has given a strong proof both of his delicacy and his judgment.

If we also call to mind that in this play Katherine is properly the
heroine, and exhibited from first to last as the very "queen of earthly
queens;" that the whole interest is thrown round her and Wolsey--the one
the injured rival, the other the enemy of Anna Bullen--and that it was
written in the reign and for the court of Elizabeth, we shall yet
farther appreciate the moral greatness of the poet's mind, which
disdained to sacrifice justice and the truth of nature to any
time-serving expediency.

Schlegel observes somewhere, that in the literal accuracy and apparent
artlessness with which Shakspeare has adapted some of the events and
characters of history to his dramatic purposes, he has shown equally his
genius and his wisdom. This, like most of Schlegel's remarks, is
profound and true; and in this respect Katherine of Arragon may rank as
the triumph of Shakspeare's genius and his wisdom. There is nothing in
the whole range of poetical fiction in any respect resembling or
approaching her; there is nothing comparable, I suppose, but Katherine's
own portrait by Holbein, which, equally true to the life, is yet as far
inferior as Katherine's person was inferior to her mind. Not only has
Shakspeare given us here a delineation as faithful as it is beautiful,
of a peculiar modification of character; but he has bequeathed us a
precious moral lesson in this proof that virtue alone,--(by which I mean
here the union of truth or conscience with benevolent affection--the
one the highest law, the other the purest impulse of the soul,)--that
such virtue is a sufficient source of the deepest pathos and power with
out any mixture of foreign or external ornament: for who but Shakspeare
would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of tragedy, stripped
her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual
sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding
intellect; and without any appeal to our imagination, without any
violation of historical truth, or any sacrifices of the other dramatic
personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle
alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and
elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our
nature!

The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by
_truth_. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or it