Upon your head, is nothing but heart's sorrow,
And a clear life ensuing.

Act iii. Sc. 3.

Let us now see how our poet teaches that repentance cannot be effectual-in other words, that there can be no forgiveness-without confession, and without amendment, testified by 'restitution and satisfaction (to man), according to the uttermost of our power, for all injuries and wrongs' that we have done. The former, confession, is prescribed directly in Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4 (quoted above, p. 117, note), and indirectly in King Lear, Act i. Sc. 1 :

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides;

that is, as we read in the Book of Proverbs, xxviii. 13:

He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

In regard to the latter, viz., amendment and satisfaction, nothing could be fuller, or better for the purpose, than the well-known speech of the king, in Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 3

What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,

But to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in Prayer, but this two-fold force,—
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,

Or pardoned, being down?
My fault is past. But, O!

* See Ps. li. 7; Isaiah i. 18.

Then I'll look up.+ what form of prayer

+ See below, p. 179.

Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder !—
That cannot be; since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardoned, and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 'tis seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above:
There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what Repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?

that is, as Johnson has very properly explained it, what can repentance do for a man that cannot be penitent, for a man who has only part of penitencedistress of conscience-without the other part, resolution of amendment?

Shakspeare has been equally explicit in teaching the further lesson, that we must be 'ready to forgive others who have offended us, as we would have forgiveness of our offences at God's hand'-a lesson with which we are familiar from the lips of our Blessed Lord Himself. I allude to the speech of Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, which has been already † noticed:

We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

Act iv. Sc. I.

* See above, p. 17.

† See above, p. 110; and below, p. 217.

The same is implied in the answer of Bolingbroke to the Duchess of York, interceding for the pardon of

her son :

Bol. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.
Duch. O happy 'vantage of a kneeling knee!

King Richard II., Act v. Sc. 3.

Also, in the words of the Duke of Buckingham when led to execution, addressing Sir T. Lovell :—

I as free forgive you,'

As I would be forgiven.

(See also below, p. 214.)

King Henry VIII., Act ii. Sc. 1.

And hence it follows, or ought to follow, as we read in the Two Gentlemen of Verona :

Who by repentance is not satisfied

Is not of heaven, nor earth; for these are pleased;
By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased.

Act v. Sc. 4.

Not, however, for its own sake. This is beautifully set forth, though not without a tincture of Romish doctrine, which was appropriate and necessary under the circumstances of the person and of the time, in a speech of the pious King Henry V. before the battle of Agincourt:

O God of battles, steel my soldiers' hearts!

Possess them not with fear! Take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them! Not to-day, O Lord,

O not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred new ;

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood.
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Still sing for Richard's soul. More will I do:
Tho' all that I can do is nothing worth;
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.

King Henry V., Act iv. Sc. I.

These last lines have given rise to much discussion and difference of opinion among the critics. I am inclined to accept Dr. Johnson's explanation, as correctly representing what Shakspeare (who, in his affection for this good king, was willing to divest his Romanism of an unscriptural tendency, as far as possible) meant to convey. 'I do all this,' says the King, though all that I can do is nothing worth, is so far from an adequate expiation of the crime, that Penitence comes after all imploring pardon, both for the crime and the expiation.'

It is in the spirit of a true penitent that, at the commencement of the same scene, the king had spoken of the purifying effect of hardships and distresses-borne after 'example' of holy men who have gone before us, or are still alive-and had desired opportunity for solitary meditation :—

'Tis good for men to love their present pains
Upon example; so the spirit is eas'd:

And, when the mind is quickened, out of doubt,
The organs, tho' defunct and dead before,

Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move

With casted slough, and fresh legerity.

I and my bosom must debate awhile,
And then I would no other company.

It only remains to point out how fully our poet recognized that while repentance may come too late, or may be unreal, judicial blindness and infatuation are the sure portion of the impenitent. It is King Lear who exclaims :

Woe, that too late repents;

Act i. Sc. 4.

And it is (as my

i.e., woe is to him that does so. reader perhaps will scarcely need to be reminded) Sir John Falstaff who makes merriment in teaching a lesson, which is, however, a very solemn one-and no less needful than solemn-viz., that we are too apt to make our repentance an easy thing, if not a matter of renewed self-indulgence. The passage to be quoted is in the dialogue with the Chief Justice, King Henry IV., 2nd Part, Act i. Sc. 2 :

For the box o' the ear the prince gave you-he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it; and the young lion repents: marry, not in sackcloth and ashes; but in new silk and old sack.

It is also a sensualist, but a sensualist of a very different class, who thus moralizes upon the consequences of a vicious and impenitent course. The words are in every way worthy of Mark Antony :

When we in our viciousness grow hard,