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had drawn them too far to retreat. They having gathered an army, the earl of Westmoreland and Prince John, the king's third son, were sent against them, and came up with them near York: but the earl, finding his force inferior, crushed them by a stratagem, wherein it seems doubtful whether he showed more perfidy, or they more simplicity. Negotiations being opened, and a conference appointed in the space between the armies, the earl heard their complaints, granted their demands, and engaged that the king should satisfy them; then, seeing their joy at his concessions, proposed that they should drink together in sign of agreement, that the people on both sides might see it. The archbishop then gave word to his men to lay aside their arms, and they, beholding such tokens of peace, as shaking of hands and drinking together of the lords in loving manner, broke up their field and returned homewards. But the earl had given secret orders for his men to keep their places; and, as soon as he saw the prey fairly within his grasp, he arrested the lords of the other side as traitors, and ordered a murderous attack on their men.

Thereupon Northumberland, together with Lord Bardolph, fled into Scotland; and about three years after, in 1408, they broke into England with a power of Scots, surprised several castles, and were advancing with high hopes, when Sir Thomas Rokesby, sheriff of Yorkshire, brought a force upon them at Branham Moor; where, after a sharp conflict, the victory fell to the sheriff, both the earl and Bardolph being slain. Thus ended the risings of the Percys; they all having deservedly fallen before the power which they had so wickedly helped to strengthen, and which they were therefore all the more eager to pull down, because of the part they had in setting it up: strong sinews, indeed, with Bolingbroke for a head; but against that head their strength only served to work their own overthrow.

In the spring of 1405 Prince Henry, being then in his nineteenth year, was at the head of an army in Wales, where Glendower had hitherto carried all before him. By

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his activity, prudence, and perseverance, the young hero gradually wrought the Welchman's downfall. Soon after reaching the scene of war he gained a clean victory over Griffith, Glendower's son, taking him prisoner, and pursued his success until checked by the arrival of foreign auxiliaries on the other side. The fall of Northumberland having at length rid the king of domestic enemies, he was able to furnish his indefatigable son with adequate supplies of men and means. Advancing slowly but constantly, he at last brought the whole country into subjection. He continued in this service most of the time for about four years, his valor and conduct awakening the most favorable expectations, and bringing him a degree of fame which is said to have moved his father's jealousy. Even before the action at Shrewsbury he had given some tokens of the promise which afterwards rose up so enchantingly, but which was not a little clouded by his rampant hilarity during the intervals of labor in the field. His father was much grieved at these irregularities, and both his grief and his jealousy were augmented by some loose and unfilial words which were reported by certain meddling pickthanks as having fallen from the prince in hours of merriment. Hearing of this, he went with a train of his followers to expostulate with his father; yet even then he enacted a strange freak of oddity, arraying himself in a gown of blue satin wrought full of eyelet holes, and at every eyelet the needle still hanging by the silk. Being admitted to an interview in the presence of a few friends, he fell on his knees, and, presenting a dagger, begged the king to take his life, since he had withdrawn his favor. His father, being much moved, threw away the dagger, and, embracing, kissed him, and owned with tears that he had indeed held him in suspicion, though, as he now saw, without just cause; and promised that no misreport should thenceforth shake his confidence in him.

At another time, one of his unruly minions being convicted of felony and sentenced to prison by Sir William Gascoigne, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, the prince

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undertook to rescue him, and even went so far as to make an assault on the judge; whereupon that pattern of judicial integrity and firmness ordered him into close keeping, and he had the good sense quietly to submit. Upon being told this his father exclaimed,-"Happy the king that has a judge so firm in his duty, and a son so obedient to the law." When he came to the throne, the prince showed his high appreciation of this righteous man by retaining him in office.

In the fourteenth year of his reign the king went about the design he had long cherished of undertaking the recovery of Jerusalem from the infidels. The provision for this being all made ready, he was stricken with "a very apoplexy" which soon ended his life. One day, while he was lying in a fit, apparently dead, having the crown on a pillow beside him, Prince Henry carried it into another room. Upon reviving, the king asked sternly who had taken it, and, being told, ordered the prince into his presence. Pacified by his dutiful words, the king sighed out,-"Alas! fair son, what right have you to the crown, since your father had none?" He answered,-"My liege, with the sword you won it, and with the sword I will keep it." "Well," said the king faintly, "do as you think best: I leave the issue with God, and hope He will have mercy on my soul." At the time of the last attack he was making his prayers at the shrine of St. Edward, and his attendants, fearing his present death, bore him into a chamber near by, belonging to the abbot of Westminster. As soon as he could speak, he asked the name of the room he was in, and, being told it was called Jerusalem, he said,—“Laud be given to the Father of heaven; for now I shall die here, according to the prophecy concerning me, that I should depart this life in Jerusalem."

One of the finest passages in English criticism is in the seventh of Coleridge's series of lectures delivered in 1818, where, after speaking of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, he adds the following:-"What had a grammatical and logical consistency for the ear,-what

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could be put together and represented to the eye, these poets took from the ear and eye, unchecked by any intuition of an inward impossibility; just as a man might put together a quarter of an orange, a quarter of an apple, and the like of a lemon and a pomegranate, and make it look like one round diverse-colored fruit. But nature, which works from within by evolution and assimilation, according to a law, cannot do so, nor could Shakespeare; for he too worked in the spirit of nature. In the Shakespearean drama there is a vitality which grows and evolves itself from within, a key-note which guides and controls the harmonies throughout."

What is here so justly said of the Poet's dramas generally holds good in the fullest measure of the First and Second Parts of King Henry IV, which, as already remarked, are essentially one drama arranged and marked as two, "only because too long to be one." Where, then, are we to find the center and principle of vital unity here? what is the "key-note which guides and controls the harmonies throughout" this work? Doubtless it is to be sought for in the character of Prince Henry, and in the wonderful change alleged to have taken place in his behavior on coming to the crown. Why was Henry of Monmouth so loose and wanton a reveller in his youth, and yet such a proficient in all noble and virtuous disciplines in his manhood? what causes, internal and external, determined him to the one; what impulses from within, what influences from without, transformed or developed him into the other? This, to the best of our judgment, is the central point where all the persons and events, with the strange alternations of wit and poetry, run together into an organic whole. So that, if viewed in the light of this principle, the entire work, with its broad, rich variety of character and incident, will be found, we think, to proceed in a spirit of wise insight and design; the whole evincing indeed a wonderful opulence of imagination, but perhaps a still more wonderful mastery of reason.

Accordingly, in the very first scene of the play this self

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same matter is put forth as uppermost in the king's thoughts. We refer to the passage between Westmoreland and the king touching the victory at Homildon; where the former declares "it is a conquest for a prince to boast of;" and the latter thereupon owns that the fame of Hotspur makes him sad and makes him sin, as he sees "riot and dishonor stain the brow of his young Harry," and wishes it could be proved that Hotspur was indeed his son, and the prince a scion of some other stock. The whole play is mainly ordered with a view to unfold the grounds and reasons of the wish thus expressed, and also the causes and process of their removal.

All accounts of Bolingbroke agree in representing him as a man of great valor and policy; intensely aspiring, yet equally prudent; a profound master of state-craft; a keen discerner of the secret springs and workings of public opinion, and therefore a great favorite with the people; and, therewithal, full of impassioned energy, and of a certain fiery yet well-governed enthusiasm. Which representation is fully borne out in that, though his reign was little else than a series of rebellions and commotions drawn on by the injustice whereby he reached the crown, and the bad title whereby he held it, yet he always got the better of them, and even turned them to his advantage; so that all efforts to undo his usurpation only served in the end to strengthen and confirm it, where he could not win the heart, cutting off the head, and managing to extract fresh security out of every danger. His last years, however, were much embittered, and his death probably hastened, by the anxieties growing out of his position, and the remorses consequent upon his crimes.

But though such be the character generally ascribed to him, no historian has come near Shakespeare in the painting thereof. As matter especially in point, take the account he is made to give of himself while remonstrating with the prince against his idle courses; which is not less admirable for historic truth than for power of art. Equally fine, also, both for truth of history and for skill