bserves
regarding him, that so "Divine Providence, while it deputes its
authority to the office-bearers of the world, is still present both
with them and it, and ever ready to punish the evil-doer": still I
doubt of its being just the thing for the world's office-bearers to
undertake the functions of Providence in that particular. Probably the
Duke should not be charged with a fanaticism of intrigue; but he comes
something nearer to it than befits a mind of the first order. Schlegel
thinks "he has more pleasure in overhearing his subjects than in
governing them in the usual way of princes"; and sets him down as an
exception to the proverb, "A cowl does not make a monk": and perhaps
his princely virtues are somewhat obscured by the disguise which so
completely transforms him into a monk. Whether he acts upon the wicked
principle with which that fraternity is so often reproached, or not,
it is pretty certain that some of his means can be justified by
nothing but the end. But perhaps, in the vast complexity of human
motives and affairs, a due exercise of fairness and candour will find
cause enough for ascribing to him the merit of honestly pursuing the
good and true according to the best lights he has. Hereabouts
Schlegel makes the following just remark: "Shakespeare, amidst the
rancour of religious parties, delights in painting monks, and always
represents their influence as beneficial; there being in his plays
none of the black and knavish specimens which an enthusiasm for
Protestantism, rather than poetical inspiration, has put some modern
poets upon delineating. He merely gives his monks an inclination to be
busy in the affairs of others, after renouncing the world for
themselves; though in respect of pious frauds he does not make them
very scrupulous."

As to the Duke's pardoning of Angelo, though Justice seems to cry out
against the act, yet in the premises it were still more unjust in him
to do otherwise; the deception he has practised on Angelo in
substituting Mariana having plainly bound him to the course he finally
takes in that matter. For the same power whereby he works through this
deception might easily have prevented Angelo's crime; and to punish
the offence after thus withholding the means of prevention were
clearly wrong: not to mention how his proceedings here involve an
innocent person; so that he ought to spare Angelo for her sake, if not
for his own. Coleridge indeed strongly reprehends this act, on t