a paying
product will not wholly account for the powerfully patriotic strain in
which they were composed. It is not only that the long series stretching
from 'King John' to 'Henry VIII.' pulses from beginning to end with
love of, and pride in, country; it is not only that the poet makes great
Englishmen speak greatly--that, placing them in positions in which
declarations of patriotism are natural and necessary, he makes those
declarations eloquent and thrilling;--it is that he charges all his
passages about England and the English with a passion of enthusiasm
which can be explained only on the hypothesis that he was throwing his
whole heart into the work, and sympathized deeply with the utterances of
his creations. There is, for instance, something more than mere
appropriateness to the character and the occasion in that marvellous
piece of eulogy of which, in 'Richard II.,' John of Gaunt is made the
spokesman. The poet seems unable to hold his admiration within bounds:

'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden--demi-paradise--....
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea,....
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of Royal Kings...
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world'--

on what other country has such magnificent praise been poured out by her
poets? One can see, too, how sincere Shakespeare was in his feelings as
an Englishman by the phrases and the epithets he everywhere bestows upon
his fatherland. There is Chorus's famous description of it in 'Henry V.'
as 'Little body with a mighty heart;' there is the Queen's allusion, in
'Henry VI.,' to its 'blessed shore.' Now it is called 'fair,' now
'fertile,' and now 'happy.' 'Dear mother England,' cries the Bastard in
'King John.' Bolingbroke rejoices that, though banished, he yet can
boast that he is 'a true-born Englishman;' and elsewhere we read of 'our
lusty English,' our 'noble English,' our 'hearts of England's
breed'--Rambures, the Frenchman, admitting that 'that island of England
breeds very valiant creatures.'

And mark how Shakespeare causes one and all of his patriots to
congratulate themselves that Britain is an island. Tennyson has called
upon his countrymen to

'Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set
His Briton in b