And Dr. Stevens is far too favourable, in our view to Madame Krudener, who to the end carried something of the insincere taint of her earlier life, justifying the remarks of one incisive critic who aptly said that she was an "inferior Madame Guyon," and that "a sort of tuft-hunting quietism was hers."

SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE.

ONE of the most remarkable facts in relation to Shakespeare is that the exceedingly proper or over-religious critics have come almost to a meeting-point with the purely irreligious and sceptical critics on the subject of Biblical reference. Most ingenious attempts have been made to prove that Shakespeare must have been a lawyer, that he must have been a sailor, that he must have travelled in Scotland, and so on. There may be much doubt about such points as these; but on one yet more important point there cannot be much doubt. It does not need a very long study of our great dramatist to realise fully that he was an attentive student of Scripture, and that certain elements in it had laid close hold of his imagination. Bishop Wordsworth, in his admirable book, “ Shakespeare's

Knowledge and Use of the Bible," which we have now before us, in its third edition, has done a great service in ably and systematically arranging the most outstanding coincidences, correspondences, or similarities of word, thought, or figure; and his book would of itself go far to remove any doubt that might be felt about Shakespeare's indebtedness to the Bible. The Bishop well writes :—

The main object of the publication having been to vindicate the name of Shakespeare from the slur cast upon him most undeservedly, as though he had been one who treated the Word of God without due respect, and even with "profaneness," the author cannot but desire that some few at least of the innumerable readers of our immortal bard in the rising generation should still be enabled to judge for themselves, not only of the injustice he has suffered from such a reproach, but of the credit he deserves for the homage paid by him to Holy Scripture, in a most remarkable degree, through the manner in which he has recommended and enforced the solemn truths and lessons which it contains.

Now, this is precisely the point which we wish to reach. By the improvers of Shakespeare after the Bowdler order, we have it impressed upon us that Shakespeare used Scripture very improperly, irreverently — that he was, in fact, something of a sneerer and they have in too many cases been guilty of mutilating and destroying some of the most beautiful, pathetic, and suggestive passages

of Shakespeare, simply because those passages had distinct Scripture references. They simply regarded him as unentitled to make use of Scripture in the way he had done. From another point of view, certain sceptics have in effect said the same thing, and join the Bowdlerisers in the last result to depreciate Shakespeare. Voltaire, as every one knows, spoke of Shakespeare as "a drunken savage," as one who could not rise above the prejudices of English life, and who was, in a word, a Philistine, who went to church and read the Bible, and wrote plays which were half sermons, and did not understand the law of L'Art pour l'Art. That was surely a peculiar position to take yet it was taken. Shakespeare moralised too much, he preached too much, he was romantic, he defied classical rule. Nothing could more confirm him in his rudeness, his formlessness, his barbarous lack of style, and strict disregard of all the "unities." How could the stage admit of references distinctively Christian without injury to the classic ideal? It was impossible. "Drunken savage "" alone was the fit epithet for such a monster. And it is remarkable, too, that while Voltaire was thus deprecating Shakespeare in France, Lessing (who, in the minds of some critics so much resembled

Voltaire) was striving to restore him to the place of highest authority in Germany, and laying weight on the humane religious sentiment by which Shakespeare was penetrated a point which Lessing was, of all things, qualified to appreciate and to make plain to others. And thus, through the element which appealed to humanity, and which stood for religious toleration and true liberality, Lessing transformed Shakespeare into a great artillery for breaking down the wall of conventionality in literature and the drama, which had been built up by the French influence under Gottsched and others. Looked at even from this point of view, the critical influence of Voltaire is directly in conflict with that of Lessing: here they stand opposed, precisely as they were opposed in the field of religion. Lessing, unlike Voltaire, though he hated dogma, would have despaired of a dramatic literature without humanity, without religious sentiment, without the aroma of toleration, of evenhanded justice, which is its exterior face, as sweet charity" is its inward one. How he would have smiled at the idea that a "drunken savage" could have written "The quality of mercy is not strained," or any of the truly humane passages pervaded by the spirit of a similar sentiment. Thus we