With purpose to relieve and follow them,)
Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke.
Hence grew the general wreck and massacre;
Enclosed were they with their enemies:
A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin's grace,
Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back;
Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength
Durst not presume to look once in the face.

Bed. Is Talbot slain? then I will slay myself,

For living idly here, in pomp and ease,
Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid,
Unto his dastard foe-men is betray'd.

3 Mess. O no, he lives; but is took prisoner,
And lord Scales with him, and lord Hungerford:
Most of the rest slaughter'd, or took, likewise.

Bed. His ransome there is none but I shall pay: I'll hale the Dauphin headlong from his throne, His crown shall be the ransome of my friend; Four of their lords I 'll change for one of ours.Farewel, my masters; to my task will I; Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make, To keep our great Saint George's feast withal: Ten thousand soldiers with me I will take, cause Whose bloody deeds shall"make"all Europe quake. 3 Mess. So you had need; for Orleans is besieg'd; The English army is grown weak and faint:

The earl of Salisbury craveth supply,

And hardly keeps his men from mutiny,

Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.

Exe. Remember, lords, your oaths to Henry sworn;

Either to quell the Dauphin utterly,

Or bring him in obedience to your yoke.

Bed. I do remember it; and here take leave,

To go about my preparation.

[Exit.

Glo. I'll to the Tower with all the haste I can,

To view the artillery and munition;

And then I will proclaim young Henry king.

[Exit.

have proposed to read-the rearward,-but without necessity. Some part of the van must have been behind the foremost line of it. We often say the back front of a house. Steevens.

When an army is attacked in the rear, the van becomes the rear in its turn, and of course the reserve. M. Mason.

Exe, To Eltham will I, where the young king is,
Being ordain'd his special governor;
And for his safety there I'll best devise.

[Exit.

Win Each hath his place and function to attend:

I am left out; for me nothing remains,
But long I will not be Jack-out-of-office;

The king from Eltham I intend to send," steal
And sit at chiefest stern of publick weal.

SCENE II,

[Exit. Scene closes.

France. Before Orleans.

Enter CHARLES, with his Forces; ALENÇON, REIGNIER,

and Others.

5

Char. Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens, So in the earth, to this day is not known: Late did he shine upon the English side; Now we are victors, upon us he smiles. What towns of any moment, but we have? At pleasure here we lie, near Orleans;

The king from Eltham I intend to send,

And sit at chiefest stern of publick weal.] The King was not at this time so much in the power of the Cardinal, that he could send him where he pleased. I have therefore no doubt but that there is an error in this passage, and that it should be read thus: The king from Eltham I intend to steal, And sit at chiefest stern of publick weal.

This slight alteration preserves the sense, and the rhyme also with which many scenes in this play conclude. The King's per son, as appears from the speech immediately preceding this of Winchester, was under the care of the Duke of Exeter, not of the Cardinal:

"Exe. To Eltham will I, where the young king is,

Being ordain'd his special governor." M. Mason. The second charge in the Articles of Accusation preferred by the Duke of Gloster against the Bishop, (Hall's Chron. Hen. VI, f. 12, b.) countenances this conjecture. Malone. The disagreeable clash of the words intend and send, seems indeed to confirm the propriety of Mr. M. Mason's emendation, Steevens.

5 Mars his true moving, &c.] So, Nash, in one of his prefaces before Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, 1596: "You are as ignorant in the true movings of my muse, as the astronomers are in the true movings of Mars, which to this day they could never attain to." Steevens. VOL. X.

C

The whiles

"Otherwhiles, the famish'd English, like pale ghosts, Faintly besiege us one hour in a month.

Alen. They want their porridge, and their fat bullbeeves:

Either they must be dieted, like mules,

And have their provender tied to their mouths,
Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice.

Reig. Let's raise the siege; Why live we idly here?
Talbot is taken, whom we wont to fear:
Remaineth none, but mad-brain'd Salisbury;
And he may well in fretting spend his gall,
Nor men, nor money, hath he to make war.

Char. Sound, sound alarum; we will rush on them. Now for the honour of the forlorn"French:- forborne Him I forgive my death, that killeth me, When he sees me go back one foot, or fly.

[Exeunt.

Alarums; Excursions; afterwards a Retreat.

-Re-enter CHARLES, ALENÇON, REIGNIER, and Others. Char. Who ever saw the like? what men have I?— Dogs! cowards! dastards!-I would ne'er have fled, But that they left me 'midst my enemies.

Reig. Salisbury is a desperate homicide;

He fighteth as one weary of his life.
The other lords, like lions wanting food,
Do rush upon us as their hungry prey."

6

Alen. Froisard, a countryman of ours, records,
England all Olivers and Rowlands bred,"
During the time Edward the third did reign.

6 as their hungry prey.] I believe it should be read: as their hungred prey. Johnson.

I adhere to the old reading, which appears to signify—the prey for which they are hungry. Steevens.

7 England all Olivers and Rowlands bred,] These were two of the most famous in the list of Charlemagne's twelve peers; and their exploits are rendered so ridiculously and equally extravagant by the old romancers, that from thence arose that saying amongst our plain and sensible ancestors, of giving one a Rowland for his Oliver, to signify the matching one incredible lie with another. Warburton.

Rather, to oppose one hero to another; i. e. to give a person as good a one as he brings. Steevens.

The old copy has-breed. Corrected by Mr. Rowe. Malone.

More truly now may this be verified;

For none but Samsons, and Goliasses,

It sendeth forth to skirmish. One to ten!

Lean raw-bon'd rascals! who would e'er suppose
They had such courage and audacity?

Char. Let's leave this town; for they are hair-brain'd

slaves,

8

And hunger will enforce them to be more eager:
Of old I know them; rather with their teeth
The walls they 'll tear down, than forsake the siege.
Reig. I think, by some odd gimmals or device,
Their arms are set, like clocks,1 still to strike on;
Else ne'er could they hold out so, as they do.
By my consent, we 'll e'en let them alone.

Alen. Be it so.

Enter the Bastard of Orleans.

Bast. Where's the prince Dauphin? I have news for him.

2

Char. Bastard of Orleans, thrice welcome to us.

8 And hunger will enforce them to be more eager:] The preposition to should be omitted, as injurious to the measure, and unnecessary in the old elliptical mode of writing. So, Act IV, sc. of this play:

"Let me persuade you take a better course." i. e. to take &c. The error pointed out, occurs again in p. 26: "Piel'd priest, dost thou command me to be shut out?"

9

Steevens.

· gimmals—] A gimmal is a piece of jointed work, where one piece moves within another, whence it is taken at large for an engine. It is now by the vulgar called a gimcrack. Johnson.

1 Their arms are set, like clocks,] Perhaps our author was thinking of the clocks in which figures in the shape of men struck the hours. Of these there were many in his time. Malone.

To go like clockwork, is still a phrase in common use, to express a regular and constant motion. Steevens.

2 Bastard of Orleans,] That this in former times was not a term of reproach, see Bishop Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, in the third volume of his Dialogues, p. 233, who observing on circumstances of agreement between the heroick and Gothick manners, says that "Bastardy was in credit with both." One of William the Conqueror's charters begins, Ego Gulielmus cognomento Bastardus." And in the reign of Edward I, John Earl Warren and Surrey being called before the King's Justices to show by what title he held his lands, produxit in medium gladium antiquum evaginatum-et ait, Ecce Domini mei, ecce warrantum

66

Bast. Methinks, your looks are sad, your cheer appall'd;3

Hath the late overthrow wrought this offence?
Be not dismay'd, for succour is at hand:

A holy maid hither with me I bring,

Which, by a vision sent to her from heaven,
Ordained is to raise this tedious siege,

And drive the English forth the bounds of France.
The spirit of deep prophecy she hath,
Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome;4
What 's past, and what 's to come, she can descry.
Speak, shall I call her in? Believe my words,5
For they are certain and infallible.

Char. Go, call her in: [exit Bast.] But, first, to try her skill,

Reignier, stand thou as Dauphin in my place:
Question her proudly, let thy looks be stern;-
By this means shall we sound what skill she hath.

[Retires.

meum! Antecessores mei cum Willō Bastardo venientes conquesti sunt terras suas, &c. Dugd. Orig. Jurid. p. 13. Dugd. Bar. of Engl. Vol. I, Blount 9.

Le Bastarde de Savoy," is inscribed over the head of one of the figures in a curious picture of the Battle of Pavia, in the Ashmolean Museum. In Fenn's Paston Letters, Vol. III, p. 72-3, in the articles of impeachment against the Duke of Suffolk, we read of the "Erle of Danas, bastard of Orlyaunce-." Vaillant.

Bastardy was reckoned no disgrace among the ancients. See the eighth Iliad, in which the illegitimacy of Teucer is mentioned as a panegyrick upon him, ver. 284:

3

σε Καί σε, νόθον περ ἐόντα, κομίσσατο ὦ ἐνὶ οίκω.”

Steevens. -your cheer appall'd;] Cheer is jollity, gaiety. M. Mason. Cheer, rather signifies-countenance. So, in A Midsummer

Night's Dream:

"All fancy-sick she is, and pale of cheer.”

See Vol. II, p. 316, n. 1. Steevens.

4 nine sibyls of old Rome;] There were no nine sibyls of Rome; but he confounds things, and mistakes this for the nine books of Sibylline oracles, brought to one of the Tarquins.

Believe my words,] It should be read:
Believe her words. Johnson.

Warburton.

I perceive no need of change. The Bastard calls upon the Dauphin to believe the extraordinary account he has just given of the prophetick spirit and prowess of the Maid of Orleans.

Malone.