1900.] on Shakespeare and True Patriotism. 417 



Dumas set Shakespeare next to God in the cosmic system, saying 

 " After God, Shakespeare has created most." If assertion of the 

 fact that Shakespeare was an Englishman were a weakness of English 

 flesh, it was a weakness beneficial to the Englishman's mental health 

 to yield to. Personally, Shakespeare had homely ambitions. Bacon 

 bequeathed his name and memory to foreign nations. Shakespeare 

 made no testamentary disposition of his name and memory, and by 

 his default, his name and memory were the heritage of the English- 

 speaking race, his next of kin. Patriotism manifested itself nowhere 

 more safely or more sanely than in the due recognition of those 

 heroes of a nation's past, whose achievements had helped to confer 

 on it its title to the respect of other nations. A large part of this 

 nation's prestige — its intellectual prestige — was due to its kinship 

 with Shakespeare. Thirty-five years ago, Cardinal Wiseman had 

 promised to deliver a Friday evening discourse on Shakespeare at 

 the Royal Institution. His death interrupted the design, but the 

 notes prepared for the lecture survived. There the Cardinal pointed 

 out how Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton had given England the 

 sovereignty respectively of literature and science in the civilised 

 world. Without Newton and Shakespeare Englishmen would lack 

 much of the consideration they now enjoyed in the sight of the 

 world. 



Coming more closely to his special subject, Mr. Lee said the 

 Shakespearian drama illustrated how the patriotic instinct might be 

 virtuously trained, and how the morbid symptoms incident to its 

 excess or defect might be averted. The play of ' Coriolanus ' proved 

 how the presence of patriotic instinct in some form or other was 

 needed to the proper conduct of life. Bolingbroke in ' Richard II.' 

 showed how a sincere love of one's country softened harshness of 

 character and purified ambition. Henry V. deprecated vaunts, in 

 the name of patriotism, of the superiority of the English over the 

 French. His patriotism, though stiffened by war, was not unmind- 

 ful of the interests of peace. The warlike play of ' Henry V.' ended 

 with a powerful appeal to France and England to cherish " neigh- 

 bourhood and Christianlike accord." The true patriot was en- 

 couraged by Shakespeare to speak out boldly when he thought his 

 country erred. Shakespeare exposed freely and with good-humoured 

 cynicism the failings and errors of his countrymen. Extravagance 

 of dress, the contemptuous ignorance of foreign languages, addiction 

 to excess, as in drink, the nation's patronage of undignified shows 

 and sports, the want of balance that commonly infects the popular 

 judgment, all came under Shakespeare's condemnation. The his- 

 torical plays of Shakespeare illustrated the brittleness rather than 

 the brilliance of kingly glory, and inferentially of national glory. 

 The glory of a nation, as of a king, was only stable when the nation, 

 as the king, lived soberly, virtuously, and wisely, and was courageous, 

 magnanimous, and ambitious of knowledge. In the most eloquent 

 of all the direct avowals of patriotism in Shakespeare's plays, in 



