the powers of action, of endangering morals, and of plunging a man in destruction and crime, as of tending to purity of life, and of ennobling mind and spirit. Shakespeare had penetrated in his early youth this double nature and twofold worth of love and its effects. In "Venus and Adonis," his first poem, the goddess after the death of her favorite utters a curse upon love, which contains in the germ, as it were, the whole development of the subject, as Shakespeare has unfolded it in the series of his dramas. It is worth while to hear the passage in its whole extent: "Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy, Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavory end; That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. "It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud; Bud, and be blasted in a breathing while; With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: The strongest body shall it make most weak, "It shall be sparing and too full of riot, Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasure It shall be raging mad, and silly mild, Make the young old, the old become a child. "It shall suspect, where is no cause of fear; It shall not fear, where it should most distrust; It shall be merciful, and too severe, And most deceiving, when it seems most just; "It shall be cause of war and dire events, And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire; As dry combustious matter is to fire.» We must remember that this was written at an age, which in the first strength of feeling generally regards love only in the brightest light, and that it is placed in a poem which appeared to deify sensual desire in the usual manner of young poets; we must, I say, remember the period and the position of this passage, in order rightly to appreciate its value and importance. In the love pieces of the period, which we shall consider, these thoughts are variously repeated on more forcible occasions, and appear in choice sentences and passages; and far more than this, throughout Shakespeare's works, they are also exhibited and embodied in characters, circumstances, and living images, with a fullness and depth such as never has been the case with any other poet. And not alone, in opposition to all usual poetry, is the curse of love portrayed in these pictures; but its richest blessing is unfolded in an equal number of counterpieces, with just as much ardor and with the same life. That in this passion the rich covetous man is "plucked down" and deceived, the poor man elevated and enriched, appears in the "Merchant of Venice.» That it makes a simpleton of the spendthrift, a ruffian of the weak, is represented in Roderigo. That it affects the wise, and that it is hardly united with reason and reflection, is brought before us in "Measure for Measure." That it teaches fools to speak and makes the old young, in how many excellent caricatures has this been displayed by the burlesque parts of Shakespeare's comedies! That it selects the "finest wits," and often makes them its prey, is expressed in that graceful, oft-repeated image, that "in the sweetest bud the eating canker dwells"; and again in other pictures, as in the "Tempest," the most charming innocence is seized by this spirit, without being even slightly injured in its stainless purity. That it is "fickle, false, and full of fraud," that it forswears itself, that the strongest of love's "oaths are straw to the fire of the blood," is exhibited in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona"; at the same time, however, we are shown that true love, full of inner beauty, shames the fickleness of the unfaithful by deeds of sacrifice. The basest and most exalted phases of this fierce passion are to be found in "Troilus and Cressida," in the highly ironical picture of the Trojan contest, in the parody of the immortal song on that love which was the cause of so long a war and of such frightful deeds. Then again, in contrast to this excited drama, we have a thoroughly spiritual picture; how love quickens the senses and the spirits, how it is the creator and the created of fancy, and the perpetual subject and the source of poetry; in what charming touches and symbols is this interwoven with the magic pictures of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"! How love surprises the man in idleness, when the character is relaxed in inactivity, how it fills his whole being and alters his very nature, is represented in Romeo, in Proteus, and in Antony; in Othello, however, the heroic nature does not permit love to enchain him by idle pleasures, and "with wanton dullness" to foil "his speculative and active instruments." That jealousy is the attendant of love, exciting suspicion where there is no cause for it, and fearing nothing where there is ground for mistrust, is the subject of this same tragedy of "Othello," and of the "Winter's Tale"; that, on the other hand, this "green-eyed monster" may be overcome by a harmonious nature and confiding trust, is developed in strong contrast in the story of Posthumus and Imogen. That love is shared by high and low, that it may begin with bitterness and end with sweetness, is well depicted in "All's Well that Ends Well "; but the main theme of the curse of the goddess of Love, that "all love's pleasure shall not match his woe," that it "finds sweet beginning, but unsavory end," that it has "the bottom poison, and the top o'erstrawed with sweets," that it "buds, and is blasted in a breathing while," that violent in kind it leads to desperate resolutions, and spends itself like a lightning flash,- this is immortally sketched in the poem of "Romeo and Juliet." The whole theme, which other poems and poets have broken into such manifold parts, is here comprised in one exuberant production. That love in all its power is in constant fatal struggle with class prejudice and propriety has been the central point at all times of all tragic portrayals of love, in life and poetry. "Love's not love, when 'tis mingled with respects": this is the mark by which nature and the poets denote the passion in its greatest power; in this its strength the conflict of nature against custom, of all-powerful boundless feeling against the necessary restraints of social life, is unavoidable; and in this collision the tragical nature of this passion is grounded,—a passion which no poet has ever depicted as Shakespeare has done in "Romeo and Juliet," with such surpassing repose and yet lively emotion, with such excitement and yet moral ingenuousness, and with such fervor of personal experience and yet mental impartiality. "It is the only play," the cold Lessing declared, “which love itself, as it were, helped to write." Complete. From "Shakespeare Commentaries.» EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794) IBBON'S "Essay on the Study of Literature" was the first of his published works. It appeared in 1761, fifteen years before the appearance of the first volume of his "History of the Roman Empire." Originally written in French and published in that language during his residence at Lausanne, it attracted more attention on the Continent than it did in England. Villemain says that while it is not strikingly original, it "shows a great literary passion, the love of learned research and of the beautiful in language." Gibbon himself writes that the publication of his "History" revived interest in the Essay, and that it was eagerly sought after in the shops, where, "When a copy of the original edition has been discovered in a sale, the primitive value of half a crown has risen to the fanciful price of a guinea." The Essay now appears in Gibbon's "Miscellaneous Works," but as a separate work it is still rare. Gibbon was born at Putney, in Surrey, England, April 27th, 1737. Like many of the most eminent English men of letters, he was virtually self-educated. The University of Oxford, where he spent fourteen months, expelled him when he was converted to Roman Catholicism, -a change of religion which, though it won him this martyrdom, had no other permanent effect on him than that of rescuing him from "the port and prejudice » of orthodox English education. On this he always congratulated himself. "To the University of Oxford I acknowledge no obligation," he says; "she will as cheerfully renounce me as a son as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College. They proved fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." After leaving Magdalen College, he was sent by his father to Lausanne to study in the family of M. Pavilliard, a Calvinist minister of that city, from whom he learned French, Latin, and Greek. Under M. Pavilliard's teachings Gibbon's faith in the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church "disappeared like a dream," but it does not appear that he was really converted again to Protestantism or any other ecclesiastical form of Christianity. He met Voltaire in 1757, and was greatly influenced by him. In the same year he fell in love with Susanne Curchod, from whom he was separated by the positive refusal of his father to consent to their marriage. The young woman was afterwards celebrated as Madame Necker, mother of the even more celebrated Madame de Staël. Returning to England in 1758, he continued to educate himself, on the theory of the elder Pliny that "no book is so bad as to be good for nothing." At Rome, which he visited in 1764, the first conception of his "History" came to him. "It was at Rome," he says, "on the eighteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind." After he had conceived it thus, his habits of research made it possible for him to elaborate it into one of the greatest monuments of varied learning among modern histories. The first volume appeared in 1776, the last in 1788. In 1783, Gibbon returned to Lausanne, and made it his home during the remainder of his life. He died at London, January 16th, 1794. With Dr. Johnson, he ranks at the head of the eighteenth-century masters of Latin style. Ciceronian syntax had never been made completely at home in England until Gibbon wrote. W. V. B. THE ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE HE history of empire is that of the miseries of humankind; the history of the sciences is that of their splendor and happiness. If a thousand other considerations render the study of the latter interesting to the philosopher, this reflection alone is sufficient to recommend it to every friend of mankind. How ardently do I wish a truth so consolatory admitted of no exception! But alas! the man too often intrudes on the retirement of the student: and hence even in his closet, that asylum of contemplative wisdom, he is still misled by his prejudices, agitated by his passions, or debased by his follies. The influence of fashion is founded on the inconstancy of man; the causes of its despotism being as frivolous as the effects of its tyranny are fatal. Men of letters are, nevertheless, afraid to cast off its yoke, and, though reflection causes some delay in their submission, it serves to render it but the more graceful. All ages and countries have given a preference, not seldom unjustly, to some particular science, while they permitted others to languish and sink into a contempt equally unreasonable. Thus logic and metaphysics under the successors of Alexander, polity and elocution during the Roman republic, history and poetry in |