Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the letter. Glos. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

Edm. I know no news, my lord.

Glos. What paper were you reading?

Edm. Nothing, my lord.

Glos. No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see: come; if it be nothing I shall not need spectacles.

Edm. I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; and, for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. Glos. Give me the letter, sir.

Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Glos. Let's see, let's see.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.

7

Glos. [Reads.] This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond8 bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffer'd. Come

Poetaster: "Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition." The word is still so used in the English Universities. Upon the gad is in haste; the same as upon the spur. A gad was a sharp-pointed piece of steel, used in driving oxen; hence goaded.

& Terrible because done as if from terror; terrified.

7 That is, this policy, or custom, of reverencing age. The idea is, that the honouring of fathers and mothers is an old superstition, which smart boys ought to cast off, knock their fathers on the head, and so have a good time while they are young. We have a like expression in scene 4: "This milky gentleness and course of yours." See vol. xiv. page 148, note 22.

8 Here, as commonly in Shakespeare, fond is foolish.

Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the letter. Glos. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord.

Glos. What paper were you reading?

Edm. Nothing, my lord.

6

Glos. No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see: come; if it be nothing I shall not need spectacles.

Edm. I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; and, for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking.

Glos. Give me the letter, sir.

Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Glos. Let's see, let's see.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.

Glos. [Reads.] This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffer'd. Come

Poetaster: "Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition." The word is still so used in the English Universities. — Upon the gad is in haste; the same as upon the spur. A gad was a sharp-pointed piece of steel, used in driving oxen; hence goaded.

6 Terrible because done as if from terror; terrified.

7 That is, this policy, or custom, of reverencing age. The idea is, that the honouring of fathers and mothers is an old superstition, which smart boys ought to cast off, knock their fathers on the head, and so have a good time while they are young. We have a like expression in scene 4: "This milky gentleness and course of yours." See vol. xiv. page 148, note 22.

8 Here, as commonly in Shakespeare, fond is foolish.

your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your Honour, and to no other pretence 11 of danger.

Glos. Think you so?

Edm If your Honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening.

Glos. He cannot be such a monster.

Lam. Nor is not, sure.

hm.

Gies.to his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves Heaven and Earth ! — Edinund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray you: frame the business after your 'n wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due resorition.13

Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey 14 the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

Glos. These late eclipses in the Sun and Moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: 15 love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in rities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack'd 'twixt son and father. This villair

11 Pretence was very often used for intention or purpose. See vol, vi peg 187, note 2.

12 Me is here expletive. -Wind into him is the same as our phras "worm yourself into him"; that is, find out his hidden purpose.

13" I would give my whole estate, al' til. it I possess, to be abflor a sured in the matter." The Poet often i as rente in this sense.

14 To convey, as the word is here used, is to manage or carry through a thing adroitly, or as by sleight of hand.

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16" Though reason of natural phi, sophy may make out that the strange events proced from the regular operation of natural laws, ard have no moral purpose a significance, yet we find the ra folowed by cela r ties, as in punishment of our sin ."