Hubert. Come forth ; do as I bid you.

[Stamps, and the men enter. Arthur. () save me, Hubert, save me! my eyes are out Ev’n with the fierce looks of these bloody men.

Hubert. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.

Arthur. Alas, what need you be so boist'rous rough?
I will not struggle, I will stand stone still.
For heav'n's sake, Hubert, let me not be bound.
Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away;
And I will sit as quiet as a lamb.
I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word,
Nor look upon the iron angrily :
Thrust but these men away, and I'll forgive you,
Whatever torment you do put me to.

Hubert. Go, stand within ; let me alone with him.
Executioner. I am best pleas'd to be from such a deed.

(Exit.
Arthur. Alas, I then have chid away my friend.
He hath a stern look, but a gentle heart;
Let him come back, that his compassion may
Give life to yours.

Hubert. Come, boy, prepare yourself.
Arthur. Is there no remedy ?
Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes.

Arthur. O heav'n! that there were but a moth in yours,
A grain, a dust, a goat, a wand'ring hair,
Any annoyance in that precious sense :
Then feeling what small things are boist'rous there,'
Your vile intent must needs seera horrible.

Hubert. Is this your promise ? go to, hold your tongue.

Arthur. Let me not hold my tongue ; let nie not, Hubert;
Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,
So I may keep mine eyes. 0

spare mine eyes !
Though to no use, but still to look on you.
Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold,
And would not harm we.

Hubert. I can heat it, boy.

Arthur. No, in good sooth, the fre is dead with grief.
Being create for comfort, to be us'd
In undeserv'd extremes; see else yourself,
There is no walice in this burniug coal;

The breath of heav'n hath blown its spirit out,
And strew'd repentant ashes on its head.

Hubert. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.

Arthur. All things that you should use to do me wrong,
Deny their office; only you do lack
That mercy which fierce fire and iron extend,
Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.

Hubert. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eyes
For all the treasure that thine uncle owns ;
Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy,
With this sampe very iron to burn them out.

Arthur. O, now you look like Hubert. All this while
You were disguised.

Hubert. Peace no more. Adieu,
Your uncle must not know but you are dead.
l'll fill these dogged spies with false reports :
And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure,
That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,
Will not offend thee.

Arthur. O heav'n! I thank you, Hubert.

Hubert. Silence, no more; go closely in with me;
Much danger do I undergo for thee.

(Exeunt."

His death afterwards, when he throws himself from his prison-walls, excites the utmost pity for his innocence and friendless situation, and welt justifies the exaggerated denunciations of Falconbridge to Hubert whom he suspects wrongfully of the deed.

* There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.
-If thou didst but consent
To this most cruel act, do but despair:
And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread
That ever spider twisted from her womb
Will strangle thee; a rush will be a beam
To hang thee on: or would'st thou drown thyself,
Put but a little water in a spoon,
And it shall be as all the ocean,
Enough to stifle such a villain up."

The excess of maternal tenderness, rendered desperate by the fickleness of friends and the injustice of fortune, and made stronger in will, in proportion to the want of all other power, was never more finely expressed than in Constance. The dignity of her answer to King Philip, when she refuses to accompany his messenger, “ To me and to the state of my great grief, let kings assemble," her indignant reproach to Austria for deserting her cause, her invocation to death, " that love of misery," however fine and spirited, all yield to the beauty of the passage, where, her passion subsiding into tenderness, she addresses the Cardinal in these words :

“ Oh father Cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our fiends in heav'n :
If that be, I shall see my hoy again,
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
'There was not such a gracious creature bord.
But now will canker-sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,
And so he'll die ; and rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heav'n,
I shall not know him ; therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.

K. Philip. You are as fond of grief as of your child.

Constance. Grief fills the room up of my absent child :
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remenibers me of all his gracious parts;
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

Then have I reason to be fond of grief."
The contrast between the mild resignation of Queen
Katherine to her own wrongs, and the wild, uncon-

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trolable affliction of Constance for the wrongs which she sustains as a mother, is no less naturally conceived than it is ably sustained throughout these two wonderful characters.

The accompaniment of the comick character of the Bastard was well chosen to relieve the piognant agony of suffering, and the cold, cowardly policy of behaviour in the principal characters of this play. Its spirit, invention, volubility of tongue, and for. wardness in action, are unbounded. Aliquando sufflaminandus erat, says Ben Jonson of Shakspeare. But we should be sorry if Ben Jonson had been his licenser. We prefer the heedless magnanimity of his wit infinitely to all Jonson's laborious caution. The character of the Bastard's comick humour is the same in essence as that of other comick charac. ters in Shakspeare; they always run on with good things and are never exhausted; they are always daring and successful. They have words at will and a flow of wit, like a flow of animal spirits. The difference between Falconbridge and the others is that he is a soldier, and brings his wit to bear upon action, is courageous with his sword as well as tongue, and stimulates his gallantry by his jokes, his enemies feeling the sharpness of his blows and the sting of his sarcasms at the same time. Among his happiest sallies are his descanting on the composition of his own person, his invective against “commodity, tickling commodity," and his expression of contempt for the Archduke of Austria, who had killed his father, which begins in jest but ends in serious earnest. His conduct at the siege of Angiers shews that his resources were not confined to

verbal retorts. The same exposure of the policy of courts and camps, of kings, nobles, priests, and cardinals, takes place here as in the other plays we have gone through, and we shall not go into a disgusting repetition.

This, like the other plays taken from English his. tory, is written in a remarkably smooth and flowing style, very different from some of the tragedies, Macbeth, for instance. The passages consist of a series of single lines, not running into one another. This peculiarity in the versification, which is most common in the three parts of Henry VI., has been assigned as a reason why those plays were not written by Shakspeare. But the same structure of verse occurs in his other undoubted plays, as in Richard II., and in King John. The following are instan

ces :

"That daughter there of Spain, the lady Blanch,
Is near to England ; look upon the years
Of Lewis the dauphin, and that lovely maid.
If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,
Where should be find it fairer than in Blanch !
If zealous love should go in search of virtue,
Where should be find it purer than in Blanch?
If love ambitious sought a match of birth,
Whose veins bound richer blood than lady Blanch?
Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,
Is the young dauphin every way complete :
If not complete of, say he is not she;
And she wants nothing, to name want,
If want it be not, that she is not he.
He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.
0, two such silver currents, when they join,