Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match'd not the high perfection of my loss.

It is but a single letter that is withdrawn, but the effect upon the passage is considerable.

The meaning of a clause which soon follows would be more clear were a different punctuation adopted.

Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer;

Only reserved, their factor to buy souls

And send them thither.

Richard is first the intelligencer for the fiends below, a character odious and infamous. He is reserved, not yet taken to the place to which Hastings, Rivers, Grey, and Vaughan are gone; and reserved only for this purpose, that he may act for the fiends, (as a factor for a merchant,) buy souls, corrupt those who but for him would be fit for another place, and send them thither.

IV. 4. STANLEY.

Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess.

These words convey no idea. They are in fact a broken sentence, Richard interrupting him—

Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess

The name of the character ought to be read here, as before, Derby, and as it is in the scene soon succeeding where the same person visits Richmond in the night.

V. 3. STANLEY (Derby).

Lest being seen, thy brother, tender George

Be executed in his father's sight.

George Stanley was not brother to Richmond, though they might call the same person father. He was son of old Stanley, the Earl of Derby of this play, by a former wife. The Earl had, subsequently to the death of his first wife,

married the Countess of Richmond, mother to the Earl of Richmond of this play.

V. 3.

The ghost of Prince Edward rises.

This mode of making dreams visible was common at the theatres in the time of Shakespeare. Thus in Thomas Heywood's play of The Troubles of Queen Elizabeth, 1608, angels present to her a Bible, which the audience understand to be a dream.

The striking expression "Despair and die" is thus introduced in a sermon preached at Paul's Cross, March 29, 1612, by Thomas Adams, published with the title, The Gallant's Burden :-" At last, when presumption hath left the stage, desperation begins to knit up all with a direful catastrophe, the pulses beating slowly, the head akeing vehemently, body and soul refusing all proffered comfort, then the devil casts the whole load on them, that at once they may despair and die; then that which was lighter than cork or feathers becomes heavier than lead and earth." This was the eloquence of the English pulpit in the time of Shakespeare.

KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

THIS was a very bold undertaking of the Poet. The veritable personages of history require time to fit them for the purposes of the dramatist. What should we think were the Earl of Bute, the Marquis of Rockingham, and Archbishop Herring to make their appearance at the theatres ? and yet something like this is what Shakespeare has done; but, whatever might be the case in his own time, we are certainly not offended.

The date of this Play has been matter of great controversy. The current of opinion has run in favour of its belonging to the reign of Elizabeth. But, since if produced in that reign at all it must have been produced very nearly at the close of it, I cannot think that Shakespeare could have been so far forgetful of what was due to age, sex, and royalty, as to introduce upon the stage the spectacle of a dying Queen, and afterwards the splendour of a coronation, when the aged Queen upon the throne was in a state of sickness and general depression of spirits, the Queen being at the same time one who had honoured the Poet with some particular marks of her attention. It would have been a violation of good taste, if not also of humanity itself, such as I cannot think that Shakespeare would ever be guilty of.

The Play itself also contains one passage obvious to every eye, which must have been written after the death of Queen Elizabeth. It is found in the speech of Cranmer at the baptism, when in language beautifully tinged with the hues

of holy writ the prelate predicts the peaceful prosperity of the reign of him who was to succeed her.

Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,

Her ashes new create another heir,

As great in admiration as herself;

So shall she leave her blessedness to one

(When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,)
Who, from the sacred ashes of her honour,

Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,

And so stand fix'd: peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,

That were the servants to this chosen infant,

Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him;
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name

Shall be, and make new nations; he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches

To all the plains about him :-Our children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven.-Act. v. Sc. 4.

That this, at least, was written when the sceptre had been transferred to her successor is so apparent that the critics, from Theobald downwards, for so early did the opinion prevail, have represented these lines as having been no part of the speech of Cranmer as originally written, but a something added after the death of Elizabeth, and Steevens goes so far as to suggest that they are not Shakespeare's lines but Ben Jonson's.

This has been from the beginning a supposition wholly gratuitous. We are accustomed to see these lines inclosed in crotchets; but these crotchets are the mere invention of the modern editors. Some have imagined that they could discern a want of coherence between these lines and those which precede and follow them. It requires a very delicate taste to determine on a point such as this. To me it appears that there is the most perfect coherence, that the

ideas flow in the most beautiful order, that there is nothing like a break or interruption of the continuity; nay, that the distribution of the members of this long and most beautiful address is singularly artificial, and at the same time most natural and proper.*

True it is that the prediction concerning King James is interposed in the midst of the prediction concerning Queen Elizabeth. But it was wise and just and proper in the poet so to collocate the members of this speech. This distribution illustrates the delicacy and propriety of his own elegant mind. A point in which the chief infelicity of the infant then receiving the rite of baptism would lie, remained to be mentioned; this was, that though born a princess, still she must die, leaving no lineal heir to succeed her

But she must die

(She must, the Saints must have her,) yet a virgin;

A most unspotted lily shall she pass

To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her.t

It was proper that the mention of this her infelicity

* The evil done by the introduction of these crotchets is apparent by the mistake into which they have led one of the latest and one of the most original of the commentators on Shakespeare. I mean Mr. Brown, the author of the work entitled "Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, &c., clearly developed," 1838, who, to save Shakespeare from a charge of flattery in this passage, appeals to these crotchets, the invention of Theobald or some other modern editor, as conclusive evidence that the words within them were not written by Shakespeare at all. Shakespeare, though he has written obscurely, never committed a like incontinuity of purpose, never was so awkward, and therefore he ought not to be supposed the author of a passage, allowed to be, as it is marked, an interpolation," p. 184. And he goes on to speak of "the crotcheted passage' as if the words had come down to us from the first editors thus marked, as something added to the original text.

+ I am bound to add that I owe the proper regulation of this passage, and the just conception of the Poet's meaning to Mr. Dyce's Remarks on Collier's and Knight's Shakespeare, 8vo, 1844, p. 145. Mr. Collier's regulation is however no worse than that of the Variorum. The punctuation is such that it is doubtful whether the folio editors caught the precise effect which Mr. Dyce has so happily exhibited.