CXII. SCENE FROM KING HENRY IV.

KING HENRY IV., HOTSPUR, WORCESTER, AND NORTHUMBERLAND.

King Henry. Henceforth

Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer:

Send me your prisoners by the speediest means,

Or you shall hear in such a kind from me

As will displease you. My lord Northumberland,
We license your departure with your son:-
Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it.

[Exit King Henry

Hotspur. And if the devil come and roar for them,

I will not send them: I will after straight,

And tell him so; for I will ease my heart,

Although it be with hazard of my head.

Northumberland. What! drunk with choler? stay, and pause

awhile;

Here comes your uncle.

Hot.

Speak of Mortimer!

Zounds! I will speak of him, and let my soul

Want mercy, if I do not join with him.

Yea, on his part, I'll empty all these veins,

And shed my dear blood drop by drop i' the dust,

But I will lift the down-trod Mortimer

As high i' the air as this unthankful king,

As this ingrate and cankered Bolingbroke.

[Enter Worcester.

North. (to Worcester). Brother, the king hath made your nephew mad.

Worcester. Who struck this heat up, after I was gone?

Hot. He will, forsooth, have all my prisoners;

And when I urged the ransom once again

Of my wife's brother, then his cheek looked pale,

And on my face he turned an eye of death,

Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.

Wor. I cannot blame him. Was he not proclaimed By Richard that dead is, the next of blood?

North. He was: I heard the proclamation;

And then it was when the unhappy king

(Whose wrongs in us God pardon!) did set forth

Upon his Irish expedition:

From whence he, intercepted, did return

To be deposed, and shortly, murdered.

Wor. And for whose death we in the world's wide mouth Live scandalized and foully spoken of.

But now I will unclasp a secret book,
And to your quick-conceiving discontents
I'll read you matter deep and dangerous,
As full of peril and advent'rous spirit
As to o'erwalk a current roaring loud,
On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

Hot. If he fall in, good-night!—or sink or swim,
Send danger from the East unto the West,
So honor cross it from the North to South,
And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

North. Imagination of some great exploit
Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.

Hot. By Heaven! methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright Honor from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drownëd Honor by the locks,
So he that doth redeem her thence might wear,
Without corrival, all her dignities:

But out upon this half-faced fellowship!

Wor. He apprehends a world of figures here,
But not the form of what he should attend.
Good cousin, give me audience for a while,
And list to me.

Hot. I cry you mercy!
Wor.

Those same noble Scots.

That are your prisoners

Hot.

I'll keep them all,—

By Heaven! he shall not have a Scot of them:
No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not:

I'll keep them, by this hand!

Wor.

You start away,

And lend no ear unto my purposes:
Those prisoners you shall keep.

Hot. Nay, I will; that's flat.

He said he would not ransom Mortimer;
Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer;

But I will find him when he lies asleep,

And in his ear I'll holla-"Mortimer!”

Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but "Mortimer," and give it him,
To keep his anger still in motion.

Wor. Hear you, cousin; a word.

Hot. All studies here I solemnly defy,
Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke:
And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales-
But that I think his father loves him not,

And would be glad he met with some mischance,
I'd have him poisoned with a pot of ale.

Wor. Farewell, kinsman. I will talk to you
When you are better tempered to attend.

SHAKSPEAKE.

CXIII-SCIENCE AND POETRY.

N one of his Irish melodies, so familiar to all lovers of poetry and music, Moore has the following lines:

"Oh! had we some bright little isle of our own,

In a blue summer ocean far off and alone,

Where a leaf never dies in the still blooming bowers,
And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers;
Where the sun loves to pause

With so fond a delay,

That the night only draws

A thin veil o'er the day;

Where simply to feel that we breathe, that we live,
Is worth the best joys that life elsewhere can give."

2. Now, this is good poetry, but bad science. An "isle" in which 66 a leaf never dies," and in which the flowers bloom through the year, must necessarily be within the tropics-a latitude to which the succeeding lines about the "fond delay" of the sun and the night, which only "draws a thin veil o'er the day "-which produces, in other words, only a few hours of twilight-are utterly inapplicable.

3. In tropical latitudes the variation of the length of the day is very inconsiderable. It is a little more or less than

twelve hours, and that is all. The night is, consequently, subject to a variation similarly limited. Instead, therefore, of the very long day and the very short nights which the poet ascribes to his "isle" in the blue summer ocean, there would necessarily be nights the duration of which could never be much less than twelve hours in any part of the year.

4. But this is not all. Instead of enjoying a constant nocturnal twilight, so beautifully described by the poet as a veil drawn over the day, the inhabitants of the tropics enjoy scarcely any twilight at all, being plunged in nocturnal darkness almost immediately after sunset. This arises from astronomical causes which are well understood.

5. It would, perhaps, be deemed hypercritical to examine how far the naturalist would justify the poet in his allusion to the industry of the bee in a tropical climate. The honeybee, which no doubt was the insect alluded to by the poet, is, for the most part, confined to ultra-tropical latitudes. Since, however, there are certain species of this insect found in the lower latitudes, it may be admitted that the poet has, at least in this point, a locus standi.

6. The allusion and imagery which Moore loved to seek in certain parts of physical science were generally much more consistent with physical truth, without being less beautiful, than that which we quoted above. How happily, for example, did he avail himself of that beautiful property of the iris by which it accommodates the eye to greater and less degrees of light, enlarging the pupil when the light is faint, and contracting it when it is intense!

7. The iris, as is well known, is the colored ring which surrounds the dark spot in the middle of the eye; this dark spot being not a black substance, but a circular orifice through which the light is admitted to the membrane lining the posterior part of the internal chamber of the eye. The circular orifice is called the pupil, the retina being the nervous membrane which produces the visual perceptions.

8. The iris which surrounds the pupil has a certain power of contraction and expansion, which is produced by

the action upon it of proper muscles provided for that purpose. The quantity of light admitted through the pupil to the retina is increased or diminished in the proportion of the area of the pupil, which increases and diminishes in proportion to the square of its diameter; a very small variation of which, therefore, produces a very considerable proportionate variation of the quantity of light admitted.

9. If a person, after remaining for some time in a room dimly lighted, pass suddenly into one which is strongly illuminated, he will become instantly sensible of pain in the retina, and will involuntarily close his eyes. After a short time, however, he will be enabled to open them and look around with impunity.

10. The cause of this is easily explained. In the dimlylighted room the pupil was widely expanded, to collect the largest quantity possible of the faint light, so that a sufficient quantity might be received by the retina to produce a sensible perception of the surrounding objects. On passing into the strongly-illuminated room the expanded pupil admits so much of the intense light as to act painfully on the retina before there is time for the iris to adjust itself so as to contract the aperture of the pupil. After a short interval, however, this adjustment is made, and the area of the pupil being diminished in the same proportion as the intensity of the light to which it is exposed has been augmented in passing from one room to the other, the action upon the retina is proportionally mitigated, so that the eye can regard without pain the surrounding objects.

11. The reverse of all this takes place when the eye suddenly passes from strong to feeble illumination. The pupil contracted when exposed to the strong light is not sufficiently open to admit the rays of feeble light necessary to produce visual perception, and for some time the surrounding objects are invisible. When, however, the proper muscular apparatus has had time to act upon the eye so as to enlarge the pupil, the rays are admitted in greater quantity, and the surrounding objects begin to be perceived.