I will give him knowledge of that which is to come, and so flood his eyes with light that he shall see God, and penetrate the dark phantoms that fill the world even in the shapes of men. Therefore it was, ye sages of Egypt, that I made choice of the wisdom of Pythagoras and thereafter I have deceived no man, nor been deceived; for what the philosopher should become have I become, all that Wisdom promised to me I have obtained."

Undoubtedly it was the task of Apollonius to cure the world of its evils; but he failed to see that the errors of men sprang not from their philosophy, but from their nature, which no remorse, that is, pervading consciousness of sin, had as yet touched. Yet the very fact that Apollonius should have had a hearing at all in a city so corrupt as Alexandria, is an indication of the change that was going on in the minds of men. That many should believe him to be a divine king was of course natural, though Mr. Newman affirms that he really claimed nothing beyond a fuller insight into nature than others had, referring no part of his power to a Supreme Intelligence. Eunapius says he was a mean between a god and a man, his life being the wandering of a god upon earth. Ammianus Marcellinus classed him with Numa, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plotinus, as among the few whose privilege it had been to be attended by a familiar spirit. Caracalla dedicated to him a temple; and many other temples also were afterwards built in his honor, in which his image was set up, as if his spirit still guided the affairs of men. Alexander Severus put his image by the side of those of Orpheus, Moses, and Christ, in his lararium; while Augustine compared him to Jupiter, much to the advantage of Apollonius in the matter of continence. In modern times, Bayle and Voltaire have endeavored to confound in an equal scepticism the prodigies ascribed to Apollonius, and the miracles recorded of Christ; while others have seen in him only the disciple of Pythagoras or the forerunner of Swedenborg. "Give me, ye gods, that which is due to me," was the ending of all his prayers. "Forgive us that which we owe," was the prayer

of Christ and therein lies all the difference between the true prophet and the false.

VOL. LXXX.-NEW SERIES, VOL. I. NO. I.

3

ART. III. WHITE'S SHAKESPEARE MEMOIRS.

Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare, with an Essay toward the Expression of his Genius; and an Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Drama. BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1865. pp. xi., 425.

NONE of the notices of this book, in the various periodicals, seem to us to have exaggerated its merits; for, although it presents nothing absolutely new relating to the life and times of Shakespeare, it omits nothing, and brings the most authentic information into an agreeable shape. It is written in a clear style, that is seldom eloquent, but never attempts to be so; is almost devoid of rhetorical ambition; flows easily on, and carries the writer's well-considered enthusiasm into the willing mind of the reader. It is a book that never suffers the attention to fall away, so full of all requisite information and artistic feeling is it; so penetrated with the conscientious results of prolonged study, so nice in judgment, so frequently happy in criticism. Mr. White had previously taught us deference for his readings of Shakespeare's lines, and his surmises about their meaning. We expected that the whole literary portion of his task would leave little to be performed by subsequent writers; that here we might find the scanty biographical facts well sifted and arranged, the relation of the plays to the times set forth, the English growth and universal nature of their genius well described. In addition to all this, there is so much insight, such an easy and prompt delineation of Shakespearian characteristics, such nice critical suggestions, particularly in the Essay, that we are proud of the work, welcome it, and rejoice in it as a sound American contribution to the English Shakespearian literature, the best qualities of which it emulates; and if we proceed to notice a point or two upon which we cannot sympathize with Mr. White, and do not hesitate to pronounce out of place in his estimate of Shakespeare, and unworthy of the great prevail

ing excellence of the volume, we still declare the book an honor to him and to American literature. For it is a most encouraging contribution to the perception, not yet many years old, that we have a native literature; that, while we still print English books with the rapacity and callousness of freebooters, we are beginning to excite the same freebooting propensity in the breast of English neutrality, whose privateers find something to prey upon, and worth the while to plunder.

In a thoroughly well-informed notice that appeared in the "Atlantic," Mr. Hudson objected to Mr. White's coloring of the relations between Shakespeare and his wife, and to his explanation, by the influence of London society, of the gradual refinement which all the female characters in the plays betray. We agree with Mr. Hudson, that there is no ground for supposing that the poet was the victim of his first love, and afterwards her hater; and we think, too, that the organic development of his genius, fed by experience of life, and contact with a wider sphere, is a fact of itself quite enough to account for the gradual ennoblement of his women. Their loveliness, purity, and moral grandeur sprang from the brain that teemed with the maturing of its own imagination. These points of dissent, therefore, though they had been marked for notice, we leave in Mr. Hudson's experienced hands.

But we object to Mr. White's elaborate attempt to make Shakespeare seem to have deferred so far to the current social distinctions, as to desire a coat of arms for his father, and to have esteemed the rank of a conventional gentleman as quite equal to the immortal distinction of his genius. There does not appear to us in the plays one trait or allusion that can fasten this vulgarity upon the poet. There is certainly no incident of his life that points to it; nor any collateral circumstance in the poet's family that can be ingeniously tortured to impli cate him in this ridiculous self-depreciation. For when a man, whose soul is filled with truth or beauty, repines at the rewards and satisfactions which his own interior condition furnishes, he depreciates, not only himself, but the divine light that visits him, elects him, gives his name its blazon, and

puts him on the peerage of the world. Literary men, ready writers, men of knacks and talents, may thus suffer; not alone from the too frequent failure of daily comfort, but from the slights and under-estimates of society. They may be mortified when ignorant wealth takes precedence; may be indignant that their own mechanic tact and shrewd invention wins no gentle privileges; may grow disgusted with their trade, and ready to drop it for a contract in army clothing, an old family name, a new suit of fine manners, and admission to the graciousness of well-bred society. They may long for consideration quite as much as for the luxury of a noble behavior in their thinking and their writing, because they may be hacks who want to share the current pay for jobs that are brilliantly performed, and who have nothing but the mental surplus with the moral deficiency, which, in default of a balance at the banker's, form their stock in trade, and their ground of hope for recognition. Such men might be bright enough to make themselves very essential to an editor, or to some dramatic celebrity; and mean enough to expect to preserve social consideration, and a place by the side of true gentlemen, after levying black-mail upon their employer or their friend. But the exigencies of the littérateur should not weight the line that is to be dropped into that deep of invisible satisfaction which atones to a Milton or a Shakespeare for the shallowness of being discovered by a fine society.

Mr. White seems to confound the fact of being a gentleman with the accident of being gauged as such, and accepted; and he also seems to confound, instead of contrasting, the honorable ambition to have a pure and gentle mind with the social negligence to court and recognize it. He says well, that no amount of mental dexterity and insight can atone for the absence of that courtesy of the moral nature which flows into acceptable manners, and recommends a man to the immediate instinct of souls that have the grace, though they may not have the genius. No man is so well gifted, that he can afford not to be on gentlemanly terms with true gentlemen: no woman is so strong in her mind, that she can risk the loss of womanly sympathy, or the instinct of refinement. Both

men and women who cut themselves off from the influence of gentle manners, from the unselfishness of true politeness, from the regards which individuals cherish for each other in a fine circle, defraud their own strength of something that tempers it, keeps it genial, preserves from bitterness, endows with symmetry. Shakespeare had the common sense to admire and cultivate ennobled men and women: but Mr. White represents him as hankering after the nobility; that is, not to be happy with the recognition of his kind, unless he could have also the recognition of a class. In this connection, we find such sentences as these:

"Men of letters, who are also gentlemen, cannot fail to see that distinction in their calling sometimes wins, and justly wins, only an attention different in degree, but not much in kind, from that which is lavished upon a mountebank or a medium. For between what a man can do to amuse, and even to instruct, and what he is, there is great difference."

But if men of letters are also gentlemen, then there is no difference between what they can do and what they are. It is the same as saying that Christian feeling interpenetrates their morals and their intelligence. Why, then, should Mr. White say that such men of letters see that their distinction "justly wins" nothing but a vulgar attention? They do not see it; and it does not really win that, except in circles where no literary gentleman would ever desire to be seen. It is not impossible, that, in New York, literary gentlemen are depreciated and neglected; but he is no gentleman who laments that he fails of recognition by those who are not the kindred of his talent or his heart. There is as much shoddy in the complaint, as in the social causes of it.

Yet we are told that it was for this social consideration that William Shakespeare labored and schemed, — that he, the Stratford fugitive, beloved by poets and scholars, honored by the true courtliness of Raleigh and Southampton, "might return to his native place, and meet Sir Thomas Lucy as a prosperous gentleman." Sir Thomas might well try to circumvent him, then, in that matter of the coat-armor; for it