Aristotle, in his distrust of our intelligence and of our knowing what is meant by a thing being entire, has taken the trouble to define the word in his "Poetics":

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'By entire I mean that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which comes first, an end is that which comes last" (the definition is slightly abridged, but nothing essential is left out), "a middle is that which comes between the beginning and the end;" and he judiciously adds, "whatever is beautiful, whether it be an animal or any other thing, composed of different parts, must have those parts arranged in a certain manner, and must also be of a certain magnitude. No very minute animal can be beautiful: the eye comprehending the whole too instantaneously to distinguish and compare the parts; neither can one of prodigious size be beautiful, as, for instance, an animal of many miles in length, as all its parts cannot be seen at once, and the whole, the unity of the object is lost to the spectator."

An animal of many miles in length is an admirable description of " Antony and Cleopatra."

Nor does it present any tragic interest of the highest order; the internal struggle which forms the essence of modern tragedy is not here an eminently ethical one; the battle waged is not between duty and passion, or between two conflicting duties; but is of a far commoner description, the clashing together of the temptations of pleasure and the dictates of self-interest, the voice of mere ordinary prudence.* In giving himself up to Cleopatra, Antony only forfeits the empire of the world, which is of less consequence than losing his soul; from this point of view he is a less tragic hero than Enobarbus.

But the paramount claim of the tragedy to our admiration is the profusion of poetic wealth lavished upon the love of Cleopatra and Antony. Shakespeare is no pedantic and narrow moralist, and delights as much in the creation of Cleopatra, "the ideal of sensual attractiveness," as of Portia, "the ideal of moral loveliness,"

* Kreyssig, "Vorlesungen über Shakespeare," Vol. I., p. 438.

and he has no need, like Milton, of a chorus of Israelite captives to utter invective against the Egyptian Dalila. This serene and placid impartiality, akin to that of the Creator, who makes His sun to shine upon the just and upon the unjust, is Shakespeare's highest glory. And it would be absurd after this, for criticism to assume the airs of a prude in speaking of these two great offenders. Their example can hardly be said to be dangerous, but if any one feels tempted to imitate them, I would only beg of him not to content himself with half measures, but to do the thing thoroughly. Pearls that have cost a few millions, and are absorbed in a single night of revelry, kingdoms and provinces to be "kissed away,"-this is all that is needed. Antony and Cleopatra are, in truth, so completely removed from all ordinary conditions of humanity, "sitting on thrones, outside the circle of the round globe," that we no more think of following them than we do of claiming the liberty of a comet to move in its eccentric orbit.†

Shakespeare, as Professor Dowden has remarked, enforces no moral lesson by means of cold, dry precepts or trite reflections, but he leaves the catastrophe to show us the inevitable end: the splendour of the feast is dimmed by no word of warning, the dancers whirl gaily by, the air is filled with strains of music and the perfume of roses-but we see a hand writing on the wall mysterious words in letters of flame, whereof the meaning is :

"God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it ; "Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting;

"Thy kingdom is divided, and given unto thine enemies."

* Dowden, pp. 313 and following.

† Hudson.

We have now come to "Coriolanus," the third of Shakespeare's Roman tragedies, and the latest in point of date. The intention of the present chapter is simply to analyse the hero's character, and to seek in it the reason and explanation of his fate; for with Shakespeare men are invariably the forgers of their own chains, and are the victims of no other Nemesis than that of their own evil deeds. "Men, at some time, are masters of their fates," says Cassius,

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings."

Although Antony might seek a salve for his vanity by ascribing all his misfortunes to the ascendency of Octavius' star, in sober truth he had none but himself to charge with his ruin.

In the case of Coriolanus, external circumstances, such as the inconstancy of the people and the treacherous conduct of the tribunes, may have palliated his misdeeds in his own eyes, and even to a certain extent may extenuate them in those of posterity; but leaving to another chapter the study of that complex personality, the restless and fickle mob, as also that of the tribunes who excited and led it at their pleasure, our present concern is solely with the moral responsibility of the

violent and haughty patrician, as evidenced by an analysis of his character, and by the tragic story of his life.

Marcius, as he is called before his gallant behaviour at the taking of the town of Corioli gained for him the surname of Coriolanus, makes his entrance upon the scene in the midst of the excited populace, with contemptuous and insulting words upon his lips :

"What would you have, you curs,

That like nor peace, nor war? the one affrights you
The other makes you proud.

Who deserves greatness

Deserves your hate: and your affections are
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil. . . .

Trust ye?

With every minute you do change a mind;
And call him noble that was now your hate,
Him vile that was your garland.”

So far, there is no difficulty in admitting his contempt for the mob, proceeding as it does from a lofty sense of honour and of right. It is no petty pride of caste that vents itself in his burning words, but the pride of a noble nature: the man who thus expresses himself is an aristocrat in the best sense of the word, and we feel that with him the first title to nobility is courage-not the mere bearing of a noble name or coat-of-arms,—and that he would willingly agree with the father of Don Juan, that "birth goes for nothing if valour is absent." But at the same time, he would never go so far with the father of Don Juan as to prefer the honest, worthy son of a porter to a degenerate prince or patrician, for the notion of a porter being worth consideration would never even occur to him. To his mind, all real merit belonged exclusively to the noble classes; and for the common people, one and all, he entertained on principle a supreme contempt. His only feeling towards them

was that of a boundless and outrageously absurd and unjust disdain. For him they were in fact devoid of all rights, natural as well as political; that he should wish to abolish the recently granted office of tribunes was a small matter, he went far beyond this, and would not even recognize their right to live, or to eat "even as dogs must," or to be hungry.

"They said they were an-hungry; sighed forth proverbs,

That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,
That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not
Corn for the rich man only. . . .

Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,

And let me use my sword, I'd make a quarry

With thousands of these quarter'd slaves,

As high as I could pick my lance."

When the pride of birth reaches such an altitude as this, it simply places the speaker outside the circle of humanity, and inevitably lays him open to the retort of the tribune, Junius Brutus :

"You speak o' the people as if you were a god

To punish; not a man of their infirmity." (Act III., Sc. 1.)

These are the two sides, good and bad, of the aristocratic nature of Coriolanus. True valour could alone win his approbation, and a nobleman unworthy of his birth would never find favour in his sight; but he considered this and every other virtue to be the exclusive possession of the patricians, and the only sentiment excited in him by the poorer classes-called by a saintly King of France, the "common people of our Lord"was that of a pitiless and inhuman scorn.

This duality of temperament was greatly fostered by the education he had received from his mother, a Roman matron of a lofty but rigid nature, who kindled a warm and generous spirit in him, but also taught him to call the plebeians—