Suf. He doth revive again;-Madam, be patient.

K. Hen. O heavenly God!

Q. Mar. How fares my gracious lord?

Suf. Comfort, my sovereign! gracious Henry,

comfort!

K. Hen. What, doth my lord of Suffolk comfort me?

Came he right now3 to sing a raven's note,
Whose dismal tune bereft my vital powers;
And thinks he, that the chirping of a wren,
By crying comfort from a hollow breast,
Can chase away the first-conceived sound?
Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words,
Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say;
Their touch affrights me, as a serpent's sting.
Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!

Upon thy eyeballs murderous tyranny

Sits in grim majesty, to fright the world.
Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding:-
Yet do not go away;-Come, basilisk,

And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight4:
For in the shade of death I shall find joy:
In life, but double death, now Gloster's dead!
Q. Mar. Why do you rate my lord of Suffolk thus ?
Although the duke was enemy to him,

Yet he, most christianlike, laments his death:
And for myself,-foe as he was to me,
*Might liquid tears, or heart-offending groans,
Or blood-consuming sighs recall his life,

I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, Look pale as primrose, with blood-drinking sighs", And all to have the noble duke alive.

# Just now.

4

As Esculap an herdsman did espie,

That did with easy sight enforce a basilisk to flie,
Albeit naturally that beast doth murther with the eye.'

Vol. VI.

Albion's England, b. i. c. iii.

And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs."
King Henry VI. Part III. Act iv. Sc. 4.

8*

What know I how the world may deem of me? For it is known we were but hollow friends; It may be judg'd, I made the duke away: So shall my name with slander's tongue be wounded, And princes' courts be fill'd with my reproach. This get I by his death: Ah me, unhappy! To be a queen, and crown'd with infamy! 'K. Hen. Ah, woe is me for Gloster, wretched man! Q. Mar. Be woe for me, more wretched than he is. What, dost thou turn away, and hide thy face? I am no loathsome leper, look on me.

What, art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?? Be poisonous too, and kill thy forlorn queen.' Is all thy comfort shut in Gloster's tomb? * Why, then dame Margaret was ne'er thy joy: Erect his statue then, and worship it,

And make my image but, an alehouse sign.
Was I, for this, nigh wreck'd upon the sea;
And twice by awkward winds from England's bank
Drove back again unto my native clime?
What boded this, but well forewarning wind
Did seem to say, -Seek not a scorpion's nest,
Nor set no footing on this unkind shore?
What did I then, but curs'd the gentle gusts,
And he that loos'd them from their brazen caves;
And bid them blow towards England's blessed
shore,

Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock?
Yet Eolus would not be a murderer,

6 i. e. let not woe be to thee for Gloster, but for me.

This allusion, which has been borrowed from the Proverbs of Solomon, and Psalm lviii. by many writers, is oddly illustrated in a passage of Gower's Confessio Amantis, b. i. fo. x. ed. 1532. Shakspeare has the same allusion in Troilus and Cressida :Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.'

8 The same uncommon epithet is applied to the wind by Marlowe in his Edward II - KALE

With awkward winds, and with sore tempests driven

To fall on shore

And by Drayton, Epistle from Richard II. to Queen Isabell:And undertook to travaile dangerous waies,

Driven by awkward winds and boisterous seas.'

But left that hateful office unto thee;

The pretty vaulting sea refus'd to drown me; Knowing, that thou would'st have me drown'd on shore,

With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness: The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands, And would not dash me with their ragged sides; Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they, Might in thy palace perish9 Margaret.

As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs, When from the shore the tempest beat us back, * I stood upon the hatches in the storm: *And when the dusky sky began to rob My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view, I took a costly jewel from my neck,A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,And threw it towards thy land;- the sea receiv'd it;

And so, I wish'd, thy body might my heart:
And even with this, I lost fair England's view,
And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart;
And call'd them blind and dusky spectacles,
For losing ken of Albion's wished coast.
How often have I tempted Suffolk's tongue
*(The agent of thy foul inconstancy)

To sit and witch10 me, as Ascanius did,
When he to madding Dido would unfold
His father's acts, commenc'd in burning Troy?
Am I not witch'd like her? or thou not false like
him11?

The verb perish is here used actively. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maids Tragedy:

let not my sins

Perish your noble youth

10 The old copy reads watch me the emendation is Theobald's, who observes that it was Cupid in the semblance of Ascanius who bewitched Dido.' She, taking him for Ascanius, would naturally speak to him about his father, and would be witched by what she learned from him, as well as by the more regular narrative she had heard from Eneas himself.

11 Steevens thinks the word or should be omitted in this line, which would improve both the sense and metre. Mason proposes to read art instead of or.

And, to survey his dead and earthly image, What were it but to make my sorrow greater? The folding Doors of an inner Chamber are thrown open, and GLOSTER is discovered dead in his Bed: WARWICK and others standing by it13. War. Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.

K. Hen. That is to see how deep my grave is made:

For, with his soul, fled all my worldly solace; *For seeing him, I see my life in death14.

War. As surely as my soul intends to live With that dread King that took our state upon him To free us from his Father's wrathful curse, 'I do believe that violent hands were laid Upon the life of this thrice-famed duke. Suf. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue! What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow? War. See, how the blood is settled in his face! Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost15,

13 This stage direction was inserted by Malone as best suited to the exhibition. The stage direction in the quarto is War. wick draws the curtaines, and shows Duke Humphrey in his bed.' In the folio, A bed with Gloster's body put forth." By these and other circumstances it seems that the theatres were then unfurnished with scenes. In those days, it appears that curtains were occasionally hung across the middle of the stage on an iron rod, which being drawn open formed a second apartment, when a change of scene was required. See Malone's Account of the ancient Theatres, prefixed to the variorum editions of Shakspeare.

14 How much discussion there has been about this simple ba sage, which evidently means I see my own life threatened with extermination, or surrounded by death. Thus in a passage of the Burial Service, to which I am surprised none of the commentators have adverted, In the midst of life we are in death.'

15 Shakspeare has confounded the terms which signify body and soul together. So in A Midsummer Night's Dream:—

damned spirits all,

That in cross-ways and floods have burial.'

The word is frequently thus licentiously used by ancient writers; instances are to be found in Spencer and others. A timely parted ghost, says Malone, means a body that has become inanimate in the common course of nature; to which violence has not brought a timeless end.' But Mr. Douce has justly observed that timely may mean early, recently, newly. Thus in Macbeth, Act ii. Sc. 3: