We can seeing and more far-reaching than it really was. hardly believe that so great a growth has come from a small seed, and that most of its strength is to be traced to such influences as the mere course of events has giventhe sun-light and the showers that have touched it, and the winds that have breathed upon it. It is with reference to a later and far more mighty usurper, that Carlyle has referred to this source of error as affecting our judgment of character; and I quote his opinion, before proceeding further with the consideration of the course of life and action, which placed the Duke of Lancaster on the throne of England. "There is an error," writes Mr. Carlyle, "widely prevalent, which perverts to the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell,—about their ambition, falsity, and such like. It is what I might call substituting the goal of their career for the course and starting-point of it. The vulgar historian of a Cromwell fancies that he had determined on being Protector of England at the time he was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all mapped out, a program of the whole drama; which he then, step by step, dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on the hollow scheming Úлоxрers or play-actor that he was? This is a radical. perversion, all but universal in such cases. And think, for an instant, how different the fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way a-head of us it is all dim,-an unwound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying all in that fashion of program, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall away of themselves, were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by history! Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view; but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar history, as in this, Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of history only remember it now and then. To remember it duly, with vigorous perfection, as in the fact it stood, requires indeed a rare faculty, rare, nay, impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty, or more than Shakspeare, who could enact a brother man's biography, see with the brother man's eyes, at all points of his course, what things he saw; in short, know his course and him, as few 'historians' are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions, which distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear if we honestly so much as try to represent them so in sequence, as they were; not in the lump as they are thrown down before us.'"* Bearing in mind the necessity of guarding against this error, let us, before returning to the reign of Henry the Fourth, look back to the previous history, to see what there was which at once favoured and fomented the ambition that led him to the throne. He was the son of a younger son of Edward the Third, and his birth therefore gave him the chances of succession, which belong to a younger branch of the royal family. When he reached the years of manhood, animated by the chivalrous spirit. of the times, he sought for military adventures in the distant region of Prussia, and travelled afterwards in the * Heroes and Hero Worship, p. 198. Holy Land. This career of foreign travel and adventure not only strengthened his character, but it kept him, for a while at least, aloof from the voluptuous misrule of Richard's court, so that when he came home, the people were ready to look upon him more hopefully and more confidently than if he had been associated, either with the pleasures of the king, or with the intrigues and conspiracies of the nobles. There seems to have been high ambition in this Lancastrian blood, for his father, John of Gaunt, having married a daughter of Pedro the Cruel, assumed, on the death of that king, the titles and arms of the kingdom of Castile. When, at a later period of hist life, he led an expedition to the Spanish peninsula, he intrusted the management of his affairs in England to his son. "Before his embarkation," writes Froissart, "and in the presence of his brothers, the Duke of Lancaster appointed his son Henry, Earl of Derby, his lieutenant for whatever concerned him during his absence, and chose for him a set of able advisers. This Henry was a young and handsome knight, son of the Lady Blanche, first Duchess of Lancaster. I never saw two such noble dames, so good, liberal, and courteous, as this lady and the late Queen of England, and never shall, were I to live a thousand years, which (adds the simple chronicler) is impossible.”* The intellect and temper of Bolingbroke seem to have been those of a sagacious, wary, and prudent politician; and dim as all vision into futurity must be, he still could see enough there to tell him that Richard's tenure of the throne would be daily and daily in greater jeopardy, and * Froissart, vol. viii. p. 4. that if the reign should end, as such reigns are apt to end, in turmoil and confusion, power, in the season of revolution, would tend towards the strong hand and the firm mind. Richard was childless, too, and on his death the title would pass to the house of Clarence, to find there, not the vigorous grasp of a man's hand, but the more uncertain hold of a child's succession, and of a female lineage. There was, therefore, between the weakness of Richard and the strength of Bolingbroke nothing interposed but weakness. After making every allowance against that historical error of which Carlyle has warned us, we cannot but believe that the crown of England must have been a perpetual prize before the eyes of Bolingbroke, not dazzling his keen vision, but kindling the spirit of his ambition. If ever man was strongly tempted to play the demagogue, and even almost to make the character of the demagogue a virtuous one, it was Bolingbroke. The hearts of the people were with good cause falling away from the king. His crafty kinsman witnessed this, and at the same time, was conscious of his own power to win them to himself. The strong men, who belonged to an elder generationthe uncles of the king, the sons of Edward the Thirdwho might have stood in Bolingbroke's way, had the catastrophe of Richard's reign come sooner, were passing from the busy scene: Gloucester had been basely murdered; Lancaster was growing old, and York was content in easy and amiable loyalty. Bolingbroke must have seen how every thing seemed to conspire to make the sovereignty his destiny, and in this he felt the strong impulse to work out his destiny. There is in this respect, to my mind, something in the career of Bolingbroke parallel to that of Macbeth, although certainly with a far inferior degree of guilt. The weird sisters foretell to Macbeth that he is to be King of Scotland. The wicked prophecy sinks deep into his heart, and he never doubts the fulfilment of it; but how does this confidence affect him? He does not passively await that fulfilment; indeed, it is only once that the thought of passive expectation crosses his mind: "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me, The prophecy proves an incitement to action for its fulfilment; and, goaded, too, by the concentrated ambition of his wife, he perpetrates both treachery and murder to make himself king, because the weird sisters have promised him that he shall be king. It seems to me that there was enough in the concurring events of the times of Richard the Second to speak to the ambitious and apprehensive spirit of Bolingbroke as audibly, almost, as the mysterious voices of the witches, when they addressed themselves to Macbeth upon the blasted heath. The wicked temptations which, in the case of Macbeth, are made visible in the hideous forms of witches, are not less real because unseen in the evil passions in the heart of Bolingbroke. He had a great game to play, and it was played with surpassing skill and boldness. No part of it was neglected or mismanaged; and it is curious to observe, that he appears to have begun to lay the foundation. of his kingly fortunes by courting, not his peers, not the noble and the high born, but the common people. Perhaps the power of popularity was more recognised since that recent popular movement when, in Wat Tyler's rebellion, sixty thousand men, aggrieved or misguided, rose up from the lowest level of society against the government |