Enter BALTHAZAR, with mufick. D. PEDRO. Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that fong again. * 2 BALTH. O good my lord, tax not fo bad a voice To flander mufick any more than once. D. PEDRO. It is the witnefs ftill of excellency, To put a ftrange face on his own perfection: I pray thee, fing, and let me woo no more. BALTH. Because you talk of wooing, I will fing: Since many a wooer doth commence his fuit To her he thinks not worthy; yet he wooes; Yet will he fwear, he loves. D. PEDRO. Nay, pray thee, come: Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument, Do it in notes. BALTH. Note this before my notes, There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. D. PEDRO. Why thefe are very crotchets that he speaks; Note, notes, forsooth, and noting! [Mufick. BENE. Now, Divine air! now is his foul ravifh'd!Is it not strange, that fheeps' guts fhould hale fouls out of men's bodies!-Well, a horn for my money, when 'all's done. 9 with mufick. I am not fure that this ftage-direction (taken from the quarto, 1600) is proper. Balthazar might have been defigned at once for a vocal and an inftrumental performer. Shakspeare's orchestra was hardly numerous; and the first folio, inftead of Balthazar, only gives us Jacke Wilson, the name of the actor who reprefented him. STEEVENS. 2 Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that fong again.] Balthazar, the musician and fervant to Don Pedro, was perhaps thus named from the celebrated Baltazarini, called De Beaujoyeux, an Italian performer on the violin, who was in the highest fame and favour at the court of Henry II. of France, 1577. BURNEY. and noting! The old copies nothing. The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. MALONE. BALTHAZAR fings. I. BALTH. Sigh no more, ladies, figh no more, One foot in fea, and one on fhore; But let them go, And be you blith and bonny; Sing no more ditties, fing no mo D. PEDRO. By my troth, a good fong. D. PEDRO. Ha? no; no, faith; thou fing'st well enough for a fhift. BENE. [Afide.] An he had been a dog, that fhould have howl'd thus, they would have hang'd him: and, I pray God, his bad voice bode no mifchief! I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it. 4 Sigh no more, ladies, figh no more, ] "Weep no more, woful fhepherds, weep no more.' Milton's Lycidas. STEEVENS. I pray God, his bad voice bode no mischief! I had as lief have heard the night-raven, ] i. c. the owl; vuntinópa. So, in King Henry VI. P. III. fc. vi: "The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time." Thus alfo, Milton, in L'Allegro : STEEVENS, And the night-raven fings." DOUCE. 1 D. PEDRO. Yea, marry; [To CLAUDIO. ]-Doft thou hear, Balthazar? I pray thee, get us fome excellent mufick; for to-morrow night we would have it at the lady Hero's chamber-window. BALTH. The beft I can, my lord. D. PEDRO. Do fo: farewell. [Exeunt BALTHAZAR and mufick.] Come hither, Leonato: What was it you told me of to-day? that your niece Beatrice was in love with fignior Benedick? CLAUD. O, ay:-Stalk on, ftalk on; the fowl fits." [Afide to PEDRO.] I did never think that lady would have loved any man. LEON. No, nor I neither; but moft wonderful, that fhe fhould fo dote on fignior Benedick, whom fhe hath in all outward behaviours feem'd ever to abhor. 6 Stalk on, falk on; the fowl fits.] This is an allufion to the falking-horfe; a horfe either real or factitious, by which the fowler anciently feltered himself from the fight of the game. So, in The Honeft Lawyer, 1616: "Lye there, thou happy warranted cafe "Of any villain. Thou haft been my Aalking-horse Again, in the 25th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion : "One underneath his horfe to get a fhoot doth falk." Again, in his Mufes' Elyfum: "Then underneath my horfe, I falk my game to ftrike." STEEVENS. Again, in New Shreds of the Old Snare, by John Gee, quarto, p. 23: Methinks I behold the cunning fowler, fuch as I have knowne in the fenne countries and els-where, that doe shoot at woodcockes, fnipes, and wilde fowle, by fneaking behind a painted cloth which they carrey before them, having pictured in it the Shape of a horfe; which while the filly fowle gazeth on, it is knockt downe with hale fhot, and fo put in the fowler's budget." REED. A falking-bull, with a cloth thrown over him, was fometimes ufed for deceiving the game; as may be seen from a very elegant cut in Loniceri Venatus Aucupium. Francofurti, 1582, 4to, and from a print by F. Valeggio, with the mottó "Vefte boves operit, dum fturnos fallit edaces." DOUCE. BENE. Is't poffible? Sits the wind in that corner? [Afide. LEON. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it; but that fhe loves him with an enraged affection, - it is past the infinite of thought. 7 7 D. PEDRO. May be, he doth but counterfeit. . CLAUD. 'Faith, like enough. LEON. O God! counterfeit! There never was but that he loves him with an enraged affection it is paft the infinite of thought.] It is impoffible to make fenfe and grammar of this fpeech. And the reafon is, that the two beginnings of two different sentences are jumbled together and made one. For but that he loves him with an enraged affection, is only part of a fentence, which fhould conclude thus. is most certain. But a new idea friking the fpeaker, he leaves his fentence unfinished, and turns to another, It is past the infinite of thought, - which is likewife left unfinished; for it should conclude thus to say how great that affection it. Those broken disjointed fentences are usual in converfation. However, there is one word wrong, which yet perplexes the fenfe; and that is infinite. Human thought cannot surely be called infinite with any kind of figurative propriety. I fuppofe the true reading was definite. This makes the paffage 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 fame fenfe in Cymbeline: For ideots, in this cafe of favour, would "Be wifely definite. i. e. could tell how to pronounce or determine in the cafe. WARBURTON. Here are difficulties raifed only to fhow how easily they can be removed. The plain fenfe is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that he loves him with an enraged affection: It (this affection) is past the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt ftops, or imperfect sentences. Infinite may well enough stand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite and the fpeaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or ellimate the degree of her paffion. 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 fimilar expreffion in King John: Beyond the infinite and boundless reach "Of mercy" counterfeit of paffion came fo near the life of paffion, as fhe discovers it. D. PEDRO. Why, what effects of paffion fhows fhe? CLAUD. Bait the hook well; this fifh will bite. [Afide. LEON. What effects, my lord! She will fit 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 affaults of affection. LEON. I would have fworn it had, my lord; efpecially againfi Benedick. BENE. [Afide.] Ifhould think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow fpeaks it: knavery cannot, fure, hide himself in fuch reverence. CLAUD. He hath ta'en the infection; hold it up. [Afide. D. PEDRO. Hath fhe made her affection known to Benedick? LEON. No; and fwears fhe never will: that's her torment. CLAUD. 'Tis true, indeed; fo your daughter fays: Shall I, fays fhe, that have fo oft encounter'd him with fcorn, write to him that I love him? LEON. This fays the now when she is beginning, to write to him: for fhe'll be up twenty times a night; and there will fhe fit in her fmock, till fhe have writ a fheet of paper: my daughter tells us all. 8 : 8 This fays he now when he is beginning to write to him for She'll be up twenty times a night; and there will fhe fit in her fmock, till She have writ a sheet of paper:] Shakspeare has more than once availed himfelf of fuch incidents as occurred to him from hiftory, &c. to compliment the princes before whom his pieces were performed. A ftriking inftance of flattery to James occurs in |