poetry which Lord Bacon has described as "history made visible.'

I have said little of the greatest name that adorns the literature of the age of Elizabeth and the few succeeding years, and have now left myself no space to speak of what demands such ample room as comment on Shakspeare. It is a field that has been of late very much travelled over. Its interest, if truly sought, can never be exhausted. There is a mere chance that I may be pointing your attention to what has not attracted it before, when I ask whether you have ever noticed the power of Shakspeare peculiarly as a writer of English prose. Of its kind, it is as admirable as his poetic language. It is interspersed through his plays, never introduced probably without some exquisite art in the transition from verse to prose, from metrical to unmetrical diction. Let us for a few minutes look at this subject, and I will place side by side two passages, counterpart in some measure in subject; first, of verse, that familiar passage on the music of the spheres, which Hallam's calm judgment pronounced "perhaps the most sublime in Shakspeare:"*

Hallam's Literature of Europe, chap. iii. ? 11, vol. iii. p. 147. It is difficult to refrain from quoting, hackneyed as they are, the lines which immediately precede those in the text, the playful dialogue of the Venetian lovers, ending with the solemn, reverential outburst of Lorenzo, as, turning from the bright, mortal eyes of his mistress, he looks up to the stars of heaven. There are some lines of Shelly, on Night, which do not suffer in comparison with any thing since the Merchant of Venice :

"How beautiful this Night! the balmiest sigh
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in morning's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude

"Look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.
Such harmony is in immortal souls :
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

Whose prose but Shakspeare's could stand by the side of such verse? I turn to an equally familiar passage in Hamlet: "I have of late (but wherefore, I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise: and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory: this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon arch,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded splendour rolls,
Seems like a canopy which love has spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow:
Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless that their white and glittering spires
Tinge not the moon's pale beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that wrapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of Peace,-all form a scene
Where musing solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness:
Where silence undisturbed might walk alone,
So cold, so bright, so still." W. B. R.

in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.'

Now let me exemplify a quick transition from prose to verse: when Coriolanus is soliciting the plebeian votes, citizens tell him he has not loved the common people: the irony of his answer is prose :-" You should account me the more virtuous, that I have not been common in my love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn brother, the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition they account gentle; and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the insinuating nod, and be off to them most counterfeitly; that is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man, and give it bountifully to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you, I may be consul." The bitterness of the soliloquy that follows is verse:

"Better it is to die, better to starve,

Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.
Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here,
To beg of Hob and Dick, that do appear,
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to't:
What custom wills, in all things should we do't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswep't,
And mountainous error be too highly heap'd
For truth to overpeer. Rather than fool it so,
Let the high office and the honour go

To one that would do thus."

The poet's power over language as an instrument is curiously apparent in this, that when he so purposes, he takes all heart out of the words, and makes them sound

as if they came merely from the lips. Observe how this occurs in the speeches of Goneril and Regan as contrasted with Cordelia's words: or the contrast between the utter hollowness of the king's request to Hamlet, and the reality that there is in his mother's language. The king's is thus:

"For your intent

In going back to school in Wittenberg:
It is most retrograde to our desire;
And we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our age,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son."

The queen speaks to her son:

"Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet,

I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg."

I propose in my next lecture to pass to the literature of the seventeenth century, and to connect with it some thoughts on the subject of Sunday reading.

LECTURE VI.

Literature of the Seventeenth Century, with incidental

Suggestions on Sunday Reading.*

*

Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity-Progress of English literature-Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World-Bacon's Essays-Milton-Comus-Hymn on the Nativity-Suggestions as to Sunday reading-Sacred books-Forms of Christian faith-Evidences of religion-Butler's Analogy-Charles Lamb's Remarks on Stackhouse-History of the Bible-Jeremy Taylor-Holy Living and Dying-Life of Christ-Pulpit-oratory-Southey's Book of the Church-Thomas Fuller-Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical SonnetsIzaak Walton's Lives-Pilgrim's Progress-The Old Man's HomeGeorge Herbert-Henry Vaughan-Milton resumed-Paradise Lost -Criticism on it as a purely sacred poem-Shakspeare's mode of treating sacred subjects-Spenser-The Faery Queen-John Wesley-Keble's Christian Year--George Wither-Aubrey De VereTrench's sonnet.

IN following the progress of English literature, the difficulty of considering it according to what may be regarded as the successive eras is greatly increased the farther we advance. The literature becomes more abundant in both departments, prose as well as verse, and the influences that affect it, and are affected by it, are found to be more various and complicated. English prose-writing was hardly entitled to be looked on as literature until nearly two hundred years after English poetry had disclosed many of its finest resources. It was not till about

the year 1600 that Hooker, in the "Ecclesiastical Polity,”

*February 7, 1850.