there need nothing further be said; though there is much more that would well bear dwelling upon. Taken altogether, its most note-worthy feature seems to lie in combining a very strict adherence to history with the Poet's peculiar mode of conceiving and working out character; thus showing that his creative powers could have all the freedom they desired under the severest laws of actual truth. The portrait of Henry, considering all the circumstances in which it was drawn, is a remarkable piece of work, being no less true to the original than politic as regards the author; for the cause which Henry had been made to serve, though against his will and from the very rampancy of his vices, had rendered it a long and hard process for the nation to see him as he was. His ferocious, low-minded ruffianism is set forth without palliation or disguise, yet with such simplicity of dealing as if the Poet himself were scarce aware of it: yet when one of the speakers is made to say of the king,-"His conscience has crept too near another lady,"-it is manifest that Shakespeare understood his character perfectly. His little traditional peculiarities of manner, which would be ridiculous, but that his boisterous savageness of temper renders them dreadful, so that they move disgust and terror at the same time; and the mixture of hypocrisy and fanaticism which endeavors to misderive his bad passions, his cruelty and lust, from divine sources, thus making Heaven responsible for the devil that is in him, and in the strength of which he is enabled to believe a lie, even while he knows it is a lie, and because he wishes it true;-all these things are shown up without malignity indeed, but without mercy too; the Poet nowhere betraying any the least judgment or leaning either for or against him, insomuch as almost to leave it doubtful whether himself disapproved of what he was showing. The secret of all which is, that Shakespeare does not expressly and as from himself draw and mold the king's character, but, in his usual way, allows him freely to characterize himself by his own words and deeds.

And in the brief but searching delineation of Anne Boleyn there is drawn together the essence of a long history. With little or nothing in her of a substantive or positive nature one way or the other; with scarce any legitimate object-matter of respect or confidence, she is notwithstanding rather an amiable person; possessed with a girlish fancy and hankering for the vain pomps and fripperies of state, but having no sense of its duties and dignities. She has a kindly and pitiful heart, but is so void of womanly principle and delicacy as to be from the first evidently flattered and elated by those royal benevolences, which to any just sensibility of honor would minister nothing but humiliation and shame. She has a real and true pity for the good queen; but her pity goes altogether on false grounds; and she shows by the very terms of it her eager and uneasy longing after what she scarcely more fears than hopes the queen is about to lose. She strikes infinitely below the true grounds and sources of Katharine's noble sorrow, and that in such a way as to indicate her utter inability to reach or conceive them; and thus serves to set off and enhance the deep and solid character of her of whose sole truth is not so much a quality, as it is the very substance and essential form; and who, from the serene and steady light thence shining within her, much rather than from any acuteness or strength of intellect, is enabled to detect the crooked policy and duplicity which are playing their engines about her. For, as Mrs. Jameson justly observes, this thorough honesty and integrity of heart, this perfect truth in the inward parts, is as hard to be deceived, as it is incapable of deceiving. We can well imagine, that with those of the Poet's audience who had any knowledge of English history, and many of them no doubt had much, the delineation of Anne, broken off, as it is, at the height of her fortune, must needs have sent their thoughts forward to reflect how the self-same levity of character, which lifted her into Katharine's place, soon afterwards drew on herself a far more sudden and rible reverse than had overtaken those on whose ruins she

had risen. And indeed some such thing may be needful, in order to excuse the Poet, on the score of art, for not carrying out the truth of history from seed-time to harvest, or at least indicating the consummation of that whereof he so faithfully unfolds the beginnings. For, that the play is historically true so far as it goes, strengthens the reason for that completeness which enters into the proper idea of historical truth.

Nevertheless, the moral effect of the play is very impressive and very just. And the lesson evolved, so far as it can be gathered into generalities, may be said to stand in showing how sorrow makes sacred the wearer, and how, to our human feelings, suffering, if borne with true dignity and strength of soul, covers a multitude of sins; or, to carry out this point with more special reference to Katharine, the lesson is stated by Mrs. Jameson, with her usual felicity, to consist in illustrating how, by the union of perfect truth with entire benevolence of character, a queen and heroine of tragedy, though "stripped of all the pomp of place and circumstance," and without any of "the usual sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding intellect, could depend on the moral principle alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses."

COMMENTS

By SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLARS

KATHARINE

Dr. Johnson observed that the genius of Shakspere comes in and goes out with Queen Katharine. What then chiefly interested the dramatist in this designed and partly accomplished Henry VIII? The presence of a noble sufferer, one who was grievously wronged, and who by a plain loyalty to what is faithful and true, by a disinterestedness of soul, and enduring magnanimity, passes out of all passion and personal resentment into the reality of things, in which much indeed of pain remains, but no ignoble wrath or shallow bitterness of heart. Her earnest endeavor for the welfare of her English subjects is made with fearless and calm persistence in the face of Wolsey's opposition. It is integrity and freedom from self-regard set over against guile, and power, and pride. In her trialscene the indignation of Katharine flashes forth against the Cardinal, but is an indignation which unswervingly progresses towards and penetrates into the truth.-DowDEN, Shakspere-His Mind and Art.

With all his desire to please his royal mistress, Shakspeare has yet never once depreciated the virtues of the good Queen Katharine, or drawn a veil over her injuries. He has made her the most prominent, as well as the most amiable, sufferer in his drama; and, in thus closely adhering to the truth of history, he pays a silent tribute to the liberality of Elizabeth, more worth than all his warmest eulogiums.-INCHBALD, King Henry VIII in The British

Theatre.

KATHARINE AND ANNE BULLEN

The two female characters between whom Henry is placed betray the same masterly manner of dramatic delineation, although one is a mere sketch. Katharine is a touching model of womanly virtue and gentleness, of conjugal devotion and love, and of Christian patience in defenseless suffering. She is surrounded by the most virtuous company; her enemy is compelled to praise in her a "disposition gentle" and a "wisdom o'ertopping woman's power." She has never done evil which must seek concealment; she was incapable of calumny and injury. Only when a natural instinct provokes her against an artful intriguer, to whom, while led away by his ambition, virtue is a folly, and when she has to take poor subjects under her protection against oppression, then only does her virtue impart to her a sting, which, however, never transgresses the limits of womanly refinement. She loves her husband "with that excellence that angels love good men with"; almost bigoted in her love, she dreams of no joy beyond his pleasure; he himself testifies to her that she was never opposed to his wishes, that she was of wife-like government, commanding in obeying; all his caprices she bore with the most saint-like patience. To see herself divorced from him after twenty years of happiness is a load of sorrow which only the noblest of women can bear with dignity and resignation; to descend from the high position of queen is moreover painful to the royal Spaniard. But she is ready to lead a life of seclusion in homely simplicity, and to bless her faithless, cruel husband even to the hour of her death. Her soul had remained beautiful upon the throne, in her outward degradation it was more beautiful still; she goes to the grave reconciled with her true enemy and destroyer. Johnson has ranked her death scene as above any scene in any other poet; so much was he impressed with its profound effect, unaided by romantic contrivance, and apart from all unnatural bursts of poetic lamentation and the ebullitions of stormy sorrow.

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