o for the historical. The whole courting scene,
indeed, in the beginning of the third act, between the lovers, is a
masterpiece; and the first dawn of disobedience in the mind of Miranda to
the command of her father is very finely drawn, so as to seem the working
of the Scriptural command--"Thou shalt leave father and mother," &c. Oh!
with what exquisite purity this scene is conceived and executed!
Shakespeare may sometimes be gross, but I boldly say that he is always
moral and modest. Alas! in this our day, decency of manners is preserved
at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies for vice are allowed,
whilst grossness against it is hypocritically, or at least morbidly,
condemned.

In this play are admirably sketched the vices generally accompanying a low
degree of civilisation; and in the first scene of the second act
Shakespeare has, as in many other places, shown the tendency in bad men to
indulge in scorn and contemptuous expressions as a mode of getting rid of
their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and also, by making
the good ridiculous, of rendering the transition of others to wickedness
easy. Shakespeare never puts habitual scorn into the mouths of other than
bad men, as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian. The scene of
the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo is an exact counterpart
of the scene between Macbeth and his lady, only pitched in a lower key
throughout, as designed to be frustrated and concealed, and exhibiting the
same profound management in the manner of familiarising a mind, not
immediately recipient, to the suggestion of guilt, by associating the
proposed crime with something ludicrous or out of place,--something not
habitually matter of reverence. By this kind of sophistry the imagination
and fancy are first bribed to contemplate the suggested act, and at length
to become acquainted with it. Observe how the effect of this scene is
heightened by contrast with another counterpart of it in low life,--that
between the conspirators Stephano, Caliban, and Trinculo in the second
scene of the third act, in which there are the same essential
characteristics.

In this play, and in this scene of it, are also shown the springs of the
vulgar in politics,--of that kind of politics which is inwoven with human
nature. In his treatment of this subject, wherever it occurs, Shakespeare
is quite peculiar. In other writers we find the particular opinions of the
individual