North. Why should the gentleman, that rode by

Travers,

Give then such instances of loss?

Bard.

Who, he? He was some hilding fellow, that had stol'n The horse he rode on; and, upon my life,

Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news. Enter MORton.

North. Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf, Foretells the nature of a tragick volume:

So looks the strond, whereon the imperious flood
Hath left a witness'd usurpation7.

Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?
Mor. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord;
Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask,
To fright our party.

North.

How doth my son, and brother? Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him, half his Troy was burn'd: But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue, And I my Percy's death, ere thou report'st it. This thou would'st say,-Your son did thus, and

thus;

Your brother, thus; so fought the noble Douglas; Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds:

6 i. e. Hilderling, base, low fellow.

7 An attestation of its ravage.

8 Dr. Bentley is said to have thought this passage corrupt; and therefore (with a greater degree of gravity than the reader will probably express) proposed the following emendation :So dead, so dull in look Ucalegon,

Drew Priam's curtain,' &c.

The name of Ucalegon occurs in the third Iliad, and in the Eneid.

But in the end, to stop mine ear indeed,
Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,
Ending with-brother, son, and all are dead.
Mor. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet:
But, for my lord your son,-

North.

Why, he is dead. See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath! He, that but fears the thing he would not know, Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others' eyes, That what he fear'd is chanc'd. Yet speak, Morton; Tell thou thy earl, his divination lies; And I will take it as a sweet disgrace,

And make thee rich for doing me such wrong. Mor. You are too great to be by me gainsaid: Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.

North. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy's dead.
I see a strange confession in thine eye :
Thou shak'st thy head, and hold'st it fear, or sin,
To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so:
The tongue offends not, that reports his death:
And he doth sin, that doth belie the dead;
Not he, which says the dead is not alive.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office; and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember'd knolling a departing friend9.

9 So in Shakspeare's seventy-first Sonnet:-
You shall hear the surly sullen bell

6

Give warning to the world that I am fled.'

Milton has adopted this expressive epithet :

I hear the far-off curfew sound

Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar.'

The bell anciently was rung before the dying person had expired, and thence was called the passing bell. Mr. Douce thinks it probable that this bell might have been originally used to drive away demons, who were supposed to watch for the parting soul.

Bard. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.
Mor. I am sorry, I should force you to believe
That, which I would to heaven I had not seen:
But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,
Rend'ring faint quittance 10, wearied and outbreath'd,
To Harry Monmouth: whose swift wrath beat down
The never daunted Percy to the earth,

From whence with life he never more sprung up.
In few, his death (whose spirit lent a fire
Even to the dullest peasant in his camp),
Being bruited 11 once, took fire and heat away
From the best temper'd courage in his troops:
For from his metal was his party steel'd;
Which once in him abated, all the rest
Turn'd on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.
And as the thing that's heavy in itself,
Upon enforcement, flies with greatest speed;
So did our men, heavy in Hotspur's loss,
Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear,
That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim,
Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,
Fly from the field: Then was that noble Worcester
Too soon ta'en prisoner: and that furious Scot,
The bloody Douglas, whose well labouring sword
Had three times slain the appearance of the king,
'Gan vail 12 his stomach, and did grace the shame
Of those that turn'd their backs; and, in his flight,

10 By faint quittance a faint return of blows is meant. King Henry V :

'We shall forget the office of our hand
Sooner than quittance of desert and merit.'

So in

11 i. e. reported, noised abroad. Vide Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 7. 12 i. e. began to fall his courage, to let his spirits sink under his fortune. To vail is to lower, to cast down. So in The Taming of the Shrew, Act v:

Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,

And place your hands below your husband's foot.'

Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all
Is,—that the king hath won; and hath sent out
A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,
Under the conduct of young Lancaster,

And Westmoreland: this is the news at full.

North. For this I shall have time enough to mourn. In poison there is physick; and these news, Having been well, that would have made me sick, Being sick, have in some measure made me well: And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire

Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs,
Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief 13,
Are thrice themselves: hence therefore, thou nice 14
crutch;

A scaly gauntlet now, with joints of steel,
Must glove this hand: and hence, thou sickly quoif;
Thou art a guard too wanton for the head,
Which princes, flesh'd with conquest, aim to hit.
Now bind my brows with iron; And approach
The ragged'st hour that time and spite dare bring,
To frown upon the enrag'd Northumberland!
Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not nature's hand
Keep the wild flood confin'd! let order die!
And let this world no longer be a stage,
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead 15!

13 Grief, in the latter part of this line, is used, in its present sense, for sorrow; in the former part for bodily pain.

14 Steevens explains nice here by trifling; but Shakspeare, like his cotemporaries, uses it in the sense of effeminate, delicate, tender. Vide note on As You Like It, Act iv. Sc. 1. p. 182.

15 The conclusion of this noble speech (says Johnson) is extremely striking. There is no need to suppose it exactly philo

Tra. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord 16.

Bard. Sweet earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.

Mor. The lives of all your loving complices
Lean on your health; the which, if you give o'er
To stormy passion, must perforce decay.
You cast the event of war, my noble lord 17,
And summ'd the account of chance, before you
said,-

Let us make head. It was your presurmise,
That in the dole 18 of blows your son might drop:
You knew, he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge,
More likely to fall in, than to get o'er 19:
You were advis'd 20, his flesh was capable

Of wounds, and scars; and that his forward spirit
Would lift him where most trade of danger rang'd;
Yet did you say,-Go forth; and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The stiff-borne action: What hath then befallen,

sophical; darkness, in poetry, may be absence of eyes, as well as privation of light. Yet we may remark that, by an ancient opinion, it has been held that if the human race, for whom the world was made, were extirpated, the whole system of sublunary nature would cease at once.' Mr. Boswell remarks that a passage resembling this, but feeble in comparison, is found in The Double Marriage of Beaumont and Fletcher :

That we might fall,

And in our ruins swallow up this kingdom,

Nay, the whole world, and make a second chaos.'

16 This line in the quarto is by mistake given to Umfreville, who is spoken of in this very scene as absent. It is given to Travers at Steevens's suggestion.

17 The fourteen following lines, and a number of others in this play, were not in the quarto edition.

18 Dealing, or distribution.

19 So in King Henry IV. Part I:

'As full of peril and adventurous spirit,
As to o'erwalk a current roaring loud,
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.'

20 That is, you were warned or aware.