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And again, with the addition that such deceitful disguises are most used when the worst temptations are to be practised, in Othello :

When devils will their blackest sins put on,

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.

Act ii. Sc. 3.

But the Scripture quoted above is alluded to still more expressly in another passage, where our poet applies it to abandoned women, whom the Devil instigates, while they act as tempters, and do his work by the destruction which they bring upon body and soul:—

It is written, they appear to men like Angels of light.
Comedy of Errors, Act iv. Sc. 3.

Once more, the Satanical artifice by which a partial statement of truth may be made subservient to the introduction of deadly error is thus exhibited:

Oftentimes to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us

In deepest consequence.

Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 3.

SECT. 3. Of God's Goodness in Creation, and in the Redemption of Man.

How comprehensive is the view which our poet has taken of the goodness of creation in all its stages, from the composition of the simplest herb up to the crowning work of all--the soul of man!

And how natural the transition from the rising of day out of night, of light out of darkness, to the reproduction of all things out of the earth, to which they fall and sink as into a grave! How just, also, and how Scriptural, the representation, that though all things were made 'very good' by their Creator, His creature, man, has the power of perverting them to evil, and will abuse that power, or will keep it in subjection, according as he follows the guiding of his own free but corrupted will, which brought death into the world, or obeys the dictates of conscience and of the Spirit of grace! I allude to the scene in Romeo and Juliet, before Friar Laurence's cell, where the friar, entering with a basket, thus soliloquizes:

The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night,
Checking the Eastern clouds with streaks of light;

*

And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels,

From forth day's path, and Titan's fiery wheels:

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Was our poet indebted here to that bold figure of the prophet Isaiah, The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage?'—xxiv. 20.

Now ere the sun advance his burning eye,

The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry,
I must fill up this osier cage of ours

With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.
The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb;

* Spotted, streaked.

What is her burying-grave, that is her womb;
And from her womb children of divers kinds
We, sucking on her natural bosom find;
Many for many virtues excellent,

None but for some, and yet all different.
O! mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities;
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live,
But to the earth* some special good doth give.
Nor aught so good, but strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometimes by action dignified :-

i. e. by the manner, or circumstances in which it is done. We must remember that a Franciscan Friar is speaking; but our poet might have had in mind cases like that of Jacob deceiving his father, or Jael killing Sisera :—

Within the infant rind of this small flower,
Poison hath residence, and medicine power;

For this, being smelt, with that part† cheers each part,
Being tasted, slugs all senses with the heart.
Two such opposed foes encamp them still
In man as well as herbs-grace and rude will:
And where the worser is predominant,
Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.

Act ii. Sc. 3.

What a depth of theological truth lies in this last couplet! It is the teaching of S. Paul—‹ If ye live after the flesh,' the póvnua σapxòs-the rude

* i. e. To the inhabitants of the earth.

ti. e. The sense that smells.

will—'ye shall die,' Rom. viii. 13; and of S. James, when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death,' i. 15; doctrine which our poet again delivers in King Henry IV. 2nd Part:

The time shall come, that foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption.
Act iii. Sc. I.

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But to continue the subject more immediately before us. There are times when the sight of all this goodness and beauty of creation, and even the contemplation of man himself, so fearfully and wonderfully made,' has no sufficient power to remove the weight which presses upon the mind; and in such a mood was Hamlet, when he testified at once to the excellency of what we see above us and around us, and still more of what we ourselves are, and at the same time to the inability of all to give his spirit the relief it sought :

Indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a steril promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave* o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man!+ How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Fine. See above, Pt. I. ch. ii. p. 32.

+ Comp. Act iii, Sc. 2, where Hamlet speaks to the players.

And why was this? It was from the knowledge of sin, which had marred all.

There had been

A foul defacer of God's handiwork,*

And

as Queen Margaret calls the wicked King Richard III. in the play so named, Act iv. Sc. 4. Hamlet knew full well that not only the commission of crime, but the unprofitable employment of our existence, is a contravention of the purpose for which we were created. Hear what he says in a

later scene:

What is a man,

If his chief good, and market† of his time
Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure, HE that made us with such large discourse—
Looking before, and after-gave us not

That capability and god-like reason,

To fust in us unused.

Act iv. Sc. 4.

Our poet's meaning in the use of the word 'discourse' in this passage may be seen by an expression which occurs before, viz. in Act i. Sc. 2

O! heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer.

And I know of no better explanation of the word in this sense than that which may be gathered from Cicero de Officiis, lib. i. c. 4:—

Homo autem, quod rationis est particeps (per quam consequentia cernit, causas rerum videt, earumque progressus et quasi

A line omitted by Mr. Bowdler, most needlessly. + Profit.

Grow mouldy.
K

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