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Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly; let me go with you;
I'll do the service of a younger man
In all your business and necessities.

ORLA. Oh good old man, how well in thee
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
Where none will sweat but for promotion;
And, having that, do choke their service up
Even with the having; it is not so with thee;
But, poor old man, thou prun'st atten tree,
That cannot so much as a blossom yield
In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.
But come thy ways, we'll go along together;
And ere we have thy youthful wages,spent,
We'll light upon some settled low content.

ADAM. Master, go on, and I will follow thee
To the last gasp with truth and loyalty;
From seventeen years till now, almost fourscore,
Here lived I, but now live here no more.
At seventeen years many their fortunes seek,
But at fourscore, it is too late a week;
Yet fortune cannot recompense me better
Than tó die well, and not my master's debtor.

appears

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAPTER XIII.

SCROOP AND RICHARD.

SCROOP. More health and happiness betide my Liege, Than can my care-tun'd tongue deliver him!

K. RICH. Mine ear is open, and my heart prepar'd; The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.

Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, 'twas my care;
Aud what loss is it to be rid of care?

Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we ?

Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,

We'll serve him too, and be his fellow so.
Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend;
They break their faith to God, as well as us.
Cry wo, destruction, ruin, loss, decay;

The worst is death, and death will have his day.
Scroop. Giad am I that your highness is so arm'd
To bear the tidings of calamity.

Like an unseasonable stormy day,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolv'd to tears;

So high above his limits swells the rage
Of Bolingbroke, cov'ring your fearful land

With hard bright steel, and hearts more hard than steel.
White beards have arm'd their thin and hairless scalps
Against thy majesty; boys, with women's voices,
Strive to speak big, and clasp their female joints
In stiff unwieldy arms, against thy.crown;
The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
Of double fatal yew against thy state;
Yea, distaff women manage rusty bills.
Against thy seat both young and old rebel,
And all goes worse than I have pow'r to tell.

K. RICH. Too well, too well, thou teil'st a tale so ill.
Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? where is Bagot?
What is become of Busby? where is Green?
-No matter where: of comfort no man speak.
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth!
Let's choose executors, and talk of wills;
And yet not so for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives, and all, are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death:
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For Heav'n's sake, let us sit upon the ground,
And tell sad stories of the death of Kings;
How some have been depos'd; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd;
Some poison'd by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;

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All murder'd.-For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a King,
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene

To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks::
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle walls, and farewell King!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn rev'rence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while.
I live on bread like you feel want like you:
Taste grief, need friends, like you: subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a King?

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOTSPUR AND GLENDOWER.

GLEN. SIT, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur ; For, by that name, as oft as Lancaster

Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale! and with
A risen sigh, he wisheth you in Heav'n,

HOT. And you in Hell, as often as he hears

Owen Glendower spoke of.

GLEN. I blame him not at my nativity The front of Heav'n was full of fiery shapes, Of burning cressets; know that at my birth The frame and the foundation of the earth Shook like a coward.

HOT. So it would have done

At the same season, if your mother's cat

Had kitten'd, though yourself had ne'er been born.
GLEN. I say, the earth did shake when I was born

Hor. I say, the earth then was not of my mind, If you suppose, as fearing you it shook.

GLEN. The heav'ns were all on fire, the earth did tremble.

HOT. O, then the earth shook to see the heav'ns on fire, And not in fear of your nativity.

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions; and the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd,

By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb, which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down
High tow'rs and moss-grown steeples. At your birth,
Our grandam earth with this distemperature
In passion shook.

GLEN. Cousin, of many men

I do not bear these crossings: give me leave
To tell you once again, that at my birth
The front of Heaven was full of fiery shapes;
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clam'rous in the frighted fields:
These signs have mark'd me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show-
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living, clipt in with the sea

That chides the banks of England, Wales, or Scotland,
Who calls me pupil, or hath read to me?

And bring him out, that is but woman's son,
Can trace me in the tedious ways of art,

Or hold me pace in deep experiments.

Hor. I think there is no man speaks better Welch. GLEN. I can speak English, lord, as well as you; For I was train'd up in the English court,

Where, being young, I fram'd to the harp

Many an English ditty lovely well,

And gave the tongue a helpful ornament;
A virtue that was never seen in you.

HOT. Marry, and I'm glad of it with all my heart;

I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew!

Than one of these same metre-balladmongers!
I'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turn'd,

Or a dry wheel grate upon the axle-tree,
And that would nothing set my teeth on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry;

'Tis like the fore'd gait of a shuffling nag

GLEN. And I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOT. Why, so can 1, or so can any man:

But will they come when you do call for them ?

GLEN. Why, I can teach thee to command the devil.” HOT. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil, By telling 'truth; Tell truth and shame the devil. If thou hast power to raise him, bring him hither, And I'll be sworn I've power to drive him hence. Oh, while you live, Fell truth and shame the devil.

SHAKSPEARE.

CHAPTER XV.

HOTSPUR READING A LETTER.

"BUT for my own part, my Lord, I could be well con"tented to be there in respect of the love 1 bear your "house." He could be contented to be there; why is he not then?" In respect of the love he bears our house!" He shows in this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our house. Let me see some more. The purpose you undertake is dangerous." Why that is certain: it is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink: but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger we pluck this flower safety. "The purpose you undertake is dan

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gerous, the friends you have named uncertain, the time "itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light for the "counterpoise of so great an opposition." Say you so, say you so? I say unto you again, you are. a shallow cowardly hind, and you lie. What a lack-brain is this! By the Lord, our plot is a good plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. What a frosty-spirited rogue this is! Why, my Lord of York commends the plot, and the general course

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