ory of Fair Rosamond, as far as Elinor is concerned, is a mere
invention of some ballad-maker of later times.

[91] _Vide_ Mezerai.

[92] When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the extreme
point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the little Island of Nisida,
and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lazaretta which now deforms
it: deforms it, however, to the fancy only, for the building itself, as
it rises from amid the vines, the cypresses and fig-trees which embosom
it, looks beautiful at a distance.

[93] "The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster," in two
parts, supposed by Malone to have been written about 1590.

[94] I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc,
as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, because I do not in
my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in
representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half
sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and
ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and
common sense, are equally violated. Schiller has treated the character
nobly: but in making Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love,
instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious
error in judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madame de
Stael's defence of him on this particular point. There was no occasion
for this deviation from the truth of things, and from the dignity and
spotless purity of the character. This young enthusiast, with her
religious reveries, her simplicity, her heroism, her melancholy, her
sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing in all her
exploits, (for though she so often led the van of battle unshrinking,
while death was all around her, she never struck a blow, nor stained her
consecrated sword with blood,--another point in which Schiller has
wronged her,) this heroine and martyr, over whose last moments we shed
burning tears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated as a
Dramatic character, and I know but one person capable of doing this.

[95] See Henry VI. Part III. Act. iii. sc. 3--

QUEEN MARGARET.

Warwick, these words have turned my hate to love,--
And I forgive and quite forget old faults,
And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.

[96] Horace Walpole observes, that "it is evident from the conduct of
Shakspeare, that