terest, independent of its own intrinsic beauty, from | heard to issue from the stones, saying, "Amen, the circumstance of its having been composed during VENERABILIS BEDA." a rigid imprisonment, which terminated in a violent and undeserved death. The death of Boethius occurred A.D. 524, and "the downfall of learning and eloquence was now inconceivably rapid." All the finer emanations of the intellect were in abeyance, and that which has been called pointedly, if ungenerously, the age of monkery and legends," was predominant. Still, owing in great measure to the universal diffusion of the Latin language, learning was never extinct; and in the very gloomiest periods of the dark ages, scholars did from time to time appear, like stars dimly rising in the twilight. It is indeed now fully allowed that the darkness of these memorable and traduced ages was neither so extreme nor so long continuing as it has been the custom to represent them. For our amor patriæ let us mention, that English intellect has always been honourably recorded. The genius of the Britons," says Tacitus," "appeared to him (Agricola) superior to that of the Gauls; for the former had no sooner learned the language of Rome, than they discovered a desire to improve it into eloquence." "I am astonished," says an Italian, writing of Erigena, a Briton, "that a barbarian placed at the extremity of the world, as remote from the conversation of men as from all knowledge of a foreign tongue, should have been able to understand, and to translate, the works of a Greek father. I allude to John, that Scottish man, who, as I also hear, is famed for piety." One of his original works might, I fancy, excite comment in these days as well as those. It is a work "On the Nature of Things:" which nature he divides into that "which creates, and is not created; that which is created, and creates; that which is created, and doth not create; and that which neither creates, nor is created.”3 "But, softly!" exclaim you, reader: "softly! You profess to be incited by the amor patriae, and yet you omit Gildas the Wise,' and have even passed over the Venerable Bede. Fie on you!" Patience, reader! my pen may be run gossip mad; she may be restive, wild, and frolicsome; but she is yet trustworthy. When I forget our own, our Venerable Bede, may my right hand forget her cunning. Do you know how he acquired his sobriquet ?—No. -Listen then. When he was old, and become parcel-blind by long years of unremitting study, a pupil, whose name, fortunately for himself, has not been recorded, led his master to a great heap of stones, telling him that a congregation of hearers was there assembled. The good man began, and preached with his usual ability and zeal; and, as he concluded with these words, "Per omnia secula seculorum," a wondrous voice was (1) Quoted by Berington. (2) It seems matter of uncertainty whether he was born in Wales, Scotland, or ireland. (3) Berington. And afterwards, when the senseless clay alone remained of him who had been the idol of so many hearts, a pupil endeavoured to indite an epitaph on his revered master. With parchment before him, and calamus in hand, he wrote thus : He asserted that the rhyme was completed by the interposition of an angel, and no one was hardy enough to question the assertion. In these days of scepticism and unbelief, a matter-of-fact explanation of the occurrence would be attempted, and the angel would be clothed in the tunic of a student of the monastery. Bede's learning is spoken of as universal; it was indeed wonderful for the age in which he lived. It was a proverbial saying of him, that “ a man born in the furthest corner of the earth, has compassed the earth with the line of his genius." Even during his life, his works were appointed to be read in churches by the ordinance of the British bishops. So early were his high talents and admirable character conspicuous, that he was ordained deacon at nineteen years of age. From his earliest youth, he devoted himself to study, to writing, and religious exercises; and combined with these, the care of a large school, and the instruction of his fellow monks. His works are very numerous, and, though frequently taxed with credulity, none have ever questioned his sincerity; whilst his history of his own time, and of that immediately preceding it, are so strictly accurate, that his errors elsewhere are in fairness attributed but to the paucity of his materials. He received high and honourable invitations to leave his monastery; one, indeed, from the pope, who wished to have a conference with him; but he declined this flattering invitation. He was offered the dignity of abbot, but this honour he also declined. Thus immured by choice, he passed from youth to age "in simplicity and godly sincerity," in the zealous pursuit of knowledge, in active labour, in earnest piety, and in the love and esteem of all around him. In the sixty-third year of his age he was seized with asthma, and on the Tuesday before Ascension Day, A.D. 735, became much worse. Still he dictated as usual in his school, saying now and then "Go on quickly: I know not how long I shall hold out, and whether my Maker will soon take me away." On Ash Wednesday one of his pupils said to him"Master, dear Master, there is still one chapter wanting. Do you think it troublesome to be asked any more questions ?" "It is no trouble," he replied. "Take your pen, and write fast. It is now time," continued he, "for me to return to Him who made me, and gave me a being when I was nothing. I have lived a long time; my merciful Judge most graciously foresaw and ordered the course of my life for me. The time of my dissolution draweth near. I desire to be dissolved, and be with Christ." All around him wept. In the evening the young scholar said,—“Dear Master, there is still one sentence that is not written." He answered, "Write quickly." The youth obeyed his commands, and said,-"It is now done." "You have well said," replied the good man, "it is at an end; all is finished." He desired to be placed on the pavement of his little oratory, his accustomed place of prayer, which was immediately done. He feebly attempted a Gloria --and so died. "Nor. Be advis'd. I say again, there is no English soul It rouses Buckingham to a discovery of the hostile ON SHAKSPEARE'S INDIVIDUALITY IN HIS of Norfolk it has the effect of setting him on his CHARACTERS. SHAKSPEARE'S MEN OF INTELLECT. BY MARY COWDEN CLARKE. WHO SO well as Shakspeare,-certainly the most pre-eminently gifted intellectual being that ever existed,-should delineate the might of intellect? Who so capable as he of fathoming its depths, of developing its resources, of displaying its powers, of celebrating its triumphs, or of portraying its varied phases? Accordingly, he has painted some portraits of men of intellect in his own immortal colours, that are no less striking in their individuality, than they are vivid, masterly, and enduring in their integrity. guard, of awakening all his prudence, of stimulating his energies, of strengthening that spirit of patient but stern resistance which in the end gives him the victory, and enables him to set his foot on the crest of his haughty adversary in the moment of his fall. For it is Norfolk who bears the king's command that the cardinal shall render up the great seal; and who (his revenge thus secured,) then, and not till then, indulges his hatred in vindictive speeches and open triumph. those who surround them. On the other hand, he not only tells us through a third person, of the ascendancy that Wolsey exerts over his royal master, where the chamberlain says: This is all subtly assistant to the impression intended to be conveyed of the cardinal's potency in will and intellect. Shakspeare not only draws individuality of character by placing the most appropriate utterance in the mouth of each of his models themHow artistically has he prepared his canvass in selves, but he still more surely indicates it by the indelineating the character of Wolsey, for instance! Influence they possess over the speech and action of the very first scene, we have indication of his sway in all things-small as well as great; matters of apparent unimportance, as of moment; pageants as well as state treaties; the appointment and details of a tournament, no less than a compact between his own nation and another; and token is not wanting of the weighty reasons he has for this universal superintendence, and of the use his foresight enables him to make of such conduct. The manner in which all this is discussed by three noblemen, each scanning the cardinal's motives, measuring his increasing influence, and evidently dreading his enmity, forms an apt prelude, and impresses us at once with the idea of Wolsey's power, pride, ambition, and intolerance of (1) Of the Gospel of St. John, the translation of which into the Saxon tongue was Bede's last work. "If you cannot Bar his access to the king, never attempt but Shakspeare gives us a manifestation of this Intellect in Wolsey takes the shape of power, power to grasp the power he covets. Imperious in his nature, and mighty in mind, he is content with nothing less than the absolute sway which his own genius enables him to attain. But his overweening confidence in his own understanding, his insolence of will, and his insatiate lust of power, bring their own retribution; and the towering height to which his ambition had elevated him, but serves to punish him by a proportionate depth of fall. We behold him in his pomp of pride, when with lofty courtesy, and a sort of superb dominion even in the manner with which he presides at his own feast, he seems to graciously condescend in the very compliments he pays his guests, and the mode in which he receives those of his royal visitor at York-place. A still and quiet conscience. ** I am able now, methinks, (Out of a fortitude of soul I feel,) To endure more miseries, and greater far, Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer." of his mental power subservient to his aims in the acquisition of worldly power, is Richard III. But the panied by so keen a sense of his personal defects, that lofty pride of Wolsey. His ambition is as soaring, his it prevents his assuming the arrogant bearing and will as aspiring, his views as far-reaching, his disdain for others as insolent; but in him, stealthy arts take the place of bold actions, crafty malice that of open attainder; while sly sneers, and hypocritical insinuations, afford a vent for the bad passions that lurk in his heart. consciousness of his own intellectual wealth is accom His consciousness of intellect takes the form of We see his insolence rebuked, and his haughty spirit checked, by the simple dignity of Queen Katherine during the examination of Buckingham's contempt-bitter, unwholesome contempt. He not surveyor, and the scene of her own trial; and after-only holds his species in sovereign disgust, regarding wards, his crafty proposal of a private conference, them as so many puppets, dupes, and destined victims, and his proceeding to address her in Latin, are con- but his contemptuous spirit spares not even himself. fronted with a noble candour, and with an honest At the very time he admits his own superiority of consciousness of rectitude, that glow as finely in conintelligence, which is to place him above these despised fellow-men, his spleen indulges itself in reflections on his personal deformity : trast with his bloated pride, as the white purity of this "lily of the field" shines out against his cardinal scarlet and purple. Then, how well has the poet depicted a man communing with himself in the consciousness of sufficing ability to quench interference with his own views. It is when Wolsey hears of the king's projected marriage with Anne Bullen; he exclaims : :- "The late queen's gentlewoman; a knight's daughter, "Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, These lines, which Gloster utters in the Third Part of own evil purposes. He knows and allows himself to be a villain, and, in his own communings, is content plainly and openly to stand for "subtle, false, and treacherous." He takes pleasure in avowing his mind to be crooked in consort with his shape, and sneeringly admits its hideousness whilst he contemplates the ruin its schemes shall effect. He voluntarily degrades the faculties he possesses, by devoting them to the attainment of criminal ends. And again, how completely do we see the struggles of a spirit unwilling to succumb to untoward circum-reservations, no sophistication, in the matter of his stances, rallying all its energies, and exerting every faculty to maintain its resistance, until the latest moment of conviction that all hope is over. This is when he reads the paper which reveals to him that he is discovered by the king. In the scene that follows, we behold him surrounded by the inimical noblemen, who have worked his downfal, and come to enjoy their conquest; he stands amidst them like a single swordsman pressed by numbers, while he waves off his adversaries with his intellectual weapon of disdain. But the true field in which Wolsey's intellectual resources best display themselves, is when he exercises their skill in analyzing his own pride, its career, and its extinction. It is there that our sympathy with this great man, and our admiration of his grand intellect, have full force-for it is there that we acknowledge him really great and grand. In the time when "the sun ushered forth his honours, and gilded the noble troops that waited on his smiles," or during those "many summers " when his "high-blown pride" bore him "in a sea of glory," did we ever feel the emotion of respect and interest that swells our heart as we hear him say : "I know myself now; and I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities, Shakspeare is fond of bringing his intellectual bad men in contact with purer, though less powerful understandings. How he has done this in the instance of Wolsey and Katherine we have already seen; and again with Richard III. he has placed his swart soul close by the bright innocence of the two young princes. The clear expanding mind of the elder boy is indicated in his wise reflections upon the wit and valour of Julius Cæsar, giving promise of good and sound fruit from such early blossom; and little York, the younger prince, with his pretty flippancy, and roguish prattle, betokens an accomplished wit hereafter: while these evidences of cleverness in his young relations but serve to sharpen their uncle Gloster's hatred, to provoke his muttered derision, and to whet his desire to compass their ruin. His contemptuous humour expresses itself in sarcasm :-Anne, Clarence, all his victims, are each in turn subjects of his scorn; and he cannot refrain from scoffing even in the act of kneeling at his mother's feet for her blessing. There is contempt throughout in his treatment of Buckingham; in his strained humility towards him at first, where he says: We cannot help being moved by these retributive throes and heart-shudderings of a clever wicked man, who beholds, in the clearer light of an awakened remorse, the true measure of his capacity for evil; and whose original contempt for love, charity, and virtue, is now expiated by involuntary scorn for his own nature. Shakspeare is no less profound in his sympathy with erring humanity, than he is skilled in revealing and reprobating those very errors; and yet the homily he reads us loses no jot of its impressive warning. Hamlet's intellectual power assumes the shape of argument, reflection, love of study, contemplation, refined intercourse with his friend Horatio, philo much has been said of this character in a former paper that more space must not be allowed to it here. "My other self, my counsel's consistory, My oracle, my prophet!-My dear cousin, I, as a child, will go by thy direction :" also in his leading Buckingham on to commit himself, and to boast of possessing powers of simulation-(to boast of this to Richard, of all men !)-it is the very waggery of contempt,-the insolence of a jocose dis-sophical analysis, and severe introspection; but so dain. We see his eyes sparkle in cruel mockery, and his lip curl with combined malevolence and sport. And when, at last, he finds that "high-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect," and demurs to commit murder to please him, he unhesitatingly throws him off, and consigns him to death, as one of no further use, and to be put out of the way. He deigns not even to listen to his returning obedience; interrupts his solicitations by addressing some one else whilst he is speaking; parries his earnest remonstrances by an irrelevant inquiry of "What is't o'clock?" and at last turns on his heel with, "Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein." Richard's hypocrisy, too, has contempt in its impudent transparency; such as his accusing himself of too yielding a disposition: "I would to God, my heart were flint like Edward's, Or Edward's soft and pitiful like mine; I am too childish-foolish for this world:" Iago is another of Shakspeare's men of intellect, though the lustre of his mental endowments is sullied and well-nigh obscured by his vicious nature. That he is proud of these endowments is evident from the display he makes of them, as well as from the excuses he makes to himself for condescending to associate with one so much his inferior in understanding as Roderigo: "Thus do I ever make my fool my purse; For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane, We gather that he is in the habit of displaying his "O gentle lady, do not put me to 't; his affected submission, and desire to be at peace with But grandly and consistently has Shakspeare limned this portrait of Richard from first to last; and fitly is the prologue to the character met by its corresponding piece of self-knowledge in that terrible soliloquy, when he starts from his sleep, and the "cold, fearful drops stand on his trembling flesh :" My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, Nay, wherefore should they? since that I myself "I am about it; but, indeed, my invention Which ushers in his celebrated cynical speech con- "She was a wight,-if ever such wight were,— But, indeed, the whole colouring of his diction is cynical. Iago's sentiments are compounded of selfworship, an ill opinion of others, and want of faith in goodness itself. He thinks it no shame thus to proclaim his views: "Others there are, Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, Do well thrive by them, and, when they have lin'd their Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul; He affects a bluntness of speech, and makes no secret of his poor opinion of mankind; he pretends to no merit of his own, but that of honest plainness; and he openly speaks of virtue as a pretext-a hollow semblance. He can conceive the veritable existence of goodness only as a part of folly, and invariably couples the mention of its qualities with a depreciating tone when instancing those whom he knows to be worthy : "The Moor is of a free and open nature, That thinks men honest, that but seem to be so; And elsewhere he calls Cassio "this honest fool." This want of belief in good it is that makes him use coarser language than perhaps any one of Shakspeare's characters, and which makes such grossness of utterance appropriate in the mouth of a man, who, otherwise, is so intellectually endowed as to have rendered such diction unfit. There is one slight touch, quite in Shakspeare's manner, and which, though so slight, strikingly indicates Iago's habit of mind, and the want of faith above insisted on. He says to Roderigo-" If thou be'st valiant,- -as (they say) base men, being in love, have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them,-list me." Ulysses is one of Shakspeare's men of intellect, whose historical reputation for sagacity and acuteness the poet had to sustain, when he proposed to draw the character in his play of Troilus and Cressida; and admirably has he worked up to the traditional model of the original. The wise politician, the prudent colleague, the astute Ithacan, the crafty dog-fox Ulysses" (as Thersites calls him) lives again; he reappears upon the scene, and mingles in the Grecian councils, while his lofty speech, and wary advice, are listened to by his brother warriors with admiration and respect. Ulysses, like Iago, is proud of his mental superiority; he is not averse from its display, and can enact the intellectual gladiator when called upon for the exertion. But he, unlike the Italian, exercises his talent for the benefit of his fellows, not for their injury; he pleads and argues in their behalf,-not that he may calumniate them, plot their misery, and bring about their ruin; he exhibits as much knowledge of mankind, its impulses, its capabilities, its duties, its failings, but he deduces very different conclusions, and devotes the result of his deductions to equally different purposes. His object is the advancement of his fellow men, the furtherance of their interests, and the amelioration of their condition. His first grand speech upon degree and social order is an eloquent piece of declamation, followed by several others distinguished for sound sense, acute perception of the sources of existing evil, true appreciation of the character of Achilles and others, with keen policy and prudent advice, no less than for beauty of rhetoric, and power of expression. Shakspeare, with the true courage of genius, has placed near Ulysses, Agamemnon and Nestor, who also speak greatly; knowing well that their excellence would only serve to enhance the extent of his merit who should surpass them both in oratory. Ulysses is also made to be a good listener,-a valuable gift in one who is conscious that he is worth being heard in return. Like a man accustomed to argue, he is in the habit of drawing logical inferences, and defining subtle distinctions from the subject-matter of his consideration; and in this spirit he animadverts upon his book, when he is reading before the tent of Achilles in the design of attracting his attention. His speeches in this scene are some of the finest things Shakspeare ever wrote of their kind, and are replete with philosophic thought, profound knowledge, and wise axioms, that may well afford food for study, and, laid close at heart, be adopted for guidance in our own course through life. Timon is a man whose intellect is developed by adversity. He does not speak eminently until his disappointment, and then, as might be expected, his thoughts take a bitter turn, and his mind vents itself in misanthropic indignation and harsh injustice. But if his views of human depravity are exaggerated, if his rancour is vehement, he has cause for his resentment; and his real cynicism is judiciously brought into contrast with the aversion which Apemantus affects towards his species. Shakspeare has given us a spirited sketch of an intellectual head in Pandulph, the pope's legate. The able churchman, the wily statesman, stands before us as clearly and individually as a portrait by Titian or Velasquez. At the court of France, how thundering are his menaced anathemas, how imperative are his commands, and how artful are his sophistications to vindicate evasion of vows that interfere with pontifical sway! how calmly does he rebuke the intemperate grief of the child-bereft Constance! how prudently does he check the youthful rashness of Lewis, the Dauphin, with words of cold experience and long-sighted policy! And afterwards, at the court of king John, we find him again asserting papal supremacy, offering his aid in effecting peace between France and England, and negotiating mutual treaties. In the last scene where he appears, he utters two quiet lines precisely in keeping with his character of a calm, long-headed man; he meets the impetuous harangue of the Dauphin with the words, "You look but on the outside of this work;" and he mediates between the two young fiery spirits, Lewis and Faulconbridge, with “ Give me leave to speak." The elements of Falstaff's intellect are wit, imagination, humour, shrewdness, and ingenuity, with an ever-ready and dexterous command of these gifts. |