are addressed to King Richard, whose ruined majesty it is supposed is compared to the desolated waste where Troy once stood. It appears to me that these words are not addressed to King Richard but to the Tower: that the speech resembles the address of the Lords in King Richard the Third to the Castle of Pontefract: that by old Troy the Queen meant London, or rather antient London, the Troynovant of early Chroniclers, the model or seat of which was supposed to be at or near where the Tower stands, a building of the antiquity of which the people of Shakespeare's time entertained the most extravagant conceptions. "Thou map of honour" is at least not more harsh if applied to the Tower than if applied to King Richard. "Thou King Richard's tomb," suits far better with the Tower than with the King himself. "Thou most beauteous inn" is far more suitable as addressed to the Tower than as addressed to the King.

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The only objection to this explanation which I can perceive lies in the expression " and not King Richard;" but, though it might be said that there was a beauty in the term "Thou King Richard's tomb," as applied to one whose greatness (soul) was departed, and that the body only remained which had inclosed the spirit that was gone, yet I own it appears to me too harsh to be beautiful; and I cannot but think that had Shakespeare contemplated this idea he would have brought it out more clearly and beautifully than in the words as they now stand. I have indeed little doubt that Shakespeare wrote,

Thou King Richard's tomb,
And not his prison;

meaning that the Queen should express herself in sad presagement of what might be his fate. However, the reader must judge.

When Shakespeare calls the Tower of London "Julius

Cæsar's ill-erected tower," he wrote conformably to the popular notions, and did not trouble himself to inquire whether they were well-grounded or no. Stowe very properly shews the absurdity in his Survay of London, published about the time when this play first appeared, p. 45. We can much more easily excuse Shakespeare than we can a later bard, who can have been driven by nothing but the necessity of his verse to commit the line,

Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame!

for when he wrote the popular notion respecting them had exploded and passed away.

V. 5. K. RICHARD.

Love to Richard

Is a strange BROOCH in this all-hating world.

The commentators regard brooch as being the ornament of the dress so called. I cannot see the appropriateness, and regard brooch as broach, a thing broached or uttered. In this all-hating world the "broach" or promulgation of such a sentiment as love to Richard is strange. Shakespeare not unfrequently turns verbs into substantives thus: as in For the fail

Of any point in't shall not only be

Death to thyself.-Winter's Tale, Act II. s. 3.

V. 3. BOLINBROKE.

Can no one tell me of my unthrifty son?

This is the first introduction of Prince Henry to dramatic life, in which he is afterwards so prominent, and the words were probably intended to connect the historical plays together, to prepare the audiences for his early appearance in the plays of King Henry the Fourth in his character of unthriftiness and riot.

As a dramatic character Prince Henry is one of the most splendid of the creations of Shakespeare, who exhibits him

first in his youthful wantonness and excesses, and afterwards in his sedate and steady conduct, when by the course of nature the reins of government were transferred to his hands. Much has been written and much has been spoken on the question whether Shakespeare is borne out in his delineation of the character of this illustrious and favourite prince of the English nation by the testimony respecting him of the contemporary chroniclers, the evidence of records, or the conclusions of those who have treated on this portion of English history in a critical or philosophical spirit. An interesting question in itself, and one which may seem (such is the prominency given to the character) to be within the just limits of the province of Shakespeare commentatorship. My own opinion is that the poet has not in this point given wrong impressions of the real character of the prince. A little allowance may be made for dramatic effect; but in the main it seems to me that the well-laboured argument of Mr. Luders, in his Essay on this subject, published in 1813, fails to produce conviction, and is ineffectual as opposed to the combined and consistent testimony of Elmham, Titus Livius, Otterbourne, Walsingham and Hardyng, of all writers indeed living near his time and speaking of him. The same line of argument has since been pursued by the Rev. J. Endell Tyler in a book of much patient research, and great merit, entitled, Henry of Monmouth; or, Memoirs of the Life and Character of Henry the Fifth, where all the facts of Henry's life, as well when Prince as King, are collected and examined with great care.

It may be observed in the first place that Shakespeare when he drew this character followed his chief authority Hollinshead. The words of that chronicler are these:

For whereas aforetime he had made himself a companion unto misrulie mates of dissolute order and life, he now banished them all from his presence

(but not unrewarded or else unpreferred), inhibiting them upon a great pain e not once to approche, lodge, or sojourne within ten miles of his court or presence; and in their places he chose men of gravitie, wit, and high policie, by whose wise counsell he might at all times rule to his honour and dignity, calling to mind how once, to hie offence of the King his father, he had with his fist striken the cheef justice for sending one of his minions (upon desert) to prison, when the justice stoutly commanded himself also to streit ward, and he (then prince) obeyed. The King after expelled him out of the Privy Council, banished him the Court, and made the Duke of Clarence his younger brother President of Council in his stead.*

The influence of this passage upon the scenes of Shakespeare is very apparent, and, were we now attempting to justify the poet for the exhibition which he makes of the prince, the citation of this passage would be sufficient, inasmuch as it shews what was the opinion of Shakespeare's time, that is, the general opinion of the country at the distance of little more than a hundred and sixty years from the time when King Henry the Fifth was alive. All that Shakespeare has done is to give vividness and individuality to the picture drawn by the sober chronicler, by assigning names and peculiar features of character to the persons who formed the company of his riotous associates, and by inventing particular incidents of riotous excess.

The question then is, Had Hollinshead sufficient authority for the representation which he has made of the prince having addicted himself to low company, and in various ways sullied his reputation in his youth ?

Hollinshead has the support of the chroniclers immediately preceding himself, Fabyan, Polydore Vergil, and Caxton, who wrote while the memory of the Prince's extravagance may well be supposed to have been alive, as they were all writers of his own century, and Polydore one of admirable sense and judgment. But as this testimony may be regarded as coming late, and it may be thought that they are so far removed

* Ed. 1808, vol. III. p. 61.

from the actual time that they are, in some degree at least, copyists from each other and not wholly independent authorities, let us go at once to Prince Henry's own contemporaries, and see what their written and recorded testimony has been.

We will first take Hardyng, who was with him at the siege of Harfleur, and at the battle of Agincourt.

Hardyng entitles his Chapter ccxi. thus: "Henry the Fyfth, Kynge of Englande and of Fraunce, began to reygne, &c. and in the houre that he was crowned and anointed, he was chaunged from all vyces unto virtuous lyfe," &c. This is pretty plain; and it is no flattery of the House of York, to whom it is allowed Hardyng was attached, as depreciating one of the ornaments of the rival House of Lancaster, for he allows every virtue unto him as king, as freely as he attributes every vice to him as prince:

The houre he was crowned and anoynt
He chaunged was of all his olde condicyon,
Full virtuous he was, fro poynt to poynt,
Grounded all newe in good opinyon;
For passingly without comparyson,
Then set upon all ryght and conscyence,

A nawe man made by all good regimence.

Walsingham is a chronicler who is always regarded with great respect, and he also was a contemporary of Henry. Speaking of the coronation, and the remarkable state of the weather, snow in April, he goes on to say of the person crowned, "Qui revera mox, ut initiatus est regni infulis, repente mutatus est in virum alterum, honestati modestiæ ac gravitati studens, nullum virtutum genus omittens, quod non cuperet exercere." p. 382. This is in effect precisely what we learn from Hardyng.

Thomas Otterbourne, whose history ends with the seventh of King Henry the Fifth, gives the same account: and

year