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persuaded to make the least abatement. Many of the magnificos, as well as traders, offered him considerable sums for it; but he was resolute in his first demand. At last, after repeated and unsuccessful applications to individuals, he assembled the merchants of the city, by proclamation, to meet him on the Rialto, where he once more exposed it to sale on the former terms, but to no purpose. After having expatiated, for the last time, on the singular beauty and value of it, he threw it suddenly into the sea before them all. Though this anecdote may appear inconsistent with the avarice of a Jew, yet it sufficiently agrees with the spirit so remarkable at all times in the scattered remains of that vindictive nation.

Shakspere's seeming aversion to the Jews in general, and his constant desire to expose their avarice and baseness as often as he had an opportunity, may serve to strengthen my supposition; and as that nation, in his time, and since, has not been famous for crimes daring and conspicuous, but has rather contented itself to thrive by the meaner and more successful arts of baseness, there seems to be a particular propriety in the epithet. When Falstaff is justifying himself in Henry IV. he adds, "If what I have said be not true, “I am a Jew, an Ebrew Jew,” i. e. one of the most suspected characters of the time. The liver of a Jew is an ingredient in the cauldron of Macbeth; and the vigilance for gain, which is described in Shylock, may afford us reason to suppose the poet was alluding to a story like that already quoted.

Richer than all his tribe, seems to point out the Jew again in a mercantile light; and may mean, that the pearl was richer than all the gems to be found among a set of men generally trading in them. Neither do I recollect that Othello mentions many things, but what he might fairly have been allowed to have had knowledge of in the course of his peregrinations. Of this kind are the similes of the Euxine sea flowing into the Propontick, and the Arabian trees dropping their gums. The rest of his speeches are more free from mythological and historical allusions, than almost any to be found in Shakspere, for he is never quite clear from them; though in the design of this character he seems to have meant it for one who had spent a greater part of his life in the field, than in the cultivation of any other knowledge than what would be of use to him in his military capacity. It should be observed, that most of the flourishes merely ornamental were added after the first edition; and this is not the only proof to be met with, that the poet in his alterations sometimes forgot his original plan.

The metaphorical term of a pearl for a fine woman, may, for aught I know, be very common; but in the instances Dr. Warburton has brought to prove it so, there are found circumstances that immediately shew a woman to have been meant. So, in Troilus and Cressida:

"HER BED IS INDIA, there SHE lies a pearl.
"Why SHE is a pearl whose price hath launch'd,"

&c.

In Othello's speech we find no such leading expression; and are therefore at liberty, I think, to take the passage in its literal meaning.

Either we are partial to discoveries which we make for ourselves, or the spirit of controversy is contagious; for it usually happens that each possessor of an ancient copy of our author is led to assert the superiority of all such readings as have not been exhibited in the notes, or received into the text of the last edition. On this account, our present republication (and more especially in the celebrated plays) affords a greater number of these diversities than were ever before obtruded on the publick. A time however may arrive, when a complete body of variations being printed, our readers may luxuriate in an ample feast of thats and whiches; and thenceforward it may be prophesied, that all will unite in a wish that the selection had been made by an editor, rather than submitted to their own labour and sagacity.

To this note should be subjoined [as an apology for many others which may not be thought to bring conviction with them] that the true sense of a passage has frequently remained undetermined, till repeated experiments have been tried on it; when one commentator, making a proper use of the errors of another, has at last explained it to universal satisfaction. When mistakes have such effects, who would regret having been mistaken, or be sorry to prove the means of directing others, by that affinity which a wrong reading or intepretation sometimes has to the right, though he has not been so lucky as to produce

at

at once authorities which could not be questioned, or decisions to which nothing could be added?

I abide by the old text,

STEEVENS.

"the base Judian."

Shakspere seems to allude to Herod in the play of Mariamne:

“I had but one inestimable Jewel

"Yet I in suddaine choler cast it downe,
“And dasht it all to pieces."-

FARMER.

Mr. Theobald is often unfaithful in his account of the ancient copies. He says, he has restored Judean from the elder quarto; but both the quartos read→→ Indian, as does the second folio. Judean is found only in the folio, 1623. In the MS. of that agen is scarcely distinguishable from u, and they who are conversant with the press well know, that if by negligence a dot is omitted over i, a compositor always considers it as an e. Hence probably the mistake in the first folio. It is surely no trivial objection to the reading Judean, that there is no such word. The country is Judæa, or Judéa, and the derivative must. be Judéan. For these reasons, I believe Indian to have been our author's word. His tribe perhaps does not refer either to Judéan or Indian, but to the pearl: A pearl richer than the whole class of pearls. His for its is common in our author.

Whether we understand pearl in its primitive or figurative sence, I strongly incline to read Indian, because, I think, the pearl would naturally bring the

people

people of the East to Shakspere's mind; the connexion in his time being considered so strong, that a contemporary author has distinguished the inhabitants of India by an epithet founded on the circumstance of their abounding in pearls:

-where the bright sun with his neighbour

beams

"Doth early light the pearled Indians."

Cornelia, a tragedy by T. Kyd, 1594.
MALONE.

544. Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk] I am told that it is immediate death for a Christian to strike a Turk in Aleppo. Othello is boasting of his own audacity. ANON.

551. Killing myself to die upon a kiss.] So, in the Second Part of Marlow's Tamburlaine, 1590:

"Yet let me kiss my lord before I dye,

"And let me dye with kissing of my lord.” STEEVENS.

554. O Spartan dog!] The dogs of Spartan race were reckoned among those of the most fierce and savage kind. HANMER.

They are again mentioned in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
"With hounds of Sparta."
HENLEY.

560. To you, tord governor,

Remains the censure of this hellish villain ;] Rymer, who had neither vigour of imagination to make a poet, nor strength of judgment to make a

critick,

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