All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,

Is far beyond a prince's delicates;
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,

Where care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. Act ii. Sc. 5. The argument here adduced in favour of a humble station of life is its comparative freedom from anxiety and alarm. And such an argument, just because it is superficial rather than substantial, comes with propriety enough from a weak though amiable character like that of King Henry VI. But our poet was well aware that deeper, and I may add, more Scriptural motives were to be assigned for the choice which such a character would make out of mere pusillanimity. The greater exposure to temptation, already alluded to in the case of Wolsey, and to which all are liable in proportion to the elevation and grandeur they attain, affords a ground for contentment in moderate, and even in lowly circumstances, which minds, not the weakest, but the strongest and best, will be most ready to appreciate. The Danish courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern gave a wise return to Hamlet's salutation- My excellent good friends-how do ye both?'-when they replied, or rather, the latter said, speaking for them both :

Happy, in that we are not over happy.

Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2.

So too, Nerissa, in the Merchant of Venice, remarks, It is no mean happiness to be seated in the

P

mean.' Act i. Sc. 2. The blinded Gloster, in King Lear, when the old man leading him observes,

Alack, sir, you cannot see your way;

makes answer, as a conscience-stricken penitent ;-
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen,
Our means + secure us; and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

It is in a calmer, but not less truthful spirit of Christian Philosophy that King Henry V., on the night before the battle of Agincourt, teaches us how our defects,' i. e. our wants, our deficiencies in the comforts and conveniences of life, may 'prove our commodities,' and so suggests an additional motive, not merely for contentment in a humble, but for resignation in an adverse lot, when he argues:

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out;

* See John ix. 39-41; Matt. xiii. 13.

† I retain the reading of the original editions, both quarto and folio. Mr. Malone does so likewise, but he understands' means ' (plural) in the same sense as those do who have adopted Pope's emendation our mean secures us,' i. e. our middle state, as Warburton interprets. It does not seem to have occurred to any of the critics that the verb 'secure' may here not improbably signify make careless, and then 'means' will be opposed to 'defects,' and signify the things we have, 'our commodities,' and in Gloster's case, his sight. Compare the use of gentle' as a verb, in King Henry V. Act. iv. Sc. 3— 'This day shall gentle his condition '

i. e. make him a gentleman. I am surprised that Bp. Hurd, in his note (highly commended by Mr. Hallam) upon Horace's callida junctura' of words, though he instances Shakspeare's art in converting substantives into verbs, says nothing of the same conversion in regard to 'adjectives.'—See Hurd's Works, vol. i. p. 78.

For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,
Which is both healthful and good husbandry:
Besides, they are our outward consciences,
And preachers to us all; admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.
Thus may we gather honey from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself.

K. Henry V. Act iv. Sc. r. On a former occasion the same king had taught

According to the Apostolic precept that we should study to be quiet,' 1 Thess. iv. 11. In like manner, the advice of the 'good Duke Humphrey' of Gloster to his Duchess, under the disgrace and punishment which she had brought upon herself

Thy greatest help is quiet, gentle Nell;

I pray thee, sort thy heart to patience—

K. Henry VI. 2nd Part, Act ii. Sc. 4. may be compared with the admonition of the Evangelical Prophet :

Their strength is to sit still. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. Isaiah xxx. 7, 15.

Nor can we reasonably doubt that when our poet wrote in King Richard II.,—

Pride must have a fall,

Act v. Sc. 5.

he had in his mind that saying in the Book of Proverbs:

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. xvi. 18.

Meanwhile, amid all his commendations of a low estate, our poet was fully sensible of the contemptuous and unworthy treatment which poverty too often meets with at the hands of a vain and mammon-serving world. He knew the testimony of Solomon :

The poor is hated even of his own neighbour. Prov. xiv. 20. All the brethren of the poor do hate him how much more do his friends go far from him? He pursueth them with words, yet they are wanting to him. xix. 7.

This is a sad picture, and it is made more melancholy by the addition of ingratitude when a rich and bountiful man, having fallen into poverty, meets with no better return from those whom he has benefited the case of Timon of Athens :—

2nd Serv.

As we do turn our backs
From our companion thrown into his grave;

So his familiars to his buried fortunes

Slink all away; leave their false vows with him,
Like empty purses pick'd, and his poor self,

A dedicated beggar to the air,

With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.

Act iv. Sc. 2.

And for one who had not the lessons and consolations of revealed religion to fall back upon, such a trial is not improperly represented as too great. But it is not so with the Christian hero, like S. Paul, who has learnt, in whatsoever state he is, therewith to be content;' nay, who in every thing

* Sir T. Hanmer's reading, 'from,' seems preferable.

gives thanks.' And Hamlet describes his friend Horatio as approaching, at least, to that high standard:

Thou hast been

As one, in suffering all, who suffers nothing;
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Has ta'en with equal thanks.

Act iii. Sc. 2.

And, looked at from this point of view, we may accept the sentiment of Hamlet, which otherwise would savour of an infidel philosophy:

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Act ii. Sc. 2.

He is not speaking of moral good and evil. He had before said 'Denmark's a prison;' to which Rosencrantz demurred-' We think not so, my lord.' Hamlet replies, 'Why then 'tis none to you: for there is nothing,' &c., &c. So that the passage becomes parallel to Horace's :

Quod petis, hic est;

Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus.

And to Milton's :

The mind is its own place; and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

That our poet is entitled to the full benefit of this interpretation-unless we will suppose that he designed, in this single instance* to give a sceptical

* Warburton has given a semi-infidel interpretation to another saying of Hamlet, in Act v. Sc. 2: 'Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows,' &c., but without sufficient reason. The reading is