And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows, and choughs, that wing the midway air, Glo. 2 Set me where you stand. hand. You are now within a Edg. Give me your hand. foot Of the extreme verge; for all beneath the moon Glo. Let go my hand. Here, friend, is another purse; in it a jewel Well worth a poor man's taking. Fairies, and gods, O, you mighty gods! Glo. If I could bear it longer, and not fall 1 "Samphire grows in great plenty on most of the sea-cliffs in this country: it is terrible to see how people gather it, hanging by a rope several fathom from the top of the impending rocks, as it were in the air."-Smith's History of Waterford, p. 315, edit. 1774.-Dover cliff was particularly resorted to for this plant. It is still eaten as a pickle in those parts of England bordering on the southern coast. 2 i. e. her cock-boat. Hence the term cockswain. Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him!— Edg. [He leaps, and falls along. Gone, sir? farewell. And yet I know not how conceit may rob The treasury of life, when life itself Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought, Ho, you Glo. Away, and let me die. Edg. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, So many fathom down precipitating, Thou hadst shivered like an egg: but thou dost breathe; Hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound. Ten masts at each make not the altitude, Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again. Glo. But have I fallen, or no? Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.* Look up a-height;-the shrill-gorged lark so far Cannot be seen or heard: do but look up. Glo. Alack, I have no eyes. Is wretchedness deprived that benefit, To end itself by death? 'Twas yet some comfort, Edg. Give me your arm; Up.-So-how is't? Feel you your legs? You stand. 1 That is, "when life is willing to be destroyed." 2 Thus might he die in reality." 3 i. e. drawn out, at length, or each added to the other. "Eche, exp. draw out, ab Anglo-Saxon elcan, elcian, Diferre, vel a verb. to eak." Skinner, Etymolog. Skinner is right in his last derivation; it is from the Anglo-Saxon eacan, to add. Pope changed this to attacht; Johnson would read on end; Steevens proposes at reach. 4 i. e. this chalky boundary of England. 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 welked,' and waved like the enridged sea; It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father, Think that the clearest 2 gods, who make them honors Of men's impossibilities,3 have preserved 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 and patient thoughts.—But who comes here? Enter LEAR, fantastically dressed up with flowers. The safer sense 5 will ne'er accommodate 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. That fellow handles his bow like 1 Welked is marked with protuberances. This and whelk are probably only different forms of the same word. The welk is a small shell-fish, so called, perhaps, because its shell is marked with convolved protuberant ridges. 2 That is, the purest. 3 By men's impossibilities perhaps is meant what men call impossibilities. 4 "Bear free and patient thoughts." Free here means pure, as in other places of these plays. 5 "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. 6 It is evident, from the whole of this speech, that Lear fancied himself in a battle. For the meaning of press-money, see the first scene of Hamlet. a crow-keeper;' 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.2-O, well flown, bird!-i' the clout, i' the clout! hewgh!-Give the word.3 Edg. Sweet marjoram. Glo. I know that voice. Lear. Ha! Goneril!-with a white beard!-They flattered 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. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make 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 5 of that voice I do well remember. Is't not the king? Lear. Ay, every inch, a king; I pardoned that man's life: what was thy cause?— Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery! No; 1 Ascham, in speaking of awkward shooters, says: "Another cowreth down, and layeth out his buttockes as thoughe he would shoote at crowes." 2 Battle-axes. 3 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. The clout is the white mark at which archers aim. 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." 4 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. 5 Trick is a word used for the peculiarity in a face, voice, or gesture, which distinguishes it from others. Let copulation thrive, for Gloster's bastard son To't, luxury,' pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.- Whose face between her forks presageth snow; The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to't Down from the waist they are centaurs, But 5 to the girdle do the gods inherit, 6 2 Beneath is all the fiends'; there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption.-Fie, fie, fie! 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 ruined 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. 1 i. e. incontinence. 2 The construction is, "Whose face presageth snow between her forks." See Cotgrave's Dict. in v. Fourcheure. 3 i. e. puts on an outward, affected seeming of virtue. See Cotgrave in v. Mineur-se. 4 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 carried 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. |