LECTURE V. Influence of Climate on National Character. - Spenser. -Shakespeare.-Milton.-Spenser's Character.-His Relation to the Past.-Faëry Queen.-Character as a Poet.-The Drama.Classical, French and English Drama. Origin of English Drama.-Shakespeare, power of, morality of. So many are the causes involved in any complex effect, that an oversight of a portion of them is inevitable. It is also natural, that once made aware, in a particular direction, of this neglect, we should forthwith give the newly discovered agent more than its share of weight. The same partial, the same limited power of the mind, is shown alike in its too restricted and its too intense appreciation. Thus, having waked up to the fact that soil and climate have something to do with national character, we hasten to the conclusion, that these are the chief and controlling forces in its formation; and that the families of men are but a higher flora, a more varied fauna, whose tendencies and capacities are impressed upon them by their environment; taking care to include in this, not merely the mineralogy of the earth, the meteorology of the heavens, the make of the land,-its mountain fastnesses, or open plains, its secluded position or commercial advantages-but also the accumulated results of these forces long since wrought into the national stock. Thus the serious and sombre phases of English character, its stern purpose and stolid animality, its severe restraints and brutal outbursts, its vigorous moral conflicts with itself and with others, are ascribed to the climate of England, damp and dejected, often driving the inhabitants into indoor life, putting them to effort in their pleasures; and to its soil, low-lying, fertile, penetrated and close bound. by the sea, yielding no hilarity, no exhilaration of sunshine and upland to the spirits, yet rewarding labor with plentiful food; more generous to digestion than to imagination, more liberal in utilities than beauties. We are not disposed to deny, and we strive not to underrate, these physical influences; but they are far from sufficient to explain fully any type of national character. We find no reason for this entire transfer of causation to the physical world, as if mind went for nothing among primitive forces. Lands do not yield given nations as they do given fruits, under defined qualities of soil and limits of temperature; and if they did, in this correlation of conditions and products, there would still be included the inscrutable living agency. Irish character, ripened under much the same physical conditions with English character, is yet very unlike it. Races have varied and independent endowments, and by constitutional and acquired bias either control or greatly modify the effects that reach them from the external world. The ethical quality which undoubtedly belongs to English as contrasted with French character is not a result of climate. It exists in very dif ferent degrees in the three political divisions of the empire, Ireland, Scotland, England; and the explanation of this varying intensity is to be found in the religious history of each of these sections. The force of religious ideas, their form of manifestation, have been very distinct for centuries in England and in France; and this fact, on which the character of each nation to-day hinges, has not been the result of diversity of soils simply, but of sentiments as well, of a variety in the ingredients of manhood rather than in those of matter, in the way in which free, unique and responsible powers have been unfolded. Into this national complexity have entered many forces, but supreme among them all have ruled those pristine elements which make up character, first individual, then national; establishing themselves at points, thence enlarging, interlacing, and growing into a net-work of living and relatively homogeneous dependencies. Certainly we cannot concede a primitive power to the plant, to the material molecule, and deny it to man. So Germany, side by side with France, and so Spain, stand each contrasted with it in national traits. National character is not something superinduced from without; is not rugged features, grim facial outlines, and a gruff bearing caught from the cold peevish air, from the warfare of man with ungenerous nature; it is not a mood of the heavens, which, by sympathy, he has gradually transferred to his own constitution, casting this in the same mould, with the same strife of tendencies; it is rooted in deep, measurably independent, constitutional forces, abiding with him as their centre; even as matter possesses a character, and is faithful to it. Thought, manners and literature receive their coloring from the way in which this national germ shows itself in the mind and heart of a people, as a distinctive, national type. Having seen the general influences at work on and through English character in the Elizabethan period, we now turn to consider what individual creative power added to them, what it wrought beyond the range of results level to the time and period in its graded, normal activity. There are always in a great age here and there significant clusters of forces to which we can only give an individual name, whose power we cannot trace beyond those wonderful personalities in which they inhere; men who make the period as well as are made by it. In this era we dwell upon three of these, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton. We know of no necessary causes which laid down the frame-work of powers for any one of these three men; yet through those powers came, in large part, the Elizabethan age. Without these three it might have been a high tableland, with them it adds thereto some of the noblest altitudes of the globe. Though all working under the conditions presented by the period, these men stood in very different relations to it. The bent of his own genius decided for each the form of his works, and gave them a very diverse direction, Spenser looked steadily toward the past; was quietly conservative in his temper, and dreamy in his cast of mind. Milton turned to the future. Fiery, almost fierce in pur pose, under the strenuous impulse of principles, he reined in thought and imagery alike to the firm march of ideas. Shakespeare's time is the present, an omnipresent present, that roots its creations anywhere, and sets them a growing under the sunshine of the hour, as easily and freely as if that place and time were all the earth. We speak first of Spenser. The past with its imagery, its illusions, its pomp of life, and poetical dreaminess, descended upon him, and completely drank up his quiet, unpractical spirit. With restless, yet untiring importunity, he sought from queen and courtiers those means which should leave him to the free indulgence of his tastes. He congratulated himself "That even the greatest did not greatly scorne To heare theyr names sung in his simple layes, Though adulation was not a grateful task to him, he was content to prosper by it, rather than turn to those practical, commonplace labors that command subsistence. "Calme was the day, and through the trembling ayre A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay Hot Titians beames, which then did glyster fayre; When I (whom sullein care, Through discontent of my long fruitlesse stay In princes court, and expectation vayne Of idle hopes, which still doe fly away Like empty shadows, did afflict my bayne,) Walkt forth to ease my payne Along the shoare of silver streaming Themmes." Irritated by delay and ill success, he complains, in |