The ruffian king, of whom one hates to think, was bent on forcing Katherine to concede her rights, and illegitimize her daughter in favour of the offspring of Anna Bullen: she steadily refused, was declared contumacious, and the sentence of divorce pronounced in 1533. Such of her attendants as persisted in paying her the honours due to a queen were driven from her household; those who consented to serve her as princessdowager she refused to admit into her presence; so that she remained unattended, except by a few women, and her gentleman usher, Griffith. During the last eighteen months of her life, she resided at Kimbolton. Her nephew, Charles V., had offered her an asylum and princely treatment; but Katherine, broken in heart and declining in health, was unwilling to drag the spectacle of her misery and degradation into a strange country: she pined in her loneliness, deprived of her daughter, receiving no consolation from the pope, and no redress from

mission by the interference of Anna Bullen:-a piece of vengeance truly feminine in its mixture of sentiment and spitefulness; and every way characteristic of the individual woman.

the emperor. Wounded pride, wronged affection, and a cankering jealousy of the woman preferred to her, (which though it never broke out into unseemly words, is enumerated as one of the causes of her death,) at length wore out a feeble frame. "Thus," says the chronicle, "Queen Katherine fell into her last sickness; and though the king sent to comfort her through Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador, she grew worse and worse; and finding death now coming, she caused a maid attending on her to write to the king to this effect:

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My most dear Lord, King, and Husband; "The hour of my death now approaching, I cannot choose but, out of the love I bear you, advise you of your soul's health, which you ought to prefer before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsover; for which yet you have cast me into many calamities, and yourself into many troubles but I forgive you all, and pray God to do so likewise; for the rest, I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good

father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must intreat you also to respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they being but three, and all my other servants a year's pay besides their due, lest otherwise they be unprovided for: lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.-Farewell!"*

She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would remind the king of her dying request, and urge him to do her this last right.

What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell; for that requires no illustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips, Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness, without injuring their truth and simplicity: the feelings,

*The king is said to have wept on reading this letter, and her body being interred at Peterbro', in the monastery, for honour of her memory it was preserved at the dissolution, and erected into a bishop's see.-Herbert's Life of Henry VIII.

and almost the manner of expression, are Katherine's own. The severe justice with which she draws the character of Wolsey is extremely characteristic; the benign candour with which she listens to the praise of him "whom living she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious enthusiasm!—the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that sad music she called her knell! her awakening from the vision of celestial joy to find herself still on earth

Spirits of peace! where are ye? are ye gone,
And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?

how unspeakably beautiful! And to consummate all in one final touch of truth and nature, we see that consciousness of her own worth and integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and that pride of station for which she had contended through long years, -which had become more dear by opposition, and by the perseverance with which she had asserted it,―remaining the last strong feeling

upon her mind, to the very last hour of ex

istence.

When I am dead, good wench,

Let me be used with honour: strew me over

With maiden flowers, that all the world may know

I was a chaste wife to my grave: embalm me,
Then lay me forth: although unqueen'd, yet like

A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me.

I can no more

In the epilogue to this play,* it is recommended

To the merciful construction of good women,、

For such a one we show'd them:

a

alluding to the character of Queen Katherine. Shakspeare has, in fact placed before us queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and above all, is a good woman; and I repeat, that in doing so, and in trusting for all his effect

* Written, (as the commentators suppose,) not by Shakspeare, but by Ben Jonson.