Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/213

Rh which they find it useful to assert. How different were these noble knights and "barons bold" from their more refined descendants in the present day, who instead of deciding questions of right by brute force, refer every thing to convenience, fashion, and good breeding! In point of any abstract love of truth or justice, they are just the same now that they were then.

The characters of old John of Gaunt and of his brother York, uncles to the King, the one stern and foreboding, the other honest, good-natured, doing all for the best, and therefore doing nothing, are well kept up. The speech of the former, in praise of England, is one of the most eloquent that ever was penned. We should perhaps hardly be disposed to feed the pampered egotism of our countrymen by quoting this description, were it not that the conclusion of it (which looks prophetic) may qualify any improper degree of exultation.

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-Paradise, This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall (Or as a moat defensive to a house) Against the envy of less happy lands: This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,