To lay afide felf-harming heaviness,

And entertain a chearful difpofition.

Queen. To please the king, I did; to please myself,
I cannot do it; yet I know no cause

Why I fhould welcome fuch a guest as grief;
Save bidding farewell to fo fweet a guest,
As my fweet Richard. Yet again, methinks,
Some unborn forrow, ripe in fortune's womb,
Is coming toward me; and my inward foul
With fomething trembles, yet at nothing grieves †,
More than with parting from my lord the king.
Buby. Each fubftance of a grief hath twenty fhadows,
Which fhew like grief itself, but are not fo;
For forrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing intire to many objects;
Like perspectives, which rightly gazed upon,
Shew nothing but confufion: eyed awry,
Diftinguish form *. So your sweet majesty,
Looking awry upon your lord's departure,
Finds fhapes of grief, more than himself, to wail;
Which looked on as it is, is nought but fhadows
Of what it is not. Gracious Queen, then weep not
More than your lord's departure; more's not feen;
Or if it be, 'tis with falfe forrow's eye,

Which for things true weeps things imaginary.
Queen. It may be fo; but yet my inward foul
Perfuades me otherwife. Howe'er it be,
I cannot but be fad; fo heavy-fad,

As though on thinking on no thought I think,
Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.
Buy. 'Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.
Queen. 'Tis nothing lefs; conceit is fill derived
From fome fore-father grief; mine is not fo;
For nothing hath begot my fomething grief;
Not fomething hath the nothing that I grieve.
'Tis in reverfion that I do poffefs ;

But what it is, that is not yet known; what
I cannot name, is nameless woe, I wot.

Shakespeare has given a defcription of the fame complexion of mind, before, in the perfon of Anthonio, in the Merchant of Venice. See my firft remark on the First Scene of the First Act of that Play.

This line is altered for the better by Doctor Warburton.

Alluding to a method of drawing, called inverted perspective, among the mathematical recreations.

‡ That is, that bas possessed my mind. Johnson.

SCENE

EN

SCENE IX.

Hope has been often termed the affuager of our grief; but Shakespeare has juftly raised it to an higher character, by making it an augmentation to our joys, also.

Bolinbroke. And hope to joy, is little lefs in joy,
Than hope enjoyed.

The bishop of Carlisle, endeavouring to awaken the king to a manly exertion of his fpirit against the rebellion, and neither to truft to the weak defence of right against might, nor expect that Providence fhall, out of refpect to his divine right, fight his battles for him, while he looks idly on, fays,

The means that Heaven yields must be embraced,
And not neglected; elfe, if Heaven would,
And we would not Heaven's offer, we refuse
The proffered means of fuccour and redress.

To which the king, after expreffing a contempt for Bolinbroke and his adherents, makes a reply agreeable to the vain notion and political fuperftition of thofe times, with regard to the abfurd doctrine of indefeafible right.

King. Not all the water in the rough rude fea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depofe
The deputy elected by the Lord.

For every man that Bolinbroke hath preft,
To lift fharp steel againft our golden crown,
Heaven for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel; then, if angels fight,

Weak men must fall, for Heaven still guards the right.
SCENE III.

However, he afterwards begins to fpeak more rationally upon this fubject; for though he appears a little caft down at first, yet, on hearing fome further ill news, he rouzes himself again, in the following fpeech:

King. I had forgot myfelf. Am I not king?
Awake, thou coward majefty, thou fleep';

Is not the king's name forty-thousand names * ?
Arm, arm, my name; a puny subject strikes
At thy great glory. Look not to the ground,
Ye favourites of a king, are we not high?
High be our thoughts.

SCENE IV.

But this poor abdicating king had no true heroism in his foul; for, upon the intelligence of fome more crofs events arriving to him juft after, he fuddenly drops the character of a fighting prince, and immediately finks into that of a preaching priest.

Enter Scroop.

Scroop. More health and happiness betide my liege,
Than can my care-tun'd tongue deliver him!
King. Mine ear is open, and mine heart prepared.
The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.
Say, is my kingdom loft? Why, 'twas my care;
And what lofs is it, to be rid of care?
Strives Bolinbroke to be as great as we ?
Greater he fall not be; if he ferve God,
We'll ferve him too, and be his fellow fo.
Revolt our fubjects, that we cannot mend ;
They break their faith to God, as well as us.
Cry woe, deftruction, ruin, lofs, decay;

The worst is death, and death will have his day.

This kind of homily he continues afterwards, in the fame Scene; including, however, fome good reflections on the unftable and unfatisfactory state of mortality, even in the highest spheres of life; which would have become his confeffor better than they did himself, as the spirited Bishop, a true fon of the church militant, tells him, in the clofe of the following paffage.

Aumerle. Where is the duke, my father, with his power?
King. No matter where-Of comfort no man speak-
Let's talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs;

Make duft our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write forrow on the bofom of the earth!
Let's chufe executors, and talk of wills.
And yet not fo-for what can we bequeath,

There is the fame thought in Richard the Third. "Befides, the king's name

" is a tower of ftrength."

Save our depofed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, our all are Bolinbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own, but death;
And that fmall model of the barren earth,
Which ferves as paste and cover to our bones.
For Heaven's fake, let us fit upon the ground,
And tell fad ftories of the death of kings;
How fome had been depofed, fome flain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they difpoffeffed;
Some poisoned by their wives; fome fleeping killed;
All murthered-For within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Keeps Death his court; and there the antick fits,
Scoffing his ftate, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little fcene

To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks;
Infufing him with felf and vain conceit,

As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brafs impregnable; and, humoured thus,
Comes at the laft, and with a little pin
Bores thro' his caftle-walls, and farewel king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With folemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition †, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me, all this while;
I live on bread, like you; feel want, like you;
Tafte grief, need friends, like you-Subjected thus,
How can you say to me, Thou art a king?

Bishop. My lord, wife men ne'er wail their prefent woes,
But prefently prevent the ways to wail.

To fear the foe, fince fear oppreffeth ftrength,

Gives, in your weakness, ftrength unto your foe 3

And fo your follies fight against yourself.

Fear, and be flain; no worse can come from fight;
And fight and die, is death deftroying death;
Where fearing dying pays death fervile breath.

There are several other paffages of the fame kind, in this and the fubfequent Act, where Richard alternately rifes to a vain confidence in his indefeasible right, and then finks again under a defpondency about his fortunes; which I fhall not disgust the Reader with here, as the reprefentation of a great

In these three lines our author feems to have minuted down notes for his Henry VI. Richard III. Macbeth, and Hamlet.

By this expreffion may be meant the popular fuperftition of the divine right of kings.

man

man fuffering misfortunes meanly, is rather an object of contempt than of compaffion.

In the latter part of this Scene, upon his finding matters growing worse and worse, he exclaims, By Heaven, I'll hate him everlaftingly, That bids me be of comfort, any more.

Doctor Johnson has prevented my obfervation on this paffage, by a note of his upon it.

"This fentiment is drawn from Nature. Nothing " is more offenfive to a mind convinced that its di"ftrefs is without a remedy, and preparing to submit "quietly to irrefiftible calamity, than those petty "and conjectured comforts which unfkilful officiouf "nefs thinks it virtue to administer."

ACT V. SCENE I.

There is fomething, however, extremely affecting, in what this unhappy man fays to his queen, upon her lamenting the mifery of his fituation.

King. Join not with grief, fair woman, de not fo,
To make my end too fudden!

This short sentence lays hold of the heart, makes us forget him as a king, and feel for him as a man. The fondness of his expreffion too, of fair woman, increases the tenderness of our regret at the additional unhappiness of their feparation.

SCENE II.

This poor moralizing prince makes a very juft obfervation here, on the nature of all alliances in vice.

The King to Northumberland.

Northumberland, thou ladder, wherewithal
The mounting Bolinbrok afcends my throne,
The time fhall not be many hours of age,
More than it is, ere foul fin gathering head
Shall break into corruption; thou shalt think,
Though he divide the realm, and give thee half,
It is too little, helping him to all;

And he shall think that thou who know'it the way

To