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P. 675, c. 1, 7. 1. all in post,-] So, in Painter's novel: "Let us take our horse to prove which of oure wives doth surmount. Whereuppon they roode to Rome in post." MALONE.

Id. L. 13. Where mortal stars,] i. e. eyes. Our author has the same allusion in A MidsummerNight's Dream:

- who more engilds the night Than all yon fiery o's and eyes of light." Again, in Romeo and Juliet:

At my poor house look to behold this night Earth-treading-stars, that make dark heaven light." MALONE. P. 676, c. 1, l. 5. which in his liver glows.] Thus the quarto 1594. Some of the modern editions have grows.-The liver was formerly supposed to be the seat of love. MALONE. Id. 1. 7. Thy hasty spring still blasts, and ne'er grows old!] Like a too early spring, which is frequently checked by blights, and never produces any ripened or wholesome fruit; the irregular forwardness of an unlawful passion never gives any solid or permanent satisfaction. So, in a subsequent stanza :

"Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring." Again, in Hamlet:

"For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy of blood;
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent; sweet, not
lasting;

The perfume and suppliance of a minute:
No more."

Again, in King Richard III.:

"Short summers lightly have a forward spring"

Blasts is here a neutral verb; it is used by Sir W. Raleigh in the same manner, in his poem entitled the Farewell:

"Tell age it daily wasteth;

Tell honour, how it alters;

Tell beauty, how it blasteth," &c.

In Venus and Adonis we find nearly the same sentiment:

"Love's gentle spring doth alway fresh remain,

Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done" MALONE.

Id. l. 14. Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white.]

The original editions exhibit this line thus:
"Virtue would stain the ore with silver
white."

Ore might certainly have been intended for

o'er (as it is printed in the text), the word over, when contracted, having been formerly written ore. But in this way the passage is not reducible to grammar. Virtue would stain that, i. e. blushes, o'er with silver white.The word intended was, perhaps, or, i. e. gold, to which the poet compares the deep colour of a blush. Thus in Hamlet we find ore used by our author manifestly in the sense of or or gold:

"O'er whom his very madness,like some ore Among a mineral of metals base,

Shows itself pure."

The terms of heraldry in the next stanza seem to favour this supposition: and the opposition between or and the silver white of virtue is entirely in Shakspeare's manner. So, afterwards:

"Which virtue gave the golden age, to gild Their silver cheeks." MALONE. Shakspeare delights in opposing the colours of gold and silver to each other. So, in Macbeth:

"His silver skin lac'd with his golden blood." We meet with a description, allied to the present one, in Much Ado About Nothing: I have mark'd

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A thousand blushing apparitions

To start into her face; a thousand innocent shames

In angel whiteness bear away those blushes." STEEVENS.

1d. l. 15. in that white intituled, I suppose he means, "that consists in that whiteness, or takes its title from it." STEEVENS.

Our author has the same phrase in his 37th Sonnet :

For whether all or more,

Intitled in their parts do crowned sit-" MALONE.

Id. 1. 40 Therefore that praise which Collatine doth owe, Praise here signifies the object of praise, i. e. Lucretia. To owe in old language means to possess. MALONE.

Id. 1. 62. Nor could she moralize his wanton sight,] To moralize here signifies to interpret, to investigate the latent meaning of his looks. So, in Much Ado About Nothing; "you have some moral in this Benedictus." Again in The Taming of the Shrew:- "and has left me here to expound the meaning or moral of his signs and tokens." MALONE.

Id. c. 2. 1. 9. Intending weariness with heavy spright;]

Intending is pretending. MALONE.

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P. 677, c. 1, 7. 18.

soft fancy's slave! Fancy, for love or affection. So, in A MidsummerNight's Dream:

"Wishes and tears poor fancy's followers." MALONE. Id. 1. 20. Then my digression-] My deviation from virtue. So, in Love's Labour's Lost: "1 will have that subject newly writ o'er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent." MALONE.

Again, in Romeo and Juliet:

"Thy noble shape is but a form in wax, Digressing from the valour of a mau.” STEEVENS.

Id. l. 22.

the scandal will survive,

And be an eye-sore in my golden coat ; Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive;}

In the books of heraldry a particular mark of disgrace is mentioned, by which the escutcheons of those persons were anciently distinguished, who “ discourteously used a widow, maid, or wife, against her will" There were likewise formerly marks of disgrace for him that "revoked a challenge, or went from his word; for him who fled from his colours," &e. In the present instance our author seems to allude to the mark first mentioned. MALONE. "Some loathsome dash the herald will contrive. So, in King John:

"To look into the blots and stains of right " Again, in Drayton's Epistle from Queen Isabel to King Richard II':

"No bastard's mark doth blot my conquering shield."

This distinction, whatever it was, was called in ancient heraldry a blot or difference. STEE

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Id.

Id.

"Her servants are all sworn and honourable." STEEVENS.

The matrimonial oath was, I believe, aloce in our author's thoughts. MALONE.

1. 25. And in his will his wilful eye he tired. This may mean-He glutted his lustful es in the imagination of what he had resolved in do. To tire is a term in falconry. So, i Heywood's Rape of Lucrece: "Must with keen fang tire upon thy flesh." Perhaps we should read- And on his will,

&c. STEEVENS.

c. 2, 1.2. Tender my suit:] Cherish, regard my suit. So, in Hamlet:

"Tender yourself more dearly." MALONE Id. 1.5. Worse than a slavish wipe.] Mote er graceful than the brand with which slaves were marked. MALONE.

Id. l. 5. or birth-hour's blot:] So, in King John: "If thou that bid'st me be content, wert grim, Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb, Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,-

Patched with foul moles and eye-offending marks,

I would not care."

Again, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream:
And the blots of Nature's hand,
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hair-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious-."

It appears that in Shakspeare's time the arms of bastards were distinguished by some kind of blot. Thus in the play above quote

"To look into the blots and stains of right" But in the passage now before us, those co poral blemishes with which children are some times born, seem alone to have been in our author's contemplation. MALONE.

Id. 1. 11. Like a white hind under the grype> sharp claws. So, in King Richard III. :

Ah me! I see the ruin of my house;
The tiger now hath seiz'd the gentle hind
All the modern editions read:

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-beneath the gripe's sharp clawThe quarto 1594, has:

"Like a white hinde under the grape's starp claws-"

The gryphon was meant, which in oer author's time was usually written grype, ur gripe. MALONE.

The gripe is properly the griffin. See Cotgrave's Dictionary, and Mr Reed's improved edition of Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. 1. p. 124 where gripe seems to be used for vulture: Ixion's wheele,

Or cruell gripe to gnaw my growing harte." FERREX AND PORREX.

It was also a term in the hermetic art Thus, in Ben Jonson's Alchemist:

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let the water in glass E be flitter d. And put into the gripe's ezz.”

As griffe is the French word for a elaw, perhaps anciently those birds which are markable for griping their prey in their ta were occasionally called gripes. STEEVENS id. l. 24. his vulture folly, Folly is used here as it is in the sacred writings, for depravity et mind. So also, in Othello:

"She turn'd to folly and she was a whore" MALONE.

Id. l. 44. - pretended;] i. e. proposed to thyse".

So, in Macbeth:

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What good could they pretend? STEEVENS, Id. 1.63 Soft pity enters at an iron gate.] Mea. ing, I suppose, the gates of a prison.

VENS.

STEL

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P. 680. c. 1. l. 7. Then kings' misdeeds cannot be hid in clay.] The memory of the ill actions of kings will remain even after their death. So, in the Paradise of Dainty Devises, 1580 : "Mine own good father, thou art goue; thine ears are stopped with clay." Again, in Kendal's Flowers of Epigrams, 1577: "The corps elapt fast in clotted clay, That here engraved doth lie." MALONE. pattern'd by thy fault,] Taking thy fault for a pattern or example. So, in the Legend of Lord Hastings, Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587:

Id. 1. 27.

"By this my pattern, all ye peers beware." MALONE.

Id. 1 37. Not to seducing lust, thy rash relier;] Thus the first copy. The edition of 1616 has -thy rash reply. Dr Sewel, without authority,

reads:

"Not to seducing lust's outrageous fire." MALONE.

Id. l. 67.

love's coy touch.] i. e. the delicate, the respectful approach of love. STEEVENS. * Id. c. 2, 1. 12. O, that prone lust, &c.] Thus the first quarto. The edition of 1600, instead of prone, has proud. That of 1616, and the modern copies, foul. Prone is headstrong,

forward, prompt. In Measure for Measure it
is used in somewhat a similar sense :
in her youth

There is a prone and speechless dialect."
MALONE.

Thus, more appositely, in Cymbeline: "Unless a man would marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone." STEEVENS.

P. 681, c. 1, 1. 5. For day, quoth she, night-scapes doth open lay;]

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So, in King Henry VI. Part II. :

"The gaudy, blabing, and remorseful day." STEEVENS.

A passage in the Winter's Tale may serve to ascertain the meaning of night-scapes here; Mercy on's, a barne a very pretty barne.'Sure some scape: though I am not very bookish, I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape." Escapium is a barbarous Latin word, signifying what comes by chance or accident. MALONE.

Id. 1. 24. Black stage for tragedies-] In our author's time, I believe, the stage was hung with black, when tragedies were performed. The hanging however was, I suppose, no more than one piece of black baize placed at the back of the stage, in the room of the tapestry which was the common decoration when comedies were acted. MALONE,

Id. l. 39. noon-tide prick ;] So, in King Henry VI. Part. III. :

"And made an evening at the noon-tide prick," i. e. the point of noon. Again, in Damon and Pythias, 1571: “It pricketh fast upon noon.' STEEVENS.

Again, in Acolastus his After-witte, 1600: "Scarce had the sun attained his noon-tide prick." MALONE.

Id l. 43. (as he is but night's child.)] The wicked in scriptural language are called the children of Darkness. STEEVENS.

Id. 1. 45 Her twinkling handmaids-] That is, the stars. So, in Troilus and Cressida : "By all Dian's waiting women yonder And by herself I will not tell you whose." MALONE. Id. c. 2. l. 18. may read the mot afar,] The motto, or word, as it was sometimes formerly called. So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609:

The word, lux tua vita mihi." Again in the title of Nashe's Have With You to Saffron

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Seemed not to stricke but smooth."

The edition of 1616, and all afterwards, read without authority: "Thy smoth`ring titles." A ragged name means a contemptible, ignominious name. MALONE.

1. 25. Advice is sporting while infection breeds;] While infection is spreading, the grave rulers of the state are careless and inattentive. Advice was formerly used for knowledge and deliberation. So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :

"How shall I dote on her with more advice,

That thus without advice begin to love her?" MALONE.

This idea was probably suggested to Shakspeare by the rapid progress of the plague in London. STEEVENS.

Id. 1. 32. and thou art well appay'd-] Appay'd, is pleased. The word is now obsolete. MALONE.

Id. l. 43.

copesmate-] i. e. companion. So, in Hubbard's Tale:

"Till that the foe his copesmate he had found." STEEVENS

Id. 1. 61. To wrong the wronger till he render right; To punish by the compunctious visiting of conscience the person who has done an injury to another, till he has made compensation. The wrong done in this instance by Time must be understood in the sense of damnum sine injuria; and in this light serves to illustrate and support Mr. Tyrwhitt's explanation of a passage in Julius Cæsar, even supposing it stood as Ben Jonson has maliciously represented it:

"Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, but with just cause," &c.

Dr Farmer very elegantly would read

To wring the wronger till he render right." MALONE.

Id. l. 62. To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,] As we have here no invocation to time, I suspect the two last words of this line to be corrupted, and would read:

"To rumate proud buildings with their bowers." STEEVENS.

Hours is surely the true reading. In the preceding address to Opportunity the same words are employed:

"Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's

rages,

Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages."

So, in our author's 19th Sonnet: "Devouring Time

O, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow."

Again, in Davison's Poems, 1621:

"Time's young howres attend her still." "To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours" -is to destroy buildings by thy slow and unperceived progress. It were easy to read with his hours; but the Poet having made Lucretia address Time personally in the two preceding stanzas, and again a little lower:

"Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage

probably was here inattentive, and is himself answerable for the present inaccuracy. MA

LONE.

P. 682, c. 1, l. 68. To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs;] The last two words, if they make any sense, it is such as is directly contrary to the sentiment here advanced; which is concerning the decays and not the repairs of time. The poet certainly wrote:

"To dry the old oak's sap, and tarish springs,"

i. e. to dry up springs, from the French tarir. or tarissement, exarefacere, exsiccatio: these words being peculiarly applied to springs or WARBURTON.

rivers.

Dr Johnson thinks Shakspeare wrote: and perish springs"

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and Dr Farmer has produced from the Maid's Tragedy a passage in which the word perish is used in an active sense. If change were necessary, that word might perhaps have as good a claim to admission as any other, but I know not why the text has been suspected of corruption. The operations of Time, here described, are not all uniform; nor has the poet confined himself solely to its destructive qualities. In some of the instances mentioned, its progress only is adverted to. Thus we are told, his glory is

"To wake the morn and sentinel the nightAnd turn the giddy round of fortune's wheel."

In others, its salutary effects are pointed out : "To cheer the ploughman with uncreasful crops,

To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light,

To wrong the wronger till he render right." | Where then is the difficulty of the present line, even supposing that we understand the word springs in its common acceptation? It is the office of Time (says Lucretia) to dry the sap of the oak, and to furnish springs with a perpetual supply; to deprive the one of that moisture which she liberally bestows upon the other. In the next stanza the employment of Time is equally various and discordant:

"To make the child a man, the man a child.” To advance the infant to the maturity of man, and to reduce the aged to the imbecility of childhood. By springs however may be understood (as has been observed by Mr Tollet) the shoots or buds of young trees; and then the meaning will be,-It is the office of Time, on the one hand, to destroy the ancient oak, by

drying up its sap; on the other, to cherish young plants, and to bring them to maturity. So, in our author's 15th Sounet:

"When I perceive that men, as plants in

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P. 683. c. 1. 1. 32. A badge of fame to slander s livery; In our author's time the servants e the nobility all wore silver badges on their liveries, on which the arms of their masters were engraved. MALONE

Id.

Id.

Id.

c. 2, l. 42. While thou on Tereus descant st, better skill. Philomel, the daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, was ravished by Terens the husband of her sister Progne. According to the fable, she was turned into a nightingale, Tereus into a lapwing, and Progne into a swallow. There seems to be something wanting to complete the sense-with better skal, but this will not suit the metre. In a preceding line, however, the preposition, with, thoug equally wanting to complete the sense, is omitted, as here:

"For day hath nought to do what's done by night."

All the copies have :

"While thou on Tereus descants better

skill."

This kind of error (descants for descant'st occurs in almost every page of our authors plays.-MALONE,

Perhaps the author wrote (I say perhaps. for in Shakspeare's licentious grammar nothing is very certain):

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I'll hum on Tarquin's ill,

While thou on Tereus descant'st bette still." STEEVENS.

47, who if it wink,) Shakspeare seldom at tends to the last antecedent. The construction is:- which heart, if the eye wink, shall fail, &e MALONE.

l. 63. When life is sham'd, and death re proaches debtor. Reproaches is here, I think, the Saxon genitive case:—when death is the debtor of reproach. So, in A MidsummerNight's Dream:

"I do wander everywhere

Swifter than the moones sphere.”

She debates whether she should not rather destroy herself than live; life being discraceta in consequence of her violation, and her death

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"Behold this pattern of thy butcheries." We meet with nearly the same expression in our author's 68th Sonnet:

"Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn." MALONE.

So, in As You Like It:

66

how well in thee appears

The constant service of the antique world." STEEVENS.

Id. 1. 66. Before the which is drawn-] That is, before Troy. MALONE.

Drawn, in this instance, does not signify delineated, but drawn out into the field, as armies are. So, in King Henry IV.:

"He cannot draw his power these fourteen days." STEEVENS.

Id. 1. 67. For Helen's rape-] Rape is used by all our old poets in the sense of raptus, or carrying away by force. It sometimes also signifies the person forcibly carried away. MA

LONE.

Id. c. 2, 1. 28. deep regard and smiling government.] Profound wisdom, and the complacency arising from the passions being under the command of reason. The former word (regard) has already occurred more than once in the same sense. MALONE.

Id 1 46. Another smother'd seems to pelt and

swear,] To pelt meant, I think, to be clamorous, as men are in a passion. So, in an old collection of tales, entitled Wits, Fits, and Fancies, 1614: "The young man all in a pelting chafe" MALONE.

Id. 1. 51. Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind.] An artful delineation, so nicely and naturally executed. Kind and nature, in old language, were synonymous. MALONE.

Id. 1. 68. To break upon the galled shore and than-] Than for then. This license of changing the terminations of words is sometimes used by our ancient poets, in imitation of the Italian poets. Thus Daniell, in his Cleopatra, 1594:

And now wilt yield thy streames
A prey to other reames;"

i. e. realms. Again, in his Complaint of Ro-
samond, 1592:

"When cleaner thoughts my weakness' gan upbray,

Against myself and shame did force me say-."

Again, in Hall's Satires, 1599:

"As frozen dunghills in a winter's morne, That voyd of vapours seemed all beforne, Soone as the Sun," &c.

Again, ibid:

"His bonnet vail'd, or ever he could thinke,

The unryly wind blowes off his periwinke." Again, in Godfrey of Bulloigne, translated by Fairfax, 1600:

"Time was (for each one has his doting time, These silver locks were golden tresses than,)

That countrie life I hated as a crime,

And from the forests sweet contentment ran."

Again, in Drayton's Mortimeriados, sign. Q. 1. 4to. 1596 :

"Out of whose top the fresh springs trembling downe,

Duly keep time with their harmonious

sowne.

Again, in Songes and Sonnettes by the Earle of Surrey and others, edit. 1567, f. 81 :

66

half the paine had never man

Which had this woful Troyan than." Many other instances of the same kind might be added. See the next note. MALONE.

Reames, in the first instance produced, is only the French royaumes affectedly anglicized. STEEVENS.

In Daniel's time the French word was usually written royaulme. MALONE.

P. 686, c. 1, 1. 2. To find a face where all distress is stel'd.] Thus the quarto, and all the subsequent copies.-In our author's twenty-fourth Sonnet we find these lines:

"Mine eye hath play'd the painter, and hath steel'd

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart" This, therefore, I suppose to have been the word intended here, which the poet altered for the sake of rhyme, So, before-hild for held, and than for then. He might however have written: "Where all distress is spell'd," i. e. written. So, in The Comedy of Errors:

"And careful hours with Time's deformed hand

Have written strange defeatures in my
face." MALONE.

Id. 1. 37. The public plague of many mo?] Mo
for more.
The word is now obsolete. MA-
LONE.

Id. l. 44. Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds ;] In the play of Troilus and Cressida, his name is frequently introduced in the same manner as here, a dissyllable. The mere English reader still pronounces the word as, I believe, Shakspeare did. Swounds is swoons. Swoon is constantly written sound or swound in the old copies of our author's plays; and from this stanza it is probable that the word was anciently pronounced at it is here written. So also Drayton in his Mortimeriados, 4to. no date:

"Thus with the pangs out of this traunce areysed,

As water sometime wakeneth from a swound,

As when the bloud is cold, we feele the wound." MALONE.

Id. c. 2. l. 30. So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
(As if with grief or travail he had fainted)
To me came Tarquin armed; so beguil'd
With outward honesty,] "To me came
Tarquin with the same armour of hypocrisy that
Sinon wore." The old copy reads:

"To me came Tarquin armed to beguild
With outward honesty," &c.

To must I think have been a misprint for so.
Beguil'd is beguiling Our author frequently
confounds the active and passive participle.
Thus, in Othello, delighted for delighting:

"If virtue no delighted beauty lack." MA

LONE.

I think the reading proposed is right; and would point thus:

"To me came Tarquin armed; so beguil'd With outward honesty, but yet," &c. So beguild is so cover'd, so mask'd with fraud, i. e. like Sinon. Thus, in the Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. 2:

"Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea." STEEVENS.

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