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ALVMNVS BOOK FYND 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 TRAGIC POETRY, 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY SHAKSPKARE. 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 TRAGIC POETRY, 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY REED, 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN F. SHAW, PATERNOSTER ROW, AND SOUTHAMPTON ROW. 
 MANCHESTER: T. DINHAM AND CO. 
 
 1856. 
 
YW V\ 
 
LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 i. 
 
 f pstorg. 
 
 SHAKSPE ARE'S CHRONICLE-PLAYS LEGENDARY HISTORY: KING LEAR ROMAN AND 
 SAXON : CYMBELINE AND MACBETH NATURE OP THE SUBJECT GENERALLY IMAGINA- 
 TIVE HISTORY DEFINED NOT HISTORICAL ROMANCE POWER OF IMAGINATION IN 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING ARCHBISHOP WHATELEY'S ANALYSIS LORD BACON'S IDEA OF 
 DRAMATIC POETRY MlLTON'S VISION OF GREECE, IN PARADISE REGAINED SENSE OF 
 REALITY FAMINES AS DESCRIBED IN HISTORY AND POETRY GENOA IN 1799 GHENT 
 IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE ARCHDEACON HARE 
 REMOTE AND OBSCURE LEGENDS REALITY TOO DISTINCT IMAGES AND MEMORIES OF 
 THE DEAD EFFECT OF TRAVEL IN THE HOLY LAND VOLNEY WRITTEN HISTORICAL 
 PAINTING CHARLES LAMB BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST WASHINGTON ALLSTON POETICAL 
 HISTORY OF THE BlBLE THE REPUTED PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY LlNGARD AND HUMB 
 ARNOLD TRAGIC POETRY SIR WALTER SCOTT FUNERALS ACTUAL AND PIC- 
 TURESQUE HOGARTH HUME'S ACCIDENTAL THEORY OUTLINE OF SHAKSPEARE'S 
 HISTORIES NOVELTY OF THE SUBJECT OF THIS LECTURE. 
 
 IT is my purpose to explain to you the nature of the course which 
 I have announced, and to present some considerations respecting the 
 study of history. 
 
 The subject of these lectures is that portion of modern history 
 which is illustrated by Shakspeare's historical drama. The earliest 
 of the reigns thus illustrated is that of King John ; the latest is that of 
 Henry the Eighth : and between these, are Richard the Second, Henry 
 the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, and Richard the Third. This is a 
 series, it will be observed, which carries us back into the agitated 
 turmoil of the Middle Ages, and leads us on to the later form of social 
 and political life in that period of history, which, to distinguish it from 
 the mediaeval, has been called the " modern of the modern." In these 
 " Chronicle-Plays," as they are styled, there is comprehended the story 
 of three eventful centuries the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth 
 B 
 
 J 
 
3 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 broken, Indeed, by some considerable intervals of time. I will endea- 
 vour in the iectures parti *lly to notice those intervals; and I propose 
 to extend my subject into a more remote antiquity, by taking the 
 tragedy of King Lear as illustrative of the legendary times, and 
 Cymbeline and Macbeth, of the Roman and Saxon periods, respectively. 
 
 The nature of this subject renders these lectures literary as well as 
 historical ; and they must combine the study of those two high depart- 
 ments of human thought, poetry and history. Now I desire to say, 
 at the outset, that I have sought this combination, not so much as a 
 means of relieving the severity of historical study and making it more 
 attractive, as because I have a deep conviction, that Poetry has a pre- 
 cious power of its own for the preservation of historical truth ; that 
 it can so revivify the past can put such life in it as to make 
 imperishable. I have it greatly at heart to carry this deep conviction 
 of mine into your minds, and hope to be able to show, if not by argu- 
 ment in this lecture, at least by actual evidence in those that follow, 
 how a great poet may be, at the same time, a great historian. 
 
 Before going further with the subject of my lecture, let me take 
 two or three minutes to prevent some misapprehensions, which might 
 otherwise occur. While there may be a legitimate and valuable service 
 of the faculty of imagination in the cause of history, there is certainly 
 a great deal that is utterly spurious and deceptive, especially in the 
 shape of historical novels, among which the few excellent stand dis- 
 tinguished from a multitude that are worthless. I have no occasion to 
 refer to them, and wish to be understood as treating my subject 
 altogether apart from them. 
 
 Again, when I state that the imagination may minister to the 
 knowledge of history, I certainly do not mean to say, that the poetic 
 or dramatic form is better than any other form of history, or, indeed, 
 to make any kind of comparison between them. There is in each its 
 own peculiar value ; and so vast is the range of history, that it needs 
 them all : it gives ample duty to every one who labours to save the 
 memory of the past whether it be he who zealously collects authentic 
 documents, or pores over time-worn inscriptions, or gathers unwritten 
 traditions whether it be annalist, or chronicler, or biographer, or 
 historian. I allude to these various functions, not in the way of com- 
 parison, but, on the contrary, to show that no disparagement of them 
 is to be understood, when I assert the use of the imagination in the 
 study of history. 
 
 Let me premise one other remark that in employing the term 
 (i Imagination," I mean not such a faculty of the mind as gives birth 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 3 
 
 to the common works of fiction, nor even such as is represented in the 
 inadequate analysis that is met with in the usual systems of metaphysics, 
 but that creative power which, whether it bear the name of imagination 
 or no, is an element of every great mind, without which there may be 
 acute intellect, there may be fine talents, but there cannot be that 
 which is known as GENIUS. I mean that inventive wisdom, which 
 brings the truth to life by the help of its own creative energy the 
 poetic element which is found, not only in the souls of mighty artists, 
 whether their art be poetry, or painting, or sculpture, but also of great 
 philosophers and historians. 
 
 I now may proceed in my endeavour to show, that this imaginative 
 power does render important service in the acquisition of historical 
 knowledge. In the first place, I ask your attention to this fact that, 
 whenever the imagination of a great artist, be he poet or be he painter, 
 has touched any historic -character or event, forthwith it acquires a 
 lifelike reality, which other portions of history, on which no such light 
 has fallen, do not possess. Why is it that we have so vivid a conception 
 of that scriptural occasion St. Paul at Athens but because, in one 
 of the grandest of the cartoons, Raffaelle has given to Christendom a 
 vision of the apostle in that sublime attitude 
 
 " As if the expanded soul diffused itself, 
 And carried to all spirits, with the act, 
 Its affluent inspiration." 
 
 Again, why is it that that splendid legend of early Roman history 
 the story of Coriolanus is so fresh and familiar to us, except that 
 Shakspeare has so impersonated the pride of that patrician soldier, as 
 to make us feel that he was not a mere name on the page of history, 
 but a human being with like passions as ourselves. I present to you 
 this fact also as unquestionably true, that the portion of English history 
 which Shakspeare has treated is more familiarly known, not only 
 popularly, but in well-educated minds, and especially with reference to 
 the characters of famous personages, than any other part of it. Why 
 is it, that the first great civil conflict the baronial war, in the reign of 
 Henry the Third, with De Muntfort at its head, he who, when he fell, 
 earned " a hero's honour and a martyr's name " why is it known so 
 much less than that other civil feud, the fury of which was quenched 
 by the blood spilt on Bosworth Field ? Why is this, except that the 
 latter period is seen in the light that is shed upon it by the imagination 
 of Shakspeare ? How the dramatic poet has so wrought upon those 
 times as to inspire a life into them, I will not now stop to inquire. It 
 is the fact I wish you to consider. From this, I pass to an authority on 
 
4 L^CTUR^S ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 which much stress may be laid, because it comes from a writer remark* 
 able for his logical and rather unimaginative habit of mind. It is a no 
 less severe logician than Archbishop Whateley, who thus reasons, to show 
 how imagination is needed in the study of history : 
 
 " It has seldom or ever been noticed, how important, among the 
 intellectual qualifications for the study of history, is a vivid imagination 
 a faculty which, consequently, a skilful narrator must himself possess, 
 and to which he must be able to furnish excitement in others. Some 
 may perhaps be startled at this remark, who have been accustomed to 
 ponsider Imagination as having no other office than to feign and falsify. 
 Every faculty is liable to abuse and misdirection, and Imagination 
 among the rest : but it is a mistake, to suppose that it necessarily tends 
 to pervert the truth of history, and to mislead the judgment. On the 
 contrary, our view of any transaction, especially one that is remote in 
 time or place, will necessarily be imperfect, generally incorrect, unless it 
 embrace something more than a bare outline of the occurrences unless 
 we have before the mind a lively idea of the scenes in which the 
 events took place, the habits of thought and of feeling of the actors, and 
 all the circumstances connected with the transaction unless, in short, 
 we can, in a considerable degree, transport ourselves out of our own 
 age, and country, and persons, and imagine ourselves the agents or 
 spectators. It is from a consideration of all these circumstances, that 
 we are enabled to form a right judgment as to the facts which history 
 records, and to derive instruction from it. What we imagine, may, 
 indeed, be wholly imaginary) i. e. unreal ; but it may be what actually 
 does or did exist. To say that Imagination, if not regulated by 
 sound judgment and sufficient knowledge, may chance to convey to us 
 false impressions of past events, is only to say that man is fallible. But 
 such false impressions are even much the more likely to take possession 
 of those whose imagination is feeble or uncultivated. They are apt to 
 imagine the things, persons, times, countries, &c., which they read of, as 
 much less different from what they see around them than is really 
 the case." 
 
 This may serve to correct a common misapprehension respecting 
 the functions of the Imagination, and to show that, when disciplined 
 and cultivated, it serves the cause of truth This, too, is to be thought 
 of, that the neglect of its culture does not extinguish it ; for existing, as 
 it does, though in very different degrees, in all minds, it will act in some 
 way, perhaps feebly, and fitfully, and irregularly ; and if it is not 
 trained in the service of wisdom and truth, it certainly will be found 
 in alliance with folly and falsehood. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. O 
 
 I pass to another authority, immeasurably higher, when I quote a 
 single sentence from Lord Bacon, who has said, that " Dramatic poetry 
 is like history made visible, and is an image of actions past, as if they 
 w r ere present." Now I stand upon this sentence as the text of my 
 lectures, and on the authority of Bacon as sustaining the view I am 
 anxious to present of the imaginative study of history. In truth, I 
 need attempt no more than to evolve the wisdom that is wrapped in 
 these few words of a, great philosopher one of the greatest the world 
 has known. 
 
 When Lord Bacon speaks of dramatic poetry being history made 
 visible, he could not have been thinking of mere scenic representations. 
 Theatric art, in his day, was too rude and contracted for him to see in 
 It aught but what was too mean to show the images of actions past, as 
 if they were present ; and, indeed, he speaks elsewhere of its low estate. 
 He thought of no scenic representation no mere bodily vision no 
 spectacle for the outward eye but of that vision of the mind, that 
 inward sight, which Imagination gives. The aspiring and far-reaching 
 genius of Bacon felt that, while our sensuous nature is limited to the 
 visible, the audible, the present, and the palpable, the spirituality of our 
 being can comprehend the remote and the unseen. The heroes of 
 antiquity rise up again in lifelike reality, and distant regions of the 
 earth are made apparent ; and, indeed, it may happen that the actual 
 vision of the eyes may be most fitly told in words that speak only of the 
 visions of the mind. When Milton visited the south of Europe, it was 
 in his thoughts, after wandering in Valdarno, and by the leafy brooks 
 of Vallanibrosa, and amid the rliins of Rome, to cross from Italy over 
 into Greece. But this cherished purpose was thwarted by tidings that 
 came from his own afflicted country; and, deeming it the duty of 
 England's sons to stand upon England's soil in her season df adversity, 
 he speeded homeward. Greece was never seen by Milton I mean by 
 those bodily eyes, which afterwards were quenched in blindness. But 
 the spiritual power of his imagination, enriched as it was with classic 
 lore, had borne him to the glorious promontory of Attica. He had seen 
 the olive groves of Academe ; he had heard the whispers of the waters of 
 Ilissus the industrious murmur of the beeS ; he had felt the pure air that 
 was wafted from the waves of the bright ^Egean Sea to mingle with the 
 breath of the flowery Hymettus. The poet's splendid vision has been 
 recorded ; and when, a few years ago, a learned traveller visited Greece, 
 he lingered upon Hymettus; and, gazing over the country around 
 Athens, he said : " I cannot leave the spot the scene now present to 
 my eyes without repeating the description given by one whb was no 
 
LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 eye-witness of it. To omit it would be injustice to Athens as well as 
 to Milton;" and that fine description in the fourth book of Paradise 
 Regained, was aptly rehearsed amid the music of those natural sounds, 
 which are yet heard upon the hills of Attica. 
 
 Another and higher exercise of the Imagination is when it is 
 employed to give us a sense of reality in the knowledge of the actions 
 and the sufferings that history records. The mind may learn the facts 
 of history, and the memory may, at need, recall them; and yet there 
 may be, withal, a most inadequate conception of their truth and reality. 
 How little sense, at best, is there of what the annals of the world tell of 
 suffering humanity ! We read or hear, for instance, of a battle, and the 
 numbers of those who have fallen in it; and, after a cold calculation, we 
 think it a large or small proportion ; and it makes about as much impression 
 on us as any other statistics might. No sympathy is touched by these 
 aggregates. The intellect calmly comprehends the facts, but the 
 imagination is not astir to give them reality in our minds. It is 
 comparatively a recent event in history the dreadful famine in which 
 thousands of the Genoese perished when, in 1799, the French army 
 under Massena was besieged in their city, and a British fleet kept such 
 unrelenting guard in that magnificent bay, that naught reached the 
 sufferers, save the waves that 
 
 " Dash their white foam against the palace walls 
 
 Of Genoa the superb." 
 
 The inhabitants of that wealthy and luxurious city were reduced to- 
 all desperate extremities, and twenty thousand innocent persons- 
 women too, and children perished by the slow misery of famine. 
 History tells us of these things in its didactic form : it gives us the 
 information, but it gives us no more. In the fourteenth century, the 
 like calamity, with pestilence superadded to famine, desolated one of the 
 opulent and populous Flemish towns, and it is thus described in the 
 Chronicles of Froissart : 
 
 " This whole winter of 1382, the Earl of Flanders had so much 
 constrained Ghent, that nothing could enter the place by land or water : 
 he had persuaded the Duke of Brabant and Duke Albert to shut up their 
 countries so effectually, that no provisions could be exported thence, 
 but secretly, and with a great risk to those who attempted it. It was 
 thought by the most intelligent, that it could not be long before they 
 perished through famine, for all the storehouses of corn were empty, 
 and the people could not obtain bread for money. When the bakers 
 had baked any, it was necessary to guard their shops ; for the populace, 
 were starving, would have broken them open* It was melancholy 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 7 
 
 to hear these poor people (for men, women, and children of good sub- 
 stance were in this miserable plight) make their daily complaints and 
 <?ries to Philip Van Artevelde^ their commar.der-in-chief." 
 
 So is the suffering city described in the simple style of the old 
 chronicler, and with, indeed, rather more of animated narrative than 
 history generally gives. 
 
 I now refer to the fine historical drama by a living poet, the Philip 
 Van Artevelde of Henry Taylor, to shew how the image of the past is 
 there presented. We gain the vision, when we read the words with 
 which Van Artevelde addresses his companions as they see the city of 
 Ghent lying in its wretchedness beneath them : 
 
 " Look round about on this once populous town! 
 Not one of these innumerous house-tops 
 But hides some spectral form of misery, 
 Some peevish, pining child, and moaning mother, 
 Some aged man, that in his dotage scolds, 
 Not knowing why he hungers, some cold corse, 
 That lies unstraightened where the spirit left it." 
 
 A still deeper sense of reality is given by the imagination being 
 carried into the interior of one of those afflicted dwellings. Van 
 Artevelde, meeting his sister, after her return from the awful charity of 
 a starving and pestilential city, questions her 
 
 " Now render me account of what befell 
 Where thou hast beeu to-day. 
 
 Clara. It is but little. 
 I paid a visit first to Ukenheim, 
 The man, who whilome saved our father's life, 
 When certain Clementists and ribald folk 
 Assailed him at Malines. He came last night, 
 And said he knew not if we owed him aught, 
 But if we did, a peek of oatmeal now 
 Would pay the debt, and save more lives tlian one. 
 I went. It seemed a wealthy matfs abode ; 
 The costly drapery and good house-gear 
 Had, in an ordinary time, betokened 
 That with the occupant the worid went welL 
 By a, low couch, curtained with cloth of frieze, 
 Sat Ukenheim, a famine-stricken man, 
 With either bony fist upon his knees, 
 And his long back upright. His eyes were fixed 
 And moved not, though some gentle words I spake : 
 Until a little urchin of a child, 
 That called him father, orept to where he sat, 
 And. plucked him by the sleeve, and with its small 
 
LtfCTUHES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 And skinny finger pointed : then he rose T 
 And with a low obeisance, and a smile 
 That looked like watery moonlight on Ms face, 
 So weak and' pale a smile, he bade me welcomed 
 I told him that a lading of wheat-flour 
 Was on its way, whereat, to my surprise, 
 His countenance fell, and he had almost wept. 
 
 Art. Poor soul ! and wherefore ? 
 
 Clara. That I soon perceived. 
 He plucked aside the curtain of the couch t 
 And there two children's bodies lay composed, 
 They seemed like twins of some ten years of age 2 , 
 And they had died so nearly both together 
 He could not say which first : and being dead, 
 He put them, for some fanciful affection, 
 Each with its arm about the other's neck, 
 So that a fairer sight I had not seen, 
 Than these two children, with their little faces 
 So thin and wan, so calm, and sad r and sweet. 
 I looked upon them long, and for a while 
 I wished myself their sister, and to lie 
 With them in death r as they did with each other ; 
 I thought that there was nothing in the world 
 I could have loved so much ; and then I wept ; 
 And when he saw I wept, his own tears fell, 
 He was sorely shaken and convulsed, 
 Through weakness of his frame and his great grief- 
 
 Art. Much pity was it he so long deferred 
 To come to us for aid. 
 
 Clara. It was, indeed. 
 But whatsoe'er had been his former pride T 
 He seemed a humbled and heart-broken man. 
 He thanked me much for what I said was sent ; 
 But I knew well his thanks were for my tears. 
 He looked again upon the children's couch, 
 And said, low down, tbey wanted nothing now* 
 So, to turn off his eyes, 
 I drew the small survivor of the three 
 Before him ,- and he snatched it up, and soon 
 Seemed quite forgetful and absorbed:. With that 
 I stole away." 
 
 Now this is purely Imaginary; and yet, how perfectly expressive is 
 it of the truth ! How much more truthful is it than mere lifeless 
 narrative-accuracy ; and how deeply into our hearts does it carry the 
 sense of the reality ! Consider how little was known a few years ago 
 of this same Philip Van Artevelde, until, within: our own day, 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 9 
 
 -of a living English poet's imagination is turned to the comparatively 
 obscure region of the annals of Flanders, and forthwith Yan Artavelde 
 becomes, what even Froissart had not succeeded in making him, a fami- 
 liar historical personage. 
 
 In continuing this analysis of the employment of the Imagination in 
 the study of history, there are still higher and niore precious functions, 
 than this power of presenting picture-like impressions, which I have 
 been endeavouring to illustrate. 
 
 We are all of tis, I dare say, apt to think of the composition and the 
 study of history as a much simpler and easier thing than it really is. 
 But if history were no more than a mere chronicle of facts, a mere 
 record of men, their deeds, and their dates, reflect how soon there 
 gather over these uncertainty, obscurity, and blank oblivion. It may be 
 that the historian is toiling to recover the knowledge of some far remote 
 age that he strives to decipher the time-worn inscriptions of a lost 
 language, or the mystery of hieroglyphics, or that he questions the awful 
 silence of the Pyramids, which, almost as long, it might seem, as the 
 earth has endured, have been pointing to the sun, or bearing on their 
 huge bulk the darkness of the night. Or it may be that the historian's 
 labour is not upon the scant materials of a dim antiquity, but upon the 
 immense accumulation from which the history of a later time is to be 
 extracted. Now, in either case, it is scarcely possible to estimate justly, 
 much less to exaggerate, the magnitude of such labour, or the might of 
 human genius, that is needed to achieve even an approach to it. This 
 has been eloquently set forth by a thoughtful living author, in a sentence 
 which reminds me of the magnificent structure of the prose of Milton 
 or Jeremy Taylor : " The field of operation is so vast and unsurvey- 
 able ; so much lies wrapped up in thick, impenetrable darkness, while 
 other portions are obscured by the mists which the passions of men have 
 spread over them, and a spot, here and there, shines out dazzlingly, 
 throwing the adjacent parts into the shade ; the events are so inextri- 
 cably intertwisted and conglomerated, sometimes thrown together in a 
 heap, often rushing onward and spreading out like the Rhine, until 
 they lose themselves in a morass, and now and then, after having dis- 
 appeared, rising up again, as was fabled of the Alpheus, in a distant 
 region, which they reach through an unseen channel ; the peaks, which 
 first meet our eyes, are mostly so barren, while the fertilizing waters 
 flow secretly through the valleys ; the statements of events are so per- 
 petually at variance, and not seldom contradictory ; the actors on the 
 ever-shifting stage are so numerous and promiscuous ; so many undis- 
 tinguishable passions, so many tangled opinions, so many mazy preju- 
 
10 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 dices are ever at work, rolling and tossing to and fro in a sleepless 
 conflict, in which every man's hand and heart seem to be against his 
 neighbour, and often against himself ; it is so impossible to discern and 
 separate the effects brought about by man's will and energy, from those 
 which are the result of outward causes, of circumstances, of conjunc- 
 tures, of all the mysterious agencies summed up under the name of 
 chance ; and it requires so much faith, as well as wisdom, to trace any 
 thing like a pervading overruling law through the chaos of human 
 affairs, and to perceive how the banner which God has set up, is still 
 borne pauselessly onward, even while the multitudinous host seems to be 
 struggling waywardly, busied in petty bickerings and personal squab- 
 bles ; that a perfect, consummate history of the world may not unrea- 
 sonably be deemed the loftiest achievement that the mind of man can 
 contemplate." It is from the entangled and enormous mass, thus des- 
 cribed, of memorials, and traditions, and records, that history is to be 
 evolved. For the work, there is not a faculty of the human mind that 
 is not needed, besides the great moral qualification a love of truth, that 
 shall be at once calm in its action, and passionate in its earnestness and 
 its impatient hatred of falsehood. What concerns my present subject 
 chiefly is, that historic truth is gained, not only by the logical processes 
 of the intellect, but by that inventive power which can discover the 
 truth when argument alone could not have disclosed it ; and it has been 
 wisely said, that the union of the poet and the philosopher is essential to 
 form the perfect historian. It is not, I think, possible to find, in the 
 records of all literature, one great historian in the constitution of whose 
 mind the imaginative faculty is not a large element the ability, not 
 simply to reason about historic testimony, but also to behold the past 
 to see it with the mind's eye ; and this is essentially the same thing as 
 poetic vision, by which the dead, the distant, are made living and present. 
 It is only when this philosophic and poetic power combined looks upon 
 the multitudinous facts of past times, that these facts are duly arrayed 
 and harmonized into just order and proportion. Amid the actual occur- 
 rences, how much is there that is unmeaning and worthless nay, worse 
 than worthless, because often obtrusive, and standing between our minds 
 and that which is significant and valuable. All such obstructions the 
 genuine historian sweeps away in silence : and knowledge is acquired, 
 not only by what is told, but by what is left untold. Men, and the 
 deeds of men, are to be exhibited in the just subordination to the con- 
 trolling agencies of their times. The simple chronicler may be content 
 to make his record of events with no discrimination ; but history is more 
 than a chronological table, and the historian must idealize the actual ; 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 11 
 
 he must give it such a form, that we may see the causes of events, and 
 the living, actuating principles that were at work in them. Now, when 
 the philosophic or the imaginative eye of the historian (I care not 
 which it be called, for I believe all true philosophy is imaginative, and 
 all genuine imagination is philosophical) when the eye of the historian 
 contemplates a period of history, after deep study, he sees all that is 
 important, and influential, and permanent, and he sees it in all its 
 essential character and reality, while a thousand insignificant circum- 
 stances have faded out of his thoughts. Thus it is that the actual is 
 idealized into the highest and purest truth. 
 
 Reflect how often our sense of truth is impaired or impeded by the 
 pressure on our minds of what is actual, and visible, and present. A 
 faithful painter may, in the highest style of his art, portray a human 
 face with all its characteristic expression, and in all its true individuality ; 
 and yet the nearest relatives are not only the hardest to satisfy, but, by 
 the very nature of their familiarity with the subject, will often be the 
 worst judges of the likeness. Again, I believe we .are all of us very 
 apt to fail in appreciating the best and the noblest parts in the characters 
 of those whom we know familiarly, for the thousand familiarities of 
 common life interpose ; and it is sad to think, that often it is not until 
 Death hath hallowed and idealized the character, that we can do it 
 justice. Then the eye can no longer see the familiar face, the ear no 
 longer catch sounds of the familiar voice : but the soul, apart from the 
 senses, is left to the solemn, solitary work, and beholds the strength 
 and the purity of the spirit that has passed away, more truly than 
 when it was incarnate in this life. 
 
 I use these illustrations to show how much that which is matter of 
 fact, as it is called, often stands in the way of truth; and I cannot 
 doubt, that one of the great moral purposes for which the Imagination 
 has been implanted in us is, that it may enable us to triumph over the 
 bondage of the senses, of which it may be said, as of the elements of 
 fire and water, that they are good servants, but very bad masters. The 
 soul must keep dominion over them, or else we are sure to be beset by 
 the manifold mischiefs and miseries of materialism in some or other of 
 its forms. The most elevated sense of truth in the spirit of a man may 
 be grievously and disastrously disturbed by the presence of that which 
 affects only the senses. It is said that Volney was made an infidel by 
 his travels in Palestine ; and though it is fearful to think of faith dying 
 out of a Christian's soul in consequence of his eyes having before them 
 the visible presence of the Holy Land, yet there is a natural process by 
 which such a defection is conceivable. 
 
12 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Wheri, at a distance, we think of Mount Sinai, or of the Mount of 
 Olives, or of that other more awful eminence, they are more spiritual 
 than material places of the earth. The " Delectable Mountains" in the 
 Pilgrim's Progress are to my mind, scarce more visionary ; and with 
 such feeling, the events that give a sanctity to those spots, are in perfect 
 harmony. But when the traveller actually stands upon that ground, ' 
 when it is visible and tangible and when, feeling the very soil, the 
 vegetation, and the stones, beneath his feet, he calls to mind Jehovah's 
 presence on that selfsame place, or the Saviour's incarnate life, then 
 the impressidn of the senses and the spiritual associations may come in 
 conflict. In the heart of Volney it proved an irreconcilable conflict, 
 and faith yielded to what was sensuous. It may well be believed, that 
 any one who visits that land, not in the reverential spirit of the early 
 Christian pilgrim, but with the thoughtless sight-seeing temper of the 
 modern traveller, has need to pray that his faith be strengthened before 
 his eyes rest on places, which, before, had only been apprehended by 
 his imagination. 
 
 In the composition of history, and eminently in the historical drama; 
 there must needs be this poetic process, by which the actual is sub- 
 ordinated to the ideal, that which is inconsiderable put out of sight, and 
 such unity given to the subject as will best display its real truth. It 
 is one of the chief functions of the Imagination to give unity and 
 harmony to the materials of which it treats: and, perhaps, I may 
 explain this more clearly by reference to an act kindred to historical 
 poetry I mean, historical painting. In one of the most admirable of 
 the Elia Essays, so full of a fine and humorous philosophy, Charles 
 Lamb has observed that " not all that is optically possible to be seen is 
 to be shown in every picture. By a wise falsification, the great masters 
 of painting got at their true conclusions, by not showing the actual 
 appearances, that is, all that was to be seen at any given moment by 
 an indifferent eye, but only what the eye might be supposed to see in 
 the doing or suffering of some portentous action." In this same essay, 
 he shows, by a careful comparison, that it is in their barrenness of the 
 imaginative faculty, that most modern works of art are so inferior to 
 the paintings by the great masters, which, on this very account, were 
 so much more impressive arid truthful. He exemplifies this deficiency 
 in Martin's historical paintings, which are familiar to us all by the help 
 of the engravings ; and in the BelshazSar's Feast of that artist, after 
 noticing the alarm which has thrown the well-dressed lords and ladies 
 in the Hall of Belus into such admired confusion, he justly asks, " Is 
 this an adequate exponent of supernatural terror ? The way in tvhich 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTOKY. 13 
 
 the finger of Qod writing judgments would have been met by a guilty 
 conscience ? There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The one is 
 disturbed, restless, and bent upon escape. The other is bowed down, 
 effortless, and passive." This same scriptural subject has been treated 
 by another modern artist one whose genius was full of that imagina- 
 tive power, which was the glory of the old masters I mean our 
 countryman, the late Washington Allston ; and I wish that you had 
 seen that great but unfinished painting, were it only that I might now 
 the better appeal to it as an illustration, to show how the imagination 
 can worthily and triumphantly reproduce the events of history. On 
 beholding it, one is made to feel that the supernatural, writing was a 
 transaction, so to speak, between God and that impious king the 
 prophet participating in divine power, while he is inspired to interpret 
 the mysterious words. You see that it is upon Belshazzar that the 
 awful terror has fallen with all its weight that it is he still gorgeous 
 with barbaric pearl and gold, and just now so proud in his profanity 
 that it is he, and, perhaps, he alone that has beheld the fingers of a 
 hand come forth and write upon the palace walls ; and that it is his 
 spirit which is withereci by the prophet's interpretation " God hath 
 numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the 
 balances and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided, and given 
 to the Medes and Persians/' In the foreground of the picture are 
 seen the queen, heart-stricken with terror, and awe, and grief the 
 group of the baffled soothsayers and astrologers the captive Israelites 
 reverentially bowing around their inspired countryman. In the middle 
 distance are the tables of the impious feast, with Belshazzar's thousand 
 lords his wives and concubines; and afar off, methought I saw 
 thousands of Babylonians thronging to the huge idol that towered 
 in the distance and yet all so controlled by the genius of a great 
 historical painter, that there is ever present to your mind the leading 
 truth of the history, that it is Belshazzar's soul that God is dealing 
 with, and that it is over his appalled spirit that is hanging the fulfilment 
 which closes the story of him and his empire. "In that night was 
 Belshazzar slain, and Darius the Mede took the kingdom." The crea- 
 tive power of a great artist, a poet-painter, has made that historical 
 occasion visible. I am sure that I am thus made to feel the truth and 
 the reality of that chapter of sacred history more deeply than I ever 
 felt it before, and that I shall never think of it otherwise than as Allston 
 has shown it to me. So is it that the imagination of the genuine 
 painter addresses itself to the imagination of the spectator; and, as 
 history is wrought on by the genius of the artist, so it is by that of the 
 
14 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 historical poet: so, indeed, too, in a somewhat different way, by 
 every great historian. All history of a high order must be animated 
 by the vivifying spirit of the Imagination ; and I give the highest 
 possible authority for this opinion, when I remind you that inspired 
 history abounds with it. That one chapter, for instance, which 
 describes the event of which I have just been speaking, the downfall of 
 the Babylonian Empire, is instinct with Imagination from the first 
 verse to the last. 
 
 Having chanced to touch upon this train of thought, let me follow 
 it a step further, for the sake of the authority. So large a space in 
 the record of revelation is occupied by history and poetry, that one 
 cannot help recognising and revering them as the appointed modes of 
 divine instruction as chosen instruments for the guidance of the 
 human soul. You find there history, in its severe form of the Chro- 
 nicles ; you find poetry in its most sublime form ; and, what is more 
 applicable to my present subject, you find history and poetry combined 
 in thos^ marvellous proportions unattainable by the uninspired imagina- 
 tion of man. And what a dull, dreary, dismal Bible it would be, if 
 all that was imaginative in it were quenched! If inspiration come 
 direct direct, I mean, from the throne of God into the mind of 
 man, it has utterance, for the most part, in some imaginative form it 
 may be a lyric chaunt, like that which burst from the lips of Moses 
 and Miriam over the Egyptian warriors, Busiris and his Memphian 
 chivalry, " the horse and his rider cast into the sea ;" and if the 
 inspiration is given to tell, not of the past, but of the future, it finds 
 voice in the lofty strains of prophetic poetry. And so when inspiration 
 comes into the mind ; as the constitutional endowment of poetic genius, 
 it, too, seeks expression in some imaginative form, whether its plastic 
 power be employed on the canvas, or on marble, or in words. 
 
 In the next place, a great impediment in the way of historical 
 knowledge, as, indeed, of all knowledge, is that he who writes, and he 
 who reads, history, is apt to bring with him prejudices and preposses- 
 sions : and accordingly, the study is carried on, not with the love of 
 truth as the prime and master impulse, but to make out some theory, 
 or to sanction some preconceived bias. The consequence of this is, 
 that there are few histories to which the reader can intrust himself 
 with believing, confiding docility ; instead of which, he has to be per- 
 petually on his guard, as if he were walking with a foe instead of a 
 friend ; and he is forced to seek truth by that painful, miserable process 
 of balancing one extreme against another. Of all the histories of 
 England, there is not one, I am safe in saying, which is not, in one way or 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 15 
 
 other, a partisan history ; and the historians who* make the proudest 
 hoast of their philosophy and their liberality, are not seldom the most 
 narrow-minded and treacherous; so that it has been well said that, 
 what has been called " the philosophy of history, may be denominated 
 the philosophy of romance ; for by few writers has so much been done 
 to pervert the truth of history, as by the so called 'philosophical 
 historians/ " 
 
 I have said there is not an impartial history of England, inasmuch 
 as every writer of it has looked on his subject, not in the clear 
 atmosphere of candour and of truth, but through the disturbing medium 
 of some party opinions and feelings. Each historian has some point of 
 vision to which he is bound by his prejudices ; and only from that can 
 he look back on past ages. Worse than all, the most familiar history of 
 England, the classic history, I mean Mr. Hume's, is the product of a 
 mind, that could look upon other times only through those deadly 
 vapours that are perpetually rising from an infidel's heart. From the 
 low and unhealthy region of a shallow, deistical philosophy, he never 
 rose to the lofty stations of truth; and how could a dry, hard, sophistical, 
 and unimaginative intellect, like his, have any feeling in common with 
 the heroism and the piety of other ages ? With an impassable gulf 
 between his spirit and the spirit of those times, how could he be a 
 faithful or a just historian of them ? 
 
 Now, to bring these considerations to bear on my subject, when a 
 historian, whether in prose or poetry, comes to his arduous work, a 
 strong and well-disciplined imagination lifts him up from the atmosphere 
 of prejudice and error into a pure region of truth. It is the precious 
 moral agency of the Imagination to raise us out of a narrow-minded 
 selfishness ; it enables us to think and to feel with others, and thus to 
 judge of them with candour and with charity, and therefore with truth. 
 It puts it in the historian's power to look upon distant ages in the spirit 
 of those ages, and thus to give a genuine knowledge of them. Instead 
 of this, history is made controversial ; it is tortured into the sanction 
 or the subversion of some system; and it is seen only in such a light, 
 or is placed only in such a light, that all the events of past ages 
 shall seem to do homage to some narrow-minded and exclusive 
 speculation of the historian. Political writers, for instance, treat the 
 civil institutions, even of antiquity, in such a way, that the narrative 
 shall make, respectively, in favour or against modern theories of 
 liberalism or absolutism. The Protestant and the Roman Catholic 
 historian will so shape their stories of the early and middle ages 
 of the Church and of Europe, as to support or condemn the great 
 
16 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 movement of the Reformation ; and thus, while writing the history, 
 of one century, they will, in reality, be thinking much more of 
 another and a later one. Or a historian, like Hume, writing in the 
 deistical temper of his own day, labours to make all history servile 
 to the shallow scepticism of the eighteenth century; and though 
 unable to conceal, that Christianity, or rather let me say more 
 precisely, the Church of Christ, is the great distinguishing element of 
 modern history, Hume never spares pains to tempt the unwary reader 
 to think, with him, that all religious feelings is either fraud or super-? 
 stition, arid that Christian earnestness is no more than a mockery or a 
 delusion. But the dutiful culture of the Imagination, together with 
 that of the practical understanding, saves us from many errors that else 
 are apt to beset us in our narrow-mindedness. The historian, as he goes 
 forth into the past ages of the world, needs all the comprehensive spirit 
 which the philosophic imagination gives, the ample feeling witfy 
 which a true poet, on beholding, in another region of Christendom, 
 religious rites different from the familiar ones of his own land, exclaims = 
 
 "Where'er we roam along the brink 
 Of Rhine, or by the sweeping Po, 
 Through Alpine vale or champaign wide, 
 Whate'er we look on at our side 
 Be Charity, to bid us think 
 And feel if we would know." 
 
 This spirit of capacious charity, which is one of the characteristics, 
 of the imaginative mind, brings with it this great gain, that it leads the 
 historian to do justice to the better side of human nature as it is dis-. 
 played in history. He will habitually seek out all that is good and 
 great in the annals of the world, and thus will feed the genial sense of 
 admiration on which the health of our moral nature so much depends. 
 It is with admirable feeling that Arnold says, " If a historian be an 
 unbeliever in all heroism if he be a man who brings every thing down 
 to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not 
 found in such a writer." The best truth of history, let me add, is lost 
 to that censorious, sneering, sarcastic temper, which is its own curse ; 
 for it can see only what is selfish, and mean, and vicious. There will, 
 indeed, be found enough of evil passion and guilt upon the pages of 
 history ; but when sentence is pronounced, let it be with a tone of 
 solemn judgment, and not of satire. Clinging to the truth in all that 
 is pure and elevated in our struggling human nature, we may do well 
 to cherish the memory of the heroic deeds, the virtues, the self-devotion, 
 and whatever else has given glory and dignity to the generations of 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 17 
 
 mankind. This is the most permanent and the most precious portion 
 of history ; and it is that to which a well-cultivated imagination, and, 
 indeed, the simplest good sense and good feeling, will turn instinctively. 
 Remember how much it is a matter of choice and of hahit with us, 
 whether we will look upon things with a good or an evil eye ; and 
 remember, too, that the seat of the scoffer is not the seat of wisdom 
 that truth is vouchsafed to him who seeks it with a generous sympathy 
 and a docile temper ; and that it is denied to him who comes with 
 suspicion, and pride, and a spirit of contempt. 
 
 Let me give a single illustration, to show how the self-same occasion 
 may be presented under very different aspects, in one of which there 
 may be present that which disturbs and distracts our impressions of the 
 truth, while in the other the imaginative view ma; be much more 
 faithful to them. In a passage in his private diary, Sir Walter Scott 
 has expressed an aversion to funerals, because so much of what is seen 
 and heard at them is painfully discordant with the genuine grief, the 
 depth of which can neither be seen nor heard. "I hate funerals," he 
 writes; "there is such a mixture of mummery with real grief the 
 actual mourner, perhaps, heart-broken, and all the rest making solemn 
 faces, and whispering observations on the weather or public news, and 
 here and there a greedy fellow enjoying the cake and wine. But," he 
 adds, " the funeral at a distance, the few mourners on horseback, with 
 their plaids wrapped around them, the father heading the procession as 
 they enter the river, and pointing out the ford by which his darling is 
 to be carried none of the subordinate figures in discord with the 
 general tone of the incident, but seeming just accessories and no more 
 the distant funeral is affecting." The first of these scenes Scott saw 
 with the keen, observing eye, with which he studied human nature in 
 its weakness as well as its strength : the other he beheld with a poet's 
 eye ; and he gazed on it as it was idealized by the distance and by his 
 own imagination. I ask you which of these views is the true one ? It 
 may be answered that each has a truth of its own. Well, then, whicn 
 more truly expresses the real feeling of the occasion ? If the purpose 
 be to show the utter heartlessness of mourning, the Hogarth's picture 
 of a funeral, at once comic and hideous, will best answer the purpose ; 
 but then, at best, it is only satire, and we feel the truth of that view 
 which is harmonized by the imagination. 
 
 The poetic faculty enables the historian or the historical poet to 
 
 accomplish another important result in our knowledge of historical 
 
 occurrences and characters. In the preface to the tragedy of 
 
 1 Richelieu," Bulwer speaks of the historic drama as " the conce-ntra- 
 
 C 
 
18 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 tion of historic events ;" and Coleridge has described it as " a collection 
 of events borrowed from history, but connected together, in respect of 
 cause and time* poetically and by dramatic fiction ; and thus, while the 
 unity from mere succession may be destroyed, it is supplied by a unity 
 of a higher order, which connects the events by reference to the workers, 
 gives a reason for them in the motives, and presents men in their 
 causative character." Now, this "unity of a higher order," which 
 Coleridge speaks of, brings to view that moral meaning, which, while it 
 is the chief value of history, is so difficult to discover in the multitude 
 and perplexity of historical events. Facts, which seem to stand wholly 
 apart, are shewn to have some moral association : a blessing, which 
 actually followed, perhaps, afar off and obscurely, is brought near to 
 the happy influence which produced it, and retribution comes manifestly 
 to guilt, which brings suffering not only to itself, but to the innocent, 
 according to the dark mystery of that law, by which misery is carried 
 down to the third and fourth generations. 
 
 When Hume, in his history, reaches the end of a splendid era of 
 English history, he closes it with this reflection that " the study of the 
 early institutions of the country is instructive, as showing that a mighty 
 fabric of government is built up by a great deal of accident, with a very 
 little human foresight and wisdom. In our meek hours of faith, we are 
 taught that not a sparrow falls to the ground without God's providence ; 
 and then we turn to the infidel history to learn there how the " kingly 
 commonwealth " of England, that has swayed the happiness of millions 
 of human beings, and has sent forth this vast Republic of the West, 
 grew up by accident ; that, with all its influence on the human race, it 
 was but the creature of chance. It is thus that history becomes 
 atheism, from which we may gladly turn to the better philosophy of the 
 poet-historian. In Shakspeare's admirable description of poetic genius, 
 one of its noblest attributes is, that it glances from earth to heaven. 
 Nowhere has this been more finely exemplified than in his own 
 " Chronicle Plays." If the Greek drama was controlled by Destiny, 
 the despotism of a blind, inexorable Fate, the Christian historical 
 drama has a Providence for its leading idea. In the periods of history 
 which I propose to examine and illustrate by the English historical plays 
 of Shakspeare, it will be seen that, while he embodies a great variety of 
 human character and passions, he shows it all as an agency in the pro- 
 vidential government of the world. After disposing of the early history, 
 I hope to be able to show to those who may accompany me in this 
 
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY. 19 
 
 fcourse of lectures, how the guilt that hung over the usurpation of King 
 John brought not only retribution on himself, but unmerited misery 
 upon the innocent Arthur how the giddy tyranny and the frailties of 
 the second Richard found sad expiation in a tragic death. We may 
 there trace the fortunes of the Lancastrian kings, from the elevation of 
 Bolingbroke, onward, through the martial glories of his son's reign, to 
 the disastrous civil wars of the Roses. In the last of these historical 
 dramas, we shall see one of th6 noblest tragic representations of the 
 mutability of earthly power; and we may contemplate the sublime, 
 historical impartiality with which the poet has portrayed the splendid and 
 haughty career of England's Great Cardinal. 
 
 In conclusion, let me say, that, apart altogether from the mode of 
 treating it* I cannot, for one moment, distrust the intrinsic interest 
 of the subject of this course of lectures. It is a subject of ample magni- 
 tude ; and of this I nave become more deeply sensible the more I have 
 dwelt upon it since I first proposed it to my mind. It is, therefore, 
 with no affectation of modesty that I assure you I have a strong 
 feeling that these lectures must be very inadequate to a subject which 
 grows in my thoughts as I work upon it. *The subject is a new one, 
 too I mean, as to the mode of treating it ; and it will demand much 
 care and study to keep the historic and poetic elements in just propor- 
 tions. In this, I have no authority or example to guide me. 
 
 I will endeavour to give the subject an interest and value in the 
 minds of those who will accompany me in the course ; but if I should 
 not succeed in this, remember what I tell you now, the fault is in me, 
 and not in my subject; 
 
II. 
 
 f ritem : png frar. 
 
 LEGENDARY PERIOD PRIOR TO THE ROMAN INVASION JULIUS C.ESAR MALONE'S COMMENT 
 FABULOUS ANTIQUITY OF BRITISH KINGS BRUTUS OF TROY AUTHENTIC ANCIENT 
 HISTORY LIMITED TO SOUTHERN EUROPE BRITAIN OUT OF THE PATH OF THE ANCIENT 
 WORLD FABER'S IDEA OF THE MEDITERRANEAN MILTON'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND- 
 FAITH IN ANCIENT LEGENDS CLAIM OF EDWARD THE FIRST TO THE. SOVEREIGNTY OF 
 SCOTLAND THE PAPAL REFERENCE DIFFERENCE OF BRITISH AND CLASSICAL LEGENDS 
 GROTE ON GREEK LEGENDS MINSTRELSY AND ROMANCE WASHINGTON, IN OUR 
 SENSE, A LEGENDARY IDEA IN AMERICA LIVES OF THE SAINTS SYMBOLICAL LEGENDS 
 POPULAR FAITH IN LEGENDS-*- IDENTIFIED WITH REVERENCE FOR ANCESTRY SIR 
 ROBERT WALPOLE'S FALSE IDEA OF HISTORY NIEBUHR MODERN COLONIES KING 
 LEAR, A DRAMATIC LEGEND FILIAL RELATION ILLUSTRATIONS APPROPRIATE TO 
 PAGANISM LEAR'S INVOCATION OF HEATHEN GODS CHARLES LAMB'S CRITICISM ON 
 LEAR. 
 
 IN the examination of the period of history, which forms the 
 subject of these lectures, I shall follow chronological order as the most 
 natural arrangement. I am, therefore, now led back into that dim, 
 or rather dark, region of historical knowledge, which may be fitly 
 described as the legendary period of British History. Amid the multi- 
 tude of stories of fables which belong to these times, one found its way 
 to the heart of Shakspeare ; and, by the wondrous alchemy of his 
 genius, it was transmuted into, perhaps, the most impressive and awful 
 tragedy in the whole range of dramatic literature. The obscure and 
 neglected legend lives, by transmigration, in that imperishable drama, 
 which shows us the royal and the parental misery of the breaking heart 
 of King Lear. 
 
 The legendary period of British history is to be understood as 
 embracing those ages, which, beginning in a distant and indefinite 
 antiquity, end with the opening of authentic annals. That authentic 
 history begins under the unfavourable circumstances of observation 
 which is limited and prejudiced, for it is found in the military narrative 
 of a Roman soldier, who met the Britons in bloody warfare. The 
 scanty information to be derived from Julius Caesar's memoirs of his 
 campaigns is, at best, the description of an enemy and a Roman ; and, 
 in judging of the value of such testimony, it should be borne in mind, 
 that, whatever were the virtues of the Roman character, and whatever 
 praise there may be in calling a man now-a-days, an " old Roman," 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. Si 
 
 there was found among that people little of veracity or magnanimity 
 in their dealings with their enemies. S'till, though the narrative by 
 Csesar is not entitled to entire confidence, it does give the first solid 
 footing for English history to stand upon. We learn certain facts from 
 itj distorted and coloured though they be by the medium through 
 which they have come to us. We can believe that the great triumvir^ 
 after having led his legions in victory from one province of Gaul into 
 another, found a new adversary, when the Britons crossed the narrow 
 channel of the sea to help the kindred people who dwelt in Armorica 
 there where, at this present time, their descendants are found, I mean, 
 that very peculiar race who occupy the north-western corner of France, 
 the province of Brittany. When the subjugation of Gaul was com- 
 pleted, Csesar, revolving, perhaps, his plans against the freedom of the 
 republic, looked round and beheld oil one side the dark and impene- 
 trable forests of Germany, and on the other what appeared the more 
 accessible and easy conquest of the almost unknown land of the 
 Britons. He looked to the white cliffs of these shores, perhaps with 
 a revengeful eye against the confederates of his Gallic enemy perhaps 
 impelled to continue war by the fire of that lust of conquest, which 
 burned in the heart of Roman soldiers for eight centuries and more 
 burned until it was quenched, not only by exhaustion, but by the fulfil- 
 ment of providential purposes. Whatever was the impulse whether these 
 or the improbable and meaner one, which has been imputed to CaBsar 
 by one of his own countrymen, the coveting of British pearls the 
 invasion of Britain added nothing to Roman power or pride. The 
 eagles were fluttered in their flight ; and, when thanks were given at 
 Rome to the gods, it may well be questioned, as Milton intimates in 
 his History of England, whether it was for a conquest or an escape 
 whether it was for an exploit done or for a discovery made. At the 
 end of the campaigns, the conqueror of Britain was not master of one 
 foot of British ground ; not a Roman colonist was left in the land ; and 
 Julius Caesar, at his return to Rome, dedicated to the goddess Venus 
 a corslet of these British pearls a gift, which was, perhaps, the more 
 precious from the fact, that the Romans went home with no inclination 
 to renew the search for that kind of jewels. 
 
 It is certain that, in the invasion of Britain, Csesar encountered a 
 foe who caused a dismay, from which even the discipline of his veteran 
 legions with difficulty rallied; and I must confess that, while we applaud 
 the heroism of the standard-bearer of the tenth legion, I have a deeper 
 sympathy with the rude barbarians who gathered by thousands to defend 
 their native shores. If it was true martial virtue for the Roman to leap 
 
82 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 into the waves and bid his hesitating fellow-soldiers follow him, there 
 was a nobler spirit in those undaunted Britons, who rushed into the 
 sea to strike the invader before his foot polluted their soil. 
 
 It is not my intention to. dwell upon such familiar passages in history 
 as the descent of Julius Csesar on the British shore ; but I could hardly 
 say less in asking your attention to the manner in which the authentic 
 history of Britain has its beginning, with that event, about fifty years 
 before the birth of our Saviour. It is the practise of the later writers 
 of English history to make no attempt to present any narrative of the 
 earlier period, which is abandoned as purely legendary or hopelessly 
 involved in fable or confused tradition. It should be understood, how- 
 ever, that, in doing so, they pursue a course very different from that of 
 the early historians of England, who had no fear in looking into a very 
 remote antiquity, and no difficulty in persuading themselves that they 
 saw a great deal there. They $ealt w jth their eras of a thousand years 
 with a magnificent assurance^ and marshalled kings and dynasties of 
 kings in complete chronology and exact succession. They carried their 
 elaborate genealogy so far beyond the Olympiads, that, by the side of it, 
 Greek and Roman history seems a thing of yesterday. British antiquity 
 is made to run parallel with Egypt's ancient lore, and with the prophets, 
 and kings, and judges of Israel. It stops at the Deluge, and is every 
 thing but antediluvian. 
 
 This confident chronology of the chroniclers startles us with its bold- 
 ness and its minute accuracy; and, indeed, it seems fantastic, if not 
 ludicrous, when we are gravely told of one British king flourishing in 
 the time of Saul, and another being contemporary with Solomon; and 
 that it was in the period of the prophet Isaiah that King Lear was ruler 
 in the land. Yet this mythical chronology appears to have been for so 
 long a time part of the popular literature of England, and to have taken 
 such hold on the mind, that one of the commentators on Shakspeare 
 thinks it worth while to remark, that the name of Nero is introduced in 
 King Lear about three hundred years before he was born ; and another 
 commentator on the same passage, where Edgar says that " Nero was 
 an angler in the lake of darkness," goes still more seriously to work in 
 the way of correction, by remarking that " this is one of Shakspeare's 
 most remarkable anachronisms; for that King Lear succeeded his 
 father Bladud in the year of the world SI 05, and Nero, in the year 
 4017, was sixteen years old when he married Octavia, Caesar's daughter/' 
 Surely, the fancies and fables of the romancers and chroniclers had as 
 much of wisdom in them as there is in such commentary. Who, as he 
 gives his heart up to the study of this grand tragedy, ever heeds or thinks, 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN, 23 
 
 of the chronology ? In the course of this lecture I will endeavour to 
 show, that the poetic truth is preserved, so far as the drama stands in 
 relation to an age and a land of paganism ; but, besides that, it mattered 
 not in what particular century the story was cast, or whether it cor- 
 responded with the history of other countries. From the legends of 
 Britain, Shakspeare culled the story as one which he felt the power of 
 his imagination could make as universal, and as perpetual, as the human 
 heart that he could create a sympathy with it, which, growing out of 
 the relation of father and child, must endure as long as the earth is 
 peopled. What need the poet care for the violation of a fabulous 
 chronology, when he was giving poetic reality to the sublime passion of 
 Lear, and when, in the character of Cordelia, he was creating such a 
 personification of all that is graceful and dutiful in womanly nature a 
 being, the very embodiment of filial piety, whom every parent, the wide 
 world over, may bless, and every daughter reverence? 
 
 I have spoken of the authentic history of Britain beginning only 
 when the inhabitants of that country came in contact, or rather 
 collision, with the Romans ; and this may lead us to the consideration, 
 that all the authentic history of the ancient world its sacred and pro- 
 fane history is almost entirely limited to the story of those races of 
 men, who dwelt on the borders of the Mediterranean. The region of 
 that great inland sea is the domain of ancient history. As you pass 
 away from the sound of its waves, the v#ice of history dies away with 
 it ; and the countless generations, that lived and died at a distance from 
 the shores of the midland sea, have hardly more place in our thoughts 
 than if they had been the inhabitants of another planet. We read the 
 history of the Israelites and of Egypt, the history of the Greeks and the 
 history of the Romans, and this we call ancient history ; and then we 
 think we have read the history of all the ancient world : yet it is the 
 story of only those who occupied a small belt of the earth's surface. 
 The light of history seems to fade unless it is reflected from the glancing 
 waters of the bright Mediterranean ; and we scarce recognise the 
 existence of mankind dwelling in the vast spaces of the North, and the 
 East, and the South. Hie Celt and the Cambrian, the Briton and the 
 German, are known only when Rome is waging war with them or is 
 dismayed at their approach. We must come to the borders of the 
 Adriatic and the JEgean shores, or to where the Nile pours its turbid 
 .current to the sea, to find the history of the Old World ; for, elsewhere, 
 it is either a desert vacancy of historical knowledge, or else what was 
 once known has passed into dark oblivion. The tribes that moved on 
 many a Northern plain have kept no kindred with the nations of 
 
24 LECTUEES ON ENGLISH HISTOEY. 
 
 history, and many a mighty empire has passed for ever out of the 
 memory of man. 
 
 "Palmyra, central in the desert.'* 
 is no more than a name ; and 
 
 "Babylon, 
 
 Learned and wise, hath perished utterly, 
 Nor leaves her speech one word to aid the sigh 
 That would lament her." 
 
 Britain did not lie in the path of the ancient world. I am very sure 
 that when we think of ancient history, we do not adequately or 
 distinctly conceive what vast spaces of the earth are left untouched. 
 We have, I am inclined to think, a kind of ill-defined notion, that 
 all the races of men had gathered either to the west of Asia, or the 
 north of Africa, or to the sunny regions of Southern Europe. The 
 great highway of the human race seems to us to have been the 
 Mediterranean Sea alone ; and certainly there is no spectacle on the earth 
 which can call up so many historic memories such throngs of thoughts 
 associated with other ages. If each wild wave upon its surface were 
 vocal, it might speak a history ; for all that was glorious in profane 
 story, and all that was holy in sacred, centred there. It is the natural 
 expression of a thoughtful mind, when a modern traveller thus describes 
 his first sight of the great and beautiful sea that touches the shores of 
 three continents : " I was looking upon the Mediterranean : it was the 
 first time those haunted waters had met my gaze, I pondered on the 
 name the Mediterranean as if the very letters had folded in their 
 little characters the secret of my joy. My inner eye roved in and out 
 along the coasts of religious Spain, the land of an eternal crusade, 
 where alone, and for that reason, the true religiousness of knighthood 
 was ever realized ; it overleaped the straits and followed the outline of 
 St. Augustine's land, where Carthage was, and rich Cyrene ; onward it 
 went to * old hushed Egypt,' the symbol of spiritual darkness, and the 
 mystical house of bondage ; from thence to Jaffa, from Jaffa to Beyroot ; 
 the birthplace of the Morning, the land of the world's pilgrimage, 
 where the Tomb is, lay stretched out like a line of light, and the nets 
 were drying on the rocks of Tyre; onward still along that large 
 projection of Asia, the field ploughed and sown by apostolic hushand- 
 men; then came a rapid glance upon the little JSgean islands, and 
 upward through the Hellespont; and, over the Sea of Marmora, 
 St. Sophia's minaret sparkled like a star ; the sea-surges were faint in 
 the myriad bays of Greece, and that other peninsula, twice the throne 
 of the world's masters, was beautiful in her peculiar twilight.'* 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. 25 
 
 Britain was too remote from the region of the Mediterranean to have 
 any place in ancient history ; and all that Was known of it was, that it 
 must have been peopled at an early age of the world, and that it was 
 occasionally visited by some of the maritime people of the South for 
 purposes of traffic. This long tract of time is not, however, left wholly 
 a blank, for the legendary story tells us, that the Britons were descended 
 from Trojan ancestry, and take their name from Brutus, who came 
 from Troy to the shores of a land called " Albion," and conquered the 
 inhabitants. Such is the story of national origin given by all the early 
 English chroniclers, who narrate also the succession of a long dynasty 
 of kings " sprung of old Aiichises' line *' who ruled over Britain in 
 times very long ago. It is the very witchcraft of history ; and, as we 
 read in these legendary annals the name of one king after another, they 
 pass before the mind, visionary creations like the shadows of the 
 kings that the weird sisters showed to Macbeth, one "gold-bound 
 brow is like the first, a third is like the former," and others more 
 shadowy still, like the images of the many more reflected in the glass of 
 the spectral Banquo. In the history of England written by Milton, he 
 precisely enumerates this series of ancient sovereigns according to the 
 traditions, which he recapitulates dutifully, though with something like 
 impatience, when, in one part of his narrative, he has to speak of 
 " twenty kings in a continued row, who either did nothing or lived in 
 ages that wrote nothing a foul pretermission," he adds, " in the author 
 of this, whether story or fable, himself weary, as seems, of his own 
 tedious tale." These negative sovereigns are succeeded by one who is 
 recorded to have excelled all before him in the art of music, whereupon 
 Milton quaintly laments that he " did not leave us one song of his twenty 
 predecessors' doings;" and, on reaching the confines of authentic 
 history, he likens the change to the approach of " dawn to one who had 
 set out on his way by night and travelled through a region of smooth 
 or idle dreams." 
 
 The very origin of this legendary British history is wrapped in 
 obscurity. It was circulated chiefly by the chronicle of Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth, a Welsh ecclesiastic, who flourished in the twelfth century ; 
 but, as the legend of the Trojan migration and settlement in Britain is 
 traced back to still earlier writers, it is reasonable to believe, that the 
 chronicle was either a translation from the British into the Latin 
 language of an ancient history of Britain found in Arniorica, or a 
 icompilation of all the stories and fables which had currency in the shape 
 of Welsh songs and oral traditions among the descendants of the 
 Britons. It would be a weary, and probably vain, inquiry to consider 
 
26 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 minutely the claims which such historical materials have on our belief 
 and so little is there attractive in the legends of British history, that I 
 need not attempt to dwell upon any of the alleged facts. But I wish, 
 before passing from this part of my subject, briefly to examine the 
 curious tenacity with which the belief in this legendary literature was 
 once held, and to show that it was not relinquished until a more critical 
 standard of historic belief was adopted, and scientific investigation took 
 the place of uninquiring and passive credulity. It has been said that 
 no man, before the sixteenth century, presumed to doubt that the 
 Britons were descended from Brutus the Trojan; and it is equally 
 certain that no modern writer could presume confidently to assert it. 
 Let us turn to Milton's history of England ; for, if it were only as a 
 psychological speculation, it will be curious to observe how such a subject 
 was regarded by a masculine and mighty mind, in which, too, there was 
 a feeling- very far removed from reverence for monastic legendary lore. 
 I have already noticed his scarce-repressed impatience, as he rehearsed 
 some passages in the history which he dismisses with these words : " I 
 neither oblige the belief of other persons, nor hastily subscribe my own. 
 Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chrono- 
 logies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance 
 of things whereof the substance is so much in doubt." When he intro- 
 duces the subject, after having summarily disposed of the stories anterior 
 to the Trojan legend, it is with these words, in which it is easy to trace 
 a lingering respect for the time-honoured legends : " Of Brutus and 
 his line, with the whole progeny of kings to the entrance of Julius 
 Csesar, we cannot so easily be discharged descents of ancestry long 
 continued, laws and exploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or 
 devised, which, on the common belief, have wrought no small impres- 
 sion, defended by many, denied utterly by few. For what though 
 Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up (seeing they who 
 first devised to bring us from some noble ancestor were content at first 
 with Brutus the Consul, till better inventions, though not willing to 
 forego the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabulous 
 age ; and, by the same remove, lighting on the Trojan tales, in affecta- 
 tion to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, pitched there), 
 yet these old and inborn names of successive kings never any to have 
 been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what has 
 been so long remembered, cannot be thought without too strict an 
 incredulity. * * * For these and the causes above mentioned, that 
 which has received approbation from so many I have chosen not to 
 omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. 27 
 
 must follow, so far as keeps aloof from impossible and absurd, attested 
 by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not as the due and 
 proper subject of story." 
 
 It is not difficult to observe in tbis a conflict in the mind of Milton 
 between his feelings and his judgment ; on the one hand, a lingering 
 respect for a long-continued and habitual popular belief, and, on the 
 other, the sense of the destitution of historical testimony. And, indeed, 
 with whatever superciliousness we may now look upon this old tradi- 
 tional history, it was no slight thing to sweep coldly and sternly away 
 all that, for centuries, had found ready acceptance in the minds of men 
 the innocent superstitions of their country's annals. Milton shared 
 in a measure the spirit of the English chroniclers, who flourished before 
 his day, and shows some sympathy with the geal with which they strove 
 against a growing incredulity, which, by converting the legendary 
 history into pure fable, would destroy with a breath whole dynasties of 
 kings and the exploits and adventures of their forefathers during cen- 
 turies. But they were striving against the progress of the science of 
 history, in which the annalist and chronicler stand midway between 
 romance or heroic legend, and genuine history. 
 
 It is most difficult for us, in these later days of higher standards of 
 historic credibility, to form any thing like an adequate conception of the 
 entire and unquestioning confidence, which was felt for the story of 
 British origin and the race of ancient British kings. Of this feeling 
 there is a curious proof in a transaction in the reign of Edward the 
 First, when the sovereignty of Scotland was claimed by the English 
 monarch. The Scots sought the interposition and protection of the 
 Pope, alleging that the Scottish realm belonged of right to the See of 
 Rome. Boniface the Eighth, a pontiff not backward in asserting the 
 claims of the papacy, didinterpo.se to check the English conquest, and 
 was answered by an elaborate and respectful epistle from Edward, in 
 which the English claim is most carefully and confidently derived from 
 the conquest of the whole country by the Trojans in the times of Eli 
 and Samuel assuredly, a very respectable antiquity of some two 
 thousand four hundred years. No Philadelphia estate could be more 
 methodically traced back to the proprietary title of William Penn, than 
 was this claim to Scotland up to Brutus, the exile from Troy. The 
 names of the successors of Brutus, in a long lineage, are regularly 
 stated, with various facts, which are asserted as having unquestionably 
 existed from antiquity in the memory of men " procul dubio ab 
 (intiquo " and the Pope is respectfully entreated, at the same time, not 
 $o bs deluded by cunningly devised and fantastical forgeries. Now, all 
 
23 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 this is set forth with the most imperturbable seriousness, and with an 
 air of complete assurance of the truth. It appears, too, to have fully 
 answered the purpose intended ; and the Scots, finding that the papal 
 antiquity was but a poor defence against such claims, and as if deter- 
 mined not to be outdone by the Southron, replied in a document assert- 
 ing their independence by virtue of descent from Scota, one of the 
 daughters of Pharaoh. The Pope seems to have been silenced in a con- 
 flict of ancestral authority, in which the succession of St. Peter seemed 
 quite a modern affair, when overshadowed by such Trojan and Egyptian 
 antiquity. 
 
 Confidently as this early history of Britain was once believed, and 
 reluctantly as it was gradually discredited, it cannot be said to possess, 
 at least in its present condition, any historic value. But when we con- 
 sider that in our own day a great historical mind like Niebuhr's has 
 actually made discoveries of historic truth in what used to appear so 
 inextricably fabulous as the early history of Rome ; when such historical 
 sagacity as his has been successfully employed, not to teach a sweeping 
 scepticism, but a just discrimination between what was actual and what 
 was fable ; and when we see a mind so zealous after truth as Arnold's, 
 carefully cherishing the Roman legends, not, indeed, as history, but as 
 illustrative of it we may venture a thought, that haply it may be 
 reserved for some historian in like manner to search out the truth that 
 now is buried beneath the mass of the old British legends. There is, to 
 be sure, this important difference between them and the legends of 
 Greece and Rome," that the ktter were native to the inhabitants of 
 those lands, that they sprang up among them, and therefore were 
 illustrative of the feelings and of the mind of the nation in a far 
 greater degree than can be claimed by the Welsh and British traditions. 
 The most recent English historian of Greece, Grote, in speaking of that 
 part of his work which he lias devoted to the legendary period, uses 
 this language: 
 
 " I describe the earlier times by themselves, as conceived by the faith 
 and feeling of the first Greeks, and known only through their legends 
 without presuming to measure how much or how little of historical 
 matter these legends may contain. If the reader blame me for not 
 assisting him to determine this if he ask me why I do not undraw the 
 curtain and disclose the picture I reply in the words^of the painter, 
 Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on exhibiting his 
 masterpiece of imitative art ' The curtain is the picture 1 .' What we 
 now read as poetry and legend was once accredited history, and the only 
 genuine history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. 29 
 
 past time : the curtain conceals- nothing behind, and cannot, by any 
 ingenuity, be withdrawn." 
 
 Now, to apply this to the legendary history of Britain, there is such 
 uncertainty as to its origin such doubt whether it was not of foreign 
 instead of domestic growth, that we cannot say in reference to it that 
 " The curtain is the picture." The legend of the Trojan ancestry of the 
 Britons has indeed, great antiquity. Sir Francis Palgrave a high 
 authority in his learned work on the English Commonwealth, speaks 
 of it as a doubtful point, whether the stories on that subject existed 
 before the arrival of the Romans, or whether the adventures of Brutus 
 were invented by the bards, to propitiate the favour of those who also 
 prided themselves on being the progeny of -ZEneas. 
 
 The legendary history of nations has filled so large a space in 
 historical literature, that it has been truly pronounced an universal 
 manifestation of the human mind, belonging to what is called the age 
 of historical faith as distinguished from historical reason. Now, why 
 is it that legendary history is composed, and why is it so long believed? 
 Those who look on humanity with an evil eye, and speak of it with a 
 satirical tongue, will say that it comes of man's propensity to falsehood. 
 This is a solution more simple and superficial than satisfactory. It must 
 be some deep and prevailing, but I hope better, feeling that gives birth 
 to legendary lore. The heart of a nation, as it grows strong, craves for 
 knowledge of its ancestry ; and, if there be no historical records, if 
 naught else be forthcoming, the heroic lay, the minstrel's song, romance 
 or epic poem, are produced to fill the blank spaces of the past. Even 
 when there are genuine materials of history, they are shaped and 
 modified, and often made, as it were, legendary, by any strong and 
 universal feeling in the heart of the people. To give a familiar 
 illustration of the controlling power of such sentiments, the profound 
 and fervent reverence for the memory of Washington so sways the 
 popular^ historical conception of the war of independence, as to 
 identify it almost wholly with his character and services making him 
 the ONE great champion of the cause. While it is known that much 
 was achieved by the wisdom and fortitude of others, and that there was 
 much that Washington had no part in, who for one moment could 
 desire to disparage, or even critically to measure, that large and uncal- 
 culating homage, the justice of which is best proved by the depth and 
 fervour of it ? And it is the highest evidence of the reality of his fame, 
 that all nicer estimates are mastered by this judgment of the heart, 
 which makes the history of the Revolution centre around him. 
 
 It has been ingeniously and truly said "We all write legends. 
 
30 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Who has not observed in himself, in his ordinary dealings with the facts 
 of every-day life, with the sayings and doings of his acquaintances, in 
 short, with everything which comes before him as a fact, a disposition 
 to forget the real order in which they appear, and to re-arrange them 
 according to his theory of how they ought to be ? Do we hear of a 
 generous, self-denying action, In a short time the real doer and it are 
 forgotten ; it has become the property of the noblest person we know. 
 So a jest we relate of the wittiest person; frivolity of the most frivolous; 
 and so on. Each particular act we attribute to the person we con- 
 ceive most likely to have been the author of it. And this does not arise 
 from any wish to leave a false impression, scarcely from carelessness ; 
 but only because facts refuse to remain bare and isolated in our memory: 
 they will arrange themselves under some law or other ; they must 
 illustrate something to us some character, some principle or else we 
 forget them. Facts are thus perpetually, so to say, becoming unfixed 
 and re-arranged in a more conceptical order. In this way we find 
 fragments of Jewish history in the legends of Greece; stories from 
 Herodotus become naturalized in the tradition of early Rome ; and the 
 mythic exploits of the Northern heroes, adopted by the biographers of 
 Saxon kings. So with the great objects of national interest. Alfred, 
 * England's darling/ the noblest of the Saxon kings, became mythic 
 almost before his death ; and, forthwith, every institution that English- 
 men most value, of law or church, became appropriated to him. He 
 divided England into shires he established trial by jury he destroyed 
 wolves and made the country so secure, that golden bracelets hung 
 untouched in the open road. And when Oxford was founded, a century 
 was added to its age, and it was discovered that Alfred had laid the first 
 stone of the first college." Again, it is said, " Time, in another way, 
 plays strange tricks with facts, and is ever altering, shifting, and even 
 changing their nature in our memory. Every man's past life is 
 becoming mythic to him ; we cannot call up again the feelings of our 
 childhood ; only we know that what then seemed to us the bitterest 
 misfortunes, we have since learnt by change of character or circumstance 
 to think very great blessings ; and even when there is no change, and 
 were they to recur again, they are such as we should equally repine at ; 
 yet, by mere lapse of time, sorrow is turned to pleasure, and the 
 sharpest pang at present becomes the most alluring object of our 
 retrospect* The sick bed, the school trial, loss of friends, pain and grief 
 of every kind, become rounded off and assume a sof*t and beautiful grace. 
 The harshest facts are smoothed and chastened off in the past like the 
 rough mountains and jagged rocks in the distant horizon. And so it is 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. 31 
 
 with every other event of our lives; read a letter we wrote ten years 
 ago, and how impossible we find it to recognise the writer in our 
 altered selves. Incident after incident rises up and hides its day, and 
 then sinks back into the landscape. It changes by distance, and we 
 change by age. While it was present it meant one thing, now it means 
 another ; and to-morrow, perhaps, something else on the point of vision 
 alters. Even old Nature, endlessly and patiently reproducing the same 
 forms, the same beauties, cannot reproduce in us the same emotions we 
 remember in our childhood. Then, all was Fairy-land ; now, time and 
 custom have deadened our sense, and 
 
 ' The things which we have seen we now can see no more.' 
 This is the true reason why men people past ages with the superhuman 
 and the marvellous. They feel their own past was, indeed, something 
 miraculous, and they cannot adequately represent their feelings except 
 by borrowing from another order of beings." 
 
 This is also to be considered that, doubtless, many an early 
 narrative was composed, not with claim to literal belief, but as legends 
 in the true sense of the term productions intended to be read for 
 example and instruction, given to simple, uncriticising folk, as moral 
 apologues are to children. We judge them, therefore, perhaps by a 
 wrong standard, and look on them with contempt because we lose 
 sight of their moral purpose. Early history abounds with prodigies 
 and portents, miraculous agencies and supernatural interpositions, 
 stories that are sometimes impressive and often grotesque. Such things 
 are acceptable to a certain condition of the human mind, and while 
 they prevail there may be a great deal of stupid and superstitious cre- 
 dulity along with innocent docility Q f belief. Later ages grow beyond 
 all this, but that growth is not necessarily all gain ; for if irrational 
 credulity be avoided, there is an opposite extreme scepticism infi- 
 delity atheism. Now, wild and extravagant and absurd as were the 
 stories of the olden time, they did lead men to the belief that there 
 is another world beyond that which we see ; that there are realities 
 beyond the things which we can handle ; and, still more, that there is 
 a providential government of the world, and that, as the earth rolls on 
 through the silent spaces of the firmament, God's hand is upon it, and 
 that his eye is on the soul of each creature of the countless genera- 
 tions of men that rise up and sink into their graves. In the olden 
 time men were, no doubt, very superstitious very credulous they 
 believed a great deal that was monstrously absurd they believed it 
 simply because it was told to them in short, they believed a great 
 deal too much ; but in that excess of belief was comprehended a faith in 
 
82 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the invaluable truths which were just now referred to. Of such truths 
 the early legends are symbolical ; and, when my thoughts turn to- a 
 history like Hume's, I do not fear to say that it is also legendary in its 
 own way, but the doctrine which it symbolizes is that there is no 
 providence over nations or men. I do not mean that he teaches this 
 merely by silence, but by assertion or insinuation, that the affairs of 
 this world are governed by chance ; and that whenever a religious 
 feeling is manifest as an agency in human events, it is no divine impulse, 
 but a delusion a folly or a fraud, as if God in anger had cast this 
 earth from him to roll onward with all its miserable freight of humanity 
 beyond his sight and beyond his care. The early popular histories of 
 England contained a large element of belief, and the later history in 
 most general use contains, in an equally large proportion, the element 
 of unbelief; and surely it is, at the least, as irrational to believe too 
 little as to believe too much. 
 
 The popular faith in legendary history may be traced to a cause 
 deep seated in human nature. With the progress of cultivation, men 
 become conscious of the high privilege of humanity of connecting 1 
 itself with times that are gone by ; and they feel that there is no more 
 dismal condition than when the past is w r holly lost to it. I do not 
 mean the mere pride of ancestry, but that feeling with which the 
 heart searches for its dead kindred. It is an universal sentiment of 
 civilized humanity ; it is witnessed in an Old Mortality laboriously 
 renewing the time-worn tombstones of the Covenanters, or in the 
 great Orator of antiquity who knew the power of it, when, nearly two 
 centuries after the great Athenian victory, he put at least a moment's 
 fire into the hearts of his degenerate countrymen as he adjured them 
 by the dead at Marathon. Every people as they rise in virtue and 
 intelligence, crave a history of their own ; and, for lack of that which 
 is authentic, they welcome the imaginative legend and the rude 
 chronicle. The genuine dignity of the nation grows as its history 
 gathers, and there is a moral power in the mere memory of an heroic 
 age. The spirit of a people must be fed with its historic associations ; 
 its natural food is the story of the good and great men of their blood ; 
 deprived of that, it languishes and dies. If the legendary lore of the 
 olden time appear to the severe judgment of later days to be puerile or 
 fantastic, let it be remembered that it shows the aspiring spirit of the 
 people, and that it is proof of that moral temper which, as has been well 
 said, elevates the present by doing reverence to the past. The ready 
 belief was given, not in weakness, but in strength, when men became 
 conscious of that power in themselves, which is told of by Shakspeare 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. 33 
 
 in his simple and sublime description of man as a being " looking before 
 and after." This power and the historic feeling that comes with it, do 
 not exist when man is in a state of barbarism. What is the past to 
 him, 
 
 u If his chief good and market of his time 
 Be but to sleep and feed ?" 
 
 This historical feeling is so closely connected with man's moral 
 nature, that I believe we might safely infer from the condition of it the 
 state of civilization of a people. It has been said of individual character, 
 that, 
 
 *' The man whose eye 
 Is ever on himself, doth look on one 
 The least of nature's works, one who might move 
 The wise man to that scorn, which wisdom holds 
 Unlawful ever." 
 
 It is equally true of a generation of men ; for when, in its self- 
 sufficiency, it separates itself from all that have gone before, it does so 
 to its own grievous degradation. It is better that legendary associa- 
 tions with the past should be created, if historic associations cannot be 
 found ; for a nation stands on the highest moral station when, looking 
 back, it can appropriate the poet's words 
 
 " The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
 Perpetual benediction." 
 
 The legendary history of Britain, which is now become so obsolete, 
 did, in its own time, good service in helping to form the national 
 character ; and, doubtless, the people rightfully and worthily kept their 
 faith in it as long as they did. It was far better than that vicious 
 and sophisticated scepticism, which w r ould beggar us of the accumulated 
 inheritance of past ages by destroying belief in the evidence. Every- 
 body, probably, has heard the story that is told of Sir Robert Walpole, 
 who, when his son, Horace Walpole, was about to read to him some 
 historical production, interrupted him by saying, " Oh, do not read 
 history, for that I know must be false!" It was an appropriate 
 sentiment ; for it was uttered by one who, during a long and prosperous 
 administration, did as much as any minister that ever lived to demoralise 
 the government and the people, and who, no doubt, formed his estimate 
 of history from the performances of the venal party-writers in his 
 service ; and whom, as Lord Mahon says in his history, " he hired as he 
 hired the ditchers on his estate." By the side of such a sentiment, 
 observe how much nobler a spirit is in the words of Niebuhr, when, 
 speaking of the phrensy of the French Revolution, he says that " Only 
 D 
 
8 i LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 once has the world beheld universal contempt invoked upon the whole 
 of the past, and that, on the other hand, the lessons of all experience 
 teach us, that a nation cannot possess a nobler treasure than the 
 unbroken chain of a long and brilliant history. It is the want of this 
 that makes all colonies so sickly. Those of the Greeks, indeed, seldom 
 cut off their recollections altogether from the root of their mother city. 
 Modern colonies have done so ; and this unnatural outrage has, perhaps, 
 operated still more than other circumstances to plunge them into a 
 state of incorrigible depravity." 
 
 In quoting these words of Niebuhr's, I cannot forbear adding what 
 may appear a slight digression, but is really in further illustration of 
 my subject. It is, I think, in the freedom from this reproach on 
 modern colonies that our own country had so much of moral strength 
 in its transition from the colonial to the national condition. The 
 British colonists in America never did cut off their recollections from 
 the root of their mother country; and accordingly when resistance 
 became necessary, they were fortified in it by the feeling that they 
 were contending for no new-born freedom, but for ancient rights ; and 
 that thus they were keeping, and not breaking, covenant with the 
 mighty dead. In England, Burke, at the outset, warned his country- 
 men what would be the character of the colonial resistance ; because, 
 he said, a favourite study with the colonists was English law. There 
 never was an instance in which it was more momentous as a matter of 
 education and I use that word in its most comprehensive sense to 
 preserve and teach the history of a nation. The revolutionary period 
 of our annals must be so presented to the reason and the imagination 
 in the American mind as to make it what there is ample materials for 
 making it a historical, and not a fabulous, heroic age. It must be 
 cultivated, not only because it is the past, with which we are immediately 
 connected, but because it does not stop there. No one can adequately 
 comprehend the American Revolution, unless he go far beyond it into 
 a more distant past along the line of the progress of constitutional 
 freedom beyond the Great Charter beyond the laws of Edward the 
 Confessor to the times of the saintly and heroic Alfred ; for it is a 
 precious truth, that the war of our independence was a wave of what 
 a great poet has called 
 
 "The flood 
 
 Of British freedom which, to the open sea 
 Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity 
 Hath flowed." 
 
 Kiebuhr's words may be applied in justification of the legendary 
 
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN. S3 
 
 history I have heen considering ; for that brought to those for whom it 
 was written, as genuine history, should bring to us 
 
 " Ennobling impulse from the past." 
 
 The generations of mankind are passing over the earth swiftly, one 
 wave of them after another, breaking on the shores of eternity; but it 
 is not lite the wild waves of the sea, that leave no more than a little 
 foam and a few weeds on the barren sand. The generations of men 
 fall rather like the leaves of the forest strewn by autumnal winds ; but, 
 as they perish, they leave behind them a fertilizing power on the soilj 
 from which other trees grow to live in the light of other summers, and 
 to battle with the winds of other winters. 
 
 In considering the legendary period of Britain, I have only alluded 
 to the sublime tragedy which Shakspeare has created out of one of the 
 simple stories which form the mythology of that age. By attempting 
 to say more than I have done of the tragedy of King Lear, I should 
 have been making a vain effort to extract from it more of historical 
 illustration than it gives, and which we cannot expect to find until we 
 come to the tragedy of King John and the other, properly, " Chronicle- 
 Plays." But I now proceed to what does belong to my present course, 
 and add a few remarks on the historical relations of the tragedy of 
 King Lear. 
 
 The extended and abiding interest in this drama is produced by the 
 genius of the Poet appealing to the universal feeling connected with 
 the relation of parent and child- the common and iristinctive sense of 
 the hideousness of filial ingratitude and of the beauty of filial piety. 
 There would be deep pathos in the story of an aged father turned adrift 
 by his ungrateful daughters, were the scene laid in any period of the 
 world or in any condition of society be it of yesterday or of a thousan 
 years ago be it in palace or in cottage : but in the hands of Shakspeare 
 it was to be raised to the highest sublimity, and the sympathy was to 
 be made to sink into the lowest depths of the human heart. To 
 achieve this, the wondrous sagacity of the poet sought for a remote 
 period of history, where royalty still wore something of its patriarchal 
 state, so that filial ingratitude shduld, ai the same time, be treason, and 
 filial piety be identified with all that is noble and beautiful in loyalty 
 and truth. The king, abdicating his throne and making partition of 
 his realm, is, at the same time, the fond father making over in his life- 
 time the inheritance to his children ; and on the ruins of parental 
 authority there falls the fading splendour of sinking royalty. The cup 
 of Lear's agony overflows with kingly and parental grief. Domestic 
 
36 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 discord is civil war ; and when the natural and closest ties of blood are 
 torn asunder by the inhuman daughters, the whole state of society is 
 convulsed, and the realm is rent by crime and anarchy. The Poet 
 knew, that it was only in an early social condition, and a simple 
 patriarchal form of government, that his imagination could find ample 
 space to show the uncontrolled misery which follows revolt against the 
 laws of natural affection. In such a state of society there is nothing to 
 counteract the appropriate consequences of such guilt. 
 
 The scene of such a drama is w r ell laid, too, in a pagan age and 
 country. We have, it seems to me, on this account, a keener sense of 
 the pitiable impotence of Lear, when we hear him in his moods of wrath 
 or in his hours of misery swearing 
 
 " By the sacred radiance of the sun, 
 The mysteries of Hecate and the night." 
 
 or invoking Nature for fierce retribution upon his own offspring. It 
 would be harrowing horrible, rather than tragic to hear a Christian 
 parent, even when so abused, imprecating curses on his children ; it 
 would be better for him to sink submissively under the burden of his 
 wrongs. But the wild spirit of the heathen father's revenge is in 
 harmony with his times ; and appropriate to a mysterious and barbaric 
 age is the sublime threatening of his vengeance sublime from its very 
 indistinctness as if too vast to shape itself in thought or word the 
 most awful menace of revenge that ever burst from a father's heart in 
 wrath upon the head of an impious child, when, in the agony of finding 
 Goneril and .Regan confederate against him, he exclaims to them 
 
 u I will do such things^ 
 
 \Yhat they are, yet I know not; but they shall be 
 The terrors of the earth." 
 
 Again, placed as the drama is, in the darkness of paganism, the fury 
 of the elements, when Lear is driven forth into the storm, acquires a 
 wild significance, as if the lightning and the thunder were conscious 
 po\\e:-s of evil in mysterious alliance with the wicked hearts of his 
 daughters ; and when the passionate king swears by Jupiter and Apollo, 
 what can his heathen gods do to save him from such a wicked 
 confederacy? The might of the malice of his daughters, and not less 
 the tyranny of the pitiless storm, we are made to feel ; and we see no 
 power in a pagan creed to interpose against them. It is as coming from 
 the lips of a heathen that we feel, too, what has been finely spoken of 
 as Lear's sublime identification of his age with that of the " Heavens 
 themselves," when, in his reproaches to them for conniving at the 
 injustice of his children, he reminds them that they themselves are old. 
 
LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BHITAIX. 37 
 
 JShakspeare has been reproached with a deviation from history in 
 the catastrophe of this tragedy. " King Lear," as saith the story of the 
 legend, " again after three years obtained the crown." The legend and 
 the tragedy are each the production of imaginative art-^the one of art 
 in its rude form, and the other of art in its highest power. It was well 
 enough in the simple fable to recompense the king for such wrongs and 
 deprivations, by giving him his sceptre and his crown again ; but, after 
 the intensity of suffering embodied in the tragedy after the sublime 
 accumulation of wrongs and of anguish after that majestic madness, in 
 which Lear's heart was chastened, as his intellect was broken, what 
 could be the appropriate sequel but death ? Indeed, in the words of 
 Kent that admirable personification of honour and humour and fidelity 
 and manliness, the perfect gentleman in a barbaric age in his words 
 as he stood by his expiring sovereign 
 
 " He hates him 
 
 That would, upon the rack of this tough world, 
 Stretch him out longer." 
 
 The tragic poet cannot misrepresent the story of the life of our 
 fallen and struggling human nature by the unnatural compensation of 
 " a happy ending." It is well said by a German critic that " Tragedy, 
 in its full historical significance, was not made for tender, weak-nerved 
 spirits. It requires strong shoulders to support the whole burden of 
 the tragical which the life of humanity contains, 
 
III. 
 
 fmofrs 
 
 l^EGENDAKY HISTORY CONTINUED ARJEGAL AND ELIDURE THE NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN 
 
 NATIONS GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS OF EUROPE ATTEMPTS or INVASION FRUS- 
 TRATEDROME SACKED BY THE GAULS GREECE INVADED AND RESCUED DEFEAT 
 
 OF VARUS IN THE FOREST OF TEUTOBURG THE MEMORY OF AfiMINIUS HERMANN 
 
 HIS UNFINISHED MONUMENT DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD PROFESSOR CREASY'S 
 VOLUMES THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE EFFECT OF ROMAN SUBJUGATION OF 
 BRITAIN BRITISH KINGS CYMBELINB, A BRITISH K^NG IMOGEN ROMAN REMAINS IN 
 BRITAIN SIR WALTER SCOTT AND RITSON DIOCLETIAN'S PERSECUTION ARTHUR AND 
 MERLIN ETHBLRED PAULINUS ALFRED COLERIDGE'S ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER 
 DIFFICULTY OF DISCUSSING HISTORICAL QUESTIONS POLEMICS DUNSTAN, AN ILLUS- 
 TRATION SIR ROGER DB COVERLEY SAINT DUNSTAN WANT OF A POETIC VIEW OF HIS 
 CHARACTER THE DANES CANUTE THE GREAT BALLADS EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 
 TOUCHING FOR THE "KING'S EYIL '.% REFERENCE ^N MACBETH THE PALACE AXD> 
 THE TOMBS OE ENGLISH KINGS. 
 
 IN my last lecture, I was engaged in considering that remote and. 
 uncertain period, during which the people of Britain dwelt apart from 
 the rest of the known world the purely legendary period of British 
 history. In the fabulous chronicles of those ages there may, perhaps, 
 be germs of truth ; and, hereafter, historical science may bring to light 
 more than our philosophy now dreams of. Before I turn away from 
 the antiquity, in which Britain was morally and intellectually, as well as 
 physically, an island in a northern sea, let me briefly notice one legend 
 which, like that of King Lear, illustrates the simplicity of feeling belong- 
 ing to such periods, when the social and family relations have the same 
 kind of importance ? as tl^e great political combinations have in ages 
 more advanced. Having to find whatever of good there is amid the 
 fables of the simple annals of the very olden time, I would fain persuade 
 you that they have at least this merit they show us human beings, it 
 may be only fabulous men and women, but still beings with human 
 hearts, actuated by the passions and motives of humanity ; whereas, in 
 many a stately history of more authentic times, you find names of real 
 personages indeed, but only names, without a principle of life in them ; 
 so that they do, in truth, become utterly unreal to us, and might be, for 
 all the sympathy we can have, another order of created beings, and 
 history might be the story of another planet. This is one grievous want 
 in all histories, except those of a rare and high order the want of thai 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS. 39 
 
 one touch of nature that "makes the whole world kin." National 
 society is made to appear, not as if it were a community of thinking, 
 sentient human beings, but like some vast and insensate machine swayed 
 by the craft of courts, or urged by martial prowess. The chief part of 
 what we know of the past is aggregate war ; so that it has been said 
 with lively truth, that " Many histories give you little else than a narra- 
 tive of military affairs, marches and countermarches, skirmishes and 
 battles; which, except during some great crisis of a truly national 
 war, affords about as complete a picture of a nation's life as an account 
 of the doses of physic a man may have taken, and the surgical operations 
 he may have ^undergone, would of the life of an individual." 
 
 In the tragedy of King Lear we saw that the national history was 
 identified with a simple story of parental anguish and filial ingratitude, 
 alleviated by the blessed influences of the filial piety of one virtuous 
 daughter. Another portion of that early history is a simple story of 
 fraternal affection, which gave to one of the ancient kings of Britain 
 the title of the " pious Elidure." It is told how the good king Gorbo- 
 nian reigned wisely and well building temples to the gods, and 
 giving to every man his due, and the people prospered ; until, this just 
 king dying, a son, unworthy of him, came to the throne the tyrant 
 Artegal. The impatient nobles and the vexed people drove him from 
 his kingdom ; and, while he was wandering in foreign lands, his brother 
 Elidure is placed on the throne. After many wanderings, the exile came 
 across the seas to live a hidden life in his native land, seeking there no 
 more than water from the spring, and the chance food an outlaw finds. 
 The king, hunting in the forest of Calatar, by Chance meets his deposed 
 and now humbled brother ; and, in an instant, the prevailing power of 
 fraternal love leaves no room for any lingering pride of royalty. The 
 forlorn outcast is recognised by this gentle barbarian as not only his 
 brother but his king ; and, abased as he is by memory of his former 
 years, and chastened by poverty and grief, he is bidden to take the 
 sceptre again. Elidure intercedes for him with an offended nation ; 
 and, by such heroic affection, he puts away from himself a kingdom to 
 reinstate a repentant brother. The poet Wordsworth has given the 
 legend in language appropriately unadprned, and thus it closes : 
 
 "'Ihe story tells what courses were pursued, 
 Until King Elidure, with full consent 
 Of all his peers, before the multitude, 
 Rose, and, to consummate this just intent, 
 Did place upon his brother's head the crown, 
 Relinquished by his own ; 
 
40 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Then to his people cried, * Receive your lord, 
 
 Gorbonian's first-born son, your rightful king restored 1* 
 
 The people answered with a loud acclaim : 
 
 Yet more ; heart-smitten by the heroic deed, 
 
 The reinstated Artegal became 
 
 Earth's noblest penitent ; from bondage freed 
 
 Of vice, thenceforth unable to subvert 
 
 Or shake his high desert, 
 iong did he reign ; and when he died, the tear 
 Of universal grief bedewed his honoured bier. 
 
 Thus was a brother by a brother saved; 
 With whom a crown (temptation that hath set 
 Discord in the hearts of men, till they have bra vied 
 Their nearest kin with deadliest purpose met) 
 'Gainst duty weighed, and faithful love, did seem 
 
 A thing of no esteem; 
 And, from this triumph of affection pure, 
 He bore the lasting name of { pious Elidure.' " 
 
 The legend of Artegal and Elidure, like that of King Lear, belongs 
 to those times in which Britain was, at least as far as authentic history 
 informs us, in its insular solitude. I proceed now to a period when 
 there was intercourse between Britain and the South. It is in the 
 early part of those times that Shakspeare has laid the scene of the play 
 of " Cymbeline," in which we find him transporting his characters from 
 London to Rome, with a violation of one of the dramatic unities that 
 shocks the French critics, and with a speed that outstrips even modern 
 locomotion. The play affords very little historical illustration ; which, 
 indeed, we can hardly expect to find until, as I have said, we come to 
 the period of the proper " Chronicle-Plays." 
 
 I have had occasion to direct your attention to a fact which, though 
 quite obvious, is apt, I think, to escape reflection unless especially 
 noticed, I mean the fact that our ancient history is confined, almost 
 entirely, to the region of the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I wish 
 now to proceed with the further consideration of the breaking down of 
 those limits, and the expansion of history which is consequent on the 
 intercommunion of the Mediterranean people with the nations of the 
 North. They were kept apart until the time came when God's purposes 
 in the providential government of the earth were to be fulfilled by 
 blending them together. I say they were kept apart ; and I mean, of" 
 course, by something more than human power. No theory of mere- 
 secondary historic causes is adequate to explain the long-continued 
 separation of the Northern and Southern nations of Europe ; and that 
 there was a providence in it appears, too, from this a that it is that very 
 
THE ROMA& AND SAXON PERIODS. 4?1 
 
 separation which has influenced the whole course of modern history, 
 taking as it does so much of its character from the infusion of the fresh 
 life of the people of the North. 
 
 In the reading of history, our minds do not look upon the nations of 
 Northern and Southern Europe relatively to each other. In the 
 history of Greece or of Romej the occasional introduction of some 
 Northern race is an episode in the story of the Greeks and Romans, 
 and it is nothing more. But my present subject draws us to the 
 general view of those nations as they stood in relation one to the other-*- 
 the North to the South for many long ages isolated, and then thrown 
 into national communion of a certain kind. A great harrier divided 
 them ; and that it was to endure for a certain period of the world as 
 "an effectual separation, appears from this,-^-that the power on neither 
 side was able prematurely to break it down. The North could not 
 conquer the South on the soil of the South, nor could the South 
 conquer the North on Northern ground. There was mutual strength 
 for independence and mutual weakness for conquest. In God's good 
 season, the great partition wall crumbled and fell as if by " the 
 unimaginable touch of Time ;" while, before that period^ no power of 
 the hosts of men had prevailed against it. 
 
 If you look at the map of Europe, you cannot fail to observe, in 
 connection with this subject, how much there is in geographical char- 
 acter that served at once to hem in the nations of the South, and hinder 
 them and the nations of the North from reciprocal conquest. Between 
 the western coist of the Euxine Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, there runs 
 east and west a great mountain range, which, beginning with the chain 
 of Mount Hsemus to the north of Maeedon, continues westward with 
 the Alpine range, and ends with the Pyrenees, thus formihg a vast 
 natural rampart to Greece, Italy-j and Spain, the regions of the 
 Mediterranean. When they of the South crossed this barrier in the 
 search of new homes, their progress was arrested by other natural 
 boundaries ; for they stopped on the borders of the great rivers of central 
 Europe. The great North was still a vast and unknown domain ; for 
 it has been well said that " The Roman colonies, along the banks of 
 the Rhine and the Danube, looked out on the country beyond those 
 rivers as we look up to the stars, and see with our eyes a world of which 
 we actually know nothing. The Romans knew that there was a vast 
 portion of earth which they did not know ; how vast it might be was 
 a part of its mysteries." 
 
 But that the Northern and Southern nations were providentially 
 kept distinct is, to my mind, still more apparent by the whole tenor of 
 
42 LECTUBES OX ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 ancient history; for, whenever these two races came in contact, or 
 rather in conflict, there is something that looks like a vain and impious 
 strife against a Divine d ecr ^ e - It is not the story of an ordinary 
 invasion and repulse i it is. something more a dim intimation of more 
 than human agency 7 tfye awfulness of Divine interposition making it 
 manifest that there were great providential purposes, and that a signal 
 retribution was to fall on every attempt to frustrate them. It is like 
 a religious service, in which the rites of paganism assume a peculiar 
 and unwonted solemnity. 
 
 Observe how it was when the Northern nations first came into 
 connection with the civilized world in the fourth century before the 
 birth of our Saviour. The Celts or Gauls came down by tens of 
 thousands upon the plains of Italy, and swept an ward in savage and 
 sanguinary triumph to the gates of Rome. Of the rquted and slaugh- 
 tered Roman army only a few fugitives had escaped. In dismay, the 
 city was well-nigh abandoned ; for the great mass of the Commons, 
 with their wives and children, fled to other towns. The holy things of 
 Roman worship were removed or buried. What could be more hope- 
 less ? But the young Patricians resolved to defend the citadel that 
 which was the sanctuary of the nationr the most sacred spot, the safety 
 of which seemed to secure their national existence, though the rest of 
 the city were given up to foreign pillage. The aged Senators, who 
 could serve their country only by their deaths, assembled, clad in their 
 most solemn vestments and in their triumphal robes ; and, repeating the 
 words after the high-priest for the redemption of their country, they 
 devoted themselves, and the army of the Gauls with themselves, to the 
 spirits of the dead and the Earth, the common grave of the living. It 
 is a very familiar part of Roman story how they awaited in their curule 
 chairs, in calm and awful silence, the approach of their destroyers, and 
 how the fierce barbarians were, for a moment, awed by the sight. One 
 of the soldiers stroked the long white beard of Marcus Papirius ; but 
 the old man, who had been a minister of the gods, was outraged by the 
 touch of profane barbarian hands, and smote the Gaul with his ivory 
 sceptre. The blow was the signal for unsparing slaughter; they 
 perished, but pestilence soon swept the invader from the land. I refer 
 to such familiar events, because they are so plainly significant of the 
 mutual repulsion of these races, and they show that hundreds of years 
 were still to pass before the Gaul and the Roman could dwell together. 
 
 Again, when, in the third century, the North sought by conquest 
 communion with the South, more than two hundred thousand of the 
 Gauls broke through the frontiers of Macedon ; and there occurred that 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS. 43 
 
 sublime passage in Greek history when the Northern barbarians, like 
 the Persians of yore, sought the plunder of the magnificent temple of 
 the Delphic Apollo the centre of all the religious emotions of Grecian 
 idolatry. The immense host of the invader fled in confusion when the 
 sanctuary, with all its accumulated treasures, was almost in their power 
 for pillage ; and the legend tells how the spirit of Apollo fell on them 
 to bewilder and destroy. Amid the earthquake and the tempest, which 
 came in that wondrous hour of battle, the priests rushed forth exclaim- 
 ing that they had seen the god pass across the vault of the temple, and 
 that they had heard the whistling of the arrows and the clanging of the 
 lances of the armed deities of Greece. When the morrow's son arose,., 
 the huge bulk of many a Northern warrior laj buried beneath the rocks 
 of Delphi, while the survivors were fleeing away in panic from the 
 sunny regions of the South. This sjipwefl tliat the, Gaul and the Greek 
 were not to dwell together. 
 
 Once more, when, in the first century before the Christian era, the 
 great Cimbric and Teutonic invasion pf Italy was driven back by th$ 
 stern Plebian soldier, Caius Marius, nothing resulted in the way of 
 permanent subjugation. It was simply invasion and repulse, as if some 
 huge wave had rushed in, and, after doing its* work of partial 
 devastation, had rolled back again into its customary channel. When 
 the tide of invading conquest set in a different direction, and pressed 
 upon the regions of the J^orth, it soqn, in like m,anner, found its limits. 
 The legions of the first Roman emperor penetrated into the forests of 
 Germany, but they penetrated to perish there. The soldiers of the 
 South had crossed the borders of what seemed to be forbidden ground 
 even to the victorious progress of Roman conquest, and the penalty was 
 defeat and extermination. A nation rose, mighty Germany 
 
 " She of the Danube and of the Northern Sea ;" 
 
 and the great victory achieved by Hermann and his Teutonic soldiers 
 was naught less than the total sacrifice of the Roman intruders. The 
 palace of the Caesars echoed with the imperial lamentations for the lost 
 legions ; and when, some years afterwards, Germanicus, with another 
 Roman army, followed in the footsteps of Varus, never did Roman pride 
 receive a sterner or more impressive rebuke than when, amid the 
 silence and gloom of the forest of Teutoburg, they reached a spot where, 
 for the first time, the fate of Varus and his legions was legible in the 
 rusting fragments of Roman weapons, and the more awful characters 
 of the bleaching bones of their slaughtered countrymen. In com- 
 memoration of the achievement of the hero of the fir^t war of German 
 
44 LECTURES ON ENGIISti. HISTORY-. 
 
 independence, a colossal statue of Hermann has been Constructed, 
 within, I believe, the last ten or fifteen years, upon the spot which has 
 been classic in the national mind of Germany in all later ages. If, in 
 such a tribute paid by filial piety after a lapse of eighteen hundred 
 years, we may, on the one hand, see something rather grotesquely 
 characteristic of German deliberation, we may also find in it a proof of 
 the awakening sense of reverence for ancient times in the heart of this 
 nineteenth century. It seems -to me, let me add, one of the healthful 
 symptoms of a better spirit of the times, that a people should now deem 
 it not too late to commemorate an heroic act of eighteen hundred years 
 ago : it is a change from that rash and revolutionary temper which was 
 of late so rife which looked upon the olden time with disdain, and 
 with that insolence of self-sufficiency which vaunts, that 
 
 " Of old things, all are Over old-: 
 Of good things, none are good enough : 
 We'll show that we can help to frame 
 A world of other stuff." 
 
 It is this victory of Hermann over the Romans that Arnold refers to 
 when, during a tour in Germany, he says : " Far before us lay the 
 land of our Saxon and Teutonic forefathers the land uncorrupted by 
 Roman or any other mixture the birthplace of the most moral races 
 of men that the world has yet seen of the soundest laws, the least 
 violent passions, and the fairest domestic and civil virtues. I thought 
 of that memorable defeat of Varus and his three legions, which forever 
 confined the Romans to the western side of the Rhine, and preserved 
 the Teutonic nation the regenerating element in modern Europe safe 
 and free." It was this battle, and the defeat of the Moors by Charles 
 Martel, that Arnold used to rank as the two most important battles in 
 the world. The victory in the forest of Teutoberg saved Germany from 
 Roman subjugation, as the battle of Tours stayed the course of Saracenic 
 aggression upon Western Christendom, preserving European civilization 
 from Asiatic conquest, as, in ancient times, the victory of Marathon 
 another of the critical battles in the world's history had saved Greece 
 from Persian power. 
 
 Now the general historical view which I wish to impress on your 
 mind is this that the nations of Northern and Southern Europe were 
 providentially kept apart until a period when intercourse should produce 
 veiy different results from what would have followed had they come 
 together sooner. When the people of the North came into continued 
 contact with the Romans, the Roman Empire the fourth empire had 
 completed the mighty work which was assigned to it in the providential 
 
THE ROMAM AND SAXON PERIODS. 45 
 
 government of the earth. The office of the Roman Empire among 
 nations, according to the well-known prophetical description in the book 
 of Daniel, was to "devour," to " tread down," to "break in pieces;" 
 and wonderfully did Rome fulfil her function ; for, from the primal 
 gathering upon the Palatine Hill, she went right onward for eight 
 centuries, on a career of conquest as straight as her own great roads 
 the Emilian or the Appian highway. That which was typified in the 
 prophet's vision as the fourth beast, " dreadful and terrible and strong 
 exceedingly." the iron power of Rome, achieved the work assigned 
 to it, by conquering the tribes and islands and nations, and absorbing 
 them in her own vast unity by converting an ancient dynasty like 
 Egypt into a Roman province or sweeping away the last remnant of 
 Greek freedom and the fragments of the Macedonian Empire or by 
 annihilating a commercial realm like Carthage with its colonies. 
 
 Bringing this to bear immediately on my subject, Britain, too, 
 came within the scope of Rome's destiny ; for Roman warfare was 
 carried there and Roman power established. But it was slow and 
 feeble and imperfect conquest, as in the evening of a well-fought day, 
 when the soldier fights faintly or is sinking down to sleep on his field 
 of battle or in old age, when the veteran's arm is not so strong nor 
 his passions so fierce. The conquest of Britain seems to me very 
 different from the early conquests made by Rome ; it was not such 
 subjugation as destroys the elements of nationality. The whole 
 power did not pass into the hands of the Romans, but was shared by 
 victors and vanquished. 
 
 The Roman supremacy was established, and the independence of 
 the Britons was destroyed, except in the west of the island, where the 
 mountains of Wales gave a home to British freedom ; still, the conquest 
 was not of such a nature as either to sweep the original inhabitants from 
 the land, or to reduce them to abject servitude. It was certainly conquest, 
 and, doubtless, accompanied with much of the misery of conquest ; but 
 it partook also of the nature of alliance, or what may be intimated by 
 a term which has become familiar of late to our ears a kind of 
 annexation. The Britons were Romanized, but they did not cease to 
 be the British people. It was not a revolution utterly destructive of 
 national character or of religious and political institutions. The con- 
 quered race seemed to be more benefitted than the conquerors. During 
 the early period of Roman warfare in Britain, the evils of foreign 
 invasion were cruelly inflicted ; and we can easily credit the story of 
 Boadicea the slaughter of the Druids the captivity of Caractacus, 
 and the forced exile of many from their homes, to make room for the 
 
46 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 soldiers of the Roman legions. But when the fierceness of the war 
 was over, the Roman and the Briton dwelt together; and, while 
 Roman law was introduced, much of subordinate authority was pre- 
 served in the hands of British rulers. Under the Roman Empire there 
 were British kings, and thus the royal title was perpetuated in an 
 imperial province. To anticipate a term of the feudal system, Britain 
 was a kind of vassal nation of the Roman Empire ; and, while it kept 
 its own national identity, it received and appropriated to itself much 
 that was beneficial in Roman government. Tacitus is referred to as 
 expressing surprise, if not of indignation, at the facility and eagerness 
 with which the Britons adopted the customs, the arts, the garb, and 
 the refinement of their conquerors. 
 
 In the play of Cymbeline, Shakspeare has portrayed the two nations 
 in such a relation as that which I have been endeavouring to present 
 to your minds. He is careful to preserve a certain degree of British inde- 
 pendence, while Roman influence or supremacy is also recognised ; and, 
 with regard to national character, he shows, in the Italian villain of 
 the play, how thoroughly demoralized the Roman people had become 
 how much they had lost of the high and heroic part of their nature in 
 the low and irreligious sensuality of Epicurean philosophy. On the 
 other hand, the poet has shown, in the Britons of the play, the good 
 and the evil which appertain to an imperfect condition of civilization. 
 He has elevated our thoughts of ancient Britain by adorning it with 
 the character of Imogen one of the loveliest of that matchless com- 
 pany of women who have their life and being in the drama of Shak- 
 speare ; and in the wild heroism of her two brothers, the stolen sons 
 of Cymbeline, he has shown, what has been truly said, that " When 
 a rude people have lost somewhat of their ferocity, and have not yet 
 acquired the vices of a later stage of civilization, their character really 
 exhibits much that is noble and excellent ; and, both in its good and 
 bad points, it so captivates the imagination, that it has always been 
 regarded by the writers of a more advanced state of society with an 
 admiration even beyond its merits." 
 
 In the imperfect state of historical knowledge respecting the early 
 period of British history, we are apt, I think, to form a false conception 
 of the civilization of the Britons. Receiving the first impression of 
 their rude barbarism, we not only trust the description too much, but 
 we carry it too far, in their history; and, accordingly, the common 
 notion of the ancient Briton is, that they were savages who sacrificed 
 human victims, and painted their skins. The truth as to the condition 
 of Britain appears to be, that it was a favoured and flourishing portion 
 
THE HOMAX AXD SAXON PERIODS. 47 
 
 of the Roman Empire. A very considerable number of large cities, and 
 a greater number of towns, are known by name as having flourished in 
 various parts of the country. The Romans brought with them their 
 luxuries, arts, and sciences ; and, accordingly, temples and theatres and 
 towns, baths and porticoes, gates, triumphal arches, and market-places 
 arose, remarkable for their architecture and decorated with sculpture 
 and statuary. Such was the reputation of the Romanised British 
 architects, that they were sent by Constantius into Gaul to rebuild a 
 ruined city. It has been said, with no less vividness than accuracy, that 
 what Calcutta is now to London, London or York was to Rome. For 
 four hundred years was the Roman influence at work in a large part of 
 Britain ; and that influence produced its results, not only in the arts as 
 displayed in public and private edifices, but also in the more permanent 
 political effects resulting from the establishment of the municipal rights 
 and privileges of the towns. 
 
 Visible proofs of the condition of Britain during the Roman period 
 are not unfrequently found at the present day, when some excavation 
 discloses a tesselated pavement, or a buried arch, or military road, or 
 when Roman coins are dug up, or sacrificial vessels, or ancient imple- 
 ments of war or peace. There are standing the more manifest ruins 
 of the frontier walls the extended lines of fortifications by which 
 Britain was defended against the Caledonian chiefly the wall of 
 Severus, the height of which, in one part of its ruins, was curiously 
 ascertained by that fervid antiquarian, Ritson. On a visit to Sir 
 Walter Scott, Ritson, who was by nature very prone to controversy, 
 and with all his learning, perhaps a little insane, disputed the exis- 
 tence of any ruins of the wall, trusting to some information that 
 had been given him. Scott assured him where the ruin was to be 
 seen, and added that it was high enough to break the neck of Mr. 
 Ritson's inaccurate informer were he to fall from it. This strong and 
 natural expression, irritating Ritson's fiery zeal for accuracy, was care- 
 fully noted by him ; and Scott was soon after astonished at finding how 
 literally his uncalculating phrase had been taken ; for a letter from 
 Ritson stated that he had indeed found the ruin, which he had visited 
 for the very purpose of jumping down from the wall to test the fidelity 
 of Sir Walter's description, which his escape with an unbroken neck 
 proved to be hyperbolical. He adds, however, that the height of the 
 wall was such as to make the experiment dangerous ; and I repeat the 
 anecdote to give you an impression as to the state of those famous 
 Roman ruins. So little is preserved of the national relics of the Roman- 
 British times, and so little can be distinctly traced in the permanent 
 
48 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 influence of social or political institutions of that period, that there 
 arises, what appears to me, another erroneous historical view of those 
 distant eras. Knowing scarce any thing of the primitive British period, 
 we are apt to conclude that the Britons became extinct, or were pushed 
 from their land, as the Indians in our own country are thrust away by 
 the white population ; and that, therefore, they transmitted to succeed- 
 ing generations no influence or national character. In like manner, 
 though in less degree, we are apt to fancy, because our information is 
 imperfect, that the Roman era of British history left but few traces 
 behind it; and hence we hastily conclude, that modern English and 
 American character is derived only from the later elements of the Anglo- 
 Saxon and Norman eras. Such a view is hardly rational, when we 
 reflect that the Britons occupied the island from an unknown antiquity 
 that they were never driven from it, but were amalgamated with their 
 Roman conquerers and that Roman civilisation abode there for four 
 hundred years. The periods were of such duration, and the circum- 
 stances were such, that the influence could not have stopped abruptly as 
 the periods respectively closed. It appears to me more reasonable and 
 truthful, and certainly it raises the dignity of our race, to take such a 
 view as preserves the continuity of the history, and to regard the suc- 
 cessive periods as revolutions not destructive or overwhelming, but 
 modifying ancient things by the introduction of new elements. The 
 Britons underwent a Roman change, and then came, as we shall 
 presently see, a Saxon change, and then a Norman change; and, 
 from the successive influences of them all, there came forth a great 
 the greatest modern nation. The revolutions were not sudden, devas- 
 tating, volcanic eruptions, leaving nothing but barren ashes and indu- 
 rated lava, but rather may they be compared to a series of geological 
 formations strewn in due and solid succession. 
 
 Before passing from the Roman period, I can do no more than 
 advert to the early introduction of Christianity into Britain ; and 
 whether or no the gospel was first preached there by St. Paul or St. 
 Peter, and whether or no the first Christian church was humbly and 
 rudely built by Joseph of Arimathea, Druidical paganism passed quickly 
 away. The remote and insular situation of the British Christians did 
 not shelter them from the perils which were the trials of faith in its 
 early era. It was in the tenth and last of the great persecutions, 
 when, according to a vivid poetic phrase, 
 
 " Diocletian's fiery sword 
 Worked busy as the lightning." 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS, 49 
 
 that Alban, the first of Britain's martyrs, gave up his earthly life. 
 English chivalry has also exulted, that the first Christian king and the 
 first Christian emperor were natives of Britain. 
 
 The great providential agency of Rome in the history of the world 
 was now drawing to an end the empire was near its death the last 
 of the legions was withdrawn from Britain, and the emperor bade the 
 Britons provide for their own defence. They were left with Roman 
 arts and arms and civilisation ; but the heart of the people was faint, 
 and they were helpless in the simple necessity of self-defence. From 
 their island home they piteously entreated once more for the protection 
 of Roman supremacy, exclaiming " The barbarians drive us to the sea, 
 and the sea drives us back to the barbarians." Help could not come 
 from Rome, whose expiring strength was sinking before the hosts of the 
 Goth, the Vandal, and the Hun. I need not stop to say how the 
 Britons were saved from the Pictish and Scottish invasions only by the 
 fierce alliance of the Saxons. The country was given over again to 
 victorious invasion and the settlement of a race of Northern heathens. 
 Nor need I dwell on the introduction of a new national element, which, 
 though it brought misery with it, contained the germs of so much that 
 was precious in the after-history of the land. The Saxon dominion was 
 planted in a soil wet with blood ; and it is in this ineffectual war, that 
 early romance has placed the fabled exploits of Arthur and his peers, and 
 the conjurations and sorcery of Merlin, The ruins of that gigantic and 
 mysterious structure, Stonehenge, which, at this day, stands in awful 
 silence upon Salisbury Plain, is supposed to be the monument of the 
 treacherous massacre of three hundred British nobles by their Saxon 
 foes. Christian Britain was paganized again, and the faith again 
 endured the fiery ordeal of heathen persecution. When Ethelred, the 
 Saxon king of Northumberland, invaded Wales, and was about to give 
 battle to the Britons, he perceived close by the enemy a host of 
 unarmed men. He asked who they were and what they were doing 
 and was told they were the monks of Bangor, praying for the success 
 of their countrymen. " Then," said Ethelred, and he said rightly, 
 " they are fighting against us." The word went forth to attack them 
 first ; and twelve hundred of those unarmed Christian men perished 
 by a bloody death. But fierce as was this persecution, when the 
 Heptarchy was established, the wild superstition of the Saxons was 
 brought under the sway of Christianity, chiefly by the mission of St. 
 Augustine. When Paulinus visited the court of King Edwin, the king 
 convened a council to determine whether their heathen creed should 
 bow to the tidings which Paulinus brought ; and it was there a pagan 
 E 
 
50 LECTUKES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 counsellor gave utterance to that beautiful imaginative argument, 
 which, told by the old Saxon historian, has been thus rendered in 
 modern verse : 
 
 " Man's life is like a Sparrow, mighty King I 
 That, stealing in, while by the lire you sit 
 Housed with rejoicing Friends, is seen to flit 
 Safe from the storm, in comfort tarrying. 
 Here did it enter there on hasty wing 
 Flies out, and passes on from cofd to cold ; 
 But whence it came we know not, nor behold 
 Whither it goes. E'en such that transient Thing 
 The Human Soul ; not utterly unknown 
 While in the Body lodged, her warm abode ; 
 But from what world she came, what woe or weal 
 On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown ; 
 This mystery if the Stranger can reveal, 
 His be a welcome cordially bestowed." 
 
 The growth of the English Christian Commonwealth advanced with 
 due progress in those Saxon centuries, and at length we read, in the 
 ninth century, of the saintly and heroic reign of Alfred the soldier 
 and the lawgiver who has left a name which, like one, and perhaps 
 only one, other, stands on the page of history purely irreproachable, 
 honoured, and faultless. I should, perhaps, run into mere common- 
 places were I to attempt to say more respecting this famous Saxon 
 sovereign ; and I prefer, therefore, borrowing the words of Coleridge 
 in his lecture on the character of the Gothic mind in the Middle Ages : 
 " I must now turn to our great monarch, Alfred one of the most 
 august characters that any age has ever produced ; and when I picture 
 him, after the toils of government and dangers of battle, seated by a 
 solitary lamp, translating the Holy Scriptures into the Saxon tongue 
 when I reflect on his moderation in success, on his fortitude and 
 perseverance in difficulty and defeat, and on the wisdom and extensive 
 nature of his legislation, I am really at a loss which part of this great 
 man's character most to admire. Yet, above all, I see the grandeur, the 
 freedom, the mildness, the domestic unity, the universal character of 
 the Middle Ages, condensed into Alfred's glorious institution of the 
 trial by jury. I gaze upon it as the immortal symbol of that age, an 
 age called, indeed, dark, but how could that age be considered dark 
 which solved the difficult problem of universal liberty, freed man from 
 the shackles of tyranny, and subjected his actions to the decision of 
 twelve of his fellow-countrymen ? " 
 
 In his fragment on English history, Burke has said that Alfred's 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS. 51 
 
 piety which, with ail its zeal and fervour, was of an enlarged and 
 noble kind was the principle that supported him in so many fatigues, 
 and fed like an abundant source his civil and military virtues. It has 
 been shown, as conclusive proof of the unfairness, and the infidel 
 tendency of Hume's history, that in it every fact is studiously concealed 
 that would have displayed the governing principle of Alfred's life to 
 have been an active belief in Christianity, 
 
 From the obscurity which hangs over the Anglo Saxon period, 
 there shine forth, though with somewhat of mysterious dimness, four 
 great names, which, in their several ways, characterize and illustrate 
 the times. The earliest and most glorious of these is that which I have 
 just noticed, King Alfred ; the others are Dunstan, Canute, and 
 Edward the Confessor. In proceeding to a brief notice of the second 
 of these characters, I find myself approaching the neighbourhood of 
 those questions which have been discussed with, more of ecclesiastical 
 animosity than historical candour ; and it is difficult to speak of even 
 so remote a personage as St. Dunstan, without perhaps, touching the 
 morbidly sensitive nerve of some prejudice or prepossession belonging to 
 later periods, I have no desire to seek topics of this description ; and, 
 on the other hand, entertaining no opinions which I need hold in 
 reserve ; and being, unless I greatly deceive myself, incapable of saying 
 any thing that would wound the reasonable feelings of anybody, it 
 would be unjust, both to you and myself, were I timidly to avoid 
 such questions when they come directly in my way. They must lie 
 in the path of any one who proposes to examine, however superficially, 
 the period of history which forms our subject. During the Middle 
 Ages, and even in modern times, for at least a century or more after 
 the Reformation, you cannot, unless by a violent and irrational dis- 
 ruption, separate political and ecclesiastical history. The student of 
 history desires to be instructed in forming a just estimate of the 
 character of Dunstan, and he naturally supposes that such a subject 
 can be candidly and satisfactorily examined ; for he never dreams of 
 writers getting angry about a man who lived nine hundred years ago. 
 But to this day it is a vexed question with all the extreme contrarieties 
 of eulogy and vituperation, and it is far easier to go to either extreme, 
 than to find the truth. Party animosity is a grievous evil anywhere, 
 but nowhere more so than in historical investigation ; and when I see 
 how the candid enquiry after truth is perplexed and thwarted by it, I 
 am reminded of that incident in the boyhood of Sir Roger de Coverley, 
 which is told in one of those inimitable papers of the Spectator, of 
 which he is the hero, and which abounds in such genuine English 
 
52 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 humour. " It happened to him/' says the Spectator, " when he was a 
 school-boy, which was at the time the feuds ran high between the 
 Cavaliers and the Roundheads. Sir Roger, being then a stripling, had 
 occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane ; upon which 
 the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering him, called him a 
 young popish cur, and asked him, who had made Anne a saint. The 
 boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, which was 
 the way to Anne's Lane, but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains ; 
 and, instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been a saint 
 before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. Upon this, 
 says the knight, I did not think fit to repeat the former question ; but, 
 going into every lane of the neighbourhood, asked what they called the 
 name of that lane, by which ingenious artifice he found out the place 
 lie inquired after without giving offence to any party." 
 
 There is, I fear, no such ingenious artifice to help one in threading 
 the avenues of history. I am tempted to add another illustration of the 
 difficulty of discerning historic truth through the medium of party 
 passion, which is given by Sir Francis Palgrave, the incident having 
 occurred a few years ago in Dublin : 
 
 "A pleasure-boat, belonging to a party of Brunswickers, having 
 been moored on the river Liffey, some of the bystanders on an adjoining 
 quay were extremely incensed at the standard of defiance which the 
 vessel displayed. The vane at the mast-head displayed an effigy an 
 Orangeman trampling on a green shamrock. This affront, aimed at 
 the feelings of the multitude, was not to be borne. The Milesians 
 attacked the hostile Saxon bark by hurling a furious volley of paving 
 stones, and the unlucky crew, urged by danger or apprehension, discharged 
 their firearms, and wounded some of the surrounding assemblage. A 
 great commotion was excited, and the leaders of the belligerent parties 
 were conducted to the police-office. Among the witnesses who were 
 called was the tinman who had made the vane ; and this worthy trades- 
 man gave the most candid and unequivocal testimony in full proof of 
 the pacific intention of the pleasure-boat, though certainly somewhat to 
 his own discredit as an artist. The unlucky cause of so much dissension 
 and bloodshed, the supposed Orangeman trampling on the green 
 shamrock, was, in truth, a flesh-coloured Mercury springing from a 
 blue cloud." 
 
 So it is in history; what is blue to one man's eye is green to another ; 
 and often, what is seen by one as the spotless purity of white, looks 
 black and begrimed to another. For the lecturer who, in his limited 
 time, must glance rapidly over his subject without stopping cautiously 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS. 53 
 
 to qualify his expressions, for him I fear there is a special danger of his 
 flying Mercuries being mistaken for something or other quite different. 
 
 But to return to St. Dunstan. I give him his title, notwithstanding 
 the admonition of Sir Roger de Coverley's experience ; for he stands, 
 not only on the Romish Calendar, but his name is retained on the 
 Calendar of the Anglo-Catholic Church. Noble by birth, the young 
 Saxon Thane exchanged his rank for the austerities of monastic life. A 
 commanding intellect and an indomitable spirit, rare accomplishments, 
 and a skill in the arts which excited the wonder and the awe of the 
 people, form the character and attainments of this remarkable personage 
 as described by all historians. But, beyond this, all is conflict and 
 confusion of opinion, from which it is almost hopeless to attempt to 
 draw a sure judgment. You find every variety of opinion, with no 
 little uncertainty as to some of the facts whereon it is formed. Hume 
 tells us that Dunstan's whole career was fraud and hypocrisy, of 
 course he tells you so, for that is his " universal solvent" of all 
 ecclesiastical questions. Roman Catholic historical writers Lingard 
 and Charles Butler uphold the probity and piety of St. Dunstan, and 
 exhibit him as an ornament to his faith and his country. Southey 
 denounces him as an arch miracle-monger, and as a complete exemplar 
 of the monkish character in its worst form : he treats one of the alleged 
 miracles as a piece of ventriloquism, and the other as a treacherous and 
 most atrocious piece of wholesale murder. Milton, who had a hearty 
 detestation of monastic character in every shape, must have been struck 
 with admiration of the fearlessness with which Dunstan rebuked the 
 vices of his king ; for he speaks of him as "a, strenuous bishop, zealous, 
 without dread of persons, and, for aught that appears, the best of many 
 ages." Palgrave explains part of Dunstan's career by a theory of 
 partial insanity, and another writer cautiously intimates he was neither 
 so good nor so bad as he is made out. Sir James Mackintosh charac- 
 terizes Dunstan as a zealous and, perhaps, useful reformer of religious 
 instruction, of commanding abilities, of a haughty, stern, and turbulent 
 nature, without more personal ambition, perhaps, than is usually blended 
 with public principle ; and who, if he were proved guilty of some pious 
 frauds, might not unreasonably pray that a part of the burden of such 
 guilt might be transferred from him to his age. 
 
 Now, these are sorry materials to form an opinion out of, and I 
 cannot but think how much better it would be if a Poet's charitable and 
 catholic imagination had looked upon St. Dunstan's character, and left 
 us a record of the vision. We should then, T believe, have been far 
 Jbetter able to form a just conception of St. Dunstan's character and 
 
54? LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the powers of the mind which made him the leading and master-spirit 
 of the Anglo-Saxon empire throughout many reigns the Wolsey of his 
 age. We should have seen fanaticism or ambition, or perhaps sterner 
 and fiercer elements, making the dark side of his character ; and with 
 this we should behold him a fearless reformer in the church, and a 
 triumphant statesman in the kingdom. He arrayed himself against 
 what he proclaimed to be the vices of the secular clergy ; and all the 
 energy of his indomitable spirit was exerted to establish the rule of the 
 Benedictine order in the Saxon monasteries. Certain is it that he 
 wielded a mighty power, for people and priests and kings trembled 
 before him. As Primate of England and chief counsellor of the king, 
 he is identified with the fame of that reign in which the Anglo-Saxon 
 dominion had greater extent and majesty than it had known before 
 when " Edgar the Peaceful" summoned the neighbouring sovereigns to 
 bow before his supremacy, as Napoleon, at the height of his power, 
 received at Dresden the homage of subject monarchs. It was the result 
 of Dunstan's administration that Edgar received the homage of eight 
 British kings ; and, on one occasion, when he sat at the helm of his 
 barge, each one of these royal vassals was plying an oar. Dunstan was 
 in the councils of a reign when the Saxons breathed secure from the 
 fierce inroads of the Danes. He was honoured and powerful by the 
 side of a king who was thus lamented in what I may give you as a brief 
 specimen of Saxon poetry : 
 
 " Here ended his earthly joys, Edgar, England's king, and chose the 
 light of another world, beauteous and happy. Here Edgar departed 
 the ruler of the Angles, the joy of the West Saxons, the defender of the 
 Mercians that was known afar among many nations. Kings beyond 
 the baths of the sea-fowl worshipped him far and wide. They bowed to 
 the king as one of their own kin. There was no fleet so proud, there 
 was no host so strong, as to seek food in England while this noble king 
 ruled the kingdom. He reared up God's honour he loved God's law 
 he preserved the people's peace, the best of all the kings that were before 
 in the memory of man. And God was his helper, and kings and earls 
 bowed to him and they obeyed his will ; and, without battle, he ruled 
 as he willed." 
 
 This happy reign ended, and the raven the dark and dreaded 
 emblem on the flag of the Danes was again seen along the shores of 
 England. For two hundred years were these fierce barbarians of the 
 North the terror and the scourge of the Saxon ; and ever when the 
 Danish raven was seen above the waves that beat towards England, it 
 was the sure omen of burning dwelling-houses, of pillaged monasteries, 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS. 55 
 
 and of a fugitive and slaughtered people. And so the warfare was 
 waged, until at length, in the eleventh century, Saxon independence 
 was given up to Canute that mighty Scandinavian monarch, who was 
 at once King of Denmark and Sweden and Norway and England ; 
 and, with some claim to Scotland and Cambria, it was his boast that 
 he ruled over six nations. His reign appears to have been a splendid 
 and a prosperous one : he was called " Canute the Great," and " Canute 
 the Rich ;" and, though he lived only a little beyond the age of forty, 
 he was called " Canute the Old ;" for, in those turbulent times, the 
 two-score years seem to have been regarded as an extraordinary 
 duration for a king's life. It has been well said of him, that prosperity 
 softened but did not corrupt him ; and that he is one of the few con- 
 querors whose greater and better qualities were developed in peace. 
 A beautiful poetic light rests on the peaceful periods of his life : he was 
 not only a conqueror and a lawgiver, but a royal minstrel ; and there 
 is still preserved from a ballad, which is said to have been long a 
 favourite with the people of England, one stanza, which broke from 
 him when, in his royal barge, he heard, over the waters of the river, 
 the distant and solemn sound of the hymn that was chaunted in the 
 minster of Ely. There is that other beautiful and poetic story that is 
 told of him, so familiar that I need only allude to it, that admirable 
 piece of symbolical teaching so appropriate to his times, by which, on 
 the sea-side, he won from the waves of the ocean a voice of rebuke to 
 the flattery of his courtiers. The fitting sequel of that story is less 
 familiar. It tells how 
 
 " Canute, (truth more worthy to be known,) 
 From that time forth, did for his brows disown 
 The ostentatious symbol of a crown, 
 Esteeming earthly royalty 
 Contemptible and vain." 
 
 When the Saxon dynasty was restored in the person of Edward, 
 surnamed the Confessor, the meek and gentle piety of that saintly 
 monarch was like a placid evening to close the Saxon day. But 
 looking away from the sovereign's character, the political horizon of 
 England was darkened by lowering clouds and a stormy sunset. The 
 weapons with which Edward strove with his turbulent and tempestuous 
 times were juridical wisdom and saintly piety. Feeble as he was in 
 perpetuating Saxon independence, he was endeared to after-times ; and 
 a high tribute was paid to his memory when, again and again, the nation 
 demanded that there should be given back to them "the laws and 
 e&sioms of the good king Edward " 
 
56 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY, 
 
 It is only upon one historical point in English history that 
 Shakspeare has touched in his tragedy of Macbeth, who was the 
 Scottish contemporary of Edward the Confessor. There is a genuine 
 poetic art in deepening the sense of the atrocities of Macbeth and the 
 sufferings of Scotland under his usurpation and tyranny, by presenting 
 the contrast of the Confessor's piety and virtues ; and, most of all, the 
 wondrous charity exerted by him on some of his subjects stricken by 
 grievous malady. It was with Edward the Confessor that that 
 remarkable practice began, of touching, to cure the disease called the 
 " king's evil," a practice which continued for nearly seven hundred 
 years in England, for it did not cease until the accession of George the 
 First. In France, it continued even later, until 1776. The long 
 duration and the universal faith in the virtues of the royal touch appear 
 to us of the present day a most unaccountable delusion. It seems to 
 have been attributed to some mysterious sanctity in the character or 
 functions of an anointed king ; and when we read of it in connection 
 with a saintly sovereign like Edward the Confessor, and in a remote 
 age, the distance of time and the character of the monarch seem to 
 hallow it, and one hesitates to treat it contemptuously as an absurd 
 medical superstition. But when we come down to times less than two 
 hundred years ago, to the reign of an English king who certainly had 
 nothing very sacred or sacerdotal in his character, I mean Charles the 
 Second, it is amazing to read of a registry which shows that, in the 
 space of twenty years, that merry monarch touched no less than ninety- 
 two thousand one hundred and seven persons for the "king's evil," 
 the malady having, I suppose, accumulated during the Commonwealth 
 and the Protectorate, although Cromwell appears to have played the 
 king by trying his hand at the cure. When Francis the First, of 
 France, was a prisoner at Madrid, after the battle of Pavia, he touched 
 a great number of the sick ; and on one day, Easter Sunday, in 1686, 
 Louis the Fourteenth touched no fewer than sixteen hundred persons. 
 I mention these things to show how extensively this extraordinary usage 
 prevailed. It is not, however, my business to attempt any solution of it 
 to choose between the miracle of the royal touch and the marvel of a 
 credulity which endured for seven or eight centuries, and in the rninds 
 not only of many thousands, but as far as evidence goes, in the minds of 
 all. But in France and in England it was accompanied with stated 
 and solemn service of prayer, and the cure was attributed to the mercy 
 of God rather than to the hand of man ; and, therefore, I will not speak 
 of it with mockery or contempt. I think there is truer wisdom and 
 better feeling in simply contemplating it, as the sage imagination of 
 
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS. 57 
 
 Shakspeare has taught us to look on it, through the vision of the 
 characters in Macbeth. 
 
 When Malcolm and Macduff have fled to England, it is in the 
 palace of Edward the Confessor that Malcolm inquires of an English 
 doctor 
 
 " Comes the king forth, I pray you ?" 
 
 and the answer is 
 
 " Ay, sir: there are a crew of wretched slaves 
 That stay his cure : their malady convinces 
 The great assay of art; but, at his touch, 
 Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, 
 They presently amend." 
 
 When Macduff asks 
 
 " What is the disease he means ?" 
 
 Malcolm answers 
 
 " Tis called the evil : 
 
 A most miraculous work in this good king ; 
 Which often, since my here-remain in England, 
 I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, 
 Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people, 
 All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, 
 The mere despair of surgery, he cures ; 
 Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, 
 Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken, 
 To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
 The healing benediction. With this strange virtue 
 He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy : 
 And sundry blessings hang about his throne, 
 That speak him full of grace." 
 
 Tt was with this good man that the ancient and lawful lineage of 
 the Saxon sovereigns ended, about the middle of the eleventh century. 
 An English historian closes this era of his country's annals in these 
 words : 
 
 " Our kings, in the castle of Windsor, live on the brink of the grave 
 which opens to receive them. The throne of Edward was equally by 
 the side of his sepulchre, for he dwelt in the palace of Westminster ; 
 and, on the festival of the Epiphany, the day after his decease, his 
 obsequies were solemnized in the adjoining abbey, then connected with 
 the royal abode by walls and towers, the foundations whereof are still 
 existing. Beneath the lofty windows of the southern transept of the 
 
58 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 abbey, you may see the deep and blackened arches, fragments of the 
 edifice raised by Edward, supporting the chaste and florid tracery of a 
 more recent age. Within, stands the shrine once rich in gems and gold 
 raised to the memory of the Confessor by the fond devotion of his 
 successors, despoiled, indeed, of all its ornaments, neglected and 
 crumbling to ruin, but still surmounted by the massy, iron-bound 
 oaken coffin, which contains the ashes of the last legitimate Anglo- 
 Saxon king. 
 
I V. 
 
 pp flf pug Pjtt. 
 
 INTERVAL BETWEEN THE LAST SAXON KINGS AND KING JOHN DEGENERACY OF THE SAXON 
 RACE CONTAGION OF DANISH VICE THE BRISTOL SLAVE-TRADE THE NORTHMEN 
 THE NORMANS THEIR CONQUESTS DEATH OP HAROLD EFFECT OF THE CONQUEST 
 ON THE CONQUERORS THEIR DESPOTISM THE ROYAL FOREST LANDS THE CURFfcW 
 DEAIH OF WILLIAM THE NORMAN TYRANNY OF HIS SUCCESSORS MARRIAGE OF 
 HENRY THE FIRST TO A SAXON PRINCESS THE PLANTAGBNETS RICHARD COEUR-DE- 
 LION ROMANCE OF IVANHOE ANSKLM, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY KING JOHN, 
 THE FIRST OF THE " CHRONIC LE-PLAYS" IMMAGJNATIVE POWER DEVELOPED JOHN, 
 A USURPER SHAKSPEABE'S vnw OF HIS CHARACTER "ENGLAND" THE GREAT IDEA 
 
 OF THE PLAY FALCONBRIDGE ITS EXPONENT HlS CHARACTER SHAKSPEARE's 
 POWER " IN MINIMIS" JAMES GURNEY's FOUR WORDS FRANCE AND AUSTRIA 
 
 CONSTANCE A^D ARTHUR His DEATH PANDULPH STRUGGLE WITH THE PAP AC y 
 INNOCENT THE THIRD STEPHEN LANGTON THE INTERDICT STRUGGLE WITH THE 
 BARONS THE GREAT CHARTER SHAKSPEABE'S ENGLISH LOYALTY. 
 
 THE main subject of this lecture will be the reign and times of 
 King John. In proceeding to it, I desire to connect that period of 
 English history with the epoch with which I closed my last lecture ; 
 and thus, by rapidly noticing the intervening times, to preserve the 
 continuity of our historical view of England. 
 
 The last event which I spoke of was the death of that meek and 
 saintly sovereign, Edward the Confessor, and, in his death, the ending 
 of the legitimate dynasty of the Anglo-Saxon kings, the race of 
 Cerdic, the King of Wessex, which had ruled the land for more than 
 five hundred years. This, it will be remembered, was about the middle 
 of the eleventh century; and at the close of the succeeding century 
 began the reign of King John. The interval of about one hundred 
 and forty years was an eventful period, which I cannot attempt to do 
 more than glance swiftly over. 
 
 The Saxon race had become degenerate the race which could 
 boast of Alfred and Athelstan which had produced heroic kings and 
 sent forth saintly men to bear the Christian faith unto other lands. 
 The best part of the old Saxon character was wasted away in wide- 
 spread licentiousness and debauchery. The people had grown to be 
 sensual and self-indulgent and riotous ; revelry was their habit, with 
 no better excuse than that the Danes had taught them to drink deep. 
 
 Danish vice became also Saxon vice; and, worse a hundred-fold, 
 
60 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 a horrid slave-trade shows into what deep and cruel profligacy England, 
 at that time, was sunk. The town of Bristol was an established slave- 
 market, and this detested traffic was carried on by Saxons of high 
 rank, who sold their own countrymen ; and into Saxon hands the 
 price was paid for Saxon peasants, menials, and servile vassals of every 
 description, who were carried away from their native land to dwell in 
 Denmark and Ireland, homeless, because in slavery. There was such 
 depravity in England, that, though the sensual, deaf in their debauchery 
 and wickedness, heard it not, the cry went up to Heaven for vengeance. 
 The national corruption seemed to provoke national retribution ; and 
 when it came, it was in fierce and bloody chastisement. " The Saxons," 
 as has been eloquently said, " had not been left without warning. 
 Judgment had followed judgment. The Dane had fulfilled his mission, 
 yet there was no improvement. They had seen, too, among them, with 
 all the stern holiness and fiery zeal of an ancient prophet, startling and 
 terrible as the Danes themselves, Dunstan the Archbishop, who had 
 dragged a king from his chamber of shame. Yet they would not rouse 
 themselves : the wine-cup was too sweet, the couch too soft : * the joys 
 of the hall/ the story, the song, the f glee-beams' of the harp, these 
 gladdened their days; and to these, in spite of the Danes and St. 
 Dunstan, they clung faster and faster. The dream went on; the 
 lethargy became heavier. * * 
 
 "At last the stroke came; more terrible in its reality than the most 
 anxious had imagined. It was not merely a change of kings or 
 families ; not even an invasion or ordinary conquest ; it was a rooting 
 and tearing up, a wild overthrow of all that was established and 
 familiar in England. 
 
 " There were seeds of good, of high and rare excellence in the 
 Saxons ; so they were to be chastised, not destroyed. Those who saw 
 the Norman triumph, and the steady, crushing strength of its progress, 
 who saw English feelings, English customs, English rights, trampled 
 on, mocked at, swept away, little thought that the Norman, the 
 " Francigena," was to have no abiding name in the land of his conquest ; 
 that his language was to be swallowed up and lost in that of the 
 Saxon ; that it was for the glory and final exaltation of the English 
 race that he was commissioned to school them thus sternly. So, indeed, 
 it was. But on that generation the judgment fell as bitter as it was 
 unexpected ; it was, in their eyes, vengeance unrelenting and final ; it 
 seemed as if God had finally cast them off, and given them over, 
 without hope of respite or release, to their tormentors/' 
 
 In closing the last lecture, the latest event in English history to 
 
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN. 61 
 
 which I alluded was the death of Edward the Confessor, the last 
 legitimate Anglo-Saxon king. There still remained a few stormy months 
 of the Saxon times a disputed succession, brief and tumultuous 
 an unsteady tenure of the throne, and a bloody death. The eyes of 
 the gentle and pious Edward had been spared the vision of the sufferings 
 that were so soon to befall the nation. The wild reign of Harold, in 
 which the Saxon dynasty passed away, occupied less than a year in that 
 period when, after the world had completed a thousand years in the 
 Christian era, there was strange and wide-spread dismay in the hearts 
 of men, and dim apprehensions that the day of judgment was nigh at 
 hand. The great comet of the year 1060 appeared; and, as it waved 
 over England, the Saxon looked up to the sky with terror, when he 
 beheld what seemed to him a portent of the sword of the invader or 
 the destroyer. The Saxon vainly strove to drown his fears in revelry 
 and riot, or else awaited in dread suspense the moment when the 
 comet should as ^filton describes it, 
 
 " Shake from its horrid hair 
 Pestilence and war." 
 
 In tumult and slaughter had the Saxon rule been established in 
 Britain; and, after six hundred years' duration, it ended, in like manner, 
 in confusion and bloodshed. Brother was warring against brother for 
 the throne, and the Norwegian king, with his pirates of the North, 
 was summoned to unnatural alliance in the fraternal strife. Harold's 
 short reign had its one victory, but it was a victory that left dead on 
 the field not only the King of Norway, but his own brother. In his 
 season of victory, his hand wet with a brother's blood, he was told 
 that the ships of the Normans had set sail from the ports of France, 
 and were approaching the shores of England. 
 
 What race of men was this that Normandy was sending forth on 
 this voyage of conquest? The Normans, as described by an old 
 historian, were the flower of the Swedes, the Danes, and the Norwegians. 
 They had dwelt, indeed, long enough in France to learn a stranger's 
 speech, but, originally, they were kindred with the Saxons ; and it is 
 curious to observe, in the progress of English history, how the various 
 tribes of the great Teutonic race were brought into fierce collision, and 
 how their union was again cemented by blood. The Northmen were 
 for a long while the most adventurous and roving race of European 
 men : they penetrated into the Mediterranean ; they swept the coasts 
 of the Northern Sea, and sailed into the navigable rivers of central 
 Europe, striking such terror that the ancient litanies contained prayers 
 
62 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 for deliverance from the fury of the Northmen. They won from a 
 king of France that fair province to which they gave their name of 
 Normandy ; and, in that same century, another portion of the North- 
 men, undismayed by the dread of an Arctic and unknown sea, are 
 believed to have sailed westward, and, making Iceland their stepping- 
 stone, as it were, in the ocean, to have passed onward and reached 
 America five hundred years before Columbus. 
 
 The Northmen who settled in France became Christianized and 
 civilized ; and, in the next century, retaining all their spirit of adven- 
 ture, they went forth, not as heathen pirates, but as Christian soldiers. 
 One band of them crossed the Alps to make a Norman settlement in 
 Southern Italy, and still farther on, to raise the Christian banner over 
 the crescent of the Saracens in the island of Sicily. But a mightier 
 conquest was that which a few years later was achieved over the 
 Saxons, and by which a duke of Normandy became King of England. 
 I need not stop to tell you how bravely the unhappy Harold met the 
 invaders on the field of Hastings, and how he fell in that battle which 
 sealed the destiny of Saxon independence. In less than one year 'after 
 the good king Edward, the sainted Confessor, had breathed his last, 
 the crown of England was on the brow of William the Norman. 
 
 The Norman conquest was the last of those great revolutionary 
 changes, which successively occured in the formation of that great 
 community of mankind, which is now peopling the vast and scattered 
 territory of the colonial British Empire, and the western regions of 
 America. It was the addition of the last element in the constitution 
 of a great modern people. We have thus seen how ancient British 
 nationality received into itself a Roman nationality, and then the Saxon 
 and the Dane, and, last of all, the Norman. 
 
 " The Norman conquest," says Southey, " is the most momentous 
 event in English history, perhaps the most momentous in the Middle 
 Ages. So severe a chastisement was never, except in the case of the 
 Visigoths, inflicted on any nation which was not destroyed by it." It 
 is an important subject of historical inquiry to ascertain the nature 
 and extent of these changes both social and political which were 
 consequent on this revolution. It is far too large a subject, even if I 
 had the ability, for me to attempt to do more than merely touch on. 
 The prominent events of this period are of such a character as to fill 
 the mind, to the exclusion of other less striking realities. This page of 
 history tells of a kingdom conquered in one battle the Saxon sovereign 
 dead on that battle field, and his army slaughtered or routed ; it tells 
 of Saxon fugitives in other and distant lands, and of Saxon prelates 
 
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN 63 
 
 thrust out to make room for Norman ecclesiastics of Saxon thane 
 and Saxon peasants outcasts from house and home of the introduction 
 of a sterner form of feudal law, and even the people's language revo- 
 lutionized. It tells of that peculiar stretch of despotic power, by 
 which, at the dismal sound of the curfew-bell, lamps and fires were 
 extinguished at an early hour, "the lights that cherish household 
 cares and festive gladness " quenched by that stern bidding. When 
 one thinks of the long, English winter-nights, this curfew-darkness 
 seems almost as gloomy as that savage age, which Charles Lamb speaks 
 of, in the essay in which he eulogizes candle-light as a kindlier lumi- 
 nary than sun or moon. "Wanting it," says he, "what savage, 
 unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and 
 unillumined fastnesses ! They must have lain about and grumbled at 
 one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed when you 
 must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's cheek to 
 be sure that he understood it ? We read, too, how, when exasperated 
 by Saxon resistance, the Conqueror swore a dreadful oath, that not one 
 Northumbrian should escape his vengeance; and then hastened to 
 fulfil it by his exterminating campaign in the North, in which one 
 hundred thousand persons are said to have perished, and not a single 
 inhabited village was left between Durham and York. It was a scene 
 of devastation and depopulation, like Hyder Ali's invasion of the 
 Carnatic, made famous by the eloquence of Burke. 
 
 Such was the fearful penalty of the Conqueror's revenge, and scarcely 
 less fearful was the penalty of his pleasure: the Norman monarchs 
 must have their hunting grounds, and the Saxon must needs give up 
 his cultivated lands, not only to the new Norman proprietor, but even 
 to the wild beasts. William, it has been said, " had a summary way of 
 increasing the forest lands : no need of planting trees or waiting for 
 the slow growth of oaks and beeches. There were then many woods 
 in merry England, and he simply swept away the homes of the villagers 
 who dwelt among and near them, so that the lands returned to their 
 natural state of wildness, and the stag crouched, undisturbed, on the 
 hearth of the peasant, or in the long fern, where once was the altar of 
 the village church." 
 
 It is under such circumstances that, in a very brief space of time 
 there was established a foreign king, a foreign prelacy, and a foreign 
 nobility ; and it would seem, at least to our first impressions, that the 
 Saxon race was not only bowed down, but crushed, beneath the Nor- 
 
64 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 man yoke ; and that the Saxon era, with all its influences, was abruptly 
 divided from later times by a broad line of blood, and a black line of 
 fire and devastation. But great as were the changes, and terrible as 
 were the sufferings, which the Norman conquest brought into England, 
 it was not such a revolution as destroyed the continuity of a nation's 
 life. It is said by the historian who has written with most learning on 
 this period, that "we attribute overmuch to the Norman conquest." 
 This opinion seems just when we turn our thoughts away from the 
 violence I have been speaking of, and consider that the laws of Edward 
 the Confessor were not abolished by the victorious invader ; that Saxon 
 earls sat in the council of the realm by the side of the Norman counts ; 
 that not a few of the lesser thanes retained possession of their lands 
 and that the Anglo-Saxon population continued unbroken. 
 
 As the body of William the First was about to be committed to its 
 grave, (it was in a churchyard in Normandy,) when the mass had been 
 performed, and an eulogy pronounced on his character, a voice from 
 the crowd of priests and people exclaimed : " He whom you have 
 praised was a robber. The very land on which you stand is mine. By 
 violence he took from my father ; and in the name of God, I forbid you 
 to bury him in it." It was an awful rebuke to the pride and injustice 
 of military conquest, when a price had to be paid over the Conqueror's 
 lifeless body to obtain a few feet of earth for the grave of him who, in 
 his life, had added a kingdom to his ancient duchy. 
 
 The miseries of England continued during the reigns of the Con- 
 queror's sons ; and it was when all Christendom was moved by the 
 splendid enthusiasm of the First Crusade, that the land was scourged 
 with the ferocious tyranny of William Rufus, the progressive wicked- 
 ness of whose nature was strongly described, when it was said that 
 " never a night came but he lay down a worse man than he rose, and 
 never a morning but he rose worse than he lay down." He died the 
 death of a wild beast ; for all that is surely known is that he was 
 found in the New Forest, transfixed with an arrow and dead. Whe- 
 ther that arrow was sped to the tyrant's breast by the purposed aim of 
 Walter Tyrrel, or by some one else who drew the bow in the wild 
 spirit of revenge, or whether it was so guided by what we call chance, 
 the people of the time beheld in his death retribution, not only on the 
 cruelty and impiety of Rufus, but on the sins of his father, who had 
 laid waste the homes of the Saxons to make the hunting-ground, where, 
 in the loneliness of the forest, his son miserably bled to death. 
 
 The gradual change in the relations of the Saxon and Norman races 
 is shown by the marriage of Henry the First to a Saxon princess, which 
 
THE KEIGN OF KING JOHN. 65 
 
 led, soon afterwards, to the restoration of the Saxon line in the person 
 of Henry the Second. I must pass over the tumultuous usurpation of 
 Stephen, and the imperial reign of the first of the Plantagenets, 
 distinguished by that great controversy worthy of all candid and careful 
 study, " the struggle," as Coleridge describes it, " between the men of 
 arms and of letters in the persons of Henry the Second and Thomas 
 a Becket." To reach the special subject from which I have been longer 
 detained than I anticipated, and for which I am therefore leaving myself 
 less room, I must pass, too, over the reign of the heroic Crusader, the 
 lion-hearted Richard, merely remarking that there may be found in the 
 romance of Ivanhoe, not only one of the most vivid representations 
 which Sir "Walter Scott has given of the life of a distant age, but also 
 a life-like exhibition of the relations which subsisted between the two 
 races, when they were not yet completely amalgamated into one people. 
 He has representedthe partially extinct hostility which embittered the 
 feelings of the haughty Normans on the one side, and, on the other, 
 not only the Saxon serf, but the high-born thane, whose lineage was 
 from the kings or nobles of England before the Conquest. 
 
 It is comparatively easy to understand the hostile attitude in which, 
 during these times, the Saxons and the Normans stood towards each 
 other; for the angry passions of men, and the deeds which are 
 prompted by such feelings, are always more manifest than the influ- 
 ences by which old animosities are appeased. It is easier to compre- 
 hend how men are brought to hate one another, than how that mutual 
 hatred is converted into harmony and peace. Years, and countless and 
 incalculable influences, may be needed to soothe the resentments 
 engendered by one battle ; especially when, like the battle of Hastings, 
 it is a victory of invasion. It would be a subject of deep interest to 
 trace the various and manifold agencies working upon the hearts and 
 habits of the Saxons and the Normans, as they dwelt in the same 
 region, at length producing national unity. I cannot pass by one 
 important influence in this harmonising process an influence of the 
 church, which has thus been described by a living English author : 
 
 " When Anselm (it was in the reign of the second William) came 
 over from his Norman convent to be Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
 his victorious countrymen thought that he, of course, would look upon 
 the old Saxons of the soil as they did, he told them plainly, that a 
 churchman acknowledged no distinction of race, and that his vocation 
 was to be the friend of the poor and distressed wherever he met with 
 them. And these principles, of course with great exceptions and 
 F 
 
66 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 deviations, were acted upon by a large portion of the Norman bishops 
 and clergy. What was the effect? We grew up to be an English 
 nation. The Saxon serf felt that he had a portion and a right in the 
 soil ; he recollected the sounds of his native language ; he began to 
 speak it : in due time the conquerors and the conquered became one." 
 
 The Crusades, too, had probably, by means of the predominant 
 feeling which they inspired, helped to fuse together the Saxon and 
 Norman elements of English nationality : and when we reach the times 
 of King John, and enter the thirteenth century, we find the distinction 
 of the two races wholly passed away. 
 
 Shakspeare's play of King John is the first, in order of time, of 
 those " Chronicle-Pays/ 5 which he gave to his country and the world 
 with the title, originally, of "Histories." It gives a dramatic and 
 imaginative view of an important reign in the annals of England ; and 
 the personages, events, and dates, are subjected to the transmuting 
 processes of a great poet's imagination, so as not only not to darken or 
 distort historic truth, but to array it in a living light. We gain a 
 deeper and more abiding sense of the truth by the help of that fine 
 function of poetic genius, by which the imagination gives unity and 
 moral connection to events that stand apart and unrelated. As to a 
 distant period, time works in harmony with the poet. " The history 
 of our ancient kings," says Coleridge, " the events of their reigns, I 
 mean, are like stars in the sky : whatever the real interspaces may be, 
 and however great, they seem close to each other. The stars the 
 events strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the differ- 
 ence of dates. A historic drama is, therefore, a collection of events 
 borrowed from history, but connected together, in respect of cause and 
 time, poetically, and by dramatic fiction." 
 
 The historic poet must carry his subject into the world of imagina- 
 tion ; and, in dealing with the multitude of historic men and their 
 deeds, he must do what every true artist, be he poet, painter, or 
 architect, has to do he must impress the mind with a harmonious 
 sense of plurality and unity. Each character, each action, must have 
 its own individuality, but this must be controlled by some pervading 
 and predominant idea which blends all the parts into unity ; the very 
 contrasts, in themselves so needful, must be subordinated to a certain 
 concord, just as in a picture there must be a rich variety, but it must 
 have its central point, and every thing must illustrate the main idea of 
 it : a landscape, with all its varied imagery of nature, must have, withal, 
 some one prevailing spirit, be it tranquil or tempestuous. You cannot 
 
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN. 67 
 
 have on the same canvas the waves in angry agitation and the trees in 
 motionless repose, or else making no more than what the poet calls 
 
 " A soft eye-music of slow- waving boughs." 
 
 In approaching these admirable dramatic histories, I have stopped 
 thus briefly to notice how the imagination in every sphere of art of a 
 high order treats the multiplicity of its materials. This is so essential 
 to the just comprehension of the historic drama, that I am tempted to 
 borrow from a contemporary writer a fine passage on the philosophy of 
 art and poetry : " Every theory of beauty embraces two elements at 
 once. One colour will not constitute a picture ; and yet, over a variety 
 of colours, there must be thrown one tint and colour. One line will 
 not form a statue ; and yet, from a multiplicity of lines, the sculptor 
 must place before the eye some one consistent image. A building is 
 a crystallization of forms ; yet towers, pinnacles, arches and vaults, 
 aisles and niches, fretted roofs and sculptured corbels, windows flaming 
 with all the colours of the rainbow, and carvings wrought into a 
 labyrinth of network, all these, when brought together by the hand 
 of a master, are framed and dovetailed into one grand plan, realizing 
 one idea, permeated with one spirit. The poet brings upon the stage 
 not one, but a multitude of characters; he represents life in all its 
 forms, the human mind in all its phases ; his very excellence consists in 
 the comprehensiveness and versatility of his conceptions. But if he 
 understand his art, he will link together not only his acts and events 
 by their relation to some one end, but even the most sudden changes 
 and incongruities by some main key-note. When Shakspeare passes at 
 once from the awfulness of Macbeth's thoughts after the murder of 
 Duncan, to the vulgar ribaldry of the porter at the gate, he makes that 
 ribaldry turn upon the thought of hell. So it is in music so it is in 
 oratory so it is in every production of human fancy : simplicity and 
 variety ; intricacy and regularity ; order amid seeming confusion, and 
 multiplicity in apparent identity ; discords harmonized ; contrasts recon- 
 ciled ; deficiencies supplied ; irregularities corrected ; these are the 
 triumphs of art. But the triumph is achieved only when both elements 
 are preserved together distinct, but not separate combined, but not 
 confused." 
 
 The first scene of the tragedy of King John has that significancy 
 which distinguishes the openings of Shakspeare's plays an intimation 
 of the whole plot, the full meaning of which is regularly developed in 
 the progress of the drama. In almost the first words, King John's 
 royalty is spoken of as " borrowed majesty," and he is summoned by 
 
68 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the embassy of his great contemporary, Philip Augustus of France, to 
 yield his kingdom up to the rightful heir, Arthur Plantagenet, the son 
 of his dead brother, Geoffrey. The succession of John was usurpation, 
 beginning in fraud and violence, and continued in crime ; but of the 
 previous Norman reigns, four out of six of the kings had possessed 
 themselves of the sceptre by the law of the strong hand. The rule of 
 succession could, therefore, as yet be scarcely considered as established ; 
 but, instead of it, there seems to have been, in that unsettled political 
 condition, little more than what Rob Boy calls 
 
 " The good old rule, tlie simple plan, 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 When this is considered, and when we remember, too, that the 
 absence of Richard on the Crusade gave peculiar opportunities to his 
 brother John to pave the way to the succession, it is not surprising that 
 John became the king, especially as the rightful heir was in his youth, 
 and the government had not yet attained that period when, under 
 constitutional forms, a minority reign becomes practicable. Accord- 
 ingly, at the opening of the drama, Shakspeare does not at once 
 awaken indignation at the injustice of the usurpation, and, indeed, 
 rather leads us to admire the calm royal bearing with which the king 
 answers the threat of war ; as if, unconscious of wrong to his nephew, 
 he relies upon his " strong possession and his right," and confidently 
 hurls back defiance to the King of France. We see, therefore, from 
 the very beginning, how differently, and in how much finer a spirit, 
 Shakspeare treats the character of King John, than that coarse and 
 common mode, by which it has been represented in such black and 
 unrelieved colours that no humanity can be found in him, and he is 
 looked on with unmitigated horror and contempt. It has been said, 
 with reference to the " vivid speaking characters/' in which Shakspeare 
 has placed so many of the English kings in imperishable individuality 
 before us, " Only look at his King John, look at any historian's. 
 Which gives you the liveliest, faithfullest representation of that prince 
 and of his age, the poet's or the historian's ? Which most powerfully 
 exposes his vices and awakens the greatest horror at them ? Yet, in 
 Shakspeare he is still a man, and, as such, comes within the range of 
 our sympathy : we can pity, even while we shudder at him ; and our 
 horror moves us to look inward into the awful depths of the nature 
 which we share with him, instead of curdling into dead hatred and 
 disgust. In the historian's he is a sheer monster, the ob : ect of con- 
 
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN. 69 
 
 temptuous loathing, a poisonous reptile whom we could crush to death 
 with as little remorse as a viper. 
 
 The tragedy begins with the voice of state, of diplomacy, of policy, 
 and of the rivalry of England and France ; and we shall see how, in the 
 various characters, all the elements of mediaeval life are present tke 
 papacy and the priesthood the monarchy and the nobility the com- 
 monalty and the soldiery all are there. It has, however, been 
 ingeniously said by a German critic that " The hero of this piece 
 stands not in the list of personages, and could not stand with them, 
 for the idea should be clear without personification. The hero is 
 England." This means, as I understand it, that Shakspeare has made 
 England the great and ever-present idea of the play ; that, without any 
 artifice of national vanity, he has so written the history of the reign of 
 King John, as to inspire a deep and fervid spirit of nationality. It is 
 comparatively an easy thing to animate the hearts of a people with such 
 a spirit by presenting the glorious parts of their country's annals; the 
 mere touch of the memory of victories won by their ancestors will 
 kindle enthusiasm and pride in the breasts of posterity. We can under- 
 stand how the recollection, for example, of the splendid career of 
 Edward the Third should prompt the boast of the Britons of later 
 times : 
 
 " We are the sons of the men 
 
 Who conquered on Cressy's plain ; 
 And what our fathers did, 
 Their sons can do again." 
 
 But it was Shakspeare's arduous achievement to fire the sentiment 
 of patriotism with the story of a reien that was tyrannical, oppressive, 
 cowardly, a period of usurpation and national degradation. He has 
 accomplished this chiefly by means of one character, which is almost 
 altogether a creation of his mind from very slight historical materials. 
 The fertile imagination of the poet, and his genial exuberance of happy 
 and gentle feelings, seem to have craved something more than the 
 poverty of the history supplies ; he wanted somebody better than a king, 
 better than a worldly ecclesiastic, and better than the bold but fickle 
 barons. It is in the highest order of dramatic art, and especially in 
 the historic drama, that Shakspeare, on no other historical basis than 
 the mere existence of a natural son of Richard, has created the splendid 
 and most attractive character of Philip Falconbridge. Besides playing 
 an important part himself, he fulfils something like the function of the 
 chorus of the ancient drama ; for he seems to illustrate the purposes of 
 
70 LECTUBES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the history, and to make the real personages more intelligible. He is 
 the embodiment, too, of the most genuine national feeling, and is truer 
 to his country than king or noble. With an abounding and overflowing 
 humour, a dauntless courage, and a gentleness of spirit that charac- 
 terizes true heroism, Falconbridge carries a generous strength and a 
 rude morality of his own, amid the craft and the cruelties and the 
 feebleness of those who surround him. The character, imaginary as it 
 is, has a historical value also in this, that it represents the bright side 
 of feudal loyalty. Honoured by the king, Falconbridge never deserts 
 him in his hour of need and peril, when the nobles are flying off from 
 their allegiance and a foreign enemy is at hand. It is no servile fidelity, 
 but such genuine and generous loyalty that we look upon it as faithful- 
 ness to his country rather than adherence to the fortunes of the king. 
 He is, as it were, the man of the people in the play, and we hear him 
 prompting brave actions and a generous policy encouraging the feeble 
 king to a truer kingly career ; we see him withstanding the haughty 
 barons, and still more indignant at papal aggression. He dwells in an 
 atmosphere of heartlessness and villainy, but it pollutes him not; 
 rather does his presence partially purify it. It is remarkable that we 
 do not and cannot, I think, associate him icjuriously with the character 
 of King John, with whose fortunes he is identified, but from whose 
 vices he is wholly aloof; and I am almost tempted to apply to him what 
 has been said of a very different character : 
 
 " His soul was like a star and dwelt apart." 
 
 The character and position of Falconbridge in the play, seem to me 
 finely to illustrate the workings of the principle of chivalry during this 
 early feudal period of history, that principle of which Mr. Burke 
 wisely said that "Without confounding rank, it produced a noble 
 equality, and handed it down through all the gradations of social life. 
 It was this opinion," said that philosophic statesman, " which mitigated 
 kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings." 
 The effects of the principle of chivalry, as manifested in the intercourse 
 of King John and Falconbridge, cannot escape observation ; but the 
 reader of the drama may probably overlook a very short passage which 
 seems to me to illustrate the workings of it as it passes down, to use 
 Mr. Burke's phrase, through all the gradations of life, and touches the 
 humbler range of society. It is a passage which struck the fancy of 
 Coleridge, who was in the habit of quoting it as an instance ef Shak- 
 speare's power in minirais ; and it certainly does show how compre- 
 hensively careful a poet's genius is of minute as well as of great things. 
 
THE KEIGN OF KING JOHN. 71 
 
 In the list of the persons of the play, you may notice the name of 
 "James Gurney, servant to Lady Falconbridge." He makes his 
 appearance once, but once, then only for a very little while; he 
 does not speak till spoken to, says four words, scarce more than four 
 monosyllables, then "Exit James Gurney" and that is all. Yet, 
 Coleridge speaks of the character of this person, and finds it in these 
 very few words that single touch of Shakspeare's pen portraying the 
 affectionate respectfulness of an aged domestic. When Falconbridge is 
 about to extort from his mother the secret of his parentage, a sense of 
 delicacy leads him to desire a conference with her alone, and he requests 
 the attendant to withdraw, saying 
 
 " James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile ?" 
 
 and the meek answer, which pleased Coleridge's fancy, is simply 
 " Good leave, good Philip." 
 
 I refer to the passage for a reason different from Coleridge's, and to 
 notice the spirit of Falconbridge's playful reply, as he says 
 
 " James, 
 There's toys abroad. Anon I'll tell thee more." 
 
 Now, I beg you to notice the familiar and affectionate tone of this 
 intercourse, as they address each other by their Christian names, 
 "Philip" and "James;" and then the fine, gentlemanly, and con- 
 siderate feeling which prompts Falconbridge to promise the old ser- 
 vant his old domestic friend to tell him more after awhile, as a kind 
 of indirect apology for even asking him to withdraw. Minute as the 
 instance is, it is a historical illustration of the gentleness with which 
 the genuine principles of chivalry looked down to the humble, as well 
 as upward to the high born. 
 
 The alliances of France and Austria, which are, at the beginning, 
 proclaimed in support of Arthur's claim to the throne of England 
 against King John, are soon dissolved. A new wind of policy blows 
 over them, and the friendship of king and duke, which a little before 
 had been proffered to the helpless and injured Arthur, with so much 
 of pomp and declamatory assurance, all passes away; his cause is 
 abandoned ; new friendships and a different policy are formed on the 
 instant. The hollowness and heartlessness of this conduct are more 
 deeply felt when we behold the wild anguish of Constance, in desperate 
 disappointment, clamouring for the lost rights of her child ; and, as if 
 the huge firm earth could alone support a grief so great as hers, 
 
72 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 seating herself on the ground for kings to come and bow to her loneli- 
 ness and desolation. 
 
 The contrast between the beauty, the strength, and grandeur of 
 natural feeling, and the ugliness and the instability of the politic zeal 
 of ambitious kings and princes, is felt, not only when we are listening 
 to the voluble utterances of maternal passion, but when we turn to the 
 gentle exclamations of the innocent Arthur, as he would fain escape 
 the turmoil of an ambitious destiny : 
 
 "Good my mother, peace! 
 I would that I were low laid in my grave : 
 I am not worth this coil that is made for me." 
 
 The peace of the grave was speedily to be the portion of this unhappy 
 prince, a youth whose character history has not especially deigned to 
 record ; but we can believe that he was, in truth, the thoughtful and 
 gentle-hearted being that Shakspeare has shown to us, not only in his 
 own actions and speech, but as he was endeared to the agitated affections 
 of Constance. In his brief life we behold the sacrificial beauty and 
 purity which seem to mark him for the victim of the selfish and wicked 
 passions that are raging around him. 
 
 The treaty between John and Philip Augustus, built on the sandy 
 foundation of a broken faith and forsworn promises, proved an unstable 
 and hollow armistice, as if the wild prayer of Constance, in her hour of 
 desolation, had a speedy answer, when, deserted by earthly alliances, 
 she cried 
 
 "Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjured kings ! 
 A widow cries ; be husband to me heavens ! 
 Let not the hours of this ungodly day 
 Wear out the day in peace ; but, ere sunset, 
 Set armed discord 'twixt these perjured kings!" 
 
 In that renewed war the destiny of Arthur was sealed : he fell into 
 the power of his victorious uncle, the young and rightful claimant of 
 the English crown was in the perilous possession of the wicked usurper. 
 Two words more a prison death close the career of Arthur of 
 Brittany. Impenetrable mystery hangs over his death, and all that can 
 be discerned in the darkness of it is, the guilt of King John. How he 
 died is not known ; but history, tradition, poetry, all have laid the guilt 
 of that death upon the conscience of King John, whose cowardice and 
 cruelty were someway the agents of the murder. The essential guilt 
 lies there, and it does not matter greatly whether Arthur pined away in 
 prison to an early death, or whether he perished in an attempt to escape, 
 
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN. 73 
 
 or whether John perpetrated the deed of horror with his own hand, in 
 mid-river loneliness and midnight silence, by plunging his dagger into 
 the bosom of his helpless kinsman, and then casting the poor child's 
 bleeding body into the deep waters of the river Seine. 
 
 It does not belong to my subject to comment on the matchless 
 dramatic skill of those two great scenes, that appalling one in which 
 the king commits Arthur to the deadly keeping of Hubert, and that 
 other piteous one between Hubert and Arthur. In the consummate 
 poetic art of those scenes, there is, at the same time, a no less admirable 
 historic charity ; for, in the obscurity of the history, Shakspeare has im- 
 pressed the mind with a deep sense of the guilt of the king without 
 aggravating it with needless horrors or more than human atrocity. 
 Arthur, in the play, perishes in his attempt at escape ; but to the 
 perilous leap that caused his death he was driven by the dread of John's 
 power ; and he had already, by John's cruel purpose, endured the terror 
 and anguish at the presence of the executioner and the sight of the in- 
 struments of torture. 
 
 When Arthur fell, by the fortune of war, into the hands of King 
 John, the possession of his young rival brought security to the usurper, 
 but it brought also temptation to make assurance doubly sure by con- 
 verting the custody of the prison into the inviolable custody of the grave. 
 The moral view, and, I believe a most just historic view, which Shak- 
 speare gives us, is this that, however the events are separated in time, 
 all the after-misery of the reign of King John was the penal retribution 
 for the murder of Arthur. In consequence of it, his continental 
 dominions passed away from him, to make up the splendid French 
 monarchy of the Capets ; and at home he struggled through a distracted 
 reign, amid disloyal nobles and a discontented people. The sequel of 
 the reign, after Arthifr is taken prisoner, is finely told in the play, when 
 the deep political sagacity of Cardinal Pandulph foretells the course of 
 things. Exciting the Dauphin to claim the English throne, he bids 
 him mark 
 
 4 'John hath seized Arthur, and it cannot be 
 That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins, 
 The misplaced John should entertain an hour, 
 One minute, nay one quiet breath of rest: 
 A sceptre, snatch'd with an unruly hand, 
 Must be as boisterously maintained as gained; 
 And he that stands upon a slippery place, 
 Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up : 
 That John may stand, then Arthur needs must fall : 
 So be it, for it cannot but be so." 
 
74 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 When the Dauphin questions what he is to gain by Arthur's fall, and 
 doubts his success, the wily cardinal replies 
 
 " How green are you, and fresh in this old world ! 
 John lays you plots ; the times conspire with you : 
 For he, that steeps his safety in true blood, 
 Shall find but bloody safety, and untrue. 
 This act, so evilly born, shall cool the hearts 
 Of all his people, and freeze up their zeal ; 
 That none so small advantage shall step forth, 
 To check his reign, but they will cherish it ; 
 No natural exhalation in the sky, 
 No scape of nature, no distempered day, 
 No common wind, no custom'd event, 
 But they will pluck away his natural cause, 
 And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, 
 Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven, 
 Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John. 
 
 * * The hearts 
 
 Of all his people shall revolt from him, 
 And kiss the lips of unacquainted change ; 
 And pluck strong matter of revolt and wrath 
 Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John." 
 
 It is just before these cold-hearted and crafty speculations respecting 
 Arthur's death that Constance addressed the Cardinal with that beau- 
 tiful and pathetic utterance of her first grief at her son's captivity : 
 
 *' Father Cardinal, I have heard you say, 
 That we shall see and know our friends hi heaven ; 
 If that be true, I shall see my boy again ; 
 For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, 
 To him that did but yesterday suspire, 
 There was not such a gracious creature born. 
 But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, 
 And chase the native beauty from his cheek, 
 And he will look as hollow as a ghost ; 
 As dim and meagre as an ague's fit ; 
 And so he'll die ; and, rising so again, 
 When I shall meet him in the court of heaven 
 I shall not know him : therefore, never, never 
 Must I behold my pretty Arthur more." 
 
 The words fall ineffectual on Pandulph's ear ; and he who, with his 
 sacred function, might have poured consolation into the aching void of 
 a mother's heart, answers with a rebuke. He was busy with intrigues 
 of state, weaving meshes to catch or entangle kings ; and what 
 
THE KEIGN OF KING JOHN. 75 
 
 audience could maternal grief find with the crafty and corrupt priest, 
 burdened with worldly policy, like such other cardinals as Wolsey and 
 Richelieu and Mazarin and Portocarrero, the politician-ecclesiastics of 
 modern Europe ? 
 
 When, with like coldness, King Philip he who had selfishly advo- 
 cated and selfishly abandoned the cause of Constance and her son tells 
 her she is 
 
 " As fond of grief as of her child," 
 
 she gives the last justification of her impassioned sorrow : 
 
 " Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form ; 
 Then have I reason to be fond of grief." 
 
 The appearance of Cardinal Pandulph in this play introduces 
 another of the great contests of this distracted reign, the struggle 
 between King John and the papal power during that splendid period of 
 it, the papacy of Innocent the Third. The controversy turned on the 
 election of the primate of England, and John's refusal to admit Stephen 
 Langton to the see of Canterbury. When the papal claim is asserted 
 by Cardinal Pandulph, as the legate of the pope, it is answered by 
 King John in a high strain of defiance, which arrays the independence 
 of his realm and sovereignty in bold antagonism against papal aggres- 
 sion : 
 
 " What earthly name to interrogatories 
 
 Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 
 
 Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name 
 
 So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous, 
 
 To charge me to an answer, as the pope. 
 
 Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of England, 
 
 Add thus much more, that no Italian priest 
 
 ShaU tithe or toll in our dominions : 
 
 But, as we under Heaven are supreme head ; 
 
 So, under him, that great supremacy, 
 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 
 
 Without the assistance of a mortal hand : 
 
 So tell the pope ; all reverence set apart, 
 
 To him and his usurped authority." 
 
 And when the King of France interposes 
 
 " Brother of England, you blaspheme in this," 
 
76 LECTUKES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 John retorts, 
 
 "Though you, and all the kings of Christendom, 
 Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
 Dreading the curse that money may buy out ; 
 And, by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, 
 Purchase corrupted pardon of a man, 
 Who, in that sale, sells pardon from himself ; 
 Though you, and all the rest, so grossly led, 
 This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish ; 
 Yet I, alone, alone do me oppose 
 Against the pope, and count his friends my foes." 
 
 The resistance brought upon John the penalty of excommunication, 
 and upon the realm, in punishment of the sovereign, that more dreadful 
 and extraordinary infliction, the papal interdict. This penalty the 
 general effect of which was to stop all religious services was a form 
 of ecclesiastical punishment which, according to the authority of Roman 
 Catholic historians, was unknown in the early ages of the church, and 
 did not come distinctly into use before the eleventh century. It is 
 accounted for as an expedient resorted to for the purpose of counteract- 
 ing and controlling feudal tyranny. In this case the sentence of a 
 general interdict over the whole of England was proclaimed, and the 
 effects of it have been thus described : 
 
 " As an ecclesiastical act, the features which most struck the minds 
 of the country people were, that the daily sacrifice ceased, the doors ot 
 the churches were shut against them ; that the dead were carried out- 
 side the town-gates, and buried in ditches or roadsides, without prayer 
 or priests' offices. The images of apostles and saints were taken down 
 or veiled ; the frequent tinkle of the convent-bell no longer told the 
 serf at the plough how the weary day was passing, or guided the 
 traveller through the forest to a shelter for the night. Religion, wont 
 to mix with and hallow each hour of the day, each action of life, was 
 totally withdrawn. The state of the country resembled a raid of the 
 Danes, or the days of old Saxon heathendom, before Augustine had set 
 up the cross at Canterbury, or holy men had penetrated the forest and 
 the fen." 
 
 " Closed are the gates of every sacred place, 
 Straight from the sun and tainted air's embrace, 
 All sacred things are covered ; cheerful morn 
 Grows sad as night : no seemly garb is worn, 
 Nor is a face allowed to meet a face 
 With natural smile of greeting. Bells are dumb ; 
 Ditches are graves funeral rights denied ; 
 And in the churchyard he must take his bride 
 Who dares be wedded." 
 
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN. 77 
 
 The temper of the king was not controlled by this dismal condition 
 of a Christian land ; but, with a crime-fraught conscience, the tyrant 
 was affrighted by superstitious terrors, and the fatal predictions of a 
 popular soothsayer. The pope invoked the alliance of France to quell 
 by invasion and the force of arms that resistance against which the 
 mandates and penalties of Rome had proved unavailing. Under the 
 dread of this danger, the mean and abject spirit of John sank to its 
 lowest and worst estate. The crown of England, that which had 
 decked the brow of Alfred and of the Confessor and of the Conqueror, 
 was laid at the feet of Pandulph, the papal legate, and John sur- 
 rendered his kingdom to receive it back and hold it as the vassal and 
 tributary of the pope. The infamy of John was completed, and 
 national degradation brought upon England. "The transaction," 
 says the Roman Catholic historian, " was certainly a disgraceful act," 
 and an English poet, in a higher strain of patriotic indignation, has 
 said 
 
 " Lo ! John self-stripped of his insignia ; crown, 
 
 Sceptre and mantle, sword and ring, laid down 
 
 At a proud legate's feet ! The spears that line 
 
 Baronial halls, the opprobrious insult feel, 
 
 And angry ocean roars a vain appeal." 
 
 After this came the third and last great struggle of the reign, in which 
 the confederate barons wrested from the reluctant king the Great 
 Charter of English rights that sealed acknowledgement of ancient 
 rights which is an epoch in the history of constitutional freedom. In 
 that achievement, no one rendered more important services than 
 Stephen Langton, he whom Innocent the Third had, in fact, made 
 the Primate of England. In the political struggle connected with the 
 Charter, the pope was arrayed on the side of his vassal king and against 
 the cause of English liberties ; while Langton, true to his nativity as 
 an Englishman, and to his station as the chief bishop of England, was 
 the fearless defender of that Charter of which it has been said that 
 " If every subsequent law were swept away, there would still remain 
 the bold features which distinguish a free from a despotic monarchy." 
 
 After a reign of conflict and confusion and disgrace, John dies a 
 miserable and a suffering death ; and the last words that fall upon his 
 dying ear are the evil tidings of continued disaster. The spirit of 
 Arthur is avenged. 
 
 At the close of the tragedy, Shakspeare, with some disregard of 
 chronological accuracy, brings back the nobles to their allegiance; 
 and then with the voice of Falconbridge the very embodiment of 
 
78 LECTUKES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 patriotism and loyalty he raises the mind from the weakness and 
 degradation of the reign to a sense of England's power and independ- 
 ence. It is in a high strain of that national self-confidence which, though 
 it may degenerate into national vanity, or swell into intolerablenational 
 pride, is part of the power which makes a people unconquerable, it is 
 in such a spirit that Falconbridge tells the young prince and the 
 nobles 
 
 " This England never did, nor never shall, 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
 But when it first did help to wound itself. 
 Now these our princes are come home again, 
 Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
 And we shall shock them : nought shall make us rue, 
 If England to itself do rest but true." 
 
 Let me add that these lines were composed by Shakspeare not long 
 after that year in which the formidable invasion by the Spanish 
 Armada was driven back in ruin from the shores of England. The 
 poet's heart beat high as he beheld the banners of the ships of Spain 
 hung out as trophies from the battlements of the Cathedral of St. 
 Paul's, when Queen Elizabeth, in the midst of a rejoicing people, went up 
 to that metropolitan temple to give thanks to God for the safety of her 
 
V. 
 
 jtonfr. 
 
 HENRY THE THIRD AND THE EDWARDS PASSED OVER BY SHAKSPEARE DE MONTFORT'S 
 REBELLION GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION THE COMMONS EXTENT OF PARLIA- 
 
 MENTARY GOVERNMENT OUR REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS THE HIGHWAY OF NATIONS 
 
 THE PLANTAGENET KINGS EDWARD THE THIRD AND THE BLACK PRINCE CHAUCER- 
 WAR WITH FRANCE ARNOLD'S VIEW SOUTHEY FROM RICHARD THE SECOND THE 
 " CHRONICLE-PLAYS" CONTINUOUS THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY KING JOHN AND HENRY 
 THE EIGHTH, PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE RICHARD THE SECOND STRICTLY HISTORICAL 
 CHARACTER OF THE KING His PREVIOUS CAREER POPULAR ELEMENT IN FRANCE AND 
 FLANDERS AND ENGLAND WAT TYLER'S REBELLION ITS EFFECTS REVOLT OF THE 
 NOBLES OPENING OF THE TRAGEDY NORFOLK AND BOLINGBROKE EXILE CHARACTER 
 OF BOLINGBROKE DEATH OF JOHN OF GAUNT MORAL DEGRADATION OF THE KING 
 HIS MISFORTUNES ELEVATE HIM BOLINGBROKE'S RETURN DlVINE RIGHT OF KINGS 
 RICHARD'S DEPOSITION, IMPRISONMENT, AND DEATH. 
 
 After King John, the next period of English history which has been 
 illustrated by Shakspeare's historical plays is the reign of Richard the 
 Second. The reign of King John belongs, it will be remembered, to 
 the first years of the thirteenth century ; that of Richard the Second 
 closed the fourteenth ; so that the intervening time was not a great 
 deal less than two hundred years, an interval of great importance for 
 the events that distinguished it and for the progress of the Constitution, 
 but less familiar, for the single reason, I believe, that the light of 
 Shakspeare's mind has not illuminated it for us. The reigns during that 
 interval were few in number, for two of them were protracted to an 
 uncommon length, half a century in one case, and more than that in 
 another. The reigns which Shakspeare has passed over are those of 
 Henry the Third and the first three of the Edwards. 
 
 When, on the death of King John, his son Henry, in the tenth year 
 of his age, was crowned King of England, the Earl of Pembroke, 
 addressing his baronial peers, said," We have persecuted the father 
 for evil demeanour, and worthily: yet this young child, whom ye 
 see before you, as he is in years tender, so he is innocent of his father's 
 doings." The appeal was not in vain. The young Plantagenet was 
 set on the throne, enjoying the restored allegiance of his barons ; but 
 the regal power, thus fortified by returning loyalty, was also in the 
 bonds of the Great Charter. The child-king grew to manhood, but 
 not to the strength of manhood. Old abuses were revived, and the 
 
80 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY 
 
 high spirit of the barons awoke again to resist them by remonstrance, 
 by opposition, and at length, by open war. There was De Montfort, 
 Earl of Leicester, at the head of the insurgent nobles, he who, with 
 his Oxford Parliament the " Mad Parliament," as the old historians 
 called it took the kingdom away from the sovereign, and gave it into 
 the hands of Commissioners. There were the vicissitudes of civil war, 
 the king, at one time, a prisoner, and afterwards triumphant, and 
 Leicester dead on the field of battle. " All the months of the year," 
 says the witty church-historian, Thomas Fuller, " may in a manner be 
 carved out of an April day, hot, cold, dry, moist, fair, foul weather, 
 being oft presented therein. Such was the character of King Henry 
 the Third's life, certain only in uncertainty ; sorrowful, successful ; in 
 plenty, in penury ; in wealth, in want ; conquered, conqueror." 
 
 This period of English annals is too remote, and the prominent 
 characters in it are too dimly represented, for us to feel that lively 
 interest which is produced by the biographical knowledge of historic 
 personages. The study of it is, however, important, as showing the 
 growth of the nation, and the steady and gradual progress of the 
 Constitution. In looking back over that progress, one cannot help 
 being struck with the small and obscure beginnings of great political 
 institutions, and thinking how unconscious the actors must have been 
 of the magnitude of that futurity which was to follow their deeds. In 
 this reign of Henry the Third, after Simon de Montfort, at the head 
 of the baronial confederacy, had defeated his king in open battle, acting 
 as sovereign of the kingdom, he summoned the cities and boroughs to 
 send members to Parliament. When he cast that seed into the soil of 
 his country, how little did he dream of the mighty and perpetual 
 germination that it would disclose in after times ! How little could he 
 have thought, that he was laying the foundation of the popular house 
 of the British Parliament ; and, indeed, not only of the English House 
 of Commons, but the popular representative legislatures of the Anglo- 
 American republics in another continent ! Men cannot foresee the 
 consequences of such deeds; and, indeed, the most enduring and 
 happiest political institutions are those which have not grown up in the 
 sight of one generation of men, but during the lapse of ages have risen 
 higher and higher, and spread their branches on every side. In 
 examining the history of a country, you see the national life as it 
 develops itself, first in one change, then in another; sometimes by 
 regular and tranquil alterations, sometimes by violence, and, it may be, 
 bloodshed ; but ever, when the growth is most healthful, it is by a due 
 course of expansion, rather than by wilful and violent changes. Thus, 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 81 
 
 the steps which De Montfort took when he summoned the representation 
 of the towns, made a path which seemed slight ; but it was destined, in 
 the providential government of the world, to become the great highway 
 on which there should move, not only the kingly Commonwealth of 
 England, but the republican commonwealth of America. Indeed I find 
 myself borrowing here partly the language of a very happy illustration 
 of gradual changes of government : " New political institutions," it 
 has been well said, " originate just as a path is made in the field. The 
 first person who crosses the grass, treads it down. The mass of elastic 
 verdure immediately rises up again ; nevertheless, some few of the more 
 limber stalks and tender blades are bruised and crushed, and continue 
 prostrate on the ground ; yet, so slight is the impression made upon the 
 herbage, that the clearest eyesight can hardly discover the harm. After 
 the first passenger other people follow ; and, within a little while, marks 
 of their footsteps begin to be perceivable. Nobody noticed the first 
 footsteps. At what period they became visible, nobody can recollect. 
 But now, there the footsteps are, the grass has changed its colour, the 
 depressions are distinct, and they direct other wayfarers to follow the 
 same line. 
 
 " Not long afterwards, bits and patches of the soil, where, very 
 recently, the grass was only flattened and trodden down, are now worn 
 quite bare. You see the naked earth ; the roots of the grass are dried, 
 the grass is killed it springs up no more ; and then the bare places 
 gradually and gradually extend till the brown devours the intervening 
 green : the bare worn places join one another, all the green between 
 them is destroyed, the continuous path is formed. 
 
 "But the path does not continue single. One passenger treads 
 upon the bounding grass to suit his convenience ; another wantonly ; a 
 third for want of thought ; more footsteps, more bare places. Tracks 
 enlarge the path on either side ; and these means of transit invite so 
 many passengers, that they break down the hedges for their further ac- 
 commodation without waiting to ask the owner's leave. The trespass 
 has received the sanction of usage ; and the law, however unwillingly, is 
 compelled to pronounce the judgment, that a public right of way has 
 been acquired, which can never more be denied or closed." 
 
 The right of way in the government was opened for the people 
 during the inglorious reign of Henry the Third, opened never to be 
 closed ; and when, in the next reign, Edward the First entered on his 
 brilliant career of conquest, while he was consolidating his kingdom by 
 the reduction of Wales, the cause of constitutional freedom was moving 
 onward. The movement did not stop during the degenerate rule of 
 G 
 
82 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the second Edward, a reign which was signalized by two battles, a 
 victory and a defeat ; of which it has been strangely but truly said, that 
 the victory should be lamented by England as a national judgment, 
 and the defeat celebrated as a national festival. The victory was over 
 the Irish, and the government of Ireland is to this day England's 
 plague ; and the defeat by the Scots at Bannockburn left Scotland 
 independent, to be united to England in due course of time by peaceful 
 treaty. After an opprobrious reign, domestic treachery precipitated 
 the ruin of Edward the Second, the first of the kings of England who 
 died discrowned. In that fine ode which the poet Gray composed, as 
 if spoken by a Welsh bard addressing Edward the First, at the time of 
 his invasion of Wales, and denouncing, in prophetic voice, the sorrows 
 of his posterity, there is, perhaps, no more startling or impressive pas- 
 sage than that in which, foretelling the murder of his son, he bids 
 him 
 
 " Mark the j-ear and mark the night, 
 When Severn shall re-echo, with affright, 
 The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roof that ring, 
 Shrieks of an agonizing king." 
 
 The splendid fifty years' reign of Edward the Third raised the national 
 spirit of England to a higher point than it had yet attained. It was an 
 era in English history of expanding and aspiring nationality. The 
 sovereign's high ambition of adding the crown of France to that of 
 England, carried along with it the hearts of his nobles and his people. 
 The spirit of the nation was filled with enthusiasm by two of the most 
 famous of England's victories, achieved by her two champions, the king 
 himself and his warlike son, Edward, the Black Prince. The peaceful 
 splendour of the reign equalled its martial glory. There was the pride 
 and magnificence of chivalry, when chivalry had not yet declined to 
 mere formal pomp and pageantry. The generous spirit and the intel- 
 lectual activity of the times were displayed in the patronage of painting 
 and the other fine arts, and architectural piles arose to perpetuate, with 
 church and castle, the memory of an illustrious era. The character of 
 the times was finely shown, too, in the glorious outburst of English 
 poetry, when the first of the great English poets, Geoffrey Chaucer, 
 displayed the power of English imagination and of the English language 
 in a series of poems, which, in variety of feeling and scope of subject, 
 are surpassed only by the productions of Shakspeare. 
 
 Such was the bright side of the reign of the third Edward. But, 
 looking even at the darker side, there was good evolving out of its dim- 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 83 
 
 culties. War is not a game to be played at with ivory counters, and 
 the war with France was a costly one, "whereby," says an old historian, 
 " our nation became exceedingly proud, and exceedingly poor." The 
 king needed money for his wars, but that very necessity proved a cause 
 of the steady progress of the constitutional rights and liberties of the 
 nation. It is to this period of English history that Arnold, in his his- 
 tory of Rome, alludes, in a passage of admirable wisdom on the growth 
 of constitutional freedom. Speaking of the slow process by which the 
 Roman plebeians rose to the political level of their patrician fellow- 
 citizens, he says : " So it is that all things come best in their season ; 
 that political power is most happily exercised by a people, when it has 
 not been given to them prematurely ; that is, before, in the natural 
 progress of things, they feel they want it. Security for person and 
 property enables a nation to grow without interruption : in contending 
 for this, a people's sense of law and right is wholesomely exercised. 
 "Meantime, national prosperity increases, and brings with it an increase 
 of intelligence, till other and more necessary wants being satisfied, men 
 awaken to the highest earthly desire of the ripened mind the desire of 
 taking an active share in the great work of government. The Roman 
 Commons abandoned the highest magistracies to the Patricians for 
 a period of many years ; but they continued to increase in prosperity 
 and influence ; and what their fathers had wisely yielded, their sons in 
 the fulness of time acquired. So the English House of Commons, in 
 the reign of Edward the Third, declined to interfere in questions of 
 peace and war as being too high for them to compass ; but they would 
 not allow the crown to take their money without their own consent ; 
 and so the nation grew, and the influence of the House of Commons 
 grew along with it, till that House has become the great and pre- 
 dominant power in the British Constitution." 
 
 The closing days of Edward's long and brilliant reign were clouded 
 over. " Never," writes Southey, " was there a king in whose history 
 the will of Providence may seem to have been more clearly manifested ; 
 so greatly had his victories exceeded all bounds of reasonable hope, so 
 much had his reverses surpassed all reasonable apprehension ! Well 
 might Edward have exclaimed with the preacher " that all is vanity," 
 when he had survived the wife of his bosom, the son of his youth and 
 of his proudest and dearest hopes, his prosperity, his popularity, the 
 respect of his chiefs, and the love of his people ; for, after the loss of 
 his son, his moral and intellectual strength gave way, and he fell under 
 subjection to an artful and rapacious woman. In this, however, pos- 
 terity has been just, that it has judged of him, not by the failure of his 
 
84 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 fortunes and the weakness of his latter days, but by the general tenor 
 and the great and abiding consequences of his long and glorious reign." 
 The succeeding reign of Richard the Second brings us to another 
 of those periods of English history, which are illustrated by Shakspeare's 
 historical plays; and, henceforward, the dramatic illustration will be 
 found to continue uninterrupted during well-nigh a century, and during 
 seven consecutive reigns. Of the ten " Chronicle-Plays " which Shak- 
 speare composed from the annals of his country, eight are devoted to 
 one grand period, and that period is thus illustrated with extraordinary 
 completeness. It is the time between the reign of Richard the Second 
 and Richard the Third, comprehending the intermediate reigns of the 
 fourth, fifth, and sixth Henries, and the fourth and fifth Edwards. 
 The subject of this era is the great civil conflict between the two 
 branches of the Plantagenet family, the houses of Lancaster and York ; 
 and Shakspeare has represented this struggle from its earliest beginning 
 down to the final catastrophe upon Bosworth Field. He has traced the 
 contest back to its primal cause to the very elements of its moral 
 origin ; and has then followed it onward through all its vicissitudes 
 through the multiform retribution with which, by turns, the sins of 
 each party were visited ; and, marking the ebb and flow of the bloody 
 tide of civil war, he has traced its course to the day when the sceptre 
 of England passed for ever from the race of the Plantagenets. 
 
 Shakspeare has treated this large historical theme England's great 
 business in the fifteenth century in a series of eight plays so closely 
 connected, so interwoven with each other, following one another in so 
 close and express succession, that they may be regarded as the eight 
 acts of one grand tragedy the drama of the historic life of very near a 
 century. You will observe, therefore, that Shakspeare has taken one 
 great era of English history, and that, too, in its most ample form, 
 in its fullest extent, and he has completed the dramatic picture of it ; 
 the work is entire it is finished. Looking, as we are apt to do, at 
 these "Chronicle-Plays" separately, we do not appreciate the magnitude 
 of the poet's achievement in the department of history ; and it is only 
 by taking a comprehensive view, and contemplating the unity of this 
 series of plays, that we learn the grandeur of the theme and the sub- 
 limity of the genius which accomplished it. The tragedy of Richard 
 the Second, the two parts of Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, the 
 three parts of Henry the Sixth, and the tragedy of Richard the Third 
 constitute, in truth, one splendid drama, unparalleled, nay, unap- 
 proached, in all imaginative literature. The subject of it may be 
 described as the decline and fall of the Plantagenet dynasty the down- 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 85 
 
 fall of the dominion which had endured during an eventful period of 
 three hundred and fifty years. The two historical plays which stand 
 detached from this series " King John " and " Henry the Eighth " 
 may be brought into relation with it by considering King John, as 
 Schlegel proposes, a kind of prologue to the series, inasmuch as it 
 represents an earlier period with all the varied elements of the early 
 mediaeval times; and, on the other hand, by regarding Henry the 
 Eighth as an epilogue, representing the beginning of the new political 
 and social condition of England in modern times. We have thus all 
 these "Chronicle-Plays," constituting one great historical poem, in 
 which the poet's imagination, taking the subject from the annals of his 
 country, has created this life-like spectacle of the fortunes of kings and 
 princes their glories and their woes their high estate and the deep 
 precipitation from it the splendour and the pride of their lives, and 
 the tragic misery of their deaths i and, with all this, the weal and wel- 
 fare of the nation, and its disasters and chastisement; and, surely, 
 never was there such wonderful fulfilment of the wished-for vision of 
 Milton when, in the " Penseroso," he exclaims 
 
 " Let gorgeous Tragedy, 
 With seeptered pall, come sweeping by, 
 Presenting Thebes, or Pelop's line, 
 Or the tale of Troy divine, 
 Or what (though rare), of later age 
 Ennobled hath the buskin'd stage." 
 
 I have spoken of these historical plays as forming a connected series, 
 and giving a continuous dramatic representation of an era of English 
 history ; it is, however, also to be borne in mind that each one of them 
 is complete in itself, and has its own dramatic unity. I shall have 
 occasion to use them in regular succession, and to show with what con- 
 summate skill, Shakspeare has linked these plays together one the 
 sequel to the other. It is when we contemplate them as the parts of 
 one great drama, that we are most deeply impressed with their 
 historical value, and with the poet-historian's power ; for it is then that 
 we are enabled to behold the whole revolution of the wheel of kingly 
 fortune, as it makes its large circuit through the space of near a 
 century ; it is then that we can see, in what else seems so chanceful, the 
 hand that turns the wheel of fortune, and learn the workings of that 
 even-handed justice, which sends its retribution, if not promptly to the 
 guilty, blowly, but certainly, to the second and third generations of the 
 guilty. Taking these plays as one ample poem, I know not where else 
 
86 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 to look for such varied and splendid teachings of the lessons of retribu- 
 tive justice. We shall see how the firmly-seated dynasty of Planta- 
 genets fortified by long possession and its lineage from the Norman 
 Conqueror is forced by the frailties of the second Richard from the due 
 course of hereditary succession ; we shall see the Lancastrian usurpa- 
 tion first established with the forms, at least, of law, then raised to the 
 highest glory of the monarchy by Henry the Fifth's splendid career of 
 foreign conquest, and then by the bloody strife of the Roses, utterly cast 
 down. We shall afterwards follow the victorious progress of the house 
 of York onward to the darkening of their fortunes, to the secret 
 slaughter of the child-king, Edward the Fifth, and the more open 
 death, in the face of the offended heavens the soldier's death of the 
 last of the Pantagenets on Bosworth Field, 
 
 In proceeding to that period of English history which is illustrated 
 by the tragedy of Richard the Second, let me advert to the fact that, 
 in this play, Shakspeare has treated history in a manner widely different 
 from that in King John. In forming a drama out of the historical 
 events of the reign of King John, the poet had no choice but to use a 
 large liberty with the actual succession of these events, separated as 
 they were in point of time, and to create a dramatic unity, by which 
 the beginning and the close of the reign should be morally connected : 
 it was necessary, too, to mould the history in such a way as to invent 
 the dramatic action for the personages of the play. Now in Richard 
 the Second the historical materials were very different : the history 
 grows out of Richard's character ; indeed, his character is the history, 
 so that the poet is the historian; because, in presenting character, 
 which is essential in dramatic poetry, he is, at the same time, telling 
 the history. In this case, therefore, the poet follows the footsteps of 
 the chronicler, the play and the chronicle are in the same path. In 
 King John, one of the most important, and certainly the noblest person 
 of the play, Philip Falconbridge, is an imaginary character, most 
 happily created and wisely used for the purposes of history as well as of 
 the drama. But in Richard the Second there is no imaginary 
 character ; all the personages are strictly and actually historical. The 
 tragedy of King John comprehended the whole of the reign the events 
 of sixteen years ; in Richard the Second, Shakspeare has confined the 
 drama to the close of the reign, only a little more than one year out 
 of the twenty-two during which Richard occupied the throne. The 
 whole of this previous portion of the reign is omitted, and we know it 
 in the play only by its results, and the retrospect that is occasionally 
 given. 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 87 
 
 The opening of the tragedy of Richard the Second displays the 
 various elements which are to be wrought to the great historic issues 
 of the time ; and it shows the condition of the realm after the lapse of 
 about twenty years of Richard's sway. We see at once the state 
 distracted by a turbulent and proud nobility, and division and discord 
 in the royal family. Somewhat more gradually, the poet brings into 
 view the character of the monarch, beneath the lofty majesty of whose 
 demeanour, which first strikes the mind, we soon discover the fickle, 
 arbitrary temper and unreal strength of that pride which is to work 
 out its own ruin in a career of fflTy and dissimulation and tyranny. 
 In the play, Richard comes on the s^e such a man as the previous 
 portion of his life had made him ; and to that previous period we must 
 therefore look back in order to understand his character and his history. 
 We must look there to discover what it was, or what causes combined to 
 fill him with such pride ; to learn what outward influences had worked 
 upon his natural disposition so as to make him at once so haughty and 
 so helpless. Before we proceed to the study of the tragic chastisement of 
 his vices and his frailties, we must needs look at the origin and growth 
 of that tyrannic pride, which rendered him so fit a subject to illustrate 
 the retributive and chastening influences, which are the high theme of 
 tragedy. 
 
 Richard the Second, when he succeeded to his grandfather, Edward 
 the Third, was a boy of about eleven years of age, that critical time 
 of life when the innocence and purity of childhood are gone. He suc- 
 ceeded to a reign which, during the long term of fifty years, had been 
 triumphant abroad and unresisted at home ; and the strength and glory 
 of that reign were well fitted to fill the mind of the boy-king with the 
 belief that the throne was impregnable, and the sceptre had super- 
 human might. This pride may well have been heightened, too, by the 
 ancestral feeling inspired by the heroic character and the martial 
 prowess of his father, Edward, the Black Prince, who, unhappily for 
 his son, had died before the succession reached him. There was every 
 thing in Richard's thoughts of the past to fire his pride ; and, when he 
 mounted the throne, he felt that it was upheld, not only by the moral 
 influences of a nation's love for the memory of his forefathers, but also 
 by the counsel and power of the surviving sons of Edward the Third, 
 Lancaster and Gloucester and York ; and the boy little dreamed that 
 the multitude of his uncles was to prove one of the miseries of his 
 reign, and that, at last, a kinsman's hand was to thrust him from the 
 throne, and to a prison, and to his grave. He could not see how much 
 of dangerous ambition lurked in the hearts of his uncles ; nor could he 
 
88 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 understand that, whilst the last king had bequeathed to him and to his 
 people the glory of his foreign conquests, there was the legacy, too, of 
 the cost of conquest and military renown ; and that, in his day, the 
 poetry of war was to be followed by that which is its inevitable sequel, 
 the prose of debt and taxes and extortion. 
 
 It was Richard's fate to live in times when his pomp and pride 
 became doubly dangerous. In the latter part of the fourteenth century 
 a change was coming over the spirit of the people of Europe ; there 
 were indications, not to be mistaken, that government was no longer 
 to be an affair of kings and nobles only, but the popular element was 
 beginning to manifest itself, and not in England alone, but in other 
 lands. It is a fact in European history worthy of careful study, that, 
 at the time I am referring to, there was a contemporaneous movement 
 of the lower classes of the body of the people in various countries. 
 France felt it, and Flanders and England. The stern slavery under 
 the feudal system was relaxing ; the voice of the serf, who so long in 
 silence had endured his bondage, was at length heard ; the spirit of 
 freedom, which heretofore had animated only the noble and high-born 
 was now inflaming the hearts of those who, under the bonds of villain- 
 service, had been part of the ownership of the soil, like a rooted tree or 
 stone earth-bound." There was an almost simultaneous rising of the 
 lower orders of the people : and not being confined to any one country, 
 it is to be explained only by general, and doubtless, various causes 
 affecting European society and government at large. It would carry me 
 beyond my subject were I to attempt to make any inquiry into these causes. 
 It so happened that when the great body of the people was gradually 
 rising in the scale of civilization, the pressure on them was increased ; 
 they rose up under it to assert their natural rights, or what may better 
 be called, their simplest civil rights. The popular insurrections in the 
 Flemish towns, in Paris, and in some of the French provinces, and in 
 England, were attended with tumult and bloodshed. Long-continued 
 and heartless neglect and oppression had engendered fierce hatred of 
 the former masters, and political enfranchisement was sought in the 
 wild spirit of revenge : so true is it, that " the great and hardest 
 problem of political wisdom is, to prevent any part of society from 
 becoming so socially degraded by poverty, that their political enfran- 
 chisement becomes dangerous or even mischievous." 
 
 This danger was encountered by the young King Richard in the 
 early part of his reign ; and I have referred to it, because the success 
 with which it was quelled was well fitted to aggravate that pride, 
 the formation of which in his character I proposed to trace. Richard 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 89 
 
 was but sixteen years of age, when the tranquillity of his kingdom was 
 broken by that extensive and formidable insurrection, which, from the 
 name of its leader, is called " Wat Tyler's Rebellion." The oppression 
 of the serfs, and the exactions under which the common people were 
 suffering, had produced a high state of popular exasperation. Little 
 was needed to cause an outbreak against the government. This natural 
 sense of injury in the minds of the people was further excited and mis- 
 guided by a seditious and fanatic priest John Ball who went about 
 the country teaching revolutionary lessons in their most destructive 
 forms in sermons, with the proverb, in doggrel verse, for his text 
 
 " When Adam delved and Eve span, 
 Who was then the gentleman ?" 
 
 The insurgents assembled in the neighbouring counties, and came up 
 to London sixty thousand strong ; they seized the Tower, threw open 
 the prison doors, destroyed the palace of the Duke of Lancaster, put to 
 death many of the citizens who attempted to withstand them, and led 
 the Primate of England to execution. It was a vast and triumphant 
 riot ; but, in the midst of it, with an intrepidity worthy of the son of 
 a heroic father, the young king the manly boy rode into the 
 metropolis, attended by only sixty horsemen, to meet and conciliate the 
 multitude of his malcontent subjects assembled by thousands and flushed 
 with the sudden success of their revolt. As soon as the insurgents 
 beheld their leader struck down, they were won back to their allegiance, 
 it would seem, by the mere presence of their youthful sovereign ; and 
 what could have occurred more fitted to feed the pride of such a heart 
 as his, than the thought that he possessed such power over the hearts 
 of thousands of his incensed and turbulent people ? It made him proud 
 of himself and still more proud of the might of royalty. 
 
 The suppression of Wat Tyler's rebellion was succeeded by a confused 
 and uncertain period of intrigue and conspiracy and crime. The king 
 surrounded himself with unworthy favourites, who flattered him to his 
 ruin. He gave himself to a career of lavish expenditure, of wanton 
 misrule, and despotic pride. His kinsmen and his uncles became odious 
 to him, and he to them. In Parliament, dethronement and exile were 
 openly spoken of, and the fate of his great grandsire, Edward the Second, 
 darkly hinted at. The discontented nobility began to confer and con- 
 federate against the king ; and his own uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, 
 placed himself at the head of one of the hostile factions. The king was 
 beset with perils, but what was worse, he was beset with evil counsellors, 
 and his own evil passions. Flattery and self-indulgence had been 
 
90 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 working their mischief on his nature, and he was on the downward 
 path of degeneracy. He could not now meet his foes as, when a boy, 
 he went forth to meet sixty thousand infuriated rebels, and, with open 
 intrepidity, overawe and subdue them. The boy was brave because he 
 was innocent ; but now, dark counsels of revenge and treachery seemed 
 good to him, and poison and assassination were thought surer and easier 
 means, by which a king could sweep his enemies from off the earth. The 
 Duke of Gloucester was hurried away to a distant prison, where, 
 mysteriously, he died a death of violence ; and henceforth the guilt, 
 which the king has added to his frailties and his follies, is to haunt his 
 life to its close. Retribution, it is said, walks with a foot of velvet, and 
 strikes with a hand of steel ; and now its noiseless steps are towards 
 this king, arid its hand uplifted. 
 
 It is at this point of his reign and his character that Shakspeare 
 brings Richard the Second before us. The quarrel between the son 
 of the Duke of Lancaster, Henry Hereford, called Bolingbroke, and 
 Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Norfolk, with which the play opens, is to 
 be decided, as the king determines, by the wager of battle, the single 
 combat of the two noblemen that ancient feudal form of trial in 
 which it was supposed Heaven would mark the righteous party by 
 giving him the victory. The lists at Coventry are made ready for the 
 combat ; the combatants appear with their heralds and in all the 
 pomp of chivalry, and in the presence of the king and many of the 
 nobles. The merits of this controversy between Bolingbroke and 
 Mowbray are involved in the obscurity which covers the intrigues and 
 half-treasonable plots of this reign. It was one of those doubtful cases 
 in which neither the accusation nor the defence admitted of notorious 
 proof; ancj, therefore, according to the feudal jurisprudence, the trial 
 of combat was awarded, and the Almighty was to be the judge, His 
 will being, as it was believed, manifested by the result. To that judg- 
 ment, Richard, though he awarded the trial, is not willing to commit 
 it ; and he interposes the decree of his mortal majesty at the last 
 moment, when the trumpets have sounded, and the combatants are 
 arrayed in complete armour, and, upon their armed steeds, are setting 
 forward to encounter each other in deadly conflict. At that instant, 
 the king throws down his warder, the truncheon of command as a 
 signal to prevent the combat. Whether this was caprice or a deeper 
 stroke of policy and dissimulation, the reasons of the king seem hollow 
 and insincere ; and, as he professes his desire to spare the shedding of 
 such blood as flowed in the veins of the high-born combatants, and to 
 save the kingdom from the feuds of civil warfare that might ensue, we 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 9J 
 
 cannot help looking forward in the history, and thinking that thd 
 throwing down of the king's warder in the lists at Coventry may be 
 considered the prelude to that fierce struggle between the houses of 
 York and Lancaster, which distracted England during the greater part 
 of half a century, and in which the best blood of the nation was poured 
 out like water. The act of the king, on this occasion, was the beginning 
 of a series of events, which close only with the battle of Bosworth Field ; 
 and, if his professions were insincere, and his decree tyrannical, there 
 was fearful retribution in the future, when, in consequence of what 
 followed this event, the nation suffered thirty years of civil war, and 
 four kings perished by violent deaths. 
 
 The judgment which the king pronounced is arbitrary ; for, instead 
 of deciding between the parties, there is the easier tyranny of com- 
 promise, by inflicting the penalty of guilt upon both of them. It is 
 arbitrary, too, in the proportions of the penalty. Norfolk is banished 
 for life, and Bolingbroke for the term of ten years, which is afterwards, 
 in the same arbitrary temper, reduced to six years. It is not this 
 inequality alone that creates a sympathy with Norfolk. We see Boling- 
 broke coming to the combat with a spirit that seems to exult chiefly in 
 the consciousness of his strength, " As confident," he boasts, " as is 
 the falcon's flight against a bird." There is a deeper feeling in the 
 spirit with which Mowbray meets the accusation, and confronts his 
 adversary : 
 
 " However Heaven or fortune cast my lot, 
 There lives or dies, true to King Richard's throne, 
 A loyal, just, and upright gentleman. 
 Never did captive with a freer heart 
 Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace 
 Hia golden, uncontrolled enfranchisement, 
 More than my dancing-soul doth celebrate 
 This feast of battle with mine adversary. 
 Most mighty liege, and my companion peers, 
 Take from my mouth the wish of happy years : 
 As gentle and as jocund as to jest, 
 Go I to fight. Truth hath a quiet breast." 
 
 This does, indeed, sound like the voice of truth; it does seem the 
 utterance of "a loyal, just, and upright gentleman/' Our pity for 
 him, as an injured man, is deepened, when he replies so meekly, yet so 
 feelingly, in that beautiful and pathetic lament for his perpetual exile : 
 
 " A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege, 
 And all unlocked for from your highness's mouth ; 
 
92 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 A dearer merit, not so deep a maim, 
 
 As to be cast forth in the common air, 
 
 Have I deserved at your highness's hands. 
 
 The language I have learned these forty years, 
 
 My native English, now I must forego : 
 
 And now my tongue's use is to me no more 
 
 Than an unstringed viol, or a harp, 
 
 Or like a cunning instrument cased up, 
 
 Or being open, put into his hands 
 
 That knows no touch to tune the harmony. 
 
 Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue, 
 
 Doubly portcullissed with my teeth and lips ; 
 
 And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance 
 
 Is made my gaolor to attend on me. 
 
 I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, 
 
 Too far in years to be a pupil now ; 
 
 What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death, 
 
 Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath ?" 
 
 When the Duke of Lancaster, old John of Gaunt, strives to reconcile 
 his son to a shorter exile hy telling him 
 
 " The sullen passage of thy weary steps 
 Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set 
 The precious jewel of thy home-return," 
 
 Bolingbroke replies in that fine and familiar strain of poetry 
 
 u Oh ! who can hold a fire in his hand, 
 By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ? 
 Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
 By bare imagination of a feast ? 
 Or wallow naked in December snow, 
 By thinking on fantastic summer's heat? 
 Oh, no ! the apprehension of the good 
 Gives but the greater feeling to the worse." 
 
 This complaint comes to us with less of real pathos than the piteous 
 lament of Norfolk. It is later in the drama just at the time that 
 Bolingbroke returns from his unfinished exile, and with the disloyal 
 purpose of thrusting Richard from his throne and seizing the sceptre 
 for himself that we are told the story of what remained of the career 
 of Norfolk : 
 
 " Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought 
 
 For Jesu Christ ; in glorious Christian field 
 
 Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross, 
 
 Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens ; 
 
THE EEIGN OF EICHAKD THE SECOND. 93 
 
 And toiled with works of war, retired himself 
 To Italy ; and there, at Venice, gave 
 His body to that pleasant country's earth, 
 And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, 
 Under whose colours he had fought so long." 
 
 No sooner is Bolingbroke banished than, as Shakspeare discloses the 
 historical truth, we perceive that it was timid suspicion and jealousy in 
 the breast of Richard, that prompted the sentence against his kinsman. 
 The popular feeling which the exile courted and won, as he went away, 
 did not escape the notice of the king and his favourites : 
 
 " Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green, 
 Observed his courtship to the common people: 
 How he did seem to dive into their hearts, 
 With humble and familiar courtesy ; 
 What reverence he did throw away on slaves, 
 Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles, 
 And patient underbearing of his fortune, 
 As 'twere to banish their effects with him. 
 Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ; 
 A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, 
 And had the tribute of his supple knee, 
 With ' Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends !' 
 As were our England in reversion his, 
 And he our subjects' next degree in hope." 
 
 Happy would it have been for the frail and feeble Richard, if, 
 instead of letting the affections of his people be won away from him by 
 the hands of a demagogue he had secured them by honourable means 
 and a dutiful sovereignty, to be at once the prop and the pride of his 
 throne. Relieved from restraints and apprehensions of Bolingbroke's 
 presence, the king precipitates himself still faster on his downward career 
 of folly and crime. The wasteful pomp and pleasures of his court bring 
 new temptations to tyrannous rapacity, and the recklessness of his 
 character is further displayed, when with fitful energy, he resolves to 
 conduct the war against his rebel subjects in Ireland : 
 
 "We will ourself in person to this war. 
 And, for our coffers, with too great a court, 
 And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light, 
 We are enforced to farm our royal realm ; 
 The revenue whereof shall furnish us 
 For our affairs in hand : if that come short, 
 Our substitute at home shall have blank charters ; 
 Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich, 
 They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold, 
 And send them after to supply our wants." 
 
94 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 A long-continued course of self-indulgence, together with the flattery 
 of his minions, hardens the heart of King Richard more and more ; 
 and when he is told that his uncle, old John of Gaunt, " time-honoured 
 Lancaster," is " grievous sick," the spendthrift king exclaims, with utter 
 and indecent heartlessness 
 
 "Now put it, Heaven, in his physician's mind 
 To help him to his grave immediately ! 
 The lining of his coflers shall make coats 
 To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars. 
 Come, gentlemen, let's all go visit him : 
 Pray God, we may make haste, and come too late." 
 
 The death scene of John of Gaunt is a dramatic invention, hut 
 Shakspeare has made an admirable historical use of it, by putting into 
 the mouth of Lancaster, not only a dying man's prophecy of the ruin 
 that is to follow Richard's riotous misrule, but also one of those mag- 
 nificent poetic eulogies on England, by which the poet has fostered the 
 national feeling of his countrymen. The misgovernment in Richard's 
 reign grieves the spirit of the dying Lancaster ; because, remembering 
 the splendour and the strength of his father's reign, he thinks of that 
 small island England, as 
 
 '* This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 This other Eden, demi-paradise ; 
 This fortress, built by nature for herself, 
 Against infection and the hand of war ; 
 This happy breed of men, this little world ; 
 This precious stone, set in the silver sea, 
 Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
 Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
 Against the envy of less happier lands ; 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." 
 
 The remonstrance and the warnings of his dying uncle are of no avail 
 to stop the headlong course of the king ; they serve but to exasperate 
 his royal pride. Immediately on Lancaster's death, Richard, reckless 
 of law and right, seized upon his estates the patrimony of the banished 
 Bolingbroke, who, by his father's death, was now Duke of Lancaster. 
 When this last tyranny is perpetrated, the warning voice of the Duke 
 of York, the gentlest of Richard's uncles the last surviving son of 
 Edward the Third is raised, and he strives to bring the king to a 
 better mind by the memory of his father : 
 
 " I am the last of noble Edward's sons, 
 Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first ; 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 95 
 
 In war was never lion raged more fierce, 
 In peace was never gentle lamb more mild, 
 Than was that young and princely gentleman : 
 His face thou hast, for even so looked he, 
 Accomplished with the number of thy hours ; 
 But when he frowned, it was against the French, 
 And not against his friends ; his noble hand, 
 Did win what he did spend, and spent not that, 
 Which his triumphant father's hand had won : 
 His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood, 
 But bloody with the enemies of his kin." 
 
 York warns the king, moreover, that, by the lawless seizure of Here- 
 ford's patrimony, he plucks a thousand dangers on his head, and 
 loses a thousand well-disposed hearts. But the poison of flattery and 
 of criminal self-indulgence, and the demoralizing irresponsibility of 
 power, have wrought their mischief so deep into the soul of Richard, 
 that neither rebuke nor kindly admonition, nor the fear of impending 
 evil, can help him. He is doomed nothing can save his sceptre or his 
 life. 
 
 We have thus far followed, as Shakspeare and the chroniclers have 
 traced it, the downward progress of Richard the Second, until we be- 
 hold him reduced to that pitch of moral degradation, which, in this 
 tragedy, is shown with such matchless impartiality. Morally, the king 
 is to be sunk no lower ; and let us now see how the poet-historian, with 
 equal truth and with the large charity of a great poet's heart, raises 
 him up again, not, indeed, to his primal power, but to our sympathy 
 and pity. The heart, which had been hardened by flattery and the 
 luxuries of arbitrary force, is to be softened ; the sleeping humanity in 
 his character is to be awakened ; his dead conscience to be brought to 
 life ; and all this, which neither fear nor reproof nor kindness could do, 
 is to be effected by what has been finely called " the power and divinity 
 of suffering. This is the very theme of tragedy ; the change in Richard's 
 character, or rather the development of those better elements in it 
 which, in prosperity, were well-nigh utterly perishing, came from the 
 chastisement of affliction; how it came, is shown by Shakspeare in 
 this drama, in which he fulfils at once the high functions of poet, his- 
 torian, and moralist. 
 
 The king hastens back from Ireland, because the banished Boling- 
 broke, regardless of his sentence, has returned to England. He has 
 landed at Ravenspurg, his professed purpose being simply to claim his 
 patrimony, but every step he takes is a step towards the possession of 
 the throne. The king has returned to meet a great but growing 
 
96 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 danger the magnitude of it making it at once awful but shadowy to 
 his mind. He faces the danger, not with a wise or heroic self-con- 
 fidence, for that he never possessed, unless it was in his youth, when he 
 met the insurgents in London. He is now not accompanied with 
 worthless favourites, who would delude him with flattery or tempt him 
 to criminal defences ; he is surrounded by men who deal truthfully 
 with him, and do not shrink from telling him of the sad realities that 
 are before and around him. As soon as he touches the soil of England, 
 he gives utterance to a strain of sensibility which, if somewhat visionary, 
 still shows a strange blending of genuine tenderness, of royal pride, 
 and of conscious weakness : 
 
 " I weep for joy, 
 
 To stand upon my kingdom once again. 
 Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand, 
 Though rebels wound thee with their horses' hoofs; 
 As a long-parted mother with her child 
 Plays fondly with her tears and smiles, in meeting; 
 So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, 
 And do the favour with my royal hands." 
 
 He conjures the earth 
 
 " Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle earth !" 
 
 He invokes it to sting rebellious feet with nettles, and send forth adders 
 to throw death upon his enemies ; then, observing, perhaps, the im- 
 patient looks of his companions, he adds 
 
 "Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords ! 
 This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones 
 Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
 Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms." 
 
 When his kinsman Aumerle gently hints that his cause needs prompt 
 and manly action, the king, looking from the earth, which he had first 
 invoked, up to heaven, rises to a loftier state of feeling in that splendid 
 strain of poetry 
 
 *' Discomfortable cousin ! knowest thou not 
 That when the searching eye of heaven is hid 
 Behind the globe, and lights the lower world, 
 Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, 
 In murders, and in outrage, bloody here ; 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 97 
 
 But when, from under this terrestrial ball, 
 
 He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, 
 
 And darts his light through every guilty hole, 
 
 Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, 
 
 The cloak of night being plucked from off their backs, 
 
 Stand bare and naked, trentbling at themselves ? 
 
 So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, 
 
 Who all this while hath revelled in the night, 
 
 Whilst we were wandering with the antipodes, 
 
 Shall see us rising in our throne the east, 
 
 His treasons will sit blushing in his face, 
 
 Not able to endure the sight of day, 
 
 But self-affrighted, tremble at his sin. 
 
 Not all the water in the rough, rude sea, 
 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed king : 
 
 The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
 
 The deputy elected by the Lord. 
 
 For every man that Bolingbroke hath pressed, 
 
 To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, 
 
 God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 
 
 A glorious angel : then, if angels fight, 
 
 Weak men must fall ; for heaven still guards the right." 
 
 The doctrine of the divine and indefeasible right of kings surely never 
 received a more magnificent exposition ; and we need not wonder that 
 Dr. Johnson, with his high-toned toryism, referred to it exultingly, 
 especially to prove that that political theory was of earlier origin than 
 the era of the Stuart kings, this play having been composed during the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth. But it must be remembered that Shakspeare 
 speaks dramatically ; and, while he devotes this lofty strain of poetry to 
 kingly power jure divino, he shows the insufficiency of the doctrine in 
 the actual working of the government ; and, what is more important, 
 he puts it in the mouth of a king, the sacred promise of whose corona- 
 tion-oath had been violated by wilful misrule, and who forgot that, if 
 the doctrine of the divine right of royalty gave him power over his 
 people, it imposed an awful responsibility to God, that could not be 
 neglected without peril. 
 
 The evil tidings of growing disloyalty and rebellion came full and 
 fast upon the unhappy Richard ; and, after some fitful flashes of reso- 
 lution and royal pride, he sinks into that strain of melancholy 
 
 " For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings ; 
 How some have been deposed, some slain in war 
 Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed 
 H 
 
98 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed ; 
 All murihered: for, within the hollow crown 
 That rounds the mortal temples of a king, 
 Keeps death his court : and there the antic sits, 
 Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp, 
 Allowing him a breath, a little scene 
 To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks 
 Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 
 As if this flesh, which walls about our life, 
 "Were brass impregnable ; and humoured thus, 
 Comes at the last, and with a little pin 
 Bores through his castle wall and farewell, king!" 
 
 King Richard is beginning to feel that he is a man ; and, as chastise- 
 ment brings this change across his spirit, our feelings yearn towards 
 him. When he encounters Bolingbroke, he recovers, in some degree, 
 the decorum of a kingly demeanour, but the sense of his degradation, 
 the fall of his pride, breaks out again : 
 
 " God ! God ! that e'er this tongue of mine, 
 That laid the sentence of dread banishment 
 On yon proud man, should take it off again 
 "With words of sooth ! Oh ! that I were as great 
 As is my grief, or lesser than my name ! 
 Or that I could forget what I have been! 
 Or not remember what I must be now !" 
 
 He is brought to London, still a king, but, in truth, a captive; and a 
 deeper compassion is inspired by that beautiful description of the entry 
 into the city, which is spoken by the Duke of York. While Boling- 
 broke's return was hailed with the joyful greetings of all voices of the 
 people 
 
 "Men's eyes 
 
 Did scowl on Richard ; no man cried, God save him 
 
 No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home; 
 
 But dust was thrown upon his sacred head ; 
 
 Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off, 
 
 His face still combating with tears and smiles, 
 
 The badges of his grief and patience, 
 
 That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel'd 
 
 The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, 
 
 And barbarism itself have pitied him." 
 
 Richard resigns his throne, and is also deposed by the parliament ; or 
 rather, it is through such formalities that Bolingbroke dethrones him, 
 and seizes the succession. The deposition scene in Westminster Hall 
 
THE REIGN OF RICHARD THE SECOND. 99 
 
 as Shakspeare has represented it, shows the last struggle of Richard's 
 fading majesty, his unsteady mind running off perpetually in wayward 
 motions of fancy and feeling shrinking from the final and irrevocable 
 expression of consent to relinquish the crown spending what strength 
 was left in words. Meditating on the annihilation of his royalty, and 
 yet dreading the necessity of the slightest effort in word or deed, there 
 comes from the very bottom of his heart that wild and piteous wish : 
 
 " Oh ! that I were a mockery king of snow, 
 Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, 
 To melt myself away in water drops !" 
 
 The crown is no longer on the brow of Richard ; the sceptre is no 
 longer in his hand ; and the dark shadow of his tragic death is, to my 
 imagination, thrown distinctly forward in the few stern words in which 
 Bolingbroke pronounces the ominous command 
 
 " Go, some of you, convey him to the Tower." 
 
 Richard is soon removed to the dungeon of Pomfret Castle. The prison- 
 scene of a dethroned king seldom fails to be the death-scene. In what 
 way he was deprived of life is doubtful; whether by the slow misery of 
 famine, as the poet Gray has represented, 
 
 " Close by the regal chair, 
 Fell Thirst and Famine scowl 
 A baleful smile upon their baffled guest," 
 
 or by the violence of assault, as in the tragedy. The gentle and 
 lofty morality of Shakspeare was never more finely shown than in 
 this, that before Richard's soul is summoned from earth, there is 
 added to the utterance of his anguish the contrite confession of a mis- 
 spent life. You may remember how, in the tragedy of King Lear, the 
 crazed mind of the " child-changed father " was soothed and healed, 
 not only by Cordelia's voice, but by the remediate virtue of soft music. 
 In the dungeon scene in Richard the Second, the poet has likewise 
 appealed to the power of music for the different purpose of moving to a 
 healthy wakefulness a distracted, I may say, a delirious, conscience. 
 A sound of rude music reaches the imprisoned king ; he listens in that 
 mood in which the fancy in solitude and sorrow is so quickly appre- 
 hensive of all, even chance, impressions, and then exclaims 
 
 u How sour sweet music is, 
 When time is broke, and no proportion kept! 
 So is it in the music of men's lives. 
 
100 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 And here have I the daintiness of ear, 
 To check time, broke in a disordered string ; 
 But, for the concord of my state and time, 
 Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. 
 I wasted time, and now doth time waste me." 
 
 When his thoughts run on into the conscious misery of his down- 
 fall, still the music calls forth a kindly feeling and a blessing ; for he 
 thinks of it as the last tribute of some humble and still loyal subject, 
 who is lingering with affection about his prison walls : 
 
 " This music mads me, let it sound no more ; 
 For though it have holp madmen to their wits, 
 In me, it seems it will make wise men mad. 
 Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me ! 
 For 'tis a sign of love ; and love to Richard 
 Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world." 
 
 Richard meets the murderous assault of Exton and the armed servants 
 with prompt and manly valour ; and his last words are expressive of 
 the remanent feeling of royalty, and of his chastened and restored 
 humanity : 
 
 " That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire, 
 That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand 
 Hath with the king's blood stained the king's own land. 
 Mount, mount, my soul ! thy seat is up on high, 
 "While my gross flesh sinks downward here to die." 
 
 Thus it is that Shakspeare a great historian teaches how 
 tragedy " the power and divinity of suffering " can bring the weak, 
 the wilful, and wicked to a better mind, and can win for them a just 
 sympathy ; so that one would fain close the story of this reign in the 
 same compassionate spirit with which Froissart, who was an eye- 
 witness of it, ends his chronicle of that period of English history by 
 saying : " King Richard was buried at Langley. God pardon his 
 sins and have mercy on his soul !" 
 
VI. 
 
 f frt pp of ftittB ifee |ottrt|. 
 
 HENRY THE FOURTH'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE AN USURPATION CHARACTER OF THE 
 KING ERROR OF HISTORICAL SEASONING CARLYLE ON CROMWELL HENRY'S 
 EDUCATION AND EXILE ANALOGY TO MACBETH His POPULARITY COUNSEL TO 
 
 HIS SON HIS VISIT TO FOREIGN LANDS PALESTINE CASTILE - HlS RETURN- 
 
 SEVERE POLICY AFTER HIS CORONATION THE BISHOP OF CARLISLE SHAKSPEARE'S 
 " CHRONICAL-PLAYS" TRAGIC - COMIC ELEMENT HERE FALSTAFF AND PRINCE HAL 
 HENRY THE FOURTH'S REIGN WITHOUT NATIONAL INTEREST UNQUIET TIMES 
 PLAN OF HIS CRUSADE ITS ORIGIN AND HIS VISIT TO THE HOLY LAND INTERCESSION 
 OF THE GREEK EMPEROR FOR ENGLISH AID VISIT OF PAL^OLOGUS TO LONDON ST. 
 BERNARD PLAN OF CRUSADE FRUSTRATED INSURRECTION IN SCOTLAND PERCY AND 
 DOUGLAS BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE MORTIMER GLENDOWER CHEVY CHASE 
 HOTSPUR AND FALSTAFF THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY DEATH OF HENRY THE 
 FOURTH. 
 
 WHEN Henry of Lancaster ascended the throne of England, the 
 regular line of hereditary succession was broken for the first time for 
 two hundred years. The due course of the law of inheritance had 
 been followed during that period of time, and was thus strongly for- 
 tified by prescription and consent. The rights of no lawful heir to the 
 throne had been violated since the innocent Arthur of Brittany fell a 
 victim to the ruthless ambition of King John. After that time the 
 crown regularly passed from father to son, from first-born to first-born, 
 during two centuries, until the aspiring Bolingbroke placed it upon his 
 own brow. Not only was the rightful monarch, the frail and offending 
 Richard, discrowned and dispossessed, imprisoned and soon slaughtered, 
 but the legitimate heir was kept . out of his inheritance by that strong 
 Lancasterian usurpation, which was not shaken until the violated claim 
 was revived, causing a civil war which lasted for thirty years, and in 
 which Englishmen died by the hands of Englishmen, in no fewer than 
 twelve pitched battles. 
 
 I have endeavoured to show how the follies and vices of Richard the 
 Second paved the way for Bolingbroke to the throne ; but I purposely 
 confined the view as much as possible to the downfall of Richard, re- 
 serving for consideration the career of his adversary, as he sought to 
 turn the weakness and tyranny of the king to his own great gain, and 
 to rise at last upon the ruins. This career of Bolingbroke's was pro- 
 bably a long and studied course of politic ambition. It proved sue- 
 
102 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 , in so f^r as the grand object of his hopes and aspirations was 
 attained, he gained the throne ; and we shall see whether the posses- 
 sion, so dearly coveted and so strenuously won, brought along with it 
 happy days and a tranquil death. 
 
 I have spoken of the occupation of the English throne by Henry of 
 Lancaster, as the crowning result of long-continued effort and long- 
 cherished purposes of ambitious premeditation ; yet, I am aware that, 
 in the study of history, there is an error, which frequently deludes the 
 student, in this way that, looking at any remarkable achievement of 
 political ambition, we are very apt, and naturally so, to persuade our- 
 selves, that the ambition which has been thus successful must have been 
 more far-seeing and more far-reaching than it really was. We can 
 hardly believe that so great a growth has come from a small seed, and 
 that most of its strength is to be traced to such influences as the mere 
 course of events has given the sun-light and the showers that have 
 touched it, and the winds that have breathed upon it. It is with refer- 
 ence to a later and far more mighty usurper, that Carlyle has referred 
 to this source of error as affecting our judgment of character ; and I 
 quote his opinion, before proceeding further with the consideration 
 of the course of life and action, which placed the Duke of Lancaster 
 on the throne of England. " There is an error," writes Mr. Carlyle, 
 " widely prevalent, which perverts to the very basis our judgments 
 formed about such men as Cromwell, about their ambition, falsity, and 
 such like. It is what I might call substituting the goal of their career 
 for the course and starting-point of it. The vulgar historian of a Crom- 
 well fancies that he had determined on being Protector of England at 
 the time he was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His 
 career lay all mapped out, a programme of the whole drama; which he 
 then, step by step, dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning de- 
 ceptive dramaturgy, as he went on the hollow scheming vTroxpirrjs 
 or play-actor that he was ! This is a radical perversion, all but uni- 
 versal in such cases. And think, for an instant, how different the fact 
 is ! How much does one of its foresee of his own life ? Short way 
 a-head of us it is all dim, an unwound skein of possibilities, of appre- 
 hensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes* This Cromwell had not 
 his life lying all in that fashion of programme, which he needed then,. 
 with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene 
 after scene I Not so. We see it so ; but to him it was in no measure 
 so. What absurdities would fall away of themselves, were this on& 
 undeniable fact kept honestly in view by history ! Historians, indeed*. 
 will tell you that they do keep it in. view ; but look whether such i& 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 103 
 
 practically the fact! Vulgar history, as in this (Crom well's case), 
 omits it altogether ; even the best kinds of history only remember it 
 now and then. To remember it duly, with vigorous perfection, as in 
 the fact it stood, requires indeed a rare faculty, rare, nay, impossible. 
 A very Shakspeare for faculty, or more than Shakspeare, who could 
 enact a brother man's biography, see with the brother man's eyes, at all 
 points of his course, what things he saw ; in short, know his course and 
 him, as few 'historians' are like to do. Half or more of all the 
 thick-plied perversions, which distort our image of Cromwell, will dis- 
 appear if we honestly so much as try to represent them so in sequence, 
 as they were; not in the lump as they 'are thrown down before usl'" 
 
 Bearing in mind the necessity of guarding against this error, let us, 
 before returning to the reign of Henry the Fourth, look back to the 
 previous history, to see what there was which at once favoured and 
 fomented the ambition that led him to the throne. He was the son of 
 a younger son of Edward the Third, and his birth, therefore, gave him 
 the chances of succession, which belong to a younger branch of the 
 royal family. When he reached the years of manhood, animated by 
 the chivalrous spirit of the times, he sought for military adventures in 
 the distant region of Prussia, and travelled afterwards in the 
 Holy Land. This career of foreign travel and adventure not only 
 strengthened his character, but it kept him, for a while at least, 
 aloof, from the voluptuous misrule of Richard's court, so that when he 
 came home the people were ready to look upon him more hopefully and 
 snore confidently than if he had been associated, either with the 
 pleasures of the king, or with the intrigues and conspiracies of the 
 nobles. There seems to have been high ambition in this Lancastrian 
 blood, for his father, John of Gaunt, having married a daughter of 
 Pedro the Cruel, assumed, on the death of that king, the titles and 
 arms of the kingdom of Castile. When, at a later period of his life, he 
 led an expedition to the Spanish peninsula, he intrusted the manage- 
 ment of his affairs in England to his son. " Before his embarkation/' 
 writes Froissart, " and in the presence of his brothers, the Duke of 
 Lancaster appointed his son Henry, Earl of Derby, his lieutenant for 
 whatever concerned him during his absence, and chose for him a set 
 of able advisers. This Henry was a young and handsome knight, son 
 of the Lady Blanche, first Duchess of Lancaster. I never saw two 
 such noble dames, so good, liberal, and courteous, as this lady and the 
 late Queen of England, and never shaft, were I to live a thousand years, 
 which (adds the simple chronicler) is impossible." 
 
 The intellect and temper of Bolingbroke seem to have been those of a 
 
LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 sagacious, wary, and prudent politician ; and dim as all vision into 
 futurity must be, he still could see enough there to tell him that 
 Richard's tenure of the throne would be daily and daily in greater 
 jeopardy, and that if the reign should end, as such reigns are apt to 
 end, in turmoil and confusion, power, in the season of revolution, would 
 tend towards the strong hand and the firm mind. Richard was child- 
 less, too, and on his death the title would pass to the house of Clarence, 
 to find there, not the vigorous grasp of a man's hand, but the more 
 uncertain hold of a child's succession, and of a female lineage. There 
 was, therefore, between the weakness of Richard and the strength of 
 Bolingbroke nothing interposed but weakness. After making every 
 allowance against that historical error of which Carlyle has warned 
 us, we cannot but believe that the crown of England must have been 
 a perpetual prize before the eyes of Bolingbroke, not dazzling his 
 keen vision, but kindling the spirit of his ambition. If ever man 
 was strongly tempted to play the demagogue, and even almost to make 
 the character of the demagogue a virtuous one, it was Bolingbroke. 
 The hearts of the people were with good cause falling away from 
 the king. His crafty kinsman witnessed this, and at the same time, was 
 conscious of his own power to win them to himself. The strong men, 
 who belonged to an elder generation the uncles of the king, the sons 
 of Edward the Third who might have stood in Bolingbroke's way, 
 had the catastrophe of Richard's reign come sooner, were passing from 
 the busy scene : Gloucester had been basely murdered ; Lancaster was 
 growing old; and York was content in easy and amiable loyalty. 
 Bolingbroke must have seen how everything seemed to conspire to make 
 the "sovereignty his destiny, and in this he felt the strong impulse to 
 work out his destiny. There is in this respect, to my mind, something 
 in the career of Bolingbroke parallel to that of Macbeth, although 
 certainly with a far inferior degree of guilt. The weird sisters foretell 
 to Macbeth that he is to be King of Scotland. The wicked prophecy 
 sinks deep into his heart, and he never doubts the fulfilment of it ; but 
 how does this confidence affect him ? He does not passively await that 
 fulfilment ; indeed, it is only once that the thought of passive expecta- 
 tion crosses his mind : 
 
 " If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me, 
 Without my stir." 
 
 The prophecy proves an incitement to action for its fulfilment ; and, 
 goaded too, by the concentrated ambition of his wife, he perpetrates 
 both treachery and murder to make himself king, because the weird 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 105 
 
 sisters have promised him that he shall be king. It seems to me that 
 there was enough in the concurring events of the times of Richard the 
 Second to speak to the ambitious and apprehensive spirit of Bol ing- 
 broke as audibly, almost, as the mysterious voices of the witches, when 
 they addressed themselves to Macbeth upon the blasted heath. The 
 wicked temptations which, in the ease of Macbeth, are made visible in 
 the hideous forms of witches are not less real because unseen in the 
 evil passions in the heart of Bolingbroke. He had a great game to 
 play, and it was played with surpassing skill and boldness. No part of 
 it was neglected or mismanaged ; and it is curious to observe, that he 
 appears to have begun to lay the foundation of his kingly fortunes by 
 courting, not his peers, not the noble and high-born, but the common 
 people. Perhaps the power of popularity was more recognised since 
 that recent popular movement when, in Wat Tyler's rebellion, sixty 
 thousand men, aggrieved or misguided, rose up from the lowest level 
 of society against the government and the laws. On that occasion, 
 they sacked and burnt the palace of the Duke of Lancaster ; a few 
 years pass by, and Lancaster's politic son is the favourite and idol of the 
 people ; he has found it worth his while to make them his friends, 
 rather than to have them his foes. He not only won golden opinions 
 from all sorts of men, but with consummate art he so demeaned him- 
 self, that ever when the people turned away with indignation, or what 
 is tenfold worse with contempt from King Richard, thinking how 
 unkmgly were his courses of life, they were attracted by the very 
 contrast to the royal reserve and stately dignity of Bolingbroke. The 
 history in this respect is told by Shakspeare with fine poetic art in the 
 remonstrance addressed by Henry the Fourth to his son, warning him 
 by the contrast of his own and Richard's career. It is at once a poetic 
 confession of a most refined and accomplished demagogue, and a 
 description of a most unroyal king the one controlling the people to 
 his own uses by wielding their imagination " the mightiest lever known 
 t the moral world" the other making himself cheap to their sight : 
 
 " Had I so lavish of my presence been, 
 So common-hackney'd to the eyes of men, 
 So stale and cheap to vulgar company ; 
 Opinion, that did help me to the crown, 
 Had still kept loyal to possession ; 
 And left me in reputeless banishment, 
 A fellow of no mark, nor likelihood. 
 By being seldom seen, I could not stir, 
 But, like a comet, I was wondered at ; 
 That men would tell their children This is he. 
 Others would say Where? Which is Bolingbroke? 
 
106 LECTUKES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 And then I stole all courtesy from heaven, 
 
 And dress'd myself in such humility, 
 
 That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts, 
 
 Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths, 
 
 E'en in the presence of the crowned king. 
 
 Thus did I keep my person fresh and new j 
 
 My presence, like a robe pontifical, 
 
 Ne'er seen, but wonder'd at; and so my state, 
 
 Seldom, but sumptuous, showed like a feast - r 
 
 And won. by rareness, such solemnity. 
 
 The skipping king, he ambled up and down 
 
 With shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits, 
 
 Soon kindled and &jon burned; 'carded his state f 
 
 Mingled his royalty with capering fools; 
 
 Had his great name profaned with their scorns ; 
 
 And gave his countenance, against his name, 
 
 To laugh at gibing boys, and stand the push 
 
 Of every beardless vain comparative? 
 
 Grew a companion to the common streets f 
 
 Enfeoffed himself to popularity ;- 
 
 That being daily swallowed by men's eyes, 
 
 They surfeited with honey ; and began 
 
 To loathe the taste of sweetness r whereof a little 
 
 More than a little is by much too much. 
 
 So, when he had occasion to be seen, 
 
 He was but as the cuckoo is in June, 
 
 Heard, not regarded ; seen but with such eyes,. 
 
 As, sick and blunted with community, 
 
 Afford no extraordinary gaze r 
 
 Such as is bent on sun-like majesty 
 
 When it shines seldom in admiring eyes : 
 
 But rather drowz'd and hung their eyelids down r 
 
 Slept in his face r and rendered such aspect 
 
 As cloudy men use to their adversaries ; 
 
 Being with his presence glutted, gorged, and full." 
 
 When Bolingbroke is first introduced in the drama, it is after he has 
 been playing this politic game so long that he manifestly feels a confi- 
 dence in his coming royalty. It is in the very presence of the king that 
 he proclaims himself the avenger of the murdered Gloucester; yet 
 Gloucester Avas the king's uncle as well as his. In a very few words, 
 Shakspeare has shown how high the aspiring spirit of Bolingbroke had 
 already risen, when he represents him saying, with reference to the 
 assassination of the Duke of Gloucester, his 
 
 "Blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries 
 E'en from the tongueless caverns of the earth 
 To me for justice and rough chastisement.* 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 107 
 
 Who would think that the king himself, as near a kinsman of the 
 murdered man, was hearing such words from a subject's lips? And 
 yet, in this, Shakspeare accurately portrays the relative condition of 
 Bolingbroke and Richard. 
 
 The banishment of Bolingbroke might arrest the progress of his 
 ambition ; but every thing, in a short space of time, turns to his advan- 
 tage. Froissart gives an animated account of the conversation of the 
 nobles, who assented to the sentence of exile, but sought to sweeten 
 it by schemes of foreign travel, and hospitality for the banished Boling- 
 broke. "'He may readily go/" said they to one another, "'two or three 
 years, and amuse himself in foreign parts, for he is young enough; 
 and although he has already travelled to Prussia, to the Holy Sepulchre, 
 Cairo, and Saint Catherine's, he will find other places to visit. He has 
 two sisters, Queens of Castile and Portugal, and may cheerfully pass 
 his time with them. The lords, knights, and squires of these countries 
 will make him welcome ; for, at this moment, all warfare is at end. 
 On his arrival in Castile, as he is very active, he may put them in 
 motion and lead them against the infidels of Granada, which will em- 
 ploy his time better than remaining idle in England.'" Bolingbroke 
 was, indeed, very active ; but he had other thoughts of action than 
 that which his considerate fellow-nobles were devising for him. He 
 had other work than to lead the Spanish knights on a crusade against 
 the Moors of Spain ; and it was to the palace of Windsor, and not the 
 Alhambra, that his hopes were travelling. 
 
 The arbitrary sentence pronounced upon him by Richard endeared 
 him still more to the people ; and his presence was craved the more for 
 the very prospect of his absence. The demonstration of popular feeling 
 on the occasion is described by Froissart with all the vivid and simple 
 narrative of the chronicler: "The day," he says, "the Earl of Derby 
 mounted his horse to leave London, upwards of forty thousand men 
 were in the streets lamenting his departure. 'Gentle Earl! will you 
 then quit us ? This country will never be happy until you return, and 
 the days until then will be insufferably long. Through envy, treachery, 
 and fear, you are driven out of a kingdom where you are more worthy 
 to reside than those which cause it. You are of such high birth and 
 gallantry, that none other can be compared to you. Why, then, will 
 you leave us, gentle Earl ! You have never done wrong by thought or 
 deed, and are incapable of so doing.' Thus did men and women so 
 piteously complain that it was grievous to hear them. The Earl of 
 Derby" he adds, " was not accompanied by trumpets, nor the music of 
 the town, but with tears and lamentations." If the tears of his 
 
108 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 countrymen were calculated to soothe the sorrows of his exile, they also 
 watered his growing pride and ambition. After bidding farewell to a 
 mourning multitude, he went to receive in France the welcome of 
 princely and royal hospitality. The Dukes of Orleans and Berry, of 
 Burgundy and Bourbon, went forth to meet him; the meeting was 
 joyous ; and they all together, the French princes and the English exile, 
 entered Paris in brilliant array, to receive the welcome of the King of 
 France. 
 
 It was brief banishment ; and in bold defiance of his sentence did 
 Bolingbroke come home to rescue his patrimony out of the rapacious 
 grasp of the king's own hand. Having formerly played, and so 
 successfully, the demagogue to the common people, he now begins to 
 practice the same arts upon the nobles who join his cause. He gives 
 them thanks ; and, to win them to his service, he adds the large and 
 kinglike promises of future bounty. He proclaims himself, too, a 
 sworn reformer, and the unrelenting adversary of the King's vicious 
 favourites, 
 
 " The caterpillars of the commonwealth, 
 Which I have sworn to weed and cut away." 
 
 Ke begins his administration of the realm by commanding them to be 
 delivered over to execution ; as if he felt in himself the irresponsible 
 power of a conqueror, or that his foot was already on the throne, which 
 is the seat of justice. The multitude in the city of London, which wept 
 when the banished Bolingbroke departed, welcomed him back, as the 
 triumphant Lancaster, with joyful acclamations. The chronicler 
 describes how men, women, and children, dressed in their best clothes, 
 went out to meet and to greet him ; and the poet-historian has finely 
 told of it, through the voice of the Duke of York. It is a familiar 
 passage of rare beauty : 
 
 " The duke, great Bolingbroke, 
 Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, 
 Which his aspiring rider seemed to know, 
 With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course, 
 While all tongues cried God save thee, Bolingbroke ! 
 You would have thought the very windows spake, 
 So many greedy looks of young and old, 
 Through casements darted their desiring eyes 
 Upon his visage ; and that all the walls, 
 With painted imagery, had said at once, 
 Jesu preserve thee ! Welcome, Bolingbroke ! 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 109 
 
 Whilst he, from one side to the other turning, 
 Bare-headed, lower than his proud steed's neck, 
 Bespake them thus. ' I thank you, countrymen' ; 
 And thus still doing, thus he passed along." 
 
 Never did the course of usurpation run more smoothly : it seemed 
 to flow with a natural and even tide, as if simply because Richard 
 was weak and Lancaster was strong. Looking at the personal conduct 
 of Bolingbroke in the course of events before he became king, and con- 
 sidering the strict rule of hereditary succession as the settled law of 
 the English monarchy, the Lancastrian establishment cannot but be 
 regarded as an usurpation ; but, on the other hand, remembering the 
 sanction given to it by the Parliament, it may he viewed as one of 
 those revolutionary changes by which, at successive periods, the British 
 Constitution has been modified. 
 
 Such opposition as was made to Bolingbroke's accession, was met 
 with prompt and stern punishment ; for it was politic to strike quickly, 
 and, if need be, bloodily. The Bishop of Carlisle, who alone among the 
 English clergy had kept his allegiance to Richard in his day of adver- 
 sity, drew down upon himself the weary punishment of lifelong im- 
 prisonment by the fearless protest which he made against the deposition 
 of his sovereign. The nobles, who made an ineffectual resistance to 
 the new succession, paid the bloody forfeit of their lives. It is for the 
 ghastly tribute of their bleeding heads that Shakspeare represents 
 the new king uttering his first royal acknowledgements. 
 
 Having now seen by what course of events, and by what course of 
 policy '-and conduct, Henry of Lancaster became King Henry the 
 Fourth of England, we have next to consider how royalty was worn by 
 him, and whether the crown, which had been the object of his far- 
 seeing, and far-reaching ambition, proved its own sufficient reward 
 whether that, which, in Lady Macbeth's words 
 
 " To all his nights and days to come, 
 Gave solely sovereign sway and masterdom," 
 
 gave also sleep to those nights, and tranquillity to his days. 
 
 Let me, however, first remark that, in passing from the historical 
 illustrations which the tragedy of Richard the Second supplied us with, 
 in the last lecture, to the illustration we may find in the two parts 
 of Henry the Fourth, one cannot help being struck with the boundless 
 variety of Shakspeare's historic drama, and the versatility of his genius 
 in dealing with these successive periods. While the " Chronicle-Plays" 
 vary in structure and character (no two of them closely corresponding), 
 
110 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 they are all, for the most part, tragedies, for the simple reason that the 
 history of human life is chiefly tragic, especially in the great historic 
 descriptions of men, their deeds, and their fortunes. But the two parts 
 of Henry the Fourth contain a large proportion of the comic element 
 of life. Tragedy and comedy are here combined to produce the mixed 
 drama. As the scenes change, we behold, as we read, the interior of 
 the palace, with all the business and the stately anxieties and per- 
 plexities of the realm, or the castles of the nobles, where the dark 
 game of conspiracy, or the bolder work of rebellion, is preparing ; and 
 then we turn to see the frolic and revelry of a London tavern, with the 
 matchless wit of one of Shakspeare's most remarkable creations 
 sparkling through the sensuality and profligacy of the place. We are 
 now at Windsor with the king, or at Bangor with the insurgent 
 nobles ; and then we are at the Boar's Head Tavern, with Falstaff and 
 his gay companions. We see Henry the Fourth, in his palace, growing 
 wan and careworn with the troubles of his government, becoming an old 
 man in midlife ; and then we see Falstaff fat, and doubtless growing fatter 
 as he takes his ease at his inn, an old man of more than threescore 
 years, but with a boyish flow of frolic and spirits, indulging his inex- 
 haustible wit by making merriment for himself and the heir apparent. 
 We see in this mixed drama the tragic side of war civil war with 
 the perplexity of the councils of the realm and the fierce deeds of 
 battle ; and we see the comic side Falstaff misusing the king's press 
 the conscription code of the times, not gathering volunteers for the 
 war, but picking out of the community comfortable, well-conditioned, 
 non-combatant folk, who, as he calculates, will be sure to buy a release, 
 so that he boasts to himself of having got in exchange for one hundred 
 and fifty soldiers three hundred and odd pounds, to pay his tavern-bill, 
 or rather to leave his tavern-bill unpaid. "I press me," says he, "none 
 but good householders, yeomen's sons, inquire me out contracted 
 bachelors, such as had been asked twice upon the bans, such a com- 
 modity of warm slaves as had as lief hear the devil as a drum, such as 
 fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild- 
 duck. I press me none but such toasts and butter, with hearts in 
 their bellies no bigger than pin's heads, and they have bought their 
 services." 
 
 The ludicrous aspect ot war and the suffering consequent "upon 
 it are further shown in Falstaff 's well-known description of his soldiers 
 "the canker of a calm world and a long peace," the vagabonds he 
 was asKamed to march through Coventry with. The link of association 
 between the serious and the comic parts of these plays is to be found 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. Ill 
 
 n the character of him who is the Prince Henry of the palace and the 
 Prince Hal of his hoon-companions in the tavern for we meet with 
 him in both places, more at home, however, in the places of his amuse- 
 ment than in the place of his rank. It is such mixed dramas as the 
 two parts of Henry the Fourth, that especially illustrate the remark of 
 Mr. Hallam, that Shakspeare's historical plays "borrow surprising 
 liveliness and probability from the national character and form of 
 government. A prince, a courtier, and a slave are the stuff on which 
 die historic dramatist would have to work in some countries: but every 
 class of freemen, in the just subordination without which neither human 
 society nor the stage, which should be its mirror, can be more than a 
 chaos of huddled units, lay open to the inspection of Shakspeare. 
 What he invented is as truly English, as truly historical in the large 
 sense of moral history, as what he read." In the tragedy of King 
 John we had, you will remember, as the representative of humble life 
 and character, only James Gurney, with his conversation of four words ; 
 but in Henry the Fourth, we have, I will not say humble life, but 
 English low life, in a company of such persons as may well be supposed 
 to have frequented a London tavern in those days. 
 
 I am inclined to think that Shakspeare felt, that in treating dra- 
 matically the reign of Henry the Fourth he must needs expand the 
 sphere of the drama, so as to comprehend these varied elements, in 
 order to supply the meagre historical interest of the subject. The 
 exuberance of his genius and of his feelings required something more 
 than the cold, uneventful misery of the palace of the politic Henry; 
 and accordingly going down to the lower stratum of society, he must 
 have delighted in creating Falstaff and his associates, to make amends 
 for the dull company of the king, and the courtiers and nobles. 
 
 The reign of Henry the Fourth is an uninteresting period of 
 English history; especially does it want national interest. After all 
 his long-sustained and successful ambition, he came to his years of 
 royalty, and they proved years of unceasing solicitude and uncertainty. 
 The old chronicler utters simple truth, when he speaks of "the unquiet 
 times of King Henry's reign;" and one of the elder English historians 
 accurately describes it, when he says " King Henry's reign was like a 
 craggy mountain, from which there was no descent, but by a thousand 
 crooked ways full of rocky stones and jetting cliffs the first difficulties 
 escaped, others are met with of more danger and anxiety. In such 
 paths he walked all the time of his reign, that one danger was a step to 
 another, and the event always doubtful ; for his subjects 7 former desire 
 being almost extinguished, his friends failing, and his enemies increasing 
 
112 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTOEY. 
 
 he had no other support in so painful a descent but his own vigilance 
 and conduct, helps, which, though they might cause him to keep on 
 his way, yet they were not sufficient to preserve him from great weari- 
 ness." And Shakspeare, with that remarkable significancy which he 
 gives to the openings of his plays, indicates in the very -first line, the 
 character of the reign, when the king is introduced, saying 
 
 " So shaken as we are, so worn with care, 
 Find we a time for frighted peace to pant." 
 
 It is historically true, also, when he is represented, at the beginning of 
 the play and of his reign, meditating a crusade, planning an expedition 
 from England, 
 
 " To chase these pagans in those holy fields, 
 Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, 
 Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed, 
 For our advantage, on the bitter cross." 
 
 Whether this purpose was prompted by the desire to make atonement 
 for such criminality as attended his accession to the throne, by the 
 ecclesiastical service of a crusade, or with the more politic design of 
 diverting the thoughts of the nation from the question of his title, or 
 whether, as is most probable, it was a mingled motive of policy and of 
 the devotional spirit of the times, it can hardly be doubted that the 
 thought was seriously entertained by the king. When we read of such 
 an intention at the period in which he flourished, we are apt, I think, 
 to err from one or two causes, which lead us to think of it as altogether 
 unreal as a piece of mere dramatic effect. We do so, because we refer 
 the spirit of the Crusades to an earlier era of European history, and 
 also because modern historians are much disposed to trfeat such purposes 
 as not only superstitious and visionary but hypocritical; so that when 
 we read of this intention of Henry the Fourth's, carrying our modern 
 notions back, we are, I believe, almost as incredulous as if we had been 
 informed that George the Fourth had meditated a crusade. But in 
 the case of Henry the Fourth let it be remembered that, in early life, 
 he had travelled to the Holy Land, and must have witnessed the gradual 
 enroachment of the Turkish power, and the decline of the Christian 
 empire in the East; he was too sagacious an observer not to discover 
 .that unless Western Christendom came to the rescue, the Turk could 
 not be withstood. Moreover, it was at the beginning of Henry's reign 
 that a Greek emperor, came from Constantinople to London to solicit 
 from his fellow-Christians assistance for the defence of his capital and 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 113 
 
 his empire against the aggresssions of the Turks. The help was not 
 given; and in half a century, within the lifetime of many who were 
 living when Henry the Fourth meditated his crusade, Mohammed with 
 his Turks did advance, in overwhelming force, upon the capital of the 
 Byzantine Caesars; the Greek empire, after its life of more than a 
 thousand years, fell; and from that day to this the Crescent, and not 
 the Cross, has glittered in the sunbeams which shine' upon the city of 
 Constantine. It can now be no more than a mere historical speculation 
 to think how differently the world's history might have been affected 
 how the cause of Christianity might have been influenced, if that ancient 
 Christian empire in the East had been upheld, if some holy St. Bernard 
 had kindled the heart of European Christendom for the enterprise of 
 a later crusade; and what a glorious destiny it would have been for 
 Britain, if the work had been achieved by British power, if Henry the 
 Fourth, strong man and sagacious statesman as he was, could have 
 devoted to such a cause the courage and wisdom by which he both 
 gained and kept the throne of England! 
 
 The intended crusade was frustrated by impending danger at home. 
 Scarcely was Henry the Fourth seated on his throne, when the flame 
 of war was kindled upon both the western and northern frontiers of 
 England. The people of Wales were in arms against him ; and the 
 Scots, who were, I may say, the perpetual foes of the English, came 
 down upon the Lowlands with a strong tide of invasion. The Douglas, 
 who led that Scottish inroad, was defeated at the battle of Holmedon 
 Hill, and the Scots repulsed ; but, while the kingdom was successfully 
 defended, the victory proved the remote cause of new difficulties and 
 dangers to the king. The victory was gained by the son of the Earl of 
 Northumberland, Henry Percy, better known, as Shakspeare has made 
 it so familiar, by the name of Hotspur. It was by the help of these 
 same Percies, father and son, that Bolingbroke had dethroned Richard 
 the Second and made himself king. The victory over the Scots, gave 
 to the Percies another and a new claim upon their sovereign. There 
 are minds so constituted that nothing distresses or oppresses them more 
 than a sense of obligation ; especially will this weakness of our poor 
 human nature betray itself in minds in which pride is a large element 
 pride in their own powers and resources. The gratitude is doubtless 
 doubly burdensome when a king feels that it is to his nobles, of whom 
 lately he was one, that he owes his own crown. There is danger of their 
 becoming arrogant, and his becoming suspicious ; and the power that is 
 built on usurpation is most apt, too, to grow jealous and tyrannical. 
 
 It is not surprising, then, to find Hotspur's victory quickly followed 
 I 
 
LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 by his quarrel with the king, in consequence of the demand for the 
 delivery of the prisoners taken in the battle of Holmedon. The quarrel 
 is still further fomented by the demand, which, on the other hand, 
 Hotspur makes on the king to ransom his brother-in-law, Mortimer, 
 who, while leading an expedition against the Welsh, had been taken 
 prisoner by Glendower. But Mortimer was one of that branch of the 
 royal family, whose better title Henry the Fourth had trespassed on ; 
 and now, instead of ransoming, he accuses him of the wilful betraying 
 of his command ; and replies to Hotspur's request 
 * " Shall our coffers, then, 
 
 Be emptied, to redeem a traitor home ? 
 
 * * * * 
 
 No, on the barren mountains let him starve ; 
 For I shall never hold that man my friend, 
 Whose tongue shall ask one penny cost, 
 To ransom home revolted Mortimer." 
 
 The unwonted passion of the king's language betrays his sense of 
 the unsoundness of his own title, and the jealousy of the better right of 
 the Mortimers ; and Hotspur's reply is in the finest vein of indignant 
 vindication : 
 
 " Revolted Mortimer ! 
 He never did fall off, my sovereign liege, 
 But by the chance of war ; to prove that true, 
 Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds, 
 Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took, 
 When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank, 
 In single opposition, hand to hand, 
 He did confound the best part of an hour, 
 In changing hardiment with great Glendower : 
 Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, 
 Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood ; 
 Who, then, affrighted with their bloody looks, 
 Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, 
 And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank, 
 Bloodstained with these valiant combatants. 
 Never did base and rotten policy 
 Colour her workings with such deadly wounds ; 
 Nor never could the noble Mortimer 
 Receive so many, and all willingly. 
 Then let him not be slandered with revolt." 
 
 The defence is in vain the king implacable and the conspiracy of the 
 Percies is afoot. Hotspur threatens 
 
 " I will lift the downtrod Mortimer 
 As high in the air as this unthankful king, 
 As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke." 
 
THE REIGN ftF HENRY THE FOURTH. 115 
 
 He speaks of his sovereign as no more than Bolingbroke ; and when 
 he learns from the older Percies, that in the reign of Kichard the 
 Second, a Mortimer had been proclaimed the rightful heir, he adds 
 
 " Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin king, 
 That wished him on the barren mountains starved. 
 But shall it be that you, that set the crown 
 Upon the head of this forgetful man, 
 And, for his sake, wear the detested blot 
 Of murderous subornation ; shall it be, 
 That you a world of curses undergo, 
 Being the agents, or base second means, 
 The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather ? 
 O, pardon me, that I descend so low, 
 To show the line and the predicament 
 Wherein you range under this subtle king. 
 Shall it, for shame, be spoken in these days, 
 Or fill up chronicles for time to come, 
 That men of your nobility and power 
 Did gage them both in an unjust behalf 
 As both of you, God pardon it ! have done, 
 To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose, 
 And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke ?" 
 
 The character of Hotspur, which gives so much spirit and splen- 
 dour to the revolt of the Percies, furnishes various historical illustra- 
 tions of the character of the age. When Shakspeare introduced him 
 into the drama, the character was already familiar to the popular mind 
 by those fine old ballads, "The Battle of Chevy Chase; 9 and "TJw Battle 
 of Otterbourne" those rude strains, which had kindled the noble and 
 heroic spirit of Sir Philip Sydney, and of which, in a well-known pas- 
 sage of his " Defence of Poesy" he said, " I never heard the old song of 
 Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with 
 a trumpet." 
 
 These antiquated poems supply illustration of the story and cha- 
 racter of Hotspur, by showing that the bravery which Shakspeare has 
 made his chief endowment had been developed in his previous life, in 
 that border- warfare which kept the frontier of England and Scotland in 
 perpetual turmoil. It was a state of watchful and revengeful hos- 
 tilities ; and, as the rugged stanza of the old ballad of Chevy Chase 
 describes it 
 
 " There was never a time on the march parts, 
 Sin the Douglas and the Percy met, 
 But it was marvel an the red blood ran not 
 As the rain does in the street." 
 
116 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 It was in this warfare that Hotspur had acquired that indomitable 
 confidence in his personal prowess, that physical bravery which courts 
 danger for danger's sake, and which lives on the very excitement of 
 encountering and overcoming the perils of war. This is one form of 
 the soldier's character which Shakspeare has so brilliantly depicted in 
 his history of that time. 
 
 While considering the character of Hotspur, historical as it is, I 
 would point your attention to what is, I think, a historical use which 
 the poet-historian makes of the character [of Falstaff a historical use 
 at the same time that there is high poetic art in it. Hotspur and Fal- 
 staff (it seems strange to mention them together) are both, let it 
 be remembered, soldiers. They both represent the military life and 
 character of that period of English history : and Shakspeare has so 
 fashioned them as to produce one of the finest and most expressive 
 contrasts in the whole range of his dramas. The characters are thus, 
 if you will closely examine them, made to expound each other by their 
 very contrariety. In this there would be high poetic art ; but the his- 
 torical question here is this, if, as I have sought to show, the border 
 warfare acting upon such a natural disposition as the young Percy's, 
 made him the impetuous, martial, danger-coveting Hotspur, what was 
 there in the events or the social condition of that age to produce so 
 different a form of the military character as that of Falstaff? The 
 character of Hotspur becomes expressive of the historical causes which 
 made him the soldier he was ; and, in like manner, I think, we may 
 discover historical causes of which Falstaffs character may become ex- 
 pressive. He was old enough to have seen service in the wars of 
 Edward the Third ; he had been page to the Earl of Norfolk, a valiant 
 nobleman ; he lived on into the un warlike and voluptuous reign of 
 Richard the Second ; and an old soldier, with such a sensual and self- 
 indulgent nature as Shakspeare has given to Falstaff, would be very 
 likely to settle down in London, to grow fat and lazy and luxurious. 
 There are, therefore, it seems to me, historical causes of a very different 
 kind ; which, working upon two very different natures, are adequate 
 to explain the monstrous difference between these contemporary sol- 
 diers, Hotspur and Falstaff. Each character has, therefore, its his- 
 torical significancy, and the contrast between them becomes highly 
 expressive. You find Hotspur seeking danger for danger's sake, joyous 
 and enthusiastic at the mere prospect of it. When Worcester intimates 
 
 to him a plan 
 
 " As full of peril and adventurous spirit, 
 As to o'erwalk a current, roaring loud, 
 On the unsteadfast footing of a spear." 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 117 
 
 The quick answer is 
 
 1 ' If he fall in, good night ! or sink or swim ; 
 Send danger from the east unto the west, 
 So honour cross it from the north to south, 
 And let them grapple; the blood more stirs, 
 To rouse a lion than to start a hare." 
 
 Falstaff has a well-settled conclusion in his mind that 
 " The better part of valour is discretion." 
 
 He is by no means a constitutional coward ; but, certainly, danger has 
 in itself no charms in his eyes. Again, he is absolutely indifferent to 
 honour ; he has no sense of it or the value of it ; with his intellectual 
 activity, he convinces himself logically of the worthlessness of it : " Can 
 honour set a leg ? No. Or an arm ? No. Or take away the grief of 
 a wound ? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then ? No." There- 
 fore he wants none of it. Then compare Hotspur's rhapsody, 
 
 " Methinks it were an easy leap 
 To pluck bright honour from the pale faced moon ; 
 Or dive into the bottom of the deep, 
 Where fathom line could never touch the ground, 
 And pluck up drowned honour by the locks ; 
 So that he that doth redeem her thence might wear, 
 Without corrival, all his dignities." 
 
 Before the battle of Shrewsbury, Falstaffs thought is 
 " Would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well." 
 
 When Hotspur, immediately after his disappointment as to the rein- 
 forcement from Northumberland, hears of the advance of the superior 
 force of the royal army, his only wish is 
 
 "Let them come; 
 
 They come like sacrifices in their trim. 
 And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war r 
 All hot and bleeding, will we offer them : 
 The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit r 
 Up to his ears in blood. I am on fire, 
 To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh, 
 And yet not ours." 
 
 In this the spirit of the border warfare flashes out. The rebellion of 
 the Percies was strengthened by confederacy with that remarkable per- 
 sonage, the Welsh chieftain, Owen Glendower. Of his character and 
 
118 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 career little is distinctly known, and that little through the narratives 
 of his foes. There rests over his history the veil of a splendid mystery ; 
 and Shakspeare has represented him chiefly as seen through the obscu- 
 rity of popular tradition, according to which the Welsh hero was 
 looked on as a wizard and magician, who could not only sway the 
 hearts of his countrymen, but could command and control the elements. 
 Glendower had given allegiance to Richard; but, disclaiming the 
 sovereignty of Bolingbroke, he raised the standard of revolt in Wales, 
 and his scattered countrymen among the rest the Welsh students at 
 Oxford and Cambridge hastened home to rally round his banner. 
 He assumed the title of Prince of Wales, and made the last effort for 
 the restoration of the independence of his country. It has been well 
 said 
 
 " Owyn Glendower failed, and he was denounced as a rebel and a 
 traitor : but had the issue of the 6 sorry fight ' at Shrewsbury been 
 otherwise than it was; had Hotspur so devised and digested and 
 matured his plan of operations, as to have enabled Owyn with his 
 forces to join heart and hand in that hard-fought field ; had Boling- 
 broke and his son fallen on that fatal day, instead of lingering among 
 his native mountains as a fugitive and a branded felon, bereft of his 
 lands, his friends, his children, and his wife, waiting only the blow of 
 death to terminate his earthly sufferings ; and, when that blow fell, 
 leaving no memorial behind him to mark either the time or the place of 
 his release, Owyn Glendower might have been recognised, even by 
 England, as he was by France, in the character of an independent 
 sovereign, and his people might have .celebrated his name as the avenger 
 of his country's wrongs, the scourge of his oppressors, and the restorer 
 of her independence." While Shakspeare has done ample justice to the 
 character of the noblest of the Percies, he leaves on our minds, with 
 admirable impartiality, a strong sense of the selfish origin of the revolt, 
 and the danger of such an overgrown and arrogant aristocracy. It 
 was one of the evils of the feudal times that men did not shrink from 
 the horrors of domestic war ; because, isolated as they were, chieftain 
 from chieftain, and one set of vassals from another, the relations of 
 countrymen and fellow-citizens were not known, or at least were not 
 felt. Hotspur, habituated, too, to his independent border warfare, 
 was apt, on provocation, to turn his hostilities against his king, as he 
 might do against the Douglas or any other Scottish noble. Whatever 
 may be the thought of the defect of Henry's title to the throne, there 
 could hardly be a greater political evil than the existence of an aristo- 
 cracy strong enough and proud enough to build up or to pull down the 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH. 119 
 
 monarchy at their will. This was the pride of the Percies, as Hotspur 
 boasted 
 
 " My father, and my uncle, and myself, 
 Did give him that same royalty he wears : 
 And when he was not six-and- twenty strong, 
 Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low, 
 A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home, 
 My father gave him welcome to the shore : 
 And, when he heard him swear and vow to God, 
 He came but to be Duke of Lancaster, 
 To sue his living, and to beg his peace ; 
 With tears of innocency, and terms of zeal, 
 My father, in kind heart and pity moved, 
 Swore him assistance, and performed it too. 
 Now, when the lords and barons of the realm 
 Perceived Northumberland did lean to him, 
 The more and less came in with cap and knee ; 
 Met him in boroughs, cities, villages ; 
 Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes, 
 Laid gifts before him, proffered him their oaths, 
 Gave him their heirs ; as pages follow'd him, 
 Even at the heels, in golden multitudes. 
 He presently as greatness knows itself 
 Steps me a little higher than his vow 
 Made to my father, when his blood was poor, 
 Upon the naked shore of Ravenspurg." 
 
 But the pride of the Percies had its fall ; and, when they were defeated 
 at Shrewsbury, and Hotspur left dead on that field of battle, the throne 
 of Henry the Fourth was more firmly fixed than before that proud race 
 of nobles had levied war against him, 
 
 The unquiet times, however, were not tranquillized ; and Henry's 
 reign was, in truth, no more than a succession of conspiracies. The 
 battle of Shrewsbury secured but a brief space of repose, which was 
 soon disturbed by the conspiracy of the Earl of Northumberland, and 
 Mowbray, and the Archbishop of York. This revolt was quelled, not 
 by another battle, but by policy ; and the strong king again proved too 
 strong for his adversaries. But, while his possession of the throne was 
 triumphantly maintained, the crown was glittering on the brow of a 
 melancholy man. The genius of a great poet gives us the vision of the 
 royal sadness ; and it is poetry and history combined, that present the 
 affecting spectacle of a careworn king in the scene where Henry, in the 
 noiseless hour of the night, in the lonely splendour of his palace, with 
 slumber estranged from his eyelids, beholding from the palace- window 
 
120 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the silent dwellings, in a sleeping city, gives utterance to that beautiful 
 apostrophe to sleep : 
 
 " How many thousand of my poorest subjects 
 Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gentle sleep, 
 Nature's soft nurse., how have I frighted thee, 
 That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
 And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 
 Why, rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
 Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 
 And hushed with buzzing night flies to thy slumber; 
 Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
 Under the canopies of costly state, 
 And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody ? 
 O ! thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile 
 In loathsome beds ; and leavest the kingly couch 
 A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell ? 
 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge, 
 And in the visitation of the winds, 
 Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 
 Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 
 With deafening clamours in the slippery clouds, 
 That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? 
 Canst thou, partial Sleep, give thy repose 
 To the wet seaboy in an hour so rude ; 
 And, in the calmest and most stillest night, 
 With all appliances and means to boot, 
 Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down ! 
 Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 
 
 That aching brow was soon to find repose; those sleepless eyelids 
 were at length to be closed, but only in the grave. "Henry Boling- 
 broke," it has been said, "had reigned thirteen years 'in great perplexity 
 and little pleasure.' He had reaped as he had sown care, insecurity, 
 suspicion, enmity, and treason; and 'curses not loud but deep/ Having 
 quelled the rebellious nobles, he revived the project of a voyage to the 
 Holy Land, to recover Jerusalem from the infidels. Preparations were 
 made for the expedition, and the king went to the shrine of St. Edward 
 the Confessor, at Westminster, there to take his leave and to speed him 
 on his voyage." The hand of death fell on his careworn body there; 
 and he was carried, to breathe his last, in the adjoining house of the 
 abbot, and not in the palace of the Plantagenets. 
 
VII. 
 
 atft gtign at fwrg 
 
 SORROWFUL BUT VIGOROUS REIGN OF THE FOURTH HENRY His SUCCESSOR SHAKSPEARE'S 
 FAVOURITE HIS REIGN OF CONQUEST HlS CAREER AS PRINCE OF WALES NOT 
 PROFLIGATE BUT POPULAR A PRINCE AND A GENTLEMAN HlS HONOUR TO RICHARD'S 
 MEMORY VENERATION FOR HIS FATHER RELATIONS OF HEIRS-APPARENT STATUTE 
 AGAINST HERESY THE PROTO MARTYR CONTRAST OF THE PRINCE AND HIS BROTHER, 
 PRINCE JOHN MACBETH'S WANT OF CHILDREN HENRY THE FIFTH A GENIAL 
 CHARACTER HlS ASSOCIATES OF EARLY LIFE THE CHARACTER OF FALST^FF CON- 
 SIDERED MORGANN'S ESSAY FRIENDSHIP HAMLET AND HORATIO HENRY AND 
 FALSTAFF FALSTAFF'S COWARDICE MR. SENIOR'S CRITICISM HENRY'S ACCESSION 
 TO THE THRONE THE WAR WITH FRANCE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT HENRY'S 
 
 RELATIONS TO HIS SOLDIERS SlR THOMAS ERPINGHAM DEATH OF YORK AND 
 
 SUFFOLK THE TRAGEDY A TRIUMPHAL SONG. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured, with the help of Shakspeare's matchless his- 
 torical illustrations, to recall to your minds the character of the first of 
 the Lancastrian reigns, and to show how Henry Bolingbroke, after 
 having climbed up the proud and royal eminence of his ambition, held 
 the throne by strong statesmanship against the aggression of the nobles. 
 The moral aspect of the reign, which we learn better from the page of 
 poetry than of history, was simply this, that Henry the Fourth wore 
 the crown of England an anxious and melancholy man; and, while in 
 his accession, there was more of craft and less of atrocity than in the 
 Scottish usurper, there were, doubtless, times when, in the still hours of 
 his sleepless nights, and in the silent chambers of his palace, and in the 
 more secret and silent chambers of his conscience, he felt the guilty 
 sinking of the heart 
 
 " Better be with the dead 
 
 Whom we to gain our place have sent to peace, 
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
 In restless ecstasy." 
 
 The cares which saddened the royal years of the life of Henry the 
 Fourth, did not, however, engender that sorrow which saps the strength. 
 The strong, though sad-hearted, man held the throne until his dying 
 day; and held it so firmly, that it passed, in due course of law, to his 
 son, Henry of Monmouth : to whose reign, as Henry the Fifth, the 
 regular progression of our subject has now brought us. 
 
 Of the many English sovereigns whom Shakspeare has placed in 
 imperishable individuality before us, Henry the Fifth was manifestly 
 
122 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the favourite of the poet's heart; and, in the multitude of the characters 
 of all kinds whom he has portrayed or created, probably no subject was 
 more congenial to him than the whole career of Henry the Fifth from 
 his first introduction as Prince of Wales. Indeed, it could hardly be 
 otherwise; for, of the nine kings who appear in Shakspeare's historical 
 plays, there is but one and that one, Henry the Fifth whose character 
 is fairly entitled to the praise of greatness, in the large sense of that 
 term, which comprehends genuine glory and virtue. He was the only 
 one of those crowned heads in whom royalty was united to a fine and 
 lofty humanity. Therefore it is that, without forsaking the path of 
 that admirable historical impartiality, in which the genius of the poet- 
 historian forever moved, he found in the character of Henry the Fifth, 
 and in him alone, scope for the richest panegyric which the soul 
 of a great poet could, out of its abundant affluence, shower upon the 
 memory of a fellow-man. I have already adverted to the variety dis- 
 played in the composition of these "Chronicle-Plays;" and as the reign 
 of Henry the Fifth was greatly distinguished from the other reigns, so 
 is the drama, which is devoted to it, altogether peculiar. The reign 
 was a short and splendid career of foreign conquest, achieved by one 
 who was at once king, hero, and conqueror; and the play is a kind of 
 lyrical commemoration of the victory and the victor. 
 
 Henry the Fifth had a brief reign of nine years ; but this was pre- 
 ceded by a period of his life, the memory of which is closely connected 
 with the estimate of his character, the thirteen years of his father's 
 reign, during which he was Prince of Wales. There came down to 
 Shakspeare not only a very distinct tradition, but also complete histo- 
 rical consent, that Henry's career as Prince of Wales was one of un- 
 wonted levity and unworthy companionship ; and, upon such tradition 
 and such historical account, the poet has so worked as to give a most 
 vivid impression of the life of the heir-apparent during his father's reign. 
 The dramatic skill with which this has been done, is unquestioned ; but 
 it may also, I believe, be shown that there is equal historical fidelity : 
 and, passing into a still higher region of thought, I think it may be 
 shown that the poet has herein displayed that moral wisdom which is 
 one great element of all his dramas ; and, indeed, without which, poetry 
 of the highest order cannot exist. 
 
 Respecting the career of the Prince of Wales, there appear to be 
 two opposite and conflicting opinions. On the one hand he is repre- 
 sented ,as a low profligate, reckless, heartless, and dissolute, the per- 
 petual inmate of taverns, and a licentious brawler. On the other side, 
 the effort is made, and with considerable historical research, to prove 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 123 
 
 that the traditional accounts of the prince's early life are altogether 
 unfounded; that Shakspeare's representation of him, as a historical 
 portrait, is misleading and unjust, and that the prince's life was blame- 
 less and irreproachable. Indeed, it might well be said, that a career 
 of excessive profligacy, continued through the years of youth and into 
 the years of manhood, could not in nature be the prelude to a kingly 
 course so sagacious and so heroic. I do not believe that Henry of 
 Monmouth, when Prince of Wales, lived such a life of dissoluteness and 
 profligacy ; and more confident am I that Shakspeare has not so repre- 
 sented it. At the same time the tradition respecting the prince was too 
 general and too well fortified to be wholly discredited. It cannot 
 reasonably be cast aside as a fiction by which men for a long while 
 and nobody can tell why deluded themselves and others. Shakspeare 
 is faithful to the tradition, which he has so informed with the life- 
 giving power of the imagination as to corroborate the truth of it ; and 
 at the same time he has so portrayed Henry's princely days, as to recon- 
 cile them with his royal days, and thus to represent them in moral 
 harmony. He does not resort to the marvel of a sudden conversion 
 and an instantaneous growth of virtue a monstrous and unnatural 
 change which would effectually hinder us from feeling the identity of 
 the Prince Henry of one drama with the King Henry of another. 
 With Shakspeare's guidance, therefore, we can, I am inclined to think, 
 learn what the one, but varied, life of Henry really was ; for the poet 
 drew the history of that life from tradition, and also from the deep 
 philosophy of human nature in his own soul. 
 
 When Prince Henry is first introduced into the drama, it is in the 
 palace, but in the company of two of his gay companions, who visit 
 him there. Whatever contaminating influences there were in such 
 companionship, it was, at least, free from the vice of destroying his 
 moral health by the poison of flattery. So far from any thing like this 
 adulation, the conventional restraints of rank are cast aside even the 
 decorous formalities of society are relaxed and there is an equality of 
 intercourse and almost unbounded freedom in it. But all this is on the 
 surface, and does not reach down to the real nature of the prince ; for, 
 the moment he is left alone, the first words he utters, disclose his know- 
 ledge of himself and of his companions, and his consciousness of what 
 is due from himself to himself. We see that he has a moral self-pos- 
 session whether it will be impaired by such companionship and self- 
 indulgence remains to be considered ; but the first soliloquy shows us 
 that, at least, he was not reckless, but that he was thoughtful ; and 
 
LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 that, whatever might be the outward show, silently and secretly he 
 was cherishing lofty and pure aspirations : 
 
 " I know you all, and will awhile uphold 
 The unyoked humour of your idleness ; 
 Yet herein will I imitate the sun, 
 Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
 To smother up his beauty from the world, 
 That when he please again to be himself, 
 Being wanted, he may be more wondered at, 
 By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
 Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. 
 If all the year were playing holidays, 
 To sport would be as tedious as to work ; 
 But when they seldom come, they wished- for come, 
 And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents. 
 So when this loose behaviour I throw off, 
 I pay the debt I never promised. 
 By how much better than my word I am, 
 By so much shall I falsify men's hopes ; 
 And like bright metal on a sullen ground, 
 My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, 
 Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes 
 Than that which hath no foil to set it off. 
 I'll so offend to make offence a skill ; 
 Redeeming time when men think least I will." 
 
 This soliloquy, at his first introduction, sets before us the thoughtful 
 element in the prince's character ; and we are thus forewarned of the 
 reserved power by which he will be able to raise himself above the loose 
 behaviour and companionship he for a while indulges in. It is, doubt- 
 less, a perilous calculation, present self-indulgence and prospective 
 reformation, and we shall see, in a subsequent passage of his life, as 
 represented by Shakspeare, that the transition is not accomplished with- 
 out a struggle. But, during this whole course of free life, the prince 
 is never so represented as to make us forget that he is a prince and a 
 gentleman never so lowered as to make him forfeit all respect, or 
 falsify the promise given by the hidden thoughtfulness of his nature. 
 Still, the question occurs both historically and dramatically was this 
 a career of wanton self-indulgence, or were there causes and impulses 
 which gave such strange direction to his early manhood ? I believe his 
 alienation, such as it was, from the palace and the court, was in accord- 
 ance both with historical truth, and the requisites of poetic art ; but to 
 show this, we must look back on his earlier days. 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 125 
 
 During the first thirteen years of his life, high as was the rank of 
 the family, Henry of Monmouth was the son, not of a king, but of a 
 nobleman ; the years of his boyhood were spent, therefore, without the 
 restraints and formalities of a royal household. He lived as one of the 
 people, and learned to feel as such. This feeling of freedom was, 
 doubtless, increased by the high-spirited boy being early initiated into 
 military life. It is worthy of notice that, when a mere youth, he re- 
 ceived the honour of knighthood ; and, ' what is still more noticeable, he 
 received it at the hands of his sovereign, the frail and unfortunate 
 Richard the Second. To the memory of that monarch, dethroned as 
 he was by his father, Henry of Monmouth, appears to have cherished a 
 feeling of respectful gratitude. That sentiment could exist in his mind 
 only in conflict with the sentiment and the duty of filial piety ; and it is 
 precisely such a conflict of obligation and feeling, working upon sensi- 
 tive and thoughtful dispositions, that wrests them from their even and 
 natural course. Remember, by way of example, how the gentle and 
 meditative spirit of Hamlet was affected, even unto the unsettling of his 
 intellect, by the conflict between duty to his living mother, and the 
 profound love and veneration to his dead father it forced him to 
 moody musing and fitful melancholy. We can conceive how, in like 
 manner, though in a very different degree, a thoughtful character like 
 the Prince of Wales may have had his youthful hours of painful reflec- 
 tion, when he was old enough to observe the establishment of his 
 father's power upon the ruins of the fallen royalty of Richard. Having 
 seen his first military adventures under the banner of Richard ; having, 
 too, received honours from him which would naturally sink deep into a 
 generous heart, then in the full flush of uncalculating youth, Henry 
 may well have looked with commiseration, at least, upon the decline 
 and downfall of his first king, although the revolution placed the crown 
 upon his father's brow, and showed the succession in prospect for him- 
 self. Now, I do not mean to assert that this was so ; but considering 
 what we do know of his later character and conduct, it is not an un- 
 reasonable speculation which leads us to think there were times when 
 the breast of this young prince was agitated by the various and con- 
 tending emotions of pride at the elevation of his family, duty to his 
 father, and the lingering loyalty to the poor dethroned Richard, or 
 pity for the memory and the misfortunes of his first chieftain. One of 
 the first acts of Henry's reign was to cause the body of Richard the 
 Second to be removed from its secluded grave at Langley, and with the 
 solemn funeral pomp of kings to be interred at Westminster, by the 
 side of his queen, "the good Queen Anne," in the tomb which 
 
126 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Richard had caused to be prepared for her and for himself. It is to 
 this act of pious loyalty that Shakspeare refers when he represents 
 Henry, on the eve of his great battle, as praying 
 
 " Not to day, O Lord! 
 Oh, not to day ! think not upon the fault 
 My father made in compassing the crown ! 
 I Richard's body have interred anew ; 
 And on it have bestowed more contrite tears 
 Than from it issued forced drops of blood. 
 Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, 
 Who twice a day their withered hands hold up 
 Towards heaven, to pardon blood ; and I have built 
 Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests 
 Sing still for Richard's souL" 
 
 It will be observed, therefore, that the speculation respecting Henry's 
 feeling towards his former sovereign-^-the king of his boyhood has an 
 actual historical basis. I will not venture to push this speculation so 
 far as to say that the sentiment which I have just spoken of alienated 
 his affection from his father ; that he cherished such loyalty to the dead 
 Richard's memory as to induce a slack allegiance to his living king an 
 unnatural estrangement from his own parent. But I do believe that 
 there may most naturally have existed in the mind of the Prince of 
 Wales such a state of conflicting emotion as to make the palace of his 
 father uncongenial to him. His is not the constitution of Hamlet, and 
 m he does not, like the heart-stricken Prince of Denmark, wander through 
 the royal chambers disconsolate, moody, and meditative ; but he goes 
 forth into the world into the common throng of the world into 
 the crowded thoroughfares of life. All that is certainly known of this 
 part of his career, leaves upon the mind an impression which associates 
 him not at all with his father's accession to the throne, and only 
 occasionally with his father's administration of the kingdom; and 
 Shakspeare's representation is, therefore, in complete harmony with the 
 imperfect historical information. The highest dramatic art and general 
 fidelity to history are here combined to work out the poet's purpose of 
 portraying the character of a king who should be entitled to be 
 respected and honoured and loved; and this was to be accomplished 
 by no fulsome adulation, by no monstrous eulogy, but by plain dealing 
 with the imperfections of human nature. 
 
 On the one hand, it was necessary so far to preserve the relations 
 between Prince Henry and Henry the Fourth as to avoid all imputation 
 of a deliberate unfilial conduct, of purposed undutifulness from the son 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 127 
 
 to the father. This would have cast a cloud that would have darkened 
 al his after-story. It would have been too like what has occurred at 
 a more modern period of British history, when, in the family of the 
 Hanoverian kings, the relation of father and son seemed to be governed 
 by a law of reciprocal dislike and repugnance ; as when, in the reign of 
 George the First, his son, the Prince of Wales, resented, by a pre- 
 melitated insult, what he spoke of as his father's "insolence" to him; 
 and the king resented the undutiful conduct by turning the heir-apparent 
 out of the palace: or when, some twenty years later, that Prince of 
 Wales, after he had become George the Second, under very much the 
 same Circumstances, went through the same ceremony which had been 
 practised on himself, by turning his son, the Prince of Wales, out of 
 doors ; so that this kind of disreputable family feud seemed to be a part 
 of the la w of inheritance, which was again shown, too, in the case of 
 George tie Third and his Prince of Wales. Now, inasmuch as these 
 half- German princes of later days were greatly inferior to the more 
 ancient Prince of Wales, and as history makes mention of no such 
 scandalous squabbling between him and Henry the Fourth, whatever 
 cause of dissatisfaction Prince Henry may have given, it was not of 
 such a nature as to affix a lasting stain upon his name. When his 
 father reproaches him with his habits of life, the answer is in a strain, 
 not of insolent resentment, but of modest and placid respectful defence : 
 
 "So please your majesty, I would I could 
 Quit all offences with as clear excuse, 
 As well as, I am doubtless, I can purge 
 Myself of many I am charged withal ; 
 Yet such extenuation let me beg, 
 As in reproof of many tales devised, 
 Which oft the ear of greatness needs must hear, 
 By smiling pick-thanks and base newsmongers, 
 I may, for some things true, wherein my youth 
 Hath faulty wandered and irregular, 
 Find pardon on my true submission." 
 
 The continued remonstrance and admonition of the king are answered 
 simply 
 
 " I shall hereafter, my thrice gracious lord, 
 Be more myself." 
 
 Neither in the history of the chronicler nor in the history of the 
 poet does there appear any such enmity between the king and the 
 Prince of Wales, as would throw an impediment in the way of our 
 admiration and enjoyment of the son's character. We feel that it is a 
 
128 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 " 
 
 difference easily adjusted ; and the prince is entitled so to speak, when he 
 gaily tells his companions 
 
 " I am good friends with my father, and may do any thing." 
 
 Now, while the filial relation is duly preserved, it is, on the other h&nd, 
 desirable that Prince Henry should not be too intimately identified 
 with his father's reign. It is well that he, whose glorious career ; s to 
 be the theme of a poet's richest praise, should not be associated i?i our 
 thoughts with an administration of the realm which was so different 
 from his own a reign of terror and not of loyal love a r^ign of 
 divided and not unanimous allegiance. The dominion of Henry the 
 Fourth was that of stern, hard, suspicious power. There v ere con- 
 spiracies, and craft and policy were needed to counterfliine them ; but 
 we are glad to believe that, as Shakspeare, following the traditions, has 
 represented it, Prince Hal took little, if any, part in such affairs of the 
 realm. Besides, the reign of Henry the Fourth was not only an unquiet 
 and perplexed time, but it was a dismal era of the beginning of 
 religious persecution. It was in that reign that the stern few was 
 enacted, by which heresy was to be punished with the slow torture of 
 the death by fire, and the Proto-martyr of English Reformers perished 
 at the stake. 
 
 It was part of the administration of Henry the Fourth to crush 
 the progress of the first movement of the Reformation, which began 
 with John Wycliff and the Lollards. With a reign thus characterised 
 by crafty policy and ecclesiastical intolerance, the young Prince of 
 Wales happily is not identified. In this respect, Shakspeare shows a 
 contrast between him and his brother, Prince John of Lancaster, who 
 appears to have shared more in the councils of the king. And what is 
 the result as to his character? He is not only the "sober-blooded 
 boy" that Falstaff complains of,- as one he could not make laugh, but, 
 when he is engaged in suppressing the second great conspiracy of the 
 nobles, he does so, not in open battle, like Prince Henry at Shrews- 
 bury, but by a piece of hard and treacherous surprise. This is incom- 
 parably worse than revelry with Falstaff, and wisely and happily is 
 Shakspeare's Prince Hal kept thus apart from his father's reign. The 
 poet, I believe, loved this historical character too well to leave him 
 much in the palace ; and, accordingly, taking authority from the tra- 
 ditionary stories of the prince's lighter hours, he carried him away from 
 the court, and transported him to a more genial and, I venture to say, 
 a better place than the palace a London tavern frequented by Falstaff 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 129 
 
 the moral perils of such a scene and companionship being small in 
 comparison with those of crafty and tyrannical rule. 
 
 In presenting to our minds his splendid conception of the character 
 of his favourite king and hero, Shakspeare would not have us believe 
 Henry the Fifth had been trained in such a school as his father's reign. 
 In such an element as that of king's councils, he does not show him 
 to us ; it was better that the mere policy of that reign should run its 
 course without him ; and from such contact Shakspeare, for the most 
 part, keeps him away. There is illustration of this in what has struck 
 me as a beautiful piece of poetic art, which occurs in another of his 
 dramas. In the tragedy of Macbeth there are intimations that Macbeth 
 had children. Lady Macbeth, in one of the most appalling passages 
 before the murder of Duncan, speaks of herself as having been a 
 mother ; and it is one of the pangs of Macbeth's ambition that the 
 sceptre is to be wrenched from his family with an unlineal hand, " no 
 son of his succeeding," as the weird sisters predicted. But no children 
 of Macbeth's appear in the drama: no child's voice is heard in his 
 guilty castle, nor in his wretched palace. Why is this, but that the 
 gentle spirit of Shakspeare, so full of fondness for children, so reve- 
 rential of the beauty and the holiness of childhood, could not bring 
 innocence into any association with the accumulated guilt of that 
 tragedy ? He could not, I believe, find it in his heart to show the 
 children of such guilty parents. The very presence of a child of theirs 
 would have aggravated the hideousness of the crimes of this blood- 
 stained pair beyond the true scope of genuine tragic emotion, and even 
 the imagination of Shakspeare could not have wrought the incongruous 
 elements into poetic harmony. 
 
 It seems to me that it is upon somewhat a similar principle, though 
 in a very different degree, that the career of Prince Henry is kept dis- 
 tinct from the career of Henry the Fourth. Retributive justice was to 
 fall, as we shall hereafter see it did fall, with fearful force upon the de- 
 scendants of the usurping Bolingbroke, but not until, in one of its more 
 distant and mighty vibrations, it should strike, not upon the first, but 
 second generation. The reign of Henry the Fifth was to be presented 
 as a virtuous and glorious dominion ; and retribution was not to be 
 thought of as hanging over it. This is at once the poetic and historical 
 view of it ; and, therefore, it was desirable to disconnect it, as far as 
 possible, from the primal guilt which at length brought the retribution 
 down. It is well, indeed, that Prince Hal is a stranger in his father's 
 palace. 
 
 K 
 
130 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 But then comes the consideration, why, if estranged from the court 
 and the royal councils, as the king describes him 
 
 " Almost an alien to the hearts 
 Of all the court and princes of my blood," 
 
 the prince should be found in such companionship as that in which he 
 is chiefly presented, and which historical tradition tells of his having 
 sought. What was the link of association between him and Falstaff ? 
 Whatever it was, the association did not rise to the dignity and feeling 
 of friendship ; it was companionship and nothing more such com- 
 panionship as would, however, be regulated in some degree by the laws 
 of friendship. In the large company of the characters that people 
 Shakspeare's plays, whether tragic or comic, I believe few instances of 
 male friendship are presented there. It was with a true knowledge of 
 human nature, and not with any morbid, and therefore unjust, esti- 
 mate of it, that Shakspeare considered, I suppose, friendship between 
 men as a relation that is rarely of long duration, and, more rarely, of 
 very deep feeling. The course of the world hardly admits of it, save 
 under peculiar and happy circumstances. We are apt, I believe, often 
 to think that the sympathy of friendship, or even companionship, is 
 proof of similarity of character : that men become friends and com- 
 panions only because they are alike ; and that no friendship can be 
 permanent unless it be founded upon strong and complete resemblance 
 of character and disposition. That there must be some kind of conge- 
 niality is undoubtedly true ; but, with certain resemblances of mind 
 and feelings, there may be dissimilitude, which, so far from being a 
 hindrance to the strength of a friendship, will engender a more real 
 and abiding affection, because the two parties are not minutely and 
 identically alike. Even in the closer and lifelong relation of man and 
 wife, it is reasonable to believe that some, I will not say positive differ- 
 ences of character, but varieties of disposition, will strengthen the 
 affection due to that vow, which, in Spenser's fine phrase, "would 
 endless matrimony make." The reason for this congenial influence of 
 a certain dissimilitude of character, especially in friendship, is perhaps 
 simply this, that one party, wanting some quality of mind or feeling, 
 and conscious of that want, has it supplied by the differently constituted 
 character of the friend or companion. This, of course, implies that 
 there is present at the same time such generosity of disposition, or such 
 a relation of the parties, as will preclude all possibility of reciprocal 
 jealousy or pride of superiority. That being the case, their various 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 131 
 
 properties make up for their mutual wants ; understanding, however, 
 that there must be preserved some main elements of direct sympathy 
 some ground common to them both. These principles are finely illus- 
 trated by Shakspeare in such a friendship as that of Hamlet and 
 Horatio : they resemble each other in the excellent moral purity and 
 manliness of their character, but in many respects, as to intellectual 
 constitution and as to habits of feeling, it is hardly possible for two 
 men to be more unlike. Hamlet is full of philosophy, of poetry ; 
 meditative, sensitive to the highest degree, the equipoise of his nature 
 disturbed by what befalls him ; on the other hand, Horatio has not a 
 particle of the poetical or philosophical constitution or temperament ; he 
 is one of the most matter-of-fact persons conceivable, with strong and 
 genuine feelings, but with those feelings imperturbably adjusted and 
 balanced ; and it is exactly in this particular that he is the appropriate 
 friend- of Hamlet, as Hamlet himself feels. He takes Horatio as his 
 chosen friend, because he finds in his sober-minded, judicious character 
 something that makes up for his own infirmity of over-sensitiveness. 
 
 I have dwelt somewhat upon this train of thought, because in seeking 
 for the point of association between the prince and Falstaff, it should be 
 understood that possibly we may find it is " by contraries that they are 
 joined more closely still." The chief sympathy between them, I 
 believe, is high intellectual activity. With such a constitution of mind, 
 Prince Henry had early in life acquired a relish for the external excite- 
 ment and animation of military life ; but finding no fit field of adven- 
 ture, and withdrawing himself, as we have noticed, from the business of 
 the -government, he needs employment, or at least excitement, for the 
 pent-up energies of his mind. He craves some relief that shall be at 
 the same time excitement, and to supply this, Shakspeare gives the 
 unparalleled wit of Falstaff. The intellect of Falstaff possesses an un- 
 wearied activity, which spends itself altogether in the direction of wit. 
 There is no exhausting it ; there is no tiring it ; there is no such thing 
 as taking it unawares. Coleridge is, no doubt, right, when he says that 
 there is no humour in the character of Falstaff ; it is all wit, and that 
 is one form of intellectual energy. Humour has more to do with feeling ; 
 it is often joined with deep pathos : it is of the heart, but wit is of the 
 head, and in its high forms is intensely intellectual. It is this, and only 
 this, that gives to Falstaff his power over the prince, and makes the 
 witchery of his companionship. Falstaff, of course, feels his own 
 power, and lays himself out (it is well worth his while to do so) to 
 cultivate it for the amusement of the heir-apparent. He does not 
 husband his wit, in which he was too affluent to need any economizing 
 
132 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 of it for the prince's use, but he provides materials, as when, after 
 his visit to Justice Shallow he says "I will devise matter enough 
 out of this Shallow to keep Prince Henry in continual laughter, the 
 wearing-out six fashions, and he shall laugh without intervalluras. It 
 is much, that a lie with a slight oath, and a jest with a sad brow, will 
 do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders ! O, you shall 
 see him laugh till his face be like a w r et cloak ill-laid up." 
 
 For lack of better employment, the prince has, from Falstaff's wit, 
 high enjoyment while it lasts. His other gay companions are very 
 insufficient for him ; the time hangs heavy on his hands, till FalstafF 
 joins them. It is the stimulus of a temporary intoxication. The prince 
 is idle, not from the love of idleness, but for want of a congenial sphere 
 of action; he is playful to keep care away, for beneath all his playfulness 
 there is an undercurrent of thoughtfulness, which, though covert at 
 first, is progressive, until it assumes the aspect of almost melancholy 
 pensiveness in his royal years. He is just in that condition of mind 
 that he needs such a contrariety of character as Falstaff presents, a 
 man, who is enamoured of an idle life from pure love of inactivity, who 
 is careless habitually, if not constitutionally. His vivacity does not, 
 like the prince's, cover any thing there is nothing beneath: it is a 
 vein, however that you cannot dig through. Besides his wit, all else is 
 sensuality, self-indulgence, shamelessness. But, reprobate as Falstai? 
 is, his character is not contemptible. His grossness may be disgusting, 
 his profligacies most reprehensible so that he may be censured or con- 
 demned but he is not to be despised. And this presents the question 
 of his imputed cowardice. On this point there has been a very great 
 misapprehension, which, perhaps, even now, is not altogether done away 
 with. The persuasion that Shakspeare intended to represent Falstaff 
 as a coward, was so universally entertained, that when, during the last 
 century, a very ingenious and argumentative essay, much in advance of 
 the criticism of that day the thin and vapid criticism of Dr. Blair and 
 Lord Kames when this essay appeared, vindicating FalstafF from the 
 charge of cowardice, it was looked upon as a freak of playful paradox. 
 But it was irrefutable argument, which has been fortified by all the 
 fine philosophical criticism that has since been bestowed upon the Shak- 
 sperean drama. I shall not, of course, depart so far from my chief 
 subject as to enter into that argument, and must content myself with 
 the assurance that there is not a doubt in the case left. Falstaif is no 
 coward; there is no constitutional timidity about him. The clue to his 
 character in this particular is given at the very opening of the drama. 
 When Poins says, "Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true- 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 133 
 
 bred cowards as ever turned back, and for the third (that is, Falstaff) 
 if he fight longer than he sees reason, 111 forswear arms." That is the 
 character of Falstaff's courage he will fight as long as he sees reason, 
 and not a moment longer will sense of honour or any thing else hold 
 him to it. This may be dishonour, but it is not cowardice; so it is 
 throughout, if carefully examined; and Falstaff describes himself justly 
 when he says to the prince, " Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt, your 
 grandfather ; but yet no coward, Hal." 
 
 It would, indeed, have greatly increased the difficulty of extenuating 
 the prince's companionship with Falstaff, if the fat knight had been a 
 pitiful coward instead of the old soldier in whom the sense of voluptu- 
 ous comfort has outgrown all sense of chivalry. When the rebellion of 
 the Percies produces a war, he is ready for military service, as affording 
 him lawless chances of providing for himself; and when the prince tells 
 him, "I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot," his only answer 
 is, " I would it had been of horse." The rebellion calls the prince into 
 action, and his prompt zeal shows not only that his course of life has 
 not enervated him, but how gladly he finds a more congenial scene. 
 It is in the midst of his loose companions that he gives his several 
 orders. 
 
 " Go, bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster, 
 
 To my brother John ; this to my lord of Westmoreland, 
 
 Go, Poins, to horse, to horse ; for thou and I 
 
 Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner-time. 
 
 Jack, meet me to-morrow in the Temple Hall ; 
 
 At two o'clock in the afternoon ; 
 
 There shalt thou know thy charge; and there receive 
 
 Money and order for their furniture. 
 
 The land is burning : Percy stands on high, 
 
 And they or we must lower lie." 
 
 Jt was by the heroism of the Prince of Wales that the victory over the 
 'Percies at Shrewsbury was won : it gave safety to his father's throne, 
 and it redeemed his own good name. 
 
 After the excitement of this campaign, he is represented as return- 
 ing to his old companions ; and, indeed, Shakspeare was too profound 
 and faithful a moralist to retrieve the prince so easily to break off 
 suddenly his former associations. The lasting transformation of his 
 character must cost a struggle, and this is shown in a remarkable 
 scene which I do not remember to have seen commented upon. Mr. 
 Senior, the eminent writer on political economy, in one of those fine 
 critical papers with which he followed the successive appearance of the 
 Waverley Novels, in remarking upon that rare power displayed by 
 
134 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Shakspeare and Scott and by few else of combining the comic with 
 the tragic element, observes that no tragedian except Shakspeare has 
 ventured to make a king's son remember that " poor creature, small 
 beer." This occurs in the scene to which I have just alluded, as dis- 
 closing the struggle between the prince's better nature and the com- 
 panionship he felt to be unworthy of it. The scene is with Poins, the 
 most gentlemanly and least unfit of his associates. The prince says, 
 " Trust me, I am exceedingly weary." It was, doubtless, weariness 
 of the heart self-dissatisfaction though he does not there say so, 
 When Poins replies, " Is it come to that ? I had thought weariness 
 durst not have attacked one of so high blood ;" the prince adds, " Faith 
 it doth me, though it discolours the complexion of my greatness to 
 acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer ? 
 * * * In troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. 
 But, indeed, these humble considerations make me out of love with my 
 greatness." And then he runs on with a good deal of extravagance to 
 show the mean things he was familiar with, avowing low propensities 
 at the very time that what he truly wants is to give utterance to the 
 better, and the deeper feelings his heart is full of, but from which he is 
 restrained by the painful misgiving that it would be thought unreal 
 and insincere, because so unlike himself as he was known to these com- 
 panions. Poins says, " How ill it follows, after you have laboured so 
 hard, you should talk so idly. Tell me how many good young princes 
 would do so, their fathers lying so sick as yours is." He answers, 
 " Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins ? Why, I tell thee it is not meet 
 that I should be sad, now my father is sick ; albeit, I could tell to thee 
 (as to me it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend), I could 
 be sad, and sad indeed, too." 
 
 Poins's remark, " Very hardly on such a subject," provokes him to 
 express more of his feelings : 
 
 " By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil's book as thou 
 and Falstaff, for obduracy and persistency. Let the end try the man. 
 But I tell thee, my heart bleeds inwardly that my father is so sick ; 
 and, keeping such vile company as thou art, hath in reason taken from 
 me all ostentation of sorrow. * * What wouldst thou think of me 
 if I should weep ?" 
 
 When Poins says, " I should think thee a most princely hypocrite/* 
 the prince adds, " It would be every man's thought : and thou art a 
 blessed fellow to think as every man thinks ; never a man's thought in 
 the world keeps the roadway better than thine: every man would 
 think me a hypocrite indeed*" 
 
THE KEIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH 135 
 
 The conflict is this : he has become so entangled that he cannot 
 suffer his better nature to take its course, from an apprehension of what 
 would most offend a disposition like his. He would, therefore, expose 
 himself to be condemned as worse than he really is, rather than to be 
 thought not so good as he might appear to be. Accordingly, he tries 
 to turn away from seriousness to his old habits of diversion ; but the 
 sport is now laborious to him, and grave thoughts intrude in the midst 
 of it, for he says : " We played the fools with the time, and the spirits 
 of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us." 
 
 And when report is made to him 
 
 " The king your father is at Westminster, 
 And there are twenty weak and wearied posts 
 Come from the North," 
 
 he casts off in an instant the bonds of his companionship at the approach 
 of the dangers of a second conspiracy against his father's throne : 
 
 " By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame 
 So idly to profane the precious time; 
 When tempests of commotion like the south 
 Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt, 
 And arch upon our bare unarmed heads. 
 Give me my sword, and cloak : Falstaff, good-night." 
 
 This is Prince Hal's last good-night to his boon companion. When 
 they next meet it is as king and subject, and when the unchangeable 
 impudence with which Falstaff approaches Henry the Fifth, in the 
 midst of the royal retinue, is rebuked and repulsed with stern but not 
 cruel severity. It is a passage in the drama of historical interest, as 
 closing for ever that levity of life which, according to common tradi- 
 tion, Henry had indulged. 
 
 The reign of Henry the Fifth was signalised at the outset by a 
 magnanimous policy. Besides the funereal honours to the memory of 
 Richard the Second, he set at liberty the representative of the strict 
 lineal succession to the crown, and thus converted a competitor into a 
 friend. His policy if policy it is to be called was to plant the throne 
 on the affections of the nation the nobles and the people. In the only 
 case of conspiracy which threatened the security of his reign, he is 
 finely represented by Shakspeare as extorting from the mouths of the 
 conspiring nobles themselves their own condemnation, so that justice is 
 made to appear almost self-administrant. 
 
 The great business of the reign was the war with France. Reserving 
 the consideration of that war chiefly for the next lecture, I shall now 
 
136 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY . 
 
 treat it only in its connection with the character of Henry the Fifth. 
 He revives the old claim of Edward the Third to the crown of France, 
 and renews hostilities which had not 'been settled by any definite 
 pacification. In doing so, he sought the advice of his highest and 
 wisest counsellors; and, in asking the Primate of England to pronounce 
 opinion on the claim, he forewarns him of the awful responsibility of 
 his advice: 
 
 " For God doth know how many, now in health, 
 
 Shall drop their blood in approbation 
 
 Of what your reverence shall incite us to : 
 
 Therefore take heed how you impawn our person, 
 
 How you awake the sleeping sword of war : 
 
 We charge you in the name of God take heed : 
 
 For never two such kingdoms did contend 
 
 Without much fall of blood ; whose guiltless drops 
 
 Are every one a wo, a sore complaint 
 
 'Gainst him whose wrongs give edge unto the swords 
 
 That makes such waste in brief mortality." 
 
 I need not occupy you with the course of that invasion from the 
 landing of Henry's army near Harfleur to one of the greatest of 
 England's victories the battle of Agincourt. Shakspeare has indicated 
 the unanimity of the national feeling in this war and the universal 
 allegiance to the king, by introducing among the soldiers, not only 
 Englishmen, but the Welsh and Irish and Scotch, so as to make it a 
 great British movement against a continental power. He has also 
 shown the popular character of the war and of the sovereign, by giving 
 considerable prominence, not merely to the nobles, but to commoners; 
 and, indeed, to the common soldiers. If the freedom of Henry's early 
 life had a perilous tendency to licentiousness, it gave him, on the other 
 hand, large sympathies with his fellow-men and a power of dealing 
 with humanity in a generous and liberal spirit, which secured him the 
 hearts of his soldiers. His intercourse with them is one of the points 
 of description in that deservedly famous picture of the eve of the battle 
 of Agincourt in the chorus of the fourth act: 
 
 " The poor condemned English, 
 
 Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires, 
 
 Sit patiently, and inly ruminate 
 
 The morning's danger ; and their gesture sad 
 
 Investing lank, lean cheeks, and warworn coats, 
 
 Presenting them unto the gazing moon 
 
 So many horrid ghosts. Oh, now who will behold 
 
 The royal captain of this ruin'd band, 
 
 Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent. 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 137 
 
 Let him cry Praise and glory on his head ! 
 For forth he goes, and visits all his host, 
 Bids them good-morrow, with a modest smile ; 
 And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. 
 Upon his royal face there is no note 
 How dread an army hath enrounded him ; 
 Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour 
 Unto the weary and all watched night : 
 But freshly looks, and overbears attaint 
 With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty ; 
 That every wretch, pining and pale before, 
 Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks ; 
 A largess universal, like the sun, 
 His liberal eye doth giva to every one, 
 Thawing cold fear." 
 
 The position of Henry's army was critically dangerous. Outnum- 
 bered, enfeebled by disease and fatigue, and badly supplied, they were 
 kept in good discipline and in good heart by the half-thoughtful, half- 
 jocund confidence of their sovereign. In the scenes before and at the 
 battle, Shakspeare shows in action the finest conception of a great 
 general, the happy warrior he 
 
 " Who doom'd to go in company with pain 
 And fear and bloodshed, miserable train ! 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; 
 In face of these doth exercise a power 
 Which is our human nature's highest dower; 
 Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves 
 Of their bad influence, and their good receives." 
 
 A historical event is dramatised when the king, overhearing West- 
 moreland's wish 
 
 " Oh, that we now had here 
 But one ten thousand of those men in England 
 That do not work to day !" 
 asks 
 
 " What's he that wishes so ? 
 My cousin Westmoreland ? No, my fair cousin : 
 If we are mark'd to die, we are enough 
 To do our country loss ; and if to live, 
 The fewer men, the greater share of honour." 
 
 Again, when, at early morn, he greets his brothers with such fin 
 cheerfulness and courtesy 
 
 " Glo'ster, 'tis true that we are in great danger ; 
 The greater therefore should our courage be. 
 Good morrow, Brother Bedford !" 
 
138 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 And what can be more touchingly beautiful than the respectful and 
 affectionate greeting to the white hairs of that fine old soldier, 
 Erpingham ? 
 
 " Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham ! 
 A good soft pillow for that good white head, 
 Were better than a churlish turf of France." 
 
 And when the old knight takes his leave, saying 
 
 " The lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry !" 
 the king's cordial response is 
 
 " God-a mercy, old heart ! thou speakest cheerfully." 
 
 In this season of the highest peril the spirit of Prince Hal seems to 
 animate the king, and it is in the mood of lighter-hearted days, that he 
 answers the message of the Constable of France 
 
 " "Why should they mock poor fellows thus ? 
 The man that once did sell the lion's skin 
 While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him. 
 And many of our bodies shall, no doubt, 
 Find native graves ; upon the which, I trust, 
 Shall witness live in brass of this day's work. 
 Tell the constable 
 
 We are but warriors for the working day : 
 Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd 
 With rainy marching in the painful field; 
 There's not a piece of feather in our host, 
 (Good argument, I hope, we will not fly,) 
 And time has worn us into slovenry : 
 But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim ; 
 And my poor soldiers tell me ere the night 
 They'll be in fresher robes." 
 
 The battle was fought ; and, at no great distance from the field of 
 Cressy, the victory of Agincourt was won. I cannot, of course, take 
 time to dwell on the particulars of it ; to speak of the immense loss of 
 life to the nobility of France ; the consequence of their impetuous but 
 ill-directed valour. Nor can I more than mention Henry's stern order 
 let us hope it was unavoidable for the slaughter of the French 
 prisoners. One incident alone I must refer to as finely illustrative of 
 that period of England's history; and it is described in one of the 
 beautiful passages of poetic description with which the play abounds 
 the description of the deaths of York and Suffolk. After the battle, 
 the king inquires whether his cousin, the Duke of York, survives : 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH. 139 
 
 " Lives he, good uncle ? Thrice, within this hour, 
 I saw him down ; thrice up again and fighting ; 
 From helmet to the spur, all blood he was." 
 
 Exeter answers 
 
 " In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie, 
 Larding the plain ; and by his bloody side 
 (Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds) 
 The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies. 
 Suffolk first died ; and York, all haggled over, 
 Comes to him, where in gore he lay ineteep'd, 
 And takes him by the beard ; kisses the gashes 
 That bloodily did yawn upon his face ; 
 And cries aloud * Tarry, my cousin Suffolk! 
 My soul shall thine keep company to heaven : 
 Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast ; 
 As, in this glorious and well-foughten field 
 We kept together in our chivalry !' 
 Upon these words, I came and cheer'd him up ; 
 He smiled me in the face, raught me his hand, 
 And, with a feeble gripe, says * Dear my lord, 
 Commend my service to my sovereign.' 
 So did he turn, and over Suffolk's neck 
 He threw his wounded arm, and kiss'd his lips ; 
 And so, espoused to death, with blood he seal'd 
 A testament of noble-ending love." 
 
 This description is an image of the English nobility ; not discordant, 
 but " keeping together in their chivalry " in the hour of battle and of 
 death, and uttering with their last breath dutiful and affectionate 
 loyalty to that sovereign, whose sway gave glory and harmony to the 
 nation. 
 
 Intending this drama as a kind of triumphal song, Shakspeare has 
 carried it, not as usual on to the monarch's death, but to the happy 
 ending of the marriage of Henry the Fifth to Katharine of France, the 
 daughter of Charles. The great achievement of the war was the treaty 
 stipulation for the permanent union of the crowns of England and 
 France. The subjugation of the French was partial and of short 
 duration ; and the next page of history that we have to turn to, will 
 show how ths independence of France found its wondrous redemption 
 by the splendid heroism of Joan of Arc. 
 
VIII. 
 
 eip jrf f MI % 
 
 THE TREATY OF TROTES ITS DETAILS THE LAST HOURS OF HENRY THE FlFTH HlS 
 INTENDED CRUSADE HUME'S COMMENTS HENRY THE SlXTH AN INFANT HlS REIGN 
 AND THESE "CHRONICLE PLAYS " UNPROMISING SUBJECTS GENUINENESS OF THE 
 
 PLAYS THK MINORITY THE FRENCH WARS STATE OF FRANCE THE REGENT 
 BEDFORD THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS JOAN OF ARC VARIOUS CRITICISMS ON HER 
 CHARACTER HER SINCERITY IMPUTED WITCHCRAFT DEFECTIVE EDUCATION HER 
 
 INFLUENCE RELIEF OF ORLEANS CORONATION OF THE KING AT RflEIMS EXEMPTION 
 
 OF DOMREMY CAPTURE OF THE MAID HER TRIAL AND EXAMINATION HER MARTYR- 
 DOMCARDINAL BEAUFORT AND THE BISHOP OF BEAUVAIS-THE CARDINAL'S DEATH 
 STATUE OF THE MAID OF VERSAILLES DEATH OF THE DUKE OF BEDFORD His 
 
 MONUMENT MAGNANIMITY OF LOUIS THE ELEVENTH. 
 
 IN concluding the last lecture, I pointed your attention to the fact 
 that Shakspeare, in order to preserve unbroken the triumphant tone of 
 the drama of Henry the Fifth, did not bring it down to the monarch's 
 death. The historical illustration which the play furnished us, ended 
 with the close of Henry's campaign in France and his marriage with 
 Katharine. The war waged by England against France extended over 
 a period of about one hundred and twenty years, broken, indeed, by 
 various truces and interruptions; and at length, some eighty years after 
 its origin, it was settled, to all appearance permanently, by the treaty 
 which the victory of Agincourt enabled the English monarch to exact. 
 The treaty of Troyes which was concluded in 1420, was such a treaty 
 as 'a conqueror negotiates, or rather dictates, in the confident strength 
 of recent victory. It did not absolutely depose the French king ; but, 
 tranferring the royal power really into the hands of the conqueror, it 
 provided that, on the death of Charles the Sixth, the crown should pass 
 to Henry the Fifth and his heirs. The union of the crowns of the 
 two great monarchies was a proud achievement; but it proved no 
 more than a splendid dream of vain ambition. It seemed as if, by the 
 subversion of its constitutional law of succession, the ancient dynasty 
 of France had now reached the end of its thousand-year life, and that 
 the sceptre of Clovis was to be for ever broken, when it fell from the 
 hands of the feeble Charles. It has been well said by Arnold in his 
 Lectures on Modern History, that "When our object is to reproduce 
 to ourselves, so far as is possible, the very life of the period we are 
 studying, minute particulars help us to do this; nay, the very formal 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 141 
 
 enunciation of titles, and the specification of towns and districts in their 
 legal style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their very 
 particularity. Every common historian records the substance of the 
 treaty by which the succession to the crown of France was given to 
 Henry the Fifth; but the treaty itself, or the English version of it 
 which Henry sent over to England to be proclaimed there, gives a far 
 more lively impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, 
 and the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles the Sixth, in 
 the ostentatious care taken to provide for the recognition of his formal 
 title during his liftime, while all real power is ceded to Henry, and 
 provision is made for the perpetual union hereafter of the two kingdoms 
 under his sole government/' 
 
 The English king was in the full vigour of his days, the prime of 
 his manhood just past, and the splendour of his reign seemed to be 
 shining forth upon some glorious future, with the united diadem of 
 France and England glittering on his brow. But, in less than two 
 years, he found himself to be a dying man. Having given his 
 death-bed injunctions for the administration of the realm and for the 
 guardianship of his infant child, he spent his last hours in devotional 
 exercises; and, as the penitential psalms were read, when he heard the 
 verse "Build thou the walls of Jerusalem," he interrupted them to 
 declare, as a. dying man, that it had been his intention to visit Palestine 
 and free the Holy City from the Saracens. It is at once very easy and 
 very characteristic for a historian like Hume to add the comment 
 "So ingenious are men in deceiving themselves, that Henry forgot in 
 these moments all the blood spilt by his ambition, and received comfort 
 from the late feeble resolve, which, as the mode of these enterprises was 
 now past, he certainly would never have carried into execution." The 
 mode of these enterprises was, indeed, past; but, at the time, it was not 
 known to be, and the whole reflection seems to me a piece of most unreal 
 moralizing. It is the malice of scepticism aping the modesty and the 
 candour of piety; and it is well worth remarking that, while Mr. Hume 
 is confident enough in his speculation to pronounce, upon no better 
 authority, that Henry never would have carried his intention into 
 execution, later historical research has brought to light documentary 
 proof, which establishes the sincerity of his dying words. Immediately 
 after the treaty of Troyes, a Flemish knight, who was a councillor to 
 Philip the Good, of Burgundy, and had been an ambassador to the 
 English king, was sent by Henry and the Duke of Burgundy upon a 
 secret mission to the Holy Land. The mission was actually performed, 
 and with success; he made a military survey of the coasts and defences 
 
142 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 of Egypt and Syria; and the two copies of this survey, intended, one 
 for the King of England, and the other for the Duke of Burgundy, 
 are both in existence. Accordingly, if Mr. Hume, in absence of all 
 evidence and knowledge, had argued, not from his theory of the uni- 
 versal hypocrisy of all pious profession of other times, but more wisely, 
 as well as charitably, from the possible sincerity of a dying man's 
 declaration, he would have been much nearer the truth. 
 
 So far from its being reasonable to scoff at Henry's declaration of 
 his purposed crusade as a self-delusion and mockery, it is not only 
 sustained by documentary evidence of the reality of his intention, but 
 we can well believe that a spirit so ardent and active as his, after having 
 achieved, while yet a young man, enough to satisfy a large ambition in 
 the way of worldly conquest, should have turned his thoughts to what 
 was esteemed a holy war. Having won the crown of France, and 
 being confederate with the greatest of the French nobles, the Duke of 
 Burgundy, who also in his ducal power was almost a sovereign, Henry 
 may well have felt that it became him to fulfil the unaccomplished 
 purpose of his father. Had this crusade been carried into effect, it 
 might have given to Eastern Europe security from Turkish invasion a 
 century earlier than it was obtained ; and the tranquillity of Christendom 
 might have been saved from the alarm, which was created by the 
 successive, and well-nigh successful, sieges of Vienna by the Turks. 
 
 On the death of Henry the Fifth, the succession passing to his only 
 child, Henry of Windsor the son of an English father and a French 
 mother, an infant of no more than nine months old the youngest 
 successor that ever had come to the English throne was to wear the 
 crown of both France and England. One of the old chroniclers 
 prefaces the reign of Henry the Sixth by saying that "The pretty 
 hands that could not feed himself, were yet made capable to wield a 
 sceptre; and he that was beholding to nurses for milk, did, nevertheless, 
 distribute the sustenance of law and justice to so great and warlike 
 nations." Two nations, and the proud and mighty nobles of two 
 countries, did obeisance to the baby brow of Henry the Sixth; but, 
 when the royal child grew to manhood, he lived to learn, by bitter 
 experience, the misery of that royalty, which his forefathers had 
 triumphantly transmitted to him. The career that was before the poor 
 child was calamity and disgrace in foreign war, discord and bloody 
 strife at home, disaster in almost every variety, and, at last, a violent 
 death. 
 
 Before proceeding to the consideration of the reign of Henry the 
 Sixth, let me say that it is a most unpromising subject for us in this 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 143 
 
 course. It is for several reasons. His long reign, for it was of near 
 forty years' duration, was confusion and turmoil from the beginning 
 to the very end of it. It was a weary period of danger and distress, 
 but not of that description of suffering which often serves to develop 
 heroic character, and cultivate lofty and virtuous emotions. Passing 
 from the reign of Henry of Monmouth to that of Windsor, you see 
 every thing co-operating to convert unanimity into discord, and not 
 only to produce distraction, but to degrade the national enthusiasm and 
 prostrate the character of the kingdom. The splendid achievement of 
 foreign victory is changed for defeat and ignominy, and the record 
 of the rest of the reign is reeking with the blood of civil slaughter. 
 Another reason for the unpromising character of the subject is, that the 
 history of the reign of Henry the Sixth is well-nigh in as great confusion 
 as the reign itself, so that it becomes most difficult to trace distinctly 
 and satisfactorily the course of events, or even to form a conception o 
 the characters and spirit of the times ; and furthermore, if we seek for 
 personal interest in the characters of those who flourished or rather 
 let me say of such distressful times, who lived then, it is hard to 
 discover, who is entitled to sympathy and respect, and who is worthy of 
 condemnation and hatred. There is a cloud of names belonging to 
 that period, but as far as one's feelings are concerned, they seem to be 
 names and nothing more. It is difficult to find one personage, either 
 male or female, among them in whose fortunes or character one can 
 take any deep interest. This is owing chiefly, I suppose, to the 
 general obscurity which hangs over the reign of Henry the Sixth, 
 and prevents our forming any thing like a distinct conception of the 
 characters of the men of the times or of the principles of action in 
 the events. 
 
 Again, there is another reason which affects the interest in this 
 reign, at least for our present purposes, and that is the manifest infe- 
 riority of the dramas Shakspeare has devoted to it, when compared 
 with his other " Chronicle-Plays." It is that very inferiority which 
 has made the authorship of the three parts of Henry the Sixth a ques- 
 tion ; and it is difficult to believe them the productions of the same 
 poetic genius, that gave to English history and English poetry the 
 other historical plays which bear a stamp that no one can mistake. The 
 question whether or no Shakspeare was the author of the three parts of 
 Henry the Sixth, is a literary question not belonging to my present 
 course ; and, while I do not enter upon it, 1 cannot help lamenting 
 that there is such grievous inferiority in these three plays, in which I 
 fear I cannot find a passage furnishing valuable historical illustration 
 
144 LECTUKES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 or of such poetic excellence, that I should desire to repeat it to you. 
 The chief value of the poet's historical illustration is, that it gives unity 
 to the apparent inconsistencies of human character, and also to a mul- 
 titude of events ; it helps us to comprehend the facts, because, discon- 
 nected as they may be, and therefore unimpressive, they are put into 
 order and harmony by the power of the imagination. Unfortunately, 
 it is just at the period of English history when we should need this 
 assistance, that it fails us ; for really these three parts of Henry the 
 Sixth are nearly as confused as the literal history of the times ; and if 
 the lamp of philosophic history is shining very feebly and unsteadily in 
 the prose, the light of poetry is equally dim in these dramas. I am 
 sure that I could not interest you in retailing the military vicissitudes of 
 this reign the alternations of victory and defeat, or the dark and 
 obscure schemes of rival factions ; and yet, what else is there in the 
 history of the reign ? So that we have before us, 1 apprehend, not 
 only a difficulty, but (I am inclined to believe) almost an impossible 
 subject. 
 
 From four of Shakspeare's plays, the Richard the Second, the two 
 parts of Henry the Fourth, and Henry the Fifth, we have been enabled 
 to draw historical illustration of the ascendency of the Lancastrian 
 kings the rise and progress of the Plantagenet family, from the time 
 when Richard threw down his warder in the lists at Coventry, to the 
 period of the highest glory of the race on the field of Agincourt. Four 
 plays, attributed to Shakspeare, are given to the sequel of the decline 
 and fall of the Lancastrians, and the rising fortunes and dominion of 
 the house of York. 
 
 The reign of Henry the Sixth may be divided, in order to assist the 
 mind in taking a view of it, into two periods ; the first, chiefly during 
 his minority, being occupied with the continuance and conclusion of 
 the war in France, and the other with the civil wars of the houses of 
 York and Lancaster. The first of these forms the subject of the First 
 Part of Henry the Sixth, which opens with the funeral of Henry the 
 Fifth. This opening is intended, it has been suggested, to show that 
 the death of that king, who was the conqueror of France and the idol 
 of England, who, by his extraordinary talents and energy, obliterated 
 almost the memory of the circumstances under which his father ob- 
 tained the throne, was the starting-point of a long period of error and 
 misfortune, during which France was lost, and England torn to pieces 
 by civil war. By way of showing the irreparable loss the nation suf- 
 fered in the death of Henry the Fifth, and as a dramatic anticipation 
 of later events, the nobles and princes of the blood, to whom were 
 
THE REIGN OF HENKY THE SIXTH. 145 
 
 committed the management of the kingdom and guardianship of his 
 infant son, are represented as beginning their disputes over the hier of 
 their deceased sovereign. The success which had attended the military 
 career of Henry the Fifth in his invasion of France, did not, immedi- 
 ately after his death, fail his countrymen. The Duke of Bedford, as 
 Regent, prosecuted the war, and it proved no less to him a career of 
 victory. Low as the power of France was reduced hy the battle of 
 Agincourt and the treaty of Troyes, it was destined to sink still lower 
 before the unabated strength of the great generals of Henry the Fifth, 
 Bedford, and Salisbury, and Talbot, strengthened too, as they were, 
 by the alliance of the Duke of Burgundy. The tide of victory and 
 conquest continued to set in the same direction. The poor half-crazed, 
 or more than half-crazed, French king, Charles the Sixth, had quickly 
 followed Henry the Fifth to the grave, and his son, afterwards Charles 
 the Seventh, was scarcely recognised, even with the title of dauphin. 
 His adherents, discomfited wherever encountered, were driven from a 
 large portion of their country ; Paris was in the occupation of the new 
 dynasty ; and the whole Burgundian people, almost a nation in them- 
 selves, had withdrawn their allegiance from the ancient race of the 
 Capetian kings, and were the willing subjects of the English infant, 
 whom the fortune of war had placed on the throne of France. The 
 hope of independence was nearly extinct; the might of the island- 
 strangers, thus far irresistible, had little more to do in fulfilling the 
 work of subjugation ; and France was sunk so low as if to give the 
 greater splendour to that wondrous restoration which was to be 
 achieved by a poor, unlettered peasant girl. 
 
 The course of English conquest in France seemed to be drawing to 
 its completion. It remained to carry the war into the country beyond 
 the Loire, and there to extinguish the last hopes of French indepen- 
 dence. The Regent Bedford added fresh troops to an army that was 
 growing almost veteran on the soil of France, and being strongly rein- 
 forced by the Duke of Burgundy, sent a large force, under the com- 
 mand of the Earl of Salisbury, to take the city of Orleans, the posses- 
 sion of which was important, as commanding the passage of the Loire 
 and the entrance into the southern provinces. If Orleans should be 
 taken, the troops of Bedford and of Burgundy could enter without 
 hinderance into the open country ; and nothing but the mountains of 
 Auvergne could shelter the dauphin, if he ventured, with his small 
 court and reduced army, to remain on the soil of his native country. 
 At the advance of the English army, the small towns surrendered after 
 faint and ineffectual resistance ; and it was manifest to both nations, 
 L 
 
146 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 that the issue of sovereignty on the one side, and of independence on 
 the other, was to be decided at the city of Orleans. The day was near, 
 when the long contest between the two kingdoms was to be decided 
 for ever, after having now been protracted through several generations ; 
 for, from its origin, in the reign of Edward the Third, it had lasted 
 about ninety years. The final judgment was to be made in a great 
 national struggle, which the victories of neither Cressy nor Poictiers 
 nor Agincourt could determine. The city of Orleans proved no easy 
 conquest; it was bravely defended, and Salisbury, the English com- 
 mander, was killed during the siege. The siege was protracted for 
 months, and at last converted into a blockade, to reduce the garrison 
 by famine. With all their fortitude and endurance, and notwith- 
 standing occasional relief, they were bound in more and more hope- 
 lessly ; and nothing short of an almost miraculous interposition could 
 save them, and with them the independence of their country. 
 
 It was exactly in such unlooked-for relief, by an almost miraculous 
 interpositon, that succour did come to that beleaguered garrison and to 
 France. It was at that crisis of the war that Joan of Arc came from 
 the village of Domremy, on the borders of Lorraine, to rescue her 
 country from foreign dominion, and to win for herself the imperishable 
 title of the Maid of Orleans. 
 
 The representation which is given of the character of Joan of Arc, 
 in the First Part of Henry the Sixth, has been ingeniously defined and 
 commented on by one of the latest and best editors of Shakspeare, and 
 one of his most genial critics : he says, " We find her described in the 
 chronicles under every form of vituperation ' a monstrous woman, 
 6 a monster,' ( a romp/ ' a devilish witch and satanical enchantress/ * an 
 organ of the devil/ She was the main instrument through which 
 England had lost France ; and thus the people hated her memory. She 
 claimed to be invested with supernatural powers, and thus her name 
 was not only execrated, but feared. Neither the patriotism nor the 
 superstition of Shakspeare's age would have endured that the Pucelle 
 should have been dismissed from the scene without vengeance taken on 
 imagined crimes ; or that confession should not be made by her, which 
 should exculpate the authors of her death. Shakspeare has conducted 
 her history up to the point when she is handed over to the stake. Other 
 writers would have burned her upon the scene, and the audience would 
 have shouted with the same delight that they felt when the Barrabas of 
 Marlowe was thrown into the cauldron. Shakspeare, following the 
 historian, has made her utter a contradictory confession of one of the 
 charges against her honour ; but he has taken care to show that the 
 
THE EEIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 147 
 
 brutality of her English persecutors forced from her an inconsistent 
 avowal, if it did not a false one, for the purpose of averting a cruel and 
 instant death. In the treatment which she received from York and 
 Warwick, the poet has not exhibited one single circumstance that might 
 excite sympathy for them. They are cold, and cruel, and insolent, 
 because a defenceless creature, whom they had dreaded, is in their 
 power. Her parting malediction has, as it appears to us, a special 
 reference to the calamities which await the authors of her death : 
 
 " May never glorious sun reflex his beams 
 Upon the country where you make abode ! 
 But darkness and the gloomy shade of death 
 Environ you.' 
 
 " But in all the previous scenes, Shakspeare has drawn the character 
 of the Maid with an undisguised sympathy for her courage, her 
 patriotism, her high intellect, and her enthusiasm. If she had been the 
 defender of England and not of France, the poet could have invested 
 her with higher attributes. It is in her mouth that he puts his choicest 
 thoughts and his most musical verse. It is she who says 
 
 * Glory is like a circle in the water, 
 Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, 
 
 'Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.' 
 
 It is she who solicits the alliance of Burgundy in a strain of impassioned 
 eloquence which belonged to one fighting in a high cause, with uncon- 
 querable trust, and winning ovsr enemies by the firm resolves of a 
 vigorous understanding and an unshaken will. The lines beginning 
 
 * Look on thy country look on bleeding France,' 
 
 might have given the tone to every thing that has been subsequently 
 written in honour of the Maid. It was his accurate knowledge of the 
 springs of character which, in so young a man, appears almost intuitive, 
 that made Shakspeare adopt this delineation of Joan of Arc. He knew 
 that, with all the influence of her supernatural pretension, this extra- 
 ordinary woman could not have swayed the destinies of kingdoms, and 
 moulded princes and warriors to her will, unless she had been a person 
 of very rare natural endowments. She was represented by the chroni- 
 clers as a mere virago, a bold and shameless trull, a monster, a witch, 
 because they adopted the vulgar view of her character the view, in 
 truth, of those to whom she was opposed. They were rough soldiers, 
 with all the virtues and all the vices of their age; the creatures of brute 
 
148 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 force ; the champions, indeed, of chivalry ; but with the brand upon 
 them of all the selfish passions with which the highest deeds of chivalry 
 were too invariably associated." 
 
 This is all that can be said of the character of Joan of Arc as it 
 appears in the drama ; and I have quoted Mr. Knight's comment at 
 length, because I must confess that I have not been able to raise my 
 admiration of the dramatic treatment of her character so high. It has 
 relative merit when compared to the treatment of the same subject by 
 the chroniclers, but it still falls, I think, very far short of what is justly 
 due to beauty and purity and heroism of female character. I believe 
 that the matured genius of the poet would have rendered such tribute 
 in spite of national prejudice and universal injustice ; and one cannot 
 help lamenting that the subject fell into his hands only in the early and 
 immature period of his imagination, to which the composition of the 
 play, if it really was his, is ascribed. 
 
 The dispassionate and unprejudiced estimate of the character of the 
 Maid of Orleans belongs, however, to a later age than that of Shak- 
 speare; and the national animosity which hindered it, has, in this case, 
 died away, so that she is now a heroine to Englishmen, no less than to 
 Frenchmen, and, indeed, a Christian heroine to all Christendom. The 
 poets of Britain and of Germany have drawn genuine inspiration from 
 the memory of her life. But let me notice that, while there is better 
 spirit of justice in dealing with her history, the modern judgment 
 differs from that which was contemporary with her in this respect, 
 that now the supernatural element is excluded; and the question is, 
 whether she was a sincere and self-deluded enthusiast, or a wilful 
 impostor. Formerly, the supernatural character of her mission was 
 not doubted, and the question then was, whether the mission was from 
 above or below. By those who were hostile, her influence was not 
 regarded as a cheat and an imposture, but it was witchcraft it was 
 sorcery and satanic inspiration some strange dealing with the powers 
 of darkness. The Duke of Gloucester issued a proclamation to 
 reassure his soldiers against the incantations of the girl, and the Duke 
 of Bedford spoke of her as a "disciple and lymb of the fiend, that 
 used false enchantments and sorceries." Nobody seems to have had 
 a doubt that she possessed supernatural power; and the only question 
 was, whether she brought with her "airs from heaven or blasts from 
 hell." The severe rationalism of modern times has, however, wholly 
 changed this interpretation of her character and career, which may be 
 admired and applauded, but must not be traced to any higher cause 
 than such as serve to explain the ordinary affairs of daily life. The 
 
THE EEIGN OF HENKY THE SIXTH. 149 
 
 modern mind recoils so violently from the admission of any thing more 
 than mere human agency in the course of liuman affairs, and the 
 whole subject of belief in miraculous interposition is so completely 
 systematised by formal treatises upon the " Evidences," which prescribe 
 the occasions on which a miracle may reasonably and appropriately be 
 recognised, that the achievements of the Maid of Orleans must find an 
 explanation in some of the more customary principles of action. And 
 yet I do not see that there is any great difference between saying that 
 she was supernaturally commissioned to redeem her country from 
 foreign dominion a proposition which most minds would probably 
 shrink from and saying that, in the providential government of the 
 world, it came into her heart to save France from English conquest 
 a proposition which, perhaps, none would have any difficulty in ad- 
 mitting. 
 
 This, at least, is clear ; that what she said respecting her motives 
 and the influences upon her mind, she did sincerely and steadfastly 
 believe. No authority could shake, no sophistry could beguile, her 
 deep convictions of what she held to be the truth, though the whole 
 world should discredit it. She said she was commissioned by Heaven 
 to raise the siege of Orleans, and to crown Charles the Seventh at 
 Rheims two acts very remotely possible, nay, to human foresight, 
 almost impracticable. And who was she that gave such wondrous 
 promise ? An humble shepherd girl, a mere child (for she was but nine* 
 teen years old), ignorant of the world of everything but the mighty 
 workings of her own soul unfriended, and, indeed, with no earthly 
 support of any kind, with no mortal countenance to cheer and encou- 
 rage ; and yet, what this poor girl said she was commissioned to do, 
 that exactly she did do. Her mission was fulfilled ; and while, perhaps, 
 no one can confidently assert, or confidently deny, that her mission was, 
 as she believed, divine, certainly in the world's history there is not to 
 be found such an achievement of unassisted human enthusiasm. 
 
 The heroism of the Maid of Orleans has this surpassing merit : that 
 it combines in beautiful proportions and harmony the elements of piety, 
 of patriotism, and of freedom. She was what she was from the love 
 and the fear of God, from love of her native land, and from the love of 
 liberty. In childhood she tended her father's flocks. Her education 
 was that of a peasant girl ; she could neither read nor write, but she 
 could repeat her Pater Noster and Ave Maria. She was known as a 
 kind-hearted girl, who would dutifully nurse the sick and help the way- 
 farer ; and acts of devotion were more congenial to her than the sports 
 of childhood. At her trial that trial which ended in her death and 
 
150 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the eternal shame of her judges the sacristan of the village church 
 hore witness, that she was wont to chide him when he neglected to ring 
 the church bells at the appointed hours of service, and to win him to 
 more fidelity in his office. To her secluded home and her apprehensive 
 spirit there came tidings brought, no doubt, by many a weary way- 
 farer of the evil that was besetting the monarchy of France. She 
 heard with indignant loyalty, how her sovereign was, by a series of 
 disasters, becoming a vassal ; how British invasion, with Burgundian 
 alliance, was spoiling her native land. How it was that the thought 
 came into her soul that she was to be an instrument to save her country 
 and her king, no history can tell, no philosophy can explain ; and we 
 must fain content ourselves, I suppose, with the poor theory that it 
 was enthusiasm political and religious enthusiasm combined, and 
 working on an ardent imagination and a lofty spirit. It was her own 
 belief that the canonized dead appeared to her ; that she saw the forms 
 and " heard the voices of her guardian saints, calling on her to re- 
 establish the throne of France and expel the English invaders." The 
 apparition began, she said, when she was thirteen years old, and they 
 continued during several years. She beheld them at noonday, and in 
 the open fields ; majestic forms floated before her sight, and the sound 
 of mysterious voices reached her ears. One awful form announced 
 itself as an archangel ; and so strong and sincere was her faith in these 
 appearances, that, on her trial, with that placid and serene confidence 
 which she displayed on that occasion, she said to her judges " I saw 
 him with my eyes as plainly as I see you now/' And when further 
 questioned, she added " Yes, I do believe firmly, as firmly as I believe 
 the Christian faith, and that God has redeemed us from the pains of 
 hell, that those voices came from God and by his command." Animated 
 by such faith, she went forth to inspire new zeal into the hearts of her 
 fainting countrymen; and it is a familiar story, how her presence 
 quickly proved a power of victory, and her voice kindled that hopeful 
 courage, which gives a people their liberty and guards their inde- 
 pendence. The enthusiasm that was caught from her by her country- 
 men, at the same time struck terror and dismay into the hearts of their 
 adversaries ; her voice was the trumpet-signal of the restoration of her 
 country's freedom ; and it has been nobly said in those lines, which 
 burst so finely from a youthful poet's heart from the impassioned soul 
 of Southey-r- 
 
 " When she spake the trump was heard 
 That echoed ominous o'er the streets of Rome, 
 When the first Caesar tottered o'er the grave. 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 151 
 
 By freedom delved ; the trump whose chilling blast, 
 On Marathon and on Platea's plain 
 Scattered the Persian." 
 
 In the almost incredibly short space of seven days after her arrival 
 at Orleans, she raised the siege of the city ; and, of those seven days, 
 three were by her direction devoted to public prayer. The super- 
 natural terror which had seized the English soldiers was so great, that, 
 at the battle of Patay, they among them no doubt were some of the 
 veterans of Agincourt fled in panic-struck confusion. The remaining 
 promise of Joan of Arc was speedily fulfilled, when the dauphin 
 entered the city of Rheims in triumph, and was crowned Charles the 
 Seventh. During the coronation, the Maid of Orleans stood before the 
 high altar of the cathedral, with her banner unfurled ; and, afterwards, 
 when asked on her trial " Why was your banner thus honoured be- 
 yond all other banners ?" she answered " It had shared the danger ; 
 it had a right to share the glory." 
 
 It was a beautiful trait of female heroism that, while this extraor- 
 dinary woman was not only displaying a dauntless intrepidity in the 
 hour of battle, and not only animated the soldiers, but led them into 
 the thickest of the fight, she refrained from staining her womanhood 
 with the blood of even the enemies of her country. The white banner 
 which she bore in battle, and which was seen in her hands in the 
 fiercest of it, she had taken, as she declared on her trial, on purpose 
 to spare the sword and lance ; that she wished not to kill any one with 
 her own hand, and that she never had. She wore, it is true, the old 
 sword which \vas mysteriously obtained for her from the church- vault 
 of St. Catherine, at Fierbois, but only as a part of her suit of armour 
 and for defence. Among the curious particulars of her story, one of 
 the homely incidents which give such reality to our impressions of her 
 life, was the use of it on one occasion as a bloodless weapon of offence. 
 When the sudden change in the fortune of war raised the spirits of the 
 French soldiers from their depression, the excitement led to disorders 
 which defied discipline. The Maid, encountering one of the riotous 
 parties revelling in company with a worthless female camp-follower, beat 
 them with the flat of her sword, so that the mysterious weapon broke 
 in her hands. When this ill-omened accident was reported to the king, 
 he said to her " You ought to have taken a stout stick and laid that 
 well on them, instead of risking the sword which came to you divinely, 
 as you say/* 
 
 Orleans being relieved and Charles the Seventh crowned at Rheims, 
 the Maid regarded her mission accomplished and her duty done. She 
 
152 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 sought release from her strange, unwomanly service. "I wish," she 
 said, " this gentle king would allow me to return to my father and 
 mother, to keep my flocks and herds as before, and do all things as I 
 was wont to do." This, let it be observed, was at the very height of 
 her triumph and power ; amid the splendour and attraction of such 
 proud scenes, arid amid the grateful honours rendered to her by king 
 and captains and courtiers, her thoughts travelled back to the simple 
 life of her childhood and the secluded pastures of Lorraine. Her father 
 and kinsfolk had come to witness her triumph, and gladly would the 
 shepherd girl have gone back with them to her quiet home and the 
 village church. She was, however, prevailed on by universal entreaty 
 to forego her own wishes ; but, while in her after-career she displayed 
 the same courage in battle, it was observed that she seemed no longer 
 to feel the same persuasion that she was acting at the command and 
 under the guidance of Heaven. 
 
 Another remarkable proof of the preservation of the simplicity and 
 innocence of her character is to be found in the fact, that she not only did 
 not solicit, but declined, all rewards ; all of royal favour that she asked 
 was, that the village of her birth should be thereafter exempt from all 
 taxation. For three hundred years and more did this memorial of her 
 services continue ; and, until the French Revolution ruptured so many 
 historic associations, the stated return on the registry of taxes opposite 
 to the name of the village of Domremy was in these words: "Nothing 
 on account of the Maiden." 
 
 Again, at another period of the war, did Joan of Arc determine to 
 retire ; but again was she persuaded to remain with the army ; v and 
 again and again in assaults and skirmishes was she distinguished by her 
 accustomed valour. But her glorious career was drawing to its dark 
 and tragic close ; so true is it, as has been eloquently said, that 
 " There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face, but a 
 line of suffering runs parallel with it ; and they that read the lustrous 
 syllables of the one and stoop not to decipher the spotted and worn 
 inscriptions of the other, get the least half of the lesson earth has to 
 give." 
 
 The death of Joan of Arc has a connection with English history 
 an opprobrious connection; for upon that history it has left a reproach, 
 which all the tide of time cannot wash away. The battle in which 
 she was taken prisoner was not with the English, but with the 
 Burgundians. In the course of a few months, however, she was . 
 purchased by the English of John of Luxemburg, whose prisoner she 
 was, for ten thousand livres. When the news of the captivity of the 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 153 
 
 Maid, was received, Paris, still in occupation of the English, was filled 
 with rejoicing; the hells in the old towers of Notre-Dame were rung, 
 and a solemn Te Deum and thanksgiving were celebrated; all this 
 "because one woman was taken prisoner; and, shame! the celebration 
 was by the order of the Regent Bedford he who, a few years before, 
 had stood by the side of his heroic brother, King Henry the Fifth, on 
 the perilous field of Agincourt, with an army outnumbered, needy, and 
 enfeebled, but not disheartened. 
 
 Joan of Arc was placed in strict confinement; she was loaded with 
 fetters, and English archers kept guard over her. Her death was 
 determined on; but more than her death was needed. Her enemies 
 were crafty as well as cruel; and their purpose was to dispel the 
 popular feeling of awe which had given strength to her countrymen 
 and struck terror to her enemies. It was by a subtle barbarity that 
 she was delivered over to an ecclesiastical tribunal for trial the 
 mockery of justice. The guilt of this proceeding rests upon both 
 countries England and France. With Englishmen did the trial 
 originate, and by Frenchmen was it conducted. The Bishop of Beau- 
 vais proved a ready instrument, and was appointed first judge; another 
 French ecclesiastic the second, and another discharged the function of 
 accuser. Near one hundred doctors of theology were present to assist 
 with their counsel; and all this authority and learning were arrayed 
 against a young, unlettered, and friendless peasant girl. She appeared 
 in her military dress, but loaded with chains ; and during fifteen days 
 was the torment of her examination continued, vexing the memory even 
 of her innocent childhood. The mind is apt to be attracted in the history 
 of Joan of Arc, chiefly, if not exclusively, by her amazing martial prowess; 
 but equally wonderful was the constancy displayed upon her trial. When 
 we think of the deep sensibility of her nature, her ardent imagination, 
 her high-wrought enthusiasm, and memory fraught with such mar- 
 vellous recollections, it is most wonderful to note the sober good sense 
 and calm wisdom of her answers; and, still more, the placid faith and 
 beautiful charity which shone through them. 
 
 She was asked whether she knew herself to be in the grace of God. 
 It was a crafty and a murderous question, for it was framed in the 
 hope of extorting an answer that should prove the sentence of her own 
 condemnation. The malice of the question was baffled by the simplicity 
 of her answer : " If I am not in the grace of God, I pray God it may 
 be vouchsafed to me; if I am, I pray God I may be preserved in it." 
 A profound humility proved the highest wisdom. With undiminished 
 malevolence, she was asked whether the saints of her visions hated the 
 
LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 English nation; and, when she replied "They love whatever God 
 loves, and hate whatever he hates," the irritated inquisitor pursued 
 her with the question "Does God, then, hate the English?" and her 
 answer was "Whether God may love or hate the English, I know not; 
 but I do know that they shall be driven forth from this realm by the 
 King of France all but those who shall die in the field." It seems 
 to me that there is nothing more impressive in her story than the 
 simple serenity, the sagacity, as well as the piety of her answers, as 
 will appear from a few of them : 
 
 " When you took the banner, did you ask whether it would make 
 you victorious in every battle ?" " The Voices," answered she, " told 
 me to take it without fear, and that God would help me." " Which 
 gave the most help, you to the banner or the banner to you?" 
 "Whether victory came from the banner or from me, it belonged 
 to God alone." " Was the hope of victory founded on the banner or 
 on yourself?" " It was founded on God, and naught besides." 
 
 "If another person had borne it, would the same success have 
 followed ?" " I cannot tell. I refer myself to God." 
 
 " Why were you chosen sooner than another ?" " It was the plea- 
 sure of God that a simple maid should put the foes of the king to 
 flight." 
 
 " Were you not wont to say, to encourage the soldiers, that all the 
 standards made in semblance of your own would be fortunate ?" " I 
 used to say to them ' Bush in boldly among the English !' and then I 
 rushed in myself." 
 
 The tones of innocence and truth could find no entrance into the 
 hearts of the ruthless judges who had foredoomed her. The cruelty of 
 her persecutors gave no respite even to the short and bitter time be- 
 tween her condemnation for sorcery and heresy and the last hour 
 when, in the market-place of Rouen, she was bound to the stake. The 
 young and heroic brow which, during her whole life, had been bowed in 
 frequent and faithful devotion, and which had been pressed by the 
 helmet in her country's battles, was made to bear a mitre with the 
 cruel and false inscriptions of " RELAPSED HERETIC, APOSTATE, IDOL- 
 ATER." While engaged in her last devotions she asked for a crucifix. 
 There was none at hand, but an English soldier made a cross of rude 
 form by breaking his staff. This was the only act of mercy or pity 
 which appears to have been shown to her by her English foes. The 
 flames lapped her body, and the Saviour's name was the last word that 
 was heard from her lips. 
 
 Of this awful and inhuman tragedy the French Bishop of Beauvajs 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 155 
 
 was an official spectator, and so was the English Bishop of Winchester. 
 It was the last prelate the Cardinal Beaufort who, implacable even 
 by the death of their victim, ordered the ashes and the hones of the 
 " heretic " to be gathered up and cast into the river Seine. And who 
 was this Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester? What was his 
 life, and what the ending of it ? We have seen how the career of Joan 
 of Arc was mysteriously turned from the simplicity and lowliness of her 
 birth, and from the path of womanhood ; and now, in brief comparison, 
 let us look at the life and death of the haughty ecclesiastic who exulted 
 over her martydom. 
 
 Henry Beaufort was a natural son of John of Gaunt, Duke of 
 Lancaster, and brother, therefore, of Henry the Fourth, and uncle of 
 Henry the Fifth. Preferment in the church was not wanting to him, 
 but it gave not enough to satisfy either his avarice or his ambition ; 
 and he added political to ecclesiastical power. During the minority of 
 Henry the Sixth, his aspiring and turbulent spirit was not the smallest 
 element of disorder in those times. The tranquillity of the realm was 
 broken by the quarrels and the rivalry of the Bishop of Winchester and 
 the Duke of Gloucester ; and the Regent Bedford was constrained to 
 return to England to quell their controversy. The prelate was hon- 
 oured with ecclesiastical dignities conferred by the pope ; he was made 
 a cardinal, and appointed captain-general of a crusade against the fol- 
 lowers of John Huss, in Bohemia. We have seen how the peaceful life 
 of Joan of Arc was turned from its natural course into the stormy 
 channel of war ; and so it is with this cardinal, the duty of whose life 
 lay in the pacific duties of the church. But how different was the 
 change ! She sought a soldier's life to defend her king and country ; 
 and he, for aggression and religious persecution, levied his band of five 
 thousand archers. She put away reward from herself, while he accu- 
 mulated wealth that distinguished him as the " Rich Cardinal/' She, 
 even in battle, forebore staining her hand with blood ; he participated in 
 the fiery blood-shedding of her martyrdom ; and on his memory rests, too, 
 the dark suspicion of having caused the treacherous murder of his kins- 
 man, Gloucester. Joan of Arc perished in the bloom of early woman- 
 hood ; but Beaufort lived not only the threescore years and ten, but to be 
 an aged man of eighty years. She died a death of torture at the stake ; 
 and, fixing her fading vision on the cross, rudely and hastily made by a 
 soldier's hand, gave up her spirit meekly in prayer. He died in his palace 
 in his bed ; perhaps it was " his bed of the golden cloth of Damascus/' 
 so gorgeous that he bequeathed it a legacy to the Queen of England ; 
 and now that he had reached the mortal limit of his fourscore years of 
 
156 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 princely pomp and royal opulence, his restless spirit raised new hopes of 
 ambitious regency upon the deaths of Bedford and Gloucester ; and, 
 still more, the triple crown of the papacy was a distant vision to the 
 eyes of the aged and aspiring cardinal. One of the chroniclers, upon 
 the testimony of the chaplain who witnessed his last days, narrates that 
 Beaufort on his death-bed uttered the miserable question "Why should 
 I die, having so much riches ? If the whole realm would save my life, 
 I am able either by policy to get it, or by riches to buy it." And Shak- 
 speare has wrought the history and tradition of Cardinal Beaufort's last 
 hours into that awful scene of impenitent misery and terror upon a 
 death-bed, where the meek and pious monarch, Henry the Sixth, is 
 introduced, uttering over the dying man's struggles the words of 
 piteous intercession : 
 
 " O thou eternal Mover of the heavens ! 
 Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch ! 
 Oh, beat away the busy meddling fiend 
 That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul, 
 And from his bosom purge this black despair ! 
 * * * * 
 
 Lord cardinal, if thou thinkest on heaven's bliss, 
 Hold up thy hand make signal of thy hope 
 He dies, and makes no sign." 
 
 The world that was not worthy of Joan of Arc while she lived, has 
 striven to make some amends to her memory, against which the spirit 
 of persecution has been revived only in the more devilish form of the 
 ribald wit and blasphemy of Voltaire. On the spot where she was 
 sacrificed, a monument has long stood to commemorate her character 
 and national services. The poetic genius of Southey and of Schiller 
 has celebrated her memory, and historians have reverently collected all 
 the evidence of her story. But, perhaps, the most beautiful tribute 
 that has ever been paid to the memory of the Maid of Orleans, has been 
 that, in our own day, of a sister woman and sister countrywoman by 
 that daughter of the King of the French the princess who, in the 
 statue of Joan of Arc, has left a memorial that she shared the genius 
 and the inspiration of Thorwaldsen or Canova. An English writer has 
 well said 
 
 " Who that has ever trodden the gorgeous galleries of Versailles, 
 has not fondly lingered before that noble work of art before that 
 touching impersonation of the Christian heroine the head meekly 
 bended, and the hands devoutly clasping the sword, in sign of the 
 cross, but firm resolution imprinted on that mouth, and beaming from 
 
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH. 157 
 
 that lofty brow? Whose thoughts, as he paused to gaze and gaze 
 again, might not sometimes wander from old times to the present, and 
 turn to the sculptress sprung from the same royal lineage which Joan 
 had risen in arms to restore so highly gifted in talent, in fortunes, in 
 hopes of happiness, yet doomed to an end so grievous and untimely. Thus, 
 the statue has grown to be a monument, not only to the memory of the 
 Maid, but to her own : thus, future generations in France all those, 
 at least, who know how to prize either genius or goodness in woman 
 will love to blend together the two names the female artist with the 
 female warrior 
 
 MARY OF WURTEMBURG and JOAN OF ARC. 
 
 The execution of the Maid of Orleans proved ineffectual in restoring 
 the fortune of the English arms ; and though the contest was pro- 
 tracted, neither the wise and strong regency of Bedford, nor the valour 
 of Talbot, could save the conquests in France. The Duke of Bur- 
 gundy broke off from the alliance with England, and returned to his 
 allegiance to the French king. The fit and final catastrophe to a war 
 which had lasted in all near one hundred and twenty years, was the 
 expulsion of the English. The original claim of the King of England 
 to the French crown had no foundation in justice ; and, happily for 
 both nations, the independence of France was re-established, and the 
 continental conquests of the Plantagenets ceased for ever. 
 
 During that war in France, the Duke of Bedford died his regency 
 unaccomplished, but distinguished for wisdom and ability ; he was 
 buried in one of the old cathedrals of France, and a stately monument 
 erected over his body. 
 
 It was said by an old chronicler that, in the next French reign, 
 King Louis the Eleventh " By certain indiscreet persons was coun- 
 selled to deface the tomb of the Duke of Bedford in the cathedral 
 church of our Lady in Rouen, being told that it was a great dishonour 
 both to the king and to the realm to see the enemy of his father and 
 theirs have so solemn and rich memorial. He answered, saying, What 
 honour shall it be to us or to you, to break this monument and to 
 pull out of the ground the dead bones of him who, in his liefetime, 
 neither my father nor your progenitors, with all their power, puissance, 
 and friends, were not able to make flee one foot backward ; but who, 
 by his strength, wit, and policy, kept them all out of the principal 
 dominions of the realm of France, and out of this noble and famous 
 duchy of Normandy. Wherefore, I say, first God have his soul, and 
 let his body lie in rest, which, when he was alive, would have disquieted 
 
158 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the proudest of all ; and, as for the tomb, I assure you, it is not so 
 decent or convenient as his honour and acts deserved, although it were 
 much richer and more beautiful." 
 
 This was a piece of generosity which one would hardly have ex- 
 pected from a man so cold-hearted and unscrupulous as Louis the 
 Eleventh ; and, as the incident is told in the simple language of the 
 chronicler, it has a poetic aspect, and recalls one scarce knows how 
 those simple lines of Coleridge which Walter Scott was fond of 
 quoting : 
 
 " The knight's bones are dust, 
 
 And his good sword rust ; 
 
 His soul is with the saints, I trust." 
 
 It was my intention to have included in this lecture that part of the 
 civil war which belongs to the reign of Henry the Sixth ; but the truth 
 is, I have been glad to escape into the French history connected with 
 that reign, and I could not forbear dwelling upon the story of Joan of 
 Arc longer than I at first contemplated. 
 
 The next lecture must, therefore, comprehend the subject of the 
 war of the houses of York and Lancaster from its origin to the end of 
 the reign of Richard the Third. 
 
IX. 
 
 f I* Mm jof % 
 
 CLOSING SCENES OF THB PLANTAGENET DYNASTY WANT OF INTEREST IN THE WAR o 
 THE ROSES THE QUESTION OF GUNEALOGY No ACTUATING PRINCIPLE IN TMR CON- 
 TEST - ITS OBSCURITY A SERIES OF BLOODY BATTLES SAINTLY CHARACTER OF THB 
 KING HIS SOLITARY SADNESS LOSS OF THB FRENCH CONQUESTS THE DUKE OF 
 
 SUFFOLK POPULAR TUMULT JACK C*DE THE TEMPLE GARDEN RICHARD OF YORK 
 AND SOMERSET THE BATTLE OF ST. ALBANS THE EARL OF WARWICK, THE KING- 
 MAKER HENRY'S CAPTIVITY THE PARLIAMENT MARGARET OF ANJOU HER CHA- 
 BACTKR KING RENE INJUSTICE OF ENGLISH WRITERS TO HER MEMORY THE BATTLE 
 OF WAKEFIELD Two CROWNED KINGS OF ENGLAND THE SLAUGHTER AT TOWTON 
 TEWKSBURY THE QUEEN SIR WALTER SCOTT'S TRIBUTE TO HER POLITICAL 
 
 EFFECTS OF THB CIVIL WAR DEATH STRUGGLE OF THE MILITARY POWKR OF THS 
 
 NOBLES THB LAST OF THE BARONS CLIFFORD No FEUD AMONG THE PEOPLE OR 
 VASSALS THE SEPARATION OF THE CHURCH FROM THE CONFLICT EDUCATION THB 
 
 FOUNDATION OF ETON. 
 
 THE first part of the reign of Henry of Windsor being connected 
 with the close of the war against France, I was tempted, in the last 
 lecture, to digress in some measure into French history, partly because 
 one could hardly help expatiating on the splendid and sad story of that 
 Christian heroine, the Maid of Orleans, and partly because I would fain 
 escape, at least for a little while, from the unpromising and unsatisfac- 
 tory subject that must be encountered now I mean the history of that 
 hateful civil feud between the families of York and Lancaster, which 
 has nothing attractive in it save its pretty symbolical title of the " War 
 of the Roses." The subject which I have now to treat of is the civil 
 war between the two branches of the Plantagenet family, from the 
 origin of their contention down to the defeat and death of Richard the 
 Third at the battle of Bosworth Field, when the body of that last of 
 the Yorkists was stripped and thrown across a horse's back, like a 
 slaughtered wild beast, besmeared with blood and dirt, and thus 
 carried to an unhonoured burial at Leicester. So it was, that, after 
 more than three centuries of majestic rule and after fourteen reigns, 
 the dominion of the Plantagenet dynasty in England, the Saxon and 
 the Norman race combined, passed away for ever. 
 
 Taken in its fullest extent, down to the battle of Bosworth Field, 
 this civil war occupied a period of thirty years, embracing what one of 
 the old English chroniclers has entitled " the troublous season of King 
 Henry the Sixth, the prosperous reign of King Edward the Fourth, 
 
160 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 the pitiful life of King Edward the Fifth, and the tragical doings of 
 King Richard the Third." A struggle so protracted and so sanguin- 
 ary as it was, has not been without permanent political consequences, 
 which I will endeavour to indicate in the course of this lecture ; but, 
 however important were these remote results in the national progress 
 of England, they do not give an interest to the story of the struggle 
 itself. If the War of the Roses be considered by itself separated, on 
 the one hand, from the earlier events, with which it is morally con- 
 nected by retribution for ancestral guilt, and, on the other hand, from 
 the later times, in which unlooked-for consequences are seen there 
 cannot, I think, be found an era of history more unsatisfactory. It is 
 scarcely possible, it seems to me, to awaken in our minds any strong 
 feeling on either side of this domestic warfare by the statement of the 
 respective claims of the two parties. The particulars of the genealogi- 
 cal question are no sooner received into the mind than they are very 
 apt to escape out of the memory. It is enough, however, to remember, 
 for the purpose of understanding the issue, that both parties trace their 
 claims back to a common ancestor, Edward the Third. There being 
 no descendants from either the first or second son of that sovereign, 
 the controversy lay between the posterity of the third and fourth sons. 
 The three Lancastrian kings, being descended from the fourth son, had 
 occupied the throne for more than half a century, to the exclusion of 
 the lineage of the third, to whom the rights of the Duke of Clarence 
 had descended in due course of inheritance. 
 
 Now, a judgment on the respective merits of the Yorkist and Lan- 
 castrian claims can only be formed after determining whether the law 
 of the English monarchy is indefeasible, unalterable, hereditary right, 
 or whether the rule of succession may undergo a change by the action 
 of Parliament, as the great national council. Historians, accordingly, 
 are found with York or Lancaster predilections and prejudices, as they 
 respectively incline to the theory of the absolute, hereditary right of 
 the monarch, or to that of the supremacy of the Parliament. But, 
 whatever be the merits of this question, they are not of such a nature 
 as to inspire us with interest in the war, for the sake of any principle 
 involved in it. And this is so, not because the modern mind, or our 
 republican minds, prevent our entering into the spirit of this ancient 
 commotion of the monarchy, but because the parties to the war do not 
 appear themselves to have felt the respective principles as great actuat- 
 ing impulses. There is a great deal to show that the war was a contest 
 of passion far more than of principle. The theoretical cause of the war 
 was perhaps the least efficient, and is quite inadequate to explain such 
 
THE WARS OF THE EOSES. 161 
 
 vindictive and incessant and protracted warfare. Had not other causes 
 co-operated, blood never would have been shed so freely and fearfully ; and 
 it would, I believe, be as reasonable to say, that the two parties fought 
 because the Yorkists wore the white rose, and the Lancastrians the 
 red, as to ascribe the war wholly to the question of genealogical right. 
 The Yorkists were not warring in support of the principle of indefeasible 
 succession, nor were the Lancastrians warring for the principle of the 
 constitutional authority of parliamentary establishment. If they had 
 been, however we might incline to one principle or the other, we might 
 gain an interest in a contest, in which we could contemplate and admire 
 men laying down their lives for a principle. This war, in which 
 Englishmen were slaughtering Englishmen, was the most destructive 
 that England had ever been engaged in ; this fraternal ferocity was the 
 cause of the loss of more lives than all the wars with Wales, Scotland, 
 and France ; and the difficulty is to discover the real motives to such a 
 series of cruelties and carnage. Full as history is, from ancient years 
 down to the present day, of wars, wicked from the frivolity or the 
 insanity of the occasion of them ready as nations have been to plunge 
 into hostilities it still is incredible that the war of York and Lancaster 
 was waged only on such a point of controversy as the real issue between 
 the two contending parties. The only cause assigned is inadequate to 
 give an interest to the struggle ; and no other cause, that I am aware 
 of, has been discovered, which would better attract the mind to the 
 study of it. 
 
 Besides the absence of intrinsic interest in the subject, a most 
 vexatious obscurity envelops the whole period of this civil war. It is 
 very true, as has been said, that " The peculiar hardship in explaining 
 the transactions of those days is, that we do not know what we have to 
 explain, or whether we have any thing to explain at all. We have to 
 solve a theorem without a proposition." We have, indeed, a consider- 
 able number of facts distinctly ascertained, but often utterly inexplicable; 
 we know their dates, too, so that we can follow them in order of time ; 
 but, as to the sequence, the connection of one with the other, it is utter 
 darkness. One can make his way through this region of history, only 
 as a man travels along an unknown road in a dark and stormy night. 
 There comes a flash of light, giving a lurid and momentary conception 
 of what is near; and, confiding to the knowledge thus gained, you 
 venture onward in the dark, till again you are startled by another flash, 
 that shows how, in a little distance, all your expectations of what lay 
 before you are illusive, and that every thing around you is totally 
 different from what it was just now : 
 M 
 
162 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 " The road is black before your eyes, 
 Glimmering faintly where it lies ; 
 Black is the sky and every hill, 
 Up to the sky, is blacker still." 
 
 Now and then the darkness of the storm seems to be breaking, and light is 
 caught from between the flying clouds, from the moon or from a starlit 
 space in the sky ; and then, just as we are promising ourselves the calm 
 vision of a tranquil hour, the tempest, that was only lulled, comes back 
 again worse and darker than ever. So it is in the uncertain and con- 
 fused history of these civil wars. We get the lurid and fitful light from 
 the fields of twelve battles, and that is nearly all that one has to guide 
 his steps by. Ever and anon, when there is some show of reconcilia- 
 tion between the factions, promising a little more clearness of historical 
 knowledge, the strife is renewed with tenfold bitterness, and we are 
 left in tenfold obscurity. If, in the fierceness of the warfare, we look 
 up to heaven to discover why, in the providential government of the 
 world, brother is thus furiously arrayed against brother for deadly 
 carnage, we look up in vain for the meaning of it all, and seem to learn 
 no more there than when we look to the high-reaching wickedness of 
 the earthly passions of the moral combatants : 
 
 " Black is the sky and every hill, 
 Up to the sky, is blacker still." 
 
 Such is the obscurity enveloping much of the history of the War of the 
 Roses, that one of the latest and most laborious of the historians of 
 England makes the candid admission, that he has omitted altogether 
 from the text of his history the principal events of one of the years 
 " Because," he says, " in our ignorance of their causes, it is difficult to 
 connect them together." He finds himself unable to do more than 
 merely mention them in a note. 
 
 Bnt, as we shall not gain any more light by merely complaining of 
 the darkness, let us make some attempt to set our steps forward in it. 
 We have seen how, in the reign of Henry the Fifth, that sovereign en- 
 joyed, in a high degree, the unanimous and affectionate allegiance of 
 his people ; and let us, in the first place, consider whether there was any- 
 thing in the character of his son, Henry the Sixth, that was calculated 
 to alienate from him the duty and the love of his subjects. It may be 
 truly said of this king that, having begun his reign in the months of 
 infancy, he carried forward into the years of manhood a most childlike 
 spirit ; the very innocence and simplicity of childhood seem never to 
 have deserted him. One of the chroniclers has said of him " King 
 
THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 163 
 
 Henry was a man of meek spirit and of a simple wit, preferring peace 
 before war, rest before business, honesty before profit, and quietness 
 before labour : and to the intent that men might perceive that there 
 could be none more chaste, more meek, more holy, nor a better crea- 
 ture, in him reigned shamefacedness, modesty, integrity, and patience 
 to be marvelled at, taking and suffering all losses, chances, displeasures, 
 and such worldly torments, in good part and with a patient manner, 
 as though they had chanced by his own fault or negligent oversight. 
 He gaped not for honour, nor thirsted for riches ; but studied only for 
 the health of his soul, the saving whereof he esteemed to be the greatest 
 wisdom, and the loss thereof the extremest folly that could be." Ano- 
 ther describes him " Patience was so radicate in his heart that, of all 
 the injuries to him committed, which was no small number, he never 
 asked vengeance nor punishment, but for that rendered to Almighty 
 God, his Creator, hearty thanks, thinking by this trouble and adversity 
 his sins were to him forgotten and forgiven. This good, this gentle, 
 this meek, this sober and wise man did declare and affirm, that those 
 mischiefs and miseries partly came to him for his own offence, and 
 partly for thejieaping of sin upon sin wretchedly by his ancestors and 
 forefathers." 
 
 The whole life of this king sustained the truth of these descriptions 
 of his character ; and surely his offence to his turbulent countrymen 
 was nothing more than his pure inoffensiveness his unresenting meek- 
 ness : 
 
 " The universal stock of the world's injury 
 Would be too poor to find a quarrel for him." 
 
 Like his ancient predecessor, the sainted Saxon, King Edward the 
 Confessor, the lot of Henry the Sixth was cast in an age of violence, 
 and he brought nothing to it but a gentle spirit. Through all the 
 tumults and the blood-shedding of the reign, the poor monarch wanders 
 in a kind of solitary sadness of heart, the most inappropriate being in the 
 world. It was said by that ill-fated artist, the late Mr. Haydon, speak- 
 ing of the angelic disposition of a fellow-artist, that he always seemed 
 to him to have been born in the wrong planet. One cannot help 
 having something of the same feeling towards the memory of one so in- 
 appositely virtuous as this good man and feeble king, Henry of Windsor. 
 While the character of the king was negative in its influence upon 
 the nation, there were several causes which, in the course of events, 
 proved positive agencies of disaffection to the Lancastrian dynasty. 
 During the minority, while Bedford was regent in France the ad- 
 
164 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 ministration at home was perplexed and discordant, and the protector 
 Gloucester had to struggle against the factious ambition of his rival, 
 Cardinal Beaufort. The mysterious iniquity of the times begins to 
 show itself, when the Duke of Gloucester is found dead in his bed, 
 murdered, it was believed, but how, why, or by whom, no one to this 
 day has discovered, so that the fact of murder has become a question. 
 In a short space of time, the aged, rich cardinal expires; and 
 Bedford is dead too, so that the great Lancastrian chiefs have passed 
 away before the worst troubles of the reign begin. 
 
 The national vanity of the English, which had been so highly stimu- 
 lated by the victory of Agincourt and the short-lived conquest of 
 French territory, was now exasperated by the reverses of the war in 
 France, and the loss of their continental dominions. The glory of the 
 Plantagenets was waning, and the King of France was getting his own 
 again ; fortress after fortress was given up by the English ; and when 
 the nation found themselves deprived of all that lately they so proudly 
 held of French soil, save a mere foothold on the sea-shore, they turned, 
 in the maddened passion of disappointed pride, to take vengeance upon 
 some one who might be made answerable for the disasters of the govern- 
 ment. The national fury fell upon the Duke of Suffolk, as chief 
 minister of Henry's government. He was impeached and tried ; and 
 the king, probably to save his life from the phrensy of faction, banished 
 him from the kingdom. On his passage to France, the vessel that 
 carried him was captured by a ship of the royal navy ; he was ordered 
 on board, received with the ominous salutation "Welcome, traitor!** 
 a mock trial was held, sentence of death pronounced ; he was lowered 
 into a small boat, which bore an executioner, a block, and a rusty sword ; 
 his head was hacked off, and his corpse cast ashore upon the Dover sands. 
 This much is known, and then comes the cloud over the history, and 
 we are all in the dark again. 
 
 The murder of Suffolk seems to have been one of those deeds which 
 are perpetrated by lawlessness usurping the place of law the wild 
 spirit of revenge claiming the power of justice. We know just enough 
 of it to regard it as one of the ominous signs of perturbed times. It 
 is a symptom of misgovernment and of domestic discord ; and quickly 
 there appears, in the shape of popular insurrection, another sign of 
 approaching anarchy. You begin to hear the first sounds that give 
 signal of the coming convulsion that is to shake the whole fabric of the 
 realm ; you discover the premonitions of the political pestilenca that is 
 to devastate England. Popular tumult is the first eruption of the 
 disease, and just such an insurrection as that which was headed by 
 
THE WARS OF THE HOSES. 165 
 
 Jack Cade, is the form the tumult is apt to take. It is licentiousness 
 proclaiming freedom by the destruction of all rule and order ; it is 
 ruffian ignorance taking advantage of popular discontent by promising 
 absurd and impracticable reformations. Wat Tyler's rebellion, some 
 seventy years before, seems to me to have been a much more reputable 
 insurrection than Cade's. Then the populace rose, because the power 
 of government was oppressive upon them, and now, because they felt 
 that the authority of law was too feeble to preserve subordination. 
 The people were estranged from the sovereign ; they had, in their dis- 
 content, a restless desire for change they knew not what it should be 5 
 and a low demagogue started them to flatter them with promises, 
 " There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny : 
 the three-hooped pots shall have ten hoops ; and I will make it felony 
 to drink small beer : all the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside 
 shall my palfrey go to grass." Whether or no Cade's rebellion was 
 fomented by the Duke of York, for the purpose of promoting his own 
 aggrandizement out of the increased confusion, is one of the multitude 
 of uncertainties of the history. York's claim to the crown is not yet 
 made ; but the troubles of the reign next take the form of the feud 
 between York and the Lancastrian chief, the Duke of Somerset. It is 
 a dispute between them, that Shakespeare has made the subject of the 
 scene in the Temple garden, in which the origin of the adoption of the 
 respective badges of the two great parties is accounted for. The scene, 
 however, is a purely dramatic creation, without historic authority, as 
 far as is known ; and I am not aware that history gives any explanation 
 of the adoption of the white and red roses as the emblems of the 
 Yorkists and Lancastrians, respectively. In that scene York, being 
 unable to obtain an oral expression of opinion respecting his hereditary 
 rights, is represented saying 
 
 '* Let him that is a true-born gentleman, 
 And stands upon the honours of his birth, 
 If he suppose th-it I have pleaded truth, 
 From off this brier pluck a white rose with me>" 
 
 and Somerset adds 
 
 " Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, 
 But dare maintain the cause of truth, 
 Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me." 
 
 The angry scene closes with Warwick's prediction : 
 
 " This brawl to-day, 
 Grown to this faction, in the Temple garden, 
 
166 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Shall send, between the red rose and the white, 
 A thousand souls to death and deadly night." 
 
 Before the claim of the Duke of York to the throne was openly 
 asserted, the thoughts of the nation were, during some years, habi- 
 tuated to look to him as the future sovereign in due course of inheritance, 
 he being the heir presumptive, and Henry the Sixth being then childless. 
 The Duke of York became still more prominent in connection with 
 royalty, by being made protector during the disability of the king. To 
 the eyes of the nation, and to his own, the crown was visible as his 
 future possession, until the birth of the Prince of Wales, the son of 
 Henry the Sixth, changed the prospect, and the throne could be 
 reached by the family of York only by a revolutionary change. 
 
 The battle of St. Albans, which is regarded as the beginning of 
 the civil war, appears to have been an unpremeditated conflict. The 
 Yorkists gained the battle, and the king fell into their power. The 
 fact of the battle is quite intelligible ; but immediately after it all that 
 the triumphant Yorkists ask, is pardons they renew their oaths of 
 fealty to King Henry, and appear perfectly satisfied, simply because 
 Somerset was killed in the battle. Soon afterwards the gentle king 
 reconciled the contending parties, and a solemn procession to St. Paul's 
 Cathedral took place, in which the leaders of the two parties made a 
 beautiful show of concord by walking hand in hand with each other. 
 It was a very fine spectacle, but it was nothing more than a spectacle. 
 The regal ambition in the soul of York was never quenched ; and 
 besides that, it was not forgotten, that in the conflict at St. Albans^ 
 Somerset, and Clifford, and Northumberland had fallen by the sword 
 of their Yorkist foes ; and now there was burning in the bosoms of 
 their sons and retainers a lust for vengeance, which years did not ex- 
 tinguish. Moreover, there was the queen, the indomitable Margaret 
 of Anjou, of whose character I shall speak presently. She was naturally 
 suspicious of the adverse influences, which she saw gathering round 
 her husband's throne; and the Yorkists strongly reciprocated the 
 feeling of jealousy, as they came to know the might of that strong- 
 willed woman. 
 
 The reconciliation endured but a little while, and then came another 
 battle, the Yorkists again victorious : but to the great perplexity of the 
 historical student, the victory is scarcely completed before the fortunes 
 of the conquerers are suddenly depressed, one can hardly tell how or 
 why : the Yorkist army disbands itself, and the leaders flee away to 
 their strongholds. It was then that the fortunes of the faction were 
 retrieved by perhaps the most remarkable personage in this war 
 
THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 167 
 
 Richard Nevil, Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," as his successful 
 prowess well entitled him to be styled. Warwick returned, rallied the 
 disbanded army of the Yorkists, gained the battle of Northampton, 
 drove the queen into exile, and brought his sovereign, helpless King 
 Henry, captive to London, the victorious nobleman all the while pay- 
 ing the show of respectful homage to his prisoner-king. Professions of 
 allegiance were still studiously continued. It was a civil war, and not 
 yet a war of succession. But now another change comes over the cha- 
 racter of the contest, for while the parliament was in session for the 
 purpose of harmonizing the dissensions, the Duke of York walked into 
 Westminster Hall, and moving on to the throne, he placed his hand 
 upon it and stood silent in that attitude. Every voice was hushed. 
 The primate of England, after a short pause, inquired whether he would 
 visit the king, and the answer was, "I know of no one in this realm 
 who ought not to rather visit me." These words, and the significant 
 gesture, proclaimed for the first time, and in the presence of the assem- 
 bled parliament, that Richard Plantagenet laid claim to the throne of 
 England. The claim was soon formally submitted to parliament, and 
 there was presented, for the first and the last time in English history, 
 the extraordinary spectacle of a king reigning and a king claiming con- 
 fronted, as it were, and maintaining their rights in the presence of the 
 great council of the realm. When the subject was first stated to King 
 Henry, he said, with a simplicity and earnestness that were impressive 
 " My father was king ; his father was also king ; I have worn the crown 
 forty years from my cradle ; you have all sworn fealty to me as your 
 sovereign, and your fathers have done the like to my fathers. How, 
 then, can my right be disputed?" 
 
 The decision of the lords in parliament was the timid and unsatis- 
 factory result of compromise that process by which men, in their dread 
 of encountering either one of two dangers, bring both upon themselves. 
 Henry's possession of the crown was confirmed ; but, on his death, to 
 the exclusion of his son, the Duke of York and his heirs were to succeed. 
 This wretched bargain was the occasion of another solemn procession 
 of amity to St. Paul's. 
 
 It is at this crisis of the war that we may best turn to the character 
 of Queen Margaret ; for upon her was the cause of the Lancastrian 
 succession now dependent. From Shakspeare and the chroniclers we 
 receive a very harsh impression of the character of Margaret of Anjou, 
 for they present her in repulsive, if not hideous, colours. She is por- 
 trayed unfeminine, arbitrary, revengeful, licentious, and even her energy 
 and fortitude are distorted into unnatural ferocity and obduracy. I 
 
168 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 greatly distrust this representation, not because I am able to find his- 
 torical authority for a different and better character, but because there 
 was so much that would almost irresistibly render the English judgmen t 
 on her memory prejudiced and unjust. The marriage-contract between 
 her and Henry the Sixth stipulated for the cession of territory to her 
 father, Rene of Anjou, that amiable, but, perhaps, somewhat fantastic 
 person, who was happy in the pompous possession of three regal titles, 
 without a rood of land in either of his kingdoms, Naples, Sicily, and 
 Jerusalem ; and who spent his days in a sort of pleasant dream of the 
 innocent play of chivalry, and the songs of troubadours. Margaret 
 came to England a Frenchwoman, to be the Queen of England, just at 
 the time when English pride was exasperated by French victories ; and, 
 moreover, she was soon placed in the unnatural attitude of supplying by 
 her character the feebleness of her husband's rule. The almost feminine 
 gentleness of Henry's disposition gives an offensively masculine character 
 to Margaret's life. She could not but see that the throne was environed 
 with dangers, the perils of false friends and open enemies. She could 
 not but see the helplessness of her royal husband ; and she ought not to 
 be judged too severely, when we consider that if her natural temper led 
 to it, so also did the necessity of the case constrain her to do one of the 
 worst things a woman can do, make a man of herself. And this was 
 done, not as by her illustrious country-woman, the Maid of Orleans, 
 under religious influences, but for purposes of worldly policy. Still, 
 these purposes were the defence of her king and husband, the posses- 
 sion of the throne, and the maintenance of the hereditary rights of her 
 son. She may have been all that the English chroniclers and the 
 English dramatist represent ; but I do distrust it, because she was in 
 the very position the relation to a divided and misgoverned people- 
 that would inevitably cause a great deal to be attributed to her, for 
 which she may not have been rightfully responsible. Considering all 
 the circumstances more than I can stop to treat of how natural, and 
 yet how unjust, would it be for the adverse party to trace every obnoxious 
 measure of the government, and many an atrocity in the war, to the 
 Frenchwoman on the throne the strong and determined wife of an 
 irresolute and unregarded king. 
 
 I dare say that, in her way of life, there may have been much that 
 is revolting to our sense of female character ; indeed, it could not be 
 otherwise ; for a woman can hardly play a man's part in the work of 
 the world without grievous detriment to her own nature. But one is 
 still entitled to contemplate Queen Margaret, not as a vulgar and hideous 
 Amazon, but as a woman under the dire necessity of mingling in scenes 
 
THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 169 
 
 of war. After the parliamentary compromise, in which the succession 
 of her son was sacrificed, we can behold her as an heroic matron war- 
 ring for the rights of her child when the father's feeble hand could not 
 defend them. She gathers an army, which the Duke of York, con- 
 temptuously encountering, pays a bloody penalty for the folly of rashly 
 despising an enemy. He was slain at the battle of Wakefield ; and, in 
 as short a time as two months after he had walked in procession to St. 
 Paul's, as the newly-declared heir-apparent, his gory head, insulted with 
 a paper crown, was set upon the gates of York. After such a catas- 
 trophe, the reader of history naturally looks for the establishment of 
 Lancastrian supremacy; but no the rights of the Duke of York, and 
 the feudal inheritance of vengeance for his death, pass to his son, the 
 Earl of March, a youth of nineteen years of age; and from this time, 
 the war becomes more ferocious than ever, and with a deeper thirst for 
 revenge. The warlike queen pursues her success by the rescue of her 
 husband from his captivity, but the young Duke of York enters London, 
 and is proclaimed King Edward the Fourth. 
 
 The coronation of the new monarch was postponed until further 
 hostilities should give him stronger possession of the throne. There 
 were now two kings in the land, Henry the Sixth and Edward the 
 Fourth; and the battle that soon followed between the two royal 
 armies, shows, more impressively, perhaps, than any other in the war, 
 to what fearful issues of carnage and bloodshed the passions of faction 
 and civil war can drive men of the same kindred and the same homes. 
 No foreigner shared in the strife ; there were none but Englishmen 
 present, and of them more than one hundred thousand were drawn up, 
 in no very unequal division, in hostile array on the field of Towton. 
 Both sovereigns were present, King Edward and King Henry, or, 
 perhaps we had better say, Queen Margaret. Proclamation had been 
 made that no quarter should be given ; and faithfully and fiercely was 
 the order obeyed, so that it proved probably the bloodiest battle in 
 British history. The desperate conflict lasted more than a day; and 
 some idea may be formed of the slaughter, when it is said the number 
 of the Englishmen slain exceeded the sum of those who fell at Vimiero, 
 Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Vittoria five great battles of the Penin- 
 sular War and at Waterloo combined. This enormous shedding of 
 English blood was by English hands. The battle ended in the total 
 rout of the Lancastrians, and the crown was firmly placed on the brow 
 of Edward the Fourth. 
 
 So decided a victory, one would imagine, must have closed the con- 
 test ; but no ; for ten perilous years was the struggle continued, chiefly 
 
170 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 by the indomitable energy of Queen Margaret. Poor King Henry took 
 refuge in the secluded regions of the North of England, but was be- 
 trayed and committed prisoner in the Tower of London, while his 
 queen, eluding her enemies, is with difficulty followed in her rapid 
 and unwearied movements, at one time rallying her English partisans 
 and risking battle, again seeking alliance and help from the King of 
 France. Perils by land and perils by sea making up the wild story of 
 her adventures, we hear of her at one time shipwrecked, and, at another, 
 falling into the hands of a band of roving banditti. She struggled to 
 the last so long as she had a husband or a child whose rights were to 
 be contended for. 
 
 The later years of the war are no less preplexed than the beginning ; 
 and I do not know that, in the events that follow, there is to be dis- 
 covered any thing especially characteristic of the age or expressive of 
 the spirit of the times, except the conduct of that great feudal lord, the 
 Earl of Warwick. It was chiefly by him that Edward the Fourth had 
 been helped to the throne ; and, when the king-maker found cause of 
 quarrel with the monarch, he turned his allegiance away, and the 
 greatest of the Yorkist chieftains was afterwards an adherent of the 
 Lancastrians. King Edward became the prisoner of the proud noble- 
 man, and one of the extraordinary spectacles which England exhibited 
 in this war, was that of two rival kings, each confined in prison and at 
 the same time. The king-maker was strong enough to lift up the 
 prostrate Lancaster. Edward the Fourth fled from the palace and the 
 kingdom ; and his imprisoned rival was led forth from the Tower to 
 hear the streets of London resounding once more with the name of 
 King Henry. This surprising restoration gave, however, but a brief 
 respite to the Lancastrian family before its final overthrow. The 
 fugitive Edward returned to recover the crown, and, as it proved, to 
 extinguish the opposing dynasty. He landed at Ravenspurg the very 
 place, as has been observed, where Bolingbroke, the Lancastrian pro- 
 genitor landed, when he came to deprive Richard the Second of the 
 crown and to usurp it for himself; so fatal was that spot for the Plan- 
 tagenets, first of the one and then of the other line. The landing of 
 Edward at Ravenspurg has been compared to the return of Napoleon 
 from Elba, when he came to shake the Bourbons again from the throne 
 so lately restored to them. The comparison holds good as to the bold- 
 ness and the rapidity of the exploits; for, in about forty days, the 
 counter-revolution of Edward was completed. 
 
 In regard to the first reception and the final results, the parallel 
 fails. When Edward landed, he found that none durst speak in his 
 
THE WAKS OF THE KOSES. 171 
 
 favour for dread of Warwick ; and he could advance into the country 
 only, as Bolingbroke had done, under the crafty plea that he came to 
 claim no more than his duchy, The disguise was, ere long, thrown off : 
 he fought and gained a battle in which his chief adversary, the king- 
 maker Warwick, was left dead on the field. He entered London in 
 triumph, was king again, and poor King Henry, of whom we never hear 
 any thing, except when something is done to him, was remanded to the 
 Tower, never again to leave it alive. 
 
 The last convulsive effort of Queen Margaret was made at Tewkes- 
 bury, where the Lancastrian party met with its final defeat. The 
 misery of the hapless queen was completed by the barbarous murder of 
 her only child, the young Prince of Wales, who was stabbed to death, it 
 is supposed, by King Edward's brothers, Clarence and Glo'ster the 
 horrid deed which Shakspeare has fitly made one of the phantoms that 
 haunted the death-dream of Clarence : 
 
 " Then came wandering by, 
 A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 
 Dabbled in blood ; and he shrieked out aloud, 
 * Clarence is come false, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence, 
 That stabb'd me in the field by Tewkesbury ; 
 Seize on him furies, take him into torment.' " 
 
 The murder of the old king, the harmless Henry, soon followed, the 
 bloody release to his grieved spirit being given by the dagger of the 
 Duke of Glo'ster if popular belief has rightly rested on that, one of the 
 dark deeds which belong to the history of the tower of London. The 
 Lancastrian king and the Lancastrian heir having been destroyed, their 
 great champion, the queen, Margaret of Anjou, is left alone ; and, so far 
 as the story of her life his connected with the annals of England, the 
 last image which we have of her is, as she stands in the tragic sublimity 
 of wo, discrowned, widowed, childless, captive, and desolate. 
 
 For sixteen years had the War of the Roses lasted, and eleven fierce 
 and bloody battles had been fought by English with English alone 
 within the narrow limits of England. Children had grown up with no 
 other spectacle of their native land than as a battle-ground on which 
 their countrymen were shedding one another's blood ; and now that the 
 war was at an end at least so far as the undisturbed occupation of the 
 throne of England was affected by it the question naturally presents 
 itself What meaning had this war ? Can it be possible that all this 
 ferocity and havoc was significant of nothing more than the contest for 
 the throne ? Can it be that the mere question, which of two cousins 
 
172 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 should fill the throne whether Henry Plantagenet or Edward Plan- 
 tagenet should wear the crown drove the multitudes of men to such 
 fierce extremities of civil strife ? Was all the misery and bloodshed of 
 this war expended for no other consequence than a dubious settlement 
 of succession ? We should, indeed, study history very superficially if 
 we thought so. 
 
 In the progress of constitutional freedom there was a great and per- 
 manent consequence of this civil war, which outweighs a thousand- fold 
 the importance of any right of York or Lancaster. It was a result 
 which the combatants on neither side contended for, and, indeed, they 
 could not have dreamed of it. It was this : the devastation of the war 
 wrought the do vvnfall of English feudalism, and thus effected a great 
 revolution in the aristocratic element of the Constitution. The war 
 was the unconscious death-struggle of the martial power of the nobility. 
 It would seem as if feudalism was to display its greatest splendour im- 
 mediately before it was extinguished as if it were to rise to its highest 
 prowess immediately before it fell into irretrievable exhaustion. As the 
 sun of feudal power in England went down, it blazed forth with the 
 light of a larger and redder orb through the clouds of war that 
 gathered around its setting. 
 
 During the whole extent of England's history, under the Saxon, 
 Dane, or Norman, the mightiest of her barons was the king-maker 
 Warwick. It was his power that made Edward king, and his that un- 
 made him. It was his power that dethroned King Henry, and it was 
 his that restored him. Each monarch in turn became the captive and 
 prisoner of this great earl. With princely revenues and estates, War- 
 wick's vassals were an army ; and some notion may be formed of the 
 force he could, at will, bring armed into the field, from the fact that 
 he is said to have dailj feasted, at his numerous manors and castles, 
 upwards of thirty thousand persons. The other nobles possessed, in 
 their degree, the power of an armed feudal retinue, ready to follow 
 their lord to battle in any cause of his choosing ; and thus there was a 
 baronial power of which modern England shows only the shadow. As 
 the traveller now beholds the stately walls of Warwick Castle, or wan- 
 ders amid the ruins of Kenilworth 
 
 "Where battlement and moated gate 
 Are objects only for the hand 
 Of hoary Time to decorate," 
 
 he can scarce, with all the impulse given to his imagination, call up 
 
THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 173 
 
 the vision of the armed hosts which, some three hundred years ago, 
 could, at a moment's summons, be gathered there in battle array. 
 
 The war of York and Lancaster was a self-exhausting contest of 
 the nobles. At the battle of Northampton the order was given through 
 the field to strike at the lords, knights, and esquires, rather than at 
 the common people. In the course of the war eighty princes of the 
 blood were killed, and the ancient nobility nearly annihilated. 
 
 Every individual of two generations of the families of Somerset and 
 Warwick fell on the field or on the scaffold. Many of those who 
 escaped the carnage were impoverished and outcast from their homes. 
 " I myself saw," says Philip de Commines, " the Duke of Exeter, the 
 king of England's brother-in-law, walking barefoot after the Duke of 
 Burgundy's train, and earning his bread by begging from door to door/' 
 The martial fierceness of a feudal nobility was tamed ; and, with the 
 decline of the force which feudalism armed them with, the way was 
 prepared for converting them into the pacific aristocracy of more 
 modern times. This change was wrought upon the generation of 
 nobles during the civil war by the varied influences and lessons of 
 adversity. Feudal pride had its fall, aud feudal vengeance was softened 
 to a gentler feeling. In this change there was a silent and momentous 
 revolution ; and it may, perhaps, be illustrated to you by the romantic 
 story connected with the change as exemplified in the family of the 
 Cliffords. At the first battle in the war, Lord Clifford was slain by 
 the Duke of York ; and the filial vengeance which fired the breast of 
 the next Lord Clifford was scarce appeased, when, in the same battle 
 in which York was slain, his son, young Rutland, was stabbed by 
 Clifford, whose unpitying warfare earned for him the titles of " the 
 butcher" and the "black Clifford." His death on the bloody field of 
 Towton gave the Yorkists their retaliation, and the title of Clifford 
 passed to his son, a young child, whose mother fled with him to find 
 safety amid secluded lakes and mountains in the North. To elude the 
 unrelenting pursuit and search of his enemies, the boy was trained in 
 the simplicity and severity of a shepherd's life, with no more than dim 
 remembrances of his father's bloody death, and of the perils he must 
 have witnessed in his early childhood, or seen reflected from his mother's 
 brow. In shepherd's garb he learned to love the simple folk and the 
 mute creation with whom his days were spent ; he carried, too, into 
 all his after life, peacefully protracted, as it was, to a good old age, a 
 passion for the tranquil pursuits of science; for, while tending his 
 flocks, he gazed from the lonely mountain-top upon the stars, and the 
 beauty and peace of their placid motion sank deep into the soul of the 
 
174 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 fierce warrior's child. His fathers, through many a generation, had 
 been surrounded by all the pomp of chivalry and by their troops of 
 vassals ; but, for this boy 
 
 " To his side the fallow-deer 
 Came and rested withour fear ; 
 The eagle, lord of land and sea, 
 Stoop'd down to do him fealty." 
 
 It was not until after more than twenty years not until after the 
 dynasty of the house of York had passed away that the young Clifford 
 was restored to his estates, to which he came, doubtless, a wiser and a 
 better man than any of his stern progenitors ; for, as a poet has com- 
 memorated the story of his life, which history has hardly heeded, this 
 Clifford was one 
 
 " Who long compelled in humble walks to go, 
 
 Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed. 
 
 Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 ^ The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 
 
 In him the savage virtue of the race, 
 Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts were dead : 
 
 Nor did he change ; but kept in lofty place 
 The wisdom which adversity had bred. 
 
 Glad were the vales, and every cottage hearth ; 
 
 The shepherd lord was honoured more and more : 
 And ages after he was laid in earth, 
 
 * The good Lord Clifford ' was the name he bore." 
 
 One of the most remarkable facts connected with this period of his- 
 tory is, that, when the Wars of the Roses were over, after all the aggra- 
 vated and unsparing hostilities, little animosity appears to have remained 
 among the survivors and their descendants. The solution of this fact 
 is this, I believe : that, having taken the field simply as retainers of 
 nobles opposed to each other, they ceased to cherish belligerent feelings, 
 when the relation to their superior lord ended. The vassal of Clifford, 
 for example, and the vassal of Salisbury fought fiercely with each other; 
 but, when they ceased to be the fighting vassals, they looked upon each 
 other as fellow-countrymen, and so their hatred was spent. 
 
 After dwelling upon the evils of these distressful times, I wish not 
 to overlook the good that was silently working out from them. While 
 
THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 175 
 
 the two aristocratic factions of the realm were sweeping along with the 
 tide of war a large portion of the people, composed of the multitude of 
 their retainers, there was still a mass of the population that kept aloof 
 from the strife, who neither shared in it nor suffered by it. There was 
 happily no ecclesiastical element in the war ; the church was not known 
 in it it was neither Yorkist nor Lancastrian ; and no bishop or abbot 
 appeared in it, except to stay, if possible, the shedding- of blood, or to 
 give sanctuary to the helpless or comfort to the suffering. While the 
 feudal power of the nobles was sinking, the common people were rising. 
 It has been well observed by Southey, that " Inasmuch as both parties 
 exerted themselves to bring into the field all the force they could mus- 
 ter, the villeins in great numbers were then emancipated when they 
 were embodied in arms ; and great numbers emancipated themselves, 
 flying to London and other cities for protection from the immediate evils 
 of war ; or, taking advantage of the frequent changes of property, and 
 the precarious tenure by which it was held, to exchange their own ser- 
 vile condition for a station of freedom with all its hopes and chances." 
 
 It is to be observed, ton, that, ferocious and sanguinary as the civil 
 war was, its fury spared the cities and towns. There was no burning 
 or sacking of towns ; there was no pillaging or devastation of churches 
 or monasteries, so that a peaceful current of good was still flowing 
 underneath the war. It is a noticeable fact that, during the perturbed 
 reign of Henry the Sixth, as if at once to meet what could not then 
 have been foreseen the wants of the people as they rose from feudal 
 servitude, schools in London and throughout the realm were extensively 
 endowed. 
 
 Having spoken, somewhat contemptuously, perhaps, of the utter 
 insignificance of Henry the sixth, in the warlike doings of his reign, I 
 must add, in justice, that his memory is finely redeemed, for national 
 gratitude is due to him for that college at Cambridge, the gorgeous 
 Gothic architecture of which has made the name of King's College 
 famous over the world. He was also the founder of Eton College 
 that great school which stands by the side of the ancient palace of 
 England's kings, and with the red-cross flag on Windsor Castle waving 
 in sight of it. Instead of leaving your mind with a contempt for the 
 good King Henry the Sixth instead of dismissing the subject with the 
 last thought of his gentle unfitness for a warlike reign, I am glad to 
 turn to a vindication of his memory a plea for gratitude that, not long 
 since, was wisely and appropriately uttered in Eton College : 
 
 " If we were required to point out the most disastrous period of 
 English history, we should, perhaps, fix upon the reign of Henry the 
 
176 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Sixth. In his earlier years he saw the foreign possessions acquired by 
 his father's victories, successively wrested from his hands ; and, towards 
 its close, he saw his kingdom wasted by the fury of civil war, and the 
 blood of his subjects profusely shed in the unnatural contest. He him- 
 self, meanwhile, appeared in no degree to influence the progress of 
 events, which were to terminate in the loss of his sceptre and his life. 
 Transferred from a throne to a prison, and again from a prison to a 
 throne, he seemed to be the sport of fortune ; a merely passive instru- 
 ment in the hands of others ; a spectator, rather than an actor, in the 
 eventful drama. His thoughts and affections were fixed upon very 
 different objects from those for which worldly ambition contends. Bent 
 on securing for himself an imperishable crown, he felt little solicitude 
 about the perishable crown which was to be the prize of the victor in 
 the bloody strife. The world, therefore, while it has bestowed on him 
 some portion of its pity, as on one who underwent much unmerited 
 suffering, has pronounced him unfit for the station which he filled, and 
 utterly useless in his generation. Yet it has pleased the Almighty to 
 ordain that this despised, this suffering monarch, should exercise a more 
 powerful and more permanent influence over future ages than many 
 princes whose exploits are the theme of the world's applause. What 
 traces can we now discern of the effects of his father's victories? They 
 form a page, a brilliant page, in history, on which we dwell with exulta- 
 tion, and which has inspired many a bosom with the desire of military 
 glory. But, as to any present influence on the interests of the country, 
 they are as if they had never been ; whereas, the foundation of Eton 
 College exercises an influence which is now felt, and will continue to be 
 felt to the remotest times. To the intellectual and moral training, to 
 which the youthful mind is here subjected, perhaps is owing more than 
 to any other single cause, the formation of that national character, 
 which has, under the Divine blessing, raised England to its eminent 
 position among the people of the earth." 
 
X. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF EDWARD THE FOURTH HlS DEATH RICHARD'S USURPATION ITS 
 CHARACTER OF INTRIGUE AND VIOLENCE THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER ATTEMPTED 
 
 VINDICATIONS THEIR INEFFICACY SIR THOMAS MORE RICHARD'S DEFORMITY, 
 MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECT OF PERSONAL DEFORMITY COMMANDING INTELLECT 
 
 OF THE KING POWER OF WILL No SYMPATHY No REPENTANCE CONTRAST OF 
 
 MACBETH RICHARD'S DREAM THE LAST OF THE PLANTAGENETS THE TUDOR KINGS 
 HENRY THE EIGHTH THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT HENRY'S REIGN 
 NEARLY CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE THE PLAY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH 
 HISTORY WOLSEY'S CHARACTER CATHARINE OF ARRAGON WOLSEY'S FALL AND 
 
 DEATH THE APPROACHING REFORMATION HENRY'S CHARACTER THE WORST IN 
 
 HISTORY His DEATH CONCLUSION. 
 
 After the close of the War of the Roses, and the death of that 
 good man, King Henry the Sixth, the throne of England was peace- 
 fully held by Edward the Fourth, who kept until his death the 
 possession, which had cost so much peril to himself and havoc in the 
 realm. The battle of Tewkesbury was followed in Edward's reign by 
 twelve years of peace and of exhaustion ; and, at the end of that time, 
 during which there were scarce any events of importance or interest, 
 the monarch died a death, which had become most unusual in the York 
 family he died in his bed ; for it may be mentioned as one of the 
 indications of the sanguinary character of the times, that the lives of 
 his father and grandfather and his three brothers, ended bloodily or 
 violently. The character of Edward the Fourth was briefly this : he 
 was a warlike and a voluptuous prince, equally ready for the perils of 
 war and the pleasures of peace. The military hardships of his early 
 life seem to have been regarded by him as warrant for the uncurbed 
 licentiousness of his undisturbed royalty. One of the elder English 
 historians, in summing up his character, says that " He lived too fast ; 
 and that, while no man acted with more vigour and spirit in all the 
 distressed and dangerous situations of his affairs, yet, when the danger 
 or difficulties were over, he relapsed constantly into a sauntering way 
 with the fair sex." What precisely the historian meant by a sauntering 
 way with the fair sex, I need not stop to describe further than to say 
 that, while Edward displayed in his belligerent days an energy and 
 dauntless intrepidity like that of as stern and indefatigable a warrior as 
 
178 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Cromwell, in his peaceful years he sank into the easy morality of as gay 
 a voluptuary as Charles the Second. It is one of the dark truths of 
 human nature, that men can mingle with all the levity of loose pleasures 
 the perpetration of deeds of appalling ferocity ; for the heart becomes 
 so indurated by continued self-indulgence, that the conscience will be 
 troubled no more by crimes of cruelty and bloodshed than by its frolic 
 immoralities. The close of the career of this voluptuous prince, King 
 Edward the Fourth, was darkened by the guilt of fratricide. The 
 share he had in the murderous killing of his brother, Clarence, is finely 
 represented by Shakspeare as embittering his last hours. Immediately 
 on being informed of the death of Clarence, he is solicited by Lord 
 Stanley to pardon one of his servants, and his perturbed conscience 
 finds voice in the answer to the suit : 
 
 " Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death, 
 And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave ? 
 My brother killed no man, his fault was thought, 
 And yet his punishment was hitter death. 
 Who sued to me for him ? Who in my wrath 
 Kneel'd at my feet, and bade me be advised? 
 Who spake of brotherhood ? Who spake of love ? 
 Who told me how the poor soul did forsake 
 The mighty Warwick and did fight for me ? 
 Who told me in the field of Tewkesbury 
 When Oxford had me down, he rescued me, 
 And said, Dear brother, live, and be a king? 
 Who told me, when we both lay in the field, 
 Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me 
 Even in his garments, and did give himself, 
 All thin and naked, to the numb-cold night ? 
 All this from my remembrance brutish wrath 
 Sinfully pluck'd, and not a man of you 
 Had so much grace to put it in my mind." 
 
 Edward's undisturbed occupation of the throne gave deceitful 
 promise of the security of the house of York, and of the return of 
 tranquil times. Even during the peaceful part of his reign, the elements 
 of discord were secretly fermenting, and the evil eye of the strongest 
 man of the Yorkist race was watching the chances for usurpation. The 
 death hours of Edward the Fourth may well have been embittered, not 
 only by the memory of many an act of ruthless violence, but by gloomy 
 forebodings for his young heir, to the uninformed strength of whose 
 hands the sceptre was to pass. Edward the Fifth succeeded to his 
 father's throne when but thirteen years old, and he reigned for less than 
 thirteen weeks. His name stands on the list of English sovereigns, and 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 179 
 
 his statue may fill a niche with the images of the rest; but there is only 
 the name and shadow of a reign. Under the dark protectorship of his 
 uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, the youthful sovereign went speedily 
 from the palace to a prison, and found secret death and burial within 
 the gloomy precincts of the Tower of London. Whatever there was of 
 justice in the original claim of the York family to the throne, it was 
 established with so much wrong and iniquity, that it had no sure 
 foundation to rest on; and after Edward the Fourth's triumphant 
 career, retribution fell heavily on his sons and successors. Indeed, 
 when we consider the mingled right and wrong in both the Lancastrian 
 and York titles, it would seem as if the good in each was rewarded 
 with a brief season of success, after which the meed of misery was 
 awarded to the guilt. The ruin of the house of York was not only the 
 retributive consequence of its crimes, but it was to be effected by the 
 atrocities of him who was to be the last of the dynasty? 
 
 It is not necessary that I should follow with any comment the 
 usurpation of Richard the Third. It is a familiar story of craft and 
 cruelty directed to the accomplishment of a purpose, which, probably 
 had long been present to his thoughts. It is one of the miseries of civil 
 war that it destroys all sense of security of life or of possession of any 
 kind ; and it is then, when the whole fabric of society is unstable, that 
 the worst passions display themselves and roam abroad in all their force. 
 Witnessing, during the early part of his career, the confusion and 
 anarchy of the War of the Roses, Richard may well have seen that, if 
 the chances of an unsettled time did not better his prospect of inherit- 
 ing the crown, still the mind of the people had become familiar with 
 sudden and revolutionary changes and scenes of bloodshed. The times 
 and the bold and unscrupulous usurper were fitted for one another; 
 and the accession of such a man as Richard, and such a reign as his, 
 seem no more than the natural sequel to the civil war. 
 
 When we consider the process of the usurpation, and some of the 
 means employed to accomplish it, we seem to be passing from the days 
 of open feudal violence to the times of modern intrigue. If, in the 
 previous period the nobles were seen armed in the field, and openly 
 warring for one or the other claimant, we now find the Duke of 
 Buckingham in the meaner attitude of the demagogue. He is seen, 
 not like "the king-maker" Warwick, making a path to the throne 
 with his sword, but giving his tongue to falsehood and deceit, play- 
 ing a deep game of hypocrisy and fraud. The speech of Buckingham 
 to the people, when he endeavours to insinuate Richard's title to 
 the crown into their minds, is for all the world like the craft of a 
 
180 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 modern politician, stimulating a factitious public opinion for selfish 
 purposes : 
 
 " When my oratory grew to an end 
 I bade them, that did love their country's good 
 Cry God save Richard, England's Royal king ! 
 Glos. And dM they so? 
 
 Buck. No, so God help me ! they spake not a word, 
 But like dumb statues or breathless stones, 
 Stared on each other, and look'd deadly pale : 
 Which when I saw, I reprehended them, 
 And ask'd the Mayor, what meant this wilful silence* 
 His answer was the people were not used 
 To be spoke to by the recorder. 
 Then he was urged to tell my tale again ; 
 1 Thus saith the duke,' * thus hath the duke inferred,* 
 But nothing spoke in warrant from himself. 
 When he had done, some followers of my own, 
 At lower end o'th hall, hurled up their caps, 
 And some ten voices cried ' God save King Richard !* 
 And thus I took the vantage of those few. 
 4 Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,' quoth I, 
 4 This general applause and cheerful shout 
 Argues your wisdom and your love to Richard;' 
 And even here brake off and came away." 
 
 Again, in this previous period, the deaths of violence, even when not 
 in battle, were open deeds of artrocity and bloodshed, as that which 
 caused 
 
 " The piteous moan that Rutland made, 
 When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at him/' 
 
 or when Prince Edward was stabbed in the field at Tewksbury ; but, 
 now there is a transaction secret and mysterious dark assassination 
 the dread doings in the Tower of London, such as the killing of 
 Clarence, or the more piteous murder of the princes, when Tyrrel was 
 intrusted with the keys for only twenty-four hours ; the murder, which 
 he feared to look on, but is represented as describing : 
 
 " The tyrannous and bloody act is done, 
 The most arch-deed of piteous massacre 
 That ever yet this land was guilty of. 
 Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn 
 To do this piece of ruthless butchery, 
 Albeit they were fleshed villains, bloody dogs, 
 Melting with tenderness and mild compassion, 
 
RICHARD THE THIED HENRY THE EIGHTH. 181 
 
 Wept like to children, in their death-sad story, 
 
 'Or thus,' quoth Dighton, 'lay the gentle babes' 
 
 4 Thus, thus,' quoth Forrest, * girding one another, 
 
 Within their alabaster innocent arms. 
 
 Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, 
 
 Which in their summer-beauty kissed each other. 
 
 A book of prayers on their pillow lay, 
 
 Which once,' quoth Forest, ' almost changed my mind ; 
 
 But O, the deviP there the villain stopped; 
 
 When Dighton thus told on' We smothered 
 
 The most replenished sweet work of Nature, 
 
 That from the prime creation e'er she framed.' " 
 
 There is no event connected with the history of Richard the Third 
 which has added more to the accumulated odium that rests upon the 
 tyrant's memory, than the mysterious death of his young kinsmen, the 
 two princely Plantagenets, who are believed to have been cruelly assas- 
 sinated in the Tower. Out of the mystery which shrouds the story$ 
 there have been spun speculations, intended to discredit the tradition, 
 which traced the horrid guilt to the stern usurper ; hut the popular 
 belief has been too widely spread to be shaken, and it is thought to 
 stand upon the basis of truth. An impressive confirmation was given 
 to it, when, nearly two hundred years after the time the murder was 
 secretly perpetrated, some excavations in the Tower of London, during 
 the reign of Charles the Second, brought to light the bones of two 
 striplings, contained in a chest, huried where no intentional search was 
 likely to discover it ; and when its ghastly and mouldering contents 
 were disclosed, the voice of the murdered children spake, as it were 
 from their secret grave, to chase away the mystery that hung over the 
 story of their death. So little doubt Was entertained as to the identity 
 of the mortal remains thus discovered, that the bones were removed 
 and received royal sepulture. 
 
 It is not only from the reproach of having caused the murder of 
 the princes, that attempts have been made to relieve the memory of 
 Richard the Third. The bolder effort of a still more general vindica* 
 tion has, from time to time, been made ; and not only the innocence of 
 his life been asserted, but also the goodness of his disposition and the 
 comeliness of his personal appearance. It has been contended, that the 
 popular notion of Richard's character is a party delusion, by which his 
 mind, his morals, and his "make, have all been misrepresented, that it 
 is all a matter of Lancastrian prejudice, which Shakspeare has injuri- 
 ously fomented, and that, as to his personal appearance, the crooked 
 back, and the shrivelled arm, and the deformity of face, were all 
 
182 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY^ 
 
 exaggerations and distortions of nothing more than low stature and a 
 stern visage. The most noted of Richard's apologists and advocates 
 was Horace Walpole, who startled the reading world hy his historic 
 doubts on this subject. The paradox was not original, for it had been 
 the burden of an old book many years before Walpole's time ; and 
 lately an Englishwoman, whose name I do not now recall, has written 
 book to prove that Richard was " truly a marvellous proper man," 
 who has been used very badly by posterity, 
 
 Such historic doubts are entitled to consideration, for certainly it is 
 not unfrequently found, that gross traditional errors have gained a place 
 in history < and it is never too late to vindicate and assert the truth ; to 
 rescue it^ when beleaguered by triumphant falsehood, is the worthy 
 duty of a strong and intrepid intellect. In the present case, the 
 attempt to turn the current of historical opinion has proved vain, and 
 all the ingenuity of argument and parade of testimony have failed in 
 redeeming the memory of Richard from the detestation with which it 
 so long'has been regarded, Under its load of obloquy the most accurate 
 and judicious historians are still content to leave it. 
 
 In the dramatic delineation of the character of Richard, Shakspeare 
 followed the description and the narrative given by Sir Thomas More 
 and the chroniclers, and has produced his own conception of the 
 character in correspondence with the popular notion. Shakspeare 
 followed faithfully the best historical authorities of his day, in whom, 
 ,as well as in the poetic portraiture, there may have been some exagger- 
 ation a deeper shade may have been given to the blackness of guilt ; 
 but still we are safe in believing, that the truth was much nearer to 
 that side than to tjie extreme opinion that lies so much farther in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 It would not be possible, on an occasion like this, to enter into an 
 examination of the conflicting arguments and testimony respecting 
 Richard's memory, but the question respecting his bodily deformity will 
 serve to illustrate the nature of the controversy as to his character. 
 The Richard of the drama speaks of himself. 
 
 " As rudely stamped, curtailed of fair proportions, 
 Cheated of feature by dissembling nature ; 
 Deformed, unfinished,-^sent before my time 
 Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, 
 And that so lamely and unfashionable, 
 That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them." 
 
 Now, this is dramatic exaggeration it is intended to be so ; it is 
 not meant for description, as persons who read unimaginatively mis- 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 183 
 
 construe it, but is meant for Richard's morbid exaggeration of his own 
 personal defects, especially as felt in envious contrast with the elegance 
 of face and form of his voluptuous brother, Edward the Fourth. This 
 utterance of malignant and spiteful feeling ought never to be mistaken 
 for literal description ; for though men have what Madame de Sevigne, 
 I believe, calls the privilege of ugliness, it would be a supernatural 
 abuse of that privilege, if a man were, as Richard speaks of himself, 
 so ugly as to set the dogs barking. So it is throughout the play : the 
 references to Richard's personal appearance are, and are intended to be, 
 exaggerations of dramatic passion. 
 
 But the general popular impression as to Richard's bodily unsightli- 
 ness, seems to show how intense was the hatred of his character how 
 odious the recollection of his life. The detestation which he had in- 
 spired aggravated the conception of his personal defects : and he was, 
 perhaps, thought tenfold more deformed than he really was, because 
 his body was the visible exponent of the spiritual deformity of his nature. 
 If Richard was the comely person his modern apologists maintain, then 
 the notion of his deformity could have its origin only in the deep con- 
 viction of the inhuman wickedness of his invisible nature : men must 
 have made him crooked and hideous because his life was so. There is 
 an ingenious and humorous essay of Charles Lamb's, on the danger of 
 confounding moral with personal deformity, in which he remarks, 
 among other illustrations, "that crooked old woman, I once said 
 speaking of an ancient gentlewoman, whose actions did not square 
 altogether with my notions of the rule of right. The unanimous sur- 
 prise of the company, before whom I uttered these words, convinced 
 me that I had confounded mental with bodily obliquity, and that there 
 was nothing tortuous about the old lady but her deeds." Now, if this 
 mistake occurred with regard to King Richard, it proves that if the 
 physical deformity was not there, the moral deformity, in all proba- 
 bility, was. 
 
 It would be both an idle and impossible inquiry to seek to ascertain 
 the degree of Richard's bodily deformity, but the fact of some deformity 
 appears highly probable, and, indeed, has an historical significancy in 
 connection with the almost incredible inhumanity of his character. The 
 consciousness of bodily deformity, even though it be slight, is found to 
 embitter minds of a certain cast to poison their spirits and, by 
 wrenching their dispositions from their natural course of feeling, to fit 
 them for unnatural paroxysms of passion, or for envenomed ferocity 
 against their more favoured fellow-men. In other minds, more happily 
 constituted, the same consciousness proves altogether innocuous, and 
 
184 LECTUKES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 like any other inscrutable affliction, it subdues and softens the spirit 
 without making it savage. Remember, for instance, how different was 
 the influence of such consciousness upon the character of Sir Walter 
 Scott and Lord Byron, afflicted as they were with much the same 
 kind of bodily defect. It is well observed by Mr. Lockhart, in his 
 biography of Scott, that the novel of the Black Dwarf derives " a 
 singular interest from the delineation of the dark feelings so often con- 
 nected with physical deformity feelings which appear to have diffused 
 their shadow over the whole genius of Byron ; and which, but for this 
 single picture, we should hardly have conceived to have passed through 
 Scott's happier mind. All the bitter blasphemy of spirit which, from 
 infancy to the tomb, swelled up in Byron against the unkindness of 
 nature, which sometimes perverted even his filial love into a sentiment of 
 diabolical malignity, all this black and desolate train of reflection must 
 have been encountered and deliberately subdued by the manly parent of 
 the Black Dwarf." 
 
 The dark record, which history has made of Richard's life and 
 reign, becomes the more credible when we reflect upon this desolating 
 and demoralising influence of the consciousness of deformity. Shak- 
 speare's profound philosophy is shown in his making this an element in 
 Richard's character. He is represented as feeling himself marked by 
 nature to stand apart from his fellow-men separated from the species. 
 He stands in utter and awful moral loneliness ; and as all social feeling 
 is extinguished, the humanity of his nature dies with it, and all that is 
 left is an almost supernatural selfishness, proud and self-assured 
 
 " I that have neither pity, love, nor fear ; 
 I have no brother, I am like no brother, 
 And this word love, which grey-beards call divine, 
 Be resident in men like one another, 
 And not in me. I am myself alone." 
 
 I have several times adverted to the peculiar significancy of the 
 opening scenes of Shakspeare's plays, and it may now be observed, that 
 of them all, Richard the Third is the only one that opens with a soli- 
 loquy, as if to indicate the moral solitariness of the character. 
 
 The career of such unusual and savage self-dependence could be 
 sustained only by the power of commanding intellect. Accordingly, 
 there is found in Richard such power in all its magnitude : there is 
 intellect, and nothing but intellect. Coleridge has observed, that 
 ' pride of intellect is the characteristic of Richard, and that Shakspeare 
 has here, as in all his great parts, developed in a tone of sublime morality 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 185 
 
 ihe dreadful consequences of placing the moral in subordination to the 
 mere intellectual being." Struggling first for the aggrandizement of 
 his family, Richard struggles afterwards for himself. To bravery in 
 battle he adds craft and hypocrisy, because he finds them the best instru- 
 ments for some purposes, and not because he is solicitous to screen his 
 crimes from the world or himself. He feels his intellectual strength, 
 and has an exulting pride in the exercise of it. He was one of these 
 bold had men, who rise up in revolutionary times, when ambitious and 
 unprincipled nobles stoop from their high station to the vilest arts of 
 the low-born demagogue ; one of those aristocratic Jacobins, who are 
 seen in seasons of anarchy, seeking to build up a tyranny on the ruins 
 of their own order. Richard is arrogant with the pride of birth and 
 the recollection of past dangers, as when he boasts 
 
 " I was born so high 
 Our aiery buildeth in the cedar-tops, 
 And dallies with the wind and scorns the sun." 
 
 The intense intellectual force of Richard's character, with the utter 
 absence of moral elements, produces throughout an overweening self- 
 assurance that is troubled with no misgivings, but breaks out perpetually 
 into a species of malignant merriment. He is so sure of his game 
 always, that he exults in anticipation of success, and vents his exuber- 
 ance of spirits in that most hateful mode of expression, sarcastic irony 
 one of the sure signs of a bad heart. When he is planning his brother's 
 murder, he looks after him as he is led to the Tower : 
 
 " Go tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return. 
 Simple plain Clarence, I do love thee so, 
 That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven, 
 If Heaven will take the present at my hands." 
 
 His exhultation rises at the prospect of the death of his other brothers 
 Edward the Fourth : 
 
 " If I fail not in my deep intent, 
 Clarence hath not another day to live. 
 Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy, 
 And leave the world for me to bustle in." 
 
 The Duke of Buckingham has been the mean and wicked partner of 
 Richard's usurpation. The strong man has whirled him along in the 
 progress of his crimes he has used him, not as a staff to lean on, but 
 a tool to subserve his purposes. The moment the frail Buckingham 
 
186 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 falters at the proposed murder of the princes, Richard casts him off as 
 a worthless thing to be trampled on without fear or compunction . 
 
 " I will converse with iron-witted fools 
 And unrespective boys ; none are for me 
 That look into me with considerate eyes. 
 High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect ; 
 The deep-revolving, witty Buckingham 
 No more shall be the neighbour to my counsels. 
 Hath he so long held out with me untired, 
 And stops he now for breath ? Well, be it so." 
 
 The ite of this wicked and discarded favourite is sealed. He feels that 
 it is not enough that he is degraded he must die ; and, after a vain 
 stuggle against his destiny, his partnership with the usurper's crimes 
 ends with a bloody death by the tyrant's order. 
 
 Immediately after Richard has cast Buckingham from his counsels, 
 he looks about for other men, more pliant implements ; and he recovers 
 his wonted animation when he utters that cold-blooded piece of irony in 
 the question to Tyrrel 
 
 " Dar'st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine ?" 
 exactly as if murder was a perfectly amicable transaction. 
 
 Richard's short reign of three years was a weary period; and, whe- 
 ther we look at his character in history or in the drama, we escape from 
 it with pleasure, for there is nothing to relieve nothing to mitigate it. 
 The contemplation of even his commanding intellect the tremendous 
 force of his will becomes odious ; for we see that it owes much of its 
 strength to abandonment of all principle of right. It is one of the 
 dreadful lessons of history, that men have often risen to power simply 
 by what has been well described as (t The fearful resolve to find, in 
 the will alone, the one absolute motive of action, under which all other 
 motives, from within and from without, must either be subordinated or 
 crushed;" men who, knowing no other principle but that might is 
 right, are " the Molochs of human nature, who are indebted for the 
 larger part of their meteoric success to their total want of principle, 
 and who surpass the generality of their fellow-creatures in one act of 
 courage only that of daring to say with their whole heart e Evil, be 
 thou my good !' " 
 
 It is not possible to discover either in the history or the drama of 
 Richard a single point for even a momentary sympathy to rest on 
 there is no room for the least transient pity of the misery of guilt. 
 Richard had no suffering that we can see he is happy in his crimes, 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 187 
 
 and they make him prouder of his power. He has no compunctions of 
 conscience, no remorseful remembrances ; and it is in this he is repre- 
 sented so differently from the Scottish usurper and tyrant. There is 
 scope for a grand contrast between Richard and Macbeth, but let me 
 only notice that never from Richard's lips do we hear the piteous 
 utterance of the guilt-oppressed weariness of life that weighed down 
 the once guiltless spirit of Macbeth. 
 
 Richard never felt that he had lived long enough ; and, as to troops 
 of friends, the lonely-hearted and proud man set no value on them. 
 The tyrant's indurated and stony conscience seemed to sustain with 
 ease the awful superstructure of his crimes ; the prospect of what he 
 thought a necessity of more and more guilt " sin plucking on sin" 
 disturbs him with no such agony of ineffectual reluctance as that which 
 appears in Macbeth's brief utterance to Lady Macbeth 
 
 " Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife !" 
 
 When Richard's crimes are perpetrated, he seems to think of them 
 no more by a strong effort of the will, he dismisses them from his 
 mind. The guilty past is no burden to him ; there is no such heart- 
 wasting, hopeless memory as appears in the solemn irony of Macbeth's 
 words to the physician : 
 
 " Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased ? 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
 Cleanse the stuff" d bosom of the perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart?" 
 
 The long-sustained obduracy of Richard's spirit at length breaks 
 down, like that of the strong-willed woman, Lady Macbeth, in the 
 mysterious condition of perturbed sleep. The waking tyrant never 
 loses his self-command, but the pride of his wicked heart is shaken by 
 fearful visions of the night ; it is only when appalled by them that con- 
 science begins to assert its authority on the eve of his death. It is a 
 curious fact, that what might be regarded as a mere dramatic inven- 
 tion I mean the agitated dream of Richard on the eve of the battle of 
 Bos worth Field is supposed to have an historical foundation, and is 
 treated by accurate historians as of actual occurrence. The story is, 
 that Richard, rising from his fearful sleep, harrassed and haggard and 
 disturbed, found it necessary, as battle was about to be joined, to ex- 
 plain to his attendants the change which had come over his spirit, and 
 which his looks betrayed. When the mysterious shapes, which in his 
 
188 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTOKY. 
 
 dream hovered around his couch, are represented by the poet as the 
 ghosts of those who had heen murdered by him, it is to be interpreted 
 as the embodiment of the hauntings of a guilty conscience the pre- 
 sence of remorse made vocal and visible. It seems monstrous, either 
 in scenic representation or in the mere reading of the play, to find the 
 ghosts set down among the persons of the drama ghosts enumerated 
 along with citizens, soldiers, and the rest ; but they are not so to be 
 thought of ; if Richard's dream on the night before the battle is an 
 historical fact, then the poet has given it a sublime moral signifieancy, 
 by idealizing the horrid phantoms of sleep into the shadowy form of 
 the dead whose blood had stained the tyrant's hands. The long and 
 unchecked career of guilt had so closed the avenues to Richard's con- 
 science, that nothing but a miracle or the mysterious agencies of sleep 
 could open the way to it ; and thus, in the first awakening from his 
 vexed sleep, the terrors of conscience throng around him for the first 
 me: 
 
 "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, 
 
 And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
 
 And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
 
 Perjury, perjury in the high'st degree, 
 
 Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree, 
 
 All several sins, all used in each degree, 
 
 Throng to the bar, crying all Guilty ! guilty ! 
 
 I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, 
 
 And if I die, no soul will pity me. 
 
 Nay, wherefore should they ? since that I myself 
 
 Find in myself no pity to myself. 
 
 Methought, the souls of all that I had murdered 
 
 Came to my tent, and every one did threat 
 
 To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard." 
 
 The terror of Richard's dream did not unman him when danger 
 came in the more familiar form of an armed enemy, and the last of the 
 Plantagenets fell, fighting with a bravery worthy of that heroic race 
 which had reigned in England for more than three hundred years, and 
 which now reached a bloody catastrophe on Bosworth Field. The 
 crown of England, which had been carried by Richard to the battle, 
 being found after the fight was over, was placed on the brow of the 
 Earl of Richmond, who, on the field of his victory, was hailed " King 
 Henry the Seventh." 
 
 The first of the Tudor kings held the throne by conquest, and by his 
 Lancastrian blood ; and a matrimonial alliance with the family of York 
 gave further security to his possession. To borrow the fine image of 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 189 
 
 Mr. Hallam u Lest the spectre of indefeasible right should stand once 
 more in arms on the tomb of the house of York, the two houses of par- 
 liament showed an earnest desire for the kings marriage with the 
 daughter of Edward the Fourth, who, if she should bear only the name 
 of royalty, might transmit an undisputed inheritance of its prerogative 
 to her posterity." The child of that marriage, Henry the Eighth, suc- 
 ceeded to the throne with the first undisputed title that England had 
 known for more than one hundred years. The beginning of the reign 
 of Henry the Eighth is just at the transition period from mediaeval to 
 modern history, when the feudal baronial power had been exhausted by 
 the War of the Roses, and the monarchy, gaining strength from the 
 ruin of the nobility, had been further fortified by the sagacious dominion 
 of Henry the Seventh. At the opening of the sixteenth century, 
 England takes its place in history as one of the great monarchies of 
 Europe about the same time that the monarchal polity of France 
 attained a similar supremacy. 
 
 In the progress of the constitutional government of England, and 
 for the ultimate advancement of constitutional freedom, the work which 
 appears tp have been assigned to the Tudor generation of kings was, 
 the extinguishing of the multitudinous tyranny of a feudal aristocracy ; 
 and this was accomplished by the elevation of the monarchal element in 
 the government. At no period of English history has there been such 
 an imperious tone and such arbitrary conduct employed by the kings as 
 under the Tudor dynasty a succession of tyrants from the seventh 
 Henry to Elizabeth, who wrought the monarchy to such a pitch of pre- 
 rogative, that the lofty pile fell to its foundation during the Stuart 
 dynasty, when Charles the First laid his head on the block. 
 
 Before passing to what must be a very rapid view of the period of 
 history that remains, let me call your attention to the fact, that the 
 drama of Henry the Eighth was composed by Shakspeare at the distance 
 of only a little more than half a century from the events which it illus- 
 trates. These events are, it is true, now seen by us through the haze 
 of a longer time ; but to the poet and his contemporaries, they had all 
 the distinctness of comparatively recent occurrences ; and, as such, the 
 imagination had a difficult task in dealing with them. The poetic pro- 
 cess, when employed on subjects of a recent and familiar nature, must 
 needs be managed with excellent judgment and high imagination ; to 
 Shakspeare, therefore, the subject of Henry the Eighth was very much 
 what the period of Washington's administration, or the reign of George 
 the Third or Louis the Sixteenth, would be to a dramatic poet of the 
 present day. The character of the play is, on this account, in many 
 
190 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 respects different from that of his other " Chronicle-Plays ;" lofty as is 
 the poetry in it, the whole tone of it eminently shows how Shakspeare's 
 genius takes rank with history. The play of Henry the Eighth is his- 
 tory, and history in its highest and purest state. 
 
 Coleridge said of this play that " It is a sort of historical masque, 
 or show-play. It opens with a description of the gorgeous meeting of 
 King Henry and the French monarch, Francis the First, at the "field 
 of the cloth of gold," and it ends with the procession at the christening 
 of Queen Elizabeth. The deep interest of the play, however, is not in 
 its scenes of pomp and display, but in the silence and stillness of the 
 tragic misery that it tells of. 
 
 In previous reigns we have seen the monarchy of England swayed 
 or sustained by the great nobles princes of the blood or potent feudal 
 barons standing round the throne; but the great change that has 
 come over the kingdom in this respect is apparent, when we see, in 
 Henry's time, that the mightiest man in the realm, one who controls 
 even the tyrant's policy, and guides the government, is a low-born com- 
 moner ; who, rising upon church preferment, becomes the chancellor of 
 the kingdom and the king's chief minister. The politic statesmanship 
 of Cardinal Wolsey is a power that transcends what was displayed by 
 .the great Earl of Warwick or any of the early feudal baronage. The 
 early part of the drama presents the angry and resentful pride of the 
 nobles, as they fret under the pomp and power of the great cardinal, 
 whose splendid ambition has mounted over all the high born of the 
 land. The impetuous Duke of Buckingham with rash passion provokes 
 a controversy, and braves the authority of Wolsey ; but the moment 
 that power strikes him, he feels 
 
 " The net has fallen upon me. * * * 
 * * * My life is spann'd already : 
 I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, 
 Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on, 
 By dark'ning my clear sun." 
 
 He dies on the scaffold, and his death is a bloody proclamation or 
 Wolsey's power. 
 
 The tragic part of the drama is made up of a succession of changes 
 from grandeur to debasement ; and the next in the series is the down- 
 fall of Queen Catharine, repudiated as a wife and degraded from the 
 throne. Her story is a familiar one, which I need not trace and I can- 
 not now pause to expatiate on. Let it be borne in mind that Catharine 
 of Arragon, when she came to England, betrothed to the heir of Eng- 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 191 
 
 land's throne, brought, as the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, not 
 only her splendid dowry, but the pride of the proudest monarchy of 
 Europe ; she came from the palace that had lately rejoiced in those 
 wonderous achievements by which the spaces of Christendom were 
 enlarged; for in one and the same year did Ferdinand and Isabella 
 remove from the soil of Spain the long-enduring dynasty of the Saracens 
 and send forth Columbus to search the dark waters of the West. For, 
 near twenty years was this proud Castilian woman Queen of England, 
 the honoured wife of Henry the Eighth. The poet-historian, I will not 
 say narrates, but exhibits with historical fidelity the course of proceeding 
 by which Catharine was wickedly cast aside to make room for Anna 
 Boleyn. There cannot be any thing more impressive or affecting, than 
 the variety and revulsions of feeling that pass over the afflicted spirit of 
 this queenly matron, whether we behold her in stately yet suppliant re- 
 monstrance with her heartless husband, or, beleaguered by the crafty 
 counsels of the two cardinals, Wolsey and Campieus she turns from 
 the king to address a more impassioned utterance to Wolsey : 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 I am about to weep ; but, thinking that 
 We are a queen (or long have dreamed so), certainly 
 The daughter of a king, my drops of tears 
 I'll turn to sparks of fire." 
 
 In a former part of this course, we had occasion to consider the 
 character of Constance wildly clamouring for her son's royal claim, and 
 afterwards that of Margaret of Anjou indomitably warring for her son's 
 inheritance; but the noblest matron of them all is Queen Catharine, in 
 whom are seen all the feelings of the wife, the mother, and the queen 
 the pride of birth and of place the consciousness of irreproachable 
 purity the anguish of the bitterest wrong the sense of loneliness in 
 a foreign land all sinking down with something of placid piety, into 
 the most piteous dejection. She knows how desolate she is 
 
 " Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom where no pity, 
 No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me ; 
 Almost no grave allowed me." 
 
 But almost in the same breath she has the fortitude to say to Wolsey 
 
 " My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty 
 To give up willingly that noble title 
 Your master wed me to : nothing but death 
 Shall e'er divorce my dignities." 
 
192 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 She had warned the great cardinal 
 
 " Take heed, for heaven's sake, take heed, lest at once 
 The burden of my sorrow fall upon ye." 
 
 The next of these sublime reverses the change from " mightiness 
 to misery" is the downfall of Wolsey. The worldly and ambitious 
 ecclesiastic had been odious in his pride of power in his days of mag- 
 nificence ; but now, with no more than the actual facts of history, the 
 poet, as has been well said " By his marvellous art, throws the fallen 
 man upon our pity. He restores him to his fellowship with humanity 
 by his temporal abasement. The trappings of his ambition are stripped 
 off, and we see him in his natural dignity. He puts on the armour of 
 fortitude and we reverence him." 
 
 Wolsey had dwelt in an atmosphere so radiant as to dazzle him, but 
 now a sudden change of fortune sweeps it away, and he sees the world 
 in the pure air and calm light of heaven. He bids farewell to all his 
 greatness in. a strain of poetry, not as piteous, certainly, but as heartfelt 
 as that with which the soul-stricken soldier bade farewell to the plumed 
 steed and the big wars that make ambition virtue. There is the linger- 
 ing sorrow for lost power. 
 
 " No sun shall usher forth my honours, 
 Nor gild again the noble troops that waited 
 Upon my smiles." 
 
 He looks sorrowfully to the destitution that is before him 
 
 "My high-blown pride 
 
 At length broke under me, and now has left me 
 Weary and old with service, to the mercy 
 Of a rude stream that must forever hide me." 
 
 It is not until the tears and the affection of his servant Cromwell 
 touch the hidden humanity in the proud man's heart, that Wolsey rises 
 to the higher strain of that solemn admonition : 
 
 " Mark but my fall and that that ruin'd me. 
 Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. 
 By that sin fell the angels how can man, then, 
 The image of his Maker, hope to win by it ? 
 Love thyself last ; cherish those hearts that hate thee. 
 Corruption wins not more than honesty. 
 Still hi thy right hand carry gentle peace 
 To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not. 
 Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
 Thy God's, and truth's : then if thou fall'st, Cromwell, 
 Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.'* 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 193 
 
 The dramatic narrative of the close of Wolsey's life becomes many 
 fold more impressive from being told to the discrowned Queen Catherine 
 in answer to her gentle inquiry 
 
 " Did'st thou not tell me 
 That the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey, 
 
 Was dead? 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Prythee, good Griffith, tell me how he died: 
 If well, he stepp'd before me, happily, 
 For my example." 
 
 And then, after she has listened to the narrative of his deeds of bene- 
 ficence and his death of humility, her gentle comment 
 
 "After my death I wish no other herald, 
 No other speaker of my living actions, 
 To keep mine honour from corruption, 
 But such an honest chronicler as Griffith. 
 Whom I most hated living, thou has made me, 
 With thy religious truth and modesty, 
 Now in his ashes honour. Peace be with him I" 
 
 This forgetfulness of her injuries this placid forgiveness of her 
 adversary is made to be the appropriate prelude to her own death. 
 Through the subdued emotions of charity to the memory of the dead, 
 and of resignation to her own woes, the Castilian pride of the noble- 
 minded and afflicted Catherine shines forth faintly in her dying 
 injunctions to her attendants : 
 
 " Although unqueen'd, yet like 
 A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me." 
 
 The tragedy of Henry the Eighth gives intimation of the vast 
 changes that were approaching. The great ecclesiastical revolution of 
 the sixteenth century is distantly alluded to, when Wolsey speaks of 
 Anne Boleyn as a spleeny Lutheran, and of Cranmer's rise 
 
 " There is sprung up 
 An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer ; one 
 Hath crawled into the favour of the king, 
 And is his oracle." 
 
 And, looking forward into one of the last allusions in Shakspeare's 
 historical plays, it is to America, when, in poetic anticipation of the 
 reign of James the First, it is said 
 
 " Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine, 
 His honour and the greatness of his name 
 
 
194 LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Shall be and make new nations. He shall flourish, 
 And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches 
 To all the plains about him." 
 
 Of the character of Henry the Eighth it may be said, without 
 exaggeration, that it contained all the worst qualities of the worst man 
 that ever reigned in England. Despotic over the nation, he carried a 
 bloody and inhuman tyranny into his own household ; and all the time 
 he was so husy handling his conscience, fondling it, and talking about 
 it, and the distress its tenderness caused him, and his scruples and his 
 sense of duty ; so that he seems to have lived and died in the self- 
 complacent conviction that he was one of the most virtuous, and 
 certainly the most conscientious, creature in the world. Strange to 
 say, too, his subjects seem to have had an abject affection for him ; 
 and, with a series of atrocities indisputably resting upon his memory, 
 posterity has but imperfectly fulfilled its duty of hatred of him. The 
 explanation given of this by Mr. Hal lam is thus: "The main cause 
 of the reverence with which our forefather's cherished this king's 
 memory was, the share he had taken in the Reformation. They saw 
 him, not indeed, the proselyte of their faith, but the subverter of their 
 enemy's power the avenging minister of heaven, by whose great arm 
 the chain of superstition had been broken and the prison-gates burst 
 asunder. As the poet Gray has finely glanced at this part of his 
 history when he speaks of him as 
 
 " Thi majestic lord 
 That broke the bonds of Rome." 
 
 A curious explanation of the inadequate condemnation of Henry's 
 character is given by another writer, who remarks : " It is extremely 
 difficult to attach any moral responsibility to one who appears to have 
 been so utterly unconscious of it himself. We cannot contemplate 
 murder and robbery apart from the homicide and the felon. No reader 
 ever throws down his book in disgust at the revolting character of 
 Bluebeard ; few experience any personal abhorrence at the Emperor of 
 Morocco, though his courtyard is ornamented with pyramids of human 
 heads, freshly furnished every day. History is unfortunately nowise 
 deficient in examples of graduated barbarity to suit any conceivable 
 occasion ; but its moral would be lost and its occupation gone, if it 
 could not also generally exhibit the temporal wages of sin. Even 
 Caligula used to wander through the measureless and hollow-sounding 
 corridors of the palace, followed by gibbering phantoms, and eagerly 
 praying for the dawn. Even Nero started at the unearthly trumpet 
 
RIC1URD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 195 
 
 which sounded nightly over the grave of his murdered mother. Even 
 Charles the Ninth saw bloody streaks in the sky, and heard strange 
 noises on the leads of the Louvre. But no remorse ever disturbed the 
 rest or affected the dreams of Henry. No occasional misgivings that 
 he was not the best king, the most faithful Catholic, the truest friend, 
 the most loving husband in Christendom, ever crossed the royal mind. 
 Wife after wife, friend after friend, councillor after councillor, perished 
 by the axe of his slaves ; but no troublesome spectres stalked through 
 the groves of Richmond or marred the tiltings at Greenwich. At last, 
 his own familiar friend is condemned ; but no blood-boltered Cromwell 
 rises at the council-board or shakes his gory locks in St. George's Hall. 
 The unconscious monarch continues his murders and his marriages, 
 troubled by nothing but the gout, and lamenting nothing but his 
 poverty, and dies at last committing his soul to the Blessed Virgin with 
 as much confidence and complacency as if he had lived the life of Fran- 
 9ois Xavier. When we include, in our recollections of this man 3 the 
 facts that he was destined for the archbishopric of Canterbury, that he 
 gravely discussed theological questions, propounded and defended theses 
 on divinity, and earnestly and vehemently disputed on serious points of 
 religion, it is enough to confuse the gravity of our reason and judgment, 
 and to give to the whole of his reign and actions the air of a grotesque 
 and barbarous pantomime." 
 
 I should have been glad, in coming to the end of the many historic 
 personages whom we have been considering, to have closed with one 
 whose memory could be regarded with less detestation ; but, as I have 
 no choice, I would fain help you to as hearty hatred of Henry the 
 Eighth as historic truth demands. I cannot add force to the language 
 of an author who has said " It is fearful, but not unsalutary, to cast 
 a parting glance at Henry the Eighth after his work upon the earth 
 was done. His broad and vicious body lay immovable and helpless, a 
 mere corrupt and bloated mass of dying tyranny. No friend was near 
 to comfort it, not even a courtier dared to warn it of its coming hour. 
 The men whom it had gorged with the offal of its plunder, hung back 
 in affright from its perishing agonies, in disgust from its ulcerous sores. 
 It could not move a limb nor lift a hand. The palace-doors were made 
 wider for its passage through them, and it could only then pass by 
 means of machinery. Yet, to the last, it kept its ghastly state, de- 
 scended daily from bedchamber into room of kingly audience, through 
 a hole in the palace ceiling, and was nightly, by the same means, lifted 
 back again to its sleepless bed. And, to the last, unhappily for the 
 world, it had its terrible indulgences. Before stretched in that helpless 
 
196 LECTUEES ON ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 state of horror, its latest victim had been a Plantagenet. Nearest to 
 itself in blood of all its living kindred, the Countess of Salisbury was, 
 in her eightieth year, dragged to the scaffold for no pretended crime 
 save that of corresponding with her son ; and, having refused to lay 
 her head on the block (it was for traitors to do so, she said, which she 
 was not), but moving swiftly round, and tossing it from side to side 
 to avoid the executioner, she was struck down by the weapons of the 
 neighbouring men-at-arms ; and, while her gray hairs streamed with 
 blood, and her neck was forcibly held down, the axe discharged, at 
 length, its dreadful office. The last victim of all followed in the grace- 
 ful and gallant person of the young Lord Surrey. The dying tyranny, 
 speechless and incapable of motion, had its hand lifted up to affix the 
 formal seal to the death-warrant of the poet, the soldier, the statesman, 
 and scholar, and on the 'day of the execution/ according to Holinshed, 
 6 was itself lying in the agonies of death/ Its miserable comfort then 
 was, the thought that youth was dying too ; that the grave which 
 yawned for abused health, indulged lusts, and monstrous crimes, had, 
 in the same instant opened at the feet of manly health, of generous 
 grace, of exquisite genius, and modest virtue. And so perished Henry 
 the Eighth." 
 
 And here, just across the threshold of modern, as distinguished 
 from mediaeval, history, this course of lectures comes to its conclusion. 
 When I think of the distant period of history with which this course 
 began, I am almost afraid to think of the extent of time and the multi- 
 tude of characters I have attempted to speak of. With a very strong 
 sense of the necessity of leaving a vast deal unsaid, and of the danger 
 of passing over what ought not to be neglected, I have used all possible 
 pains to make the most of the time you have kindly given me. I part 
 with my subject at present with the hope that, hereafter, I may possibly 
 resume it, by treating either some of the many grand historical subjects 
 which remain in the period of the Middle Ages, or by advancing into 
 the ampler field of modern history, and onward into the neglected 
 annals of our own country. 
 
 Let me add a word or two of explanation respecting the method of 
 the course I am now concluding. In it, I have purposely refrained, 
 as far as possible, from mere historic narrative, and have aimed at such 
 comprehensive comment as might illustrate the character and spirit of 
 those distant times, and of the men who lived in them. I ventured to 
 hope that in this way I might revive some historical recollections 
 might deepen some historical impressions, and, perhaps, inspire an 
 interest in the study of history. 
 
RICHARD THE THIRD HENRY THE EIGHTH. 197 
 
 With regard to the poetical illustrations which I have introduced 
 from Shakspeare's " Chronicle-Plays," I wish to explain, that I have 
 not thought it worth while to occupy your time with pointing out the 
 deviations in those plays from the literal truth of history. I have used 
 those illustrations as contributing to the general truth of history to 
 its moral significancy, and because I had it at heart to show that by 
 the help of the imagination, disciplined in the service of truth, we gain 
 that sense of the reality of past ages, and of our fellow-beings who 
 peopled them, which makes history a living picture. 
 
FOUR LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 TRAGIC POETRY, 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED IN 
 
 's |0wr tat gramas. 
 
TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 i. 
 
 pig 
 
 THE subject which I ask you to carry in your thoughts during this 
 brief course of lectures is " Tragic Poetry, especially as illustrated by 
 the four great dramas of Shakspeare." I do not propose to enter upon 
 a strictly critical examination of these tragedies. I dwell upon them as 
 they are illustrative of the aim and the scope of tragic poetry. I wish 
 to inquire, how a true poet deals with the human heart when he 
 awakens its solemn sympathies, and why it is that such sympathies the 
 sentiments of pity, sorrow, and even anguish -are stirred within the 
 soul by the agency of the imagination. 
 
 When I speak of the four great dramas of Shakspeare, I trust it is 
 understood, that I am not expressing merely a private preference of my 
 own an individual judgment. Universal consent has recognised them 
 as undoubtedly the highest efforts of his genius ; and, what I wish you 
 to observe is, that when the inspiration of the poet was in its loftiest 
 region, that region was " Tragedy." The upper air of poetry is the 
 atmosphere of sorrow. This is a truth attested by every department of 
 art the poetry of words of music of the canvas and of marble. 
 Now, as poetry is a glorified reflection of life and nature, why is this ? 
 Simply because, when a man weeps, the passions that are stirring within 
 him are mightier than those feelings which prompt to cheerfulness and 
 merriment. The smile plays upon the countenance ; the laugh is a 
 momentary and noisy impulse; but the tear rises slowly and silently 
 from the deep places of the heart. It is at once the symbol and the 
 relief of overwhelming feeling it is the language of those emotions 
 which words cannot give utterance to. Words and smiles and laughter 
 all have to do with impulses that are on the surface, and which we 
 freely express to one another in the trivial and social intercourse of 
 daily life ; but let any one study his own heart, and he will know that 
 there are passions, whose very might and depth give them a sanctity, 
 
202 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 which we instinctively recognise by veiling them from the gaze of 
 others. They are the sacred things of the temple of the human soul, 
 and the common touch would only profane them. In childhood, indeed, 
 when its little griefs and joys are blended with that absence of self-con- 
 sciousness which is both the bliss and the beauty of its innocence, tears 
 are shed without restraint or disguise. But, when the self-consciousness 
 of manhood has taught us that tears are the expression of those passions 
 which are too sacred for exposure, the heart will often in silence break 
 rather than violate this ac(mirable instinct of our nature. Indeed, the 
 more a man reflects on these things, the more confirmed will be the 
 spirit of reserve in him the more will he shrink from " wearing his 
 heart upon his sleeve." Hence it is that the highest department of 
 poetic art belongs to tragedy, embracing, as it does, in its range, the 
 most awful emotions that human nature is capable of an t>ld man's 
 agony from the wrongs of filial impiety, as in King Lear ; the heart- 
 wasting misery of criminal temptations and a blood-stained conscience, 
 as in Macbeth ; the strife of a young and noble spirit contending with 
 vice and an adverse destiny, as in Hamlet ; and the phrensy of an 
 abandoned faith, as in Othello. 
 
 If it has been shown that the highest department of the art belongs 
 to tragic poetry, assuming, as it may do, either the epic or the dramatic 
 form, it may still be asked What are its moral uses ? The inquiry is 
 a just one ; and, to the best of my ability, I will endeavour in some 
 degree to give an answer to it on this condition, however, that I am 
 not expected to answer it in any mere utilitarian spirit. Indeed, one 
 main design of these four lectures will be to show what salutary in- 
 fluences belong to tragic poetry how the poet's sad imaginings are 
 calculated to chasten, to elevate, and to purify an agency which 
 justified so sage and solemn a spirit as Milton's in styling the lofty, 
 grave tragedians 
 
 " In chorus or iambic, teachers best 
 Of moral prudence, with delight received, 
 In brief sententious precepts, while they treat 
 Of fate, and chance, and change in human life ; 
 High actions and high passions best describing," 
 
 When Milton thus spake, it was in immediate reference to the Athenian 
 tragic drama; but the words have a more universal application as finely 
 describing the themes of all tragedy : 
 
 " Fate, and chance, and change in human life, 
 High actions and high passions best describing ;" 
 
KING LEAR. 203 
 
 themes involving what is most momentous in man's moral nature. The 
 great poet, in all ages of the world, has been a genuine moralist ; and, 
 when morality perished upon the pages of philosophy, it has heen kept 
 alive by the inspirations of poetry. Most of all has the tragic poet best 
 told the strange story of man's nature the conflict of its passions, the 
 wild commingling of good and evil elements, their ceaseless agitation, 
 and all that makes up the mystery of the human heart the strange 
 mystery that dwells in the breast of every human being. 
 
 The influence of any department of poetry must be sought in that 
 sphere of action and passion which is its archetype ; for all poetry, that 
 is truly such, is the imaginative representation of life. Now, tragic 
 poetry has its original in the sorrows and misery that float like clouds 
 over the days of human existence. Afflictions are ever travelling across 
 the earth upon errands, mysterious, but merciful, could we only under- 
 stand them; and the poet, picturing them to us in some sad story of his 
 own, teaches the imaginative lesson of their influence upon the heart. 
 He shows what that heart is capable of; its often unknown power and 
 energy and endurance; the passions that are slumbering there; the 
 feelings which may be wrought either to a pitch of wickedness or to 
 some lofty mood of heroic virtue. I say again, that to the poet, and 
 chiefly to the tragic poet, belongs the function of unravelling that 
 greatest of all earthly mysteries the human heart. And this is done 
 for salutary uses ; for be assured that mighty poets are inspired with 
 the power of portraying the soul in its strength and its weakness, not 
 for the effeminate purpose of mere sentiment, but that we may the 
 better know our own natures the better learn what the spirit which 
 abides within us is capable of. Whether that teaching of the poet is 
 made practically influential upon character, or the impressions be 
 suffered to pass away in sentimental inactivity, in violation of that law 
 of our moral being which tells us that feelings, no matter how virtuous, 
 will surely perish unless they are converted into active principles, is 
 another consideration to which I may revert hereafter. But the 
 question now is as to the moral design of tragedy, not whether its uses 
 are neglected. The great critic of antiquity, with all the sublime 
 solemnities of his country's dramatic literature in his thoughts, in the 
 presence, as it were, of that spectral mystery of fate which over- 
 shadowed Athenian tragedy, has told us that "Tragic poetry is the 
 imitation of serious action, employing pity and terror for the purpose of 
 chastening such passions." A great modern poet tells us that 
 
 " It were a wantonness, and would demand 
 Severe reproof, if we were men whose hearts 
 
204 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 Could hold vain dalliance with the misery 
 
 Even of the dead : contented thence to draw 
 
 A momentary pleasure, never mark'd 
 
 By reason, barren of all future good. 
 
 But we have known that there is often found 
 
 In mournful thoughts, and always might be found, 
 
 A power to virtue friendly." Wordsworth. 
 
 Now, it is my purpose to trace this "power to virtue friendly" in 
 tragic poetry, designed as it is to shadow forth imaginatively the 
 mournful thoughts of our actual life, and to show that the poet gives us 
 the best insight into our nature teaching us, by his imaginative 
 realities, how the heart may be hardened ; how it may be melted ; that 
 thus we may the better know what should be our true dealings with 
 the principles and passions of our fellow-beings and of ourselves. This 
 is the profound and simple morality of that drama which is to be my 
 illustration this evening. 
 
 But let me introduce the contemplation of that sublime production 
 of art, the tragedy of King Lear, by first presenting a simpler example 
 of pathetic poetry, to show "the power to virtue friendly" which 
 abides in mournful thoughts. There is a tradition respecting one of 
 the ancient ecclesiastical edifices in the North of England, that it was 
 founded by the mandate of a mourning mother the first impulse when 
 her despairing, obdurate, and voiceless grief was turned into tranquil 
 resignation for the fate of her only son, a gallant youth who perished 
 pitiably in the rocky chasm of the river Wharf. The story and its 
 moral are told in the unaffected stanzas of a ballad : 
 
 " Young Romilly through Barden woods 
 
 Is ranging high and low ; 
 And holds a greyhound in a leash, 
 To let slip upon buck or doe. 
 
 The pair have reached the fearful chasm, 
 
 How tempting to bestride ! 
 For lordly Wharf is there pent in 
 
 With rocks on either side. 
 
 This striding place is called the Strid, 
 
 A name which it took of yore ; 
 A thousand years hath it borne that name, 
 
 And shall a thousand more. 
 
 And hither is young Romilly come, 
 
 And what may now forbid 
 That he, perhaps for the hundredth time, 
 
 Shall bound across the Strid? 
 
KING LEAR. 205 
 
 He sprang in glee, for what cared he 
 That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep ? 
 
 But the greyhound in the leash hung back, 
 And check'd him in his leap. 
 
 The boy is in the arms of Wharf, 
 
 And strangled by a merciless force ; 
 For never more was young Romilly seen 
 
 Till he rose a lifeless corse. 
 
 Now there is stillness in the vale, 
 
 And long, unspeaking sorrow : 
 Wharf shall be to pitying hearts 
 
 A name more sad than Yarrow. 
 
 If for a lover the lady wept, 
 
 A solace she might borrow 
 From death and from the passion of death ; 
 
 Old Wharf might heal her sorrow. 
 
 She weeps not for the wedding-day 
 
 Which was to be to-morrow : 
 Her hope was a farther -looking hope, 
 
 And her's is a mother's sorrow. 
 
 He was a tree that stood alone, 
 
 And proudly did its branches wave ; 
 And the root of this delightful tree 
 
 Was in her husband's grave ! 
 
 Long, long in darkness did she sit, 
 
 And her first words were, ' Let there be 
 In Bolton, on the Field of Wharf, 
 
 A stately Priory !' 
 
 The stately priory was rear'd ; 
 
 And Wharf, as he moved along, 
 To matins joined a mournful voice, 
 
 Nor failed at even-song. 
 
 And the lady prayed in heaviness 
 
 That look'd not for relief! 
 But slowly did her succour come, 
 
 And a patience to her grief. 
 
 Oh ! there is never sorrow of heart 
 
 That shall lack a timely end, 
 If but to God we turn, and ask 
 
 Of him to be our friend !" Wordsworth. 
 
 I need not stop to show how, in this story, there came from 
 mournful thoughts " a power to virtue friendly. 7 ' The science of ethics 
 
206 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 could not teach a more precious lesson than is conveyed by the reflec- 
 tion, that the darkness of a lonesome heart in which the mourner sat, 
 caught its first ray of light by the resolve of an act of piety. It was 
 thus the heavy cloud of hopeless sorrowing was scattered ; it was thus 
 that the widowed mother's spirit, while yet on earth, found a home in 
 the calm and unclouded region of holy emotions, and her aspirations 
 and the chaunted services of the church and the voice of the waters of 
 the fatal river all blended together to consecrate the place. 
 
 From these simple verses let us now turn to learn how the same 
 truth is conveyed in one of the most awe-inspiring productions of Shak- 
 speare's genius the tragedy of King Lear. Let us seek to discover 
 the salutary influences of that tumultuous and solemn agony with which 
 it is filled, and thus verify the words of the great critic of antiquity > 
 that " tragedy is meant to chasten the passions of the soul by the 
 agency of terror and pity." These are the wise words of him whom 
 Greece, in the abundance of all that the intellect of man can achieve, 
 gave as worthy to be the philosopher and critic of her poets, and who 
 brought his heart of criticism from a reverential gazing upon the pages 
 of Homer, and reverential insight into the deep places of his own heart. 
 Let me here ask whether the truth of this principle, which I am about 
 to take as my guide through these lectures, is not recognised in its 
 analogy to the outer world whether there is not a violent, and it may 
 be, a terrific, chastening of the elements without, like the painful puri- 
 fication of the moral elements within us. A heavy and pestilent atmos- 
 phere may be gathering around us, the seeds of disease and death 
 floating upon it. Then there is a lurid threatening of the tempest a 
 hurried movement of the clouds; and the wind, which had been 
 ominously moaning, comes rising up from beneath the horizon like the 
 terrific phantom that haunted the palace of Dion a sullen spectre 
 
 " Sweeping, vehemently sweeping, 
 Like Auster, whirling to and fro 
 His force in Caspian foam to try ; 
 Or Boreas, when he scours the snow 
 That skims the plains of Thessaly ;" 
 
 and when the tumult of the elements is over, there is a pure air to 
 breathe ; and overhead is the blue sky, into whose infinite depth the 
 eye cannot look without a sense of better things, than when it is ever 
 bent downwards to what is low and corrupt the measureable mean- 
 nesses that entangle our footsteps. Now, akin to this is the strife of 
 passions, which passes away and leaves in the soul a calm and a purity 
 
KING LEAR. 207 
 
 it knew not before. Or, again, the rain weeps upon the earth, and, 
 ere the drops are dried while glistening with the rays of the returning 
 sun the grass will begin its silent growth in the valley ; and so it is 
 that, by the virtue of pathetic influences, gentle emotions will spring 
 up from the soil of a saddened spirit. 
 
 The significancy of the very titles of Shakspeare's plays at once tells 
 us that the interest of " King Lear " is meant to centre chiefly about 
 the aged monarch an ancient British king. The first step in the accu- 
 rate study of any great dramatic poem is to consider the locality and 
 the period, so far, at least, as they serve to cast their lights and 
 shadows upon the characters. The idea of place is definite, strikingly 
 so by virtue of such local description as of the Dover Cliff, impressing 
 the imagination with the knowledge that Britain is the scene. This 
 serves, too, to make it a home story : and such, indeed, it was, when 
 Shakspeare, not inventing the plot, simply took it as an old legend of 
 the land, to be made forever a living thing by the life-blood infused into 
 it by a poet's genius. While it is thus distinct as to place it is all 
 shadowy as to time ; you must go back beyond the Norman Conquest, 
 the Saxon, the Dane, or even the Roman; back into a region which 
 the ray of historic light dimly penetrates, only to show in the misty 
 confusion the strange shapes of fable and romance. All that can be 
 learnt is, that Lear and his daughters lived a long time ago; and it only 
 concerns us to observe that it was in some age earlier than the Chris- 
 tian era, when men fancied that their destinies were ruled by the stars, 
 and put up their prayers to gods passionate like themselves. This is 
 important; for the wild and stormy tumult of the drama is more in 
 unison with a period of paganism than it could be with any age of true 
 faith. Lear is a barbaric chieftain a heathen monarch ; and the wil- 
 fulness of offence at an unoffending child, and the agonised impreca- 
 tions upon his wicked daughters, befit a heathen's lips. The lurid 
 atmosphere of the tragedy could not have been harmonised with the 
 radiance of Christendom; and, therefore, the imagination is skilfully 
 guided into a pagan land ; for it is in the very first scene that one 
 mythological oath after another is uttered by the king, swearing by 
 Apollo, Jupiter 
 
 " By the sacred radiance of the sun, 
 
 The mysteries of Hecate and the night ; 
 
 By all the operations of the orbs 
 
 From whom we do exist and cease to be." 
 
 Except in these two respects distance from the distinctness of his- 
 toric time and from the calmness of a Christian age it matters not 
 
208 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 how many centuries ago we fancy the story ; indeed, it is better that a 
 great work of imagination should stand aloof from chronology. Like 
 the relation between parent and child, on which the tragedy rests, it is 
 not circumscribed by time ; and, as long as there shall be parental feel- 
 ing on the earth as long as there shall be filial piety, there must be 
 sympathy with the " child-changed father " in this wondrous poem. 
 
 The first impression that is given of Lear's character is that of 
 selfishness, arising from the habitual exercise of power. He is four- 
 score years old, and his heart has been hardened by that which is well- 
 nigh sure to harden the heart of any man the possession of irrespon- 
 sible strength. His only law is his own absolute will, now feebly 
 guided by an intellect which time has begun to work on : the gods are 
 only ministers to his oaths and imprecations. He stands before us the 
 very personation of unlimited despotism, lawless and selfish. He is 
 surrounded by courtiers, but they are not counsellors. The only 
 council-chamber is his own mind ; and there he matures, in the lonely 
 dignity of a tyrant's will, the " dark purpose " as he calls it, of his 
 abdication and the division of his kingdom. In the very act of putting 
 off royalty, every word and motion of the aged man is kingly the 
 speech and action of one so long habituated to the use of arbitrary 
 authority so that when he purposes to lay it down, there is despotism 
 in the very resignation. As if the issues of life were in his mortal 
 hands, he decrees the course of his remaining days: 
 
 " Tis our first intent 
 
 To shake all cares and business from our age, 
 Conferring them on younger strength, while we 
 Unburthen'd crawl toward death." 
 
 This passage, it seems to me, suggests one of those dim presentiments 
 which Shakspeare frequently employs, as darkly prophetic of the future 
 in his dramas. We feel as if this absolute planning for the future, even 
 for the remnant days of his old age, can hardly come to good. Human 
 power is reaching beyond its limits, and the pride of power, so con- 
 fidently resolving upon freedom from all cares, seems to shadow forth its 
 own disappointment. The anxieties of not only sovereignty but of 
 humanity are to be laid aside ; yet, at the very moment when, with 
 kingly self-confidence, he is sending this decree forth that he will travel 
 onward unburthened to the grave, we seem to have a mysterious fore- 
 warning low words of admonition that burdens a thousand-fold 
 weightier shall be heaped upon him. Troubles to come are casting then? 
 shadows before and darkening the splendour of his pride. We may 
 
KING LEAR. 209 
 
 fancy Lear, like another ancient barbaric king of Britain, intoxicated 
 with the lifelong use of despotic power, giving his mandate to stay the 
 flood of troubles ; and at the same time, the approaching waters of the 
 deep are curling their threatening surges not only to dash the spray 
 upon his feet, but to heave huge billows upon his discrowned head. 
 
 The more deeply we study the opening of this drama, the more per- 
 fect it is found as a personation of the intense selfishness of irresponsible 
 power. The king sits solitary. Observe, there is no queen to share his 
 throne and to approach him with a wife's counsel, and even the affections 
 of his children are objects of command. Every thing is subordinate 
 every thing self-centering. The instant he finds his vanity frustrated in 
 a pitiful scheme to extort professions of fondness from his daughters, 
 the silence of his darling child becomes rebellion, and the counsel of a 
 faithful and affectionate subject, treason. The ruling passion is the 
 pride of despotism, and the vengeance of insulted royalty is swift in an 
 indiscriminate destruction. Now, this is very sad that an old man's 
 heart, a father's heart, should be so hard and so hollow that pride and 
 passion are echoing there as the wind might through the ruins of an 
 ancient Druid temple on some barren British waste. To the eye of a 
 pure moral intelligence, this should be a more deplorable spectacle than 
 that piteous one of the aged king unhoused and unsheltered in the storm. 
 Here it is the moral storm of his own lawless passions of a vindictive 
 selfishness and a despotic will making havoc in the heart. In the other 
 it is only the thunder, the wind, and the rain the outer elements 
 beating upon the outer man. 
 
 Such is the character of King Lear when first made known to us : 
 self-willed, irritable, despotic, unnatural, rash in temper and weak in 
 judgment an object of aversion from the intensity of his cruel selfish- 
 ness. And yet, beneath all this, there is something which shows that 
 these are the ruins of a noble nature, overgrown, indeed, with all the 
 weeds that rankly luxuriate in the habit of tyranny. The dutiful respect 
 of his courtiers shows that genuine majesty had not wholly degenerated 
 into despotism ; and enough is told of what had gone before the opening 
 scenes, to let us know that, in a heart so miserably perverted, there were 
 some gracious affections the best of them for that faithful child whom 
 he now casts away, " dowered with his curse and strangered with his 
 oath." Cordelia was the darling of the palace far dearer to him than 
 the hard-fronted Goner ii and Regan. 
 
 Now, how is this nature to be redeemed? How is human sympathy 
 to be reanimated in a tyrant's heart? What Promethean heat is there 
 to rekindle extinct affections? How shall the barren soil of selfishness 
 P 
 
210 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 be broken up, so that virtuous and gentle emotions may grow there? 
 The mischief wrought by fourscore years of tyranny upon the soul of 
 him that used it, is to be done away. The tragedy teaches the restora- 
 tion of Lear's moral nature. It is affected in a two-fold way by all 
 the agony that is crowded into the short and stormy twilight of his 
 life, and by the gentle mediation of his injured daughter. 
 
 It is this process I am anxious to trace, assuming a familiarity on 
 the part of each one of my hearers with the course of this famous 
 tragedy. The tragic movement begins with the cruel disowning and 
 banishment of Lear's true child, brought about by his disappointment 
 in the miserable device to draw from each of his daughters wordy pro- 
 testations of filial affection. The hollow hearts of Goneril and Regan 
 are well fitted to utter sounds enough to fill the monarch's craving ears, 
 and their flattery hurries him on in the uncalculating confidence of 
 hearing the sweeter music of Cordelia's voice for she was the dearest 
 to him the one of whom he soon after says, even in his angry dis- 
 appointment 
 
 " [ loved her most, arid thought to set my rest 
 On her kind nursery." 
 
 We sympathize with the fond old man's amazement at her answer, 
 and it is hard to suppress a little regret that she should not humour him 
 and yet preserve her sincerity. It is a pity she is forced to speak as 
 she does, and we are half tempted to join in the king's censure when he 
 speaks of her " pride which she calls plainness." But she could not 
 answer otherwise. The truthfulness of her nature instinctively re- 
 coiled from the hypocrisy of her sisters' to the opposite point of speech- 
 less affection. She had just heard language desecrated to the uses of 
 heartless deceit, and the sanctity of her spirit could not suffer the un- 
 hallowed thing to touch her lips. More than this, the very form of the 
 question forbade her to speak : 
 
 " What can you say to draw 
 A third more opulent than your sisters ?" 
 
 as if the unpolluted temple of her heart was to be made a'place of traffic 
 as if her dearest and dutiful affections could be bought and bribed 
 and bargained with. Her love had ever been a freewill offering, at 
 once a gift and a duty ; and now the parent, in a mood of unthinking, 
 selfish fondness, was seeking to turn it into something for which land 
 and money should be equivalents it was to be measured out in words 
 and a price paid down for it. All that was left for Cordelia wa s 
 silence, broken only by the firm reiteration of her simple, respectful 
 
KING LEAR. 211 
 
 answer. When Lear, before the tempest of his anger rises, with a 
 slight admonition, solicits her to speak again, the full heart of his 
 child gives utterance to a few words few, but with infinitely more 
 truth and love in them than in all the idle echoes that came sounding 
 from the hollow caverns in the hearts of Goneril and Began : 
 
 " Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave 
 My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty 
 According to my bond no more nor less." 
 
 Cordelia's voice, we are told, " was ever soft, gentle, and low." But 
 it was unintelligible to a mind deluded by flattery ; for, after a few 
 questionings, somewhat in the way of remonstrance, the stormy will of 
 a despotic king sweeps away the lingering affections of a father's heart. 
 Cordelia's offence is against her sovereign as well as against her parent 
 treason as well as filial impiety. In the brief space of a few moments, 
 the turbulent old man casts off a child who never before had offended 
 the dearest of his daughters the darling of the household : 
 
 " Thy truth, then, be thy dower. 
 For by the sacred radiance of the sun, 
 The mysteries of Hecate and the night ; 
 By all the operations of the orbs, 
 From whom we do exist or cease to be, 
 Here I disclaim all my paternal care, 
 Propinquity and property of blood, 
 And, as a stranger to my heart and me, 
 Hold thee from this forever. The barbarous Scythian 
 Or he that makes his generation messes 
 To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom 
 Be as well neigbour'd, pitied, and relieved, 
 As thou my sometime daughter." 
 
 Who does not feel that the angry elements of this deplorable repudia- 
 tion are passing harmlessly over Lear's innocent child and gathering 
 into a black cloud to burst one day on his own head ? With the rash 
 confidence of unchastened power, the king is venturing to set his 
 sovereignty against the mightier sovereignty of nature, and her laws 
 will be avenged. We dread the consequences, not so much for Cordelia 
 as for Lear himself. The fearless interposition of Kent is thrust aside, 
 and the tragedy is begun. Naught can check it, for it is rising with 
 the force and the speed of an ocean's tide upon the Solway sands. The 
 monarch deigns to give a little, a very little, justification of the cruel 
 disowning of his child : 
 
 " I loved her most, and thought to have set my rest 
 On her kind nursery." 
 
2J2 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 But, on the instant, checking his words, as if it were an unkingly thing 
 to explain or vindicate any act of his absolute sway, he commands his 
 daughter to avoid his sight : 
 
 " So be my grave my peace as here I give 
 Her father's heart from her." 
 
 Happy would it have been if the peace of the grave had been nearer at 
 hand; for he little dreamed how much anguish lay in wait for him in 
 the short way he had to travel from his throne to that resting-place. 
 Every thing now savours of absolute dominion irrational power own- 
 ing no law but undisciplined will. It is piling up for a more fearful 
 ruin. 
 
 It somewhat relieves the pain with which we witness this arbitrary 
 sovereignty wielded against the helpless daughter, to observe that, when, 
 in the full burst of his indignation, Lear casts her away, the bitter irony 
 of the first words was, in reality, a benediction the infatuated father's 
 unintended blessing : 
 
 " Thy truth, then, be thy dower." 
 
 : And so, indeed it was the dowerless daughter, richer and happier far 
 than her majestic sisters' ; for Goneril and Began with all their territo- 
 ries, and the added portion of their plundered sister, with armies at 
 their beck) and all the large effects that troop with majesty, are incar- 
 nations of guilty passions and self-tormenting cares. But we feel that 
 the suffering Cordelia will return a ministering spirit. 
 
 Lear has now accomplished both his deliberate and his sudden 
 resolves : he has left his throne and he has driven away the daughter 
 who offended him. It only remains for him to spend the remnant of 
 his days without a care, committing himself to the alternate guardian- 
 ship of the two daughters who had promised so largely. He has 
 quitted the palace, and is housed in the home of his eldest born. 
 When he next appears, there is apparent a want of that majestic bearing 
 which had heretofore given a dignity even to his angry and distempered 
 moods ; there is an abrupt impatience, betraying a mind not wholly at 
 ease something of a desperate effort at joviality. The cares of the 
 kingdom cast aside, he has been seeking to supply the void by the excite- 
 ment of the chase, and, perhaps, to escape from bitter recollections of 
 his discarded child. On his return from hunting, the first intimation 
 is given that things are already beginning to go wrong. One of his 
 followers suggests that there is an abatement of kindness in the conduct 
 of his daughter. Lear himself, it appears, had felt it ; he had been 
 
 
KING LEAK. 213 
 
 struggling against his own apprehensions forced, it may he for the 
 first time in all his life, to look for the fault in himself, and even hoping 
 to find it there. The pride of the haughty king is beginning to hreak. 
 This is the first symptom of that great moral change which is to come 
 Over him. The questioning of himself, the willingness to extenuate 
 neglect, and to lay the blame there rather than upon his daughter, 
 shows that he is standing on the threshold of that dark school of ad- 
 versity in which his heart was to be both chastened and broken. His 
 attendant had harped his fears aright : " Thou but rememberest me of 
 my own conception. I have perceived a most faint neglect of late, 
 which I have rather blamed on mine own jealous curiosity than as a 
 very pretence and purpose of unkindness. I will look further into it." 
 
 The truth is not long to be disguised, for the shameless tongue of 
 Goneril herself announces it. Outraging all decency towards one who 
 was beneath her roof in double trust her father and her guest she 
 breaks out in invectives against his followers, mingled with complaints 
 of him. He listens in a kind of dreamy bewilderment a confused 
 questioning of his own identity and her's. He speaks only a few words, 
 and she resumes her unnatural strain, assailing the virtue and honour 
 of his chosen knights. Lear's royal spirit is roused again ; and . his 
 first indignant thought, with a fierce exclamation, is, to call his train 
 together, and, on the instant, to quit his daughter's house. Yet, this 
 burst of passion is different from that he poured upon Cordelia, for it 
 is now tempered with sad reflections. Even in the midst of the present 
 provocation, he is wrapt in self-communion. Bitter meditations are 
 interrupted by broken words to Goneril and her imbecile husband, and 
 passionate orders to prepare for departure. You can see, too, in what 
 direction his half-uttered thoughts are travelling to his own irretriev- 
 able rashness " Age that too late repents ;" and to his innocent child, 
 whom he had injuriously driven from him 
 
 "Oh! most small fault, 
 How ugly did'st thou in Cordelia show ! 
 Which, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature 
 From the fix'd place drew from my heart all love 
 And added to the gall." 
 
 If his intellect should afterwards give way beneath the load of woes, he 
 is now, at least, coming to his right heart. It is not only turning with 
 forgiveness to his true daughter, but it is also solemnized with self- 
 reproach. It is this which seems to subdue his spirit to a reflective 
 mood, musing at the very time the outrage is done to him : 
 
TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 " Ingratitude ! thou marble-hearted fiend, 
 More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child 
 Than the sea monster." 
 
 There is this subdued tone even in his awful prayer that nature would 
 withhold from his offending daughter a mother's happiness in her 
 offspring, that she may feel 
 
 " How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
 To have a thankless child." 
 
 But his mingled passion and remorse are overmastering him ; for, after 
 quitting the presence of Goneril, he rushed back again to give utterance 
 to his overcharged heart by speaking his agony and his anger. His 
 self-command is too weak, and his first relief is a burst of tears. What 
 a strife of emotions is it when a father is forced to speak so to his 
 daughter ! 
 
 " Life and death ! I am ashamed 
 
 That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus 
 
 That these hot tears, which break from me perforce, 
 
 Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee ! 
 
 The untented woundings of a father's curse 
 
 Pierce every sense about thee. Old fond eyes, 
 
 Beweep this cause again, I'll pluck ye out 
 
 And cast you with the waters that you lose 
 
 To temper clay." 
 
 The tragedy is now deepening and more hurried. Visions of 
 resumed sovereignty thoughts of taking it again by force float before 
 Lear's imagination ; and, at the departure from Gonerirs castle, his 
 broken sentences, convulsive laughter at the wild jests of his faithful 
 follower, the fool threats thoughts half-uttered betray the tumultu- 
 ous condition of his mind. Among these thoughts is one that shows 
 the sharp moral discipline that is at work upon him contrition for the 
 wrong done to his true child, which had been growing in his heart, and 
 now, for the first time, is partly spoken. It is to Cordelia alone the 
 words can apply "I did her wrong." He could not name her. 
 
 Lear approaches the dwelling of his second daughter with misgivings 
 of her fidelity. He struggles to suppress them, but they are there. 
 The interview with Regan is almost a painful one. In that with Goneril 
 he had assumed the highest tone of his fresh and unchecked anger, and 
 was ready to boast that he had another daughter to look to. But now 
 after Goneril's defection, if Regan, too, prove false, his kingdom becomes 
 desolate. Where can the old man find shelter for his discrowned head? 
 He knows it is his last hope, and is tone is lowered. He strives to pro- 
 
KING LEAR. 215 
 
 vent this one's misconduct, and yet both his paternal affection and his 
 royal pride recoil from what he feels to be a pitiable degradation a 
 white-haired father, who had given up all, bending a brow hallowed by 
 eighty years, to beseech in return from a daughter no more than for- 
 bearance from cruel and unnatural treatment. Therefore his appeals 
 to her are indirect. He replies to her formal words of welcome with 
 terms of endearment ; he tells her of the enormity of Goneril's ingrati- 
 tude, and of his own wounded spirit ; he tells her, too, of her own 
 obligations, and the trust he has in her better nature, and he reminds 
 her of her dead mother : 
 
 " Beloved Regan, 
 
 Thy sister's naught. Oh, Regan, she hath tied 
 Sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture here ! 
 I can scarce speak to thee. Thou'lt not believe 
 With how depraved a quality, Regan ! 
 
 His emotions overpower his utterance and what does this speechless 
 agony avail him ? Only to bring down one of the worst blows that can 
 be struck on the human heart when wrongs are passionately com- 
 plained of to one from, whom a sympathy is rightfully due, to find them 
 coldly palliated. Now, would you not have thought that this treatment 
 must call forth another outbreak of parental indignation ? But no ! 
 Lear's anger turns back only against the first offender with reiterated 
 curses upon Goneril. With Regan, he still pleads indirectly by attri- 
 buting to her a tender-hearted nature, by telling her there is comfort in 
 her eyes and none of the burning fierceness that flamed upon him from 
 Ooneril's, and by reminding her of " the offices of nature " and (i bond 
 of childhood." He is hoping against hope, and his last hope sickens unto 
 death at the entrance of Groneril herself; for then there flashes upon his 
 raind the horrid belief that his two daughters are confederated against 
 him. Where now does the old man look for help ? For the first time, 
 he looks away from earth. Heretofore his pride and his anger have 
 looked up to heaven for the dread purpose of calling down imprecations. 
 Now, his chastened spirit looks up in supplication. Nay, more, as he 
 feels his earthly sympathies perishing around him, there is that sublime 
 effort of imagination by which he identifies his own old age with that of 
 the heavens ; 
 
 lt heavens ! 
 
 If you do lave old men, if your sweet sway 
 Allow obedience, if you j-ourselves are old, 
 Make it your cause, send down and take my part!" 
 
216 TRAGIC POET11Y. 
 
 His spirit sank within him at the appearance of Goneril : a deadlier chill 
 seizes upon it at a worse sight : 
 
 " Regan, wilt them take her by the hand?" 
 
 Once his mind seems to be wandering after Cordelia when he speaks of 
 liis "dowerless youngest born;" but his remaining pride sweeps the 
 thought away, and there follows that wretched scene in which the 
 helpless old king is bandied by the arguments of his daughters threat- 
 ening and reasoning about the reduction of his retinue. When Lear 
 speaks in answer it is a strange utterance at first, as if he would fain 
 let his thoughts stray from his present misery into a region of abstrac- 
 tions ; or, more probably, as if his mind were beginning to lose all law 
 of its own, and were moved only by chance impulses, there is a train of 
 mere speculative reasoning ; then a supplication to heaven on behalf of 
 his acknowledged poverty and wretchedness, disturbed, however, by dark 
 infidel doubts that the gods may be the evil destinies to destroy him ; 
 then there is a desperate rallying of his mere human energy, fitfully 
 broken with wild and royal threats, vague as the winds that are already 
 heard preparing a rude reception for him on the heath : 
 
 41 Oh, reason not the need our basest beggars 
 Are in the poorest thing superfluous. 
 Allow not nature more than nature needs, 
 Man's life is cheap as beasts'. Thou art a lady: 
 If only to go warm were gorgeous, 
 YThy, nature neo/ls not what them gorgeous wear'st, 
 "Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need, 
 You heavens give me that patience, patience I need ! 
 You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, 
 As full of grief as age wretched in both, 
 If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts 
 Against their father, fool me not so much. 
 To bear it tamely ; touch me with noble anger. 
 Oh, let not women's weapons, water-drops, 
 Stain my man's cheeks ! No, you unnatural hags, 
 I will have such revenges on you both 
 
 That all the world shall 1 will do such things^ 
 
 What they are, yet I know not ; but they shall be 
 
 The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep; 
 
 No, I'll not weep. 
 
 I have full cause of weeping, but this heart 
 
 Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, 
 
 Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad !" 
 
 Lear is now environed with his thick-thronging afflictions, and the 
 
KING LEAR. 217 
 
 dark presentiment of insanity has entered his mind. The moral tem- 
 pest has raged its utmost, and the tragic effort is fitly sustained when 
 the aged sufferer, houseless and hopeless, is found wandering over the 
 desolate heath, exposed to the unsparing storm. At the very time 
 that his intellect is becoming unsettled and there is the restlessness 
 of a fevered brain, his thoughts discover a fitful and unwonted strength. 
 Already he has sought to identify by a mighty grasp of the imagination 
 of his old age with that of the heavens themselves, and now he feels in 
 the beatings of the tempests the blows of his daughters : 
 
 "I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness, 
 I never gave you kingdom, called you children ; 
 But yet I call you servile ministers, 
 That have with two pernicious daughters joined 
 Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head, 
 So old and white as this." 
 
 But most impressive is it to trace the effect of this severe chastening 
 upon the king's moral nature. His closest sympathy now is with that 
 humble creature who had been in prosperous days the light-hearted and 
 privileged jester at the royal table, but who clings so faithfully to his 
 master's miseries. Lear's affection for his devoted favourite grows 
 deeper and more sensitive: 
 
 " Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart 
 That's sorry yet for thee." 
 
 His pity for the fool's exposure to the storm and cold, shows a self- 
 forgetfulness which is a new element in Lear's character. When 
 brought to the wretched hovel for shelter, he is solicitous to provide first 
 for the fool ; and this sympathy expands with a more comprehensive one 
 for all suffering humanity, accompanied with a self-reproach for having, 
 ia his palmy days, taken too little heed of houseless poverty : 
 
 " Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are 
 That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, 
 How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, 
 Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 
 From seasons such as these ? Take physic, pomp, 
 Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, 
 That thou may'st shake the superflux to them 
 And show the heavens more just." 
 
 Lear's destiny demands a yet lower humiliation. The entanglements 
 of his brain are becoming more perplexed, and you can trace the foot- 
 steps of his departing reason. There is coming on, as has been finely said 
 
 
218 TBAGIC POETRY. 
 
 by Mr. Hallam, " that sublime madness, not absurdly sudden as in some 
 tragedies, but in which the strings that keep his reasoning powers together* 
 give way, one after another, with the phrensy of rage and grief. Then 
 it is that we find, what in life may sometimes be seen, the intellectual 
 energies grow stronger in calamity, and especially under wrong. An 
 awful eloquence belongs to unmerited suffering. Thoughts burst out 
 more profound than Lear in his prosperous hour oould ever have con- 
 ceived; inconsequent for such is the condition of madness but, in 
 themselves, fragments of coherent truth, the reason of the unreasonable 
 mind." 
 
 It is when Lear is brought lowest that his good angel, the lost Cor- 
 delia, comes back to minister to him. We first hear of her in that 
 exquisite description one of the most graphic that Shakspeare 
 ever drew of her receiving the letters narrating her father's affliction : 
 
 ' ' She took them, read them in my presence ; 
 And now and then an ample tear trill'd down 
 Her delicate cheek ; it seem'd she was a queen 
 ver her passion ; who, most rebel-like, 
 Sought to be king o'er her. 
 
 Kent. 0, then it moved her? 
 Not to a rage ; patience and sorrow strove 
 Who should express her goodliest. You have seen 
 Sunshine and rain at once ; her smiles and tears 
 Were like a better day. Those happy smiles 
 That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know 
 What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence, 
 As pearls from diamonds dropp'd. In brief, sorrow- 
 Would be a rarity most belov'd, if all 
 Could so become it. 
 Made she no verbal question? 
 Faith, once or twice, she heaved the name of father 
 Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart ; 
 Cried, 'Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! sisters! 
 Kent! father! sisters! What? i* the storm? i* the night? 
 Let pity not be believed !' There she shook 
 The holy water from her heavenly eyes, 
 And clamour moisten'd : then away she started, 
 To deal with grief alone." 
 
 The turbulence of the tragedy now gives place to gentler emotions. 
 After a tempest so ruinous, there break forth some rays of the pathetic 
 light of sunset. A softer radiance is floating round Cordelia. 
 
 But Lear must not pass away from life in the darkness of insanity. 
 The restoration of his mind is as inimitable as its aberration. When he 
 
KING LEAR. 219 
 
 awakes from his sleep of madness he is all gentleness regenerate hy the 
 discipline of adversity and of his phrensy. One of the most beautiful 
 dramatic passages ever composed is that where Cordelia is watching 
 over her sleeping father praying over him 
 
 " you kind gods ! 
 
 Cure this great breach in his abused nature. 
 The untuned and jarring senses, 0, wind up 
 Of this child-changed father." 
 
 The voice that, in happy days gone by, used to be music in his ears, is 
 heard once more ; and it is no wonder that, in his waking bewilder- 
 ment, Lear answers her question whether he knows her 
 
 "You are a spirit, I know. When did you die?" 
 
 The shrill accents of Goneril and Regan had been the horrid sounds 
 he listened to, and then the stormy noises of an angry sky ; but now the 
 melody of Cordelia's voice carries him into the world of spirits. When 
 his daughter beseeches his blessing, his confused recollections begin to 
 shape themselves : 
 
 " Pray do not mock me : 
 I am a very foolish, fond old man, 
 . Fourscore and upward ; and, to deal plainly, 
 I fear I am not in my perfect mind. 
 Methinks I should know you, and know this man ; 
 Yet I am doubtful ; for I am mainly ignorant 
 What place this is ; and all the skill I have, 
 Remembers not these garments ; nor I know not 
 Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me ; 
 For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
 To be my child, Cordelia." 
 
 That despotic parental fondness which was only tributary to his pride 
 and selfishness is purified, and now Lear looks upon his daughter with 
 a true affection that happy consciousness so feelingly expressed by the 
 great poet of our times the consciousness that 
 
 " There are spun 
 
 Around the heart such tender ties 
 That our own children to our eyes 
 
 Are dearer than the sun." Wordsworth. 
 
 The happy hours of this recognition are only short moments in the 
 tragedy. The gloom quickly gathers over it. The destiny of the drama 
 demands its tragic ending ; something different from a continuance of 
 life with all the ills it is exposed to. There must be no tampering with 
 
 
220 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 the solemnities of its close. "Fourscore and upward" why should 
 Lsar linger any longer on the earth? Who 
 
 " Would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer?" 
 
 And Cordelia the earth was too stormy and too wicked a place for 
 one so pure and gentle to dwell upon. Besides, the law of a tragedy so 
 lofty as this so sublime and solemn in its moralty required that she 
 should be not only ministrant to her erring father, but a propitiatory 
 sacrifice. Her last duty was to him ; and the pity of it is, that the poor 
 heart-broken old man could not have been spared that last agony of 
 carrying in his arms his dead daughter. 
 
 But compare Lear at the beginning of the drama selfish, irritable, 
 foolish, petulant, despotic and unnatural with Lear at the close of it. 
 The chastened spirit the gentleness of his heart-breaking as he drooped 
 to death over the dead body of his darling Cordelia, and surely we are 
 taught that "There is in mournful thoughts a power to virtue 
 friendly." 
 
II. 
 
 te: 
 
 WHEN I last had the pleasure of meeting you, we were engaged in 
 the consideration of a tragedy in which the chief agency employed was 
 the emotion of pity. It was surely most piteous to contemplate, first, 
 the perversion of Lear's moral nature, and then the accumulation of 
 his agonies ; and most pitious of all was it to contemplate the sad sacri- 
 fice of the innocent Cordelia. Yet, all this was accompanied with a 
 reconciling principle, found in the reflection that the painful series of 
 afflictions was a process of moral purification. Lear's heart was re- 
 stored, and Cordelia's filial piety became more beautiful with the glory 
 of martyrdom. 
 
 The tragedy of Macbeth is, in these respects, very different. The 
 chastening of the passions, which tragedy is designed to accomplish, is 
 now to be effected by the instrumentality, not of pity, but of terror 
 terror in the imaginative presence of wicked temptations and of a 
 fearful career of guilt. In the last lecture, I sought to show you how 
 Shakspeare carried Lear along his stormy pilgrimage onward to a better 
 nature; but now we are to trace the downward course of a human soul 
 that has given itself over to the guidance of the spirits of darkness. 
 It is a dramatic story of a temptation followed by guilt, and guik 
 followed by moral ruin. Nor is it only by showing the awful hauntings 
 of a blood-stained conscience that the emotion of terror is to be 
 awakened. In Lear the tragedy was moved by natural, human 
 influences the passions of mortal beings only; but in Macbeth other" 
 agencies are invoked the power of witchcraft and all the visionary 
 things that superstition deals with. There is a world of nature and a 
 world above and beyond it; and now both are to be brought together, 
 which can be well accomplished only by a mighty effort of imagination. 
 The natural and the supernatural are to be blended familiar beings 
 and mysterious are to be associated, as it were, in one living company 
 things sensible and things fantastic. "Without any feeling of incon- 
 gruity, we are to be made to witness the firm tread of the armed soldier, 
 and the noiseless gliding of ghosts, and the wild motions of witches, 
 flitting and hovering through the air. 
 
222 TRAGIC POETRY* 
 
 To have a just knowledge of the tragedy of Macbeth, we must form 
 a distinct conception of the supernatural atmosphere which envelopes 
 the action. The air is lurid and thick with strange and awful creations. 
 Distinct as are all its human interests, the tragedy is set in a shadowy, 
 spectral region of witches the mysteries of Hecate ominous dreams 
 and gloomy presentiments of visions to the open eye of the wakeful 
 guilty, and to the sealed eye of the sleeping of invisible and mysterious 
 powers in the elements, and of the prophetic sight of distant dynasties 
 of kings of incantations and of voiceless ghosts rising from fresh 
 graves blood-bolted visitants from charnel-houses. 
 
 Those who have studied the genius of Shakspeare as an artist, are 
 familiar with the significancy of the opening scenes in his dramas I 
 mean as indicating the general character of the whole play. This is 
 peculiarly manifest in the tragedy of Macbeth. It is scarcely possible 
 to conceive a shorter scene than the first. It contains no more than 
 twelve lines short and broken and yet it discloses the supernatural 
 character of the drama, and mysteriously indicates upon whom the 
 powers of darkness are about to employ themselves. This brief scene, 
 which stamps the nature of the play, so far transcends the power of 
 scenic exhibition, that it must be removed from all injurious and low 
 attempts to present it on the stage. It is addressed to the imagination 
 and not to the senses. It cannot be looked at and listened to by the eye 
 and the ear. The scene is a wild and instant appeal to one faculty of 
 the mind, especially by the absence of all description. It is no more 
 than an "open place" the persons, three witches. No one is looking 
 on to describe them to us, or to express the emotions their presence 
 might create. They are alone, and the only circumstances are " thunder 
 and lightning." No human sight is upon them in their solitude no 
 human sound is mingling with their speech. It is the dark communion 
 of witches one speaking to the other, and the only sound that is 
 echoing to their intonations is the thunder, bursting close around them 
 and then passing away in distant reverberations. The only light that 
 falls upon their wild and unearthly forms is the lightning as it flashes 
 from the clouds they are wrapt in. The turmoil and carnage of war 
 are near at hand, and the three witches kinless nameless sexless, 
 too, I may say the weird women with beards scenting the blood of a 
 battle-field meet to meet again to seal the deep damnation of their 
 victim. Their fatal intent thus darkly intimated, they answer to 
 mysterious calls of you know not what "Paddock" and "Greymelkin," 
 some of the horrid animals which seem associated with the witches to 
 mark their grossly earthy nature; and, ere their presence has been well 
 
MACBETH. 223 
 
 conceived, they vanish with wild utterance from them all of the moral 
 confusion and murkiness of a demon's heart: 
 
 " Fair is foul and foul is fair ; 
 Hover through the fog and filthy air." 
 
 In this first short scene of witchcraft, no more than the name of 
 Macbeth is introduced; but, in another scene, he is soon made known 
 to us a soldier, and an adventurous and valiant one. His intrepidity in 
 battle is pointedly presented in the glowing descriptions of those who 
 had just witnessed some of his exploits first one who had seen him 
 fighting hand to hand a fierce and dangerous rebel against the Scottish 
 king then one who had seen him breaking through the stout ISTorweyan 
 ranks. " His praises in the kingdom's great defence," are on the lips of 
 all. He is the brave Macbeth the noble Macbeth valour's minion 
 Bellona's bridegroom the eagle the lion in the hour of battle. In 
 setting forth courage as a prominent trait in his character, there is an 
 important purpose which becomes manifest in the contrast with the 
 change his character undergoes. Amid images of death on the field of 
 battle he is undismayed ; and the narratives of his companions-in-arms 
 proclaim his exploits of heroic daring. As the interest of the tragedy 
 centres chiefly around the transformation of Macbeth's nature, we 
 should carefully gather all the elements of it which are communicated 
 in the opening scenes. He is a brave soldier, to whom fear is a 
 stranger; and he is dear to his sovereign, not only for his victories, but 
 as a loyal and dutiful subject. This is all that we are told of him, and 
 yet it raises expectations of other and still nobler traits of character; 
 for it has been finely said that " The field of battle has been the field 
 on which, more than on any other, has been manifested the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice and self-devotion. And that war is practically a discipline 
 of self-sacrifice, as well as of self-control, we perpetually see in domestic 
 life; in which hardly any class of men show so much gentleness, so 
 much forbearance, are so regardless of themselves, and so considerate 
 towards others, as those whose hearts have glowed when the trumpet 
 was calling them to battle." 
 
 But the trials to which Macbeth has been exposed have been physical 
 rather than moral dangers; they give no absolute assurance that the 
 trait of character which is proclaimed is any thing more than mere 
 animal courage a quality common to brutes and to men. Or it may 
 be that courage which is generated in the opinion of the world a 
 sense of honour. Or, again, he may belong to that common class of 
 characters men whose course of life is well enough just as long as 
 
TRAGIC POETRY 
 
 their impulses chance to be good -just as long as no violent temptation 
 stands in their path; generous when generosity demands no self-sacrifice; 
 dutiful when duty is easy and needs no self-denial, and charitable to 
 error because indifferent to truth. The temptations to which humanity 
 is exposed make it necessary to find a better armour than such negative 
 virtue; and the hero of this tragedy, if only thus armed, will vainly 
 cope with the spiritual powers that are about to wrestle with him. 
 
 Before Macbeth appears, we have a further insight into the character 
 of the supernatural beings who are to sway his destiny. The appointed 
 time for their meeting with him is at hand; the thunder of the past 
 storm on that day, which had been u so fair and foul," was yet sounding 
 over the heath, when the witches again meet, hastening together from 
 witchcraft mischief and actually rising to something of sisterly sympathy, 
 as they tell each other their exploits. When you consider the work they 
 have on hand, the sublimity of the harm they are now planning 
 nothing less than to drag down the soul of a brave and illustrious 
 soldier to perdition and then listen to the low and gross and compara- 
 tively vulgar witchcraft they are exulting over, it is seen what extraor- 
 dinary, anomalous creations these foul beings are. One of them had 
 been busy "killing swine"; another had been squabbling with a sailor's 
 wife, who refused the witch any of the nuts she was munching. This 
 is surely the lowest caste of witchcraft, but straightway the hag rises 
 from it to the terrific sublimity of a supernatural avenger a fury of 
 the classic drama. The woman's husband is "a sailor to Aleppo gone;" 
 and upon him the witch, summoning the adverse winds of the sea, 
 threatens to wreak her vengeance : 
 
 " Sleep shall neither night nor day, 
 Hang upon his pent-house lid ; 
 He shall live a man forbid ; 
 Weary seven nights nine times nine, 
 Shall he dwindle peak and pine ; 
 Though his bark cannot be lost, 
 Yet it shall be tempest-tost." 
 
 The boast of her threatened vengeance is confirmed by the sudden re- 
 collection of a trophy gained on some former occasion of mischief on the 
 ocean " A pilot's thumb, wrecked as homewards he did come." The 
 witches are, indeed, " posters of the sea and land " vagrant beggars 
 secret destroyers of the farmer's live-stock indwellers in the storm of 
 thunder and lightning, with winds and tempests at their command; 
 but what, amid all that is low and grovelling, gives them a strange and 
 terrific sublimity, they are tempters of the conscience. While gloating 
 
 
MACBETH. 225 
 
 over the pilot's thumb, they are startled at the sound which signals the 
 approach of Macbeth and his Scottish soldiers. Quickly winding up a 
 charm, and catching somewhat of a solemn demeanour from the magni- 
 tude of their malice, they rise suddenly to the full statue of their super- 
 natural strength, and on the blasted heath prepare to proclaim their 
 prophetic salutations. The very first moment Macbeth makes his ap- 
 pearance, the wicked eye is upon him. He has hardly spoken a word 
 to his fellow-soldier Banquo, before it is perceived that their path is 
 stopped by these uncouth appearances. Banquo is the first to speak 
 and to challenge them : 
 
 " What are these, 
 
 So wither'd and so wild in their attire ? 
 They look not like the inhabitants of earth, 
 And yet are on't. Live you ? or are you aught, 
 That man may question? You seem to understand me, 
 JBy each at once her choppy finger laying 
 Upon her skinny lips : you should be women, 
 And yet your beards forbid me to interpret 
 That you are so." 
 
 They answered not at Banquo's bidding ; but when Macbeth calls 
 on them to speak, demand " What are you ?" at that summons they 
 are quick to answer in the threefold acclaim spoken by one after 
 another 
 
 "All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor. 
 All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee, thane of Glamis. 
 All hail, Macbeth ! that shalt be king hereafter." 
 
 It is a prophecy the prophecy is a promise and the promise is a 
 temptation. From that instant he surrenders himself to a wicked des- 
 tiny : he is under a fascination he never breaks through till the last 
 hopeless hour of his life. Macbeth's character is further shown by a 
 most instructive contrast with the different mood of Banquo's mind ; 
 ,who, though not listless to the fortune-telling, preserves his self-posses- 
 gion and self-reliance, his open and purer nature not being tempted into 
 communion, as it were, with the mysterious interruptions. The integrity 
 of his spirit is in his words : 
 
 " I 1 the name of truth, 
 Are ye fantastical, or that indeed 
 Which outwardly you show ? My noble partner 
 You greet with present grace, and great prediction 
 Of noble having, and of royal hope, 
 That he seems rapt withal ; to me you speak not : 
 
226 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 If you can look into the seeds of time, 
 And say which grain will grovv^ and which will not, 
 Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear, 
 Your favour nor your hate." 
 
 Every thing shows how deep the words of the witches have sunk 
 into the heart of Macbeth. The quiet, martial composure of the soldier 
 was greatly disturbed at the first announcement of the prophecy ; for it 
 is then that Banquo says 
 
 " Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear 
 Things that do not sound so fair ?" 
 
 The commotion of his spirit is shown still more by the impetuous 
 earnestness with which he questions them for further information : 
 
 " Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more : 
 
 By Sinel's death T know I'm thane of Glamis 
 
 But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives, 
 
 A prosperous gentleman ; and to be king 
 Stands not within the prospect of belief, 
 
 No more than to be Cawdor. Say, from whence 
 
 You owe this strange intelligence ? or why 
 
 Upon this blasted heath you stop our way 
 
 With such prophetic greeting ? Speak, I charge you." 
 
 When the witches vanish into the air what seemed corporeal melting 
 into the wind his first feeling is, " Would they had stayed !" Banquo 
 thinks of them as " bubbles of the earth," and questions the reality of 
 what had just transpired. But Macbeth, as if seeking encouragement 
 for his thoughts, clinging to the prophecy, repeats what they had pro- 
 mised " Your children shall be kings ;" and thus secures the satisfac- 
 tion of hearing from human lips the promise to himself, for his com- 
 panion naturally replies " You shall be king." Then as if conscious 
 already of thoughts that could not be looked into, Macbeth turns Jfrom 
 the higher to the lower promise : 
 
 " And thane of Cawdor too ; went it not so ?" 
 
 On the spot he is soon hailed by the messenger from the king with 
 the new title of Cawdor, the forfeited rank and estate of the rebel thane. I 
 This speedy verification of the words of witchcraft greatly deepens the 
 impression on the mind of Macbeth ; and while he is wrapped in medita- 
 tion, the supernatural influence is driving his thoughts onward to the 
 future 
 
 " Glamis and thane of Cawdor ; 
 The greatest is behind." 
 
MACBETH. 22? 
 
 Again he turns to Banquo to draw from him other sanction than what 
 his own spirit gave to his yet obscure ambition : 
 
 " Do you not hope your children shall be kings, 
 Whefe those that gave the thane of Caw dor to me, 
 Promised no less to them ?" 
 
 But the purer nature of Banquo is already recoiling from the super- 
 natural powers that have crossed their path : 
 
 " That, trusted home, 
 Might yet enkindle you into the crown, 
 Besides the thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange ; 
 And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, 
 The instruments of darkness tell us truths ; 
 Win us with honest trifles, to betray us 
 In deepest consequence. 1 ' 
 
 Banquo instinctively feels that the promises, glorious as they are, come 
 from powers of evil. His first exclamation, on finding them partly 
 realized, was 
 
 1 ' What can the devil speak true ?" 
 
 The warning words he addressed to Macbeth are illustrative of Shak- 
 peare's manner of foreshadowing the course of things in his drama, 
 either by admonitions, or misgivings, or presentiments of some kind, which 
 he dispenses as preparations for the future. The warning is wasted on 
 Macbeth. In fact, his career of guilt is begun. He is now not only 
 rapt in solitary musing, but the great temptation is beginning to shape 
 itself into a more definite form. The witches have cast a wicked light 
 upon the crown on Duncan's brow, and it is reflected into the soul of 
 Macbeth to dazzle and to lead him on to his own destruction. His con- 
 fidence in the event is growing ; but his mind, quickened by the agencies 
 that have touched it, is beginning to invent means for the accomplish- 
 ment of his destiny, and these means, directed to an end thus prompted, 
 are sure to be guilty ones. Indeed, his imagination, in its morbid 
 activity, has already grasped at its worst wickedness. The fancy of 
 murder is the first symptoms of the corruption of his conscience, and 
 another sign a most dangerous one in the career of iniquity he is 
 beginning to reason about his emotions : 
 
 " Two truths are told, 
 As happy prologues to the swelling act 
 Of the imperial theme. * * * 
 This supernatural soliciting 
 Cannot be ill ; cannot be good. If ill, 
 Why hath it given me earnest of success, 
 
228 TKAGIC POETRY. 
 
 Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor : 
 
 If good, why do I yield to that suggestion, 
 
 Whose horrid image doth unlix my hair, 
 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs 
 
 Against the use of nature ? Present fears 
 
 Are less than horrible imaginings : 
 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
 
 Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
 
 Is smothered in surmise ; and nothing is 
 
 But what is not." 
 
 Macbeth has begun to dally in his mind with conceptions of wicked 
 (deeds, not without some convulsion of his better nature, which serves to 
 sustain our sympathy with him. But, in all this process of temptation, 
 amid his impulses and misgivings and agitations, observe there is no 
 fixed principle of virtue in his character. A sense of mere honour may 
 have kept his course of life, thus far, free from reproach ; but, doubtless, 
 it is an unsteady and undisciplined conscience which gives to evil sug- 
 gestions so ready an admittance. He rallies from his agitation, not into 
 the composure which would have been gained by a dismissal from his 
 thoughts of the promises of witchcraft, but by a self-abandonment to 
 his destiny : 
 
 " If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me, 
 Without my stir." 
 
 He clings to the temptation, but seeks to commit himself to the uncon- 
 trollable tide of fate : 
 
 " Come what come may; 
 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day." 
 
 This is the only time the thought enters into the mind of Macbeth, of 
 trusting exclusively to the power of destiny without co-operation on his 
 own part; and it has furnished a striking illustration of the important 
 principle in human nature, that faith, instead of leading, as has often 
 been theoretically supposed, to diminish exertion, excites, on the contrary, 
 to unwearied efforts. Prompted as Macbeth is, to the possession of the 
 crown by the prediction of the witches, we might have supposed that 
 he would be withheld from the perpetration of crime by the consideration 
 that it must be needless, since it was fated that he must be king. Once, 
 and only once, does such a thought occur to him; and thus has Shak- 
 speare's knowledge of human nature shown that faith a real faith 
 whether good or evil, is a principle that leads to action. 
 
 This feeble effort of Macbeth's to save his innocence by giving up 
 to destiny his own free agency, is unavailing; for guilty imaginings 
 
MACBETH. 229 
 
 thoughts of murder have begun to vitiate his spirit. Already there 
 is something of the alarm of a conscience fearful that its own wicked 
 musings are betrayed, and he begins to dissemble and prevaricate. He 
 says to Banquo 
 
 " My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten,' 
 
 and proposes to his companion-in-arms candid communion respecting 
 their mysterious adventure. While Banquo keeps his integrity, 
 Macbeth is losing his sense of right and wrong: the poison of a 
 supernatural evil influence is sinking down into his heart, and there is 
 coming forth from the moral murkiness and confusion which begin to 
 prevail there, an echo to the cry heard from the witches at their first 
 appearance : 
 
 " Fair is foul and foul is fair." 
 
 It is hardly possible to conceive anything more wild and fantastic and 
 anomalous than the supernatural agencies which have so worked upon 
 the guilty ambition of Macbeth; and it is, therefore, most remarkable 
 that there should be such an air of truthfulness about them. They 
 seem to be, not the phantoms of a gross and absurd superstition, but 
 credible realities, so naturally do they coexist with human passions. 
 This can be explained only by their being typical of something real. 
 Few of us, I presume are unwilling to believe that there is around us 
 an invisible world, not the less real because we cannot perceive it; and 
 I know of no reason why we may not also believe, that that unseen 
 world has its beings, who are mysteriously ministrant to either the good 
 or the evil of men's lives. It is no figurative language when we are 
 taught that powers of darkness are ceaselessly roaming about to tempt 
 the souls of men; and it is only because our intellects are so materialized 
 that we are slow to believe what rests upon other proof than the evi- 
 dence of the senses. The spiritual world is as real or rather more 
 real than the material; and, although we are not yet endowed with 
 faculties to apprehend it, yet, with all its mysteries, it may be close to us 
 and around us. Now, it is one of the functions of the imagination, as 
 Shakspeare himself tells us, " to body forth the forms of things un- 
 known," and "turn them to shapes;" and thus the weird sisters may 
 be regarded as incarnations, not merely of evil suggestions, but of the 
 invisible tempters of mankind the spiritual enemies, to whose arts 
 humanity is exposed. The tragedy, therefore, is at once an imaginative 
 and most real representation of the career of human frailty yielding to 
 temptation. 
 
 The first interview between Duncan and Macbeth shows the progress 
 
280 TEAGIC POETRY. 
 
 of the guilty purpose for the gentle presence of the monarch, his con- 
 fiding kindness, serve only to provoke a more distinct shaping of the 
 "black and deep desires" which Macbeth is revolving in his mind. Thus 
 far his guilt has been instigated only by the witchcraft-temptation, and 
 known only in self-communion. He has been dealing alone with his 
 ambition and his conscience. A new and irresistible power is superadded 
 in the promptings of his wife. The temptation, begun by supernatural 
 utterance, needs now only a wicked human voice to bring it to the 
 consummation. 
 
 The character of Lady Macbeth is one of the boldest of Sbakspeare's 
 conceptions; but it can here be considered only in its relation to her 
 husband and his guilt. They closely resemble each other in the absence 
 of moral principle, but they differ greatly in this that she displays a 
 fearful energy of will, a dauntlessness of purpose that is not swayed by 
 any outward or inward influence; while in Macbeth's character, one 
 large element is the philosophic element the tendency to reflection. 
 It is this musing, meditative habit of mind, and a susceptibility of 
 imagination, which contribute greatly to sustain a sympathy for the 
 character, even after he is involved in criminality. It is hard to help 
 lamenting the ruin of a capacious soul one whose powers fitted it for 
 better communion than with the dark portion of the spiritual world. 
 
 Besides, Lady Macbeth, dwelling in her lonely castle-life, does not, 
 like her husband, feel the secondary motives the sense of honour, the 
 love of reputation, which are his chief moral principles. She is intro- 
 duced in the high- wrought fervour excited by her husband's letter, 
 informing her of the prophetic salutation of the witches, and the quick 
 fulfilment of it in part. His confidence in the promises is manifest; 
 and thus the temptation passes on from his heart to hers to kindle there 
 the transport of ambition the rapturous anticipation of royalty. She 
 sees no obstacle, but what she contemptuously calls the "milk of human 
 kindness" in her husband's nature, and she knows the influence of her 
 own energetic will over his reflective spirit. It is the pride of power, 
 therefore, as well as the lust of ambition, by which she is agitated: 
 
 " Hie thee hither, 
 
 That I may pour my spirit into thine ear ; 
 And chasten with the valour of my tongue 
 All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
 Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
 To have thee crowned withal." 
 
 One thought occupies her mind ; one passion fills her heart ; and, im- 
 pelled by supernatural force, it drives her across the bounds of woman's 
 
MACBETH. 231 
 
 nature. Her fierce excitement becomes more highly wrought by the 
 intelligence of the king's approaching visit, the dread issue of which is 
 already grasped by her quickened thought : 
 
 " The raven himself is hoarse, 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements." 
 
 Divesting herself of womanly emotions, she calls on the powers of dark- 
 ness spirits that attend on schemes of murder to " stop up the access 
 and passage to remorse," and quell all " compunctious visitings of 
 nature," that she may the better scatter the scruples from her husband's 
 conscience. In the midst of this phrensy of a lawless ambition, Macbeth 
 appears, and nothing can be more rapid or decided than her dealing 
 with him. She meets him with no expression of conjugal affection, no 
 tenderness at his return from the wars, but greets him with his titles, 
 his honours present and promised : 
 
 " Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor ! 
 Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter ! 
 Thy letters have transported me beyond 
 The ignorant present ; and I feel now 
 The future in the instant." 
 
 In all Macbeth's intercourse with his wife, there is a certain manli- 
 ness of affection which contributes in some measure to redeem his 
 character, and sustains a sympathy with him. His manner is dis- 
 tinguished by something of the deferential esteem of chivalry ; and, 
 after having seen him entertaining guilty imaginings, and dallying with 
 thoughts of murder, we seem to hear the voice of a better nature when, 
 using words that might have been most innocent, he says : 
 
 " My dearest love, 
 Duncan comes here to-night." 
 
 Thoughts that he had indulged in solitary meditation he withholds from 
 her ; but a single question and a single answer betrays the sympathy o 
 their wicked conceptions : 
 
 Lady Macbeth. And when goes he hence? 
 Macbeth To-morrow as he purposes. 
 
 The hesitation is that of a wavering conscience. She knows it from 
 familiarity with his temperament and from the perplexity of his counte- 
 nance ; and she knows it can be swept away by her stronger will look- 
 ing through all doubts and scruples and fears, to the object \vhich filled 
 her vision : 
 
 
232 TEAGIC POETRY. 
 
 " Oh never 
 
 Shall sun that morrow see ! 
 Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men 
 May read strange matters. To beguile the time, 
 Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye, 
 Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower, 
 But be the serpent under it. He that's coming 
 Must be provided for : and you shall put 
 This night's great business into my dispatch ; 
 Which shall to all our nights and days to come 
 Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom." 
 
 His feeble answer 
 
 " We will speak further" 
 
 shows him not quite prepared ; hut it is a signal not so much of indeci- 
 sion as the vanishing of his doubt, dispelled by the tremendous will of 
 the woman. 
 
 From the beginning of the drama, every thing has been growing 
 darker and more threatening ; but, as if to give a little respite before it 
 omes to the worst, the sun shines out for a short while in that sweet 
 landscape where Duncan is moving on with sacrificial meekness to his 
 slaughter. When you consider the treacherous and murderous plot- 
 tings going on between the guilty-seeking pair within the castle, a most 
 solemn contrast may be discovered in the brief colloquy beneath its walls 
 between the pure-hearted Duncan and the equally innocent and noble 
 Banquo. It is the perfection of pathos, as a prelude to the assassination 
 scene; and, indeed, when Shakspeare seeks to impress us with the 
 deepest sense of human character and feeling, the poetic power is in 
 nothing more admirably shown than in the harmony he creates between 
 the material world and the spiritual world in the breast of man. You 
 have here, for instance, the placid temper of the meek monarch his 
 heart stirred only by affections as pure as the fragrant rural air that 
 lightly touched his brow. You have the unclouded candour of Banquo 's 
 heart, and overhead are the blue heavens, which seem to be a reflection 
 of it. Their hearts are touched with the beauty of the earth, air, and 
 sky, and with a sympathy with the cheerful birds that are hovering over 
 their devoted heads. 
 
 The same poetic harmony between the immaterial and material world 
 appears in the tempestuous night when the crime is perpetrated a 
 moral tempest of passions within, and a physical tempest of the elements 
 without. Macbeth's powerful intellect is again busy with reflections 
 and reasonings ; but it is not so much the actual guilt he recoils from 
 
MACBETH. 233 
 
 or its dread penalty in a life to come, as the retribution in his mortal 
 life. There is something of infidel audacity in his allusion to a here- 
 after : 
 
 " If but this blow 
 
 Might be the be-all and the end-all here, 
 But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 
 We'd jump the life to come. But, in these cases, 
 We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
 Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
 To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice 
 Commands the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
 To our own lips." 
 
 His active mind dwells on subordinate considerations of treason dis- 
 loyalty the breach of trust in murdering his guest his kinsman his 
 king a meek monarch a train of thought which rises, indeed, to a 
 pitch of wild sublimity in the contemplation of the crime : 
 
 " He's here on double trust : 
 First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, 
 Strong both against the deed ; then, as his host, 
 Who should against his murderer shut the door, 
 ISTot bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
 Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking off: 
 And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 
 Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd 
 Upon the slightest couriers of the air, 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye 
 That tears shall drown the wind." 
 
 At the entrance of his wife he relapses from these agitations of conscience 
 to the more prudential reflections 
 
 " "We will proceed no further in this business : 
 He hath honoured me of late : and I have bought 
 Golden opinions from all sorts of people, 
 Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, 
 Not cast aside so soon." 
 
 For an instant he seems innocent, and the wicked purpose cast away ; 
 but this cannot safely be inferred merely because the words are used. 
 Indeed, in the study of Shakspeare, a false meaning is often attributed 
 by reading a passage narratively instead of dramatically. The words 
 may express only one of the struggles of a weak conscience and a strong 
 intellect : and the sincerity of them may well be questioned when you 
 
234 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 reflect on the entire inadequacy of the reasons he assigns in so momen- 
 tous a question gratitude to the king and his lately-earned popularity. 
 The one great question, whether he shall be a murderer, he takes no 
 thought of; and this shows the moral condition of his mind. Besides, 
 he has just lamented that he has no spur to prick the sides of his intent, 
 which now he seems to invite by his apparent relinquishment. Lady 
 Macbeth, with a perfect knowledge of her husband's character, treats 
 his expression as a mere flattering of his conscience. She artfully taunts 
 him with indecision, goads^ him with reproaches, and, as if to awe his 
 spirit by wild exaggerations of her own energy, she breaks out into that 
 terrific boast, that rather than forswear herself, she would pluck the 
 babe from her breast and hideously destroy it. 
 
 The guilt deepens, and the supernatural atmosphere thickens at the 
 same time. On the unruly night of the murder, a storm was raging, 
 and, doubtless, the witches were riding on the blast and untying the 
 whirlwind; for there were 
 
 " Lamen tings heard in the air ; strange screams of death, 
 And prophesying, with accents terrible, 
 Of dire combustion and confused events, 
 New-hatch'd to the woful time. 
 The obscure bird clamour'd the livelong night ; 
 Some say the earth was feverous, and did shake." 
 
 The whole domain of Macbeth's castle is impregnated with the super- 
 natural atmosphere visions and dreams and supernatural voices, 
 Banquo's dream of the weird sisters, and the bosom-weight of his 
 gloomy presentiments. Duncan's horses, too 
 
 " Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race 
 Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, 
 Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make 
 War with mankind." 
 
 But more terrible is the tumult in the soul of Macbeth. The in- 
 tensity of effort powerfully affects the imaginative element in his mind, 
 Where he moves, there is a vision of the air-drawn dagger with gouts 
 of blood upon the blade, the broken sleep of the surfeited grooms, their 
 laughter, their terror, and screams of murder, and their prayers, and 
 the wild curse in the air of eternal wakefulness all this created or 
 magnified, and distorted through the medium of a murderer's burning 
 brain. The pleadings of conscience had before been hardly audible 
 he had heard only the suggestions of prudence and expediency ; but, at 
 the instant of the murder, the new utterance of a blood-stained con- 
 science strikes into his very soul : 
 
MACBETH. 235 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry * Sleep no more ! 
 Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep ; 
 Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast ;' * * * 
 Still it cried * Sleep no more !' to all the house : 
 * Glamis hath murder'd sleep ; and therefore Cawdor 
 Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more !' " 
 
 All the emotions which had been ebbing and flowing in his spirit 
 before the commission of the crime, now rush in one resistless tide. 
 His senses are wound up to a torturing accuteness ; one question after 
 another breaks strangely from him. Amid his bewilderment and agony, 
 his constitutional activity of mind assumes a preternatural rapidity. 
 Thoughts and reflections are close crowded in these agitated moments. 
 His wife is confounded by that apostrophe to sleep, which serves to 
 illustrate the mind of Macbeth, and perhaps to show that he had held 
 back the dagger in contemplation of the sweet sleep of the confiding 
 Duncan. He avows his dismay at the thought of what he had done 
 and his inability to look on it again. Fancied voices have alarmed him, 
 and now the simplest sounds strike terror to his soul. The brave man, 
 the soldier, becomes conscious of the change; for, on the knocking at 
 the gate, he exclaims 
 
 " How is't with me, when every noise appals me?" 
 
 Nor is it only through one sense that terrors are overwhelming him ; he 
 looks upon his hands, and the sorry sight of Duncan's blood upon them 
 " plucks out his eyes." His phrensied imagination, hopeless of any 
 cleansing, sees blood enough there to stain the ocean, to "incarnadine 
 the multitudinous seas." The condition of his feelings is further shown 
 by contrast with the partner of his guilt. She has no thought but 
 of the business on hand: she hears none but natural sounds the 
 knocking at the gate is precisely known by her, whose senses are not 
 bewildered by fancies; and it strikes a chill to the very heart when, 
 though Duncan's corpse is scarcely cold, we hear her say to her husband 
 
 " The sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures." 
 
 And, after she, too, has dabbled in the murdered man's blood 
 
 "A little water clears us of this deed." 
 The murderer himself has sunk into a reverie from which with difficulty 
 
236 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 he is roused by his wife : and then one burst of repentant agony, and 
 the scene is over perhaps the most appalling scene in all dramatic 
 literature. 
 
 Macbeth has worked out his own destiny ; he " has it now, king, 
 Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird woman promised." Let us now 
 consider the new era of life he has entered on, and see how the presence 
 of one guilty remembrance shall be to him like a triumphant demon in 
 his soul. The more obvious effects of guilt upon his character I need 
 not trace; for they are plain enough to show that fearful truth in the 
 study of human nature, that there is no limit to the hardening of the 
 heart or to the perversion of the understanding. The assassination is 
 quickly followed by the remorseless slaughter of the innocent grooms; 
 and the shedding of blood becomes to him an ordinary means of 
 attaining his ends. The progress of criminality I need not dwell upon ; 
 but let me rather seek to trace some of the more recondite influences 
 upon Macbeth's nature. 
 
 There is, in one of these scenes, an expression of Banquo's which, 
 simple as it is, I have been deeply impressed with in studying this great 
 work of poetic art. When the death of Duncan is first discovered, and 
 the inmates of the castle are fearfully startled from their slumbers 
 none but the guilty pair knowing whence the crime came amid the 
 consternation and panic echoing through the chambers and courts, 
 Banquo is the first to restore some little composure by these simple 
 words : 
 
 " In the great hand of God I stand ; and thence 
 Against the undivulged pretence I fight 
 Of treasonous malice." 
 
 In the darkness of undetected danger the natural sense of safety 
 destroyed by the presence of secret assassination that is revealed only 
 by the voiceless witness of Duncan's bleeding body there is a sublimity 
 in this lofty confidence, for it is the strength of an innocent and faithful 
 spirit. 
 
 From Banquo, strong in the faith that he is standing in the great 
 hand of God, turn to Macbeth, strong in the possession of his guilt- 
 earned power. He is beset by the torment of new doubts and fears; the 
 restlessness of his conscience makes distant and imaginary evils a present, 
 perpetual, and pressing torture. He envies the murdered dead their 
 repose in the tomb : 
 
 " Better be with the dead, 
 
 Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, 
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
 
MACBETH. 237 
 
 In restless ecstacy. Duncan is in his grave : 
 
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 
 
 Treason has done his worst ; nor steel nor poison, 
 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
 
 Can touch him further!" 
 
 The silent rebuke of Banquo's better nature is a growing misery 
 to him, with the added dread that his sceptre is a barren one, to be 
 wrenched from his grasp by an unlineal hand, no son of his succeeding. 
 The anguish of his conscience now travels in this direction : 
 
 " full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife ! 
 Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives." 
 
 "There's comfort yet," he thinks, in their destruction; but when his 
 former companion-in-arms is treacherously murdered, a new agony 
 comes upon him convulsions of a guilty imagination, which calls up, 
 even at a festival, the spectre of the blood-bolter ed Ban quo, glaring and 
 shaking his gory locks at him. 
 
 Let it be remembered that I am tracing the career of no common 
 murderer, whom familiarity with blood might only imbrute, but of one 
 whose capacious intellect is made to feel, more and more, how unreal 
 every thing becomes to a soul that has cast out the spiritual elements of 
 its humanity. Macbeth cannot, as Banquo did, look up to the great 
 hand of God, for to him it can only be the hand of an avenger. His 
 spirit, craving for something more than the support of mere material 
 power, seeks further communion with the witches. He tampers with 
 the " dark and midnight hags," who, with incantations and prophetic 
 sorceries, weave their toils closer and closer around him, and then 
 vanish forever with his curse upon them and upon himself 
 
 " Infected he the air whereon they ride, 
 
 tAnd damn'd all those that trust them !" 
 Observe, too, that, at the very time the witches have deluded their 
 victim with promises that seem to make "assurance double sure, 5 ' 
 although he feels that he has taken a bond of destiny, his evil faith 
 actuates him to new works of blood : 
 
 "From this moment, 
 The firstlings of my heart shall be 
 The firstlings of my hand. And even now 
 To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done : 
 The castle of Macduff I will surprise ; 
 Seize upon Fife ; give to the edge of the sword 
 His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls 
 That trace him in his line no boasting like a fool." 
 
238 TRAGIC POETBY. 
 
 The supernatural in the tragedy is now fading fast away ; and, ere 
 we come to the catastrophe, we almost forget the witchery of the weird 
 sisters ; their malice has been achieved, and then all is left to human 
 vice, human passion, human misery. The high- wrought spirituality of 
 the tragedy has its sublime ending in the "slumbry agitation" of Lady 
 Macbeth, that terrific open-eyed sleep-walking, sleep-talking, and the 
 never-ending misery of the blood-stained hand, with the appalling 
 incoherencies of the hauntings of guilt : 
 
 "Out, damned spot! out, I say! . . . Yet who would have 
 thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? . . . The 
 thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? ... I tell you yet 
 again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave. . . . 
 Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not 
 sweeten this little hand." Her waking imagination had been dull, but 
 now there is a morbid activity of the fancy in sleep. Her force of 
 character, which for a while seemed superhuman, has given way : but 
 still it is in keeping with the character of this strong-willed woman that 
 her remorse is only distantly discovered in her dreams. Darkness seems 
 to have terrors for her, for her attendant says " She has light by her 
 continually; 'tis her command." The wretched woman perishes a 
 hopeless suicide. 
 
 Macbeth is left alone. A deadly heart-sickness is consuming him : 
 it is broken only by a desperate and fitful energy to fire again the 
 soldier's spirit in his heart, which soon sinks into a despondency deeply 
 pathetic : 
 
 " This push 
 
 Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now. 
 
 I have lived long enough : my way of life 
 
 Is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf : 
 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 
 As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 
 I must not look to have ; but in their stead, 
 
 Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath 
 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not." 
 
 He finds that he has been paltered with by the double senses of sorcery. 
 The sea of blood is sweeping him onward, helpless and hopeless ; for 
 its red tide has washed out, one by one, the promises which witchcraft 
 had written upon sand. 
 
 Throughout this drama, one of its most remarkable impressions is, 
 that we retain, not, indeed, a sympathy, but a pity for the ruin of the 
 hero. It is a feeling wholly different from the unhealthy admiration 
 
MACBETH. 239 
 
 excited in a vicious school of sentimental romance for its worthless 
 personages. Shakspeare has never suffered the interest in the character 
 of Macbeth to be wholly extinguished, and, appropriately, he gives him 
 the dignity of a soldier's death. 
 
 The moral catastrophe is more deeply laid. In the life of man there 
 are two results of goodness and a well-poised faith which, for their im- 
 pressive beauty, appear to me especially worthy of the deepest reflection : 
 one is, that in a course of existence thus controlled, there is an unbroken 
 continuity ; the stream of life flows on in its appointed channel, leaving 
 no ruin behind, and with a sunlight ever before. The past, the present, 
 and the future are blended together in the mind by happy memories 
 a happy consciousness and the hopefulness of faith. " The thought of 
 past years doth breed perpetual benediction," and there is a tranquil 
 looking forward to the future. The other result is, that familiar things 
 are the oftener regarded as symbols of that spiritual world which gives 
 reality to our being a feeling without which the heart sinks down in 
 dismal and dreary despondency from its sense of hollowness, and with 
 which the heart leaps up with the assurance of its own undying strength. 
 Now, 1 have referred to these considerations because it is to the very 
 opposite of all this that the soul of Macbeth is brought in the extremity 
 of his career of guilt. It is that condition of mind the lowest pitch 
 of infidel despair which looks on life as utterly vain and meaningless. 
 From the innocence of his early days he feels separated by a dread gulf 
 of crime ; and, for the future, all is impenetrable darkness. This is the 
 moral catastrophe of the tragedy, and I do not know how I can so well 
 express these opposite conditions to which the soul may be either raised 
 or sunk, than by citing what alone is adequate to express the emotions 
 which accompany them the language of poetry. The first of them 
 the exulting joy of a faithful, thoughtful spirit, quickly sensitive to any- 
 token which gives assurance of the covenant between things human and 
 divine, and happy in its memory of childhood has been expressed when 
 
 a poet exclaimed- 
 
 " My heart leaps up when I behold 
 
 A rainbow in the sky : 
 So was it when my life began, 
 So is it now I am a man, 
 So be it when I shall grow old, 
 
 Or let me die ! 
 
 The child is father of the man ! 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
240 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 Now, by the side of this, listen to what is almost the last voice that 
 comes from the weary soul of Macbeth : 
 
 " To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player, 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing." 
 
 The terrors of the tragedy have subsided into this deeply pathetic strain ; 
 and, hollow as this contemplative melancholy is, it still wins from us 
 enough of sympathy to make us feel that we are standing amid the 
 ruins of a soul which was worthy of a better destiny. 
 

 III. 
 
 iamlei 
 
 Iff passing from the tragedy of Macbeth to that of Hamlet, the 
 transition is a very wide one Both dramas, indeed, have their super- 
 natural agencies strange spiritual things made real to imagination : 
 and the respective heroes are not unlike in a certain constitutional re- 
 flectiveness of mind. In the Scottish usurper, as well as in the young 
 Danish prince, there is a touch of philosophy. But, while in the 
 tragedy of Macbeth there is, I may almost say, a throng of supernatural 
 forms detested and terrific the witches, with all their train of appari- 
 tions, that rose around their cauldron, and the blood-boltered spectre of 
 Ban quo in Hamlet there is one solitary and majestic phantom ; and, 
 instead of that lurid, supernatural light which was fitfully breaking 
 upon .the former tragedy, we seem to behold now one solemn and awful 
 shadow hanging over the course of the drama. The meditative moods 
 of Macbeth's mind were no more than bubbles, borne onward upon the 
 surface of that rapid and violent tide which hurried the movement of 
 the play ; but in Hamlet, the philosophic habit of his intellect is the 
 chief element in the tragedy the ruling principle which gives to it its 
 gentle and slow progression. Nor is this intellectual character pecu- 
 liar to the chief person ; for, besides the profound and feeling thought- 
 fulness of Hamlet, you find the insincere and declamatory reasoning of 
 the king, the self-complacent shrewdness of the old politician in Po- 
 lonius, the fraternal counsels of Laertes, and, in perfect keeping with the 
 predominant tone of the tragedy, the logic of the captious grave-digger 
 a most thoughtful, reasoning company. In this respect, it seems to me 
 that this drama, more than any other, may be regarded as eminently 
 reflecting the constitution of Shakspeare's mind as the production 
 in which he incorporated, more largely than any other, the habits of his 
 intellect. 
 
 If the question were asked What personage in the whole range, 
 not only of dramatic literature, but of all fiction, has gained the deepest, 
 the most pleasing, and universal interest? the answer, I am inclined to 
 believe, which cultivated minds would be most apt to give, would be, 
 The character of Hamlet. Now it would be a very shallow effort were 
 
242 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 I to seek an explanation of this deep and wide-spread interest in the 
 outward story of the play, its plot and incidents and catastrophe. The 
 mystery is not to be solved thus ; something more inward must be sought 
 to explain ifc to show how it is in accordance with our common human- 
 heartedness. !Nay, more than this : it is not enough to discover in what 
 respects this poem is illustrative and typical of the mere feelings and 
 thoughts of humanity, for I believe that its sublime philosophy consists 
 in this that in it we are carried into that region of our spiritual nature 
 which is not peculiar or variable in different human beings, and which 
 is not susceptible of degrees, such as we attribute to intellect or senti- 
 ment ; it carries us through the domain of passion and thought into 
 that spiritual region where nought is known but what is illimitable 
 and eternal the human soul. It need not, therefore, cause our 
 wonder that this tragedy has much about it that is mysterious, ob- 
 scure, and perplexed to critic and to commentator ; for it deals with 
 the greatest of all mysteries that imperishable principle of the person- 
 ality of each human being that eternal something which, at our birth, 
 gathers up for a mysterious combination the earthly elements of our 
 bodies, and, after travelling on through the mortal life, scatters those 
 elements at death like the light, lifeless leaves of autumn. Entertaining 
 the thought I do of the tragedy of Hamlet, I find myself approaching it 
 to say with diffidence would feebly express it, but with a conviction 
 of the greater or less inadequacy of all criticism for the exposition of its 
 sublime imaginings. It is a subject to be thought upon, much rather 
 than talked of. 
 
 Let it, however, be remembered that, according to the plan of my 
 course, I am considering these dramas as illustrations of the main subject 
 of tragic poetry. If, in accordance with the definition given by an 
 ancient philosopher, we traced a chastening of the passions by the agency 
 of pity in King Lear, and in Macbeth by the agency rather of terror, 
 we may discover in Hamlet another of the uses of tragedy in showing 
 that mournful thoughts and the sad conflicts of humanity have a power 
 of their own to make known the strength and weakness of the soul 
 all that lies hid there, and which men rarely become conscious of in the 
 trivial chances of life or in its placid periods. A deeper self-conscious- 
 ness is awakened from its slumbers by the tumultuous movements of the 
 soul disappointment, affliction, or anguish. It is thus the hidden 
 energies of the spirit are disclosed, just as the unfelt and unknown 
 strength of a nation is brought into action by the necessities and tribu- 
 lations of war. 
 
 In King Lear we had occasion to study the career of a human spirit 
 
HAMLET. 243 
 
 under the stern discipline of affliction a heart palpitating under Prome- 
 thean torture ; for filial ingratitude had " tied sharp-toothed unkindness 
 like a vulture there." In Macheth we followed the career of a spirit 
 through its yieldings to temptation ; but in Hamlet the influences are 
 far more complex. The tragedy is a story of a soul environed by all 
 the agencies which are best fitted to reveal its functions and its aspira- 
 tions; and the imagination of Shakspeare, after embodying in the 
 character of Hamlet the elements of a susceptible spirit, has gathered 
 around that spirit every influence which could aptly touch it. He has 
 shown this character in the despondency of an unavailing sorrow; 
 another while in the sunshine of a cheerful thoughtfulness ; again in the 
 distress of disturbed affections, in the perplexity of obscure and conflict- 
 ing duties ; and again in the solemn awe of a supernatural influence. 
 The observation we have to take is of the starlike light of Hamlet's soul 
 dwelling apart in the region of a lofty self-communion, and moving 
 onward in its path like one of " that host," as it has been finely called, 
 "of white-robed pilgrims that travel along the vault of the nightly 
 sky." We are to observe the light of his life shining, serenely shining, 
 from the large and placid spaces of his own gentle and noble and 
 thoughtful nature, or else struggling with either the mists of earthly 
 sorrow, or the lurid, supernatural reflection that reaches it from the 
 prison-house of the suffering dead. Now, let us inquire, what is the 
 character of Hamlet, before the tragic influences are brought to bear 
 upon it. /The first mention of him is of " young Hamlet." He is a 
 prince, the heir apparent to the throne of Denmark, the son of a most 
 majestic monarch a father whom he as deeply honoured as he dearly 
 loved; for about that parent there were the grandeur of an heroic 
 warrior and the graceful gentleness of domestic virtue. We are told of 
 the frown that darkened his brow 
 
 " When, in an angry parle, 
 He smote the sledded Polack on the ice." 
 
 and we are also told of the tender affection to his queen, that 
 
 " He might not beteem the winds of heaven 
 Visit her face too roughly " 
 
 a love for her which was " of that dignity that it went hand in hand 
 even with the vow he made to her in marriage." Hamlet was the son, 
 too, of an " all-seeming virtuous mother," the loving wife of his father ; 
 and thus he had grown to manhood amid those happy, virtuous house- 
 hold influences that are the best atmosphere for the young neart to live 
 in. To the attractions of manly form and feature, he has added the 
 
244 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 accomplishments which befit his high hirth ; and, what is more rare 
 as a princely aim, he has learnt the delights of communion with the 
 recorded wisdom of poets and philosophers. It was not enough for 
 him to be crowned with the pride of expectant royalty, he must also 
 wear the milder glory of scholarship ; and how much his heart is in this, 
 is seen when, in the sympathy which common studies engender, he greets 
 his friend Horatio as his " fellow-student."/ I do not know that there 
 is a character in all the large company of the Shaksperian drama upon 
 whom the poet has, from the exuberance of his imagination, bestowed 
 such abundant and various graciousness. You may observe in Hamlet 
 the princely dignity, and that indescribable and instinctive deference to 
 the feelings of others, which constitutes the gentlemanly spirit ; you 
 have the gallant bearing of the soldier, and that meditative composure 
 which philosophy may give. 
 
 Nor is it only in these acquirements that the character of Hamlet is 
 arrayed with so much grace : it has a beauty in its large portion of 
 those feelings which, independent of social or intellectual rank, adorn 
 humanity. He clings to Horatio with the steady zeal of a fast friend- 
 ship, and the deeper susceptibility of his heart is shown in the love for 
 Ophelia, which endured till his destiny demanded the sad sacrifice of it. 
 
 Hamlet has just crossed the threshold of manhood, and what more 
 could be added to give him dignity and grace ? Young and beautiful, 
 the pride of the palace, and, better still, an indweller in spirit in the 
 palaces of wisdom and learning, elevated by the memories of an heroic 
 ancestry and by noble expectations for the future, and happy, too, in 
 the depth of his affections this is life in its purest and most serene 
 region of thought and feeling all is bright and innocent and joyous, 
 but the elements of tragedy are darker. 
 
 The first change that comes over a prospect so sunny, the first tragic 
 influence which touches the nature of Hamlet is the sudden sorrowing 
 for his father. That virtuous freedom from care, which belongs to that 
 period of life spent beneath the paternal roof, and to that period alone, 
 has ceased upon the unexpected ending of his father's life. The object, 
 to which had been devoted all the reverential affection of a nature so 
 thoughtful and sensitive, is suddenly taken away. When Hamlet first 
 appears, you behold the stricken heart of filial piety. Amid the pomp 
 and pageantry of the court he stands a mourner near the throne ; and 
 the appeal is a vain one to him, when he is unworthily and unfeelingly 
 entreated to cast his sorrow away : 
 
 * " Do not forever with thy vailed lids 
 Seek for thy noble father in the dust" 
 
HAMLET. 245 
 
 This was, doubtless, the first time the arrow of death had passed so 
 near him ; and probably there is no influence on the human spirit 
 comparable to that when separation by death is, for the first time 5 
 deeply and really felt. The ending of life is, for the most part, too 
 familiar to be felt : we meet the funeral procession, and it gives us 
 scarce a second thought : we hear of the departure of some one known 
 to us, and we are surprised or sorry, but these are momentary emotions, 
 upon the very surface too. When, for the first time, death invades our 
 own household, perhaps we are too young to heed it : the brief bewilder- 
 ment of childhood soon gives way to the innocent vanity the excusable 
 self-importance of the new suit of mourning. But when death for the 
 first time makes itself truly felt when some sudden separation of what 
 life had closely bound together, startles us to the very centre of our 
 being, there is no greater power to drive the soul into itself in its 
 struggles with that dreary sense of craving after what is gone from our 
 bodily eyes forever that utter casting down of the heart when the 
 mourner comes back from the fresh grave to the desolate house. The 
 earnestness of life is blunted, and the very sun in the sky shines less 
 brightly than it did before. Pleasant memories are converted into sad 
 associations, and. we feel, 
 
 " Where'er we go, 
 That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 
 
 Nor is this influence of a genuine grief confined merely to our emotions, 
 it powerfully agitates the intellectual part of man. Let me call it a 
 spiritual rather than a mere intellectual struggle, when the heart in its 
 loneliness is groping after the dead. When the life which animated 
 some familiar form is extinguished the fire quenched with which the 
 substance of the eye was lighted, we are strangely perplexed, because 
 we are left without the means of apprending the new life which follows 
 after the mortal life. The bodily elements which used to be known to 
 our senses things of sight and sound are left to perish until the soul 
 shall gather them up again ; and the dead are, perhaps, separated from 
 the living only so far as this, that the spiritual existence and that 
 mysterious combination of spirit and matter, which we call life, cannot 
 take cognizance of each other. Yet, impenetrable as this barrier is, 
 who can tell how slight it may be ! Death may be no more than such 
 a separation : this earth, which has its visible world of living, material 
 things, may have also its invisible spiritual world of the myriads of the 
 dead, whose bodies have been commingled with the dust, or whose bones 
 are drifting in the fathomless caverns of the sea. Now, the struggle of 
 
246 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 a strong and thoughtful grief is to overleap these barriers which are 
 impassable to mortality. Its aspirations would reach beyond the 
 inevitable limits of its materialism ; and its intense yearnings after the 
 dead are not to be satisfied by suffering its fancies to travel to the tomb, 
 but strive to follow the imperishable particle which was the very life of 
 what the grave receives. Hopeless as its questionings may be, the soul 
 of the survivor sends them after the disembodied spirit a process of 
 thought and feeling which has been thus described as from a mourner's 
 own lips : 
 
 " I called on dreams and visions to disclose 
 
 That which is vailed from waking thoughts ; conjured 
 
 Eternity, as men constrain a ghost, 
 
 To appear and answer ; to the grave I spake 
 
 Imploringly look'd up, and asked the heavens 
 
 If angels traversed their cerulean floors, 
 
 If fixed or wandering star could tidings yield 
 
 Of the departed spirit what abode 
 
 It occupies what consciousness retains 
 
 Of former loves and interests. Then my soul 
 
 Turn'd inward to examine of what stuff 
 
 Time's fetters are composed ; and life was put 
 
 To inquisition long and profitless 
 
 By pain of heart, now check'd and now impelled 
 
 The intellectual power, through words and things, 
 
 Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way !'* 
 
 The active and fine intellect of Hamlet has received what is at once 
 the shock and the impulse of profound grief. His shaping imagination 
 is busy in fashioning the likeness of his dead father's form now made 
 visible to his " mind's eye," that happy expression which Shakspeare has 
 made so familiar to all who speak our English tongue. And how dear 
 had that form in life been to his eyes may be known from the enthusiastic 
 admiration he gives utterance to, when, afterwards describing to his 
 mother the picture of her first husband, his own honoured father, he 
 says 
 
 " See, what a grace was seated on this brow : 
 
 Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; 
 
 An eye like Mars, to threaten and command ; 
 
 A station like the herald Mercury, 
 
 New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 
 
 A combination and a form indeed, 
 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
 
 To give the world assurance of a man." 
 
 From the glowing words of this description, we may perceive how 
 
HAMLET. 247 
 
 Hamlet's imagination had been filled with the glorious ideal forms of 
 classic fable; and it is worth noticing, that the very first feeling 
 attributed to him is an anxiety to go back to the calm retreat of his 
 academic life at Wittenberg, to resume that happy communion with the 
 good and wise of all ages which no villany can betray. 
 
 It is not only sorrow that is weighing down the heart of Hamlet. 
 Even the sad seclusion of grief is not allowed to him. He finds himself 
 cheated of his inheritance; and the succession, and the detested paternity 
 that is thrust upon him, inflame ill-suppressed feelings of indignation 
 and resentment. Dark misgivings, too, as we afterwards learn, are 
 flitting across his mind and casting shadows of suspicion too dreadful 
 for him to give utterance to presentiments of that supernatural revela- 
 tion which discloses to him the mystery of his father's murder. Worse 
 than all this is the anguish of disappointment in his once-loved mother, 
 the once "most seeming virtuous queen/' Memories of his father's deep 
 and honourable love crowd upon his mind. Unable and unwilling to 
 cast away his duty, and perhaps affection, to her, he is agitated by the 
 reluctant conviction that she is unworthy of it; and thus the sentiment 
 of filial piety, which ought to flow in a placid current, is changed into 
 a broken and fretted tide. Such are the trials that come upon the 
 unprepared spirit of one who had been the happy inmate of a virtuous 
 palace, had breathed the pure atmosphere of domestic love and honour, 
 and whose enthusiasm had been elevated by the heroic associations and 
 trophies of his illustrious father, and not less by ideal visions of truth 
 in the unclouded regions of philosophy. He is suddenly in a situation 
 where sorrows press upon him, which are agonies to such a spirit as his ; 
 and yet, see, withal, how graceful a gentleness he maintains! Indeed, 
 from the indecorous tone in which he is addressed both by king and 
 queen, we might believe that his life had been characterized by that 
 scholastic gentleness, which the unworthy might be tempted to presume 
 upon. The king speaks to him, and Hamlet recoils with a play upon 
 words which serves to disguise his deep and disturbed feelings. The 
 queen speaks, and he answers with respect'and with reserve ; for, while 
 dutifully remembering that she is his mother, he cannot forget that she is 
 his father's fickle and faithless widow. His dearest wish is to withdraw 
 into the recesses of his sorrowing meditations; but he is molested by 
 cold common-places on the subject of death, and by reproaches of the 
 fidelity of his grief a grief so inward and self-communing, that to 
 confound it with the mere outward customary signs, was, indeed a 
 heartless imputation. The usurper takes up the reproachful strain from 
 the lips of the queen; beginning with empty compliments, and ending 
 
248 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 with the empty promises of hypocrisy, he tells Hamlet that the filial 
 obligation was discharged by the obsequious sorrow already shown, and 
 that now it was an obstinate condolement a course of impious stub- 
 bornness an unmanly grief, showing a will most incorrect to heaven 
 a heart unfortified a mind impatient an understanding simple and 
 unschooled a fault to heaven a fault against the dead a fault to 
 nature to reason most absurd. To this heaping of reproaches of the 
 very kind to wound so sensitive and thoughtful a spirit, Hamlet answers 
 not a word it is the silence of an almost breaking heart, as he after- 
 wards says 
 
 " But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue." 
 
 These are the first of those conflicts of the heart which disturb Hamlet's 
 nature. There is the double disappointment of his filial piety the 
 death of his noble father and the moral degradation of his mother : all 
 his gentle propensities, too, are frustrated, his longing for scholastic 
 solitude ia thwarted, and his lonely self-communion violated by intru- 
 sion. Constraint is on him, and he is forced to dwell amid the unruly 
 revelry of a riotous palace so changed, too, from what it was and in 
 the detested presence of all that his spirit is at variance with. Now, the 
 natural consequence of such a state of mind is, a wretched weariness of 
 life, which comes sadly across the young heart when the natural tide of 
 its hopes and affections is suddenly and violently arrested when misan- 
 thropy is forced into a spirit whose native element is love. His first free 
 utterance is when he breaks forth, the very moment he is left alone, in 
 that piteous and incoherent soliloquy, which admirably presents the 
 characteristic condition of his mind a combination of great intellectual 
 activity with deep moral sensibility manifest in the perpetual com- 
 mingling of meditations and emotions. f A blight has touched his young 
 heart, and not only the palace his home but the whole earth is 
 dreary to him: so young, he is already longing after the repose of the 
 grave, and a wish for self- destruction is checked only by a sense of man's 
 duty to the everlasting: he sorrows most of all that he must live. All 
 his pent-up and conflicting feelings are seeking relief at once ; and the 
 words that give utterance to them are expressive, at the same time, of 
 is affection and admiration for his departed father, antipathy and con- 
 tempt for his kinsman, the usurper, and the worst misery of all the 
 heart-sickening thoughts of his mother's infidelity. 
 
 Throughout this drama, in every soliloquy or speech of Hamlet, 
 you may discover, not only the extraordinary intellectual activity which 
 Shakspeare has given to the character, but also a wonderful suscepti- 
 
HAMLET. 249 
 
 bility of sentiment, which is one of its chief charms. I know of no 
 dramatic character in which the processes of thought are so rapid and 
 so complex, and the associations of ideas so quick and various. We 
 seem to feel the depth and purity of Hamlet's spirit the more, when we 
 contemplate the thoughts and feelings which perpetually are speeding 
 so quickly over it, just as to the eye the steadfast firmament has a purer 
 blue and a more measureless height, because of the flying haste of the 
 clouds upon a bright and breezy day ; or, rather, to vary the similitude, 
 the pathetic beauty of Hamlet's character impresses us the more from 
 its inimitable variety, like the shifting glory of an autumnal sunset, 
 changing, at each instant changing the bright foreshadowing twilight 
 and darkness. 
 
 Immediately after the agonized soliloquy, the entrance of Horatio 
 and the gentlemen to whom the ghost had appeared, gives another 
 aspect to Hamlet's character. His deep and painful self-communions 
 are hushed, and it is, indeed, very beautiful to see him at once casting 
 aside all considerations of self in his friendly address to his fellow- 
 student. He will not believe Horatio's avowal of truant disposition ; 
 but, after the momentary diversion of affectionate greeting, his dark 
 thoughts are forced back, first in a painful sense of princely shame that 
 his friend should witness the disgraceful debauchery of the royal house- 
 hold. 
 
 Horatio's answer leads on to still more painful thoughts ; and yet 
 there is a most attractive grace in the sincerity and pathos with which 
 Hamlet partly opens his heart to his friend : 
 
 Horatio. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. 
 Hamlet. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student ; 
 I think it was to see my mother's wedding. 
 
 As soon as Horatio replies, 
 
 " Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon," 
 
 there comes one of those characteristic quick transitions of feeling ; for 
 Hamlet, as if conscious of having laid bare too much of his lonely 
 thoughts, even to his friend, rallies with somewhat of a bitter jest that 
 severe jesting which frequently breaks from him, not forced, but 
 natural to deep and suppressed emotions, which seem to find in it a 
 kind of relief. He tells Horatio that the marriage so speedy after the 
 burial was excellent economy there was no waste : 
 
 "Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral-bak'd meats, 
 Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables." 
 
250 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 But he cannot sustain the jesting mood ; and he feels, too, that it is a 
 wrong to his friend, for he straightway adds, also addressing him 
 
 " Would I had met my direst foe in heaven, 
 Ere I had ever seen that day, Horatio I " 
 
 Again he gives himself up to meditation, and gazes with the "mind's 
 eye" into the invisible world where the spirit of his father dwells. 
 When roused by the account of the apparition, his habitual mental 
 activity is suspended in wonder: there is neither argument nor sceptical 
 distrust, but only the firm resolve to speak to the spectre, if it assume 
 his noble father's person, with the prudential injunction of secresy upon 
 all who had witnessed the mystery. When left alone, the habit of 
 meditation returns and associates the strange intelligence with some of 
 his own unuttered presentiments. 
 
 The ghost of the murdered monarch is surely one of the most 
 majestic phantoms that poetic imagination has ever realized. It is an 
 apparition not so much of terror as of awe and solemnity, arrayed with 
 all the impressive associations of the grave, of religion, and of popular 
 superstition. Its movements are stately the shadow, as it were, of the 
 step of a kingly soldier; the glory of its earthly and warlike majesty is 
 mysteriously mingled with an awful dignity brought from the regions of 
 the dead. It is that fab' and warlike form 
 
 " In which the majesty of buried Denmark 
 Did sometimes march." 
 
 It seems to wear the very armour he had on 
 
 "When he the ambitious Norway combated." 
 
 When the soldiers vainly and rashly strike at it with their partisans, 
 they straightway feel 
 
 " We do it wrong, being so majestical, 
 To offer it the show of violence ; 
 For it is, as the air, invulnerable, 
 And our vain blows malicious mockery." 
 
 The spectre which most nearly resembles it is the imperial apparition of 
 Caesar, which awed even the philosophic soul of Brutus before the battle 
 of Philippi. 
 
 Now, let us consider how the young philosophy of Hamlet will bear 
 this new and supernatural influence. His presence of mind never for- 
 sakes him; for, with all the emotion and amazement and the solemn 
 awe which agitate him, he addresses the phantom of his father with apt 
 questionings: when his attendants become fearfully apprehensive that 
 
HAMLET. 251 
 
 he may be led away to his destruction, it seems to me that there is a 
 moral sublimity in Hamlet's brief argument for fearlessness a spiritual 
 fearlessness; and again in the calm expression of his determination, 
 unheeding Horatio's effort to alarm him : 
 
 " Why, what should be the fear ? 
 I do not set my life at a pin's fee ; 
 And, for my soul, what can it do to that, 
 Being a thing immortal as itself?" 
 
 While the ghost speaks, Hamlet's mind is riveted in dutiful attention 
 to words which show his dark misgivings, more than realized in the 
 mysterious disclosure. But the after-consequences of such a super- 
 natural visitation are yet greater. In the records of ghost stories, it is 
 said that, "whenever the supernatural character of the apparition has 
 been believed, the effects on the spectator have always been most terrible 
 convulsion, idiocy, madness, or even death, on the spot." 
 
 The vanishing of the ghost, whose presence had awed Hamlet into 
 a reverential silence, is followed by a burst of language which shows 
 that his intellect is in a state of delirious commotion ; and the first sign 
 of the disturbance of it has been discovered in the vow "to wipe away 
 from the tablet of his memory, all trivial fond records, all saws of books, 
 all forms, all pressures past, that youth and observation copied there;" 
 and then, at the very instant, writing down in his tablets the maxim 
 
 "That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain! 
 At least, I'm sure, it may be so in Denmark." 
 
 When his friends rejoin him, the intense excitement of his mind gives 
 way to eccentric jesting. He puts them away from himself and his 
 secret with what seems a strange flippancy " wild and whirling words," 
 as Horatio calls them. As the tumult of his emotions subsides, his gentle 
 gentlemanly disposition prompts an apology to Horatio for what looked 
 too like an unworthy trifling with him. The wonted activity of his in- 
 tellect again appears in what has struck me as the most graceful and 
 thoughtful play upon words I have ever met with. It occurs immedi- 
 ately before the half-sportive allusion to the philosophical studies of 
 himself and his fellow-student. When the ghost is heard speaking from 
 beneath, Horatio exclaims 
 
 " Oh, day and night, but that is wondrous strange ! 
 
 Hamlet. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. 
 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in our philosophy." 
 
 Happy would it be, let me add, if, whenever a spiritual mystery is pre- 
 
252 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 sented to our thoughts, we did not reject it because, transcending our 
 little knowledge, it happens to be " undreamt of in our philosophy ;" 
 happy would it be if we did not suffer doubts, and suspicions, and the 
 sophistries of a sensualized scepticism to shut up the avenues of our souls, 
 instead of opening the door wide to give the mystery a stranger's wel- 
 come ! 
 
 Hamlet's character from the time of the interview with the ghost 
 becomes more complicated ; and it is a question on which a great deal 
 of comment has been expended, whether his insanity is feigned or real. 
 The difficulties involving the question are of theoretical rather than of 
 practical purport ; for they do not seem to affect the poetical impression 
 which the character is intended to make. Indeed, it may be that the 
 interest of the character is rather increased by this very mysteriousness 
 the obscurity in discriminating between his affected wildness and the 
 actual disturbance of his intellect. These difficulties are owing partly 
 to this that insanity is of so many degrees, and so multiform, that you 
 can scarce define it : the English language, though not highly esteemed 
 by all for its copiousness, furnishes, it may be, a dozen different words 
 to express the various morbid conditions of the intellect. I, probably, 
 am not wrong in saying that this subject of insanity, has often perplexed 
 at least two learned professions, to say nothing of the wisdom of judges 
 and the integrity of jurors. To some charitable minds, enormity of 
 crime is itself an evidence of insanity of a wrong head as well as of a 
 wrong heart ; while by others, of sterner judgments, a disordered intel- 
 lect would not be suffered to plead insanity in bar of justice at an earthly 
 tribunal. Modern philanthropy and science have learned to classify, for 
 salutary purposes, the inmates of lunatic asylums ; but no science has 
 ever attempted the same process for the unhealthy minds that share 
 with the sane ones the business of life. 
 
 The difficulty with respect to Hamlet is not so much in forming a 
 just conception of the state of his mind, as in attaching a precise signifi- 
 cancy to this word " insanity." At least there need be no such diffi- 
 culty, were it not oftener caused by the logic of a contracted criticism 
 the propensity to narrow verbal comment which will misapprehend 
 the whole drift of a character and destroy the spirit of a drama by 
 dwelling upon detached passages and expressions. 
 
 This is fatal to a true appreciation of the dramatic genius of the 
 poet : very much, if I may be allowed to use such an illustration, which 
 I do with entire reverence, very much in the same way that men often 
 perplex and embarrass their faith argue it out of their hearts, and 
 tempt themselves into miserable heresies by fastening upon isolated 
 
HAMLET. 253 
 
 texts, instead of studying the Scriptures with a more docile and catholic 
 spirit than that which trusts to mere logic. 
 
 Hamlet mentions to his friends a deliberate purpose of " putting an 
 antic disposition on," and he is seen fulfilling his intention ; and hence 
 it is inferred that all his insanity is feigned. On the other hand, there 
 is observed a wildness of demeanour which cannot thus be accounted 
 for ; and hence it is inferred that it is real insanity. Now, the human 
 mind is not such a simple machine as this, and Shakspeare knew 
 it too well ever to treat it so. The truth, as well as I can 
 state a matter so abstruse, seems to be this: that, from com- 
 bination of influences, the mind of Hamlet was in a state of undue 
 susceptibility of both unnatural excitement and depression ; and then 
 further agitated by a supernatural visitation, by which, in his own 
 words he felt his " disposition horridly shaken with thoughts beyond the 
 reaches of our souls." This visible and audible communion with the 
 dead has so convulsed all the spiritual elements of his nature, that he 
 becomes conscious that the sovereignty of his reason was in jeopardy ; 
 and it is that very consciousness the apprehension of insanity which 
 suggests to an intellect so active the thought of feigning madness the 
 device of assuming an antic disposition which would give them an un- 
 wonted freedom, and which might always be controlled by his habitual 
 intellectual strength. It comes, then to this that there was disorder 
 in the mind a disturbance of his intellect, something more than that 
 which he was feigning ; but, if this question of insanity involve the 
 question whether his mind ceased to be under the mastery of his will, 
 assuredly there was no such aberration. 
 
 In the various allusions to the condition of Hamlet's mind, you may 
 find it variously designated. The queen tenderly speaks of the "trans- 
 formation" of her son. The king speaks of it as a " melancholy " and a 
 " distemper." Polonius calls it " lunacy." The grave-digger bluntly 
 talks of " Hamlet he that is mad and sent to England ; sent there 
 because he was mad ; he shall recover his wits there ; or if he do not, 
 it is no great matter ; it will not be seen in him there ; there the men 
 are as mad as he." But when Ophelia speaks of it, in the simplicity of 
 her opinion, there is not only beauty but truth in the image by which 
 she describes what seems to her the piteous overthrow of a lofty mind : 
 
 " See that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 Like sweet bells, jangled, out of tune, and harsh." 
 
 It is an exquisite similitude of the undefinable condition of Hamlet's 
 
25 4 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 mind : his intellect had lost its harmony, hut still there was a wild music 
 in the changes which an untoward destiny was ringing on it. 
 
 The scene with Ophelia is one of the most difficult to interpret. 
 There is a natural inclination to refer to real insanity Hamlet's apparent 
 harshness ; for there seems to be a rude rejecting of her, which it is 
 hard to reconcile with the truth and gentleness of his natural disposition, 
 and which we cannot quite believe his deep love for her would suffer 
 him to affect. But it must be remembered, that there was a leave- 
 taking before this, which is not dramatically presented, and which, in 
 some respects, is more important. It is only described : it was a silent 
 interview that silence a better token of his deep feeling than the wild 
 words he afterwards addresses to her. He takes her by the hand ; he 
 gazes on her face with 
 
 " Such perusal as he would draw it" 
 
 perhaps to impress it on his imagination as something dear to his heart, 
 and yet which an awful nece ' T forces him to banish. A deep and 
 piteous sigh breaks from him n, without a word spoken, he leaves 
 
 her 
 
 " That done, he lets me go. 
 And, with his head over his shoulder turned, 
 He seem'd to find his way without his eyes ; 
 For out of doors he went without their help, 
 And, to the last, bended their light on me." 
 
 This was the real leave-taking ; and if it be asked why he thus alienated 
 himself from Ophelia, the necessity is to be explained by the fearful 
 responsibility which filled his soul. A voice from the grave was ever in 
 his ears. The apparition of a loved and honoured father had burst from 
 the prison-house of the dead to lay upon the soul of Hamlet, with 
 supernatural weight, a duty which he felt must absorb his being. 
 What now could he have to do with such a sentiment as love ? With 
 all its purity, it could not consort with his solemn charge. 
 
 When afterwards Hamlet unexpectedly finds himself again in the 
 presence of Ophelia, all his former affection comes back upon him : 
 
 " Soft you, now ! 
 
 The fair Ophelia ! Nymph, in thy orisons 
 Be all my sins remember'd." 
 
 He had over-calculated his own strength in setting aside his love for 
 her ; and of this he becomes conscious when the thought of his one 
 paramount duty quickly returns. Hence, the revulsion of feeling in 
 this painful scene the desperate energy with which he recovers himself 
 
HAMLET. 255 
 
 from relapse into an affection, the indulgence of which his destiny 
 can no more admit. His apparent rudeness we must not take too 
 literally remember it is poetry, and not prose, we are studying now. 
 It is not in reality indifference and heartlessness to Ophelia, but self- 
 reproach of what he sternly condemns as his own weakness, when, with 
 such strange impetuosity, he bids her " To a nunnery, go "one 
 moment disclaiming his love, and another acknowledging it with a 
 wild irony accusing himself of " pride, revenge, ambition more offences 
 at his beck than he has thoughts to put them in, imagination to give 
 them shape, or time to act them in ; " then telling the innocent and 
 artless girl of the vices and frailties, not, indeed, of herself, but of her 
 sex, and warning her that the world is not a safe place for her to abide 
 in: kf Get thee to a nunnery, farewell. ... To a nunnery, go ; 
 and quickly too. Farewell. . . . To a nunnery, go." In confirma- 
 tion of the view I have taken of this scene, observe that Hamlet's 
 asperity does not wound Ophelia as an injury. Her only feeling is pity 
 more for the sad calamity of his int/^e.ct than for her own dejected 
 hopelessness. 
 
 Meditative as is the mind of Harm , his nature is too gentle for 
 him to travel on in life a solitary-hearted man. The sense of loneliness 
 is relieved by his friendship for Horatio, to whose manly judgment he 
 could, in consultation, impart his supernatural secret and his dread, 
 though ill-defined, purposes, which it would have* been both cruel 
 and useless to tell one so innocent, so tender, and so artless as the 
 " sweet Ophelia." The friendship of Hamlet and Horatio is one of 
 those such as may be observed in actual life founded not only upon 
 sympathies, but upon harmonious contrasts of character the qualities of 
 one party happily felt as supplying something wanting in the other. 
 Horatio is a man not only of strong, but just and well-regulated, feelings, 
 and especially in intellectual constitution, possessed of sound, practical, 
 common sense, strikingly contrasted with Hamlet's imaginative apprehen- 
 siveness the deep spirit of meditation and overwrought mental activity. 
 The character of Hamlet is overflowing with poetry and philosophy, 
 while Horatio is matter-of-fact and prosaic. Yet, in this very variety, 
 Hamlet, conscious of his own disposition, feels that he has a better 
 friend a safer counsellor. 
 
 Besides this friendship, Hamlet finds relief from the sense of moral 
 desolation, which sickens his heart, in the conscious power of his intellect. 
 It is this, I think, which may explain the abrupt transition from an 
 
 expression of his dreary feeling to that splendid panegyric upon man : 
 
 " I have of late (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, foregone 
 
256 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 all custom of exercises ; and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, 
 that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; 
 this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave overhanging 
 firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire why, it appears 
 no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. 
 What a piece of work is man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in 
 faculty ! in form, and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, 
 how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty of the 
 world ! the paragon of animals ! And yet, to me, what is this quintes- 
 sence of dust ?" 
 
 The genius of Hamlet is shown not only in such passages interspersed 
 through the ramblings of his antic disposition, but also in his inimitable 
 lonely meditations, such as that most famous of all soliloquies, when, 
 standing on the fancied brink of life the very tide-mark of "this 
 bank and shoal of time " he gazes out upon the ocean of eternity, his 
 
 " Soul has sight of that immortal sea, 
 Which brought us hither." 
 
 His " mind's eye " is strained almost to blindness in the effort to descry 
 the shores of "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no 
 traveller returns :" and his spirit falls back again to this earthly life, 
 saddened by thoughts of prosperous iniquity and by his sympathy with 
 suffering humanity, the vision of its wrongs and miseries before " this 
 mortal coil is shuffled off" 
 
 " The spurns, 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes." 
 
 Hamlet's far-reaching mind seeks to fathom the dreams of our afterlife. 
 Indeed, as Charles Lamb, speaking of the impossibility of acting this 
 tragedy, remarks "Nine parts in ten of what Hamlet does are 
 transactions between himself and his moral sense effusions of his 
 solitary musings, which he retires to holes and corners and the most 
 sequestered parts of the palace to pour forth ; or rather, they are the 
 silent meditations with which his bosom is bursting, reduced to words 
 for the sake of the reader profound sorrows light-and-noise-abhorring 
 ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls and 
 chambers." 
 
 But the mandate of his father's spirit is not yet fulfilled. The 
 usurper is still on the throne the incestuous marriage is unbroken. 
 Why is this with one who, at the first intimation given by the ghost, 
 spoke of " sweeping to his revenge with wings as swift as meditation or 
 the thoughts of love " ? The chief explanation by the best critics lies in 
 
HAMLET 257 
 
 the excessive activity of Hamlet's intellect disproportionate mental 
 exertion, always busy with its own suggestions and speculations, but flying 
 from the acting point. He is conscious of this himself in some of his 
 self-reproaches : 
 
 "What is a man, 
 
 If his chief good, and market of his time, 
 Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more. 
 Sure he that made us with such large discourse, 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 That capability and godlike reason 
 To fust in as unused. Now, whether it be 
 Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
 Of thiriking too precisely on the event, 
 A thought, which quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom, 
 And ever three parts coward, I do not know 
 Why yet I have to say, ' This thing's to do ;' 
 Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, 
 To do't." 
 
 But this is the exaggeration of self-accusation. Hamlet was brave, yet 
 he was gentle too ; and it seems to me that another and, perhaps, chief 
 cause of his inaction, for which sufficient allowance has not been made, 
 was the tenderness of his conscience the agitation of the moral sense 
 even more than of the intellect : 
 
 " Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ; 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
 With this regard, their currents turn awry 
 And lose the name of action." 
 
 It should not be forgotten that when the ghost imposed on Hamlet the 
 duty of vengeance, he said not how, but solemnly charged him 
 
 " Howsoever thou pursu'st the act, 
 Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive 
 Against thy mother aught." 
 
 It was the awful duty of blood-shedding to be discharged righteously, 
 and most natural was it that the duty was entangled in inextricable 
 perplexity. 
 
 The tenderness of Hamlet's conscience is shown in his repenting of 
 the chance-killing of Polonius ; and afterwards when eluding the 
 treachery of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he sends them to the death 
 they had plotted for him, he makes some little excusing of himself to 
 Horatio : 
 
 S 
 
258 TKAGIC POETRY. 
 
 " Why, man, they did make love to their employment; 
 They are not near my conscience." 
 
 And then the thought of putting the king to death comes to his mind 
 with a sense of justice an act of dutiful vengeance : 
 
 " Is't not perfect conscience 
 To quit him with this arm ?" 
 
 It is his moral doubts which have blunted his purpose postponing 
 " The important acting of the dread command." 
 
 These caused his misgivings that the spectre might be an evil spirit, 
 seeking out his weakness and his melancholy to abuse him to his perdi- 
 tion. He sought, therefore, further assurance of his conscience by 
 means of the play before the king, saying that if is occulted guilt did 
 not there unkennel itself 
 
 " It is a damned ghost that we have seen, 
 And my imaginations are as foul 
 As Vulcan's stithy." 
 
 When once Hamlet has actually drawn his sword to take the forfeit 
 life of the usurper, he sheathes it again for an expressed reason that 
 sounds almost like a fiendish vengeance the thought that if the king 
 were killed while praying, his soul, purged and seasoned for the passage, 
 would go to heaven. But surely no one can misapprehend this for the 
 true reason : it is only a piece of self-deception an excuse for delay 
 a palliation for his shrinking from a deed of blood. The soliloquy of 
 he king is the portraiture of a wretched man clinging to his guilt, and 
 therefore helpless in his strivings after contrition. Touching the sub- 
 jects of mercy and expiation and prayer, it contains one of those vailed 
 9-nd profoundly reverential allusions to Scripture truths and language, 
 which Shakspeare occasionally shadows forth with such a pious reserve : 
 
 " What, if this cursed hand 
 Were thicker than itself with brother's blood ! 
 Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens, 
 To wash it white as snow ? Whereto serves mercy, 
 But to confront the visage of offence ? 
 And what's in prayer, but this twofold force, 
 To be forestalled, ere we come to fall, 
 Or pardon'd, being down ? ' 
 
 As the play draws to a close, Hamlet seems rather to recede from his 
 purpose than to approach it. It has been truly said of him that he is 
 always perfectly equal to any call of the moment, let it only not be for 
 the future. He is sent from the kingdom, nothing yet accomplished. 
 
HAMLET. 259 
 
 Perhaps his absence was to spare him the sad catastrophe of Ophelia's 
 insanity, of which he was the innocent cause. The love he had been 
 forced by higher duties to relinquish, would have come back to her 
 forlorn estate : it did come back at her grave : 
 
 " I loved Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers 
 Could not, with all their quantity of love, 
 Make up my sum." 
 
 A most attractive grace continues to be thrown round every move- 
 ment of Hamlet spiritual, intellectual, and bodily, in the closing scenes 
 of the tragedy the thoughtful, playful conversation with the grave- 
 digger, and the gentle moralizing over the relics of mortality the 
 gentlemanly sporting with the fop the more than gentlemanly apology 
 to Laertes: 
 
 " Give me your pardon, sir : I have done you wrong : 
 But pardon 't, as you are a gentleman. 
 This presence knows, and you must needs have heard 
 How I am punish' d with a sore distraction. 
 What I have done, 
 
 That might your nature, honour, and exception 
 Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. 
 * 
 
 Sir, in this audience, 
 
 Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil 
 
 Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, 
 
 That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, 
 
 And hurt my brother." 
 
 One of the latest expressions of Hamlet's habitual thoughtfulness is 
 the beautiful presentiment of his approaching death, when, speaking to 
 Horatio with some confidence of success in the fencing-match, he adds 
 "But thou would'st not think how ill all's here about my heart: but it's 
 no matter." This gloominess alarms his friend, and Hamlet tries to 
 shake it off; "It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as 
 would, perhaps, trouble a woman." Horatio still urges him to postpone 
 the trial at arms, because he is not fit; but Hamlet speaks in a better 
 mood of faith: "Not a whit, we defy augury; there's a special provi- 
 dence in the fall of a sparrow." 
 
 He whose mind had been so active in its purposes whose heart had 
 beat so quickly to all true impulses achieves the duty, vaguely com- 
 manded by a supernatural voice, only by co-operating with the tumult 
 of an accident, and in the heat of passion. Heretofore, always equal to 
 the present moment, his meditations meditations of the heart as well 
 
260 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 as of the intellect had perpetually carried him into the distant future. 
 Now, the certainty of the poison crowds all the future of his mortal 
 life into a few, short, present instants. Death is in Denmark's 
 palace. The majestic phantom of him who once tenanted the throne, 
 is avenged by the bloody perishing of the guilty. The innocent one is 
 implicated too deeply in the destiny of the tragedy to escape, and 
 Horatio's words are his fitting requiem : 
 
 " Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince ; 
 And nights of angels sing thee to thy rest." 
 
IV. 
 
 IN closing my last lecture, I spoke of the subject of this evening's 
 lecture as the deepest of Shakspeare's tragedies. The first impression 
 might be different ; for, through the scenes of Othello, there are scat- 
 tered things which seem to belong to comedy the pliability of that 
 poor dupe, Roderigo the sarcastic jests of lago and his drinking songs, 
 and the tipsiness of Cassio. These are matters which might befit the 
 comic drama, but they are subordinate to what is, I repeat, the deepest 
 of Shakspeare's tragedies. Perhaps, therefore, it is the most remarkable 
 illustration of the power of our great dramatic poet's imagination in 
 blending together, in apt proportions, the tragic and the comic elements 
 just as in real life you may often find, near each other, things to weep 
 for, and things to smile, or it may be even to laugh, at. The tragedy 
 of Othello is the deepest, because in it the darkest and lowest region of 
 human wickedness is brought to light, because the victim of that wicked- 
 ness is a most heroic heart, and because, most of all, a being the purest, 
 most innocent, and gentle, is made the sacrifice. It must be very deep 
 when you reflect that in it are combined the destinies of lago and 
 Othello and Desdemona. Never did poetic creation dive into a cavern 
 so deep, so dark, and noisome, as the soul of lago ; never did poet's 
 imagination kindle a fiercer fire than flamed from the heart of the 
 frenzied Moor ; never did it shine upon a spot so beautiful, so fair, as 
 that loving, meek, and faithful Venetian lady. It is the deepest tragedy, 
 because there is in its course of events less to reconcile the heart to its 
 dismal ending, less to make us willingly, though wofully, acquiesce in 
 the unmerited suffering of the innocent ; and, therefore, it is only by 
 justly and strongly conceiving the essential idea of pure tragedy that we 
 can be brought to believe that such a catastrophe was right. 
 
 In the tragedy of Othello, the master-spirit is at once set before us 
 the wicked one who rules the destinies of all on whom he casts his evil eye. 
 Amid the various forms in which the shaping imagination of the poet 
 has fashioned his conceptions of human wickedness, lago is pre-eminently 
 the most vicious the most viciously powerful of all the Shaksperian 
 villains. There is a force of intellect in the character which, divorced as 
 it is from every thing like moral sentiment, is fearful to contemplate. 
 
262 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 It has the excessive intellectual activity which we had occasion to study 
 in Hamlet, but not, as in that sweet prince, gently wedded to virtuous 
 meditation and kindly sympathies. The consciousness of mental energy 
 in Hamlet spent itself in pure and perpetual musings ; while in lago it 
 delights in annihilating the peace of mind in his happy fellow-beings. 
 There is something of the reflectiveness of Macbeth, but none of his 
 natural tenderness of disposition none of his apprehensive imagination 
 none of his fluttering, procrastinating conscience, which needed the 
 outward impulses of a supernatural temptation, and the strong sway of 
 a strong-willed woman to drive him on to guilt. lago is all-sufficient to 
 himself. He originates his own plans of mischief ; he councils with no 
 one ; he needs no help, unless it be for so insignificant a service as to 
 steal a handkerchief, and then he bids his wife perpetrate the theft. Not 
 altogether passionless, his passions are at the absolute command of his 
 intellect : he can, at will, be calm or choleric. Listen as closely as you 
 may, you cannot hear his heart beat. He is one of your stony-hearted 
 philosophers 
 
 " A reasoning, self-sufficient thing, 
 An intellectual all-in-all." 
 
 He knows where his strength lies, and it is his delight to use it ; for he 
 plots and intrigues and destroys. 
 
 One curious evidence of the power of this character is to be observed 
 in the fact, that the reader himself is often deluded by lago's sophistries 
 and falsehood, so artfully does he misrepresent them so vehemently 
 does he vilify. For instance, speaking of Desdemona, he says to 
 Roderigo " Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor, but 
 for bragging and telling her fantastical lies !" And not only does this 
 coarse and vulgar perversion of Othello's defence before the senate of his 
 course of love win the weak belief of lago's dupe, but the reader him- 
 self is half disposed to accredit it. Now it must be remembered that 
 Shakspeare, above all other poets, is distinguished for this that he 
 never explains his characters ; he creates them, sets them before us in 
 speech and action, and then leaves it to us to find them out just as in 
 real life we have to study the characters and tempers of actual men and 
 women, and often without rightly knowing them. It is this which most 
 demonstrates the poet's vivid imagination the intensity of his creative 
 power : it is this which constitutes the self-forgetting intrepidity of the 
 genuine artist, disdaining to be his own commentator, and trusting that 
 some faithful heart will rise from the reverential lowliness of genuine 
 criticism to a just knowledge of his creations. For this confidence we 
 make but a poor return, when we interpret a poet's words as literally 
 
OTHELLO. 263 
 
 as the argumentation of prose, and unimaginatively accept for truth the 
 speech that falls from even a villain's tongue. The poems of Shakspeare 
 are dramas, and, therefore, we must not read them as if they were nar- 
 ratives. They are the action, and not the story, of human virtues and 
 vices and passions ; and so true to nature are the creations of his 
 genius, that, living mortals, they may be found saying a hundred things 
 in which they are^themselves deceived, or in which they would wilfully 
 deceive others. In the study of character, as dramatically portrayed, 
 there can be no more fruitful source of error than to take detached pas- 
 sages without heed to the character of him who speaks. Now, in the 
 tragedy of Othello, unless you carefully adopt this principle as a safe- 
 guard, you have to deal with so adroit a villain, so accomplished a sophist, 
 so reckless and insidious a liar in lago, that he will surely deceive you. 
 No word of his is to be taken on trust for he owns no obligation to 
 truth, and is instantaneously rapid in fabrication. 
 
 It is to this prodigious talent for deception which characterizes lago 
 that may, I think, be traced an erroneous view in regard to the very 
 germ of tragedy. It seems to be generally assumed, that lago's hatred 
 of Othello had its origin in military disappointment professional pique 
 at Cassio's promotion in preference to him ; and that, therefore, this 
 frustrated ambition left behind it the sting of a determined revenge. 
 According to this view, all the tragic consequences followed from lago's 
 spirit of vengeance; and I do not know but what there is thus insinuated 
 into our minds some secret sympathy with him as an injured man an 
 approved soldier unfairly dealt with his services forgotten in the fa- 
 vouritism to a new soldier 
 
 " Forsooth, a great arithmetician, 
 One Michael Cassio, a Florentine." 
 
 Now, what is the proof of all this? Nothing, from first scene to last, 
 1 believe, but lago's word. He says so, and therefore it is true, when 
 surely the safer logic would be, that therefore it is false. General as 
 the interpretation has been, that military disappointment was the cause 
 of lago's animosity against the Moorish chief, I am well persuaded there 
 is nothing to sanction it. I do not believe a word of the story. There 
 is nothing in the intercourse between Othello and lago and Cassio which 
 looks like it; and indeed, such an injury was of itself hardly of the kind 
 to imbitter the feelings of such a being as lago. 
 
 But this fiction has found more ready belief from another cause; 
 and that is, the notion that such extremity of wickedness as his is un- 
 natural that there is not adequate cause for his hatred of Othello, and 
 
264 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 the havoc he makes of his happiness. The most has therefore heen 
 made of this military disappointment, because critics and readers have 
 assumed to think, that otherwise there would be nothing for the super- 
 stucture of the tragedy to rest upon. It would be much better if the 
 critic always approached these dramas with a more docile temper, and 
 not with the presumptuous vanity of helping Shakspeare in his inter- 
 pretations of what is natural. But the great poet-philosopher did not 
 handle his subjects thus timidly. He was no dainty moralist; and in 
 this tragedy it was his purpose to realize one of the most fearful specu- 
 lations respecting human nature to show one of the darkest sides of 
 the soul of man that it is capable of "motiveless malignity/' This is 
 Coleridge's fit phrase in the description of lago's villainy. At least, 
 the incidents which chance to suggest his malignant feelings are so 
 immeasurably disproportionate, that they can scarce be spoken of as 
 causes or motives. In some cases it is clearly apparent, that lago's 
 reasons are afterthoughts faint recognitions of the difference between 
 right and wrong opiates to quiet the few, irregular, and very feeble 
 beatings, of a conscience not quite dead. The explanations of his 
 hatred of Othello are not to be credulously received as realities, but to 
 be withstood as the fictions of a quick invention and a wicked spirit 
 foul things engendered in the pollutions of his heart. 
 
 In the science of human nature, it is a fearful truth that there is a 
 temptation to crime in the mere gratification of a pleasurable conscious- 
 ness of power ; that the mind is tempted to dwell upon guilt, which, 
 thus being taken up into the thoughts, becomes familiar, and then takes 
 possession of our actions. This is the peril of a foul imagination, such 
 as lago's. It is shallow philosophy to look for outward, instead of 
 inward, motive; and most unsatisfactory is it to be told that the motive 
 to all the misery which lago worked out was no more than a disappoint- 
 ment in promotion. Such a solution seems only the more to perplex 
 the problem ; for, if we must seek for an outward motive, this is, indeed, 
 most insufficient. The true motive was the innate malignity of lago's 
 heart the natural antagonism of a base to a noble nature. In this 
 tragedy, Shakspeare has represented one of the most insidious and 
 mysterious temptations that the spirit of man is exposed to a tempta- 
 tion which, when it triumphs, seems to assimilate humanity, even in its 
 mortal life, to the desperate state of demons. It is the pride of power 
 in its most depraved form : proud of its wicked inventions, and then 
 proud of the conscious strength to achieve them. Perhaps we might 
 in this way trace to its source that strange influence the contagion or 
 fascination of crime. Some act of depravity is committed, then told in 
 
OTHELLO. 265 
 
 all its appalling details ; and, when the public mind becomes thoroughly 
 familiar with the thoughts and emotions thus prompted, a hundred 
 hearts, roused from their sleep of innocence, are impelled, by what 
 almost seems a supernatural influence, to perpetrate their wicked 
 imaginations. The records of crime bear witness to this horrid truth : 
 they show that this mysterious path does exist among the thousand 
 avenues, which the powers of evil have opened, to tempt the soul of man 
 downward. I do not know that philosophy has done much to explain 
 how the will of man is led to this aberration, but there is something 
 analogous to it, and by which, perhaps, it may be illustrated, in an 
 emotion, which, probably, has been experienced by most persons I 
 allude to that singular feeling or impulse, or whatever it may be called, 
 which, on looking down from the edge of any great elevation, seems to 
 be almost a wish to cast oneself into the depth below, and which comes 
 so strongly on some, that they shrink, shuddering, from the spot of 
 danger. This sensation has been described by Shakspeare, with one of 
 his inimitable phrases, in a well-known passage in Hamlet: 
 
 " The very place puts toys of desperation, 
 Without more motive, into every brain, 
 That looks so many fathoms to the sea, 
 And hears it roar beneath." 
 
 In like manner the contemplation of crime the looking down into its 
 deep, dark moral gulf, strangely puts " toys of desperation " in the brain 
 of him who suffers his thoughts and imaginations to dwell too familiarly 
 with guilt. lago's intellect is habitually busy with the evil suggestions 
 of intense selfishness and native malignity ; and his is a strong and 
 active intellect, every movement of which brings along with it a sense 
 of power ; and then the inevitable, irresistible, onward course of 
 iniquity is to put these wicked conceptions into action. 
 
 The first movement of the tragedy and of the wicked elements of 
 lago's disposition, seems to be simply this : during an interval of military 
 service, he has insinuated himself into a kind of friendship with a rich 
 young Venetian, whom he flatters with professions of assistance in 
 gaining the hand of Desdemona. lago is a soldier a man of adventure ; 
 and he has gained an ascendancy over Roderigo for the meanly selfish 
 purpose of using his purse. This mercenary motive, cast in the rank 
 soil of lago's heart, is the single seed from which springs the harvest of 
 all his atrocity. Unexpectedly, it is discovered that Othello has proved 
 a successful rival in Desdemona's love, and lago finds it necessary to 
 confirm the assurances he has given of his hatred towards Othello ; and 
 
266 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 then comes the fiction, as I believe it to be, of the wrong done to him 
 by Cassio's promotion. There is on the part of Roderigo an almost 
 immeasurable inferiority of intellect to his companion, but this very 
 inferiority serves an important dramatic purpose, because thus lago's 
 character is the better developed by his bolder dealings with his dupe. 
 Well assured of his intellectual supremacy, which there was neither 
 force of mind nor of morals to withstand, lago knows that he is sure of 
 deference to mere power of intellect, even although displayed in a 
 reckless avowal of an absolute want of principle and honour. So 
 completely is Roderigo in his grasp so absolutely subject to the stronger 
 mind that lago talks to him almost as unreservedly as in soliloquy. 
 There is no one to whom he speaks so freely, so fully ; no one, indeed, 
 to whom he could have ventured so to open the dark and hollow places 
 of his heart. It is apparently from the pleasurable consciousness of his 
 abundant power of intellect, rather than from the necessity of it, that 
 he goes on arguing and philosophizing with his dupe ; and so mighty is 
 the fascination, that Roderigo scarcely flutters under it he is lost in 
 amazement and admiration at the boldness with which honesty is 
 scoffed at, and the pride of intellectual strength proclaimed. When 
 Roderigo expresses surprise at lago's reconciling his hatred and service 
 to Othello, he is overwhelmed with the answer 
 
 " 0, sir, content you : 
 I follow him to serve my turn upon him : 
 We cannot all be masters, nor all masters 
 Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark 
 Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave, 
 That doting on his own obsequious bondage, 
 Wears out his time, much like his master's ass, 
 For naught but provender ; and, when he's old, cashier'd : 
 Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are, 
 Who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, 
 Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves ; 
 And throwing but shows of service on their lords, 
 Do well thrive by them ; and when they have lined their coats, 
 Do themselves homage : these fellows have some soul ; 
 And such a one do I profess myself. 
 For, sir, 
 
 It is as sure as you are Roderigo, 
 Were I the Moor, I would not be lago. 
 In following him I follow but myself : 
 Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, 
 But seeming so, for my peculiar end : 
 For when my outward action doth demonstrate 
 

 OTHELLO. 267 
 
 The native act and figure of my heart 
 In complement externe, 'tis not long after, 
 But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve, 
 For daws to peck at : I am not what I am." 
 
 And when he has thus made sure of Roderigo's absolute submissiveness, 
 observe with what decision he bids him, as to his course against Othello, 
 
 "Make after him, poison his delight ; 
 Proclaim him in the streets ; incense her kinsmen, 
 And, though he in a fertile climate dwell, 
 Plague him with flies : though that his joy be joy, 
 Yet throw such changes of vexation on't, 
 As it may lose some colour." 
 
 lago is soon after found by the side of his noble victim. He tells 
 Othello of Roderigo's slanders ; and with blunt professions of love and 
 loyalty, he says how hard it was to refrain from resenting it by stabbing 
 the slanderer and the calm, placid heroism of the Moor is shown in 
 the simple reply 
 
 " 'Tis better as it is." 
 
 All attempts to excite or intimidate him are equally ineffectual; for 
 there is an imperturbable dignity when he intimates his lofty birth, his 
 services to the state, and his devotion to a soldier's life, as sufficient 
 security against the angry father's complaints : 
 
 " Let him do his spite 
 
 My services, which I have done the seignory, 
 Shall out-tongue his complaint. 'Tis yet to know 
 (Which, when I know that boasting is an honour, 
 I shall promulgate), I fetch my life and being 
 From men of royal siege ; and my demerits 
 May speak, unbonneted, to as proud a fortune 
 As this that I have reach'd. For know, lago, 
 But that I love the gentle Desdemona, 
 I would not my unhoused free condition 
 Put into circumscription and confine 
 For the sea's worth." 
 
 When urged by lago to retire, the same majestic composure is in his 
 answer : 
 
 " Not I : I must be found ; 
 
 My parts, my title, and my perfect soul 
 
 Shall manifest me rightly." 
 
 And when the incensed father, with his followers, breaks in upon him 
 to claim his daughter back, amid the tumult of torches hurried hither 
 
268 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 and thither, and swords drawn by the friends of both, the tranquil and 
 commanding voice of Othello rises above the angry elements : 
 
 " Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them 
 Good signior, you shall more command with years 
 Than with your weapons. 
 
 Hold your hands, 
 
 Both you of my inclining, and the rest. 
 Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it 
 "Without a prompter." 
 
 The hero of the tragedy is thus introduced a man of heroic stamp, 
 an intrepid soldier honoured for faithful services to the Venetian state ; 
 the blood of kings is coursing in his viens, and the royalty of his birth 
 and his martial experience are accompanied with a lofty spirit and a 
 majestic self-command. But he has been first introduced by the ribaldry 
 of lago, and hence the imagination is unhappily tempted to adopt one 
 of those false impressions, which his filthy fancy delights in giving. 
 
 The repulsive notion that Othello was a black a coarse-featured 
 African seems to me directly at variance with the requisitions of both 
 poetry and history ; and I cannot but think it is an error which may 
 be traced either to some false critical theory, or else more probably to 
 the too literal interpretation of passages in the play the unimaginative 
 reading which is fatal so often to the spirit of poetry. The hero is 
 styled " Othello the Moor ; " such is his title and familiar designation 
 throughout. He was one of that adventurous race of men who, striking 
 out from the heart of Arabia, had made conquest of Persia and Syria ; 
 and, overturning the ancient sovereignty of Egypt, swept in victory 
 along the whole northern coast of Africa, and passing thence across the 
 narrow frith of the Mediterranean, scattered the dynasty of the Goths 
 with Roderic at their head. In the most fertile region of Spain they 
 built up an empire which lasted for centuries, and left behind them, for 
 the wonder of remote generations, in the ruins of the Alhambra, a 
 monument of the pomp of Sarcenic civilization. Moreover, it was the 
 race that preserved the literature of Greece its philosophy and science 
 when Greece itself was prostrate and benighted. Even after the 
 power of the caliphs in their several realms began to decline, the Moors 
 were the chosen and honoured captains of the armies of Christian states. 
 Especially was this the policy of the Venetian Republic, to lessen, it is 
 said, by the employment of mercenary commanders, the danger of 
 domestic intrigue. How true to his nature was it for Othello to stand 
 in conscious pride the descendant of a race of kings the representative 
 of the Arabs who had been sovereigns in Europe his spirit glowing 
 
OTHELLO. 269 
 
 with noble ancestral memories ! And, on the other hand, how perfectly 
 consistent it was with the debasing malignity of lago, and with the 
 petulant disappointment of Roderigo, a foppish Venetian, to be blind 
 to all that ennobled and dignified the Moorish name to see no dis- 
 tinction between the chivalrous Moor, the chieftain of Christian armies, 
 and the barbarous Ethiop the despised slave. It was natural that 
 vulgar words should be uttered from the lips of such men, and also that 
 the parental phrensy of Desdemona's father should find relief in the 
 same strain of vituperative misrepresentation the propensity of a fresh 
 and angry grief to magnify its injury. Such are the authorities which 
 have led to the supposition that Othello was black. In one scene, 
 indeed, he speaks so of himself: but it is when he is in lago's grasp 
 when his disordered spirit has begun to give food to his own suspicions. 
 It is when he is " changing with the poison." The agony of doubt has 
 heaved over the lofty, complacent bearing of his happier moments, and 
 his speaking of himself as black is what is very natural to such con- 
 dition of mind a piece of morbid exaggeration, just as when, in the 
 same scene he describes himself as 
 
 " Declined into the vale of years." 
 
 On every account, it is better to clear the fancy of this false conception 
 of Othello's colour most of all for the sake of our sympathies with 
 the gentle Desdemona ; for if we are brought to believe that this bright, 
 this fair-faced, Venetian lady was wedded to a black, we should almost 
 be tempted to think that the monstrous alliance was fitly blotted out in 
 its fearful catastrophe. 
 
 Shakspeare probably took his hero from the Spanish poetry of the 
 times a Moorish chieftain one of the dark-complexioned guests, who 
 were familiarly welcome in the houses of the Venetian nobles ; and, 
 being cherished for illustrious public services, it was not difficult for the 
 susceptible fancy of a woman to transfigure the shades upon the Moor- 
 ish brow with the glory of the warrior's spirit. Perhaps, too, it was 
 partly the poet's purpose to show the transforming power of the passion 
 of love that magic which shows 
 
 " Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." 
 
 The Moorish complexion of Othello not intended to produce in 
 our minds disgust at Desdemona's choice is made to serve an impor- 
 tant dramatic purpose, in that it greatly ministers to his suspicions of 
 his wife's fidelity. It is the first unprompted argument for doubt the 
 first suggested by Othello's own thoughts, and, of course, quickly 
 seized on and fomented by lago. It serves, too, to account for the 
 
270 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 extreme sensitiveness of Othello's sense of honour that which is a 
 prime element in his character. 
 
 The careless interpretation of this tragedy has usually treated it as 
 Shakspeare's exposition of the passion of jealousy. But, in Othello's 
 composition, there is not an element of jealousy. Shakspeare has 
 depicted jealous men in other of his plays, and nothing can be more 
 different from the Moor. Besides, jealousy is a little, a mean passion 
 something which dwells in small minds, whereas all the passions of 
 Othello are heroic and magnanimous. In his dying words, he was "not 
 easily jealous ;" and, indeed, even after lago has begun to torture his 
 spirit, he, with perfect truth, disclaims the morbid apprehensiveness 
 of jealousy : 
 
 " 'Tis not to make me jealous 
 To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, 
 Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances ; 
 Where virtue is, these are more virtuous : 
 Nor from my own weak merits will I draw 
 The smallest fear, or doubt of her revolt; 
 For she had eyes and chose me." 
 
 Indeed, as if to show how imperturbable Othello is by the impulse of 
 insufficient excitement and irritation, nothing can be more admirable 
 than the unbroken calm he seems to dwell in during the early part of 
 the play the heroic repose of his spirit his majestic self-possession, 
 whether under the reproaches heaped upon him by one who is secure 
 from his resentment, or even in the fresh fervour of his love for Desde- 
 niona. The military duty which interrupts his bridal days, is placidly 
 welcomed with the cheerfulness of a soldier's spirit of self-sacrifice. 
 
 The ship that bears Othello to Cyprus is tossed by a fearful tempest 
 ominous of the mightier tempest which was soon to heave his heart. 
 When, after the brief interruption of the voyage, he is once more 
 welcomed by his wife, his swelling happiness gives itself freer utterance 
 than he had yet indulged in. There is a sense of joy more than befits 
 a mortal's portion, and therefore it is slightly darkened with what 
 Shakspeare often uses a presentiment that it can scarce endure an 
 apprehension sweetly echoed by a faint prayer from the more confiding 
 heart of Desdemona. But the presentiment begins to be fashioned into 
 a threatening reality ; for a fiendlike eye is fastened on their bliss, and 
 the heart is chilled by lago's sneer and his malignant menace : 
 
 " Oh, you are well tuned now ! 
 But I'll set down the pegs that made the music, 
 As honest as I am." 
 
OTHELLO. 271 
 
 The first indication of the stormy elements, which, by heroic discipline, 
 have been taught to slumber in Othello's heart, is when he finds the 
 midnight tranquillity of Cyprus broken by the drunken* brawl which 
 lago had artfully fomented. This wounds Othello's soldiery pride 
 his sense of honour ; and the hidden fires in his Moorish blood flash for 
 the first time in high indignation at the disgraceful breach of discipline. 
 The scene is note of preparation for the more appaling outbreak of the 
 passions of the Moor. 
 
 The way being prepared, lago's work of destruction is accomplished 
 with frightful rapidity ; and probably the most masterly scene in the 
 whole range of dramatic literature is that third scene of the third act, 
 in which, with almost demoniac skill, he annihilates Othello's peace of 
 mind forever. Four or five simple words from lago's lips a slight 
 exclamation, half-suppressed, but meant for Othello's ear and the 
 irretrievable mischief is begun : the poisoned shaft is shot. From that 
 moment the happiness of the Moor is gone. But, throughout this scene, 
 there is nothing of the excitability by inadequate causes, or of the 
 eagerness to snatch at proofs, which are characteristics of jealousy. On 
 the contrary, the efforts of Othello are gigantic against the proofs, but 
 they are forced upon his mind like demonstration : the bitterness of his 
 agony is the unavoidable acquiescence, as, when almost speechlessly, he 
 gives in to the first argument lago plies him with : 
 
 " She did deceive her father by marrying you. 
 Othello. And so she did." 
 
 When lago finds him too much depressed by the first suggestions, he 
 cheers him up with an affected bluntness of honesty and regret, in order 
 that Othello's mind may recover energy enough to move forward to his 
 destruction by its own force impelled by slight impulses. As when 
 the Moor's disturbed thoughts begin to suggest reasons, such as his sense 
 . of the incongruous match, it is instantly seized on by lago 
 
 "Ay ! there's the point;" 
 
 and a hundred-fold aggravated. Othello's mind is now tormented with 
 a morbid activity the restlessness almost of insanity first a regret 
 that he had married, and then the misery of his fierce resolve to cast 
 her off: 
 
 " If I do prove her haggard, 
 
 Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, 
 I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind, 
 To prey at fortune." 
 
272 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 When Desdemona appears, the mere sight of her brings hack for a 
 moment his better nature, and there is a desperate struggle to dismiss 
 all doubt : 
 
 " If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself! 
 I'll not believe it." 
 
 But the effort is a vain one, as lago well knew : 
 
 " The Moor already changes with my poison. 
 Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons, 
 Which, at the first, are scarce found to distaste ; 
 But, with a little act upon the blood, 
 Bum like the mines of sulphur. 
 
 Not poppy nor mandragora, 
 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
 Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou ow'dst yesterday." 
 
 The Moor's doubts have wrought him into a phrensy, and his thoughts, 
 thus strongly impelled, go back to the glory of his martial life, and he 
 feels that it must be obscured by his conjugal indignity. His soldier's spirit 
 sinks within him, and this new sorrow speaks in that plaintive lament, 
 which is heard like the sighing of the wind when its last low sounds are 
 telling of a coming storm: 
 
 0, now, forever 
 
 Farewell, the tranquil mind ! farewell, content ! 
 Farewell, the plumed troop, and the big wars, 
 That make ambition virtue ! 0, farewell ! 
 Farewell, the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
 The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, 
 The royal banner: and all quality, 
 Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ! 
 And, O, you mortal engines, whose rude throats 
 The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, 
 Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone !" 
 
 The fiendish lago, knowing his power, pours the poison into Othello's 
 heart with a bolder hand ; and then comes the meditation of revenge 
 the Moor's outraged honour crying aloud for vengeance. The con- 
 tending emotions which make this agony are unconquered love and a 
 new-born hate. When the tempter, with hideous hypocrisy, counsels 
 patience 
 
 " Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea, 
 
 Whose icy current and compulsive course 
 
 Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 
 To the Propontic and the Hellespont ; 
 
OTHELLO. 273 
 
 Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, 
 Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love, 
 Till that a capable and wide revenge 
 Swallow them up." 
 
 His desperation is wrought by the collision of two sovereign passions. 
 He struggles to hate, and yet loves as deeply to the very last. He boasts 
 that his heart is turned to stone, and, at the same time, great streams 
 of love come gushing from it. His suffering sense of honour, too, 
 increases the misery. The conflict of the passions becomes even more 
 tragic in the subsequent interview with the innocent one. Othello's 
 stern heroism breaks into tears, and his bewildered wife seeks to soothe 
 him in the tenderest strain of remonstrance: 
 
 " Alas ! the heavy day! why do you weep ? 
 Am I the motive of these tears, my lord ? 
 If haply you my father do suspect 
 An instrument of this your calling back, 
 Lay not the blame on me ; if you have lost him, 
 I have lost him too." 
 
 This calls forth, in a kind of self-communion rather than direct reply, 
 the fullest expression of the anguish that was breaking Othello's heart 
 a sense of heroic honour fatally wounded, and a deep love blasted by 
 the conviction of impurity : 
 
 " Had it pleased heaven 
 To try me with affliction ; had it rain'd 
 All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head ; 
 Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips ; 
 Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes ; 
 I should have found in some place of my soul 
 A drop of patience : but, alas ! to make me 
 The fixed figure for the time of scorn 
 To point his slow and moving finger at, 
 Yet could I bear that too ; well, very well ; 
 But there where I have garner'd up my heart ; 
 "Where either I must live, or bear no life ; 
 The fountain from the which my current runs, 
 Or else dried up ; to be discarded thence ! 
 Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads 
 To knot and gender in ! 
 
 * * * * 
 
 O, thou weed, 
 
 Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet, 
 That the sense aches at thee, would thou had'st ne'er been born !" 
 
 T 
 
274? TEAGIC POETRY. 
 
 A splendid contrast begins now to be dimly developed between the 
 character of Othello and Desdemona. He has surrendered his generous 
 and confiding spirit to the craft of a subtle intellect; he has suffered 
 himself to be betrayed out of the moral region of faith into the cold 
 atmosphere of doubts and questionings and proofs. The sustaining 
 principle of his nature has perished; for it is against his nature that con- 
 victions have overwhelmed him. But Desdemona, trusting to her own 
 pure impulses, still clings to her faith; and by virtue of it alone, in 
 opposition to all that her senses and her understanding show her, she is 
 wise as well as innocent. She will not believe even what she sees, but, 
 with the most irresistible tenderness of conscious purity, invents excuses 
 for her husband's violence : 
 
 " Something, sure, of state, 
 Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice 
 Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him, 
 Kath puddled his clear spirit ; and in such cases, 
 Men's nature wrangle with inferior things, 
 . Though great ones are their object." 
 
 She scarcely doubts her husband's righteousness, and only questions her I 
 own behaviour. The only complaint she utters is in no higher tone | 
 
 than this : 
 
 " Those that do teach young babes, 
 Do it with gentle means and easy tasks ; 
 He might have chid me so, for in good faith, 
 I am a child to chiding." 
 
 She seems to have no fear that, come what may, 
 
 " Though he do shake me off 
 To beggarly divorcement," 
 
 her love can be weakened : 
 
 " Unkindness may do much, 
 And his unkindness may defeat my life, 
 But never taint my love." 
 
 Tago has seen Othello wrought "up to the highest pitch of phrensy : 
 wildly crying for blood ; but this, he knows, will not answer his devilish ! 
 purposes. It is necessary yet to work him into the calm resolve of 
 deliberate vengeance the firmness of a judicial avenger; and the skill 
 with which this is accomplished is fearful to contemplate to see how 
 he makes Desdemona's attractions, and even virtues, plead against her. 
 When the lingering affection of the Moor still betrays itself, lago tells 
 
 him 
 
 " 3$ay you must forget that." 
 
OTHELLO. 275 
 
 And when, against his darker will, he goes on recounting her graces, 
 he is boldly told 
 
 " She's the worse for all this ;" 
 
 and Othello, as if reproaching himself for a momentary tenderness, 
 wildly assents 
 
 " 0, a thousand, a thousand times !" 
 
 The feeling cannot be shaken away 
 
 " And then of so gentle a condition." 
 This, too, is perverted into proof of guilt : 
 "Ay, too gentle." 
 
 The profound emotion with which assent is wrung from the helpless 
 Moor is, perhaps, the finest touch of pathos in the tragedy : 
 
 " Nay, that's certain : 
 But yet the pity of it, lago ! 
 0, lago, the pity of it, lago !" 
 
 The tumultuous passions which have agitated the agonized Othello 
 almost subside into a sense of justice the awful sternness of composure 
 with which he is about to render up an expiation for his injured 
 honour. 
 
 The only being whose spotless purity endures is the injured 
 Desdemona. The violent elements rage around her without spoiling 
 her innocence. She shrinks even from the sound of the coarse words 
 that wound her ear, and it is inimitably touching when she appeals to 
 lago himself : 
 
 " Am I that name, lago ? 
 
 lago. What name, fair lady ? 
 
 Des. Such as she says my lord did say I was." 
 
 Desdemona is preserved innocent, for she is a sacrifice a victim with- 
 out blemish meek and unresisting. It is as such that Othello ap- 
 proaches her to execute her doom : 
 
 " It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul, 
 Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars ! 
 It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood : 
 Nor scar that whiter skin of her's than snow, 
 And smooth as a monumental alabaster." 
 Yet she must die.'' 
 
 The fierce Moor is again all tenderness, even in his dire determination. 
 
276 TKAGIC POETRY. 
 
 Weeping over Desdemona his sleeping, unconscious wife, he is im- 
 pressed with a sacrificial solemnity : 
 
 " I must weep, 
 
 But they are cruel tears ; This sorrow's heavenly ; 
 It strikes where it doth love." 
 
 The plot which, by the simplest means, had been entangled so | 
 intricately, is unwoven by means as simple. The fall of a handkerchief 
 had been all the machinery that handkerchief of which Othello, | 
 terrifying the imagination of his wife, toid her 
 
 I 
 
 " There's magic in the web of it : 
 A sibyl, that had number'd in the world 
 The sun to course two hundred compasses, 
 In her prophetic fury sew'd the work : 
 The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk, 
 And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful 
 Conserved of maidens' hearts," 
 
 that handkerchief, the thought of which, in Cassio's hands, recalled by | 
 lago, struck the last hope from Othello's heart : 
 
 " Oh, it comes o'er my memory, 
 As doth the raven o'er the infected house, 
 Boding to all." 
 
 And now the whole truth is revealed to the misguided Othello, by the 
 few words of Emilia: 
 
 " thou dull Moor! that handkerchief thou speak'st of, 
 I found by fortune, and did give my husband." 
 
 The sense of misery and the sense of justice bid Othello most willingly 
 make his own life forfeit to the same hand which had destroyed the 
 innocent one. There only remains a little faint questioning of lago, 
 "why he hath thus ensnared both soul and body" a little excusing^ 
 of himself 
 
 " For naught I did in hate, but all in honour," 
 
 a little heart-broken pleading for his memory his soldier's memory for! 
 services done to the state, but yet more for his conjugal memory to 
 be spoken of as 
 
 "One that loved not wisely, but too well : 
 
 Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, 
 
 Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, 
 
 Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away 
 
OTHELLO. 277 
 
 Richer than alibis tribe; of one, whose subdued eyes, 
 Albeit unused to the melting mood, 
 Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 
 Their medicinal gum." 
 
 This sad tragedy was never meant to give an admonition so superficial 
 as to warn against the evil of jealousy. The moral of Shakspeare's 
 dramas always lies deeper, because they are works of pure imagination 
 the noblest faculty of the human mind. There may be discovered 
 in this tragedy the loftiest moral that poetry ever shadowed forth 
 the victory of faith. When Othello was tempted to cast his faith from 
 out his heart, his whole nature was given over to misery and despera- 
 tion and guilt he lost the inward spiritual principle which was the 
 very life of his moral being. But Desdemona clung to her faith, and 
 it kept her heart in its perfect integrity and innocence even through 
 all her sorrows and to the last moment of consciousness on her fearful 
 death-bed. Comparatively, she was happy ; for the chief sufferer was 
 the faith-bewildered Othello. 
 
 This course of lectures, through which you have so kindly followed 
 me, has comprehended only the subject of tragic poetry ; and, although 
 King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello, afford illustrations as varied 
 as need be desired, yet they have been no more than varieties of terror 
 and pity and sorrow ; and, dwelling thus upon sad emotions alone, I 
 have not been without a fear that you might be craving some relief in 
 having your thoughts so exclusively directed to the dismal side of 
 humanity. Indeed, it would inspire a happy feeling, and finely would 
 it show the universality of the poet's genius, if we could have suddenly 
 turned our attention to the bright side of that world which Shakspeare 
 has created; to delve in the inexhaustible mine of Falstaff's wit, and 
 find the genuine ore of his joyous philosophy and humour ; to speed in 
 fancy into the fairy realm of Ariel and Oberon, or to follow the light- 
 hearted Rosalind through the sunny shady glades of the forest of Arden. 
 But the scope of my course was necessarily confined to " poetry in its 
 deepest earnest," and to trace the moral which tragedy imaginatively 
 teaches 
 
 " That there is often found 
 
 In mournful thoughts, and always might be found, 
 A power to virtue friendly ;" 
 
 those mournful thoughts not to be spent in luxurious, sentimental 
 
278 TRAGIC POETRY. 
 
 dreaminess, but to be taken up into our actions ; for, let me say, there 
 is no more insidious temptation than the self-delusion of sentimentality ; 
 it is not only worthless as a principle of action, but it may co-exist with 
 a deplorable hardening of the heart. 
 
 I have followed the moral teachings of a poet in those tragedies, 
 which serve to show the salutary influences of sorrow ; and the lessons 
 of history give further confirmation. For what does history tell of half 
 so much as of suffering ? If science teaches that this earth of ours is a 
 glittering planet, the records of history as surely teach, that it rolls on 
 stained with blood and with tears. So has it ever been, and the pages 
 of history which impress us most deeply are its tragedies. In all the 
 annals of the ancient dynasty of Egypt, what is there like that tragic 
 midnight momenta when all the first-born in the land were smitten 
 " from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first- 
 born of the captive that was in the dungeon ?" The chronicles of 
 Babylon have perished, and we bear in mind only that tragic hour, when 
 there came forth the fingers of a man, and wrote upon the palace wall 
 the prophecy of an empire's doom. Turn to classic story, and what 
 rises up to the memory more readily than the sacrifice in the tragic pass 
 of Thermopylae ? Come to the annals of our fatherland, and where have 
 they a deeper interest, than when the career of King Charles him who 
 had been the companion of the loose and profligate Villiers him who 
 had broken the covenant of the constitution turned into tragedy, when 
 gloom was gathering over his fortunes, from the day on which the royal 
 standard was raised at Nottingham only to be ominously cast down in 
 a stormy and unruly night, until at length he made a bloody atonement 
 on the scaffold ; and, as his corpse was borne to an unnoted grave, with 
 no other funeral rite than silent loyalty, snow fell drearily but purely 
 upon the black pall that covered his coffin ? 
 
 Thus it is that history, as well as poetry, shows what has been finely 
 called "the power and divinity of suffering." There is a moral interest 
 in spots sacred to sorrow which grandeur cannot boast of; and a 
 thoughtful traveller has thus expressed the feeling on visiting the palace 
 of the doges at Venice : " It is a strange building, with its multitudinous 
 little marble columns and grotesque windows, and the Giant Staircase 
 all glorious of the purest Carrara marble, carved and chiselled into 
 ornaments of the most beautiful minuteness. A splendid palace indeed 
 it is : yet, while my eye wandered in a few minutes over the gorgeous 
 part of the structure, it was long riveted with undiminished interest upon 
 the little round holes close to the level of the sullen canal beneath the 
 Bridge of Sighs: holes which marked the dungeons beneath the level of 
 
OTHELLO. 279 
 
 the canal, where for years, the victims of that wicked merchant republic 
 were confined. ********** 
 
 "And why is it that suffering should have a spell to fix the eye above 
 the power of beauty or of greatness? Is it because the cross is areligon 
 of suffering a faith of suffering a privilege of suffering a perfection 
 arrived at by and through suffering only? Half an hour was enough 
 for the Ducal Palace. I could gaze for hours upon those dungeon-holes, 
 gaze and read there, as in an exhaustless volume, histories on histories 
 of silent, weary suffering, as it filed the soft heart of man away, 
 attenuated his reason into a dull instinct, or cracked the stout heart as 
 you would shiver a flint. ******** 
 
 " There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face, but 
 a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous 
 syllables of the one, and stoop not to decipher the spotted and worn 
 inscription of the other, get the least half of the lesson earth has to 
 give." 
 
 To these reflections, let me add what a poet has written to teach 
 that in this mortal life, we have before us not only the duty of action, 
 but the more neglected, yet inevitable, duty of suffering: 
 
 " Great actions move our admiration, chiefly 
 Because they carry in themselves an earnest 
 That we can suffer greatly. 
 Action is transitory a step, a blow, 
 The motion of a muscle this way or that 
 'Tis done, and in the after vacancy 
 We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed : 
 Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark, 
 And has the nature of infinity. 
 Yet through the darkness (infinite though it seem, 
 And irremovable) gracious openings lie, 
 By which the soul with patient steps of thought, 
 Now toiling, wafted now on wings of prayer, 
 May pass in hope ; and, though from mortal bonds 
 Yet undeliver'd, rise with sure ascent 
 Even to the fountain-head of peace divine.'" 
 
 I have, I fear, consumed more than an appropriate portion of your 
 time, and it would, therefore, be ungracious to encroach on it longer; 
 but it would be yet more ungracious not to take one moment more, to 
 say how much I have felt the attention which has been given so kindly 
 to my subject. 
 
 BRADSHAW AND BLACKLOCK, PK1STERS, MANCHESTER. 
 
VB I 1396" 
 
 847837 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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