RAM. What, will you have them weep our horses' blood? How shall we then behold their natural tears? Enter a Messenger. MESS. The English are embattled, you French peers. CON. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to your horse! Do but behold yon poor and starved band, 2 That our French gallants shall to-day draw out, And sheath for lack of sport: let us but blow on them, The vapour of our valour will o'erturn them. Mr. Pope for doubt substituted daunt, which was adopted in the subsequent editions. For the emendation now made I imagined I should 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. *—suck away their souls,] This strong expression did not escape the notice of Dryden and Pope; the former having (less chastely) employed it in his Don Sebastian, King of Portugal: "Sucking each others' souls while we expire:" and the latter, in his Eloisa to Abelard: "Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul." STEEVENS. About our squares of battle,—were enough 6 What's to say? And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound The tucket-sonuance, and the note to mount: For our approach shall so much dare the field, That England shall couch down in fear, and yield. 3 About our squares of battle,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra : no practice had 66 "In the brave squares of war." STEEVENS. * ———— a hilding foe;] Hilding, or hinderling, is a low wretch. So, in King Henry IV. Part II: sc. vii: "He was some hilding fellow, that had stole STEEVENS. JOHNSON. upon this mountain's basis by-] See Henry's speech, 66 Take a trumpet, herald; "Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill." MALONE. • The tucket-sonuance, &c.] He uses terms of the field as if they were going out only to the chace for sport. To dare the field is a phrase in falconry. Birds are dared when by the falcon in the air they are terrified from rising, so that they will be sometimes taken by the hand. Such an easy capture the lords expected to make of the English. JOHNSON. The tucket-sonuance was, I believe, the name of an introductory flourish on the trumpet, as toccata in Italian is the prelude of a sonata on the harpsichord, and toccar la tromba is to blow the trumpet. In The Spanish Tragedy, (no date,) "a tucket afar off.” "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 so much Enter GRANDPRE. GRAND. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France? 7 8 Yon island carrions, desperate of their bones, poor 7 Yon island carrions, &c.] This and the preceding description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our historians, of Henry's army, immediately before the battle of Agincourt: "The Englishmen were brought into great misery 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.” Holinshed. MALONE. • Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,] By their ragged curtains, are meant their colours. M. MASON. The idea seems to have been taken from what every man must have observed, i. e. ragged curtains put in motion by the air, when the windows of mean houses are left open. STEEVENS. • Their horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks, With torch-staves in their hand:] Grandpré alludes to the form of ancient candlesticks, which frequently represented human figures holding the sockets for the lights in their extended hands. A similar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: “ he showed like a pewter candlestick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff 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 bit' The following is an exact representation of one of these candlesticks, now in the possession of Francis Douce, Esq. The receptacles for the candles are wanting in the original. The sockets in which they were to be placed are in the outstretched hands of the figure. The form of torch-staves may be ascertained by a wooden cut in Vol. IX. p. 359. STEEVENS. 1 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 grass, still and motionless; CON. They have said their prayers, and they stay for death. DAU. Shall we go send them dinners, and fresh suits, And give their fasting horses provender, CON. I stay but for my guard ;* On, to the field: I meet with the word, though differently spelt, in the old play of The Raigne of King Edward the Third, 1596: "Nor lay aside their jacks of gymold mail.” Gymold or gimmal'd mail means armour composed of links like those of a chain, which by its flexibility fitted it to the shape of the body more exactly than defensive covering of any other contrivance. There was a suit of it to be seen in the Tower. Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, Book I. ch. v. calls it woven mail : "In woven mail all armed warily." In Lingua, &c. 1607, is mentioned 66 a gimmal ring with one link hanging." STEEVENS. "A gimmal or gemmow ring, (says Minsheu, 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 so lifeless-] So, in The Comedy of Errors : "A living dead man.' STEEVENS. * I stay but for my guard;] It seems, by what follows, that guard in this place means rather something of ornament or of distinction, than a body of attendants. JOHNSON. VOL. XII. 2 G |