Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/216

186 touches of pathos are his wish "O that I were a mockery king of snow to melt away before the sun of Bolingbroke," and the incident of the poor groom who comes to visit him in prison, and tells him how "it yearned his heart that Bolingbroke upon his coronation day rode on Roan Barbary." We shall have occasion to return hereafter to the character of Richard II. in speaking of Henry VI. There is only one passage more, the description of his entrance into London with Bolingbroke, which we should like to quote here, if it had not been so used and worn out, so thumbed and got by rote, so praised and painted; but its beauty surmounts all these considerations.

"Duchess. My lord, you told me you would tell the rest, When weeping made you break the story off Of our two cousins coming into London. York. Where did I leave? Duchess. At that sad stop, my lord, Where rude misgovern'd hands, from window tops, Threw dust and rubbish on king Richard's head. York. Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke, Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed, Which his aspiring rider seem'd to know, With slow, but stately pace, kept on his course, While all tongues cried—God save thee, Bolingbroke! You would have thought the very windows spake, So many greedy looks of young and old Through casements darted their desiring eyes Upon his visage; and that all the walls, With painted imag'ry, had said at once—