Whose manners still our tardy apish nation Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity, 'Tis breath thou lack'st, and that breath wilt thou lose. And thus, expiring, do foretell of him: For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; In 'England's Parnassus' a Infestion. All the ancient copies read infection. (1600), where the passage is quoted, we read intestion. stitution of infestion, which Malone has adopted, and which we think right to follow. Infection, in Shakspere's time, was used, as it is now, to express the taint of some pernicious quality; and was more particularly applied to that frightful disease, the plague, to whose ravages London was annually subject. For Shakspere, therefore, to call England "This fortress, built by nature for herself, would sound very unreasonable to an audience who were constantly witnesses of the ravages of infection. "The silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall," was then unavailing to keep out "the pestilence which walketh in darkness." But, on the other hand, England had been long free from foreign invasion. Infestion is taken, by Malone, to be an abbreviation of infestation, in the same way that, in Bishop Hall, acception is used for acceptation. Infestation appears to have designated those violent incursions of an enemy-those annoying, joy-depriving (infestus) ravages-to which an unprotected frontier is peculiarly exposed; and from which the sea, as a moat defensive to a house," shut out "this scepter'd isle." This happy breed of men, this little world; Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, Still, infection, being a word of which there can be no doubt of the meaning, is to be preferred, if we can be content to receive the idea in a limited sense-that the sea in some sort kept out pestilence, though not absolutely. a Pelting. Whatever doubts there may be as to the origin of this word, its application is perfectly clear. It invariably means something petty-of little worth. The "pelting farm" in this passage, and " the poor pelting villages" of Lear, would leave no doubt as to its use, even if we had not "a pelting little town," and " а pelting village of barbarous people," in North's 'Plutarch.' The epithet was not confined to inanimate things. In 'Measure for Measure' we have the famous pas. sage, "Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder." Gabriel Harvey, it seems, wrote the word paulting; and as palt is the Teutonic word for a scrap-a rag-some say that paulting, pelting, and paltry, are the same. Pelt, as is well known, is a skin. The fur trade is still called the peltry trade. But skins-peltries—in former times might have been considered comparatively worthless. A dead fowl thrown to a hawk was, according to Grose, a pelt. Thus pelting may have been derived directly from pelt, although it may have had some original affinity with paltry. Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, Enter KING RICHARD and QUEEN; AUMERLE, BUSHY, York. The king is come: deal mildly with his youth; For young hot colts, being rag'd, do rage the more. Queen. How fares our noble uncle, Lancaster? K. Rich. What comfort, man? How is 't with aged Gaunt? Gaunt. O, how that name befits my composition! Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast t; Is my strict fast,-I mean my children's looks; K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their names? I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee. K. Rich. Should dying men flatter with those that live? Gaunt. No, no; men living flatter those that die. K. Rich. Thou, now a dying, say'st thou flatterest me. Gaunt. Oh! no; thou diest, though I the sicker be. K. Rich. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill. Gaunt. Now, He that made me knows I see thee ill; Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill. Thy death-bed is no lesser than the land Wherein thou liest in reputation sick: And thou, too careless patient as thou art, Committ'st thy anointed body to the cure Of those physicians that first wounded thee. A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown, Whose compass is no bigger than thy head; And yet, incaged in so small a verge, The waste is no whit lesser than thy land. From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame, Which art possess'd now to depose thyself. And K. Rich. b And thou a lunatic lean-witted fool, Presuming on an ague's privilege, Dar'st with thy frozen admonition Make pale our cheek; chasing the royal blood, Wert thou not brother to great Edward's son, This tongue, that runs so roundly in thy head, Should run thy head from thy unreverend shoulders. That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd: That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood: And thy unkindness be like crooked age, a Possess'd. The second possess'd in this sentence is used in the same way in which Maria speaks of Malvolio, in 'Twelfth Night :'—" He is, sure, possessed, madam." b So the folio. The first quarto reads thus: "Gaunt. And thou- c Crooked age. It has been suggested that age here means Time; and that To crop at once a too-long wither'd flower. Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!— [Exit, borne out by his Attendants. K. Rich. And let them die, that age and sullens have; For both hast thou, and both become the grave. а York. I do beseech your majesty, impute his words a To wayward sickliness and age in him: He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear As Harry duke of Hereford, were he here. K. Rich. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his: As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is. Enter NORTHUMBERLAND. North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your ma jesty. K. Rich. What says he?b North. Nay, nothing; all is said: His tongue is now a stringless instrument; Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent. York. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so! Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe. K. Rich. The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he; His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be: So much for that. Now for our Irish wars: We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns, And, for these great affairs do ask some charge, The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables, Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd. crooked age is not bending age, but Time armed with a crook, by which name a sickle was anciently called. The natural meaning of the passage seems to be, like bent old age, which crops the flower of life. a Steevens struck out I do from this line. b Steevens stuck in now, to make ten syllables of this line. |