You urg'd me as a judge; but I had rather,
You would have bid me argue like a father:-
O, had it been a stranger, not my child,

9

To smooth his fault I should have been more mild:
A partial slander1 sought I to avoid,

And in the sentence my own life destroy'd.
Alas, I look'd, when some of you should say,
I was too strict, to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will, to do myself this wrong.

K. Rich. Cousin, farewel:—and, uncle, bid him so; Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICH. and Train. Aum. Cousin, farewel: what presence must not know, From where you do remain, let paper show.

Mar. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your side.

Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words, That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends? Boling. I have too few to take my leave of you, When the tongue's office should be prodigal To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart. Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time. Boling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time. Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone. Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten. Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure. Boling. My heart will sigh, when I miscal it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps

Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set

The precious jewel of thy home-return.

Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make2

90, had it been a stranger,] This couplet is wanting in the folio. Steevens.

1 A partial slander -] That is, the reproach of partiality. This is a just picture of the struggle between principle and affection. Johnson.

This couplet which is wanting in the folio edition, has been arbitrarily placed by some of the modern editors at the conclusion of Gaunt's speech. In the three oldest quartos it follows the fifth line of it. In the fourth quarto, which seems copied from the folio, the passage is omitted. Steevens.

Will but remember me, what a deal of world
I wander from the jewels that I love.
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages; and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else,
But that I was a journeyman to grief?3

Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven visits,^
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens:
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not, the king did banish thee;5

6

But thou the king: Woe doth the heavier sit,

2 Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make - This, and the six verses which follow, I have ventured to supply from the old quarto. The allusion, it is true, to an apprenticeship, and becoming a journeyman, is not in the sublime taste; nor, as Horace has expressed it: "spirat tragicum satis:" however, as there is no doubt of the passage being genuine, the lines are not so despicable as to deserve being quite lost. Theobald.

- journeyman to grief?] I am afraid our author in this place designed a very poor quibble, as journey signifies both travel and a day's work. However, he is not to be censured for what he himself rejected. Johnson.

The quarto, in which these lines are found, is said in its titlepage to have been corrected by the author; and the play is indeed more accurately printed than most of the other single copies. There is now, however, no certain method of knowing by whom the rejection was made. Steevens.

4 All places that the eye of heaven visits, &c.] So, Nonnus: Depos quμx: i. e. the sun. Steevens.

The fourteen verses that follow are found in the first edition.

Pope.

I am inclined to believe that what Mr. Theobald and Mr. Pope have restored were expunged in the revision by the author: If these lines are omitted, the sense is more coherent. Nothing is more frequent among dramatic writers, than to shorten their dialogues for the stage. Johnson.

5

did banish thee;] Read:

Therefore, think not, the king did banish thee. Ritson.

6 Think not, the king did banish thee;

But thou the king:] The same thought occurs in Coriolanus:

"I banish you." M. Mason

All places that the eye of heaven visits,

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens :-
Think not the king did banish thee;

But thou the king:] Shakspeare, when he wrote the

passage be,

Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say-I sent thee forth to purchase honour,
And not the king exil'd thee: or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com❜st:
Suppose the singing birds, musicians;

The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strew'd;'
The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more

8

Than a delightful measure, or a dance:

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.

Boling. O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus??

fore us, probably remembered that part of Lyly's Euphues, 1580, in which Euphues exhorts Botanio to take his exile patiently. Among other arguments he observes, that "Nature hath given to man a country no more than she hath a house, or lands, or livings. Socrates would neither call himself an Athenian, neither a Grecian, but a citizen of the world. Plato would never account him banished, that had the sunne, ayre, water, and earth, that he had before; where he felt the winter's blast and the summer's blaze; where the same sunne and the same moone shined; whereby he noted that every place was a country to a wise man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind.-When it was cast in Diogenes' teeth, that the Sinoponetes had banished him Pontus, yea, said he, I them of Diogenes." Malone.

7

•the presence strew'd;] Shakspeare has other allusions to the ancient practice of strewing rushes over the floor of the presence chamber. Henley.

So, in Cymbeline:

66

Tarquin thus

"Did softly press the rushes, ere he wakened
"The chastity he wounded:-" Steevens.

See Hentzner's account of the presence chamber, in the palace at Greenwich, 1598. Itinerar. p. 135. Malone.

8

than a delightful measure,] A measure was a formal court dance. So, in King Richard III:

"Our dreadful marches to delightful measures." Steevens. 90, who can hold a fire in his hand, &c.] Fire is here, as in many other places, used as a dissyllable. Malone.

It has been remarked, that there is a passage resembling this in Tully's Fifth Book of Tusculan Questions. Speaking of Epicurus, he says:-"Sed unâ se dicit recordatione acquiescere præteritarum voluptatum: ut si quis æstuans, cum vim caloris non

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastick summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good,
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.
Gaunt. Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on thy way:
Had I thy youth, and cause, I would not stay.

Boling. Then, England's ground, farewel; sweet soil, adieu;

My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where-e'er I wander, boast of this I can,-

Though banish'd, yet a trueborn Englishman.1 [Exeunt. SCENE IV.

The same. A Room in the King's Castle.

Enter King RICHARD, BAGOT, and GREEN; AUMERLE following.

K. Rich. We did observe.-Cousin Aumerle, How far brought you high Hereford on his way?

facile patiatur, recordari velit se aliquando in Arpinati nostro gelidis fluminibus circumfusum fuisse. Non enim video, quomodo sedare possint mala præsentia præteritæ voluptates." The Tusculan Questions of Cicero had been translated early enough for Shakspeare to have seen them. Steevens.

Shakspeare, however, I believe, was thinking on the words of Lyly, in the page from which an extract has been already made: "I speake this to this end, that though thy exile seem grievous to thee, yet guiding thy selfe with the rules of phylosophy, it should be more tolerable: he that is cold, doth not cover himselfe with care but with clothes; he that is washed in the raine, drieth himselfe by the fire, not by his fancy; and thou which art banished," &c. Malone.

1- yet a trueborn Englishman.] Here the first Act ought to end, that between the first and second Acts there may be time for John of Gaunt to accompany his son, return, and fall sick. Then the first scene of the second Act begins with a natural conversation, interrupted by a message from John of Gaunt, by which the King is called to visit him, which visit is paid in the following scene. As the play is now divided, more time passes between the two last scenes of the first Act, than between the first Act and the second. Johnson.

Aum. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so, But to the next highway, and there I left him.

K. Rich. And, say, what store of parting tears were shed?

Aum 'Faith, none by me: 2 except the north-east wind, Which then blew bitterly against our faces,

Awak'd the sleeping rheum; and so, by chance,
Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

K. Rich. What said our cousin, when you parted with him?

Aum. Farewel:

And, for my heart disdained that my tongue

Should so profane the word, that taught me craft
To counterfeit oppression of such grief,

That words seem'd buried in my sorrow's grave.
Marry, would the word farewel have lengthen'd hours,
And added years to his short banishment,
He should have had a volume of farewels;
But, since it would not, he had none of me.

K. Rich. He is our cousin, cousin; but 'tis doubt,
When time shall call him home from banishment,
Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.
Ourself, and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green, 3
Observ'd his courtship to the common people:-
How he did seem to dive into their hearts,
With humble and familiar courtesy ;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves;
Wooing poor craftsmen, with the craft of smiles,
And patient underbearing of his fortune,

With the

2 -none by me:] The old copies read-for me. other modern editors I have here adopted an emendation made by the editor of the second folio; but without necessity. For me, may mean, on my part. Thus we say, "For me, I am content," &c. where these words have the same signification as here.

Malone.

If we read-for me, the expression will be equivocal, and seem as if it meant-no tears were shed on my account. So, in the preceding scene:

3

"O, let no noble eye profane a tear
"For me," &c. Steevens.

Bagot here, and Green,] The old copies read-here Bagot. The transposition was made in a quarto of no value, printed in 1634. Malone.