Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/239

Rh king of "the ill neighbourhood" of the Scot in attacking England when she was attacking France.

It is worth observing that in all these plays, which give an admirable picture of the spirit of the good old times, the moral inference does not at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but on the dignity or meanness of the persons committing them. "The eagle England" has a right "to be in prey," but "the weazel Scot" has none "to come sneaking to her nest," which she has left to pounce upon others. Might was rihgtright [sic], without equivocation or disguise, in that heroic and chivalrous age. The substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among the refinements and abuses of modern philosophy.

A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of subordination in a commonwealth can hardly be conceived than the following:—

"For government, though high and low and lower, Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, Congruing in a full and natural close, Like music. Therefore heaven doth divide The state of man in divers functions, Setting endeavour in continual motion; To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, P