t the estimate of this which he has given
in the third Lecture of "Sesame and Lilies"[1] is so painful, if
regarded as Shakspere's latest and most mature opinion, that everybody,
even Mr. Ruskin himself, would be glad to modify its gloom with a few
rays of hope, if it were possible to do so. "What then," says Mr.
Ruskin, "is the message to us of our own poet and searcher of hearts,
after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered over
the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the heathen's
(Homer)? is his hope more near, his trust more sure, his reading of
fate more happy? Ah no! He differs from the heathen poet chiefly in
this, that he recognizes for deliverance no gods nigh at hand, and that,
by petty chance, by momentary folly, by broken message, by fool's
tyranny, or traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are
brought to their ruin, and perish without word of hope. He, indeed, as
part of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of
habitual devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine
is bright with visions of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing
by his few dead, acknowledges the presence of the hand that can save
alike by many or by few. But observe that from those who with deepest
spirit meditate, and with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words
as these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the
perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all
heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in
exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the
great Christian poet the consciousness of a moral law, through which
'the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to
scourge us;' and of the resolved arbitration of the destinies, that
conclude into precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began; and
force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest plots do
pall, to the confession that 'there's a divinity that shapes our ends,
rough-hew them how we will.'"[2]

[Footnote 1: 3rd edition, sec. 115.]

[Footnote 2: Mr. Ruskin has analyzed "The Tempest," in "Munera
Pulveris," sec. 124, et seqq., but from another point of view.]

128. Now, it is perfectly clear that this criticism was written with two
or three plays, all belonging to one period, very conspicuously before
the mind. Of the illustrative exceptions that are made to the ge