Like an unseasonable stormy deluge,

Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores
As if the world were all dissolved to tears,

So, high above his limits, swells the rage
Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land

With hard bright steel, and hearts harder than steel.

A deluge does make the rivers drown their shores; and the rage too of Bolingbroke, swelling high above its limits, and covering the land with armies, does resemble completely such a deluge. Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus paints a picture assembling the same objects in the same images expressed by the same words as here present themselves, if 'deluge' be read instead of 'day,' a word of which some abbreviation, or faintness of writing in the end of it, or loss of margin in the manuscript, might easily occasion the substitution.

Then must my earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflowed and drowned.

The expression 'stormy deluge' would be confirmed by the following passage: 'They (whales) send up on high, as it 'were, with a mightie strong breath a great quantity of water 'when they list, like storms of rain.' Book ix. ch. 6.

285

KING HENRY IV. PART I.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

K. Hen. So shaken as we are, so wan with care, Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils

To be commenced in stronds afar remote.

That is, 'let us suffer' (misprinted 'soften' in the Variorum editions) peace to rest awhile without disturbance, that she may recover breath to propose new wars.'-JOHNSON.

On the contrary I should say 'Shaken and wan as we 'are, yet we find a time for peace, although still frightened 'and panting, to talk of new wars even in short-winded 'accents which her terror and fatigue still occasion.'

K. Hen. No more the thirsty Erinnys of this soil Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood. The first folio, as also the five first quartos, read 'en'trance'

'The thirsty entrance of our soil.'

This word was explained to mean 'the porous surface of the 'earth' by Steevens, and 'the parched and cracked surface of 'the earth' by Ritson. But Steevens was not satisfied; and after giving 'entrants' in the sense of 'invaders' as a conjecture of his own, eventually approved and adopted into his text Erinnys,' which had been proposed by Monk Mason,

chiefly on the ground that Shakespeare has used the pers fication Nemesis' in another play. Steevens, howe Malone, Ritson, and Mason all agree in allowing that 'lips' and 'her own children' must refer to 'soil;' and consid that the soil of England is well susceptible of personificatica and has been elsewhere personified by Shakespeare. Now! too find it impossible to acquiesce in the reading 'entrance. The notion of the surface of the soil daubing the lips of the soil (which must also be its surface, or a part of such) with blood, is most unacceptable both to the understanding and imagination. The action is most unsuited to the agent, and in itself it is difficult to imagine. Entrants,' on the other hand, is hardly worth the cost of a departure from the printed text. It is an affected word, most inadequately descriptive of bloodthirsty invaders. Erinnys,' however, besides that it is a somewhat wide variation from 'entrants,' introduces more than one awkwardness. It presents a personification to whom 'her lips' and 'her children' will by many not unnaturally be referred, while the additional personification of the 'soil,' to which also they may be attributed as belonging, produces a most cumbrous accumulation. Further, it involves the absurdity of ascribing to the thirst of one person the drinking of another; for the 'Erinnys' would not slack its own thirst by forcing the soil to drink, nor would the soil be naturally incited to drink by the thirst of the 'Erinnys.' Neither the text, therefore, nor the existing emendations satisfy me. I propose with some confidence to read:

No more the thirsty entrails of this soil

Shall daub her lips in her own children's blood.

The poet has in another passage made the 'entrails' the constitutional seat and cause of the drought in the body:

'What? hath thy fiery heart so parched thy entrails
'That not a tear can fall for Rutland's death?'

Hen. VI. pt. ii., act. i. sc. 4.

Similarly a poet of the succeeding century has described. 'entrails' as the seat of hunger:

'Her mouth from ear to ear extended wide,

'Which, when for want of food her entrails pined,

'She oped, and, cursing, swallowed nought but wind.' Churchill's Prophecy of Famine.'

1 another place, too, Shakespeare has ascribed 'entrails' to e earth (Titus Andronicus):

'A precious ring, &c.

'And shows the ragged entrails of the pit.'

Act ii. sc. 4.

In the same play, again, 'thirst' is ascribed to the earth, and 'thirst' for blood, too, is by implication attributed to it:

'Let my tears staunch the earth's dry appetite,

'My son's sweet blood will make it shame and blush.' Act ii. sc. 4.

'Entrails' is a generic expression comprehending many inward organs probably in Shakespeare's intention; and if the entrails can be so parched as to dry up the fountain of tears at the eye, they can also be so parched as to be thirsty, or to generate thirst such as compels their possessor to daub his lips with any moisture which can come within reach. The soil therefore, as personified, will here possess 'entrails' no less naturally than 'lips' and 'children;' and the thirst of those 'entrails' will of course indirectly daub those lips' with the blood of those 'children.'

I discover, through the list of various readings in the Cambridge Edition, what no editor or commentator has mentioned, that the fourth folio alone of all the numerous copies of this play gives the very reading 'entrails' which I had inferred to be probably the right one.

K. Hen. No more shall trenching war channel her fields,

Nor bruise her flow'rets with the armed hoofs

Of hostile paces.

chiefly on the ground that Shakespeare has used the personification Nemesis' in another play. Steevens, however, Malone, Ritson, and Mason all agree in allowing that her 'lips' and 'her own children' must refer to 'soil;' and consider that the soil of England is well susceptible of personification, and has been elsewhere personified by Shakespeare. Now I too find it impossible to acquiesce in the reading 'entrance.' The notion of the surface of the soil daubing the lips of the soil (which must also be its surface, or a part of such) with blood, is most unacceptable both to the understanding and imagination. The action is most unsuited to the agent, and in itself it is difficult to imagine. Entrants,' on the other hand, is hardly worth the cost of a departure from the printed text. It is an affected word, most inadequately descriptive of bloodthirsty invaders. Erinnys,' however, besides that it is a somewhat wide variation from 'entrants,' introduces more than one awkwardness. It presents a personification to whom 'her lips' and 'her children' will by many not unnaturally be referred, while the additional personification of the soil,' to which also they may be attributed as belonging, produces a most cumbrous accumulation. Further, it involves the absurdity of ascribing to the thirst of one person the drinking of another; for the 'Erinnys' would not slack its own thirst by forcing the soil to drink, nor would the soil be naturally incited to drink by the thirst of the 'Erinnys.' Neither the text, therefore, nor the existing emendations satisfy me. propose with some confidence to read:

No more the thirsty entrails of this soil

Shall daub her lips in her own children's blood.

The poet has in another passage made the 'entrails' the constitutional seat and cause of the drought in the body:

'What? hath thy fiery heart so parched thy entrails
'That not a tear can fall for Rutland's death?'

Hen. VI. pt. ii., act. i. sc. 4.

Similarly a poet of the succeeding century has described 'entrails' as the seat of hunger: