His face still combating with tears and smiles,
The badges of his grief and patience

That had not God for fome strong purpose, steel'd
The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted;

And barbarism itself have pitied him.

* Who are the violets now,

That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?

SCENE X. K. Richard's Soliloquy in Prison..

I have been studying how to compare,
This prifon, where I live, unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but my felf,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer on't.
My brain I'll prove the female to my foul,
My foul, the father; and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts

And these same thoughts people this little world,,
In humour, like the people of this world,

For no thought is contented.

Thoughts tending to content, flatter themselves,
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,

And shall not be the last: (like filly beggars,
Who, fitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,
That many have, and others must fit there)
And in this thought they find a kind of eafe,

* Who, &c.] Milton doubtless had this paffage in his eye, when in his pretty song, On May-morning, he wrote,

Now the bright morning-ftar, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowlip, and the pale primrofe.

Bearing

Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of fuch as have before endur'd the like.,
Thus play I, in one prifon, many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king,
Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar,
And fo I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me, I was better when a king;
Then am I king'd again; and by and by,
Think, that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
And strait am nothing-But what-e'er I am,
Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleas'd, till he be eas'd
With being nothing.

The **

The Life and Death of King

N

RICHARD III.

ACTI. SCENE I.

Richard, on his own Deformity.

OW are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums chang'd to me ry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-vifag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the fouls of fearful adverfaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber,
To the lafcivious pleasing of a lute.
(1) But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an am'rous looking glass,
I, that am rudely stampt, and want love's majefty,
To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely, and unfashionably,
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them:
Why I, (in this weak piping time of peace)

(1) But, &c.] See Longinus on the Sublime. sect. 38. the latHave no delight to pass away the time;

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,

And descant on my own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well. spoken days *

I am determined to prove a villain,

福

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

SCENE II. Richard's Love for Lady Anne.

Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears, Sham'd their aspects with store of childish drops: These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear, Not when my father York, and Edward wept, To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made; When black-fac'd Clifford shook his sword at him; Nor when thy war-like father, like a child, Told the fad story of my father's death, And twenty times made pause to sob and weep, That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks, Like trees be-dash'd with rain: in that fad time, My manly eyes did fcorn an humble tear: And what these forrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. I never fued to friend, nor enemy; My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing words; But now my beauty is propos'd my fee,

My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.

On his own Person, after his fuccessful Addreffes.

My dukedom to a beggarly denier,
I do mistake my person all this while:
Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,
Myself to be a marv'lous, proper man.
I'll be at charges for a looking-glafs,

See Othello, p. 161, n. 3.

And

And entertain a score or two of taylors,
To study fashions to adorn my body :
Since I am crept in favour with myself,
I will maintain it with some little cost.

SCENE IV. Queen Margaret's Execrations..

The worm of confcience still be-gnaw thy foul;
Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv'st,
And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends:
No fleep close up that deadly eye of thine,
Unless it be when some tormenting dream
Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!
Thou elvish-markt abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that was feal'd in thy nativity
(2) The flave of nature, and the fon of hell!
Thou slander of thy heavy mother's womb!
Thou loathed iffue of thy father's loins !
(3) Thou rag of honour, thou detested.-

High Birth.

I was born so high,

Our airy buildeth in the Cedar's top,
And dallies with the wind, and scorns the fun.

(2) The flave of nature] She afterwards says,

Sin death and hell have set their marks upon him. Mr. Warburton observes, "that the expreffion in the text is strong and noble, and alludes to an antient custom of masters branding of their flaves by which it is infinuated, that his mis-sh pen person was a mark that nature had set upon him to stigmatize his ill conditions." It has been long fince observed, that Distortum vultum fequitur distortio morum.

A face distorted generally proclaims

Distorted manners.

(3) Rag, &c.] Richard speaking of Richmond and his followers in the last act of this play says,

Lash hence these over-weening rags of France,
These famish'd beggars weary of their lives.

Richard's