nounced. So far my king and master; so much
my office 3.

K. HEN. What is thy name? I know thy quality.
MONT. Montjoy.

K. HEN. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee

back,

And tell thy king,-I do not seek him now;
But could be willing to march on to Calais
Without impeachment: for, to say the sooth,
(Though 'tis no wisdom to confess so much
Unto an enemy of craft and vantage,)

My people are with sickness much enfeebled :
My numbers lessen'd; and those few I have,
Almost no better than so many French;

Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,
I thought, upon one pair of English legs

Did march three Frenchmen.-Yet, forgive me,

God,

That I do brag thus !-this your air of France
Hath blown that vice in me; I must repent.

Go, therefore, tell thy master, here I am;

so much my office.] This speech, as well as another preceding it, was compressed into verse by Mr. Pope. Where he wanted a syllable, he supplied it, and where there were too many for his purpose, he made suitable omissions. Shakspeare (if we may believe the most perfect copy of the play, i. e. that in the first folio,) meant both speeches for prose, and as such I have printed them. STEEVENS.

Without IMPEACHMENT:] i. e. hindrance. Empechement, French. In a book entitled, Miracles lately wrought by the Intercession of the glorious Virgin Marie, at Mont-aigu, nere unto Siche in Brabant, &c. printed at Antwerp, by Arnold Conings, 1606, I meet with this word: "Wherefore he took it and without empeschment, or resistance, placed it againe in the oke." STEEVENS. Impeachment, in the same sense, has always been used as a legal word in deeds, as-" without impeachment of waste : without restraint or hindrance of waste.

REED.

i. e.

Without impeachment is, without being attacked. Impeachment, the legal word, is not from the French, but the Latin, impetere. See Blackstone, vol. ii. p. 283. MALONE.

;

My ransom, is this frail and worthless trunk
My army, but a weak and sickly guard ;
Yet, God before", tell him we will come on,
Through France himself, and such another neigh-
bour,

Stand in our way. There's for thy labour, Montjoy.
Go, bid thy master well advise himself:

If we may pass, we will; if we be hinder'd,
We shall your tawny ground with your red blood
Discolour and so, Montjoy, fare you well.
The sum of all our answer is but this:
We would not seek a battle, as we are;
Nor, as we are, we say, we will not shun it;
So tell your master.

7

MONT. I shall deliver so.

Thanks to your high[Exit MONTJOY. GLO. I hope, they will not come upon us now.

ness.

God before,] This was an expression in that age for God being my guide, or, when used to another, God be thy guide. So, in An old Dialogue between a Herdsman and a Maiden going on a Pilgrimage to Walsingham, the herdsman takes his leave in these words:

JOHNSON.

"Now, go thy ways, and God before." To prevent was used in the same sense. 8There's for thy labour, Montjoy,

Go, bid thy master well ADVISE himself:

We shall your TAWNY GROUND with your RED BLOOD DISCOLOUR:] From Holinshed: "My desire is, that none of you be so unadvised, as to be the occasion that I in my defence shall colour and make red your tawny ground with the effusion of christian bloud. When he [Henry] had thus answered the herauld, he gave him a greate rewarde, and licensed him to depart." MALONE.

It appears from many ancient books that it was always customary to reward a herald, whether he brought defiance or congratulation. So, in the ancient metrical history of The Battle of Floddon:

"Then gave he to the herald's hand,

Besides, with it, a rich reward;

"Who hasten'd to his native land

"To see how with his king it far'd." STEEVENS.

K. HEN. We are in God's hand, brother, not in

theirs.

March to the bridge; it now draws toward night :Beyond the river we'll encamp ourselves;

And on to-morrow bid them march away.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VII.9

The French Camp, near Agincourt.

Enter the Constable of France, the Lord RAMBUres, the Duke of ORLEANS, Dauphin, and Others.

CON. Tut! I have the best armour of the world.'Would it were day!

ORL. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his due.

CON. It is the best horse of Europe.

ORL. Will it never be morning?

DAU. My lord of Orleans, and my lord high constable, you talk of horse and armour,

ORL. You are as well provided of both, as any prince in the world.

DAU. What a long night is this!I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. Ca, ha! He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs'; le cheval volant, the Pegasus, qui a les narines de feu! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the

9

--

Scene VII.] This scene is shorter, and I think better, in the first editions of 1600 and 1608. But as the enlargements appear to be the author's own, I would not omit them. POPE.

He bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs :] Alluding to the bounding of tennis-balls, which were stuffed with hair, as appears from Much Ado About Nothing : "And the old ornament of his cheek hath already stuff'd tennis-balls." WARBURTON.

earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes. ORL. He's of the colour of the nutmeg.

DAU. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him2, but only in patient stillness, while his rider mounts him he is, indeed, a horse; and all other jades you may call-beasts".

2

he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him,] Thus Cleopatra, speaking of herself:

66

I am air and fire; my other elements "I give to baser life." STEEVENS.

So, in our author's 44th Sonnet :

66

so much of earth and water wrought,

"I must attend time's leisure with my moan."

Again, in Twelfth Night: "Do not our lives consist of the four elements? MALONE.

3

and all other JADES you may call-BEASTS.] It is plain that jades and beasts should change places, it being the first word, and not the last, which is the term of reproach; as afterwards it is said:

"I had as lief have my mistress a jade." WARBURTON. There is no occasion for this change. In The Second Part of King Henry IV. Sc. I. :

66

he gave his able horse the head,

And, bending forward, struck his armed heels Against the panting sides of the poor jade." Again, in Arthur Hall's translation of the 4th Iliad :

"Two horses tough ech one it [his chariot] hath, the jades they are not dul,

"Of barley white, of rie and oates, they feede in mangier full." Jade is sometimes used for a post horse. Beast is always employed as a contemptuous distinction. So, in Macbeth:

what beast was't then

66

"That made you break this enterprize to me?" Again, in Timon of Athens: "- what a wicked beast was 1 to disfurnish myself against so good a time!" STEEvens.

I agree with Warburton in supposing that the words-beasts and jades have changed places. Steevens says, that beast is always employed as a contemptuous distinction, and, to support this assertion, he quotes a passage from Macbeth, and another from Timon, in which it appears that men were called beasts,

CON. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent horse.

DAU. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.

ORL. No more, cousin.

DAU. Nay, the man hath no wit, that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey: it is a theme as fluent as the sea; turn the sands into

where abuse was intended. But though the word beast be a contemptuous distinction, as he terms it, when applied to a man, it does not follow that it should be so when applied to a horse. He forgets the following speech in Hamlet, which militates. strongly against his assertion:

66

he grew unto his seat,

"And to such wond'rous doings brought his horse,

"As he had been incorps'd, and demi-natur'd

"With the brave beast."

But the word jade is always used in a contemptuous sense; and in the passage which Steevens quotes from The Second Part of Henry IV. the able horse is called a poor jade, merely because the poor beast was supposed to be jaded. The word is there an expression of pity, not of contempt. M. MASON.

I cannot forbear subjoining two queries to this note.

In the passage quoted by Mr. M. Mason from Hamlet, is not the epithet brave added, to exempt the word beast from being received in a slight sense of degradation?

Is not, in the instance quoted by me from Henry IV. the epithet poor supplied, to render jade an object of compassion? Jade is a term of no very decided meaning. It sometimes signifies a hackney, sometimes a vicious horse, and sometimes a tired one; and yet I cannot help thinking, in the present instance, that as a horse is degraded by being called a jade, so a jade is vilified by being termed a beast. STEEVENS.

I do not think there is any ground for the transposition proposed by Dr. Warburton, who would make jades and beasts change places. Words under the hand of either a transcriber or compositor, never thus leap out of their places. The Dauphin evidently means, that no other horse has so good a title as his, to the appellation peculiarly appropriated to that fine and useful animal. The general term for quadrupeds may suffice for all other horses. MALONE.