Ill may'st thou thrive, if thou grant any grace! Duch. Pleads he in earnest? look upon his face; His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest ; His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast:

He

prays but faintly, and would be denied ; We pray with heart, and soul, and all beside: His weary joints would gladly rise, I know; Our knees shall kneel till to the ground they grow: His prayers are full of false hypocrisy ; Ours of true zeal and deep integrity. Our prayers do out-pray his; then, let them have That mercy which true prayers ought to have. Boling. Good aunt, stand up.

Duch. Nay, do not say-stand up; But, pardon first, and afterwards, stand up. An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,

Pardon should be the first word of thy speech.
I never long'd to hear a word till now;
Say-pardon, king; let pity teach thee how :
The word is short, but not so short as sweet;
No word like pardon, for kings' mouths so meet.
York. Speak it in French, king: say, pardonnez

moi.

Duch. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy? Ah! my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord, That set'st the word itself against the word! Speak, pardon, as 'tis current in our land; The chopping French we do not understand. Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there, Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear, That hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce, Pity may move thee pardon to rehearse. Boling. Good aunt, stand up. Duch.

I do not sue to stand: Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.

Boling. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.
Duch. O, happy vantage of a kneeling knee!
Yet am I sick for fear: speak it again;
Twice saying pardon doth not pardon twain,
But makes one pardon strong.

Boling. I pardon him with all my heart.
Duch.
A god on earth thou art.
Boling. But for our trusty brother-in-law, and
the abbot,

With all the rest of that consorted crew,
Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels.-
Good uncle, help to order several powers
To Oxford, or where'er these traitors are:
They shall not live within this world, I swear,
But I will have them, if I once know where.
Uncle, farewell,-and cousin too, adieu :
Your mother well hath pray'd, and prove you true.
Duch. Come, my old son: I pray Heaven make
thee new.
[Exeunt.

K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare
This prison, where I live, unto the world:
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it: yet I'll hammer't out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul;
My soul, the father: and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,

And these same thoughts people this little world;
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples, and do set the word itself
Against the word:

As thus," Come, little ones ;" and then again,-
"It is as hard to come, as for a camel
To thread the postern of a needle's eye."
Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content, flatter themselves,
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars,
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have, and others must sit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back

Of such as have before endur'd the like.

Thus play I. in one person, many people,
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then, treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then, crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king:
Then, am I king'd again; and, by and by,
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing.—But whate'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleas'd, till he be eas'd
With being nothing.-Music do I hear? [Music
Ha, ha! keep time.-How sour sweet music is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives:
And here have I the daintiness of ear,
To check time broke in a disorder'd string,
But for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar,
Their watches on unto mine eyes the outward
watch,

Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sounds that tell what hour it is,
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart.
Which is the bell: so sighs, and tears, and groans,
Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me: let it sound no more,
For though it hath holpe madmen to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad.
Yet, blessing on his heart that gives it me!
For 'tis a sign of love, and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
Enter Groom.

Groom. Hail, royal prince!
K. Rich.

Thanks, noble peer;
The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear.
What art thou? and how comest thou hither,
Where no man never comes, but that sad dog
That brings me food to make misfortune live?

Groom. I was a poor groom of thy stable, king, When thou wert king; who, travelling towards York, With much ado, at length have gotten leave To look upon my sometimes royal master's face. O! how it yern'd my heart, when I beheld In London streets that coronation day, When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary! That horse that thou so often hast bestrid, That horse that I so carefully have dress'd!

K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,

How went he under him?

Groom. So proudly, as if he disdain'd the ground.
K. Rich. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his
back?

That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble? Would he not fall down,
(Since pride must have a fall,) and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back?
Forgiveness, horse! why do I rail on thee,
Since thou, created to be aw'd by man,
Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse;
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,
Spur-gall'd, and tir'd, by jauncing Bolingbroke.

[Snatching a weapon, and killing one. Go thou, and fill another room in hell.

[He kills another: EXTON strikes him down. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire, That staggers thus my person.-Exton, thy fierce hand

Hath with the king's blood stain'd the king's own land.

Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high, Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die. [Dies. Exton. As full of valour, as of royal blood: Both have I spilt: O, would the deed were good!

For now the devil, that told me I did well,
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
This dead king to the living king I'll bear.-
Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.
[Exeunt.

SCENE VI.-Windsor. An Apartment in the
Castle.
Flourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE, and YORK, with
Lords, and Attendants.

Boling. Kind uncle York, the latest news we

hear

Is, that the rebels have consum'd with fire
Our town of Ciceter in Glostershire;
But whether they be ta'en, or slain, we hear not

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

Welcome, my lord. What is the news?

More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life; So, as thou liv'st in peace, die free from strife: For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,

Fitz. My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London The heads of Brocas, and sir Bennet Seely, Two of the dangerous consorted traitors, That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.

Boling. Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot; Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.

Enter PERCY, with the Bishop of Carlisle. Percy. The grand conspirator, abbot of Westminster,

With clog of conscience, and sour melancholy,
Hath yielded up his body to the grave;

But here is Carlisle living, to abide

Thy kingly doom, and sentence of his pride.
Boling. Carlisle, this is your doom :-

Choose out some secret place, some reverend room, 44

Enter EXTON, with Attendants bearing a coffin.
Exton. Great king, within this coffin I present
Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies
The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
Richard of Bourdeaux, by me hither brought.
Boling. Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast
wrought

A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
Upon my head, and all this famous land.
Exton. From your own mouth, my lord, did I
this deed.

Boling. They love not poison that do poison need,
Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead,
I hate the murderer, love him murdered.
The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
But neither my good word, nor princely favour:
With Cain go wander through the shades of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.-
Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe,
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow:
Come, mourn with me for that I do lament,
And put on sullen black incontinent.
I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land,
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
March sadly after: grace my mournings here,
In weeping after this untimely bier.

[Exeunt.

ACT I.-SCENE I.

"Old John of Gaunt, TIME-HONOURED Lancaster," etc. John of Gaunt was, at this period, about fifty-seven; and it would now sound strangely to apply this epithet of " time-honoured" to a British peer, or even an American senator, of that age. Some years ago, in a debate in the senate of New York, on the subject of judiciary reform, the present editor had occasion to comment on this passage, in reference to the absurd restriction, in this state, of the tenure of higher judicial office to the age of sixty, fixed in 1775:-"The habits of former generations were not so favourable to longevity, and the preservation of a sound mind in a sound body, to ripe old age, as those of the present. The improvement of modern life in habits, in diet, in ventilation, in the police of cities, in the science of medicine, have all tended very much to the prolongation of the period of active, healthy, and useful life. It may sound oddly to refer to the authority of Shakespeare, in an argument on legal reform; yet he affords some curious illustrations of this fact. Every body recollects, in his historical plays, the address to John of Gaunt, as time-honoured Lancaster;' and his son, Henry IV., is afterwards represented as an aged prince. Some of the critics have noticed these as historical errors in the dramatist, as John of Gaunt, who is spoken of in terms we should now apply to a man of eighty, was then some years under sixty; while the venerable Henry IV. was under forty at the battle of Shrewsbury, and died at forty-five. But old poets and chroniclers often express similar relative notions of age; and the solution given, by the best English antiquaries, is, that the mode of life of those steel-clad warriors, mixed of alternate hardships and wild excess, with little attention to any habits of cleanliness, either in their persons or their dwellings, with the total absence of all tolerable surgical or medical skill, to relieve the most ordinary malady, or what would be now considered as a slight wound, broke them down at a comparatively early age. They were old men, 'time-honoured patriarchs, at an age when a modern English barrister, or colonel, is often called a rising young man.' Something of the same change has taken place in our own state of society, since the revolution," etc.-VERPLANCK's Speech in the Senate of New York, on the Bill for the Amendment of the Law, (1839.)

that by which one is constrained, are the same thing. The appeal of Hereford against Mowbray was to be decided by a "trial by combat." This practice was very ancient, and traces of it are found in the fifth cen tury. The "oath and band" of John of Gaunt were the pledges that he gave for his son's appearance. Thus, in the "Fairy Queen" of Spenser:

These three that hardy challenge took in hand,
For Canace with Cambel for to fight;
The day was set, that all might understand,

And pledges pawn'd, the same to keep aright. "-Henry HEREFORD thy bold son"-In the ancient copies, this name is here spelled Herford, showing that it was pronounced, in Shakespeare's time, as a dissyl lable-probably Harford, as it is always spelled by Shakespeare's friend and contemporary, Daniel, in speaking of the same personage, in his "Civil Wars." In the speech of Richard, after the entrance of Boling. broke, the title is printed Hereford," in most of the old copies; and the usual course in the latter part of this play, in the oldest edition as well as in the folio of 1623, is to print it the same; but the metre is always more exact when it is pronounced in two syllables, as it doubtless was by the author.

"the cause you come"-i. e. On which you come, or you come on. Such an omission of the preposition is not unusual.

"-any other ground INHABITABLE"-i. e. Uninhabitable: so used by Ben Jonson, Donne, and other writers of the time. Thus, in T. Heywood's "General History of Women," (1624:)-"Where all the country was scorched by the heat of the sun, and the place almost inhabitable for the multitude of serpents."

"It must be great that can INHERIT us So much as of a thought of ill in him." We have more than once had occasion to point out the peculiar use of "inherit," by Shakespeare, as here, not in its ordinary sense, but in that of possessing. So

in ROMEO AND JULIET: