the chief baker, describes what he had spoken in these words :

Me he restored unto my office, and him he hanged.

Genesis xli. 13.

See also Jerem. i. 10, Ezek. xliii. 3, and elsewhere.
The Roman poet Persius uses the same style :—
Spem macram, supplice voto,

Nunc Licinî in campos, nunc Crassi mittit in ædes.

Of

I will only notice further, that a figure of speech of which S. Paul is fond is also to be met with very frequently in Shakspeare; I mean the figure which grammarians have called Oxymoron. Scriptural examples it may suffice to refer to that sublime passage in the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, which ends thus as having nothing and [yet] possessing all things,' vi. 10. The following may be accepted as a sample of parallel instances to be found in our poet :

Fairest Cordelia, thou art most rich, being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised.

K. Lear, Act i. Sc. 1.

Compare the Duke's speech in Measure for Measure,

quoted above, p. 148.

My long sickness

Of health and living now begins to mend,

And nothing brings me all things.

Timon of Athens, Act v. Sc. 2.

So, too, we have in Cymbeline, iv. 3

Wherein I am false, I am honest;

with which we may compare S. Paul, in the passage of the Bible last referred to, as deceivers and [yet] true.'

Of the same character are the lines in the Merchant of Venice, which Gratiano addresses to Antonio :

You have too much respect upon the world;
They lose it that do buy it with much care.

Act i. Sc. I.

And in Measure for Measure, where Claudio says to the exhortations of the disguised

in

answer

Duke :

To sue to live, I find I seek to die,
And seeking death, find life :

Act iii. Sc. I.

both which passages appear to be founded upon the words of our Lord, recorded by S. Matthew, xvi. 25, 'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.'

Ben Jonson, in his Discoveries (see Works, vol. ix. p. 175) condemns as 'ridiculous' our poet's line, as it stood in the first copy of Julius Cæsar, Act iii. Sc. I:

Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, but with just cause.

It is, however, easily defensible, and, no less than the foregoing quotations from S. Paul and from our Lord Himself, will be readily defended not only by a reverent, but a sound and judicious criticism.

See below, Addit. Illustr., p. 378.

CONCLUSION.

HAVE now gone through the interesting and instructive task which I proposed to

myself; and the conclusion at which I have arrived is this:-Take the entire range of English Literature; put together our best authors, who have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, and we shall not find, I believe, in them all united, so much evidence of the Bible having been read and used, as we have found in Shakspeare alone. This is a phenomenon which admits of being looked at from several points of view; but I shall be content to regard it solely in connection with the undoubted fact that, of all our authors, Shakspeare is also, by general confession, the greatest and the best. According to the testimony of Charles Lamb, a most competent judge in regard to all the literary elements of the question, our poet, 'in his divine mind and manners, surpassed not only the great men his contemporaries, but all mankind.'* Yes; and claiming for him this

* Specimens of Dramatic Poets, Preface, vol. i. p. 7. It is Coleridge who exclaims, 'Merciful, wonder-working Heaven! What a man was this Shakspeare! Myriad-minded indeed he was.' Notes and Lectures, p. 81.

superiority over his contemporaries, I cannot but remark that, while most of the great laymen of that Elizabethan age-Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, the poet Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Burleigh, Ben Jonson-have paid homage to Christianity, if not always in their practice, yet in the convictions of their understanding, and in the profession of their faith, none of them has done this so fully or so effectually as Shakspeare.*

But I may go further. Not a little remarkable is it that those only have disputed the superior merit and excellency of our poet who have also denied the value and authority of Holy Scripture. The disparagement of such judges-I allude especially to Voltaire and David Hume-is an additional confirmation of the otherwise unanimous panegyric with which he has been honoured. It will appear scarcely credible at the present day that the accepted Historian of England, in speaking of England's greatest poet, should have given vent to criticisms such as these:—

A striking peculiarity of sentiment . . . Shakspeare frequently hits; a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. . . . It is in vain we look [in him] for either purity or simplicity of diction. Both he and Ben Jonson were equally deficient in taste and elegance, in harmony and correctness. . . . The English theatre has ever since taken a strong tincture of Shakspeare; and

* There is a remarkable passage in Seward's Preface to his Edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1750, which ends thus: The very best means to restore the British genius to its pristine vigour, and to create other Shakspeares and other Miltons is to promote the study, love, and admiration of the Scriptures. Comp. Mr. Froude, below, p. 360.