general idea of his historical Englishmen, as Plutarch of his Romans. But it was for the poet to mould and fashion these outlines into the vital and imperishable shapes in which we find them. This is creation-not alteration.

Richard is again on the stage. Is there a_jot in the deposition scene that is not perfectly true to his previous character? As to Bolingbroke's consistency, there cannot be a doubt, even with the most hasty reader. The king's dallying with the resignation of the crown-the prolonged talk, to parry, as it were, the inevitable act, -the " ay, no; no, ay ;”—the natural indignation at Northumberland's unnecessary harshness;-the exquisite tenderness of selfshrinking abasement, running off into poetry, "too deep for

"O, that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water drops;"

and, lastly, the calling for the mirror, and the real explanation of all his apparent affectation of disquietude ;—

"These external manners of lament

Are merely shadows to the unseen grief

That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul:"

who but Shakspere could have given us these wonderful tints of one human mind—so varying and yet so harmonious-so forcible and yet so delicate without being betrayed into something different from his own unity of conception? In the parting scene with the queen we have still the same unerring consistency. We are told that "the interview of separation between her and her wretched husband is remarkable for its poverty and tameness."*. The poet who wrote the parting scene between Juliet and her Montague had, we presume, the command of his instruments; and though, taken separately from what is around them, there may be differences in the degree of beauty in these parting scenes, they are each dramatically beautiful, in the highest sense of the term. Shakspere never went from his proper path to produce a beauty that was out of place. And yet who can read these lines, and dare to talk of "poverty and tameness ?”.

"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 griefs,
Tell thou the lamentable fall of me,

66

Frois

We are told, as we have already noticed, that this speech ends with "childish prattle." Remember, Richard II. is speaking.-Lastly, we come to the prison scene. The soliloquy is Richard all over. There is not a sentence in it that does not tell of a mind deeply reflective in its misfortunes, but wanting the guide to all sound reflection, the power of going out of himself, under the conduct of a loftier reason than could endure to dwell upon the merely personal. His self-consciousness (to use the word in a German sense) intensifies, but lowers, every thought. And then the beautiful little episode of "Roan Barbary," and Richard's all-absorbing application to himself of the story of the " poor groom of the stable." sart tells a tale, how Richard was forsaken by his favourite greyhound, which fawns on the earl." the great dramatist who transfused the incident, knew the avenues to the human heart. Steevens thinks the story of Roan Barbary might have been of Shakspere's own invention, but informs us that "Froissart relates a yet more silly tale!" Even to the death, Richard is historically as well as poetically true. His sudden valour is shown as the consequence of passionate excitement. The prose manuscript in the library of the King of France, to which we have alluded in the Historical Illustrations, exhibits a somewhat similar scene, when Lancaster, York, Aumerle, and others, went to him in the Tower, to confer upon his resignation:-"The king, in great wrath, walked about the room; and at length broke out into passionate exclamations and appeals to heaven; called them false traitors, and offered

The quaint historian, as well as

to fight any four of them." The Chronicles which Shakspere might consult were somewhat meagre, and might gain much by the addition of the records of this eventful reign which modern researches have discovered. If we compare every account, we must say that the Richard II. of Shakspere is rigidly the true Richard. The poet is the truest historian in all that belongs to the higher attributes of history.

But with this surpassing dramatic truth in the 'Richard II.,' perhaps, after all, the most wonderful thing in the whole play-that which makes it so exclusively and entirely Shaksperian-is the evolvement of the truth under the poetical form. The character of Richard, especially, is entirely subordinated to the poetical conception of it-to something higher than the historical propriety, yet including all that historical propriety, and calling it forth under the most striking aspects. All the vacillations and weaknesses of the king, in the hands of an artist like Shakspere, are reproduced with the most natural and vivid colours; so as to display their own chaVOL. IV.

2 L

racteristic effects, in combination with the principle of poetical beauty, which carries them into a higher region than the perfect command over the elements of strong individualization could alone produce. For example, when Richard says

"O, that I were a mockery king of snow,

Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke!”

we see in a moment how this speech belongs to the shrinking and overpowered mind of the timid voluptuary, who could form no notion of power apart from its external supports. But then, separated from the character, how exquisitely beautiful is it in itself! Byron, in his finest drama of Sardanapalus,' has given us an entirely different conception of a voluptuary overpowered by misfortune; and though he has said, speaking of his ideal of his own dramatic poem, "You will find all this very unlike Shakspere, and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers"—it is to us very doubtful if 'Sardanapalus' would have been written, had not the 'Richard II.' of Shakspere offered the temptation to pull the bow of Ulysses in the direction of another mark. The characters exhibit very remarkable contrasts. Sardanapalus becomes a hero when the king is in danger;-Richard, when the sceptre is struck out of his hands, forgets that his ancestors won the sceptre by the sword. The one is the sensualist of misdirected native energy, who casts off his sensuality when the passion for enjoyment is swallowed up in the higher excitement of rash and sudden daring;—the other is the sensualist of artificial power, whose luxury consists in pomp without enjoyment, and who loses the sense of gratification when the factitious supports of his pride are cut away from him. Richard, who should have been a troubadour, has become a weak and irresolute voluptuary through the corruptions of a throne ;-Sardanapalus, who might have been a conqueror, retains a natural heroism that a throne cannot wholly corrupt. But here we stop. Sardanapalus' is a beautiful poem, but the characters, and especially the chief character, come before us as something shadowy, and not of earth. 'Richard II.' possesses all the higher attributes of poetry,-but the characters, and especially the leading character, are of flesh and blood like ourselves.

And why is it, when we have looked beneath the surface at this matchless poetical delineation of Richard, and find the absolute king capricious, rapacious, cunning,-and the fallen king irresolute, effeminate, intellectually prostrate,-why is it, when we see that our Shakspere herein never intended to present to us the image of " a

good man struggling with adversity," and conceived a being the farthest removed from the ideal that another mighty poet proposed to himself as an example of heroism when he described his own fortitude

"I argue not

Against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward,"

why is it that Richard II. still commands our tears-even our
sympathies? It is this:-His very infirmities make him creep into
our affections; for they are so nearly allied to the beautiful parts
of his character, that, if the little leaven had been absent, he might
have been a ruler to kneel before, and a man to love.
We see,
then, how thin is the partition between the highest and the lowliest
parts of our nature—and we love Richard even for his faults, for
they are those of our common humanity. Inferior poets might
have given us Bolingbroke the lordly tyrant, and Richard the fallen
hero. We might have had the struggle for the kingdom painted
with all the glowing colours with which, according to the autho-
rities which once governed opinion, a poet was bound to represent
the crimes of an usurper and the virtues of a legitimate king; or,
if the poet had despised the usual current of authority, he might
have made the usurper one who had cast aside all selfish and un-
patriotic principles, and the legitimate king an unmitigated oppres-
sor, whose fall would have been hailed as the triumph of injured
humanity. Impartial Shakspere! How many of the deepest les-
sons of toleration and justice have we not learned from thy wisdom,
in combination with thy power! If the power of thy poetry could
have been separated from the truth of thy philosophy, how much
would the world have still wanted to help it forward in the course
of gentleness and peace!

END OF VOLUME IV.

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