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and fascinates the eye. And yet he has a son at Oxford, and a daughter just blossoming into womanhood, which strangely links him with our household sympathies.

Shakespeare's fondness of weaving poetical conceptions round the leanest subjects is finely shown in the continual pouring forth of snatches from old ballads by Silence, when his native sterility of brain is overcome by the working of sack on his memory. How delicately-comical the volubility with which he trundles off the fag-ends of popular ditties, when in "the sweet of the night" his heart has grown rich with the exhilaration of wine! Who can ever forget the exquisite humor of the contrast between Silence dry and Silence drunk? As nothing but wine can put his tongue astir, so his tongue cannot choose but keep on till the force of the wine is spent: so long as the effect of this is on him, not even the tempestuous abuse of Pistol can stop him.

The conduct of Silence on this occasion lets us far into the style and spirit of old English mirth. We see that he must have passed his life in an atmosphere of song; for it was only by dint of long custom and endless repetition that so passive a memory as his could be stored with such matter. And the snatches he sings are fragments of old minstrelsy "that had long been heard in the squire's hall and the yeoman's chimney corner," where friends and neighbors were wont to "sing aloud old songs, the precious music of the heart."

It were hardly just either to Shallow and Silence or to the Poet, to dismiss them without referring to their piece of dialogue about old Double: where, with all that is odd and grotesque, in itself and its circumstances, there is a strange mixture of something that draws and knits in with the sanctities of our being, and "feelingly persuades us what we are." As with the "smooth-lipped shell" of which Wordsworth speaks so beautifully, so with this poor shell of humanity; when we apply our ear to it, and listen intensely, "from within are heard murmurings, whereby the monitor expresses mysterious union with its native sea."

It is considerable that this bit of dialogue occurs at our first meeting with the speakers; as if the Poet meant it on purpose to set and gauge our feelings aright towards them; to forestall and prevent an over-much rising of contempt for them, which is probably about the worst feeling we can cherish. At all events, such is nature; and so jealous was our divine Shakespeare of nature's rights.-After hovering awhile among these scenes, we are almost tempted to retract what was said above touching the falling off in the Second Part.

Among the other characters of this play there is much judicious discrimination. Lord Bardolph is shrewd and sensible, of a firm practical understanding, and prudent forecast, and none the less brave, that his cool reflection begets a temperance, and puts him upon looking carefully before he leaps. And the Archbishop, so forthright and strong-thoughted, bold, enterprising, and resolute in action, in speech grave, moral, and sententious, forms, all together, a noble portrait. Northumberland makes good his previous character: evermore talking big and doing nothing; full of verbal tempest and practical indecision; and still ruining his friends, and at last himself, between "I would" and "I dare not," he lives without our respect and dies unpitied of us; while his daughter-in-law's remembrance of her noble husband kindles a sharp resentment of his mean-spirited backwardness, and a hearty scorn of his blustering verbiage.

The drama of King Henry IV, taking the two parts as artistically one, is deservedly ranked among the very highest of Shakespeare's achievements. The characterization, whether for quantity, or quality, or variety, or, again, whether regarded in the individual development or in the dramatic combination, is above all praise. And yet, large and free as is the scope here given to invention, the parts are all strictly subordinated to the idea of the whole as an historical drama; insomuch that even Falstaff, richly ideal as is the character, every where helps on the history, a

whole century of old English wit and sense and humor being crowded together and compacted in him. And one is surprised, withal, upon reflection, to see how many scraps and odd minutes of intelligence are here to be met with. The Poet seems indeed to have been almost every where, and brought away some tincture or relish of the place; as though his body were set full of eyes, and every eye took in matter of thought and memory: here we have the smell of eggs and butter; there we turn up a fragment of old John of Gaunt; elsewhere we chance upon a pot of Tewksbury mustard; again we hit a bit of popular superstition, how earl Douglas "runs o' horseback up a hill perpendicular:" on the march with Falstaff we contemplate "the cankers of a calm world and a long peace;" at Clement'sInn we hear "the chimes at midnight;" at master Shallow's we "eat a last year's pippin of my own graffing, with a dish of carraways and so forth:" now we are amidst the poetries of chivalry and the felicities of victory; now amidst the obscure sufferings of war, where its inexorable iron hand enters the widow's cottage, and snatches away the land's humblest comforts. And so we might go on indefinitely, the particulars of this kind being so numerous as might well distract the mind, and yet so skillfully composed that the number seems not large, till by a special effort of thought one goes to view them severally. And these particulars, though so unnoticed, or so little noticed, in the detail, are nevertheless so ordered that they all tell in the result. How pervading and controlling is the principle of organic life and law, issuing in a perfect fitting of all the parts to each, and of each to all, so that in the farthest extremities we can detect the beatings of one common heart, may be specially instanced in Sir John: whose sayings every where so fit and cleave to the circumstances, to all the oddities of connection and situation out of which they grow; have such a mixed smacking, such a various and composite relish, made up from all the peculiarities of the person by whom, the occasion wherein, and the pur

pose for which they are spoken, that they cannot be detached and set out by themselves, without thwarting or greatly marring their force and flavor. On the whole, we may safely affirm with Johnson, that "perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight."

COMMENTS

By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS

THE PRINCE

The prince comes to the court at his father's end. The last suspicion rouses fully his veiled nature. This one scene, which needs no explanation, is worth all the rest of the play. The king's apparent death cuts him to the heart; Warwick finds him sitting over the crown like a picture of mourning sorrow. The hearts even of the most unconcerned tremble with doubt as to what the kingdom may expect from him. The far-seeing Warwick had flattered the sick king that the prince had but studied his wild companions like a strange tongue, the most immodest word of which is learned; that in the perfectness of time he would cast off his followers. But when the perfectness of time came, he seemed to be of another opinion, and he wishes the heir to the throne had the temper of the worst of his brothers. His brothers see with astonishment Henry's deep emotion when he appears as king; the worthy Lord Chief-Justice he keeps in suspense to the very last; at length with calm majesty he draws back the clouds from his bright and pure nature, and with one word sets all at rest, by promising that this very man shall be a father to him, that his voice shall sound before all others in his ear, and that he will follow his wise directions. Wildness and passion have died and been buried with his father; the tide of blood, hitherto flowing in vanity, turns and ebbs back to the sea, where it shall mingle "with the state of floods, and flow henceforth in formal majesty." The change of feeling which had commenced with his call against the rebels is completed at his higher vocation to occupy the

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