in any of the Essays on the Learning of Shakespear. in Nothing can be better managed than the caution which the king gives the meddling Archbishop, not to advise himself rashly to engage the war with France, his scrupulous dread of the consequences of that advice, and his eager desire to hear and follow it. "And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, For never two such kingdoms did contend Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops Are every one a woe, a sore complaint 'Gainst him, whose wrong gives edge unto the swords For we will hear, note, and believe in heart, That what you speak, is in your conscience wash'd, Another characteristic instance of the blindness of human nature to every thing but its own interests is the complaint made by the king of" the ill neighbourhood" of the Scot in attacking England when she was attacking France. "For once the eagle England being in prey, To her unguarded nest the weazel Scot Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs." It is worth observing that in all these plays, which give an admirable picture of the spirit of the good old times, the moral inference does not at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but on the dignity or meanness of the persons committing them. "The eagle England" has a right "to be in prey," but "the weazel Scot" has none "to come sneaking to her nest," which she has left to pounce upon others. Might was rihgt, without equivocation or disguise, in that heroic and chivalrous age. The substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among the refinements and abuses of modern philosophy. A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of subordination in a commonwealth can hardly be conceived than the following: "For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congruing in a full and natural close, Therefore heaven doth divide Р Obedience: for so work the honey bees; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing mason building roofs of gold, Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town ; As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea; As many lines close in the dial's centre; So may a thousand actions, once a-foot, End in one purpose, and be all well borne HENRY V. is but one of Shakespear's secondrate plays. Yet by quoting passages, like this, from his second-rate plays alone, we might make a volume "rich with his praise," "As is the oozy bottom of the sea With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries." Of this sort are the king's remonstrance to Scroop, Grey, and Cambridge, on the detection of their treason, his address to the soldiers at the siege of Harfleur, and the still finer one before the battle of Agincourt, the description of the night before the battle, and the reflections on ceremony put into the mouth of the king. "O hard condition; twin-born with greatness, Subjected to the breath of every fool, Whose sense no more can feel but his own wringing! And what art thou, thou idol ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more What is thy soul, O adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Wherein thou art less happy, being feared, Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Think'st thou, the fiery fever will go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Can'st thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream, That play'st so subtly with a king's repose, I am a king, that find thee: and I know, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, The slave, a member of the country's peace, Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots, What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Most of these passages are well known: there is one, which we do not remember to have seen noticed, and yet it is no whit inferior to the rest in heroic beauty. It is the account of the deaths of York and Suffolk. "Exeter. The duke of York commends him to your majesty. |