is intolerable. Shakespeare has employed all the might of his genius to glorify her, but all this is in vain when we see that Doctor Johnson, that great pot of porter, falls into sweet rapture at her sight and foams with eulogy. If she had been my wife such praise would have induced me to get a divorce. Perhaps it was not the charms of Anna Bullen which tore the poor king from her, but the enthusiasm with which some Doctor Johnson of the time spoke of the faithful, dignified, and pious Katharine. Did Thomas More, perhaps, who, with all his surpassing excellence was rather pedantic, hide-bound, and indigestible—even as Doctor Johnson was—exalt the queen too much towards heaven? The brave Chancellor, however, paid rather too dearly for his enthusiasm; the king exalted him for it to heaven itself.
I do not really know at which I am most amazed—that Katharine endured her husband for fifteen years, or that he so long put up with her? The king was not only very full of whims, irritable, and in constant contradiction with all his wife's inclinations—that is common enough in marriages, which, however, endure in admirable fashion till death makes an end of all—but the king was also a musician and theologian, and both to perfect wretchedness! I heard not long ago, as a delightful curiosity, a choral com-
