134 



DISCOVERY 



the phrase " rivers of your blood " that should arrest 

 us, for, if literally accepted, it does indicate the notion 

 of a flow in one direction only. The flow of a river is 

 the very opposite of a tidal flow. 



To insist, however, that, because Shakespeare used 

 the expression "rivers of blood," he actually foresaw the 

 discovery of the circulation, is to read a great deal too 

 much into this passage ; possibly he meant no more by 

 " rivers " than if he had said " streams." If we had 

 none other than this passage to go upon, we might 

 admit that Shakespeare had before him the Harveian 

 notion of a flow only in one direction ; but in the light 

 of what he writes in Act V, Sc. i, of the same play — 



" The veins unfilled, onr blood is cold, and then 

 We pout upon the morning, are unapt 

 To give or to forgive ; but when we have stuffed 

 These pipes and these conveyances of our blood 

 With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls 

 Than in our priest-like fasts " — ■ 



^\■e cannot but believe that Shakespeare held no view 

 other than the Galenical one of his own day, namely, 

 that the veins, not the arteries, convey the nourishment 

 to all parts of the body. The revivifying effect of 

 alcohol taken with food is fully appreciated in this 

 passage. 



That distinguished man of science, Steno the Dane, 

 was violently criticised for his irreverence in asserting 

 that the heart — the seat of the soul — was in its essence 

 none other than a common muscle. 



Shakespeare seems to have had an inkling of the pre- 

 eminence of the beating organ in the chest ; he knew 

 not only fairly accurately where the heart-beat is, but 

 how emotions directly affect it, as when Macbeth 

 exclaims, 



" Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, 

 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs," 



One of Shakespeare's allusions to blood reaching the 

 heart has been made a good deal of by certain writers 

 on the history of physiological discovery. The passage 

 is in Julius C;esar (Act II, Sc. i) where Brutus exclaims, 



" You are mj- true and honourable wife. 

 As dear to me as are the rudd)- drops 

 That visit my sad heart." 



All that this asserts could be known from observing 

 slaughtered animals, namely, that blood is in the heart ; 

 and yet some writers have gone so far as to maintain 

 that Shakespeare anticipated Harvey in the matter of 

 the dicovery of the circulation. This is excess of hero- 

 worship. 



There is, however, quite a striking passage in 

 Measure for Measure (Act IV, Sc. 3), where the heart is 

 mentioned in a new connection : 



Lucio : " O Pretty Isabella ; I am pale at mine heart to see 

 thine eyes so red," 



The thought in Shakespeare's mind was probably that 

 the emotion of sorrow or sympathy blanches the heart 

 in the same wav that some emotions blanch the skin 

 of the face. While the literal physiology of this is 

 incorrect, there is the recognition of the important 

 effect of psychical states on the condition of the 

 heart. 



{To he continued) 



Reviews of Books 



NEW REVELATIONS OF BYRON'S PERSONALITY 



Lord Byron's Correspondence, chiefly ivith Ladv Melbourne, 

 Mr. Hohhouse. The Hon. Douglas Kinnaird, and 

 P. B. Shelley. With Portraits. Edited by John 

 Murray, C.V.O. In two volumes. (John Hurray, 



25^-) 



The French Rev-olution and the subsequent Napoleonic 

 Wars threw a strange assortment of men to the surface 

 not only in the world of politics, but also in literature. 

 The events of these years stirred men to their depths, and, 

 so far as our poets were concerned, drove them out of the 

 " polite society " of Bath and the " coffee taverns " of 

 London, to wander again through the green fields of 

 England, or across the Continent, and made them face the 

 realities of life, not in a library chair, but in the open world 

 and amongst other human beings. As the nineteenth 

 century wore on poets began to return to London clubs 

 and drawang-rooms, and we find Tennyson, the author of 

 The Idylls of the King, reigning as the literary lion in the 

 place of B\Ton, the author of Don Juan. Tranquillity 

 flows through Tennyson's works, even through the most 

 passionate stanzas of Maud, but a blast of passion and 

 strong emotion surges through B^Ton's poems. 



B^Ton appealed to an age of unrest and violent contrasts. 

 His character was, indeed, a strange blend of opposing 

 tendencies. After his death our Victorian ancestors 

 exaggerated all his worst qualities, and handed on to us 

 the picture of a haught}^ sneering aristocrat, who lived 

 the life of a depraved and selfish debauchee, and wrote 

 immoral poems which no young person should be allowed 

 to read. That is only a one-sided picture, and we believe 

 that these two new volumes of his letters will help to shed 

 a more kindly light on his life and personality. 



There was something both of the Dr. Jekyll and of the 

 Mr. Hyde in BjTon's make-up, though he never reached 

 such extremes of kindness or of cruelty. It is impossible 

 to put a good reflection on such matters as his treatment 

 of Clare Clairmont, the attitude he adopted towards Leigh 

 Hunt and liis family on their arrival in Italy, his readi- 

 ness to believe slanders about his friend Shelley (see vol. ii, 

 p. 183), liis numerous dislikings of people and his habit of 

 loudly voicing them. These seem to us more inexcusable 

 than any of his amours, for there is an inhumanity about 

 them. Yet, taking the man with all the handicaps with 



