Did push it out of further question1. ELY. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? CANT. It must be thought on. If it pass against us, We lose the better half of our possession: Would they strip from us; being valued thus,— Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil, A thousand pounds by the year2: Thus runs the bill. ELY. This would drink deep. CANT. "Twould drink the cup and all. ELY. But what prevention ? CANT. The king is full of grace, and fair regard. ter] then his ancestour had once by the boare." [K. Richard III.] edit. 1641, 12mo. p. 87. So again, Shakspeare himself makes King Henry V. say to the Princess Katharine, I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore prove a good soldier-breeder." Act V. PERCY. Shakspeare uses the same word in Much Ado About Nothing : Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mong'ring boys." 66 Again, in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1608: "Leave us to scamble for her getting out." See vol. vii. p. 134, n. 3. STEEVENS. out of further QUESTION.] i. e. of further debate. MALONE. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "If we contemn, out of our question wipe him." STEEVENS. 2 A thousand pounds by the year:] Hall, who appears to have been Shakspeare's authority, in the above enumeration, says, and the kyng to have clerely in his cofers twentie thousand poundes." REED. 66 ELY. And a true lover of the holy church. And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him; To envelop and contain celestial spirits. Never came reformation in a flood", With such a heady current, scouring faults; So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, ELY. We are blessed in the change. CANT. Hear him but reason in divinity', 3 The breath no sooner left his father's body, But that his wILDNESS, mortified in him, Seem'd to die too:] The same thought occurs in the last scene of the preceding play, where Henry V. 66 says: My father is gone wild into his grave, "For in his tomb lie my affections." M. MASON. 4 CONSIDERATION like an angel, &c.] As paradise, when sin and Adam were driven out by the angel, became the habitation of celestial spirits, so the king's heart, since consideration has driven out his follies, is now the receptacle of wisdom and of virtue. JOHNSON. Mr. Upton observes that, according to the Scripture expression, the old Adam, or the old man, signified man in an unregenerated or gentile state. MALONE. 5 Never came reformation in a flood,] Alluding to the method by which Hercules cleansed the famous stables, when he turned a river through them. Hercules still is in our author's head when he mentions the Hydra. JOHNSON. 6 With such a heady CURRENT,] Old copy-currance. rected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE. Cor 7 Hear him but reason in divinity, &c.] This speech seems to have been copied from King James's prelates, speaking of their Solomon; when Archbishop Whitgift, who, as an eminent writer says, "died soon afterwards, and probably doated then, at the Hampton-Court conference, declared himself verily persuaded, And, all-admiring, with an inward wish You would desire, the king were made a prelate: Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, You would say,—it hath been all-in-all his study: The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, that his sacred majesty spake by the spirit of God." And, in effect, this scene was added after King James's accession to the crown: so that we have no way of avoiding its being esteemed a compliment to him, but by supposing it a compliment to his bishops. WARBurton. Why these lines should be divided from the rest of the speech and applied to King James, I am not able to conceive; nor why an opportunity should be so eagerly snatched to treat with contempt that part of his character which was the least contemptible. King James's theological knowledge was not inconsiderable. To preside at disputations is not very suitable to a king, but to understand the questions is surely laudable. The poet, if he had James in his thoughts, was no skilful encomiast ; for the mention of Harry's skill in war forced upon the remembrance of his audience the great deficiency of their present king; who yet, with all his faults, and many faults he had, was such, that Sir Robert Cotton says, "he would be content that England should never have a better, provided that it should never have a worse." JOHNSON. Those who are solicitous that justice should be done to the theological knowledge of our British Solomon, may very easily furnish themselves with specimens of it from a book entitled, Rex Platonicus, sive de potentissimi Principis Jacobi Britanniarum Regis ad illustrissimam Academiam Oxoniensem adventu, Aug. 27. Anno 1605. In this performance we may still hear him reasoning in Divinity, Physick, Jurisprudence, and Philosophy. On the second of these subjects he has not failed to express his wellknown enmity to tobacco, and throws out many a royal witticism on the "Medici Nicotianista," and "Tobacconista" of the age; insomuch, that Isaac Wake, the chronicler of his triumphs at Oxford, declares, that "nemo nisi iniquissimus rerum æstimator, bonique publici pessimè invidus Jacobo nostro recusabit immortalem gloriæ aram figere, qui ipse adeo mirabilem in Theologia, Jurisprudentiæ, et Medicina arcanis peritiam eamque planè divinitùs assecutus est, ut," &c. STEEVENS. The air, a charter'd libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, Which is a wonder, how his grace should glean it, His companies 2 unletter'd, rude, and shallow; 8 The air, &c.] This line is exquisitely beautiful. JOHNSON. The same thought occurs in As You Like It, Act II. Sc. VII. : I must have liberty 66 "Withal, as large a charter as the wind, "To blow on whom I please." MALONE. 9 So that the ART and PRACTICK part of life-] He discourses with so much skill on all subjects, that "the art and practice of life must be the mistress or teacher of his theorick ; "that is, 'that his theory must have been taught by art and practice; which, says he, is strange, since he could see little of the true art or practice among his loose companions, nor ever retired to digest his practice into theory. Art is used by the author for practice, as distinguished from science or theory. JOHNSON. I to this THEORICK:] Theorick is what terminates in speculation. So, in The Valiant Welshman, 1615: son Caradoc, ""Tis yet unfit that, on this sudden warning, "You leave your fair wife to the theorique "Of matrimonial pleasure and delight." Bookish theorick is mentioned in Othello. In our author's time this word was always used where we now use theory. See vol. x. p. 443, n. 7. MALONE. STEEVENS. 2-companies -] Is here used for companions. It is used by other authors of Shakspeare's age in the same sense. See vol. v. p. 188, n. 2. MALONE. 3-popularity.] i. e. plebeian intercourse; an unusual sense of the word: though perhaps the same idea was meant to be communicated by it in King Henry IV. Part I. where King Richard II, is represented as having "Enfeoff'd himself to popularity." STEEVENS. ELY. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle *: And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best, And so the prince obscur'd his contemplation CANT. It must be so: for miracles are ceas'd; And therefore we must needs admit the means, How things are perfected. ELY. But, my good lord, Urg'd by the commons? Doth his majesty CANT. He seems indifferent; And in regard of causes now in hand, As touching France,-to give a greater sum 4 The strawberry, &c.] i. e. the wild fruit so called, that grows in the woods. STEEVENS. 5-crescive in his faculty.] Increasing in its proper power. "Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night "Unseen, yet CRESCIVE in his faculty." Crescit occulto velut arbor ævo Fama Marcelli. JOHNSON. Crescive is a word used by Drant, in his translation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 1567: 6 "As lusty youths of crescive age doe flourishe freshe and grow." STEEVENS. SWAYING more upon our part,] Swaying is inclining. So, in King Henry VI. Part III. : way, like a mighty sea,- "Now sways it this |