Nor never by advised1 purpose meet,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,

'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.
Boling. I swear.

Nor. And I, to keep all this.

Boling. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy.2-
By this time, had the king permitted us,
One of our souls had wandered in the air,
Banished this frail sepúlchre of our flesh,
As now our flesh is banished from this land.
Confess thy treasons, ere thou fly the realm;
Since thou hast far to go, bear not along
The clogging burden of a guilty soul.

Nor. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,
My name be blotted from the book of life,

And I from heaven banished, as from hence!
But what thou art, Heaven, thou, and I do know;
And all too soon, I fear, the king shall rue.-
Farewell, my liege.-Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way. [Exit.3
K. Rich. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes
I see thy grieved heart; thy sad aspéct

Hath from the number of his banished years
Plucked four away.-Six frozen winters spent,
Return [To BOLING.] with welcome home from banish-

ment.

Boling. How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs, End in a word; such is the breath of kings. Gaunt. I thank my liege, that, in regard of me, He shortens four years of my son's exile. But little vantage shall I reap thereby; For, ere the six years, that he hath to spend, Can change their moons, and bring their times about, My oil-dried lamp, and time-bewasted light,

1 Premeditated, deliberated.

2 The first folio reads "So fare." This line seems to be addressed by way of caution to Mowbray, lest he should think that Bolingbroke was about to conciliate him.

3 The duke of Norfolk went to Venice," where for thought and melancholy he deceased."-Holinshed.

Shall be extinct with age, and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son.

K. Rich. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.
Gaunt. But not a minute, king, that thou canst give.
Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;
Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;

Thy word is current with him for my death;
But, dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.
K. Rich. Thy son is banished upon good advice,
Whereto thy tongue a party verdict gave.
Why at our justice seem'st thou then to lower?
Gaunt. Things sweet to taste, prove in digestion sour.
You urged me as a judge; but I had rather,
You would have bid me argue like a father.-
O, had it been a stranger, not my child,

To smooth his fault I should have been more mild;2
A partial slander3 sought I to avoid,

And in the sentence my own life destroyed.
Alas, I looked, when some of you should say
I was too strict, to make mine own away;
But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue,
Against my will, to do myself this wrong.

K. Rich. Cousin, farewell;-and, uncle, bid him so, Six years we banish him, and he shall go.

[Flourish. Exeunt K. RICH. and Train. Aum. Cousin, farewell; what presence must not know,

From where you do remain, let paper show.

Mar. My lord, no leave take I; for I will ride, As far as land will let me, by your side.

Gaunt. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,

That thou return'st no greeting to thy friends?

Boling. I have too few to take my leave of you,

1 Had a part or share in it.

2 This couplet is wanting in the folio.
3 i. e. the reproach of partiality.

When the tongue's office should be prodigal
To breathe the abundant dolor of the heart.

Gaunt. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.
Boling. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.
Gaunt. What is six winters? they are quickly gone
Boling. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour

ten.

Gaunt. Call it a travel that thou tak'st for pleasure. Boling. My heart will sigh, when I miscall it so, Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.

Gaunt. The sullen passage of thy weary steps
Esteem a foil, wherein thou art to set
The precious jewel of thy home-return.

Boling. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make1
Will but remember me, what a deal of world
I wander from the jewels that I love.
Must I not serve a long apprenticehood
To foreign passages; and in the end,
Having my freedom, boast of nothing else,
But that I was a journeyman to grief?

Gaunt. All places that the eye of heaven 2 visits,
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;

There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not the king did banish thee;

But thou the king. Woe doth the heavier sit,
Where it perceives it is but faintly borne.
Go, say-I sent thee forth to purchase honor,
And not-the king exiled thee; or suppose,
Devouring pestilence hangs in our air,
And thou art flying to a fresher clime.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it

To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com❜st.
Suppose the singing birds, musicians;

The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strewed; 3

1 This speech and that which follows are not in the folio.

2 i. e. the sun.

3 We have other allusions to the practice of strewing rushes over the floor of the presence-chamber, in Shakspeare.

The flowers, fair ladies; and thy steps, no more
Than a delightful measure, or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.
Boling. O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good,
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.
Gaunt. Come, come, my son, I'll bring thee on thy

way:

Had I thy youth, and cause, I would not stay.

Boling. Then, England's ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;

My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!
Where'er I wander, boast of this I can,-
Though banished, yet a trueborn Englishman.'

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV. The same. A Room in the King's Castle.

Enter KING RICHARD, BAGOT, and GREEN; Aumerle following.

K. Rich. We did observe.2-Cousin Aumerle, How far brought you high Hereford on his way? Aum. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,

But to the next highway, and there I left him.

K. Rich. And, say, what store of parting tears were shed?

1 Dr. Johnson thought that the first act should end here.

2 The king here addressed Green and Bagot, who, we may suppose, had been talking to him of Bolingbroke's "courtship to the common people," at the time of his departure. "Yes," says Richard, "we did observe it."

Aum. 'Faith, none by1 me; except the north-east

wind,

Which then blew bitterly against our faces,
Awaked the sleeping rheum; and so, by chance,
Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.

K. Rich. What said our cousin, when you parted with him?

Aum. Farewell:

And, for my heart disdained that my tongue
Should so profane the word, that taught me craft
To counterfeit oppression of such grief,

That words seemed buried in my sorrow's grave.
Marry, would the word farewell have lengthened hours,
And added years to his short banishment,
He should have had a volume of farewells;
But, since it would not, he had none of me.

K. Rich. He is our cousin, cousin; but 'tis doubt, When time shall call him home from banishment, Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.

2

Ourself, and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green,
Observed his courtship to the common people ;-
How he did seem to dive into their hearts,
With humble and familiar courtesy ;

What reverence he did throw away on slaves;
Wooing poor craftsmen, with the craft of smiles,
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere, to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid-God speed him well,
And had the tribute of his supple knee,3
With-Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;

1 The first folio and the quarto of 1597 read ""Faith, none for me." The emendation was made in the folio, 1623.

2 The earlier quarto copies read, “Ourself and Bushy," and no more. The folio:

"Ourself, and Bushy here, Bagot, and Greene.

In the quarto, the stage-direction says, "Enter the King, with Bushie," &c.; but in the folio, "Enter the King, Aumerle," &c., because it was observed that Bushy comes in afterward. On this account we have

adopted a transposition made in the quarto of 1634.

3 To illustrate this, it should be remembered that courtesying (the act of reverence now confined to women) was anciently practised by men.