Trier and Ravenna. 45 from Rome herself, Trier cannot claim the foremost place. But it may fairly claim the second. Ravenna stands as something wholly unique, richer in monuments of her own class than Rome herself. But the colony by the Mosel may fairly be allowed a place in the same group as Rome and Ravenna. Trier is the Ravenna, the Rome, of the lands beyond the Alps. E. A. F. ART. II.-Shakespeare's Character and Early Career. (1.) Shakespeare: The First Folio Edition of 1623. Reproduced under the immediate supervision of HOWARD STAUNTON, by Photolithography. 1864. (2.) An Historical Account of the New Place, Stratford-upon- (3.) Shakespeareana Genealogica. By GEORGE R. FRENCH. 1848. (5.) William Shakespeare: A Biography. By CHARLES KNIGHT. 1851. (6.) Shakespeare: His Inner Life. By J. A. HERAUD. London: J. Maxwell and Co. 1865. (7.) Shakespeare: His Birthplace, Home, and Grave. By Rev. (8.) Shakespeare's Sonnets, never before Interpreted. By GERALD (10.) The Sonnets of Shakespeare Solved. By HENRY BROWN. (11.) The Worthies of Warwickshire. By Rev. F. LEIGH COLVILLE. M.A. London: J. R. Smith. 1870. Article, William Shakespeare,' pp. 635–676. (12.) Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. By SAMUEL NEIL. London: Houlston and Wright. 1861. (13.) Some Account of the Life of Shakespeare. By HOWARD STAYNTON. Prefixed to the Works of Shakespeare. London: Routledge and Co. 1860. (14.) The Bibliography of Shakespeare. By H. G. BоHм. Printed for the Philobiblion Society. 1866. (15.) The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded. By DELIA BACON, with a Preface by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. London Groombridge and Son. 1857. (16.) Biographic Sketches Prefixed to the Editions of Shakespeare. Superintended by J. P. COLLIER, Rev. A. DYCE, Rev. H. N. HUDSON, W. C. HAZLITT, R. GRANT WHITE, MARY COWDEN CLARKE, SHERIFF HENRY GLASFORD BELL, S. W. SINGER, ROBERT BELL, &c. By THOMAS DE QUINCEY, in his Works,' Vol. XV., and by Dr. DUNHAM, in 'Lives of the Dramatists' (Lardner's Cyclopædia, Vol. I.). (17.) On Shakespeare's Knowledge of the Bible. By C. WORDSWORTH D.C.L., Bishop of St. Andrews. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1864. (18.) Genius, the Gift of God: a Sermon on the Tercentenary of William Shakespeare. By R. W. DALE, M.A. 1864. (19.) Illustrations of the Life of Shakespeare. Part I. By J. O. (HALLIWELL) PHILLIPPS. London. 1874. (20.) Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse. By Dr. C. M. INGLEBY. London: Trübner. 1874. SHAKESPEARE is, unquestionably, the mystery as well as the glory of our literature. His works and his life alike compel our wonder. We would fain know how this' serene creator of 'immortal things,' or rather beings, comported himself in the complicated pathways of this world's life, while we marvel at the prodigality of vitality with which he was endowed, from whose intellect there could be thrown off-full-grown, and all athrob with life-that whole race of shadowlings which, for nearly three centuries, have dwelt among men, in a species of animated spirituality, and are better known to us than many of our most familiar every-day friends. Strange might of mind must surely have been his who, in the short course of thirty years of dramatic endeavour, has peopled the realms of imagination for ever with a progeny so numerous, so strangely vitalized and real! Yet while conferring personality on the mere phantasies of his mind, and giving recreative realization to history-if we accept the ordinary conceptions of his biographers-he has left us little or no image of himself, and has engrossed but few remembrances or records of his common way of life upon the much-bewritten pages of time. The shadowy essences of his soul have become substantial, while he has almost evanished into a dream-like impersonality. They are gifted with the eternity of those things of beauty which are a joy for ever,' while his name must be read as the abstract noun for Creative Poesy. It is difficult to feel satisfied that Shakespeare-at once the supreme realist, and the consummate idealist of the drama; with whom, indeed, the most ideal are ever also the most real characters, whose sense of by-play even, is so exquisite, that when, in the exigencies of the stage, anything 'Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head (Lucrece. st. 204), could so resemble a supernumerary in the divine drama of life. We have in the plays of Shakespeare mere gleams and glimpses of the life-events in which the characters therein are concerned; and yet out of these occasional hearsays and appearances, in a scene here and there-because all is wrought to a common end-we can form a full and entire conception of each of the dramatis persone, and know them not in their outward accoutrements only, but in the very inner habits of their souls. 'He gives us,' says Schlegel, the history of 'minds; he lays open to us, in a single sentence, a whole 'series of preceding conditions.' Such is the mould into which, as if by some connatural force, the characters of the Shakespearean stage are so cast that the ideal seems to be compacted of and kin to the real. Every human being by, the determination of God moves in the centre of circumstances, exercises upon those about him a certain amount of influence, opens out to his 'fellows' as a character, and casts into the ongoings of his times some issues from his own being. He is charged with ethical power, and must manifest to his surroundings that which is most within him. Time, place, and circumstance affect him, but he also affects them; and the more so, the more individual he is. If, then, in Shakespeare's plays, nay even in his poems—we need not mention his sonnets,'-it is correct to say, 'Everywhere 'we find individuality, nowhere mere portrait,' why should their author be so constantly put before us as a being quite abstract and impersonal? We like to think otherwise of Shakespeare. To us he appears robust and genuinely-living, treading and threading, both as boy and man, the pathways of Stratfordupon-Avon in sturdy selfhood; coolly and pleasantly taking his stroll in Cheapside, or through St. Paul's; moving about in the green-room and on the stage, 'Catching all passions in his craft of will;' in the Mermaid merrily conversing with facetious grace, at home happy, at church attentive and sedate, in his studyeven in the maddest play of his humour-settled and serene; in company, 'gentle, not froward,' having a kindly phrase and a happy turn of thought for maid and matron, friend and comrade, laughing boy or toil-driven labourer; in parish business, sober and discreet; in personal dealing, plain, yet thrifty; in his profession, diligent and versatile; at court, loyal, but not fawning; and by the fireside, a loving and honoured husband, as well as an affectionate father-a man very much, on the whole, 'void of offence;' and yet not altogether awanting in that generous self-consciousness of his own powers which would make it easy for him to recognise to the full the fairest talents of others. Sparse, indeed, are the means of bringing his individual existence into the very presence of our minds, and it is not easy to form a complete and living picture of 'the chief of 'all poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded 'world, has left record of himself in literature.' But is it really so impossible, as has generally been supposed, to construct a biography of Shakespeare that shall be at once trustworthy in fact, and satisfying to our spirits ? A few dates and facts gathered from registers and title-pages, parish records and property rolls, court-leet notices, law-sheets and schedules, State papers and Corporation MSS., stray traditions and gossips' Difficulties of the Biographer. 49 stories; obscure allusions in rare pamphlets, provocative of questions of identity and chronology, giving rise to disputed readings and conflicting inferences, ingenious conjectures, and strange suggestions; and as the ultimate, 'the penurious records 'of a gravestone' constitute almost all the material we have to work up into a memoir of the producer of that drama' which 'represents all Christendom, the modern world in its whole an'tithesis to the ancient.' But if it be characteristic of the mightiest of the students of anatomy that he can, from a given vertebra, reconstruct the entire creature of which it formed a part, so ought it to be in the power of the psychological biographer to reproduce, from a few clear and well-defined facts, at least the more striking lineaments of one who, like Shakespeare, possessed those sovereign capacities of thought, feeling, and activity, of love, friendship, and personal force, which, in his own day, charmed 'the very faculties of eyes and ears,' and in ours excites the wonder of the world's noblest minds. It may be, as some affirm, that the real and inner substance of things does not 'lie in dates and places and such horn-book mechanism of space and time;' but if we are rightly to comprehend any human life-much more one which stands in the very centre of the universe of intellectuality-we must bring all statements and inferences regarding it to the touchstone tests of circumstantial accuracy and punctilious harmony of dates. 'The pillar and ground of the truth' is laid on the foundations of period and place. We do think these simple matters have not been sufficiently attended to by the biographers of Shakespeare, and we propose to subject to criticism certain of the more material of the generally received statements and inferences, misconceptions and apocryphal notions incorporated into some of the best memoirs of the most impressive of the minds of 'the 'Great Eliza's golden time.' Few undertakings are more difficult than the removal, from the pages of history or biography, of errors which have become engrained by constancy of repetition, and have engrossed the fancy by their apparent attractiveness. We, however, prefer winnowed wheat to garnered tares, even though the produce is smaller in appearance; and we believe in the supreme interest of truth in comparison with ever so great an amount of sensational fiction. Truth, if not stranger, is at least stronger than fiction; and if, after laying |