But here it is the physical difference which accompanies this so immense human distinction, which he appears to be in quest of; it is the control over nature with which these '_farcical titles_' invest their possessor, that he appears to be now pertinaciously bent upon ascertaining. For we shall find, as we pursue the subject, that this is not an accidental point here, a casual incident of the character, or of the plot, a thing which belongs to the play, and not to the author; but that this is a poet who is somehow perpetually haunted with the impression that those who assume a divine right to control, and dispose of their fellow-men, ought to exhibit some sign of their authority; some superior abilities; some magical control; some light and power that other men have not. How he came by any such notions, the critic of his works is, of course, not bound to show; but that which meets him at the first reading is the fact, the incontestable fact, that the Poet of Shakspere's stage, be he who he may, is a poet whose mind is in some way deeply occupied with this question; that it is a poet who is infected, and, indeed, perfectly possessed, with the idea, that the true human leadership ought to consist in the ability to extend the empire of man over nature,--in the ability to unite and control men, and lead them in battalions against those common evils which infest the human conditions,--not fevers only but 'worser' evils, and harder to be cured, and to the conquest of those supernal blessings which the human race have always been vainly crying for. 'I am a king that find thee,' he says. And having this inveterate notion of a true human regality to begin with, he is naturally the more curious and prying in regard to the claims of the one which he finds in possession; and when by the mystery of his profession and art, he contrives to get the cloak of that factitious royalty about him, he asks questions under its cover which another man would not think of putting. 'Canst thou,' he continues, walking up and down the stage in King Hal's mantle, inquiring narrowly into its virtues and taking advantage of that occasion to ascertain the limits of the prerogative--that very dubious question then,-- 'Canst thou when thou command'st the beggar's knee, _Command the health_ of it?'-- _No_? what mockery of power is it then? But, this in connection with the preceding inquiry in regard to the effect of titles on the progress of a fever, or the amenability of its paroxysm, to flexure and low bending, might have seemed perhaps in the mouth of a subject to savour somewhat of irony; it might have sounded too much like a taunt upon the royal helplessness under cover of a serious philosophical inquiry, or it might have betrayed in such an one a disposition to pursue scientific inquiries farther than was perhaps expedient. But thus it is, that THE KING can dare to pursue the subject, answering his own questions.