At once

enigma both to the other persons and to us. ardent and self-restrained, far-sighted, firmly poised, always eying his mark steadily, and ever working towards it stealthily, he knows perfectly withal how to abide his time: he sees the opportunity clearly while it is coming, and seizes it promptly when it comes; but does all this so quietly as to seem the mere servant of events, and not at all the worker of them. He is undoubtedly ambitious of the crown, expects to have it, means to get it, and frames his action to that end; but he builds both the ambition and the expectation on his knowledge of Richard's character and his own political insight: reading the signs of the time with a statesman's eye, he knows that things are hastening towards a crisis in the State; as he also knows that they will be apt to make an end the sooner, if left to their natural course: nor, after all, is it so correct to say that he forces the crown away from Richard, as that he lets Richard's fitful, jerking impotence shake it off into his hand; though it must be owned that he takes, and knows he is taking, just the right way to stimulate Richard's convulsive zigzaggery into fatal action.

Bolingbroke, throughout the play, appears framed of qualities at once attractive and commanding. In the sequent play, the tempestuous Hotspur denounces him as a " vile politician." A politician he is indeed, but he is much more than that. He is a conscious adept and a willing practiser in the ways of popularity and if there is much of artfulness in his condescension, there is much of genuineness too: for he knows that the strength of the throne must stand in having the hearts of the people knit to it; and in his view the tribute of a winning address, or of gracious and obliging behaviour, may be honestly and wisely paid, to purchase their honest affection. Therewithal he is a master of just that proud complaisance and benignant loftiness, that happy mixture of affability and reserve, which makes its way most surely to the seat of popular confidence andrespect. Nor does his courtship of the people ever forget

that their love will keep the longer and the better for being so seasoned with reverence as to stop short of familiarity : for this cause, he offers himself seldom to their eyes; and when he thus offers himself, he does it so sparingly as to make their eyes glad of the sight without glutting them; and does it in such a way, that their love of the man may in no sort melt down their awe of the prince. The way he sweetens himself into their good thoughts, by smiling and bowing his farewell pleasantness upon them when leaving for his place of exile, has its best showing in Richard's description,

"How he did seem to dive into their hearts

With humble and familiar courtesy ;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves;
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles,
And patient under-bearing of his fortune.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;

A brace of draymen bid God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee,

With Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends."

Bolingbroke's departure is with the port and bearing of a conscious victor in the issue he has made. He knows that the hearts of the people are going with him, and that his power at home will strike its roots the deeper for the rough wind of tyranny which blows him abroad, where he must "sigh his English breath in foreign clouds, eating the bitter bread of banishment." From that moment, he sees that the crown is in reversion his; and the inspiration of these forward-looking thoughts is one cause why he throws such winning blandness and compliance into his parting salutations. And on coming back to reclaim his plundered inheritance, instead of waiting for a formal settlement of rights and titles, no sooner is he landed than he quietly assumes the functions, and goes to doing the works, of sovereignty, while disclaiming the office and all pretensions to it. In their long experience of a king without kingliness, the people have had enough of the name without the thing: so he proceeds to enact the thing without the name.

Men thus get used to seeing kingly acts done by him, and grow warm with the sense of public benefits resulting therefrom, without understanding clearly that they are such; that is, they are made to feel the presence of a real king inside of him, before they know it. In this way, he literally steals the sentiment of loyalty into them; while his approved kingliness of spirit reinvests the title with its old dearness and lustre, and at the same time points him out as the rightful wearer of it. Being thus a king in fact, though not in name and outward show, the sentiments that have been wont to go with the crown silently draw together and centre upon him; and when this is done the crown itself naturally gravitates towards his head. Whether the man consciously designs all this, may indeed be questioned; but such is clearly the natural drift and upshot of the course he pursues.

Nor is his bearing towards the lords who gather round him less remarkable. During their long ride together, he cheats the tediousness of the road with his sweetness and affability of discourse, thus winning and fastening them to his cause, yet without so committing himself to them as to give them any foothold for lording it over him. The overweening Percys, from the importance of their aid, evidently reckon upon being a power behind the throne greater than the throne; but they are not long in finding they have mistaken their man. So in the deposition-scene, when the insolent Northumberland thinks to rule the crestfallen King by dint of browbeating, Bolingbroke quietly overrules him; and he does this so much in the spirit of one born to command, as to make it evident that the reign of favouritism is at an end. He is not unmindful that those who have engaged in rebellion to set him up may do the same again to pluck him down: therefore he is the prompter to let them know that, instead of being his master, they have given themselves a master in him, and that, if he has used their services in establishing his throne, he has done so as their King, and not as their creature. And as he has no

notion of usurping the crown by their help in order that they may rule the State with a king under them; so neither is he wanting in magnanimity to the brave old Bishop of Carlisle, whose honest, outspoken, uncompromising loyalty to Richard draws from him a reproof indeed, but in language so restrained and temperate as to show that he honours the man much more than he resents the act. The same nobleness of spirit, or, if you please, politic generosity, is evinced again in his declared purpose of recalling Norfolk, and reinstating him in his lands and honours; and perhaps still better in the scene where he pardons Aumerle, and where, while the old Duke and Duchess of York are pleading with all their might, the one against, the other for, their son's life, he gently plays with the occasion, and defers the word, though his mind is made up, and at last gratifies the father by denying his suit, and binds all three of their hearts indissolubly to himself by a wise act of mercy the more engaging for his stern justice to the other conspirators.

And so the way Bolingbroke kings it all through the fourth and fifth Acts, sparing of words, but prompt and vigorous, yet temperate and prudent in deed, makes a forcible contrast to Richard's froward, violent, imbecile tyrannizing in the first and second. As for the murder of Richard, this is indeed an execrable thing; but there is the less need of remarking upon it, inasmuch as Bolingbroke's professed abhorrence of the deed and remorse for having hinted it, whether sincere or not, sufficiently mark it out for reprobation. Of course the proximate cause of it is the conspiracy which has come to light for restoring the deposed King, and which has cost the lives of several men. The death of those men is, in the circumstances, just. And the fact that Richard's life thus holds Bolingbroke in constant peril of assassination amply explains why the latter should wish the ground and motive for such plots removed, though it may nowise excuse the means used for stopping off that peril. But in truth the head and spring of all these evils lies in the usurpation; and for this Richard is quite as much to blame as Bolingbroke.

KING HENRY THE FOURTH.

DR. JOHNSON rightly observes that the First and Second Parts of KING HENRY THE FOURTH are substantially one drama, the whole being arranged as two only because too long to be one. For this cause it seems best to regard them as one in what follows, and so dispose of them both together. The writing of them must be placed at least as early as 1597, when the author was thirty-three years old. The First Part was registered at the Stationers' for publication in February, 1598, and was published in the course of that year. There were also four other quarto issues of the play before the folio edition of 1623. The Second Part was first published in 1600, and there is not known to have been any other edition of it till it reappeared along with the First Part in the folio. It is pretty certain, however, for reasons to be stated presently, that the Second Part was written before the entry of the First Part at the Stationers' in 1598.

It is beyond question that the original name of Sir John Falstaff was Sir John Oldcastle; and a curious relic of that naming survives in Act i. scene 2, where the Prince calls Falstaff " my old lad of the castle." And we have several other strong proofs of the fact; as in the Epilogue to the Second Part: "For any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already he be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." Also, in Amerals for Ladies, a play by Nathaniel Field, printed in 1618: "Did you never see the play where the fat Knight, hight Oldcastle, did tell you truly what this honour was?" which clearly alludes to Falstaff's soliloquy about honour in the First Part, Act v. scene 1. Yet the change of name must have been made before the play was entered in the Stationers' books, as that entry mentions "the conceited mirth of Sir John Falstaff." And we have one small but pretty decisive mark inferring