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And learn to make a body of a limb.

K. Rich. Thou chid'st me well: proud Bolingbroke, I come

To change blows with thee for our day of doom.

This ague-fit of fear is over-blown;

An easy task it is to win our own.

Scroop. Your uncle York hath join'd with Bolingbroke.—

K. Rich. Thou hast said enough,

Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth

Of that sweet way I was in to despair!

What say you now? what comfort have we now?

By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly,

That bids me be of comfort any more.”

Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech:—

“Noble lord,

Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle,” &c.

Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and ambition in Bolingbroke with the necessity for dissimulation.

Ib. sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in giving reality and individual life, by the introduction of accidents in his historic plays, and thereby making them dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an islet of repose—a melancholy repose, indeed—is this scene with the Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting and realising is the incident of the very horse Barbary, in the scene with the Groom in the last act!—

“Groom. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King,

When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York,

With much ado, at length have gotten leave

To look upon my sometimes master's face.

O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld,

In London streets, that coronation day,

When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary!

That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid;

That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd!

K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary?”

Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how Shakespeare makes one play introductory to another; for it is evidently a preparation for Henry IV., as Gloucester in the third part of Henry VI. is for Richard III.

I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the only true loyalty developed in this noble and impressive play. We have neither the rants of Beaumont and Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger;—the vast importance of the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly enounced, whilst, at the same time, the genuine sanctity which surrounds him is attributed to, and grounded on, the position in which he stands as the convergence and exponent of the life and power of the state.

The great end of the body politic appears to be to humanise, and assist in the progressiveness of, the animal man;—but the problem is so complicated with contingencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay down rules for the formation of a state. And should we be able to form a system of government, which should so balance its different powers as to form a check upon each, and so continually remedy and correct itself, it would, nevertheless, defeat its own aim;—for man is destined to be guided by higher principles, by universal views, which can never be fulfilled in this state of existence,—by a spirit of progressiveness which can never be accomplished, for then it would cease to be. Plato's Republic is like Bunyan's Town of Man-Soul,—a description of an individual, all of whose faculties are in their proper subordination and inter-dependence; and this it is assumed may be the prototype of the state as one great individual. But there is this sophism in it, that it is forgotten that the human faculties, indeed, are parts and not separate things; but that you could never get chiefs who were wholly reason, ministers who were wholly understanding, soldiers all wrath, labourers all concupiscence, and so on through the rest. Each of these partakes of, and interferes with, all the others.

“Henry IV.—Part I.”

Act i. sc. 1. King Henry's speech:—

“No more the thirsty entrance of this soil

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood.”

A most obscure passage: but I think Theobald's interpretation right, namely, that “thirsty entrance” means the dry penetrability, or bibulous drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this passage is of the Shakespearian sort.

Ib. sc. 2. In this, the first