low's we eat a last year's pippin of my own grafting, with a dish of caraways and so forth": now we are amidst the poetries of chivalry and the felicities of victory; now amidst the obscure sufferings of war, where its inexorable iron hand enters the widow's cottage, and snatches away the land's humblest comforts. And so I might go on indefinitely, the particulars in this kind being so numerous as might well distract the mind, yet so skilfully composed that the number seems not large, till by a special effort of thought one goes to viewing them severally. And these particulars, though so unnoticed or so little noticed in the detail, are nevertheless so ordered that they all tell in the result. How strong is the principle of organic unity and life pervading the whole, may be specially instanced in Falstaff; whose sayings everywhere so fit and cleave to the circumstances, to all the oddities of connection and situation out of which they grow; have such a mixed smacking, such a various and composite relish, made up from all the peculiarities of the person by whom, the occasion wherein, and the purpose for which they are spoken, that they cannot be detached and set out by themselves without thwarting or greatly marring their force and flavour. Thus in the farthest extremities of the work we feel the beatings of one common heart. On the whole, we may safely affirm with Dr. Johnson, that "perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight."

Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, Carriers, Travel

Enter King HENRY, WESTMORELAND, Sir WALTER BLUNT,

and others.

King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils

To be commenced in strands afar remote.1

No more the thirsty entrance 2 of this soil

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armèd hoofs
Of hostile paces: those opposèd eyes,
Which, like the meteors 3 of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery,

Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,

1 It scarce need be said that here the image is of Peace so scared and out of breath with domestic strife, that she can but make a brief pause, and pant forth short and broken speech of new wars to be undertaken in foreign lands. This play is distinctly continuous with King Richard II., at the close of which we have Bolingbroke avowing it as his purpose to atone for the death of Richard by leading out another Crusade:

I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land,

To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.

And in fact he was hardly more than seated on the throne before he began to be so harassed with acts of rebellion and threats of invasion, that he conceived the plan of drowning the public sense of his usurpation in an enthusiasm of foreign war and conquest.

2 Of course entrance here means mouth; for what but a mouth should have lips? So in Genesis, iv. II: "And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand."

8 Meteor was used in a much more general sense than we attach to the word. King John, page 98, note 19. It might include the Aurora Borealis, which sometimes has the appearance of hostile armies engaged in battle. So in Paradise Lost, ii. 533-8:

As when, to warn proud cities, war appears
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush

To battle in the clouds, before each van

Prick forth the aëry knights, and couch their spears,

Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

From either end of heaven the welkin burns.

March all one way, and be no more opposed
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ —
Whose soldier now, under whose blessèd cross
We are impressèd and engaged to fight-
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,1
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walk'd those blessèd feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd
For our advantage on the bitter cross.
But this our purpose is a twelvemonth old,
And bootless 'tis to tell you we will go :

Therefore we meet not now.5 - Then let me hear
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,"

What yesternight our Council did decree

In forwarding this dear expedience.7

West. My liege, this haste was hot in question, And many limits of the charge set down

8

4 Levying an army to a place is an elliptical form of expression. So in Gosson's School of Abuse, 1587: "Scipio, before he levied his forces to the walls of Carthage, gave his soldiers the print of the city in a cake, to be devoured." - Here, as often, shall has the force of will; the two being used indifferently.

5 "We meet not on that question, or to consider that matter." Such is often the meaning of therefore in old English.

6 Ralph Neville, the present Earl of Westmoreland, married for his first wife Joan, daughter to John of Gaunt, by Catharine Swynford, and therefore half-sister to King Henry the Fourth. Cousin, in old English, bears much the same sense as kinsman in our time.

7 The Poet uses expedience and expedition interchangeably: likewise, expedient and expeditious. By dear, the King probably means that he has his heart set upon it.

8 "Limits of the charge" probably means appointments for the undertak