Truly, therefore, is it said by Helena to the King of France :

It is not so with HIM THAT ALL THINGS KNOWS,
As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;
But most it is presumption in us, when

The help of Heaven we count the act of men.

All's Well that Ends Well, Act ii. Sc. 1.

Justly, too, does Hermione express her confidence when falsely accused :

If powers divine

Behold our human actions, as they do,

I doubt not then but innocence shall make
False accusation blush, and tyranny

Tremble at patience.

Winter's Tale, Act iii. Sc. 2.

Nor was it without reason that Laertes, seeing and hearing proofs of the madness of his sister Ophelia, appealed to the divine compassion:

Do you see this, O GOD?

Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5.

Nor, again, that Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Edward IV., after the murder of her children, the two young Princes in the Tower, should thus expostulate:

Wilt thou, O GOD, fly from such gentle lambs,
And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?

When did'st Thou sleep, when such a deed was done?

K. Richard III., Act iv. Sc. 4.

Nor, once more, that Queen Katharine should protest against the two Cardinals who had lent them

selves to accomplish her divorce from King Henry

VIII. :

Ye have angels' faces; but Heaven knows your hearts.

K. Henry VIII., Act iii. Sc. 1.

It may be that the striking description of Divine Providence, which we read in Troilus and Cressida, is pitched too high for heathen characters (a subject of which I shall have occasion to speak presently), but if admissible there at all, it could not be better placed than it is in the mouth of Ulysses :

The providence that's in a watchful state
Find: bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps;
Keep: place with thought, and almost, like the gods,
Does houghts unveil in their dumb cradles.*

Act iii. Sc. 3.

In a note upon this passage, Mr. Henley asks, 'Is there not here some allusion to the sublime description of the Divine Omnipresence in the 139th Psalm ?' However this question may be answered, there will be no doubt it other passages that our poet's views of the providence, goodness, and justice of God were drawn directly from Holy Scripture. Thus, where Hamlet says

There is a pecial providence in the fall of a sparrow—

Act v. Sc. 2.

we cannot doubt of the poet's allusion to our Lord's words :

Are not two sparrovs sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. Matt. x. 29.

*To be pronounced, probably, as a trisyllable.

Nor again, where good old Adam, in As you like it, says to Orlando

can we fail to perceive that our poet had in mind both the Psalmist and the Evangelist; the Psalmist, who writes of GOD, that

He feedeth the young ravens that call upon Him

Ps. cxlvii. 9. (Prayer Book version).

and the Evangelist, who records our Lord's words:

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeden them.

Matt. vi. 26.

From such an image it was an easy step for one with Shakspeare's imagination to moralze as he does in the following lines, spoken by King Henry VI. to the Duke of Gloster :

But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,
And what a pitch she flew above the est!

To see how God in all His creatures works!

Yea, man and birds are fain* of climling high.

K. Henry VI., 2nd Part, Act ii. Sc. 1.

And equally easy was it for a mind of Shakspeare's versatility to make a wicked man pply conversely the doctrine of God's goodness in His general pro

* Fond.

vidence, as does King Richard III.-the doctrine, I mean, which we read also in the Sermon on the Mount, that our heavenly Father

maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Matt. v. 45.

K. Rich. Then he disdains to shine; for, by the book,

He should have brav'd the east an hour ago:

A black day will it be to somebody.

Ratcliff,

Ratc. My lord?

K. Rich. The sun will not be seen to-day!
The sky doth frown and lour upon our army.
I would these dewy tears were from the ground.
Not shine to-day! Why, what is that to me,
More than to Richmond? for the self-same Heaven
That frowns on me, looks sadly upon him.

K. Richard III., Act v. Sc. 3.

In like manner, as the Bible teaches us that 'God is no respecter of persons,' Acts x. 34; that He 'accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor, for they all are the work of His hands,' Job xxxiv. 19; so our poet represents the same truth alike in graceful verse and vigorous

prose:

Perdita. I was not much afeard: for once, or twice,

I was about to speak, and tell him plainly,

The self-same sun that shines upon his court,

Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike.

Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 3.

K. Henry (in disguise). Though I speak it to you, I think the king is but a man, as I am: The violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man. King Henry V., Act iv. Sc. 1.

But this assertion of the general providence and common goodness of God, as we find them asserted in Scripture, does not prevent our poet from appealing confidently to the Divine Justice,* as an unerring arbiter and maintainer of the right. Thus Elizabeth, Queen of King Edward IV., avows,

Just is God, to right the innocent.

King Richard III., Act i. Sc. 2.

Again, it is in the spirit in which Laban said to Jacob,

See, God is witness betwixt me and thee-Gen. xxxi. 50,

that Malcolm says to Macduff :—

God above

Deal between thee and me.

Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 3.

And the double lesson which is taught in the following passage, viz., that kings are not to be deposed by their subjects,† and that, acting rightly, we may depend upon the Divine protection, is in both respects plainly Scriptural, and therefore true; though in neither case so as to forbid qualification, or exclude exception.

See below, p. 113, and Sect. 5.

+ See below, Sect. 15.