from such a view. Whether, also, there may have
been any secondary allusion to some known event of the day, as X. Z.
supposes, and as is by no means improbable, I cannot say; but I protest
against its being said that the scene referred to is "totally unconnected
with what goes before, and what follows." Antony is the hero of the play;
and this scene shows the culminating point of Antony's fortunes, when his
very successes turn against him.

To return to _Henry VIII._, the compliment to the Queen, to which your
correspondent refers, is, as he very justly observes, brought in in a very
forced manner. This, to my mind, is very strong evidence; otherwise I
should not think it unworthy of Shakspeare. And it still has to be borne in
mind, that he would have had to accommodate his characters and
circumstances to the views of another writer. Shakspeare's spirit was too
catholic, too universal, to have allowed, in a work entirely his own, even
his Wolsey to have made use of the term "a spleeny Lutheran;" yet neither
in the passage in which this expression occurs, nor in the one above
referred to, is the versification characteristic of Fletcher. For my own
part, however, I cannot recognise Shakspeare's spirit in this antagonism of
creeds, which is, perhaps, even more strongly displayed in the prophetic
speech of Cranmer's in the last scene, wherein he says, "God shall be truly
known!" It may be said, that in both these instances the expressions are
true to the characters of Wolsey and Cranmer. It may be so; for both are
wanting in that ideal elevation which Shakspeare never fails to give. That,
with this reservation, he becomes the mouth-piece of each character, is
most true; and a curious instance of the writer's utter forgetfulness of
his assumed character of contemporary with the events he is relating,
occurring in Act. IV. Sc. 2 where Griffiths says--

"He was most princely: ever witness for him
Those twins of learning, that he rais'd in you,
Ipswich and Oxford! _one of which fell with him_,
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;
The other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, _and still so rising_,"--

{319} has no parallel in Shakspeare's works. To John Fletcher, indeed, at
the close of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, these things were known; but
scarcely to the attendant of Queen Katherine, who has but just narrated the
circumstances, then newly happened, of Wolsey's fall. On maturer
cons