Queen, in King Richard II., says to the Duke of York,

For Heaven's sake, speak comfortable words;

he replies in language which many passages of the Bible fully justify:

Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts;

Comfort's in heaven: and we are on the earth,
Where nothing lives but crosses, care, and grief. '

Act ii. Sc. 2.

And yet we must not be impatient to quit this scene of trial, so long as our remaining here may tend in any way to promote God's glory, or to be serviceable to our fellow men. Shakspeare, from the mouth of Hamlet, will teach us this, after the measure of the wisdom and the love of this world; but we must go to the Bible, and sit at the feet of S. Paul, if we would learn it more perfectly.

The dying Prince of Denmark speaks to his friend Horatio :

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

Act v. Sc. 2.

The great apostle of the Gentiles, in bondage at Rome, writes to his Philippian converts :

I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. Phil. i. 23, 24.

Meanwhile may our names be written in the Book of Life!' This expression, which is used

frequently by S. John in the Revelation, and once by S. Paul, Phil. iv. 3, could only have occurred to one who had often in his hand the sacred volume, which is to us in this world the Book of Life.' We find it in King Richard II. The speaker is Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk :

No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the Book of Life,
And I from heaven banished, as from hence!

Act i. Sc. 3.

CHAPTER III.

Of the Poetry of Shakspeare as derived from
the Bible.

COME now, in the last place, to speak of passages in which Shakspeare has been indebted to Holy Writ, not only for poetical diction and sentiment, but for some of the most striking and sublime images which are to be found in his works.

1. We are familiar with that simple, but most affecting apostrophe with which the vision of Isaiah opens:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath spoken-I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me.

i. 2.

See also Deut. xxxii. 1, Jerem. ii. 12, vi. 19. All creation is summoned to listen to a tale of undutifulness, which was felt by the prophets to be without parallel. It was under the influence of a similar feeling that Hamlet exclaims upon his mother's hasty and incestuous marriage with his uncle, his father's murderer :

Heaven and earth!

Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet within a month—
Let me not think on't.

Act i. Sc. 2.

And again the same feeling is aroused and vents itself in a similar exclamation, in the scene between Hamlet and his father's ghost:

Ghost.

List, list, O list,

If thou didst ever thy dear father love.

Hamlet. O! Heaven!

Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

Ibid. Sc. 5. The exclamation is not idle or common-place, but sublime and full of intense passion.

2. It is a bolder flight of imagination which represents the elements and heavenly bodies taking part, as allies, in the conflict of human warfare. Thus, in that grandest of all lyrical compositionsthe Song of Deborah and Barak, Judges v. 20:They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

Compare Joshua x. 12-14.

The classical student will be reminded of a parallel and wonderfully magnificent passage in the poet Claudian, De tert. Consul. Honor. 93–98 :—

Te propter, gelidis Aquilo de monte procellis
Obruit adversas acies, revolutaque tela
Vertit in auctores, et turbine reppulit hastas.
O nimium dilecte Deo! cui militat æther,
Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti.

Claudian was a heathen; but he recognised what was believed to be the interposition of the Deity on behalf of the Emperor Theodosius against Eugenius, at the battle of Aquileia, fought on Sept. 6th, A.D. 394. See Augustin, De Civit. Dei, lib. v. cap. xxvi.; Fleury's Church History, book xix. c. xlix. Let us now see the use which our poet has made of this sublime idea.

First, in King Henry VI. 3rd Part, it appears in its simplest and, so to speak, most elementary form, where Hastings says:

'Tis better using France, than trusting France :
Let us be backed with Heaven, and with the seas,
Which God hath given for fence impregnable,
And with their helps only defend ourselves:

In them and in ourselves our safety lies:

Act iv. Sc. I.

a passage upon which Dr. Johnson truly remarks : This has been the advice of every man who in any age understood and favoured the interest of England.

Next, in King Richard II., we have a development of the idea, suggested probably by the destruction of the host of Sennacherib, recorded in 2 Kings xix. and Isaiah xxxvii. :—

K. Richard. And we are barren, and bereft of friends;
Yet know-my master, God omnipotent,
Is mustering in his clouds, on our behalf,
Armies of pestilence: and they shall strike
Your children yet unborn, and unbegot,
That lift your vassal hands against my head,

And threat the glory of my precious crown. Act iii. Sc. 3.