Hot.

:

Do so, and 'tis well :

Enter a Messenger, with Letters.

What letters hast thou there?-I can but thank you.
Mess. These letters come from your father,-
Hot. Letters from him! why comes he not himself?
Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he's grievous sick?
Hot. 'Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick,
In such a justling time? Who leads his power?
Under whose government come they along?
Mess. His letters bear his mind, not I, my
Wor. I pr'ythee, tell me, doth he keep his bed?
Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth?
And at the time of my departure thence,
He was much fear'd by his physicians.

lord 5.

Wor. I would, the state of time had first been whole, Ere he by sickness had been visited;

His health was never better worth than now. Hot. Sick now! droop now! this sickness doth infect

The very life-blood of our enterprise;

'Tis catching hither, even to our camp.

He writes me here,—that inward sickness—
And that his friends by deputation could not
So soon be drawn; nor did he think it meet,

To lay so dangerous and dear a trust

ner, to threaten even to his beard. Thus in Marlowe's King Edward II :

These barons thus to beard me in my land.'

Again, in Macbeth :

met them dareful beard to beard.'

4 Epaminondas being told, on the evening before the battle of Leuctra, that an officer of distinction had died in his tent, exclaimed, Good gods! how could any body find time to die in such a conjuncture.'-Xenophon Hellenic, 1. vi.

5 The folio reads not I his mind.' my mind.' The emendation is Capell's.

The quarto, 1598, 'not I

On any soul remov'd, but on his own.
Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,—
That with our small conjunction, we should on,
To see how fortune is dispos'd to us:

For, as he writes, there is no quailing7 now;
Because the king is certainly possess'd8
What say you to it?

Of all our purposes.

Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us. Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp'd off:And yet, in faith, 'tis not; his present want Seems more than we shall find it:-Were it good, To set the exact wealth of all our states All at one cast? to set so rich à main On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour? It were not good; for therein should we read The very bottom and the soul of hope: The very list, the very utmost bound

Of all our fortunes.

Doug.

'Faith, and so we should;

Where now remains a sweet reversion;
We may boldly spend upon the hope of what
Is to come in :

A comfort of retirement 10 lives in this.

Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto, If that the devil and mischance look big Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.

6 That is, on any less near to himself, or whose interest is remote. Thus in Hamlet:

'It wafts you to a more removed ground.' And in As You Like It:-' in so removed a dwelling.'

7 Quailing is fainting, slackening, flagging; or failing in vigour or resolution; going back. Cotgrave renders it by alachissement. So in the Third Part of King Henry VI. Act ii. Sc. 3 :"This may plant courage in their quailing breasts.'

8 Informed.

9 Where, for whereas. As in Pericles, Act i, Sc. 1:-
'Where now you are both a father and a son.'
10 i. e. a support to which we may have recourse.'

:

Wor. But yet, I would your father had been here,
The quality and hair 11 of our attempt
Brooks no division: It will be thought
By some, that know not why he is away,
That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike
Of our proceedings, kept the earl from hence;
And think, how such an apprehension
May turn the tide of fearful faction,

And breed a kind of question in our cause:
For, well you know, we of the offering 12 side
Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement ;
And stop all sight-holes, every loop, from whence
The eye of reason may pry in upon us:

This absence of your father's draws a curtain 13,
That shows the ignorant a kind of fear

Before not dreamt of.

Hot.

You strain too far.

I, rather, of his absence make this use;-
It lends a lustre, and more great opinion,

A larger dare to our great enterprise,

Than if the earl were here: for men must think,
If we, without his help, can make a head,

11 Hair was anciently used metaphorically for the colour, complexion, or nature of a thing. Pelo (in Italian) is used for the colour of a horse, also for the countenance of a man:' and poil, in French, has the same significations, esser d'un pelo, estre d'un poil. To be of the same hair, quality, or condition. Thus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Nice Valour :

'A lady of my hair cannot want pitying.'

And in the old comedy of The Family of Love:- They say I am of the right haire, and indeed they may stand to't.' So in the Interlude of Tom Tyler and his Wife :

'But I bridled a colt of a contrary haire.'

12 The offering side is the assailing side. Baret renders' Attentare pudicitiam puellæ, to assaile a maydens chastitie: to offer.'

13 To draw a curtain had anciently the same meaning as to undraw one at present. Thus in the Second Part of King Henry VI. quarto, 1600:- Then the curtaines being drawne, Duke Humphrey is discovered in his bed.'

To push against the kingdom; with his help,
We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.—
Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole.
Doug. As heart can think: there is not such a word
Spoke of in Scotland, as this term 14 of fear.

Enter SIR RICHARD VERNON.

Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul. Ver. 'Pray God, my news be worth a welcome, lord. The earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong, Is marching hitherwards; with him, Prince John. Hot. No harm: What more?

Ver.

And further, I have learn'd, The king himself in person is set forth, Or hitherwards intended speedily,

With strong and mighty preparation.

Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son, The nimble-footed 15 mad-cap prince of Wales, And his comrades, that daff'd the world aside, And bid it pass?

Ver.

All furnish'd, all in arms, All plum'd: like estridges that with the wind. Bated, like eagles having lately bath'd 16;

14 The folio reads dream of fear.'

15 Shakspeare rarely bestows his epithets at random. Stowe says of the prince : He was passing swift in running, insomuch that he, with two other of his lords, without hounds, bow, or other engine, would take a wilde bucke, or doe, in a large parke.'

16 This is the reading of all the old copies, which Hanmer not understanding, altered to

'All plum'd like estridges, and with the wind

Bating like eagles, &c.'

Then came Johnson, who supposed that there must be necessity for emendation, as it had already been attempted: he changed it thus:

'All plum'd like estridges, that wing the wind;
Bated like eagles, &c.'

This reading has been adopted by Malone, and by Steevens, with a voluminous commentary to show its necessity. But surely, if VOL. V.

U

Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry,—with his beaver 17 on,
His cuisses 18 on his thighs, gallantly arm'd,-—
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury,

a clear sense can be deduced from the passage as it stands, no conjectural alteration of the text should be admitted. The meaning of the passage is obviously this: The prince and his comrades were all furnish'd, all in arms, all plumed: like estridges (ostriches) that bated (i. e. flutter or beat) the wind with their wings; like eagles having lately bathed.' Johnson's reading is exceptionable, if it was not an unwarrantable innovation, because to wing the wind and to bate are the same thing; and the difficulties of an elliptical construction are not avoided by it. Malone's notion, that a line had been omitted, has not my concurrence. Nor do I think with Mr. Douce, that by estridges, estridge falcons are here meant, though the word may be used in that sense in Antony and Cleopatra. The ostridge's plumage would be more likely to occur to the poet, from the circumstance of its being the cognizance of the prince of Wales. So in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 22:

Prince Edward all in gold, as he great Jove had been, The Mountford's all in plumes like estridges were seen.' Bating, or to bate, in falconry, is the unquiet fluttering of a hawk. To beat the wing, batter l'ale, Ital. All birds bate, i. e. flutter, beat, or flap their wings to dry their feathers after bathing; and the mode in which the ostrich uses its wings, to assist itself in running with the wind, is of this character; it is a fluttering or a flapping, not a flight. The fluttering motion and flapping of the plumed crests of the prince and his associates naturally excited these images. Bated refers both to the flapping of the plumes, and of the wings of the ostrich; the plumage of that bird is displayed to more advantage when its wings are in motion, than when at rest; and hence the propriety of representing the feathers of the helmets flouting the air to the plumage of the ostrich when its wings were in motion, or when it 'bated the air, like eagles lately bathed.'

17 The beaver of a helmet was a moveable piece, which lifted up or down to enable the wearer to drink or to take breath more freely. It is frequently, though improperly, used to express the helmet itself.

18 Armour for the thighs.