That privates have not too, save ceremony? And what art thou, thou idol ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more What is thy soul, O adoration? Art thou ought else but place, degree, and form, Wherein thou art less happy, being feared, What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep, The slave, a member of the country's peace, Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages." Most of these passages are all well known: there is one, which we do not remember to have seen noticed, and yet it is no whit inferiour to the rest in heroick beauty. It is the account of the deaths of York and Suffolk. "Exeter. The duke of York commends him to your majesty. I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting; Exeter. In which array (brave soldier) doth he lie, But we must have done with splendid quotations. The behaviour of the king, in the difficult and doubtful circumstances in which he is placed, is as patient and modest as it is spirited and lofty in his prosperous fortune. The character of the French nobles is also very admirably depicted; and the Dauphin's praise of his horse shews the vanity of that class of persons in a very striking point of view. Shakspeare always accompanies a foolish prince with a satirical courtier, as we see in this instance. The comick parts of HENRY V. are very inferiour to those of Henry IV. Falstaff is dead, and without him, Pistol, Nym, and Bardolph, are satellites without a sun. Fluellen the Welchman is the most entertaining character in the piece. He is goodnatured, brave, cholerick, and pedantick. His parallel between Alexander and Harry of Monmouth, and his desire to have "some disputations" with captain Macmorris on the discipline of the Roman wars, in the heat of the battle, are never to be forgotten. His treatment of Pistol is as good as Pistol's treatment of his French prisoner. There are two other remarkable prose passages in this play: the conversation of Henry in disguise with the three sentinels on the duties of a soldier, and his courtship of Katherine in broken French. We like them both exceedingly, though the first savours perhaps too much of the king, and the last too little of the lover. HENRY VI. IN THREE PARTS. X DURING the time of the civil wars of York and "Glory is like a circle in the water; The first part relates to the wars in France after the death of Henry V. and the story of the Maid of Orleans. She is here almost as scurvily treated as in Voltaire's Pucelle. Talbot is a very magnificent sketch: there is something as formidable in this portrait of him, as there would be in a monumental figure of him, or in the sight of the armour which he wore. The scene in which he visits the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks to entrap him, is a very spirited one, and his description of his own treatment while a prisoner to the French not less remarkable. "Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertain'd. In open market-place produced they me, Here, said they, is the terrour of the French, Ready they were to shoot me to the heart." The second part relates chiefly to the contests between the nobles during the minority of Henry, and the death of Gloucester, the good Duke Humphrey. The character of Cardinal Beaufort is the most prominent in the group: the account of his death is one of our author's masterpieces. So is the speech of Gloucester to the nobles on the loss of the provinces of France by the king's marriage with Margaret of Anjou. The pretensions and growing ambition of the Duke of York, the father of Richard III. are also very ably developed. Among |