SCENE, ENGLAND.

There is no List of Characters in the old copies.

Enter KING HENRY, WESTMORELAND, Sir WALTER BLUNT, and others."

K. HEN. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,

Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenc'd in stronds" afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil

Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowrets with the armed hoofs
. Of hostile paces: those opposed eyes,

Stronds-strands-shores.

b Entrance. In the variorum editions of Shakspere, except Malone's of 1821, we have the following correction of the text:-

"No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil."

This reading was suggested by Monck Mason, and adopted by Steevens. Erinnys, according to Monck Mason, is the Fury of Discord. The first conjecture of Steevens was that the word was entrants; the suggestion of Douce was entrails. The original text is somewhat obscure; but the obscurity is perfectly in the manner of Shakspere, and in great part arises from the boldness of the metaphor. Entrance is put for mouth; and if we were to read, "No more the thirsty mouth of this earth shall daub her lips with the blood of her own children," we should find little more difficulty than with the passage in Genesis, which was probably in Shakspere's mind when he wrote the line:-"And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy

Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in the intestine shock
And furious close of civil butchery,

Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way; and be no more oppos'd
Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies:
The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,
No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,
As far as to the sepulchre of Christ,

(Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross
We are impressed and engag'd to fight,)

Forthwith a power

of English shall we levy";

Whose arms were moulded in their mother's womb

To chase these pagans, in those holy fields,

Over whose acres walked those blessed feet,

Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail'd,
For our advantage, on the bitter cross.

But this our purpose is a twelvemonth old,
And bootless 't is to tell you-we will go ;

Therefore we meet not now:-Then let me hear
Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,
What yesternight our council did decree,
In forwarding this dear expedience.

WEST. My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down

But yesternight: when, all athwart, there came

A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news;

Whose worst was,-that the noble Mortimer,

brother's blood from thy hand." The terms entrance and mouth are convertible even now-as the mouth of a river, for the entrance of a river.

But Malone gives a passage in the old King John' of 1591, ́which, he says, may throw some light on that before us :

"Is all the blood y-spilt on either part,

Closing the crannies of the thirsty earth,

Grown to a love-game and a bridal feast?"

A correspondent, who lighted upon this passage, would read

"No more the thirsty crannies of this soil

Shall daub their lips with her own children's blood."

Levy. Gifford (Ben Jonson, v. 138) has properly rebuked the rash disposition of Steevens to meddle with the text, in a remark upon the passage before us. Steevens says, to levy a power as far as to the sepulchre of Christ is an expression quite unexampled, if not corrupt; and he proposes to read lead. "The expression is neither unexampled nor corrupt," says Gifford, “but good authorised English. One instance of it is before me: "Scipio, before he levied his force to the walles of Carthage, gave his soldiers the print of the citie in a cake to be devoured.'-Gosson's 'School of Abuse,' 1587."

b Therefore we meet not now. We do not meet now on that account.

Limits. To limit is to define; and therefore the limits of the charge may be the calculations, the estimates.

3

Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight
Against the irregular and wild Glendower,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
And a thousand of his people butchered:
Upon whose dead corpses" there was such misuse,
Such beastly, shameless transformation,

By those Welshwomen done, as may not be,
Without much shame, re-told or spoken of.

K. HEN. It seems, then, that the tidings of this broil
Brake off our business for the Holy Land.

WEST. This, match'd with other like, my gracious lord.
For more uneven and unwelcome news

Came from the north, and thus it did report:
On Holy-rood day, the gallant Hotspur there,
Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,
That ever-valiant and approved Scot,
At Holmedon met,

Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour;
As by discharge of their artillery,

And shape of likelihood, the news was told;
For he that brought them, in the very heat
And pride of their contention did take horse,
Uncertain of the issue any way.

K. HEN. Here is a dear and true-industrious friend,
Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,
Stain'd with the variation of each soil

Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours;
And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news :
The earl of Douglas is discomfited;

Ten thousand bold Scots, two-and-twenty knights,

Balk'd in their own blood, did sir Walter see

On Holmedon's plains: Of prisoners, Hotspur took

Corpses. So the folio; the quartos, corpse.

Welshwomen, &c. The story is told in Walsingham, and may be found in Andrews's "History of Great Britain,' vol. i., part ii., p. 4.

• The first quarto,

which has been followed in modern editions, reads thus:

"This, match'd with other, did, my gracious lord,

For more uneven and unwelcome news

Came from the north, and thus it did import."

The quarto of 1604 has like, for, and import. We retain the reading of the folio, substituting for in the place of far.

a Balk'd. To balk is to raise into ridges,—as in Minshew-" to balke, or make a balk in earing of land." Thus, the ten thousand bold Scots, balk'd in their own blood, are the slain heaped upthe "hills of dead" of Pope's translation of the Iliad.' Some conjecture the passage ought to be "bak'd in their own blood,"-as in Heywood's 'Iron Age,'

"Troilus lies embak'd

In his cold blood."