L

You knew, he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge,
More likely to fall in, than to get o'er:5
You were advis'd, his flesh was capable

Of wounds, and scars; and that his forward fpirit
Would lift him where most trade of danger rang'd;
Yet did you fay, - Go forth; and none of this,
Though strongly apprehended, could restrain
The ftiff-borne action: What hath then befallen,
Or what hath this bold enterprize brought forth,
More than that being which was like to be?

BARD. We all, that are engaged to this lofs,"
Knew that we ventur'd on fuch dangerous feas,
That, if we wrought out life, 'twas ten to one:
And yet we ventur'd, for the gain propos'd
Chok'd the respect of likely ppril fear'd;
And, fince we are o'erset, venture again.
Come, we will put forth; body, and goods.

MOR. 'Tis more than time: And, my most noble lord,

* You knew, he walk'd o'er perils, on an edge,

More likely to fall in, than to get o'er :)

P. 1:

So, in King Henry IV,

"As full of peril and adventurous spirit,

"As to o'erwalk a current roaring loud,

"On the unsteadfast footing of a spear." MALONE.

6 You were advis'd, his flesh was capable-] i. e, you knew. So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :

"How shall I doat on her with more advice-."

i. e, on further knowledge. MALONE.

Thus also, Thomas Twyne, the continuator of Phaer's tranflas tion of Virgil, 1584, for haud infcius, has advis'd:

He spake: and ftrait the sword advisde into his throat receives." STEEVENS.

7 We all, that are engaged to this lofs, ) We have a fimilar

phraseology in the preceding play:

"Hath a more worthy interest to the flate,

"Than thou the shadow of fucceffion." MALONE.

I hear for certain, and do speak the truth,
The gentle archbishop of York is up,
With well-appointed powers; he is a man,
Who with a double surety binds his followers.
My lord your son had only but the corps,
But fhadows, and the shows of men, to fight:
For that fame word, rebellion, did divide
The action of their bodies from their fouls;
And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd,
As men drink potions; that their weapons only
Seem'd on our fide, but, for their spirits and fouls,
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond: But now the bishop
Turns infurrection to religion :
Suppos'd fincere and holy in his thoughts,
He's follow'd both with body and with mind;
And doth enlarge his rifing with the blood
Of fair king Richard, fcrap'd from Pomfret stones:
Derives from heaven his quarrel, and his cause;
Tells them, he doth bestride a bleeding land,
Gafping for life under great Bolingbroke;
And inore, and less, do flock to follow him.

• The gentle &c. ) These one-and-twenty lines were added fince the first edition. JOHNSON.

This and the following twenty lines are not found in the quarto, 1600, either from some inadvertence of the transcriber or compofitor, or from the printer not having been able to procure a perfed copy. They first appeared in the folio, 1623; but it is manifeft that they were written at the same time with the rest of the play, Northumberland's anfwer referring to them. MALONE.

9 Tells them, he doth bestride a bleeding land, That is, ftands. over his country to defend her as the lies bleeding on the ground. So Falstaff before says to the Prince, If thou see me down, Hal and bestride me, fo; it is an office of friendship. JOHNSON.

* And more, and less, More and less means greater and less. So, in Macbeth: " Both more and less have given him the revolt."

STEEVENS.

NORTH. I knew of this before; but, to speak

truth,

This present grief had wip'd it from my mind.
Go in with me; and counsel every man
The aptest way for safety, and revenge:

Get posts, and letters, and make friends with

speed;

Never so few, and never yet more need. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

London. A Street.

Enter Sir JOHN FALSTAFF, with his Page bearing his fword and buckler.

FAL. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water? 3

3.

3 --what says the doctor to my water?] The method of investigating diseases by the inspection of urine only, was once fo much the fashion, that Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians, formed a ftatute to restrain apothecaries from carrying the water of their patients to a doctor, and afterwards giving medicines in consequence of the opinions they received concerning it. This flatute was, soon after, followed by another, which forbade the doctors themselves to pronounce on any disorder from such an uncertain diagnostic.

or Who

John Day, the author of a comedy called Law Tricks, would have thought it? 1608, describes an apothecary thus: “_his houfe is set round with patients twice or thrice a day, and because they'll be fure not to want drink, every one brings his own water in an urinal with him."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady:

" I'll make her cry so much, that the physician,

" If she fall fick upon it, shall want urine

"To find the cause by.""

It will fcarcely be believed hereafter, that in the years 1775 and 1776, a German, who had been a fervant in a public riding-school,

い

PAGE. He faid, fir, the water itself was a good healthy water: but, for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than he knew for.

FAL. Man of all forts take a pride to gird at me:4 The brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter, more than I invent, or is invented on me: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men. I do here walk before thee, like a fow, that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one. If the prince put thee into my service for any other reafon than to fet me off, why then I have no judgement. Thou whorefon mandrake, thou art fitter to be worn in my cap, than to wait at my heels. I was never mann'd with an agate till now :

6

(from which he was discharged for insufficiency,) revived this ex ploded practice of water-cafting. After he had amply increased the bills of mortality, and been publickly hung up to the ridicule of those who had too much sense to confult him, asa monument of the folly of his patients, he retired with a princely fortune, and perhaps is now indulging a hearty laugh at the expence of English credulity. STEEVENS.

4

to gird at me:] i. e. to gibe. So, in, Lyly's Mother Bombie, 1594: "We maids are mad wenches; we gird them, and Hout them," &c. See Vol. IX. p. 367, n. STEEVENS.

5

7.

mandrake, Mandrake is a root supposed to have the shape of a man; it is now counterfeited with the root of briony.

JOHNSON.

6 I was never mann'd with an agate till now:] That is, I never before had an agate for my man. JOHNSON.

Alluding to the little figures cut in agates, and other hard fstones, for feals; and therefore he says, I will fet you neither in gold nor filver. The Oxford editor alters it to aglet, a tag to the points then in use (a word indeed which our author uses to express the same thought): but aglets, though they were sometimes of gold or filver, were never fet in those metals. WARBURTON.

It appears from a paffage in Beaumont and Fletcher's Coxcomb, that it was usual for justices of peace either to wear an agate in a ring, or as an appendage to their gold chain: "-- Thou wilt

but I will fet you neither in gold nor filver, but in vile apparel, and fend you back again to your master, for a jewel; the juvenal, the prince your master, whose chin is not yet fledg'd. I will fooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he shall get one on his cheek; and yet he will not stick to say, his face is a face-royal: God may finish it when he will, it is not a hair amiss yet: he may keep it still as a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn fixpence out of it; and yet he will be crowing, as if he had writ man ever since his father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he is almost out of mine, I can affure him.-

spit as formally, and show thy agate and hatch'd chain, as well as the beft of them."

The fame allusion is employed on the same occafion in the Isle of Gulls, 1606:

"Grace, you Agate! haft not forgot that yet?"

The virtues of the agate were anciently supposed to prote& the wearer from any misfortune. So, in Greene's Mamillia, 1593: --the man that hath the stone agathes about him, is furely defenced against adversity." STEEVENS.

I believe an agate is ufed merely to express any thing remarkably little, without any allufion to the figure cut upon it. So, in Much Ado about Nothing, Vol. VI. p. 290, n. 9:

"If low, an agate very vilely cut.

MALONE.

7 --the juvenal,) This term, which has already occurred in The Midsummer Night's Dream, and Love's Labour's Loft, is used in many places by Chaucer, and always fignifies a young man.

STEEVENS.

*-he may keep it still as a face-royal,] That is, a face exempt from the touch of vulgar hands. So, a flag-royal is not to be hunted, a mine-royal is not to be dug. JOHNSON.

Old copies at a face-royal. Corrected by the editor of the second folio, MALONE.

Perhaps this quibbling allufion is to the English real, rial, or royal. The poet seems to mean that a barber can no more earu fixpence by his face-royal, than by the face ftamped on the coin called a royal; the one requiring as little shaving as the other..

STEEVENS.