al phantasy, or sweetness of temper, or dreamy
dignity, or love of God, or love of His creatures. He saw that such a man
through sheer bewilderment and impatience can become as unjust or as
violent as any common man, any Bolingbroke or Prince John, and yet remain
'that sweet lovely rose.' The courtly and saintly ideals of the Middle
Ages were fading, and the practical ideals of the modern age had begun to
threaten the unuseful dome of the sky; Merry England was fading, and yet
it was not so faded that the Poets could not watch the procession of the
world with that untroubled sympathy for men as they are, as apart from all
they do and seem, which is the substance of tragic irony.

Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments,
apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its
flamings out of the uncivilized heart. He did indeed think it wrong to
overturn a King, and thereby to swamp peace in civil war, and the
historical plays from _Henry IV._ to _Richard III._, that monstrous birth
and last sign of the wrath of Heaven, are a fulfilment of the prophecy of
the Bishop of Carlisle, who was 'raised up by God' to make it; but he had
no nice sense of utilities, no ready balance to measure deeds, like that
fine instrument, with all the latest improvements, Gervinus and Professor
Dowden handle so skilfully. He meditated as Solomon, not as Bentham
meditated, upon blind ambitions, untoward accidents, and capricious
passions, and the world was almost as empty in his eyes as it must be in
the eyes of God.

'Tired with all these, for restful death I cry;--
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And Art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tired with all these, from these would I begone
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.'

V

The Greeks, a certain scholar has told me, considered that myths are the
activities of the Daemons, and that the Daemons shape our characters and our
lives. I have often had the fancy that there is some one Myth for every
man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understa