Let me speak proudly;-Tell the Constable,

that do no great honour to the poet. Perhaps from this putrid valour Dryden might borrow the pofthumous empire of Don Sebastian, who was to reign wherefoever his atoms should be scattered. JOHNSON.

By this phrafe, however uncouth, Shakspeare feems to mean the fame as in the preceding line. Mortality is death. So, in King Henry VI. Part I:

I beg mortality

"Rather than life.

Relapse may be used for rebound. Shakspeare has given mind of honour for honourable mind; and by the fame rule might write relapfe of mortality for fatal or mortal rebound; or by relapfe of mortality, he may mean-after they had relapfed into inanimation.

This putrid valour is common to the defcriptions of other poets as well as Shakspeare and Dryden, and is predicated to be no lefs victorious by Lucan, Lib. VII. v. 821:

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Quid fugis hanc cladem, quid olentes deferis agros? "Has trahe, Cæfar, aquas; hoc, fi potes, utere cœlo. "Sed tibi tabentes populi Pharfalica rura

Eripiunt, campofque tenent victore fugato."

Corneille has imitated this paffage in the firft fpeech in his Pompée:

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de chars,

"Sur fes champs empeftés confufément épars,

"Ces montagnes de morts privés d'honneurs fuprêmes,

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Que la nature force à fe venger eux-mêmes,

"Et de leurs troncs pourris exhale dans les vents

"De quoi faire la guerre au refte des vivans."

Voltaire, in his letter to the academy of Belles Lettres at Paris, opposes the preceding part of this fpeech to a quotation from Shakspeare. The Frenchman, however, very prudently stopped before he came to the lines which are here quoted. STEEVENS.

The ruggedness of this line, which is rendered by the word relapfe (at least as we now accent it,) fcarcely metre, induces me to think, with Dr. Johnson, that word corrupt.

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In the following paffage the word relapfe feems to fignify nothing more than lapfe: Nothing fo much do I retract as that wherein foever I have fcandalized the meaneft. Into fome fplenetive vaine of wantonnefs have I foolishly relapfed, to fupply my private wants; of them no lefs do I defire to be abfolved than the reft." Chrifts Tears over Jerufalem, by Thomas Nashe, 4to. 1594. MALONE.

I am too dull to perceive that relapfe, in the preceding quotation, may not be used in its common and accepted fenfe. STEEVENS.

4

We are but warriors for the working-day:3
Our gaynefs, and our gilt, are all befmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host,
(Good argument, I hope, we fhall not fly,)
And time hath worn us into flovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim:
And my poor foldiers tell me—yet ere night
They'll be in fresher robes; or they will pluck
The gay new coats o'er the French foldiers' heads,
And turn them out of fervice. If they do this,
(As, if God please, they fhall,) my ranfom then
Will foon be levy'd. Herald, fave thou thy la-
bour;

Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald;
They shall have none, I fwear, but these my joints:
Which if they have as I will leave 'em to them,
Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.

MONT. I fhall, king Harry. And fo fare thee

well:

Thou never shalt hear herald any more.

[Exit. K. HEN. I fear, thou'lt once more come again for ransom.

3 -warriors for the working-day:] We are foldiers but coarfely dreffed; we have not on our holiday apparel.

JOHNSON. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "Pr'ythee, tell her but a worky-day fortune." STEEVENS.

4our gilt,] i. e. Golden fhow, fuperficial gilding. Obfolete. So, in Timon of Athens :

"When thou waft in thy gilt and thy perfume," &c. Again, in Twelfth Night:

"The double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off." Again, in Arden of Feversham, 1592:

"And now the rain hath beaten off thy gilt."

STEEVENS,

Enter the Duke of YORK."

YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg The leading of the vaward.

K. HEN. Take it, brave York.-Now, foldiers, march away:

And how thou pleaseft, God, dispose the day!

[Exeunt.

Alarums; Excurfions; Enter French Soldier, PISTOL, and Boy.

PIST. Yield, cur.

FR. SOL. Je penfe, que vous eftes le gentilhomme de bonne qualité.

PIST. Quality, call you me?-Conftrue me, art thou a gentleman? What is thy name? discuss."

5 the Duke of York.] This perfonage is the fame, who appears in our author's King Richard II. by the title of Duke of Aumerle. His chriftian name was Edward. He was the eldest fon of Edmond of Langley, Duke of York, who is introduced in the fame play, and who was the fifth fon of King Edward III. Richard Earl of Cambridge, who appears in the fecond act of this play, was younger brother to this Edward Duke of York. MALONE.

6 Quality, call you me ?-Conftrue me,] The old copy reads→→→ Qualtitie calmie custure me—• STEEVENS.

We should read this nonfenfe thus:

Quality, cality-conftrue me, art thou a gentleman?

i. e. tell me, let me understand whether thou be'ft a gentleman.

Mr. Edwards, in his MS. notes, propofes to read:

WARBURTON.

Quality, call you me? conftrue me, &c. STEEVENS.

The alteration proposed by Mr. Edwards has been too hastily adopted. Pistol, who does not understand French, imagines the

FR. SOL. O feigneur Dieu!

PIST. O, fignieur Dew fhould be a gentleman: Perpend my words, O fignieur Dew, and mark;

prifoner to be fpeaking of his own quality. The line should therefore have been given thus:

Quality!-calmly; conftrue me, art thou a gentleman.

RITSON.

The words in the folio (where alone they are found)-Qualitee calmie cufture me, appeared fuch nonfenfe, that fome emendation was here a matter of neceffity, and accordingly that made by the joint efforts of Dr. Warburton and Mr. Edwards, has been adopted in mine and the late editions. But fince, I have found reason to believe that the old copy is very nearly right, and that a much flighter emendation than that which has been made, will fuffice. In a book entitled, A Handfull of Plefant Delites, containing fundrie new Sonets, newly devifed to the newest tunes, &c. by Clement Robinson and others, 16mo. 1584, is "A Sonet of a lover in the praise of his lady, to Calen o cufture me, fung at every line's end:"

"When as I view your comely grace, Calen," &c. Pistol, therefore, we fee, is only repeating the burden of an old fong, and the words fhould be undoubtedly printed

Quality! Calen o cufture me. Art thou a gentleman, &c. He elfew here has quoted the old ballad beginning, "Where is the life that late I led?" With what propriety the prefent words are introduced, it is not neceffary to inquire. Pistol is not very scrupulous in his quotations.

It may alfo be obferved, that conftrue me is not Shakspeare's phrafeology, but-conftrue to me. So, in Twelfth Night: "I will conftrue to them whence you come," &c. MALONE.

Conftrue me, though not the phrafeology of our author's more chaftifed characters, might agree fufficiently with that of Pistol.

Mr. Malone's discovery is a very curious one, and when (as probably will be the cafe) fome further ray of light is thrown on the unintelligible words-Calen &c. I will be the first to vote them into the text. STEEVENS.

7-difcufs.] This affected word is ufed by Lyly, in his Woman in the Moon, 1597:

"But first I muft difcufs this heavenly cloud." STEEVENS. 8 fignieur Dew should be a gentleman:] I cannot help thinking, that Shak fpeare intended here a ftroke at a paffage in a famous old book, called, The Gentleman's Academie in Hawking, Hunting, and Armorie, written originally by Juliana Barnes, and re-published by Gervafe Markham, 1595. The first chapter of

O fignieur Dew, thou dieft on point of fox,"
Except, O fignieur, thou do give to me
Egregious ranfom.

FR. SOL. O, prennez mifericorde! ayez pitié de moy! PIST. Moy fhall not ferve, I will have forty moys; For I will fetch thy rim2 out at thy throat, In drops of crimson blood.

the Booke of Armorie, is, "the difference 'twixt Churles and Gentlemen;" and it ends thus: "From the of-fpring of gentlemanly Japhet came Abraham, Moyfes, Aaron, and the Prophets; and alfo the king of the right line of Mary, of whom that only abfolute gentleman, Jefus, was borne:-gentleman, by his mother Mary, princeffe of coat armor." FARMER.

9 thou dieft on point of fox,] Fox is an old cant word for a fword. So, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philafter:

"I made my father's old fox fly about his ears."

The fame expreffion occurs in The two angry Women of Abington, 1599:

"I had a fword, ay the flower of Smithfield for a sword; a right fox, i'faith."

Again, in The Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukely, 1605: old hack'd fwords, foxes, bilbos, and horn-buckles.' Again, in The Devil's Charter, 1607:

And by this awful crofs upon my blade,

"And by this fox which ftinks of Pagan blood."

2 For I will fetch thy rim-] We should read:
Or, I will fetch thy ransome out of thy throat.

STEEVENS,

WARBURTON.

I know not what to do with rim. The measure gives reason to suppose that it stands for fome monofyllable; and, befides, ransome is a word not likely to have been corrupted. JOHNSON.

It appears from Sir Arthur Gorges's Tranflation of Lucan, 1614, that fome part of the inteftines was anciently called the rim, Lucan, Book I:

"The flender rimme too weake to part

"The boyling liver from the heart."

parvufque fecat vitalia limes. L. 623.

"Parvus limes (fays one of the fcholiafts) præcordia indicat; membrana illa quæ cor et pulmones a jecore et liene dirimit." Í believe it is now called the diaphragm in human creatures, and the skirt or midriff in beafts; but ftill in fome places, the rim.