A cocker'd filken wanton brave our fields,
And flesh his fpirit in a warlike foil,

Mocking the air with colours idly spread,'
And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms:
Perchance, the cardinal cannot make your peace;
Or if he do, let it at least be said,

They faw we had a purpose of defence.

K. JOHN. Have thou the ordering of this prefent time.

BAST. Away then, with good courage; yet, I know,

Our party may well meet a prouder foe.+ [Exeunt.

3 Mocking the air with colours idly spread,] He has the fame image in Macbeth:

"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,

"And fan our people cold." JOHNSON.

From these two paffages Mr. Gray feems to have formed the first ftanza of his celebrated Ode:

"Ruin feize thee, ruthless king!
"Confufion on thy banners wait!

Though fann'd by conqueft's crimson wing

They mock the air with idle ftate." MALONE.

4 Away then, with good courage; yet, I know,

Our party may well meet a prouder foe.] Let us then away with courage; yet I fo well know the faintnefs of our party, that I think it may easily happen that they shall encounter enemies who have more Spirit than themselves. JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnfon is, I believe, mistaken. Faulconbridge meansfor all their boafting, I know very well that our party is able to cope with one yet prouder and more confident of its ftrength than theirs. Faulconbridge would otherwife difpirit the King, whom he means to animate. STEEVENS.

SCENE II.

A Plain, near St. Edmund's-Bury.^

Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and Soldiers.

LEW. My lord Melun, let this be copied out, And keep it safe for our remembrance: Return the precedent' to these lords again; That, having our fair order written down, Both they, and we, perusing o'er these notes, May know wherefore we took the facrament, And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

SAL. Upon our fides it never fhall be broken.
And, noble Dauphin, albeit we fwear
A voluntary zeal, and unurg'd faith,

To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince,
I am not glad that fuch a fore of time

near St. Edmund's-Bury.] I have ventured to fix the place of the scene here, which is fpecified by none of the editors, on the following authorities. In the preceding act, where Salisbury has fixed to go over to the Dauphin; he says:

"Lords, I will meet him at St. Edmund's-Bury."

And Count Melun, in this laft act says:

and many more with me,

Upon the altar at St. Edmund's-Bury;
"Even on that altar, where we swore to you

"Dear amity, and everlafting love."

And it appears likewife from The Troublefome Reign of King John, in two parts, (the firft rough model of this play,) that the interchange of vows betwixt the Dauphin and the English barons, was at St. Edmund's-Bury. THEOBALD.

the precedent, &r.] i. e. the rough draft of the original treaty between the Dauphin and the English lords. Thus (adds Mr. M. Mafon) in K. Richard III. the fcrivener employed to engross the indictment of Lord Haftings, fays, "that it took him eleven hours to write it, and that the precedent was full as long a doing." STEEVENS.

Should feek a plaster by contemn'd revolt,
And heal the inveterate canker of one wound,
By making many: O, it grieves my foul,
That I muft draw this metal from my fide
To be a widow-maker; O, and there,
Where honourable rescue, and defence,
Cries out upon the name of Salisbury:
But fuch is the infection of the time,
That, for the health and phyfick of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice and confused wrong.-
And is't not pity, O my grieved friends!
That we, the fons and children of this ifle,
Were born to fee fo fad an hour as this;
Wherein we step after a stranger march"
Upon her gentle bofom, and fill up
Her enemies' ranks, (I must withdraw and
Upon the spot of this enforced cause,)'
To grace
grace the
gentry of a land remote,
And follow unacquainted colours here?

weep

What, here?-O nation, that thou could'ft remove! That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about,8 Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyfelf, And grapple thee' unto a pagan fhore; 2

6 — after a stranger march-] Our author often ufes ftranger as an adjective. See the laft fcene. MALONE.

7the fpot of this enforced caufe,] Spot probably means, fain or difgrace. M. MASON.

So, in a former paffage:

8

"To look into the Spots and stains of right.”

MALONE.

clippeth thee about,] i. e. embraceth. So, in Coriolanus : "Enter the city; clip your wives." STEEVENS.

9 And grapple thee-] The old copy reads--And cripple thee, &c. Perhaps our author wrote gripple, a word used by Drayton in his Polyolbion, fong 1:

That thrufts his gripple hand into her golden maw.”

Where these two Chriftian armies might combine
The blood of malice in a vein of league,
And not to-spend it fo unneighbourly!

LEW. A noble temper doft thou show in this;
And great affections, wrestling in thy bosom,
Do make an earthquake of nobility.

O, what a noble combat haft thou fought,"
Between compulfion, and a brave refpect!"
Let me wipe off this honourable dew,
That filverly doth progress on thy cheeks:

Our author, however, in Macbeth has the verb-grapple: Grapples thee to the heart and love of us—. The emendation (as Mr. Malone obferves) was made by Mr. Pope. STEEVENS.

2

unto a pagan fhore;] Our author feems to have been thinking on the wars carried on by Chriftian princes in the holy land against the Saracens; where the united armies of France and England might have laid their mutual animofities afide, and fought in the caufe of Chrift, inftead of fighting against brethren and countrymen, as Salisbury and the other English noblemen who had joined the Dauphin, were about to do. MALONE.

3 And not to-fpend it fo unneighbourly!] This is one of many paffages, in which Shakspeare concludes a fentence without attending to the manner in which the former part of it is constructed. MALONE.

Shak fpeare only employs in the present inftance a phraseology which he had ufed before in The Merry Wives of Windfor:

29

"And, fairy-like, to-pinch the unclean-knight." To, in compofition with verbs, is common enough in ancient language. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's obfervations on this laft paffage, and my inftances in fupport of his pofition, Vol. III. p. 461. n. 5. STEEVENS.

4 haft thou fought,] Thou, which appears to have been accidentally omitted by the tranfcriber or compofitor, was inferted by the editor of the fourth folio. MALONE.

5 Between compulfion, and a brave refpet!] This compulfion was the neceffity of a reformation in the state; which, according to Salisbury's opinion (who, in his fpeech preceding, calls it an enforced caufe,) could only be procured by foreign arms: and the brave refpect was the love of his country. WARBURTON,

My heart hath melted at a lady's tears,
Being an ordinary inundation;

But this effufion of fuch manly drops,

This shower, blown up by tempeft of the foul,"
Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amaz'd
Than had I feen the vaulty top of heaven
Figur'd quite o'er with burning meteors.
Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,
And with a great heart heave away this storm:
Commend these waters to those baby eyes,
That never faw the giant world enrag'd;
Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,
Full warm of blood, of mirth, of goffiping.
Come, come; for thou shalt thruft thy hand as deep
Into the purfe of rich profperity,

As Lewis himself:-fo, nobles, fhall you all,
That knit your finews to the strength of mine.

Enter PANDULPH, attended.

And even there, methinks, an angel spake:'
Look, where the holy legate comes apace,
To give us warrant from the hand of heaven;

6 This shower, blown up by tempeft of the foul,] So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

7

"This windy tempeft, till it blow up rain,

"Held back his forrow's tide-." MALONE.

—an angel fpake:] Sir T. Hanmer, and after him Dr. Warburton read here-an angel fpeeds. I think unneceffarily. The Dauphin does not yet hear the legate indeed, nor pretend to hear him; but feeing him advance, and concluding that he comes to animate and authorize him with the power of the church, he cries out, at the fight of this holy man, I am encouraged as by the voice of an angel. JOHNSON.

Rather, In what I have now faid, an angel fpake; for fee, the holy legate approaches, to give a warrant from heaven, and the name of right to our caufe. MALONE.

This throught is for from a new one : Heus, in Gower de Confessione Amantis : Her thought it sowned in hex ere,

"

as though that it an angell were.", Steevens