FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT. King Henry. Had I so lavish of my presence been, So common hackney'd in the eyes of men, So stale and cheap to vulgar company; Opinion, that did help me to the crown, Had still kept loyal to possession ;* And left me in reputeless banishment, A fellow of no mark, nor likelihood. By being seldom seen, I could not stir, But, like a comet, I was wonder'd at; That men would tell their children," this is he;" Others would say,-" Where? which is Bolinbroke?" And then I stole all courtesy from heaven, And dress'd myself in such humility, That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts, Even in the presence of the crowned king. * The possession of the late King Richard II. Had his great name profaned with their scorns; That, being daily swallow'd by men's eyes, To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little He was but as the cuckoo is in June, Afford no extraordinary gaze, Such as is bent on sunlike majesty, When it shines seldom in admiring eyes; But rather drowzed, and hung their eyelids down, As cloudy men use to their adversaries; Being with his presence glutted, gorg'd, and full. 1st part King Henry IV. Act iii. Scene 2. E FATE. HEAVEN LEAVES MUCH TO OURSELVES. Helena. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull. All's well that ends well. Acti. Scene 1. Bishop of Carlisle. The means that heaven yields must be embraced, And not neglected; else, if heaven would, And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse. King Richard II. Act iii. Scene 2. Cassius. Men at some time are masters of their fates; The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, &c. Julius Cæsar. Acti. Scene 2. Thyreus. Wisdom and fortune combating together, If that the former dare but what it can, No chance may shake it. Antony and Cleopatra. Act iii. Scene 11. FATE, destiny, fortune, chance, accident, necessity, freewill-heavens! what a splendid foundation for an essay of nine volumes! May my readers be content to wait till they receive it from some other pen than mine! I shall content myself with directing their attention to the judicious medium which Shakspere maintains between the extremes of the two doctrines of predestination and freewill-not depriving Providence of its prerogative, and yet shewing us that much remains to be worked out for ourselves. There is no subject on which mankind have held more various or opposing doctrines. The Mahometan doctrine of fatalism is well-known. Hear how prettily a girl of fourteen years of age can dogmatize in precisely the opposite opinions! Thus wrote Bettine Brentano, that most wonderful of children: (now Madame Von Arnim) * "We say, 'Fate rules over us:' but 'tis we are our own fate: we break the threads which bind us to happiness; and tie those which lay an unblest burthen on the heart! an internal spiritual form will shape itself, by means of the external and worldly one: this internal spirit rules, itself, over its own fate, according as may be requisite to its higher organization." Now without attempting to argue these weighty questions, I think that we may venture to assume, that the real truth lies somewhere in the mean between Mahometanism and little Bettine Brentano-in short, that we have something to do with our fate, but not everything; and that we may, without fear of error, allow the correctness of the Poet's remarks, viz. :-" that our remedies oft in ourselves do lie," and further, that "the means that heaven yields must be embraced, and not neglected." * Vide "Goethe's Correspondence with a Child." The book should have been called "Correspondence of a Child with Goethe," for her portion of it is by far the best. "Schiller's notions on these subjects seem to have been somewhat similar to our Poet's, if we may judge from the following passage, which occurs in his magnificent tragedy "Don Carlos." It is not impossible that he may have imbibed the ideas from Shakspere. It relates to so-called chance, or accident. "Und was Ist Zufall anders, als der rohe Stein, Der Leben annimmt unter Bildner's Hand? Which may be thus paraphrased: "What else is accident than the rough stone, |