But in the end, to stop mine ear indeed,
Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,
Ending with-brother, son, and all are dead.
Mor. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet:
But, for
my lord your son,-
North.

Why, he is dead. See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

He, that but fears the thing he would not know, Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others' eyes, That what he fear'd is chanc'd. Yet speak, Morton; Tell thou thy earl, his divination lies;

And I will take it as a sweet disgrace,

And make thee rich for doing me such wrong. Mor. You are too great to be by me gainsaid: Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

North. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy's dead. I see a strange confession in thine eye: Thou shak'st thy head, and hold'st it fear, or sin, To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so: The tongue offends not, that reports his death: And he doth sin, that doth belie the dead; Not he, which says the dead is not alive. Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office; and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, Remember'd knolling a departing friend9.

9 So in Shakspeare's seventy-first Sonnet :

You shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled.'

:

Milton has adopted this expressive epithet :-
'I hear the far-off curfew sound

Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar.'

The bell anciently was rung before the dying person had expired, and thence was called the passing bell. Mr. Douce thinks it probable that this bell might have been originally used to drive away demons, who were supposed to watch for the parting soul.

Bard. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.
Mor. I am sorry, I should force you to believe
That, which I would to heaven I had not seen:
But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,
Rend'ring faint quittance 10, wearied and outbreath'd,
To Harry Monmouth: whose swift wrath beat down
The never daunted Percy to the earth,

From whence with life he never more sprung up.
In few, his death (whose spirit lent a fire
Even to the dullest peasant in his camp),
Being bruited11 once, took fire and heat away
From the best temper'd courage in his troops:
For from his metal was his party steel'd;
Which once in him abated, all the rest
Turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
And as the thing that's heavy in itself,
Upon enforcement, flies with greatest speed;
So did our men, heavy in Hotspur's loss,
Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear,
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim,
Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,
Fly from the field: Then was that noble Worcester
Too soon ta'en prisoner: and that furious Scot,
The bloody Douglas, whose well labouring sword
Had three times slain the appearance of the king,
'Gan vail1o his stomach, and did grace the shame
Of those that turn'd their backs; and, in his flight,

10 By faint quittance a faint return of blows is meant. So in King Henry V:—

'We shall forget the office of our hand

Sooner than quittance of desert and merit.'

11 i. e. reported, noised abroad. Vide Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 7. 12 i. e. began to fall his courage, to let his spirits sink under his fortune. To vail is to lower, to cast down. So in The Taming of the Shrew, Act v:

Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,

And place your hands below your husband's foot.'

Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
Is, that the king hath won; and hath sent out
A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,
Under the conduct of young Lancaster,
And Westmoreland: this is the news at full.
North. For this I shall have time enough to mourn.
In poison there is physick; and these news,
Having been well, that would have made me sick,
Being sick, have in some measure made me well:
And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints,
Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,
Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire

13

Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs, Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief 13, Are thrice themselves: hence therefore, thou nice 14 crutch;

A scaly gauntlet now, with joints of steel,

Must glove this hand: and hence, thou sickly quoif;
Thou art a guard too wanton for the head,
Which princes, flesh'd with conquest, aim to hit.
Now bind my brows with iron; And approach
The ragged'st hour that time and spite dare bring,
To frown upon the enrag'd Northumberland!
Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not nature's hand
Keep the wild flood confin'd! let order die!
And let this world no longer be a stage,
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead 15!

13 Grief, in the latter part of this line, is used, in its present for sorrow; in the former part for bodily pain.

sense,

14 Steevens explains nice here by trifling; but Shakspeare, like his cotemporaries, uses it in the sense of effeminate, delicate, tender. Vide note on As You Like It, Act iv. Sc. 1. p. 182.

15 6 The conclusion of this noble speech (says Johnson) is extremely striking. There is no need to suppose it exactly philo

Tra. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord 16.

Bard. Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.

Mor. The lives of all your loving complices Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er To stormy passion, must perforce decay. You cast the event of war, my noble lord 17, And summ'd the account of chance, before you said,

Let us make head. It was your presurmise, That in the dole 18 of blows your son might drop: You knew, he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge, More likely to fall in, than to get o'er 19:

You were advis'd 20, his flesh was capable

Of wounds, and scars; and that his forward spirit.
Would lift him where most trade of danger rang'd;
Yet did you say,-Go forth; and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The stiff-borne action: What hath then befallen,

sophical; darkness, in poetry, may be absence of eyes, as well as privation of light. Yet we may remark that, by an ancient opinion, it has been held that if the human race, for whom the world was made, were extirpated, the whole system of sublunary nature would cease at once.' Mr. Boswell remarks that a passage resembling this, but feeble in comparison, is found in The Double Marriage of Beaumont and Fletcher:

That we might fall,

And in our ruins swallow up this kingdom,

Nay, the whole world, and make a second chaos.'

16 This line in the quarto is by mistake given to Umfreville, who is spoken of in this very scene as absent. It is given to Travers at Steevens's suggestion.

17 The fourteen following lines, and a number of others in this play, were not in the quarto edition.

18 Dealing, or distribution.

19 So in King Henry IV. Part I:

'As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
As to o'erwalk a current roaring loud,
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.'

20 That is, you were warned or aware.

Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth,
More than that being which was like to be?

21

Bard. We all, that are engaged to this loss 21,
Knew that we ventur'd on such dangerous seas,
That, if we wrought out life, 'twas ten to one:
And yet we ventur'd, for the gain propos'd
Chok'd the respect of likely peril fear'd;
And, since we are o'erset, venture again.

Come, we will all put forth; body, and goods.

Mor. 'Tis more than time: And, my most noble

lord,

I hear for certain, and do speak the truth,-
The gentle archbishop of York is up 22,
With well appointed powers; he is a man,
Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corps,
But shadows, and the shows of men, to fight:
For that same word, rebellion, did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls;
And they did fight with queasiness 23, constrain'd,
As men drink potions; that their weapons only
Seem'd on our side, but, for their spirits and souls,
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond: But now the bishop
Turns insurrection to religion:

Suppos'd sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He's follow'd both with body and with mind;
And doth enlarge his rising with the blood
Of fair King Richard, scrap'd from Pomfret stones:
Derives from heaven his quarrel, and his cause;

21 This mode of expression has before been noticed. Thus in the first part of King Henry IV :

'Hath a more worthy interest to this state.'

22 This and the following twenty lines are not found in the quarto.

23 Against their stomachs.