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ás if; since 's if seems hardly imaginable. Lord Broke, Mustapha, second chorus, p. 114,—

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God, as if from power's throne he took his being."

I suspect, indeed-judging from the general tenor of Lord Broke's versification-that as if is here pronounced as a monosyllable; but this is doubtful. Chamberlayne, Love's Victory, Retrosp., vol. i. p. 261,

“All yet is silent, dark, and secret, as if

The powers of night did favour our intent."

Yet possibly Chamberlayne may have arranged the lines,—

"All yet

Is silent, dark, and secret, as if" &c.

Beaumont and Fletcher, Laws of Candy, i. 2,

Ib.,

"And as if this old weather-beaten body
Had been compos'd of cannon-proof," &c.

"Clown. Advocate's the court word for a pheasant ; say you have none. Shepherd. None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock or hen." Kenrick, in his Review of Johnson's Shakespeare, says that for the former pheasant we ought to read present; and Malone, Var. 1821, in loc., has made the same conjecture. Surely they are in the right.

Ib.,- "He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical." To be sounds awkward and uncolloquial. Qu., "He seems to me."

v. 1,-" my queen's full eyes." King Henry V., last sc., a fair face will wither, a full eye wax hollow."

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(Where we offenders now appear,) soul-vext

Begin, And why to me?""

The last words are surely a quotation.

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He dies to me again, when talk'd of;" &c.

Perhaps," Pray, no more;" &c.

2,-"

being in so preposterous estate as we are."

Quasi prosperous.

3,

"The statue is but newly fix'd; the colour's

Not dry."

Colours, surely. Herrick, Clarke, vol. i. page 132, ccxii. (The Tear sent to her from Staines),—

Springs.

"For tears no more will fall.

Nor will I seek supply

Of them, the spring's once dry;

Ib. Arrange,

But I'll devise," &c.

"She hangs about his neck: if she pertain

To life, let her speak too."

117

i. 1,

Sent.1

KING JOHN.

"Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!"

Ib.,

Madam, an if my brother had my shape,
And I had his, Sir Robert his, like him;

And [An?] if my legs were two such riding rods," &c.

The commentators quote Methusalem his page, and the like. But his in this construction, without a substantive, is a different idiom, and one of which I have met with no example; nor is there any necessity of metre to palliate such a violence on language. The folio has,-"Sir Roberts his;" whence I conjecture,

"And I had his, Sir Robert's, his, like him;

1 Compare Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5,—

"That God hath sent us but this only child;"

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where all the old copies but the first quarto read lent.—Ed.

2 The first folio is followed by the other three, by Rowe, Pope, Hanmer, and Capell; the fourth folio however, and the above editors, insert the apostrophe in the word Roberts; and Hanmer, by placing a comma after it, appears to have anticipated Walker's interpretation. Theobald, Warburton, Johnson, Mr. Knight, and Mr. Collier, have not so much as mentioned the reading of the old copies. I believe it to be the genuine one, though I must own I doubt Walker's interpretation. The double genitive, though denounced by Malone, is occasionally heard even now in the mouths of the vulgar; and, though it may not accord with modern

SEIKTIKS the additional repetition only making the ridicule more poignant.

Ib.,

"And then comes answer, like an A B C-book."

Why not restore the old form, " Absey book"? And so Knight. [And other recent editors.-Ed.]

Ib.,

"I have disclaim'd Sir Robert, and my land;
Legitimation, name, and all is gone."

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"Do, child, go to iť grandam, child;

Give grandam kingdom, and it' grandam will
Give it a plum," &c.

I suspect this is merely an old form for its. The old poets certainly employed it now and then-probably only under particular circumstances-where we should use its. Sylvester's Dubartas, i. ii. p. 10, col. 2, ed. 1621, the ague is described as

notions of grammar, it is not more repugnant to them than the double nominative," God he knoweth," or the double accusative, "God I pray him," both of which examples (not to mention others elsewhere) occur in King Richard III.-Ed.

3 See, on this point, Professor Craik's Philological Commentary on Julius Cæsar. I may observe, however, that Constance here is evidently mimicking the imperfect babble of the nursery, and that even the passages from the Silent Woman and from King Lear do not present the style of ordinary conversation.-Ed.

Ib.

2,

te Robbing the nerves of might, of joy the heart,
Of mirth the face, of moisture every part
(Much like a candle fed with its own humour,
By little and little it own self's consumer).

Qu.,

"And all for her; a plague upon her! " 4

Ha, majesty! how high thy glory towers,
When the rich blood of kings is set on fire!"

Glory, i.e., vaunting, ut sæpe.

Ib.,

"I see a yielding in the looks of France."

Compare Middleton, Triumph of Truth, Dyce, vol. v. p, 231,

"I see a blessed yielding in thy eye."

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The folio is the earliest authority for King John. I think Shakespeare wrote,

"Of hoarding abbots: set at liberty

Imprison'd angels :" &c.

4 This is the usual reading, which Walker evidently intended to alter, though, by a slip of the pen, he left it as he found it. Qu.,

“And all for her, and by her; a plague upon her."

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