With one appearing hair, that will not follow These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to France? Work, work, your thoughts, and therein see a siege : Behold the ordnance on their carriages, With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur. Suppose, the ambassador from the French comes back; Tells Harry-that the king doth offer him 3 [Exit. - linstock-] The staff to which the match is fixed when ordnance is fired. JOHNSON. 66 So, in Middleton's comedy of Blurt Master Constable, 1602: O Cupid, grant that my blushing prove not a linstocke, and give fire too suddenly," &c. Again, in The Jew of Malta, by Marlowe, 1633: "Till you shall hear a culverin discharg'd 66 'By him that bears the linstock kindled thus." I learn from Smith's Sea Grammar, 1627, that the "Lintstock is a handsome carved stick, more than halfe yard long, with a cocke at the one end, to hold fast his match," &c. STEEVENS. 4 Chambers-] Small pieces of ordnance. See p. 75, n. 6. STEEVENS. 5 And EKE-] This word is in the first folio written-eech; as it was, sometimes at least, pronounced. So, in Pericles, 1609 : "And time that is so briefly spent, "With your fine fancies quaintly each; "What's dumb in show I'll plain with speech." MALONE. See also the concluding speech of The First Part of the Spanish Tragedy, 1605 : 66 My armes are of the shortest, "Let your loves peace them out." STEEVENS. SCENE I. The Same. Before Harfleur. Alarums. Enter King HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOSTER, and Soldiers, with Scaling Ladders. K. HEN. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; 6 Or close the wall up with our English dead! But when the blast of war blows in our ears, 6 Or close the wall, &c.] Here is apparently a chasm. One line at least is lost, which contained the other part of a disjunctive proposition. The King's speech is, dear friends, either win the town, or close up the wall with dead.' The old quarto gives no help. JOHNSON. I do not perceive the chasm which Dr. Johnson complains of. What the King means to say is,- Re-enter the breach you have made, or fill it up with your own dead bodies; ' i. e. Pursue your advantage, or give it up with your lives. Mount the breach in the wall, or repair it by leaving your own carcases in lieu of the stones you have displaced in short-Do one thing or the other. So, in Church-yard's Siege of Edenbrough Castle: "Or leaue our bones and bowels in the breatch." This speech of King Henry was added after the quartos 1600 and 1608. STEEVENS. 7 - when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger;] Sir Thomas Hanmer has observed on the following passage in Troilus and Cressida, that in storms and high winds the tiger roars and rages most furiously: "Doth valour's show and valour's worth divide "In storms of fortune: for, in her ray and brightness, "The herd hath more annoyance by the brize "Than by the tiger: but when splitting winds Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood", Let it pry through the portage of the head, O'erhand and jutty' his confounded base2, 8 66 And flies flee under shade; why then the thing of courage, "As rouz'd with rage, with rage doth sympathize," &c. STEEVENS. SUMMON up the blood,] Old copy-commune, &c. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. MALONE. 9 PORTAGE of the head,] Portage, open space, from port, a gate. Let the eye appear in the head as cannon through the battlements, or embrasures, of a fortification. JOHNSON. So we now say-" the port-holes of a ship." M. MASON. -jutty-The force of the verb to jutty, when applied to a rock projecting into the sea, is not felt by those who are unaware that this word anciently signified a mole raised to withstand the encroachment of the tide. In an act, 1 Edw. VI. c. 14, provision is made for " the maintenaunce of piers, jutties, walles, and bankes, against the rages of the sea." HOLT WHITE. Jutty-heads, in sea-language, are platforms standing on piles, near the docks, and projecting without the wharfs, for the more convenient docking and undocking ships. See Chambers's Dictionary. STEEVENS. 2 his CONFOUNDED base,] His worn or wasted base. So, in The Tempest: 66 JOHNSON. the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd, "As stooping to relieve him." STEEVENS. One of the senses of to confound, in our author's time, was, to destroy. See Minsheu's Dictionary, in v. 3let the brow o'erwhelm it, As fearfully, as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, MALONE. Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.] So, in Daniel's Civil Warres, 1595: "A place there is, where proudly rais'd there stands Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide; Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit 5 To his full height !-On, on, you noble English", Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof' ! Fathers, that, like so many Alexanders, Have, in these parts, from morn till even fought, And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument, Dishonour not your mothers; now attest, That those, whom you call'd fathers, did beget you! Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war!-And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here "And spurns the waves, that in rebellious bands "Assault his empire, and against him rise." MALONE. 4 Now set the teeth,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra : 66 now I'll set my teeth, "And send to darkness all that stop me." STEEVENS. 5-bend up every spirit-] A metaphor from the bow. JOHNSON. So again, in Hamlet: "they fool me to the top of my bent." Again, in Macbeth : "I am settled, and bend up "Each corporal agent to this terrible feat." Malone. 6 you NOBLEST English,] Thus the second folio. The first has-noblish. Mr. Malone reads-noble; and observes that this speech is not in the quartos. STEEVENS. 7 Whose blood is FET from fathers of war-proof!] Thus the folio 1623, and rightly. So, Spenser's Fairy Queen, b. iii. : "Whom strange adventure did from Britain fet." Again, in the Prologue to Ben Jonson's Silent Woman: 66 Though there be none far-fet, there will dear bought." Again, in Lord Surrey's translation of the second book of Virgil's Æneid: "And with that winde had fet the land of Greece." The sacred writings afford many instances to the same purpose. Mr. Pope first made the change, [to fetch'd], which I, among others, had inadvertently followed. STEEVENS. 8 3-argument.] Is matter, or subject. JOHNSON. For there is none of you so mean and base, SCENE II. The Same. Forces pass over; then enter NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, and Boy. BARD. On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach! NYм. 'Pray thee, corporal, stay: the knocks are too hot; and for mine own part, I have not a case of lives3: the humour of it is too hot, that is the very plain-song of it. 9-like greyhounds in the SLIPS,] Slips are a contrivance of leather, to start two dogs at the same time. C. 1 STRAINING upon the start.] The old copy reads-Straying. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. MALONE. 2-corporal.] We should read-lieutenant. It is Bardolph to whom he speaks. STEEVENS. Though Bardolph is only a corporal in King Henry IV. as our author has in this play, from inadvertence or design, made him a lieutenant, I think, with Mr. Steevens, that we should read lieutenant. See a former note, p. 294, n. 8. The truth is, I believe, that the variations in his title proceeded merely from Shakspeare's inattention. MALONE. 3 — a case of lives:] A set of lives, of which, when one is worn out, another may serve. JOHNSON. Perhaps only two; as a case of Pistols; and, in Ben Jonson, a case of masques. WHALLEY. I believe Mr. Whalley's explanation is the true one. pistols, which was the current phrase for a pair or brace of pistols, in our author's time, is at this day the term always used |