Both for myself and them, (but, chief of all,
Your safety, for the which myself and them
Bend their best studies,) heartily request
The enfranchisement of Arthur; whose restraint
Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent
To break into this dangerous argument,—
If what in rest you have, in right you hold,
Why then your fears, (which, as they say, attend
The steps of wrong,) should move you to mew up
Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days
With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth
The rich advantage of good exercise??

8 If, what in REST you have, in right you hold, Why THEN your fears, (which, as they say, attend The steps of wrong,) SHOULD move you to mew up Your tender kinsman, &c.] Perhaps we should read: "If, what in wrest you have, in right you holdi. e. if what you possess by an act of seizure or violence, &c. So again, in this play:

"The imminent decay of wrested pomp."

Wrest is a substantive used by Spenser, and by our author in Troilus and Cressida. STEEVENS.

The emendation proposed by Mr. Steevens is its own voucher. If then and should change places, and a mark of interrogation be placed after exercise, the full sense of the passage will be restored. HENLEY.

Mr. Steevens's reading of wrest is better than his explanation. If adopted, the meaning must be—" If what you possess, or have in your hand, or grasp." RITSON.

It is evident that the words should and then have changed their places. M. MASON.

The construction is-If you have a good title to what you now quietly possess, why then should your fears move you, &c.

MALONE. Perhaps this question is elliptically expressed, and means— Why then is it that your fears should move you," &c. STEEVENS.

9

66

good exercise?] In the middle ages, the whole education of princes and noble youths consisted in martial exercises, &c. These could not be easily had in a prison, where mental improvements might have been afforded as well as any where else; but this sort of education never entered into the thoughts of our active, warlike, but illiterate nobility. PERCY.

That the time's enemies may not have this
To grace occasions, let it be our suit,
That you have bid us ask his liberty;
Which for our goods we do no further ask,
Than whereupon our weal, on your depending,
Counts it your weal, he have his liberty.
K. JOHN. Let it be so; I do commit his youth
Enter HUBERT.

To your direction.-Hubert, what news with you? PEM. This is the man should do the bloody deed;

He show'd his warrant to a friend of mine:

The image of a wicked heinous fault

Lives in his eye; that close aspéct of his
Does show the mood of a much-troubled breast;
And I do fearfully believe, 'tis done,

What we so fear'd he had a charge to do.

SAL. The colour of the king doth come and go, Between his purpose and his conscience',

Between his PURPOSE and his conscience,] Between his consciousness of guilt, and his design to conceal it by fair professions. JOHNSON.

Rather, between the criminal act that he planned and commanded to be executed, and the reproaches of his conscience consequent on the execution of it. So, in Coriolanus:

"It is a purpos'd thing, and grows by plot."

We have nearly the same expressions afterwards :

"Nay, in the body of this fleshly land, (in John's own person)

"Hostility, and civil tumult, reigns

"Between my conscience and my cousin's death."

MALONE.

The purpose of the King, which Salisbury alludes to, is that of putting Arthur to death, which he considers as not yet accomplished, and therefore supposes that there might still be a conflict, in the King's mind

"Between his purpose and his conscience."

So, when Salisbury sees the dead body of Arthur, he says— "It is the shameful work of Hubert's hand;

"The practice and the purpose of the king." M. MASON.

Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set 2:
His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

PEM. And, when it breaks 3, I fear, will issue thence

The foul corruption of a sweet child's death.
K. JOHN. We cannot hold mortality's strong
hand:-

Good lords, although my will to give is living,
The suit which you demand is gone and dead:
He tells us, Arthur is deceas'd to-night.

SAL. Indeed, we fear'd, his sickness was past

cure.

PEM. Indeed, we heard how near his death he

was,

Before the child himself felt he was sick :

This must be answer'd, either here, or hence. K. JOHN. Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?

Think you,

I bear the shears of destiny?
Have I commandment on the pulse of life?
SAL. It is apparent foul-play; and 'tis shame,
That greatness should so grossly offer it:
So thrive it in your game! and so farewell.

PEM. Stay yet, lord Salisbury; I'll go with thee,
And find the inheritance of this poor child,
His little kingdom of a forced grave.

That blood, which ow'd the breath of all this isle, Three foot of it doth hold; Bad world the while!

2 Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles SET:] But heralds are not planted, I presume, in the midst betwixt two lines of battle; though they, and trumpets, are often sent over from party to party, to propose terms, demand a parley, &c. I have therefore ventured to read-sent. THEOBALD.

Set is not fixed, but only placed; heralds must be set between battles, in order to be sent between them. JOHNSON.

3 And, when it breaks,] This is but an indelicate metaphor, taken from an imposthumated tumour. JOHNSON.

This must not be thus borne: this will break out To all our sorrows, and ere long, I doubt.

[Exeunt Lords. K. JOHN. They burn in indignation; I repent; There is no sure foundation set on blood;

No certain life achiev'd by others' death.

Enter a Messenger.

A fearful eye thou hast; Where is that blood,
That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?
So foul a sky clears not without a storm :

Pour down thy weather:-How goes all in France? MESS. From France to England 1.—Never such a power

For any foreign preparation,

Was levied in the body of a land!

The copy of your speed is learn'd by them;
For, when you should be told they do prepare,
The tidings come, that they are all arriv'd.

K. JOHN. O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?

Where hath it slept? Where is my mother's care? That such an army could be drawn in France,

And she not hear of it?

MESS.

My liege, her ear
Is stopp'd with dust; the first of April, died
Your noble mother: And, as I hear, my lord,
The lady Constance in a frenzy died

Three days before but this from rumour's tongue
I idly heard; if true, or false, I know not.

4 From France to England.] The King asks how all goes in France, the Messenger catches the word goes, and answers, that whatever is in France goes now into England. JOHNSON. SO, where hath our intelligence been DRUNK ?

Where hath it SLEPT?] So, in Macbeth:

Was the hope drunk

"Wherein you drest yourself? hath it slept since?"

MALONE.

K. JOHN. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion! O, make a league with me, till I have pleas'd My discontented peers!-What! mother dead? How wildly then walks my estate in France !Under whose conduct came those powers of France, That thou for truth giv'st out, are landed here? MESS. Under the Dauphin.

Enter the Bastard and PETER of POMFRET.

K. JOHN. Thou hast made me giddy With these ill tidings.-Now, what says the world To your proceedings? do not seek to stuff My head with more ill news, for it is full.

BAST. But, if you be afeard to hear the worst,
Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.
K. JOHN. Bear with me, cousin; for I was
amaz'd'

Under the tide but now I breathe again
Aloft the flood; and can give audience
To any tongue, speak it of what it will.

BAST. How I have sped among the clergymen,
The sums I have collected shall express.
But as I travell'd hither through the land,
I find the people strangely fantasied;
Possess'd with rumours, full of idle dreams;
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear:

6 How WILDLY then WALKS my estate in France !] So, in one of the Paston Letters, vol. iii. p. 99: "The country of Norfolk and Suffolk stand right wildly." STEEVENS,

i. e. How ill my affairs go in France !-The verb, to walk, is used with great licence by old writers. It often means, to go, to move. So, in the Continuation of Harding's Chronicle, 1543: "Evil words walke far." Again, in Fenner's Compter's Commonwealth, 1618: "The keeper, admiring he could not hear his prisoner's tongue walk all this while," &c. MALOne.

7-I was AMAZ'D] i. e. stunned, confounded. So, in Cymbeline: "I am amaz'd with matter." Again, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, vol. viii. p. 200.

"You do amaze her: hear the truth of it." STEEVENS.