Old Nick, a spider grimme, who doth devyse
Ever to catch us in his cunning toyles.
Look at his claws--how long they are, and hooked!
Look at his eyes--and mark how grimme and greedie!
Look at his horrid fangs--how sharp and crooked!
Then keep thy distance so, I this arreede ye,
Oh sillie Flie! an thou wouldst keep thee whole;
For an he catch thee, he will eate thy soul."

And there they are! the winged insect lovers of pleasure, and of gain
and strife--in one word, of sin--entangled in the ladder webb; while
such a monster is in the centre, watching his larder. John Bell is
instinctively a moral weaver. Fine-spun are his philosophical threads;
we stop not to enquire if they will bear the tug of life. He is trying
them, however, on the "tug of war." Pen and needle are set to work
philosophically, methodically, benignly. In this he is but a unit out of
many thousands. His opinions are not singular. Amiable moralist!--
delightful is the dream, sweetly sounding the wisdom; but is it
practicable? John Bell's warfare, "The Assault," is, without a doubt,
"confusion worse confounded;" it is not easy, at a view, to find legs
and arms and heads in their anatomical order. We must trace the human
figure as through its map. Perhaps this is purposely done to resemble a
battle the more truly, where limbs are apt to fly out of their places.
But John Bell thinks--

"The play's the thing
Wherewith to touch the conscience of the king."

So he pours forth from his "Unpublished Play" a choice tirade against
the royal play of human ninepins:--

"And then a battle, too--no doubt it is
A right fine thing; or rather to have been there.
But all things have their price; and this, methinks,
Is rather dear sometimes. Oh! glory's but
The tatter'd banner in a cobwebb'd hall,
Open'd not once a-year--a doubtful tomb,
With half the name effaced. Of all the bones
Have whiten'd battle-fields, how many names
Live in the chronicle? and which were in the right?
One murder hangs a man upon a rope,
A hundred thousand maketh him a god,
And builds him up a temple in the air
Out of men's skulls. A loving mother bears
A thousand pangs to bring into the world
One child; your warrior sends a thousand out,
Then picks his teeth."

JOHN BELL--_Unpublished Play_.

Such was Shakspeare's momentary humour, when he put it i