B. 1797.

HEINRICH HEINE.

D. 1856.

SEE how gently he waives the laurel-wreath, while most anxious to clutch more than its equivalent: "I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical fame; and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a sword: for I was a brave soldier in the war of liberation of humanity."

BISMARCK appears quite conscious of the power he has so long held behind the Throne; and the "mild absolutism" which he prompted has been a perpetual strain upon the government of his King. "If," said Bismarck, "the King could stand the strain on him for three or four years and I allowed there was one, the estrangement of the public being very painful and disagreeable to him he would certainly win his game. Unless he got tired and left me in the lurch, I would not fail him. If he were to appeal to the people, and put it to the vote, he would even now have nine tenths of them in his favor. The Emperor, at the time (1855), said of me, Ce n'est pas un homme sérieux ["He is not a man of consequence"],

a mot of which I did not think myself at liberty to remind him in the weaving-shed at Doncherry."

66

While in attendance upon the siege of Paris, Bismarck was impatient of delay, and really believed he might have cut a larger figure if he had been an officer. At dinner (December 24) he observed, “ Had I been an officer, and I wish I had been, I should have had an army now, and we should not have been stuck here outside of Paris."

B. 1370.

CARDINAL BEAUFORT.

D. 1447.

(Bishop of Winchester.)

THE Cardinal, son of John of Gaunt, was early promoted to the wealthy See of Winchester, and after the death of Henry V. became the powerful rival of the Duke of Gloucester. The latter having been arrested, suddenly died, not without suspicion, in the time of Shakspeare, of poison. The death of the Cardinal, after a lingering sickness, occurred a few weeks later. To those about his bedside, although seventy-seven years old, he said, "Wherefore should I die, being so rich? If the whole realm would save my life, I am able either by policy to get it or by wealth to buy it. Will not death be bribed? Will money do nothing?"

B. 1471.

CARDINAL WOLSEY.

D. 1530.

CARDINAL WOLSEY'S famous insolence, Ego et rex meus ("I and my king"), he apologized for by observing that it was conformable to the Latin idiom, and that the Roman always placed himself before the person of whom he spoke.

Johnson, in his "Vanity of Human Wishes," gives a full-length picture of Wolsey, beginning with the words:

"In full-blown dignity, see Wolsey stand,

Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand.".

Shakspeare also makes a fine use of the rise and fall of this historic character in his "King Henry VIII." At his downfall Wolsey thus speaks:

"Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man. To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him."

And finally thus laments his fate:

“Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in my age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."

B. 1500. THE DUKE OF SOMERSET.

D. 1552.

THE Duke, whose conceit was in his high rank and his long line of forefathers, once declared that he sincerely pitied Adam because he had no ancestors.

B. 1533.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

D. 1602.

WHEN the Lord Keeper, with others, came to the Queen, just before her death, to inquire, in the name of the Council, her pleasure as to who should succeed, she thus replied :

"I told you my seat had been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascal to succeed me. And who should succeed me but a king?"

The Lords asking what she meant by these words, she answered that her meaning was that a king should succeed; "and who should that be but our cousin of Scotland ?"

Among other anecdotes concerning Queen Elizabeth, Sir James Melvil, while he was near her on a mission from Queen Mary of Scotland, relates how he evaded the question as to what colored hair was most admired (Elizabeth's being more reddish than yellow and naturally curling), but was less scrupulous in declaring his mistress the tallest. "Then," said Elizabeth," she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low."

B. 1551.

SIR EDWARD COKE.

D. 1633.

SIR EDWARD COKE, though esteemed pedantic by lawyers, was a learned and most prolific writer, and among the "thirty books which he had written with his own hand," he declared that the "most pleasing

to himself was a manual which he called 'Vade Mecum,' from whence at one view he took a prospect of his life past." A slave to the Crown while he was Attorney-General, he did not hesitate to assert himself when advanced to be judge. Among other assumptions he had styled himself Lord Chief Justice of England, when it was declared that "his title was his own invention, since he was no more than of the King's Bench."

So our late Chief Justice Chase, on the Johnson Impeachment trial, assumed the title of Chief Justice of the United States, though only the chief of the Supreme Court.

When Sir Edward Coke was in the Tower, he was informed that the King would allow him "eight of the best learned in the law to advise him for his cause." The great lawyer thanked him, but said he "knew himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the law."

When Bacon published his "Novum Organum," thought by many to be the greatest work of the human intellect, he sent a copy to Sir Edward Coke, who expressed his contempt for the author by writing the following distich on the titlepage, which bore a cut of a ship sailing through the Pillars of Hercules :

"It deserveth not to be read in schools,
But to be freighted in the ship of fools.”