1 Back, Edmund, to my brother; Hasten his musters and conduct his powers.
2 Sir, by your patience, I hold you but a subject of this war, Not as a brother.
3 I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my virtue.
4 I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.
5 My father hath set guard to take my brother; And I have one thing, of a queasy question, Which I must act.
6 He led our powers; Bore the commission of my place and person; The which immediacy may well stand up And call itself your brother.
7 It is a letter from my brother that I have not all o'er-read; and for so much as I have perus'd, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking.
8 Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father.'
9 I now perceive it was not altogether your brother's evil disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit, set a-work by a reproveable badness in himself.
10 If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you should run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience.