Here, said they, is the terror of the French,
The scarecrow that affrights our children so,
Then broke I from the officers that led me,

And with my nails digg'd stones out of the ground,
To hurl at the beholders of my shame.
My grisly countenance made others fly,

None durst come near for fear of sudden death.
In iron walls they deem'd me not secure :
So great a fear my name amongst them spread,
That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel,
And spurn in pieces posts of adamant.
Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had:
They walk'd about me every minute-while;
And if I did but stir out of my bed,

Ready they were to shoot me to the heart."

The second part relates chiefly to the contests between the nobles during the minority of Henry, and the death of Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey. The character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent of the group: the account of his death is one of our author's master-pieces. So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on the loss of the provinces of France by the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition of the Duke of York, the father of Richard III., are also very ably developed. Among the episodes, the tragi-comedy of Jack Cade, and the detection of the impostor Simcox, are truly edifying.

The third part describes Henry's loss of his crown: his death takes place in the last act, which is usually thrust into the common acting play of Richard III. The character of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard, is here very powerfully commenced, and his dangerous designs and long-aching ambition are fully described in his soliloquy in the third act, beginning, "Ay, Edward will use women honorably." Henry VI. is drawn as disinctly as his high-spirited Queen, and notwithstanding the very nean figure which Henry makes as a king, we still feel more respect for him than for his wife.

We have already observed that Shakspeare was scarcely more remarkable for the force and marked contrasts of his characters, than for the truth and subtlety with which he has distinguished those which approached the nearest to each other. For instance,

the soul of Othello is hardly more distinct from that of lago than that of Desdemona is shown to be from Æmilia's; the ambition of Macbeth is as distinct from the ambition of Richard III. as it is from the meekness of Duncan; the real madness of Lear is as different from the feigned madness of Edgar as from the babbling of the fool; the contrast between wit and folly in Fal. staff and Shallow is not more characteristic though more obvious han the gradations of folly, loquacious or reserved, in Shallow and Silence; and again, the gallantry of Prince Henry is as little confounded with that of Hotspur as with the cowardice of Falstaff, or as the sensual and philosophie cowardice of the Knight is with the pitiful and cringing cowardice of Parolles. All these several personages were as different in Shakspeare as they would have been in themselves: his imagination borrowed from the life, and every circumstance, object, motive, passion, operat ed there as it would in reality, and produced a world of men and women as distinct, as true, and as various as those that ex. ist in nature. The peculiar property of Shakspeare's imagina tion was his truth, accompanied with the unconsciousness of na. ture indeed, imagination to be perfect must be unconscious, at least in production; for nature is so. We shall attempt one example more in the characters of Richard II. and Henry VI.

The characters and situations of both these persons were so nearly alike, that they would have been completely confounded by a common-place poet. Yet they are kept quite distinct in Shakspeare. Both were kings, and both unfortunate. Both lost their crowns owing to their mismanagement and imbecility; the one from a thoughtless, wilful abuse of power, the other from an indifference to it. The manner in which they bear their misfortunes corresponds exactly to the causes which led to them. The one is always lamenting the loss of his power, which he has not the spirit to regain; the other seems only to regret that he had ever been king, and is glad to be rid of the power, with the trouble: the effeminacy of the one is that of a voluptuary.

*There is another instance of the same distinction in Hamlet and Ophena Hamlet's pretended madness would make a very good real madness in any other author

proud, revengeful, impatient of contradiction, and inconsolable in his misfortunes; the effeminacy of the other is that of an indolent, good-natured mind, naturally averse to the turmoils of ambition and the cares of greatness, and who wishes to pass his time in monkish indolence and contemplation. Richard bewails the loss of the kingly power only as it was the means of gratifying his pride and luxury; Henry regards it only as a means of doing right, and is less desirous of the advantages to be derived from possessing it than afraid of exercising it wrong. knighting a young soldier, he gives him ghostly advice

"Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight,

And learn this lesson, draw thy sword in right.”

Richard II., in the first speeches of the play, betrays his real character. In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing of Bolingbroke's rebellion, before his presumption has met with any check, he exclaims

"Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords:

This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones,
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king
Shall faulter under proud rebellious arms.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly man cannot depose
The Deputy elected by the Lord,

For every man that Bolingbroke hath prest,
To lift sharp steel against our golden crown,
Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay

A glorious angel; then if angels fight,

Weak men must fall; for Heaven still guards the right.”

Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very first news of actual disaster, all his conceit of himself as the peculiar favorite of Providence vanishes into air.

"But now the blood of twenty thousand men

Did triumph in my face, and they are fled.
All souls that will be safe fly from my side;
For time hath set a blot upon my pride."

R

Immediately after, however, recollecting that "cheap de fence" of the divinity of kings which is to be found in opinion, he is for arming his name against his enemies.

"Awake, thou coward Majesty, thou sleep'st;
Is not the King's name forty thousand names?
Arm, arm, my name; a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory!"

King Henry does not make any such vaporing resistance to the loss of his crown, but lets it slip from off his head as a weight which he is neither able nor willing to bear; stands quietly by to see the issue of the contest for his kingdom, as if it were a game at push-pin, and is pleased when the odds prove against him.

When Richard first hears of the death of his favorites, Bushy, Bagot, and the rest, he indignantly rejects all idea of any further efforts, and only indulges in the extravagant impatience of his grief and his despair, in that fine speech which has been so often quoted :—

"AUMERLE. Where is the duke my father, with his power ?

K. RICHARD. No matter where: of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow in the bosom of the earth!
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so—for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ?
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For heaven's sake let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd;
Some poison'd by their wives, sotne sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd for within the hollow crown,

That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death bis court and there the art,c s.1%,
Sending his state, and -Tintung at his pomp!

Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit-

As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable: and humor'd thus,
Comes at the last, and, with a little pin,

Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,

For you have but mistook me all this while :
I live on bread like you, feel want, taste grief,
Need friends, like you ;-subjected thus,

How can you say to me-I am a king?"

There is as little sincerity afterwards in his affected resignation to his fate, as there is fortitude in this exaggerated picture of his misfortunes before they have happened.

When Northumberland comes back with the message from Bolingbroke, he exclaims, anticipating the result,

“What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it: must he be depos'd?

The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? O' God's name let it go.
I'll give my jewels for a set of beads;
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;
My gay apparel for an alm's-man's gown;
My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood;
My sceptre for a palmer's walking staff;
My subjects for a pair of carved saints,
And my large kingdom for a little grave-
A little, little grave, an obscure grave."

How differently is all this expressed in King Henry's soliloquy during the battle with Edward's party :—

"This battle fares like to the morning's war,
When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd blowing of his nails,
Can neither call it perfect day or night.
Here on this mole-hill will I sit me down
To whom God will, there be the victory!
For Margaret my Queen and Clifford too

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