Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment.’
Rubens, if he had painted it, would not have improved upon this simile.
The conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely, relating to the sudden change in the manners of Henry V. is among the well-known Beauties of Shakespear. It is indeed admirable both for strength and grace. It has sometimes occurred to us that Shakespear, in describing ‘the reformation’ of the Prince, might have had an eye to himself—
‘Which is a wonder how his grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain,
His companies unletter’d, rude and shallow,
His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration