For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little.

K. Henry VIII. Act iv. Sc. 2.

And the churlish Apemantus, in Timon of Athens, philosophizes for once to some purpose when he

says:

Best state, contentless,

Hath a distracted and most wretched being,

Worse than the worst, content.

Act iv. Sc. 3.

In other words, as the old lady in attendance upon Anne Bullen testifies, in King Henry VIII.,

Our content

Is our best having:

i. e. our best possession.

This was spoken in

answer to the reflection of Anne, which her own subsequent fate so fully verified :

Verily,

I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.

Act ii. Sc. 3.

See Jeremiah xlv. 5; and compare again Othello :

Poor and content, is rich, and rich enough.

Act iii. Sc. 3.

In this same play we meet also with the rule, which we have so much need to bear in mind, if the pleasures of life are to be wisely and innocently enjoyed :

Let's teach ourselves that honourable stop,
Not to out-sport discretion—

Act ii. Sc. 3.

a rule which may remind us of the exhortation of S. Paul:

Let your moderation be known unto all men.

Phil. iv. 5.

But to come back now to King Henry VI. In an earlier part of the play before quoted, and on the very day of the battle of Towton, which established his antagonist Edward on the throne, and while the fight was raging in the distance, we hear that pious but feeble-minded prince thus moralizing:

Here on this molehill will I sit me down.
To whom God will, there be the victory.

Would I were dead! if God's good will were so;

For what is in this world, but grief and woe?

O God! methinks it were a happy life,

To be no better than a homely swain:

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly point by point.

So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

Ah! what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?
O! yes it doth; a thousand times it doth.
And to conclude-the shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of a leather bottle,

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
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. Not only is it true

They that stand high have many blasts to shake them,
And when they fall they dash themselves to pieces ;—
King Richard III. Act i. Sc. 3.

* See Eccles. v. 12, and compare in K. Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 1, the King's soliloquy beginning Upon the King,' &c.

but-and this is the more important consideration to the Christian's mind:

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds.

King Henry IV. 2nd Part, Act iv. Sc. 4.

It is, moreover, in a lowly and retired station of life that we are led to find,' as the exiled Duke testifies in As you like it, Act ii. Sc. 1,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Hence 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 mean.' Act i. Sc. 2. And the blinded Gloster, in King

Lear, confesses :—

I stumbled when I saw.

Full oft 'tis seen,

Our means + secure us; and our mere defects

Prove our commodities.

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

Act iv. Sc. I.

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 (see above, p. 42), and then 'means ' will be opposed to 'defects," and signify the things we have, our commodities,' and in Gloster's

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;

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 boney from the weed,
And make a moral of the devil himself.

K. Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 1. On a former occasion the same king had taught

us:

Act iii. Sc. 1.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; according to the well-known Apostolic precept that

case, his sight. We may 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. And the similar use of niggard' in Julius Cæsar, Act iv. Sc. 3. I am surprised that Bishop 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.