Like Frederic the Great before his first Silesian war,
the future conqueror of Agincourt has practically made up his mind before
he seeks to find as good reason or as plausible excuse as were likewise
to suffice the future conqueror of Rosbach. In a word, Henry is
doubtless not the man, as old Auchindrane expresses it in the noble and
strangely neglected tragedy which bears solitary but sufficient witness
to the actual dramatic faculty of Sir Walter Scott's genius, to do the
devil's work without his wages; but neither is he, on the like
unprofitable terms, by any manner of means the man to do God's. No
completer incarnation could be shown us of the militant
Englishman--_Anglais pur sang_; but it is not only, as some have seemed
to think, with the highest, the purest, the noblest quality of English
character that his just and far-seeing creator has endowed him. The
godlike equity of Shakespeare's judgment, his implacable and impeccable
righteousness of instinct and of insight, was too deeply ingrained in the
very core of his genius to be perverted by any provincial or
pseudo-patriotic prepossessions; his patriotism was too national to be
provincial.
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