Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set.
His passion is so ripe it needs must break.

Pem. And when it breaks, I fear, will issue thence The foul corruption of a sweet child's death.

K. John. We cannot hold mortality's strong hand.— Good lords, although my will to give is living, The suit which you demand is gone and dead. He tells us, Arthur is deceased to-night.

Sal. Indeed, we feared his sickness was past cure. Pem. Indeed, we heard how near his death he was, Before the child himself felt he was sick.

This must be answered, either here, or hence.

K. John. Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?

Think you, I bear the shears of destiny?
Have I commandment on the pulse of life?

Sal. It is apparent foul-play; and 'tis shame,
That greatness should so grossly offer it.

So thrive it in your game! and so farewell.

Pem. Stay yet, lord Salisbury; I'll go with thee,
And find the inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.

That blood, which owed the breadth of all this isle,
Three foot of it doth hold. Bad world the while!
This must not be thus borne; this will break out
To all our sorrows, and ere long, I doubt.

[Exeunt Lords.
K. John. They burn in indignation; I repent;
There is no sure foundation set on blood;
No certain life achieved by others' death.-

Enter a Messenger.

A fearful eye thou hast; where is that blood,
That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?
So foul a sky clears not without a storm.

Pour down thy weather;-how goes all in France?

1 i. e. "owned the breadth of all this isle." The two last variorum editions erroneously read "breath for breadth," which is found in the old copy.

Mess. From France to England.'-Never such a

power

For any foreign preparation,

Was levied in the body of a land!

The copy of your speed is learned by them;
For, when you should be told they do prepare,
The tidings come that they are all arrived.

K. John. O, where hath our intelligence been drunk? Where hath it slept? Where is my mother's care? That such an army could be drawn in France,

And she not hear of it?

Mess.
My liege, her ear
Is stopped with dust; the first of April, died
Your noble mother; and, as I hear, my lord,
The lady Constance in a frenzy died

Three days before: but this from rumor's tongue
I idly heard; if true, or false, I know not.

K. John. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!
O, make a league with me, till I have pleased
My discontented peers!-What! mother dead?
How wildly then walks my estate in France! 2-
Under whose conduct came those powers of France,
That thou for truth giv'st out, are landed here?
Mess. Under the dauphin.

Enter the Bastard and PETER of Pomfret. K. John. Thou hast made me giddy With these ill tidings.-Now, what says the world To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff My head with more ill news, for it is full.

Bast. But if you be afeard to hear the worst, Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.

K. John. Bear with me, cousin; for I was amazed3 Under the tide; but now I breathe again

1 The king asks how all goes in France; the messenger catches the word goes, and answers, that whatever is in France goes now into England. 2 i. e. how ill my affairs go in France.

3 Astonied, stunned, confounded, are the ancient synonymes of amazed, obstupesco.

Aloft the flood; and can give audience
To any tongue, speak it of what it will.
Bast. How I have sped among the clergymen,
The sums I have collected shall express.
But, as I travelled hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possessed with rumors, full of idle dreams;
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear.
And here's a prophet,' that I brought with me
From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found
With many hundreds treading on his heels;
To whom he sung, in rude, harsh-sounding rhymes,
That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,

Your highness should deliver up your crown.

K. John. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?

Peter. Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so. K. John. Hubert, away with him; imprison him; And on that day at noon, whereon, he says,

I shall yield up my crown, let him be hanged.
Deliver him to safety, and return,

For I must use thee.-O, my gentle cousin,

[Exit HUBERT, with PETER. Hear'st thou the news abroad, who are arrived? Bast. The French, my lord; men's mouths are full

of it.

Besides, I met lord Bigot, and lord Salisbury,
(With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,)
And others more, going to seek the grave
Of Arthur, who, they say, is killed to-night
On your suggestion.

K. John.
Gentle kinsman, go,
And thrust thyself into their companies.

1 This man was a hermit, in great repute with the common people. Notwithstanding the event is said to have fallen out as he prophesied, the poor fellow was inhumanly dragged at horses' tails through the streets of Warham, and, together with his son, who appears to have been even more innocent than his father, hanged, afterwards, upon a gibbet.—Holinshed, in anno 1213.-Speed says that Peter the hermit was suborned by the pope's legate, the French king, and the barons, for this purpose.

2 i. e. to safe custody.

I have a way to win their loves again;
Bring them before me.

Bast.

I will seek them out.

K. John. Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.

O, let me have no subject enemies,

With dreadful

When adverse foreigners affright my towns pomp of stout invasion!Be Mercury; set feathers to thy heels;

And fly, like thought, from them to me again.

Bast. The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.

[Exit. K. John. Spoke like a spriteful, noble gentleman.Go after him; for he, perhaps, shall need Some messenger betwixt me and the peers; And be thou he.

Mess.

With all my heart, my liege.

K. John. My mother dead!

Re-enter Hubert.

[Exit.

Hub. My lord, they say, five moons were scen to

night;

Four fixed; and the fifth did whirl about

The other four, in wondrous motion.

K. John. Five moons?

Hub.

Old men, and beldams, in the streets

Do prophesy upon it dangerously.

Young Arthur's death is common in their mouths;
And when they talk of him, they shake their heads,
And whisper one another in the ear;

And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist;
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action,

With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.
I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news;
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,
Standing on slippers, (which his nimble haste

Had falsely thrust upon contráry feet,)1
Told of a many thousand warlike French,
That were embattailed and ranked in Kent.
Another lean, unwashed artificer

Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death.

K. John. Why seek'st thou to possess me with these fears?

Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur's death?
Thy hand hath murdered him; I had a mighty cause
To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.
Hub. Had none, my lord! why, did you not pro-
voke me?

K. John. It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves, that take their humors for a warrant
To break within the bloody house of life;
And, on the winking of authority,

To understand a law; to know the meaning
Of dangerous majesty, when, perchance, it frowns
More upon humor than advised respect.2

Hub. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.
K. John. O, when the last account 'twixt Heaven
and earth

Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal
Witness against us to damnation!

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by,
A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted, and signed, to do a deed of shame,
This murder had not come into my mind;
But, taking note of thy abhorred aspéct,
Finding thee fit for bloody villany,
Apt, liable, to be employed in danger,
I faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death;
And thou, to be endeared to a king,
Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.
Hub. My lord,-

1 This passage, which called forth the antiquarian knowledge of so many learned commentators, is now, from the return of the fashion of right and left shoes, become intelligible without a note.

2 Deliberate consideration.

VOL. III.

42

3 To quote is to note or mark.