of character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her challenging Wolsey as a "foe to truth," and her very expressions, "I utterly refuse,-yea, from my soul abhor you for my judge," are taken from fact.

The sudden burst of indig

nant passion towards the close of this scene,

In one who ever yet

Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects

Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom

O'ertopping woman's power;

is taken from nature, though it occurred on a different occasion.*

Lastly, the circumstance of her being called back after she had appealed from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called: "On, on," quoth she; "it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways."†

King Henry's own assertion, "I dare to say, my lords, that for her womanhood, wisdom, nobility, and gentleness, never prince had such another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not wise," is thus beautifully para phrased by Shakespeare :—

That man i' th' world, who shall report he has
A better wife, let him in naught be trusted,
For speaking false in that! Thou art, alone
(If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,

Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,
Obeying in commanding, and thy parts,

Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out),
The queen of earthly queens.-She 's noble born;
And, like her true nobility, she has

Carried herself towards me.

* "The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly and obstinately, with many high words: and suddenly, in a fury, she departed from him into her privy chamber."-Vide Hall's Chronicle,

↑ Vide Cavendish's Life of Wolsey.

We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey and Cam peggio visited the queen by the king's order she was found. at work among her women, and came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging about her neck; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she interrupted him, saying, "Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you; although I understand Ļatin." "Forsooth then,” quoth my lord, “madam, if it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." My lords, I thank you then," quoth she, "of your good wills; but to make answer to your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so noble wise men as ye be. I had need of good counsel in this case, which toucheth me so near; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find in England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me, against the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be not here; they be in Spain, in my native country.* Alas! my lords, I am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I pray you to extend your good and indifferent minds in your authority unto me, for I * This affecting passage is thus rendered by Shakespeare (iii. 1.) :~. Nay, forsooth, my friends,

They that must weigh out my afflictions,

They that my trust must grow to, live not here:
They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,
In mine own country, lords,

am a simple woman, destitute and barren of friendship and counsel, here in a foreign region; and as for your counsel, I will not refuse, but be glad to hear."

It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstall waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by an act of Parliament, she refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his subject. The bishop describes her conduct in his letter: "She being therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words, declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist in accounting herself the king's wife till death." When the official letter containing minutes of their conference was shown to her, she seized a pen and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which she was styled Princess-dowager.

If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Katherine and the two cardinals (act iii. scene 1), we shall observe how finely Shakespeare has condensed these incidents, and unfolded to us all the workings of Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with some of her women-she calls for music "to soothe her soul grown sad with troubles"-then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is so well adapted to the occasion, while its quaint yet classic elegance breathes the very spirit of those times when Surrey loved and sung. They are interrupted by the arrival of the two cardinals. Katherine's perception of their subtlety-her suspicion of their purpose-her sense of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild subdued dignity, are beautifully represented; as also the guarded self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer; but when they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use Tunstall's expres sion, "the choler and the agony," burst forth in words.

Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye!
Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge

That no king can corrupt.

Wolsey.

Your rage mistakes us.

Queen Katherine. The more shame for ye! Holy men
thought ye,

Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues ;

But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye :

Mend 'em, for shame, my lords. Is this your comfort,

The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady?

With the same force of language, and impetuous yet digni fied feeling, she asserts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her rights:

'Have I liv'd thus long (let me speak myself,

Since virtue finds no friends), a wife, a true one

A woman (I dare say, without vain-glory)

Never yet branded with suspicion ?

Have I with all my full affections

Still met the king? lov'd him next heaven? obey'd him?

Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him?

Almost forgot my prayers to content him?

And am I thus rewarded? 't is not well, lords, etc.

My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,

To give up willingly that noble title

Your master wed me to: nothing but death
Shall e'er divorce my dignities.

And this burst of unwonted passion is immediately followed by the natural reaction; it subsides into tears, dejection, and a mournful self-compassion:

Would I had never trod this English ground,

Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it!
What will become of me now, wretched lady?
I am the most unhappy woman living.—
Alas, poor wenches, where are now your fortunes?

Shipwracked upon a kingdom where no pity,
No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me!
Almost no grave allowed me !-Like the lily,

[To her women.

That once was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,

I'll hang my head and perish.

Dr. Johnson observes on this scene that all Katherine's distresses could not save her from a quibble on the word cardinal.

Holy men I thought ye,

Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;
But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye!

When we read this passage in connection with the situation and sentiment, the scornful play upon the words is not only appropriate and natural, it seems inevitable. Katherine, assuredly, is neither an imaginative nor a witty personage; but we all acknowledge the truism that anger inspires wit, and whenever there is passion there is poetry. In the instance just alluded to, the sarcasm springs naturally out from the bitter indignation of the moment. In her grand rebuke of Wolsey, in the trial scene, how just and beautiful is the gradual elevation of her language, till it rises into that magnificent image

You have by fortune and his highness' favours,

Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted,
Where powers are your retainers, etc.

In the depth of her affliction, the pathos as naturally clothes itself in poetry.

Like the lily,

That once was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,

I'll hang my head and perish.

But these, I believe, are the only instances of imagery through. out; for, in general, her language is plain and energetic. It has the strength and simplicity of her character, with very little metaphor and less wit.

In approaching the last scene of Katherine's life, I feel as if about to tread within a sanctuary where nothing befits us but silence and tears; veneration so strives with compassion, tenderness with awe.

*

* Dr. Johnson is of opinion that this scene" is above any other part of