 
brisk,  nervous  and  picturesque  language,  makes  them  realize  the  scenery,  man- 
ners, politics,  poetry  of  every  mile  of  ground  over  which  he  conducts  them." — 
Morning  Post. 

"Mr.  Dixon's  'Free  Russia,'  is  another  valuable  addition  to  the  books  of  travel 
which  he  has  given  us.  It  reveals  to  our  view  the  great  mysterious  people  of 
Eastern  Europe." — Daily  Telegraph. 

"This  is  a  more  important  a,nd  remarkable  work  upon  the  great  Muscovite 
Empire  than  any  foreign  traveller  has  ever  even  attempted,  much  less  accom- 
plished. Thanks  to  the  writer  of  these  splendid  volumes,  'Free  Russia '  is  brought 
clearly,  boldly,  vividly,  comprehensively,  and  yet  minutely,  within  the  ken  of 
every  intelligent  reading  Englishman.  The  book  is  in  many  parts  as  enthralling 
as  a  romance,  besides  being  full  of  life  and  character." — Sun. 

"  '  Free  Russia  '  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  books  that  has  ever  been  written 
hi  our  times,  of  the  value  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  speak  in  terms  too  highly 
commendatory. ' ' — Messenger. 

"  Mr.  Dixon  is  delightfully  readable.  '  Free  Russia '  has  afforded  us  a  great  deal 
of  pleasure.  It  is  the  best  work  of  its  clever  and  versatile  author."— Illustrated  News. 

RECOLLECTIONS  OF  SOCIETY  IN  FRANCE 

AND  ENGLAND.   By  LADY  CLEMENTINA  DAVEES.     2  vols.  crown 
8vo.     (In  the  Press.) 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSES.    HUKST   AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW   WORKS— Continued. 


VOL.  I.  OF  HER  MAJESTY'S  TOWER.    By  W. 

HEPWORTH  DIXON.   DEDICATED  BY  EXPRESS  PERMIS- 
SION TO  THE  QUEEN.     Sixth  Edition.     Demy  8vo.     15s. 

CONTENTS  :— The  Pile— Inner  Ward  and  Outer  Ward— The  Wharf— River  Rights— 
The  White  Tower — Charles  of  Orleans — Uncle  Gloucester — Prison  Rules — Beau- 
champ  Tower— The  good  Lord  Cobham— King  and  Cardinal— The  Pilgrimage 
of  Grace — Madge  Cheyne — Heirs  to  the  Crown — The  Nine  Days'  Queen — De- 
throned—The Men  of  Kent— Courtney— No  Cross  no  Crown— Cranmer,  Lati- 
mer,  Ridley— White  Roses— Princess  Margaret— Plot  and  Counterplot— Mon- 
sieur Charles — Bishop  of  Ross — Murder  of  Northumberland — Philip  the  Con- 
fessor—Mass in  the  Tower— Sir  Walter  Raleigh— The  Arabella  Plot— Raleigh's 
Walk— The  Villain  Waad— The  Garden  House— The  Brick  Tower. 


"From  first  to  last  this  volume  overflows  with  new  information  and  original 
thought,  with  poetry  and  picture.  In  these  fascinating  pages  Mr.  Dixon  dis- 
charges alternately  the  functions  of  the  historian,  and  the  historic  biographer,  with 
the  insight,  art,  humour  and  accurate  knowledge  which  never  fail  him  when  he 
undertakes  to  illumine  the  darksome  recesses  of  our  national  story." — Morning  Post. 

"We  earnestly  recommend  this  remarkable  volume  to  those  in  quest  of  amuse- 
ment and  instruction,  at  once  solid  and  refined.  It  is  a  most  eloquent  and  graphic 
historical  narrative,  by  a  ripe  scholar  and  an  accomplished  master  of  English  dic- 
tion, and  a  valuable  commentary  on  the  social  aspect  of  mediaeval  and  Tudor  civil- 
ization. In  Mr.  Dixon's  pages  are  related  some  of  the  most  moving  records  of 
human  flesh  and  blood  to  which  human  ear  could  listen." — Daily  Telegraph. 

"  It  is  needless  to  say  that  Mr.  Dixon  clothes  the  gray  stones  of  the  old  Tower 
with  a  new  and  more  living  interest  than  most  of  us  have  felt  before.  It  is  need- 
less to  say  that  the  stories  are  admirably  told,  for  Mr.  Dixon's  style  is  full  of  vigour 
and  liveliness,  and  he  would  make  a  far  duller  subject  than  this  tale  of  tragic  suf- 
fering and  heroism  into  an  interesting  volume.  This  book  is  as  fascinating  as  a  good 
novel,  yet  it  has  all  the  truth  of  veritable  history." — Daily  News. 

"  It  is  impossible  to  praise  too  highly  this  most  entrancing  history.  A  better 
book  has  seldom,  and  a  brighter  one  has  never,  been  issued  to  the  world  by  any 
master  of  the  delightful  art  of  historic  illustration." — Star. 

"  We  can  highly  recommend  Mr.  Dixon's  work.  It  will  enhance  his  reputation. 
The  whole  is  charmingly  written,  and  there  is  a  life,  a  spirit,  and  a  reality  about 
the  sketches  of  the  celebrated  prisoners  of  the  Tower,  which  give  the  work  the 
interest  of  a  romance.  '  Her  Majesty's  Tower'  is  likely  to  become  one  of  the  most 
popular  contributions  to  history." — Standard. 

"  In  many  respects  this  noble  volume  is  Mr.  Dixon's  masterpiece.  The  book  is  a 
microcosm  of  our  English  history;  and  throughout,  it  is  penned  with  an  eloquence 
as  remarkable  for  its  vigorous  simplicity  as  for  its  luminous  picturesqueness.  It 
more  than  sustains  Mr.  Dixon's  reputation.  It  enhances  it." — Sun. 

"  This  is  a  work  of  great  value.  It  cannot  fail  to  be  largely  popular  and  to  main- 
tain its  author's  reputation.  It  bears  throughout  the  marks  of  careful  study,  keen 
observation,  and  that  power  of  seizing  upon  those  points  of  a  story  that  are  of  real 
importance,  which  is  the  most  precious  possession  of  the  historian.  To  all  historic 
documents,  ancient  and  modern,  Mr.  Dixon  has  had  unequalled  facilities  of  access, 
and  his  work  will  in  future  be  the  trusted  and  popular  history  of  the  Tower.  He 
has  succeeded  in  giving  a  splendid  panorama  of  English  history." — Globe. 

"This  charming  volume  will  be  the  most  permanently  popular  of  all  Mr.  Dixon's 
works.  Under  the  treatment  of  so  practised  a  master  of  our  English  tongue  the 
story  of  the  Tower  becomes  more  fascinating  than  the  daintiest  of  romances." — 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOBOUGH  STREET. 

MESSES.    HURST    AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW  WORKS— Continued. 


VOL.  II.  OF   HER  MAJESTY'S   TOWER.     By 

W.  HEPWORTH  DIXON.     DEDICATED  BY  EXPRESS  PER- 
MISSION TO  THE  QUEEN.     Sixth  Edition.     Demy  8vo.    15». 

CONTENTS: — The  Anglo-Spanish  Plot — Factions  at  Court — Lord  Grey  of  Wilton — 
Old  English  Catholics— The  English  Jesuits— White  Webbs— The  Priests'  Plot 
—Wilton  Court— Last  of  a  Noble  Line— Powder-Plot  Boom— Guy  Fawkes— 
Origin  of  the  Plot — Vinegar  House — Conspiracy  at  Large — The  Jesuit's  Move — 
In  London — November,  1605 — Hunted  Down — In  the  Tower — Search  for  Gar- 
net—End of  the  English  Jesuits— The  Catholic  Lords— Harry  Percy— The 
Wizard  Earl— A  Eeal  Arabella  Plot— William  Seymour— The  Escape— Pursuit 
— Dead  in  the  Tower — Lady  Frances  Howard — Eobert  Carr — Powder  Poisoning. 


FROM  THE  TIMES: — "All  the  civilized  world — English,  Continental,  and  Ame- 
rican— takes  an  interest  in  the  Tower  of  London.  The  Tower  is  the  stage 
upon  which  has  been  enacted  some  of  the  grandest  dramas  and  saddest  tragedies 
in  our  national  annals.  If,  in  imagination,  we  take  our  stand  on  those  time-worn 
walls,  and  let  century  after  century  flit  past  us,  we  shall  see  in  duo  succession  the 
majority  of  the  most  famous  men  and  lovely  women  of  England  in  the  olden  time. 
We  shall  see  them  jesting,  jousting,  love-making,  plotting,  and  then  anon,  per- 
haps, commending  their  souls  to  God  in  the  presence  of  a  hideous  masked  figure, 
bearing  an  axe  in  his  hands.  It  is  such  pictures  as  these  that  Mr.  Dixon,  with 
considerable  skill  as  an  historical  limner,  has  set  before  us  in  these  volumes.  Mr. 
Dixon  dashes  off  the  scenes  of  Tower  history  with  great  spirit.  His  descriptions 
are  given  with  such  terseness  and  vigour  that  we  should  spoil  them  by  any  attempt 
at  condensation.  As  favourable  examples  of  his  narrative  powers  we  may  call  at- 
tention to  the  story  of  the  beautiful  but  unpopular  Elinor,  Queen  of  Henry  III.,  and 
the  description  of  Anne  Boleyn's  first  and  second  arrivals  at  the  Tower.  Then  we 
have  the  story  of  the  bold  Bishop  of  Durham,  who  escapes  by  the  aid  of  a  cord 
hidden  in  a  wine- jar;  and  the  tale  of  Maud  Fitzwalter,  imprisoned  and  murdered 
by  the  caitiff  John.  Passing  onwards,  we  meet  Charles  of  Orleans,  the  poetio 
French  Prince,  captured  at  Agincourt,  and  detained  for  five-and-twenty  years  a 
prisoner  in  the  Tower.  Next  we  encounter  the  baleful  form  of  Eichard  of  Gloucester, 
and  are  filled  with  indignation  at  the  blackest  of  the  black  Tower  deeds.  As  we 
draw  nearer  to  modern  times,  we  have  the  sorrowful  story  of  the  Nine  Days' 
Queen,  poor  little  Lady  Jane  Grey.  The  chapter  entitled  "No  Cross,  no  Crown  " 
is  one  of  the  most  affecting  in  the  book.  A  mature  man  can  scarcely  read  it  with- 
out feeling  the  tears  ready  to  trickle  from  his  eyes.  No  part  of  the  first  volume 
yields  in  interest  to  the  chapters  which  are  devoted  to  the  story  of  Sir  Walter 
Ealeigh.  The  greater  part  of  the  second  volume  is  occupied  with  the  story  of  the 
Gunpowder  Plot.  The  narrative  is  extremely  interesting,  and  will  repay  perusal. 
Another  cause  celebre  possessed  of  a  perennial  interest,  is  the  murder  of  Sir  Thomas 
Overbury  by  Lord  and  Lady  Somerset.  Mr.  Dixon  tells  the  tale  skilfully.  In  con- 
clusion, we  may  congratulate  the  author  on  this,  his  latest  work.  Both  volumes 
are  decidedly  attractive,  and  throw  much  light  on  our  national  history,  but  we 
think  the  palm  of  superior  interest  must  be  awarded  to  the  second  volume." 

FROM  THE  ATHENAEUM  : — "  The  present  volume  is  superior  in  sustained  interest 
to  that  by  which  it  was  preceded.  The  whole  details  are  so  picturesquely  narrated, 
that  the  reader  is  carried  away  by  the  narrative.  The  stories  are  told  with  such 
knowledge  of  new  facts  as  to  make  them  like  hitherto  unwritten  chapters  in  our 
history." 

FROM  THE  MORNING  POST: — "This  volume  fascinates  the  reader's  imagination 
and  stimulates  his  curiosity,  whilst  throwing  floods  of  pure  light  on  several  of  the 
most  perplexing  matters  of  James  the  First's  reign.  Not  inferior  to  any  of  the 
author's  previous  works  of  history  in  respect  of  discernment  and  logical  soundness, 
it  equals  them  in  luminous  expression,  and  surpasses  some  of  them  in  romantic 
interest." 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSRS,   HUEST   AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW  WORKS— Continued. 


ANNALS   OF  OXFORD.     By  J.  C.  JEAFFRESON, 

B.A.,  Oxon.     Author  of  "  A  Book  About  the  Clergy,"  &c.     Second 
Edition,    2  vols.  8vo.     80s. 

CONTENTS  :— The  Cross  Keys ;  King  Alfred's  Expulsion  from  Oxford ;  Chums  and  In- 
mates ;  Classical  Schools  and  Benefactions ;  Schools  and  Scholars ;  On  Learn- 
ing and  certain  Incentives  to  it ;  Colleges  and  Halls  ;  Structural  Newness  of 
Oxford ;  Arithmetic  gone  Mad ;  Reduction  of  the  Estimates ;  A  Happy  Family; 
Town  and  Gown ;  Death  to  the  Legate's  Cook ;  The  Great  Eiot ;  St  Scholastica ; 
King's  College  Chapel  used  as  a  Playhouse ;  St.  Mary's  Church ;  Ladies  in  Eesi- 
dence ;  Gownswomen  of  the  17th  Century ;  The  Birch  in  the  Bodleian ;  Aularian 
Eigour ;  Eoyal  Smiles  :  Tudor,  Georgian,  Elizabeth  and  Stuart ;  Eoyal  Pomps ; 
Oxford  in  Arms ;  The  Cavaliers  in  Oxford ;  Henrietta  Maria's  Triumph  and 
Oxford's  Capitulation ;  The  Saints  Triumphant ;  Cromwell ian  Oxford ;  Alma 
Mater  in  the  Days  of  the  Merry  Monarch ;  The  Sheldonian  Theatre ;  Gardens 
and  Walks ;  Oxford  Jokes  and  Sausages ;  Terrse  Filii ;  The  Constitution  Club  ; 
Nicholas  Amhurst ;  Commemoration ;  Oxford  in  the  Future. 

"The  pleasantest  and  most  informing  book  about  Oxford  that  has  ever  been 
written.  Whilst  these  volumes  will  be  eagerly  perused  by  the  sons  of  Alma  Mater, 
they  will  be  read  with  scarcely  less  interest  by  the  general  reader." — Post. 

"  Those  who  turn  to  Mr.  Jeaffreson's  highly  interesting  work  for  solid  informa- 
tion or  for  amusement,  will  not  be  disappointed.  Eich  in  research  and  full  of 
antiquarian  interest,  these  volumes  abound  in  keen  humour  and  well-bred  wit. 
A  scholar-like  fancy  brigntens  every  page.  Mr.  Jeaffreson  is  a  very  model  of  a 
cicerone  ;  full  of  information,  full  of  knowledge,  '  The  Annals  of  Oxford '  is  a  work 
which  well  deserves  to  be  read,  and  merits  a  permanent  niche  in  the  library" — 
TJie  Graphic. 

"  Mr.  Jeaffreson  is,  par  excellence,  a  popular  writer.  He  chooses  what  is  pic- 
turesque and  of  general  interest.  *  *  No  one  can  read  these  Annals  of  Oxford 
without  feeling  a  very  deep  interest  in  their  varied  contents.  *  *  Mr.  Jeaffre- 
son's sketch  of  the  University  under  the  Stuarts  and  Georges  is  most  entertaining 
and  instructive." — Athenseuin. 

"These  interesting  volumes  should  be  read  not  only  by  Oxonians,  but  by  all 
students  of  English  history." — John  Bull. 

"  This  work  will  add  to  Mr.  Jeaffreson's  reputation,  not  only  as  an  agreeable 
writer,  but  a  careful  explorer,  who  carries  on  his  investigations  out  of  the  beaten 
track.  We  have  perused  these  goodly  volumes  with  much  interest.  They  con- 
tain lively  descriptions  of  many  of  the  leading  events  in  connexion  with  the  rise 
and  development  of  the  University;  events,  too,  which  have  materially  influenced 
our  national  history;  and  no  unbiassed  reader  can  glide  through  his  pleasant 
pages  without  acknowledging  the  fair  and  candid  spirit  in  which  Mr.  Jeaffreson 
has  executed  his  task." — Oxford  Chronicle. 

A  BOOK  ABOUT  THE  CLERGY.   By  J.  C. 

JEAFFRESON,  B.A.,  Oxon,  author  of  "  A  Book  about  Lawyers,"  "  A 
Book  about  Doctors,"  &c.     Second  Edition.     2  vols  8vo.     30s. 

"This  is  a  book  of  sterling  excellence,  in  which  all — laity  as  well  as  clergy — will 
find  entertainment  and  instruction :  a  book  to  be  bought  and  placed  permanently 
in  our  libraries.  It  is  written  in  a  terse  and  lively  style  throughout,  it  is  eminently 
fair  and  candid,  and  is  full  of  interesting  information  on  almost  every  topic  that 
serves  to  illustrate  the  history  of  the  English  clergy" — Times. 

"  Honest  praise  may  be  awarded  to  these  volumes.  Mr.  Jeaffreson  has  collected 
a  large  amount  of  curious  information,  and  a  rich  store  of  facts  not  readily  to  be 
found  elsewhere.  The  book  will  please,  and  it  deserves  to  please,  those  who  like 
picturesque  details  and  pleasant  gossip." — Pall  Mall  Gazette. 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSRS.    HURST    AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW  WORKS— Continued. 


A  CRUISE  IN  GREEK  WATERS  ;  with  a  Hunting 

Excursion  in  Tunis.  By  CAPT.  TOWNSHEND,  2nd  Life  Guards. 
1  vol.  8vo,  with  Illustrations.  15s. 

"  Capt.  Townsliend  writes  about  the  foreign  lands  he  has  visited  with  good  hu- 
mour and  intelligence.  His  pictures  of  life  in  Algiers  are  vivid  and  truthful,  and 
his  narrative  of  boar-hunting  in  Tunis  is  especially  worthy  of  notice." — Athenxum. 

"A  thoroughly  pleasant  and  agreeable  book,  full  of  picturesque  descriptions  of 
notable  places,  and  the  present  condition,  and  appearance  of  some  of  the  most  in- 
teresting countries  of  Europe." — Examiner. 

"  The  most  attractive  and  interesting  book  of  travels  of  the  season,  full  of  acute 
observation,  picturesque  description,  and  exciting  adventure."—  United  Service  May. 

A   RAMBLE   INTO   BRITTANY.      By  the   Rev. 

G.  MUSGRAVE,  M.A.,  Oxon.     2  vols.,  with  Illustrations.     24s. 

"Mr.  Musgrave  is  a  man  of  considerable  information,  and  good  powers  of  obser- 
vation. His  book  is  interesting  and  amusing.  He  sketches  the  Breton  landscapes 
with  force  and  spirit."— Pa??  Mall  Gazette. 

"  Mr.  Musgrave  always  writes  pleasantly,  and  manages  to  combine  instruction 
and  entertainment  in  very  agreeable  proportions." — Examiner. 

"A  valuable,  pleasant,  and  instructive  book.'' — Post. 

WILD    LIFE    AMONG     THE    KOORDS.     By 

MAJOR  F.  MILLINGEN,  F.R.G.S.     8vo,  with  Illustrations.     15s. 

"  Major  Millingen's  interesting  volume  reads  pleasantly  as  a  journal  of  travel 
in  districts  never  that  we  know  described  before.  Major  Millingen  is  a  shrewd 
observer.  He  gives  an  interesting  account  of  the  Koords,  and  describes  the  mag- 
nificent scenery  of  the  country  with  skill  and  felicity." — Saturday  Review. 

"  A  thoroughly  interesting  work,  which  we  heartily  recommend." — Examiner. 

A  HUNTER'S  ADVENTURES  IN  THE  GREAT 

WEST.  By  PARKER  GILLMORE  ("  Ubique"),  author  of  "  Gun,  Rod, 
and  Saddle,"  &c.  1  vol.  8vo,  with  Illustrations.  15s. 

"  A  good  volume  of  sports  and  spirited  adventure.  We  have  thoroughly  enjoyed 
Mr.  Gillmore's  work.  It  would  be  difficult  to  speak  in  too  high  terms  of  his  pluck, 
enterprise  and  energy  " — Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"An  interesting,  amusing,  and  instructive  book." — Examiner. 

"  A  volume  of  exceeding  interest,  full  of  exciting  and  spiritedly  told  adventure." 
— Sunday  Times. 

"Mr.  Gillmore  is  a  keen  sportsman  and  a  fearless  explorer.  His  work  Is  full  of 
interest  and  adventure,  and  is  as  well  written  as  it  is  amusing." — Messenger. 

A    TOUR    ROUND    ENGLAND.     By    WALTER 

THORNBURY.     2  vols.  post  8vo,  with  Illustrations.     24s. 

"  Mr.  Thornbury  is  deservedly  popular  as  a  pleasant,  genial  writer,  and  has  writ- 
ten two  most  amusing  volumes  on  some  of  the  most  interesting  places  in  Eng- 
land, which  we  have  read  with  considerable  interest,  and  can  heartily  recom- 
mend. " — Examiner. 

"All  who  know  Mr.  Thornbury's  racy,  vivid,  and  vigorous  style,  and  his  plea- 
sant and  graceful  way  of  presenting  information  to  the  reader,  will  be  sure  to 
become  familiar  with  his  travels  through  England." — Daily  Telegraph. 

"  The  reader  can  scarcely  fail  to  find  in  this  book  many  picturesque  incidents  and 
legendary  anecdotes  alike  new  and  entertaining." — Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"English  tourists  should  get  Mr.  Thornbury's  charming  book.  It  contains  a  large 
amount  of  topographical,  historical,  and  social  gossip." — Sun. 

TURKISH  HAREMS  &  CIRCASSIAN  HOMES. 

By  MRS.  HARVEY,  of  Ickwell  Bury.  8vo,  with  Coloured  Illustra- 
tions. (Just  Ready.) 


13,  GREAT  MARYBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSRS.    HURST    AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW   WORKS— Continued. 


THE   SEVENTH   VIAL;    OR,    THE    TIME    OF 

TROUBLE  BEGUN,  as  shown  in  THE  GREAT  WAR,  THE 
DETHRONEMENT  OF  THE  POPE,  and  other  Collateral  Events. 
By  the  Rev.  JOHN  GUMMING,  D.D.,  &c.  Third  Edition.  1  vol.  6s. 

"  Dr.  Gumming  is  the  popular  exponent  of  a  school  of  prophetic  interpretation, 
and  on  this  score  has  established  a  claim  to  attention.  His  book  furnishes  an 
instructive  collection  of  the  many  strange  portents  of  our  day.  Dr.  dimming  takes 
his  facts  very  fairly.  He  has  a  case,  and  the  gravity  of  the  subject  must  command 
the  attention  of  readers." — Times,  March  6. 

"  A.  deeply  interesting  work.  We  commend  it  to  all  who  wish  for  able  and  honest 
assistance  in  understanding  the  signs  of  the  times." — Record. 

"  This  book  is  intensely  interesting  from  beginning  to  end,  and  is  marked 
throughout  by  the  same  earnest  and  conscientious  tone  which  characterises  all  Dr. 
Cumming's  writings  on  this,  his  favourite  subject." — London  Scotsman. 

LIFE  AND  REMAINS  OF  ROBERT  LEE,  D.D., 

F.R.S.E.,  Minister  of  Old  Grey  friars,  Dean  of  the  Chapel  Royal  of 
Holyrood,  and  Chaplain  in  Ordinary  to  the  Queen.  By  ROBERT 
HERBERT  STORY,  Minister  of  Rosneath ;  with  an  Introductory 
Chapter  by  Mrs.  OLEPHANT,  author  of  "  The  Life  of  the  Rev.  Ed- 
ward Irving,"  &c.  2  vols.  8vo,  with  Portrait.  80s. 

"  We  need  make  no  apology  to  our  readers  for  calling  their  attention  to  the  life 
and  writings  of  a  man  who,  by  the  force  and  energy  of  his  character,  has  left  an 
indelible  mark  on  the  annals  of  his  country.  It  is  but  a  small  thing  for  a  man  to 
leave  a  mere  name  behind  him,  even  though  that  name  be  famous ;  it  is  a  far 
higher  merit  to  bequeath  to  posterity  a  living  influence,  and  this  Dr.  Lee  has  cer- 
tainly accomplished.  We  cordially  commend  the  perusal  of  this  book  to  every- 
body."— Times. 

SPIRITUAL  WIVES.    By  W.  HEPWORTH  DIXON, 

Author  of  '  NEW  AMERICA,'  &c.  FOURTH  EDITION,  with  A  NEW 
PREFACE.  2  vols.  8vo.  With  Portrait  of  the  Author.  30s. 

"Mr.  Dixon  has  treated  his  subject  in  a  philosophical  spirit,  and  in  his  usual 
graphic  manner.  There  is,  to  our  thinking,  more  pernicious  doctrine  in  one  chap- 
ter of  some  of  the  sensational  novels  which  mid  admirers  in  drawing-rooms  and 
eulogists  in  the  press  than  in  the  whole  of  Mr.  Dixon's  interesting  work." — Examiner. 

LUCREZIA   BORGIA,  DUCHESS  OF  FERRARA;  A 

Biography  :  Illustrated  by  Rare  and  Unpublished  Documents.  By 
WILLIAM  GILBERT.  2  vols.  post  8vo,  with  Portrait.  21s. 

"A  very  interesting  study  of  the  character  of  Lucrezia  Borgia.  Mr.  Gilbert  has 
done  good  service  in  carefully  investigating  the  evidence  on  which  the  charges 
rest  which  have  been  brought  against  her,  and  his  researches  are  likely  to  produce 
the  more  effect  inasmuch  as  their  results  have  been  described  in  a  manner  likely 
to  prove  generally  interesting.  His  clear  and  unaffected  style  is  admirably  adapted 
for  biography.  That  Mr.  Gilbert  will  succeed  hi  amusing  and  interesting  his  readers 
may  be  safely  predicted." — Saturday  Review. 

THE  LIFE   OF  ROSSINI.     By  H.  SUTHERLAND 

EDWARDS.     1  vol.  8vo,  with  fine  Portrait.     15s 

"  An  eminently  interesting,  readable,  and  trustworthy  book.  Mr.  Edwards  was 
instinctively  looked  to  for  a  life  of  Rossini,  and  the  result  is  a  very  satisfactory 
one.  The  salient  features  of  Rossini's  life  and  labours  are  grouped  in  admirable 
order ;  and  the  book,  while  it  conveys  everything  necessary  to  an  accurate  idea  of 
its  subject,  is  as  interesting  as  a  novel."— Sunday  Times. 


13,  GREAT  MARLBOROUGH  STREET. 

MESSRS.  HURST    AND    BLACKETT'S 
NEW   WORKS— Continued. 


TRAVELS    OF   A  NATURALIST   IN    JAPAN 

AND  MANCHURIA.     By  ARTHUR  ADAMS,  F.L.S.,  Staff-Surgeon 
R.N.     1  vol.  8vo,  with  Illustrations.     15s. 

"  An  amusing  volume.  Mr  Adams  has  acquired  a  body  of  interesting  informa- 
tion, which  he  has  set  forth  in  a  lively  and  agreeable  style.  The  book  will  be  a 
favourite  with  naturalists,  and  is  calculated  to  interest  others  as  well." — Daily  News. 

"  A  very  good  book  of  its  kind.  The  author  is  an  enthusiastic  naturalist,  taking 
especial  interest  in  entomology.  He  is  also  quick  to  observe  the  physical  aspecta 
of  nature,  and  the  leading  characteristics  of  the  people  he  visits.  He  has  come 
across  some  very  humorous  incidents  in  his  travels,  and  these  he  always  describes 
in  a  lively  and  amusing  style. "—Globe. 

FRANCIS    THE    FIRST    IN    CAPTIVITY    AT 

MADRID,  AND  OTHER  HISTORIC  STUDIES.    By  A.  BAILLIE  COCHRANE, 
M.P.     Second  Edition.     2  vols.  post  8vo.  21s. 
"  A  pleasant,  interesting,  and  entertaining  work." — Daily  News. 

EASTERN  PILGRIMS  :  the  Travels  of  Three  Ladies. 

By  AGNES  SMITH.     1  vol.  8vo,  with  Illustrations.     15s. 

"A  pleasantly  written  record  of  Eastern  Travels  in  Turkey,  Egypt,  Palestine, 
and  Greece.  Written  by  a  lady,  and  narrating  the  pilgrimage  of  ladies,  it  has  an 
interest  of  its  own.  The  tone  is  devout,  and  altogether  the  book  deserves  our 
warm  commendation." — Record. 

MY  HOLIDAY  IN  AUSTRIA.  By  LIZZIE  SELINA 

EDEN.     1  vol.  post  8vo,  with  Illustrations.     10s.  6d. 
"  A  pleasantly-written  volume." — Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"Miss  Eden  enjoyed  her  holiday,  and  her  readers  will  share  her  pleasure. 
Her  wurk  is  easy  and  fluent  in  style,  lively  and  pleasant  in  matter." — Athenxum. 

A    TRIP    TO    THE    TROPICS,    AND    HOME 

THROUGH  AMERICA.     By  the   MARQUIS  OF  LORNE.    Second 
Edition.     1  vol.  8vo,  with  Illustrations.     15s. 

"The  tone  of  Lord  Lome's  book  is  thoroughly  healthy  and  vigorous,  and  his 
remarks  upon  men  and  things  are  well-reasoned  and  acute."— Times. 

MEMOIRS  OF  QUEEN  HORTENSE,  MOTHER 

OF  NAPOLEON  III.     Cheaper  Edition,  in  1  vol.     6s. 
"  A  biography  of  the  beautiful  and  unhappy  Queen,  more  satisfactory  than  any  we 
have  yet  met  with." — Daily  News. 

THE  BEAUTIFUL  IN  NATURE  AND  ART. 

By  MRS.  ELLIS.    Author  of  '  The  Women  of  England,'  &c.     1  vol. 
crown  8vo,  with  fine  Portrait.     10s.  6d. 

WILLIAM     SHAKESPEARE.        By     CARDINAL 

WISEMAN.     1  vol.  8vo,  5s. 

FAIRY  FANCIES.    By  LIZZIE  SELINA  EDEN.    Il- 
lustrated by  the  MARCHIONESS  OF  HASTINGS.     1  vol.    10a.  6d. 

"  'The  Wandering  Lights' — the  first  of  the  'Fairy  Fancies' — ia  a  more  beautiful 
production,  truer  to  the  inspiration  of  Nature,  and  more  likely  to  be  genuinely 
attractive  to  the  imagination  of  childhood,  than  the  famous  '  Story  without  an 
End. ' "  — Examiner. 


THE  NEW  AKD  POPULAR  NOVELS, 

PUBLISHED  BY  HURST  &  BLACKETT. 


RALPH   THE  HEIR.     By  ANTHONY  TROLLOPE, 

author  of  "  Framley  Parsonage,"  &c.     3  vols.     (In  April) 

HER  OWN  FAULT.    By  Mrs.  SPENDER,  author  of 

"  Brothers- in-Law,"  &c.     3  vols. 

MARQUIS  AND  MERCHANT.      By  MOKTIMER 

COLLINS.     3  vols. 

RIDDLES  OF  LOVE.    By  SIDNEY  LAMAN  BLAN- 

CHARD.      3  VOls. 

"  This  very  pleasant  novel  is  a  picture  of  real  life,  full  of  interest.  Mr.  Blanchard'  s 
pen  is  always  elegant,  fluent,  and  pointed." — Morning  Advertiser. 

RODERICK.    By  the  Author  of  "  John  Arnold."  3  v. 

"A  pleasing,  bright,  and  decidedly  amusing  novel" — Messenger. 

MARTHA.    By  WILLIAM  GILBERT,  author  of  "  Shir- 
ley Hall  Asylum,"  &c.    3  vols. 

" '  Martha '  is  one  of  Mr.  Gilbert's  best  books.  The  character  of  Martha  is  an 
admirable  picture.  Mr.  Gilbert  has  given  it  a  reality  and  power  which  will  secure 
it  a  permanent  recognition  in  English  literature." — Spectator. — "  A  thoroughly  good 
novel." — Daily  News, — "A  story  of  remarkable  interest.  It  is  full  of  merit" — Post. 
— "  The  best  of  Mr.  Gilbert's  novels.  It  is  a  book  of  extraordinary  interest,  viva- 
city, and  power.  The  narrative  is  worked  out  with  the  skill  only  attained  by  great 
genius." — John  Bull. 

CHECKMATE.    By  J.  SHERIDAN  LE  FANU,  author 

of  "  Uncle  Silas,"  &c.    3  vols. 
"  A  very  well  written  novel.    The  plot  is  constructed  with  wonderful  ingenuity." 

— Examiner. "  Written    with    masterly  power." — Globe. "  From  the  flrst 

page  to  the  denouement  the   author  excites,  sustains,  and  baffles  our  curiosity.1' — 

Pall  Mall  Gazette. "  A  thrilling  story."— Spectator. "  This  exciting  novel 

is  redundant  with  such  power  and  consummate  art  that  an  enthralling  interest 
takes  complete  possession  of  the  reader." — Messenger. 

DRAWN  FROM  LIFE.     By  ARCHIBALD  FORBES, 

Special  Military  Correspondent  of  the  Daily  News.     3  vols. 

"  We  cordially  recommend  this  book.  It  certainly  merits  success.  Our  author, 
the  excellent  special  correspondent  of  the  Daily  News,  a  Highlander,  describes 
Highland  life  with  accuracy ;  a  soldier,  he  depicts  a  soldier's  career  with  spirit. 
The  narrative,  moreover,  is  exciting  and  romantic." — Athenaeum. 

"  A  healthy,  manly  book,  which  interests  by  its  honest  purpose  and  by  its  graphic 
delineations  of  scenes  which  we  can  readily  believe  are  all  drawn  from  life." — 
Examiner. 

"  A  thoroughly  well  written  and  interesting  story." — Daily  News. 

"  This  narrative  is  full  of  life  and  interest" — Standard. 

"  This  work  is  far  more  interesting  than  nineteen  out  of  twenty  novels."— Scotsman. 

TWO    FAIR    DAUGHTERS.      By  PERCY  FITZ- 

GERALD,  M.A.,  author  of  "  Bella  Donna,"  &c.    3  vols. 

"  A  very  attractive  and  enthralling  tale.  It  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  achieve- 
ments of  Mr.  Percy  Fitzgerald's  pen.  The  character  of  the  Doctor  is  a  masterpiece, 
and  his  two  daughters  are  as  charming  and  delightful  heroines  as  novel  reader 
could  desire." — Sun. 

"A  fresh,  natural,  and  humorous  story,  excellently  put  together,  and  growing  in 
interest  to  the  very  end.''— Echo. 

10 


THE  NEW  AND  POPULAR  NOVELS, 

PUBLISHED  BY  HURST  &  BLACKETT. 


MY  LITTLE  LADY.     3  vols. 

"There  is  a  great  deal  of  fascination  about  this  book.  The  author  writes  in  a 
clear,  unaffected  style.  She  has  a  decided  gift  for  depicting  character;  while  the 
descriptions  of  scenery  scattered  up  and  down  the  book  convey  a  distinct  pic- 
torial impression  to  the  reader.  The  scenes  in  Florence  are  singularly  rich  in 
local  colouring  and  picturesque  details.  All  this  part  of  the  narrative  is  very  in- 
terestingly told.  It  reads  Jike  the  experiences  of  an  actual  life." — Times. 

"  This  book  is  full  of  life  and  colour.  The  scenes  in  which  the  incidents  are  laid 
pourtray  the  experiences  of  a  mind  well  stored  to  begin  with,  and  quick  to  receive 
impressions  of  grace  and  beauty.  Finally,  there  is  not  a  line  in  it  that  might  not 
be  read  aloud  in  the  family  circle." — Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"  This  story  presents  a  number  of  vivid  and  very  charming  pictures.  Indeed, 
the  whole  book  is  charming.  It  is  interesting  in  both  character  and  story,  and 
thoroughly  good  of  its  kind," — Saturday  Review. 

"  A  book  which  can  be  read  with  genuiue  pleasure.  The  aim  of  the  story  is  high 
and  its  moral  excellent,  and  the  'Little  Lady1  is  thoroughly  worthy  of  her  name." 
Athenaeum. 

"  One  of  the  most  remarkable  and  most  interesting  tales  which  has  been  for 
some  time  submitted  to  the  public." — Morning  Post. 

SIR  HARRY  HOTSPUR,  By  ANTHONY  TROLLOPE, 

author  of  "  Framley  Parsonage,"  &c.     1  vol.     10s.  6d. 

"  In  this  novel  we  are  glad  to  recognise  a  return  to  what  we  must  call  Mr.  Trol- 
lope's  old  form.  The  characters  are  drawn  with  vigour  and  boldness,  and  the 
book  may  do  good  to  many  readers  of  both  sexes/' — Times. 

'"Sir  Harry  Hotspur,' it  appears  to  us,  is  decidedly  more  successful  than  any 
other  of  Mr.  Trollope's  shorter  stories.  The  author  has  shown  in  this  brilliant 
novelette  that  he  can  interest  his  readers  by  rapid  and  direct  sketching  as  well  as 
by  the  minute  details  and  patient  evolution  of  little  traits  of  character  that  mark 
his  larger  works.  No  reader  who  begins  to  read  this  book  wi.l  lay  it  down  until 
the  last  page  is  turned." — Athenseum. 

"A  novel  of  remarkable  power." — Examiner. 

"One  of  Mr.  Trollope's  very  best  tales." — Spectator. 

THE  THREE  BROTHERS.    By  MRS.  OLIPHANT, 

author  of  "  Chronicles  of  Carlingford,"  "  Salem  Chapel,"  &c.     3  v. 

"  The  novel-reading  public  may  look  forward  to  no  small  pleasure  in  the  per- 
usal of  this  latest  issue  of  one  of  their  best  and  favourite  writers.  It  is  bright  and 
sparkling,  and  full  of  keen  observation,  as  well  as  of  a  genial,  kindly  philosophy." — 
Saturday  Review. 

A  BRAVE  LADY.     By  the  Author  of  "John  Hali- 

fax,  Gentleman,"  &c.     3  vols. 

"  A  very  good  novel — a  thoughtful,  well-written  book,  showing  a  tender  sym- 
pathy with  human  nature,  and  permeated  by  a  pure  and  noble  spirit." — Examiner. 

DIARY    OF   A   NOVELIST.      By   the   Author  of 

"  Rachel's  Secret,"  "  Nature's  Nobleman,"  &c.     1  vol. 

"  There  is  much  to  like  about  this  book.  It  is  graceful,  feminine,  and  unaffected ; 
the  writing  is  lucid  and  fluent,  and  we  put  down  the  book  with  a  most  favourable 

impression." — Pall  Mall  Gazette. "A  book  to  read,  not  once,  but  many  times. 

All  who  can  do  so  should  possess  it  for  themselves." — Literary  W&rld. 

QUEEN  OF  HERSELF.    By  ALICE  KING.    3  vols. 

"  Miss  King  writes  gracefully  and  with  good  purpose.  Her  novels  are  always 
interesting,  and  '  Queen  of  Herself  '  is  true,  vivid,  and  marked  by  unusual  power." 
— Examiner. "  A  story  of  the  very  best  class." — Messenger. 

11 


nf 


Published  annually,  in   One  Vol.,  royal  8vo,  with  the  Arms  beautifully 
engraved,  handsomely  bound,  with  gilt  edges,  price  31$.  6d. 

LODGE'S     PEERAGE 

AND  BARONETAGE, 

CORRECTED    BY   THE    NOBILITY. 


THE    f OETIETH  EDITION  FOE  1871  IS  NOW  EEADY. 

LODGE'S  PEERAGE  AND  BARONETAGE  is  acknowledged  to  be  the  most 
complete,  as  well  as  the  most  elegant,  work  of  the  kind.  As  an  esta- 
blished and  authentic  authority  on  all  questions  respecting  the  family 
histories,  honours,  and  connections  of  the  titled  aristocracy,  no  work  haa 
ever  stood  so  high.  It  is  published  under  the  especial  patronage  of  Her 
Majesty,  and  is  annually  corrected  throughout,  from  the  personal  com- 
munications of  the  Nobility.  It  is  the  only  work  of  its  class  in  which,  the 
type  being  kept  constantly  standing,  every  correction  is  made  in  its  proper 
place  to  the  date  of  publication,  an  advantage  which  gives  it  supremacy 
over  all  its  competitors.  Independently  of  its  full  and  authentic  informa- 
tion respecting  the  existing  Peers  and  Baronets  of  the  realm,  the  most 
sedulous  attention  is  given  in  its  pages  to  the  collateral  branches  of  the 
various  noble  families,  and  the  names  of  many  thousand  individuals  are 
introduced,  which  do  not  appear  in  other  records  of  the  titled  classes.  For 
its  authority,  correctness,  and  facility  of  arrangement,  and  the  beauty  of 
its  typography  and  binding,  the  work  is  justly  entitled  to  the  place  it 
occupies  on  the  tables  of  Her  Majesty  and  the  Nobility. 


LIST  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  CONTENTS. 


Historical  View  of  the  Peerage. 

Parliamentary  Eoll  of  the  House  of  Lords. 

English,  Scotch,  and  Irish  Peers,  in  their 
orders  of  Precedence. 

Alphabetical  List  of  Peers  of  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  Kingdom,  holding  supe- 
rior rank  in  the  Scotch  or  Irish  Peerage. 

Alphabetical  list  of  Scotch  and  Irish  Peers, 
holding  superior  titles  in  the  Peerage  of 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  Kingdom. 

A  Collective  list  of  Peers,  in  their  order  of 
Precedence. 

Table  of  Precedency  among  Men. 

Table  of  Precedency  among  Women. 

The  Queen  and  the  Eoyal  Family. 

Peers  of  the  Blood  Eoyal. 

The  Peerage,  alphabetically  arranged. 

Families  of  such  Extinct  Peers  as  have  left 
Widows  or  Issue. 

Alphabetical  List  of  the  Surnames  of  all  the 
Peers. 


The  Archbishops  and  Bishops  of  England, 
Ireland,  and  the  Colonies. 

The  Baronetage  alphabetically  arranged. 

Alphabetical  List  of  Surnames  assumed  by 
members  of  Noble  Families. 

Alphabetical  List  of  the  Second  Titles  of 
Peers,  usually  borne  by  their  Eldest 
Sons. 

Alphabetical  Index  to  the  Daughters  of 
Dukes,  Marquises,  and  Earls,  who,  hav- 
ing married  Commoners,  retain  the  title 
of  Lady  before  their  own  Christian  and 
their  Husband's  Surnames. 

Alphabetical  Index  to  the  Daughters  of 
Viscounts  and  Barons,  who,  having 
married  Commoners,  are  styled  Honour- 
able Mrs. ;  and,  in  case  of  the  husband 
being  a  Baronet  or  Knight,  Honourable 
Lady. 

Mottoes  alphabetically  arranged  and  trans- 
lated. 


"A  work  which  corrects  all  errors  of  former  works.  It  is  a  most  useful  publication. 
We  are  happy  to  bear  testimony  to  the  fact  that  scrupulous  accuracy  is  a  distinguish- 
ing feature  of  this  book." — Times. 

"Lodge's  Peerage  must  supersede  all  other  works  of  the  kind,  for  two  reasons:  first,  it 
is  on  a  better  plan  ;  and  secondly,  it  is  better  executed.  We  can  safely  pronounce  it  to  be 
the  readiest,  the  most  useful,  and  exactest  of  modern  works  on  the  subject"— Spectator. 

"A  work  of  great  value.  It  is  the  most  faithful  record  we  possess  of  the  aristo- 
cracy of  the  day." — Post. 

"  The  best  existing,  and,  we  believe,  the  best  possible  Peerage.  It  is  the  standard 
authority  on  the  subject." — Standard. 


HURST  &  BLACKETT'S  STANDARD  LIBRARY 

OF  CHEAP  EDITIONS  OF 

POPULAR    MODERN    WORKS, 

ILLUSTRATED   BY  MTLLAIS,   HOLMAN   HUNT,   LEECH,   BIRKET  FOSTER, 
JOHN  GILBERT,  TENNIEL,  SANDYS,  &C. 

Each  in  a  Single  Volume,  elegantly  printed,  bound,  and  illustrated,  price  5s. 


I.— SAM  SLICK'S  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE. 

'•The  first  volume  of  Messrs.  Hurst  and  Blackett's  Standard  Library  of  Cheap  Editions 
forms  a  very  good  beginning  to  what  will  doubtless  be  a  very  successful  undertaking. 
' Nature  and  Human  Nature' is  one  of  the  best  of  Sam  Slick's  witty  and  humorous 
productions,  and  is  well  entitled  to  the  large  circulation  which  it  cannot  fail  to  obtain 
in  its  present  convenient  and  cheap  shape.  The  volume  combines  with  the  great  recom- 
mendations of  a  clear,  bold  type,  and  good  paper,  the  lesser  but  attractive  merits  of 
being  well  illustrated  and  elegantly  bound." — Post. 

II.— JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN. 

"  This  is  a  very  good  and  a  very  interesting  work.  It  is  designed  to  trace  the  career 
from  boyhood  to  age  of  a  perfect  man — a  Christian  gentleman;  and  it  abounds  in  inci- 
dent both  well  and  highly  wrought.  Throughout  it  is  conceived  in  a  high  spirit,  and 
•written  with  great  ability.  This  cheap  and  handsome  new  edition  is  worthy  to  pass 
freely  from  hand  to  hand  as  a  gift  book  in  many  households." — Examiner. 

"  The  new  and  cheaper  edition  of  this  interesting  work  will  doubtless  meet  with  great 
success.  John  Halifax,  the  hero  of  this  most  beautiful  story,  is  no  ordinary  hero,  and 
this  his  history  is  no  ordinary  book.  It  is  a  full-length  portrait  of  a  true  gentleman,  one 
of  nature's  own  nobility.  It  is  also  the  history  of  a  home,  and  a  thoroughly  English 
one.  The  work  abounds  in  incident,  and  is  full  of  graphic  power  and  true  pathos.  It 
is  a  book  that  few  will  read  without  becoming  wiser  and  better." — Scotsman. 

III.— THE  CRESCENT  AND  THE  CROSS. 

BY  ELIOT  WARBURTON. 

"  Independent  of  its  value  as  an  original  narrative,  and  its  useful  and  interesting 
information,  this  work  is  remarkable  for  the  colouring  power  and  play  of  fancy  with 
which  its  descriptions  are  enlivened.  Among  its  greatest  and  most  lasting  charms  is 
its  reverent  and  serious  spirit." — Quarterly  Review. 

IV.— NATHALIE.     By  JULIA  KAVANAGH. 

•' ' Nathalie'  is  Miss  Kavanagh's  best  imaginative  effort.  Its  manner  is  gracious  and 
attractive.  Its  matter  is  good.  A  sentiment,  a  tenderness,  are  commanded  by  her 
which  are  as  individual  as  they  are  elegant." — Athe.mKum. 

V.— A  WOMAN'S  THOUGHTS  ABOUT  WOMEN. 

BY   THE  AUTHOR  OF   "JOHN  HALIFAX,   GENTLEMAN." 

"  A  book  of  sound  counsel.  It  is  one  of  the  most  sensible  works  of  its  kind,  well- 
written,  true-hearted,  and  altogether  practical.  Whoever  wishes  to  give  advice  to  a 
young  lady  may  thank  the  author  for  means  of  doing  so." — Examiner. 

VI.— ADAM  GRAEME.    By  MRS.  OLIPHANT. 

"  A  story  awakening  genuine  emotions  of  interest  and  delight  by  its  admirable  pic- 
tures of  Scottish  life  and  scenery.  The  author  sets  before  us  the  essential  attributes  of 
Christian  virtue,  their  deep  and  silent  workings  in  the  heart,  and  their  beautiful  mani- 
festations in  life,  with  a  delicacy,  power,  and  truth  which  can  hardly  be  surpassed."-Pos( 

VII—  SAM  SLICK'S  WISE  SAWS  AND  MODERN 
INSTANCES. 

"  The  reputation  of  this  book  will  stand  as  long  as  that  of  Scott's  or  Bulwer's  Nereis. 
Ite  remarkable  originality  and  happy  descriptions  of  American  life  still  continue  the 
Bub  jectof  universal  admiration.  The  new  edition  forms  a  part  of  Messrs.  Hurst  and 
Blackett's  Cheap  Standard  Library,  which  has  included  some  of  he  very  best  specimens 
of  light  literature  that  ever  have  been  written." — Musenger. 

13 


HURST  &  BLACKETT'S  STANDARD  LIBRARY 

(CONTINUED.) 

VIII.— CARDINAL  WISEMAN'S  RECOLLECTIONS  OF 
THE  LAST  FOUR  POPES. 

"  A  picturesque  book  on  Rome  and  its  ecclesiastical  sovereigns,  by  an  eloquent  Roman 
Catholic.  Cardinal  Wiseman  has  treated  a  special  subject  with  so  much  geniality,  that 
his  recollections  will  excite  no  ill-feeling  in  those  who  are  most  conscientiously  opposed 
to  every  idea  of  human  infallibility  represented  in  Papal  domination." — Athenaeum. 

IX.— A  LIFE  FOR  A  LIFE. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "  JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

"In  'A  Life  for  a  Life '  the  author  is  fortunate  in  a  good  subject,  and  has  produced  a 
work  of  strong  effect." — Athen&um. 

X.— THE  OLD  COURT  SUBURB.  By  LEIGH  HUNT. 

"  A  delightful  book,  that  will  be  welcome  to  all  readers,  and  most  welcome  to  those 
who  have  a  love  for  the  best  kinds  of  reading." — Examiner. 

"  A  more  agreeable  and  entertaining  book  has  not  been  published  since  Boswell  pro- 
duced his  reminiscences  of  Johnson." — Observer. 

XI.— MARGARET  AND  HER  BRIDESMAIDS. 

"  We  recommend  all  who  are  in  search  of  a  fascinating  novel  to  read  this  work  for 
themselves.  They  will  find  it  well  worth  their  while.  There  are  a  freshness  and  ori- 
ginality about  it  quite  charming  " — Athenxum. 

XII.— THE  OLD  JUDGE.     By  SAM  SLICK. 

"  The  publications  included  in  this  Library  have  all  been  of  good  quality ;  many  give 
information  while  they  entertain,  and  of  that  class  the  book  before  us  is  a  specimen. 
The  manner  in  which  the  Cheap  Editions  forming  the  series  is  produced,  deserves 
especial  mention.  The  paper  and  print  are  unexceptionable ;  there  is  a  steel  engraving 
in  each  volume,  and  the  outsides  of  them  will  satisfy  the  purchaser  who  likes  to  see 
books  in  handsome  uniform." — Examiner. 

XIII.— DARIEN.     By  ELIOT  WARBURTON. 

"  This  last  production  of  the  author  of  '  The  Crescent  and  the  Cross  '  has  the  same 
elements  of  a  very  wide  popularity.  It  will  please  its  thousands." — Globe. 

XIV.— FAMILY  ROMANCE ;  OR,  DOMESTIC  ANNALS 
OF  THE  ARISTOCRACY. 

BY  SIR  BERNARD  BURKE,  ULSTER  KING  OF  ARMS. 

"  It  were  impossible  to  praise  too  highly  this  most  interesting  book.  It  ought  to  be 
found  on  every  drawing-room  table." — Standard. 

XV.— THE  LAIRD  OF  NORLAW.     By  MRS.  OLIPHANT. 

"  The  '  Laird  of  Norlaw '  fully  sustains  the  author's  high  reputation." — Sunday  Times. 

XVI.— THE  ENGLISHWOMAN  IN  ITALY. 

"  We  can  praise  Mrs.  Gretton's  book  as  interesting,  unexaggerated,  and  full  of  oppor- 
tune instruction." — Times. 

XVII.— NOTHING  NEW. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "  JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

"  '  Nothing  New '  displays  all  those  superior  merits  which  have  made  '  John  Halifax 
one  of  the  most  popular  works  of  the  day." — Post. 

XVIIL— FREER'S  LIFE  OF  JEANNE  D'ALBRET. 

"Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  than  Miss  Freer's  story  of  the  life  of  Jeanne 
D'Albret,  and  the  narrative  is  as  trustworthy  as  it  is  attractive."— Post. 

XIX.— THE  VALLEY  OF  A  HUNDRED  FIRES. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "MARGARET  AND  HER  BRIDESMAIDS." 

"  If  asked  to  classify  this  work,  w  t  should  give  it  a  place  between  '  John  Halifax '  and 
The  Caxtons.'  "—Standard. 

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(CONTINUED.; 


XX.— THE  ROMANCE  OF  THE  FORUM. 

BY  PETER  BURKE,  SERGEANT  AT  LAW. 

"  A  work  of  singular  interest,  which  can  never  fail  to  charm.  The  present  cheap  and 
elegant  edition  includes  the  true  story  of  the  Colleen  Bawn." — Illustrated  News. 

XXI.— ADELE.     By  JULIA  KAVANAGH. 

"  '  Adele '  is  the  best  work  we  have  read  by  Miss  Kavanagh ;  it  is  a  charming  story, 
full  of  delicate  character-painting." — Athenseum. 

XXIL— STUDIES  FROM  LIFE. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "  JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

"  These  '  Studies  from  Life  '  are  remarkable  for  graphic  power  and  observation.  The 
book  will  not  diminish  the  reputation  of  the  accomplished  author." — Saturday  Review. 

XXIII.— GRANDMOTHER'S  MONEY. 

"  We  commend  '  Grandmother's  Money '  to  readers  in  search  of  a  good  novel.  The 
characters  are  true  to  human  nature,  the  story  is  interesting." — Athenseum. 

XXIV.— A  BOOK  ABOUT  DOCTORS. 

BY  J.  C.  JEAFFRESON. 

"  A  delightful  book." — Athenxum.  "  A  book  to  be  read  and  re-read ;  fit  for  the  study 
as  well  as  the  drawing-room  table  and  the  circulating  library." — Lancet. 

XXV.— NO  CHURCH. 

"  We  advise  all  who  have  the  opportunity  to  read  this  book." — Athenseum, 

XXVI.— MISTRESS  AND  MAID. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "  JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 
"  A  good  wholesome  book,  gracefully  written,  and  as  pleasant  to  read  as  it  is  instruc 
tive." — Athenaeum.    ."  A  charming  tale  charmingly  told." — Standard. 

XXVII.— LOST  AND  SAVED.     By  HON.  MRS.  NORTON. 

"  '  Lost  and  Saved '  will  be  read  with  eager  interest.    It  is  a  vigorous  novel." — Times. 
"A  novel  of  rare  excellence.    It  is  Mrs.  Norton's  best  prose  work." — Examiner. 

XXVIII.— LES  MISERABLES.     By  VICTOR  HUGO. 

AUTHORISED  COPYRIGHT  ENGLISH  TRANSLATION. 

"  The  merits  of  '  Les  Miserables '  do  not  merely  consist  in  the  conception  of  it  as  a 
whole ;  it  abounds,  page  after  page,  with  details  of  unequalled  beauty.  In  dealing  with 
all  the  emotions,  doubts,  fears,  which  go  to  make  up  our  common  humanity,  M.  Victor 
Hugo  has  stamped  upon  every  page  the  hall-mark  of  genius." — Quarterly  Review. 

XXIX.— BARBARA'S  HISTORY. 

BY  AMELIA  B.  EDWARDS. 

"  It  i  not  often  that  we  light  upon  a  novel  of  so  much  merit  and  interest  as  '  Barbara's 
History.'  It  is  a  work  conspicuous  for  taste  and  literary  culture.  It  is  a  very  graceful 
and  charming  book,  with  a  well-managed  story,  clearly-cut  characters,  and  sentiments 
expressed  with  an  exquisite  elocution.  It  is  a  book  which  the  world  will  like.  This  is 
high  praise  of  a  work  of  art,  and  so  we  intend  it." — Times. 

XXX.— LIFE  OF  THE  REV.  EDWARD  IRVING. 

BY  MRS.  OLIPHANT. 

"  A  good  book  on  a  most  interesting  theme." — Times. 

"  A  truly  interesting  and  most  affecting  memoir.  Irving's  Life  ought  to  have  a  niche 
in  every  gallery  of  religious  biography.  There  are  few  lives  that  will  be  fuller  of  in- 
struction, interest,  and  consolation," — Saturday  Review. 

"Mrs.  Oliphant's  Life  of  Irving  supplies  a  long-felt  desideratum.  It  is  copious, 
earnest  and  eloquent." — Edinburgh  Review. 

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(CONTINUED.) 

XXXI.— ST.  OLAVE'S. 

"This  charming  novel  is  the  work  of  one  who  possesses  a  great  talent  for  writing,  as 
well  as  experience  and  knowledge  of  the  world.  '  St.  OlaveV  is  the  work  of  an  artist. 
The  whole  book  is  worth  reading." — Athenaeum. 

XXXII.— SAM  SLICK'S  AMERICAN  HUMOUR. 

14  Dip  where  you  will  into  the  lottery  of  fun,  you  are  sure  to  draw  out  a  prize."— Pott. 

XXXIII.— CHRISTIAN'S  MISTAKE. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "  JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

"  A  more  charming  story,  to  our  taste,  has  rarely  been  written.  The  writer  has  hit 
off  a  circle  of  varied  characters  all  true  to  nature,  and  has  entangled  them  in  a  story 
which  keeps  us  in  suspense  till  its  kuot  is  happily  and  gracefully  resolved  Even  if 
tried  by  the  standard  of  the  Archbishop  of  York,  we  should  expect  that  even  he  would 
pronounce  '  Christian's  Mistake '  a  novel  without  a  fault." — Times. 

XXXIV.— ALEC  FORBES  OF  HOWGLEN. 

BY  GEORGE  MAC  DONALD,  LL.D. 

"  No  account  of  this  story  would  give  any  idea  of  the  profound  interest  that  pervades 
the  work  from  the  first  page  to  the  last." — Athenaeum. 

XXXV.— AGNES.     By  MRS,  OLIPHANT. 

44  4  Agnes '  is  a  novel  superior  to  any  of  Mrs.  Oliphant's  former  works."— A  thenoeum. 
"  A  story  whose  pathetic  beauty  will  appeal  irresistibly  to  all  readers." — Post. 

XXXVI.— A  NOBLE  LIFE. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  fct  JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

41  This  is  one  of  those  pleasant  tales  in  which  the  author  of  4  John  Halifax '  speaks 
out  of  a  generous  heart  the  purest  truths  of  life." — Examiner.  "Few  men,  and  no 
women,  will  read  'A  Noble  Life '  without  finding  themselves  the  better." — Spectator. 

XXXVII.— NEW  AMERICA.   By  HEPWORTH  DIXON. 

41 A  very  interesting  book.    Mr.  Dixon  has  written  thoughtfully  and  well" — Times. 
Mr.  Dixon's  very  entertaining  and  instructive  work  on  New  America." — Pall  Matt  Gaz. 
"We  recommend  every  one  who  feels  any  interest  in  human  nature  to  read  Mr. 
Dixon's  very  interesting  book." — Saturday  Review. 

XXXVIII.— ROBERT  FALCONER. 

BY  GEORGE  MAC  DONALD,  LL.D. 

44 '  Eobert  Falconer '  is  a  work  brimful  of  life  and  humour  and  of  the  deepest  human 
interest.  It  is  a  book  to  be  returned  to  again  and  again  for  the  deep  and  searching 
knowledge  it  evinces  of  human  thoughts  and  feelings." — Athenaeum. 

XXXIX.— THE  WOMAN'S  KINGDOM. 

BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF  "JOHN  HALIFAX,  GENTLEMAN." 

" '  The  Woman's  Kingdom '  sustains  the  author's  reputation  as  a  writer  of  the 
purest  and  noblest  kind  of  domestic  stories. — Athenaeum. 

XL.— ANNALS  OF  AN  EVENTFUL  LIFE. 

BY  GEORGE  WEBBE  DASENT,  D.C.L. 

44  A  racy,  w;ell-written,  and  original  novel.  The  interest  never  flags.  The  whole 
work  sparkles  with  wit  and  humour." — Quarterly  Review. 

"This  is  a  very  interesting  novel":  wit,  humour,  and  keen  observation  abound  in 
every  page  while  the  characters  are  life-like." — Times. 

XLL— DAVID    ELGINBROD. 

BY  GEORGE  MAC  DONALD,  LL.D. 

44  4  David  Elginbrod '  is  a  novel  which  is  the  work  of  a  man  of  true  genius,  and  dis- 
plays an  original  vein  of  reflection.  There  is  much  in  his  book  besides  a  plot — there  is 
good  writing,  there  is  good  thought,  and  there  is  a  strong  religious  feeling  which  will 
attract  the  highest  class  of  readers."— Timet. 

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