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From fafting maids, whofe minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

ANG.

To-morrow.

Well: come to me

LUCIO. Go to; it is well; away. [Afide to ISABEL.
ISAB. Heaven keep your honour safe!

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Where prayers crofs.] Which way Angelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers cross that way, or cross each other, at that way, more than any other, I do not understand.

Ifabella prays that his honour may be fafe, meaning only to give him his title his imagination is caught by the word honour: he feels that his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus:

I am that way going to temptation,
Which your prayers cross.

That is, I am tempted to lofe that honour of which thou implo eft the preservation. The temptation under which I labour is that which thou haft unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the fame mode of language a few lines lower. Ifabella, parting, fays:

Save your honour!

Angelo catches the word Save it! From what?

From thee; even from thy virtue! JOHNSON.

The best method of illuftrating this paffage will be to quote a fimilar one from The Merchant of Venice, Ad. III. fc. i:

« Sal. I would it might prove the end of his loffes!

Sola. Let me fay Amen betimes, left the devil cross thy prayer.

For the fame reafon Angelo feems to fay Amen to Ifabella's prayer; but, to make the expreflion clear, we fhould read perhaps Where prayers are croffed. TYŔWHITT.

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The petition of the Lord's Prayer lead us not into temptation" is here confidered as croffing or intercepting the onward way in which Augelo was going; this appointment of his for the morrow's meeting, being a premeditated exposure of himself to, temptation, which it was the general object of prayer to thwart.

HENLEY.

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ANG.

[Exeunt LUCIO, ISABELLA, and Provóft. From thee; even from thy virtue!What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine? The tempter, or the tempted, who fins moft? Ha! Not fhe; nor doth fhe tempt: but it is I, That lying by the violet, in the fun, ' Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower Corrupt with virtuous feafon. Can it be, That modefty may more betray our fenfe Than woman's lightnefs? Having wafte ground enough,

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Shall we defire to raze the fanctuary,

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Ha! This tragedy. Ha! (which clogs the metre) was certainly thrown in by the player editors.

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STEEVENS.

That lying by the violet, in the fun, &c.] I am not corrupted by her, but my own heart, which excites foul defires under the fame benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by thofe beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON.

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"I do proteft her modeft wordes hath wrought in me a

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maze,

Though he be faire, fhe is not deackt with garish fhewes

for gaze.

Hir bewtie lures, her lookes cut off fond fuits with chaft

difdain.

« O God, I feele a fodaine change, that doth my freedome

chayne.

"What didst thou fay?, fie, Promos fie, &c. STEEVENS. Senfe has in this paffage the fame` fignification as in that above that my fenfe breeds with it." MALONE.

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And pitch our evils there? 6 O, fie, fie, fie!
What doft thou? or what art thou, Angelo?
Doft thou defire her foully, for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live :
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges fteal themfelves. What? do I love her,

That I defire to hear her fpeak again,

And feaft upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a faint,
With faints doft bait thy hook! Moft dangerous
Is that temptation, that doth goad us on

To fin in loving virtue: never could the ftrumpet,
With all her double vigour, art, and nature,
Once flir my temper; but this virtuous maid

6 And pitch our evils there?] So, in King Henry VIII: "Nor build their evils on the graves of great men. Neither of these paffages appears to contain a very elegant allufion.

Evils, in the prefent inftance, undoubtedly ftand for foricæ. Dr. Farmer affures me he has feen the word evil ufed in this fenfe by our ancient writers; and it appears from Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, &c. that privies were originally fo ill-contrived, even in royal palaces, as to deferve the title of evils or nuifances. STEEVENS.

One of Sir John Berkenhead's queries confirms the foregoing

obfervation:

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Whether, ever fince the Houfe of Commons has been locked up, the speaker's chair has not been a close-flool? "

Whether it is not feasonable to ftop the nofe of my evil?" Two CENTURIES OF PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, Svo. no date.

MALONE,

No language could more forcibly exprefs the aggravated profligacy of Angelo's paffion, which the purity of Ifabella but ferved the more to inflame. The defecration of edifices devoted to religion, by converting them to the most abject purposes of nature, was an eaftern method of expreffing contempt. See 2 Kings, x. 27.

HENLEY.

Subdues me quite, Ever, till now,

When men were fond. I fmil'd, and wonder'd how.7

SCEN E III.

A Room in a Prifon.

[ Exit.

Enter DUKE, 'habited like a Friar, and Provost.

DUKE. Hail to you, provost! fo, I think you are. PROV. I am the provoft: What's your will, good friar?

DUKE. Bound by my charity, and my blefs'd order, I come to vifit the afflicted fpirits

Here in the prifon:

do me the common right To let me fee them; and to make me know The nature of their crimes, that I may minifter To them accordingly.

PROV. I would do more than that, if more were needful...

Enter JULIET.

Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine, Who falling in the flames of her own youth, 'Hath blifter'd her report: 9 She is with child;

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I fmild, and wonder'd how.] As a day muft now intervene between this conference of Ifabella with Angelo, and the next, the a& might more properly end here; and here, in my opinion, it was ended by the poet. JOHNSON.

8 I come to visit the afflicted fpirits

Here in the prifon: This is a fcriptural expreffion, very fuitable to the grave character which the Duke affumes. "By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison."

iii. 19.

WHALLEY.

9 Who falling in the flames of her own youth,

x Pet.

Hath blifter'd her report:] The old copy reads flaws. STEEVENS.

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And he that got it, fentenc'd: a young man
More fit to do another fuch offence,

Than die for this.

DUKE.

When 'muft he die?

PROV. As I do think, to-morrow.

I have provided for you; ftay a while, [To JULIET. And you fhall be conducted.

DUKE. Repent you, fair one, of the fin you carry

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Who doth not fee that the integrity of the metaphor requires we fhould read:

Hames of her own youth? WARBURTON.

Who does, not fee that, upon fuch principles, there is no end of correction? JOHNSON.

Dr. Johnfon did not know, nor perhaps Dr. Warburton either, that Sir William D'Avenant reads flames instead of flaws in his Law against Lovers, a play almost literally taken from Measure for Meafure, and Much ado about Nothing. FARMER.

Shakspeare has flaming youth. in Hamiet; and Greene, in his Never too Late, 1616, fays he meafured the flames of youth by his own dead cinders. Blifter'd her report, is disfigur'd her fame. Blifter feems to have reference to the flames mentioned in the preceding line. A fimilar ufe of this word occurs in Hamlet: takes the rose

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From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And fets a blifter there. STEEVENS.

In fupport of this emendation, it fhould be remembered, that flawes (for fo it was anciently fpelled) and flames differ only by a letter that is very frequently mistaken at the prefs. The fame miftake is found in Macbeth, A& II. fc. i. edit. 1623:

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To fall IN, (not into) was the language of the time. So, in Cymbeline:

almost spent with hunger,

I am fallen in offence." MALONE,

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