With bufy hammers clofing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.

The country cocks do crow, the clocks do toll:
And (the third hour of drowsy morning nam'd)
Proud of their numbers and fecure in foul,
The confident and over-lufty French
Do the low rated English play at dice;
And chide the cripple tardy-gated night,
Who, like a foul and ugly witch, does limp
So tedioufly away: the poor condemned English
Like facrifices, by their watchful fires
Sit patiently, and inly ruminate

The morning's danger: (10) and their gesture fad,

(In

(ro) And their gefture, &c.] The prefent paffage has perplexed the commentators, and feems not to have been at all understood by them: Theobald has left it as it stands, without troubling himself about it. Warburton and Sir Thomas Hanmer have both misunderstood, and both altered it differently. Their mistakes have arifen from imagining the participle invefling was to be connected with gefture fad in the foregoing line, whereas it is put abfolute, and to be conftrued lank-lean cheeks, and war-worn coats invefting; there is no difficulty in the word applied to coats, as the immediate fenfe of the word is cloathing: Shakespear ufes investments for cloaths in the foregoing play, A. 4.

S. 2.

Whose white investments figure innocence.

The difficulty is in the word applied to lank-lean cheeks; it muft there be taken metaphorically: we know how vague our author is in his afe of metaphors, and. we know how often he ufes one verb or participle to two nouns of a different fenfe, as here. But indeed the metaphor is not unusual, we fay oftenthe face is cloath'd with fmiles: thus to me this difficult paffage appears in a very clear light, which I could have wifhed Mr. Edwards, who fo well understands our author, had explained to us: he seems to look upon it as desperate. See Can. of C it cifm, p. 72.

A very ingenious gentleman observed to me, upon my afking his opinion of the paffage, that investing, by the common. acceptation, fignifies befiring, or rather taking pofion of all the avenues to a place: and this arifes from the civil and feudal cuftoms of giving poffeffion by a robe or veftment. He then:

obferved,

(Investing lank-lean cheeks, and war-worn coats,)
(11) Prefenteth them unto the gazing moon
So many horrid ghofts. Who now beholds
The royal captain of this ruin'd band,
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
Let him cry praise and glory on his head!
For forth he goes, and visits all his hoft,
Bids them good-morrow, with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen.
Upon his royal face there is no note

How dread an army hath enrounded him;
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour
Unto the weary and all-watched night;
But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint,
With chearful femblance, and sweet majefty;
That ev'ry wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.

A largefi

obferved, that Shakespear uses the word in a fimple sense: an investment with him being the matching of cloaths: and cloath that are well matched or fuited, are called a fute or fuit of cloaths.

And their gefture fad

Investing (i. e. fuiting or matching with) lank-lean cheeks, &c.

He feems to have fallen into the fame mistake with the other commentators in regard to the conftruction. All I would observe from his judicious remark is, that invefting, in the metaphorical fenfe, if it fatisfies not the reader in the fimple one, will explain the paffage very well: lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats taking poffeffion of them, &c. but I think the first fenfe the

true one.

I cannot but approve Sir Thomas Hanmer's criticism of prefented into prefenteth, which I have admitted into the text, as the reader may plainly fee, the chorus fpeaks of the time prefent: they fit, they ruminate, and so on. To make the line more clear, I have printed it in a parenthesis, and, I hope, shall be excused for my endeavour to explain fo difficult a paffage, as I would have every line, in our author, if poffible, fet right; and by all means prefer the old and general readings to any wanton conjectures of mifapprehending criticism.

(11) Prefenteth. Ox, ed. vulg. prefented.

A largefs univerfal, like the fun,

His lib'ral eyes doth give to ev'ry one,
Thawing cold fear.

Enter three Soldiers, Bates, Court, and Williams.

Court. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning, which breaks yonder?

Bates. I think it be: but we have no great cause to defire the approach of day.

Will. We fee yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we never fhall fee the end of it. Who goes there?

K. Henry. A Friend.

Will. Under what captain ferve you ?

K. Henry. Under Sir John Erpingham.

Will. A good old commander, and a most kind gentleman: I pray you, what thinks he of our eftate?

K.Henry. Even as men wreck'd upon a fand, that look to be wafh'd off the next tide.

Bates. He hath not told his thought to the king!

K. Henry. No; nor is it meet he should: for tho' I fpeak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I am: the violet fmells to him, as it does to me; the element fhews to him, as it doth to me; all his fenfes have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his naked, nefs he appears but a man; and tho' his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop, they ftoop with the like wing: therefore, when he fees reafon of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the fame relifh as ours are; yet in reason no man fhould poffefs him with any appearance of fear; left he, by fhewing it, fhould dishearten his army.

Bates. He may fhew what outward courage he will; but I believe as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the Thames up to the neck, and fo I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, fo we were quit here.

K. Henry.

K. Henry. By my troth, I will speak my confcience of the king: I think he would not with himself any where but where he is.

Bates. Then would he were here alone; fo fhould he be fure to be ranfomed, and many poor mens lives faved.

K. Henry. I dare fay, you love him not fo ill to wish him here alone; howfoever, you speak this to feel other mens minds. Methinks I could not die any where fo contented as in the king's company: his caufe being juft, and his quarrel honourable.

Will. That's more than we know.

Bates. Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we know enough, if we know we are the king's fubjects: if his caufe be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.

Will. But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all thofe legs, and arms, and heads chopp'd off in a battle, fhall join together at the latter day, and cry all, We dy'd in fuch a place, fome fwearing, fome crying for a furgeon; fome upon their wives left poor behind them; fome upon the debts they owe; fome upon their children rawly left. I am afraid there are few die well, that die in battle; for how can they charitably difpofe of any thing when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king, that led them to it, whom to disobey, were against all proportion of subjection.

K. Henry. So, if a fon, that by his father fent about merchandize, do finfully miscarry upon the fea, the imputation of his wickednefs, by your rule, fhould be impofed upon is father that fent him: or if a fervant under his master's command, tranfporting a fum of money be affail'd by robbers, and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the bufinefs of the mafter the author of the fervants damnation; but this is not fo: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his foldiers, the father of his fon, nor the master of his fer

vant,

vant, for they purpose not their death, when they purpofe their fervices. Befides, there is no king, be his caufe never fo fpotlefs, if it come to the arbitrement of fwords, can try it out with all unfpotted foldiers: fome, peradventure, have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; fome, of beguiling virgins with the broken feals of perjury; fome, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bofom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now if thefe men have defeated the law, and out-run native punishment; though they can out-ftrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance: fo that here men are punish'd for before-breach of the king's laws, in now the king's quarrel; where they feared the death, they have borne life away, and where they would be fafe they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation, than he was before guilty of thofe impieties for which they are now vifited. Every fubject's duty is the king's, but every subject's foul is his own. Therefore should every foldier in the wars, do as every fick man in his bed, wash every moth out of his confcience: and dying fo, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was bleffedly loft, wherein fuch preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not fin to think that making God fo free an offer, he let him out-live that day to fee his greatness, and to teach others how they should prepare.

Will. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his own head, the king is not to answer for it.

SCENE V. The Miferies of Royalty.

(12) O hard condition, and twin-born with greatness, Subject to breath of ev'ry fool, whose sense No more can feel but his own wringing. What infinite heart ease must kings neglect,

(12) 0, &c.] See A. 4. S. 10, of the foregoing play.

That