Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

apologize for them, by the character of his age, which was one not tender of human life, nor scrupulous as to the means for the attainment of its objects. The Richard of Shakspeare is a gigantic criminal; the Richard of impartial history is still a criminal, but a man not all evil-a man who turned to a good use the power that he may have ill acquired; a man who made enemies of his haughty and vindictive nobles; but who ruled the people with wisdom and moderation, and treated them in a manner to deserve, if it did not obtain, their love. His memory has cried aloud for justice. Mr. Sharon Turner has done battle in his behalf

has entered the court of appeal, and made out such a case in his favor as goes far to qualify, if it cannot reverse, the previous judgment.

place with regard to characters in Shak- | that Richard had committed crimes in the speare. In his immortal pages, Macbeth pursuit of power, explained, if they did not stands branded as a weak and cowardly murderer; who, goaded by a strong-minded and bad woman, and by the promptings of his own guilty ambition, treacherously slew his guest-the king to whom he had sworn allegiance, and to whom he owed the double fealty of a subject and a host. Yet recent researches have shown that Shakspeare pilloried a comparatively innocent man, by founding a play upon tradition, and not upon history. Macbeth slew Duncan, it is true, but not in his bed-not asleep and unarmed -but in open fight on the field of battle. It does not even appear that Macbeth was a usurper; but granting that he were, still, in the unsettled and semi-barbarous period at which he lived, usurpation was a common occurrence; and, in his case, the usurpation proved of advantage to the country that acquiesced in it. Macbeth reigned over Scotland for fifteen years; and if there were a legal flaw in his title to the throne, he endeavored to make a good moral title by the general vigor and policy of his administration, and by his justice to the people. Sir Walter Scott says, "The claim of Macbeth to the throne, according to the rule of Scottish succession, was better than that of Duncan. As a king, the tyrant so much exclaimed against was, in reality, a firm, just, and equitable prince." The reaction having begun, men have learned to separate the Macbeth of Shakspeare from the Macbeth of history-to admire the first mentioned as one of the grandest portraitures of crime and sorrow in the whole range of literature; more interesting, although fictitious, than the real Macbeth that lived and moved; and to do justice at all convenient times to the fame that had the misfortune (for itself, if not for the world) to come in the way of so mighty a genius.

Richard III. of England is another royal personage whose memory has been similarly unfortunate in coming into contact with the purposes of Shakspeare. No doubt the world has gained; but the world, when it does justice to the real Richard, will fortunately lose no portion of the delight and instruction derivable from the story of the imaginary one. The materials available for the dramatist's purpose were found in Holinshed, who took them from the prejudiced pen of Sir Thomas More. Later historians denied the accuracy of Sir Thomas More's statements, and the truth of his portraiture: and while they could not gainsay the fact

While we are upon the subject of kings," let us not omit the case of James I.--the alleged bigot and pedant, the mock Solomon, and the butt of ridicule, for a long period, for every one who desired to have a fling at royalty. Every one who has read the elder D'Israeli's inquiry into the literary and political character of that monarch, will confess that he has found not only a zealous but an able defender. Mr. D'Israeli, as he informs us in his preface to this interesting historical sketch, set off in the world with the popular notions of the character of James I.; but in the course of study, and with a more enlarged comprehension of the age, he was

struck with the contrast of his real with his apparent character, and developed those hidden and involved causes which so long influenced historians and memoir-writers in vilifying and ridiculing this monarch. Mr. D'Israeli's treatise is a masterpiece of its kind. It seeks to prove that the alleged pedant detested pedantry; that the so-called bigot was less bigoted than his age; that the epithet "Solomon," applied to him in mockery, ought to have been applied in seriousness and in respect; that the monarch, accused of personal cowardice, dreaded war for his people and not for himself; and that his contemporaries saw and acknowledged in him those virtues and talents which a succeeding age, led astray by prejudiced writers, altogether denied. Who shall say that Mr. D'Israeli has failed in this chivalrous attempt? All unprejudiced readers must admit that he has done much to rescue the memory of his hero from obloquy that appears unmerited; and that, although "this philosopher on the

[ocr errors]

their apologist. Machiavelli suffered in the cause of freedom; he was put to the torture by a despot, and endured sorrows of many kinds for his devotion to his country. Disgusted with princes, and with the people too, he wrote his celebrated work, intending a satire upon the crimes of rulers. The obstinate world insisted upon receiving this satire in a spirit the very reverse of that which an

throne, and father of his people, lived without exciting gratitude and died without inspiring regret unregarded, unremembered," there is justice to be gathered from the rolling of the centuries. The thinkers of the present age, if they do not share in all the enthusiasm of his defender, at least suspend their judgment, and admit that his detractors may have been in error. Cromwell's is another over-vilified reputa-imated its author, with about as little justice tion; with regard to which, thanks not only to Mr. Carlyle, his great defender and admirer, but to Dr. Merlé D'Aubigné, and other writers, the reaction has commenced and made good progress. As if to verify the quaint prediction of his contemporary

"His fame, like men, the older it doth grow, Will of itself turn whiter too,"

the world is pleased with every new proof that industry or ingenuity can adduce of the sterling character and steadfast wisdom of the great Protector of the English Commonwealth. The infamy with which it was sought to cover him has been gradually dispersing, like the morning mists before the sun; the mark of Cain which royalist writers, in the reaction of their day, affixed upon his brow, has been obliterated by the hand of time; and in the new reaction of this age, a halo has been gradually forming, which bids fair to enshrine permanently that memory which was once considered more degraded and unworthy than that of the vilest of malefactors.

The history of the illustrious Machiavelli is another instance of pertinacious wrong disappearing before the lights exhibited by cool and dispassionate inquiry. For three centuries and upwards, his name has served to designate a particular kind of political duplicity and cunning. To accuse a statesman of Machiavellism, has been to exalt his intellect at the expense of his honesty and virtue -to exonerate him from the imputation of lack of brains, only to brand him as possessing too much for the welfare of his species. "Il Principe" ("The Prince"), his famous treatise, long considered infamous, brought all this obloquy upon him. In that muchspoken-of, but little known work, he drew up the code of despotism, concealing his satire so well, that the world mistook the hater for the friend of tyranny, and the denouncer of crimes against the people for

as we should exhibit were we to accuse Henry Fielding of preaching robbery and murder for his "Life of Jonathan Wild the Great." Machiavelli's object, it is true, was not quite so apparent as that of the novelist. The people, moreover, were not aware of the friend they had in this illustrious diplomatist. They considered the hard words he employed against men in general, as the outpourings of a demoniac hatred. They could not see that the severe satire was intended for their benefit, or make any allowance for the bitterness of feeling with which unmerited suffering had imbued one of the ablest men of his time. Machiavelli dedicated his treatise of "The Prince" to Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the usurper of the liberties of Florence; a man whom he hated, against whose government he had conspired, and who had caused him to be put upon the rack, to extort from his agony the names of his confederates. This circumstance might have served to open the eyes of the herd of men and of writers to the real purpose of the author; but it did not. Treatise after treatise was written, to refute doctrines which Machiavelli detested ; and his name became the synonym for the political criminality and astuteness which it was his real object to hold up to the abhorrence of mankind. Amongst others who employed their pens in this cause was Frederick the Great of Prussia, who wrote in his youth "6 This a tract entitled "Anti-Machiavel." military genius," says D'Israeli, "protested against those political arts which he afterwards adroitly practiced, and realized in his own character the political monster which Machiavelli had drawn." The tide against Machiavelli has long since begun to turn; and though his unfortunate name will, in all probability, survive to designate a species of depravity for which modern languages offer no other, the memory of the man has already received justice from all the impartial students of history, and will, doubtless, receive justice in due time from a still wider audience.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

Benjamin Franklin: his Autobiography, with a Narrative of his Public Life and Services. By the Rev. H. HASTINGS WELD-with numerous designs by J. G. Chapman.

When we say that this book is illustrated to our liking, we intend the statement to convey high praise-since few autobiographies hold a more honored place in our regard than Benjamin Franklin's. There is heart as well as head in it; the plainness and the poetry of true-as distinct from tawdryRepublican energy and achievement. It is written in a style which we hope we shall never cease to relish. It is calculated, from the professional tone of its incidents, to be expressly dear to all literary men, and to all who are interested in the circulation of knowledge and in the record of progress. By the majority of book-illustrators fed on the patronage and requisitions of those "having albums," such a subject might not be thought to hold out any strong temptations. The mixture of practical with picturesque which it contains is calculated to batile the mediocrities. Most satisfactorily has the difficulty been provided for by Mr. Chapman: some of whose designs, moreover, are capitally rendered on wood-making the volume a truly attractive one, without divesting it of the value which belongs to a library book. We have dwelt upon the illustrations rather than upon the memoir by Mr. Hastings Weld; because the latter portion of the volume, however well executed, could hardly fail to come before us at a disadvantage, the quality of the former part considered. As a companion, Franklin is little less trying to a modern writer than that Archimage of nervous writing, William Cobbett.-Athenæum.

[ocr errors]

written. This will be cheering news for those who, because new plants and new animals are not to be laid hold of, imagine that science is about to stop. Almost all our science in zoology and botany is yet to come,--and we can expect it only through the aid of well-trained observers. First principles must be understood before we can hope for great advances to follow. It is on this account that we are glad to find so accomplished a naturalist as M. Agassiz teaching the elements of his science. We are probably indebted for this to the demands of his adopted country. In America the difficulty of beginning anything anew is less than in Europe. Time has not yet encrusted her educational institutions and forbidden their expansion with the impulses of the new life that ever flows from inquiry and the activity of the human mind. The present work is intended for the use of schools and colleges:-and we have seldom seen a book more admirably adapted in its general arrangement and style to meet the object of its publication.—Athenæum.

Memoirs of the House of Orleans; including Sketches and Anecdotes of the most distinguished Characters in France during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. By W. COOKE TAYLOR, LL.D. 3 vols. 8vo.

To withdraw the history of the Orleans branch of the Bourbons from the mass of French history, and set it clearly as an episode before the public, was a design which might readily be suggested at this crisis of its fortunes. The past cycle appears to be completed; and the cycle of the future, whatever it may be for the descendants of the first crowned and

Principles of Zoology.-By Lovis AGASSIZ and AU- discrowned member of the family of Louis Philippe, GUSTUS A. GOULD. Boston: Gould & Co.

One of the greatest errors that has characterized the science of our day, has been the tendency on the part of naturalists to study the forms of plants and animals to the exclusion of any regard for the functions performed, or the changes undergone in them during life. Dried plants and stuffed skins were supposed to afford all the necessary elements of rearing botanical and zoological science. Already has the botanist declared his conviction that a single observation on a living plant with a microscope is of more importance to botany than the possession of a cartload of dried plants-and the thought is penetrating the mind of zoologists, that it is useless for them to pursue their task without the aids of comparative anatomy and physiology. To know what an animal or plant really is, or what it is in relation to other animals and plants, we must know, as well as its external form, its internal structure and its living actions, and not only what they are, but what they have been. That would be but an imperfect history of a nation or an individual that should be confined to any given day, or even year, in its whole existence. This, then, has been the deficiency of both zoology and botany-and the history of almost every individual plant and animal has yet to be

[ocr errors]

is opening its course in France and in Spain. The influence of the race upon the political circumstances of France has long been most important, but never, perhaps, so important as during the past century. At last it arrived at the climax to blight its wholesome brother, and the elder house succumbed to the aspiring of the younger rival. To have the whole traced with an able and competent hand, the task could not have been entrusted to a superior ability than Dr. Cooke Taylor, so well known and esteemed in the literary world for his former productions; belonging to the sterling ranks of national literature. Nor has he failed to do justice to the choice, to his own reputation, and to the subject in the work before us. It is clearly arranged, grounded on considerable research, and impartially stated. The results are not favorable to the Orleans dynasty or its precedents; but we must refer to the three volumes for the details from the period of “the great secret of Louis XIV." to the present day. That a consistent and consequential line of policy has been pursued by the Orleans family from that date, and that intrigue and conspiracy marked the doings of some part of it, can hardly admit of a doubt. How far the ex-King followed in the footsteps of his father, will probably be better understood hereafter.-Literary Gazette.

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][subsumed]
« AnteriorContinuar »