Four lagging winters, and four wanton fprings,
End in a word; Such is the breath of kings.
GAUNT. I thank my liege, that, in regard of me,
He shortens four years of my fon's exile:
But little vantage fhall I reap thereby;

For, ere the fix years, that he hath to spend,
Can change their moons, and bring their times
about,

My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewafted light,
Shall be extinct with age, and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me fee my fon.

K. RICH. Why, uncle, thou haft many years to

live.

GAUNT. But not a minute, king, that thou canst
give:

Shorten my days thou canft with fullen forrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow:*
Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
But ftop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;
Thy word is current with him for my death;
But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.

K. RICH. Thy fon is banish'd upon good advice,'
Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave;"
Why at our juftice feem'ft thou then to lower?
GAUNT. Things sweet to tafte, prove in digestion
four.

And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow:] It is matter of very melancholy confideration, that all human advantages confer more power of doing evil than good. JOHNSON.

8 -upon good advice,] Upon great confideration.

So, in King Henry VI. Part II:

9

MALONE.

"But with advice and filent fecrecy." STEEVENS.

— a party-verdict gave;] i. e. you had yourself a part or fhare in the verdict that I pronounced. MALONE.

You urg'd me as a judge; but I had rather,
You would have bid me argue like a father:—
O, had it been a stranger, not my child,

To fmooth his fault I fhould have been more mild:
A partial flander' fought I to avoid,

And in the fentence my own life destroy'd.
Alas, I look'd, when fome of you should say,
I was too ftrict, to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will, to do myself this wrong.

K. RICH. Coufin, farewell :-and, uncle, bid him fo;

Six years we banish him, and he fhall go.

[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICHARD and Train. AUM. Coufin, farewell: what presence must not know,

From where you do remain, let paper show.

MAR. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your fide.

GAUNT. O, to what purpose doft thou hoard thy words,

That thou return'ft no greeting to thy friends?
BOLING. I have too few to take my leave of you,
When the tongue's office fhould be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.
GAUNT. Thy grief is but thy abfence for a time.

20, had it been a ftranger,] This couplet is wanting in the folio. STEEVENS,

3 A partial flander-] That is, the reproach of partiality. This is a juft picture of the ftruggle between principle and affection. JOHNSON.

This couplet, which is wanting in the folio edition, has been arbitrarily placed by fome of the modern editors at the conclufion of Gaunt's fpeech. In the three oldeft quartos it follows the fifth line of it. In the fourth quarto, which feems copied from the folio, the paffage is omitted. STEEVENS,

BOLING. Joy abfent, grief is present for that time.

GAUNT. What is fix winters? they are quickly

gone.

BOLING. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.

GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleafure.

BOLING. My heart will figh, when I miscall it fo,

Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

GAUNT. The fullen paffage of thy weary steps Efteem a foil, wherein thou art to fet The precious jewel of thy home-return.

BOLING. Nay, rather, every tedious ftride I make+ Will but remember me, what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Muft I not ferve a long apprenticehood To foreign paffages; and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else, But that I was a journeyman to grief?

4 Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious ftride I make-] This, and the fix verses which follow, I have ventured to fupply from the old quarto. The allufion, it is true, to an apprenticeship, and becoming a journeyman, is not in the fublime tafte; nor, as Horace has expreffed it, "Spirat tragicum fatis:" however, as there is no doubt of the paffage being genuine, the lines are not so despicable as to deferve being quite loft. THEOBALD.

5 journeyman to grief?] I am afraid our author in this place defigned a very poor quibble, as journey fignifies both travel and a day's work. However, he is not to be cenfured for what he himfelf rejected. JOHNSON.

The quarto, in which thefe lines are found, is faid in its titlepage to have been corrected by the author; and the play is indeed more accurately printed than most of the other fingle copies. There is now, however, no certain method of knowing by whom the rejection was made. STEEVENS.

lm.

GAUNT. All places that the eye of heaven vifits,"
Are to a wife man ports and happy havens:
Teach thy neceffity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like neceffity.

Think not, the king did banish thee;"
But thou the king: Woe doth the heavier fit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, fay-I fent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not-the king exíl'd thee: or suppose,
Devouring peftilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.

All places that the eye of heaven vifits, &c.] The fourteen verfes that follow are found in the firft edition. POPE.

I am inclined to believe that what Mr. Theobald and Mr. Pope have restored were expunged in the revifion by the author: If thefe lines are omitted, the fenfe is more coherent. Nothing is more frequent among dramatic writers, than to fhorten their dialogues for the ftage. JOHNSON.

7 did banish thee;] Read:

Therefore, think not, the king did banish thee. RITSON.

* Think not, the king did banish thee;

But thou the king:] The fame thought occurs in Coriolanus :
"I banish you." M. MASON.

All places that the eye of heaven vifits,
Are to a wife man ports and happy havens:-

Think not the king did banish thee;

But thou the king:] Shakspeare, when he wrote the paffage before us, probably remembered that part of Lyly's Euphues, 1580, in which Euphues exhorts Botanio to take his exile patiently. Among other arguments he obferves, that " Nature hath given to man a country no more than fhe hath a houfe, or lands, or livings. Socrates would neither call himself an Athenian, neither a Grecian, but a citizen of the world. Plato would never account him banished, that had the funne, ayre, water, and earth, that he had before; where he felt the winter's blaft and the fummer's blaze; where the fame funne and the fame moone fhined: whereby he noted that every place was a country to a wife man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind. When it was caft in Diogenes' teeth, that the Sinoponetes had banished him Pontus, yea, said he, I them of Diogenes." MALONE.

To Nonnus: aidepos

oppa: 1.6.

the

sur.

Steever

Look, what thy foul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'ft, not whence thou com'ft:
Suppofe the finging birds, musicians;

The grafs whereon thou tread'ft, the prefence ftrew'd;

The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance:
For gnarling forrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and fets it light.
BOLING. O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frofty Caucafus?*

8

the prefence firew'd;] Shakspeare has other allufions to the ancient practice of ftrewing rushes over the floor of the prefence chamber. HENLEY.

Tarquin thus

"Did foftly prefs the rushes, ere he waken'd

"The chastity he wounded:" STEEVENS.

See Hentzner's account of the prefence chamber, in the palace at Greenwich, 1598. Itinerar. p. 135. MALONE.

9 Than a delightful measure,] A measure was a formal court dance. So, in K. Richard III:

"Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."

STEEVENS.

2 O, who can hold a fire in his hand, &c.] Fire is here, as in many other places, used as a diffyllable. MALONE.

It has been remarked, that there is a paffage resembling this in Tully's Fifth Book of Tufculan Questions. Speaking of Epicurus, he fays: Sed unâ fe dicit recordatione acquiefcere præteritarum voluptatum: ut fi quis æftuans, cum vim caloris non facile patiatur, recordari velit fe aliquando in Arpinati noftro gelidis fluminibus circumfufum fuiffe. Non enim video, quomodo fedare poffint mala præfentia præteritæ voluptates." The Tufculan Questions of Cicero had been tranflated early enough for Shakfspeare to have feen them. STEEVENS.

Shakspeare, however, I believe, was thinking on the words of Lyly in the page from which an extract has been already made: I fpeake this to this end, that though thy exile feem grievous to thee, yet guiding thy felfe with the rules of philofophy, it should be more tolerable: he that is cold, doth not cover himfelfe with