show that human nature is much the
same as it was in the days when Job called in his agony for comfort
and found none. Wonderful and disquieting it is to see how the noblest
of minds have been driven in all ages to mourn over the disposition of
men to strike at the unfortunate! The Book of Job is the finest piece
of literary work known to the world, and it is mainly taken up with a
picture of the treatment which the Arabian patriarch met with at the
hands of his friends. People do not look for sarcasm in the Bible, but
the unconscious lofty sarcasm of Job is so terrible, that it shows how
a mighty intellect may be driven by bitter wrong into transcendencies
of wrath and scorn. "Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with
you." The old desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst
extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of
withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on
imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I
suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and
despair. The book is one of the world's monuments, and it has been
placed there to remind all people that dwell on earth of their own
innate meanness; it has been placed before us as a lesson against
cruelty, treachery, ingratitude. Have we gone very far in the
direction since Job raged and mourned? Those who look around them may
answer the question in their own way.

The world had not progressed much in Shakspere's time, at any rate.
Like all of us, Shakspere was able to look on the work of beautiful
and kind souls--no one has ever spoken more nobly of the benefactions
conferred on their brethren by the righteous; but that calm immortal
soul had in it depths of awful scorn and anger, which bubbled up only
a very few times. Few people read "Timon of Athens"; and I do not
blame the neglect, for it is a spirit-crushing play, and a man must be
bold if he cares to look at it twice. But in it it is plain to me that
Shakspere lets us see a gleam from the boiling flood of scorn that
raged far under his serene exterior. The words bite; the abandonment
of the satirist is complete. He puts into the mouth of the man who is
down a whole acrid and scurrilous philosophy of success and failure;
and there is not a passage in Swift which can equal for venom and
emphasis the ferocious words of the Athenian misanthrope. We know
nothing of Shakspere's mood while he was writing this cruel piece,