wages than others were paying, and by overcharging him for whatever goods he bought. Even Jones himself is inclined to forget the sharp dealing of the past, and when he gets well he will go to work again for Smith because of his liberality rather than to work for Brown who pays honest wages and does not cheat him in trade, but who could not afford to help him when he was sick. It is a very cheap way to buy popularity. A man receives a vast amount of praise for his generosity while he lives. Society forgives his thefts and pronounces a eulogy at his funeral. Besides all this he imagines that he is sure of an entrance into heaven on the ground that "charity shall cover the multitude of sins." If he were strictly honest he would prevent a great deal more suffering than he relieves by his gifts; but the chances are that he would be neither so wealthy nor so popular. Justice is rare, but those who would profit most by it are most to blame for its rarity. They are quick to praise unscrupulous liberality, and slow to appreciate scrupulous economy.

ness.

The spirit with which we fulfill our obligations as masters is a matter of no slight importance. If service should be hearty and willing, we should repay it with equal interest and willingThe master should sympathize with the servant and identify himself with the servant's interests, just as truly as the servant should enter heartily into his interests. To pay honest wages for work well done is not a gracious act. It is but a fair exchange of equal values. Neither party to the transaction can rightly consider himself benevolent. Both are benefited; and each has conferred a favor upon the other. The workman is no more under obligation to the employer than the employer to the workman. One owes no more gratitude

than the other.

Very many employers assume an air of complacent benevolence whenever they pay the wages of their servants, as though they were making a free gift. Worse than this many withhold their servants' wages as long as possible, and grumble when called upon for payment as though they were very badly treated. Such a spirit is entirely unjustifiable. Doubtless if an employer has been cheated by his servant, being overcharged for his work, or having his work badly done, he may justly

make objection and refuse payment. But if the wages are honestly earned in accordance with previous agreement, payment should be made promptly and heartily. It affords a really honest man as much pleasure to pay his debts as it does to receive payment from others. All grudging and grumbling on the part of masters tends to arouse a feeling of bitterness in the hearts of servants, and to create antagonism between those two elements of society that should live in closest harmony.

The inevitable result of this patronizing spirit on the part of masters is to pauperize the employed of every class. Men cannot occupy the position of beneficiaries, however unjustly, and at the same time maintain true independence and self-respect. Most surely there will follow a marked depreciation of character.

Between poverty and pauperism the distance is heaven-wide. Poverty may be hard to bear, but it does not injure character. On the contrary it often develops the truest moral strength. Pauperism is always evil. It implies a loss of moral tone that endangers the welfare of society. A pauper is a person who is willingly dependent on others whether he be rich or poor. Every influence that tends to lessen the feeling of self-respect and personal independence in a corresponding degree tends to pauperize men. The only antidote for pauperism is the cultivation among all classes of that manly independence of character which scorns to eat unearned bread or to enjoy unearned luxury. Nothing can exert a more potent influence in this direction than a proper recognition of the nobility of labor and its value as evinced in the willing and liberal payment of wages honestly earned. If justice in the relation of work and wages requires an equal exchange of material values, it requires no less imperatively an equal willingness and kindliness of spirit in both parties to the exchange.

As masters we may do much towards the solution of present social problems, not on the one hand by opposing force to force or any measures of retaliation, nor on the other by gifts and charities scattered broadcast among the poor; but by honest liberality of dealing with our servants, by kindness of spirit, by a careful respect for manly dignity.

The relation of master and servant is the broadest of all social relations. Other relations there are which affect different

parts of society and vary greatly in breadth and importance. This relation is universal. Whoever does not come within its scope is a social monstrosity. It is therefore of the first importance in social reforms that the responsibilities of this relation should be recognized in their twofold bearing, that a true balance should be carefully preserved, and that we should free ourselves from one-sided views and prejudices. Seeing that each represents in himself both phases of the relation, who requires true service from others must render true service to others, who seeks due reward for his service must himself be a model master.

GEO. H. HUBBARD.

ARTICLE III.-CORIOLANUS.

THE Shakespearian drama, with its mixture of comedy and tragedy, is sui generis and can only be judged by its own rules. Coriolanus, however, more nearly resembles the classic drama. With the Greeks, tragedy and comedy were more strictly separated than with the English of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and humor was not mingled with tragedy; also that hybrid, the tragi-comedy, was unknown on the Greek stage. There were two chief reasons for these differences :

First, the world of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a much more heterogeneous one than that of the Greeks; in it there was more than one civilized nation and diversity of surroundings and growth gave a diversity to life, also the discovery of new lands furnished the marvelous-food for the imagination;

Second, the men who reproduced it were realists not idealists. The world of human life with all its elements, even the crudest, was pleasing to them. Like children, they took as much pleasure in the details as in the main story of life. The manysided gleam of humor in the midst of tragedy pleased them and their audiences. They were realistic reproducers. Shakespeare, like the rest of the men of his time, was a realist, but he was an idealizing realist. He not only saw the variegated model before him but he looked back of that to the ideal upon which it was molded. He saw not only the actual world of human beings, but the ethical world of innate justice that lay at its foundation. So Portia, with her appeal to mercy, rises calm above the bickerings about her. So Lady Macbeth suffers for her crime in spite of her dauntlessness.

The object of the idealizing artist is to clear away confusing details and let his ideal stand forth distinct and well-defined. This instinct of a true artist grew more self-confident in Shakespeare as he grew older. This we can see by comparing Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Merchant of Venice, with the Tempest and Coriolanus. The last two are more simple in plot and characters than the others.

This instinct is also indicated by the tendency to leave humor out of tragedy. In Coriolanus there is no clown nor any humorous scenes. In Macbeth the porter scene, for other reasons, is supposed to be an interpolation. In Hamlet and Lear, however, the public taste is considered and clowns introduced. In the study of character the Elizabethans were more impressed by its contradictoriness, the Greeks and Romans by its unity. Shakespeare saw the unity in variety but his later dramas show that he tended more and more to represent the unity of character. Compare Shylock with Coriolanus, and Portia with Volumnia. In Shylock are conflicting impulses, patriotism and avarice, in Coriolanus one unifying quality-pride; in Portia is a diversity and roundness not like Volumnia's single-minded love and pride.

In Coriolanus, Shakespeare seems to have turned his back upon his own time, and looking towards the ancient and guided only by his artistic instincts, to have written a pure tragedy, having a hero with classic singleness of character.

I intend to treat this rather as a tragedy than an historical drama, but a few words will be necessary upon its historical qualities. Aristotle says that poetry is superior to and more philosophical than history; poetry treats more of the general, history of the particular; poetry of what is, according to probability or necessity possible, what might occur; history of what does occur. The relation of history to drama is either to furnish material for its inventions, or to be the text for its illuminations. Macbeth is an example of a plot made from historical material but not following history. Henry IV. and V. and Coriolanus are examples of poetry used to illuminate dark problems of history. Often the bare facts of history are contradictory; as, the change in Prince Hal's character when he becomes Henry V., or the apparent treachery of Coriolanus against Rome. The poet sees a possible explanation of these and puts it into the form of fiction. He sees how a certain type of character, with which these men may be identical, would under certain circumstances act just in that way. He puts his conception of the explanation into dramatic form, and the result is an historical play. This seems to be the real excuse for mingling fiction and history either in the novel or the drama.