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the folio version for the stage. It is certainly, as it stands, not at all clear to the modern reader, and the numerous misprints which swarm in the quartos, authorize the application of conjectural emendation, if any word can be found at all likely to be so misprinted. Warburtan, always bold and ingenious, supposes that the w was a turned M, and that we should therefore have read a "wetter May." This does not much better the sense, and unfortunately for the theory, the w in the original copies is not a capital, which would be required for an error as to May. Malone took half this amendment, and reads a "better May." Theobald reads "a better day," and this is adopted by most later editions as meaning, "the better or best weather, most favourable to the productions of the earth, mixed with rain and sunshine." Stevens also proposes "an April day," and Tieck tranlates it into German, "a spring day." Le Tourneur, the French translator, adopting "better day," gives a happy paraphrase, thus:

Vous avez vu le soleil au milieu de la pluie: son sourire et ses pleurs offraient l'image d'un jour plus doux encore.

But as none of these emendations carry with them the internal evidence of their own truth, I have, with Mr. Singer, preferred retaining the original word, understanding them in the sense explained by Mr. Boaden in an ingenious note contributed by him to Singer's edition, which strikes me as very satisfactory and probable :-"The difficulty has arisen from a general mistake as to the simile itself; and Shakespeare's own words here actually convey his perfect meaning, as indeed they commonly do. I understand the passage thus :—

You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears

Were like; a better way.

That is, Cordelia's smiles and tears were like the conjunction of sunshine and rain, in a better way or manner. Now in what did this better way consist? Why simply in the smiles seeming unconscious of the tears; whereas the sunshine has a watery look through the falling drops of rain

Those happy smiles,

That play'd on her ripe lip, secm'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes.

"That the point of comparison was neither a 'better day,' nor a 'wetter May,' is proved by the following passages, cited by Stevens and Malone :- Her tears came dropping down like rain in sunshine.'-SIDNEY'S "Arcadia," p. 244. Again, p. 163, edit. 1593 :And with that she prettily smiled, which, mingled with tears, one could not tell whether it were a mourning pleasure, or a delightful sorrow; but like when a few April drops are scattered by a gentle Zephyrus among fine-coloured flowers,' Again, in A Courtlie Controversie of Cupid's Cautels,' &c., translated from the French by H. W., [Henry Wotton,] 1578, p. 289:Who hath viewed in the spring time raine and sunneshine in one moment, might beholde the troubled countenance of the gentlewoman-with an eye now smyling, then bathed in teares.'

"I may just observe, as perhaps an illustration, that the better way of CHARITY is that the right hand should not know what the left hand giveth."

66_ those happy SMILETS."-This beautiful diminutive is found in the original; and though it is doubtless Shakespeare's own coinage, not being found in any other author, yet there is no reason why it should be altered to smiles, as it has been by all the editors until Knight restored it. It makes the third peculiarly Shakespearian word in this play, with reverb for reverberate, and intrinsecate for intricate.

"And clamour moisten'd."—A phrase rendered obscure by too great compression, and by an inversion, but meaning, "she moistened with tears, her clamorous outery,"

SCENE IV.

"With HOAR-DOCKS"-So one quarto; another has it hor-docks; and the folio prints it hardokes; but it is no doubt the same word. The "hoar-dock," as Stevens informs us, is the dock with whitish woolly leaves. Some commentators read harlocks, others burdocks and charlocks; but the ancient text is to be preserved, if possible.

"My mourning, and IMPORTANT tears"-"Important" is used for importunate, as in the COMEDY OF ERRORS, and elsewhere, by Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

"No BLOWN ambition doth our arms incite."-The old Saxon word blown has become obsolete in this figurative sense, which has been appropriated to the Latinized word inflated, of the same primitive sense.

SCENE V.

"Let me unseal the letter."-I know not well why Shakespeare gives the steward, who is a mere factor of wickedness, so much fidelity. He now refuses the letter; and afterwards, when he is dying, thinks only how it may be safely delivered.-JOHNSON.

Shakespeare has here incidentally painted, without the formality of a regular moral lesson, one of the very strange and very common self-contradictions of our enigmatical nature. Zealous, honourable, even self-sacrificing fidelity, sometimes to a chief or leader, sometimes to a party, a faction, or a gang,-appears to be so little dependant on any principle of virtuous duty, that it is often found strongest among those who have thrown off the common restraints of morality. It would seem that when man's obligations to his God or his kind are rejected or forgotten, the most abandoned mind still craves something for the exercise of its natural social sympathies, and as it loses sight of nobler and truer duties becomes, like the steward, more and more "duteous to the vices" of its self-chosen masters. This is one of the moral phenomena of artificial society, so much within the range of Johnson's observation, as an acute observer of life, that it is strange that he should not have recognized its truth in Oswald's character.

"take this NOTE"-i. e. Take this knowledge or information. We have before in this play had "note" employed in the same sense.

SCENE VI.

How fearful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!" "This description has been much admired since the time of Addison, who has remarked, with a poor attempt at pleasantry, that He who can read it without being giddy has a very good head, or a very bad one.' The description is certainly not mean, but I am far from thinking it wrought to the utmost excellence of poetry. He that looks from a precipice finds himself assailed by one great and dreadful image of irresistible destruction. But this overwhelming idea is dissipated and enfeebled from the instant that the mind can restore itself to the observation of particulars, and diffuse its attention to distinct objects. The enumeration of the choughs and crows, the samphire-man, and the fishers, counteracts the great effect of the prospect, as it peoples the desert of intermediate vacuity, and stops the mind in the rapidity of its descent through emptiness and horror.”— JOHNSON,

In Boswell's "Life of Johnson," we have a more detailed account of his poetical creed, with reference to this description of Dover Cliff:-" Johnson said that the description of the temple, in The Mourning Bride,' was the finest poetical passage he had ever read: he recollected none in SHAKESPEARE equal to it,

(How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,

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To bear aloft its arch'd and pond'rous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and unmoveable,
Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight. The tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart!)

*

'But,' ,' said Garrick, all alarmed for the god of his idolwe know not the extent of his powers. atry, We are to suppose there are such passages in his works: Shakespeare must not suffer from the badness of our memories.' Johnson, diverted by this enthusiastic jealousy, went on with great ardour-No, sir; Congreve has nature,' (smiling on the tragic eagerness of Garrick ;) but, composing himself, he added, Sir, this is not comparing Congreve on the whole with Shakespeare on the whole, but only maintaining that Congreve has one finer passage than any that can be found in Shakespeare's writings. What I mean is, that you can show me no passage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any intermixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect. Mr. Murphy mentioned Shakespeare's description of the night before the battle of Agincourt; but it was observed that it had men in it. Mr. Davies suggested the speech of Juliet, in which she figures herself awaking in her ancestors' tomb. Some one mentioned the description of Dover Cliff. Johnson- No, sir; it should be all precipice-all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good description, but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on, by computation, from one stage of the tremendous space to another. Had the girl in The Mourning Bride' said she could not cast her shoe to the top of one of the pillars in the temple, it would not have aided the idea, but weakened it.'"

The impression made on Johnson by this description, is partly, I think, to be ascribed to his peculiar physical constitution, which could not permit him to look steadily from such a height. Any one who has observed the effect on himself and others, by views from high cliffs or steeples, must have remarked that many are totally unable to remark the objects immediately below, being like Johnson, overwhelmed and giddy with the single idea of personal danger. Others again, are struck with the novelty of the diminished size of objects, still distinctly seen as Edgar describes them. With this allowance for Johnson's criticism, I fully agree with the sound and acute remarks of Mr. Knight:

"Taken as pieces of pure description, there is only one way of testing the different value of these passages of Shakespeare and Congreve-that is, by considering what ideas the mind receives from the different modes adopted to convey ideas. But the criticism of Johnson, even if it could have established that the passage of Congreve, taken apart, was 'finer' than that of Shakespeare, utterly overlooks the dramatic propriety of each passage. The 'girl,' in the Mourning Bride,' is soliloquizing-uttering a piece of versification, harmonious enough, indeed, but without any dramatic purpose. The mode in which Edgar describes the cliff is for the special information of the blind Gloster-one who could not look from a precipice. The crows and choughs, the samphire-gatherer, the fisherman, the bark, the surge that is seen but not heard-each of these, incidental to the place, is selected as a standard by which Gloster can measure the altitude of the cliff. Transpose the description into the generalities of Congreve's description of the cathedral, and the dramatic propriety at least is utterly destroyed. The height of the cliff is then only presented as an image to Gloster's mind upon the vague assertion of his conductor. Let the description begin, for example, something after the fashion of Congreve,

How fearful is the edge of this high cliff!

and continue with a proper assortment of chalky crags and gulfs below. Of what worth then would be Edgar's concluding lines,

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"Diminish'd to her cock"-i. e. Her cockboat, often called a "cock" in that day; hence cock-swain, still in use. The bark is not at anchor, but anchoring; her cock boat and the buoy all come in as part of the visual picture suggested by the leading idea.

"Ten masts at each."-So all the old editions. Pope supposed that it should have been "attached," her masts fastened together. Johnson, "on end." In Rowe's edition, the first popular one of the last age, it is, "ten masts at least." Malone has shown that "attach" in that day had not its present sense, but meant "to seize," and was used as now in the law. "Ten masts at each" means the length of each one. Although critical research has found no example of a similar use of at each, yet the phrase conveys the meaning.

"- of this chalky BOURN."-In a previous passage, "Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me," bourn signifies a river; and so in the "Faery Queen :"

My little boat can safely pass this perilous bourne. In Milton's "Comus" we have

And every bosky bourn from side to side. Here, as Warton well explains the word, bourn is a winding, deep, and narrow valley, with a rivulet at the bottom. Such a spot is a bourn because it is a boundary-a natural division; and this is the sense in which a river is called a bourn. The "chalky bourn" in the passage before us is, in the same way, the chalky boundary of England towards France.-KNIGHT.

" and wav'd like the ENRIDGED sea."-This is the reading of the quartos. The folio, enraged. Enridged is the more poetical word, and Shakespeare has the idea in his VENUS AND ADONIS :

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend.-KNIGHT. "—like a CROW-KEEPER."-The crow-keeper was the rustic who kept crows from corn-one unpractised

in the proper use of the bow. Ascham, in his "Toxophilus," thus describes one who "handles his bow like a crow-keeper :"-" Another cowereth down, and layeth out his buttocks as though he should shoot at crows."

"draw me a CLOTHIER'S YARD."- Draw like a famous English archer, the archer of "Chevy Chase".

An arrow of a cloth yard long Up to the head he drew.

"Bring up the brown BILLS."-The bills for billmen--the infantry. Marlowe uses the phrase in his "Edward II. :”—

Lo, with a band of bowmen and of pikes,
Brown bills, and targetiers.

"the CLOUT"-Lear fancies himself present at a trial of skill in archery; the clout was the white mark at which aim was taken.

"To say ay,' and 'no,' to every thing I said."-To assent to every thing I asserted or denied, however contradictory to each other such assertions might be. The "no good divinity" seems to allude to some scriptural passage, such as St. Paul's, "Our word toward you was not yea and nay." The obscurity of the passage may be ascribed to Lear's broken and digressive sentences, and therefore the reading, in which the old copies all agree, is here retained. Yet there is great probability that the Poet wrote, as has been suggested, thus: "To say Ay and No to every thing I said Ay and No to (easily changed into too, from the similarity of the sound) was no good divinity."

"PLATE sin with gold."-In the old copies, Place. This happy and just correction was made by Pope.

"This a good block."-Stevens conjectures that, when Lear says, "I will preach to thee," and begins his sermon, "When we are born, we cry," he takes his hat in his hand, and, turning it round, dislikes the fashion or shape of it, which was then called the block. He then starts off, by association with the hat, to the delicate stratagem of shoeing a troop of horse with felt. Lord Herbert, in his "Life of Henry VIII.,” describes a joust at which Henry was present in France, where horses shod with felt were brought into a marble hall.

"Then, KILL," etc.--Kill was the ancient word of onset in the English army.

"-Che voR'ye, or Ise try whether your COSTARD or my BALLOW be the harder"-Edgar is affecting a rustic dialect, and the meaning of this sentence is, "I warn you, or I'll try whether your head or my cudgel be the harder." Balo means a beam, in Norfolk, and "ballow," a pole, in the north of England. See Holloway's "Provincial Dictionary." Stevens observes that when the old writers introduced a rustic, they commonly gave him the Somersetshire dialect which Edgar here uses.

"Thee I'll RAKE up"-i. e. Cover up. At the end of this speech, modern editors add, "Exit Edgar, dragging out the body;" but it has no warrant in any of the old folios, and the probability is, that Edgar was supposed to bury Oswald on the spot. After he has done so, he addresses Gloster, "Give me your hand," without any re-entrance being marked in any recent copies of the play. While modern editors insert needless stagedirections, they omit, further on, one that is necessary, and that is found in every old impression, folio and quarto-" Drum afar off."-COLLIER.

Johnson and the English annotators say that "to rake up the fire" is a Staffordshire phrase for covering the fire for the night. It seems to be an old English phrase which has become obsolete and provincial, with the disuse of the wood fires, but it is common in America for covering over the embers, though done with a shovel.

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SCENE VII.

(poor perdu !)"-Reed has shown that this allusion is to the forlorn hope of an army, called in French "enfans perdus ;" among other desperate adventures in which they were engaged, the night-watches seem to have been cominon. Warburton is wrong in supposing that those ordered on such services, were lightly or badly armed, the contrary is the fact, and such is the allusion of the Poet: "Poor perdu, you are exposed to the most dangerous situation, not with the most proper arms, but with a mere helmet of thin and hoary hair." The same allusion occurs in Davenant's "Love and Honour," 1649:

I have endured

Another night would tire a perdu

More than a wet furrow and great frost.

So in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Little French Lawyer:"

I am set here like a perdu,

To watch a fellow that has wronged my mistress.

Mine enemy's dog,

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire."

The late John W. Jarvis, to whose faithful and spirited portraits, posterity will owe the living resemblance of so many of the eminent men of America during the first thirty years of this century, when great men were numerous among us, and good painters very scarce, used often to quote these lines as accumulating in the shortest compass the greatest causes of dislike to be overcome by good-natured pity. It is not merely the personal enemy, for whom there might be human sympathy, that is admitted to the family fireside, but his dog, and that a dog who had himself inflicted his own share of personal injury, and that too upon a gentle being from whom it was not possible that he could have received any provocation.

"How does my royal lord"-No passage in this or any other drama, can surpass this scene, where Lear recognizes Cordelia, and in the intervals of distraction asks forgiveness of his wronged child. Mrs. Jameson beautifully remarks: "The subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man, are brought before us in so few words, and sustained with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost working of the human heart, that as there is nothing surpassing this scene in Shakespeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared with it in any other writer."

"No, sir, you must not kneel.”—This natural and touching incident is one of the few things which Shakespeare owes to the older "Leir." He makes her kneel for Lear's blessing, and he kneels to her. In the old play, Cordella kneels to her father on discovering herself, and Leir replies,―

O stand thou up, it is my part to kneel,
And ask forgiveness of my former faults.
Cor. O if you wish I should enjoy my breath,
Dear father rise, or I receive my death.

The idea of the pathetic action of the father and daughter kneeling to each other, is all that is borrowed-the feeling and poetry are Shakespeare's own.

"not an hour more nor less"-The quartos omit these words, and Malone and others decided that they were interpolated by the player. We see no ground for this belief, and though the insertion of them varies the versification, it is not complete as the text stands in the quartos. In Lear's state of mind, this broken mode of delivering his thoughts is natural; and when we find "not an hour more or less" in the folio of 1623, we have no pretence for rejecting the words as not written by Shakespeare.-COLLIER.

"Every reader of SHAKESPEARE who has become familiar with this most exquisite scene through the modern editions, has read it thus:

Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish, fond old man,

Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

That most Shakespearian touch of nature

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less ;-has been mutilated by the editors. The breaking a limb off an ancient statue would, to our minds, not be a greater sacrilege. They found the words, not an hour more nor less,' only in the folio, and they therefore rejected them. Malone says, "The folio absurdly adds, not an hour more nor less,' i. e. Not an hour more nor less than an indeterminate number, for such is fourscore and upwards.' Why, who is speaking? One who speaks logically and collectedly? No! one who immediately after says, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.' It was the half-consciousness of the foolish, fond old man' which Shakespeare meant to express by the mixture of a determinate and an indeterminate idea-a depth of poetical truth which Stevens and Ritson call the interpolation of some foolish player.'"-Knight.

"To make him EVEN o'er the time he has lost”—i. e. It is dangerous to make what has passed during his insanity plain or level to his mind, in his present unsettled state.

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"HERE is the guess of their TRUE strength❞—The quartos, with as clear a sense, give "Hard is the guess of their great strength." According to the folio, which text we have adopted, we must suppose that Edmund hands to Albany some paper, containing a statement of the guess" of the strength of the enemy.

"And hardly shall I CARRY OUT MY SIDE"-To carry out a side was an old idiomatic expression for success, probably derived from playing games in which different sides were taken. In one of the "Paston Letters," we read "Heydon's son hath borne out his side stoutly here." In "The Maid's Tragedy," (Beaumont and Fletcher,) Dula refuses the aid of Aspatia, saying, "She will pluck down a side," meaning, that if they were to be partners, Aspatia would lose the game. To pluck down a side was, therefore, the reverse of carrying out a side. Edmund observes that he should hardly be able to win the game he was playing, while the husband of Goneril was living.-COLLIER.

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common exclamation of the time, which occurs in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, "What the good year, my lord," which has been sometimes mistaken by the commentators for an illusion to the "goujeers" or goujeres. Farmer accuses Florio of a similar blunder, in rendering mal anno a good year; the fact is, that he translates it properly an ill year, in both editions of his Italian Dictionary, in 1598 and 1611, without mentioning good year at all.-COLLIER.

Knight, however, retains the "good year" and adopts the explanation of Tieck, the celebrated German translator and critic, who thus lectures the English editors for not understanding their own native language :—

"The good yeares' of the folio is used ironically for the bad year-the year of pestilence; and, like il mal anno of the Italians, had been long used as a curse in England. And yet the editors, who understood the Poet as little as their own language, made out of this -the goujeers-morbus gallicus. Why, even old Florio, who might have known pretty well, is tutored that, when he translates it il mal anno by good year, he ought to have written goujeers."

"The which IMMEDIACY."-Nares, in his valuable glossary, says "that this word, so far as is known, is peculiar to this passage;" it was probably the Poet's own coinage to express the close and immediate delegation of power without any thing intervening, as the adjective immediate is used in HAMLET; "the most immediate to the throne."

"— THE WALLS are thine"-A metaphorical phrase, signifying to surrender, like a town.

"The let-alone lies not in your good will."-Albany tells his wife, that though she has a good will to obstruct her sister's love, it is not in her power.

"Trust to thy single virtue"- "Virtue" here signifies valour; a Roman sense of the word. Raleigh says, "The conquest of Palestine with singular virtue they achieved."

"Upon this call o' the trumpet"—This is according to the ceremonials of the trial by combat:-"The appellant and his procurator first come to the gate. The constable and marshal demand, by voice of herald, what he is and why he comes so arrayed.-SELDEN'S "Duello."

The critic who is disposed to denounce the introduction of the laws and principles of chivalry into the reign of Lear, must recollect that this refers to that period of British history of which Geoffrey of Monmouth and his Armorican original are the annalists. If we are to receive the times of Lear and his successors historically at all, we must take them as these authors describe them, and they expressly describe the usages and opinions of chivalry, its tournaments and knights, "its ladies and its pomp," as in full glory under King Arthur, five hundred years before the Christian era.

"And that thy TONGUE some 'SAY"-" "Say" is assay, i. e. sample or taste, and is often found in this form in the old poets and dramatists.

"Ask me not what I know"--Albany again appeals to Goneril whether she knows the paper, and in all the quartos the answer is assigned to her, who then goes out. The folio, having fixed her exit after "Who can arraign me for't?" transfers "Ask me not what I know" to Edmund, which is followed in Knight's edition. The internal evidence is not decisive either way.

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from some omission, or other error of the press, in the only old copies which preserve it, and our readers have seen in the "Introductory Remarks" to this play, the careless manner in which those first editions were printed. Jackson boldly conjectures, "would have seemed a pyramid," and reads in the next line but one, "to amplify truth much;" which gives another equally harsh meaning. Until some more satisfactory emendation is proposed, nothing can be done beyond giving the reader the substance of the explanations of former commentators, which are far from satisfactory.

Stevens gives the following explanation: - "This would have seemed a period to such as love not sorrow, but-another, i. e. but I must add another, i. e. another period, another kind of conclusion to my story, such as will increase the horrors of what has been already told." It will be neccessary, if we admit this interpretation, to point the passage thus:

but another :

(To amplify too much, would make much more,
And top extremity,)
Whilst I was big, &c.

Malone's explanation is:-"This would have seemed the utmost completion of woe, to such as do not delight in sorrow, but another, of a different disposition, to amplify misery, would give more strength to that which hath too much;'"-referring to the bastard's desiring to hear more, and to Albany's thinking that enough had been said.

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- threw ME on my father"-So every old copy; but many editors read "threw him on my father," because, says Stevens, in a note of his, "there is a tragic propriety in Kent's throwing himself on his deceased friend, but this is lost in the act of clumsily tumbling a son over the lifeless remains of his father." Yet as the old text is clear in every original edition containing the lines, and as it is not likely that ME should have been mistaken for HIM, I have (with Malone and Collier) adhered to the old text, admitting, that it is more natural that Kent, in grief, should have thrown himself upon Gloster, than that, in his violence, he should have thrown himself upon his father's body. "Who dead? Speak, man"-We follow the folio: the quartos with many modern editions, read thus:Gent. It's hot, it smokes: it came from the heart of, Alb. Who, man? speak.

In the next line but one, "she hath confess'd it" of the quarto seems more proper than "she confesses it" of the folio.

"Is this the promis'd end"-i. e. the promised end of the world, according to the interpretation of Monck Mason. Consistently with this, Edgar returns "Or image of that horror ?" i. e. Or only a resemblance of that dread day ?-just as Macbeth calls the murdered Duncan "the great doom's image."

"Fall and cease."-Albany is looking on the pains employed by Lear to recover his child, and knows to what miseries he must survive, when he finds them to be ineffectual. Having these images present to his eyes and imagination, he cries out, "Rather fall, and cease to be, at once, than continue in existence only to be wretched." So, in ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, to cease is used for to die; and in HAMLET, the death of majesty is called "the cease of majesty." Again, in ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL:

Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cease! Both suffer under this complaint you bring, And both shall cease, without your remedy.-STEVENS. The word is used in nearly the same sense in a former scene in this play.

- of two she lov'd AND haled."-The meaning of this passage appears to be this :-If Fortune, to display the plenitude of her power, should brag of two persons, one of whom she had highly elevated, and the other she had wofully depressed, we now behold the latter.

The quarto reads, "She loved or hated," which confirms this explanation; but either reading will express the same sense.-M. MASON.

If we take the folio reading, "loved and hated," is not this the sense?-"If Fortune should boast of two persons who had in turn received her highest favours and injuries, Lear is one of them." In other words, there can be but one besides Lear who has suffered such reverses.

"This is a dull sight."-Some have taken this in the sense of Macbeth's "This is a sorry sight." But it surely refers to Lear's consciousness of his failing eyesight, one of the common prognostics of the approach of death from the decay of nature, as Lear is here painted.

"have FORDONE themselves"-We have before been told in this scene that Goneril" fordid herself" or destroyed herself. One of the quartos has "fordoome themselves," the other quartos print it fordoom'd. Nevertheless, only Goneril had "fordone"

herself.

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"And my POOR FOOL is hang'd."-Poor fool was, in the language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, a common phrase of affectionate kindness, applied to any person or thing, where some feeling for helplessness or misfortune was mixed with natural tenderness, somewhat as we now familiarly say "poor thing," in commiseration or endearment.

Thus Shakespeare, in his poem of VENUS AND ADONIS, applies it to the young lover :

The poor fool prays that he may depart. Beatrice sportively calls her own heart thus: "poor fool, it keeps on the windy side of care." Brooke, in his "Romeus and Juliet," which our Poet had so largely used in his play, thus applies the phrase to his hero :

Ne how to unloose his bonds, does the poor fool devise. Many similar passages have been collected by the commentators. With this customary and familiar use of the phrase, when the whole interest of the scene is fixed on Cordelia's death, and Lear himself is in the same breath addressing her, (" And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,") it seems to me evident that it is to Cordelia alone that the phrase can allude. But Sir Joshua Reynolds maintains that the Poet here meant to inform his audience of the fate of the Fool, who has been silently withdrawn from the scene. He has supported this opinion with so much ingenuity as to the main question, and with such just and delicate criticisms as to collateral points, that his note cannot be omitted here. We inclose it in the substance of the opposing arguments of Stevens and Malone :

"This is an expressson of tenderness for his dead Cordelia, (not his Fool, as some have thought,) on whose lips he is still intent, and dies away while he is searching there for indications of life.

"Poor fool, in the age of Shakespeare, was an expression of endearment. So, in KING Henry VI., PART III. :

So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean. Again, in ROMEO and Juliet:—

And, pretty fool, it stinted and said-ay. Again, in the Two GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, where Julia is speaking of her lover, Proteus :

Alas, poor fool! why do I pity him?

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