[99] Ellis's Collection. We must keep in mind that Katherine was a foreigner, and till after she was seventeen, never spoke or wrote a word of English. [100] Hall's Chronicle [101] Hall's Chronicle, p. 781. [102] The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529. "The queen being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of her counsel, and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her; and after her obeisance, sadly and with great gravity, she appealed from them to the court of Rome."--_See Hall and Cavendish's Life of Wolsey._ The account which Hume gives of this scene is very elegant; but after the affecting _naivete_ of the old chroniclers, it is very cold and unsatisfactory. [103] "The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly and obstinately, with many high words: and suddenly, in a fury she departed from him into her privy chamber."--_Vide Hall's Chronicle_. [104] _Vide_ Cavendish's Life of Wolsey. [105] Winter's Tale, act iii. scene 2. [106] I have constantly abstained from considering any of these characters with a reference to the theatre; yet I cannot help remarking, that if Mrs. Siddons, who excelled equally in Hermione and Katherine, and threw such majesty of demeanor, such power, such picturesque effect, into both, could likewise feel and convey the infinite contrast between the ideal grace, the classical repose and imaginative charm thrown round Hermione, and the matter-of-fact, artless, prosaic nature of Katherine; between the poetical grandeur of the former, and the moral dignity of the latter,--then she certainly exceeded all that I could have imagined possible, even to _her_ wonderful powers. [107] This affecting passage is thus rendered by Shakspeare:-- Nay, forsooth, my friends, They that must weigh out my afflictions-- They that my trust must grow to, live not here-- They are, as all my other comforts, far hence, In mine own country, lords. _Henry VIII._ _act_ iii. _sc._ 1 [108] Dr. Johnson is of opinion, that this scene "is above any other part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above any scene of any other poet, tender and pathetic; without gods, or furies, or poisons, or precipices; without the help of romantic circumstances; without improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of tumultuous misery."