Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought,
By this had thought been past. Alive or dead?
Ho you, sir! friend! Hear you, sir? speak!
[Aside.] Thus might he pass indeed; yet he revives.
What are you, sir?

Edg. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air, So many fathom down precipitating,

Thou'dst shiver'd like an egg: but thou dost breathe ;

Hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound. Ten masts at each 7 make not the altitude

Which thou hast perpendicularly fell:

Thy life's a miracle. Speak yet again.

Glos. But have I fall'n, or no?

Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.

Look up a-height; the shrill-gorged3 lark so far
Cannot be seen or heard: do but look up.

Glos. Alack, I have no eyes.

Is wretchedness deprived that benefit

To end itself by death? 'Twas yet some comfort,
When misery could beguile the tyrant's rage,
And frustrate his proud will.

him." This accords with what Edgar says a little after: "Thus might he pass indeed." So in the Poet's dedication of his Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton: "I know not how I shall offend in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship."

6 The substance called gossamer is formed of the collected webs of spiders. Some think it the down of plants; others the vapour arising from boggy or marshy ground in warm weather. The etymon of this word is said to be summer goose or summer gauze, hence "gauze o' the summer."

7 A strange expression, but meaning, perhaps, ten masts joined each to the other, or drawn out in length. This explanation may be justified by observing that each is from the Anglo-Saxon eacan, to add, to augment, or lengthen. Eke, sometimes spelt eche, is from the same source.

8 Shrill is loud, as in Julius Caesar, i. 2: "I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, cry Caesar!" "Shrill-gorged" is loud-throated, or loudvoiced.

Edg.

Give me your arm :

Up: so. How is't? Feel you your legs? You stand.

Glos. Too well, too well.
Edg.

This is above all strangeness.

Upon the crown o' the cliff, what thing was that
Which parted from you?

Glos.

A poor unfortunate beggar.
Edg. As I stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full Moons; he had a thousand noses,
Horns whelk'd and waved like the enridgèd sea.9
It was some fiend; therefore, thou happy father,
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours
Of men's impossibilities, 10 have preserved thee.

Glos. I do remember now: henceforth I'll bear
Affliction till it do cry out itself

Enough, enough, and die. That thing you speak of,
I took it for a man; often 'twould say

The fiend, the fiend! he led me to that place.

Edg. Bear free and patient thoughts. But who comes

here?

Enter LEAR, fantastically dressed with wild flowers.

The safer sense will ne'er accommodate

His master thus.11

Lear. No, they cannot touch me for coining; I am the King himself:

? Whelk'd is marked with protuberances. The whelk is a small shellfish, so called, perhaps, because its shell is marked with convolved protuberant ridges. The sea is enridged when blown into waves.

10 Men's impossibilities are things that seem to men impossible. — The incident of Gloster being made to believe himself ascending, and leaping from, the chalky cliff has always struck me as a very notable case of inherent improbability overcome in effect by opulence of description.

11 Ilis for its, referring to sense. Edgar is speaking of Lear's dress, and judges from this that he is not in his safer sense; that is, in his senses.

12

-There's your

Edg. [Aside.] O thou side-piercing sight! Lear. Nature's above art in that respect. press-money.' That fellow handles his bow like a crowkeeper: 13 draw me a clothier's yard. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace; this piece of toasted cheese will do't. -There's my gauntlet! I'll prove it on a giant. Bring up the brown bills. —O, well flown, bird! —I' the clout, i' the clout! hewgh! Give the word.14

Edg. Sweet marjoram.

Lear. Pass.

Glos. I know that voice.

Lear.. Ha! Goneril, with a white beard! They flatter'd me like a dog; and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say ay and no to every thing that I said ay and no to, was no good divinity.15 When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they

12 Lear, I suppose, here imagines himself a recruiting officer, impressing men into the service, and paying them the bounty-money. The sense of the preceding clause is, that he, being a king by nature or by birth, is not subject to legal or artificial control touching the matter in question.

13 A crow-keeper is a thing to keep the crows off the corn; what we call a scare-crow; which was sometimes a figure of a man, with a cross-bow in his hands. -"Draw me a clothier's yard" means draw me an arrow the length of a clothier's yard; the force of an arrow depending on the length it was drawn in the bow.

14 The old King is here raving of a challenge, a battle, of falconry, and archery, jumbled together in quick succession. When he says "There's my gauntlet," he is a champion throwing down his glove by way of challenge. When he says "Give the word," he is a sentinel on guard, demanding the watchword or countersign. Brown bill is an old term for a kind of battleaxe; here put for men armed with that weapon. Well flown, bird, was the falconer's expression when the hawk made a good flight. The clout is the white mark at which archers aim.

15 To tie our assent and dissent entirely to another, to speak nothing but in echo of his yes and no, is the extreme of sycophancy; and may well be called " no good divinity."

are not men o' their words: they told me I was every thing;

'tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

Glos. The trick 16 of that voice I do well remember:

Is't not the King?

Lear.

Ay, every inch a king:

When I do stare, see how the subject quakes!

No:

Adultery?

Thou shalt not die: die for adultery!

The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.

Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters

Got 'tween the lawful sheets.

To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.
Behold yond simpering dame,

;1

Whose face between her forks presages snow 17
That minces virtue, 18 and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure's name :

The fitchew nor the soiled horse 19

With a more riotous appetite.

goes to't

Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:

But to the girdle do the gods inherit,20

16 Trick for peculiarity or characteristic. See vol. x. page 9, note 7.

17 The order, according to the sense, is, "Whose face presages snow between her forks." The same thought is imaged with more delicacy in Timon, iv. 3: "Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow that lies on Dian's lap."

18 That affects or puts on the coyness or modesty of virtue. Cotgrave explains mineux-se, " Outward seeming, also squeamish, quaint, coy, that minces it exceedingly." See vol. xii. page 208, note I.

19 The fitchew is the pole-cat.—Soiled is well explained by Heath: “A horse is said to be soiled when, after having been long stalled, he is turned out for a few weeks in the Spring, to take the first flush of the new grass, which both cleanses him and fills him with blood."

20 Inherit in its old sense of possess. See vol. vii. page 85, note 31.

Beneath is all the fiends';

There's Hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!— Give me an ounce of civet,21 good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee.

Glos. O, let me kiss that hand !

Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. Glos. O ruin'd piece of nature ! This great world Shall so wear out to nought. — Dost thou know me?

Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst, blind Cupid; I'll not love. Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it.

Glos. Were all the letters suns, I could not see.

Edg. [Aside.] I would not take this from report: it is And my heart breaks at it.

Lear. Read.

Glos. What, with the case of eyes?

Lear. O ho, are you there with me?22 No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light: yet you see how this world

goes.

Glos. I see it feelingly.

Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: Change places; and, handy-dandy,23 which is the justice,

21 Civet is the old name of a musky perfume; obtained from what is called the civet-cat. So, in iii. 4, Lear says to Edgar, "Thou owest the worm no silk, the cat no perfume."

22 That is, "is that what you mean?" A like instance occurs in As You Like It, v. 2: "O, I know where you are": where you are for what you mean. So, in old language, to go along with one is to understand him.

23 Handy-dandy is an old game of children; one child enclosing something in his hand, and using a sort of legerdemain, changing it swiftly from hand to hand, and then calling upon his playfellow to guess which hand it is in; the latter to have the thing, if he guesses right.