6 SCENE III." Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin."

Douce, in a note on this passage, supposes the names of ordnance, such as basilisk and culverin, to be derived from the names of serpents. He tells us that a basilisk carried a ball weighing two hundred pounds. Neither Douce nor other commentators have noticed a passage in Harrison's Description of England, which contains "the names of our greatest ordinance,"-and where the basilisk, the cannon, and the culverin, are fully described. The basilisk, the largest of all, weighed 9000 pounds, and carried a ball of 60 pounds;-the cannon weighed 7000 pounds, and also carried a ball of 60 pounds-(but this weight of ball would appear to be a misprint)-and the culverin weighed 4000 pounds, and carried a ball of 18 pounds. Harrison gives a wondrous account of a great gun,

compared with which the English basilisk must have been a pocket-pistol: "The Turk had one gun made by one Orbon, a Dane, the caster of his ordinance, which could not be drawn to the siege of Constantinople but by seventy yokes of oxen and two thousand men."

7 SCENE IV.-Eastcheap. A Room in the Boar's Head Tavern.

"Who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar's Head? Have we not all been there, time out of mind? And is it not a more real as well as notorious thing to us than the London Tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, or White's, or What's-his-name's, or any other of your contemporary and fleeting taps?" We quote this passage from Leigh Hunt's delightful 'Indicator.' Mr. Hunt, we take it, is speaking of the endearing associations of the Boar's Head-not of a real brick and stone tavern. But Goldsmith, it would appear, had sat in the Boar's Head of Shakspere. We quote the following from his Essays:

"Such were the reflections that naturally arose while I sat at the Boar's Head tavern, still kept at Eastcheap. Here, by a pleasant fire, in the very room where old Sir John Falstaff cracked his jokes, in the very chair which was sometimes honoured by Prince Henry, and sometimes polluted by his immoral merry companions, I sat and ruminated on the follies of youth; wished to be young again, but was resolved to make the best of life while it lasted, and now and then compared past and present times together. I considered myself as the only living representative of the old knight, and transported my imagination back to the times when the prince and he gave life to the revel, and made even debauchery not disgusting. The room also conspired to throw my reflections back into antiquity: the oak floor, the Gothic windows, and the ponderous chimney-piece, had long withstood the tooth of time."

Alas! the real Boar's Head was destroyed in the great fire of London; and its successor, that rose up out of the ruins, has been swept away with the old London Bridge, to which it was a neighbour. We can no longer make a pilgrimage even to the second Boar's Head. "The earliest notice of this place," says Mr. Brayley in his Londiniana, occurs in the testament of William Warden, who, in the reign of Richard II., gave all that his tenement, called the Boar's Head, Eastcheap, to a college of priests or chaplains, founded by Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor, in the adjoining church of St. Michael, Crooked Lane.'

In an enumeration of taverns, in an old black letter poem, we find the

"Bore's Head, neere London Stone." "The Boar's Head, in Southwark," is noticed in one of the Paston Letters, written in the time of Henry VI. Shakspere found "the Old Tavern in Eastcheap" in the anonymous play described in our Introductory Notice.

But of the original Boar's Head there remains a very interesting and to all appearance authentic relic. At any rate we will confide in its authenticity with as implicit a faith as Martinus Scriblerus believed in his brazen shield. In Whitechapel, some years since, there was a hillock called the

9 SCENE IV.-" At the strappado." Douce has described this cruel punishment, which did not consist in the infliction of blows by a strap, but was effected by drawing up the victim by a rope and pulleys, and dropping him suddenly down, for the purpose of dislocating his shoulder. "The good old times' were remarkable for the ingenuity with which man tormented man.

10 SCENE IV." He of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado."

Amaimon, according to Scot, in his "Discovery

of Witchcraft," was a spirit who might be bound at certain hours of the day and night. He was a fit subject, therefore, for Glendower to exercise his magic upon.

11 SCENE IV.-" A Welsh hook."

This weapon appears to have been a pike with a hook placed at some distance below its point, like some of the ancient partizans.

12 SCENE IV.-"Behind the arras."

Dr Johnson seems to think that the bulk of Falstaff rendered it difficult to conceal him behind the arras; but the arras or tapestry, which was originally hung on hooks, was afterwards set on frames at some distance from the walls. There are many passages in Shakspere, and in other plays of his time, which shew that the space between the arras and the wall was large enough even for the concealment of Falstaff.

THE character of Hotspur has been drawn by Shakspere with the boldest pencil. Nothing can be more free and vigorous than this remarkable portrait. Of the likeness we are as certain as when we look at the Charles V. of Titian, or the Lord Strafford of Vandyke. But it is too young, say the critics. The poet, in the first scene, say they, ought not to have called him "young Harry Percy," for he was some thirty-five years old at the battle of Holmedon; and the wish of the king,

"that it could be prov'd

That some night-tripping fairy had exchang'd,
In cradle-clothes, our children where they lay,
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet,"

was a very absurd wish, and such a change was quite beyond the power of a "night-tripping fairy," for Percy was born about 1366, and Henry of Monmouth some twenty years later. Everything in its place. We desire the utmost exactness in matters where exactness is required. Let History proper give us her dates to the very day and hour; but let Poetry be allowed to break the bands by which she would be earth-bound. When Shakspere shews us the ambitious, irascible, self-willed, sarcastic, but high-minded and noble Hotspur, and places in contrast with him the thoughtless, good-tempered, yielding, witty, but brave and chivalrous Henry, we have no desire to be constantly reminded that characters so alike in the energy of youth have been incorrectly approximated in their ages by the poet. Fluellen had, no doubt, very correct notions "as touching the direction of the military discipline;" but when he bestowed upon Captain Macmorris a few disputations," in the way of argument and friendly communication, when the town was besieged and the trumpet called to the breach, we think the captain was perfectly justified in telling the worthy Welshman that it was "no time to discourse."

Sir Henry Percy received his soubriquet of Hot spur from the Scots, with whom he was engaged

in perpetual forays and battles. The old ballad of the Battle of Otterbourne tells us,

"He had byn a march-man all hys dayes,
And kepte Barwyke upon Twede."

He was
66 first armed when the castle of Berwick
was taken by the Scots," in 1378, when he was
twelve years old; and from that time till the
battle of Holmedon, his spur was never cold. No-
thing can be more historically true than the prince's
description of Hotspur-"he that kills me some
six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his
hands, and says to his wife, Fye upon this quiet
life! I want work.' 'O my sweet Harry,' says she,
'how many hast thou killed to-day ?''
Give my
roan horse a drench,' says he, and answers, Some
fourteen,' an hour after; a trifle, a trifle."" The
abstraction of Hotspur-the 'some fourteen,--an
hour after,'-has been repeated by our poet in the
beautiful scene between Hotspur and his lady, in
this Act:-

"Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,

And I must know it, else he loves me not."

The servant has been called and dismissed; the lady has uttered her reproof; a battle has been fought in Hotspur's imagination, before he answers, 'Away,

Away, you trifler! Love?-I love thee not." This little trait in Hotspur's character might be traditionary; and so might be the

"speaking thick, which Nature made his blemish." At any rate, these circumstances are singularly characteristic. So also is Hotspur's contempt of poetry, in opposition to Glendower, whose mind is essentially poetical. Such are the magical touches by which Shakspere created the imperishable likenesses of his historical personages. He seized upon a general truth, and made it more striking and permanent by investing it with the ideal.

Sit, cousin, Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur : For by that name as oft as Lancaster

Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale, and, with

A rising sigh, he wisheth you in heaven.

a Induction. Steevens properly says that an Induction was anciently something introductory to a play; but he adds, somewhat absurdly, that Shakspere's attendance on the theatre might have familiarized him to the conception of the word. In the sense in which Shakspere here uses the word it is synonymous with introduction-a leading in, a beginning; and this meaning would have been perfectly familiar to such a master of "the tongue" as Shakspere was, without any theatrical associations. An example of his discrimination in language is offered to us in Richard III.:

"Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophesies, libels, and dreams." Here the word is used in its metaphysical sense of deductions from facts or propositions, and not in the sense of introduction, as in the passage before us, which Steevens infers.

Hot. And you in hell, as oft as he hears Owen Glendower spoke of.

Glend. I cannot blame him: at my nativity, The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; and, at my birth, The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shak'd like a coward.

Hot. Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's cat had but kitten'd, though yourself had ne'er been born.

Glend. I say, the earth did shake when I was

born.

Hot. And I say, the earth was not of my mind,

If you suppose, as fearing you it shook.

Glend. The heavens were all on fire, the earth

did tremble.

I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave
To tell you once again,—that at my birth,
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes;
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have mark'd me extraordinary;
And all the courses of my life do shew
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living,-clipp'd in with the sea
That chides the banks of England, Scotland,
Wales,-

Which calls me pupil, or hath read to me?
And bring him out, that is but woman's son,
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,
And hold me pace in deep experiments.

Hot. I think there's no man speaks better Welsh: I'll to dinner,

Mort. Peace, cousin Percy: you will make him mad.

Glend. I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hot. Why, so can I; or so can any man: But will they come, when you do call for them? Glend. Why, I can teach thee, cousin, to command

The devil.

Hot. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil,

By telling truth; Tell truth, and shame the devil.

If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,

And I'll be sworn. I have power to shame him hence.

O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil.

Mort. Come, come,

No more of this unprofitable chat.

Glend. Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head

Against my power: thrice from the banks of
Wye,

And sandy-bottom'd Severn, have I sent him,
Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.

Hot. Home without boots, and in foul weather too?

How 'scapes he agues, in the devil's name? Glend. Come, here's the map; Shall we divide our right,

According to our three-fold order ta’en ?
Mort. The archdeacon hath divided it

Into three limits, very equally:

a He living in the first three quartos; the folio, the.

England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,
By south and east, is to my part assign'd:
All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore,
And all the fertile land within that bound,
To Owen Glendower :-and, dear coz, to you
The remnant northward, lying off from Trent.
And our indentures tripartite are drawn :
Which being sealed interchangeably,
(A business that this night may execute,)
To-morrow, cousin Percy, you, and I,
And my good lord of Worcester, will set forth,
To meet your father, and the Scottish power,
As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury.

My father Glendower is not ready yet,
Nor shall we need his help these fourteen days:-
Within that space, [to GLEND.] you may have
drawn together

Your tenants, friends, and neighbouring gentle

men.

Glend. A shorter time shall send me to you, lords.

And in my conduct shall your ladies come:
From whom you now must steal, and take no
leave;

For there will be a world of water shed,
Upon the parting of your wives and you.

Hot. Methinks, my moiety," north from Burton here,

In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me, from the best of all my land,
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I'll have the current in this place damm'd up;
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly:

It shall not wind with such a deep indent,
To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

Glend. Not wind? it shall, it must; you see it doth.