ecessary for the occasion; perhaps it will be deemed ent answer, that the spirit of such a war could scarce atically conveyed without the presence of a fury, the Furies have always been represented as females. add a few words touching the reason which seems justified the Poet in carrying on the part of Marcainst the literal truth of history, into the scenes of chard the Third.

it is considerable that in the earlier plays Richard several years older than he really was. Old enough, he was in fact, to have the spirit of the times thorransfused into his character. There can be no doubt pungent seasoning sprinkled in here and there from heart and busy brain of the precocious Richard is a addition to those plays in an artistic point of view. e was, I think, good cause in the substantial truth s why Richard should be there just as he is. In moral history, it was but right to forecast the style cter which the proceedings then on foot were likely ate and hand down to after-times. And as in the lays Richard supplies such a forecast, so in the later garet supplies a corresponding retrospect. She was d on the scene, to the end, apparently, that the parht have a terrible present remembrancer of their eeds; just as the manhood of Richard had been ed for the purpose, as would seem, of forecasting the es from the earlier stages of that multitudinous tragthat there appears to be some reason in the ways Hence, as well as in the laws of Art, why Margaret till be kept in presence, as the fitting counterpart errible man,—so merry-hearted, subtle-witted, and

anded whose mental officecx tuma navi......

hat is worse, if aught worse there be, to poetry,- as ws on from youth to manhood, and from manhood to ad, at once the offspring and the avenger of civil ry.

or the part which Margaret takes in the scenes of King d the Third, I have but little to add respecting it. ondition is vastly different indeed from what it was in rlier plays, but her character remains the same. She stripped of arms and instruments, so that her thoughts longer work out in acts. But, for this very cause, her nian energies concentrate themselves so much the n her speech; and her eloquence, while retaining all ngth and fluency, burns the deeper, forasmuch as it is y organ of her mind that she has left. In brief, she the same high-grown, wide-branching tree, now renleafless indeed, and therefore all the fitter for the of heaven to howl and whistle through! Long suffers deepened her fierceness into sublimity. At once ive and broken-hearted, her part runs into a most sive blending of the terrible and the pathetic. Waln his Historic Doubts, remarks that in this play the seems to deduce the woes of the House of York from ses which Queen Margaret had vented against them." it not as well be said that her woes are deduced from se formerly laid upon her by the Duke of York? I

ceive no deduction in either case: each seems but

racters in this play probably little need be und Buckingham neither get nor deserve They have done all they could to nurse iman tiger that finally hunts them to death. eping in the wickedness of the times, and icipation, either by act or by sympathy in rs, mark them out as worthy victims when, better than he is actuated by, they undercourse which they have themselves exulted ll of hell-fire pursue.

the hero rightly from the first, penetrates -, and then adroitly fathers the results of on some current superstition of omens or sharing in any of Richard's crimes or s at all with blood, he turns Richard's im, and fairly beats him at his own game. → Richmond naturally marks him out for -casts this from afar, and with a kind of shapes his course that he can easily parry the suspicion when it comes. With clean mbles them as completely as Richard does e is in secret correspondence with Rich

he is pres

of honest And his shown in dearest in

try from t for the n believe, i liberty.

The pa

York, and

as to dive monotony riding. 1 such cons rending s

ness thus and breat Lady A flatteries

sore burde

plicity, which is art indeed. He counsels is flight to Richmond, and gives him letstraight to Richard, and tells him Dorset lso the first to inform Richard that "Richas," and that "he makes for England, here vn." By this timely speaking of what is would naturally be least expected to dis

passage for the full-grown deceit which ced to use. But he justly holds it a work eive such an arch-deceiver in such a cause. m and rectitude of purpose are amply when the crisis comes, he stakes what is ld to him, for the deliverance of his counering tyrant. This was a good beginning illustrious House of Stanley, which has, I ges since stood true alike to loyalty and

Lady Anne, of Elizabeth, the Duchess of young Princes, are skilfully managed so relieve what would else be a prolonged ocious wickedness and intellectual circusievè, for the change from the society of hypocrisies and villainies to that of hearta relief: nay, it is almost a positive happie now and then from the doers of wrong, e with the sufferers of wrong.

to be all too soft to stand against the crafty mentor into whose hand she has given

seems

or bird entangled in a snare,

art still flutters, though her wings forbear useless struggle.

udent, motherly, and pitiful, withal by no strength and spirit. Stanley, Margaret, excepted, she is the only person in the correctly the hero's character. From the indred at Pomfret, her instinctive feminine once the whole scheme of what is coming, e utter ruin of her House. But she is so ith intriguing arts, and, what is still worse, friendly assurances of minds less penetrat_t all her defences prove of no avail in the was both wise and kind in the Poet to ce as so untuned to the language of ime has to call on one so eloquent in curses her cursing for her. In the scene where o persistently for her daughter's hand, it g uncertain whether she is really beguiled wizard rhetoric, or whether she only tems a reluctant acquiescence, and so at last Most critics, I believe, have taken the I am far from seeing it so: for her daugh■ly pledged to Richmond already, and she secret of the plot for seating him on the ze it as an instance of that profound yet ost unconscious guile which women

are

proves a craft. The tv

delineatio

speeches, quisitive, whether t

tact, veili younger i keen chil and quite intelligenc ital foil to Richard.