never saw him but once in the tilt-yard; and then he burst his head, for crowding among the marshal's men. I saw it; and told John of Gaunt he beat his own name; for you might have trussed him, and all his apparel, into an eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court; and now hath he land and beeves. Well; I will be acquainted with him, if I return; and it shall go hard, but I will make him a philosopher's two stones to me. If the young dace be a bait for the old pike I see no reason, in the law of nature, but I may snap at him. Let time shape, and there

an end.

[Exit.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.-A Forest in Yorkshire.

Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY,
HAST.NGS, and others.

Archbishop.

HAT is this forest call'd?

Hast. 'Tis Gualtree forest, an't shall please your grace.

Arch. Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth,

To know the numbers of our enemies.

Hast. We have sent forth already.

Arch.

'Tis well done,

My friends, and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have received
New-dated letters from Northumberland;

Their cold intent, tenor, and substance, thus :-
Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
As might hold sortance with his quality;
The which he could not levy; whereupon
He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland and concludes in hearty prayers,
That your attempts may overlive the hazard
And fearful meeting of their opposite.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground,

And dash themselves to pieces.

Hast.

Enter a Messenger.

Now, what news?

Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form comes on the enemy:

And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number

Upon, or near, the rate of thirty thousand.

Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them

out.

Let us sway on, and face them in the field.

Enter WESTMORELAND.

Arch. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

Mowb. I think it is my lord of Westmoreland. West Health and fair greeting from our general,

The prince, lord John and duke of Lancaster. Arch. Say on, my lord of Westmoreland, in

peace;

What doth concern your coming?

West.

Then, my lord,

Unto your grace do I in chief address

The substance of my speech. If that rebellion

Came life itself, in base and abject routs,
Led on by bloody youths, guarded with rags,
And countenanced by boys and beggary;
I say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd,
In his true, native, and most proper shape,
You, reverend father, and these noble lords,
Had not been here, to dress the ugly form
Of base and bloody insurrection

With your fair honours. You, lord archbishop,-
Whose see is by a civil peace maintain'd;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd;

Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd;

Whose white investments figure innocence,
The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,-
Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself,

Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,
Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war?
Turning your books to greaves, your ink to
blood,

Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine
To a loud trumpet, and a point of war?

Arch. Wherefore do I this ?-so the question
stands.

Briefly to this end : - We are all diseased;
And, with our surfeiting, and wanton hours,
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it: of which disease
Our late king, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I, as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men :
But, rather, show a while like fearful war,
To diet rank mints, sick of happiness;

And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

I have in equal balance justly weighed

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,

And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion :

And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which, long ere this, we offer'd to the king,
And might by no suit gain our audience :
When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our
griefs,

We are denied access unto his person

Even by those men that most have done us

wrong.

The dangers of the days but newly gone,
(Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood,) and the examples
Of every minute's instance, (present now,)
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms:
Not to break peace or any branch of it;
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

West. When ever yet was your appeal denied?
Wherein have you been galled by the king?
What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you?
That you should seal this lawless bloody book
Of forged rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?
Arch. My brother, general! the

wealth!

To brother born an household cruelty,
I make my quarrel in particular.

common

West. There is no need of any such redress; Or, if there were, it not belongs to you.

Mowb. Why not to him, in part; and to us all, That feel the bruises of the days before : And suffer the condition of these times To lay a heavy and unequal hand

Upon our honours ?

West. O my good lord Mowbray, Construe the times to their necessities, And you shall say indeed,—it is the time, And not the king, that doth you injuries. Yet, for your part, it not appears to me, Either from the king, or in the present time, That you should have an inch of any ground To build a grief on: were you not restored To all the duke of Norfolk's seigniories, Your noble and right-well-remember'd father's? Mowb. What thing, in honour, had my father lost,

That need to be revived, and breathed in me? The king, that loved him, as the state stood

then,

Was, force perforce, compell'd to banish him :
And then, that Henry Bolingbroke, and he,
Being mounted, and both roused in their seats,
Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,
Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,
Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of
steel,

And the loud trumpet blowing them together; Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd

My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,
O, when the king did throw his warder down,
His own life hung upon the staff he threw :
Then threw he down himself; and all their lives,