"Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens guilty in a common ruin: To wash it white as snow?" No; foul deeds will rise to men's eyes though all the earth o'erwhelm them; and murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.' The death of Polonius, which the king would on every account so willingly have prevented, becomes the cause of undeserved suspicion against him, and the instrument of his humiliation: "the people are muddied, thick and unwholesome in their thoughts for good Polonius' death;" and "it has been but greenly done in hugger-mugger to inter him;" the mob, hasty and violent then as a Danish mob is still, arraign the king's person, and cry "Laertes shall be king!" The incoherences of Ophelia, made mad by her father's death, her "winks, nods, gestures," move the hearers to collection, and "throw dangerous conjectures into ill-breeding minds," which "botch the words up to fit their own thoughts." The ominous clouds are closing darkly in on the sultry day, the muttering of the threatening thunder is heard in the distance, and the fatal flash of the avenging lightning is every moment dreaded. "Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss," and sorrows coming, not "single spies, but in battalions," give superfluous death. For the queen's sake, whom his crime has made his wife, and because of the love which the distracted multitude bear to Hamlet, whom his crime has bereaved of father and of place, he cannot proceed directly against him. The gratifications which his sin has gotten him become fetters to prevent him from evading its consequences. "She is so conjunctive to my life and soul, That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her." The consequences of a great crime, like the slimy folds of some horrible serpent, coil faster and faster round the struggling victim; he strains at first with determined silent effort and vehement ener gy to undo them; then, as strength fails and fatal fate approaches, with shrieking cries and convulsive agonies, until at last we heartily pity his fierce anguish, and pray for the end of the terrible tragedy. The blessing or the curse of an act is its eternity; the pity of a wicked act is that it often involves the innocent with the destroyeth much good." one sinner Because poetical justice does not happen in the world, therefore Shakspeare ical justice: he exhibits the gradual evolu does not make it his business to do poettion of events and develops actions in their necessary consequences, neither approving nor censuring; the moral lesson which his works teach is the moral lesson which nature teaches. Of all things, the most presumptuous and most ignorant is that criticism which imputes it to Shakspeare as a fault or a crime that he has not shown a sufficient partisanship for virtue, that he has with tranquil indifference permitted the innocent equally with the guilty to suffer and perish when the law of events demanded it. To the sen timental idealist it would have been far more pleasing if a miracle had interposed and stayed the operation of natural law, so that Cordelia might not have been strangled like a dog and Ophelia might not have been miserably drowned. Some such a critic it was who blamed Goethe for making Werter commit suicide instead of rather making him repent and become a moral and a model young man. who found the death of Hamlet to be Some such a critic it must have been cruel and unnecessary. Alas! that an angel did not still the troubled waters, and, putting forth a helping hand, rescue Hamlet from the whirlpool of events in which he was struggling! An angel not that natural law should take its course, appearing, however, it was inevitable and that the much-meditative, indecisive, and impulsive Hamlet should be crushed out by the inexorable march of events. Those who will find a moral in the matter may find it in this instructive reflection: that Hamlet, who had made so large a use of guile during his life, himself perishes at last the victim of guile. It is plain that Hamlet has a recognition of the fate of which he is alike the victim and the instrument. Crime has no meaning for him who is appointed by nature the minister of its revenge: "there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so;" and it causes him no sorrow when he has slain the "unseen good old man:" "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, fare well." I do repent; but Heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister." Thus commissioned, how could he afflict himself because a "foolish prating knave," whose life had been a system of intrigues, perishes the victim of his own scheming policy? In the path of Hamlet's destiny, as in the course of nature, human life is of little account: ""Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes Betwixt the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites." By an inexorable necessity he must finish his course whatever may betide: he cannot turn aside to deplore an old man killed, or even hold back to spare the fair and gentle Ophelia, as the scorching lava-torrent cannot turn aside its course to let the modest violet live. It is in this feeling of the sacrifice which he must be to his fate that we find the interpretation of the towering passion into which Hamlet falls at Ophelia's grave. "Oh, 'tis easy enough," might be his reflection, "to make loud wail and to invoke with passionate clamor the silent heavens; but what sort of grief is that which utters itself so loudly? Ophelia is dead; but could I not weep for her!" "I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum." Am not I of all mortals most wretched, that Orestes-like I am made the undesired instrument of fate, and that benetted round with villanies I must go my unhappy course, fatal to those whom I most loved, cruel to those to whom nature bids me be kind? But one life!-think of that-and it doomed to be a sacrifice! I too could rant; but it is no matter do what you may, you are sure to be misunderstood: "Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." In that outbreak we have the genuine utterance of Hamlet's deeply moved and fiercely tried nature-an outburst of the pent-up feelings; and immediately afterwards he is sorry that he has so forgotten and revealed himself: a proud and sensitive nature is ashamed of the exhi bition of great emotion, and angry that it has descended to explain. But, in truth, the occasion was most provoking: to Hamlet, so conscientious, so full of consideration, so carefully weighing the consequences of his actions, so deeply feeling, and so sincerely abhorring mere passionate exclamation, it must have been intensely irritating to witness the violent and noisy demonstration of Laertes-a violence which surely betrayed a grief not very deep. It is so easy, such a relief, to rant and mouth: Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou." Self-consciousness returns even while he is in the full burst of his passion; his great reflection scarce deserts him for a moment; thus he knows that he is ranting. Before taking a final and reluctant leave of Hamlet, in whose company it would be easy and most agreeable to multiply pages into sheets, let us take notice of his last words to Horatio-more mournful words than which, mortal never uttered: "Hamlet. But thou would'st not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter. "Horatio. Nay, good my lord. "Hamlet. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as would, perhaps, trouble a woman. "Horatio. If your mind dislike anything, obey it: I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit. "Hamlet. Not a whit; we defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a be not to come, it will be now; if it be not sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave betimes. Let be." In the tone of Hamlet's words at the close of the first act, there was the formless presentiment of coming misery; and now again in words which are almost his last, there comes over him the dark foreboding of the final catastrophe. The colossal shadow of his tragical end is projected over the closing scenes of his life, and his feeling thrills to its gloomy inspiration. As the appointed minister of nature's vengeance for a great crime, he is in most intimate harmony with the rest of nature, and an instinctive feeling, mysterious and inexplicable, forecasts unconsciously that issue by which it is subsequently interpreted. He defies augury from a conviction that his hour must come at the appointed time. With the unfailing certainty of destiny it comes; the "self-sacrifice of life is o'er;" and the "rest is silence." Vauxhall." But as Goethe advanced from the storminess of Werter to the calmness of Faust, so did Shakspeare rise in the glorious development from the subjective character of Timon to that lofty and pure region of clear vision from which he contemplated the actions of men with infinite calmness. His practical life was correspondent; by bending his actions to the yoke of his intellectual life-by living, in fact, his philosophyhe was able to work steadily in the painful sphere of his vocation to the end which he had proposed to himself. If Hamlet is a reflex of Shakspeare's character, it reflects a period ere it had attain One lesson which Shakspeare implicitly teaches, is a lesson of infinite tolerance as the result of deep insight and a comprehensive view. Heartily do we sympathize with Hamlet in his great sorrow and sore trial; we esteem the faithful friendship and admire the cool judgment of Horatio; the treachery of Laertes, so greatly provoked as he was by events, does not excite unmitigated horror and render him inexcusably hateful-his re-ed to its full development--a stage in pentance we accept with sincere satisfaction; and even the wicked king inspires sorrow rather than anger, though we abhor his deeds, and as he kneels to pray we would certainly forgive his crime if the decision lay with us: believing that God will be kind to the wicked, as he has been kind to the good in making them good, we cannot give up the comforting hope that, after the day of retribution, the fratricidal king may find rest. No poet save Goethe thus approaches Shakspeare in the tolerant and emancipated point of view from which he contemplates humanity. On account of this surpassing excellence, some, fired by the restless presumption of their own infirmities, have dared to find fault with Shakspeare; they have blamed him because he has exhibited moral ugliness unveiled, because he was not sufficiently patriotic, and because he seemed more skeptical than was fitting. Imperturbable assurance! As if Shakspeare's far-seeing vision and penetrating insight could anywhere detect inexcusable vice; as if his mighty mind could be fettered by the littleness of skepticism, or could condescend to the selfishness of patriotism! Is it really a matter for regret to any mortal that Shakspeare has not given us the demented twaddle of the Civis Romanus? From the evidence of his sonnets and of different plays-indeed, from the character of Hamlet himself - there can be no doubt that Shakspeare was at one time much tried, disheartened, and oppressed by the harsh experiences of life; he began, doubtless, as many others have done, by thinking life "a Paradise," and found it, as others have done, " only a which the struggle between the feeling of the painful experiences of life and the intellectual appreciation of them as events was actively going on-in which his nature was not yet in harmony with itself; but the crowning development of his philosophy seems to have been to look on all events with a serene and passionless gaze as inevitable effects of antecedent causes-to be nowise moved by the vices of men, and to see in their virtues the evolution of their nature. It is a probable conjecture which has been made, therefore, that Hamlet was sketched out at an earlier period of his life than that at which it was published, and that it was kept by him for some time and much modified, the soliloquies and large generalizations being some of them perhaps thus introduced, and the action of the play thereby delayed. The Hamlet of his youth may thus have been alloyed with a more advanced philosophy, and a character progressively elaborated which seems almost overweighted with intellectual preponderance. If this be so, it may account for the strange circumstance, that at the beginning of the play Hamlet is represented as wishing to go back to school at Wittenberg, when, as the graveyard scene proves, he must have been about thirty years of age. The metaphysician who would gain a just conception of what human freedom is, could scarce do better than study the relations of the human will in the events of life as these are exhibited in the play of "Hamlet." It represents the abstract and brief chronicle of human life, and, faithfully holding the mirror up to nature, it teaches-better than all phi losophical disquisition and minute intro- | answer thee? I will lay mine hand upspective analysis can-how is evolved on my mouth." Well, then, is it for the drama in which human will contests him who learns his limitation, to whom with necessity. Struggle as earnestly the dark horizon of necessity becomes and as constantly as he may, the re- the sunlit circle of duty. 66 flecting mortal must feel at the end of all that he is inevitably what he is; that his follies and his virtues are alike his fate; that there is a divinity which shapes his ends, rough-hew them as he may." Hamlet, the man of thought, may brood over possibilities, speculate on events, analyze motives, and purposely delay action; but in the end he is, equally with Macbeth, the man of energetic action whom the darkest hints of the witches arouse to desperate deeds, drawn on to the unavoidable issue. Mighty, it must be allowed, is the power of human will; that which, to him whose will is not developed, is fate, is, to him who has a well-fashioned will, power-so much has been conquered from necessity, so much has been taken from the devil's territory. The savage prostrates himself, powerless, prayerful, and pitiable, before the flashing lightning; but the developed mortal lays hold of the lightning and makes it a very useful servant; to the former, lightning is a fate against which will is helpless; to the latter, will is a fate against which lightning is helpless. What limit, then, to the power of will, when so much of fate is ignorance? The limit which there necessarily is to the contents of the continent, to the comprehended of that which comprehends it. The unrelenting circle of ne cessity encompasses all: one may go his destined course with tranquil resignation, and another may fume and fret and struggle; but, willing or unwilling, both must go. As the play of "Hamlet" so instructively teaches, notwithstanding all the ingenious refinements of a powerful meditation, the human will is in cluded within the larger sphere of necessity or natural law. The cage may be a larger or a smaller one, but its bars are always there. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Then Job answered and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I Saturday Review. CLEOPATRA." THE entertaining game of whitewashing-or, to use a politer term, rehabilitating-historical characters of doubtful fame is going on merrily. All the cherished monsters and villains of our earlier days are being taken from us one after the other, and soon there will not be a single bugbear left with which to frighten the youthful student of history, and point to him a perceptible moral. Henry VIII. has been deprived of his well-worn reputation for brutality, Richard III. has lost his moral as well as his physical hump, Robespierre's green visage is green no more, Tilly has been transmuted into a respectable war-Christian, the Tiberius of Tacitus has been consigned to limbo, and Nero must henceforth be mentioned with respect. And, now that the supply of male monsters begins to fall short, the turn of the female has come, and one more unfortunate has been added to the list in the person of the ill-used Cleopatra. M. Adolf Stahr, to whose fertile pen we owe this most recent tour de force, is already known as an active and enterprising "rehabilitator." It is impossible to read anything written by him without pleasure; nor has he ever appeared to greater advantage than in his last two publications, forming part of a projected gallery of Pictures from Antiquity. The first of these was a wellsustained vindication of Tiberius as a ruler and a man. It received less attention than it deserved, on account perhaps of the contemporaneous appearance of Mr. Merivale's volumes on the same period of Roman empire, which, upon the whole, treated the character of Tiberius in the same spirit, but with less vehemence and more exhaustiveness of criticism. Both writers, widely different * Cleopatra. Von ADOLF STAHR, Berlin: 1864. in their habits of mind and style, had I ment?" So far from having a word of set themselves to the same task of decent compassion, if not of indignation, weighing the evidence of Tacitus in the for the orator's death, he considers that balance, and pointing out the aspirations to have spared him would have been which his political bias and blinding "superhuman virtue" on the part of prejudice had cast upon a most remark- Antonius, whose most passionate and able man. In this endeavor each, after "most unconscientious " enemy he had his own fashion, succeeded; and M. been. This violent prejudice goes so Stahr was sufficiently delighted with far as to make M. Stahr decry Cicero's the success of his attempt to set to work authority as a literary critic of Antoimmediately upon another popular char- nius' style, by abusing him as a peddling acter of Roman history, which seems to "syllable-monger" (Sylbenstecher.) have particular attractions for his ardent mind. The tone of his book on Cleo patra would be extremely affecting if it were not also slightly ludicrous. M. Stahr throughout speaks of Cleopatra with the vehement gallantry of a champion rescuing a lovely woman in distress; and runs amuck against poor Plutarch and Dio Cassius, and against bookworms and pedants in general, like a Don Quixote armed with a classical dictionary. He never pauses to make the reflection that Cleopatra has not met with so very hard treatment, after all, at the hands of an unfeeling posterity. He will vindicate her fame, and nobody shall prevent him. Probably M. Stahr thinks himself too much a child of nature, and man of the world at the same time, to allow that he belongs to any school of modern historians of Rome. He has, however, adopted most of the shibboleths of the young and lusty school of whom the brilliant Professor Mommsen is the acknowledged chief. The prime articles of their faith are that there was but one Cæsar, that the aristocracy whom he overthrew was a rotten body of selfish impostors, and that its prophet Cicero was the most contemptible impostor of them all. Against the latter view, which is constantly being advanced with an air of the most startling novelty, it is impossible too frequently and too strongly to protest. Cicero was not a strong character, but his assailants have in vain been defied to prove him a disWhat right has M. Stahr to declare Cicero's opinion of the character of Cleopatra's father, Ptolemæus Auletes, worthless, because Cicero was himself "implicated in the dirty intrigues and corruption by which the exiled monarch for years at Rome attempted to bring about his reinstate honest one. But if M. Stahr is as vehement in his hates as he is ardent in his loves, in everything pertaining to criticism of the ancient authorities he affects the judicial calmness of a grammatical commentary. This is the manner of his school, inherited in the first instance from the great father of critical Roman history, Niebuhr. But a master's hand is needed to use the weapon aright. M. Stahr appears to conceive himself gifted with a kind of second-sight in discovering the original sources of the ancient writer's accounts, compared with which Niebuhr's extraordinary hits in that line are mere child's-play. The brilliancy of M. Stahr's discoveries is at first very dazzling, but fades away a little on closer examination. Thus he is anxious to prove the story to be a mere fable, according to which Antonius, after his defeat at Actium, built himself a pier with a palace on it, at Alexandria, and shut himself up inside in gloomy despair-a story adopted by both Drumann and Merivale. To prove the story worthless, it suffices for M. Stahr to point "with tolerable probability" to its source, which he asserts to be the epic poet C. Rabirius, fragments of whose poems De Bello Alexandrino were found at Herculaneum, and from which Seneca quotes the passage: "Hoc habeo, quodcunque dedi." This may or may not be the case; but why is this same Rabirius afterwards quoted as good authority to support M. Stahr's attempt to disprove Cleopatra's betrayal of Pelusium to Octavianus? And this very Rabirius will afford us another instance of M. Stahr's ingenious but transparent method of playing with his authorities. In a note to page 240, a long passage is quoted from this writer, descriptive of Cleopatra's |