by the great forces of love, hate, jealousy, ambition, pride and patriotism. He 'idealises' so far as he has a keener insight than any one into the corresponding types of character, but he does not care, so far as we can see, for the religious enthusiast who retires to a hermitage or scornfully renounces the world, the flesh, and the devil. The men in whom he takes an interest have forgotten that they ever renounced these powers; they are soldiers, courtiers, and statesmen, who give us the secret of the actual Raleighs and Essexes and Burleighs of his own day. The virtues of purity or self-devotion are left chiefly to the women who are the more charming by contrast with the world of force and passion in which they move; though now and then, a Cleopatra or a Lady Macbeth shows that a woman, as Mary Stuart had sufficiently shown, can be interesting by force of human passion. This, of course, is to say that Shakespeare is able to interpret in the most vivid way the characteristics of a period of extraordinary intellectual and social convulsion. But his interpretation shows also individual peculiarities which distinguish him from others who experience a similar external influence. There is, I think, one distinct moral doctrine even
