Which thou hast perpendicularly fell; Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn11: Look up a-height;-the shrill-gorg'd lark so far Cannot be seen or heard: do but look up. Glo. Alack, I have no eyes. Is wretchedness depriv'd that benefit, To end itself by death? 'Twas yet some comfort, When misery could beguile the tyrant's rage, And frustrate his proud will. Edg. Give me your arm: Up: So;-How is't? Feel you your legs? You stand. Glo. Too well, too well. Edg. This is above all strangeness. Upon the crown o'the cliff, what thing was that Which parted from you? Glo. A poor unfortunate beggar. Edg. As I stood here below, methought, his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses, Horns welk'd 12, and wav'd like the enridged sea; It was some fiend: Therefore, thou happy father, Skinner, Etymolog. Skinner is right in his last derivation, it is from the A. S. eacan, to add. Thus Chaucer, in The House of Fame, b. iii. v. 975 : gan somewhat to eche To this tiding in his speche.' And in Troilus and Cresseide, b. i. v. 706 :— 'As doen these fooles, that hir sorrowes eche.' Pope changed this to attacht; Johnson would read on end; Steevens proposes at reach. Ignorance of our earlier language has been the stumbling block of all these eminent critics. 11 i. e. this chalky boundary of England. 12 Welk'd is marked with protuberances. This and whelk are probably only different forms of the same word. The welk is a small shellfish, so called, perhaps, because its shell is marked with convolved protuberant ridges. See vol. v. p. 458, note 1 Think that the clearest 13 gods, who make them ho nours Of men's impossibilities 14, have preserv'd thee. Glo. I do remember now; henceforth I'll bear Affliction, till it do cry out itself, Enough, enough, and, die. That thing you speak of, I took it for a man; often 'twould say, The fiend, the fiend: he led me to that place. Edg. Bear free 15 and patient thoughts.--But who comes here? Enter LEAR, fantastically dressed up with Flowers. 16 will ne'er accommodate The safer sense His master thus. Lear. No, they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself. Edg. O thou side-piercing sight! Lear. Nature's above art in that respect.-There's your press-money 17. That fellow handles his bow 13 That is, the purest; the most free from evil. So in Timon of Athens - Roots! you clear gods! 14 By men's impossibilities perhaps is meant what men call impossibilities, what appear as such to mere mortal beings. 15 Bear free and patient thoughts.' Free here means pure, as in other places of these plays. See vol. i. p. 332—3, note 5; vol. iv. p. 128, additional note. 16 The safer sense (says Mr. Blakeway) seems to me to mean the eyesight, which, says Edgar, will never more serve the unfortunate Lear so well as those which Gloster has remaining will serve him, who is now returned to a right mind. Horace terms the eyes oculi fidelis,' and the eyesight may be called the safer sense in allusion to the proverb Seeing is believing.' Gloster afterwards laments the stiffness of his vile sense.' 17 It is evident from the whole of this speech that Lear fancie himself in a battle. For the meaning of press money see the firs scene of Hamlet, note 10, which will also serve to explain the passage in Act v. Sc. 2: And turn our imprest lances in our eves.' like a crow-keeper 18: draw me a clothier's yard.Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace;-this piece of toasted cheese will do't.-There's my gauntlet; I'll prove it on a giant. Bring up the brown bills 19.O, well flown, bird!-i'the clout, i'the clout; hewgh! -Give the word 20. Edg. Sweet marjoram. Glo. I know that voice. -Lear. Ha! Goneril!-with a white beard! They flatter'd me like a dog; and told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black ones were there. To say ay, and no, to every thing I said!Ay and no too was no good divinity 21. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make 18 'Or if thou'lt not thy archery forbear, To some base rustick do thyself prefer; And when corn's sown, or grown into the ear, Practice thy quiver and turn crow-keeper.' Drayton, Idea the Forty-eighth. Ascham, in speaking of awkward shooters, says: cowreth down, and layeth out his buttockes as though he would shoote at crowes.' Another The subsequent expression of Lear, draw me a clothier's yard,' Steevens thinks, alludes to the old ballad of Chevy Chase: 'An arrow of a cloth yard long, Up to the head he drew,' &c. 19 Battleaxes. 20 Lear is here raving of archery, falconry, and a battle, jumbled together in quick transition. 'Well flown bird' was the falconer's expression when the hawk was successful in her flight; it is so used in A Woman Kill'd with Kindness. The clout is the white mark at which archers aim. See vol. i. p. 348, note 10. By give the word,' the watchword in a camp is meant. The quartos read, 'O well flown bird in the ayre, hugh, give the word.' 21 It has been proposed to read To say ay and no to every thing I said ay and no to, was no good divinity.' Besides the inaccuracy of construction in the passage as it stands in the text; it does not appear how it could be flattery to dissent from as well as assent to every thing Lear said. me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men o'their words: they told me I was every thing: 'tis a lie; I am not ague-proof. Glo. The trick 22 of that voice I do well remember: Is't not the king? Lear. Ay, every inch a king: Thou shalt not die; Die for adultery! No: Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son Got 'tween the lawful sheets. my daughters To't luxury 23, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.- Whose face between her forks presageth snow 24; The fitchew, nor the soiled horse 26, goes to't 22 Trick is a word used for the air, or peculiarity in a face, voice, or gesture, which distinguishes it from others. We still say he has a trick of winking with his eyes, &c. See vol. iv. p. 335, note 7. 23 i. e. incontinence. See vol. vii. p. 438, note 4. 24 The construction is, Whose face presageth snow between her forks.' So in Timon of Athens, Act iv. Sc. 3:"Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian's lap.' See Cotgrave's Dict. in v. Fourcheure. 25 i. e. puts on an outward affected seeming of virtue. See Cotgrave in v. Mineux-se. He also explains it under Faire la sadinette, to mince it, nicefie it, be very squeamish, backward, or coy.' 26 The fitchew is the polecat. A soiled horse is a horse that has been fed with hay and corn during the winter, and is turned out in the spring to take the first flush of grass, or has it cut and With a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, But to the girdle do the gods inherit 28, Beneath is all the fiends'; there's hell, there's darkness, There is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption;-Fye, fye, fye! pah; pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination there's money for thee. : Glo. O, let me kiss that hand! Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. Glo. O ruin'd piece of nature! This great world Shall so wear out to nought.-Dost thou know me? Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid? I'll not love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it. Glo. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one. Edg. I would not take this from report ;—it is, ' And my heart breaks at it. Lear. Read. Glo. What, with the case of eyes? Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light: Yet you see how this world goes. Glo. I see it feelingly. Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes, with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yon' justice rails upon yon' simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: Change places; and, handycarried to him. This at once cleanses the animal and fills him with blood. In the old copies the preceding as well as the latter part of Lear's speech is printed as prose. It is doubtful whether any part of it was intended for metre. 28 Possess.: 27 But in its exceptive sense. See vol. i. 17. P. |