the multiplicity of things which the world sets before it. Thus, too, will something like a balance and order be upheld, and our minds be preserved from that exaggeration on the one side, and depreciation on the other side, which are the sure results of exclusiveness. A poet, for instance, should have much of the philosopher in him; not, indeed, thrusting itself forward at the surface-this would only make a monster of his work, like the Siamese twins, neither one thing nor two-but latent within the spindle should be out of sight, but the web should be spun by the Fates. A philosopher, on the other hand, should have much of the poet in him. A historian cannot be great without combining the elements of the two minds. A statesman ought to unite those of all the three. A great religious teacher, such as Socrates, Bernard, Luther, Schleiermacher, needs the statesman's practical power of dealing with men and things, as well as the historian's insight into their growth and purpose. He needs the philosopher's ideas, impregnated and impersonated by the imaginations of the poet. In like manner our graver faculties and thoughts are much chastened and bettered by a blending and interfusion of the lighter, so that "the sable cloud" may "turn her silver lining on the night;" while our lighter thoughts require the graver to substantiate them and keep them from evaporating. Thus Socrates is said, in Plato's Banquet, to have maintained that a great tragic poet ought likewise to be a great comic poet: an observation the more remarkable, because the tendency of the Greek mind, as at once manifested in their Polytheism, and fostered by it, was to insulate all its ideas; and as it were, to split up the intellectual world into a cluster of Cyclades; whereas the appetite of union and fusion, often leading to confusion, is the characteristic of modern times. The combination, however, was realised in himself, and in his great pupil; and may, perhaps, have been so to a certain extent in Eschylus, if we may judge from the fame of his satyric dramas. At all events the assertion, as has been remarked more than once, for instance by Coleridge (Remains, ii., 12),—is a wonderful prophetical intuition, which has received its fulfilment in Shakspere. No heart would have been strong enough to hold the woe of Lear and Othello, except that which had the unquenchable clasticity of Falstaff and the Midsummer Night's Dream.' He, too, is an example that the perception of the ridiculous does not necessarily imply bitterness and scorn. Along with his intense humour, and his equally intense piercing insight into the darkest most fearful depths of human nature, there is still a spirit of universal kindness, as well as universal justice, pervading his works; and Ben Jonson has left us a precious memorial of him, where he calls him "My gentle Shakspere." This one epithet sheds a beautiful light on his character: its truth is attested by his wisdom, which could never have been so perfect unless it had been harmonised by the gentleness of the dove. A similar union of the graver and lighter powers is found in several of Shakspere's contemporaries, and in many others among the greatest poets of the modern world; in Boccaccio, in Cervantes, in Chaucer, in Göthe, in Tieck; so was it in Walter Scott.

213.-THE PAGE'S SCENES IN PHILASTER.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

[THE Page's Scenes in Philaster' have been held unsurpassed in tender delicacy. It is difficult to quote a scene or scenes from Beaumont and Fletcher, without being offended by some inherent grossness, which is here happily wanting. The date of the first play of these dramatists is 1607. Francis Beaumont was born in 1586, and died in 1815. John Fletcher was born in 1576, and died in 1625.]

The story of Philaster' is that of a rightful heir to a throne falling in love with the daughter of the usurper. Their affection is disturbed by jealousies excited by a designing woman, and encouraged by the tyrannical king, but the lovers are finally happy and triumphant.

The Page is a lady in disguise, in love with Philaster. Charles Lamb says, “For many years after the date of Philaster's first exhibition on the stage, scarce a play can be found without one of these women pages in it, following in the train of some pre-engaged lover, calling on the gods to bless her happy rival."

Philaster tells the princess Arethusa how his page became known to him:—

Philaster. I have a boy sent by the gods,

Not yet seen in the court; hunting the buck,
I found him sitting by a fountain-side,

Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst,
And paid the nymph again as much in tears;
A garland lay him by, made by himself,
Of many several flowers, bred in the bay,
Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness
Delighted me: but ever when he turn'd
His tender eyes upon them, he would weep,
As if he meant to make them grow again.
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, I ask'd him all his story;
He told me that his parents gentle died,
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,

Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs,
Which did not stop their courses; and the sun,
Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light.
Then took he up his garland and did show,
What every flower, as country people hold,
Did signify; and how all, order'd thus,

Expressed his grief: and to my thoughts did read
The prettiest lecture of his country art

That could be wished; so that, methought, I could
Have studied it. I gladly entertain’d him,

Who was as glad to follow; and have got

The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy,

That ever master kept.

Bellario, the page, is told by Philaster that he has preferred him to the service of the princess:

Phi. And thou shalt find her honourable, boy;

Full of regard unto thy tender youth,

For thine own modesty; and, for my sake,

Apter to give than thou wilt be to ask, ay, or deserve.
Bellario. Sir, you did take me up when I was nothing.

And only yet am something by being yours;

You trusted me unknown; and that which you are ap
To construe a simple innocence in me,

Perhaps might have been craft, the cunning of a boy
Harden'd in lies and theft; yet ventured you

To part my miseries and me: for which

I never can expect to serve a lady

That bears more honour in her breast than you.

Phi. But, boy, it will prefer thee; thou art young,
And bear'st a childish overflowing love

To them that clap thy cheeks and speak thee fair yet.
But when thy judgment comes to rule those passions

Thou wilt remember best those careful friend

That placed thee in the noblest way of life:

She is a princess I prefer thee to.

Bell. In that small time that I have seen the world

I never knew a man hasty to part

With a servant he thought trusty; I remember,

My father would prefer the boys he kept

To greater men than he, but did it not
Till they were grown too saucy for himself.
Phi. Why, gentle boy, I find no fault at all
In thy behaviour.

Bell. Sir, if I have made

A fault of ignorance, instruct my youth;
I shall be willing, if not apt, to learn.
Age and experience will adorn my mind
With larger knowledge; and if I have done
A wilful fault, think me not past all hope
For once; what master holds so strict a hand
Over his boy, that he will part with him
Without one warning? Let me be corrected
To break my stubbornness if it be so,
Rather than turn me off, and I shall mend.

Phi. Thy love doth plead so prettily to stay,
That (trust me) I could weep to part with thee.
Alas, I do not turn thee off; thou knowest
It is my business that doth call thee hence;

And when thou art with her thou dwell'st with me:
Think so, and 'tis so; and when time is full,
That thou hast well discharged this heavy trust
Laid on so weak a one, I will again

With joy receive thee; as I live, I will;

Nay, weep not, gentle boy; 'tis more than time

Thou didst attend the princess.

Bell. I am gone;

But since I am to part with you, my lord,

And none knows whether I shall live to do

More service for you, take this little prayer;
Heaven bless your loves, your fights, all your designs.
May sick men, if they have your wish, be well;
And Heaven hate those you curse, though I be one.
Phi. The love of boys unto their lords is strange:

I have read wonders of it: yet this boy,

For my

sake (if a man may judge by looks

And speech), would outdo story. I may see

A day to pay him for his loyalty.

[Exit

There is also a fine scene in which Philaster, who has become jealous of Bellario, discharges him. At length the page throws off her disguise, and confesses the motive of her conduct:

My father would oft speak

Your worth and virtue, and as I did grow
More and more apprehensive, I did thirst
To see the man so praised, but yet all this

Was but a maiden longing, to be lost

As soon as found, till, sitting in my window,
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates;
My blood flew out, and back again as fast
As I had put it forth, and suck'd it in
Like breath; then was I call'd away in hast
To entertain you. Never was a man
Heav'd from a sheep-cot to a sceptre, raised
So high in thoughts as I; you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever; I did hear you talk
Far above singing; after you were gone,
I grew acquainted with my heart, and search'
What stirr'd it so. Alas! I found it love,
Yet far from lust, for could I have but lived
In presence of you, I had had my end.
For this I did delude my noble father
With a feign'd pilgrimage, and drest myself
In habit of a boy, and, for I knew

My birth no match for you, I was past hope
Of having you. And understanding well,
That when I made discovery of my sex
I could not stay with you, I made a vow
By all the most religious things a maid
Could call together, never to be known,

Whilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes,
For other than I seem'd; that I might ever

Abide with you: then sate I by the fount

Where first you took me up.

King. Search out a matcn

Within our kingdom, where and when thou wilt,

And I will pay thy dowry; and thyself

Wilt well deserve him.

Bell. Never, Sir, will I

Marry; it is a thing within my vow

But if I may have leave to serve the princess,

To see the virtues of her lord and her,

I shall have hope to live.

214.-ON THE INHERENT PLEASURE OF THE VIRTUOUS, AND MISERY OF THE VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.

CHALMERS.

[THE following is from Dr. Chalmers's Bridgewater Treatise, 'The Adaptation of external Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man.']

There is a felt satisfaction in the thought of having done what we know to be right; and, in counterpart to this complacency of self-approbation, there is a felt discomfort, amounting often to bitter and remorseful agony, in the thought of having done what conscience tells us to be wrong. This implies a sense of the rectitude of what is virtuous. But, without thinking of its rectitude at all, without viewing it in reference either to the law of conscience or the law of God, with no regard to jurisprudence in the matter, there is, in the virtuous affection itself another

and a distinct enjoyment. We ought to cherish and to exercise benevolence; and there is a pleasure in the consciousness of doing what we ought: but beside this moral sentiment, and beside the peculiar pleasure appended to benevolence as moral, there is a sensation in the merely physical affection of benevolence; and that sensa tion, of itself, is in the highest degree pleasurable. The primary or instant gratification which there is in the direct and immediate feeling of benevolence is one thing: the second or reflex gratification which there is in the consciousness of benevolence as moral is another thing. The two are distinct of themselves; but the contingent union of them, in the case of every virtuous affection, gives a multiple force to the conclusion, that God is the lover, and, because so, the patron or the rewarder, of virtue. He hath so constituted our nature, that in the very flow and exercise of the good affections there shall be the oil of gladness. There is instant delight in the first conception of benevolence; there is sustained delight in its continued exercise; there is consummated delight in the happy, smiling, and prosperous result of it. Kindness, and honesty, and truth, are of themselves, and irrespective of their rightness, sweet unto the taste of the inner man. Malice, envy, falsehood, injustice, irrespective of their wrongness, have, of themselves, the bitterness of gall and wormwood. The Deity hath annexed a high mental enjoyment, not to the consciousness only of good affections, but to the very sense and feeling of good affections. However closely these may follow on each other-nay, however implicated or blended together they may be at the same moment into one compound state of feeling-they are not the less distinct, on that account, of themselves. They form two pleasurable sensations, instead of one; and their opposition, in the case of every virtuous deed or virtuous desire, exhibits to us that very concurrence in the world of mind which obtains with such frequency and fulness in the world o. matter, affording, in every new part that is added, not a simply repeated only, but a vastly multiplied evidence for design, throughout all its combinations. There is a pleasure in the very sensation of virtue; and there is a pleasure attendant on the sense of its rectitude. These two phenomena are independent of each other. Let there be a certain number of chances against the first in a random economy of things, and also a certain number of chances against the second. In the actual economy of things, where there is the conjunction of both phenomena, it is the product of these two numbers which represents the amount of evidence afforded by them, for a moral government in the world, and a moral governor over them.

In the calm satisfactions of virtue, this distinction may not be so palpable as in the pungent and more vividly felt disquietudes which are attendant on the wrong affections of our nature. The perpetual corrosion of that heart, for example, which frets in unhappy peevishness all the day long, is plainly distinct from the bitterness of that remorse which is felt, in the recollection of its harsh and injurious outbreakings on the innocent sufferers within its reach. It is saying much for the moral character of God, that he has placed a conscience within us, which adminis ters painful rebuke on every indulgence of a wrong affection. But it is saying still more for such being the character of our Maker, so to have framed our mental constitution that, in the very working of these bad affections, there should be the painfulness of a felt discomfort and discordancy. Such is the make or mechanism of our nature, that it is thwarted and put out of sorts by rage, and envy, and hatred ; and this irrespective of the adverse moral judgments which conscience passes upon them. Of themselves, they are unsavoury; and no sooner do they enter the heart, than they shed upon it an immediate distillation of bitterness. Just as the placid smile of benevolence bespeaks the felt comfort of benevolence: so, in the frown and tempest of an angry countenance, do we read the unhappiness of that man who is vexed and agitated by his own malignant affections, eating inwardly, as they do, on