Fal. My lord, I beseech you, give me leave to go through Glostershire: and, when you come to court, stand my good lord 5, 'pray, in your good report.

P. John. Fare you well, Falstaff: I, in my condition 6,

Shall better speak of you than you deserve. [Exit. Fal. I would you had but the wit; 'twere better than your dukedom. -Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh ;—but that's no marvel, he drinks no wine. There's never any of these demure boys come to any proof: for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches: they are generally fools and cowards;—which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish, and dull, and crudy vapours which environ it makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive3, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which delivered o'er to the voice (the tongue), which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity

5 Johnson was so much unacquainted with ancient phraseology as to make difficulties about this phrase, which is one of the most common petitionary forms of our ancestors. Stand my good lord, or be my good lord, means stand my friend, be my patron or benefactor, report well of me.

·

6 Condition is most frequently used by Shakspeare for nature, disposition. The prince may therefore mean, I shall in my good nature speak better of you than you deserve.'

7 Vide note on King Henry IV. Part I. Act i. Sc. ii. p. 131. s Inventive, imaginative.

and cowardice: but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme. It illumineth the face: which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm and then the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great, and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour comes of sherris: So that skill in the weapon is nothing, without sack; for that sets it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil9; till sack commences it 10, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it, that Prince Harry is valiant: for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, steril, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with excellent endeavour of drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris; that he is become very hot, and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them, should be, to forswear thin potations, and addict themselves to sack.

Enter BARDOLPH.

How now, Bardolph ?

Bard. The army is discharged all, and gone. Fal. Let them go. I'll through Glostershire; and there will I visit master Robert Shallow, esquire:

9 It was anciently supposed that all the mines of gold, &c. were guarded by evil spirits. See the Secret Wonders of Nature and Art, by Edw. Fenton, 1569, p. 91.

10 Commences it, that is brings it into action. Tyrwhitt thinks it is probable that there is an allusion to the commencement and act of the universities, which give to students a complete authority to use those hoards of learning which have entitled them to their degrees. As the dictionaries of the poet's time explain this matter, the conjecture seems probable.

I have him already tempering11 between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal with him. Come away. [Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

Westminster. A Room in the Palace.

Enter KING HENRY, CLARENCE, PRINCE HUMPHREY, WARWICK, and Others.

K. Hen. Now, lords, if heaven doth give successful end

To this debate that bleedeth at our doors,

We will our youth lead on to higher fields,
And draw no swords but what are sanctified.
Our navy is address'd1, our power collected,
Our substitutes in absence well invested,
And every thing lies level to our wish:
Only, we want a little personal strength;
And pause us, till these rebels, now afoot,
Come underneath the yoke of government.

War. Both which, we doubt not but your majesty Shall soon enjoy.

K. Hen.

Humphrey, my son of Gloster, Where is the prince your brother?

P. Humph. I think, he's gone to hunt, my lord,

at Windsor.

K. Hen. And how accompanied?

P. Humph.

I do not know, my lord.

11 A pleasant allusion to the old use of soft wax for sealing. Shakspeare again alludes to it in Venus and Adonis :

What wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering.'

So in Middleton's Any Thing for a Quiet Life:

You must temper him like wax, or he'll not seal.'

1 Ready, prepared.

'To-morrow for our march are we address'd.'

King Henry V.

K. Hen. Is not his brother, Thomas of Clarence,

with him?

P. Humph. No, my good lord; he is in presence

here.

Cla. What would my lord and father?

K. Hen. Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of
Clarence.

How chance, thou art not with the prince thy brother?
He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas;
Thou hast a better place in his affection,
Than all thy brothers: cherish it, my boy;
And noble offices thou may'st effect
Of mediation, after I am dead,

Between his greatness and thy other brethren :-
Therefore, omit him not: blunt not his love:
Nor lose the good advantage of his grace,
By seeming cold or careless of his will.
For he is gracious, if he be observ'd 2;
He hath a tear for pity, and a hand
Open as day for melting charity:

Yet, notwithstanding, being incens'd, he's flint;
As humorous3 as winter, and as sudden

As flaws congealed in the spring of day*.

2 i. e. if he has respectful attention shown him. So in The Merry Wives of Windsor :

'Follow'd her with doting observance.'

3. His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongu'd he was, and therefore free;
Yet if men mov'd him, was he such a storm

As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,

When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.'

Shakspeare's Lover's Complaint. Humorous was used for capricious, as homoursome now is.

4 A flaw is a sudden gust of violent wind; alluding to the opinion of some philosophers, that the vapours being congealed in the air by cold (which is the most intense in the morning), and being afterwards rarefied and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion those sudden and impetuous gusts of wind which are called flaws. Shakspeare uses the word again in King Henry VI. VOL. V.

H H

His temper, therefore, must be well observ'd:
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,
When you perceive his blood inclin❜d to mirth:
But, being moody, give him line and scope;
Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,
Confound themselves with working. Learn this,
Thomas,

And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends;
A hoop of gold, to bind thy brothers in;
That the united vessel of their blood,
Mingled with venom of suggestion 5,
(As, force perforce, the age will pour it in),
Shall never leak, though it do work as strong
As aconitum, or rash gunpowder.

Cla. I shall observe him with all care and love.
K. Hen. Why art thou not at Windsor with him,
Thomas?

Cla. He is not there to-day; he dines in London. K. Hen. And how accompanied? canst thou tell that?

Cla. With Poins, and other his continual followers. K. Hen. Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds; And he, the noble image of my youth,

Is overspread with them: Therefore my grief
Stretches itself beyond the hour of death:

The blood weeps from my heart, when I do shape,
In forms imaginary, the unguided days,

And rotten times, that shall look upon,

you

and in his Venus and Adonis. Thus also Beaumont and Fletcher in The Pilgrim :·

'What flaws and whirles of weather,

Or rather storms have been aloft these three days.'

5 Though their blood be inflamed by the temptations to which youth is peculiarly subject.

6 Aconitum, or aconite, wolfs-bane, a poisonous herb. Rash is sudden, hasty, violent. In Othello we have:

as rash as fire.'