Page:William Hazlitt - Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817).djvu/250

220 means of gratifying his pride and luxury; Henry regards it only as a means of doing right, and is less desirous of the advantages to be derived from possessing it than afraid of exercising it wrong. In knighting a young soldier, he gives him ghostly advice—

Richard II. in the first speeches of the play betrays his real character. In the first alarm of his pride, on hearing of Bolingbroke's rebellion, before his presumption has met with any check, he exclaims—

Yet, notwithstanding this royal confession of faith, on the very first news of actual disaster,