But more than why,—why have they dared to march
So many miles upon her peaceful bosom,
Frighting her pale-faced villages with war,
And ostentation of despised arms?"
"But sure," says Warburton, "the ostentation of despised arms would not fright any one. We should read 'disposed arms'—i.e., forces in battle array." "Despoiling arms" is the reading recommended by the margins. "Displayed arms" is the right expression, according to Mr Singer. But surely no emendation is required. The ostentation of despised arms was quite sufficient to frighten the harmless villagers; and this is all that Shakespeare says it did. And then it is in the highest degree appropriate and consistent that York should give his nephew to understand that his arms or forces were utterly despicable in the estimation of all loyal subjects, of all honourable and right-thinking men. Hence his words,
"Frighting her pale-faced villages with war,
And ostentation of despised arms,"
mean—alarming with war only pale-faced villagers, who never smelt the sulphurous breeze of battle, and making a vain parade of arms which all true soldiers must despise.
Act III. Scene 3.—The substitution of storm for "harm," in the following lines, is an exceedingly doubtful emendation. York says of Richard—
"Yet looks he like a king; behold, his eye,
As bright as is the eagle's, lightens forth
Controlling majesty. Alack, alack for woe,
That any harm should stain so fair a show!"
It is true that, in a previous part of the speech, the king is likened to the setting sun, whose glory "the envious clouds are bent to dim;" and therefore the word storm has some show of reason to recommend it, and "hum" may possibly have been a misprint. But we rather think that it is the right word, and that it is more natural and pathetic than the word storm. Nothing else worthy of note or comment presents itself in the MS. corrections of King Richard II.
The First Part of King Henry IV.— Act I. Scene 1.—"No new light," says Mr Collier, "is thrown upon the two lines which have produced so many conjectures:
'No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood."'
The MS. corrector has in this instance shown his sense by not meddling with these lines; for how any light beyond their own inherent lustre should ever have been thought necessary to render them luminous, it is not easy to understand. As a specimen of the way in which the old commentators occasionally darkened the very simplest matters, their treatment of these two lines may be adduced. The old quartos, and the folio 1623, supply the text as given above. By an error of the press, the folio 1632 reads damb instead of daub. This damb the earlier commentators converted into damp. Warburton changed "damp" into trempe—i.e., moisten. Dr Johnson, although very properly dissatisfied with this Frenchified reading, is as much at fault as the bishop. With the authentic text of the older editions before him, he says, "the old reading helps the editor no better than the new" (in other words, daub is no better than damb, and damp, and trempe); "nor can I satisfactorily re-form the passage. I think that 'thirsty entrance' must be wrong, yet know not what to offer. We may read, but not very elegantly—
'No more the thirsty entrails of this soil
Shall daubed be with her own children's blood.' "
Truly this reading is by no means elegant; it is nothing less than monstrous. To say nothing of the physical impossibility of the blood penetrating to the "entrails" of the earth, the expression violates the first principles of poetical word-painting. The interior parts of the earth are not seen, and therefore to talk of them as daubed with blood, is to attempt to place before the eye of the mind a picture which cannot be placed before it. In science, or as a matter of fact, this may be admissible; but in poetry, where the imagination is addressed, it is simply an absurdity. Steevens, with some hesitation, proposes—
"No more the thirsty entrants of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood."
"Entrants," that is, "invaders." This says Steevens, "may be far-fetched." It is
