through the heart of the country. Holinshed describes the resolution to send the herald Montjoy to Henry. Three heralds, according to the contemporary accounts, appeared before the English king on the 20th. His answer is thus given in Holinshed:-"Mine intent is to do as it pleaseth God; I will not seek your master at this time; but if he or his seek me, I will meet with them, God willing. If any of your nation attempt once to stop me in my journey now towards Calais, at their jeopardy be it; and wish I not any of you so unadvised as to be the occasion that I dye your tawny ground with your red blood." Henry continued to press on his troops with great regularity, though they suffered the most serious privations. They were shrewdly out of beef," as Orleans says; - they were "with sickness much enfeebled," as Henry declares. Holinshed describes their situation with great quaintness: "The enemies had destroyed all the corn before 66 they came. Rest could they none take, for their enemies with alarms did ever so infest them; daily it rained, and nightly it freezed: of fuel there was great scarcity, of fluxes plenty: money enough, but wares for their relief to bestow it on had they none." And yet, under these circumstances, the proclamation against plunder was enforced with undeviating justice. The fact of a man being hanged for stealing a sacred vessel is found in Holinshed. The oriflamme had been hoisted, the last time that the sacred banner was displayed in France. Sixty thousand princes, and knights, and esquires, and men at arms, were gathered round the national standard. When Henry crossed the river Ternoise, on the 24th of October, this mighty army stood before him, filling," says the priest who accompanied the march, very large field as with an innumerable host of locusts." 66 66 a ACT IV. 19 CHORUS.-" Fills the wide vessel of the universe." WE are gravely informed by Warburton that Iwe are not to think Shakspere so ignorant as to imagine it was night over the whole globe at once." Ben Jonson has these lines: "O for a clap of thunder now, as loud As to be heard throughout the universe!" We are not to think Jonson so ignorant as not to know that a clap of thunder could not possibly be heard throughout the mundane system. 20 CHORUS. "Each battle sees the other's umber'd face." "The author's profession," says Malone, "probably furnished him with this epithet." But players redden their cheeks as well as brown them, and we therefore must in the same way suppose that when the Friar says to Juliet "The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade," Shakspere was thinking of rouge. 21 CHORUS." With busy hammers closing rivets up." The plate armour was not only riveted in parts, before it was put on; but the armourers were employed in closing up parts which fitted on to each other by rivets, when the knight the silent despair-which the French imputed | "fixed candlestick" in his possession ;-and the to the poor "beggar'd host" of the English-is copy of this is worth pages of verbal explanasuggested by this image, when we rightly un- tion. derstand it. Mr. Douce had such an ancient HISTORICAL. The foundation of the great scene when Westmoreland wishes "But one ten thousand of those men in England, That do no work to-day!" The magnificent chorus of this Act presents | God, by confessing their sins with tears, and such a vivid picture of the circumstances that numbers of them taking the sacrament; for, as marked the eve of the battle of Agincourt, that it was related by some prisoners, they looked even if they were not, for the most part, sup- for certain death on the morrow." ported by authentic history, it would be impossible to dispossess ourselves of the belief that they were true. "The French," according to Holinshed, "were very merry, pleasant, and full of game"-" the English made peace with God in confessing their sins." Holinshed also mentions the French playing at dice for the English prisoners. But the narratives of Monstrelet and of St. Remy are much more minute than Holinshed; and in one or two small particulars they differ from that of the poet. The account of Monstrelet is exceedingly interesting: "The French, with all the royal officers, that is to say, the Constable, the Marshal Boucicault, the Lord of Dampierre and Sir Clignet de Brabant, each styling himself admiral of France; the Lord of Rambures, master of the cross-bows; with many other princes, barons, and knightsplanted their banners with loud acclamations of joy around the royal banner of the Constable, on the spot they had fixed upon, situated in the county of St. Pol, or territory of Azincourt, by which the next morning the English must pass on their march to Calais. Great fires were this night lighted near to the banner under which each person was to fight; but, although the French were full one hundred and fifty thousand "chevaucheurs," with a great number of wagons and carts, cannon, ribaudequins, and all other military stores, they had but little music to cheer their spirits; and it was remarked with surprise, that scarcely any of their horses neighed during the night, which was considered by many as a bad omen. The English during the whole night played on their trumpets and various other instruments, insomuch that the whole neighbourhood resounded with their music; and notwithstanding they were much fatigued and oppressed by cold, hunger, and other annoyances, they made their peace with is in Holinshed. "It is said, that as he heard one of the host utter his wish to another thus: I would to God there were with us now so many good soldiers as are at this hour within England!' The king answered: 'I would not wish a man more here than I have; we are indeed in comparison to the enemies but a few, but if God of his clemency do favour us and our just cause (as I trust he will), we shall speed well enough."" This circumstance, however, really occurred, not as Holinshed has described it on the day of the battle, but when the French host was first seen by the English; and he who uttered the wish for some more men was Sir Walter Hungerford. The French forces, on the morning of the 25th of October, were drawn up in three lines on the plain of Agincourt, through which the route to Calais lay. The battle-field is thus described by Dr. John Gordon Smith, in a paper in The Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature,' 1829: "Those who travel to Paris vid St. Omer and Abbeville, pass over the field of battle, which skirts the high road (to the left, in the direction just mentioned), about sixteen miles beyond St. Omer; two on the Paris side of a considerable village or bourg named Fruges; about eight north of the fortified town of Hesdin; and thirty, or thereabout, in the same direction from Abbeville. All accounts of the battle mention the hamlet of Ruisseauville, through which very place the high-road to Paris now passes. Azincour is a commune, or parish, consisting of a most uninteresting collection of 'Slobbery dirty farms,' (or rather farmers' residences,) and cottages, such as, in that part of the country, are met with in all directions; once, however, distinguished by a castle, of which nothing now remains but the foundation. The scene of the contest lies between this commune and the adjoining one of Tramecour, in a wood belonging to which latter the king concealed those archers whose prowess and vigour contributed so eminently to the glorious result. Part of this wood still remains; though (if I remember rightly), at the time of our visit, the corner into which the bowmen were thrown had been materially thinned, if, indeed, the original timber had not been entirely cut down, and its place but scantily supplied by brush or underwood. Some of the trees, however, in the wood of Tramecour, were very old in 1816." It is unnecessary for us to follow the Chroniclers, or the more minute contemporary historians, through their details of the fearful carnage and victory of Agincourt. We may, however, put the facts shortly before our readers, as they may be collected from Sir H. Nicolas's elaborate and careful history of the battle : : The fighting men of France wore "long coats of steel, reaching to their knees, which were very heavy; below these was armour for the legs; and above, white harness, and bacinets, with camails." They were drawn up between two woods, in a space wholly inadequate for the movements of such an immense body; and the ground was soft from heavy rains. It was with the utmost difficulty they could stand or lift their weapons. The horses at every step sunk into the mud. Henry formed his little band in one line, the archers being posted between the wings, in the form of a wedge, with sharp stakes fixed before them. The king, habited in his "cote d'armes," mounted a small gray horse; but he subsequently fought on foot. He addressed his troops with his usual spirit. Each army remained inactive for some hours. A truce was at length proposed by the French. The reply of Henry, before an army ten times as great as his own, differed little from the terms he had offered in his own capital. Towards the middle of the day the order was given to the English to advance, by Henry crying aloud, "Advance banners." Sir Thomas de Erpyngham, the commander of the archers, threw his truncheon into the air, exclaiming, "Now strike!" The English immediately prostrated themselves to the ground, beseeching the protection of Heaven, and proceeded in three lines on the French army. The archers of Henry soon put the French cavalry in disorder; and the whole army rushing on, with the national huzza, the archers threw aside their bows, and slew all to have been about twelve hundred. Most of the dead were afterwards buried in enormous trenches. before them with their bill-hooks and hatchets. | slain on the field; that of the English appears The immense numbers of the French proved their ruin. The battle soon became a slaughter; and the harnessed knights, almost incapable of moving, were hacked to pieces by the English archers, "who were habited in jackets, and had their hosen loose, with hatchets or swords hanging from their girdles, whilst many were barefooted and without hats." The battle lasted about three hours. The English "stood on the heaps of corpses, which exceeded a man's height;" the French, indeed, fell almost passive in their lines. Henry, at one period of the battle, issued an order for the slaughter of his prisoners. Even the French writers justify this horrible circumstance as an act of self-preservation. The total loss of the French was about ten thousand The English king conducted himself with his accustomed dignity to his many illustrious prisoners. The victorious army marched to Calais in fine order, and embarked for England, without any attempt to follow up their almost miraculous triumph. Henry reached Calais on the 29th of October, and on the 17th of November landed at Dover. He entered London amidst the most expensive pageantry of the citizens, contrasting with the studied simplicity of his own retinue and demeanor, on Saturday, the 24th of November. ACT V. 23 CHORUS.-"Like a mighty whiffler 'fore the king." A WHIFFLER may be taken generally to mean an officer who leads the way in processions. A whiffler was originally a fifer or piper, who anciently went first on occasions of pageant and ceremony. Minsheu defines him to be a club or staff bearer. Grose, in his 'Provincial Glossary,' mentions whifflers as "men who make way for the corporation of Norwich, by flourishing their swords." The sword-flourishers of Norwich are standard-bearers in London, under the same name. 24 CHORUS.-"As yet the lamentation of the French," &c. It is extremely difficult to explain this passage as it stands. Why should the lamentation of the French invite the king of England to stay at home? If we were half as venturous as our editorial predecessors, we would transpose a line as printed (such a typographical change of a manuscript being too common in printing) and read thus: "Now in London place him; As yet the lamentation of the French. 25 SCENE I." Why wear you your leek to-day? St. Davy's day is past." We were favoured with some memoranda on the use of the leek, as the national emblem of Wales, by the late accomplished antiquary Sir Samuel Meyrick, the substance of which we have great pleasure in presenting to our readers. Not one of the Welsh bards, though there exists a tolerable series of their compositions from the fifth century, till the time of Elizabeth, have in any manner alluded to the leek as a national emblem. Even at the present day, the custom of wearing leeks on the first of March is confined to the members of modern clubs. There is, however, a tradition in Wales as to the origin of the custom, namely, that the Saxons being about to attack the Britons on St. David's day, put leeks in their caps, in order, if dispersed, to be known to each other; and that the Britons having gained the victory, transferred the leeks to their own caps as signals of triumph. This, like many other traditions, seems to have been invented for the nonce. But the Harleian MS., No. 1977, written by a Welshman, of the time of James I., contains the following passage: "I like the leek above all herbs and flowers; Next to the lion and the unicorn, The leek's the fairest emblem that is worn." Now the inference to be drawn from these lines, is, that the leek was assumed upon, or immediately after, the battle of Bosworth-field, which was won by Henry VII., who had many Welshmen (his countrymen) in his army, and whose yeomen guard was composed of Welshmen; and this inference is derived from the fact, that the Tudor colours were white and green; and, as may be seen in several heraldic MSS., formed the field on which the English, French, and Irish arms were placed. "The field was ours," alludes to the victory, of course, as well as to the heraldic field. This view of the case would account for the leek being only worn by Welshmen in England, and its having been a custom of comparatively modern origin in the time of Shakspere. 26 SCENE II.-"Notre tres cher filz," &c. Dr. Farmer, in his essay on the learning of Shakspere, winds up his many proofs of the ignorance of our poet, by the following argument, the crown of all:-"But to come to a conclusion, I will give you an irrefragable argument, that Shakspere did not understand two very common words in the French and Latin languages. According to the articles of agreement between the conqueror, Henry, and the king of France, the latter was to style the former (in the corrected French of the former editions), Nostre tres cher filz Henry roy d' Angle terre; and in Latin, Præclarissimus filius, &c. 'What,' says Dr. Warburton, 'is tres cher in French, præclarissimus in Latin! we should read præcarissimus.' This appears to be exceedingly true; but how came the blunder? it is a typographical one in Holinshed, which Shakspere copied; but must indisputably have corrected, had he been acquainted with the languages." Now really this is a very weak argument, upon Farmer's own showing: for Shakspere finding the passage in Holinshed was bound to copy it, without setting himself up as a verbal critic; nor was it necessary that the Latin words of the treaty should have exactly corresponded to the French. He might have understood the agreement to mean, that the very dear son in the one language, should be the most noble son in the other. But Malone says that the mistake is in all the old historians, as well as in Holinshed. He is not quite right in this statement, for the word is precharissimus in Hall. At any rate, the truth could not be ascertained till the publication of such a work as Rymer's 'Fœdera,' where, in the treaty of Troyes, the word stands præcarissimus. By a super-refinement of veneration for Shakspere, as justifiable as Farmer's coarse depreciation of him, the præclarissimus might be taken to prove his learning; for Capell maintains that præcarissimus is no Latin word. We give this note to show what stuff criticism may be made of, when it departs from the safe resting place of common sense. HISTORICAL. The triumphal procession and the pageant, with which Henry was welcomed to London, described in the chorus, are given in Holinshed; so also the king's freedom "from vainness and self-glorious pride." The Chronicler thus depicts this modesty: "The king, like a great and sober personage, and as one remembering from whom all victories are sent, seemed little to regard such vain pomp and shows as were in triumphant sort devised for his welcoming home from so prosperous a journey, insomuch that he would not suffer his helmet to be carried with him, whereby might have appeared to the people the blows and dents that were to be seen in the same; neither would he suffer any ditties to be made and sung by minstrels of his glorious victory, for that he would wholly have the praise and thanks altogether given to God." Percy, however, thinks that an old song, "For the victory of Agincourt," was drawn up by some poet laureat of those days. This song, or hymn, was printed from a manuscript copy in the Pepys collection. Our readers will perhaps be satisfied with the last stanza : "Now gracious God he save owre kynge, |