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To lead him where he would; his roguish madness Allows itself to any thing.

2 Serv. Go thou; I'll fetch some flax, and whites

of eggs

18
9

To apply to his bleeding face. Now, heaven help

him!

[Exeunt severally.

ACT IV.

SCENE I. The Heath.

Enter EDGAR.

Edg. Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd, Than still contemn'd and flatter'd1. To be worst, The lowest, and most dejected thing of fortune, Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear: The lamentable change is from the best; The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then 2,

18 Steevens asserted that this passage was ridiculed by Ben Jonson in The Case is Altered. Mr. Gifford has shown the folly and falsehood of the assertion; and that it was only a common allusion to a method of stanching blood practised in the poet's time by every barber-surgeon and old woman in the kingdom.

1It is better to be thus and openly contemned, than to be flattered and secretly contemned.' The expression in this speech, owes nothing to thy blasts,' might seem to be copied from Virgil, Æn. xi. 51:

'Nos juvenem exanimum, et nil jam cœlestibus ullis
Debentem, vano mosti comitamur honore.'

The meaning of Edgar's speech seems to be this:- Yet it is better to be thus in this fixed and acknowledged contemptible state, than living in affluence, to be flattered and despised at the same time. He who is placed in the worst and lowest state, has this advantage, he lives in hope, and not in fear, of a reverse of fortune. The lamentable change is from affluence to beggary. He laughs at the idea of changing for the worse, who is already as low as possible.'-Sir J. Reynolds.

2 The next two lines and a half are not in the quartos.

Thou unsubstantial air, that I embrace!

The wretch, that thou hast blown unto the worst, Owes nothing to thy blasts.-But who comes here?

Enter GLOSTER, led by an old Man.

My father, poorly led ?-World, world, O world! But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee, Life would not yield to age3.

Old Man. O my good lord, I have been your tenant, and your father's tenant, these fourscore years.

Glo. Away, get thee away; good friend, be gone: Thy comforts can do me no good at all, Thee they may hurt.

Old Man. Alack, sir, you cannot see your way. Glo. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw: Full oft 'tis seen,

Our mean secures us, and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.-Ah, dear son, Edgar,
The food of thy abused father's wrath!
Might I but live to see thee in

I'd say, I had eyes again!

Old Man.

my

touch 5,

How now? Who's there? Edg. [Aside.] O gods! Who is't can say, I am at the worst?

I am worse than e'er I was.

30 world! if reverses of fortune and changes such as I now see and feel, from ease and affluence to poverty and misery, did not show us the little value of life, we should never submit with any kind of resignation to death, the necessary consequences of old age; we should cling to life more strongly than we do.'

4 Mean is here put for our moderate or mean conditions. It was sometimes the practice of the poet's age to use a plural, when the subject spoken of related to more persons than one. To avoid the equivoque Pope changed the reading of the old copy to 'our mean secures us,' which is certainly more intelligible, and may have been the reading intended, as meane being spelled with a final e might easily be mistaken for means, which is the reading of the old copy.

5 So in another scene, 'I see it feelingly.'

Old Man.

"Tis poor mad Tom.

Edg. [Aside.] And worse I may be yet; The

worst is not,

So long as we can say, This is the worst.

Old Man. Fellow, where goest?

Glo.

Is it a beggar man? Old Man. Madman and beggar too.

Glo. He has some reason, else he could not beg.
I'the last night's storm I such a fellow saw;
Which made me think a man a worm: My son
Came then into my mind; and yet my mind
Was then scarce friends with him: I have heard
more since:

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport7.

Edg.

How should this be?—

Bad is the trade must play the fool to sorrow, Ang'ring itself and others. [Aside.]—Bless thee,

master!

Glo. Is that the naked fellow?

Old Man.

Ay, my lord.

Glo. Then, 'pr'ythee, get thee gone: If, for my sake, Thou wilt o'ertake us, hence a mile or twain, I'the way to Dover, do it for ancient love; And bring some covering for this naked soul, Whom I'll entreat to lead me.

Old Man.

Alack, sir, he's mad.

Glo. 'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead

the blind.

6 i. e. while we live; for while we yet continue to have a sense of feeling, something worse than the present may still happen. He recalls his former rash conclusion.

7

'Dii nos quasi pilas homines habent.'

Plaut. Captiv. Prol. i. 22.

Thus also in Sidney's Arcadia, lib. ii. :—

wretched human kinde

Balles to the starres,' &c.

Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure;
Above the rest, be gone.

Old Man. I'll bring him the best 'parel that I have, Come on't what will.

Glo. Sirrah, naked fellow.

[Exit.

Edg. Poor Tom's a-cold.-I cannot daub3 it

further.

Glo. Come hither, fellow.

[Aside.

Edg. [Aside.] And yet I must.-Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.

Glo. Know'st thou the way to Dover?

Edg. Both stile and gate, horse-way, and footpath. Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits: Bless the good man from the foul fiend! [Five fiends9 have been in poor Tom at once; of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; and Fibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since possesses chambermaids and waitingwomen 10. So, bless thee, master!]

8 i. e. disguise it.

'So smooth he daub'd his vice with show of virtue.' King Richard III. 9The devil in Ma Mainy confessed his name to be Modu, and that he had besides himself seven other spirits, and all of them captaines and of great fame. 'Then Edmundes (the exorcist) began againe with great earnestness, and all the company cried out, &c.- -so as both that wicked prince Modu and his company might be cast out.'-Harsnet, p. 163. This passage will account for five fiends having been in poor Tom at once.'

10 If she have a little helpe of the mother, epilepsie, or cramp, to teach her role her eyes, wrie her mouth, gnash her teeth, starte with her body, hold her armes and handes stiffe, make antike faces, grinne, mow and mop like an ape, then no doubt the young girle is owle-blasted, and possessed.'—Harsnet, p. 136. The five devils here mentioned are the names of five of those who were made to act in this farce three chambermaids, or waiting women, in Mr. Edmund Peckham's family. The reader will now perceive why a coquette is called flibergibbit or titifill by Cotgrave. See Act iii. Sc. 4, note 23. The passage in crotchets is omitted in the folio.

Glo. Here, take this purse, thou whom the hea

ven's plagues

Have humbled to all strokes: that I am wretched,
Makes thee the happier :-Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous, and lust-dieted man,
That slaves your ordinance11, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,

And each man have enough.-Dost thou know Dover?
Edg. Ay, master.

Glo. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head Looks fearfully in 12 the confined deep:

Bring me but to the very brim of it,

And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear,

With something rich about me: from that place
I shall no leading need.

Edg.

Poor Tom shall lead thee.

Give me thy arm;

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

Before the DUKE of ALBANY's Palace.

Enter GONERIL and EDMUND; Steward meeting them.

Gon. Welcome, my lord: I marvel, our mild husband1

Not met us on the way:-Now, where's your master?

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11 Lear has before uttered the same sentiment, which indeed cannot be too strongly impressed, though it may be too often repeated.'-Johnson. To slave an ordinance is to treat it as a slave, to make it subject to us, instead of acting in obedience to it. So in Heywood's Brazen Age, 1613 :

none

Could slave him like the Lydian Omphale.'

Again, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Massinger :-' that slaves me to his will.' The quartos read 'That stands your ordinance,' which may be right, says Malone, and means withstands or abides.

12 In is here put for on, as in other places of these plays.

It must be remembered that Albany, the husband of Gone

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