Give even way unto my rough affairs:

Put not you on the visage of the times,
And be, like them, to Percy troublesome.

LADY N. I have given over, I will speak no more. Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide. NORTH. Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn; And, but my going, nothing can redeem it.

LADY P. O, yet, for God's sake, go not to these

wars!

The time was, father, that

you broke your word,
When you were more endear'd to it than now;
When your own Percy, when my heart's dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look, to see his father
Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain ".
Who then persuaded you to stay at home?
There were two honours lost; yours, and your son's.
For yours,-may heavenly glory brighten it!
For his,-it stuck upon him, as the sun

In the grey vault of heaven: and, by his light,
Did all the chivalry of England move

To do brave acts; he was, indeed, the glass
Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.
He had no legs, that practised not his gait;

6 Threw many a northward look, to see his father Bring up his powers; but he did LONG in vain.] Mr. Theobald very elegantly conjectures that the poet wrote,

66 -but he did look in vain."

Statius, in the tenth Book of his Thebaid, has the same thought: frustra de colle Lycæi

Anxia prospectas, si quis per nubila longe

Aut sonus, aut nostro sublatus ab agmine pulvis.

STEEVENS.

7 In the GREY vault of heaven :] So, in one of our author's poems to his mistress:

And truly, not the morning sun of heaven "Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east," &c. STEEVENS. He had no legs, &c.] The twenty-two following lines are of those added by Shakspeare after his first edition. POPE. They were first printed in the folio, 1623. MALONE.

And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,
Became the accents of the valiant";

For those that could speak low, and tardily,
Would turn their own perfection to abuse,

To seem like him: So that, in speech, in gait,
In diet, in affections of delight,

In military rules, humours of blood,

He was the mark and glass, copy and book,
That fashion'd others1. And him,-O wondrous
him!

O miracle of men!-him did you leave,
(Second to none, unseconded by you,)
To look upon the hideous god of war
In disadvantage; to abide a field,

Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur's name
Did seem defensible 2-so you left him:
Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong,
To hold your honour more precise and nice
With others, than with him; let them alone;

9 And SPEAKING THICK, which nature made his blemish, Became the accents of the valiant;] Speaking thick is, speaking fast, crouding one word on another. So, in Cymbeline:

say, and speak thick,

"Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing-."

"Became the accents of the valiant" is,

66 I came to be affected

by them," a sense which (as Mr. M. Mason observes) is confirmed by the lines immediately succeeding:

For those that could speak low, and tardily,

"Would turn their own perfection to abuse,
"To seem like him."

The opposition designed by the adverb tardily, also serves to support my explanation of the epithet thick. STEEVENS.

He was the mark and GLASS, copy and BOOK,

That fashion'd others.] So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece, 1594:

"For princes are the glass, the school, the book,
"Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look."
MALONE.

2 Did seem DEFENSIBLE:] Defensible does not in this place mean capable of defence, but bearing strength, furnishing the means of defence; the passive for the active participle. MALONE.

The marshal, and the archbishop, are strong.
Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,
To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur's neck,
Have talk'd of Monmouth's grave.

NORTH.

Beshrew your heart,

Fair daughter! you do draw my spirits from me,
With new lamenting ancient oversights.

But I must go, and meet with danger there;
Or it will seek me in another place,

And find me worse provided.

LADY N.
O, fly to Scotland.
Till that the nobles, and the armed commons,
Have of their puissance made a little taste.

LADY P. If they get ground and vantage of the
king,

Then join you with them, like a rib of steel,
To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves,
First let them try themselves: So did your son ;
He was so suffer'd; so came I a widow;
And never shall have length of life enough,
To rain upon remembrance" with mine eyes,
That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven,
For recordation to my noble husband.

NORTH. Come, come, go in with me: 'tis with my mind,

As with the tide swell'd up unto its height,
That makes a still-stand, running neither way.
Fain would I go to meet the archbishop,

But many thousand reasons hold me back :

-] Alluding to the plant rose

3 To rain upon REMEMBRANCEmary, so called, and used in funerals. Thus, in The Winter's Tale:

"For you there's rosemary and rue, these keep

66

Seeming and savour all the winter long:

"Grace and remembrance be to you both," &c.

For as rue was called herb of grace, from its being used in exorcisms; so rosemary was called remembrance, from its being a cephalic. WARBURTON.

I will resolve for Scotland; there am I,
Till time and vantage crave my company.

SCENE IV.

[Exeunt.

London. A Room in the Boar's Head Tavern, in Eastcheap*.

Enter Two Drawers.

1 DRAW. What the devil hast thou brought there? apple-Johns? thou know'st sir John cannot endure an apple-John3.

2 DRAW. Mass, thou sayest true: The prince once set a dish of apple-John's before him: and told him, there were five more sir Johns: and, putting off his hat, said, I will now take my leave of

4

Boar's Head Tavern, in Eastcheap.] Shakspeare (as I learn from my friend Mr. Petrie), has with propriety selected the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, for the scene of Prince Henry's merry meetings, as it was near his own residence: "A mansion called Cold-harbour (near All-hallows Church, Upper Thames Street, three minutes walk from the Boar's Head) was granted to Henry Prince of Wales, 11 Henry IV. (1410)." Rymer, vol. viii. p. 628, London edit. BosWELL.

5-an APPLE-JOHN.] So, in The Ball, by Chapman and Shirley, 1639:

66

thy man, Apple-John, that looks

"As he had been a sennight in the straw,
"A ripening for the market."

Thus,

This apple will keep two years, but becomes very wrinkled and shrivelled. It is called by the French,-Deux-ans. Cogan, in his Haven of Health, 1595: "The best apples that we have in England are pepins, deusants, costards, darlings, and such other." Again, among instructions given in the year 1580 to some of our navigators, "for banketting on shipboard persons of credite," we meet with "the apple John that dureth two yeares, to make shew of our fruits. See Hackluyt, vol. i. p. 441. STEEVENS.

Falstaff has already said of himself, I am withered like an old apple-John. See vol. xvi. p. 336. BosWELL.

these six dry, round, old, withered knights. It angered him to the heart; but he hath forgot that.

1 DRAW. Why then, cover, and set them down: And see if thou canst find out Sneak's noise; mistress Tear-sheet would fain hear some musick. Dispatch :-The room where they supped, is too hot; they'll come in straight.

2 DRAW. Sirrah, here will be the prince, and master Poins anon: and they will put on two of our jerkins, and aprons; and sir John must not know of it: Bardolph hath brought word.

SNEAK's noise ;] Sneak was a street minstrel, and therefore the drawer goes out to listen if he can hear him in the neighbourhood. JOHNSON.

A noise of musicians anciently signified a concert or company of them. In the old play of Henry V. (not that of Shakspeare) there is this passage: there came the young prince, and two or three more of his companions, and called for wine good store, and then they sent for a noyse of musitians," &c.

Falstaff addresses them as a company in another scene of this play. So again, in Westward Hoe, by Deckar and Webster, 1607: "All the noise that went with him, poor fellows, have had their fiddle-cases pulled over their ears."

Again, in The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, a comedy, printed 1598, the Count says: "O that we had a noise of musicians, to play to this antick as we go."

Heywood, in his Iron Age, 1632, has taken two expressions from these plays of Henry IV. and put them into the mouth of Thersites addressing himself to Achilles :

"Where's this great sword and buckler man of Greece, "We shall have him in one of Sneak's noise,

"And come peaking into the tents of the Greeks,

66

With, will you have any musick, gentlemen?"

Among Ben Jonson's Leges Convivales is

Fidicen, nici accersitus, non venito. STEEVENS.

A noise was so familiarly used for a concert, that it is employed as a ludicrous metaphor in the Chances, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "He's neer without a noise of syringes

"In's pocket-." BOSWELL.

6 Dispatch, &c.] This period is from the first edition. POPE. These words, which are not in the folio, are in the quarto given to the second drawer. Mr. Pope rightly attributed them to the first. MALONE.