old in judgement and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him!'

A great

The play is a mere bundle of individual passages, but each of these passages is admirable. example is King Henry's soliloquy which opens the third act, the profoundly imaginative apostrophe to Sleep:

O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and lcavest the kingly couch,
A watch-case or a common ’larum bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.'

Throughout this Second Part, the King, besieged by cares and living in the shadow of death, is richer in thought and wisdom than ever before. What he says, and what is said to him, seems drawn by the poet from the very depths of his own experience, and addressed to men of the like experience and thought. Every word of that first scene of the third act is in the highest degree significant and admirable. It is here that the King turns to what we now call geology for an image of the historical mutability of all things. When he

mournfully reminds his attendants that Richard II., whom he displaced, prophesied a Nemesis to come from those who had helped him to the throne, and that this Nemesis has now overtaken him, Warwick answers with the profound and astonishingly modern reflection that history is apparently governed by laws, and that each man's life

'Figuring the nature of the times deceased;
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things

As yet not come to life.'
To this the King returns the no less philosophical

KING HENRY IV.

his sons.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.
RUMOUR, the Presenter.
King HENRY THE FOURTH.
HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES, afterwards

King Henry V.
THOMAS, DUKE OF CLARENCE,
PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER,
PRINCE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER,
EARL OF WARWICK.
EARL OF WESTMORELAND. EARL OF SURREY.
GOWER. HARCOURT. BLUNT.
LORD CHIEF-JUSTICE of the King's Bench.
A SERVANT of the Chief Justice.
EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND.
SCROOP, Archbishop of York.
LORD MOWBRAY. LORD HASTINGS.
Lord BARDOLPH. Sir John COLEVILE.
Travers and Morton, retainers of Northumberland.
Sir John FALSTAFF. His Page.
BARDOLPH. PISTOL. Poins. PETO.

-country justices. SILENCE, Davy, servant to Shallow. MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, and BULLCALF,

recruits.
FANG and Snare, sheriff's officers.
Lady NORTHUMBERLAND. LADY PERCY.
Mistress Quickly, hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap.
Doll TEARSHEET.
Lords and Attendants; Porter, Drawers,

Beadles, Grooms, etc.
A Dancer, speaker of the epilogue.

Scene-England.

SECOND PART OF

KING HENRY IV.

INDUCTION.

Warkworth. Before the castle. Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues. Rum. Open your ears; for which of you will stop The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks? I, from the orient to the drooping west, Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold The acts commenced on this ball of earth: Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. I speak of peace, while covert enmity Under the smile of safety wounds the world: And who but Rumour, who but only I, Make fearful musters and prepared defence, Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief, Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war, And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop