D. PEDRO. Why these are very crotchets that he

speaks;

Note, notes, forsooth, and noting!

[Musick.

BENE. Now, Divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange, that sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies ?-Well, a horn for my money, when all's done.

BALTHAZAR Sings.

I.

BALTH. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more",
Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore;
To one thing constant never :
Then sigh not so,

But let them go,

And be you blith and bonny ;
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into, Hey nonny, nunny.

II.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
Of dumps so dull and heavy;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leavy.
Then sigh not so, &c.

D. PEDRO. By my troth, a good song.
BALTH. And an ill singer, my lord.

D. PEDRO. Ha? no; no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.

6

and NOTING!] The old copies-nothing. The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. MALONE.

7 Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,]

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Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more."

Milton's Lycidas. STEEVENS.

BENE. [Aside.] An he had been a dog, that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him and, I pray God, his bad voice bode no mischief! I had as lief have heard the night-raven 3, come what plague could have come after it.

D. PEDRO. Yea, marry; [To CLAUDIO.]-Dost thou hear, Balthazar? I pray thee, get us some excellent musick; for to-morrow night we would have it at the lady Hero's chamber-window.

BALTH. The best I can, my lord.

D. PEDRO. Do so: farewell. [Exeunt BALTHAZAR and musick.] Come hither, Leonato: What was it you told me of to-day? that your niece Beatrice was in love with signior Benedick?

CLAUD. O, ay:-Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits. [Aside to PEDRO.] I did never think that lady would have loved any man.

8

- I pray God, his bad voice BODE NO MISCHIEF! I had as lief have heard the NIGHT-RAVEN,] i. e. the owl; vuxтixopa. So, in King Henry VI. P. III. Sc. VI.

66

:

The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time." STEEVENS. Thus also, Milton, in L'Allegro :

"And the night-raven sings." DOUCE.

9 Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.] This is an allusion to the stalking-horse; a horse either real or factitious, by which the fowler anciently sheltered himself from the sight of the game. So, in The Honest Lawyer, 1616:

"Lye there, thou happy warranted case

"Of any villain. Thou hast been

"Now these ten months."

my stalking-horse

Again, in the 25th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion :

"One underneath his horse to get a shoot doth stalk." Again, in his Muses' Elysium:

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Then underneath my horse, I stalk my game to strike."

STEEVENS.

Again, in New Shreds of the Old Snare, by John Gee, quarto, p. 23: "Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, such as I have knowne in the fenne countries and els-where, that doe shoot at woodcockes, snipes, and wilde fowle, by sneaking behind a painted cloth which they carrey before them, having pictured in it the

LEON. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful, that she should so dote on signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever to abhor.

BENE. Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner ? [Aside.

LEON. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it; but that she loves him with an enraged affection,-it is past the infinite of thought'.

shape of a horse; which while the silly fowle gazeth on, it is knockt down with hale shot, and so put in the fowler's budget." REED.

A stalking-bull, with a cloth thrown over him, was sometimes used for deceiving the game; as may be seen from a very elegant cut in Loniceri Venatus et Aucupium. Francofurti, 1582, 4to. and from a print by F. Valeggio, with the motto

I

one.

Veste boves operit, dum sturnos fallit edaces. DOUCE.

but that she loves him with an enraged affection,-it is past the INFINITE of thought.] It is impossible to make sense and grammar of this speech. And the reason is, that the two beginnings of two different sentences are jumbled together and made For-" but that she loves him with an enraged affection," is only part of a sentence which should conclude thus,' is most certain.' But a new idea striking the speaker, he leaves his sentence unfinished, and turns to another," it is past the infinite of thought," which is likewise left unfinished; for it should conclude thus- to say how great that affection is.' Those broken disjointed sentences are usual in conversation. However, there is one one word wrong, which yet perplexes the sense; and that is infinite. Human thought cannot surely be called infinite with any kind of figurative propriety. I suppose the true reading was definite. This makes the passage intelligible. It is past the definite of thought,'-i. e. it cannot be defined or conceived how great that affection is. Shakspeare uses the word again in the same sense in Cymbeline:

6

"For ideots, in this case of favour, would
"Be wisely definite-."

i. e. could tell how to pronounce or determine in the case.

WARBURTON.

Here are difficulties raised only to show how easily they can be removed. The plain sense is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that she loves him with an enraged affection: It (this af

D. PEDRO. May be, she doth but counterfeit.
CLAUD. 'Faith, like enough.

LEON. O God! counterfeit! There never was counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion, as she discovers it.

D. PEDRO. Why, what effects of passion shows she?

CLAUD. Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.

[Aside. LEON. What effects, my lord! She will sit you,You heard my daughter tell you how.

CLAUD. She did, indeed.

D. PEDRO. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me: I would have thought her spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.

LEON. I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against Benedick.

BENE. [Aside.] I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.

CLAUD. He hath ta'en the infection; hold it up.

[Aside.

D. PEDRO. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

LEON. No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.

CLAUD. "Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says:

fection) is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt stops, or imperfect sentences. Infinite may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite: and the speaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or estimate the degree of her passion. JOHNSON.

The meaning, I think, is, but with what an enraged affection she loves him, it is beyond the power of thought to conceive.' MALONE.

Shakspeare has a similar expression in King John:

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Beyond the infinite and boundless reach "Of mercy." STEEVENS.

Shall I, says she, that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?

LEON. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him: for she'll be up twenty times a night; and there will she sit in her smock, till she have writ a sheet of paper 2 :-my daughter tells us all.

CLAUD. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your daughter told us of.

2 This says she now when she is beginning to write to him: for she'll be up twenty times a night; and there will she sit in her smock, till she have writ a sheet of paper:] Shakspeare has more than once availed himself of such incidents as occurred to him from history, &c. to compliment the princes before whom his pieces were performed. A striking instance of flattery to James occurs in Macbeth; perhaps the passage here quoted was not less grateful to Elizabeth, as it apparently alludes to an extraordinary trait in one of the letters pretended to have been written by the hated Mary to Bothwell :

"I am nakit, and ganging to sleep, and zit I cease not to scribble all this paper, in so meikle as rest is thairof." That is, 'I am naked, and going to sleep, and yet I cease not to scribble to the end of my paper, much as there remains of it unwritten on.

HENLEY.

Mr. Henley's observation must fall to the ground; the word in every edition of Mary's letter which Shakspeare could possibly have seen, being irkit, not nakit. The French version (as Mr. Whitaker observes in his Vindication of this unfortunate princess, 2d edit. vol. i. p. 522, &c.) "we know to talk egregious nonsense at times. It even mistakes irkit for nakit; strips the delicate Queen in the month of January, and at the hour of midnight; and keeps her in this situation toute nuë,' without even the cover of a smock upon her, writing a long letter to her lover." Irkit, Scotch, is likewise rendered " nudatæ," by the Latin translator.

"I am irkit," means, I am vexed, uneasy. So, in Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella :

"And is even irkt that so sweete comedie

By such unsuted speech should hindred be." Again, in As You Like It :

"And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools," &c. Again, in King Henry VI. :

"It irks his heart he cannot be reveng'd." STEEVENS.