appropriate but shameful end. The very story of Falstaff's death, who cannot survive the loss of the King's favour, and his banishment from the court, which has blighted for him all the joys of life, is episodically introduced, in order that the least seed even of the great poetic creation might not be lost, but that every one should find his due, and every member of the great dramatic action have for himself a proper beginning, middle, and end.

Thus does the true import of war appear to be coincident with the end and essence of history itself. While the poet exhibits war, though springing in the first instance from the sinfulness of man, as a judgment of God, the executioner of divine justice, and the medium of His grace-and consequently a lever of the development of history, and a means of the advancement of the human race-in this fundamental idea of his poem, he has at the same time seized and depicted the most important moments of history itself.

But although we have hitherto left unnoticed the immediate external cause and the particular circumstances of this great national war, they have not been neglected by Shakspeare himself. A questionable right led to the war. The drama accordingly opens with an examination of the title on which it is founded. However debateable Henry's legal claim may have been, his inward title was only the more indisputable. Accordingly, he gains and maintains the victory. But as the war had its external cause and beginning, it must also have a similar close; the contested claims must be decided finally. Historically this is accomplished by Henry's marriage with Catherine of France, with the reversion of the French throne on the death of Charles VI. With the same events the drama also closes. This conclusion has been frequently censured, on the ground that the love-making and espousals of the fifth act are, it is justly urged, little in unison with the serious, heroic, and epical subject-matter of the first four. But in truth the war itself is only apparently ended; it does not really come to end for several decades later, when Henry has long rested in the grave. should be remembered, that the drama does not stand isolated by itself; and it is only a part of a greater whole, and with outstretched arms reaches far into the great trilogy which follows.

But, on the other hand, it

On the other hand, the natural and intrinsic relation between war and marriage has been overlooked in the censure. It resembles that which subsists between life and death. As war springs out of peace, inasmuch as the collected forces of peace press outwardly under the action of constant collision; so war, whenever it is just, is in its turn the parent of peace. But now the most lively type of peace is marriage, the foundation of the family and the state, and the germ of a new and vigorous life. It is quite true that the peace here made is no real pacification-it is an outward peace only; the princes, and not the nations, are reconciled. But is the poet to be blamed for this? If critics are determined to tear his work from its organic connexion with the following dramas, then the concluding peace may and must be taken for a true and genuine resting point, and it is the natural close both of the war and of the drama. If, on the other hand, it be considered in the connexion in which it really stands with the other pieces of the great historical drama, then its true close is "Henry the Sixth," and the last act of "Henry the Fifth" is but a transition point, which conveys however the same important lesson which runs through the whole piece, teaching us that war and peace are not to be made arbitrarily at the caprices and humours of man. It is on this account that, as Schlegel has justly remarked, a decided tone of irony prevails in the fifth act. Moreover, all these objections have proceeded from the mistaken theory, that every historical drama ought to be simply a tragedy or a comedy. Now "Henry the Fifth" is manifestly neither the one nor the other; and this the sticklers of theory could not forgive. Most of these oblique and distorted judgments have been passed upon "Henry the Fifth" by those notion-mongers who reject every thing as false and blameworthy that they find difficlt to reconcile with their own factitious theories.

We have already indicated in general terms the historical import and influence of the long reign of Henry the Sirth. The weakness of this monarch effected in England what in France was accomplished by the vigorous arm of Louis the Eleventh. We have also hinted our belief that the fundamental idea, which is reflected in the life of Henry-the same which some have erroneously pretended to discover in "Hamlet"-appears here to be

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historically motived by the necessary progress of the English nation. It might, indeed, be taken as forming the special ground idea of the trilogy itself, if the object of the latter were confined to the exhibition of the life and fortunes of the king. But such alone is not its matter and object. The class of dramas to which it belongs is not biographical, but historical. On this account, among the leading personages of such dramas, the people and the state, in their relations to other people and kingdoms, have a place of right. From the description of a great national war, in its poetico-historical sense, the poem here advances to the delineation of civil war, which is to the former as poison is to medicine. This procedure appears absolutely indispensable in the construction of the great tragedy of which the reign of Henry the Sixth forms the fourth act. The bane must have its antidote. The unstable foundation on which the Royal House of Lancaster rested, and the disturbance of the straight course of history which marked its accession to the throne, as well as the immorality, selfishness, ambition, and avarice, which the long course of unchecked prosperity had fostered in the nobles and commons, ultimately produced in the factions of the white and red roses the antidote to their own rank poison. By interweaving the story of the old Mortimer, the unfortunate pretender to the thrones of Bolingbroke, and his son, the poet has with great judgment indicated the connection of the "Henry the Sixth" with the other parts of the great drama, and at the same time kept alive the memory of the olden wrong of Henry's ancestor. We have here no petty conflict between a few rebellious barons and the sovereignty; but a civil war in the strict sense: a chaotic dissolution of all the ties of social life, by which the different members of the state are plunged in hatred and dissension, forms the leading topic of the dramatic representation. The soil from which it springs historically is the total corruption and immorality of the nation; and as long as the evil is associated with power and energy of will, it thrives fearfully; vice struggles with vice, and crime and sin with sin and crime, until at last they destroy each other by their own virulence. No piece, in short, exhibits the two opposite aspects of the Christian view of things in the mutual interpenetration in which they occur in the historic

drama, more distinctly than "Henry the Sixth," and its continuation, "Richard the Third." In these plays evil is made to find its own corrective and destruction in evil and moral weakness and perversity; vice and folly mutually frustrate each other as in Comedy. The good obtains, no doubt, by God's grace, the final victory, but not within the immediate limits of the represented time and action; it passes beyond the acting personages of the piece into the wide futurity of history. For the present the tragical rules uncontrolled, not merely annihilating evil, but also destroying whatsoever is great, noble, and beautiful in humanity. For amid the general decay of an age and nation, the virtue and good intentions of individuals can never preserve themselves entirely spotless, inasmuch as the individual does not stand isolated and alone, but is an organic member of society-the child of his nation, and the creature of his age. The universal sinfulness must seize upon him also in the same way that one foul spot infects the whole fruit, and as, conversely, it is the corruption of the whole that originates the foulness of the particular spot.

This saddening thought, which is identical in principle with the christian dogma of original sin, forms the ground idea of this great trilogy. With various modifications it is carried through each of the three parts, as being indeed necessarily implied in the historical import of civil war. But the same reference of all history to the divine grace, which, in its delineation of the great national war, the previous drama had conveyed by representing war as an immediate judgment of God, is here again repeated; the civil war being regarded as an antidote and restorative of the general corruption and suffering, and defeat as tending to the purification and refinement of human goodness and nobility. This is the other-the soothing and consolatory aspect of the poem. The life and fortunes of Henry the Sixth reflect both aspects in the most immediate and clearest manner. His personal history forms, indeed, the foundation of the whole, and the link which connects together the several parts. Henry, indeed, takes no share in the action; all he does is to pray and to suffer, and yet all that happens falls upon his devoted head, and his doing nothing is even the principal cause of all that is done and happens. Ac

cordingly in this piece the interest is greatly divided. The chief part of it is no doubt claimed by the King and his family, but they have to share it in the first part with Talbot and his son, in their noble struggle against France, with the defeat of Gloster, and the victory of York in the second; and in the third, the end of York, and the conduct of Edward, arrest our attention. And yet the true unity is manifestly preserved by the oneness of the interest of the story, and of the ground idea which animates it. To establish this point it will be necessary to enter upon a close examination of each of the three parts.

To begin with the first, which forms the proper conclusion of "Henry the Fifth," since the national war which is there exhibited now first attains to a real end. It concludes to the advantage of France, even because the intrinsic moral right has gone over to her side. For although the nobles and commonalty of France are not much better as yet, and are at best but more prudent and sharpened by experience, they have nevertheless abandoned their haughty self-confidence and groundless vanity, and a growing esteem for their adversary has laid the first step to victory. And, what is more important still, England, on the other hand, has lost her moral superiority. We are conscious at once of this loss in the introductory scenes, amid the selfish intrigues and quarrels of the nobles, in whose wake the people blindly follow, and that the people and army are no longer animated by the same spirit which gave the victory to Henry the Fifth, is proved, among other incidents of the campaign, by the disgraceful and cowardly flight of Fastolfe. Accordingly, the piece opens well with the funeral of Henry, as with the entombment of the victories and conquests of England. It was a grand, though great error, to suppose that at that time England could maintain a lasting rule over France; whenever the political and national energy of a people are not completely broken, it is impossible for them to sink into a mere province of another kingdom. Nothing but the intrinsic weakness of France, and the moral and heroic energy of Henry the Fifth, could have lent to such a misconception the brief and transient sanction of success. When the French nation had once roused itself, a monarch as vigorous as the Sixth Henry was weak, would have found it impossible to retain the conquest which in its encroach