Sayfadaki görseller
PDF
ePub

Nor fire, nor cankering age, as Naso said
Of his, thy wit-fraught book shall once invade;
Nor shall I e'er believe or think thee dead
(Though missed) until our bankrout stage be sped
(Impossible) with some new strain t' out-do
Passions of Juliet and her Romeo ;

Or till I hear a scene more nobly take

Than when thy half-sword parleying Romans spake:
Till these, till any of thy volume's rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling, be express'd,
Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,
But, crown'd with laurel, live eternally.

'L. DIGGES.'

The last of the poetical notices prefixed to the folio is supposed to be by the dramatist, John Marston. It is as follows:

[ocr errors]

To the Memorie of M. W. Shake-speare.

'Wee wondred (Shake-speare) that thou went'st so soone
From the world's-stage to the grave's tyring-roome.
Wee thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth
Tels thy spectators that thou went'st but forth
To enter with applause. An Actor's art
Can dye, and live, to acte a second part.
That's but an Exit of Mortalitie;
This, a Re-entrance to a Plaudite.

'J.M."

112, 113. As we descend from the date of the first folio, the notices of Shakespeare and his works become, of course, more and more numerous. We shall close our list, however, with two, which are in themselves valuable as coming from men who were not only strictly Shakespeare's contemporaries, but among the greatest of his contemporaries. The first is from the poet Donne, who was born nine years after Shakespeare, and who died in 1631. It appeared first in a volume of Donne's Poems, posthumously published in 1633; but the reader will observe that it must have been written by 1623-for the opening lines are clearly referred to in Jonson's eulogy in the folio of that year.

'An Epitaph upon Shakespeare.

'Renowned Chaucer, lie a thought more nigh
To rare Beaumond; and, learned Beaumond, lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make roome

For Shakespeare in your threefold fourefold tombe.
To lie all foure in one bed make a shift,
For untill doomsday hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that be slaine

For whom your curtaines need be drawne againe;

Contemporary Notices of Shakespeare.

209

But, if precedency of death doth barre
A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre,
Under this curled marble of thine owne

Sleepe, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleepe alone;
That unto us and others it may be

Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.'

The following is a passage from the little fragments of prose, published from the commonplace-book of Ben Jonson, under the title of Discoveries, in the folio edition of his works in 1641, or four years after his death. It may have been written any time between 1616 and 1637, but most probably it was written nearer the latter year than the former :

'De Shakespeare nostrat.-Augustus in Hat.-I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour. For I loved the man and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any. He was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Cæsar, one speaking to him, Cæsar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied, 'Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause,' and such like; which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

We cannot do better than end with this striking passage-the expression of Ben's opinion of his quondam friend and companion, as he was sitting one day alone in his declining age with his note-book before him, calling up the memory of past days. After all, the noblest contemporary testimonies to Shakespeare's merits are by Ben Jonson.

[blocks in formation]

210

ART. VII.-The Park Street Pulpit, containing Sermons Preached and Revised by the Rev. C. H. SPURGEON. 8vo. Vols. I., II. Alabaster and Passmore.

MR. SPURGEON is a notability. He filled Exeter Hall with eager listeners for months together. He has since done the same in the great Music Hall of the Surrey Gardens, though spacious enough to receive 9000 persons. Hitherto the prophets have been in the wrong. The feeling does not subside. The crowds gather even more than before. The common people' are there, as at the first: but with them there are now many who are of a much higher grade. Professional men, senatorial men, ministers of state, and peers of the realm, are among Mr. Spurgeon's auditory. These are facts that cannot be questioned. That there is something very extraordinary in them every one must feel. How is the matter to be explained?

Mr. Spurgeon's origin and ecclesiastical connexion do not solve the mystery. There was nothing in that to favour a success of this nature. He is not only a dissenter coming up from among dissenters, but his sect is one of the straitest of them all. In his antecedents we find no traces of academic fame and promise, no high ecclesiastical patronage. The great ushers of successful conventionality among us made no way for him. He comes direct and openly from what John Foster called the morass of Anabaptism. Nevertheless, there he is, a man and a very young man, too, who has broken through, or overleaped, all impediment of that sort. In that fact there is not only something remarkable, but something pleasant and hopeful.

6

We must add, there is nothing in Mr. Spurgeon's presence to account for his success. When we picture to our mind the noble and venerable figure of Latimer, we cease to marvel that the quaintness and homeliness of the English and of the illustrations pervading his sermons should have fallen with great effect upon his hearers. That lofty form, that noble brow, those finely-chiselled features, and the play of intelligence and humour ever passing like cloud and sunshine over that countenance, are enough to account for a great deal. Whitfield, too, rose like Saul among his fellows, and seemed born to leadership. The same was true of Edward Irving. But Mr. Spurgeon has literally nothing of this sort to help him. His figure is short, and chubby, and rather awkward than otherwise. For so young a

Charles Spurgeon and the Pulpit.

211

man there seems to be a strong tendency in him to grow stout, and should he live another twenty or thirty years, he must take care, or he may be classed among the people who are sometimes described as being nearly as broad as they are long. He knows nothing of the æsthetics of dress; everything of that sort about him is commonplace, verging upon the vulgar. His features, too, have a round homely Saxon cast, such as would lead you to regard him as capable of a rude strength of purpose, and of a dogged power of endurance, but as not likely to apprehend purposes of a high and really intellectual complexion. He is a veritable Saxon in the groundwork of his nature, both physical and mental, but he has nearly everything from nature, scarcely anything from the usual processes of self-culture.

We must not, therefore, look to culture as giving Mr. Spurgeon his power over men. In metaphysics, in theology, in all matters where a trained power of discrimination would become conspicuous, his mind is in a very crude condition. If you submit to his influence, accordingly, it is not because you are sensible to the discipline of his touch, for you feel that you could amend not a little that falls from him. You listen, but it is not because you are charmed by the accuracy of the statements that are made, nor because the illustrations brought to the subject are such as to indicate that the preacher is a man rich in general knowledge. No-the charm must be somewhere else. Mr. Spurgeon's head is but poorly disciplined, and his knowledge has no pretension to fulness.

After saying thus much, we shall perhaps be expected to say that there is nothing like original or profound thought in Mr. Spurgeon. He has no mission to lift the veil from undiscovered truth. He never gives forth conceptions that afford the slightest promise of such power. Of this fact every one must be

aware.

If Mr. Spurgeon has power over cultivated minds-and he certainly has-it is not because he is himself a man of taste, in the conventional meaning of that term. In this respect, indeed, the preacher is said to be improved and improving. But the distance between his manner, and all our long-cherished notions about clerical propriety, and the becoming in the pulpit, must be admitted to be very great. Certainly, if people of taste are found about him, it is not because he is always careful not to offend in that form. Latimer, indeed, dealt much in the homespun, both in language and in allusion. But the preacher in that case was known to be a scholar, abreast with all the learning and subtle speculation proper to his profession. Edward Irving, too, was a man of high general taste and knowledge, and supposed,

on that ground, that he had a special mission to the educated, the literary, and the upper classes. But in the case of Mr. Spurgeon, the worship rendered him seems to bear a strong resemblance to that paid by the ancients to some of the rudest images of their gods-the sculpture was barbarous, all Greek taste might have been shocked by it, only it had its traditions, it was as old as the piety of simpler and better times, and it had some day fallen down from heaven.

Much has been said about Mr. Spurgeon's voice, as though the secret of his power lay in a great measure there. He can preach loud, and to say that, it is thought, is to say a great deal. It is, in fact, to say nothing. The question is not about a man who has voice enough to make 10,000 people hear, but about a man who has attraction enough to bring 10,000 people together to listen. Does every man who can speak so as to make a large congregation hear, get a large congregation to hear him? But what we mean to say concerning Mr. Spurgeon's voice is, that while it is good in some respects, it is far from being the voice we should have expected in so successful a public speaker. It takes a clear, sound, bell-like ring along with it, but it has no rich tones either of loftiness or tenderness. In these respects, the voice of Whitfield must have been immeasurably superior. In point of compass and richness the voice of Mr. Spurgeon is not to be mentioned in comparison with that of Mr. James of Birmingham, or with that of Dr. Raffles; and to compare his power in this way with that of the late agitator, O'Connell, would indeed be to compare small things with great. The voice which fills the Music Hall at the Surrey Gardens so equally, is successful to that extent from its very defects. It is a comparatively level voice. Its great attributes are distinctness and force. Were it to soar at times with the grand, and to descend at times with the pathetic, as the voice of an orator of the highest order would be sure to do, the hearing would not be so uniform as at present. In short, while Mr. Spurgeon has made the pulpit more attractive than any living man, he has so done by means of a voice which can scarcely be called oratorical.

The problem of Mr. Spurgeon's popularity, therefore, is still to be solved. Everything in his origin, and in his ecclesiastical connexion, seemed to be opposed to it. His presence could do nothing in his favour-it was, in fact, against him. No one can attribute his success to his culture, or to any unusual grasp of thought, or more than very partially to his voice. What is it, then, that has given him this power?

The first secret of his success, we think, will be found in his elocution. It is wanting in the qualities above-mentioned. But

« ÖncekiDevam »