Beware my follower. Peace, Smolkin;1 peace, thou

fiend!

Glo. What, hath your grace no better company? Edg. The prince of darkness is a gentleman; Modo he's called, and Mahu.1

Glo. Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile, That it doth hate what gets it.

Edg. Poor Tom's a-cold.

Glo. Go in with me; my duty cannot suffer
To obey in all your daughters' hard commands.
Though their injunction be to bar my doors,
And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you,
Yet have I ventured to come to seek you out,
And bring you where both fire and food is ready.
Lear. First let me talk with this philosopher.-
What is the cause of thunder?

Kent. Good my lord, take his offer;

Go into the house.

Lear. I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban.

What is your study?

Edg. How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin. Lear. Let me ask you one word in private.

Kent. Impórtune him once more to go, my lord; His wits begin to unsettle.2

1 "The names of other punie spirits cast out of Twyford were these:Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio," &c.-Harsnet's Detection, &c. p. 49. Again, "Maho was the chief devil that had possession of Sarah Williams; but another of the possessed, named Richard Mainy, was molested by a still more considerable fiend, called Modu," p. 268; where the said Richard Mainy deposes:-"Furthermore it is pretended, that there remaineth still in mee the prince of devils, whose name should be Modu." And, p. 269 :— "When the said priests had despatched their business at Hackney (where they had been exorcising Sarah Williams), they then returned towards mee, upon pretence to cast the great prince Modu out of mee." In the Goblins, by sir John Suckling, a catch is introduced, which conIcludes with these two lines:

"The prince of darkness is a gentleman;
Mahu, Mahu is his name."

This catch may not be the production of Suckling, but the original referred to by Edgar's speech.

2 Lord Orford has the following remark in the postscript to his Mysterious Mother:-"The finest picture ever drawn of a head discomposed by misfortune is that of king Lear. His thoughts dwell on the ingrati

Canst thou blame him?

Glo.
His daughters seek his death.-Ah, that good Kent!—
He said it would be thus ;-poor banished man!—
Thou say'st, the king grows mad; I'll tell thee, friend,
I am almost mad myself. I had a son,

Now outlawed from my blood; he sought my life,
But lately, very late; I loved him, friend,—

No father his son dearer: true to tell thee,

[Storm continues. The grief hath crazed my wits.-What a night's this! I do beseech your grace,

Lear.

Noble philosopher, your company.

Edg. Tom's a-cold.

O, cry you mercy,

Glo. In, fellow, there, to the hovel; keep thee

warm.

Lear. Come, let's in all.

Kent.

Lear. With him;

This way, my lord.

I will keep still with my philosopher.

Kent. Good my lord, soothe him; let him take the

fellow.

Glo. Take him you on.

Kent. Sirrah, come on; go along with us.

Lear. Come, good Athenian.

Glo.

Hush.

No words, no words.

Edg. Child Rowland1 to the dark tower came,
His word was still,-Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.

[Exeunt.

tude of his daughters, and every sentence that falls from his wildness excites reflection and pity. Had frenzy entirely seized him, our compassion would abate; we should conclude that he no longer felt unhappiness."

1 Capel observes, that Child Rowland means the knight Orlando. He would read come, with the quartos, absolutely (Orlando being come to the dark tower); and supposes a line to be lost, "which spoke of some giant, the inhabitant of that tower, and the smeller-out of Child Rowland, who comes to encounter him." He proposes to fill up the passage thus :"Child Rowland to the dark tower come,

[The giant roared, and out he ran ;]

His word was still," &c.

Part of this is to be found in the second part of Jack and the Giants,

SCENE V. A Room in Gloster's Castle.

Enter CORNWALL and EDMUND.

Corn. I will have my revenge ere I depart this

house.

Edm. How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think of.

Corn. I now perceive it was not altogether your brother's evil disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit,1 set a-work by a reprovable badness in himself.

Edm. How malicious is my fortune, that I must repent to be just! This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France. O Heavens! that this treason were not, or not I the detector!

Corn. Go with me to the duchess.

Edm. If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty business in hand.

Corn. True or false, it hath made thee earl of Gloster. Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our apprehension.

Edm. [Aside.] If I find him comforting the king, it will stuff his suspicion more fully.-I will persevere in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.

Corn. I will lay trust upon thee; and thou shalt find a dearer father in my love. [Exeunt.

which, if not as old as the time of Shakspeare, may have been compiled from something that was so: they are uttered by a giant:—

"Fee, faw, fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman;
Be he alive, or be he dead,

I'll grind his bones to make my bread.”

1 Cornwall seems to mean the merit of Edmund; which, being noticed by Gloster, provoked or instigated Edgar to seek his father's death.

SCENE VI. A Chamber in a Farm-House, adjoining the Castle.

Enter GLOSTEr, Lear, Kent, Fool, and EDGar.

Glo. Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can; I will not be long from you.

Kent. All the power of his wits has given way to his impatience. The gods reward your kindness!

[Exit GLOSTER. Edg. Frateretto' calls me; and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent,2 and beware the foul fiend.

Fool. 'Pr'ythee, nuncle, tell me, whether a madman be a gentleman, or a yeoman?

Lear. A king, a king!

Fool. No; he's a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he's a mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him.

Lear. To have a thousand with red burning spits Come hissing in upon them:

Edg. The foul fiend bites my back.4

Fool. He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's heels," a boy's love, or a whore's oath. Lear. It shall be done; I will arraign them straight. Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer;

[To EDGAR.

1 Rabelais says that Nero was a fiddler in hell, and Trajan an angler. 2 Perhaps he is here addressing the fool. Fools were anciently termed innocents.

3 The old copies have hizzing, which Malone changed to whizzing. One of the quartos spells the word hiszing, which indicates that the reading of the present text is right.

4 This and the next thirteen speeches are only in the quartos.

5 The old copies read, "a horse's health;" but heels was certainly meant. "Trust not a horse's heels, nor a dog's tooth," is a proverb in Ray's Collection; which may be traced at least as far back as the time of our Edward II.

6 Justicer, from justiciarius, was the old term, as we learn from Lambard's Eirenarcha.

Thou, sapient sir, sit here. [To the Fool.]-Now, you

she-foxes!

Edg. Look, where he stands and glares!— Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam ? 1

1

Come o'er the bourn,2 Bessy to me.

Fool. Her boat hath a leak,

And she must not speak

Why she dares not come over to thee.

Edg. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale. Hopdance cries in Tom's belly for two white herrings. Croak not, black angel; I have no food for thee.

Kent. How do you, sir? Stand you not so amazed. Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?

Lear. I'll see their trial first.-Bring in the evi

dence.

Thou robed man of justice, take thy place;

TO EDGAR. And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity, [To the Fool. Bench by his side.-You are of the commission, Sit you too.

[TO KENT.

1 "Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam?" is a question addressed to some visionary spectator, and may mean no more than "Do you want eyes when you should use them most? that you cannot see this spectre."

2 A bourn is a brook or rivulet. At the beginning of A Very Mery and Pythie Comedie, called the Longer Thou Livest The More Fool Thou Art, &c. blk. let., no date:-"Entreth Moros, counterfaiting a vain gesture and foolish countenance, synging the foote of many songs, as fooles were wont;" and among them is this passage:

"Com over the boorne Bessé,

My litle pretie Bessé,

Come over the boorne, Bessé, to me."

The old copies read, "o'er the broome ;" and Johnson suggested, as there was no connection between a boat and a broom, that it was an error. Steevens made the correction, and adduced this illustration. There is peculiar propriety in this address: Bessy and poor Tom usually travelled together, as appears by a passage cited from Dick Whipper's Sessions, 1607, by Malone. Mad women, who travel about the country, are called, in Shropshire, Cousin Betties, and elsewhere, Mad Bessies.

3 Much of this may have been suggested by Harsnet's book. Hoberdidance is mentioned in a former note. "One time shee remembereth that, shee having the said croaking in her belly, they said it was the devil that was about the bed, that spake with the voice of a toad,” p. 194, 195, &c.

VOL. VII.

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