This grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore. Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil." For the sow, it is not mentioned, indeed, by Caliban among his mother's "charms,"" toads, beetles, bats,"--but into that foul caldron, whose ingredients are catalogued in Macbeth, the first witch bids also— Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten Her nine farrow. Or the mere grossness of the one animal and the supposed malignity of the other may be referred to; and so the name Sycorax be designed to express a horrid mixture of those two characteristics-something bestial and fiendish withal. "With age and envy" she " was grown into a hoop." She had almost lost what human form she once had, and approached in semblance the brute whose nature she shared. Prospero speaks of— The son that she did litter here, A freckled whelp hag-born, not honour'd with A human shape. The last name we shall notice is Apemantus in Timon of Athens. This name is not found in Barckley's Discourse of the Felicity of Man, but is so in the novel in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, which treats "of the straunge and beastlie nature of Timon of Athens, enemie to mankinde, with his death, buriall, and epitaph." It was no doubt also observed in North's translation of Amyot's Translation of Plutarch's Life of Antonine. We see, by the way, that that remarkable editor, Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in his edition of Shakespeare's Library, makes mention of North's Life of Timon! All that Plutarch says of Apemantus is comprised in these sentences, here quoted from North's version :— "Apemantus, wondering at it [his shunning "all other men's companies but the company of young Alcibiades, a bold and insolent youth, whom he would greatly feast, and make much of, and kissed him very gladly "ἠσπάζετο καὶ κατεφίλει προθύμως], asked him the cause and what he meant, to make so much of that young man alone, and to hate all others. Timon answered him, 'I do it,' said he, 'because I know that one day he shall do great mischief unto the Athenians.' This Timon sometimes would have Apemantus in his company, because he was much like of his nature and his conditions, and also followed him in manner of life. On a time when they solemnly celebrated the feasts called Chose of Athens (to wit, the feasts of the dead, when they make sprinklings and sacrifices for the dead), and that they two then feasted together by themselves, Apemantus said unto the other: O here is a trim banquet, Timon.' Timon answered again, 'yea,' said he, 'so thou wert not here.' (Toù d''Añnμάντου φήσαντος “ ὡς καλόν, ὦ Τίμων, τὸ συμπόσιον ἡμῶν, ‘εἶχε συ, ἔφη, * μὴ παρῆς.)" It will be allowed that there is little here to suggest the characterisation we find in Shakspeare's play. It may justly be said that that cha racterisation is in accordance with that rule of contrast which the great dramatist so commonly observes. It was obvious to develope Apemantus into the affected, self-conscious, egotistic cynic whose bitterness should by its very shallowness make the unfathomed indignation of the genuine misanthrope more effectively felt. Apemantus is an impostor. He professes to loathe his kind, and yet is always intruding himself into its society. He cannot understand the genuine feeling of which his spitefulness is a mere simulation-the "sæva indignatio" quæ cor lacerat. When he hears of Timon's withdrawal into the cave near the seashore, he thinks that Timon too is acting a part. He has not sensibility enough to be a good hater—a thorough man-hater. "Men report," he says to one whom he regards as a sort of would-be rival in his line of ferocity Men report Thou dost affect my manners, and dost use them. The grand distinction between the two characters springs from the fact, that the one is a man of noble nature whose trust in humanity has been rudely dethroned; the other, a man of an inferior breed, that has not even known anything of sympathy and affection. Timon's hate is so pathetic and so terrible, because he has loved, if not wisely, yet too well. There is no denying that he is "more sinned against than sinning "—that he is dreadfully wronged; and one cannot wonder, if with his ill-balanced temperament he rushes into the furthest extremes of acrimony and loathing. But Apemantus has no such right to be savage; he can bring no such justifying accusation against the world; he is more sinning than sinned against. Fie, thou art a churl: ye've got a humour there Does not become a man: 'tis much to blame. Now, what we have specially to point out, is the curious way in which his very name is indication of the fact that, as compared with Timon and whatever license to curse Timon may claim, he is without a grievance,—is an unwronged man. This is exactly what his name means. It is the Greek áriμarros, meaning literally "un-hurt"-a word, as we learn from Liddell and Scott, used by Homer, Od. xix. 282; by Pindar, Ol. viii. end. : ἀλλ' ἀπήμαντον ἄγων βίοτον and Eschylus, Agam. 378. A noticeable coincidence, and of use for the comprehension of the play, if indeed it is not something more. Let us now read Timon's own analysis of Apemantus Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd, but bred a dog. Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself In general riot; melted down thy youth The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush Thy nature did commence in sufferance; time Hath made thee hard in it. Why shouldst thou hate men? In Macbeth the "second murderer" describes himself thus: I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Have so incensed that I am reckless what We might call him Pemantus, if there was such a word in the Greek language. At all events, he makes exactly intelligible what the name Apemantus may mean. To conclude these remarks, we think it would be rash indeed to infer from such considerations as we have laid before our readers that Shakspeare was a Greek scholar of any great pretensions. There is nowadays so much wild theorising about Shakspeare--gentlemen who seem scarcely to have read his works through are so ready with their inestimable decisions that we wish to keep well within the limits of our facts. It cannot be demonstratively shown that Shakspeare was conscious of the curious significancies we have discussed. "Beware instinct. . . . Instinct is a great matter." All we wish to suggest is a probability in some cases that he may have been so. But, even if so much cannot be conceded us, we venture to hope that the few remarks we have made may be not useless for the better understanding of the masterpieces they concern. Papal Conclaves. No elections, we imagine, have ever called into service so much subtlety, craft, and diplomacy as those which have made the Popes. As, however, it is now twenty-nine years since the occurrence of the last election, it may reasonably be suspected that the members of the Sacred College are not so well practised in the electioneering arts of the Conclave as those of past times, when two elections would take place in a year, and even four have been recorded as having taken place in eighteen months. Nevertheless distinguished Conclavists, as the electioneering agents of the Conclave are called, have drawn up treatises on the art of Pope-making— founded on and illustrated by their own experience-in which the theory of the tactics for managing Conclaves and electing Popes is minutely set forth, and which, we may be sure, are not wanting in the library of many a Roman cardinal. Originally, as is well known, the clergy and people united in the election of the Pope, until Nicholas II., in 1059, restricted the quality of elector to the body of cardinals, and Alexander III., in 1179, declared that a majority of two-thirds of their number should be necessary for the election of a Pope. The cardinals are of three orders-bishops, priests, and deacons. There are, as a rule, six bishops, fifty priests, and fourteen deacons. The whole number of the College of Cardinals ought not, according to a Bull of Sixtus V., to exceed seventy, though the Bull has not been rightly observed; and indeed Paul IV. meditated increasing their number to a hundred. The custom of locking up the cardinals cum clave, from which the Conclave gets its name, dates from the long-contested election of Gregory X., and became law by a Bull of that Pope after his election to the Papacy in 1270. The Conclave of Gregory X. lasted two years, during which time the Church of Rome was without an infallible head. Clement IV., the predecessor of Gregory, died at Viterbo, and the cardinals, not being able to agree upon the choice of a successor, were preparing to leave the town, when St. Buonaventura, the disciple of St. Francis of Assisi, persuaded the inhabitants to shut their gates, and not to let the cardinals go till a Pope was made. The people took the Saint's advice, and not only shut the gates of the town, but set a guard over the cardinals at the doors of the palace in which they met, and informed them that they could not even leave the palace until they had elected their Pope. However, even then the cardinals could come to no agreement; they went on from month to month and month to month still voting without producing the requisite majority, till one day the Cardinal del Porto exclaimed that the Holy Ghost could never come down and inspire their choice as long as they had a roof over their heads. The people of Viterbo took this profane joke seriously and unroofed the palace. This measure, again, was still ineffectual, and the cardinals, it seemed, would never have arrived at any determination had the device not been hit upon of diminishing the supplies of their tables. This measure succeeded. Hunger effected more than rain and wind had done, and Gregory X. was elected. Gregory X., on his election, issued the Bull that all future Popes should be elected in conclave-that is, by any assembly of cardinals locked up together and subject to specified restrictions as to diet and attendance until the election was over. Everybody shut up in the Conclave is a Conclavist, but all Conclavists are not voters. In fact, the word Conclavist is more especially applied to the attendants on the cardinals, who are of two kinds-those particularly attached to them, two attendants to each cardinal, and those who are the general functionaries of the Conclave, such as the physician, the notary, the prothonotary, the theologian, the confessor, the chaplain, and the secretary of the Conclave. The Conclavists attached to each cardinal are his private secretaries or agents, and as through them most of the intrigues and negociations of the Conclave are carried on, a good, astute, wily, and cautious Conclavist is of invaluable assistance to his cardinal. It will thus be seen that if the body of the cardinals in conclave be sixty in number, the whole body of Conclavists who must remain shut up together till election will be close upon two hundred; and the inconvenience of such a life, especially at certain times of the year, must be very considerable. The Conclave is now ordinarily held in a wing of the Palace of the Vatican, which is arranged for this purpose in separate cells. Each cardinal has an apartment composed of two cells, one for himself and one for his Conclavists. Each cell is numbered, and the numbers of the cells are drawn for by lot by all the cardinals before entering into conclave. After this they furnish them as they please, and the furniture of the cell of the Pope elect belongs by custom to the first who can lay hands on it after his election, and therefore generally falls, of course, to his own Conclavists. The windows which may happen to be in each cell are walled up, and when the gate of the Conclave is closed, the Dean of the Conclave keeps its keys inside; and the Marshal of the Conclave, whose office is hereditary in the princely house of Savelli, keeps the keys without. At the gate of the Conclave, however, there is a wicket (rota) which is carefully watched by five Papal masters of the ceremonies, by the foreign ambassadors, and sometimes by delegates of the city of Rome. All the meals of the cardinals are passed through this wicket, and communications from or to the cardinals pass likewise through this wicket, and are subjected to the scrutiny of its guardians, who stop all unlicensed communications. When the bell of the Capitol announces the death of the Sovereign Pontiff, the Cardinal Camerlingo goes to inspect the body of the Pope, and to take the fisherman's ring from his finger, while the Dean of the Sacred College |