Aum. Unto my mother's prayers, I bend my knee.
York. Against them both, my true joints bended be.
Ill may'ft thou thrive, if thou grant any grace!

Dutch. Pleads he in carneft? look upon his face;
His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jeft;
His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast:
He prays but faintly, and would be deny'd;
We pray with heart, and foul, and all befide:
His weary joints would gladly rife, I know;
Our knees fhall kneel till to the ground they grow:
His prayers are full of falfe hypocrify;
Ours, of true zeal and deep integrity.

Our prayers do out-pray his; then let them have
That mercy, which true prayers ought to have.
Boling. Good aunt, ftand up.

Dutch. Nay, do not fay-stand up;

But, pardon, firft; and afterwards, ftand up.
An if I were thy nurfe, thy tongue to teach,
Pardon-fhould be the first word of thy speech.
I never long'd to hear a word till now;
Say-pardon, king; let pity teach thee how:
The word is fhort, but not fo fhort as sweet;
No word like, pardon, for kings' mouths fo meet.
York. Speak it in French, king; fay, pardonnez moy3.
Dutch. Doft thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?
Ah, my four hufband, my hard-hearted lord,

That fet'ft the word itself against the word!-
Speak, pardon, as 'tis current in our land;
The chopping French + we do not understand.

3-pardonnez moy.] That is, excufe me, a phrafe ufed when any thing is civilly denied. The whole paffage is fuch as I could well with away. JOHNSON.

4 The chopping French-] Chopping, I fuppofe, here means jabbering, talking flippantly a language unintelligible to Englishmen; or perhaps it may mean, the French, who clip and mutilate their words. I do not remember to have met the word, in this fenfe, in any other place. In the univerfities they talk of chopping logick; and our author in Romeo and Juliet has the fame phrase :

"How now! how now! chop logisk ?" MALONE.

VOL. V.

H

Thine

Thine eye begins to speak, fet thy tongue there.:
Or, in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear;
That, hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,
Pity may move thee pardon to rehearse.
Boling. Good aunt, stand up.

Dutch. I do not sue to stand,

Pardon is all the fuit I have in hand.

Boling. I pardon him, as God fhall pardon me.
Dutch. O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!

Yet am I fick for fear: speak it again;

Twice faying pardon, doth not pardon twain,
But makes one pardon ftrong.

Boling. With all my heart

I pardon him *.

Dutch. A god on earth thou art.

Boling. But for our trusty brother-in-law 5,-and the abbot,

With all the rest of that conforted crew,

Deftruction ftraight shall dog them at the heels.—

Good uncle, help to order feveral powers

To Oxford, or where-e'er these traitors are:
They fhall not live within this world, I fwear,
But I will have them, if I once know where.
Uncle, farewel -and coufin too, adieu 7:

Your mother well hath pray'd, and prove you true.

Dutch. Come, my old fon ;-I pray God make thee new.

With all my beart

Exeunt.

I pardon bim.] The old copies read-I pardon him with all my heart. The tranfpofition was made by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

5 But for our trusty brother-in-law-] John duke of Exeter, and earl of Huntingdon, who had married with the lady Elizabeth, fifter of Henry Bolingbroke. THEOBALD.

7

6 the abbot-] i. e. the Abbot of Westminster. THEOBALD. - coufin, too, adieu :] Too, which is not in the old copy, was added by Mr. Theobald, for the fake of the metre. MALONE.

SCENE

Enter EXTON, and a Servant.

Exton. Didft thou not mark the king, what words he spake?

Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?

Was it not fo?

Ser. Thofe were his very words.

Exton. Have I no friend? quoth he: he spake it twice, And urg'd it twice together; did he not ?

Serv. He did.

Exton. And, fpeaking it, he wiftly look'd on me;
As who fhould fay,-I would, thou wert the man
That would divorce this terror from my heart;
Meaning, the king at Pomfret. Come, let's go;
I am the king's friend, and will rid his foe.

SCENE V.

Pomfret. The Dungeon of the Castle.

Enter RICHARD.

[Exeunt.

K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare
This prison, where I live, unto the world:
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it ;-Yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my foul;
My foul, the father: and these two beget
A generation of ftill-breeding thoughts,
And these fame thoughts people this little world;
In humours, like the people of this world,

For no thought is contented. The better fort,

8 people this little world ;] i. e. his own frame;" the state of man;" which in our author's Julius Cæfar is faid to be "like to a little kingdom." So alfo in his Lover's Complaint:

"Storming my world with Sorrow's wind and rain."

Again, in King Lear:

"Strives in this little world of man to out-run

"The too-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain." MALONE.

As thoughts of things divine,-are intermix'd
With fcruples, and do fet the word itself
Against the word:

As thus,-Come, little ones; and then again,-
It is as hard to come, as for a camel

To thread the poftern of a needle's eye.

Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a paffage through the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prifon-walls;
And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content, flatter themfelves,-
That they are not the first of fortune's flaves,
Nor fhall not be the laft; Like filly beggars,
Who, fitting in the ftocks, refuge their fhame,-
That many have, and others must fit there:
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of fuch as have before endur'd the like.
Thus play I, in one perfon, many people,
And none contented: Sometimes am I king;
Then treafon makes me with myself a beggar,
And fo I am: Then crushing penury
Perfuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again: and, by-and-by,
Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing :-But, whate'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,
With nothing fhall be pleas'd, till he be eas'd
With being nothing.-Mufick do I hear?
Ha, ha! keep time:- How four sweet mufick is,
When time is broke, and no proportion kept?

the word itfelf

[Mufick.

Against the word: By the word I fuppofe is meant the holy word.

The folio reads:

the faith itfelf

Against the faith. STEEVENS.

The reading of the text is that of the first quarto, 1597. MALONE. 1- in one perfon,] Thus the first quarto, 1597.

fequent old copies have—prifon, MALONE.

All the fub

So

So is it in the mufick of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear,
To check time broke in a disorder'd string;
But, for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wafted time, and now doth time waste me.

For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock 3:
My thoughts are minutes; and, with fighs, they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,

Is pointing ftill, in cleanfing them from tears:
Now, fir, the found, that tells what hour it is,
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: So fighs, and tears, and groans,
Shew minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs pofting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,

While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock".

2 To check-] Thus the first quarto, 1597. The folio reads-To bear. Of this play the first quarto copy is much more valuable than that of the folio. MALONE.

3 For now bath time made me his numb'ring clock: &c.] There appears to me no reason for fuppofing with Dr. Johnson that this paffage is corrupt. It should be recollected that there are three ways in which a clock notices the progrefs of time; viz. by the libration of the pendulum, the index on the dial, and the ftriking of the hour. To these the king, in his comparison, feverally alludes; his fighs correfponding to the jarring of the pendulum, which, at the fame time that it watches or numbers the feconds, marks alfo their progress in minutes on the dial or outward watch, to which the king compares his eyes; and their want of figures is fupplied by a fucceffion of tears, or (to ufe an expreffion of Milton) minute drops: his finger, by as regularly wiping these away, performing the office of the dial's point:-his clamorous groans are the founds that tell the hour.

in K. Henry IV. P. II. tears are used in a fimilar manner: "But Harry lives, that fhall convert thofe tears,

"By number, into hours of happiness." HENLEY.

4 with fighs they jar] To jar is, I believe, to make that noise which is called ticking. So, in the Winter's Tale:

"I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind, &c."

Again, in the Spanish Tragedy:

"the minutes jarring, the clock ftriking." STEEVENS. 5 bis Jack o' the clock.] That is, I ftrike for him. One of these automatons is alluded to in King Richard III. A&t. IV. sc. iii.

"Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'ft the stroke, Between thy begging and my meditation." STEEVENS.

H 3

This