I would LAND-DAMN him." "Land-damn" is probably one of those words which caprice brought into fashion, and which, after a short time, reason and grammar drove irrecoverably away. It perhaps meant no more than-"I will rid the country of him; condemn him to quit the land."-JOHNSON.

Warner, a popular contemporary poet, has a similar phrase "country loutes land-lurch their lords"—which supports Johnson's conjecture. Farmer proposes reading, "laudanum him"-i. e. poison him.

"The second, and the third, nine, and some five”— i. e. The second nine, and the third some five.

"The instruments that feel"-Leontes, at these words, must be supposed to take hold of Antigonus. "The instruments that feel" are his fingers.

"-Fie, fie! no thought of HIM"-i. e. "Of Polixenes, to whom the thoughts of Leontes naturally revert without naming him. Coleridge called this in his lectures, in 1815, an admirable instance of propriety in soliloquy, where the mind leaps from one object to another, however distant, without any apparent interval; the operation here being perfectly intelligible without mentioning Polixenes. The king is talking to himself, while his lords and attendants stand at a distance."-COLLIER.

"The very thought of my revenges that way Recoil upon me: in himself too mighty," etc. This passage is founded on a similar one in the novel of Dorastus and Fawnia:"-" Pandosto, although he felt that revenge was a spur to war, and that envy always proffereth steel, yet he saw Egistus was not only of great puissance and prowess to withstand him, but also had many kings of his alliance to aid him, if need should serve; for he married the Emperor of Russia's daughter." Shakespeare has made this lady the wife of the Leoutes of the play-not of the Polixenes; but it will be seen that Greene, the acknowledged classical scholar, exhibits as much indifference to chronology as the supposed illiterate dramatist.

"Less appear so in COMFORTING your evils"—"Comforting" is here used, as Monck Mason observes, in the legal sense of comforting and abetting a person in any criminal action.

"A MANKIND witch"-In Junius's "Nomenclator," by Abraham Fleming, 1535, Virago is interpreted "A manly woman, or a mankind woman.' Johnson asserts that the phrase is still used (in some English counties) for a woman violent, ferocious, and mischievous.

"-thou art wOMAN-TIR'D"-To be "woman-tir'd" is to be pecked by a woman. The phrase is taken from falconry, and is often employed by writers contempo

"A CALLAT"-"Callat," sometimes spelled callet, is a very old term of abuse applied to women. It originally meant merely a low mean woman, and has been derived from calle, which Tyrwhitt tells us is French for "a species of cap," ("Gloss. to. Chaucer,") or from calote, which Grey says was a sort of head-dress worn by country girls. In the time of Shakespeare, and earlier, callet was generally used for a lewd woman, a drab.

"And, LOZEL, thou art worthy to be hang'd”—“ A lozel," says Verstegan, in his "Restitution," 1605, as quoted by Reed, "is one that hath lost, neglected, or cast off his own good and welfare, and who is become lewd, and careless of credit and honesty." Spenser often uses the word.

"So sure as THY beard's grey"-The original reading is, this beard is grey," but as Leontes, in a prior scene, has told us that twenty-three years ago he was unbreeched, etc.. he cannot mean his own beard; and the annotators suppose that it is intended he should take hold of, or point at the beard of Antigonus. But we have no hesitation in adopting, with Collier, the old MS. correction of Lord Francis Egerton's copy of the folio, 1623, altering this into “thy.”

ACT III.-SCENE I.

"Fertile THE ISLE"-i. e. The "isle" of Delphos. Warburton points out a geographical blunder here, inasmuch as the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was not in an island, but in Phocis, on the continent. This is of course true; but Shakespeare had "isle" from Greene, in whom the error was less excusable, as he was Master of Arts in both Universities. In "Pandosto," Bellaria requests "that it would please his Majestie to send sixe of his noble men, whom he best trusted, to the isle of Delphos, there to inquire of the Oracle of Apollo, whether she had committed adultery with Egistus, or conspired to poyson him with Tranion." (See "Shakespeare's Library," part i. p. 20.)

"EVEN to the guilt”—i. e. Equal, indifferent.

"SILENCE"-"The word Silence is printed as a stagedirection in the first folio, without any indication of the entrance of the queen, etc. This deficiency the second folio supplied merely by the word Enter, which follows Silence. The third and fourth folios adopt the reading of the second. Malone and all the other modern edi. tors take Silence as an exclamation of the officer: so it might be; but the printer of the folio, 1623, did not so understand it, and the editor of the folio, 1632, when correcting an obvious omission, did not think fit to alter the reading. The word Silence was probably meant to mark the suspense, that ought to be displayed by all upon the stage, on the entrance of Hermione to trial.”— COLLIER.

Though agreeing with Mr. Collier in adhering to the original reading, I rather think that" Silence" (though the word is not meant as part of the officer's speech) is yet to be understood as if here silence is proclaimed in legal form; as, in a parallel scene in HENRY VIII., Wolsey says, "Let silence be commanded."

"the PRETENCE whereof"-i. e. Design, or intention; a usual sense of the word in that age. 111 For life, I prize it

As I weigh grief, which I would SPARE," etc. "Life is to me now only grief, and as such only is considered by me; I would therefore willingly dismiss it. To 'spare' any thing is to let it go, to quit the pos session of it."-JOHNSON.

"With what encounter so uncurrent I

Have strain'd, t' appear thus," etc. This passage is difficult, and Johnson confessed that he could not understand it: he proposed to read, "With what encounter so uncurrent-Have I been strained to appear thus." Stevens considers it a metaphor from running at tilt; but Mr. Amoyt has given the following explanation of the sentence:-"Hermione intends to say, Beloved as I was by you before Polixenes arrived, and deservedly so, I appeal to your conscience how it has happened that I have had to struggle against so untoward a current as to appear thus before you in the character of a criminal.'"

In

Strain is often used, in old poetry, for going awry, as Drayton describes a river-"wantonly she strains in her lascivious course." The sense may then be, what unusual interview have I so erred as to expose myself to the appearance of guilt?"

"That any of these bolder vices WANTED

LESS impudence to gainsay what they did," etc. "It is apparent that according to the proper, at least according to the present use of words, 'less' should be more, or wanted' should be had. But Shakespeare is very uncertain in his use of negatives. It may be necessary once to observe, that, in our language, two negatives did not originally affirm, but strengthen the negation. This mode of speech was in time changed, but, as the change was made in opposition to long custom, it proceeded gradually, and uniformity was not obtained but through an intermediate confusion."-JOHN

SON.

"My life stands IN THE LEVEL of your dreams”—A metaphor from gunnery: to stand in the level means to be the object at which direct aim is taken.

"I have got STRENGTH of LIMIT"-"I know not well how 'strength' of 'limit' can mean strength to pass the limits of the child-bed chamber; which yet it must mean in this place, unless we read, in more easy phrase 'strength of limb. And now,' etc.-JOHNSON. Mr. M. Mason judiciously conceives strength of limit to mean, the limited degree of strength which it is customary for women to acquire, before they are suffered to go abroad, after child-bearing."-STEVENS.

"FLATNESS of my misery"-"That is, how low, how flat, I am laid by my calamity."-JOHNSON. So, Milton, in "Paradise Lost," book ii. :thus repuls'd, our final hope

Is flat despair.

-if that which is lost be not found"-This oracle, with the change of names, is from Greene's "Pandosto." "Suspition is no proofe; jealousie is an unequall judge; Bellaria is chast; Egistus blamelesse; Tranion a true subject; Pandosto treacherous; his babe an innocent; the king shall die without an heire, if that which is lost be not founde."-(Shakespeare's Library, part i. p. 21.) The editions of "Pandosto," subsequent to that of 1588, read, "his babe innocent," and "the king shall live without an heire," etc. Therefore, Shakespeare employed one of the later impressions; probably that of 1609, the year before we suppose him to have commenced this play.

Of the queen's SPEED"-"Of the event of the queen's trial: so we still say, he sped well, or ill."-JOHNSON.

"Which you knew great, and to the hazard"—This line, in the folio of 1623, is deficient two syllables of the regular metre, and the editor of the folio of 1632 supplied them by reading "certain hazard." Malone pronounces certain of all words the "most objectionable," and supposes the lost word "to be either doubtful or fearful;" while Stevens urges that it is "quite in Shakespeare's manner." We leave the line as it stands in the oldest and most authentic copy, and as, in all probability, Shakespeare wrote it, metrical enough to the ear for dramatic dialogue, though not conforming to the regular blank-verse standard.

11

and how his piety

Does my deeds make the blacker!"

"This vehement retraction of Leontes, accompanied with the confession of more crimes than he was suspected of, is agreeable to our daily experience of the vicissitudes of violent tempers, and the eruptions of minds oppressed with guilt."-JOHNSON.

"That did but show thee or a FOOL"-Theobald would read soul for "fool;" and Warburton, "that did but show thee off a fool." I agree, with Coleridge, that "fool is Shakespeare's word," for the reasons he assigns. "1. My ear feels it to be Shakespearian; 2. The involved grammar is Shakespearian-show thee, being a fool naturally, to have improved thy folly by incon stancy; 3. The alteration is most flat, and un-Shake spearian. As to the grossness of the abuse, she calls him gross and foolish' a few lines below." This mode of speech was anciently quite common.

Would have shed water out of fire, ere done 't." That is, a devil would have shed tears of pity, ere he would have committed such an action.

"-for one so TENDER"-i. e. Tender in years. "All faults I make, when I shall come to know them. I do repent."

"This is another instance of the sudden changes inci dent to vehement and ungovernable minds."-JOHNSON "so long as nature

Will bear up with this exercise," etc. Mr. Knight was the first to restore the original metre, which, in the numerous editions of the last century, and the first thirty years of the present, were thus printed, without any reason assigned for it :

Shall be my recreation: so long as
Nature will bear up with this exercise,
So long I daily vow to use it. Come
And lead me to these sorrows.

Knight justly remarks:-"If the freedom and variety of his versification were offensive to those who had been trained in the school of Pope, let it be remembered that we have now come back to the proper estimation of a nobler rhythm; and that Shakespeare, of all the great dramatists, appears to have held the true mean, between a syllabic monotony on the one hand, and a license running into prose on the other."

SCENE III.

"Enter ANTIGONUS, with the BABE"-So in the old copies, which there is no reason for changing into child, as in most modern editions.

" and there thy CHARACTER"-By "character" is meant the writing afterwards discovered with Perdita.

"A LULLABY too rough"-So in "Pandosto:"-" -"Shalt thou have the whistling windes for thy lullabie, and the salt sea fome instede of sweete milke?"-(Shakespeare's Library, part i. p. 18.)-These verbal resemblances show that Shakespeare wrote, not only with Greene's novel in his memory, but before him.

"A BOY, or a CHILD"-Stevens says that he is told, that, "in some of the inland counties of England, a female infant, in contradistinction to a male one, is still termed, among the peasantry, a child."" This use of the word was clearly the meaning of Shakespeare; but in none of the provincial glossaries can we find an authority for such an application. On the contrary, in all the ancient writers, childe means a boy, a young man, and generally in some association with chivalry. Byron, in his preface to "Childe Harold," says:-"It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation Childe,' as Childe Waters,' Childe Childers,' etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification, which I have adopted." Nares observes upon the passage before us, that the expression "child' may perhaps be rather referred to the simplicity of the shepherd, reversing the common practice, than taken as an authority for it."

"—how the sea FLAP-DRAGONED it"-The meaning is, that the sea swallowed the ship as drinkers swallowed flap-dragons, which were almonds, or other inflammable substances set on fire, set afloat, and gulped down while blazing. Thus Falstaff says of the Prince, "He drinks candles' ends for flap-dragons."

"a BEARING-CLOTH"-Percy explains this as "the fine mantle, or cloth, with which a child is usually covered when it is carried to the church to be baptized."

ACT IV.-CHORUS.

"Impute it not a crime

To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
O'er sixteen years," etc.

"This trespass, in respect of dramatic unity, will appear venial to those who have read the once famous Lily's Endymion,' (or, as he himself calls it in the prologue, his Man in the Moon.') Two acts of this piece comprise the space of forty years; Endymion lying down to sleep at the end of the second, and waking in the first scene of the fifth, after a nap of that unconscionable length. Lily has, likewise, been guilty of much greater absurdity than Shakespeare committed; for he supposes that Endymion's hair, features, and person, were changed by age during his sleep, while all the other personages of the drama remained without alteration."-STEVENS.

Malone states that, in the comedy of "Patient Grissel," (by Decker, Chettle, and Haughton,) Grissel is in the first act married, and soon afterwards brought to bed of twins, a son and a daughter; and the daughter, in the fifth act, is produced on the scene as a woman old enough to be married.

Dr. Johnson has thus commented on the dramatic unity of time:

"By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended. The time required by the fable elapses, for the most part, between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented in the catastrophe as happening in Pontus. We know that there is neither war nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus-that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus is before us. The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions; and why may not the second

imitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination: a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation, we easily contract the time of real actions; and, therefore, willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation."

"and leave the GROWTH untried

Of that wide GAP," etc.

"Our author attends more to his ideas than to his irregular; but he means, words. The 'growth' of the 'wide gap' is somewhat the growth,' or progression, of the time which filled up the 'gap' of the story between Perdita's birth and her sixteenth year. To leave this growth untried, is to leave the passages of the intermediate years unnoted and unexamined. Untried' is not, perhaps, the word which he would have chosen, but which his rhyme required.”—JOHNSON.

"the red blood reigns in the winter's PALE”— "That is, the red, the spring blood, now reigns over the parts lately under the dominion of winter. The English pale,' and the Irish pale,' were frequent expressions in Shakespeare's time; and the words 'red' and pale' are used for the sake of the antithesis."FARMER.

In this sense we still retain the phrase, "the pale of the church," "the pale of fashion." The Poet means to retain that sense, with a remote allusion to winter's pale colours.

"Doth set my PUGGING tooth on edge"-" Pugging." and puggard, seem to have been cant words, of nearly the same meaning with the modern slang-phrase of prigging-i. e. thieving, or cheating.

"With heigh! WITH HEIGH"-The first folio has only "with heigh!" the repetition, necessary for the metre, is from the second folio.

shilling: what then will the wool of fifteen hundred yield?"

Shakespeare has here brought his agricultural knowledge to bear. We have every reason to believe that he was a practical farmer; for, after he had bought his estate in Stratford-Fields, in 1602, we find him suing one Philip Rogers, for a debt of thirty-five shillings and ten pence, for corn delivered. And, in 1605, he purchased a moiety of the tithes of Stratford, which he probably had to collect in kind. When he puts this speech, therefore, in the mouth of the Clown, we may reasonably conclude that he knew, of his own experience, that the average produce of eleven wethers was a tod of wool; and that the value of a tod was a 'pound and odd shilling.' Ritson says, 'It appears from Stafford's Breefe Conceipte of English Pollicye,' 1581, that the price of a tod of wool was, at that period, twenty or two-and-twenty shillings; so that the medium price was exactly pound and odd shilling.'"-KNIGHT.

The researches into the curious and important question of money prices, have shown that this was about the average price of the times. Wool, according to our mode of estimation, was then worth eight pence sterling the pound.

"THREE-MAN song-men all"—i. e. Singers of songs in three parts, or for three men.

"MEANS and bases”—“ Means" are tenours-inter mediate voices, between the treble and bass.

"he sings PSALMS to HORNPIPES"-" In the early days of psalmody, it was not unusual to adapt the popular secular tunes to the versions of psalms, the rage for which originated in France."-WARTON'S "History of Poetry."

"to colour the WARDEN pies”—“Wardens' are a large sort of pear, called in French poires de garde, because, being a late hard pear, they may be kept very long. It is said that their name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon wearden, (to preserve.) They are now called baking-pears."-NARES.

"A fellow sir, that I have known to go about with TROL-MY-DAMES"-Probably a corruption of the French term, trou madame. The game much resembles that called bagatelle. The Old-English title of this sport was pigeon-holes, as the arches in the machine, through which the balls are rolled, resembles the cavities made for pigeons in a dove-house.

"it will no more but ABIDE"-i. e. It will do no more than remain there for a time.

"a MOTION of the prodigal son"-A "motion" was technical for a puppet-show, of which the history of the prodigal son was here the subject.

I should blush
To see you so attired, sworn, I think,
To show myself a glass."

Perdita probably means, that the prince, by the rustic habit he wears, seems as if he had sworn to show her as, in a glass, how she ought to be dressed, instead of being "so goddess-like pranked up;" and were it not for the license and folly which custom had made familiar at such feasts as that of sheep-shearing, when mimetic sports were allowable, she should blush to see him so attired.

"For you there's rosemary, and rue; these keep Seeming and savour all the winter long," etc. Ophelia distributes the same plants, and accompanies them with similar expressions :-"There's rosemary;

that's for remembrance.

There's rue for you; we may

call it herb of grace." The qualities of retaining "seeming and savour" appear to form the reason why these plants were considered emblematical of "grace and remembrance."

"— and streak'd GILLYFLOWERS"-Gillyvors, in the folios, both here, when the word is spoken by Perdita, and afterwards by Polixenes. Dyce insists that the old spelling should be retained, as "an old form of the word."

"In the folio edition it is spelled Gillyvors. Gelofer, or gillofer, was the old name for the whole class of carnations, pinks, and sweet-williams; from the French girofle. There were also stock-gelofers, and wall-gelofers. The variegated gillyflowers, or carnations, being considered as a produce of art, were properly called nature's bastards, and being streaked white and red, Perdita considers them a proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman; and therefore declines to meddle with them. She connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of these flowers, with the art of painting the face-a fashion very prevalent in Shakespeare's time."DOUCE.

"I'll not put

The dibble in earth to set one slip of them," etc. "It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt to answer the reasoning of Polixenes: she gives up the argument, but, woman-like, retains her own opinion, or, rather, her sense of right, unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which comes over the soul like music and fragrance mingled: we seem to inhale the blended odours of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with their sweetness; and she concludes with a touch of passionate sentiment, which melts into the very heart."-MRS. JAMESON.

"From Dis's waggon! daffodils"-" An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the metre, but for the balance, for the aesthetic logic. Perhaps golden was the word, which would set off the 'violets dim."". COLERIDGE.

violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes," etc. "Johnson had not sufficient imagination to comprehend this exquisite passage: he thought that the Poet had mistaken Juno for Pallas, and says, that 'sweeter than an eyelid is an odd image! But the eyes of Juno were as remarkable as those of Pallas, and-

- of a beauty never yet Equalled in height of tincture. The beauties of Greece and other Asiatic nations tinged their eyelids of an obscure violet colour, by means of some unguent, which was doubtless perfumed like those for the hair, etc., mentioned by Athenæus. Hence Hesiod's phrase, in a passage which has been rendered

Her flowing hair and suble eyelids
Breathed enamouring odour, like the breath
Of balmy Venus.

- makes her blood look our"-The old and possibly the true reading is look on 't, which Collier retains, as meaning that Camillo observes that Florizel tells Perdita something that makes her blood come into her cheeks "to look on it."

"To have a WORTHY FEEDING”—A "worthy feeding” seems to mean a tract of pasturage, not inconsiderable, which the old shepherd considers not unworthy of his supposed daughter's fortune.

lone quotes a song from "Sportive Wit," (1666,) which implies that it was a rustic dance:

The courtiers scorn us country clowns,

We country clowns do scorn the court;
We can be as merry upon the downs

As you at midnight with all your sport,
With a fading, with a fading.

It appears, from a letter in Boswell's edition of "Malone," that it was an Irish dance, and that it was practised, upon rejoicing occasions, as recently as 1803, the date of the letter:

"The dance is called Rinca Fada, and means, literally, the long dance.' Though faed is a reed, the name of the dance is not borrowed from it; 'fada is the adjective, long, and rinca the substantive, dance.' In Irish the adjective follows the substantive, differing from the English construction: hence, rinca fada. Faeden is the diminutive, and means little reed; faeden is the first person of the verb to whistle, either with the lips, or with a reed-i. e. I whistle.

"This dance is still practised, on rejoicing occasions, in many parts of Ireland. A king and queen are chosen from among the young persons who are the best dancers; the queen carries a garland, composed of two hoops, placed at right angles, and fastened to a handle; the hoops are covered with flowers and ribands: you have seen it, I dare say, with the May-maids. Frequently, in the course of the dance, the king and queen lift up their joined hands as high as they can, she still holding the garland in the other. The most remote couple from the king and queen first pass under; all the rest of the line, linked together, follow in succession. When the last has passed, the king and queen suddenly face about, and front their companions. This is often repeated during the dance, and the curious undulations are pretty enough, resembling the movements of a serpent. The dancers, on the first of May, visit such newly-wedded pairs, of a certain rank, as have been married since last May-day, in the neighbourhood; who commonly bestow on them a stuffed ball, richly decked with gold and silver lace, and accompanied with a present in money, to regale themselves after the dance. This dance is practised when the bonfires are lighted up, the queen hailing the return of summer in a popular Irish song, beginning

Thuga mair sein lu soure ving.

We lead on summer-see! she follows in our train."

666

-'fadings,' 'jump her and thump her"-The burdens of old songs and ballads, mentioned in writers of the time.

he so chants to the SLEEVE-HAND, and the work about the SQUARE on't"-The "sleeve-hand" was the cuff, or wristband; the "square" signified the work about the bosom.

POKING-STICKS of steel"-" Poking-sticks" were heated in the fire, and made use of to set the plaits of ruffs. Stowe informs us, that "about the sixteenth yeare of the queene [Elizabeth] began the making of steele poking-sticks, and untill that time all lawndresses used setting stickes made of wood or bone."

– Clamour your tongues”—“An expression taken from bell-ringing; now contracted to clam. The bells are said to be clammed, when, after a course of rounds or changes, they are all pulled off at once, and give a general clash, or clam, by which the peal is concluded. As this clam is succeeded by a silence, it exactly suits the sense of the passage."-NARES.

Mr. Gifford thinks, with Malone, that it is a misprint for charm.

"a TAWDRY lace"-It was sometimes only called a tawdry, and it was not used for lacing, but worn as an ornament for the head or neck.

"-a fish, that appeared upon the coast"-In 1604, was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, "A strange reporte of a monstrous fish, that appeared

in the form of a woman, from her waist upward, seene in the sea." To this Malone supposes that Shakespeare alludes. In Sir Henry Herbert's office-book, which contains a register of all the shows of London, from 1623 to 1642, is entered, "a license to Francis Sherret, to show a strange fish for one year, from the 10th of March, 1635."

"they call themselves SALTIERS"-i. e. Satyrs, says Malone: men covered with hairy skins, to give them the appearance of satyrs; but possibly the true explanation is saulliers-i. e. vaulters. The servant says afterwards, that the worst of one of the threes "jumps twelve foot and a half by the squire." The stage-direction in the old copies, after they enter, is, "Here a dance of twelve satyrs," and perhaps "saltiers" is only the servant's blunder.

"by the SQUIRE"-i. e. By the foot-rule-Fr. esquierre.

"that's BOLTED"-i. e. Sifted by the northern blasts.

"-thou no more shalt NEVER see this knack”—Stevens omits never, as "absurd redundancy;" but the reduplication of negatives was a common mode of writing at the time, and the word is found in all the old copies.

"—I was not much afeard”—“The character of Perdita is here finely sustained. To have made her quite astonished at the king's discovery of himself, had not become her birth; and to have given her presence of mind to have made this reply to the king, had not become her education."-WARBURTON.

"Will't please you, sir, be gone”—“O how more than exquisite is this whole speech!-and that profound nature of noble pride and grief, venting themselves in a momentary peevishness of resentment towards Florizel:

- Will 't please you, sir, be gone!"-Coleridge. "Where no priest shovels in dust"-Before the reform of the burial-service, in the time of Edward VI., it was the custom for the priest to throw earth on the body, in the form of a cross, and then sprinkle it with holy

water.

"by my FANCY"-i. e. By my love: the use of the word "fancy" in this sense is perpetual in Shakespeare and authors of his age. (See MERCHANT OF VENICE.)

"at every SITTING"-"Every sitting" means, at every audience you shall have of the king and council: the council-days being formerly called, in common speech, the sitting. Howell, in one of his letters, says:-"My lord president hopes to be at the next sitting in York.”

"But not TAKE IN the mind”-To "take in" anciently meant to conquer, to get the better of. As, in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA :—

He could so quickly cut the Ionian seas,
And take in Toryne.

"She is i' the rear of our birth”—The original reads—