RAM. What, will you have them weep our horses'

blood?

How fhall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter a Meffenger.

MESS. The English are embattled, you French

peers.

CON. To horfe, you gallant princes! straight to

horfe!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band,
And your fair fhow fhall fuck away their fouls,2
Leaving them but the fhales and hufks of men.
There is not work enough for all our hands;
Scarce blood enough in all their fickly veins,
To give each naked curtle-ax a ftain,

That our French gallants fhall to-day draw out,
And fheath for lack of fport: let us but blow on

them,

The vapour of our valour will o'erturn them.
"Tis pofitive 'gainst all exceptions, lords,
That our fuperfluous lackeys, and our peasants,-
Who, in unneceffary action, fwarm

Mr. Pope for doubt fubftituted daunt, which was adopted in the fubfequent editions. For the emendation now made I imagined I fhould have been answerable; but on looking into Mr. . Rowe's edition I find he has anticipated me, and has printed the word as it is now exhibited in the text. MALONE.

2

-fuck away their fouls,] This ftrong expreffion did not escape the notice of Dryden and Pope; the former having (lefs chastely) employed it in his Don Sebaftian, King of Portugal:

Sucking each others' fouls while we expire :" and the latter, in his Eloifa to Abelard :

"Suck my laft breath, and catch my flying foul."

STEEVENS.

About our fquares of battle,3-were enough
To purge this field of fuch a hilding foe; 4
Though we, upon this mountain's bafis by 5
Took ftand for idle fpeculation:
But that our honours must not.
A very little little let us do,

What's to say?

And all is done. Then let the trumpets found The tucket-fonuance, and the note to mount: For our approach shall so much dare the field, That England fhall couch down in fear, and yield.

3 About our fquares of battle,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra: no practice had

wretch.

"In the brave Squares of war." STEEVENS.

a hilding foe;] Hilding, or hinderling, is a low JOHNSON.

So, in King Henry IV. Part II:

"He was fome hilding fellow, that had stole

"The horse he rode on."

STEEVENS.

- upon this mountain's bafis by-] See Henry's fpeech,

Take a trumpet, herald;

"Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill."

MALONE.

6 The tucket-fonuance, &c.] He uses terms of the field as if they were going out only to the chace for fport. To dare the field is a phrafe in falconry. Birds are dared when by the falcon in the air they are terrified from rifing, so that they will be fometimes taken by the hand.

Such an eafy capture the lords expected to make of the English.

JOHNSON.

The tucket-fonuance was, I believe, the name of an introductory flourish on the trumpet, as toccata in Italian is the prelude of a fonata on the harpfichord, and toccar la tromba is to blow the trumpet.

In The Spanish Tragedy, (no date,) "a tucket afar off."
Again, in The Devil's Law-case, 1623:

"2 tuckets by several trumpets."

Sonance is a word used by Heywood, in his Rape of Lucrece, 1630:

"Or, if he chance to endure our tongues fo much
"As but to hear their fonance." STEEVENS.

Enter GRANDPRE'.

GRAND. Why do you stay so long, my lords of
France?

Yon ifland carrions," desperate of their bones,
Ill-favour'dly become the morning field :
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loofe,&
And our air fhakes them paffing fcornfully.
Big Mars feems bankrupt in their beggar'd hoft,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
Their horfemen fit like fixed candlesticks,

With torch-staves in their hand:9 and their poor jades.

7 Yon ifland carrions, &c.] This and the preceding defcription of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our hiftorians, of Henry's army, immediately before the battle of Agincourt:

"The Englishmen were brought into great mifery in this journey [from Harfleur to Agincourt]; their victual was in manner spent, and now could they get none :-rest could they none take, for their enemies were ever at hand to give them alarmes daily it rained, and nightly it freezed; of fewel there was great scarcity, but of fluxes great plenty; money they had enough, but wares to bestowe it upon, for their relief or comforte, had they little or none." Holinfhed. MALONE.

8 Their ragged curtains poorly are let loofe,] By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours. M. MASON.

The idea feems to have been taken from what every man muft have observed, i. e. ragged curtains put in motion by the air, when the windows of mean houses are left open. STEEVENS.

9 Their horfemen fit like fixed candlesticks,

With torch-ftaves in their hand:] Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human figures holding the fockets for the lights in their extended hands.

-he

A fimilar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: “ fhowed like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting ftaff in his hand little bigger than a candle."

Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips; The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes; And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal biti

The following is an exact reprefentation of one of these candlesticks, now in the poffeffion of Francis Douce, Efq. The receptacles for the candles are wanting in the original. The fockets in which they were to be placed are in the outstretched hands of the figure.

Ι

gimmal bit-] Gimmal is, in the western counties, a ring; a gimmal bit is therefore a bit of which the parts played one within another. JOHNSON.

Lies foul with chew'd grafs, ftill and motionless ;
And their executors, the knavish crows,2
Fly o'er them all, impatient for their hour.
Description cannot fuit itself in words,

To démonftrate the life of fuch a battle
In life fo lifelefs 3 as it fhows itself.

CON. They have faid their prayers, and they stay for death.

DAU. Shall we go fend them dinners, and fresh fuits,

And give their fafting horfes provender,

And after fight with them?

CON. I ftay but for my guard;4 On, to the field:

I meet with the word, though differently fpelt, in the old play of The Raigne of King Edward the Third, 1596:

"Nor lay afide their jacks of gymold mail."

Gymold or gimmal'd mail means armour compofed of links like those of a chain, which by its flexibility fitted it to the shape of the body more exactly than defenfive covering of any other contrivance. There was a fuit of it to be seen in the Tower. Spenfer, in his Fairy Queen, Book I. ch. v. calls it woven mail:

"In woven mail all armed warily." In Lingua, &c. 1607, is mentioned:

a gimmal ring with one link hanging."

STEEVENS.

"A gimmal or gemmow ring, (fays Minfheu, Dictionary, 1617,) from the Gal. gemeau, Lat. gemellus, double, or twinnes, because they be rings with two or more links." MALONE.

2

their executors, the knavish crows,] The crows who are to have the disposal of what they shall leave, their hides and their flesh. JOHNSON.

3 In life fo lifeless-] So, in The Comedy of Errors:

"A living dead man."

STEEVENS.

4 1 ftay but for my guard ;] It seems, by what follows, that guard in this place means rather fomething of ornament or of diftinction, than a body of attendants. JOHNSON.