and Holinshed’s huge black-letter folios in Queen Elizabeth’s time with as much interest as they do Macaulay’s or Prescott’s elegant octavos in the reign of her successor, Victoria.  Shakespeare drew again and again upon the former for the material of his historical plays; and in writing “Henry VIII.,” he adopted often the very language of the Chronicler.  The well-known description of Wolsey, which he puts into the mouth of Queen Katherine,—­

  “He was a man
  Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking
  Himself with princes; one that by suggestion
  Tith’d all the kingdom:  Simony was fair play: 
  His own opinion was his law:  I’ the presence
  He would say untruths; and be ever double,
  Both in his words and meaning; He was never,
  But where he meant to ruin, pitiful: 
  His promises were, as he then was, mighty;
  But his performance, as he is now, nothing: 
  Of his own body he was ill, and gave
  The clergy ill example,”—­

is little more than the following paragraph from Holinshed put into verse:—­

“This cardinal! (as you may perceive in this storie) was of a great stomach, for he compted himselfe equall with princes, and by craftie suggestion gat into his hands innumerable treasure:  he forced little on simonie, [i.e., regarded it as of little consequence,] and was not pittifull, and stood affectionate in his owne opinion:  in open presence he would lie and saie untruth, and was double both in speach and meaning:  he would promise much and performe little:  he was vicious of his bodie, and gave the clergie evill example.”—­Ed. 1587, vol. iii. p. 622.

Turning back from the page on which the Chronicler comments upon the life of the dead prime-minister, to that on which he records his fall, we find these passages:—­

“In the meane time, the king, being informed that all those things that the cardinall had doone by his power legatine within this realme were in the case of the premunire and provision, caused his attornie, Christopher Hales, to sue out a writ of premunire against him. ...After this in the king’s bench his matter for the premunire being called upon, two atturneis which he had authorised by his warrant, signed with his owne hand, confessed the action, and so had judgement to forfeit all his lands, tenements, goods, and cattels, and to be out of the king’s protection.”—­Ib. p. 909.

If the reader will look back at the passage touching the premunire, quoted above, he will see that these few lines from Raphael Holinshed are somewhat fatal to an argument in favor of Shakespeare’s “legal acquirements,” in so far as it rests in any degree upon the use of terms or the knowledge displayed in that passage.  Shakespeare and Drayton are here in the same boat, though “not with the same sculls.”

Before we shelve Holinshed,—­for the good Raphael’s folios are like Falstaff in size, if not in wit, and, when once laid flat-long, require levers to set them up on end again,—­let us see if he cannot help us to account for more of the “legalisms” that our Lord Chief Justice and our barrister have “smelt out” in Shakespeare’s historical plays.  Mr. Rushton quotes the following passages from “Richard II.":—­