What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!”
In that scene of unparalleled beauty, tenderness, and simplicity, in which there is related to Queen Katharine the death of “the great child of honour,” as she terms him, Cardinal Wolsey (Henry VIII., act iv. sc. 2, l. 27, vol. vi. p. 87), Griffith describes him as,—
“Full of repentance,
Continual meditations, tears and sorrows,
He gave his honours to the world again,
His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.”
And just afterwards (l. 44), when the Queen had been speaking with some asperity of the Cardinal’s greater faults, Griffith remonstrates,—
“Noble Madam,
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water. May it please your highness