Eno. This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.

Mec. She's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.

Eno. When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart, upon the river of Cydnus.

Agr. There she appeared indeed; or my reporter devised well for her.

Eno. I will tell you:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,

Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were

silver;

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water, which they beat, to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie

In her pavilion, (cloth of gold, of tissue)
O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see,
The fancy out-work nature :9 on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

[7] i. e. if report quadrates with her, or suits with her merits.

STEEVENS.

[8] The reader may not be displeased with the present opportunity of comparing our author's description with that of Dryden:

"Her galley down the silver Cydnus row'd,

The tackling, silk, the streamers wav'd with gold,

The gentle winds were lodg'd in purple sails:

Her nymphs, like Nereids, round her couch were plac'd,

Where she, another sea-born Venus, lay.--

She lay, and leant her cheek upon her hand,
And cast a look so languishingly sweet,

As if, secure of all beholders' hearts,

Neglecting she could take 'em: Boys, like Cupids,
Stood fanning with their painted wings the winds
That play'd about her face: But if she smil'd,

A darting glory seem'd to blaze abroad;

That man's desiring eyes were never wearied,

But hung upon the object: To soft flutes

The silver oars kept time; and while they play'd,

The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight,

And both to thought. Twas heaven, or somewhat more;

For she so charm'd all hearts, that gazing crowds

Stood panting on the shore, and wanted breath

To give their welcome voice." REED.

[9] Meaning the Venus of Protogenes mentioned by Pliny, 1. 35. WARBURTON.

Agr. O, rare for Antony!

Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i'the eyes,'
And made their bends adornings; at the helm
A seeming Mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,

[1] Perhaps, tended her by th' eyes, discovered her will by the eyes.

JOHNSON. The whole passage is taken from the following in sir Thos. North's translation of Plutarch. 'She disdained to set forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the riuer of Cydnus, the poope whereof was of golde, the sailes of purple, and the owers of siluer, whiche kept stroke in rowing after the sounde of the musicke of flutes, howboyes, citherns, violls, and such other instruments as they played vpon in the barge. And now for the person of her selfe: she was layed vnder a pauillion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the Goddesse Venus, commonly drawn in picture and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretie faire boyes apparelled as painters do set forth God Cupide, with little fannes in their hands, with the which they fanned wind vpon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen also, the fairest of them was apparelled like the nymphes Nereides (which are the mermaides of the waters) and like the Graces, some stearing the helme, others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came a wonderfull passing sweet sauor of perfumes, that perfumed the wharfes side, pestered with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all alongst the riuer's side: others also ranne out of the citie to see her coming in. So that in thend, there ranne such multitudes of people one after another to see her, that Antonius was left post alone in the market place, in his imperiall seate to geve audience:" &c. STEEVENS.

[2] This passage, as it stands, appears to me wholly unintelligible; but it may be amended by a very slight deviation from the text, by reading, the guise, instead of the eyes, and then it will run thus:

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her the guise,
And made their bends, adornings.

In the guise, means in the forms of mermaids, who were supposed to have the head and body of a beautiful woman, concluding in a fish's tail: and by the bends which they made adornings, Enobarbus means the flexure of the fictitious fishes' tails, in which the limbs of the women were necessarily involved, in order to carry on the deception, and which it seems they adapted with so much art as to make them an ornament, instead of a deformity. This conjecture is supported by the very next sentence, where Enobarbus, proceeding in his discription, says:

66 -----------at the helm,
A seeming mermaid steers."

In many of the remarks of Mr. M. Mason I subversive of opinions I had formerly hazarded. the misfortune wholly to disagree with him.

M. MASON.

perfectly concur, though they are On the present occasion, I have

His deviation from the text cannot be received; for who ever employed the phrase he recommends, without adding somewhat immediately after it, that would deter mine its precise meaning? We may properly say--in the guise of a shepherd, of a friar, or of a Nereid. But to tell us that Cleopatra's women attended ber in the guise," without subsequently informing us what that guise was, is phraseology unauthorized by the practice of any writer I have met with. In Cymbeline, Posthumus says:

"To shame the guise of the world, I will begin
The fashion, less without, and more within."

If the word the commentator would introduce had been genuine, and had referred to the antecedent, Nereides, Shakespeare would most probably have said---" tended her in that guise:"--at least would have employed some expression to connect bis supplement with the foregoing clause of his description. But in the guise" seems unreducible to sense, and unjustifiable on every principle of grammar. Be

That yarely frame the office.

From the barge
A strange invisible pérfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron'd in the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.*

Agr. Rare Egyptian!

sides, when our poet had once absolutely declared these women were like Nereides or Mermaids, would it have been necessary for him to subjoin that they appeared in the form, or with the accoutrements of such beings? for how else could they have been distinguished?

Yet, whatever grace the tails of legitimate mermaids might boast of in their native element, they must have produced but aukward effects when taken out of it, and exhibited on the deck of a galley. Nor can I conceive that our fair representa tives of these nymphs of the sea were much more adroit and picturesque in their motions; for when their legs were cramped within the fictitious tails the commentator has made for them, I do not discover how they could have undulated their hinder parts in a lucky imitation of semi-fishes. Like poor Elkanah Settle, in his dragon of green leather, they could only wag the remigium cauda without ease, variety, or even a chance of labouring into a graceful curve. I will undertake, in short, the expense of providing characteristic tails for any set of mimic Nereides, if my opponent will engage to teach them the exercise of these adscititious terminations, so as to render them a grace instead of a deformity." In such an attempt a party of British chambermaids would prove as docile as an equal number of Egyptian maids of honour.

It may be addeu also, that the Sirens and descendants of Nereus, are understood to have been complete and beautiful women, whose breed was uncrossed by the salmon or dolphin tribes; and as such they are uniformly described by Greek and Roman poets. Antony, in a future scene, (though perhaps with reference to this adventure on the Cydnus,) has styled Cleopatra his Thetis, a goddess whose train of Nereids is circumstantially depicted by Homer, though without a hint that the vertebrae of their backs were lengthened into tails. Extravagance of shape is only met with in the lowest orders of oceanick and terrestrial deities. Tritons are furnished with fins and tails, and Satyrs have horns and hoofs. But a Nereid's tail is an unclassical image adopted from modern sign-posts, and happily exposed to ridicule by Hogarth, in his print of Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn. What Horace too has reprobated as a disgusting combination, can never hope to be received as a pattern of the graceful:

66 -ut turpiter atrum

Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne.”

I allow that the figure at the helm of the vessel was likewise a Mermaid or Nereid; but all mention of a tail is wanting there, as in every other passage throughout the dramas of our author, in which a Mermaid is introduced.

The plain sense of the contested passage seems to be---that these Ladies rendered that homage which their assumed characters obliged them to pay to their Queen, a circumstance ornamental to themselves. Each inclined her person so grace fully, that the very act of humiliation was an improvement of her own beauty. STEEVENS.

[3] Yarely, that is, readily and dexterously perform the task they undertake. STEEVENS.

[4] Álluding to an axiom in the Peripatetic philosophy then in vogue that Nature abhors a vacuum.

WARBURTON.

Eno. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,
Invited her to supper: she replied,

It should be better, he became her guest;
Which she entreated: Our courteous Antony,
Whom ne'er the word of No woman heard speak,
Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast;
And, for his ordinary, pays his heart,

For what his eyes eat only.

Agr. Royal wench!

She made great Cæsar lay his sword to bed;

He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.

Eno. I saw her once

Hop forty paces through the public street:

And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect, perfection,

And, breathless, power breathe forth.

Mec. Now Antony must leave her utterly.
Eno. Never; he will not;

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety: Other women cloy

Th' appetites they feed; but she makes hungry,
Where most she satisfies. For vilest things

Become themselves in her; that the holy priests
Bless her, when she is riggish.

[4] Such is the praise bestowed by Shakespeare on his heroine; a praise that well deserves the consideration of our female readers. Cleopatra, as appears from the tetradrachms of Antony, was no Venus; and indeed the majority of ladies who most successfully enslaved the hearts of princes, are known to have been less remarkable for personal than mental attractions. The reign of insipid beauty is seldom lasting; but permanent must be the rule of a woman who can diversify the sameness of life by an inexhausted variety of accomplishments. STEEVENS.

[5] In this, and the foregoing description of Cleopatra's passage down the Cydnus, Dryden seems to have emulated Shakespeare, and not without success:

"--she's dangerous:

Her eyes have power beyond Thessalian charms,
To draw the moon from heaven. For eloquence,
The sea-green sirens taught her voice their flattery;
And, while she speaks, night steals upon the day,
Unmark'd of those that hear: Then, she's so charming,

Age buds at sight of her, and swells to youth:

The holy priests gaze on her when she smiles;

And with heav'd hands, forgetting gravity,

They bless her wanton eyes. Even I who hate her,
With a malignant joy behold such beauty,

And while I curse desire it."

Be it remembered however, that, in both instances, without a spark from Shakespeare, the blaze of Dryden might not have been enkindled. REED.

[6] Rigg is an antient word meaning a strumpet.

STEEVENS.

Mec. If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle

The heart of Antony, Octavia is

A blessed lottery to him.

Agr. Let us go.—

Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest,

Whilst you abide here.

Eno. Humbly, sir, I thank you.

SCENE III.

[Exeunt.

The same. A Room in CESAR's House. Enter CÆSAR, ANTONY, OCTAVIA between them; Attendants and a Soothsayer.

Ant. The world, and my great office, will sometimes Divide me from your bosom.

Oct. All which time

Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers
To them for you.

Ant. Good night, sir.-My Octavia,

Read not my blemishes in the world's report:

I have not kept my square; but that to come

Shall all be done by the rule. Good night, dear lady.

Oct. Good night, sir,

Cas. Good night.

[Exeunt Cæs. and Octa.

Ant. Now, sirrah! you do wish yourself in Egypt ?

Sooth. 'Would I had never come from thence, nor you Thither!

Ant. If you can, your reason?

Sooth. I see't in

My motion, have it not in my tongue :' But yet

Hie you again to Egypt.

Ant. Say to me,

Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Cæsar's, or mine?

Sooth. Cæsar's.

Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side:

Thy dæmon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is

Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,

Where Cæsar's is not; but, near him, thy angel
Becomes a Fear, as being o'erpower'd; therefore
Make space enough between you.

[1] Motion, that is, the divinitory agitation.

WARBURTON.

12 A Fear was a personage in some of the old moralities. In the sacred writings, Fear is also a person: "I will put a Fear in the land of Egypt." Exodus.

STEEVENS.