Aumerle. Thou dar'st not, coward, live to see the day. And that thou art so, there I throw my gage Of mortal breathing. Aumerle. And if I do not, may my hands rot off, And never brandish more revengeful steel Over the glittering helmet of my foe. Who sets me else? By heav'n I'll throw at all. To answer twenty thousand such as you. Surry. My Lord Fitzwater, I remember well The very time Aumerle and you did talk. Fitzwater. My lord, 'tis true: you were in presence then: And you can witness with me this is true. Surry. As false, by heav'n, as heav'n itself is true. Fitzwater. Surry, thou liest. Surry. Dishonourable boy, That lie shall lye so heavy on my sword, That it shall render vengeance and revenge, Till thou the lie-giver and that lie rest In earth as quiet as thy father's skull. In proof whereof, there is mine honour's pawn: Engage it to the trial, if thou dar'st. Fitzwater. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse : If I dare eat or drink, or breathe or live, I dare meet Surry in a wilderness, And spit upon him, whilst I say he lies, And lies, and lies: there is my bond of faith, The truth is, that there is neither truth nor honour in all these noble persons: they answer words with words, as they do blows with blows, in mere self defence: nor have they any principle whatever but that of courage in maintaining any wrong they dare commit, or any falsehood which they find it useful to assert. How different were these noble knights and "barons bold" from their more refined descendants in the present day, who, instead of deciding questions of right by brute force, refer every thing to convenience, fashion, and good breeding! In H point of any abstract love of truth or justice, they are just the same now that they were then. The characters of old John of Gaunt and of his brother York, uncles to the King, the one stern and foreboding, the other honest, good-natured, doing all for the best, and therefore doing nothing, are well kept up. The speech of the former, in praise of England, is one of the most eloquent that ever was penned. We should perhaps hardly be disposed to feed the pampered egotism of our countrymen by quoting this description, were it not that the conclusion of it (which looks prophetic) may qualify any improper degree of exultation. Jaun th "This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd for their breed and famous for their birth, The character of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV. is drawn with a masterly hand :-patient for occasion, and then steadily availing himself of it, seeing his advantage afar off, but only seizing on it when he has it within his reach, humble, crafty, bold, and aspiring, encroaching by regular but slow degrees, building power on opinion, and cementing opinion by power. His disposition is first unfolded by Richard himself, who however is too selfwilled and secure to make a proper use of his knowledge. "Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green, Observed his courtship of the common people : What reverence he did throw away on slaves; A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, With thanks my countrymen, my loving friends'; And he our subjects' next degree in hope." Afterwards, he gives his own character to Percy, in these words : "I thank thee, gentle Percy, and be sure It shall be still thy true love's recompense." ; We know how he afterwards kept his promise. His bold assertion of his own rights, his pretended submission to the king, and the ascendancy which he tacitly assumes over him without openly claiming it, as soon as he has him in his power, are characteristic traits of this ambitious and politic usurper. But the part of Richard himself gives the chief interest to the play. His folly, his vices, his misfortunes, his reluctance to part with the crown, his fear to keep it, his weak and womanish regrets, his starting tears, his fits of hectic passion, his smothered majesty, pass in succession before us, and make a picture as natural as it is affecting. Among the most striking touches of pathos are his wish "O that I were a mockery king of snow to melt away before the sun of Bolingbroke," and the incident of the poor groom who comes to visit him in prison, and tells him how "it yearned his heart that Bolingbroke upon his coronation-day rode on Roan Barbary." We shall have occasion to return hereafter to the character of Richard II. in speaking of Henry VI. There is only one passage more, the description of his entrance into London with Bolingbroke, which we should like to quote here, if it had not been so used and worn out, so thumbed and got by rote, so praised and painted; but its beauty surmounts all these considerations. "Duchess. My lord, you told me you would tell the rest, When weeping made you break the story off Of our two cousins coming into London. York. Where did I leave? Duchess. At that sad stop, my lord, Where rude misgovern'd hands, from window tops, York. Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke, 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 Duchess. Alas, poor Richard! where rides he the while? After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious: Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes But dust was thrown upon his sacred head! HENRY IV. IN TWO PARTS. If Shakespear's fondness for the ludicrous sometimes led to faults in his tragedies (which was not often the case) he has made us amends by the character of Falstaff. This is perhaps the most substantial comic character that ever was invented. Sir John carries a most portly presence in the mind's eye; and in him, not to speak it profanely, "we behold the fulness of the spirit of wit and humour bodily." We are as well acquainted with his person as his mind, and his jokes come upon us with double force and relish from the quantity of flesh through which they make their way, as he shakes his fat sides with laughter, or "lards the lean earth as he walks along.' Other comic characters seem, if we approach and handle them, to resolve themselves into air, "into thin air;" but this is embodied and palpable to the grossest apprehension : it lies "three fingers deep upon the ribs," it plays about the lungs and the diaphragm with all the force of animal enjoyment. His body is like a good estate to his mind, from which he receives rents and revenues of profit and pleasure in kind, according to its extent, and the richness of the soil. Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensation; an effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others, from feeling none in itself. Falstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution; an exuberance of good-humour and good-nature; an overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellowship; a giving vent to his heart's ease, and over-contentment with himself and others. He would not be in character, if he were not so fat as he is; for there is the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination and the pampered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. He manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his jokes, as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, where there is cut |