Pucelle:

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Make us partakers of a little gain,

That now our loss might be ten times as much?
Wherefore is Charles impatient with his friend?
At all times will you have my power alike?
Sleeping or waking, shall I still prevail,

Or will you blame, and lay the fault on me?
Improvident soldiers! Had your watch been good
This sudden mischief never could have fallen," &c.
1 Hen. VI. ii. 2.

See of the abject people," "the rabble," "the envious people," rejoicing in the penance of the punished duchess" of York (2 Hen. VI. ii. 4). Of how "the tag-rag people did clap and hiss Cæsar, according as he pleased and displeased them" (Jul. Cæs. i. 2). How, when Cæsar is murdered, the multitude, or throng of citizens, agree that Cæsar was to blame, and applauded Brutus; but when Anthony, feigning to blame, praises Cæsar, and "ruffles up their spirits" in his favour, the maltitude again turn, and vow vengeance on the conspirators and murderers (Jul Cæs. iii. 2 and 3). So, too, of Coriolanus: "The fusty plebeians hate his honours, but say, against their hearts, We thank the gods our Rome hath such a soldier." With the acclamations and clamours of the host Caius Marcius Coriolanus "wears the war's garland" (Cor. i. 9 and 10). He is then "blamed for being proud," and those who "are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs . . . the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians try to use this blame as an engine to ruin Coriolanus (ii. 1). In the end they succeed, Coriolanus ensuring his own fall by the utter disregard or contempt for the "many-headed multitude" (ii. 3), "the tongues of the common mouth," whose praise or blame he alike despises.

2. "I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of

such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me.

:

I am

very proud, revengeful, ambitious with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth; we are arrant knaves all."Ham. iii. 1.

See forward Malcolm's more detailed description of the vices which he conceives to be in himself (Macb. iv. 3, 45-100). Troilus also describes his truth as a vice in him (Tr. Cr. iv. 4). The speakers, it will be observed, are all young.

3. With regard to the opinions of philosophers, it will be found that they all, in some way or another, connect the ideas of errors or faults in mankind with Nature, or influences to which man's nature is subservient.

"O powerful love! that, in some respects, makes a beast a man ; in some other, a man a beast. A fault done first in the form of a beast: 0 Jove, a beastly fault! and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl think on't, Jove; a foul fault," &c.-Mer. Wives v. 5, 1-16.

"So oft it chances in particular men,

That for some vicious mole of nature in them,

As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,

Since Nature cannot choose his origin),

Carrying the stamp of one defect,

Being Nature's livery or fortune's star

Take corruption from that particular fault."

Lear: "Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air Hang fated o'er men's faults light on thy daughters. Nothing could have subdued Nature to such lowness but his unkind daughters. . . . Judicious punishment! 'Twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters."

-Lear iii. 4.

BLAMING Oneself Over-much.

"I love a confessing modesty, I hate an accusing one." -De Aug. vi. 3 (Antitheta).

To this, James Spedding appends this foot-note: "Amo confitentem verecundium, accusautun odi. I do not understand this sentence.-J. S." The following passage seems to illustrate this kind of overstrained and ungenuine self-accusation :

Mal.: "It is myself I mean; in whom I know
All the particulars of vice so grafted,

That when they shall be opened, black Macbeth
Will seem as pure as snow; and the poor state
Esteem him as a lamb, by being compared

With my confineless harms . . . I grant him bloody,

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name; but there's no bottom, none,

In my voluptuousness," &c.

-See Macb. iv. 3, 45-131, and Ham. iii. 1, quoted Ante.

BOLDNESS a Better Quality in a Follower than a Leader.

"Boldness is the pioneer of folly, . . . confidence is the mistress of fools, and the sport of wise men.”—De Aug. vi. 3 (Antitheta).

"Boldness is ever blind; for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences: therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so that the right use of bold persons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds under the directions of others; for in counsel it is good to see dangers, and in execution not to see them except they be very great."-Ess. of Boldness.

(See of the counsei held by the Archbishop of York, and other lords opposed to the king, as to their dangers in execution of their plans.-2 Hen. IV. i. 3, 1—20).

L. Bard.: "My judgment is, we should not step too far,
For in a theme so bloody-fac'd as this,
Conjecture, expectation, and surmise

Of aids uncertain, should not be admitted."
Arch. Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for, indeed,
It was young Hotspur's case at Shrewsbury."
L. Bard.: "It was, my lord; who lin'd himself with hope,
Eating the air on promise of supply,
And so, with great imagination,

.

Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,
And winking, leapt into destruction."

-2 Hen. IV. i. 3.

"You take a precipice for no leap of danger,

And woo your own destruction."-2 Hen. VIII. v. 1.

BOLDNESS Breaks Promises.

"Boldness. . . hath done wonders in popular states; but with Senates and Princes less: and ever, more upon the first entrance of persons into action than soon after, for boldness is an ill keeper of promise."-Ess. of Boldness.

Blunt: "I come with gracious offers from the King
Hotspur: "The king is kind; and well we know the king
Knows at what time to promise, when to pay.
My father, and my uncle, and myself
Did give him that same royalty he wears;
And when he was not six-and-twenty strong,
Sick in the world's regard, wretched, and low-
A poor, unminded outlaw sneaking home-
My father gave him welcome to the shore;
And when he heard him swear and vow to God,
He came but to be Duke of Lancaster

My father, in kind heart and pity mov'd,
Swore him assistance, and performed it too.
Now, when the lords and barons of the realm
Perceived Northumberland did lean to him,

Compare "Boldness is an ill keeper of promises."-Ess. of Boldness.

The more and less came in with cap and knee

. . . Proffered him their oaths . . followed him,
Even at his heels in golden multitudes.

He presently, as greatness knows itself,
Steps me a little higher than his vow

Made to my father when his blood was poor," &c.
-See 1 Hen. IV. iv. 3, 30—-114.

BOLDNESS, or Rash Fearlessness, Senseless.

"Boldness is dulness of the sense joined with malice of the will."-De Aug. vi. 3 (Antitheta).

Duke: "How seems he touched?"

Prov.: "A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully, but as a drunken sleeper: careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, and to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal," &c.-M. M. iv. 2.

2 Murderer:

"I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Have so incens'd that I am reckless what I do
To spite the world."

1 Murderer:

So weary

"And I another,

with disasters, tugg'd with fortune,
That I would set my life on any chance
To mend it, or be rid on't."-Macb. iii. 1.

BOLDNESS, Reckless, is Ignorance.

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Wonderful like (to the case of folly) is the case of boldness in civil business. What first? Boldness. What second and third? Boldness. And yet boldness. is a child of ignorance and baseness, far superior to other parts (or qualities). But nevertheless it doth fascinate, and bind hand and foot those that are shallow in judgment or weak in courage (which are the greatest part); yea, and prevaileth with wise men at weak times."Ess. of Boldness.