"Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues: nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use...."

Here we have once more a characteristically Shaksperean transmutation
and development of the idea rather than a reproduction; and the same
appears when we compare the admirable lines of the poet with a homiletic
sentence from the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE:--

"It is not enough for us to serve God in spirit and soul; we
owe him besides and we yield unto him a corporal
worshipping: we apply our limbs, our motions, and all
external things to honour him."

But granting the philosophic as well as the poetic heightening, we are
still led to infer a stimulation of the poet's thought by the Essays--a
stimulation not limited to one play, but affecting other plays written
about the same time. Another point of connection between HAMLET and
MEASURE FOR MEASURE is seen when we compare the above passage, "Spirits
are not finely touched but to fine issues," with Laertes' lines[95]:

"Nature is fine in love, and when 'tis fine
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves."

And though such data are of course not conclusive as to the time of
composition of the plays, there is so much of identity between the
thought in the Duke's speech, just quoted, and a notable passage in
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, as to strengthen greatly the surmise that the
latter play was also written, or rather worked-over, by Shakspere about
1604. The phrase:

"if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all the same
As if we had them not,"

is developed in the speech of Ulysses to Achilles[96]:

"A strange fellow here
Writes me that man--how dearly ever parted
How much in having, or without, or in--
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he knows, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort their heat again
To the first giver."

I do not remember in Montaigne any such development of the id