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it thus, speaking to the guests; The gods require our thanks;' and it begins in these words :

You great benefactors! sprinkle our society with thankfulness. Act iii. Sc. 6.

This of course is in prose; but on a previous occasion, in the same play, another grace occurs, said by Apemantus, the 'churlish philosopher,' which is in verse, much after the style of some of the metrical graces in the old primers; and the manner in which it is introduced, apparently as a Benedictio post cibum, or at least after the entertainment has commenced, may possibly be intended to reflect upon the omission of grace-saying at public banquets, or at the tables of the rich-a suspicion which the words, spoken by the same character immediately before, would seem to confirm :

Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.

Act i. Sc. 2.

However this may be, and however we may question the propriety of putting such a sentiment as I am about to quote from Coriolanus, into the mouth of a Volscian soldier, there can be no doubt that the sentiment itself implies great familiarity on the part of our poet with the practice of saying grace both before and after meals. The scene is A camp, at a small distance from Rome. Enter Aufidius, General of the Volscians, and his Lieutenant. Aufid. Do they still fly to the Roman ? *

* i. e. to Coriolanus.

Lieut. I do not know what witchcraft's in him; but
Your soldiers use him as the grace 'fore meat,
Their talk at table, and their thanks at end;
And you are darkened in this action, sir,
Even by your own.

Act iv. Sc. 7.

Passing by the

But to come to Christian times. very proper resolution of Sir Hugh Evans, in Merry Wives of Windsor, Act i. Sc. I: 'I will not be absence at the grace,'-where, by-the-bye, we should have thought Sir Hugh would have been the person to ask the blessing'; we may turn to the Merchant of Venice, and I think we shall not be far wrong in supposing that our poet designed to satirize the Puritanism which had begun to prevail in his own age, when he put the following lines into the mouth of Gratiano in that play. Bassanio, whom he had proposed to accompany to Belmont, the house of Portia, consented, but at the same time required of him to allay his skipping spirit with some cold drops of modesty :'

Grat.

Signior Bassanio, hear me :
If I do not put on a sober habit,

Talk with respect

Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely;
Nay more, while grace is saying bood mine eyes

Thus with my hat, and sigh and say, Amen ;
Use all the observance of civility,

Like one well-studied in a sad ostent,

To please his grandam-never trust me more.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

It is somewhat remarkable that no one of Shak

speare's commentators, so far as I have seen, has a word to say in illustration of the dialogue, which I am about to quote, between Lucio and the two Gentlemen, in the second scene of Measure for Measure:

1st Gent. There's not a soldier of us all that, in the thanksgiving before meat, doth relish the petition well that prays for peace.

2nd Gent. I never heard any soldier dislike it.

Lucio. I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

2nd Gent. No? A dozen times at least.

1st Gent. What? in metre?

Lucio. In any proportion, or in any language.*

'Proportion,' Warburton says, here signifies measure; but I rather think it means prose or verse, chant or hymn, as 'in any language' means especially, I imagine, Latin or English. However, it is of more interest to point out that the petition,

Give peace in our time, O Lord!

taken from the Versicles in the Prayer Book, before the Collect for the day, is still used, as it appears from the above passage to have been in Shakspeare's time, as part of the grace (probably from the connexion between Peace and Plenty) in some of our college halls; e. g. at Winchester, at election time, the concluding portion of the grace, Post

Mr. Bowdler omits the two last speeches, and much more that follows-partly with and partly without sufficient reason.

N

cibum, which is chanted, runs thus, being formed out of three of the said Versicles.

Fac Reginam salvam, Domine; Da pacem in diebus nostris ; et exaudi nos in die quocunque invocamus te. Amen.

Lucio had meant to insinuate that the 2nd Gentleman was a graceless fellow. The same jest passes somewhat more broadly, as might be expected, between Falstaff and Prince Hal:

Fals. I pray thee, sweet wag, when thou art king—as, God save thy grace-majesty, I should say; for grace thou wilt have

none

P. Hen. What, none?

Fals. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to an egg and butter:

King Hen. IV. 1st Part, Act i. Sc. 2.

where the speaker, with logic more characteristic than reverent, would imply that a short grace may suffice for a scanty meal.

There remains one more passage to be produced under this head; and it is one from which we might perhaps infer that in the time of Shakspeare the master of the house sometimes devolved the duty of saying grace upon his wife. In Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio says to Katharina, when the supper is brought in :

Come, Kate, sit down; I know you have a stomach.
Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I ?

Act iv. Sc. I.

SECT. 7. Of the Duty and Efficacy of Prayer.

There are few subjects of literary contemplation more interesting or more profitable than to observe the hold which a great practical subject like that of Prayer had upon a mind like that of Shakspeare. We know that some of our distinguished poets have unhappily allowed themselves, at one time or other, if not throughout their career, to imagine difficulties in the way of the performance of this duty; but we have no evidence in any of Shakspeare's plays, from first to last, that he ever entertained any but the truest and most just conceptions of it. First, we have already seen (p. 162) in Hamlet its twofold force, as obtaining either grace to prevent us from sinning, or pardon when we have sinned:

What's in Prayer, but this two-fold force,

To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,

Or pardoned, being down?

Act iii. Sc. 3.

Next, in the epilogue to the Tempest, this latter efficacy is represented as an antidote to despair :

My ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by Prayer;
Which pierces so, that it assaults

Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

It was probably not without some reference, in his own mind, to the practice of Daniel, vi. 10, and to the ancient hours of the church, that our poet puts into the mouth of Imogen, one of his sweetest

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