Apt, liable to be employ'd in danger,
I faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death.
And thou, to be endeared to a King,

Mad'ft it no confcience to destroy a Prince.
Hub. My Lord

K. John. Hadft thou but shook thy head, or made a pause,

When I fpake darkly what I purposed:

Or turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face,

Or bid me tell my tale in exprefs words;

Deep fhame had struck me dumb, made me break off,
And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me,
But thou didst understand me by my signs,
And didft in figns again parley with fin:
Yea, without ftop, did'ft let thy heart consent,
And confequently thy rude hand to act

The deed, which both our tongues held vile to name-
Out of my fight, and never fee me more!
My Nobles leave me, and my state is brav❜d,
Ev'n at my gates, with ranks of foreign pow'rs;
Nay, in the body of this fleshy land,

This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,
Hoftility, and civil tumult reigns,

Between my confcience and my cousin's death.

Hub. Arm you against your other enemies, I'll make a peace between your foul and you.

of guilt is drawn ab ipfis receffibus mentis, from an intimate knowledge of mankind, particularly that line in which he says, that to have bid him tell his tale in ex

4 Hadft thou but fhook thy head, &c.] There are many touches of nature in this conference of John with Hubert. A man engaged in wickedness would keep the profit to himself, and tranf-prefs words, would have ftruck fer the guilt to his accomplice. him dumb; nothing is more cerThese reproaches vented againft tain, than that bad men use all the Hubert are not the words of art arts of fallacy upon themselves, or policy, but the eruptions of a palliate their actions to their own mind fwelling with consciousness minds by gentle terms, and hide of a crime, and defirous of dif- themselves from their own decharging its mifery on another. tection in ambiguities and fubterfuges.

This account of the timidity

Young

Young Arthur is alive: this hand of mine
Is yet a maiden, and an innocent hand,
Not painted with the crimfon fpots of blood,
Within this bofom never enter'd yet

The dreadful motion of a murd'rous thought',
And you have flander'd nature in
my form;
Which, howfoever rude exteriorly,
Is yet the cover of a fairer mind,

Than to be butcher of an innocent child.

K. John. Doth Arthur live? O, hafte thee to the
Peers,

Throw this report on their incenfed rage,

And make them tame to their obedience.
Forgive the comment that my paffion made
Upon thy feature, for my rage was blind;

The dreadful motion of a MURD'ROUS thought,] Nothing can be falfer than what Hubert here fays in his own vindication (yet it was the poet's purpose that he fhould fpeak truth); for we find, from a preceding scene, the motion of a murd'rous thought bad entred into kim, and that, very deeply and it was with difficulty that the tears, the intreaties, and the innocence of Arthur had diverted and fuppreffed it. Nor is the expreffion, in this reading, at all exact, it not being the neceffary quality of a murd'rous thought to be dreadful, affrighting, or terrible: For it being commonly excited by the flattering views of intereft, pleafure, or revenge, the mind is often too much taken up with those ideas to attend, fteadily, to the confequences. We must conclude therefore that Shakespeare

wrote,

a MURDERER's thought. And this makes Hubert fpeak

And foul imaginary eyes of blood
Prefented thee more hideous than thou art.
Oh, answer not, but to my clofet bring
The angry Lords with all expedient hafte.
I conjure thee but flowly: run more fast.

Arth.

SCENE V.

A Strret before a Prifon.

Enter Arthur on the Walls, difguis'd.

TH

[Exeunt,

HE wall is high, and yet I will leap down.
Good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not!
There's few or none do know me: if they did,
This fhip-boy's femblance hath difguis'd me quite.
I am afraid, and yet I'll venture it.

If I get down, and do not break my limbs,
I'll find a thoufand fhifts to get away:

As good to die, and go; as die, and ftay. [Leaps down.
Oh me! my Uncle's fpirit is in these stones:
Heav'n take my foul,and England keep my bones! [Dies.

Enter Pembroke, Salisbury and Bigot.

Sal. Lords, I will meet him at St. Edmondsbury; It is our fafety; and we must embrace

This gentle offer of the perilous time.

Pemb. Who brought that letter from the Cardinal? Sal. The Count Melun, a noble Lord of France, Whose private with me of the Dauphin's love" Is much more gen'ral than thefe lines import. Bigot. To-morrow morning let us meet him then. Sal. Or rather then fet forward, for 'twill be Two long days' journey, Lords, or ere we meet.

РОРЕ.

Whofe private, &c.—] i. e. is much more ample than the whose private account, of the letters. Dauphin's affection to our caufe,

Enter

Enter Faulconbridge.

Faule. Once more to-day well met, diftemper'd
Lords;

The King by me requests your presence ftrait.
Sal. The King hath difpoffeft himself of us;
We will not line his thin, bestained cloak
With our pure honours: nor attend the foot,
That leaves the print of blood where-e'er it walks.
Return, and tell him fo; we know the worst.

Faulc. Whate'er you think, good words, I think, were best.

Sal. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now '. Faulc. But there is little reafon in your grief, Therefore 'twere reason, you had manners now. Pemb. Sir, Sir, impatience hath it privilege. Faulc. 'Tis true, to hurt its master, no man else. Sal. This is the prison: what is he lies here?

[Seeing Arthur. Pemb. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!-

The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.

Sal. Murder, as hating what himself hath done, Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.

Bigot. Or when he doom'd this beauty to the grave, Found it too precious, princely, for a grave.

Sal. Sir Rickard, what think you? have you beheld, Or have you read, or heard, or could you think, Or do you almost think, altho' you fee,

What you do fee? could thought, without this object,
Form fuch another? 'tis the very top,

The height, the creft, or creft unto the creft,
Of murder's arms; this is the bloodieft fhame,
The wildeft favag'ry, the vileft ftroke,
That ever wall-ey'd wrath, or ftaring rage,

7 To reason, in Shakespeare, is not so often to argue, as to talk.

Presented

Prefented to the tears of foft remorse.

Pemb. All murders past do stand excus'd in this ; And this fo fole, and fo unmatchable,

Shall give a holiness, a purity,

To the yet-unbegotten fins of time;
And prove a deadly blood-fhed but a jeft,
Exampled by this heinous fpectacle.

Faulc. It is a damned and a bloody work,
The graceless action of a heavy hand:
If that it be the work of any hand.

Sal. If that it be the work of any hand?
We had a kind of light, what would enfue.
It is the fhameful work of Hubert's hand,
The practice and the purpose of the King:
From whofe obedience I forbid my foul,
Kneeling before this ruin of fweet life,
And breathing to this breathless excellence
The incenfe of a vow, a holy vows!
Never to taste the pleasures of the world,
Never to be infected with delight,
Nor converfant with ease and idleness,
Till I have fet a glory to this hand,

By giving it the worship of revenge".

Pemb.
Bigot.

Our fouls religiously confirm thy words.

SCENE VI.

Enter Hubert.

Hub. Lords, I am hot with hafte, in feeking you; Arthur doth live, the King hath fent for you. Sal. Oh, he is bold, and blufhes not at death..