CHAPTER XVI.
story of prince henry and the chief justice. — first found in the work of sir thomas elyot, published nearly a century and a half subsequently to the supposed transaction. — sir john hawkins hall — hume. — no allusion to the circumstance in the early chroniclers. — dispute as to the judge. — various claimants of the distinction. — gascoyne — hankford — hody — markham. — some interesting particulars with regard to gascoyne, lately discovered and verified. — improbability of the entire story.
In a little work, not long since published, intended to interest the rising generation in the history of their own country, the preface assigns as the author's reason for not coming down later than the Revolution of 1689, "that, from that period, history becomes too distinct and important to be trifled with." The doctrine involved in the position, which is implied here, that the previous history of our country may be trifled with, is so dangerous to the cause of truth, that we may well believe the sentiment to have fallen from the pen of the author unadvisedly. It is, however, unhappily a principle on which too many, in works of far higher stamp and graver moment, have justified themselves in substituting their own theories, and hypotheses, and descriptive scenes, for the unbending strictness of fact, thus sapping the foundation of all confidence in history. It is not the poet only, and the fascinating author of historical romances, who have thus "trifled with history;" our annalists and chroniclers, our lawyers and moralists, often, no doubt unwittingly, certainly unscrupulously, have countenanced and aided the same pernicious practice. It is frequently curious and amusing to trace the various successive gradations, beginning with surmise, and proceeding through probability onward to positive assertion, each writer borrowing from his predecessor; and then in turn, from his own filling-up of the outline, furnishing somewhat more for another, who supplies at length the whole historical portrait, complete in all its form and colouring. Had the author above referred to not taken to himself practically in the body of his work the indulgence which his latitudinarian principle recognizes in the preface, he would not have so distorted facts in his "story of Madcap Harry and the Old Judge," for the purpose of making a pretty consistent tale,—consistent with itself, but not with the truth of history,—to amuse children in their earliest days, at the risk of misleading them, and giving them a wrong bias through their lives.
In examining the alleged fact of Henry's violence and insults exhibited in a court of justice, there is much greater difficulty than may generally be supposed, in consequence of the entire silence of all contemporary annalists and chroniclers. Not one word occurs asserting it; no allusion to the circumstance whatever is found previously to the reign of Henry VIII, nearly a century and a half after Henry V.'s accession. Hume[325] asserts it on the authority of Hall; and Hall has exaggerated the alleged facts most egregiously, and most unjustifiably. Whether the fact took place, and, if it did, what were the time, the place, and the circumstances, the reader must judge for himself. The present treatise professes only to bring together the evidences on all sides fairly.
It has been already stated that no historian or chronicler, (whose work is now in existence and known,) for nearly one hundred and fifty years, has ever alluded to the transaction. The first writer in whom it is found is Sir Thomas Elliott (or Elyot), who, in a work called The Governour, dedicated to Henry VIII. about the year 1534, thus particularizes the occurrence. Elyot gives no reference to his authority.
"The most renowned Prince, King Henry V. late King of England, during the life of his father, was noted to be fierce and of wanton courage. It happened that one of his servants, whom he well favoured, was, for felony by him committed, arraigned at the King's Bench. Whereof the Prince being advertised, and incensed by light persons about him, in furious rage came hastily to the bar, where his servant stood as a prisoner, and commanded him to be ungyved and set at liberty: whereat all men were abashed, reserved [except] the Chief Justice, who humbly exhorted the Prince to be contented that his servant might be ordered according to the ancient laws of this realm; or, if he would have him saved from the rigour of the laws, that he should obtain, if he might, from the King his father his gracious pardon, whereby no law or justice should be derogate. With which answer the Prince nothing appeased, but rather more inflamed, endeavoured himself to take away his servant. The Judge, considering the perilous example and inconvenience that might thereby issue, with a valiant spirit and courage commanded the Prince upon his allegiance to leave the prisoner and depart his way. With which commandment the Prince being set all in a fury, all chafed and in a terrible manner came up to the place of judgment, men thinking that he would have slain the Judge, or have done to him some damage; but the Judge, sitting still without moving, declaring the majesty of the King's place of judgment, and with an assured and bold countenance, had to the Prince these words following: 'Sir, remember yourself: I keep here the place of the King your sovereign lord and father, to whom ye owe double obedience; wherefore eftsoons in his name I charge you desist of your wilfulness and unlawful enterprise, and from henceforth give good example to those which hereafter shall be your proper subjects. And now, for your contempt and disobedience, go you to the prison of the King's Bench, whereunto I commit you; and remain ye there prisoner until the pleasure of the King your father be further known.' With which words being abashed, and also wondering at the marvellous gravity of that worshipful Justice, the noble Prince laying his weapon apart, doing reverence, departed; and went to the King's Bench, as he was commanded. Whereat his servants disdaining, came and showed the King all the whole affair. Whereat he awhile studying, after as a man all ravished with gladness, holding his hands and eyes up towards heaven abraided, saying with a loud voice, 'O merciful God, how much am I above other men bound to your infinite goodness, specially that ye have given me a Judge who feareth not to minister justice, and also a son who can suffer semblably, and obey justice!'"
Sir John Hawkins,[326] when he cites this passage as evidence of an ebullition of wanton insolence and unrestrained impetuosity, in illustration of the character of Henry, to whom he ascribes the unjustifiable suppression of an act of parliament, lays himself open to blame in more points than one. In the first place, he ought not, as regards the suppression of an act of parliament, to have charged upon Henry, as a self-willed act, what, to say the very least, was equally the act of the whole Privy Council; and then he ought not to have endeavoured to brand him with disgrace on the testimony of a witness who wrote nearly a century and a half after the asserted event.
Hall, who wrote only at the commencement of the reign of Edward VI, (the first edition of his work having appeared in 1548,) thus states the charge against Henry:
"For imprisonment of one[327] of his wanton mates and unthrifty playfaires, he strake the Chief Justice with his fist on his face; for which offence he was not only committed to streight prison, but also of his father put out of the Privy Council and banished the court, and his brother Thomas Duke of Clarence elected president of the King's counsail, to his great displeasure and open reproach."
Perhaps it might be argued without unfairness, that the great variation and discrepancy in the traditions respecting this affair in the Prince's life would induce us to believe that, at all events, something of the kind actually took place; that, without some foundation in real fact, so extraordinary a transaction could never have been invented; that, whatever difficulty we may find in filling up the outline, the broad reality of an insolent and violent bearing shown by the Prince to a Judge on the bench ought to be admitted; and that any variation as to the person of the Judge, or the court over which he presided, or the time at which the incident might have taken place, or the degree of insult and personal violence exhibited, is unessential, and proves only the inaccuracy in detail of various accounts, all of which combine, independently of those minute circumstances, to establish the main point. To this argument it might also be added, that the very circumstance of an inspection of original documents presenting names of real living persons, identically the same with those which Shakspeare has given to the minor heroes of his drama, (such as Bardolf, Pistol, &c.) intimates a knowledge on his part of the transactions of those times which entitles him to a higher degree of credit, as seeming to imply that he might have had recourse to documents which are now lost:
"Sir, Here comes the nobleman who committed the Prince for striking him about Bardolf."
2 Hen. IV.act. i.
On the other side, it might with equal, perhaps with greater fairness be argued, that this is not one of those cases in which various independent authorities bear separate testimony to one important fact; whilst minor discrepancies as to time and place, and persons and circumstances, tend only to confirm the testimony, placing the authority above suspicion, and exempting the case from all idea of conspiring witnesses. Such arguments are then only sound when the witnesses are contemporary with the fact, or live soon after its alleged date. But when chroniclers and biographers, who write immediately of the times and of the life of the person charged, recording circumstances far less important and characteristic, omit all mention whatever of an event which must have been notorious to all,—but of which no trace whatever can be found, nor any allusion directly or indirectly to it is discovered, for more than a century and a quarter after the death of the accused,—the investigator appears to be justified in requiring some auxiliary evidence; at all events, such discrepancies cease to contribute the alleged aid to the establishment of the main fact. When, for example, the Chronicle of London records an affray in East-Cheap between the townsmen and the Princes,[328] mentioning by name Thomas and John, and registers the journeys of John of Gaunt, the execution of Rhys Duy, the Welshman, with unnumbered events, far less important and notorious than must have been the commitment to prison of the heir-apparent of the throne, and on that circumstance is altogether silent, not having the slightest allusion to anything of the kind; and when those biographers who lived and wrote nearest to the time (such as Elmham, Livius, Otterbourne, Hardyng, Walsingham, all of whom speak more or less strongly of his irregularities and youthful vices, and subsequent reformation,) never allude to any story of the sort, and apparently had no knowledge even of any tradition respecting it; the charge either of partiality or incredulity does not seem to lie at the door of any one who might doubt the reality of the whole. It is not as though the deed were regarded as having fixed an indelible stain on the Prince's memory, and therefore his partial biographers would gladly have buried it in oblivion. Sir Thomas Elyot (and his seems to have been the general opinion) appears to have considered the issue of the transaction as far more redounding to the Prince's honour, than its progress stamped him with disgrace; and he attracts the reader's especial attention to it by a marginal note: "A good Judge, a good Prince, a good King." It is curious to observe the progress of this story. Sir Thomas Elyot, the first in point of time who states it, makes no mention either "of the blow on the Chief Justice's face with his fist," or the removal of the Prince from the council, and the substitution of his brother. Hall, on whom Hume builds, adds both those facts; and then Hume in his turn proceeds to affirm that his father, during the latter years of his life, had excluded him from all share in public business. Had Hume examined the original documents for himself, instead of building only upon "printed accounts" of later date by more than a century, he could not have fallen into this error. But a refutation of this mistake, only incidental to our present question, belonged to another part of this work, where it may be found in its chronological order. To the ancillary argument drawn from the names of Henry's supposed reckless companions in Shakspeare occurring in the records of real history, it may be answered, that if that fact proved anything, it proves too much. If, indeed, men of those names were found in Henry's company, as Prince of Wales, either in London, in Wales, or in Calais, and were afterwards lost sight of, or seen only in obscurity and separate from him, that fact might be regarded as confirmatory of the popular tradition. But the reality is otherwise. The names of Pistol and Bardolf[329] are found among those who accompanied the King in his careers of victory in France: and in the very year before Henry's death (a fact hitherto unnoticed by historians) William Bardolf was one of the Barons of the Cinque Ports, and Lieutenant of Calais; a post which he appears to have held for some years with great credit, and enjoying the royal favour and confidence. William Bardolf had been employed ten years before by Henry IV, as one of the commissioners appointed to treat with the Duke of Burgundy.[330]
It is a curious fact, that the magnanimous conduct of the Judge, tending so much to his renown, has induced various families and biographers to challenge the credit of the affair for their friends. No less than four claimants require us to examine their pretensions. Shakspeare and the world at large have consented to give the honour to Gascoyne; whilst the friends of Markham, Hankford, and Hody, have each in their turn disputed the palm with him. Of these four claimants two are reckoned among the "worthies of Devon." With regard to Sir John Hody, "to whom some of our countrymen (says Mr. Prince) would ascribe the honour," we need only add the sentence with which this antiquary sets aside his claim,—"But this cannot be, for that he was not a judge until thirty years afterwards."
The claims of Hankford to this distinction rest on the authority of Risdon, the Devon antiquary, who began his work in 1605, and did not finish it till 1630. Mr. Prince would add the authority of Baker's Chronicle; but, were Baker's authority of any value, he does not mention the name of the Judge; and, by specifying that the transaction took place at the King's Bench bar, and that the Prince was committed to the Fleet, he shows that no dependence is to be placed on his authority. If it took place at the King's Bench bar, the King's Bench prison would have received the royal culprit; and if, as Risdon says, the Judge's sentence was, "I command you, prisoner, to the King's Bench," not Hankford, but Gascoyne, was the Judge. Hankford was not appointed to the King's Bench before March 29th, 1 Henry V, some days after the supposed culprit had ascended the throne.[331]
The claim of Judge Markham, it is presumed, is supported only by the testimony of an ancient manuscript preserved in his family. He was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 20 Richard II. to 9 Henry IV.[332] Some colour, however, is given to this claim by the vague tradition that Prince Henry was committed to the Fleet; to which prison alone the Judges of the Common Pleas commit their prisoners. But if he was the Judge who committed the Prince, and if he died in the 9th of Henry IV,[333] the allegation that the Prince was then dismissed from the council falls to the ground; for at that time, and long after, he seems to have been in the very zenith of his power.
If, then, Prince Henry was ever guilty of the gross insult and violence in a court of justice, and the firm, intrepid Judge, to uphold and vindicate the majesty of the law, committed him to prison for the offence, the probabilities preponderate in favour of Gascoyne having been the individual. But this supposition also is not free from difficulties. He was made Chief Justice of the King's Bench[334] 15th November, 2 Henry IV. (1401.) And of his intrepidity[335] in the discharge of that office, we have already mentioned an especial instance at the death of Archbishop Scrope, if what Clemens Maydestone, a contemporary, says, be true. Henry IV, who had the person of the Archbishop in his power, called upon Gascoyne, who was with him, to pass on his prisoner the sentence of death; but, at the risk of losing the King's favour and his own appointment, he positively refused, on the ground of its illegality. The Archbishop, however, was condemned to be beheaded by one Fulthorp, (or, as some say, Fulford,) afterwards a judge, as we have stated in its place. Gascoyne was subsequently sent with Lord Ross, by the council, to the north, as one of those in whom the King was known to have especial confidence, as soon as the news arrived in London of Lord Bardolf's hostile movement; and we find him still continued in the office of Chief Justice, apparently without having incurred the King's displeasure.
No adage is more sound than that which affirms a little learning to be a dangerous thing. More than fifty years ago, the Gentleman's Magazine[336] triumphantly maintained, that, at all events, Shakspeare had deviated from history in bringing Henry V. and Gascoyne together after the Prince's accession, because Gascoyne died in the life-time of Henry IV. This view has generally been acquiesced in, and the powerfully delineated scene of our great dramatist has been pronounced altogether the groundless fiction of an event which could not by possibility have transpired. The whole question turns upon the date of Gascoyne's death. He was buried in Harewood Church in Yorkshire; and Fuller gives the following as his monumental inscription: "Gulielmus Gascoyne, Die Dominica, 17o Decris. 1412, 14 H. IV."—"William Gascoyne [died] on Sunday, December 17th, 1412, in the fourteenth year of Henry IV." If this were correct, there would be an end of the question; but the brass was torn from the tomb during the civil wars, and the copy cannot be verified. The inscription, however, as given by Fuller, is at all events self-contradictory. The 17th of December fell on a Saturday, not on a Sunday, in 1412.
The process of the argument, and the accession of new evidence by which we are now at length enabled to set this point at rest, are very curious. The Author, indeed, confesses himself to have been one of those who were induced, by the documents then before them, to believe that Judge Gascoyne died on Sunday, December 17, 1413, somewhat more than half a year after Henry V.'s accession; and although the late discovery of the Judge's last Will proves that the argument was then sound only so far as it established the fact that he died after Henry's accession, and was unsound in fixing the period of his death at so early a period as December 1413; yet the statement of that argument may perhaps not be altogether uninteresting, whilst it may suggest a valuable caution as to the jealous vigilance with which circumstantial evidence should always be sifted before the conclusions built upon it be admitted.
It was then a fact upon record, that Chief Justice Gascoyne was summoned, on the 22nd March 1413, (the very day after Henry's accession,) to attend the parliament in the May following. When the parliament met, Gascoyne's name does not appear among those who were present; whilst Hankford, his successor, is appointed Trier of Petitions in the room of Gascoyne, and, in the case of a writ of error, brings up as Chief Justice the record from the King's Bench. Hankford's appointment as Chief Justice bears date March 29th, 1413; and he is summoned to attend parliament as Chief Justice in the December following.[337] In the Pell Rolls a payment is recorded, July 7, 1413, of his half-year's fee to "William Gascoyne, late Chief Justice of Lord Henry the King's father." The inference from these facts was undoubtedly conclusive: first, that Gascoyne's death was erroneously referred to December 1412; secondly, that he was alive and Chief Justice when Henry V. came to the throne; thirdly, that he ceased to be Chief Justice within eight days of Henry's accession, somewhere between March 22, and March 29, 1413. It was merely matter of conjecture whether he was too ill to discharge the duties of his station, and resigned; or what other probable cause of his removal existed. The conversation, at all events, which Shakspeare records, might possibly have taken place; though it is a fact, scarcely reconcilable with it, that Henry V. never did renew Gascoyne's appointment,—a proceeding almost invariably adopted on the demise of a sovereign by his successor. Henry V. might have offered to commit into his hand "the unstained sword that he was wont to bear:"—within eight days after Henry IV. had ceased to breathe, Gascoyne had no longer in his hand the staff of justice.
The reason which then induced the persons who argued on these facts to suppose that Fuller had by mistake adopted the date of the year 1412 instead of 1413 was this:—It was very improbable that the words "Die Dominica" should have been introduced by the copyist, if they were not really on the tomb. Hence it was inferred that he died on a Sunday. Now December 17th was on a Sunday in the following year, 1413; and, since the date was in Roman letters, it was thought very probable that the last I had been obliterated in MCCCCXIII. The words, indeed, "14th Henry IV," were also quoted by Fuller: but it was unquestionably more credible that those words formed a marginal note in the reporter's manuscript, and were mere surplusages, than that they should have been allowed a place in the brass scroll of a monument.
Such was the state of our knowledge, and such was the course of our reasoning as to the time of Gascoyne's decease, till within a very short period of the publication of this work. A document, however, has been very lately brought to light on this subject, which supersedes that statement altogether; setting the whole argument in a new point of view, and reading a plain lesson on the care and circumspection with which inferences, however plausible, as to dates and facts, should be admitted. In the present instance, indeed, the conclusion to which we had before arrived, on the question of Gascoyne having survived Henry IV, remains unassailable, or rather, is only still further removed from the possibility of historical doubt; and the whole argument on the vast improbability of Prince Henry having ever offered an insult to the Chief Justice, or of his ever having been committed to prison for any offence of the kind, remains at least equally strong as before. Most persons, perhaps, may consider the degree of improbability to have become still greater. Be this as it may, the facts now placed beyond further controversy as to Gascoyne's death are these. In the Registry of the Court of York the last Will and testament of William Gascoyne has been found recorded. It bears date on the Friday after St. Lucy's Day in the year 1419; and it was proved on the 23rd of December following. In the year 1419, St. Lucy's Day, December 13, was on a Wednesday. The Will was consequently made on Friday the 15th of December, and was proved on the morrow week, Saturday, December 23rd. In the Will, the testator declares that he was weak in body; and the strong probability is that he died on the following Sunday, December 17, 1419.[338] This would accord precisely with Fuller's representation of the scroll on the tomb, "on the Lord's Day, December 17." Whilst the facility of mistaking MCCCCXIX for MCCCCXII, (being the obliteration only of one cross stroke in the last letter,) is even more remarkable than that of the error which on the former supposition was thought probable, from the obliteration of the last letter I in MCCCCXIII.
The Author has had recourse to every means within his reach to assure himself of the genuineness of this document, and to ascertain that the testator was the William Gascoyne[339] who was Chief Justice of the King's Bench. The result is, that not a shadow of any of the doubts which he once jealously entertained, remains on the subject; whilst he gratefully remembers the prompt and satisfactory assistance rendered him by the present Registrar of York. The document must be admitted without reserve.
From these now indisputable facts a thought might perhaps not unnaturally suggest itself to the mind of any one taking only a general view of the whole subject, that some countenance is here given to the prevalent notion that Gascoyne had displeased Henry during the years of his princedom; but that, instead of holding the worthy and intrepid Judge in higher honour, (as tradition tells,) and rewarding him for his noble bearing, on the contrary, the King resented the insult shown to his person, and dismissed him (contrary to the usual practice) from his high judicial station. A fact,[340] however, new (it is presumed) to history, enables or rather compels us to dismiss such a conjecture from our minds. Whatever was the definite cause of Gascoyne's withdrawal from the bench as Chief Justice of England; whether his declining health, or an inclination for retirement and repose after so long[341] and wearisome a discharge of his arduous duties, or the competency[342] of his fortune, induced him to draw back at length from the turmoils of public life, and pass his last days among his own friends and relatives in the privacy of a country residence; certainly he carried with him when he left his court, not the resentment and unkindness, but the most friendly feelings and respect of his new sovereign. By warrant, November 28, 1414, (that is, in the very year after his retirement,) the King grants to "our dear and well-beloved William Gascoyne an allowance of four bucks and does out of the forest of Pontefract for the term of his life."
The sum of the whole matter as to the historical representations of Henry's conduct is this:
Before the year 1534, far more than a century after Henry's death, no allusion whatever is made to any occurrence of the kind in any work, printed or manuscript, now extant and known. Sir Thomas Elyot, who mentions it incidentally as an anecdote, combining the merits "of a good Judge, a good Prince, and a good King," gives no reference to any authority whatever. Subsequently it is reported in detail by Hall, but with much exaggeration on Elyot's narrative. It then not only passed current in our histories, but served as a topic of grave import in our Prince of tragedians, and of burlesque in the broad farces of later and perhaps earlier days than his. The biographers of Henry, though they detail in all their minute particulars many circumstances of his youth, far less important either to his character, or as facts of general and national interest, and who lived, some of them, almost a century nearer the date of the supposed transaction than Elyot, are to a man silent on the subject; not one of them betraying the shadow of suspicion that he was even aware of any rumour or vague tradition of the kind. Such facts as the committal to prison of the heir-apparent, especially such an heir-apparent as Henry (it is presumed), must have been notorious through the metropolis and the whole land, and must have excited a great and general sensation; and yet the Chronicles, though they often surprise us by their minute notice of trifling circumstances, do not contain the slightest intimation that any such affair as this had ever come to the knowledge of those who kept them. They are silent, and their silence seems natural.[343]
On the whole, most persons will probably believe that either Gascoyne, or Hankford, or Hody would upon such evidence, we do not say merely charge the jury for an acquittal, but would, on perusing the depositions, have previously recommended the grand inquest to return "Not a true Bill." Still every reader has the evidence fairly before him, and must decide for himself!
Should any one be disposed to think that questions of this sort might well be left undecided, and that the settlement of them is not worth the trouble and research often required for their thorough investigation, the Author ventures to suspect that, in the generality of instances, such reflections originate in an inexperience of the vast practical moment which facts, the most trifling in themselves, often carry with them in the investigation of the most important questions. Doubtless, the wise man will exercise his discretion in not confounding great things with small; but, on the contrary, in stamping on every thing its own intrinsic and comparative value. Still, in great things and small, (though each in its own weight and measure,) the truth is ever dear for its own sake, and should be for its own sake pursued. And it must never be forgotten, that one truth, in itself perhaps too minute and insignificant for its worth to be felt in the calculation, when probabilities are being estimated, may be a guiding star to other truths of great value, which, without its leading, might have remained neglected and unknown. In itself, a false statement, though generally acquiesced in, may be unimportant; in its consequences, it may be widely and permanently prejudicial to the cause of truth. If viewed abstractedly, it might appear like a cloud in the horizon not larger than a man's hand; but that speck may be the harbinger of wind and tempest. With regard, indeed, to those natural appearances in the sky, the most experienced observer can do nothing towards arresting the progress of the threatened storm; his foresight can only enable him to provide himself a shelter, or hasten him on his journey, "that the rain stop him not." In the case of literary, physical, moral, religious, and historical subjects of inquiry, (or to whatever department of human knowledge our pursuits may be directed,) by rectifying the minutest error we may check the propagation of mischief, and preserve the truth (it may be some momentous practical truth) in its integrity and brightness.
Connected with the subject of this and the preceding chapter, problems of very difficult solution present themselves, a full and comprehensive elucidation of which would involve questions of deep moral and metaphysical interest with regard to the structure, the cultivation and training, the associations and habits of the human mind. Upon the merits of those problems in their various ramifications the Author has no intention to venture; and probably few persons would pronounce unhesitatingly how far on the one hand the facts of past ages (constituting a valuable deposit of especial trust) should be kept religiously distinct from works of fiction; or on the other hand how far the field of history itself is legitimate ground for the imagination in all its excursive ranges to disport upon freely and fearlessly: in a word, how far the practice is justifiable and desirable of bending the realities of historical record to the service of the fancy, and moulding them into the shape best suited to the writer's purpose in developing his plot, perfecting his characters, and exciting a more lively interest in his whole design. Whatever might be the result of such questions fully enucleated, the Author, with his present views, cannot suffer himself to doubt that society is infinitely a gainer in possessing the historical dramas of Shakspeare, and the historical romances of Walter Scott. Instead of putting the moral and intellectual advantages, the improvement and the pleasure with which such extraordinary men have enriched their country and the world in one scale, and jealously weighing them against the erroneous associations which their exhibition of past events has a tendency to impart, a philosophical view of the whole case should seem to encourage us in the full enjoyment of their exquisite treasures; suggesting, however, at the same time, the salutary caution that we should never suffer ourselves to be so influenced by the naturalness and beauty of their poetical creations, as to forego the beneficial exercise of ascertaining from the safest guides the real facts and characters of history.