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antecessiones non ignorat, similitudines comparat, rebusque præsentibus adjungit atque adnectit futuras), facile totius vitæ cursum videt, ad eamque degendam præparat res necessarias.

But did our poet think that 'discourse of reason,' however large,' could avail to remove the depression which arises, but too often, from a sense of unprofitableness, and from a knowledge of sin, both in ourselves and others? No! We have the witness of his last will and testament to the contrary. From that we learn where his hope was fixed. There we read:

First, I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator; hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.

It is in accordance with this Christian hope, this assured belief, that Clarence is made to say to the men who had been sent to murder him in the Tower:

I charge you, as you hope to have redemption,
By Christ's dear blood, shed for our grievous sins,
That you depart, and lay no hands on me.

King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 4.

And again, our blessed Lord is spoken of, in King Richard II. as

The world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son.

Act iv. Sc. I.

And again, in King Henry VI. 2nd Part, as

That dread King that took our state upon Him
To free us from His Father's wrathful curse.

Act iii. Sc. 2.

And in King Henry IV. 1st Part, Palestine is

described as

Those holy fields,

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,
Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross. Act i. Sc. 1.

It is remarkable, too, how fully our poet recognized the glorious truth, which too many, alas! have endeavoured to obscure, viz. that Redemption is no partial gift; that as the disease, which it was mercifully designed to cure, is universal, so the application of the remedy is universal also: according to the teaching of S. Paul, that

As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation—and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. Rom. v. 18 and 12.

The universality of the disease is indicated in Measure for Measure, where the virtuous Isabella thus speaks to Angelo, the wicked Lord Deputy, in the Duke's absence :

Why, all the souls that
And He that might the
Found out the remedy.

Alas! Alas!

are, were forfeit once;
vantage best have took,
How would you be,

If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O think on that;

And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

The common reading is 'were,' which is interpreted to refer to Adam and Eve; but I agree with Warburton in substituting 'are.' To confine the meaning to Adam and Eve, appears to me to render what follows illogical,

The critics-Warburton, Johnson, Malone, and Holt White-have severally offered different explanations of these last words; but I am inclined to think they have all missed the poet's meaning. 'Like man new made,' means, I believe, like man redeemed,* like the redemption of man; and the words are to be understood as put, per epexegesin, in reference to the entire clause in the preceding line. Thus, Isabella says in effect: Your merciful act will be like the mercy shown in the redemption of the world, whereby mankind, lost and condemned to death (as her brother Claudio was), are restored to life.' And so the universality of the remedy will also be implied in those words, as it is plainly stated in these which follow, from King Henry VI. 2nd Part:

Now, by the death of HIM that died for all!

Act i. Sc. 1.

This all-important subject-the extent of evil, and its cure-will receive further elucidation in the next and subsequent sections.

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SECT. 4. Of Human Life, and of The World.

It was worthy of the position which Wolsey had held in church and state, that his voice should be made the instrument, at the close of his career, to recommend, in a few words, all the great points of

* Young, in The Complaint, Night iv., speaks of man 're-made* for redeemed.'

the highest Christian morality, however he himself had fallen short in his own practice of them. I refer to the speech in which he gave his final charge to Cromwell:

Love thyself last. Cherish those hearts that hate* thee.
Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not.
LET ALL THE Ends thou aim'st at be thy couNTRY'S,

THY GOD'S, AND TRUTH'S; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.

King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2.

Here we have duty to God, to our neighbour, to our country; renunciation of self; love of enemies; the practical study of truth, of justice, of integrity, of peaceableness; all these strung together like so many pearls upon one thread, in a manner that may remind us of S. Paul's delineation of charity, or of the summaries of moral duty, which we read in the 12th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and in the concluding chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians.

Nor was it less worthy of the highest officer in a king's household, the Lord Chamberlain Polonius, that in sending forth his son into the world he should thus give him lessons for life; lessons which again may remind us of those given to their respective sons, under circumstances more or less similar,

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• Warburton proposed to read wait,' for reasons which rightly, I think, appeared unsatisfactory to Steevens.

by King James, by Sir Walter Raleigh, by Lord Burleigh, by the Earl of Strafford,* and to his nephew, afterwards Lord Camelford, by the Earl of Chatham :

There-my blessing+ with you ;

[Laying his hand upon Laertes' head.]

And these few precepts in thy memory

Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

Take each man's ‡ censure, but reserve thy judgment.

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Neither a borrower, nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: TO THINE own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell;-my blessing season this in thee!

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3.

In the foregoing injunction respecting hearing and speaking, especially when taken in connection with one which I have not quoted, viz.

Beware of entrance to a quarrel

See K. James' works, and a collection entitled Practical Wisdom, or the Manual of Life, published in 1824.

† See below, Sect. 8.

Opinion.

§ In one of the lines here omitted our poet probably had in view Ecclesiasticus xix. 30, quoted by Mr. Todd.

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