It is right to remind the reader of this, for a reason applying
forcibly to the present moment Michelet has taxed Englishmen with
yielding to national animosities in the case of Joan, having no
plea whatever for that insinuation but the single one drawn from
Shakspeare's Henry VI. To this the answer is, first, that
Shakspeare's share in that trilogy is not nicely ascertained
Secondly, that M Michelet forgot (or, which is far worse,
_not_ forgetting it, he dissembled) the fact, that in
undertaking a series of dramas upon the basis avowedly of national
chronicles, and for the very purpose of profiting by old
traditionary recollections connected with ancestral glories, it was
mere lunacy to recast the circumstances at the bidding of
antiquarian research, so as entirely to disturb these glories.
Besides that, to Shakspeare's age no such spirit of research had
blossomed. Writing for the stage, a man would have risked
lapidation by uttering a whisper in that direction. And, even if
not, what sense could there have been in openly running counter to
the very motive that had originally prompted that particular class
of chronicle plays? Thirdly, if one Englishman had, in a memorable
situation, adopted the popular view of Joan's conduct,
(_popular_ as much in France as in England;) on the other
hand, fifty years before M. Michelet was writing this flagrant
injustice, another Englishman (viz., Southey) had, in an epic poem,
reversed this mis-judgment, and invested the shepherd girl with a
glory nowhere else accorded to her, unless indeed by Schiller.
Fourthly, we are not entitled to view as an _attack_ upon
Joanna, what, in the worst construction, is but an unexamining
adoption of the contemporary historical accounts. A poet or a
dramatist is not responsible for the accuracy of chronicles. But
what _is_ an attack upon Joan, being briefly the foulest and
obscenest attempt ever made to stifle the grandeur of a great human
struggle, viz., the French burlesque poem of _La
Pucelle_--what memorable man was it that wrote _that_? Was
he a Frenchman, or was he not? That M. Michelet should
_pretend_ to have forgotten this vilest of pasquinades, is
more shocking to the general sense of justice than any special
untruth as to Shakspeare _can_ be to the particular
nationality of an Englishman.