inspected only by those whom he commanded, it is hard if his own officers and servants should not see as much ill in it as other men, and be as willing to prevent it; especially when there was no solicitation used to have it acted.  It is known that noble person,[13] to whom it was referred, is a severe critic on good sense, decency, and morality; and I can assure the world, that the rules of Horace are more familiar to him, than they are to me.  He remembers too well that the vetus comaedia was banished from the Athenian theatre for its too much licence in representing persons, and would never have pardoned it in this or any play.

What opinion Henry III. had of his successor, is evident from the words he spoke upon his deathbed:  “he exhorted the nobility,” says Davila, “to acknowledge the king of Navarre, to whom the kingdom of right belonged; and that they should not stick at the difference of religion; for both the king of Navarre, a man of a sincere noble nature, would in the end return into the bosom of the church, and the pope, being better informed, would receive him into his favour, to prevent the ruin of the whole kingdom.”  I hope I shall not need in this quotation to defend myself, as if it were my opinion, that the pope has any right to dispose of kingdoms; my meaning is evident, that the king’s judgment of his brother-in-law, was the same which I have copied; and I must farther add from Davila, that the arguments I have used in defence of that succession were chiefly drawn from the king’s answer to the deputies, as they may be seen more at large in pages 730, and 731, of the first edition of that history in English.  There the three estates, to the wonder of all men, jointly concurred in cutting off the succession; the clergy, who were managed by the archbishop of Lyons and cardinal of Guise, were the first who promoted it; and the commons and nobility afterwards consented, as referring themselves, says our author, to the clergy; so that there was only the king to stand in the gap; and he by artifice diverted that storm which was breaking upon posterity.

The crown was then reduced to the lowest ebb of its authority; and the king, in a manner, stood single, and yet preserved his negative entire; but if the clergy and nobility had been on his part of the balance, it might reasonably be supposed, that the meeting of those estates at Blois had healed the breaches of the nation, and not forced him to the ratio ultima regum, which is never to be praised, nor is it here, but only excused as the last result of his necessity.  As for the parallel betwixt the king of Navarre, and any other prince now living, what likeness the God of Nature, and the descent of virtues in the same channel have produced, is evident; I have only to say, that the nation certainly is happy, where the royal virtues of the progenitors are derived on their descendants.[14]