mayor, aldermen, and citizens, with all the relish of a weakminded and weak-moraled man. Richard makes him his cat's-paw so long as it suits his purpose; but the instant he perceives that the weak-souled creature is even weak enough to have conscience-qualms after so much weakness of paltering with right, he flings him by with the sneer

"High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect."

He does not choose that the blind fool he has hitherto known so subserviently hoodwinked and linked to his purposes, should now presume to scan them, much less to demur and shrink from their fulfilment. From first to last, Buckingham's career with Richard contains an impressive lesson on weakness enmeshed by unscrupulous strength, when involved in the net by its own folly and vanity.

Some of Shakespeare's most insignificant scenes abound with notable axioms and aphoristic wisdom. For example, in that short and apparently unimportant one in this play, where some citizens meet in the street and talk, gossip-wise, about the ill-ordering of government from the factious state of parties, the king's death, and the extreme youth of his successor, the Prince of Wales, one of the citizens says, with the grave prudential tone of mercantile foresight :

"When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.
All may be well; but if God sort it so,

'Tis more than we deserve, or I expect.

"2d Cit. Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear;
You cannot reason almost with a man
That looks not heavily and full of dread.

"3d Cit. Before the days of change, still is it so.

By a divine instinct men's minds mistrust
Ensuing danger; as by proof we see

The water swell before a boist'rous storm :-
But leave it all to God."

The serene piety and resignation of this little scene, coming in contrast with the treason and cruelty with which the whole argument of the drama is fraught, is conceived in the full spirit of Shakespeare's prevailing philosophy.

He is also accustomed to introduce a character as a sort of chorus, to detail the progress of events to his audience, as the choruses of the ancient tragedy were appointed to do. So in this; he has a short scene in the 3d Act, headed

who says:

"A Street-Enter a Scrivener,"

"Here is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings;
Which in a set hand fairly is engross'd,
That it may be to-day read o'er in Paul's;
And mark how well the sequel hangs together.
Eleven hours I have spent to write it over,
For yesternight by Catesby was it sent to me.
The precedent was full as long a doing;
And yet within these five hours Hastings liv'd,
Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty.
Here's a good world the while! Who is so gross
That cannot see this palpable device ?-
Yet who so bold, but says he sees it not?-
Bad is the world, and all will come to naught,
When such ill dealing must be seen in thought."

This slight passing scene appears to me accurately suggestive of the smothered feeling of indignation that boils in men's minds under a tyrannical dynasty; and, indeed, so well is this under-current of opinion depicted in the subordinate characters in Shakespeare's historical plays, that they ought in nowise to be omitted in the representation, since they form part of the perfect whole designed by the great master. He, no doubt, intended that the minds of the audience, while dazzled by the glare of romance and preeminence which surrounded the chief actors in life's drama, should at the same time be presented with the counterbalancing reflection of the ill effects produced upon the mass of the people during the transit of such fiery meteors.

XIX.

Coriolanus.