Richard II., so fond of parade and pleasure, so refined and intellectual, so affable at first, so despotic and absolute at last, till he was superseded and then slain, is among the most melancholy of knights and sovereigns. He was not heroic, for he was easily elevated and easily depressed. He turned deadly pale on hearing, in Ireland, of the landing of Henry Bolingbroke in England, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury had preached in favor of the usurper. He was eminently courageous, sang a roundelay as well as any minstrel, and often made the roundelays he sung. He looked little like a knight indeed when he traversed part of Wales to Conway, disguised as a Franciscan friar; or flying from castle to castle, having sorry lodging and little food. It was in the dress and cowl of a monk that the once chivalrous Richard surrendered himself to his cousin. In the army of that cousin, sent to take Richard and his few faithful knights and squires who refused to detach his device from their coats, was “Sir Henry Percy” (the _Hotspur_ of Shakespeare), “whom they held to be the best knight in England.” It was by persuasion of Hotspur’s father that Richard left Conway for Flint, where he was made prisoner, and afterward conveyed to Chester, the English knights of the opposite faction behaving to him with most unchivalric rudeness. The unsceptred monarch was first taken to Pickering, one of the most beautiful spots in England, defaced by scenes of the greatest crimes, of which place knights and nobles were the masters. Thence he passed on to Leeds and Knaresborough Castle, where the king’s chamber is still pointed out to visiters. Finally, he was carried to “bloody Pomfret”--“fatal and ominous to noble peers.” Never, it is said, did man look less like a knight than the unhappy king, when he appeared before the drawbridge of Pontefract Castle. Majestic still he was in feature, but the majesty was depressed by such profound melancholy, that few could look upon the weeping king without themselves shedding tears. If the picture of him at this juncture might be metrically given in outline, the following sketch might feebly render it:-- Who enters now that gate, With dignity upon his pallid brow? Who is the man that, bending to his fate, Comes hither now? A man of wo he seems, Whom Sadness deep hath long marked for her own. Hath such a form as that indulged in dreams Upon a throne? Have smiles e’er wreathed that face? Face now so stamped with every line that’s sad; Was joy e’er known those quivering lips to grace, That heart to glad? Who is this shadow’s shade? This type of withered majesty? this thing? Can it be true that knightly form decayed Was once a king? Son of a noble sire, And of his father’s virtues too, the heir; Those eyes so dim once rivalled the sun’s fire; None were more fair.