that thou should'st say, who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou should'st say, who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. Deut. xxx. 11-14.

The righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise: Say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from above. Or, who shall descend into the deep? that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead: But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith, which we preach.

Romans x. 6-8.

In the other passage of the same play, to which I last referred, we may also trace a similar use and adaptation of Scriptural ideas and modes of thought. In this instance, for a reason that will be obvious, let us take the Scripture first.

In Job xxi. 22, the solemn question is asked :Shall any teach God knowledge?

And in Isaiah xl. 13:

Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or, being his counsellor, hath taught Him?

And in S. Paul, more than once, see Rom. xi. 34, 1 Cor. ii. 16:—

Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?

When Owen Glendower desires to represent that he is something more than human :

All the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men-

he endeavours to fortify the boast by making use of the same image and attribute of Deity :

Where is he living

Which calls me pupil, or hath read to me?
And bring him out, that is but woman's son,
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,
And hold me pace in deep experiments?

Act iii. Sc. г.

10. Again: the sublime passages of the Old Testament, in which the attributes of man, or of angels, are assigned to Almighty God; as, for instance, where He is said to 'ride upon the heavens,' Deut. xxxiii. 26, Ps. lxviii. 4; or 'to walk' or 'fly upon the wings of the wind, Ps. civ. 3, xviii. 10; or that 'His hand is not shortened,' Numb. xi. 23, Isai. 1. 2, lix. 1 ;-might expect to find their likenesses in Shakspeare, and they do find them: yet so softened and disguised, that no comparison which might suggest thoughts of irreverence is provoked by the imitation.

It is Romeo who thus, from Capulet's garden, addresses Juliet at her window :

O! speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of Heaven
Unto the white upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

The shortening of the hand or arm is applied as a metaphor to Danger, with great force and propriety,

in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, part of which, at least, I take to have been written by Shakspeare when a young man.

Danger, which I feared, is at Antioch,
Whose arm seems far too short to hit me here.

Act i. Sc. z.

Nor can I doubt that our poet had in his eye that beautiful and most pathetic passage of the prophet Isaiah, in which God's unfailing remembrance of his people is set forth, xlix. 15;

Can a woman forget her sucking child?

may forget, yet will I not forget thee;

Yea, they

when he wrote, in King Henry V., that wellknown speech of the king on the eve of the victory at Agincourt :

This day is called the feast of Crispian!
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named;

Old men forget, yea, all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day.

Act iv. Sc. 3.

I may observe that, in the received text of this passage, the reading is 'yet all shall be forgot;' but with the parallel words of Isaiah before me, I had no doubt that the true reading is 'yea' instead of 'yet:' and I have since discovered that the same conjecture had occurred to Malone, though he makes no mention of the confirmation

given to it by the turn of expression which the inspired prophet employs.

11. The reader who desires further illustrations under this head is requested to compare the fine description in King Richard II. of deeds of darkness shrinking and terrified at the return of day;

Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,

The cloak of night being plucked from off their backs,
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves; --

1 Act iii. Sc. 2.

with the similar description in the Book of Job :—

In the dark they dig thro' houses ; they know not the light; for the morning is to them even as the shadow of death : if one know them they are in the terrors of the shadow of death. xxiv. 13-17.

And again, the grand passage in the Third Part of King Henry VI., where the Earl of Warwick compares his own fall to that of the cedar,

Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,
Under whose shade the ramping lion slept;

Act v. Sc. z.

was doubtless derived, as is pointed out in a note of Steevens, from the prophet Ezekiel, who had made a similar comparison between the fall of the glory of Assyria and of a cedar in Lebanon :

All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young; under his shadow dwelt all great nations. xxxi. 6.

12. The following may be added as specimens

of less elaborate comparison, no less evidently drawn from the same sacred source.

In Much ado about nothing, Benedick says to Don Pedro, in answer to the latter's question :

Where's the count?

I found him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren.
Act ii. Sc. I.

Where again the note of Steevens very properly refers us to the parallel in Isaiah :

The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city ;

i. 8.

a melancholy picture of loneliness and desolation. In Hamlet, Polonius warns Ophelia not to trust too readily to the advances of the young prince, however accompanied with protestations of affection :These blazes, daughter,

Giving more light than heat, extinct in both,
Even in their promise as it is a making,
You must not take for fire.

Act i. Sc. 3.

And again, in the First Part of King Henry IV. the same image occurs to describe the companions of the sovereign whom Henry had supplanted :