POETS AND OTHER WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE. JAMES I. reigned between the sword, which terrified him while yet unborn, and the axe, which slew, but could not terrify his son. His reign separated the scaffold of Fotheringay from that of Whitehall: a gloomy period, in which Bacon and Shakspeare were extinguished. Those two illustrious contemporaries trod the same ground: I have already mentioned the foreigners who were their companions in glory. France, which was then behind-hand in letters, presents to us only Amyot, de Thou, Ronsard, and Montaigne, minds of humbler flight. Hardy and Garnier had scarcely begun to lisp the first accents of our Melpomene. Rabelais indeed had been dead but fifteen years when Shakspeare was born. The buffoon would have proved qualified to measure himself with the tragic dramatist. The latter had already passed thirty-one years on earth, when the unfortunate Tasso and the heroic Ercilla left it, both dying in 1595. The English poet founded the theatre of his nation, whilst Lope de Vèga established that of Spain; but Lope had a rival in Calderon. The author of the "Meilleur Alcalde" had embarked as a volunteer, in the invincible Armada, at the very time when the author of Falstaff was calming the inquietudes of the "Fair vestal throned in the West." The Castilian dramatist alludes to this famed Armada in his "Fuerza lastimosa." "The winds," he says, "destroyed the finest naval armament that was ever seen." Lope was coming, sword in hand, to assault Shakspeare on his own hearth, as the minstrels of William the Conqueror attacked the Scalds of Harold. Lope has treated religion as Shakspeare treated history. The characters of the first, chant on the stage the Gloria Patri, interspersed with songs. Those of the second, sing lively ballads, the lazzi of the grave-digger. Cervantes, wounded at Lepanto, in 1570, a slave in Algiers, in 1575, ransomed in 1581, began in a prison his inimitable comic work, and dared not continue it till long afterwards, so much was it misinterpreted. Cervantes died in the same year and the same month with Shakspeare. Two documents specify the wealth of these authors. William Shakspeare, by his last testament, bequeathed to his wife his second best bed. He left two of his brother actors thirty-two shillings each, to buy rings. He constituted his eldest daughter, Susan, his residuary legatee, and made some little presents to his second, Judith, who signed a cross at the bottom of the papers, proving that she could not write. Michael Cervantes acknowledged, by note, that he had received, as the dower of his wife, Catherine Salazor y Palacios, a spindle, an iron skillet, three spits, a shovel, a rasp, a brush, six bushels of meal, five pounds of wax, two little stools, a four-legged table, a woollen mattress, a copper candlestick, two quilts, two infant Jesuses, with their little clothes and shirts, forty-four hens and pullets, with one cock! There is, now-a-days, no scribbler so mean but would exclaim against the injustice of mankind and their contempt of genius, if he were not gorged with pensions, a hundredth part of which would have been a fortune to Cervantes and to Shakspeare. In 1616, therefore, the painter of Lear's fool, and the painter of Don Quixote, worthy fellow-travellers! set out together for a better world. Corneille had come to supply their place in the cosmopolite family of great minds, whose children are born among all nations; as in Rome, Brutus was succeeded by Brutuses, and Scipio by Scipios. The bard of the Cid, a boy of six years, be held the last days of the bard of Othello; as Michael Angelo delivered up his palette, his chisel, his square, and his lute, to death, in the same year when Shakspeare, with the buskin on his feet, and the mask in his hand, entered on life; as the dying poet of Lusitania hailed the first suns of the bard of Albion. While the young butcher of Stratford, armed with his knife, apostrophized before he slaughtered his victim sheep and heifers, Camoëns made the tomb of Inez, on the banks of the Tagus, echo with his swan-like melody. "For how many years may I yet celebrate ye, oh! nymhps of the Tagus? Fortune draws me on to wander through sorrows and perils ; sometimes o'er the sea, sometimes in the midst of combats, sometimes degraded by shameful indigence, with no asylum but a hospital. It sufficeth not that I was devoted to so many woes; it seems that grief must come even from those I sing. Poets, you can bestow glory; behold its price! My years decline; soon will my summer and mine autumn pass away. Misfortune leads to the brink of dark repose, and of eternal sleep." And must the greatest geniuses, in all ages, and of all countries, have to repeat those last words of Camoëns ? Milton, aged but eight years when Shakspeare died, rose, like a shade, beside that great man's tomb. Milton also complains of having fallen on evil days, and too late an age. Unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years damp, my intended wing He felt this apprehension even at the moment when he was composing the ninth book of Paradise Lost, which includes the seduction of Eve, with the most pathetic scenes between her and Adam. These divine spirits, predecessors or contemporaries of Shakspeare, have in their natures something which partakes of the beauty of their countries. Dante was an illustrious citizen and |