RAM. What, will you have them weep our horfes' blood?

How fhall we then behold their natural tears?

Enter a Meffenger.

MESS. The English are embattled, you French

peers.

CON. To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horfe!

Do but behold yon poor and starved band,
And your fair fhow fhall fuck away their fouls,*
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 sheath 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

About our fquares of battle,3-were enough

Mr. Pope for doubt fubftituted daunt, which was adop ... the fubfequent editions. For the emendation now made I imagined I fhould have been anfwerable; 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 efcape the notice of Dryden and Pope; the former having (lefs chaftely) 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.

3 About our fquares of battle,] So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

66

-no practice had

"In the brave fquares of war." STEEVENS.

What's to say?

To purge this field of fuch a hilding foe;+
Though we, upon this mountain's bafis by s
Took fstand for idle fpeculation:
But that our honours must not.
A very little little let us do,
And all is done. Then let the
The tucket-fonuance," and the note to mount:
For our approach fhall fo much dare the field,
That England shall couch down in fear, and yield.

trumpets found

Enter GRANDPRE'.

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

4-a hilding foe ;] Hilding, or hinderling, is a low wretch.

So, in King Henry IV. Part II:

"He was fome hilding fellow, that had stole
"The horse he rode on." STEEVENS.

JOHNSON.

5 upon this mountain's bafis by-] See Henry's fpeech, fc. vii:

66

Take a trumpet, herald;

"Ride thou unto the horsemen on yon hill." MALONE.

6 The tucket-fonuance, &c.] He ufes 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, fo 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 harpsichord, 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-cafe, 1623:

2 tuckets by feveral trumpets.'

Sonance is a word ufed 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.

Yon island carrions,' defperate of their bones,
I'll-favour'dly become the morning field:
Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,
And our air fhakes them paffing fcornfully.
Big Mars feems bankrupt in their beggar'd host,
And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.
Their horfemen fit like fixed candlesticks,

With torch-ftaves in their hand: and their poor jades

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 fpent, and now could they get none :-reft 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 fcarcity, 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." Holinfbed. 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 obferved, i. e. ragged curtains put in motion by the air, when the windows of mean houfes are left STEEVENS.

open.

9 Their horfemen fit like fixed candlesticks,

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

he

A fimilar image occurs in Vittoria Corombona, 1612: " fhow'd like a pewter candleflick, fashioned like a man in armour, holding a tilting staff in his hand little bigger than a candle."

The following is an exact representation of one of these candlefticks, 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.

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 form of torch-ftaves may be ascertained by a wooden cut in Vol. VII. p. 146. STEEVENS.

2 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.

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 thofe of a chain, which by its flexibility fitted it to the shape of the body more exactly than defenfive covering of any other con

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

To démonftrate the life of fuch a battle
In life fo lifelefs' as it shows 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; On, to the field:

trivance. There was a fuit of it to be feen in the Tower. Spenfer, in his Fairie 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, (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 difpofal of what they fhall leave, their hides and their flesh. JOHNSON.

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

"A living dead man." STEEVENS.

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

The following quotation from Holinfhed, p. 554, will best elucidate this paffage: "The duke of Brabant when his standard was not come, caufed a banner to be taken from a trumpet and fastened upon a fpear, the which he commanded to be borne before him inftead of a standard."

In the fecond part of Heywood's Iron Age, 1632, Menelaus, after having enumerated to Pyrrhus the treasures of his father Achilles, as his myrmidons, &c. adds:

"His fword, fpurs, armour, guard, pavilion."

From this last paffage it should appear that guard was part of the defenfive armour; perhaps what we call at prefent the gorget.