into the royal family, through that Katharine of Valois, whose courtship is written in the play of Henry V., I will try on the same page to fasten in mind the cause of the great civil wars of York and Lancaster, or of the white and red roses, which desolated England in the heart of the fifteenth century.*

You will recall my having spoken of Chaucer as a favorite in the household of John of Gaunt, and as an inmate also in the household of John's older brother, Lionel. You will remember, too, that Henry IV., son of John of Gaunt, succeeded the hapless and handsome Richard II. on the throne; but his right was disputed, and with a great deal of reason, by the heirs of the older brother, Lionel (who had title of Duke of Clarence). There was not however power and courage enough to contest the claim, until the kingship of young Henry VI.

crowned when an infant- offered opportunity. Thereafter and thereby came the broils, the apprehensions, the doubts, the conspiracies, the battles, which made England one of the worst of places to

*1455 to 1485.

live in all this bitterness between York and Lancaster growing out of the rival claims of the heirs of our old acquaintances Lionel and John of Gaunt, whom we met in the days of Chaucer.

Joan of Arc and Richard III.

If we look for any literary illumination of this period, we shall scarce find it, except we go again to the historic plays of Shakespeare: The career of Henry VI. supplies to him the ground-work for three dramas: the first, dealing with the English armies in France, which, after Henry V.'s death are beaten back and forth by French forces, waked to new bravery under the strange enthusiasm and heroic leadership of Joan of Arc. Of course she comes in for her picture in Shakespeare's story: but he gives us an ignoble one (though not so bad as Voltaire's in the ribald poem of La Pucelle).

No Englishman of that day, or of Shakespeare's day, could do justice to the fiery, Gallic courage, the self-devotion, the religious ennoblement of that earnest, gallant soul who was called the Maid of Orleans. A far better notion of her presence and

power than Shakespeare gave is brought to mind by that recent French painting of Bastien-Lepage

so well known by engraving—which aims to set

forth the vision and the voices that came to her

amid the forest silence and shadows. Amid those shadows she stands. startled a strong, sweet figure of a peasant maiden; stoutly clad and simply; capable of harvest-work with the strongest of her sisterhood; yet not coarse; redeemed through every fibre of body and soul by a light that shines. in her eye, looking dreamily upward; seeing things others see not; hoping things others hope not, and with clenched hand putting emphasis to the purpose—which the hope and the vision kindle; pitying her poor France, and nerved to help hershe did — all the weary and the troublesome days through, till the shameful sacrifice at English hands, on the market-place of Rouen, closed her life and her story.

as

The two closing portions of the Henry VI. dramas relate to home concerns. There is much blood in them and tedium too (if one dare say this), and flashes of wit- a crazy tangle of white and red roses in that English garden-cleared up at last in Shake

speare's own way, when Richard III.* comes, in drama of his own, and crookedness, and Satanry of his own, and laughs his mocking laugh over the corpses he makes of kings and queens and princes; and at last in Bosworth field, upon the borders of Warwickshire and near to the old Roman Watling Street, the wicked hunchback, fighting like a demon, goes down under the sword-thrust of that Henry (VII.) of Richmond, who, as I have said, was grandson to Katharine of Valois, of the coquettish courtship.

No chronicler of them all, commonplace or painstaking as he might be, has so planted the image of the crooked Richard III. in men's minds as Shakespeare though it is to be feared that he used somewhat too much blood in the coloring; and doubtful if the hump-backed king was quite the monster which Garrick, Booth, and Macready have made of him.

*Miss Halsted in her Richard III., chap. viii (following the Historic Doubts of Horace Walpole), makes a kindly attempt to overset the Shakespearean view of Richard's character-in which, however, it must be said that she is only very moderately successful. See also a more recent effort in the same direction by Alfred O. Legge (The Unpopular King, etc. London, 1885).

Caxton and First English Printing.

In the midst of those draggling, dreary, dismal war-times, when no poet lifted his voice in song, when no chronicler who has a worthy name wrote any story of the years, there came into vogue in Europe and in England, a trade-which in its issues had more to do with the life and spread of good literature, than any poet, or any ten poets could accomplish. You will guess at once what the trade was; it was the trade of Printing.

Bosworth field dates in 1485 in the middle of the century (or 1444) John Gutenberg began the printing of a Bible; and a little after, Faust began to dispose of wonderful copies of books, which the royal buyers thought to be manuscripts and Faust did not perhaps undeceive them yet copies were so wonderfully alike one to the other that book lovers were puzzled, and pushed inquiry, and so the truth of the method came out.

In 1477 William Caxton set up the first English printing press-in an old building, close upon Westminster Abbey-a building, which, if tradition is to be trusted, was standing down to near the middle