Glo. Too well, too well.

Edg.

This is above all strangeness.
Upon the crown o' the cliff, what thing was that
Which parted from you?

Glo.

A poor, unfortunate beggar.
Edg. As I stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,
Horns welked,' and waved like the enridged sea;
It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father,
Think that the clearest 2 gods, who make them honors
Of men's impossibilities,3 have preserved thee.

Glo. I do remember now; henceforth I'll bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself,
Enough, enough, and die. That thing you speak of,
I took it for a man; often 'twould say,

The fiend, the fiend: he led me to that place.

Edg. Bear free and patient thoughts.-But who
comes here?

6

Enter LEAR, fantastically dressed up with flowers.
The safer sense 5 will ne'er accommodate
His master thus.

Lear. No, they cannot touch me for coining;
I am the king himself.

[ACT IV.

Edg. O thou side-piercing sight!

Lear. Nature's above art in that respect. There's your press-money. That fellow handles his bow like

1 Welked is marked with protuberances. This and whelk are probably only different forms of the same word. The welk is a small shell-fish, so called, perhaps, because its shell is marked with convolved protuberant ridges.

2 That is, the purest.

3 By men's impossibilities perhaps is meant what men call impossibilities.

4 "Bear free and patient thoughts." Free here means pure, as in other places of these plays.

5 “The safer sense (says Mr. Blakeway) seems to me to mean the eyesight, which, says Edgar, will never more serve the unfortunate Lear so well as those which Gloster has remaining will serve him, who is now returned to a right mind.

6 It is evident, from the whole of this speech, that Lear fancied himself in a battle. For the meaning of press-money, see the first scene of Hamlet.

KING LEAR.

SC. VI.]

a crow-keeper;1 draw me a clothier's yard.-Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace;--this piece of toasted cheese will do't.-There's my gauntlet; I'll prove it on a giant.-Bring up the brown bills.2-O, well flown, bird!-i' the clout, i' the clout! hewgh!-Give the word.3

Edg. Sweet marjoram.

Lear. Pass.

Glo. I know that voice.

Lear. Ha! Goneril!—with a white beard!-They flattered me like a dog; and told me I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. To say ay, and no, to every thing I said!--Ay and no too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men o' their words. They told me I was every thing: 'tis a lie; I am not ague proof.

Glo. The trick 5 of that voice I do well remember. Is't not the king?

Lear.

Ay, every inch, a king;
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.
I pardoned that man's life: what was thy cause?-
Adultery.-

Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery! No;
The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.

105

1 Ascham, in speaking of awkward shooters, says: Another cowreth down, and layeth out his buttockes as thoughe he would shoote at crowes.” 2 Battle-axes.

3 Lear is here raving of archery, falconry, and a battle, jumbled together in quick transition. "Well flown bird" was the falconer's expression when the hawk was successful in her flight. The clout is the white mark at which archers aim. By "give the word," the watchword in a camp is meant. "The quartos read, "O well flown bird in the ayre, hugh, give the word."

4 It has been proposed to read, "To say ay and no to every thing I said ay and no to, was no good divinity." Besides the inaccuracy of construction in the passage as it stands in the text, it does not appear how it could be flattery to dissent from, as well as assent to. every thing Lear

said.

5 Trick is a word used for the peculiarity in a face, voice, or gesture, which distinguishes it from others.

VOL. VII.

14

3

Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son
Was kinder to his father, than my daughters
Got 'tween the lawful sheets.

KING LEAR.

To't, luxury,' pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.--
Behold yon simpering dame,

Whose face between her forks presageth snow;
That minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure's name;

4

The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to't
With a more riotous appetite.

Down from the waist they are centaurs,
Though women all above;

But 5 to the girdle do the gods inherit,"

Beneath is all the fiends'; there's hell, there's darkness,
there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench,
consumption.—Fie, fie, fie! pah; pah! Give me an
ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagi-
nation. There's money for thee.

Glo. O, let me kiss that hand!

Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
Glo. O ruined piece of nature! This great world
Shail so wear out to nought.-Dost thou know me?

Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost
thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid!
I'll not love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the
penning of it.

Glo. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.
Edg. I would not take this from report ;-it is,
And my heart breaks at it.

Lear. Read.

[ACT IV.

1 i. e. incontinence.

2 The construction is, "Whose face presageth snow between her forks." See Cotgrave's Dict. in v. Fourcheure.

3 i. e. puts on an outward, affected seeming of virtue. See Cotgrave in v. Mineux-se.

4 The fitchew is the polecat. A soiled horse is a horse that has been fed with hay and corn during the winter, and is turned out in the spring to take the first flush of grass, or has it cut and carried to him. This at once cleanses the animal and fills him with blood. In the old copies the preceding as well as the latter part of Lear's speech is printed as prose. It is doubtful whether any part of it was intended for metre.

5 But in its exceptive sense.

6 Possess.

2

KING LEAR.

SC. VI.]

Glo. What, with the case of eyes?

Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how this world goes.

Glo. I see it feelingly.

10%

Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears; see how yon' justice rails upon yon' simple thief. Hark, in thine ear. Change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?-Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

Glo. Ay, sir.

Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou might'st behold the great image of authority; a dog's obeyed in office.

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand;

Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind

For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the

cozener.

Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;
Robes, and furred gowns, hide all.' Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw doth pierce it.
None does offend, none, I say none; I'll able 'em."
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal the accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes;
And, like a scurvy politician, seem

To see the things thou dost not.-Now, now, now,

now.

Pull off my boots ;-harder, harder; so.

3

Edg. Ó, matter and impertinency mixed!

Reason in madness!

Lear. If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloster.

1 From "hide all" to "accuser's lips " is wanting in the quartos.

2 i. e. support or uphold them.

3 Impertinency here is used in its old legitimate sense of something not belonging to the subject.

108

Thou must be patient; we came crying hither.
Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air,
We wawl, and cry.-I will preach to thee; mark me.
Glo. Alack, alack the day!

KING LEAR.

Lear. When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.This a good block?1
It were a delicate stratagem to shoe

A troop of horse with felt. I'll put it in proof;
And when I have stolen upon these sons-in-law,
Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.o

Enter a Gentleman, with Attendants.

Gent. O, here he is; lay hand upon him.-Sir,
Your most dear daughter-

Lear. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even
The natural fool of fortune.-Use me well;

Let me have a surgeon;

You shall have ransom.
I am cut to the brains.
Gent.

You shall have any thing.
Lear. No seconds? All myself?
Why, this would make a man, a man of salt,3
To use his eyes for garden water-pots,
Ay, and for laying autumn's dust.

Gent.

Good sir,

Lear. I will die bravely, like a bridegroom. What?
I will be jovial; come, come; I am a king,
My masters, know you that!

4

Gent. You are a royal one, and we obey you.
Lear. Then there's life in it. Nay, an you get it,
shall get it by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa.5

you

[Exit, running; Attendants follow.

[ACT IV.

1 Upon the king's saying "I will preach to thee," the Poet seems to have meant him to pull off his hat, and keep turning it, and feeling it, till the idea of felt which the good hat or block was made of, raises the stratagem in his brain of shoeing a troop of horse with the [same substance] which he held and moulded between his hands.

2 This was the cry formerly in the English army when an onset was made on the enemy.

3 6 A man of salt" is a man of tears.

4 The case is not yet desperate.

5 Mr. Boswell thinks that this passage seems to prove that sessa means the very reverse of cessez.