And helps to end me.-See, sons, what things you are! How quickly nature falls into revolt,

When gold becomes her object!

For this the foolish over-careful fathers

Have broke their sleep with thoughts,1 their brains with care,

Their bones with industry;

For this they have engrossed and pil'd up

The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
For this they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts, and martial exercises:
When, like the bee, tolling from every flower2
The virtuous sweets;

Our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey,
We bring it to the hive; and, like the bees,

Are murder'd for our pains. This bitter taste
Yield his engrossments3 to the ending father.-
Re-enter WARWICK.

Now, where is he that will not stay so long
Till his friend sickness hath determin'd me?

War. My lord, I found the prince in the next room,
Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks;
With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow,
That tyranny, which never quaff'd but blood,
Would, by beholding him, have wash'd his knife

1 with thoughts,] Concerning the education and promo tion of their children. So, afterwards:

"For this they have been thoughtful to invest
"Their sons with arts," &c.

Mr. Rowe and the subsequent editors read-with thought; but the change does not appear to me necessary.

2

Malone.

tolling from every flower -] This speech has been contracted, dilated, and put to every critical torture, in order to force it within the bounds of metre, and prevent the admission of hemistichs. I have restored it without alteration, but with those breaks which appeared to others as imperfections. The reading of the quarto is tolling. The folio reads culling. Tolling is taking toll. Steevens.

3 Yield his engrossments -] His accumulations. Johnson. determin'd-] i. e. ended; it is still used in this sense in legal conveyances. Reed.

4

So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

"as it [the hailstone] determines, so
"Dissolves my life." Steevens.

With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.

K. Hen. But wherefore did he take away the crown?
Re-enter Prince HENRY.

Lo, where he comes.-Come hither to me, Harry:-
Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.

[Exeunt CLA. P. HUMPH. Lords, &c.

P. Hen. I never thought to hear you speak again. K. Hen. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought: I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.

Dost thou so hunger for my empty chair,

That thou wilt needs invest thee with mine honours
Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!

Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity
Is held from falling with so weak a wind,
That it will quickly drop: my day is dim.

Thou hast stol'n that, which, after some few hours,
Were thine without offence; and, at my death,
Thou hast seal'd up my expectation: 5

Thy life did manifest, thou lov❜dst me not,
And thou wilt have me die assured of it.

hou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts;
Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
To stab at half an hour of my life."
What! canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself;
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear,
That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.

5 seal'd up my expectation:] Thou hast confirmed my opinion. Johnson.

6 half an hour of my life.] It should be remembered that Shakspeare uses a few words alternately as monosyllables and dissyllables. Mr. Rowe, whose ear was accustomed to the utmost harmony of numbers, and who, at the same time, appears to have been little acquainted with our poet's manner, first added the word frail to supply the syllable which he conceived to be wanting. The quarto writes the word hower, as it was anciently pronounced.

So, Ben Jonson, in The Case is alter'd, 1609:

"By twice so many howers as would fill

"The circle of a year."

The reader will find many more instances in the soliloquy of King Henry VI, Part III, Act II, sc. v. The other editors have followed Mr. Rowe. Steevens.

Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse,
Be drops of balm, to sanctify thy head:
Only compound me with forgotten dust;

Give that, which gave thee life, unto the worms.
Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;

For now a time is come to mock at form,
Harry the fifth is crown'd:-Up, vanity!

Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
And to the English court assemble now,
From every region, apes of idleness!

Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum:
Have you a ruffian, that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night; rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
Be happy, he will trouble you no more:
England shall double gild his treble guilt;7

7 England shall double gild his treble guilt;] Evidently the nonsense of some foolish player: for we must make a difference between what Shakspeare might be supposed to have written off hand, and what he had corrected. These scenes are of the latter kind; therefore such lines are by no means to be esteemed his. But, except Mr. Pope, (who judiciously threw out this line) not one of Shakspeare's editors seem ever to have had so reasonable and necessary a rule in their heads, when they set upon correcting this author. Warburton.

I know not why this commentator should speak with so much confidence what he cannot know, or determine so positively what so capricious a writer as our poet might either deliberately or wantonly produce. This line is, indeed, such as disgraces a few that precede and follow it, but it suits well enough with the daggers hid in thought, and whetted on thy stony heart; and the answer which the Prince makes, and which is applauded [by the King] for wisdom, is not of a strain much higher than this ejected line. Johnson.

How much this play on words, faulty as it is, was admired in the age of Shakspeare, appears from the most ancient writers of that time having frequently indulged themselves in it. So, in Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 1617:

"And as amidst the enamour'd waves he swims,

"The god of gold a purpose guilt his limbs;

"That, this word guilt including double sense,

"The double guilt of his incontinence

'Might be express'd."

Again, in Acolastus his Afterwit, a poem, by S. Nicholson, 1600: "O sacred thirst of golde, what canst thou not?

"Some terms thee gylt, that every soule might reade,
"Even in thy name, thy guilt is great indeede."

See also Vol. VII, p. 96, n. 9.

N 2

Malone.

England shall give him office, honour, might:
For the fifth Harry, from curb'd licence plucks
The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
Shall flesh his tooth in every innocent.

O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
What wilt thou do, when riot is thy care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,

Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!

P. Hen. O, pardon me, my liege! but for my tears,

[Kneeling.

The moist impediments unto my speech,
I had forestall'd this dear and deep rebuke,
Ere you with grief had spoke, and I had heard
The course of it so far. There is your crown;
And He that wears the crown immortally,
Long guard it yours! If I affect it more,
Than as your honour, and as your renown,
Let me no more from this obedience rise,

(Which my most true and inward-duteous spirit
Teacheth) this prostrate and exterior bending!
Heaven witness with me, when I here came in,

when riot is thy care?] i. e. Curator. A bold figure. So Eumæus is styled by Ovid, Epist. I:

immundæ cura fidelis hare." Tyrwhitt.

One cannot help wishing Mr. Tyrwhitt's elegant explanation to be true; yet I doubt whether the poet meant to say more than— What wilt thou do, when riot is thy regular business and occupation? Malone.

9 Which my most true &c.] True is loyal. This passage is obscure in the construction, though the general meaning is clear enough. The order is, this obedience which is taught this exterior bending by my duteous spirit; or, this obedience which teaches this exterior bending to my inwardly duteous spirit. I know not which is right. Johnson.

The former construction appears to me the least exceptionable of the two; but both are extremely harsh, and neither of them I think, the true construction. Malone.

The latter words "this prostrate and exterior bending"-appear to me to be merely explanatory of the former words-this obedience. Suppose the intermediate sentence-" which my most true and inward-duteous spirit teacheth"-to be included in a parenthesis, and the meaning I contend for will be evident.

M. Mason

I have adopted Mr. M. Mason's regulation. Steevens.

And found no course of breath within your majesty,
How cold it struck my heart! if I do feign,
O, let me in my present wildness die;
And never live to show the incredulous world
The noble change that I have purposed!
Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,
(And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,)
I spake unto the crown, as having sense,

And thus upbraided it. The care on thec depending,
Hath fed upon the body of my father;

Therefore, thou, best of gold, art worst of gold.
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,

Preserving life in med'cine potable:1

But thou, most fine, most honour'd, most renown'd,
Hast eat thy bearer up. Thus, my most royal liege,
Accusing it, I put it on my head;

To try with it,-as with an enemy,

That had before my face murder'd my father,-
The quarrel of a true inheritor.

But if it did infect my blood with joy,

Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride;

If any rebel or vain spirit of mine

Did, with the least affection of a welcome,
Give entertainment to the might of it,
Let God for ever keep it from my head!

Which my most true and inward-duteous spirit

Teacheth] i. e. which my loyalty and inward sense of duty prompt me to. The words, "this prostrate and exterior bending," are, I apprehend, put in apposition with "obedience," which is used for obeisance. Malone.

1

in med'cine potable:] There has long prevailed an opinion that a solution of gold has great medicinal virtues, and that the incorruptibility of gold might be communicated to the body impregnated with it. Some have pretended to make potable gold, among other frauds practised on credulity. Johnson.

So, in the character of the Doctor of Physicke, by Chaucer, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 446:

Steevens.

"For gold in phisike is a cordial." That gold may be made potable is certain, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's incredulity. The process is inserted in Abbé Guenee's incomparable work, intitled Lettres de quelques Juifs à M. de Voltaire, 5th edit. Vol. I, p. 416, a work which every person unacquainted with it will be glad to be referred to. Henley. See Dodsley's Collection of old Plays, Vol. VIII, p. 484, edit, 1780.

Reed.