RAM. What, will you have them weep our horfes' blood?

How shall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter a Meffenger.

MESS. The English are embattled, you French

peers.

CON. To horfe, you gallant princes! straight to horfe!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band,
And your fair show shall fuck away their fouls,
Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.
There is not work enough for all our hands;
Scarce blood enough in all their fickly veins,
To give each naked curtle-ax a stain,
That our French gallants shall to-day draw out,
And sheath for lack of sport: letus but blow on them,
I he vapour of our valour will o'erturn them.
'Tis positive 'gainst all exceptions, lords,
That our fuperfluous lackeys, and our peasants, -
Who, in unneceffary action, fwarm

About our squares of battle 3

were enough

Mr. Pope for doubt fubftituted daunt, which was adopted in the subsequent editions. For the emendation now made I imagined I should have been answerable; but on looking into Mr. Rowe's edition I find he has anticipated me, and has printed the word as it is now exhibited in the text.

2

MALONF.

fuck away their fouls, ] This strong expression did not escape the notice of Dryden and Pope; the former having (less chastely) employed it in his Don Sebastian, King of Portugal:

Sucking each others' fouls while we expire:"

and the latter, in his Eloifa to Abelard:

" Suck my last breath, and catch my flying foul."

STEEVENS.

3. About our squares of battle,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

no pradite had

In the brave Squares of war."

STEEVENS.

To purge this field of fuch a hilding foe; 4
Though we, upon this mountain's basis by
Took stand for idle speculation:
But that our honours must not.

A very little little let us do,

6

What's to say?

And all is done. Then let the trumpets found The tucket-fonuance, and the note to mount: For our approach shall so much dare the field, That England shall couch down in fear, and yield.

4

Enter GRANDPRE

GRAND. Why do you slay so long, my lords of France?

hilding foe;] Hilding, or hinderling, is a low wretch.

So, in King Henry IV. Part II:

" He was some hilding fellow, that had ftole

JOHNSON,

5 upon this mountain's bafis by -) See Henry's speech,

fc. vii:

"Take a trumpet, herald;

"

" Ride thou unto the horfemen on yon hill. MALONE. 6 The tucket-fonuance, &c.] He uses terms of the field as if they were going out only to the chace for sport. To dare the field is a phrafe in falconry. Birds are dared when by the falcon in the air they are terrified from rifing, so that they will be sometimes taken by the hand.

Such an easy capture the lords expected to make of the English.

JOHNSON.

The tucket-fonuance was, I believe, the name of an introductory flourish on the trumpet, as toccata in Italian is the prelude of a fonata on the harpsichord, and toccar la tromba is to blow the trumpet.

In The Spanish Tragedy (no date) "a tucket afar off."
Again, in The Devil's Law-cafe, 1623:

Sonance is a word used by Heywood, in his Rape of Lucreces

1630:

"Or, if he chance to endure our tongues so much
"As but to hear their fonance. STEEVENS..

"

Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones,
I'll-favour'dly become the morning field:
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air shakes them passing scornfully.
Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar'd hoft,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
Their horfemen sit like fixed candlesticks,
With torch-ftaves in their hand: 9 and their poor

jades

Yon island carrions, &c.] This and the preceding description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our hiftorians, of Henry's army, immediately before the battle of Agincourt:

"The Englishmen were brought into great misery in this jour ney [from Harfleur to Agincourt); their vidual was in manner spent, and now could they get none: - reft could they none take, for their enemies were ever at hand to give them alarmes: daily it rained, and nightly it freezed; of fewel there was great scarcity, but of fluxes great plenty; money they had enough, but wares to beflowe it upon, for their relief or comforte, had they little or none. Holinshed. MALONE.

8

Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose, By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours. M. MASON.

The idea feems to have been taken from what every man muft have observed, i. e. ragged curtains put in motion by the air, when the windows of mean houses are left open. STEEVENS. 9 Their horjemen fit like fixed candlesticks,

1

With torch-flaves in their hand: ) Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human figures holding the fockets for the lights in their extended hands.

A fimilar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612,:"he show'd like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand little bigger than a candle. The following is an exact representation of one of these candle. sticks, now in the possession of Francis Douce, Esq. The receptacles for the candles are wanting in the original. The fockets in which they were to be placed are in the outstretched hands of the figure.

Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips; Thegum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes; And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit

2

gimmal bit - ) Gimmal is, in the western counties, a ring; a gimmal bit is therefore a bit of which the parts played one within another. JOHNSON.

I meet with the word, though differently spelt, in the old play of The Raigne of King Edward the Third, 1596:

"

" Nor lay afide their jacks of gymold mail. Gymold or gimmal'd mail means armour composed of links like those of a chain, which by its flexibility fitted it to the shape of

the body more exactly than defenfive covering of any other con

1

2

Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless;
And their executors, the knavish crows, *
Fly o'er them all, impatient for their hour.
Description cannot fuit itself in words,
To demonftrate the life of such a battle
In life fo lifeless as it shows itself.

CON. They have faid their prayers, and they stay

for death.

DAU. Shall we go fend them dinners, and fresh fuits,

And give their fasting horses provender,

And after fight with them?

CON. Iftay but for my guard; 4 On, to the field:

)

trivance. There was a fuit of it to be seen in the Tower. Spenser, in his Fairie Queen, Book I. ch. v. calls it woven mail:

" In woven mail all armed warily. "

In Lingua, &c. 1607, is mentioned:

"

a gimmal ring with one link hanging. STEEVENS. "A gimmal or gemmow ring, (says Minsheu, Dictionary, 1617,) from the Gal. gemeau, Lat. gemellus, double, or twinnes, because they be rings with two or more links.

2

MALONE.

their executors, the knavish crows,] The crows who are to have the disposal of what they shall leave, their hides and their flesh. JOHNSON.

3 In life so lifeless-] So, in The Comedy of Errors :

"

"A living dead mau. STEEVENS.

4 I stay but for my guard; It seems, by what follows, that guard in this place means rather fomething of ornament or of diftin&ion, than a body of attendants. JOHNSON.

The following quotation from Holinshed, p. 554, will best elucidate this paffage: "The duke of Brabant when his ftandard was not come, caused a banner to be taken from a trumpet and fastened upon a fpear, the which he commanded to be borne before him instead of a standard. "

In the second part of Heywood's Iron Age, 1632, Menelaus, after having enumerated to Pyrrhus the treasures of his father Achilles, as his myrmidons, &c. adds:

"His fword, spurs, armour, guard, pavilion.

From this last passage it should appear that guard was part of the defenfive armour; perhaps what we call at present the gorget.