Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/72

 of royal susceptibilities may not improbably have given edge to the author's pen as it set down these venturous lines in a time when as yet no king had been taught, in the phrase of old Lord Auchinleck, that he had a joint in his neck.

And what's a prince? Had all been virtuous men, There never had been prince upon the earth, And so no subject: all men had been princes. A virtuous man is subject to no prince, But to his soul and honour; which are laws That carry fire and sword within themselves, Never corrupted, never out of rule; What is there in a prince, that his least lusts Are valued at the lives of other men, When common faults in him should prodigies be, And his gross dotage rather loathed than soothed?"

I should be surprised to find in any poet of Chapman's age an echo of such clear and daring words as these, which may suffice to shew that the oligarchic habit of mind to which I have before referred in him was the fruit of no sycophantic temper, no pliant and prostitute spirit, the property of a courtier or a courtezan, but sprung rather from pure intellectual haughtiness and a contempt for the mob of minds. Nevertheless it is well worth remark that such a deliberate utterance of republican