Pursue things more honorable, and from which you may appear to be really wise. Leave to others these empty things, or, as you may perhaps call them, insanities; "which make your hours empty.» Imitate not them who follow these puerilities, but those who really know how to live, who have glory and other good things.

Plato has spoken these sentiments from the mouth of one, as I said before, of no great estimation, yet with the repute of common sense and common understanding, and with an inclination to speak the plain truth. For he does not descant upon that species of philosophy, which is the teacher of all virtues; which stands foremost in the discharge of all public and private duties; which, if not prevented, regulates with firmness, fortitude, and wisdom, the government of the state. But he speaks of that futile and childish attention to trifles, which conduces nothing to the guidance and regulation of life; in which people of that description (whom the vulgar consider as philosophers, and whom he considered as such who delivered these censures), grow old in idleness. Complete. "Attic Nights," Book X., Chap. xxii.

I

THEY ARE MISTAKEN WHO COMMIT SINS WITH THE HOPE OF REMAINING CONCEALED

SAW, when I was at Athens, a philosopher named Peregrinus, and surnamed afterwards Proteus, a man of dignity and fortitude, who resided in a little cottage without the city. As I used to go to him frequently, I heard from him many useful and excellent remarks, among which this is what I chiefly remember: He said "that a wise man would not be guilty of sin, although gods and men were alike ignorant of it." For he thought a wise man should avoid sin, not from the fear of punishment or disgrace, but from his sense of duty and love of virtue. But of those who were not of such a disposition, or so taught, that they could easily restrain themselves from sin, by their own power and will, he thought they would be more readily induced to sin, when they expected their guilt would be concealed, and that such concealment would produce impunity. "But," says he, "if men know that nothing can be long concealed, they will sin in a more guarded and secret manner. Wherefore," he added, "those lines of Sophocles, the wisest of poets, were worthy to be remembered:

'Nor vainly think your skill can aught conceal;

Time, that knows all things, shall all truths reveal.'»

Another of the old poets, whose name I do not now recollect, has called Truth the daughter of Time.

Complete. "Attic Nights," Book XII.,
Chap. xi.

THE

SENTIMENT OF THE PHILOSOPHER PANETIUS

HE philosopher Panætius's second book of "Offices," one of those celebrated treatises which Marcus Tullius with so much labor and attention imitated, was read to us. There was written, among many other things of excellent tendency, what ought most particularly to be fixed in the mind. The import of it is this: "The life of those who pass their time in business, and are desirous of being useful to themselves and others, brings with it daily troubles and sudden dangers. To avoid these, a ready and attentive mind is necessary, such as they must possess who are called Pancratiastæ. For as they, when summoned to the contest, stand with their arms stretched forward, and guard their head and face with their hands as with a rampart; and as their limbs, before the battle commences, are prepared either to avoid the blows of the enemy or to plant their own, so ought the mind and the attention of every prudent man to be guarded against the power and the caprice of injustice, looking forward through every place, and, upon every occasion, diligent, protected, steady, and alert, never suffering the attention to flag, ever keeping its object in view, opposing debate and consideration, like arms and hands, against the lashes of fortune and the snares of the wicked, lest at any time an adverse and sudden attack should be made upon us when we are unprepared and destitute of defense."

GEORG GOTTFRIED GERVINUS

(1805-1871)

HEN the great Liberal movement of 1847 and 1848 in Germany was defeated, Gervinus, who had hoped much from it for Germany and humanity, was so despondent that he withdrew from politics and concentrated his energies on the study of Shakespeare. The result was his celebrated "Shakespeare Commentaries," published (1849–50) in four volumes.

It established his reputation as one of the greatest Shakespearean critics of the nineteenth century, and gave him a place in every important library in England and America. He was born at Darmstadt, Germany, May 20th, 1805. In 1835 he became a member of the faculty of Heidelberg University, but, withdrawing after a few years, he became professor of Literature and History at Göttingen. Expelled from Göttingen in 1837, for protesting against Royal attacks on constitutional government, he supported himself by literary work until 1844, when he returned to Heidelberg. In 1855 he published his "Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century" which led the authorities of Baden to imprison him for several months as a traitor." He was of a sensitive disposition, and the result of such persecution was apparently his permanent retirement to his study. He retired only to intrench himself, however, and in one great work after another he appealed to posterity in behalf of the higher civilization which the princelings and squirelings of his day regarded as treasonable. His greatest works are his "Shakespeare," "History of German Literature," and "History of German Poetry." He died March 18th, 1871.

WR

SHAKESPEARE'S LOVE PLAYS

WILL first speak of the series of love plays, in which Shakespeare has more or less exclusively represented the essence and nature of love. All the above-named pieces are of this kind, whilst in Shakespeare's later dramas it is only in true comedies that love adventures form the central point, and this indeed only of the plot, and no longer as here, at the same time, the very substance of the piece; whilst in his tragedies

they are only introduced so far as they represent, in the great varieties of life itself, but one side of our existence. With our

own German poets, even the greatest, this side of our being occupies far too wide a space, and must detract much from the wealth of their poetry, as compared with Shakespeare's works. They felt nothing of that natural impulse of the English poet to establish themselves in the great sphere of active life, that is history, in order to counterbalance the life of sentiment. Where they have interwoven a love affair as an episode in an historical play, the preference for the sentimental part prevailed, and the poetic brilliancy and energy centred in it. Shakespeare's words in "Love's Labor's Lost" may be almost universally applied to this sentimental poetry:

"Never durst poet touch a pen to write,

Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs."

But this was not the case with our poet. We may conclude, from the circumstances of Shakespeare's life, that in his youth he may have been for a while that which in "Love's Labor's Lost" and the "Two Gentlemen of Verona " he calls the "votary to love"; and this was indeed the very period in which he created the love pieces which we shall next consider. But it was at all events only a period, a passing time, in which he was personally swayed by this passion, and poetically engaged with it; and to this poetic occupation he in no wise surrendered himself entirely, but he took care, as we have said, in the happiest instinct of a many-sided nature, to maintain the just balance in his descriptions of the powerful life of feeling, by the contemplation of the great historical world of action.

If we lose sight of this grand double-sidedness, if we become entirely and solely absorbed in the love pieces of this period, we find even in this exclusive view of the matter that he treated his theme quite otherwise than our German poets. The ideal love heroes of our own Schiller, and the weak sensual characters of our Goethe, are from that sentimental element which is infused throughout the love poetry of a modern date, of one uniform coloring; on our stage, therefore, there is one fixed character of a lover, which the player to whom it is committed acts nearly always in the same manner. It was not thus in Shakespeare's time, and his works are not so designed. The vast theme, the passion of love, is treated by Shakespeare in a far grander manner. He

depicted it not alone in reference to itself, but in the most manifold combination with other passions, and in the most widespread relations to other human circumstances; it is to him a necessity in those first five plays which we find devoted to this theme to represent it in the greatest fullness and variety possible, in its entire existence, in all its operations, in its good and its bad qualities. He shows us, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," how it fares with a man who abandons himself wholly to this passion, and also its effect upon the energetic character still a stranger to it. He shows, in "Love's Labor's Lost," how a set of youthful companions unnaturally endeavor to crush it by ascetic vows, and how the effort avenges itself. He shows, in "All's Well that Ends Well," how love is despised by manly haughtiness and pride of rank, and how it overcomes this by fidelity and devotion. He shows, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in a marvelous allegory, the errors of blind unreasonable love, which transports man into a dream-life, devoid of reflection. He shows lastly, in that great song of love, in "Romeo and Juliet," how this most powerful of all passions seizes human beings in its most fearful power, and how, enhanced by natures favorable to its reception and by circumstances inimical to it, it is carried to an extent in which it overstrains and annihilates itself. And when the poet, having advanced to this extreme point, has measured this side of human nature, in its breadth and depth, he returns back to himself, as it were, personally unconcerned, and in his later works he does. not readily again permit it such a wide and exclusive space.

This many-sidedness of love and its manifold bearings and effects upon human nature, Shakespeare alone, of all poets and of all ages, has depicted in its full extent. If we glance at the whole epic and dramatic poetry of France, Italy, and Spain, we shall find all the relations of love treated to tediousness after the same model and idea. This mannerism was a transmission from the Middle Ages, when knightly customs and gallantry first gave a spiritual beauty to sensual desire, and an extravagant adoration of women, unknown to the Ancients, penetrated life and poetry. In this period love was regarded as a source of civilization, as a source even of power and action; and the poetic generations of succeeding times conceived it only from this its ennobling side, and this with a preference and exclusiveness which such a judge of life as Shakespeare could not share. He had, moreover, experienced its shadow side: how it is just as capable of paralyzing