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On any soul removed, but on his own.
Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,
That with our small conjunction we should on,
To see how fortune is disposed to us ;
For, as he writes, there is no quailing now,
Because the King is certainly possess'd 5
Of all our purposes. What say you to it?

Wor. Your father's sickness is a maim to us.
Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp'd off:
And yet, in faith, 'tis not; his present want
Seems more than we shall find it.
To set the éxact wealth of all our states

Were it good

All at one cast? to set so rich a main
On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?
It were not good; for therein should we read
The very bottom and the soul of hope,

7

The very list, the very utmost bound
Of all our fortunes.

Doug.

Faith, and so we should;

Where now remains a sweet reversion;
And we may boldly spend upon the hope
Of what is to come in :

A comfort of retirement 9 lives in this.

Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto,

If that the Devil and mischance look big

-

5 Possess'd is informed. Often so. See Twelfth Night, page 65, note 25. 6 To see, to learn, to discover are among the old senses of to read. To "read the bottom" is to try the uttermost; to exhaust.

7 List in the sense of edge or border, was quite common. A metaphor

from the list of cloth.

8 Where and whereas were used interchangeably in the Poet's time.

9 Retirement is used with the same meaning as reversion, just before; something to fall back upon.

Upon the maidenhood of our affairs.10

Wor. But yet I would your father had been here. The quality and hair 11 of our attempt

Brooks no division: it will be thought

By some, that know not why he is away,
That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike
Of our proceedings, kept the earl from hence:
And think how such an apprehension

May turn the tide of fearful faction,

And breed a kind of question in our cause;
For well you know we of the offering side 12
Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement,
And stop all sight-holes, every loop 13 from whence
The eye of reason may pry in upon us :
This absence of your father's draws a curtain,
That shows the ignorant a kind of fear 14
Before not dreamt of.

Hot.

Nay, you strain too far.

I, rather, of his absence make this use:

It lends a lustre and more great opinion,15

A larger dare to our great enterprise,

Than if the earl were here; for men must think,

10 The youth, immaturity of our affairs.

11 Hair was used metaphorically for complexion, or character. So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Nice Valour: “A lady of my hair cannot want pitying." And in an old manuscript play entitled Sir Thomas More: "A fellow of your haire is very fitt to be a secretaries follower."

12 The offering side is the assailing side.

13 Loop is the same as loop-hole.

14 Here, again, fear is put for the thing feared. The words draws a curtain (that is, withdraws) show that the Poet had in mind the personage called Fear, who figured on the old stage; something like what we call a fright.

15 Opinion is fame, reputation, in old English, as in Latin.

If we, without his help, can make a head

To push against the kingdom, with his help
We shall o'erturn it topsy-turvy down.

Yet all goes well, yet all our joints are whole.

Doug. As heart can think: there is not such a word Spoken in Scotland as this term of fear.

Enter Sir RICHARD VERNON.

Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul.
Ver. Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.
The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong,
Is marching hitherwards; with him Prince John.
Hot. No harm: what more?
Ver.

And further, I have learn'd,

Where is his son,

The King himself in person is set forth,
Or hitherwards intendeth speedily,
With strong and mighty preparation.
Hot. He shall be welcome too.
The nimble-footed 16 madcap Prince of Wales,
And his comrades, that daff 17 the world aside,
And bid it pass?

Ver.

All furnish'd, all in arms; All plumed like estridges that with the wind Bate it; 18 like eagles having lately bathed ;

19

16 Stowe says of the Prince," He was passing swift in running, insomuch that he, with two other of his lords, without hounds, bow, or other engine, would take a wilde bucke, or doe, in a large parke."

17 Daff is the same as doff, do off. Here it means throw or toss.

18 Estridge is the old form of ostrich. The ostrich's plumage might naturally occur to the Poet, from its being the cognizance of the Prince. To bate is an old term, meaning to flutter or flap the wings, as an ostrich does to aid its speed in running. Here it is used absolutely or indefinitely, and not as referring to any antecedent. So the Poet has such expressions

Glittering in golden coats, like images ;
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the Sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry with his beaver 20 on,
His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm'd-
Rise from the ground like feather'd Mercury,

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as "fight it out," "smooth'st it so,' 'revel it," "trip it as you go," and others. So that the meaning in the text is, "Their plumage showed as if they had been ostriches struggling with, or beating against, the wind." Such is the upshot of the explanation lately given by Mr. A. E. Brae; who supports it by the following apt quotation from one of Lord Bacon's letters to Queen Elizabeth, 1600: "For now I am like a hawk that bates when I see occasion for service, but cannot fly, because I am tied to another's fist." Mr. Brae adds, "There can be no doubt that the first branch of the simile is an allusion to the egregious pluming of the helmets of those days, as represented in many an old illumination; and certainly the streaming of an ostrich's plumage, when struggling against the wind, presents a much more vivid image than when sailing before it."

19 Here, again, I gladly avail myself of Mr. Brae's learned comments : "Eagles were supposed to renew their youth and vigour by plunging in certain springs. In the Bestiare of Philippe de Thaun, the story of the eagles seeking a certain fountain in the East, and, when plunged therein three times, having their youth and vigour renewed, is declared to be typical of baptism." Spenser makes use of the same fable in The Faerie Queene, i. II, where the hero, overcome and desperately wounded in his long fight with the "old Dragon," at last falls back into "a springing well, full of great vertues, and for med'cine good," and lies there all the night. Una, sorely distressed and dismayed at his fall, watches, to see the issue, till morning, when

At last she saw, where he upstarted brave
Out of the well, wherein he drenched lay;
As eagle fresh out of the ocean wave,
Where he hath left his plumes all hoary gray,

And deckt himselfe with feathers youthly gay.

20 The beaver of the helmet was a movable piece, which lifted up to enable the wearer to drink or to breathe more freely. Of course in time of action it was drawn down over the face.

21 into his seat,

And vault it with such ease

As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds,
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

Hot. No more, no more: worse than the Sun in March, This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come;

They come like sacrifices in their trim,

And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war,
All hot and bleeding, will we offer them:
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit
Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire
To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh,
And yet not ours. - Come, let me taste 22
Who is to bear me, like a thunderbolt,
Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales:
Harry and Harry shall, hot horse to horse,
Meet, and ne'er part till one drop down a corse.
O, that Glendower were come !

Ver.

my horse,

There is more news:

I learn'd in Worcester, as I rode along,

He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.
Doug. That's the worst tidings that I hear of yet.
Wor. Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.
Hot. What may the King's whole battle reach unto?
Ver. To thirty thousand.

Hot.

Forty let it be:

My father and Glendower being both away,

The powers of us may serve so great a day.

21 Another instance like that remarked in note 18.

22 The Poet repeatedly uses to taste for to try. See Twelfth Night, page 105, note 21.

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