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273. they'll stick where they are thrown.] This allusion has already occurred in Measure for Measure:

“Nay, friar, I am a kind of burr, I shall stick." STEEVENS. 309. I have a kind of self resides with you;] So, in our author's 123d Sonnet :

for I, being pent in thee,

"Perforce am thine, and all that is in me."

317.

But you are wise,

MALONE.

Or else you love not; for to be wise, and love,
Exceeds man's might, &c.] I read,
-but we're not wise,

Or else we love not: to be wise and love,
Exceeds man's might;

Cressida, in return to the praise given by Troilus to her wisdom, replies: "That lovers are never wise; that it is beyond the power of man to bring love and wisdom to an union." JOHNSON.

318.

-to be wise, and love, Exceeds man's might;

] This is from

Spenser, Shepherd's Cal. March:

"To be wise, and eke to love,

"Is granted scarce to gods above."

TYRWHITT.

"Amare et sapere vix a Deo conceditur.” Pub. Syr. Spenser, whom Shakspere followed, seems to have misunderstood this proverb. Marston, in the Dutch Courtezan, 1606, has the same thought, and the line is printed as a quotation:

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"But raging lust my fate all strong doth move, "The gods themselves cannot be wise and love.”

MALONE.

328. Might be affronted with the match-] I wish "my integrity might be met and matched with such equality and force of pure unmingled love."

JOHNSON. 332. And simpler than the infancy of truth.] This is fine; and means, "Ere truth, to defend itself against deceit in the commerce of the world, had, out of necessity, learned worldly policy."

WARBURTON.

336. True swains in love shall, in the world to come, Approve their truths by Troilus: when their

rhymes,

Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,

Want similies, truth, tir'd with iteration,

-]

The metre, as well as the sense, of the last verse will be improved, I think, by reading,

Want similies of truth, tir'd with iteration.

So, a little lower in the same speech:

Yet after all comparisons of Truth. TYRWHITT, 340. As true as steel-] It should be remembered that mirrors, in the time of our author, were made of plates of polished steel. So, in The Renegado, by Massinger :

"Take down the looking-glass;-here is a mirror "Steel'd so exactly," &c.

Again, in The Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntington,

by Heywood, 1601:

"For

"For thy steel-glass wherein thou wont'st to look, "Thy chrystal eyes gaze in a chrystal brooke." One of Gascoigne's pieces is called the Steel-glass; a title, which, from the subject of the poem, he appears evidently to have used as synonimous to mirror.

The same allusion is found in an old piece entitled The Pleasures of Poetry, no date, but printed in the time of queen Elizabeth:

"Behold in her the lively glasse,

"The pattern true as steel.”

As true as steel, therefore, means—as true as the mirror which faithfully represents every image that is presented before it. MALONE. As true as steel is an ancient proverbial simile. I find it in Lydgate's Troy Book, where he speaks of Troilus, L. II. ch. 16:

"Thereto in love trewe as any stele."

STEEVENS.

340. True as plantage to the moon.] This may be fully illustrated by a quotation from Scott's Discoverie of Witchcraft: «The poore husbandman perceiveth that the increase of the moone maketh plants frutefull: so as in the full moone they are in the best strength; decaieing in the wane; and in the conjunction do utterlie wither and vade." FARMER.

342. As iron to adamant- -] So, in Greene's Tu Quoque, 1599 :

"As true to three as steel to adamant." MALONE. 344. As truth's authentick author to be cited,] Troilus

Eij

Troilus shall crown the verse, as a man to be cited as the authentick author of truth; as one whose protestations were true to a proverb. JOHNSON.

367.

inconstant men— -] Shakspere seems to have been less attentive to make Pandar talk conse

quentially, than to account for the ideas actually annexed to the three names. Now it is certain, that, in

his time, a Troilus was as clean an expression for a constant lover, as a Cressida and a Pandar were for a jilt and a pimp. TYRWHITT.

379.

Appear it to your mind,

That, through the sight I bear in things, to Jove I have abandon'd Troy,- -] I am afraid, that after all efforts to clear the argument of Calchas, it will still appear liable to objection; nor do I discover more to be urged in his defence, than that though his skill in divination determined him to leave Troy, yet that he joined himself to Agamemnon and his army by unconstrained good-will; and though he came as a fugitive escaping from destruction, yet his services after his reception, being voluntary and important, deserved reward. This argument is not regularly and distinctly deduced; but this is, I think, the best explication that it will yet admit. JOHNSON.

340. -through the sight I bear in things, to Jove] This passage, in all the modern editions, is silently depraved, and printed thus:

"through the sight I bear in things to come. The word is so printed, that nothing but the sense an determine whether it be love or Jove. I believe

that

that the editors read it as love, and therefore made the alteration to obtain some meaning.

Paris's love for Helen.

JOHNSON.

-to love, might mean-to the conséquences of STEEVENS. 406. In most accepted pain.] Her presence, says Calchas, shall strike off, or recompence the service I have done, even in these labours which were most accepted. JOHNSON. 475.

-how dearly ever parted] i. e. however excellently endowed, with however dear or precious parts enriched or adorned,

JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson's exposition is strongly supported by a subsequent line:

66

That no man is the lord of any thing "(Though in and of him there is much consisting) "Till he communicate his parts to others." So, Persius:

"Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire, hoc sciat alter."

See also the Dramatis Persona of Ben Jonson's Every Man out of Humour; “MACILENTE, a man wellparted; a sufficient scholar," &c. MALONE.

485. To others' eyes, &c.

(That most pure spirit, &c.] These two lines are totally omitted in all the editions but the first quarto.

POPE.

nor doth the eye itself,] So, in Julius Cæsar: "No Cassius; for the eye sees not itself,

"But by reflexion, by some other things."

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