Oh God! if Thine be pity, and if Thou E’en in the jaws of death ere now, Hast wrought salvation--look on me; And if my life seem fair to Thee O tear this plague, this curse away, Which gaining on me day by day, A creeping slow paralysis, Hath driven away all happiness. Six love stories stand out conspicuous in the records of poetry--those which find expression in the _Elegies_ of Propertius, in the _Sonnets and Canzoni_ of Dante and Petrarch, in the _Sonnets_ of Camoens, in the _Astrophel and Stella_ of Sidney, in the _Sonnets_ of Shakespeare. But never has passion, never has pathos, thrilled in intenser or more piercing utterance than in the poems which that fatal “Clytemnestra quadrantaria”--to employ the phrase which may actually have been applied to her--inspired, and in which the rapture and loathing and despair of Catullus found a voice. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 48: “If the silent dead can feel any pleasure, or solace from our sorrow, Calvus, when, in wistful regret, we recall past loves, and weep for the friendships severed long ago, then be sure that Quintilia’s grief for her early death is not so great as the joy she feels in knowing your love for her.”] THE RELIGION OF SHAKESPEARE[49] [Footnote 49: _The Religion of Shakespeare._ Chiefly from the writings of the late Mr. Richard Simpson. By Henry Sebastian Bowden. London.] This book, which is partly a compilation from the uncollected writings of the late Richard Simpson and partly the composition of Father Bowden himself, is an attempt to show that Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic. It contains much interesting information; it is well written, and we have read it with pleasure. With much which we find in it we entirely concur and are in full sympathy. We take Shakespeare quite as seriously as Father Bowden does. We believe that the greatest of dramatic poets is also one of the greatest of moral teachers, that his theology and ethics deserve the most careful study, and that they have, too frequently, been either neglected or misinterpreted. We agree with Father Bowden that nothing could be sounder and more persistently emphasised than the ethical element in this poet’s dramas; that his ethics are, in the main, the ethics of Christianity, and that so far from Shakespeare being simply an agnostic and having no religion at all, as Birch and others have contended, he is, if not formally, at least in essence, as religious as Æschylus and Sophocles. And now Father Bowden must forgive us if we are unable to go further with him. We have no prejudice against Roman Catholicism, or against any of the creeds in which religious faith and reverence have found expression,--“Tros Rutulusve fuat nullo discrimine agetur.” Our sole wish is, if possible, to get at the truth. It is of comparatively little consequence now to what form of religion Shakespeare belonged, but it would be at least interesting, if it could be shown that any particular sect could legitimately claim him.