Gaunt. Methinks, I am a prophet new inspir'd; And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last;
For violent fires soon burn out themselves:
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes, that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding, food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon

itself.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;

This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection7, and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,

6 i. e. hasty, violent.

7 Johnson raised a doubt whether we should not read invasion here. Farmer and Malone, upon the authority of a misprint in Allot's England's Parnassus, where this passage is quoted, Against intestion,' &c. propose to read infestion, a word of their own coinage. Malone's long note proves nothing: he thinks that we could receive no other infection from abroad than the plague; but it is evident that the poet may allude to the infection of vicious manners and customs. It is true that infestation was in use for a troubling, molesting, or disturbing:' but as all the old copies read infection, there seems to be no sufficient reason for disturbing the text.

8 i. e. by reason of their breed. The quarto of 1598 reads

thus:

'Fear'd by their breed, and famous for their birth.'

In Greene's Farewell to Follie, 1598, we have a passage resembling this: My lordes of Buda, feared for your valour, and famous for your victories, let not the private will of one be the ruin of a mighty kingdom.'

Renowned for their deeds as far from home
(For Christian service, and true chivalry),
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son:
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out (I die pronouncing it),
Like to a tenement, or pelting9 farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds;
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself:
O, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

Enter KING RICHARD, and Queen 10; AUMERLE,
BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT, Ross 11, and WIL-
LOUGHBY 12

York. The king is come: deal mildly with his youth; For young hot colts, being rag'd 13, do rage the more. Queen. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster?

9 In this 22d yeare of King Richard, the common fame ranne that the king had letten to farme the realme unto Sir William Scrope, earle of Wiltshire, and then treasurer of England, to Syr John Bushey, Sir John Bagot, and Sir Henry Greene, Knightes.'-Fabian.

Pelting is paltry, pitiful, petty.

10 Shakspeare has deviated from historical truth in the introduction of Richard's queen as a woman; for Anne, his first wife, was dead before the period at which the commencement of the play is laid; and Isabella, his second wife, was a child at the time of his death.

11 i. e. William Lord Ross, of Hamlake, afterwards lord treasurer to Henry IV.

12 William Lord Willoughby, of Eresby.

13 Ritson proposes to read:→

6

being rein'd, do rage the more.'

K. Rich. What comfort, man? How is't with aged Gaunt?

Gaunt. O, how that name befits my composition! Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt14 in being old: Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;

And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt?
For sleeping England long time have I watch'd;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt:
The pleasure, that some fathers feed upon,
Is my strict fast, I mean-my children's looks;
And, therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt:
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.
K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their
names?

Gaunt. No, misery makes sport to mock itself:
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.

K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live?

Gaunt. No, no; men living flatter those that die. K. Rich. Thou, now a dying, say'st thou flatter'st me.

Gaunt. Oh! no; thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill. Gaunt. Now, He that made me, knows I see thee

ill;

Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.
Thy deathbed is no lesser than thy land,
Wherein thou liest in reputation sick :
And thou, too careless patient as thou art,
Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure
Of those physicians that first wounded thee:
A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,
Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;
14 Meagre, thin.

And yet, incaged in so small a verge,

The waste is no whit lesser than thy land;
O, had thy grandsire, with a prophet's eye,
Seen how his son's son should destroy his sons,
From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame;
Deposing thee before thou wert possess'd,
Which art possess'd 15 now to depose thyself.
Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,
It were a shame to let this land by lease:
But, for thy world, enjoying but this land,
Is it not more than shame, to shame it so!
Landlord of England art thou now, not king:
Thy state of law is bondslave to the law 16;
And thou-

K. Rich.

a lunatick lean-witted fool,

Presuming on an ague's privilege,

Dar'st with thy frozen admonition

Make pale our cheek; chasing the royal blood,
With fury, from his native residence.
Now by my seat's right royal majesty,

Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son,
This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head,

Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.
Gaunt. O, spare me not, my brother Edward's son,
For that I was his father Edward's son;
That blood already, like the pelican,

Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd:
My brother Gloster, plain well meaning soul,
(Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!)
May be a precedent and witness good,

That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood:
Join with the present sickness that I have,

15 Mad.

16 Thy legal state, that rank in the state and these large desmesnes, which the constitution allotted thee, are now bondslave to the law; being subject to the same legal restrictions as every ordinary pelting farm that has been let on lease.'

And thy unkindness be like crooked age,
Το crop at once a too-long wither'd flower.

Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!—
These words hereafter thy tormentors be—
Convey me to my bed, then to my grave:
Love they 17 to live, that love and honour have.

[Exit, borne out by his Attendants. K. Rich. And let them die, that age and sullens

have;

For both hast thou, and both become the grave.
York. 'Beseech your majesty, impute his words
To wayward sickliness and age in him:

He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear
As Harry duke of Hereford, were he here.

K. Rich. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his :

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.

North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your majesty.

K. Rich. What says he?

North. Nay, nothing; all is said:

His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.
York. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!
Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.
K. Rich. The ripest fruit first falls, and SO doth he;
His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be 18:

So much for that.

-Now for our Irish wars : We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns 19;

17 i. e. let them love to live, &c.

18 That is, our pilgrimage is yet to come.'

19 Kernes were Irish peasantry, serving as light armed foot soldiers. Shakspeare makes York say, in the second part of King Henry V. that Cade, when in Ireland, used to disguise himself as a shag-haired crafty kerne. The kerne is an ordinary VOL. V.

E