Four lagging winters, and four wanton fprings, For, ere the fix years, that he hath to spend, My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewafted light, K. RICH. Why, uncle, thou haft many years to live. GAUNT. But not a minute, king, that thou canft give: Shorten my days thou canft with fullen forrow, Thy word is current with him for my death; four. 7 And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow:] It is matter of very melancholy confideration, that all human advantages confer more power of doing evil than good. JOHNSON. 8 upon good advice, ] Upon great confideration. So, in King Henry VI. Part II: But with advice and filent fecrecy." STEEVENS. MALONE. a party verdict gave; ] i. e. you had yourfelf a part or fhare in the verdi& that I pronounced. MALONE. You urg'd me as a judge; but I had rather, 2 To fmooth his fault I fhould have been more mild: And in the sentence my own life destroy'd. K. RICH. Coufin, farewell:—and, uncle, bid him fo; Six years we banish him, and he shall go. [Flourish. Exeunt K. RICHARD. and Train. AUM. Coufin, farewell: what presence must not know, From where you do remain, let paper fhow. MAR. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your fide. GAUNT. O, to what purpose doft thou hoard thy That thou return'ft no greeting to thy friends? 2 O, had it been a franger,] This couplet is wanting in the folio. 3 A partial flander-] That is, the reproach of partiality. This is a juft picture of the ftruggle between principle and affection. JOHNSON. This couplet, which is wanting in the folio edition, has been arbitrarily placed by fome of the modern editors at the conclufion of Gaunt's fpeech. In the three oldeft quartos it follows the fifth line of it. In the fourth quarto, which feems copied from the folio, the paffage is omitted. STEEVENS. BOLING. Joy abfent, grief is present for that time. GAUNT. What is fix winters; they are quickly gone. BOLING. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten. GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak❜ft for plea fure. BOLING. My heart will figh, when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage. GAUNT. The fullen paffage of thy weary steps Efleem a foil, wherein thou art to fet The precious jewel of thy home-return. BOLING. Nay, rather, every tedious ftride I make Will but remember me, what a deal of world I wander from the jewels that I love. Muft I not ferve a long apprenticehood To foreign paffages; and in the end, Having my freedom, boaft of nothing else, But that I was a journeyman to grief?5 4 Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious ftride I make-] This, and the fix verfes which follow, I have ventured to fupply from the old quarto. The allufion, it is true, to an apprenticeship, and becoming a journeyman, is not in the fublime tafte; nor, as Horace has expressed it, “fpirat tragicum fatis:" however, as there is no doubt of the paffage being genuine, the lines are not so despicable as to deserve being quite loft. THEOBALD. 5 journeyman ta grief?] I am afraid our author in this place defigned a very poor quibble, as journey fignifies both travel. and a day's work. However, he is not to be cenfured for what he himself rejected. JOHNSON. The quarto, in which these lines are found, is faid in its title. page to have been corrected by the author; and the play is indeed more accurately printed than most of the other fingle copies. There is now, however, no certain method of knowing by whom the rejection was made. STEEVENS. GAUNT. All places that the eye of heaven vifits, Are to a wife man ports and happy havens: Teach thy neceffity to reason thus; There is no virtue like neceffity. Think not, the king did banish thee;' 8 But thou the king: Woe doth the heavier fit, All places that the eye of heaven vifits, &c.] The fourteen verfes that follow are found in the firft edition. POPE. I am inclined to believe that what Mr. Theobald and Mr. Pope have restored were expunged in the revision by the author: If these lines are omitted, the fense is more coherent. Nothing is more frequent among dramatic writers, than to fhorten their dia. logues for the ftage. JOHNSON. 7 -did banish thee;] Read: Therefore, think not, the king did banish thee. Think not, the king did banish thee; RITSON. But thou the king:] The fame thought occurs in Coriolanus: "I banish you.' M. MASON. All places that the eye of heaven vifits, Are to a wife man ports and happy havens : Think not the king did banish thee; man a But thou the king:] Shakspeare, when he wrote the paffage before us, probably remembered that part of Lyly's Euphues, 1580, in which Euphues exhorts Botanio to take his exile patiently. Among other arguments he obferves, that Nature hath given to country no more than he hath a house, or lands, or livings. Socrates would neither call himself an Athenian, neither a Grecian, but a citizen of the world. Plato would never account him ba. nished, that had the funne, ayre, water, and earth, that he had before; where he felt the winter's blaft and the fummer's blaze; where the fame funne and the fame moone fhined: whereby he noted that every place was a country to a wife man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind. When it was caft in Diogenes' teeth, that the Sinoponetes had banished him Pontus, yea, faid he, I them of Diogenes.' MALONE. " Look, what thy foul holds dear, imagine it The grafs whereon thou tread'ft, the prefence The flowers, fair ladies; and thy fteps, no more 9 For gnarling forrow hath less power to bite 2 3 ——the presence ftrew'd ;] Shakspeare has other allufions to the ancient practice of ftrewing rushes over the floor of the presence chamber. HENLEY. "Did foftly prefs the rushes, ere he waken'd "The chastity he wounded:--". STEEVENS. See Hentzner's account of the prefence chamber, in the palace at Greenwich, 1598. Itinerar. p. 135. MALONE. 9 Than a delightful meafure,] A measure was a formal court dance. So, in K. Richard 111: 2 “Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.” STEEVENS. 0, who can hold a fire in his hand, &c.] Fire is here, as in many other places, ufed as a diffyllable. MALONE. It has been remarked, that there is a paffage resembling this in Tully's Fifth Book of Tufculan Queflions. Speaking of Epicurus, he fays:Sed unâ fe dicit recordatione acquiefcere præteritarum voluptatum: ut fi quis æftuans, cum vim caloris non facile patiatur, recordari velit fe aliquando in Arpinati noftro gelidis Aluminibus circumfufum fuiffe, Non enim video, quomodo fedare. poffint mala præfentia præteritæ voluptates." The Tufculan Questions of Cicero had been tranflated early enough for Shakspeare to have fcen them. STEEVENS. 66 Shakspeare, however, I believe, was thinking on the words of Lyly in the page from which an extract has been already made: I fpeake this to this end, that though thy exile feem grievous to thee, yet guiding thy felfe with the rules of philofophy, it should be more tolerable: he that is cold, doth not cover himfelfe with |