much, for he had never seen it since his father had been laid there." The personal narrative of the French knight here closes; the remainder of his narrative being given on the faith of another person, a clerk. From Westminster, Richard was removed to the Tower. The parliament, which began on the 13th September, drew up thirty-three "articles objected to King Richard, whereby he was counted worthy to be deposed from his principality."

The scene of fiery contention in Westminster Hall, with which this act opens, follows the chroniclers very literally. Shakspere has, however, placed this remarkable exhibition of vindictive charges and recriminations before the deposition of Richard. It took place after Henry's coronation. The protest of the Bishop of Carlisle, whom Holinshed calls "a bold bishop and a faithful," also, according to most authorities, followed the deposition. It is stated to have been made on a request from the commons that Richard might have "judgment decreed against him, so as the realm were not troubled by him." There is considerable doubt whether this speech was delivered at all. It does not appear that Richard made his resignation in parliament, but that Northumberland and other peers, prelates and knights, with justices and notaries, attended the captive on the 29th September, 1399, in the chief chamber of the king's lodging in the Tower, where he read aloud and subscribed the scroll of resignation, saying that, if it were in his power, he would that the Duke of Lancaster there present should be his successor. These instruments were read to the parliament the day following. So Holinshed relates the story. Froissart, however, details the ceremonies of the surrender with more minuteness: "On a day the Duke of Lancaster, accompanied with lords, dukes, prelates, earls, barons, and knights, and of the notablest men of London, and of other good towns, rode to the Tower, and there alighted. Then King Richard was brought into the hall, apparelled like a king in his robes of state, his sceptre in his hand, and his crown on his head; then he stood up alone, not holden nor stayed by no man, and said aloud, I have been king of England, duke of Aquitaine, and lord of Ireland, about twenty-one years, which seigniory, royalty, sceptre, crown, and heritage I clearly resign here to my cousin Henry of Lancaster; and I desire him here, in this open presence, in entering of the same possession, to take this sceptre and so delivered it to the duke, who took it." There can be no doubt that this apparently willing resignation, which his enemies said was made even with a merry countenance, was extorted from Richard by the fear of death. Northumberland openly proclaimed this when he rebelled against Henry. In a very curious manuscript in the library of the King of France, from which copious extracts are given in Mr. Webb's notes to the Metrical History,' there is a detailed account of a meeting between Richard and Bolingbroke in the Tower, at which York and Aumerle were present,-where the king, in a most violent rage, says, "I am king, and will still continue king, in spite of all my enemies." Shakspere has most skilfully portrayed this natural struggle of the will of the unhappy man against the necessity by which he was overwhelmed. The deposition scene shows us,—as faithfully as the glass which the poet introduces exhibits the person of the king,-the vacillations of a nature irresolute and yielding, but clinging to the phantom of power when the substance had passed away. There can be no doubt that Shakspere's portrait of Richard II. is as historically true as it is poetically just.

The chroniclers have shown us the fierce, and, as we should call them in moderu times, the brutal contests of the peers in the first parliament of Henry IV. But we have had lately opened to us a most curious record of the days of Richard, which shows us a parliament that more nearly approaches to our notions of an assembly of men called together for the public good, but not forgetting their private interests in their peaceful moods; and deporting themselves as men do who have mighty ques

tions to deliberate upon, but who bring to that deliberation the sloth, the petty feelings, and the other individual characteristics that remind us that great legislators are sometimes small men. The Camden Society, which is doing for literature the very reverse of what the Roxburgh Club did-which is making unpublished and rare tracts accessible to all men, instead of gaining a petty reputation by rendering scarce things known, and then causing them to be scarcer,—has published an ‘Alliterative Poem on the Deposition of King Richard II.' This most curious production is printed from a manuscript in the public library at Cambridge. There seems to be no doubt that the poem was written about the time when Richard fell into the hands of his enemies :-the first lines represent the author as being informed that "Henrri was entrid on the est half" of the kingdom, while Richard "werrid be west on the wilde Yrisshe." The author of the poem appears to have been a partisan of Bolingbroke the transcriber was of the opposite faction; and to this circumstance we owe the loss of the more important part of the original composition; for he broke off abruptly in the description of Richard's servile parliament― the parliament that, giving a colour to his exactions and despotic exercise of authority, led to the great revolution which ended in his deposition. Of this famous parliament the following is a part of the description to which we have alluded :

"And somme slombrid and slepte, and said but a lite;

And somme mafilid with the mouth, and nyst what they ment;

And somme had hire, and helde ther-with evere,

And wolde no fforther a ffoot, ffor ffer of her maistris;

And some were so soleyne, and sad of her wittis,

That er they come to the clos a-combred they were,
That thei the conclucioun than constrewe ne couthe
No burne of the benche, of borowe nother ellis,
So blynde and so ballid and bare was the reson;
And somme were so ffers at the ffrist come,
That they bente on a bouet, and bare a topte saile
A-ffor the wynde ffresshely, to make a good ffare."

We venture upon a free prose translation of the old English:

"And some slumbered and slept, and said but a little; and some stammered with the mouth, and knew not what they meant; and some were paid, and held to that, and would no further a-foot, for fear of their masters; and some were so sullen and grave in their wits, that before they came to the close they were so much encumbered, that their conclusions could be construed by no baron on the bench, nor by no one else of the borough,—so blind, and so bald, and so bare was their reason. And some were so fierce at the first coming, that they were bent on a bout, and bare a topsail afore the wind freshly, to make a good fare."-Unchangeable human nature!

ACT V.

SCENE I.-London. A Street leading to the Tower.

Enter QUEEN and Ladies.

Queen. This way the king will come; this is the way To Julius Cæsar's ill-erected a tower,

а

To whose flint bosom my condemned lord
Is doom'd a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke:
Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth
Have any resting for her true king's queen.

Enter KING RICHARD and Guards.

b

But soft, but see, or rather do not see,
My fair rose wither: Yet look up; behold;
That you in pity may dissolve to dew,
And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.
Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand;
Thou map of honour; thou king Richard's tomb,
And not king Richard; thou most beauteous inn,c
Why should hard-favour'd grief be lodg'd in thee,
When triumph is become an alehouse guest?

K. Rich. Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,
To make my end too sudden learn, good soul,

:

To think our former state a happy dream;

From which awak'd, the truth of what we are

a Ill-erected-erected for evil.

b The queen, in a series of bold metaphors, compares her "condemned lord" to a ruin, or a mere outward form of greatness. He is "the model where old Troy did stand "the representation of the waste on which the most renowned city of antiquity once stood.

c Inn. We doubt whether the word is here used as Falstaff uses it-" Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn ?" An inn was originally a dwelling-a place of cover or protection. We have still the Inns of Court; Lord Braybrooke's seat in Essex, commonly called Audley-End, is, properly, Audley-Inn. When the queen opposes the term alehouse to inn, she certainly does not mean, as Monck Mason thinks, to discriminate between two classes of houses of entertainment, but between a publichouse and a "beauteous mansion."

Shows us but this: I am sworn brother,a sweet,
To grim necessity; and he and I

Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France,
And cloister thee in some religious house:
Our holy lives must win a new world's crown,
Which our profane hours here have stricken down.
Queen. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform'd and weaken'd? Hath Bolingbroke
Depos'd thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart?
The lion, dying, thrusteth forth his paw,

And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o'erpower'd; and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take thy correction mildly? kiss the rod;
And fawn on rage with base humility,

Which art a lion, and a king of beasts?

K. Rich. A king of beasts, indeed; if aught but beasts, I had been still a happy king of men.

Good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for France:
Think I am dead; and that even here thou tak'st,
As from my death-bed, my last living leave.

In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire

With good old folks; and let them tell thee tales
Of woeful ages, long ago betid:

And, ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief,
Tell thou the lamentable fall of me,

And send the hearers weeping to their beds.
For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,

And, in compassion, weep the fire out :

And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,

For the deposing of a rightful king.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, attended.

North. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang'd; You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.

a Sworn brother. Military adventurers were sometimes leagued to share each others' fortunes-to divide their plunder, and even their honours. They were then fratres jurati-sworn brothers.

And, madam, there is order ta'en for you;
With all swift speed you must away to France.

K. Rich. Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal
The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,
The time shall not be many hours of age
More than it is, ere foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption: thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm, and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all:

And he shall think that thou, which know'st the way
To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,
Being ne'er so little urg'd another way,

To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.
The love of wicked friends converts to fear;
That fear to hate; and hate turns one, or both,
To worthy danger, and deserved death.

North. My guilt be on my head, and there an end.
Take leave, and part; for you must part forthwith.

K. Rich. Doubly divorc'd?-Bad men, ye violate
A twofold marriage; 'twixt my crown and me;
And then betwixt me and my married wife.
Let me unkiss the oath 'twixt thee and me;
And yet not so, for with a kiss 'twas made.a

Part us, Northumberland; I towards the north,
Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime;
My queen to France; from whence, set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May,

Sent back like Hallowmas, or short'st of day.

Queen. And must we be divided? must we part?

K. Rich. Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.

Queen. Banish us both, and send the king with me.

North. That were some love, but little policy.
Queen. Then whither he goes thither let me go.

K. Rich. So two, together weeping, make one woe.

a The kiss was an established form of the ancient ceremony of affiancing. (See

Illustrations of Two Gentlemen of Verona,' Act II. Scene 2.)

b Queen. So the folio. The quartos, wife.

Hallowmas. The first of November,-opposed to "sweet May."