LECTURES
ON
ENGLISH HISTORY
AND
TRAGIC POETRY,
AS ILLUSTRATED BY SHAKSPEARE.
BYk
HENRY REED,
LATE PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Dramatict est eluti Historia speotabilia, nam constituit imaginem rerum tanquam presentium: Historia,
autem, tanquam prmteritarum."-Bacon, de Au/gm. &. lib. i ch. xiii.
PHILADELPHIA:
PARRY & MCM I L LAN,
SUCCESSORS TO A. HART, xLiA CAREY & H4T.
1856.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
WILLIAM  B. IiEED,
in the Clerk's Office of the l)istrict.l~,urr  of thle United States Ibr the Eastern
Iistrict o''enmlsylvanaia.
STEREOTYPELD 13Y L. JOhNSON AND CO.
PHILADELPHIIA.
Printed i y  T. X. L, P. C. Coiils.




INTRODUCTION.
THE success of the first series of Mr. Reed's Lectures on
English Literature, has tempted me to a new experiment on
the kindness of the public. This volume comprises two
courses on kindred subjects-one delivered in 1846, on the
Historical Plays of Shakspeare-from the dim legendary period, when scarcely the form of history is maintained, down
to the edge of the poet's own day and generation, the reign
of Henry the Eighth-the other, a very brief one on Tragic
Poetry, in 1842.  The first course was prepared for the
smaller class of the College Chapel; and the second, which
was by comparison very highly elaborated, for a more popular audience. With this latter course Mr. Reed took great
pains, and had reason to be content with the result; for
they were listened to with delight by a most intelligent
audience, and added much to his local reputation. Both
will, I am sure, be read with great pleasure, though of them,
as of all these posthumous works, it is but fair to say that
they are in want of the critical revision which the author
alone could have given, and must be read, not as carefullywritten essays, but as spoken discourses intended more for
the ear than the eye. Practically, there s good reason in
3




4                  INTRODUCTION.
Sydney Smith's distinction, if not as to the greater care
necessary, at least as to the greater care usually taken in
what is written to be read than in what is written to be
spoken. Mr. Reed wrote, not carelessly, but very rapidly.
In one of his private letters (to many of which, by-the-by, I
have referred in the notes to this volume) he thus describes
not only his mode of composition, with its attendant embarrassments, but the feeling almost of enthusiasm which his
theme often excited:-" Since you were here," he writes, "a
very busy man have I been-perpetually haunted by the
writing of one lecture a week, and usually not being able to
finish it till about an hour before it was wanted. This has
been a severity on one who likes to compose with a leisurely
thoughtfulness. I have just got through the Shakspeare
part of my course, with a lecture on Hamlet yesterday evening. I could scarcely have conceived how much my reverential admiration —wonder at the genius of the myriad-minded
one-has deepened by this kind of study of his dramas-'in the lowest deep, a lower deep.' John Milton is before
me in awful majesty for Monday next."
Thus he wrote and felt when poetical study occupied his
mind; and, though this letter does not refer to these courses
of lectures, but to one other more extended on the British
Poets, which I yet hope to give to the public, I have quoted
it in some measure to account for slight inaccuracies-the
fruit of haste, and also as a revelation of the earnest and
thoughtful spirit that influenced him throughout. His was
-he heart of a most devout poetical student.
Of the first course of lectures on English History as illustrated by Shlakspeare, I need only say, in addition to the




INTRODUCTION                      5
explanations of the Introductory Lecture, that this mode of
historical writing is entirely new. With the exception of
some fugitive essays in English magazines-the object of
which was to show how wrong Shakspeare was-I am aware
of nothing of the kind in the language. How the idea of
using Shakspeare's plays, in Lord Bacon's phrase, as "Historia spectabilis," is developed, the indulgent reader must
determine, bearing in mind throughout, that the drama is
not used merely as a mode of. illustrating historical records
or lightening their gravity, not as a means of entertainment
and relief, but as an instrument of deep philosophy in combining two great departments of human thought and knowledge too often dissociated. "I seek," to use Mr. Reed's
words, "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 precious power of its own for the preservation of
historical truth; that it can so revivify the past —can put
such life into it, as to make it imperishable." The attempt
is now before the reading public.
In editing this volume I have added a few notes, and
in them have, in several instances, availed myself of my
brother's private correspondence.  It is of so interesting a nature-so varied, and, as with every thing he
wrote, so characteristic, and transparent to his pure tastes
and gentle nature, that I am inclined to promise, at no very
distant day, a memoir of his life and correspondence. I
speak doubtfully; for, though among his family and intimate friends every hour of desolate separation, with its sad
thoughts and memories, is less tolerable, (and I write these




6                  INTRODUCTION.
words at the distance of more than a year from the day of
the sacrifice of the Arctic,) such a step must very much depend on the favour with which these volumes are received
by the public.
Down to this point of time, as I have said, the publication
of Mr. Reed's works has been eminently successful; the
Lectures on English Literature having passed through several editions-three in this country, and at least one in a
cheap form in Great Britain. Rarely has an unheralded
book been more kindly received both at home and abroad.
I have not seen the English edition, which I understand to
be in the form of what is known as "Railway reading." It
has, of course, been printed without regard to the American
copyright, affording in a small but very striking way (for
here, those who are wronged are the widow and orphan)
an illustration of the discreditable condition of the law between the two countries, the responsibility for which, I am
sorry to say, rests on my own countrymen. I am the more
free to express this opinion, recollecting, as I do most distinctly, how strong were my brother's feelings-how  intensely he felt, as a matter of American self-reproach,
the want or the denial of international copyright.
In preparing this volume for the press, I am glad to make
my acknowledgements for great assistance rendered to me
by Professor George Allen —one of my brother's colleagues
at the University of Pennsylvania.          W. B. R.
OCTOBER 9, 1855.




CONTENTS.
LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY.
LECTURE I.-INTRODUCTORY.
ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY.
Shakspeare's Chronicle-Plays-Legendary history: King LearRoman and Saxon: Cymbeline and Macbeth-Nature of the
subject generally-Imaginative history defined-Not historical
romance-Power of Imagination in historical painting-Archbishop Whateley's analysis-Lord Bacon's idea of dramatic
poetry-Milton's Vision of Greece, in Paradise RegainedSense of reality-Famines as described in history and poetry
-Genoa in 1799-Ghent in the fourteenth century-Philip
Van Artavelde-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 Bible-The reputed philosophy of history-Lingard and Hume-Arnold-Tragic poetry
-Sir Walter Scott-Funerals actual and picturesque-Hogarth-Hume's accidental theory-Outline of Shakspeare's
histories-Novelty of the subject of this lecture.............. Page  13
7




8                         CONTENTS.
LECTURE II.
THE LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN: KING LEAR.
Legendary period prior to the Roman invasion-Julius Coesar
-Malone's comment-Fabulous antiquity of British kingsBrutus 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 EnglandFaith 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 legendsPopular faith in legends-Identified with reverence for ancestry-Sir Robert Walpole's false idea of history-NiebuhrModern colonies —King Lear a dramatic legend-Filial relation-Illustrations appropriate to paganism-Lear's invocation
of heathen gods-Charles Lamb's criticism on Lear........ Page  46
LECTURE III.
THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS: CYMBELINE AND MACBETH.
Legendary history continued-Artegal and Elidure-The Northern and Southern nations-Geographical divisions of Europe
-Attempts of invasion frustrated-Rome sacked by the Gauls
-Greece invaded and rescued-Defeat of Varus in the forest
of Teutoburg-The memory of Arminius-Hermann-IIis 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-Cymbeline a
British king-Imogen-Roman remains in Britain-Sir Walter
Scott and Ritson-Diocletian's persecution-Arthur and Merlin-EthelredI-Paulinus-Alfred-Coleridge's estimate of his
character-Difficulty of discussing historical questions-Polemics-Dunstan, an illustration-Sir Roger de CoverleySaint Dunstan-Want of a poetic view of his character-The
Danes-Canute the Great-Ballads-Edward the ConfessorTouching for the "king's evil"-Reference in Macbeth-The
palace and the tombs of English kings................................  78




CONTENTS.                           9
LECTURE IV.
THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.
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 of Hlarold-Effect of the conquest on the
conquerors-Their despotism-The Royal Forest lands-The
Curfew-Death of William the Norman-Tyranny of his successors-Marriage of Henry the First to -a Saxon princessThe Plantagenets-Richard Coeur-de-Lion-Romance of Ivanhoe-Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury-King John, the first
of the " Chronicle-Plays"-Imaginative  power developedJohn, a usurper-Shakspeare's view of his character-" England" the great idea of the play-Falconbridge its exponent
-His character-Shakspeare's power "in minimis"-James
Gurney's four words-France and Austria —Constance and
Arthur-His death-Pandulph-Struggle with the PapacyInnocent the Third-Stephen Langton-The interdict-Struggle with the barons-The Great Charter-Shakspeare's English loyalty..............................................................Page 115
LECTURE V.
THE REIGN OF ItICHARD TIIE SECOND.
Henry the Third and the Edwards passed over by Shakspeare
-De Montfort's Rebellion-Growth of the Constitution-The
Commons-Extent of parliamentary government-Our republican institutions-The highway of nations-The Plantagenet
kings-Edward the Third and the Black Prince-ChaucerWar 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 misfor



10                       CONTENTS.
tunes elevate him-Bolingbroke's return-Divine right of
kings-Richard's deposition, imprisonment, and death..... Page 147
LECTURE VI.
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTH.
Henry the Fourth's accession to the throne an usurpation-Character of the king-Error of historical reasoning-Carlyle on
Cromwell —Ienry's education and exile-Analogy to Macbeth
-His popularity-Counsel to his son-His visit to foreign
lands-Palestine-Castile-His return-Severe policy after his
coronation-The Bishop of Carlisle-Shakspeare's "ChroniclePlays" 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
IIoly Land-Intercession of the Greek emperor for English aid
-Visit of Paleologus 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........................................................ 181
LECTURE VII.
THE CHARACTER AND REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH.
Sorrowful but vigorous reign of the fourth Henry-His successor
Shakspeare's favourite-His reign of conquest-His career as
Prince of Wales-Not profligate but popular-A prince and a
gentleman-His 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-His associates of early life-The character
of Falstaff considered-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-Sir Thomas Erpingham-Death of York and Suffolk
- -The tragedy  a triumphal song........................................ 213




CONTENTS.                         11
LECTURE VIII.
THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH.
The treaty of Troyes-Its details-The last hours of Henry the
Fifth-His intended crusade-Hume's comments-Henry the
Sixth an infant-His reign and these "Chronicle-Plays" unpromising subjects-Genuineness of the plays-The Minority
-The French wars-State of France-The Regent BedfordThe 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 Rheims-Exemption of Domremy-Capture of the
Maid-Her trial and examination-Her martyrdom-Cardinal
Beaufort and the Bishop of Beauvais-The cardinal's deathStatue of the Maid at Versailles-Death of the Duke of Bedford
-His monument-Magnanimity of Louis the Eleventh....Page 245
LECTURE IX.
THE WARS OF THE ROSES.
Closing scenes of the Plantagenet dynasty-Want of interest in
the War of the Roses-The question of genealogy-No actuating principle in the contest-Its obscurity-A series of bloody
battles-Saintly character of the king-His solitary sadnessLoss of the French conquests-The Duke of Suffolk-Popular
tumult-Jack Cade-The Temple Garden-Richard of York
and Somerset-The battle of St. Albans-The Earl of Warwick, the king-maker-Henry's captivity-The ParliamentMargaret of Anjou-Her character-King Ren6-Injustice of
English writers to her memory-The battle of WakefieldTwo crowned Kings of England-The slaughter at TowtonTewksbury-The queen-Sir Walter Scott's tribute to herPolitical effects of the civil war-Death struggle of the military
power of the nobles-The last of the barons-Clifford-No feud
among the people or vassals-The separation of the church
from the conflict-Education-The foundation of Eton............ 278




12                          CONTENTS.
LECTUBE X.
RICHARD THE THIRD-HENRY THE EIGHTH.
The character of Edward the Fourth-His 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 PlantagenetsThe 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 deathThe approaching Reformation-Henry's character the worst in
history-His death-Conclusion.................................. Page 309
LECTURES ON TRAGIC POETRY.
LECTURE I.
KING   LEAR.....................................................................  345
LECTURE II.
MACBETH........................................................................  375
LECTURE III.
HAMLET...........................................................................   406
LECTURE IV.
OTIELLO........4.....3.........7............................ 437




LECTURES
ON
ENGLISH HISTORY.
LECTURE I.-INTRODUCTORY.*
@a  {be i tubt  of  )istar1.
Shakspeare's Chronicle-Plays-Legendary history: King Lear-Roman and Saxon: Cymbeline and Macbeth-Nature of the subject
generally-Imaginative history defined-Not historical romancePower of Imagination in historical painting-Archbishop Whateley's
analysis-Lord Bacon's idea of dramatic poetry-Milton'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 Artavelde-Archdeacon HareRemote 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 Bible-The reputed
philosophy of history-Lingard and Hume-Arnold-Tragic poetry
-Sir Walter Scott-Funerals actual and picturesque-HogarthHume's accidental theory-Outline of Shakspeare's historiesNovelty 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.
* Delivered in the College Hall of the University of Pennsylvania,
December 8th, 1846.
13




14                LECTURE FIRST.
The subject of these lectures is that portion of modern
history which is illustrated by Shalspeare'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
mediseval, 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-broken, indeed, by
some considerable intervals of time. I will endeavour in
the lectures partially 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 departments 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 precious 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 it
imperishable. I have it greatly at heart to carry this
deep conviction of mine into your minds, and hope to be




ON THE STUDY OF IS'T'ORY.              15
able to show, if not by argument 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 ffirther 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 distinguished 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 traditionswhether it be annalist, or chronicler, or biographer, or
historian. I allude to these various functions, not in the
way of comparison, 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 "Imagination," I mean not such a faculty
of the mind as gives birth to the common works of




16                   LECTURE FIRST.
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."** This illustration was, no doubt, suggested by a letter from Charles
Lamb to Southey, 6th May, 1815. He says, referring to "Roderic,"
where these lines occur-"It struck me forcibly that the feeling of
these lines might have been suggested to you by the cartoon of Paul
at Athens." Final Memorials, vol. iv. p. 215. W. B. R.




ON TIIE STUDY OF IIISTO1.Y.            17
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 Montfort 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 which much stress may be laid, because it comes from
a writer remarkable 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 his* Sir Francis Palgrave.
2




18                 LECTURE FIRST.
tory, 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 consider 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




ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY.                 19
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.
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 were
present."t  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 tho 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 thinkihg 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
X- Whateley's Elements of Rhetoric, p. 176.
t "IDramatica est veluti Ilistoria spectabilis: nam constituit imaginem rerumn tanquam presentium: Ilistoria, autem, tanauam proeteritarum." De Augin. Sc. lib. ii. ch. xiii.




20                LECTURE FI.RST.
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 Vallambrosa, and amid the
ruins 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 of adversity, he speeded homeward. Greece
was never seen by Milton —I mean by those bodily eyes,
which afterward 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
AEgean 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




ON'rlIE STUDY OF IIISTOIRY.             21
Greece, he lingered upon IHymettus; and, gazing over
the country around Athens, he said:-I"I cannot leave
the spot-the scene now present to my eyes-without
repeating the description given by one who was no eyewitness 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
- Quoted in substance from "Greece, Pictorial, Descriptive, and
Historical, by Christopher Wordsworth, DD., p. 31." Milton's words
as he turned from this glorious promise were-" Turpe enim existimabam, dum mei cives de libertate dimicarent, me, animi causa, otiose
peregrinari." W. B. R.




22                LECTURE FIRST.
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 childrenperished 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, who were starving, would have broken them open.
I't was melancholy to hear these poor people (for men,
women, and children of good substance were in this
Wordsworth's Musings near Aquapendente. Works, p. 319.




ON TIlE STUDY OF HISTORY.                   23
miserable plight) make their daily complaints and cries
to Philip Van Artavelde, their eomnallnder-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 Artavelde of Henry Taylor,-to
show how the image of the past is there presented.  We
gain the vision, when we read the words with which Van
Artavelde 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 stilt deeper sense of reality is given by the imagination being carried into the interior of one of those afflicted
dwellings. Van Artavelde, meeting his sister, after her
return from the awful charity of a starving and pestilential city, questions her"Now render me account of what befel —
Where thou hast been to-day.
Clara. It is but little.
I paid a visit first to Ukenheim,
The mau, who whilome saved our father's life,
When certain Clementists and ribald folk
Assailed him at Malines. Ile came last night,
And said he knew not if we owed him aught,
But if we did, a peck of oatmeal now
Would pay the debt, and save more lives than on(.




24                    LLECTURE  FIRST.
I went. It seemed a wealthy man's abode;
The costly drapery and good house-gear
Had, in an ordinary time, betokened
That with the occupant the world 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, crept to where he sat,
And plucked him by the sleeve, and with its small
And skinny finger pointed: then he rose,
And with a low obeisance, and a smile
That looked like watery moonlight on his face,
So pale and weak a smile, he bade me welcome.
I told him that a lading of wheat-flour
Wa's on its way, whereat, to my surprise,
His countenance fell, and he had almost wept.
A rt. Poor soul! and wherefore?
Clara. That I soon perceived.
Ile plucked aside the curtain of the couch,
And there two children's bodies lay composed.
They seemed like twins of some ten years of age,
And they had died so nearly both together
He scarce could 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 those two children, with their little faces
So thin and wan, so calm, and sad, and sweet.
I looked upon them long, and for a while
I wished myself their sister, and to lie
With them in death, as they did with each other;
I thought that there was nothing in the woild
I could have loved so much; and then I wept;
And when he saw I wept, his own tears fell,
And he was sorely shaken and convulsed,
Through weakness of his frame and his great grief.




ON TIlE STUDY OF IIISTORY.                  25
Art. Much pity was it he so long deferred
To dome to us for aid.
Clara. It was, indeed.
But whatsoe'er had been his former pride,
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, they 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 Artavelde, until, within our own
day, the vision of a living English poet's imagination is
turned to the comparatively obscure region of the annals
of Flanders, and forthwith Van 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 more precious functions, than this power of presenting picture-like impressions, which I have been endeavouring to illustrate.
We are all of us, 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




26                LEC'TU'C'E FIRST.
nen, their deeds, and their dates,-reficct 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 timeworn 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 unsurveyable, 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 inextricably 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 disappeared, rising up again, as was
fabled of the Alpheus, in a distant region, which they
reach through an unseen chliannel; the peaks, which first




ON TIIE STUDY OF IIISTORY.              27
meet our eyes, are mostly so barren, while the fertilizing
waters flow secretly through the valleys; the statements
of events are so perpetually at variance, and not seldom
contradictory; the actors on the ever-shifting stage are so
numerous and promiscuous; so many undistinguishable
passions, so many tangled opinions, so many mazy prejudices 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 conjunctures, 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 squabbles;-that a perfect, consummate history of the world may not unreasonably be
deemed the loftiest achievement that the mind of man
can contemplate."*  It is from the entangled and enormous mass, thus described, 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,
- Hare's Guesses at Truth. First Series, p. 353.




28                LECTUIRE Fi1RST.
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 occurrences, 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 controlling 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; 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




ON TIIE STUDY OF HISTORY.                29
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 circumstances 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




30                 LECTURE FIRST.
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 serivants, 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.
When, at a distance, we think of MIount Sinai, or of
the Mount of Olives, or of that other more awful emninence, 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 feelings, 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 impression 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




ON THIE STUDY OF IIISTOlIT.              31
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 subordinated 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 thisi
very account, were so much more impressive and truthful. He exemplifies this deficiency in Martin's historical paintings, which are familiar to us all by the help
i- Essay on the Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Pro.ductions of Modern Art. Lamb's Prose'Works, vol. iii. p. 176.




32                 LECTURE FIRST.
of the engravings; and in the Belshazzar'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
which the finger of God 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 imaginative 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 beh6lding 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 withered by the prophet's interpretation-" God hath numbered thy kingdom and. finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances
X Lamb's Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 173.




ON THE STUDY OF IIISTORY.                   33
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 Qf 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  i's 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 creative 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
* In the summer of 1842, my brother accompanied me on a
visit to New England, and there he became personally acquainted
with Mr. Allston. He saw "Belshazzar" afterward. In an address
delivered before the Art Union of Philadelphia, he thus refers to this
visit:"When Death suddenly, but with its gentlest stroke, closed the
career of the most eminent painter our country has produced,-I
mean the late Washington Allston, —the paint was left wet on that
great scriptural painting, unhappily incomplete, to which he had
devoted many of the best, and all the later, years of his life,-a life
3




34                    LECTURE FIRST.
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 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
and a name which I cannot mention without regretting that I must
not stop to'say what might be' said of them, as showing the beauty
and the dignity, the truth and the moral power, that dwell in the soul
of a great Christian artist. With his high powers as a painter, there
was united a most exquisite spirit of criticism, wherein it would have
been hard to say which was the largest element,-a fine philosophy
or tender Christian sympathy.  I remember with what deep but
tranquil emotion, in tones that were the very music of modesty and
genius,' he lamented, rather than rebuked, that injurious temper
of criticism which seizes on the weak points of a painter's work, and
shuts its vision to all that is genuine and great.  He made the
remark with reference to Haydon; and I could not but recall it, when,
not a great while afterward, we heard the tragic story of that painter's
death,-how, in the metropolis of Great Britain, he was driven by
neglect and that wrong, which Allston had reproved, to a crazed brain
and an awful suicide."  W. B. R.




ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY.               35
of divine instruction-as chosen instruments for the
guidance of the human soul. You find there history,
in its severe form of the Chronicles; you find poetry in
its most sublime form; and, what is more applicable to
my present subject, you find history and poetry combined
in those marvellous proportions unattainable by the uninspired imagination 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 prepossessions; 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 perpetually on
his guard, as if he were walking with a foe instead of a




36                  LECTURE FIRST.
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 other,
a partisan history; and the historians who make the
proudest boast 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
"tile 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,
* This remark will bewfound in the advertisement to the fourth
volume of the quarto, and, I believe, first, edition of Lingard's History
of England, p. -vi.  In the last edition, revised shortly before the
author's death, he says: —"Nor do I hesitate to proclaim my belief
that no writers have proved more successful in the perversion of historic truth than speculative and philosophical historians." W. B. R.




ON THE STUDY OF HIISTORY.              37
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 an 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 narrowminded 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 oEfthe Church and of
Europe, as to support or condemn the great 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 an historian,




38                  LECTURE FIRST.
like Hume, writing in the deistical temper of his own
day, labours to make all history servile to the shallow
skepticism 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 the
pains to tempt the unwary reader to think, with him,
that all.religious feeling is either fraud or superstition,
and 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 with 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 A leads the historian to do justice to
the better side of human nature as it is displayed in
history.   He will habitually seek out all that is good
-W Wordsworth's Lines composed in one of the Catholic Cantons.
Works, p. 280.




ON THE STUDY OF HIISTORY.
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 an 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 last 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 the tone of solemn judgment,
and not of satire.t   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
- Lectures on Modern History, p. 301.
t I shall have occasion, at one part of this course, in connection
with the career of Henry the Fifth, to see the tone of history alleviated by the inimitable comic element of the character of Falstaff;
but, for the most part, we find that the historical drama carries
us into the region of lofty passions-that its largest element is that
of tragedy-that it is by suffering that the characters of men and
nations are formed and disciplined-that it is in the school of adversity that high virtues are engendered; for,
"Oh, Life! without thy chequered scene
Of right and wrong, of weal a d wo,
Success and failure, could a ground
For magnanimity be found;. For faith,'mid ruined hopes, serene?.Or whence could virtue flow?"
Wordsworth, p. 280.   H. R.




40.               LECTURE FIRST.
glory and dignity to the generations of 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. Reme'mlber how
much it is a matter of choice and of habit with us,
whether we will look upon things with a good or an
evil eye; and remnember, 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 selfsame 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 may 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, heartbroken, 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
anid wine.  But," Me 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




ON THE STUDY OF lIISTORY.                    41
of the subordinate  igures 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 st~ength: 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, which more truly
expresses the real feeling of the occasion?  If the purpose be to show the utter heartlessness of mourning, then
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.Lockhart's Scott, vol. viii. p. 322.
t Hogarth's Pictures, or rather the folio volume of engravings, was
one of the picture-books of my boyhood; and now I am not ashamed
to record the heresy, that no creation of art is in every way more
repulsive to me.  The fun is, to my eye, hideous.  They may be
historical pictures, (so Hazlitt dignifies them,) but they are historical
of the most unpicturesque period of modern times-the first quarter or
half of the eighteenth century-the early Georgian era. If HRgarth
had illustrated such a ghastly book as Lord Hervey's Memoirs, what
happy congeniality of art and letter-press it would have been!-and
what man or woman of delicacy would care to open the volume!
W. B. R.
A friend, to whom I have shown this note, calls my attention to a
passage from Goethe, on the same subject:
"The third work formed for itself quite another circle of readers.
The interest devoted to Lichtenberg's Hogarth was, in reality, a factitious interest: for how could the German feel any real enjoyment ou
whims and oddities that rarely occurred in the circumstances of the




2.                  LECTURE FIRST.
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 "Richelieu," Bulwer speaks
of the historic drama as "the concentration 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 shown 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
simple and pure life of his own countrymen? It was only the tradition, which made current upon the Continent a name glorified by the
English-it was only the singularity of being able to possess all of
these whimsical representations complete in one body, and the convenient circumstance that there was no need of bringing to the study
and admiration. of these works any knowledge or feeling of art, but
only a bad disposition and contempt for mankind-that favoured, in a
very peculiar way, this remarkable success." Goethe's Works, (1840,)
vol. xxvii. p. 511. (Annalen, oder Tag-und Jahres-Hefte.)
" Literary Remains. Works, vol. viii. p. 29.




ON THE  STUDY OF HISTORY.                     43
mystery of that law, by which misery is carried down to
the third and fourth generations.
WThen HIume, 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 oA 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, froqn which we may gladly turn
to  the  better philosophy  of the  poet-historian.*   In: My brother had s strong aversion (if such a word is admissible in
matters of criticism) to Hume and his History; and, as is clear from
many passages of these lectures, was at no pains to conceal it. He
had no sympathy with the tolerance of error which praises Hume,
adopts or recommends his history as a text-book, and contents itself
with incidental corrections of errors and misrepresentations. (Smyth's
Lectures, vol. i. lect. v.) He would as soon have taught from Paine
as from Hume; for he believed that flume's principles, enforced
more perniciously in his History than anywhere else, were, as Lord
Brougham admits them to be, "atheism, not skepticism." (Men of
Letters, p. 177. Art. on Hume.) To Hume's skill as a rhetorician,
he, perhaps, did injustice-though, with my brother, I incline to the
belief that time and improving criticism are damaging this fame also.
The passages from Hume cited by Lord Brougham as "magnificent,"
do not so impress me. Others, not quoted, such as his description
of Charles the First's execution, are most graceful and picturesque.




44                 LECTURE FIRST.
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 6xamine 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 providential 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
course 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 the. 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.
As a per contra to Lord. Brougham's excessive panegyric on Hume,
the student is referred to an admirable article entitled "Hume and
his Influence on-History," in vol. lxxiii. p. 536, of the Quarterly Re-.iew. W. B. R.




ON THIE STUDY OF HIISTORY.             45
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 magnitude; and
of this I have 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 proportions. 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.




LECTURE II.*
G4t  Trngen1rhr  Verio0  of  riIrin: Diing  ezar.
Legendary period prior to the Roman invasion-Julius Caesar-Malone's comment-Fabulous antiquity of British kings-Brutus of
Troy-Authentic ancient history limited to Southern EuropeBritain 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 saintsSymbolical legends-Popular faith in legends-Identified with
reverence for ancestry-Sir Robert Walpole's false idea of historyNiebuhr-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 multitude of stories or 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
* December 15th, 1846.
46




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.            47
awful tragedy in the whole range of dramatic literature.
The obscure and neglected Jegend 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 Coesar'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," there was
found among that people little of veracity or magnanimity'in their dealings with their enemies.   Still,
though the narrative by Caesar is not entitled to entire
confidence, it does give the first solid footing for English
history to stand upon. We learn certain facts from it,
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




48                LECTURE SECOND.
province of Brittany. When the subjugation of Gaul
was completed, Caesar, revolving, perhaps, his plans
against the freedom of the republic, looked round and
beheld on one side the dark and impenetrable 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 continued 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 fulfilment of providential purposes.
Whatever was the impulse-whether these, or the improbable and meaner one, which has been imputed to
Cawsar 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
* Tacitus, Vit. Agricolte cap. xii. Cicero ad Att. iv. 16. Ad Pam.
vii. 7. Lingard, ch. i. The authority alluded to in the text was,
doubtless, Suetonius, C. Julius Caesar s. 47:-" Britanniam petlsse, spe
margaritarum, quarum amplitudinem conferentem, interdum su  n mani
exegisse pondus." W. B. R.




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.              49
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, Caesar
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 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 Caesar 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 practice
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,
however, 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 dealt with their eras of a thousand years with a magnificent assurance, and marshalled
kings and dynasties of kings in complete chronology and
4




50                LECTURE SECOND.
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 boldness 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 3105, and Nero, in the year 4017, was
sixteen years old when he married- Octavia, Caesar's
daughter." *   Surely, the fancies and fablesf of the
* Grdte's History of Greece, vol. i. 642, Eng. ed.; 485, Am. ed. This
whole subject is discussed by Mr. Grote, and thence the hints in the
lecture were ob'viously taken. Mr. Grote's note is this: —"Dr.




LEGENDARY  PERIOD  OF BRITAIN.                51
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 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 corresponded 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 beZachary Grey has the following observations in his'Notes on Shakspeare,' (London, 1754, vol. i. p. 112.) In commenting on the passage
in King Lear-'Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness,'
he says:-' This is one of Shakspeare's most remarkable anachronisms.
King Lear succeeded his father Bladud A. Ar. 3105; and Nero, A. M.
4017, was sixteen years old when he married Octavia, Ctesar's daughter."' W. B. R.




52               LECTURE SECOND.
ginning 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 profane
history-is almost entirely limited to the story of those
rac6es 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 voice 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. The 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 ~Egean 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 history, and many




LEGENDARY  PERIOD OF BRITAIN.               53
a mighty empire has passed forever 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."t
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 memoriessuch 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
- The Excursion, book viii, p. 626, Am. ed.
t Wordsworth's Sonnet on Missions and Travels, p. 352.




54                  LECTURE  SECOND.
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 husbandmen; then came a rapid glance upon
the little 2Egean 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."*, Faber's "Sights and Thoughts," p. 112. My brother had read
this volume some years before, and was much delighted with it.
Writing to a friend, in 1842, he says: —"I have been reading aloud
to my one listener (Charles Lamb's idea of an audience) Faber's
Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples.
It is a remarkable production-very bold and very beautiful-one
of the most imaginative and fanciful prose books I ever read-very,
very Oxfordish in its fashion of sentiment and reflection-abounding
in architectural spirit which would delight you, and Wordsworthian
deeply, saving an occasional censoriousness which he ought to cure.
But I found it one of those books which I delight in floating along




LEGENDARY  PERIOD  OF BRITAIN.              55
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 Anchises' 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
the tide of, though, in this case, there are some ugly snags aid sawyers in the stream. The volume abounds in deep and beautiful reflections clothed in prose most musical. In one or two places its
beauty is marred by some John Bullish impudence about America."
MS. Letter, July 23, 1842. W. B. R.




56               LECTURE SECOND.
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 Armorica, or a compilation 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 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
- History of Britain, pp. 36, 37.




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.              57
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 Englahd; 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 chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious
about the time and circumstance of things whereof the
substance is so much in doubt." When he introduces
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
Caesar, 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 impression, defended
by many, denied utterly by few.  For what though
Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up,




68               LECTURE SECOND..(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 affectation to make the Briton of one
original with the Roman, pitched there,) yet those 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 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 this 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 traditional 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
* History of Britain, pp. 10-37.




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.              59
with the zeal 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 centuries. 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, did interpose 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. INo
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




60               LECTURE SECOND.
memory of men —"procul dubio ab antiquo"-and the
Pope is respectfully entreated, at the same time, not
to be deluded by cunningly! devised and fantastical forgeries.  Now, all 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 determined not to be outdone by
the Southron, replied in a document asserting their independence by virtue of descent from Scota, one of the
daughters of Pharaoh. The Pope seems to have- been
silenced in a conflict 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 consider 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 skepticism;
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 itwe may venture a thought, that haply it may be reserved
Lingard, vol. ii. pp. 564, 565.




LEGENDARY  PERIOD OF BRITAIN.             61
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 latter were native to the inhabitants of those lands,
that they sprang up among them, and therefore were
illustrative of the feelings and 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, in speaking of that part of his work
which he has 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 blames 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!'
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 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.
- Preface to Grote's History of Greece, vol. i. p. xiii.




62               LECTURE SECOND.
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'~ Mr. Grote.




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.              63
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 uncalculating 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. Who has not observed in himself, in his ordinary dealings with the facts of everyday life, with the
sayings and doings of his acquaintances, in short, with
every thing which comes before him as a fact, a disposition to forget the real order in which they appear, and to
rearrange 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 conceive 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 iD
our memory: they will arrange themselves under some




64               LECTURE SECOND.
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 rearranged in a more conceptional 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 Englishmen most value, of law or church, became
appropriated to him.  He divided England into shiresHe 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




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.              65
and assume a soft and beautiful grace.  The harshest
facts are smoothed aqd chastened off in the past like the
rough mountains andjagged rocks in the distant horizon.
And so it is 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 bides 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. Theyfeel 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; Lives of the English Saints, No. iv. pp. 75-78.
5




66               LECTURE SECOND.
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 credulity along with innocent docility of
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-skepticism-infidelity-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 generations of men that
rise up and sink into their graves. In the' olden time,men were, no doubt, very superstitious-very credulousthey believed a great deal that was monstrously absurdthey 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 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




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.              67
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 itself with times that
are gone by; and they feel that there is no more dismal
condition than when the past is wholly 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 timeworn 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 countrymenw 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
* Demosthenes de Corona, s. 208.




68                 LECTURE SECOND.
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 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,
"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
Tlnlawful ever."** Wordsworth's Lines left on a seat in a Yew-Tree, p. 38.




LEGENDARY PERIOD  OF BRITAIN.              69
It is equnally 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 associations 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 skepticism, which would beggar us of the
accumulated inheritance of past ages by destroying belief
in the evidence.  Everybody, 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 demoralize 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
* Ode on Intimations of Immortality, p. 471.




70                   LECTURE  SECOND.
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 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 lon10 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."t! History of England, vol. ii. p. 240.
t Niebuhr's exact words are these: —"Notwithstanding  this
solemnity and the perpetual abolition of the name of King, the
Romans were far from reflecting an indiscriminate hatred on the
memory of the monarchical -times. The statues of the kings, and
among them, it appears, even that of the last Tarquinius, were preserved and probably multiplied. Their laws and institutions, in civil
as well as religious matters, continued to exist in full efficacy. The
change of the constitution originally affected only a single branch;
and it never was the intention of the Romans to despoil themselves
of a rich inheritance of laws and reminiscences. It is only in our
own days thatf men have witnessed the consequences of that phrensy
which, with a species of pride hitherto unparalleled, entailed upon
itself humiliation and slavery, while it laid claim to unexampled perfecticn and boasted to form a new world from the chaos. Only once
has the world seen (and we have seen) a general contempt of the past
excited, and men priding themselves in the title of emancipated
slaves. Something similar, indeed, and somewhat similar results,
were experienced in the religious revolutions.  The Protestant
churches have thrown aside the Saints and Fathers, and suffered in




LEGENDARY  PERIOD  OF BRITAIN.                 dA
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 tthey were keeping, and not breaking, covenant
with the mighty dead. In England, Burke, at the outset, warned his countrymen 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-an historical, and not a fabulous,
consequence. It is the same in science and literature. But, on the
contrary, the experience of universal history attests that a nation can
possess no wealth more splendid than a long and brilliant antiquity.
All colonies languish under this defect. Those of the Greeks seldom
wholly rent themselves in recollection from the stock of the parent
state; modern colonies have done so, and have sunk by that unna
tural abruption, perhaps still more than by any other circumstances,
into incurable deterioration."  Niebuhr's Rome, by Walter, vol 1
p. 338. - W. B. R.




72                LECTI:URE SECOND.
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 goes 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."`
Niebuhr's words may be applied in justification of the
legendary history I have been 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 like 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
soil, from which other trees grow to live in the light:- Wordsworth, p. 255. Sonnet.




LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITAIN.            73
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 instinctive sense of the hideousness of filial ingratitude and of the beauty of filial piety.
There would be deep pathos in the story of any 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 thousand 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 should, at the
same time, be treason, and filial piety be identified with
all that is noble and beautiful in loyalty and truth. The




74                LECTURE SECOND.
king, abdicating his throne and making partition of his
realm, is, at the same time, the fond father making over
in his lifetime 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 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 well 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




LEGENDARY  PERIOD OF BRITAIN.               75
of his vengeance-sublime from its very indistinctnessas' 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"I will do such things,What 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 powers 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.t
*: Dr. Johnson's note on this passage is,-" Shakspeare makes his
Lear too much of a mythologist; he had Hecate and Apollo before.?
W. B. h.
t Lamb's Essay on Shakspeare's Tragedies. Prose Works, vol. i.
p. 122.




76                LECTURE SECOND.
Shakspeare 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
sovereigfi~" 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
* "A happy ending!" says Lamb; "as if the living martyrdom
that Lear had gone through-the flaying of his feelings alive, did
not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous
thing for him." W. B. R.




LEGENDARY  PERIOD  OF BRITAIN.                      77
historical significance, was not made for tender, weaknerved spirits. It requires strong shoulders to support
the whole burden of the tragical which the life of humanity contains."*
* Ulrici's Shakspeare's Dramatic Art, p. 236. If the reader feel
any disappointment at the brief comment of this lecture on the
tragedy, I beg him to remember that these lectures are historico-critical merely, and to refer to the first of the series in this volume on
Tragic Poetry, where King Lear is critically considered. W. B. I.




LECTURE III.*
$ gomarn and *axon vriohbF:    G mMbrliare Anu  &Trtbrti.
Legendary history continued —Artegal and Elidure-The Northern
and Southern nations-Geographical divisions of Europe-Attempts of invasion frustrated-Rome sacked by the GaulsGreece invaded and rescued-Defeat of Varus in the forest
of Teutoburg —The memory of Arminius —-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 —Cymbeline a
British king-Imogen-Roman remains in Britain-Sir Walter
Scott and Ritson-Diocletian's persecution-Arthur and Merlin
-Ethelred-Paulinus-Alfred- Coleridge's estimate of his character-Difficulty of discussing historical questions-PolemicsDunstan, an illustration-Sir Roger de Coverley-Saint DunstanWant of a poetic view of his character-The Danes-Canute the
Great-Ballads-Edward the Confessor-Touching for the "king's
evil"-Reference in Macbeth-The palace and the tombs of 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  tl*  rest of the known worldthe 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.: January 4th, 1847.
78




TIlE ROMAN  &ND SAXON PERIODS.            79
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 belonging to such periods, when the social and
family relations have the same kind of importance, as the
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 fabulouis 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 that 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.narrative 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




80                LECTURE TIIIRD.
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 Gorbonian 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 Calater, 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'a Hare's Guesses at Truth. First Series, p. 358.




THE ROMAN  AND  SAXON  PERIODS.                  81
brother. A modern poet has given the legend in language appropriately unadorned, and thus it closes:
"The 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;
Then to his people cried,' Receive your lord,
Gorbonian's first-born son, your rightful king restored!'
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.
Long 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 hearts of men, till they have braved
Their nearest kin with deadly 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
- Wordsworth's Artegal and Elidure. Works, p. 93
6




82             - LECTURE THIRD.
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 Icept apart; and I mean, of course, by something more than human power.  No theory. of mere
secondary historic causes is adequate to explain the longcontinued separation of the Northern and Southern nations of Europe; and that there was a providence in it
appears, too, from this,-that it is that very 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 Rome, the
occasional introduction of some Northern race is an epi



THE ROMIAN AND SAXON PERIODS.           83
sode 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 barrier 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 character 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 coast of the Euxine Sea and the Atlantic
Ocean, there runs east and west a great mountain range,
which, beginning with the chain of Mount Haemus to
the north of Macedon, continues westward with the Alpine range, and ends with the Pyrenees, thus forming a
vast natural rampart to Greece, Italy, and Spain,-the
regions of the Mediterranean.  When they of the South
t "The unimaginable touch of Time." Wordsworth's Sonnet on
Mutability, p. 368.




84                LECTURE TIIRD.
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 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 decree. It is not the
story of an ordinary invasion and repulse: it is something
more-a dim. intimation of more than human agencythe 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 ceintury before the birth of our Saviour. The
Celts or Gauls came down by tens of thousands upon
* Arnold's Lectures on Modern History; Am. ed,, p. 47.




THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.             85
the plains of Italy, and swept onward in savage and
sanguinary triumph to the gates of Rome. Of the routed
and slaughtered 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
hopeless? But the young Patricians resolved to defend the
citadel —that which was the sanctuary of the nation-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.




86                LECTURE THIRD.
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 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 exclaiming
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 sun arose, the
huge bulk of many a Northern warrior lay buried
beneath the rocks of Delphi, while the survivors were
fleeing away in panic from the sunny regions of the
South.  This showed that 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 of Italy
was driven back by the stern Plebeian soldier, Caius Marius, nothing resulted in the way of permanent subjugation.  It was simply invasion and repulse, as if some
huge wavo had rushed in, and, after doing its work of
partial devastation, had rolled back again into its cus* B. C. 279. Smith's History of Greece, (Felton,) p. 528.




THE ROMAN AND SAXON  PERIODS.                 87
tomary channel. When the tide of invading conquest set
in a different direction, and pressed upon the regions of
the North, it soon, in like manner, found its limit. 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.t   In  commemoration of the achievement
of the hero of the first war of German independence, a
colossal statue of Hermann has been constructed, within,
I believe, the last ten or fifteen years, upon the spot which
a Wordsworth's Sonnet, "A Prophecy," p. 258.
t Tacitus, Ann. i. 61, 62. Suetonius thus records imperial sorrow
"Adeo denique consternatum ferunt, ut, per continuos menses barbS'
capilloque submisso, caput interdum foribus illideret, vociferans' Quintili Vare, legiones redde!'"  Augustus, c. 23. W. B. R.




88                 LECTURE THIRD.
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 selfsufficiency 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 df 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
*- Wordsworth's "Rob Roy's Grave," p. 243.'It is something to
see reviving that filial feeling towards the years which begot us, which
delights to own gratitude for the benefits received from them, and to
deal reverently even with their faults, rather than to insult them by a
perpetual boast of our own superiority."  Quarterly Review, 1841.
Vol. lxix. p. 113. M. B. R.




THE  ROMIAN  AND  SAXON  PERIODS.                 89
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 Teutoburg 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 Marathonanother of the critical battles in the world's history —had
saved Greece from Persian power.t
- Life and Correspondence. App. C. p. 454.
t The idea of a series of critical or decisive battles in the world's
history, originating, perhaps, in an incidental remark of Mr. Hallam,
has been cleverly elaborated in a work with this title by Professor
Creasy, of University College, London; and I am glad of the occasion, valueless as my testimony may be, to bear it not only to theo
attractiveness, but'the value of these volumes. The series extend
from Marathon to Waterloo, with, as it seems to me, but one material
omission,-for Mr. Creasy's view extends to this side of the Atlantic,
-the battle on the Plains of Abraham, in 1759, by which the French
Colonial America was destroyed, and North America became English
beyond peradventure. Surely, this was a decisive battle.
From this work, I am tempted to make an extract illustrative of
what is alluded to in the text,-the memorial of Arminius's victory."Nearly eighteen centuries after the death of Arminius, the modern
Germans conceived the idea of rendering tardy homage to their great
hero; Land, accordingly, some eight or ten years ago, a general subscription was organized in Germany, for the purpose of erecting, on
the Osniig, (a conical mountain, which forms the highest summit of
the Teutoburger Wald, and is eighteen hundred feet above the level
of the sea,) a colossal bronze statue of Arminius. The statue was designed by Bandel. The hero was to stand, uplifting a sword in his
right hand, and looking towards the Rhine. The height of the statue




90                   LECTURE  THIRD.
Now  the general historical view  which I wish.to impress on your minds is this-that the nations of Northern
and Southern Europe were providentially kept apart until
a period when intercourse should produce very 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 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 powdr of Rome,-achieved the work assigned
was to be eighty feet from the base to the point of the sword, and was
to stand on a circular Gothic temple, ninety feet high, and supported
by oak-trees as columns. The mountain, where it was to be erected,
is wild and stern, and overlooks the scene of the battle. It was calculated that the statue would be clearly visible at a distance of sixty
miles. The temple is nearly finished, and the statue itself has been
cast at the copper-works of Lemago.  But there, through want of
funds to set it up, it has lain for some years, in disjointed fragments,
exposed to the mutilating homage of relic-seeking travellers. The
idea of honouring a hero who belongs to all Germany, is not one which
the present rulers of that divided country have any wish to encourage; and the statue may long continue to lie there, and present too
true a type of the condition of Germany herself." Creasy's Fifteen
Decisive Battles of the World, vol. i. p, 250.




THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.             91
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 Empireor 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




92                LECTURE THIRD.
a revolution utterly destructive of national character or
of religious and political institutions. The.conquered
race seemed to be more benefited 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 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 preserved 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 termn 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 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 independence,
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
- Tacitus, Vit. Agricolie, c. xvi.




TIIE ROMAN AN'D SAXON PERIODS.              93
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 company of women who have their life and being in
the drama of Shakspeare; 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
* It was upon the trial of the queen that Mr. Brougham, speaking
of the perjured Italian witness, quoted Iachimo's words:
"I have belied a lady,
The princess of the country; and the air on't
Revengingly enfeebles me."           W. B. t.




94                LECTURE THIRD.
Britain appears to be, that it was a favoured and flourishing portion 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 porticos, gates,
triumphal arches, and market-places arose, remarkable
for their architecture and decorated with sculpture and
statuary. Such was the reputation of the Romanized
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 upfrequently 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 implements 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




THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.              95
to controversy, and, with all his learning, perhaps a little
insane, disputed the existence 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 carefully 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 relies of the RomanBritish times, and so little can be distinctly traced in the
permanent 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 succeeding generations nc
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 con



96                LECTURE THIRD.
elude, 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 never were driven from it,
but were amalgamated with their Roman conquerorsand that Roman civilization abode there for four hundred years. The periods were of such duration, and the
circumstances 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
successive 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, devastating, volcanic eruptions, leaving nothing
but barren ashes and indurated 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




THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.                97
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,"*
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 civilization; 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."t  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
* "Diocletian's fiery sword," &c. Wordsworth's Sonnet on Persecution, p. 349.
t Milton's History of Britain, p. 125.
7




98                   LECTURE TH1RD.
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
* I am not as much in the habit of quoting Wordsworth as my
brother was, not being so familiar with his poems, and, perhaps, (this
I say with diffidence,) relatively, not so appreciative of their merits;
but his lines on Stonehenge (Excursion, b. iii.) are very grand. The
parenthetical idea is magnificent:
"Not less than that huge Pile (from some abyss
Of mortal power unquestionably sprung,)
Whose hoary Diadem of pendant rocks
Confines the shrill-voiced whirlwind, round and round
Eddying within its vast circumference,
On Sarum's naked plain."                    W. B. R




THE ROMAN  AND SAXON  PERIODS.                 09
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 counsellor gave utterance to that beautiful iia.ginative argument, which, told by the old Saxon historian,
has been thus rendered in modern verse:
"Man's life is like a Sparrow, mighty King!
That, stealing in, while by the fire 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
FElies out, and passes on from cold to cold;
But whence it came we know not, nor behold
Whither it goes. Even 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 hei departure waits, no tongue hath shewn;
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' Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets.




100               LECTURE THIRD.
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 tonguewhen 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 piety-which, with all 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
* Coleridge's Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 74. Ed. 1836, Pickering.




TIIE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.            101
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
* Quarterly Review,-" Hume and his Influence on History,"No. 146, March, 1844, pp. 577-579. W. B. R.




102              LECTURE THIRD.
even in modern times, for at least a century or more after
the Reformation, you cannot, unless by a violent and
irrational disruption, 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 inquiry 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 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




TILE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.           103
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 he 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 tradesman- 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
* Spectator, No. 125.




104                  LECTURE  THIRD.
trampling on the green shamroclk,-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 subjects without stopping cautiously 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.t   Noble  by birth, the  young
* Palgrave's History of England. Preface, vol. i. p. xxxii.
t At a time when the merest justice to the Roman Catholic Church
is hazardous, I will presume to deprecate the use of this word
"Romish," which, kindred to the other nicknames, " Romanist" and
" Papist," ought to be banished from the language of Christian
scholars and gentlemen. They are words of offence and disrespect,
and therefore unfit for use except as part of the Billingsgate of
controversy. They are undescriptive'and unsanctioned by authority. In speaking to a Roman Catholic, common courtesy forbids
the use of such words. In speaking of him, surely, among scholars,
the same rule of courtesy should prevail. My brother-a most resolute Protestant-was singularly free from sectarian animosities, and
this slip of language was, I am satisfied, purely accidental. On the
next page but one he avoids the epithet. The following words, written
in confidence years before these lectures, describe his feelings and
opinions to the last hour of his life, —and yet it suited vulgar and
ignorant men for their own poor purposes to describe Henry Reed as
an ultraist in church matters. I wish I could be sure that their eyes
-those, I mean, who did him, on more than one occasion, practical
injustice-would read his truthful, almost eloquent, words:




TIHE  ROMAN  AND SAXON  PERIODS.                105
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.*
"I cannot find in my heart," he writes, "any sympathy with
that kind of church feeling which, when it finds the door in good
condition,-hung on strong hinges and with a stout latch,-does not
look with a thankful and affectionate spirit to the family within, as
much as with somewhat of insolence and superciliousness to those who
are without. It is, I apprehend, something of this kind which too
often characterizes the self-styled-boastfully self-styled —HighChurchmanship: there is a certain temper about it which is odious to
me, and at variance with what I trust and believe is the genuine
heart of the church. It carries with it that unchurchlike self-obtrusion which, extremes meeting, assimilates it to that which it professes
its chief aversion to. The epithet " High," in this connection, is any
thing but agreeable to my ears; and I am half-inclined to think that
if it is important to'unprotestantize the Reformation,' it may not be
amiss to'unhighchurchmanize' the church. There is danger of what
Julius Hare calls'ecclesiolatry.'" MS. Letter, March 31, 1843.
W. B. R.
- This phrase, if I mistake not, will be found in a letter from Sir
Walter Scott in Lockhart, in which he says that something "might
be explained by the doctrine of the' association of ideas,' or whatever
other doctrine had taken the place of that which, in my day, had been
the universal solvent of all metaphysical difficulties."  W. B. R.




106               LECTURE TIIIRD.
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 miraclemonger, 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.
MIilton, 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 characterizes 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, I believe, have been far better
Milton's History of Britain, p. 285.




TIIE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.              107
able to form a just conception of St. Dunstan's character
and 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 beforewhen "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:
* Neither Henry Taylor, for Edwin the Fair had then appeared,
nor Wordsworth himself appear to have fulfilled my brother's wish as
to the poetic illustration of Dunstan's character. W. B. R.




108              LECTURE TIIIRD.
"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, and of a fugitive or 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.
* Translated from the Saxon Chronicle, pp. 116, 122,-in a note to
Lingard, vol. i. p. 271.




THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.                109
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 conquerors 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 longa 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."t
* This stanza will be found in a note to Campbell's Essay on English Poetry, p. 22.
t Wordsworth's Canute and Alfred on the Sea-shore, p. 413.




110              LECTURE THIRD.
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 customs of the good king Edward."
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;




THE ROMAN AND SAXON PERIODS.            111
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 minds 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




112                  LECTURE THIRD.
it as the sage imagination of 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 souls
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's 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."*'
* Though entirely aside from the context, I am tempted to note,
that in this same scene will be found lurking one of the most beautiful




THE ROMIAN  AND  SAXON  PERIODS.                113
It was with this good man that the ancient and lawful
lineage of the Saxon sovereigns ended, about the middle
of the elever.th 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 Shakspeare's lines, which no "beauty-selector" or compiler of quotation-dictionaries has ever detected. It is Malcolm who says"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell:
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so."
And, in this connection of quotations, I venture to quote a sprightly
passage from a letter of my brother's which now lies before me:
"I was," he writes, "the other day, looking over'Measure for
Measure' to find a grand image which Froude mentions in one of his
letters, but which got out of my memory after I had returned the' Remains' to the Library. By-the-by, did you ever notice how hard
it is to lay your hand sometimes upon a grand thought or image in
Shakspeare, which you have lost the clue to? He puts it somewhere
that you would not think of looking for it, or so incidentally that you
overlook it-so differently from inferior writers, who put a flashy gilt
frame round what they are proud of. I was obliged, therefore, to look
over the play almost line by line, and, after all, did not find what I
was looking for; but I did notice among other things a jewel of a sentence, in point of real English construction and sunparsableness, which
I thought would delight you:'These poor informal women are no more
But instruments of some more mightier member
That sets them on.'
In the same scene, was Shakspeare thinking of a Puritan heresythough I am not sure the error belongs to them,' the greater the sinner the greater the saint'-when he says-'They say, best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.'
8




114                 LECTURE THIRD.
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 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."
Baffled in finding the passage I was hunting, I was driven to get
the' Remains' again, for the vexation of memory haunted me. Mr.
Froude was struck with what he calls'a certain wild sublimity about
it.' Speaking of respect for high places, the duke says —'Respect to your great place! and let the Devil
Be sometimes honoured for his burning throne."'
MS. Letter, 22d October, 1843.  W. B. R.




LECTURE IV.*
9z geIgnX of gingr Jotn,
Interval between the last Saxon kings and King John-Degeneraey of the Saxon race-Contagion of Danish vice-The
Bristol slave-trade-The Northmen-The Normans-Their conquests-Death of Harold-Effect of the conquest on the conquerors
-Their despotism-The Royal Forest lands-The Curfew-Death
of nWilliam the Norman-Tyranny of his successors-Marriage of
Henry the First to a Saxon princess-The Plantagenets-Richard
Coeur-de-Lion-Romance of Ivanhoe-Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury-King John, the first of the " Chronicle-Plays"-Imaginative power developed-John, a usurper-Shakspeare's view of his
character-" England" the great idea of the play-Falconbridge its
exponent-His character —Shakspeare's power "in minimis"James Gurney's four words-France and Austria-Constance and
Arthur-His death-Pandulph-Struggle with the Papacy —Innocent the Third-Stephen Langton-The interdict-Struggle with
the barons-The Great Charter-Shakspeare'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,
*: January 18th, 1847.
115




116              LECTURE FOURTH.
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 widespread
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 an
hundred-fold, 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
*' "Slave ships regularly sailed from Bristol to Ireland, where they
were secure of a ready and profitable market." Lingard, vol. i.
p. 376, ch. vii. W. B. R.




THE REIGN OF KING JOhN.              117
depravity in England, that, though. the sensual, deaf in
their debauchery and wickedness, heard it not, the cry
went up to Heaven for vengeance. T~ he 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'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




a118            LECTURE FOURTH.
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 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 timesa 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
* This striking quotation I am unable to trace to its source.
W. B. R.




THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.              119
dread suspense the moment when the comet should, as
Milton 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 for




120             LECTURE FOURTII.
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 Northmen, 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 adventure, 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 occurred 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




THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.               121
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 the 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 thrust out to make room for Norman
ecclesiastics-of Saxon thane and Saxon peasants outcast
from house and home —of the introduction of a sterner
form of feudal law, and even the people's language revolutionized. 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
* Southey's Naval History, vol. i. p. 123.




122              LECTURE FOURTH.
seems almost as gloomy as that savage age, which Charles
Lamb speaks of, in the essay in which he eulogizes candlelight as a kindlier luminary 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 manywoods 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 wilderness, and
* Popular Fallacies, xv.




TIHE REIGN OF KING JOHN.              123
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
Norman 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 the 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."t 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:- Lives of the English Saints, No. vii. Introduction to the Life of
St. Gilbert, p. 2.
t PaJgrave's English Commonwealth, Part i. 653.




124              LECTURE FOURTH.
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 it from my father;
and, in the name of God, I forbid ywu 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 Conqueror'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 wickedness
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."t 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. Whether
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.
" Lingard, vol. ii. p. 54.
t British Critic, June, 1843, vol. xxxiii. p. 46. Article on St. Anselm.




THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.               125
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 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
k-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 lionhearted 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 represented the partially extinct hostility which imbittered 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 influences by
which old animosities are appeased. It is easier to comprehend how men are brought to hate one another, than




126             LECTURE FOURTH.
how that mutual hatred is converted to 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 harmonizing process-an influence
of the church, which has been thus 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 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




THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.               127
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-Plays," 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 starsthe events-strike us and remain in our eye, little modified by the difference of dates. An 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 imagination; 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 dohe must impress the mind with an harmonious sense of
plurality and unity. Each character, each action, must
* Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 161.




128              LECTURE FOURTH.
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 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
W- ordsworth. Lines on Airey Force Valley, p. 192.




THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.               129
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 reconciled;
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 the embassy of his great contemporary, Philip Au-; Sewell's Christian Politics, p. 18.
9




130               LECTURE FOURTIL
gustus 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
Roy calls"The good old rule, the 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 righful heir was in his youth, and
the government had not yet attained that period when,
under constitutional forms, a minority reign becomes
practicable. Accordingly, 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,' Wordsworth's Rob Roy's Grave, p. 243.




THE REIGN OF KING  JOHN.               131
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
withif 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 object of contemptuous 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
F'rance; and we shall see how, in the various characters,
all the elements of mediaeval life are present-the papacy
and the priesthood-the monarchy and the nobility-the
commonalty 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 personHare's Guesses at Truth, First Series, p. 355.




132               LECTURE FOURTII.
ages, 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 understand
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 reign 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,
-a Franz Horn, vol. ii. p. 196.




THE REIGN  OF KING JOIIN.              133
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
the history, and to make the real personages more intelligible. He is the imbodiment, 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 characterizes 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 an
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 faithfulness 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




134               LECTURE FOURTII.
presence partially purify it.  It is remarkable that we do
not and cannot, I think, associate him injuriously 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."t   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 of Shakspeare's power in minimis; and it certainly does show
how comprehensively careful a poet's genius is of minute
as well as of great things. In the list of the persons of
" Wordsworth's Sonnet written in London in 1802, p. 255.
T Reflections on the French Revolution, vol. iii. p. 98.




THE REIGN OF KING JOHN.                135
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 Gurneey," 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 considerate feeling which
prompts Falconbridge to promise the old servant —his'* Table Talk, p. 35. Ed. 1852.




136              LECTURE FOURTH.
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 an 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, seating herself on the
ground for kings to come and bow to her loneliness 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's made for me."




TIIE REIGN OF KING JOHN.                137
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 foresworn
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 story of 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




138              LECTURE FOURTH.
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, 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 impressed 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 instruments 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 double sure by converting the custody of
a prison into the inviolable custody of the grave. The
moral view, and, I believe, a most just historic view,
which Shakspeare gives us, is this-that, however the
events are separated in time, all the after-misery of the




THE  REIGN  OF KING  JOHN.                   139
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 Arthur 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"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."
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 customed event,




140                 LECTURE  FOURTIh.
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 pick 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 beautiful 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 in 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.
BEut 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. Hle was busy with intrigues of state,
weaving meshes to catch or entangle kinks; and what
audience could maternal grief find with the crafty and
corrupt priest, burdened with worldly policy, like such




TILE REIGN  OF KIN'G  JOHN.                141
other cardinals as Wolsey and iRichelieu and Mazarin
and Portocarrero, the politician-ecclesiastics of modern
Europe?
When, with like coldness, King Philip-he who had
selfishly advocated 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
aggression:
"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.




142                 LECTURE FOURTH.
Tell him this tale; and from the mouth of England,
Add thus much more,-that no Italian priest
Shall 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 uphQld,
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,"
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."
This 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



TILE REIGN OF KINGX  JOIIN.                113
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 of the churches were shut
against them; that the dead were qarried outside 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-funereal rights denied;
And in the churchyard he must take his bride
Who dares be wedded."t
* Lives of the English Saints, No. 10, p. 32. Life of Stephen
Langton. Hume's description of the Interdict has been often cited
with praise by his admirers. W. B. R.
t Wordsworth's Sonnet,-An Interdict.




144               LECTURE FOURTII.
The temper of the king was not controlled by this
dismal condition of a Christian land; but, with a crimefraught conscience, the tyrant was aftrighted 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 surrendered 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."t
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 rightsthat sealed acknowledgment of ancient rights which is an
epoch in the history of constitutional freedom. In that' Lingard, vol. iHi. p. 32.
t Wordsworth's Sonnet on Papal Abuses, p. 354.




TILE REIGN  OF KING  JOIIN.                145
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 patriotism and loyalty —
he raises the mind from the weakness and degradation of
the reign to a sense of England's power and independence. It is in a high strain of that national self-confi-' "In the chroniclers, we have manifold changes of fortune in the
life of John, after Arthur of Brittany has fallen. In Shakspeare,
Arthur is at once avenged. The heart-broken mother and her boy are
not the only sufferers from double courses. The spirit of Constance is
appeased by the fall of John. The Niobe of a Gothic age, who vainly
thought to shield her child from so stern a destiny as that with which
Apollo and Artemis pursued the daughter of Tantalus, may rest in
peace."  Historical Illustrations to C. Knight's Shakspeare, vol. i. p.
78. AV. B. R.
10




146               LECTURE FOURTII.
dence which, though it may degenerate into national
vanity or swell into intolerable national pride, is part of
the power which makes a people unconquerable,-it is in
such d 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 her 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 realm.




LECTURE V.*
X12~ gtrij   Dof gicatr6  ape f co n.
Henry the Third and the Edwards passed over by Shakspeare-De
Montfort's Rebellion-Growth of the Constitution-The CommonsExtent of parliamentary government-Our republican institutionsThe 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-Divine 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
- January 25th, 1847.
147




148               LECTURE FIFTI.
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
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




THE REIGN OF RICHARD TIIE SECOND.   149
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,
~ Church History of Britain, vol. i. p. 369.




150               LECTURE FIFTI.
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 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 slender 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
* De Maistre,Essai surle principe gennrateur des ConstitutionsPolitiques.




TILE REIGN OF RICIIARD TIIE SECOND.    151
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 bareworn 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 accommodation 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'- Palgrave's JIerchant and Friar, p. 89.




152                LECTURE FIFTII.
kingdom by the reduction of Wales, the cause of constitutional freedom was moving onward. The movement
did not stop during the degenerate rule of 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 passage
than that in which, foretelling the murder of his son, he
bids him"Mark the year 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
" Gray's Bard. Poetical Works, p. 170, Reed's Edition.




TILE REIGN  OF  RICITARD TIEl S~ECOND.    153
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 intellectual
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 difficulties. 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 history of Rome, alludes, in a
passage of admirable wisdom on the growth of constitutional freedom.  Speaking of the slow process by which




154               LECTURE FIFTII.
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 Comnons
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 conmpass; 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 predominant 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
- History of Rome, vol. i. p. 343.




THE REIGN OF RICHARD TIIE SECOND.    155
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, posterity has been
just, that it has judged of him, not by the failure of his
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 "ChroniclePlays" which Shakspeare 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




156               LECTURE FIFTI.
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 forever from the race of the Plantagenets.
Shakspeare has treated this large historical themeEngland'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-rit 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 sublimity
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, unapproached, in all
imaginative literature. The subject of it maybe described
as the decline and fall of the Plantagenet dynasty-the
downfall of the dominion which had endured during an
eventful period of three hundred and fifty years. The two




TIIE REIGN OF RICIIARD  THE SECOND.    157
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 lifelike 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; and,
with all this, the weal and welfare 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 sceptered pall, come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' 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




158               LECTURE FIFTILH.
what consummate 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, slowly, but certainly, to the
second and third generations of the guilty. Taking these
plays as one'ample poem, I know not where else to look
for such varied and splendid teaching of the lessons of
retributive justice.  We shall see how the firmly-seated
dynasty of the Plantagenets-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 usurpation 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 Plantagenets on
Bosworth Field.
In proceeding to that period of English history which
is illustrated by the tragedy of Richard the Second, let




TIIE REIGN OF RICIHARD TIIE SECOND.    159
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.




160               LECTURE FIFTH.
The opening of the tragedy of Richard the Second displays the various elements which are to be wrought to the
great historical 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 ni6tarch, benea'th
the loftysi ajesty of whose demeanour, which first strikes
the mind, we soon discover the fickle, arbitrary temper and
the unreal strength of that pride which is to work out its
own ruin in a career of folly and dissimulation and tyranny. In the play, Richard comes on the scene 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 succeeded to a
reign which, during the long term of fifty years, had been
triumphant abroad and unresisted at home; and the




THE REIGN OF RICIIARD TIHE SECOND.   161
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 superhuman 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 the 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 understand that, while 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
11




162               LECTURE FIFTII.
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 the high-born, was now inflaming the hearts of those who, under the bonds of villainservice, 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 civic 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
enfranchisement becomes dangerous or even mischievous."




THE REIGN OF RICIIARD THE SECOND.    163
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 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
misguided by a seditious and fanatic priest-John Ballwho went about the country teaching revolutionary lessons in their most destructive forms-in sermons, with the
proverb, in doggerel 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, they 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 an 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 malecontent subjects assembled




164               LECTURE FIFTII.
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 again 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 confederate 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 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




THE REIGN OF RICHARD TILE SECOND.    165
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, and.its. hand uplifted.
It is at this point of his reign and of 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; and,
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 judgment, Richard, though he
awarded the trial, is not willing to commit it; and he




166               LECTURE FIFTII.
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 cannot help looking forward in the history, and thinking that the 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 compromise 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,




TIE REIGN  OF RICHARD  TlHE  SECOND.                16T
in the same arbitrary temper, reduced to six years. It is
not this inequality'alone that creates a sympathy with
Norfolk. We see Bolingbroke 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
Ilis 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 unlooked for from your highness' mouth;
A dearer merit, not so deep a maim,
As to be cast forth in the common air,
Have I deserved at your highness' hand,
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,




168                  LECTURE  FI FTIt.
Or like a cunning instrument cased up,
Or, being open, put into his hands
That knows no touch to tune the liarmony.
Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue,
Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips;
And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance
Is made my gaoler 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 his shorter exile by 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"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




TIHE  REIGN  O1F RICHARD  THE  SECOND.              169
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:
And, toiled with works of war, retired himself
To Italy; and there, at Venice, gave
HIis 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:
" Otrself afd 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 affects 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




1170                 LECTURE  FITTII.
be won away from  him  by the arts 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 substitutes athome 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."
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 coffers 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 REIGN OF RICHARD  TIIE  SECOND.                171
The death scene of John of Gaunt is a dramatic invention, but 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 magnificent
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 sceptred 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:




172                  LECTURE  FIFThI.
"I am the last of noble Edward's sons,
Of whom thy father, prince of Wales, was first;
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 Hereford'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 selfindulgence, 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 behold 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 con



TIIE REIGN OF RICIIARD THIE SECOND.    173
science 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, historian, and moralist.
The king hastens back from Ireland, because the banished Bolingbroke, 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
and growing 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-confidence, 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 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:
~- Faber's Sights and Thoughts, p. 288.




174                  LECTURE  FIFTT.
"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 thee 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 impatient 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."
WThen 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;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
iHe 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,




THE  REIGN  OF ilICHARD  THE  SECOND.              175
Stand bare and naked, trembling 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,
Hiis 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 jture divinzo, 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 coronation-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.




176                  LECTURE  FIFTI.
The evil tidings of growing disloyalty and rebellion
came full and fast upon the unhappy Richard; and, after
some fitful flashes of resolution 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;
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed;
All nmurthered:-for, within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps death his court: and there the antick 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 chastisement 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:
"0 God! 0 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




THE REIGN  OF RICHtARD  THE SECOND.              177
beautiful description of the entry into the city, which is
spoken by the Duke of York.  While Bolingbroke'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, 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
12




178               LECTURE FIFTH.
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 misspent 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
apprehensive of all, even chance, impressions, and then
exclaimsX Gray's Poetical Works, p. 172.




THE REIGN  OF RICIIARD  TtlE  SECOND.              179
"How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
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 downfall, 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 kings'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




180                LECTURE FIFTIT.
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!"*
*t Froissart. Johnes's Translation, vol. xii. p. 193.




LECTURE VI.*
Egz XdWn of rtnrg f1tj   ourft.
Henry the Fourth's accession to the throne an usurpation-Character of the king-Error of historical reasoning-Carlyle on
Cromwell-Henry's education and exile-Analogy to Macbeth
-His popularity-Counsel to his son-His visit to foreign lands
-Palestine-Castile-His return-Severe policy after his coronation-The Bishop of Carlisle-Shakspeare's "Chronicle-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 Palheologus 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 fortified
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
* Monday, February 1st, 1847.
181




182               LECTURE SIXTH.
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 Lancastrian
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, reserving 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 probably a long and studied course of
politic ambition. It proved successful, in so far as the
grand object of his hopes and aspirations was attained,he gained the throne; and we shall see whether the possession, 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 longcontinued 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 ourselves, that the ambition
which has been thus successful must have been more far



THE REIGN  OF HENRY  THE FOURTH.           183
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 giventhe sun-light and the showers that have touched it, and
the winds that have breathed upon it. It is with reference 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 Cromwell
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 program of the whole drama; which he then, step by step,
dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on-the hollow scheming
V7roxpr'pz  or play-actor that he was?  This is a radical
perversion, all but universal in such cases. And think,
for an instant, how different the fact is! How much does
one of us foresee of his own life? Short way a-head of us
it is all dim,-an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This
Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion -of
program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable
cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after




184               LECTURE SIXTH.
scene! Not so.  We see it so; but to him it was in no
measure so. What absurdities would fall away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view
by history! Historians indeed will tell you that they do
keep it in view; but look whether such is practically the
fact! Vulgar history, as in this, Cromwell'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 disappear 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 us.' "*
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
-* Heroes and Hero Worship, p. 198.




TIHE REIGN OF HIENRY TIEE FOURTH.          185
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 more
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 management 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 shall, 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 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
* Froissart, vol. viii. p. 4.




186              LECTURE SIXTI.
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 childless, 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 Thirdwho 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 every thing 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




THE REIGN OF HIENRY THIE FOURTH.    187
degree of guilt. The weird' sisters foretell to Macbeth
that heals 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 expectation 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'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 Bolingbroke 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 case 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 the 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




188                 LECTURE SIXTI.
and the laws.  On that occasion, they sacked and burnt
the palace of the Duke of Lancaster; a few yearsepass 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 himself, that ever when
the people turned away with indignation, or-what is
tenfold worse-with contempt from King Richard, thinking how unkingly 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 to the moral world"-the other making himself
cheap to their sight:
" Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackney'd in 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?
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dress'd myself in such humility,




THE  REIGN  OF HENRY  THE  FOURTH.                 189
That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,
Even in the presence of the crowned king.
Thus did I keep my person fresh and new;
My presence, like a robe pontifical,
Ne'er seen, but wonder'd at; and so my state,
Seldom, but sumptuous, showed like a feast;
And won, by rareness, such solemnity.
The skipping king, he ambled up and down
With shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits,
Soon kindled and soon burned;'carded his state;
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,
Enfeoffed himself to popularity;
That being daily swallowed by men's eyes,
They surfeited with honey; and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, 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,
Such as is bent on sun-like majesty
When it shines seldom in admiring eyes:
But rather drowz'd and hung their eyelids down,
Slept in his face, 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 confidence in his coming royalty.
It is in the very presence of the king that he proclaims
himself the avenger of the murdered Gloucester; yet




190.  LECTURE SIXTH.
Gloucester was 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
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth
To me for justice and rough chastisement."
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 advantage. 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 Bolingbroke.  "'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 employ his time better than remain



THE REIGN OF IHEN'lY THE FOURTH.    191
ing 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:-m" 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 countrymen were calculated to soothe the sorrows of
his exile, they also watered his growing pride and ambi.
i: Froissart, vol. xii. p. 56.




192               LECTURE SIXTH.
tion. 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."
He 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:




TIIE  REIGN  OF IIENRY  THE  FOURTH.               193
"The duke, great Bolingbroke,
Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,
Which his aspiring rider seem'd 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!
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 considering
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 be viewed as one of those revolutionary changes by which, at successive periods, the
British Constitution has been modified.: I have had some hesitation as to repeating these familiar passages; but if quotations from Shakspeare are to be omitted because they are familiar, there could be no such thing as illustrations of a lecturer's meaning. Besides, who has not observed how
often in a common Shakspearian passage, a rare beauty, a new suggestion reveals itself, when presented in a new relation.  I have
thought it best, therefore, with but few exceptions, to allow the quotations in these lectures to remain. W. B. R.
3




194               LECTURE SIXTH.
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
adversity, drew down upon himself the weary punishment
of lifelong imprisonment 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 acknowledgments.
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 rewardwhether 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 mavy 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 REIGN OF HENRY THE FOURTII.    195
the "'Chronicle-Plays" vary in structure and character,
(no two of them closely corresponding,) 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 perplexities 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 inexhaustible wit by making merriment for himself and the heir-apparent.  We see in
this mixed drama the tragic side of war-civil warwith 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 volutnteers for the war, but




196              LECTURE SIXTII.
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 commodity 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 pressed 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 of 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 ashamed to
march through Coventry with. The link of association
between the serious and the comic parts of these plays is
to be found in the character of him who is the Prince
Henry of the palace and the Prince Hal of his boon-companions in the tavern-for we meet with him in both
places, more at home, however, in the places of his amusement 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 the historic dramatist would have to work in some
countries: but every class of freemen, in the just subor



TIIE REIGN OF HIENRY TIIE FOURTIt.   197
dination 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 dramatically 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
*- Literature of Europe, vol. ii. p. 395.




198:     LECTURE  SIXTI.
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' former desire
being almost extinguished, his friends failing, and his
enemies increasing, 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
weariness." 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 wan 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




TI1E REIGN  OF HIENRY TILE FOURTH.              199
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 unrealas 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 treat 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
encroachment 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 his empire against the aggressions of the Turks.*  The help was not given; and in' "WVhen Manuel had satiated the curiosity, and perhaps fatigued
the patience of the French, he resolved on a visit to the adjacent
island. In his progress from Dover, he was entertained at Canterbury
with due reverence by the prior and monks of St. Austin; and, on
Blackheath, King Henry the Fourth, with the English court, saluted
the Greek hero, who, during many days, was lodged and treated in




200                 LECTURE  SIXTIH.
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 wisdoim by which he both gained and kept the throne of
England!
The intended crusade was frustrated by impending
London as emperor of the East. But the state of England was still
more adverse to the design of the holy war. In the same year, the
hereditary sovereign had been deposed and murdered; the reigning
prince was a successful usurper, whose ambition was punished by
jealousy and remorse; nor could Henry of Lancaster withdraw his
person or forces from the defence of a throne incessantly shaken by
conspiracy and rebellion. He pitied, he praised, he feasted, the emperor of Constantinople; but if the English monarch assumed the
cross, it was only to appease his people, and perhaps his conscience,
by the merit or semblance of this pious intention." Gibbon's Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. lxvi., Milman's edition, vol. vi.
p. 221. W. B. R.




THIE REIGN OF HENRY TILE FOURTII.    201
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 ani
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 crown. There is danger of
their becoming arrogantj 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 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




202                  LECTURE  SIXTI.
further fomented by the demand, which, on the other
hand, Hotspur makes on the king to ransom his brotherin-law, Mortimer, who, while leading an expedition against
the Welsh, had been taken prisoner by Glendower.  But
AIortimer 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 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 me for 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 waij —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 breath'd, 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,




TIlE REIGN  OF IIENRY  TIIE FOURTH.               203
Bloodstained with these valiant combatants.
Never did bare and rotten policy
Colour her working 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 theatens"I will lift the downtrod Mortimer
As high i' the air as this unthankful king,
As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke."
He speaks of his sovereign as no more than Bolingbroke;
and when he learns from the elder Percies, that in the
reign of Richard 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 murd'rous 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 in 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?"




204                LECTUREv   SIXT1h.
The character of Ilotspur, which gives so much spirit
and splendour to the revolt of the Percies, furnishes various historical illustration 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,' and
The 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 passage 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 character 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 hostilities; 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."
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
a' Page 45. vol. ii. of the American edition of the Library of Old
English Prose Writers, edited by Dr. Young.




TIIE REIGN  OF IIENRY TILE FOURTII.          205
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,
an historical use which the poet-historian makes of the
character of Falstaff-an historical use at the same time
that there is high poetic art in it. Hotspur and Falstaff
(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 historical 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 Falstaff's character may become expressive. 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 unwarlike and voluptu-:' "Then," says Justice Shallow, "was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John,
a boy; and page to Thomas ~Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk."




206                 LECTURE SIXTI.
ous 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 soldiers, Hotspur
and Falstaff. Each character has, therefore, its historical
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 quick answer is"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;-O! 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




THE REIGN  OF 1IENRY  TILE FOUTIH.               207
no skill in surgery then?  No."   Therefore 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 he, that doth redeem her thence, might wear,
Without corrival, all her dignities."
Before the battle of Shrewsbury, Falstaff's thought is" Would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well."
When Hotspur, immediately after his disappointment as
to the reinforcement 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,
All hot and bleeding, will we offer them:
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit,
Up to the 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 personage, the Welsh chieftain,
Owen Glendower. Of his character and career little is
distinctly known, and that little through the narratives
of his foes. There rests over his history the vail of a
splendid mystery; and Shakspeare has represented him
chiefly as seen through the obscurity of popular tradition,




208              LECTURE SIXTII.
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'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 Bolingbroke 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




THE REIGN OF IIENRY THE FOURTII.                 209
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 fellowcitizens 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 thought of the defect
of Henry's title to the throne, there could hardly be a
greater political evil than the existence of an aristocracy
strong enough and proud enough to build up or to pull
down the 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 livery, and 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,
14




210                 LECTURE SIXTIL.
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 itselfSteps me a little higher than his vow
Made to my father, while his blood was poor,
Upon the naked shore at 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 Mlowbray, 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 the silent dwellings in a sleeping city,
gives utterance to that beautiful apostrophe to sleep:
"H;' ow many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep!-Sleep, gentle sleep,




THE REIGN  OF  IIENRY  THE  FOURTH.              211
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 hush'd 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?
0! 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, 0 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 bead 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 Bolingbroke," 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




212               LECTURE SIXTH.
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.
* Southey's Naval History, vol. ii. p. 50.




LECTURE VII.*
1e  4aratfer and 9etgn of  urN       fgWe <ift.
Sorrowful but vigorous reign of the fourth Henry-His successor
Shakspeare's favourite-His reign of conquest-His career as
Prince of Wales-Not profligate but popular-A prince and a
gentleman-His 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
-His associates of early life-The character of Falstaff considered
-Morgann's essay-Friendship —Hamlet and Horatio-Henry and
Falstaff-Falstaff's cowardice-Mr. Senior's criticism-H-enry's accession to the throne-The war with France-Battle of AgincourtHenry's relations to his soldiers-Sir Thomas Erpingham —Death
of York and Suffolk-The tragedy a triumphal song.
I HAVE endeavoured, with the help of Shakspeare's
matchless historical 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'M
* February 8th, 1847.
213




214              LECTURE SEVENTH.
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 heartI" 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 sadhearted, 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 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




THE REIGN OF IIENRY TIIE FIFTII.          215
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 displayed in the composition of these " ChroniclePlays;" 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 preceded 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 historical consent, that Henry's career as Prince
of Wales was one of unwonted 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




216             LECTURE SEVENTH.
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 represented as a low profligate, reckless, heartless, and dissolute, the perpetual inmate of
taverns, and a licentious brawler. On the other side, the
effort is made, and with considerable historical research,
to prove that the traditional accounts of the prince's early
life are altogether unfounded; that Shakspeare's representation of him, as an historical portrait, is misleading
and unjust, and that the prince's life was blameless 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 represented 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 reconcile 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




TIlE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH.              217
growth of virtue-a monstrous and unnatural changewhich 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 knowledge 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-possession-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 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,




218                LECTURE  SEVENTH.
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,
And 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,
doubtless, 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 without 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




THIE REIGN OF HENRY TIIE FIFTII.           219
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 accordance both
with historical truth, and the requisites of poetic art;
but to show this, we must look back on his earlier
days.
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 received 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 sensitive 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,




220             LECTURE SEVENTH.
though in a very different degree, a thoughtful character
like the Prince of Wales may have had his youthful
hours of painful reflection, 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 himself. 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 unreasonable speculation which leads us to think there were times when
the breast of this young prince was agitated by the various
and contending 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 solemdr funeral pomp of kings to be interred
at Westminster by the side of his queen, —" the good
Queen Anne,"-in the tomb which 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, 0 Lord!
Oh, not to day! think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!




TIIE REIGN  OF IIENRY THE FIFTH.               221
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
Toward 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 sovereignthe 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 he does not, like the heartstricken 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 portray



222              LECTURE SEVENTIJ.
ing 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 to the
father. This would have cast a cloud that would have
darkened all 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 premeditated 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 law of inheritance,-which was again shown,
too, in the case of George the Third and his Prince of
Wales.* Now, inasmuch as these half-German princes. In reference to the early Hanover kings and princes, it has often
occurred to me that the later Stuarts must have been bad indeed when
a moral nation, such as the English, could prefer and endure repulsive




THE REIGN  OF IIENlRY  THE  FIFTH.              223
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."
reprobates-coarse adulterers, and violaters of every domestic tiesuch as were George the First and Second, and Prince Frederic. Is
there not some faint analogy in our day-the points of contrast being
equally marked-between Falstaff and poor Sheridan? I have somewhere seen a very sad narrative of an accidental meeting, on the road
near Brighton, of Sheridan, not long before his death, and the Prince
Regent; and Sheridan, in his threadbare coat, turning down a bypath
to avoid his former friend. As Hostess Quickly says of Falstaff when
dying,-" The king had killed his heart."  W. B. R.




224              LECTURE SEVENTIH.
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 difference easily adjusted; and the prince is entitled so to
speak, when he gayly 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 hand, desirable that Prince Henry should not
be too intimately identified with his father's reign. It is
well that he, whose glorious career is to be the theme of
a poet's richest praise, should not be associated in 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 reign of divided and not unanimous allegiance. The dominion of Henry the Fourth was that of
stern, hard, suspicious power. There were conspiracies,
and craft and policy were needed to countermine 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 law was enacted, by which heresy was to be punished
with the slow torture of the death by fire, and the Protomartyr of English Reformers perished at the stake.*: Stat. 2, Hen. 4, c. 15. De heretico comburendo. The preamble sets
forth "that divers unauthorized preachers go about teaching new




TILE  REIGN  OF HENRY  THE  FIFTH.                 225
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 characterized 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 Shrewsbury, but by a piece of hard
and treacherous  surprise.  This is incomparably worse
than revelry with Falstaff, and wisely and happily is
doctrines and heretical opinions, making conventicles and confederacies, holding schools, writing books, misinforming the people, and
daily committing enormities too horrible to be heard; and that the
bishops are unable to repress these offences because the offenders
despise ecclesiastical censures, and when they are cited before their
ordinaries, depart into another diocese; the statute therefore provides
as a remedy for these evils, that the bishop shall have power to arrest
and confine persons defamed or vehemently suspected of such offences
till they make their canonical purgation; and, if they be convicted, to
punish them with imprisonment, and a fine to the king. It then enacts
that if any person so convicted shall refuse to abjure such preachings,
doctrines, opinions, schools, and misinformations, or, after abjuration,
shall be proved to have relapsed, then the sheriff of the county, or the
mayor and bailiffs of the nearest borough, shall, on requisition, be present at the pronunciation of the sentence, shall receive the person so
condemnned into custody, and shall cause him to be burnt on a high
place before the people, that such punishment may strike terror into
the minds of others." 1 Statutes at Large, 441. WV. B. R.
15




226              LECTURE SEVENTH.
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 traditionary 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 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 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 reverential of the beauty and the




THE REIGN OF HENRY  THE FIFTH.              227
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 distinct 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 descendants of the usurping Bolingbroke, but not
until, in one oQf 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.
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.




228             LECTURE SEVENTH.
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 moresuch companionship 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, estimate 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 companions
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 congeniality 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 differences of character, but varieties of disposition, will
strengthen the affection due to that vow, which, in




THE REIGN OF HENRY  TIlE FIFTH.             229
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 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
illustrated 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
" Poetical Works, vol. v. p. 140.




230               LECTURE  SEVENTI.
something that makes up for his own infirmity of oversensitiveness.
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 synlathy 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 excitement and animation of
military life; but finding no fit field of- adventure, 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 unwearied 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,
- Coleridge's words are, "Pistol, Nym, and id genus omne, do not
please me as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations-foils to
the native wit of Falstaff. I say wit emphatically: for this character,
so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor
was meant to contain, any humour at all." Literary Remains, (Ed.
1836,) vol. ii. p. 271; see also vol. i. p. 134. W. B. R.




TIHE REIGN  OF HIENRY TIIE FIFTH.          231
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 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 intervallums.  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! 0, you shall see him laugh till his face
be like a wet cloak ill-laid up."
For the 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 actioni 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




232             LECTURE SEVRNTIL.
his wit, all else is sensuality, self-indulgence, shamelessness. But, reprobate as Falstaff is, his character is not
contemptible. His grossness may be disgusting, his profligacies most reprehensible-so that he may be censured
or condemned-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 Shaksperean 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.  Falstaff 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-bred cowards as ever turned back,-and for
the third, (that is, Falstaff,) if he fight longer than he sees
reason, I'll 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




TIIE  REIGN  OF IHENRY  TILE FIFTIL.               233
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."*
*- The "ingenious and argumentative essay" to which my brother
refers is "The Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff,
by Morgann," which I cannot help regarding yet as a fantastical
attempt to reverse a popular judgment. The isolated passages relied
on, prove nothing or too much; as, for example, when Mrs. Quickly
means to arrest the fat knight, she says:
"HLostess,1 Where is your yeoman?  Is it a lusty yeoman? will'a
stand to't?
Fang. Sirrab, where's Snare?
Hostess. 0 lord, ay: good master Snare.
Snare. Here, here-it may cost some of us our lives, for he will
stab."
Stabbing a bailiff or a dead Percy seems to be the extent of Falstaffs
positive courage; and a coward, a runaway coward, will he remain
during all time. It seems to me-though this may be playful paradox
too-that a far better case might be made out for poor Bardolph,
who was hanged for robbing a church. For instance, Bardolph was
trustworthy, or in the crisis at Shrewsbury he would hardly have
been made by the prince "bearer of despatches" to Prince John
and Lord Westmoreland. When Falstaff is threatened by the sheriff's
officers, it is on Bardolph he calls to keep them off.  When Pistol
and Nym quarrel, and seem to be coming to blows, Bardolph interposes, and with his drawn sword keeps the peace. At the bridge
at Harfieur, Bardolph makes at least a good show of fighting, calling
his followers "on, on to the breach," and obeys Captain Fluellen's
orders of attack. He uttered brave words at the bridge, and Fluellen
is willing to intercede with the king, when IBardolph is to be hanged
for sacrilege, but is interrupted by the stern refusal, (a little harsh from
Henry's lips to his old companion,) "We would have all such offenders
to be cut off." It must be admitted (I am not sure Morgann is equally
candid as to his hero) that the " Boy," as well as Poins, disparages Bardolph as " white-livered and red-faced," as one "who faces it out and
fights not," and that at Gadshill he did run with the rest; but the par.




234,               LECTURE  SEVENTIL.
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 voluptuous 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, "Ihave 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, hear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster,
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 i' the Temple Hall;
At two o'clock i' 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 either they or we must lower lie."
It 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.
tisans of Falstaff should remember the reason Bardolph gives for his
flight when the prince reproaches him for cowardice:
"Faith, I ran when I saw others run."
On the whole, I submit the Bardolphian heroic theory with equal, if
not great, confidence. W. B. R.




THE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH.               235
After the excitement of this campaign, he is represented as returning 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 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 disclosing the struggle between the prince's
better nature and the companionship 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 exceeding 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
-* Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. v. p. 247. It. appears that Mr. Senior's articles on the Waverley Novels were begun in a periodical called
the London Review, which soon failed. They were continued in the
Quarterly Review. W. B. R.




236             LECTURE SEVENTIT.
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 companions.  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." IHe
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




TIIE REIGN OF HENRY THE FIFTH.              237
world keeps the roadway better than thine; —every man
would think me an hypocrite indeed."
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 tempest of commotion, like the south
Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt,
And drop 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




238              LECTURE SEVENTH.
cruel severity. It is a passage in the drama of historical
interest, as closing forever that levity of life which, according to common tradition, Henry had indulged.
The reign of Henry the Fifth was signalized at the
outset by a magnanimous policy. Besides the funeral
hvnours 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 treat it only in its connection with the character of Henry the Fifth. Hle 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




TIHE  REIGN  OF 1IENRY  TIHE  FIFTH.             239
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 make such waste in brief mortality.":'
I need not occupy you with the course of that invasion
from  the landing of Henry's army near Harfieur 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 frieedom  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
a It was, besides, in pursuance of his father's dying advice:
"Though thou stand'st more sure than I could do,
Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;
And all thy friends, which thou must make thy friends,
Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out,
By whose fell working I was first advanced,
And by whose power I well might lodge a fear
To be again displaced; which to avoid,
I cut them off; and had a purpose now
To lead out many to the Holy Land;
Lest rest and lying still might make them look
Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,
Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels; that action hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days."    W. B. R.




240                LECTURE  SEVENTH.
in a generous and liberal spirit, which secured him the
hearts of his soldiers.  Iis intercourse with them is one
of the points of description in that deservedly famoius
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,
Presenteth 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,
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 overhears 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 give to every one,
Thawing cold fear." ~
- Campbell, the poet, in the preface to his edition of Shakspeare,
says:
" The description of the night before the battle of Agincourt will be
repeated by the youth of England when our children's children shall
be gray with age. It was said of ZEschylus that he composed his'Seven Chiefs against Thebes' under the inspiration of Mars himself.
If' Henry the Fifth' had been written for the Greeks, the same might
have been said of it." W. B. R.




THE  REIGN OF HENRY  THE  FIFTH.                241
The position of Henry's army was critically dangerous.
Outnumbered, 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.""*
An historical event is dramatized when the king, overhearing Westmoreland's wish" Oh, that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no 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 fine cheerfulness and courtesy"Gloster,'tis true that we are in great danger;
The greater therefore should our courage be.
Good morrow, brother Bedford!"
* Wordsworth's " Character of the Happy Warrior."
]6




242                LECTURE  SEVENTH.
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 his 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 tho
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 warrior's 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 shall not fly,)
And time hath worn us into slovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;
And my poor soldiers tell me yet ere 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




THE  REIGN  OF HENRY  THE FIFTH.                 243
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 illdirected 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:
"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 insteep'd,
And takes him by the beard; kisses the gashes
That bloodily did yawn upon his face;
And cries aloud-' Tarry, dear 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




244             LECTURE SEVENTH.
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 King
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 the independence of France found its wondrous redemption by the
splendid heroism of Joan of Arc.




LECTURE VIII.*
The treaty of Troyes-Its details-The last hours of Henry the Fifth
-His intended crusade-Hume's comments-Henry the Sixth an
infant-His reign and these "Chronicle-Plays" unpromising subjects-Genuineness of the plays-The Minority-The French warsState of France-The Regent Bedford-The Siege of Orleans-Joan
of Arc-Various criticisms on her character-Her sincerityImputed witchcraft-Defective educatipn-Her influence-Relief
of Orleans-Coronation of the king at Rheims-Exemption of
Domremy-Capture of the Maid-Her trial and examination-Her
martyrdam-Cardinal Beaufort and the Bishop of Beauvais-The
cardinal's death-Statue of the Maid at 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
* February 15th, 1847.
245




246              LECTURE EIGHTH.
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, transferring 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 forever 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 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




THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTII.            247
recognition of his formal title during his lifetime, 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 an 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."t  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 skepticism
aping the modesty and the candour of piety; and it is
well worth remarking that, while Mr. Hume is conf4dent
* Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, lect. i. p. 98, (Amer. ed.)
t History of England, vol. iv. p. 73.




248             LECTURE EIG-ITH.
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 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 universal
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




TIHE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH.            249
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. Ote 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
* Speed, as quoted in Southey's Naval History of England, vol. ii.
p. 58.




250              LECTURE EIGHTH.
subject for us in this 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 Henry 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 achievemnent 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
of 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 so 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




THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH.              251
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 inferiority of the dramas Shakspeare has
devoted to it, when compared with his other "ChroniclePlays.". It is that very inferiority which has made the
authorship of the three parts of Henry the Sixth a question; 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, I 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, 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 multitude of
events; it helps us to comprehend the facts, because, disconnected 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




252             LECTURE EIGHTH.
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, I apprehend, not only a difficult, 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
Agi ncourt. 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 obtained 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




TIIE REIGN OF HENRY THIE SIXTH.           253
irreparable loss the nation suffered 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 committed the management of the kingdom and guardianship
of his infant son, are represented as beginning their disputes over the bier of their deceased sovereign. The
success which had attended the military career of Henry
the Fifth in his invasion of France, did not, immediately
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 by 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
themselves, 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 islandstrangers, thus far irresistible, had little more to do in
fulfilling the work of subjugation; and France was sunk




254                 LECTURE  EIGHTH.
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 independence. The Regent Bedford added fresh troops to an army that was
growing almost veteran on the soil of France, and being
strongly reinforced by the Duke of Burgundy, sent a large
force, under the command of the Earl of Salisbury, to
take the city of Orleans, the possession 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
- There is a striking passage of De Serres, quoted in a note to
Southey's Joan of Are, and requoted in Creasy's "Battles," in the
chapter on the Battle of Orleans: "In sooth, the estate of France
was then most miserable. There appeared nothing but a horrible face,
confusion, poverty, desolation, solitarinesse and feare. The lean and
bare labourers in the country did terrifie even theeves themselves, who
had nothing left them to spoile but the carkasses of these poore miserable creatures, wandering up and down like ghostes drawne out of
their graves. The least farmes and hamlets were fortified by these
robbers, English, Bourguegnons, and French, every one striving to do
his worst; all men-of-war were well agreed to spoile the countryman
and merchant. Even the cattell, accustomed to the larume bell, the
signe of the enemy's approach, would run home of themselves without
any guide by this accustomed misery."  W. B. R.




THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH.            255
advance of the English army, the small towns surrendered
after faint and ineffectual resistance; and it was manifest
to both nations, 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 forever, 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 commander, 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 notwithstanding occasional relief, they were bound in more and more hopelessly; 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 interposition, 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 Are, 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




256              LECTURE EIGHTH.
critics: he says, "We find her described in the chronicles
under every form of vituperation-' a monstrous woman,''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 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!




THE REIGN  OF IIENRY  THE  SIXTH.               257
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 not 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 belongs to one fighting in
a high cause, with unconquerable trust, and winning over
enemies by the firm resolves of a vigorous understanding
and an unshaken will. The lines beginning —'Look on thy country-look on fertile France,'might have given the tone to every thing that has been
subsequently written in honor of the Maid.* It was his
* I am at a loss to conjecture why these striking lines were not
quoted in full, and add them in a note:
"Look on thy country-look on fertile France,
And see the cities and the towns defaced
By wasting ruin of the cruel foe!
As looks the mother on her lowly babe,
When death doth close his tender-dying eyes,
See, see the pining malady of France;
Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds,
17




258                LECTURE EIGHITH.
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 extraordinary 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 chroniclers 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
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
Which thou thyself hast given her woful breast!
Oh! turn thy edged sword another way;
Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help!
One drop of blood drawn from thy country's bosom
Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore.
Return thee, therefore, with a flood of tears,
And wash away thy country's stained spots." W. B. R.
- Charles Knight's Pictorial Shakspearc.  Essay on Henry the
Sixth and Richard the Third, p. 131.




TIlE  REIGN OF IIENRY  TIIE  SIXTH.             259
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 Shakspeare; 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.t
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. For-* "Joan of Arc a heroine to Englishmen no less than to Frenchmen." Arnold's Lectures, p. 96.
I My brother was not familiar with the German language or its
literature. HIis allusion is here, of course, to Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," with which, accident had made him acquainted in the translation
by the late William Peter, the British consul in Philadelphia-a gentle
man who, during his residence in our city, gained many friends. Ile
was a poet of no mean pretensions and a thorough scholar. My brother
always spoke of him highly and affectionately. W. B. R.




260              LECTURE EIGHTH.
merly, 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 enchauntments 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 modern
mind recoils so violently from the admission of any thing
more than mere human agency in the course of human
affairs, and the whole subject of belief in miraculous interposition is so completely systematized 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




THE REIGN OF IIENRY TIIE SIXTH.          261
English conquest-a proposition which, perhaps, none
would have any difficulty in admitting.
This, at least, is clear: that what she said respecting
her motives and the influences upon her mind, she did
sincerely and steadfastlybelieve. 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? A humble shepherd girl, a mere child, (for she was but nineteen years
old,) ignorant of the world-of every thing 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 encourage; and yet what this poor
girl said she was commissioned to do, that exactly ste
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




WL8~2            LECTURE EIGHTIL..
dutifully nurse the sick and help the wayfarer; 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 the eternal shame of her judges —the sacristan
of the village church bore 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 wayfarer-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 apparitions 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 occa



THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTH.               283
sion, 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 independence. The enthusiasm
that was caught from her by her countrymen 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" 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
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 supernatural terror which had seized
the English soldiers was so great, that, at the battle of
Patay, they —along them  no doubt were some of the
veterans of Agincourt-fled in panic-struck confusion.




264               LECTURE EIGIITII.
The remaining promise of Joan of Are was speedily fulfilled when the dauphin entered the city of IRheims 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 beyond 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 extraordinary 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 was 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 sol- How untrue, therefore, is Schiller's delineation of "The Maid:"
he makes her bound by a vow to kill, and never to give quarter. The
crisis of her fate comes from an act of mercy. W. B. R.




TIIE REIGN  OF IHENRY  TIIE SIXTII.         265
diers from their depression, the excitement led to disorders which defied discipline. The iMaid, 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 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, and 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
* Is there not some skepticism-an insinuated doubt-in this "As
yozu say" of the king? I wonder that my brother missed the chance of a
fair criticism on Hume, who calls Charles the Seventh " the good king."
Why, it is, indeed, not easy to say. History scarcely produces a character less entitled to this praise, and more in contrast with the heroism
that rescued him. W. B. R.




266              LECTURE FIGfITI.
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 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 Frefch
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; 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
- "Nbant a cause de la Pucelle." W. B. R.




THE REIGN OF HENRY TILE SIXTH.            267
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 Maid was received, Paris,
still in the occupation of the English, was filled with
rejoicing; the bells 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, 0, 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 Are 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 —Engiand and
France. With Englishmen did the trial originate, and
by Frenchmen was it conducted. The Bishop of Beauvais 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




268                LECTURE' EIGITTI-T.
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 Are, 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 marvellous 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 malevo* It was once my good fortune-a rare one in this country, where
the book is not often met with-to read the examination of Marie
Antoinette, the dethroned Queen of France, before the revolutionary
tribunal-the questions and the answers as printed in the Moniteur.
The original newspaper on its homely brownish paper as published, I
presume, the next day, was before me. It brought the ghastly scene
of her martyrdom more vividly to my mind than any elaborate eloquence-from Burke down to Lamartine. It has been recalled to my
memory by this examination of " La Pucelle." W. B. R.




TIIE REIGN OF IIENRY THE SIXTII.         269
lence, she was asked whether the saints of her visions
hated the 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 pleasure 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-' Rush
in boldly among the English!' and then I rushed in
myself."




270             LECTURE EIGTIh.
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 between 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, IDOLATER."  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 Beauvais 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 bones 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 martyrdom.
Henry Beaufort was a natural son of John of Gaunt,




TIlE REIGN OF IENRY TIlE SIXThI.         271
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 honoured with ecclesiastical dignities conferred by the pope; he was made a cardinal,
and appointed captain-general of a crusade against the
followers of John Huss, in Bohemia. We have seen how
the peaceful life of Joan of Are 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 accumulated 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 kinsman, Gloucester.
Joan of Arc perished in the bloom of early womanhood,
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




2712               LECTURE EIGHTH.
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 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 Shakspeare 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:
" 0 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 hopeHe dies, and makes no sign.*' The historical student is aware that there is "another side" even
in Cardinal Beaufort's case; and that Doctor Lingard, the Roman




TIIE REIGN  OF IHENRY  TIIE  SIXTII.            273
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
Catholic historian, asserts that Shakspeare was all wrong, and was
misled by prejudiced chroniclers, such as Hall; and that the cardinal's old age was devoted to pastoral duties and religious exercises.
(Vol. iv. p. 83.) My brother, though evidently on the Shakspearian
side of the question, did not bring out one of Beaufort's atrocities as
strongly as he might have done.  Lord Mahon, in his Quarterly
Review essay, says, speaking of the Maid's execution: —"Several
of the prelates and assessors had already withdrawn in horror from
the sight, and others were melted into tears; but the Cardinal of Winchester, still unmoved, gave orders that the ashes and bones of the
heretic should be collected and cast into the Seine." On the vexed
question of Beaufort's real guilt' or innocence, I am incompetent to
form an opinion; but, taking his death-bed horrors as truth, there
are four lines at the close of the scene which, in charity, should be
quoted. Warwick says" So bad a death argues a monstrous life."
To which the king gently answers"Forbear to judge, for we are sinners allClose up his eyes and draw the curtain close
And let us all to meditation."          W. B. Ri
$ I find the following most recent tribute to the memory of " The
Maid" in the little volume to which I have already more than once referred in these notes:
"I will add but one remark," says Professor Creasy, "on theioharacter of the truest heroine that the world has ever seen. If any
is




274                LECTURE EIGHTH.
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
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
person can be found in the present age who would join in the scoffs
of Voltaire against the Maid of Orleans, and the heavenly voices by
which she believed herself inspired, let him read the life of the wisest
and best man that the heathen nations ever produced. Let him read
of the heavenly voice by which Socrates believed himself to be constantly attended; which cautioned him on his way from the field of
battle at Delium, and which, from his boyhood to the time of his death,
visited him with unearthly warnings. Let the modest reader reflect
upon this; and then, unless he is prepared to term Socrates either fool
or impostor, let him not dare to deride or vilify Joan of Are." DecisiveBattles of the World, vol. ii. p. 101: "The Battle of Orleans."
W. B. R.




TIIE REIGN  OF IIENR1Y  TtIE SIXTH.              275
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 warriorMARY  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 protracted, neither the wise and
strong regency of Bedford, nor the valour of Talbot, could
save the conquests in France. The Duke of Burgundy
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-esta-:t This is an extract from a most picturesque article in No. 138 of
the Quarterly Review, now known to be by Lord Mahon-the present
Earl Stanhope-and since separately published as his, in a popular
form. Much of the materials, and, occasionally, passages of the lecture, are derived from this article; and I have not thought it worth
while to distinguish them further than by this general acknowledgment.  It occurs to me here to note, as this work is passing
through the press, we have the intelligence that Earl Stanhope has
recently-and it was one of his first acts on succeeding to his titlecreated a prize essay at Oxford on "English Historical Composition."
At this time when a great deal of nonsense is talked and written on
both sides of the Atlantic about "the cold shade of the aristocracy,"
it is pleasant to those who still think well of ancient institutions to
find noblemen like Lord Stanhope and Lord Carlisle actively contributing to the cause of popular letters. WV. B. R.




276              LECTURE EIGIHTIL.
blished, and the continental conquests of the Plantagenets
ceased forever.
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 counselled 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 lifetime,
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 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
" Lingard cites for this surprising act of Louis the Eleventh, Stow,
p. 475; Hall, 129.




THE REIGN OF HENRY THE SIXTII.              277
have expected 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-once 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.
* Christabel. Poetical Works, p. 276, Am. ed.




LECTURE IX.*
Ride mars of ft Bast
Closing scenes of the Plantagenet dynasty-Want of interest in the
War of the Roses-The question of genealogy-No actuating principle in the contest-Its obscurity-A series of bloody battlesSaintly character of the king-His solitary sadness-Loss of the
French conquests-The Duke of Suffolk-Popular tumult-Jack
Cade-The Temple Garden-Richard of York and Somerset-The
Battle of St. Albans-The Earl of Warwick, the king-makerHenry's captivity-The Parliament-Margaret of Anjou-Her character-King Rene —Injustice of English writers to her memoryThe 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 the civil war-Death struggle of
the military power of the nobles-The last of the barons-CliffordNo feud among the people or vassals-The separation of the church
from the conflict-Education-The 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 unsatisfactory subject
*a February 22d, 1847.
278




TIIE WARS OF THE ROSES.              279
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 forever.
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,
the pitf/ul life of King Edward the Fifth, and the
tragical doings of King Richard the Third." A struggle so protracted and so sanguinary 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 XVar of the
Roses. be considered by itself-separated, on the one hand,
from the earlier events, with which it is morally connected
by retribution for ancestral guilt, and, on the other hand,




280               LECTURE NINTH.
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 genealogical 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 Lancastrian 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 an interest in the




TIIE WARS OF TILE ROSES.              281
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 actuating 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 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




282               LECTURE NINTH.
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 considerable 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 in 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:
"The road is black before your eyes,
Glimmering faintly where it lies;




TIlE WARS OF THE ROSES                  283
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 calin
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 confused 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 reconciliation 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* Wordsworth. The Waggoner.




284               LECTURE NINTIL.
"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.*
But, 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 enjoyed, 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 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
creature, 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
* Lingard, vol. iv. p. 104.




THE WARS OF TIIE ROSES.                 285
saving whereof he esteemed to be the greatest wisdom,
and the loss thereof the extremest folly that could be."
Another 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 the heaping 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 meekness:
"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, speaking of the angelic disposition of a fellow-artist, that he always seemed to him
* "A Fair Quarrel," by Middleton and Rowley. Quoted in Henry
Taylor's "Statesman;" and in "Lamb's Specimens," vol. i. p. 143.




286               LECTURE NINTH.
to have been born in the wrong planet. One cannot help
having something of the same feeling towards the memory
of one so inappositely 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 administration
at h6me 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 stimulated 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




TIHE WARS OF TIIE ROSES.                  287
the disasters of the government. 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;
*- It has been cleverly said " that we are certain he was put to death,
certain he was put to death violently, and we are so thankful for these
two known quantities, that we consider the Iproblem easy, and the
event almost a natural one, though the facts, as they have come down
to us, can only be paralleled in modern description, by imagining that
Lord Brougham, while crossing to Hatvre, after having been supplanted in the chancellorship, had his head chopped off on the paddle-box
of the Grand Turk steamer, and no inquiry made about it." H. R.




288              LECTURE NINTH.
you discover the premonitions of the political pestilence
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 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 discontent, a restless desire
for change-they knew not what it should be; 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 anal the Lancastrian chief, the Duke of
Somerset. It is a dispute between them, that Shakspeare
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




THE WARS OF THE  ROSEs.                   289
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 honour of his birth,
If he suppose that 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 party of the 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,
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, habituated to look to him as the future sovereign in due course of inheritance, he being the heir presumeptive, 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,
19




290               LECTURE NINTH.
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 pardon: 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 wallking 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 extinguish. 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
womnan.
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 vic



TIlE WARS OF THE ROSES.              291
tory is scarcely completed before the fortunes of the conquerors 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-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 paying 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 character of the contest, for while
the parliament was in session for the purpose of harmonizing the dissentions, 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 assembled 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 confronted, as it were, and maintaining their rights in
the presence of the great council of the realm. When the




292               LECTURE NlNT1I.
subject was first stated to King Henry, he said, with a
simplicity and earnestness that were impressive-" Iy
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 unsatisfactory 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 portrayed unfeminine, arbitrary, revengeful, licentious, and even her energy and fortitude are distorted
into unnatural ferocity and obduracy.  I greatly distrust
this representation, not because I am able to find historical authority for a different and better character, but because there was so much that would almost irresistibly
render the English judgment 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




THE WARS OF TTIF ROSES.              293
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 sb ought not to be judged too severely, when
we consider "hat 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 countrywoman, 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 possession
of the throne, and the maintenance of the hereditary
rights of her son. She may have been all that the English chroniclers and the Englsh 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




294               LECTURE NINTII.
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 of war. After the parliamentary compromise, in which the succession of her son was
sacrificed, we can behold her as an heroic matron warring
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, contemptuously 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 catastrophe, the reader of history
naturally looks for the establishment of Lancastrian su.
premacy; 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 proclaimred King Edward the
Fourth.




TtIE  WARS OF THIE  ROSrS.               295
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, Ilenry 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 Peninsular War-and at Waterloo  combined.*
This enormous shedding of English blood was by English
- I do not know the authority for this exact statement.  In
Southey's Colloquies, vol. i. p. 210, llfontesinos says:-" More Englishmen fell at Towton than in any of Marlborough's battles or at
Waterloo." Lingard says that Edward the Fourth, in a confidential
letter to his mother, while he conceals his own loss, tells her that his
heralds counted twenty-eight thousand Lancastrian dead on the field.
"It was," says the historian, "a decisive victory, but it cost the
nation a deluge of blood." W. B. R.




296               LET'C'TURE NS I NTI.
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 contest; but no; for ten perilous years was
the struggle continued, chiefly by the indomitable energy
of Queen Margaret.  Poor King Henry took refuge in
the secluded regions of the North of England, but was
betrayed 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 —as 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 perplexed than
the beginnifig; and I do not know that, in the events
that follow, there is to be discovered 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 nobleman, and one of the extraordinary spectacles
which England exhibited in this war, was that of two




THIE YWAR1S OF THIE IOSES.          297
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 progenitor, 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 Plantagenets, 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 boldness and 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 favour for dread of WVarwick;
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




298                LECTURE NINTH.
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 Tewkesbury, 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
Gloster-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 shriek'd 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 to your torments.'"
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 Gloster-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 is 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.*
-- After five years of captivity in England, she was ransomed by the
king of France and returned to her native country; where, in about




THE  WARS  OF TILE  ROSES.                   299'
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 itselfWhat meaning had this war?   Can it be possible that all
five years more, her eventful and unhappy life came to its end. The
latter part of her life is a subject that has fallen into the hands of
Shakspeare's great successor in imaginative historical literature. In
the romance of "Anne of Geierstein" Sir Walter Scott has introduced
the character of Queen Margaret during the last years of her life, and
he has represented her with a finer justice than is awarded to her in
the dramas. It is with admirable impartiality, and with the highest
art, that Scott has dealt with the majestic ruin of Margaret's mighty
and ambitious spirit, when, as he describes her, during the interview
with the young Lancastrian in the Cathedral of Strasburg-" Though
rivers of tears had furrowed the cheek-though care, disappointment,
domestic grief, and humbled pride had quenched the fire of her eye
and wasted the smooth dignity of her forehead-her noble and majestic features even yet showed the remains of that beauty which once
was held unequalled in Europe."
Scott has traced the course of Margaret's aspiring and restless spirit
on to her death, and even to the last sound of the solemn dirge over
her grave. It is over the close of her story that Scott cites the lines
entitled from an " Old Poem," but, doubtless, his own:
"Toll, toll the bellGreatness is o'er;
The heart has broke,
To ache no more.;An unsubstantial pageant allDrop o'er the scene the funeral piall."  H. R.




I300               LECTURE NINTH.
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 should fill the throne
-whether Henry Plantagenet or Edward Plantagenet
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 permanent 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 downfall 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 immediately 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 unmade hilm.  It was




TIIE ~NARS OF TIIE ROSES.              301
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, Warwick'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 daily feasted, at his numerous manors and
castles, upward 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 wanders 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 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 scaffoldW Wordsworth's Lines to a Lady. Works, p. 411.




302               LECTURE NINTII.
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,
and 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: Memoires de Comrmires, Liv. iii. ch. iv.




TIIE WARS OF TIlE ROSES.                   303
remembrances of his father's bloody death, and of the
perils he mlust 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 fierce
warrior's child. His fathers, through many a generation,
had been surrounded by all the pomlp of chivalry and by
their troops of vassals; but, for this boy"To his side the fallow-deer
Came and rested without 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 awaythat 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 commemorated 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,
i Wordsworth's Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle. Works,
p. 187.




304                 LECTURE  NINTII.
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 history is, that, when the Wars of the Roses
were over, after all the aggravated 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 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 popula* Wordsworth's Song at the Feast of Brougham  Castle. Works,
p. 188.




THE WARS OF THE ROSES.                 305
tion 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 muster, 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 servile condition for a
~station of freedom with all its hopes and chances."
It is to be observed, too, 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 meetwhat 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.*
A The spread of education was one of the innovations, it will be reinembered, that excited the ire of Jack Cade when his ruffians brought
Lord Say a prisoner to him, and Cade tells him20




306                 LECTURE NINTH.
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 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
" Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm, in
erecting a grammar school; and, whereas, before, our forefathers
had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast. caused
printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and
dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to' thy face
that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun, and a
verb, and such abominable words as no Christian can endure to
hear." H. R.




TIIE WARS OF THE ROSES.               307
unnatural contest. He himself, 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 instrument 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.
WThat 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 exultation, 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




308                  LECTURE  NINTH.
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."*
I This is an extract from an address delivered after a confirmation,
at Eton College, in 1844, by Dr. Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln, and quoted
in a little work that I found in my brother's library, entitled "' The
Unity of History, or Outlines of Lectures on Ancient and Modern History considered on the principles of the Church of England," by the
Rev. C. J. Abraham, London, 1845. WV. B. R.




LECTURE X.*
Sitkltb  fit 9:irb- xmq 14Z Wt     f4h.
the character of Edward the Fourth-His 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, men'taland physical-Effect of personal deformity-Commanding intellect of the king-Power of will-No
sympathy-No repentance-Contrast of Macbeth-Richard's dreamThe 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'lat good man, King Henry the Sixth, the
throne of England was peacefully 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
*- March 1st, 1847.
309




310               LECTURE TENTII.
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 be'en 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 li;ed 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 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 Shak-speare as embitter



THE REIGN  OF RICHARD  THE THIRD.                311
ing 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 bitter death.
Who sued to me for him? Who in my wrath
Kneel'd at my feet, and bade me be advised?
Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke 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 at Tewksbury
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 unformed strength of whose hands
the sceptre was to pass. Edward the Fifth succeeded to




312               LECTURE TENTII.
his father's throne when but thirteen years old, and he
reigned for less than thirteen weeks. His name stands
on the list of Engligh sovereigns, and 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 hi's 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




THE RtEIGN OF RIICIIARD  THE THIRD.    313
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 inheriting 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,-playing 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 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 did 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.




314                  LECTURE  TENTIt.
His answer was-the people were not used
To be spoke to but by the recorder.
Then he was urged to tell my tale again;-' 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' the hall, hurled up their caps,
And some ten voices cried-' God save King Richard!'
And thus I took the vantage of those few.'Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,' quoth I,'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 atrocity and
bloodshed, as that which caused
"The piteous moan that Rutland made,
When black-faced Clifford shook his sword at 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 of the Tower 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 fesh'd villains, bloody dogs,




TIHE  REIGNX OF RICIIARD TIIE TIIIRD.          316
Melting with tenderness and mild compassion,
Wept like two children, in their death's-sad story,'0, thus,' quoth Dighton,'lay the gentle babes'-'Thus, thus,' quoth Forrest,'girdling one another
Within their alabaster innocent arms.
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer-beauty kiss'd each other.
A book of prayers on their pillow lay,
Which once,' quoth Forrest,'almost changed my mind;
But 0, the devil'-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 assassinated 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; but 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, -ontained in a chest, buried 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




316               LECTURE TENTH.
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 vindication has, from time
to time, been made; and not only the innocence of his
life been assqrted, 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 injuriously fomented, and that, as to his personal appearance,
the crooked back, and the shrivelled arm, and the deformity of face, Wvere all 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 by 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 a book to
prove that Richard was "truly a marvellous proper man,"
who has been used very badly by posterity.t
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: The disinterment of these supposed royal remains was in 1674.
See Appendix to chap. vii. vol. iii. Lingard.
t This I presume to be Richard the Third as Duke of Gloucester
and King of England, by Caroline A. Halstead. Lon 




THE REIGN  OF RtICIIARD  TIlE THIRD.    317
never too late to vindicate and assert the truth; to rescue
it, when beleagured 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 exaggeration-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 the 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."




318              LECTURE TENTH.
Now, this is dramatic exaiggeration —it is intended to
be so; it is not meant for description, as persons who
read unimaginatively misconstrue 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 unsightliness, seems to show how intense was the
hatred of his character-how  odious the recollection of
his life. The detestation which he had inspired 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 conviction 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,




THE REIGN OF RICHIARD  TIIE THIRD.    319
whose actions did not square altogether with my notions
of the rule of right. The unanimous surprise 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 probability,
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 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 connected with
* Lamb's Prose Works, vol. i. p. 246.




320               LECTURE TENTI.
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 demoralizing influence of the
consciousness of deformity. Shakspeare'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 gray-beards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another,
And not in me. I am m2jself alone."
I have several times adverted to the peculiar significancy of the opening scenes of Shakspeare's plays, and it: Life of Scott, vol. v. p. 175.




TIIE REIGN OF RICHARD  THE THIRD.    321
may now be observed, that of them all, Richard the Third
is the only one that opens with a soliloquy, 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 the 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 instruments 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 bad 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's-top,
And dailies with the wind and scorns the sun."
* Lectures on Shakspeare and other Dramatists, vol. i. p. 187.
21




322                  LECTURE  TENTII.
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 exuberance 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 our hands,"
His exultation rises at the prospect of the death of his
other brother, 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 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.




TILE REIGN  OF RICHIARD  TIIE THIRD.          323
IIigh-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 fate 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 struggle 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, whether 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- " 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




324               LECTURE TENTIH.
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-' 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, and they
make him prouder of his power. He has no compunctions
of conscience, no remorseful remembrances; and it is in
this he is represented 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!"
* Coleridge's Statesman's Manual. Appendix B, p. 262.




TIlE REIGN OF RICIIARD TTIE THIRD.           325
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 that 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 conscience 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 invention-I mean the
agitated dream of Richard on the eve of the battle of
Bosworth 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 explain
to his attendants the change which had come over his
spirit, and which his looks betrayed.  When the mysterious shapes, which in his dream hovered around his
couch, are represented by the poet as the ghosts of those
who had been murdered by him, it is to be interpreted as




326                 LECTURE  TENTII.
the embodiment of the hauntings of a guilty consciencethe presence 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 significancy, 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 conscience, 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
time:
"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 Qf 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




TIIE REIGN OF IENRY TIIE FTITITII.    327
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 Mr. Hallam
-"Lest the spectre of indefeasible right should stand
once more in arms on the tomb of the house of York, the
two houses of parliament showed an earnest desire for
the king's 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, succeeded 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
* Hallam's Constitutional History, vol. i. 1. 12.




328              IIECTURE TE'NTIL
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 to 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 prerogative, 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 illustrates. 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 process, 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 HENRY TIE EIGHTIt.    329
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 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 history, 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 commoner; 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
* Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 91.




330              ILECTURE TENTI.
drama represents 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.:' 
a -:    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 of 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 downfall 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 cannot 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 England'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 wondrous 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




THIE REIGN  OF HENRY  THlE EIGHIITH.         331
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 Anne 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 remonstrance with her heartless husband, or-beleaguered by the crafty counsels of the two
cardinals, Wolsey and Campeius —she turns from the
king to address a more impassioned utterance to Wolsey:
" Siit,
Iam about to weep; but, thinking that
We are. a queen, (or long have dreamed so,) certain
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 placethe 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."




332                LECTURE TENTI.
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."
She had warned the great cardinal"Take heed, for heaven's sake, take heed, lest at once
The burden of my sorrows 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 magnificence; 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 lingering sorrow
for lost power"No sun shall usher forth my honours,
Nor.gild again the noble troops that waited
Upon my smiles."




TIlE RtEIGN OF HENRY  TIlE  EIGHTH.               333
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 in 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, 0 Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr."
The dramatic narrative of the close of Wolsey's life
becomes manyfold 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."*;.
* It is observed by Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chancellors
of England, that the subsequent part of Henry's reign is the best




334                  LECTURE  TENTH.
And then, after she has listened to the narrative of his
deeds of beneficence 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 hast made me,
With thy religious truth and modesty,
Now in his ashes honour: Peace be with him!"
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 Catharine shines forth faintly in her dying
injunctions to her attendants:
"Although unqueen'd, yet like
A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me."
panegyric on Wolsey; for, during twenty-nine years, he had kept free
from the stain of blood or violence the sovereign, who now, following
the natural bent of his character, cut off the heads of his wives and
his most virtuous ministers, and proved himself the most arbitrary
tyrant that ever disgraced the throne of England.
The same author, in closing the biography of Wolsey, remarks:"I shall not attempt to draw any general character of this eminent
man. His good and bad qualities may best be understood from the
details of his actions, and are immortalized by the dialogue between
Queen Catharine and Griffith, her secretary, which is familiar to every
reader."
Nothing need be added to a dialogue which has been well described as "not merely the noblest poetic impersonation, but the most
fair and impartial historic estimate, of Wolsey's character." H. R.




TILE REIGN OF IIENRY  THE EIGITTIH.           335
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 Cranlner'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
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 busy 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




336              LECTURE TENTII.
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. Hallam is thus:-" The main
cause of the reverence with which our forefathers 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 prisongates burst asunder. As the poet Gray has finely glanced
at this part of his history when he speaks of him as"The 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 hollowsounding corridors of the pralace, followed by gibbering




THE REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.                337
phantoms and eagerly praying for the dawn. Even Nero
started at the unearthly trumpet 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 Frangois Xavier.
When we include, in our recollections of this man, the
facts that he was destined for the Archbishopic of Canterbury, that he gravely discussed theological questions,
propounded and defended theses of divinity, and earnestly and vehemently disputed on serious points of religion, it is enough to confuse the gravity of our reason
* Tacitus Ann. xiv. 10. " Quia tamen non, ut hominum vultus, ita
locorum facies mutantur, obversabaturque maris illius et litorum gravis
adspectus (et erant, qui crederent, sonitum tubse collibus circum editis
planctusque tumulo matris audirij Neapolim concessit." W. B. R.'.)




338               LE CTURE -TENTH.
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 of 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, descended 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 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 bloclk, (it was for




THE REIGN OF HENRY ThIE EIGHTIL.    339
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
graceful 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,'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
multitude 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
* Forster's Treatise on Popular Progress, p. 48.




310               LECTURE TENTII.
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.
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.
To these words of explanation let me add that I
very heartily feel the kindness and attention for which
s These hopes, alas, were never fulfilled. W. B. R.




THE REIGN OF IIENRY THIE EIGIITH.        341
I am indebted to the class. That kindness has been
a very great encouragement while I have been going
on with the preparation of these lectures; it furnishes
mnc with most agreeable recollections, and the hope of a
recurrence of your friendliness, if a similar intercourse
should hereafter be renewed.








FOUR LECTURES
ON
TRAGIC POETRY,
AS ILLUSTRATED IN
I; ahmutart's bur Ormt raiulas.








TRAGIC POETRY.
LECTURE I.*
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
* December 6th, 1842.
345




346               LEC'TURE FIRST.
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 nmight and depth give them a
sanctity, 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-consciousness 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 admirable instinct




KING  LEAR.                     347
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 old man's agony from  the
wrongs of filial impiety, as in King Lear; the heartwasting misery of criminal temptations and a bloodstained 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 influences 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."*
* Paradise Regained, book iv. ver. 261.




348               LECTURE FIRST.
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;"
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 been 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 understand 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




KING  LEAR.                      349
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 overshadowed
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
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
* Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry, chap. vi.




350                LECTURE FIRST.
In mournful thoughts, and always might be found,
A power to virtue friendly."`
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 illustratron 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 grayhound in a leash,
To let slip upon buck or doe.
-' Wordsworth's Excursion, b. i. Works, p. 401.




KING  LEAR.                         361
The pair have reached that fearful chasm,
I 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?
He sprang in glee, for what cared he
That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep?
But the greyhound in the leash hungback,
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 deep, 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;




352                  LECTURE FIRST.
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 join'd a mournful voice,
Nor fail'd at even-song.
And the lady pray'd 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!"m-:
I need not stop to show how, in this story, there came
from mournful thoughts a power to virtue friendly. The
science of ethics could not teach a more precious lesson
than is conveyed by the reflection, 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.
- Wordsworth's Force of Prayer. Works, p. 356.




KING  LEAR.                    353
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 Shakspeare'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 art 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 purification of the moral elements
within us. A heavy and pestilent atmosphere 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 skins the plains of Thessaly;"* Wordsworth's Dion. Works, p. 359.
23




354               LECTURE FIRST.
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 measurable meannesses 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 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 accurate
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




KING LEAR.                     355
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 Christian 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 wilfulness of
offence at an unoffending child, and the agonized imprecations upon his wicked daughters, befit a heathen's lips.
The lurid atmosphere of the tragedy could not have been
harmonized 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 historic time and from the calmness of a Christiah
age-it matters not 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 feeling on the earth-as long as
there shall be filial piety, there must be sympathy with
the "child-changed father" in this wondrous poem.




356                LECTURE FIRST.
The first impression that is given of Lear's character is
that of selfishness, arising from the habitual exercise of
power. He is fourscore 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 irresponsible 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 councilchamber 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 fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, 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 confidently resolving upon freedom from all




KING( LEAR.                   357
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 forewarning-low words of admonition-that burdens a thousand-fold weightier shall be
heaped upon him. Troubles to come'are casting their
shadows before and darkening the splendour of his pride.
We may 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 perfect 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
heait, a father's heart, should be so hard and so hollow
that pride and passion are echoing there as the wind




358               LECTURE FIRST.
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 thiffnder, 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 selfishness. 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 Goneril 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 be broken
up, so that virtuous and gentle emotions may grow there?
The mischief wrought by fourscore years of tyranny upon




KING  LEAR.                     359
the soul of him that used it, is to be done away.  The
tragedy teaches the restoration of Lear's moral nature.
It is affected in a twofold 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 protestations 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 disappointment"I loved her most and 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 could 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 recoiled from the hypocrisy of her sisters to
the opposite point of speechless affection.  She had just
heard language desecrated to the uses of heartless deceit,
and the sanctity of her spirit could not suffer the unhal



360                LECTURE FIRST.
lowed 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 was silence, broken only by
the firm reiteration of her simple, respectful 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 Regan:
"Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty
According to my bond-nor 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




KING  LEAR.                       361
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 and 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 neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou,my sometime daughter."
Who does not feel that the angry elements of this deplorable repudiation 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 foi 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 set my rest
On her kind nursery."
But, on the instant, checking his words, as if it were an




362                LECTURE FIRST.
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 owning 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 Regan with all their territories, and the added portion of their'plundered sister, with armies at their beck,
and all the large effects that troop with majesty, are incarnations 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,




KING LEAR.                   363
committing himself to the alternate guardianship 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 excitement 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 struggling against his own apprehensions
-forced, it may be 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 break. 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 adversity in which his heart was to be both
chastened and broken.  His attendant has 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."




364                LECTURE FIRST.
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
hers.  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 irretrievable rashness-" Age that too late repents;"
and to his innocent child, whom he had' injuriously
driven from him" 0! 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
daughtfer, but it is also solemnized with self-reproach. It




KING  LEAR.                       365
is this which seems to subdue his spirit to a reflective
mood, musing at the very time the outrage is done
to him:
"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
rushes back again to give utterance to his overcharged
heart by speaking his agony and his anger. His selfcommand 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 thusThat 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 you 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




366               LECTURE TFIRST.
the departure from Goneril's castle, his broken sentences,
convulsive laughter at the wild jests of his faithful follower, the fool-threats-thoughts half-uttered-betray
the tumultuous 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
a most 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 his tone is lowered.  He
strives to prevent 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
forbearance 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 ingratitude, 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:




KING  LEAR.                    367
"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
Of how depraved a quality, 0 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 complained 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 f6rth another outbreak of
parental indignation? But no! Lear's anger turns back
only against the first offender with reiterated curses upon
G-oneril.  With Regan he still pleads indirectly by attributing 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 Goneril's, and by reminding
her of "the offices of nature" and "bond of childhood."
He is hoping against hope, and his last hope sickens unto
death at the entrance of Goneril herself; for then there
flashes upon his mind 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:




368                 LECTURE FIRST.
"0O heavens!
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
Allow obedience, if yourselves are old.
Make it your cause; send down and take my part!"
His spirit sank within him at the appearance of Goneril:
a deadlier chill seizes upon it at a worse sight:
"0 Regan! wilt thou take her by the hand?"
Once his mind seems. to be wandering after Cordelia
when he speaks of his "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 threatening and reasoning about the reduction of his retinue.
When Lear speaks in answer-it is a strange utteranceat first, as if he would fain let his thoughts stray from his
present misery into a region of abstractions; 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':
"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,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,




KING  LEAR.                        369
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.I 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. 0 fool, I shall go mad!"
Lear is now environed with his thick-thronging afflictions, and the dark presentiment of insanity has entered
his mind. The.moral tempest 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 his own
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."
24




370                  LECTURE FIRST.
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 selfreproach for having, in his palmy days, taken too little
heed of houseless poverty
"Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
That bide the peltiqg 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 footsteps of his departing reason.
There is coming on, as has been finely said by Mr. Hallam, "that sublime madness, not absurdly sudden as in
some tragedies, but in which the strings that keep his




KING  LEAR.                       371
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 could ever have conceived; 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 Cordelia, 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
Over her passion; who, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o'er her.
Kent. O, then it moved her?
Gent. 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 beloved, if all
Could so become it.
Kent. Made she no verbal question?
Gent. 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




372                 LECTURE FIRST.
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 awakes from his sleep of madness he is all gentleness-regenerate by 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" 0 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 bewilderment, 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,




KING  LEAR.                       373
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.":-5
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
the solemnities of its close.  " Fourscore and upward" —
why should Lear 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
i Wordsworth's Ruth. Works, p. 139.




374                LECTURE FIRST.
and solemn in its morality-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 unnaturalwith 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."




LECTURE II.*
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 piteous of all was it to contemplate the
sad sacrifice 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 restored, 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 pil~ December 13th, 1842.
375




LECTURE SECOND.
grimage 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 guilt 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 incongruity, 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.
To have a just knowledge of the tragedy of Macbeth,
we must form a distinct conception of the supernatural
atmosphere which envelops 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




M ACBETII.                   3,7
ghosts rising from fresh graves-blood-boltered 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




378              LECTURE SECOND.
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 damna.
tion of their victim. Their fatal intent thus darkly intimated, they answer to mysterious calls of you know not
what " Paddock" and "Grcymelkin," some of the horrid
animals which seem associated with the witches to mark
their grossly earthy nature; and, ere their presence has
been well 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 Norweyan 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




MACBETH.                          879
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 filely said that-" The field of
battle has been the field on which, more almost 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."*
- I have not been able to verify this quotation, though it sounds
very much like Archdeacon Hare; and in his favourite De Maistre is
to be found a kindred sentiment in eulogy of military character:
"Le metier de la guerre... ne tend nullement I d6grader,
a rendre feroce ou dur, au moins celui qui l'exerce: au contraire, il
tend' le perfectionner. L'homme le plus honnete #et ordinairement
le militaire honnete, et, pour mon compte, j'ai toujours fait un cas
particulier... du bon sens militaire......  Dans le
commerce ordinaire de la vie, les militaires sont plus aimables, plus
faciles, et souvent meme, a ce qu'il m'a paru, plus obligeants que les
autres hommes..                 La religion chez eux se marie`
l'honneur d'une maniere remarquable.... La vertu, la pite6
mgme s'allient trds-bien avec le courage militaire; loin d'affaiblir le
guerrier, elles l'exaltent." Soir6es de St. Petersbourg, vol. ii. p. 18.
W. B. R.




380              LECTURE SECOND.
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 along as 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 "so fair and foul," was yet sounding
over the heath, when the witches again meet, hastening
together fromi 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 comparatively vulgar witchcraft they are exulting over, it is seen what extraordinary,




MACBETH.                      381
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 recollection of a trophy gained on some former
occasion of mischief on the ocean-"A pilot's thumb,
wrecked as homeward 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:  mhile
gloating 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
magnitude of their malice, they rise suddenly to the




382                 LECTURE  SECOND.
full stature of their supernatural strength, and on the
blasted heath prepare to proclaim their prophetic salutations.   The very first moment Macbeth  makes his
appearance, 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 o'the earth,
And yet are on't. Live you? or are you aught,
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By 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 answer not at Banquo's bidding; but when Macbeth calls on them to speak, demands-"' 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 Glamis.
All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor.
All hail, Macbeth! thou 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 destiny: 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 fortunetelling, preserves his self-possession and self-reliance, his




M ACBETI L.                      383
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' the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
Ye greet with present grace, and great prediction
Of noble having, and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal; to me you speak not:
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear,
Your favours 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 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, I know, I am 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."




384               LECTURE SECOND.
~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 1' 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 promised-" Your children shall be kings;"
and thus secures the satisfaction of hearing from human
lips the promise to himself, for his companion naturally
replies-" You shall be king."  Then, as if conscious
already of thoughts that could not be looked into, Macbeth turns from 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.  This speedy verification
of the words of witchcraft greatly deepens the impression
on the mind of Macbeth; and, while he is wrapped in
meditation, the supernatural influence is driving his
thoughts onward to the future" Glamis and thane of Cawdor:
The greatest is behind."
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,
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me,
Promised no less to them?"
But the purer nature of Banquo is already recoiling from
the supernatural powers that have crossed their path:




MACBETH.                       385
"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 withhonest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence."
Banquo instinctively feels that the promises, glorious as
they are, come from powers of evil. His first exclamation, on finding them partly realized, was"What can the devil speak true?"
The warning words he addresses to Macbeth are illustrative of Shakspeare'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 confidence in the event is growing; but
his mind, quickened by the agencies that have touched
it, is beginning to invent means for the accomplishment
of his destiny, and these means, directed to an end thus
prompted, are sure to be guilty ones. Indeed, his imagi.
nation, in its morbid activity, has already grasped at its
worst wickedness. The fancy of murder is the first
symptom 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:
25




386                 LECTURE  SECOND.
"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,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix 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 suggestions
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 uncontrollable tide of fate:
"Come what come may;
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."




MACBETH.                     387
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 Shakspeare'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-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




388                 LECTURE  SECOND.
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 any thing 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
* In Chorley's Memorials of Mrs. Hemans, vol. ii. p. 126, she writes
from Rydal Mount:-" Have I ever told you how much Mr. Wordsworth's reading and recitation have delighted me? His voice has
something quite breezelike in the soft gradations of its swells and
falls. How I wish you could have heard it a few evenings since! We
had just returned from riding through the deep valley of Grasmere,
and were talking of different natural sounds which, in the stillness of
the evening, had struck my imagination.'Perhaps,' I said,'there
may be still deeper and richer music pervading all nature than any
which we are permitted to hear.' He answered by reciting those glorious lines of Milton's:'Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
All these with ceaseless praise his works behold




A A CB ET If.                    389
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 evidence 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 unknown,"
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 of the guilty purpose-for the gentle preBoth day and night: how often from the steep
Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air
Sole, or responsive each to other's note,
Singing their.great Creator? oft in bands
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds
In full harmonic number joined, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heaven.'
And his tones of solemn earnestness, sinking, almost dying away into
a murmur of veneration, as if the passage were breathed forth from
the heart, I shall never forget;' the forest leaves seemed stirred with
prayer' while those high thoughts were uttered." W. B. R.




390              LECTURE SECOPND.
sence of the monarch, his confiding lindness, 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
Shakspeare'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 castIelife, 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 introduced 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




MACBETH.                       391
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 spirits in thine ear;
And chastise 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, impelled by supernatural force, it drives her
across the bounds of woman's nature.  1Her 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 darkness-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




392                LECTURE SECON D.
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
This ignorant present; and I feel now
The future in the instant."
In all Macbeth's intercourse with his wife, there is a
certain manliness of affection which contributes in some
measure to redeem his character, and sustains a sympathy
with him. His manner is distinguished 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 of their wicked conceptions:
Lady 1lacbeth. And when goes hence?
Miacbeth. 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 countenance; and she knows it can
be swept away by her stronger will looking through all
doubts and scruples and fears, to the object which filled
her vision:




M ACBET I.                      393
"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. Ile that's coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night's great business into my despatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom."
EHis feeble answer" We will speak further"shows him not quite prepared; but it is a signal not so
much of indecision 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 comes 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 plottings 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




394                LECTURlE SECOND.
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, 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 an hereafter:
" That 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
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips."
His active mind dwells on subordinate considerations of
treason-disloyalty-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:'I le's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman-and his subject,




M AC  E T I.                     395
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not 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 sightless 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 reflect on the entire inadequacy of the reasons he assigns in so momentous
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




396                 LECTURE  SECOND.
intent, which now  he seems to invite by this 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 whirlwinds; for
there were
"Lamentings heard i' 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 supernatural atmosphere-visions and dreams
and spiritual 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 raceTurn'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 intensity of effort powerfully affects the imaginative




MIAC BET I.                      397
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 sternal 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 conscience strikes into his very
soul:
"Methought I heard a voice cry-' Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep;
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave 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 acuteness; 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 confid



398              LECTURE SECOND.
ing 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 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




MI A C B E'If.                399
now, king, Cawdor, Glamis, all, as the weird:women proraised." 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 cameamid 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




400                 LECTURE  SECOND.
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
In restless ecstasy.. 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:
" O 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-boltered Banquo, glaring and
shaking his gory locks at him.
Let it be remembered that I am tracing the career of




MACBETI.                        401
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.  MIacbeth 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 be the. air whereon they ride,
And 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," 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 very 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 o' the sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace his line-no boasting like a fool."
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
26




402               LECTURE SECOND.
been achieved, and then all is left to human vice, human
passion, hunman 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 littfle 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 the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,




MACBETIH.                      403
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."
Hle 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 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 impressive 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
W- ordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. Worksi p. 387.




404               LECTURE SECOND.
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, I 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 condi-tions 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."*' Wordsworth's works, p. 27.




MACBETH.                         405
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 melan.
choly 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.




LECTURE III.*
IN passing from the tragedy of Macbeth to that of
Hamlet, the transition is a very wide one. Both dramas,
indeed, have their supernatural agencies-strange, spiritual things made real to the imagination; and the
respective heroes are not unlike in a certain constitutional reflectiveness 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 apparitions, that rose around their cauldron,
and the blood-boltered spectre of Banquo-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
" December 20th, 1842.
406




HAMLET.                     407
movement of the play; but in  Iamlet, 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 peculiar to the chief person; for, besides the profound and
feeling thoughtfulness of Hamlet, you find the insincere
and declamatory reasoning of the king, the self-complacent shrewdness of the old politician in Polonius, 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 I to seek an explanation of this
deep and widespread 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 it —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




408               LECTURE THIRD.
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
sentiment; it carries us through the domain of passion
and thought into that spiritual region where naught 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, obscure,
and perplexed to critic and to commentator; for it deals
with the greatest of all mysteries-that imperishable
principle of the personality 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




HIAMLET.                    403
become conscious of in the trivial chances of life or in its
placid periods.  A deeper self-consciousness 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 tribulations of war.
In King Lear we had occasion to study the career of a
human spirit under the stern discipline of affliction-a
heart palpitating under Promethean torture; for filial ingratitude had "tied sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture there."  In Macbeth 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 aspirations; 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 conflicting 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




410                LECTURE TIHIRD.
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 heirapparent 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 virttous mother,". the loving wife of his father; and thus he
had grown to manhood amid those happy, virtuous household influences that are the best atmosphere for the young
heart to live in. To the attractions of manly form and
feature, he has added the accomplishments which befit'
his high birth; 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 scholar



I A ILET.                   411
ship; 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 friendship, 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




412               LECTURE THIRD.
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."
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, 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 bewilderment 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




II AMLET.                     413
the soul into itself in its struggles with that dreary sense
of craving rafter 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 past 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 apprehending 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
t Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality.




414                  LECTURE THIRD.
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 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-aa 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 veiled from waking thought; conjured
Eternity, as men constrain a ghost,
To appear and answer; to the grave I spake
Imploringly-looked 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
Turned 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 checked 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 iis busy in fashioning the
i Wordsworth's Excursion, b. iii. (Despondency.)




11 AM  L ET.                     415
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:
IHyperion'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's imagination had been filled with
* In a private letter written soon after, my brother thus playfully
refers to this familiar phrase:
"I have always regarded the' mind's eye' as eminently and peculiarly a Shakspearian phrase, his originally and nobody else's; but, in
a volume of minor Greek poets, looking for something or other, I
chanced on the phrase pvixis "ovya in some lines by Naumachius; and
yet, may be that is the' soul's eye,' which makes a difference. Pray,
who was professor of Greek when Hamlet was a student at Wittenberg? and was the'Poetse Minores' one of the text-books in use?
What a pity it was not Horatio that used the phrase; for he is so precise and matter-of-fact, that'he would certainly have told us where he
got it, with, perhaps, a reference; while Hamlet was very much the
kind of man to use the phrase, with some little alteration, and say
nothing about original authorities-or may be it was a sort of unconscious (S. T. C.) plagiarism."  MS. Letter, 28th February, 1845.
W. B. R.




416               LECTURE TIIIRD.
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 villainy 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. HIe 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 revelation 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 honmour, 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 philosopby.  Hle is suddenly in a situation where sorrows




HAMLET.                    417
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 commonplaces on the subject of death, and by reproaches
of the fidelity of his grief-a grief so inward and selfcommuning, 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 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 stubbornness-an unmanly grief, showing a will most incorrect to heaven-a heart unfortified —a mind impatientan understanding simple and unschooled — a fault to
heaven-a fault against the dead-a fault to natureto 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
27




418               LECTURE THIRD.
silence of an almost breaking heart, as he afterwards
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 is thwarted, and his lonely selfcommunion violated by intrusion. 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 misanthropy 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 commingling of meditations and emotions.  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




HAMLET.                     419
feelings are seeking relief at once; and the words that
give utterance to them are expressive, at the same time,
of his affection and admiration for his departed father, antipathy and contempt 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 susceptibility 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 of twilight and darkness.
Immediately after the agonized soliloquy, the entrance
of Horatio and the gentlemen to whom the ghost had
appeared, gives another aspect of 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 a truant disposition; but, after the momentary diver.




420                 LECTURE  TIIILD.
sion 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 household.
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."
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 dearest foe in heaven,
Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!"




H A MLET.                     421
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
skeptical 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 fair and warlike form
"In which the majesty of burled 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."




422                LECTURE THIRD.
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 forsakes 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 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 supernatural 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
* Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 22.




HAiMLET.                      428
delirious commotion; and the first sign of the disturbance
of it has been discovered in the vow " to wipe away from
the table 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 am 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 intellect again
appears in what has struck me as the most graceful and
thoughtful play upon words I have ever met with. It
occurs immediately 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 this is wondrous strange'!
lcamlet. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Happy would it be, let me add, if, whenever a spiritual
mystery is presented 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




424               LECTURE THIIRD.
sophistries of a sensualized skepticism  to shut up the
avenues of our souls, instead of opening the door wide to
give the mystery a stranger's welcome!
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 mysteriousnessthe 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 a wrong heart; while by
others, of sterner judgments, a disordered intellect would
not be suffered to plead insanity in bar of justice at an
earthly tribunal.  Modern philanthropy and science have
learnt 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.




1t A M L E T.               425
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 significancy to this word " insanity."
At least there need be no such difficulty, 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 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 a combination 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




426               LECTURE THIIRD.
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 is in
jeopardy; and it is this very consciousness-the apprehension of insanity-which suggests to an intellect so
active the thought of feigning madness-the device of
assumling an antic disposition-which would give him an
unwonted 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 " transformation" of her son. The
king speaks of it as a " melancholy" and a "distemper."
Polonius calls it " lunacy." The grave-digger bluntly
taks 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




IAMLET.                       427
of Hamlet's mind: his intellect had lost its harmony, but
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 necessity forces
him to banish. A deep and piteous sigh breaks from
him; then, 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 o' doors he went without their helps,
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.




428               LECTURE THIRD.
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.
HIence, the revulsion of feeling in this painful scene-the
desperate- energy with which he recovers himself 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-niore 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




hi AMLE T.                   429
the world is not a safe place for her to abide in: —" Get
thee to a nunnery, farewell...    To a nunnery, go;
and quickly too. Farewell...    To a nunnery, go."
In confirmation 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 intellect than for her own dejected hopelessness.
Meditative as is the mind of Hamlet, 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 to 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
apprehensiveness-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




430               LECTURE THIRD.
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 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 a 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 quintessence 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
i* Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.




IH A M L E T.                 431
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 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:
-* Essay on Shakspeare's Tragedies. Prose Works, vol. i. p. 107.




432                  LECTURE  TILIRD.
"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 us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking 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 live 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 this 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




11 A M LET                     433
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:
"Why, man, they did make love to this 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 purposepostponing"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 perdition. He sought, therefore, further assurance of his conscience by means of the play
before the king, saying that if his 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
28




434                 LECTURE THIRD.
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 the
king is the portraiture of a wretched Iman clinging to his
guilt, and therefore helpless in his strivings after contrition. Touching the subjects of mercy and expiation and
prayer, it contains one of those vailed and 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. Perhaps his absence was to spare him the sad
-' Coleridge's Literary Remains, (Notes on Hamlet,) vol. ii. p. 229.
(Ed. 1836.)




II AM L ET.                     435
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 movement'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 it, 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 my arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother."
One of the latest expressions of Iamlet'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




436                 LECTURE  TITIJI).
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 providence in
the fall of a sparrow."
He whose mind had been so active in its purposeswhose heart had beat so quickly to all true impulses
-achieves the duty, vaguely commanded 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 as of the intellecthad 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 flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."t
* Coleridge's Literary Remains, (Notes on HIamlet,) vol. ii. p. 234.
t On my brother's manuscript, I find a reference to what he describes as some excellent criticism on Hamlet in the Christian Remembrancer for January, 1849, in an article on the book of Job;
and in a private letter written just as he was fresh from the composition of this lecture, he says:-" I have never felt myself so deeply in
the heart of Hamlet-my insight into the character clearer than ever
before had oeen given to me." W. B. R.




LEC(IUJRE  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 scattered things
which seem to belong to comedy —the pliability of that
poor dupe, Roderigo-the sarcastic jests of Iago 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 wickedness is a most
heroic heart, and because, most of all, a being the purest,
December 2Tth, 1842.
437




438              LECTURE FOURTI.
most innocent, and gentle, is made the sacrifice. It
must be very deep when you reflect that in it are combined the destinies of Iago and Othello and Desdemona.
Never did poetic creation dive into a cavern so deep, so
dark and noisome as the soul of Iago; 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 thk 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, Iago is
pre-eminent-the most vicious-the most viciously powerful of all the Shaksperean 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. It has the excessive intellectual activity which
we had occasion to study in Hamlet, but not, as in that
sweet prince, gently wedded td virtuous meditation and
kindly sympathies. The consciousness of mental energy
in Hamlet spent itself in pure and perpetual musings;
while in Iago 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




OTHELLO.                      439
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. Iago is all-sufficient to
himself.  He originates his own plans of mischief; he
counsels 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 Iago's sophistries and falsehood, so artfully
does he misrepresent them-so vehemently does he vilify.
For instance, speaking of IDesdemona, he says to Roderigo-" 3Mark 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 Iago's dupe, but the reader himself is half disposed to accredit it. Now, it must be
remembered that Shakspeare, above all poets, is distinW- Wordsworth's Poet's Epitaph.




440              LECTURE EOUItRTI.
guished 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 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 narratives.  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 passages
without heed to the character of him who speaks. Now,
in the tragedy of Othello, unless you carefully adopt this
principle as a safeguard, you have to deal with so adroit
a villain, so accomplished a sophist, so reckless and insidious a liar in Iago, 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.




OTHELLO.                      441
It is to this prodigious talent for deception which characterizes Iago that may, I think, be traced an erroneous
view in regard to the very germ of the tragedy. It seems
to be generally assumed, that Iago'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 Iago'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 favouritism 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, I believe, but Iago'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 Iago'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 Iago 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
Iago.
But this fiction has found more ready belief from
another cause; and that is, the notion that such extremity of wickedness as his is unnatural —that there is not




442              LECTURE FOURTH.
adequate cause for his hatred of Othello, and the havoc
he makes of his happiness. The most has therefore been
made of this military disappointment, because critics and
readers have assumed to think, that otherwise there would
be nothing for the superstructure 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 interpretations 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 speculations
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 Iago's villainy.* At least, the incidents
which chance to suggest his malignant feelings ate so
immeasurably disproportionate, that they can scarce be
spoken of as causes or motives.  In some cases it is
clearly apparent, that Iago'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 consciousness of power; that the
* Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 260. (Notes on Othello.)




OTHELLO.                    443
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 Iago'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 Iago worked out was no more than a disappointment 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 Iago'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 temptation 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
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




444              LECTURE FOURTH.
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 wellknown 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 imaginings to dwell too familiarly with
guilt. Iago'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 Iago'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.  Iago is a soldier-a




OTIIELLO.                    445
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
Iago'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 Iago finds it necessary to confirm the assurances
he has given of his hatred towards Othello; and 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 Iago's character
is the better developed by his bolder dealings with his
dupe.  WVell assured of his intellectual supremacy, which
there was neither force of mind nor of morals to withstand, Iago 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 Iago 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 whdm he
could have ventured so to open the dark and hollow
places of his heart. It is apparently from the pleasureable 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 ithe is lost in amazement and admiration at the boldness
with which honesty is scoffed at, and the pride of intel.
lectual strength proclaimed.  When Roderigo expresses




446                 LECTURE  FOURTH.
surprise at Iago's reconciling his hatred and service to
Othello, he is overwhelmed with the answer" O0 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 nought 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 Iago.
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
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern,'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."




OTIELLO.                         447
Iago is soon after found by the side of his noble victim.
He tells Othello of Rloderigo's slanders; and, with blunt
professions of love and loyalty, he says how  hard it was
to refrain from  resenting it by stabbing the slandererand 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 seigniory,
Shall out-tongue his complaints.'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, Iago,
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 Iago 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




448                 LECTURE FOUiRTIL.
of torches hurried hither 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' veins, 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 Iago, 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*t-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 playthe unimaginative reading which is fatal so often to the
* Coleridge handles this topic (of Othello's colour) in Literary Remains, vol. ii. p. 256. So in his Table Talk, p. 1: " Othello must not
be conceived as a negro, but a high and chivalrous Moorish chief.
Shakspeare learned the spirit of the character from the Spanish poetry
which was prevalent in England in his time." W. B. R.




OTHELLO.                    449
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 Saracenic 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 with noble ancestral memories! And, on the other hand, how perfectly consistent
it was with the debasing malignity of Iago, 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 distinction between the chivalrous Moor,
the chieftain of Christian armies, and the barbarous
Ethiop-the despised slave. It was natural that vulgar
29




450              LECTURE FOURTII.
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 Iago'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 iswhat is very natural to such condition 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 fairfaced, 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 Moorish brow with the glory of the
warrior's spirit. Perhaps, too, it was partly the poet's




OTHELLO.                          451
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 important 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 Iago. It serves, too,
to account for the 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
jealousoy.* 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
* Coleridge was the first to deny the jealousy of Othello, (Literary
Remains, vol. ii. p. 258, 266, and Table Talk, p. 1, 39.) Most of the
critics have followed him. De Quincey, in a note to his Life and
Manners, (Boston ed. p. 79,) says-" Mr. Coleridge has contended,
and I think with truth, that the passion of Othello is not jealousy. So
much I know by report as the result of a lecture which he read at the
Royal Institution. His arguments I did not hear. To me it is evident that Othello's state of mind was not that of a degrading, suspicious rivalship; but the state of perfect misery arising out of this
dilemma, the most affecting, perhaps, to contemplate of any which
can exist, viz., the dire necessity of loving without limit one whom
the heart pronounces to be unworthy and irretrievably sunk." To my
mind, utterly repugnant as it is to all manner of paradoxical criticism,
it seems, after all, that Falstaff was a coward, and Othello was jealous.
W. B. R.




452               LECTURE FOURTH.
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 Iago 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 well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous:
Nor from mine 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 playthe 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 Desdemona. 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
soon was 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




OTHlELLO.                     453
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 Iago's
sneer and his malignant.menace:
"Oh, you are well tuned now!
But I'll set down the pegs that make the music,
As honest as I am."
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 Iago had artfully fomented.  This wounds Othello's soldierly 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 appalling outbreak of the passions of the Moor.
The way being prepared, Iago'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  Iago'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 charac



454                LECTURE FOURTH.
teristics 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 Iago
plies him with:
"She did deceive her father marrying you
Othello. And so she did."
When Iago 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 Iago"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."
When Desdemonda appears, the mere sight of her brings
back for a moment his better nature, and there is a desperate struggle to dismiss all doubt:
" If she be false, 0, then, heaven mocks itself!
I'll not believe it."




OTHELLO.                         456
But the effort is a vain one, as Iago 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,
Burn 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, 0, you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!"
The fiendish Iago, 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 contending emotions:R:ich make this agony are unconquered love and a new



456                LECTURE  FOURTIL
born hate. When the tempter, with hideous hypocrisy,
counsels patience"Never, Iago.-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;
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 occasion of these tears, my lord?
If haply you my father do suspect
An instrument of this your calling back,
Lay not your blame on me; if you have lost him,
Why I have lost him to."
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:




OTHELLO.                         457
"Had it pleased heaven
To try me with affliction; had he 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 part of my soul
A drop of patience: but, alas! to make me
A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving 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 dries 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!"
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 convictions 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:




458                LECTURE FOURTH.
"Something, sure, of state,
Either from Venice, or some unhatch'd practice
Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,
Hath puddled his clear spirit; and in such cases,
Men's natures wrangle with inferior things,
Though great ones are their object."
She scarcely doubts her husband's righteousness, and
only questions her 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."
Iago 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, Iago tells him"Nay, you must forget that."




OTHELLO.                       459
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" O, 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 ot it, Iago!O, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!"
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 Iago
himself:
"Am I that name, Iago?
Iago. What name, fair lady?
Des. Such as she says my lord did say I was."
Desdemona is preserved innocent, for she is a sacrifice



460                 LECTURE  FOURTH.
a victim  without blemish-meek and unresisting.  It is
as such that Othello approaches 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 hers than snow,
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
Yet she must die."
The fierce Moor is again all tenderness, even in his dire
determination.   Weeping  over Desdemona-his sleeping, unconscious wife, he is impressed 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, told her" There's magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had number'd in the world
The sun to make 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,"{ "Schiller has the material sublime; to produce an effect, he sets
you a whole town on fire, and throws infants, with their mothers, into
the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower. But Shakspeare
drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow." Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 2. W. B. R.




OTHELLO.                         461
that handkerchief, the thought of which, in Cassio's
hands, recalled by Iago, 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:
" O 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 Iago, "why he hath
thus ensnared both soul and body"-a little excusing
of himself"For nought 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 vwrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one, whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum."*
i After the delivery of this lecture, it flashed upon me that there is
an inimitable and most pathetic beauty in the dying Moor's allusion




462                LECTURE FOURTH.
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 desperation 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
to "the Arabian trees." What perfect poetic truth it is!-the mind,
by one of its almost supernaturally quickened processes, is travelling
far back to the land of his birth and the home of his childhood.
It furnishes, too, another proof of Othello's veritable AMoorish blood.
H. R.




OTHELLO.                      463
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 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 coexist 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




464              LECTURE FOURTH.
most deeply are its tragedies. In all the annals of the
ancient dynasty of Egypt, what is there like that tragic
midnight moment, when all the first-born of 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 Thermopyle? 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
" The king's body was laid in the grave without any words, or
other ceremonies than the tears and sighs of a few beholders." Clarendon, b. xi. W. B. R.




OT IIE LLO.                   465
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 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 a religion 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."*
- Faber's Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among
Foreign Peoples, pp. 285, 288.
30




466                  LECTURE  FOURTII.
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 szfferinlg:
" 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 shares 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 mlore 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.' These lines are from Wordsworth, the first ten being from his
tragedy, "The Borderers."
TIIE END.
STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO.
PIULADELPHIA.




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LECTURES o  J E.\LLW HifSTOR Y.
As illustrated by Shakspeare's Chronicle Plays, and on
Tragic Poetry.  By HENRY REED.  Edited by his brother, WILLIAM B. REED.  1 vol. 12mo                       $1.25
"Beginning with the dim legendary period on which Lear and Cymbeline
shed a few rays of light, Mr. REED, in these exquisite essays-for such, rather
than lectures, they are-traces the varied course of English history down to the
verge of the Poet's own day-the reign of Henry the Eighth and the birth of
Elizabeth; and it is wonderful to be made to understand, by the continuity of
such a mode of illustration, how complete the course is. Marlborough's confession of ignorance was not so great as one is apt to think, when be said that
all he knew of English history he learned from Shakspeare's plays; and Mr.
REED shows us now how complete, and thorough, and accurate, the Poet's knowledge was. There is throughout a happy blending of criticism and history, and
withal, in perhaps a greater degree than in AMr. REED'S former volume, that
transparency of style which reveals in every page the pure and gentle character,
the strong intellience and high morality, of the author. No one that begins
this little book will lay it down till it is finished. It is, too, suited to all tastes
and all ages." —Veorth Asmericcan.
"'We welcome another valuable contribution to English belles-lettres, from the
papers of the late Professor HENRY REED. With happy originality. the historical
plays of Shakspeare are made the basis of lectures upon English history —not
the less instructive because adorned with all the rraces of poetry. The theme
is thus relieved from any scholastic dulness, and made attractive to those who
read for amusement, as well as to severe students. * *       * The present
volume is invested with much of the interest of a personal memoir, by the judicious introduction of extracts from the private correspondence of the lamented
author."-City Item.
" In this work, the lovers of English literature and English history again
have the privilege of reading the emanations of one of the most cultivated miTnds
of which our country can boast. Professor REED'S style is beautifully chaste and
powerfully correct-possessing none of those redundances which are like a
withered branch, but close yet free, elegant, but not youthfully florid. *   *
It is no ordinary work, but one that from its importance marks an era in literature."-Pennsylvanian.
"Professor REED has gained a transatlantic reputation of which any one might
be proud; and it is enough for the work before us to say that it will add in a
high degree to that reputation. * * *  These Lectures require no praise. No
one can read them without adding materially to his stock of information, or
without being impressed by the judicious relation of facts, the taste in illustration, or the purity of language everywhere displayed."-Bulletin.
"These Lectures show a knowledge not only of the text of England's greatest
bard, but a deep and critical examination of their suggestions, and we believe
will be found to he of inestimable value, as commentaries upon the genius of him
who has long puzzled the acuhlen of scholars, and given food for thought to the
great minds of every age. That they are valuable additions to the historical
literature of our country. no one who knows Professor REEn'S ability can for a
moment doubt. * *   5 * For the collection of his works we are indebted to the
affectionate regra:d of his brother, WILLIAM B. REED,n Esq.; and we cannot take
leave of the volumle without expressing our satisfaction with the manner in
which that gentleman has executed the task."-Argus.




PARRY & BMcIILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
REED'S LECTURES ON ENVGLISH L [TERA TURE.
Lectures on English Literature, delivered in the Chapel
Hall of the University of Pennsylvania by Professor
IAENRY REED. With a Portrait. Edited by his brother,
WILLIAM  B. REED.  1 vol. 12mo, cloth              -     $1.25
[Extracts of a letter from Professor C. C. FELTON, of Harvard.]
CAMBRIDGE, Mlay 21, 1855.
GENTLEMEN:
I have read, with much pleasure and instruction, the Lectures of the late
Professor REED, on English Literature, published by you.
Among the greatest improvements made in our higher schools within a few
years, there is none, in my opinion, more important than the increased attention paid to the study of English Literature, as an essential element of education. * * * * As a guide and companion in this department of education,
the volume of Professor REED'S Lectures appears to me truly admirable. The
subject is treated in a comprehensive and able manner. The style of the Lectures is pure and graceful: the criticism judicious: the general principles cleatrly
stated, and illustrated with careful thought and comprehensive study: the
moral and religious tone is every thing that could be desired for a work to be.
put into the hands of the young; and I know of no book, in that department
of elegant letters, better suited to cultivate and purify the taste, and to excite
the enthusiasm of pupils.
I am, gentlemen, very respectfully, yours,  C. C. FELTON.
Messrs. PARRY & MCMILLAN.
"The book is in every way a most creditable contribution to the Library of
Critical Literature."-London Leader.
"These Lectures bear the marks of ripe scholarship and an accomplished
mind."-Presbyterian.
"The Lectures are of the highest order, both in scholarship, sound sense, and
gracefulness of style, and show a thorough mastery of his subject that only a
familiar acquaintance with the original sources could have given. There is
also a moral purity and a Christian spirit running through them that is peculiarly pleasing."-WVthtchm an and Observer.
"*  * * * If any thing could bring consolation to the friends of Professor
REED for his untimely loss, it is that he left his MSS. in such a complete and
scholar-like preparation that the public will receive them as a national benefit.
* * * * The third lecture of the volume, on.the English language, is in
itself a monument of the varied and extensive learning and acquirements of the
lamented author, which would hand down his name to posterity as one of the
gifted of the nineteenth century."-National Intelligencer.
"A posthumous work, and a noble monument to the memory of the distinguished Professor, whose loss in the Arctic created such an intense sorrow in
the city of his birth, education, and active life, and such an overwhelming sense
of calamity wherever his just fame had spread." —IIese Journal.
"These lectures, or rather essays, are of surpassing beauty and excellence.
We know not where to look for a volume so admirably adapted to the wants of
a large class of young readers, who desire to direct their reading intelligently
and profitably."-Boston Traveller.




PARRY & MoMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
unrbtye of the Sittrature  Df ite Unity0 ftatts.
BY RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD.
I. THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA.
II. THE FEMALE POETS OF AMERICA.
III. THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA.
THE POETS AND P OETRY OF AMERICA,
By RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. Containing Biographical and
Critical Memoirs, and the best Poems of all the best
Poets.  Sixteenth edition.  With  Portraits on Steel
of Dana, Bryant, Percival, Longfellow, Gallagher,
Poe, Cooke, Lowell, Taylor. Carefully revised, rearranged, much enlarged, and brought down to the
year 1855.  1 vol. royal 8vo, cloth, gilt    -          $3.00
"It is performing a valuable service when a man of taste and information
makes a suitable, well-assorted selection, and guides the friend of poetry in his
rambles through those groves from which he might otherwise be deterred by
their immensity. Such service has been rendered by Mr. GRISWOLD in his' Poets
and Poetry of America.' "-From Baron FREDERICK VON RAUMER, of Prussia.
"We doubt whether there is another man in America who could have been
found to devote so much industry, not to say drudgery, as was called for in
such an undertaking. Sure we are that no such man could have been found
who would have done it so well."-From the New York Cburier and Enquirer.
"The editor has executed his task with industry, skill, and taste. No man
in this country is probably so familiar with this branch of American literature,
not only in regard to its most ancient, but most obscure authors."-From the
New York Evening Post.
"No collection of American poetry at all comparable to it in extent, completeness, or general merit, has ever been issued." —From the Albany Evening Journal.
"cMr. GRISWVOLD has succeeded as well in his book as the nature of the case
admitted. IIis patient research and general correctness of taste are worthy of
praise; his difficulties and temptations would have extenuated Ar graver errors
than he has committed, and his volume well deserves the approbation it has
received." —From the North American Review, (by E. P. WHIPPLE.)
"We must not forget to thank MIr. GRISWoLD for his good taste and good
feeling. It would be difficult to overpraise either."-PFrom the London Examiner.
"We think in this beautiful volume the reader will find nearly all that is
worth reading in American poetry."-From the Boston 3Morning Post.
"' Mr. GRISWOLD'S work is honourable to the character and genius of the American people." —From Taos. CAMPBELL, author of "The Pleasures of Hope."
"The critical and biographical notes are brief, but discriminative and elegant "-From Bishop POTTER's "Hand-Book for Readers."




PARRY & IIcMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
THE IEMVALE POETS OF AMERICA,
By RUFUS W. GRISWOLD.  Containing extended Critical
and Biographical Notices, with Poems, Chronologically Arranged. Fifth edition: continued to 1856.
With Portraits on Steel of Maria Brooks, Frances S.
Osgood, Alice Carey, Julia Ward Howe, &c. 1 vol.
royal 8vo, cloth, gilt  -                                $3.00
"Very rare, and very opposite, and very high abilities are required for that
circumnavigation of the whole continent of literature-that exploration of every
bay, and river, and inland lake, with all their islands-that picturesque representation of every peculiarity of the subjects of research, sketchy yet faithful,
spirited yet minute-and, above all. that grouping of the whole in one historical
picture of national genius, which are demanded by the enterprise which Dr.
GRISWOLD has essayed, and which he has so successfully accomplished by a
combination of knowledge and skill as uncommon as it is delightful. IHis
biographical narratives display a great deal of spirit and tact. Iis criticisms
exhibit a thorough familiarity with the writings which he reviews, and are
animated with sensibilities and perceptions kindred in their delicacy and ardour
with that inspiration from which the verses themselves have flowed. They are
searching, truthful, comprehensive, and candid in their character, and always
graceful and elegant in style."-From the New  eork1 Tribune.' Of all Mr. GRISWOLD'S various works, the present evinces the greatest triumph
over difficulties, and best demonstrates the minuteness and the extent of his
knowledge of American literature. Very few of the women included in this
collection have ever published editions of their writings, and a considerable
portion of the verse was published anonymously. The labour, therefore, of collecting the materials of both the biographies and the illustrative extracts, must
have been of that arduous and vexatious kind which only enthusiasm for the
subject could have sustained. The volume is an important original contribution to the literary history of the country; and nobody, whose mind is not
incurably vitiated by prejudice, can make dissimilarity of opinion with regard
to some of the judgments expressed in the book, a ground for denying its
general ability, honesty, and value. Most of the materials are strictly new,
and this fact of itself is sufficient to stamp the work with that character which
distinguishes books of original research from mere compilations."-From Grcabani's American ionLthly Miugazine.'"Dr. GRISWOLD has performed the duties of his undertaking with a diligence,
a taste, and a discrimination, which we doubt whether any other man in this
country could have equalled. The selections are copious and judicious, and
the criticisms upon them are delicate and just. A great deal of trouble has
obviously been taken to obtain materials for the work, and to bring together
accurate information in regard to the authors. A very large portion of the
poems have been given to the editor expressly for this collection. The work
has, therefore, to a great extent. the value of an original production by the combined efforts of our female poets."-From MORRIS and W~ILLIS'S lIome Journal.
"It is an erudite and elaborate review of the contributions of American
women to that department of literature in which women may be expected to
win the greatest triumphs. It is full of curious and entertaining information
and genial and elegant criticism; and among its contents are nearly one hundred
new noerns, by our most distinguished female writers."-From the NT. American




PARRY & MIcMILLAN'S PUIBLICATIONS.
THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA,
With an Introductory Survey of the Intellectual History,
Condition, and Prospects of the Country. By RUFus
W. GRISWOLD.  Illustrated with Portraits of Edwards,
Irving, Audubon, Story, Wilde, Prescott, Kennedy,
Emerson, and Hoffman. 1 vol. royal 8vo, cloth,
gilt   -                                                $3.00
"It will be an important and interesting contribution to our national literature. The range of authors is very wide, the biographical notices full and interesting. I am surprised that the author has been able to collect so many particulals in this way. The selections appear to me to have been made with
discrimination, and the criticism shows a sound taste and a correct appreciation of the qualities of the writers, as well as I can judge."-From  WmI. H.
PRESCOTT, author of'Ferdinand and Isabella."
" Dr. RuFus W. GRISwoLD is the most learned bibliographer in the country.
IIis book is a welcome one to us, and we presume will be so to the public, completing. as it does, the view of American literature of which his other workThe Poets of America-formed the first part. We confess that we do not agree
with Dr. GRISWOLD'S estimate of some of the authors whose names appear in
this work. We have, however, been long enough conversant with the literary
world, to tolerate great latitude of opinion in regard to the merits of authors,
and have ceased long ago to quarrel with those who do not happen to think of
our favourite writers as we do, or who praise. as we imagine, without good
cause. We are glad to possess, in this form, portions of many authors whose
entire works we should never own, and, if we did, should probably never find
time to read. We confess our obligations to the author also for the personal
information concerning them which he has collected in the memoirs prefixed to
their writings. These are written in a manner creditable to the research, ability,
and kindness of the author."-Frosm the ANew York Ekvening Post, (by Mr. BRYANT.)
"The design has been executed with candour, discrimination, and unquestionable ability. It has raised our opinion of Mr. GRISWOLD'S literary powers
far beyond any estimate which we had formed from his previous efforts. There
is a range of sympathy, a variety of knowledge, and a breadth and comprehensiveness of taste, which few men in the country could have exhibited. The
independence of thought and fearlessness of criticism which are displayed are
eminently worthy of commendation, on a subject and in a country where there
is so great a lack of both. The introductory sketch is written with an ardent
amorpat rica, and sets the literary pretensions of the country upon as high a
ground as they can be placed by any man; and, whether it be that we partake
of Mr. GRISewoID'S national paitiality, or have been stirred by his glowing interest, it has appeared to us, as we read, that his claims for American genius and
art were not beyond the measure of truth and justice. Itis notices of several
of the authors are as able specimens of particular criticism as we are acquainted
with." —Froms MORRn   and WILLIS'S Home Journal.
" The book now before us is more than- respectable: it is executed ably, and
in many parts brilliantly. In some respects it is an extraordinary work, such
as few men in America, perhaps, except thet author, could have produced, and
he only after years of sedulous investigation and under many advantages of
circumstance or accident. The distribution of the various writers into theizr
classes, and the selection of representatives of each class, or type. exhibit much
s;ill.'-Frsom t!.e tKzicl. erlcocl,'c, (by iles lte Ilon\ce. BINNETY WALLACE.)




PARRY & McMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
Q UESNEL ONV TIE GOSPELS.
The Gospels: With Moral Reflections on each verse.
By PASQUJIER QUESNEL.  With an Introductory Essay,
by  the Rev. DANIEL WILSON, A.M., Vicar of Islington, [now Bishop of Calcutta.] Carefully revised by
the  Rev. HENRY  A. BOARDMAN, D.D.  Printed  with
bold type, on beautifully tinted and sized paper.
2 vols. 8vo  -                                            $4.00
"A repository of original, striking, spiritual meditations, the absence of which
could be supplied by no other work in our language."-Dr. BOARDMAN.
(From the Right Rev. Aleonzo Potter, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal
Church for the Diocese of Pennsylvania.)
Philadelphia, Oct. 31, 1855.
Messrs. PARRY & MCMILLAN:
Gentlemen-Quesnel's Reflections was an invaluable contribution to the sacred
literature of the world in its original form. In this edition, prepared under the
auspices of such names as Bishop WILSON and the Rev. Dr. BOARDMAN, it will be
still more useful for English and Protestant leaders. It occupied a large part
of the life of one of the most illustrious Jansenists of the seventeenth century;
and to ministers of the gospel, and to private Christians of every name, it must
always be an inexhaustible mine of interest and instruction. Your press could
have rendered no better service to the public than by such an edition of such
a work.         I am gentlemen, very truly, yours,
ALONZO POTTER.
(FrIomn Rev. Tv Adams, D.D., Pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian Church.)
New Yo-rk City, 6th Nov., 1855.
Messrs. PARRY & MCMILLAN:
Gentlemen-I rejoice in the republication of Quesnel on the Gospels. It is the
life-labour of a good and great man. We owe more to the Janseuists than has
been acknowledged. Ihere and there may remain in PASCAL, THOMAS A'KErMPIS,
and QUIESNEL, Romish notions-flies in the ointment-which are easily separated
from the fragrant mass. There is an uncommon richness, pith, and quaintness,
in the Reflections of Quesnel, which will secure for them that esteem they deserve, when they are better known. The excellent taste and judgment of the
American Editor are a pledge that every weed has been culled from this garden
of spices.        Very respectfully, your obt. servt.,
W. ADAMS.
(From the Rev. Dr. Alexander, Pastor of the Fifth Avenue and NVileteenth Street
Presbyterian Church, Nezw York.)
New York, Oct. 24,1855.
The work of Quesnel on the Gospels is a series of Devotional Reflections, which
has commanded the suffrages of Protestants. As corrected, it is. in my opinion,
more full of holy suggestion, especially for ministers of the Word, than any
similar writing; indeed, it breathes the best spirit of GERSON, PASCAL. and FENELON. But its chief glory is its condemnation by the fatmous Constitution UNIGENITUS of Pope Clement the Eleventh. I rejoice in the republication of a book
so precious.                                 JAMES W. ALEXANDER.




PARRY & McMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
QUESNEL ON TIlE GOSPELS-OPINIONS OF THE PnESS.
"This world-renowned work, the richest product of Jansenist Theology, impressed with the imprimatur of the Pope's anathema, is now for the first time
published in this country. * *- * * It will be read in this country, as it
has long been in Europe, by thousands, to their spiritual edification." —Biblical
Repertory and Princeton review.
"We hardly know any thing like it for sweetness, insight, and unction.
QUESNEL was singularly discriminating, and the Confessional-good coming out
of what is usually terrible evil-laid bare before him the human heart. There
are fearful traces of this in the book, especially in regard to the kinds of sin
which QUESNEL feels to be most common. The value of the work does not consist so much in logical conclusions, or didactic depth, as in a kind of French
ingenuity-a something which, free from its sweetness and solemnity, would
be akin to wit. IIe is best upon the biographical passages and every-day incidents of the Gospels."-Presbyterian Quarterly.
"We think that all good people, and clergymen especially, will greatly enjoy
and be largely profited by these' Reflections.' They are not a comment on the
Gospels, but each verse is followed by a few lines suggesting its spiritual richness and beauty. and often opening its religious sense with charming and surprising force. The volumes are admirably printed in large and fair type, and
in excellent taste."-Cong regationalist.
"We doubt not that ministers and private Christians will find these volumes
to be a storehouse of spiritual treasures."-N. Y. Observer.
"We can commend the work as spiritual, rich, copious, original, and abounding in earnest and frequent applications of Scripture truth, to the inward experience and practical life of the believer."-Presbyterian.
" QUESNEL was one of that noble band of Jansenists who stand forth in such
blessed inconsistency in the history of Popery, and who have made the name
of Port Royal dear to many a Protestant by the words and acts of such sainted'
men las PASCAL, ARNAULD, NICOLE, and ST. CYRAN. On the first issue of this work.
ih 1671, it was hailed with delight by many divines in the Romish Church, and
had a large circulation. But it had too much of Jesus in it for the Society of
Jesus, and hence Jesuit fraud and force never rested until it was condemned
by the Pope, although it is a well-established fact that as a man he approved
and admired the book. Accordingly, after forty years of struggle, the famous
bull Unigenitus was issued in 1714, condemning one hundred and one propositions taken from this book, most of which are simple utterances of the Gospel.
This bull is added in an appendix, and is a curious document. * * * * It
breathes a pure, lofty, and unworldly spirituality, that is greatly wanting in
the prevalent type of our modern piety."- -atchsnan and Observer.
"' The work is a mine of the sweetest and richest Mloral Reflections to be found
in Christian literature, and cannot fail to awaken in every pious heart the liveliest emotions of spirituality."-Pennsylvania Inquirer.
"The author of this work was a French Catholic divine, who flourished in the
latter part of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century.
lie gave offence to the Court of Rome by an edition of the works of Pope Leo
the Great, which he published in 1674; but the production that excited the
greatest animosity against him is that which is here reproduced, (with many
omissions and corrections, indeed,) under the sanction of two eminent menthe one an Episcopalian, the other a Presbyterian. As the work now stands,
little or nothing will be found in it to which Evangelical Protestants will not
render a cordial assent, and it is confessedly one of the richest treasuries of
practical and spiritual thoullht, conse(tel with this portion of Scripture, to be
found in any language."-Pl"ritan Recorder.




PARRY &.McMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
TIE SIX DAYS OF CREA TIOXN
A Series of affectionate Letters from a Father to his
Children, developing the progressive advances of Creation during the Six Days; in which the Natural History of Animals, Plants, Minerals, Celestial Objects,
&c., and their uses and relations to Man, are treated
with particular reference to the illustration of Scriptural Truth.  By W. G. RHIND.  Illustrated with six
beautiful steel plates, and 140 wood cuts. From the
last London edition. I vol. crown 8vo. Cloth $1.00
" This is an excellent work, full of scientific facts." —Phila. Ledger.
"The writer is well known for his scholarship. * * * * Those who are
able to appreciate a sterling work on a point so important as the Natural IHistory of the Bible will see that this book must be one of no ordinary merit." —
Presbyterian Banner.
" This is a valuable book, replete with hallowed lessons of instruction for the
family."-Christian Observes.
" A thoroughly evangelical spirit pervades the volume, adapting it to impress
the heart, as well as inform the understanding."-P' esbyterian.
"The subject of Natural History was never presented in a more interesting
and attractive form than we find it in this volume."-Phila. Daily lNews.
"It is just such a publication as parents will wish to have by them when
they seek to teach their children the meaning of the sacred volume it illustrates." —Boston Atlas.
" We cordially commend this beautiful book to all, especially to the young."
-N..Y. Observer.
"A more valuable or delightful volume than this cannot be put into the hands
of youth."-St. Jeshn Observer.
"We have seldom encountered a more valuable book-one more replete with
valuable, truthful, and impressive lessons for the family circle."-City Iftem.
" To children and youth especially, such clear and familiar treatises as tfh's
volume contains are valuable as fitting them to appreciate the more elaborate
productions that are now finding their way even into our schools. The day of
the arrogant antagonism of science against revelation has, we believe, forever
gone: it is quite time that the bigoted opposition of narrow-minded relilionismrr
should as completely disappear. This desirable consummation, books like that
under notice help to procure. The facts and conclusions of genuine science are
brought satisfactorily within the reach of moderate capacity, thus conveying a
fund of independent knowledge. as well as establishing upon us the hold of divine revelation. * * * * The arrangement is orderly and dignified; and
the style, firom a quiet. unobtrusive ease, rXises now and then to a graceful beauty,
which lends additional charnm to the narrative. The illustrations, both on wood
and steel. are well executed. WNe know of no similar volume richer in attractive
and beneficial information."-Lawrence,entinlel.




PARRY & Mc-MILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
THE BOOK AND ITS STORY.
A Charming IIistory of the Bible for the Young, prepared on the occasion of the Jubilee of the British and
Foreign Bible Society.  By D. N. R.  With an Introductory Preface by the Rev. T. PHILLIPS, Jubilee Secretary. Handsomely printed, in one volume, crown
octavo, on fine paper, and illustrated.with numerous
wood cuts.  Cloth  -                          - -      $1.00
"This valuable work, containing the'Story' of that wonderfully-preserved
Book-the Bible-should be heartily welcomed by all the Christian families of
this land. Interesting and instructive, it attracts the youth, and at the same
time furnishes strong food for the man of reflection and mature years. We
hope that the publishers will be more than remunerated for the introduction
of such a work into the Christian literature of this land."-Inquirer & Courier.
" To the man who loves God's Word, and who is desirous of seeing it circulated in all the nations of our earth, this book is an inestimable treasure. It
ought to be in every family and congregational library. Its perusal must profit
every man who glances over its pages." —Reformn Banner.
" One of the most important and valuable works we have ever commended.
It possesses throughout a powerful interest."-American Courier.
"It places before us, in a most attractive form, the history of the Bible itself,
and the countries connected with that history from the earliest date, blending
with the statements details of a highly.instructive character, well calculated to
enlighten the mind, and to impress the heart with feelings of reverence for the'Oracles of the Living God.' We strongly recommend the work as a most
pleasing and instructive addition to the family library."-Church TVitness.
" The work can scarcely fail to be received with as much favour in this country
as in England, where it has gone through.eleven editions in little longer than
a year."-Com. Advertiser.' This book will be sought by Christians of all denominations. It is indeed
a most charming history of the Bible."-Daily News.
"Great pains seem to have been taken to render the varied contents of the
volume as accurate as they are interesting."-Sal. lEve. Post.
"This is precisely such a book as should be found in every family. The wood
cuts and illustrations are exceedingly valuable. The publishers display great
taste in the getting up of the work."-Pres. Banner.
"A deeply interesting volume. We shall rejoice to know that a copy of this
choice volume is finding its way to every family in the land." —Christian Visitor.
"We know of no book for general readers that covers the same ground. It
well deserves the popularity it has attained."-Journal &,ldvocate.
"It is a book of remarkable value, has specimens of the text of nearly all'the
most ancient manuscript copies of the IIoly Writings in vvarious languages, and
a view of the first public reading of the Scriptures in the Crypt of St. Paul's,
London, in the year 1541."-Concordia Intelligencer.




PARRY & MeMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
EVENINGS 1WITHT THE PROPHETS:
A  Series of Memoirs  and  Meditations.  By Rev. A.
MORTON BROWN, LIED., Cheltenham. 1 vol. crown
8vo.  Cloth                     -                        $1;00
"It is one of the clearest, most satisfactory, and best historical reviews of the
lives of the Prophets of the Old Testament that has ever appeared."-Boston
Atlas.'- We have rarely taken up a book anyway connected with the subject of prophecy which has seemed to us so well adapted to interest and edify the great
mass of the Christian community as this volume. It is written in an impressive and glowing style, and seems to throw us into immediate intercourse with
the illustrious men.whose characters and works it commemorates."-Puritan
Recorder.
"Unlike most religious books of the present day, Evenings with the Prophets
is written in such a lively, popular style, that it possesses all the interest of a
secular history."-Phil. Daily ~News.
"Not only a readable, but a very pleasant and profitable book. We could
wish our readers no better employment and no higher enjoyment, after the
toils of the busy day are over, than the perusal of a chapter of this book."Colonial Presbyterian.
" Written, as the work has been, by one possessing a clear and vigorous mind,
as well as a warm Christian heart, it will commend itself to every intelligent
Christian reader."-Penn. Inquirer.
"A delightful and instructive volume. The Christian who peruses these
papers will find himself in a charmed society."-Michigan Chris. Herald.
"It is a work worthy of all commendation."-Am. Spectator.
"The work is crowded with impressive suggestions, clothed in graphic and
eloquent language."-N. Y. Tribune.
" The book is eminently readable and entertaining, and seems to be infinitely
preferable for the family, the Sunday-school, or even the study of the general
reader, to a formal commentary on that portion of the Scriptures to which the
work refers."-North American.
"It is a cordial, wholesome book, that bears upon it marks of a genial sincerity, as well as of patient study and liberal scholarship."-Lawrence Sentinel.
"This is one of those rare books which afford a pleasant evening's entertainment, which are now printed for a thinking public. Things, called books, are
plentiful; but a sensitive mind is shocked with their verbosity, inelegance of
language, and moral depravity of sense. In this book, however, we find food
for reflection. It lifts the dark veil from many an incident in history, explains
to the inquiring mind various matters which it could not before comprehend,
and so pleasingly elucidates facts of Scriptural biography, that it is quite impossible to lay it down before completing its entire contents." —Eastcm WVhig.
" To the young, who are entering on an earnest examination of the Scriptures
in order to the attainment of clear conceptions of the harmony of divine truth,
and to those of riper years who are desirous of having their knowledge amplified or confirmed, it will prove an invaluable boon. * * * * The chapters
rXesemble great historic paintings; each prophet stands as the centre, and around
himn gather the pomp, and circumstance, and grandeur, and desolation, of ancient monarchies, the shadows of Isralel's doom, and the rising splendours of
Messiah's kingdom."-London Evangeliccal iMagazinse.




PARRY & McMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
MORNINGS WITH JESUS.
A Series of Devotional Readings for the Closet and the
Family for every day in the year, carefully prepared
from  notes of sermons preached by the late Rev. WM.
JAY, of Bath.  1 vol. crown 8vo.  Cloth, gilt    $1.25
"The Rev. WsM. JAY was the clergyman whom JOHN FOSTER, the celebrated
essayist, entitled'the prince of preachers.' Judging from this volume, the very
skeleton of his discourse has more energy than the entire body of some men's
pulpit oratory." —Com. Adv.
"These Readings breathe a spirit of genuine piety, and their tone is catholic
and healthful."-Eventing Argus.
"Charmingly adapted to private and family reading. The Sunday-school
teacher will find it an invaluable assistant."- City Itemn.
" This well-printed volume contains numerous expositions of the sacred Scriptures, marked by the originality and naturalness of manner, the perspicuity
and impressiveness of style, the evangelicalrond experimental savour, the fulness and felicity of illustration, which were characteristic of the discourses of
their pious and eloquent author. Clearness of thought, vigour of expression,
boldness in the utterance of truth, and earnestness, both of persuasion and denunciation, are traits in which they eminently excel." —x. Anter.'" The brief meditations composing the volume are pervaded with some of the
best characteristics of Mr. JAY'S style, and will not disappoint the devout reader,."
-Presbyterian.
"These meditations are, like every thing from the pen or the lips of WILLIAM
JA-, practical, evangelical, apt, and often strikingly beautiful. *   * Full
of pious and excellent thought, and well fitted to be read in connection with the
devotions of either the family or the closet."-Puritan Recorder.
"There is a peculiar freshness about these pages which gives them a charm
superior to almost any other of the productions of Mr. JAY." —1. Y. Observer.
" Christians, who know the worth ofevangelical truth, will value it as a volume
worthy of being employed to aid their private and family devotions; and, whether beginning the Christian life, or more advanced in the experience of it, will
read it with profit and pleasure."-Church Witness.'" One great charm that pervades these pages is, that they range through every
department of human experience, and show that the Spirit has his appropriate
teachings for every condition. They are also eminently fitted to cherish a devotional spirit."-Dr. SPRAGUE.
"' We recommend it as one of the best of closet companions."-Colonial Presbyterian.
" This is a rich gathering together of all the gems of beauty to be found in the
writings of the Rev. WILLIAM JAY, centering around the Cross. In it will be
found a delightful exercise for each morning in the year, and together forming
*a complete exposition of Bible truth."-Anzerican Spectator.
"These readings are for every morning of the year. They are based upon
suitable texts, and occupy each from one to two pages, so that it would be easy
to read one each morning at family worship, They are remarkably rich in
Christian experience, counsel, and consolation. and expressed in clear, concise,
and beautiful language, as are all the writings of this distinguished author.
We can most heartily recommend this book for family use."-Canadians Review.




PARRY & MceIILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
READ'S ILLUSTRA TED POEMS.
Poems, by T. BUCHANAN READ. A new and enlarged
edition. Beautifully illustrated with designs by eminent artists, and finely engraved on steel. Cloth,
extra, gilt edge  -           -$3.50
Turkey morocco -                                          6.00
Cloth, without illustrations          -     -      -      1.00
"VWe do not hesitate to declare our opinion that Mr. READ is the most promising
of the living transatlantic poets. We know of no other American (with the
doubtful exception of Edgar Poe) having so much real feeling as is shown in
some of his verses. It presents a refreshing contrast with the cold and clever
manufactures which most of his contemporaries would impose upon us as expressions of feeling. Mr. READ has a very high sense of natural beauty: this kind
of description is his forte. We offer no apology for quoting the whole of the
exquisite poem  called'The Closing Scene.' This is uanquestionably the best
A sierican poemn we have met with indeed it is, with one or two exceptions, the only
Asericatn poentm ee have read, or could have read over and over again. It is an
addition to the permanent stock of poetry in the English language. The first
thirteen stanzas, taken by themselves, constitute a truly inspired little poem.
Tennyson himself, the great modern master of that kind of description which
employs the object of outward nature as a language for human feeling, has
scarcely surpassed, in its way, this poem, vwhich in our opinion merits the ftnme
that Gray's celebrated'Elegy' has obtaiined, withoust deserving it nearly so well. The
feeling of the three opening stanzas-the only unexceptionable passage of more
than two or three lines in Gray's poem-is here sustained to a far greater length,
and with much simpler language and imagery. Mr. RE. D'S volume affords
other equally remarkable instances of perception and polish."-North British
Review.
"It is pleasant to turn to a volume of poetry like Mr. READ'S, and not the
less so, as enabling us to pay a most willinr tribute to Ameican genius. When
an American poet is not only known but reprinted here, it is clear that his
genius is of a more universal and general character, touching the heart as such,
not as an American or English heart. Pure, tender, sympathizing, and hopeful,
with an eye observant of naltre and an ear well trained to give melodious
expression to every turn of thOght-simple and unpretending in the choice of
subjects, but touching each with fresh. genuine feeling-there are not many
modern writers of verse who have supplied us with such a pleasant book of
desultory reading. *    * *  * One poem, called'The Closing Scene.'in which
the thoughts, measure, and cadence are in happy harmony, we are obliged unwillingly to curtail. A description of late and dreary Autumn, given with
American accuracy of scene-painting, ushers in a picture of failing and sorrow.
ful humanity."-Christian Rlensesnrancer, (a London Quarterly lieview.)
"A poet, whose fame, both at home and abroad, heightens with each successive production. and widens as the knowledge of his work extends."- Willis cf
Morris's Home Journal.:' The volume we have now the pleasure of introducing to our readers abounds
with delicately-pictured imag es, a rich. luxuriant fancy, and hizh-toned sentiments, marked by a touching and polished simplicity. 5 * * All is mirrored in
the poet's soul like the beautifully brilliant foliage which his genius pictures
on the bosomu of the quiet stream or sequestered lake." —Aliericvtu C(burie,.




PARRY & MicMILLAN-'S PUBLICATIONS.
THE NEW PASTORAL.
A Poem. By THos. BUCHANAN READ. 1 vol. 12mo,
cloth                                              -     $1.00
"We must give Mr. READ the credit for writing the only good pastoral poem
of the present day."-Evenieg -Bulletin.
"Poetically imagined and beautifully expressed." —Baltimore Amecrican.
"It will be welcomed as thefirst truly American poem. We predict for it an
immense circulation. It must become one of the indispensables for the centretable in America, both in the palace and the cottage."-Faren Journal.
" The New Pastoral supplies the vacant place in the literature of America,
which Thomson and Cowper have filled in that of England; and we feel proud
of our young countryman when we say, equally well. IIis poem is purely
national-American in its scope, in its spirit, in its ideas, and in the exquisite
pictures of rural life and manners which constitute its chief charm."-Rcuding
Democrat.
"M ar. READ has given us a pastoral poem of gmeat smoothness of versification,
naturalness of thought and expression, and abounding in passages of great
beauty; while over the whole is breathed a spirit of domestic and rustic quietude
such as commends it to the gentler sympathies of the soul. It deserves to take
its place among the best of our fireside poetry."-N. Y. Observer.
"American literature gets, in The tNew Pastoral, a valuable acquisition."Boston Transcript.
"The author has, by this work, achieved for himself a high position among
American poets. * * * It will continue a'standard' in the literature of
his country. *  * * A chastened imagination has decked homely scenes
with all the charms which it is the high power of poesy only to do, and painted
American rural chances with a lifelike fidelity which stamps them forever
upon the page."-Morning News.
"We have the'New Pastoral,' from the pen of TuOMAS BUCHANAN READ, a
poet whose name and fame bid fair to become household words in America. In
simple and flutelike prolongations of melody it breathes the soul of a new
people, stirred by new experiences, dwelling in a fresh, young world."-Conzmercial Register.
" The North British Review pronounced one of Mr. READ'S former productions
the best poem that had appeared from an American author. We think the
poet's well-merited reputation will not suffer firom the present work. It is rich
in the elements of a permanent popularity. The just appreciation of nature;
the beauty of description; the truthful pictures of simple, rural life; the delicacy
of sentiment; the overflowing of a gentle, loving heart, and the sweetly flowing
numbers, cannot fail to win admirers, and gain new laurels for the bard. The
fact that it is also, in all respects, a home production, thoroughly American in
all its incidents and scenery, gives it additional charms." —Presbyterian.
"It is written with sincerity and feeling: there are descriptions which have
great truth of detail, and the poem has the great merit of a subdued and natural
tone."-Putnan' s 1Monthly.
"The lovers of sound moral sentiment most sweetly expressed, and of the
bright portraiture of nature in her p eaceful scenes and moods, will find in this
volume a great deal to elevate; to interest, and to retine."-Xlratchez C(ottrie.




PARRY & McMILLAN'S PUBLICATIONS.
TAM'  FORTNIGHT RAMBLE.
Tam's Fortnight Ramble, and other Poems. By TnoMas
MACKELLAR.  216 pages, 12mo  -    -                -     $0.75
"He is a man of genius, with a heart as tender as a woman's; who would
have been effeminate from over-delicacy of construction, but for the masculine
necessity of getting a livelihood. 1 like him."-N. P. WILLIS.
"Many of his sonnets bear upon them the richness of genius, and awaken
those feelings which nothing but true poetry can arouse."-Hon. J. R. CHANDLER.'We hesitate not to pronounce him a genuine poet."-Rev. J. W. ALEXANDER, D.D.
" Tam is no new acquaintance, either to us or to our readers; but one of those
"old, fimiliar" friends who are cherished in our heart's core. The beauty of his
verse not less than of his seiltiments, has endeared himn to thousands on thousands of the readers of the Gazette; and not unfrequently his cheerful strains,
his poetry "' tipped with heavenliness," has made festival in many a sorrowing
heart. Tam, or Mr. MACKELLAR, to speak of him by his real name, is no pretty
trifler in verse, but an earnest man, writing on earnest subjects, and striving
to do good as well as to amuse. Such should ever be the high aim of poetry."
-J. C. NEAL, editor of lVeal's Gazette.
"He touches every subject with ease and grace, and breathes life into that
which was before inanimate."-Del. Co. Repub.
"fWritten by our printer-poet, as the title indicates, in a season of relief front
the persecution of publishers, printers, and proofs. The poetry is remarkable
for its beautiful simplicity, high-toned morality, and earnest piety."-Rev. Dr.
SUMMERS.
" Mr. MACKELLAR has in him the poetry of pleasantry and pathos. Some passages are touching, others amusing, and all evincing sound sense and discrimination. A religious vein runs through all, and the minor poems are the breathings of a heart which seems to have the highest enjoyments amidst the domestic
circle." —'Pesbyterian, (Ithila.)
" This is a volume of poetry, in the best sense of the word; true poetry, responsive to nature and life, and to the heart of man. There is a charm-it is
the power of inspiration-the charm of truth and nature, and of poetic feeling,
blended with sacred charity-on almost every page, which invites and holds
the willing eye and ear of the reader."-Chrislian Observer.
"He is a poet of nature and of the home affections, and he appeals to the
heart with a gentle and persuasive force that only those who feel what they
write can exercise. It is refi'eshing to turn from the stilted rhymes and forced
ideas ofmost of the writers of the present day, to the sweet and pleasant thoughts
that come upward from his heart to stir our sympathies and exact our admiration."-Evenirg News.
"' The head and the heart of this author, although he is too modest to make
high claims for either, in truth require no gratuitous commendation. IIis
muse has indeed t te truth, and depth, and insight of poetry, lacking only the
passionateness, fire, and rapture with which its sometimes grandeur, oftener
giddiness, intoxicates the fancy. It is a gentle, loving, hopeful, healthy heartiness that is the charm of his poems. The rhythm is smooth, the versification
accurate, and the sentiment always beautiful. Extracts made anywhere at random from this book would show how just the character we ascribe to thewriter,
and how tame the rl'aise we ha:ve given to his poetry.' -Dr. ELsRea.