one against him, and he was at length expelled from Normandy, and all the other provinces which he retained in France. Incensed at this, he resolved to wreak his spleen and malice on the barons who had, as he pretended, deserted his cause in Normandy; and to this end he levied large sums on their estates, to support an army for the invasion of France, which, however, only ended in his burning the city of Angiers, and then retiring on the approach of the enemy's forces. This cowardly conduct, and the plundering of their revenues, was the occasion of a quarrel between John and his nobles; which was soon followed by a still more serious outbreak between him and the pope, which arose from the following causes. At the death of the archbishop of Canterbury, two persons were named to fill the metropolitan see-Reginald by the Augustine monks, and John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich, by the suffragan bishops of the province, whose side was espoused by the king. The rival parties appealed to Rome, and Innocent III., determining to show his independence and authority, nominated a new candidate, the famous Cardinal Stephen Langton. John resolved not to submit to this encroachment, as he considered it, upon his royal prerogative, and in revenge expelled the monks, who had adopted the pope's side, from their monastery. In return Innocent III. excommunicated John, and laid England under an interdict and shortly after he absolved all his subjects from their allegiance to their sovereign, and published a crusade of all Europe against him who had dared to resist so obstinately the decrees of the holy see. This drove John to despair, and upon the arrival of the papal legate, Pandulph, who represented that if he would submit there was still forgiveness from the holy father, he consented to the terms dictated to him; which were, that he should resign his crown into the hands of the pope's representative, and hereafter hold it as a vassal of the church of Rome, to which he was to pay a tribute of 1000 marks a-year. Having taken this oath, he was absolved from the ban under which he had lain for so many years.

Thus freed of all fear from the church, John still persisted in those tyrannical measures which had before made him so hateful to his subjects. His conduct towards his barons caused them, with the archbishop at their head, to make a vigorous stand against this oppression; and this new quarrel, after upwards of a year's duration, in which the king manifested, as usual, the greatest treachery, and falsehood, and double-dealing, ended in the barons wresting from the royal hands the ever memorable Magna Charta, the foundation, as it is called, of English liberty, This happened at Runimede, on the 15th of June, in the year 1215.

But since John had put himself under the especial protection of the pope, he resolved to try if he could, against his barons, obtain any help from that quarter, and so regain what had been snatched of the royal prerogative from his grasp. He appealed, therefore, to the pontiff, complaining of the rebellious conduct of his nobles, and instancing the charter which they had forced him to grant. The pope warmly took up his cause, and in a bull annulled the whole charter. Thus terrified lest they should lose what they had so lately

and so hardly obtained, the barons again took up arms, and feeling themselves too weak to cope with the king's army, they appealed for assistance to the king of France, who sent over the dauphin Louis with a considerable force. The success of Louis was at first very great, for John's soldiers (many of whom were French, and therefore refused to serve against their own countrymen) fast deserted him, and suffered his rival to advance to London, where many of the nobles and chief men of the city did homage to him as their sovereign. But Louis's avowed partiality for the French, and moreover the Count de Melun on his death-bed having confessed that there was a plot to put all the English barons to death, brought about once more a change in the favour of John, who resolved to make an effort, with the help of his nobles, now returned to their allegiance, to rid the country of its foreign occupants. With this intention he marched towards Lincolnshire; but his road lying along the shore, which was overflowed at high water, and being ignorant of this, he lost in the floods his baggage, carriages, and all his treasures, and barely escaped with his life. Heart-broken at this disaster, he betook himself to Swinstead Abbey, where his grief and the distracted state of his affairs threw him into a fever, which had every appearance of terminating fatally. He removed to Newark, where he soon after died, in the year 1216, in the eighteenth year of his reign, and the fifty-first of his age.

It is not too much to assert of this prince that he was the worst king, perhaps with the exception of Henry VIII., that ever sat on the English throne. To use the words of Hume, "The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself and destructive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty; all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect that the disagreeable picture has been anywise overcharged by the prejudices of the ancient historians. It is hard to say whether his conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects, was most culpable; or whether his crimes, in these respects, were not even exceeded by the baseness which appeared in his transactions with the king of France, the pope, and the barons. His European dominions, when they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive than have ever, since his time, been ruled by an English monarch. But he first lost, by his misconduct, the flourishing provinces in France, the ancient patrimony of his family: he subjected his kingdom to a shameful vassalage under the see of Rome: he saw the prerogatives of his crown diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction: and he died at last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter, as a fugitive, from the pursuit of his enemies."

Shakspeare's tragedy of "King John" is the first of his series of dramas upon English history, which Schlegel considers "one of the most valuable of Shakspeare's works, and partly the fruit of his maturest age." The same acute critic describes them as

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a his

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torical heroic poem in the dramatic form, of which the separate plays constitute the rhapsodies." "The principal features of the events," he continues, are exhibited with such fidelity; their causes, and even their secret springs, are placed in such a clear light, that we may attain from them a knowledge of history in all its truth, while the living picture makes an impression on the imagination which can never be effaced. But this series of dramas is intended as the vehicle of a much higher and much more general instruction; it furnishes examples of the political course of the world applicable to all times. This mirror of kings should be the manual of young princes; from it they may learn the intrinsic dignity of their hereditary vocation, but they will also learn from it the difficulties of their situation, the dangers of usurpation, the inevitable fall of tyranny, which buries itself under its attempts to obtain a firmer foundation; lastly, the ruinous consequences of the weaknesses, errors, and crimes of kings for whole nations and many subsequent generations."

The drama which we are now considering opens soon after the beginning of the usurpation of John, and terminates with his death; thus comprising a period of nearly eighteen years. As we read it, we find that Shakspeare has, on one or two occasions, taken the liberty of varying the precise details which historians afforded him. The most remarkable of these licenses is his making the death of Prince Arthur to happen in England instead of Normandy, and through an accident brought about by his own over-daring in trying to leap down from his prison windows, instead of by the hands of his wicked uncle, or by those of his servants. But in taking the odium of the murder from the memory of John, our poet had, no doubt, his object. We should remember that though most probable, yet it is not certain that Arthur was murdered by his kinsman; and he, therefore, we may suppose, took advantage of this uncertainty, lest, by attributing it positively to the king, he should draw a character so hideous that it would only disgust instead of instructing his readers. His aim is, in all his works, to raise, and not to depress his subject; to teach by lofty ideas, and not by low conceptions. "In King John," says the writer whom we have so often quoted before, “the political and warlike events are dressed out with solemn pomp, for the very reason that they possess but little of true grandeur. The falsehood and selfishness of the monarch speak in the style of a manifesto. Conventional dignity is most indispensable where personal dignity is wanting.. Even the last moments of John, an unjust and feeble prince, whom we can neither respect nor admire, are yet so pourtrayed as to extinguish our displeasure with him, and fill us with serious considerations on the arbitrary deeds and inevitable fate of mortals."

"King John," though it cannot be considered as one of the best productions of Shakspeare's genius, still possesses scenes of exquisite power and passages of the highest beauty; and two of its characters, at least, that of the Lady Constance and of the bastard Faulconbridge, are drawn by the hand of a master, and with unfailing strength and energy of purpose. Perhaps in no other portion of his

writings is a mother's love for her child, and grief for his loss, so wonderfully pourtrayed as in the character of Constance: our very inmost heart is pierced as we contemplate the emotions of her fondest affection, the ravings of her despair, her grief that her child, such as she has known him on earth, will be lost to her even in heaven; the whole picture is one which rivals even nature itself. She is tauntingly told that she is "as fond of grief as of her child;" and what, for true pathos, can surpass her reply?

"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,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief?

O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort and my sorrow's cure!"

And that this child was worthy of such love and such despairing regrets, every scene in which he is introduced fully convinces us; and more especially that one in which he is about to fall a victim to the wicked ambition of his uncle, by having his eyes put out by Hubert and his assistants. Then how touching are his entreaties for mercy, how innocent and natural the prayers which he uses!

And of Faulconbridge, notwithstanding all his faults, his worldlymindedness, and anxiety for his own interests, it may almost be said that he is the hero of the drama. Who can forbear admiring his heroism, his gaiety, his light-heartedness under all circumstances (so much after the manner and spirit of his great father, Coeur-deLion), his fidelity, even to the last, to King John, who, all unworthy as he was, was still his master and his benefactor?

And besides the scenes which develope the characters of Constance and Faulconbridge, which certainly may be considered the chief ones in the play, there are not wanting others which are not surpassed by anything that Shakspeare ever produced. It may suffice to instance the scene between John and Hubert preparatory to the intended blinding of Arthur, when the tyrant hardly ventures to say to himself even, and much less to another, what he wishes done. "This is one of those scenes," says one of Shakspeare's commentators, "to which may be promised a lasting commendation: art could add little to its perfection; and time itself can take nothing from its beauties." And of particular passages which have become almost proverbial (a fame in which Shakspeare is unrivalled by all writers, whether ancient or modern), there are few which are better known than this one from our present play;

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with a taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

We said above that the character of John is drawn, perhaps, less detestable than he really was. Still, as usual, Shakspeare does not make us love vice, nor does he palliate its enormities. Neither does he forget at last to tell us how all vice and all sin must end. John's death-bed shows us this, when the miserable wretch begins to reap the reward of his crimes;

"Poisoned-ill-fare; dead, forsook, cast off."