Saturninus. Go, take him away, and hang him presently.

Clown. How much money must I have?

Tamora. Come, sirrah, you must be hang'd.

Clo. Hang'd! by'r lady, then I have brought up a neck to a fair

end.

This is an instance of Shakspere's indifference to the death of inferior persons, which Johnson calls innocent mediocrity.'

Aaron, discovered with his child by a Goth, is brought to Lucius. Lucius would have the child hanged in the father's sight to vex his soul,' and afterwards hang the Moor. The Moor, nothing daunted by a view of his own approaching death, pleads for the life of the child, and promises that Lucius shall hear of something to his advantage, but adds

If thou wilt not, befall what may befall,

I'll speak no more; but vengeance rot you all!

This is something like Iago's end. Lucius was not improved by experience, when he would victimise the innocent to his vengeance. To make the sequel and the moral consistent with the commencement of his career, Lucius would perpetrate this fresh cruelty, and Aaron memorialises his sense of religion.

Lucius. Tell on thy mind; I say thy child shall live.
Aaron. Swear that he shall, and then will I begin.
Luc. Who should I swear by? thou believ'st no God:
That granted, how can'st thou believe an oath ?

Aar. What if I do not? as, indeed, I do not:
Yet, for I know thou art religious,

And hast a thing within thee called conscience,
With twenty Popish tricks and ceremonies
Which I have seen thee careful to observe,
Therefore I urge thy oath; for that I know
An idiot holds his bauble for a God,

And keeps the oath which by that God he swears,
To that I'll urge him ;-therefore thou shalt vow
By that same God, what God soe'er it be,
That thou ador'st and hast in reverence,

To save my boy, nourish and bring him up,
Or else I will discover nought to thee.

Luc. Ev'n by my God I will swear to thee, I will.

Here is an open profession of atheism. Religion, con

science, tricks, and ceremonies, are all put together, and their relation to all religion pointed at by calling them 'Popish.' When the characters were pagans, who would have done this but Shakspere? Is not the irony of an oath Shakspere's? This characterisation of tricks and baubles, and calling the believer in them an idiot, is a cast of the speech of Theseus, in Midsummer Night's Dream. Lucius asks Aaron

Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

Aaron. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things,
As willingly as one would kill a fly;
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed,
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.

Luc. Bring down the devil, for he must not die

So sweet a death as hanging presently.

Aar. If there be devils, would I were a devil,
To live and burn in everlasting fire,

So I might have your company in hell,

But to torment you with my bitter tongue!

Luc. Sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more.

Killing flies is again made a comparison with his own commission of cruelties, as it was with the tyranny of men by Andronicus, and as it is with the tyranny of the gods towards men by Gloster, in Lear. Aaron himself, in the utterance of avowed blasphemy, gives us the meaning of the bitter tongue' of Andronicus. Shakspere was the person who ought to have stopped Aaron's mouth earlier, and not have allowed the rest to ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.

Tamora as Revenge, and her two sons as Rape and Murder, come to Titus.

Titus. Good Lord, how like the Empress' sons they are, And you the Empress! but we worldly men

Have miserable and mistaking eyes.

Lucius ends religiously as he began, ordering the funerals of the rest, and denying burial to Tamora. He says this will be a want of pity, like her want of pity. Thus the conclusion puts into the mouth of Lucius the moral to the

play which he had enacted-the want of pity and the power of superstition. There is a judgment here' which falls alike on all parties-the heaviest on the pious Andro nicus, and the lightest, perhaps, upon the atheist.

Lucius enters triumphantly into Rome a second time, and with a son of Tamora, by Aaron. He calls the Moor unhallowed slave, irreligious, misbelieving. Lucius tells the child to shed some tears over his grandfather.

Because kind nature doth require it so ;

Friends should associate friends in grief and woe.

Had he followed the dictates of nature at first, there had not been cause for so many tears. He then passes sentence on the Moor.

Lucius. Set him breast deep in earth, and famish him;
There let him stand, and rave and cry for food:

If any one relieves or pities him,

For the offence he dies. This is our doom:

Some stay, to see him fasten'd in the earth.

Aaron. O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?
I am no baby, I, that, with base prayers,

I should repent the evils I have done;

Ten thousand, worse than ever yet I did,
Would I perform, if I might have my will;
If one good deed in all my life I did,

I do repent it from my very soul.

This is addressed to God. Is it not a satire on religious phraseology? Titus serves up Tamora's sons in a pie to be eaten by her, in imitation of the ancient fable, and thus addresses Saturninus:

My lord the emperor, resolve me this;
Was it well done of rash Virginius,

To slay his daughter with his own right hand,
Because she was enforc'd, stain'd, and deflour'd?

Saturninus. It was, Andronicus.

Titus. Your reason, mighty lord?

Sat. Because the girl should not survive her shame,

And by her presence still renew his sorrows.

Tit. A reason mighty, strong, and effectual,

A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant,
For me, most wretched, to perform the like.

Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee;
And with thy shame thy father's sorrow die!

[He kills her.

Sat. What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?

Tit. Kill'd her, for whom my tears have made me blind.
I am as woful as Virginius was,

And have a thousand times more cause than he

To do this outrage; and it is now done.

We see Shakspere fulfilling the malice of Aaron, and pursuing, by wholesale destruction, the work of retributive justice. Lucius, who would not spare the son of Tamora, is obliged to grant life to the second son of the man who had punished him so severely for the denial of it to the first. As in the speech of Macbeth, there is a responsibility to man taught; every one recommends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice to their own lips;' but there is no responsibility to Deity taught. The idea of hell is treated with the greatest contempt. Cobbett once wrote-Does not every man at once see that it would create the greatest wickedness if we raised the cry "Holloa, boys, there is no hell." Has not Shakspere raised this cry, and re-echoed it throughout this play? What Posidonius said of Epicurus, may be said of Shakspere-' He brought in the gods to make merry at their expense.'

We cannot see in Eschylus anything so impious as we have pointed out in this drama. Yet he was condemned to be stoned, because he did not pay sufficient respect to the religion of his country in his tragedies. He was only pardoned because he had lost a hand in the service of his country. Euripides was also considered an atheist by his contemporaries. Aristophanes introduces a shopman, who says, 'Since Euripides persuaded men by his impious verses, that there were no gods, I sell no more crowns.' Yet it would be still more difficult to find impiety in Euripides equal to that which has come under our notice. Plutarch attributes to Euripides the system of atheism, which, he says, 'he caused to be uttered on the stage. Not daring to give his own opinion, because he feared the Areopagus, he insinuated it in introducing Sisyphus upon the stage.' Plutarch took the common-sense view of the subject, that

the author sympathised with the atheist he delineated. It did not signify what the character was, good or bad-acknowledging gods, or totally denying thein; there were the ideas, and no critic thought of saying they belonged to the character-to Sisyphus and not to Euripides. Certainly it was intended as a blind to the vulgar, and as a legal defence; but that does not make the truth of things less clear to moral, religious, and philosophical judges.

The sort of atheism to be found in Titus Andronicus, and other plays of Shakspere-the doubts, invective, and abuse indulged in with regard to the divinity, in the century in which Shakspere lived, had been an historical fact. One Haguet, an English sectary of the sixteenth century, made the following prayer in dying, which we translate from the Latin: God of heaven, most powerful Jehovah, the alpha and omega of the universe, king of kings; eternal god! deliver me from the hands of my enemies: anything less, I will climb up to the heavens, and drag you from your throne, I will tear you to pieces with my hands.' This man could not have believed in God, or entertained any religion. Such language shows essentially the same want of reverence that is so observable in the reproaches of our poet.

A book of the seventeenth century, which bore the title 'Cymbalum mundi,' under the guise of stories and pagan divinities, was thought not to treat with proper respect religion and divinity in general. The book was condemned by the Sorbonne, and burnt. The following were the reflections of the critics upon it, which apply equally well to Shakspere. Voet observes, It is possible for a man to instil atheism into works of pleasantry and full of fiction, and might serve himself with this ruse, in order that if he was pursued, he might escape from his pursuers.' Theoph. Spiyelius, 1663, in his search after atheism, says, the author of the Cymbalum mundi,' under the veil of mythology, appears to wish to reject those things which we say and believe to be most true concerning God. Another, Pasquier, in the first volume of his letters: The Cymbalum mundi is a Lucianism, which deserves to be cast into the fire, with its author, if he was living.' Lucianism-how exactly does the word suit the same sort of productions in Shakspere.