And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears King Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 1. These last lines have given rise to much discussion and difference of opinion among the critics. I am inclined to accept Dr. Johnson's explanation, as correctly representing what Skakspeare (who, in his affection for this good king, was willing to divest his Romanism of an unscriptural tendency, as far as possible) meant to convey. I do all this, says the King, though all that I can do is nothing worth, is so far from an adequate expiation of the crime, that Penitence comes after all imploring pardon, both for the crime and the expiation.' It is in the spirit of a true penitent that at the commencement of the same scene, the king had spoken of the purifying effect of hardships and distresses-borne after example' of holy men who have gone before us, or are still alive-and had desired opportunity for solitary meditation :— "Tis good for men to love their present pains, And, when the mind is quickened, out of doubt, Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move I and my bosom must debate awhile, It only remains to point out how fully our poet recognised that while repentance may come too late, or may be unreal, judicial blindness and infatuation are the sure portion of the impenitent. It is King Lear who exclaims : Woe, that too late repents. Act i. Sc. 4. And it is (as my i. e. woe is to him that does so. reader perhaps will scarcely need to be reminded) Sir John Falstaff who makes merriment in teaching a lesson, which is, however, a very solemn one-and no less needful than solemn-viz. that we are too apt to make our repentance an easy thing, if not a matter of renewed self-indulgence. The passage to be quoted is in the dialogue with the Chief Justice, King Henry IV. 2nd Part, Act i. Sc. 2 :— For the box o' the ear the prince gave you-he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it; and the young lion repents: marry, not in sackcloth and ashes; but in new silk and old sack. It is also a sensualist, but a sensualist of a very different class, who thus moralizes upon the consequences of a vicious and impenitent course. The words are in every way worthy of Mark Antony :— When we in our viciousness grow hard, (O! misery on't!) the wise gods seel* our eyes; Ant. and Cleop. Act iii. Sc. 9. To our confusion. Sentiments as awful as they are just; and which will not appear either too irreverent for a Christian man to write, when we remember how often in the Psalms, and in the Book of Proverbs, God is said to laugh,' and 'to mock' at the calamities of those who have despised his laws; or too profound for a Heathen man to utter, when we compare the deep sayings of Persius respecting the confirmed and reprobate votaries of vicious self-indulgence, in his 3rd Satire: Sed stupet hic vitio, et fibris increvit + opimum Nothing can exceed the irony which represents a man as faultless, only because he has rendered himself senseless, and incapable of judging between right and wrong. SECT. 6. Of Faith and Thankfulness towards God. 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man,' is a scriptural precept which Shakspeare has not been slow to echo, nor has he failed to do ⚫i. e. Close: a term of falconry, not to be confounded with seal. † Comp. Habakkuk ii, 6. full justice to the contrast with which the Scriptures so often accompany that precept, viz. the duty and the satisfaction of placing our trust in God. The devoted, but not over-honest nurse in Romeo and Juliet can tell her mistress There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, Act iii. Sc. 2. And the Duke of Bedford can ask, in King Henry VI. 1st Part :- What is the trust or strength of foolish men? Act iii. Sc. I. And yet we are senseless enough, as the Lord Hastings testifies, in King Richard III., to make more account of man's favour, which is so worthless, than of the favour of God, which is above all price: O! momentary grace of mortal men, Which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep. Act iii. Sc. 4. As Cardinal Wolsey 'tumbled down' from the eminence to which he had been raised, and thereby was led, all too late, to exclaim : O! Cromwell, Cromwell, Had I but served my God with half the zeal * See Ps. xii. 1; xiv. 2; cvi. 10. I served my king, He would not in mine age King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2. In the scene which discovers the murder of King Duncan, in the castle of Macbeth-after Lady Macbeth has been carried out, feigning to be overcome by the bloody spectacle which she had herself contrived-Banquo exclaims, as if the sight of such a catastrophe brought home to his mind its true lesson, the utter insecurity, not only of all earthly greatness, but of all trust in man Fears and scruples shake us : IN THE GREAT HAND OF GOD I STAND; and, thence, Of treasonous malice. Macbeth, Act ii. Sc. 3. And so the good King Henry V. recognised the blessedness of being able to place his confidence where alone it ought to be placed, when, with reference to the overwhelming numbers of the French, before the battle of Agincourt, he said to the Duke of Gloster : We are in God's hands, brother, not in theirs. King Henry V. Act iii. Sc. 5. And he felt it sinful to boast of anything he could do by his own power : Forgive me, God, That I do brag thus! this your air of France he is speaking to Montjoy, the French herald— Here I am; My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk; |