Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,
Art thou damn'd, Hubert.

Hub. Do but hear me, sir.

Bast. Ha! I'll tell thee what;

Thou art damn'd as black-nay, nothing is so black;
Thou art more deep damn'd than prince Lucifer :
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell

As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.
Hub. Upon my soul,-

Bast. If thou didst but consent

To this most cruel act, do but despair,

And, if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread
That ever spider twisted from her womb
Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be

A beam to hang thee on; or would'st thou drown thyself,
Put but a little water in a spoon,

And it shall be as all the ocean,

Enough to stifle such a villain up.

I do suspect thee very grievously.

Hub. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought
Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath
Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,
Let hell want pains enough to torture me!
I left him well.

Bast. Go, bear him in thine arms.-

I am amaz'd, methinks; and lose my way
Among the thorns and dangers of this world.-----
How easy dost thou take all England up!
From forth this morsel of dead royalty,
The life, the right, and truth of all this realm
Is fled to heaven; and England now is left
To tug and scamble, and to part by th' teeth
The unowed interest' of proud-swelling state.
Now, for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty,
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest,
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace :

[8] I remember once to have met with a book, printed in the time of Henry VIII. (which Shakespeare possibly might have seen,) where we are told that the defor mity of the condemned in the other world, is exactly proportioned to the degrees of their guilt The author of it observes how difficult it would be, on this account, to distinguish between Belzebub and Judas Iscariot. STEEVENS.

[9] Scamble and scramble have the same meaning. STEEVENS.

[1] That is, the interest which is not at this moment legally possessed by any one, however rightfully entitled to it. On the death of Arthur, the right to the English crown devolved to his sister, Eleanor. MALONE.

Now powers from home, and discontents at home,
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits
(As doth a raven on a sick-fallen beast,)
The imminent decay of wrested pomp.*
Now happy he, whose cloak and cincture can
Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child,
And follow me with speed; I'll to the king:
A thousand businesses are brief in hand,
And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.

9

[Exeunt.

ACT V.

SCENE I.-The same. A room in the Palace. Enter King JOHN, PANDULPH with the Crown, and Attendants.

King John.

THUS have I yielded up into your hand,

The circle of my glory.

Pand. Take again

[Giving JOHN the Crown.

From this my hand, as holding of the pope,

Your sovereign greatness and authority.

K. John. Now keep your holy word: go meet the French;

And from his holiness use all your power

To stop their marches, 'fore we are inflam'd.

Our discontented counties do revolt ;

Our people quarrel with obedience ;

Swearing allegiance, and the love of soul,
To stranger blood, to foreign royalty
This inundation of mistemper'd humour

Rests by you only to be qualified.

Then pause not; for the present time's so sick,
That present medicine must be minister'd,

Or overthrow incurable ensues.

Pand. It was my breath that blew this tempest up,

Upon your stubborn usage of the pope:

But, since you are a gentle convertite,3

My tongue shall hush again this storm of war,
And make fair weather in your blustering land.
On this Ascension-day, remember well,

[2] Wrested pomp, is greatness obtained by violence. JOHNSON. [3] A convertite is a convert. STEEVENS.

Upon your oath of service to the pope,

Go I to make the French lay down their arms.

[Exit

K. John. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet Say, that, before Ascension-day at noon,

My crown I should give off? Even so I have:
I did suppose, it should be on constraint;
But, heaven be thank'd, it is but voluntary.

Enter the Bastard.

Bast. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out, But Dover castle: London hath receiv'd,

Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers:
Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone

To offer service to your enemy;

And wild amazement hurries up and down
The little number of your doubtful friends.

K. John. Would not my lords return to me again,
After they heard young Arthur was alive?

Bast. They found him dead, and cast into the streets; An empty casket, where the jewel of life

By some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away.
K. John. That villain Hubert told me, he did live.
Bast. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.
But wherefore do you droop? why look you sad?
Be great in act, as you have been in thought;
Let not the world see fear, and sad distrust,
Govern the motion of a kingly eye:

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threat'ner, and outface the brow
Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,
That borrow their behaviours from the great,
Grow great by your example, and put on
The dauntless spirit of resolution.
Away; and glister like the god of war,
When he intendeth to become the field:
Show boldness, and aspiring confidence.
What, shall they seek the lion in his den,

And fright him there? and make him tremble there?
O, let it not be said!-Forage,* and run

To meet displeasure further from the doors;
And grapple with him, ere he come so nigh.

K. John. The legate of the pope hath been with me,

[4] To forage is here used in its original sense, for to range abroad. JOHNSON

And I have made a happy peace with him;
And he hath promis'd to dismiss the powers
Led by the Dauphin.

Bast. O inglorious league !

Shall we, upon the footing of our land,
Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,
Insinuation, parley, and base truce,

To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy,
A cocker'd silken wanton brave our fields,
And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,
Mocking the air with colours idly spread,
And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms :
Perchance, the cardinal cannot make your peace ;
Or if he do, let it at least be said,

They saw we had a purpose of defence.

K. John. Have thou the ordering of this present time. Bast. Away then, with good courage; yet, I know, Our party may well meet a prouder foe.

SCENE II.

[Exeunt.

A Plain near St. Edmund's-Bury. Enter, in arms, Lewis,
SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and Soldiers.
Lew. My lord Melun, let this be copied out,
And keep it safe for our remembrance :
Return the precedent to these lords again;
That, having our fair order written down,
Both they, and we, perusing o'er these notes,
May know wherefore we took the sacrament,
And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.

Sal. Upon our sides it never shall be broken.
And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear
A voluntary zeal, and unurg'd faith,

To your proceedings; yet, believe me, prince,
I am not glad that such a sore of time
Should seek a plaster by contemn'd revolt,
And heal the inveterate canker of one wound,
By making many: O, it grieves my soul,
That I must draw this metal from my side
To be a widow-maker; O, and there,
Where honourable rescue, and defence,

[5] He has the same image in Macbeth:

"Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky,

And fan our people cold." JOHNSON.

[6] i. e. the rough draught of the original treaty between the Dauphin and the English lords. STEEVENS.

Cries out upon the name of Salisbury :
But such is the infection of the time,
That, for the health and physic of our right,
We cannot deal but with the very hand
Of stern injustice and confused wrong.-
And is't not pity, O my grieved friends!
That we, the sons and children of this isle,
Were born to see so sad an hour as this;
Wherein we step after a stranger march
Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up

Her enemies' ranks, (I must withdraw and weep
Upon the spot of this enforced cause,)"
To grace the gentry of a land remote,
And follow unacquainted colours here?

What, here?-O nation, that thou could'st remove!
That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about,
Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself,
And grapple thee unto a pagan shore;

Where these two Christian armies might combine
The blood of malice in a vein of league,
And not to spend it so unneighbourly!

Lew. A noble temper dost thou show in this
And great affections, wrestling in thy bosom,
Do make an earthquake of nobility.
O, what a noble combat hast thou fought,
Between compulsion and a brave respect!
Let me wipe off this honorable dew,
That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks:
My heart hath melted at a lady's tears,
Being an ordinary inundation;

But this effusion of such manly drops,

This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul,
Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amaz'd
Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven
Figur'd quite o'er with burning meteors.
Lift up thy brow, renown'd Salisbury,
And with a great heart heave away this storm:
Commend these waters to those baby eyes,
That never saw the giant world enrag'd;
Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,
Full warm of blood, of mirth, of gossiping.
Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep
[7] Spot probably means, stain or disgrace. M. MASON.