therefore was Octavius to be raised to the empire of the world. But even in other circumstances it requires-what is itself action— moderation, prudence, and forethought. Whoever does not possess these qualities, whether like Antony he is unable to command himself, or like Lepidus with the sceptre in his hand sleeps off his drunken debauches, or dreaming of the crocodiles of Egypt, or, like Sextus Pompeius hopes by a sentiment to leap at once into the empire of the world,—must keep aloof from the machinery of the history, or else it will but draw him in to crush him to pieces. This wellknown but widely neglected lesson, which all history, and all historical dramas, loudly proclaim, pervades every part of "Antony and Cleopatra" as its leading and fundamental idea. History is here again depicted in its unlimited power; but at the same time we are taught that even because it is thus despotic, it requires of the ministers of its development that they should be men energetic of will and deed, and above all else, moderate, forecasting, and self-possessed.

The same theme is re-echoed in the fall of Enobarbus and Fulvia. In their lives and characters they stand in the same relation to Octavia, Mecænas, and Agrippa, as Antony does to Octavius. But Cleopatra, the spotted and slimy "serpent of old Nile" the representative of a corrupt oriental luxury, which has already made its inroads on the Roman world-raised so high by her grace and beauty, her talents and her wit-so womanish and yet so unwomanly-she who clothes all her inmost purposes, and yet thinks with mere outward clothing, with paint and spangles, to cheat history-she pays the penalty of her temerity which hurried her out of the nursery and boudoir into the council-chamber, and into the midst of wars and battles. With all her shrewdness and cunning, she is as little possessed of true prudence as of moderation, and all her machinations are frustrated by the cool, calculating Octavius. Before the tribunal of history he gains his cause, simply because he has more of intrinsic moral rectitude on his side. He is no doubt ambitious and greedy of power, but so also are his opponents. The moderation, however, which he alone possesses is the first principle of virtue, since in its truth it involves self-control. And because history, in its ultimate end reaches far beyond this earthly existence, it demands of man before all things

the controul of himself, in order that when he shall have stripped off his earthly body, he may be fit and able to live in another and better world.

And yet how poor does Octavius appear in this his meagre virtue, and which, when he employs it for the sole purpose of his own earthly aggrandizement, sinks at once into mere worldly cunning. In his character, as laid open to us by Shakspeare, we already read the whole story of his long unworthy life—those arts of the actor-the tacks and doubles with which he sought to steer in safety, through the troubled waves of the times, the ship of state freighted with the precious burthen of his own ascendancy. Like history, true poetry exhibits the future in the present; while it paints the earthly success which accompanies historical justice, it yet lays bare the foul worm-eaten kernel of such prosperity, when in its motives and feelings it rises not above earth. The real victory, therefore, rests neither with Antony nor with Augustus: tried by a higher standard, both alike are in the wrong. But the degraded Roman people could no longer endure sterling justice and truth. The great and noble-minded Julius falls to make room for the little and mean-spirited Augustus. Such is the tragic fate of man, to which his own sinfulness has doomed him, and out of which God's grace alone can deliver him. In this, therefore, as in all his other pieces, the ground-idea of the single drama thus rises to the universal historical view of the world itself.

To judge from the language and characters, "Julius Cæsar" and "Antony and Cleopatra" were beyond doubt written about the same time as "Coriolanus." "Antony and Cleopatra" is entered at Stationers' Hall as early as 2nd May, 1608, although the oldest impression bears the date of 1620. It was therefore written in all probability in 1607; and we may suppose that Shakspeare was led to treat the subject by the composition of Julius Cæsar, which on the other hand was perhaps occasioned by a piece of Lord Sterline's, printed in 1607, but written in all likelihood two years earlier. (Malone, Reed, ii. 348). The "Julius Cæsar," consequently, may be placed in 1606-7. In this date, Malone, Chalmers, Drake, and Tieck, all agree.

We come now to the second cycle, which consists of English histories, and the King John, with its deep and pregnant mean

ing, at once arrests our attention. This in more than one respect is not merely the prologue to, but the very basis of, the whole cycle. As in "Coriolanus" the ancient political life is depicted in its principal aspect, relatively to the family bond as its foundation, so here we have an immediate view opened to us into the essentially different idea of christian politics. The ancient polity—as it had grown out of the natural bond of domestic life, and was itself nothing more than the family union-established and organised by law, to fulfil its idea and intention, ought to have exhibited on its more enlarged sphere, and in a general, legally constituted, and settled form, what the family was in a narrower circle, and in a concrete, indefinite, and undeveloped state. All conflict between the rights of the family and the state ought to have disappeared before it. In other words, the natural man ought to establish in the state, with conscious clearness and definiteness, and in the form of a fixed organic constitution, that order of his existence which, in the family union, is presented immediately, and in a form as yet vague and unevolved. This is the idea of the ancient state; and it appears to have been realised in the palmy times, however brief, of the Roman republic. The Christian state is very different. It rests not ou man's mere natural existence, or on any order conformable to nature alone. On the contrary, whatever is purely natural in man has been destroyed by Christianity, and its place supplied by the divine-human; and consequently a divine is substituted for a mere natural order; and as the divine-human-the union, that is, of man with God-is man's true destination, it must also be the basis and fundamental principle not only of his whole life but of its form also. We may therefore say, that in a Christian state the place of the family union is taken by the religious community, i.e. by the Church, as the ground and principle of its development. This immediate concrete, intrinsic, and free combination of individuals into one organic body pervaded by the Holy Spirit-in other words, a whole which immediately exhibits the union of God with humanity-must in the state also exhibit itself as such an union, passing through and brought about by all the conditions of earthly existence, and consequently fully evolved and legally established, and assuming an external form. As religion, in its Christian sense, is the inmost ground of all morality, which is but its outward

manifestation, so the Church is the inherent basis and substance of the state, which is but the copy and impression of the ecclesiastical union. Or in the same way that faith and certainty are related to each other, the former being the immediate inward concrete vitality of religious consciousness, the latter the same science of the same subject-matter, but which as having passed through all the relation of earthly existance, both within itself and to God, admits of deduction and development; even so the Church is immediately, intrinsically, and concretely, what the state exhibits in an organic and well developed form. Not that I would be understood to mean that the Church is invisible only; on the contrary, it is, and by its very nature ought to be, visible also. But still, outwardness is non-essential to it-a means merely of its realization; while on the contrary it is the most essential feature of the state-in short, its final aim.

As then, in "Coriolanus," the state appears in conflict with its principle-the ties and duties of the family-so King John exhibits the struggle between the christian state and its foundation, which is the Church. This conflict is shown primarily in the conduct and character of John himself, which is nothing but an endless struggle between his better feelings, on the one hand, and the arrogance and pretensions of his earthly sovereignty, on the other. His mind is never at peace within itself; and naturally weak, he falls into the grossest inconsistencies and want of principle. The defect in his title to the crown, and his own weakness, lead to dissensions within, and perpetual aggressions from without. In vain has he recourse to treachery and murder to hedge in his usurped majesty, and to suppress the growing demands of the commons and barons, or to resist the attacks of France and the Papacy. But not the State alone, but the Church also, is corrupt and rotten at the core. The political element is immoral, selfish, and encroaching, and, consequently, is loosened from its proper foundation; the ecclesiastical body seeks for nothing but external splendour, influence, and power; mistaking entirely its true and essential vocation, it degrades itself as low as the civil body by its intrigues and dissimulation. Cardinal Pandulph is the most correct delineation of a corrupt priest that poet ever painted. Accordingly, neither the Church nor the State gain by the quarrel; the whole

benefit falls to the nobles and the people, who, comparatively speaking, are as yet morally and politically sound. The representative of the latter is Faulconbridge, the bastard son of the Lionhearted Richard. He is the most independent character throughout the whole piece; and this advantage he owes to his birth, which connects him at once with the royal family, and with the people. His motives are of the very purest-patriotism and knightly honour; he therefore can dare to speak the truth with impunity, and he utters it with that overflowing fulness of humour which energetic and noble minds always have most at command. He rescues England from the deadly consequences of civil strife, as well as from the fangs of France and the Popedom. The apparently inferior and subordinate power of knight and citizen rises superior to the influence of the mightiest potentates, simply because it has on its side morality and manliness. This is the eternal lesson which the history of the world is ever teaching. The final result of these entanglements and quarrels, amidst which, however, the grace of God manifests itself, is the independence of the English nation, established from within by the hard-won bulwark of its rights, Magna Charta, and from without by its victory over France and the papal aggressions. Thus does the poet, in "King John,” exhibit modern history in that aspect of its relation between Church and State, which is as essential, as it is peculiar, to it. Indeed the fundamental idea of the whole piece seems to be conveyed in its closing lines, delivered by Faulconbridge :

"This England never did, (nor never shall,)

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.

Now these, her princes are come home again,

Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true."

For this truth to herself, this concord, can only be preserved when the state is pervaded by the ecclesiastical, and the church by the political spirit, i. e. when both are animated by the pure spirit of Christian morality.

The fortunes, the actions and sufferings of all the subordinate personages, are naturally affected and determined by the course of