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away their brains! that we should with joy, revel, pleasure and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Iago. Why, but you are now well enough. How came you thus recovered?

Cassio. It hath pleased the devil Drunkenness to give place to the devil wrath: one imperfectness shows me another, to make me frankly despise myself. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently† a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.

Act ii. Sc. 3.

The drinking bout had ended in a quarrel, and in the midst of the disturbance, Othello, coming in, exclaims :

Why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this?
Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that
Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?

For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl.

The last line is one of those which make it difficult to believe that Shakspeare had altogether forgotten his schoolboy classics. Surely when he wrote it he was thinking of Horace :

Natis in usum lætitiæ scyphis

Pugnare Thracum est; tollite barbarum
Morem, verecundumque Bacchum
Sanguineis prohibite rixis.

In like manner we are warned against idleness, as the certain mother of all evil, and especially of

* See Ephes. iv. 27.

† Compare what the clown, in Twelfth Night, says of a drunken man: that he is like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman.' Act i. Sc. 5.

Mahometans.

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such sins as are pointed at under this head, in Antony and Cleopatra, where Antony first reflects :

O then, we bring forth weeds

When our quick minds * lie still :—

and next resolves,

I must from this enchanting queen break off:
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch.

Act i. Sc. 2.

Where again it is not impossible that Shakspeare had in mind another Roman poet of high authority in such matters :

Quæritur Ægisthus quare sit factus Adulter?

In promptu causa est ;-desidiosus erat.

But the most impressive lesson in this respect is the picture which our poet draws of the deathbed of one whom he has made the type of a merry, but sensual and ungodly life; and being put into the mouth of a worthless woman (for it could scarcely have been represented otherwise) the description of the scene is made more touching, more melancholy. I allude to Act ii. Sc. 3, in King Henry V. The reader of Burnet, of Evelyn's Memoirs, and of the Life of Bp. Ken, will be at no loss to compare a parallel scene of real life, only exhibited on the most elevated stage and in the highest rank; I allude to the deathbed scene of the Merry Monarch,'

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I prefer this conjecture of Warburton to the reading, winds,' notwithstanding Johnson's explanation.

King Charles II. Truly the end of that mirth is heaviness!' Prov. xiv. 13.

I cannot refrain from adding that as idleness is the root of vice, so diligence, together with the desire of self-improvement* is, under the guidance of Divine grace, the best road to virtue. And this too our poet would teach us, if I do not misinterpret him, in these comprehensive and emphatic words :

Ignorance is the curse of God,

Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

K. Henry VI. 2nd Part, Act iv. Sc. 7.

Or to take only the lower and merely practical view which a heathen could exhibit:

Ni

Posces ante diem librum cum lumine, si non
Intendes animum studiis et rebus honestis,
Invidiâ vel Amore vigil torquebere: –

in other words, with such things as, he leaves us to conclude, are not honest,' not 'virtuous,' not 'of good report.' By invidia' we may understand all those evil affections which belong to the irascible, as by amor' those which belong to the concupiscible part of our nature.

And this admonition, important at all times, is especially needful for the young. Hence, it is with good reason that Laertes warns his sister Ophelia :

* See the speech of Hamlet quoted above, p. 129.

In the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent:

Be wary then.

Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 2.

Nor can we doubt of the good fruit which will follow in after life from such self-control and selfcultivation; for, as Iago testifies

"Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus.* Our bodies are our gardens; to the† which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it steril with idleness or manured with industry-why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. Othello, Act i. Sc. 3.

Lastly, in speaking of the cultivation of the body, let us not forget-especially in days when no bounds are set to the adorning of the person and to extravagance in dress :

"Tis the mind that makes the body rich;

And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,

So honor peereth in the meanest habit.

Taming of the Shrew, Act iv. Sc. 3.

SECT. 11. Of Justice and Honesty.

II.

We are told in Measure for Measure of a certain 'sanctimonious pirate that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one-the eighth-out of the Table,' Act i. Sc. 2. Thou shalt not steal was a

See above, p. 143.

† See above, p. 19.

commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions.' I am afraid that conduct similar in effect to this pirate's is still only too common-among landsmen; as we may conclude it was in Shakspeare's day. To be honest, as this world goes,' says Hamlet* to Polonius, 'is to be one man picked out of ten thousand,' Act ii. Sc. 2. And in Timon of Athens, it is the remark of one of the three strangers, that' Policy sits above conscience,' Act iii. Sc. 2. And yet how often have we been taught, in regard not only to dishonest and unjust but to harsh and ungenerous treatment of others, that with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again!' Matt. vii. 2.

Measure for measure must be answered.

Henry VI. 3rd Part, Act ii. Sc. 6. Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure. Measure for Measure, Act v. Sc. 1.

We know that even heathen moralists, such as Cicero, regarded illiberality as a species of injustice ; and though we have a proverb which bids us to be just before we are generous, yet we also know that, as Christians, we can never be said to be truly just, until we are also really bountiful. It is the twofold stigma of prodigality that it has a direct tendency, by disabling us from giving, to make us unjust both towards God and towards man. Hence it is that while the duty of a charitable temper and disposition

See above, p. 137.

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