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My vouch against you, and my place i'the flate,
Will fo your accufation over-weigh,
That you fhall ftifle in your own report,
And smell of calumny." I have begun;
And now I give my fenfual. race the rein:3
Fit thy confent to my sharp appetite;

Lay by all nicety, and prolixious blufhes,"
That banish what they fue for; redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will;

Or elfe he must not only die the death,*

My vouch against you,] The calling his denial of her charge his vouch, has fomething fine. Vouch is the teftimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he infinuates his authority was fo great, that his denial would have the fame credit that a vouch or teftimony has in ordinary cafes. WARBURTON.

I believe this beauty is merely imaginary, and that vouch against means no more than denial. JOHNSON.

7 That you shall stifle in your own report, And fmell of calumny.

A metaphor from a lamp or candle extinguished in its own greafe. STEEVENS.

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8 And now I give my fenfual race the rein:] And now I give my fenfes the rein, in the race they are now actually running. HEATH. and prolixious blushes,] The word prolixious is not peculiar to Shakspeare. I find it in Mofes his Birth and Miracles, by Drayton :

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Moft part by water, more prolixious was, &c. Again, in the Dedication to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is Up, 1598 rarifier of prolixious rough barbarism," &c.

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Again, in Nafh's Lenten Stuff, &c. 1599:

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well known unto them by his prolixious fea-wandering." Prolixious blushes mean what Milton has elegantly called

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die the death,] This seems to be a folemn phrase for death inflicted by law. So, in A Midfummer Night's Dream;

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Prepare to die the death." JOHNSON.

It is a phrafe taken from fcripture, as is obferved in a note on The Midfummer Night's Dream. STEEVENS.

The phrafe is a good phrase, as Shallow fays, conceive it to be either of legal or fcriptural origin. it frequently. See Cant. Tales, ver. 607.

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They were adradde of him, as of the deth.

but I do nót Chaucer uses

ver. 1222.

But thy unkindness fhall his death draw out
To lingering fufferance: answer me to-morrow,
Or, by the affecion that now guides me moft,
I'll prove a tyrant to him: As for you,
Say what you can, my falfe o'erweighs your true.
[Exit.
IṢAB. To whom fhould I complain? Did I tell

this,

Who would believe me? O perilous mouths, That bear in them one and the felf-fame tongue, Either of condemnation or approof!

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Bidding the law make court'fy to their will;
Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,
To follow, as it draws! I'll to my brother:
Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him fuch a mind of honour,"
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up,
Before his fifter fhould her body stoop
To fuch abhorr'd pollution.

Then Ifabel, live chafte, and, brother, die:
More than our brother is our chastity.

I'll tell him yet of Angelo's requeft,

And fit his mind to death, for his foul's reft.

[Exit.

"The deth he feleth thurgh his herte fmite." It feems to have been originally a mistaken translation of the French La Mort.

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TYRWHITT.

prompture] Suggeftion, temptation, inftigation.

"

JOHNSON.

-fuch a mind of honour,] This, in Shakspeare's language, may mean, fuch an honourable mind, as he ufes « mind of love," in The Merchant of Venice, for loving mind. Thus alfo, in Philafter: I had thought, thy mind

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"Had been of honour."

STEEVINS.

ACT III.
III. SCENE I.

A Room in the Prifon.

Enter DUKE, CLAUDIO, and Provoft.

DUKE. So, then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo?

CLAUD. The miferable have no other medicinę, But only hope:

I have hope to live, and am prepar'd to die.

DUKE. Be abfolute for death; either death, or

life,

Shall thereby be the fweeter. Reason thus with life,If I do lofe thee, I do lofe a thing

That none but fools would keep: 7 a breath thou art,

Be abfolute for death;] Be determined to die, without any hope

of life. Horace,

The hour which exceeds expectation will be welcome."

JOHNSON.

7 That none but fools would keep :] But this reading is not only contrary to all fenfe and reafon, but to the drift of this moral difcourfe. The Duke, in his affumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to inftil into the condemned prifoner a refignation of mind to his fentence; but the fenfe of the lines in this reading, is a direct perfuafive to fuicide; I make no doubt, but the poet

wrote,

That none but fools would reck:

i. c. care for, be anxious about, regret the lofs of. tragedy of Tancred and Gifmund, A& IV. fc. iii :

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Not that the recks this life.

And Shakspeare, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

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Recking as little what betideth me.

So, in the

WARBURTON.

The meaning feems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A fenfe which, whether true or not, is certainly innocent.

VOL, VI.

H

JOHNSON.

(Servile to all the skiey influences,)

That doft this habitation, where thou keep'ft, 7
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to flun,
And yet run'ft toward him ftill: Thou art not

noble;

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Keep, in this place, I believe, may not fignify preferve, but care for. "No lenger for to liven I ne kepe, fays Eneas in Chaucer's Dido, Queen of Carthage; and elfewhere: "That I kepe not rehearsed be: i. e. which I care not to have rehearsed. Again, in The Knightes Tale, Tyrwhitt's edit. ver. 2240: "I kepe nought of armes for to yelpe.

Again, in

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Mery Jefte of a Man called Howleglafs, bl. 1. no date. Then the parfon bad him remember that he had a foule for to kepe, and he preached and teached to him the ufe of confeffion, &c. STEEVENS.

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Mr. Steevens's explanation is confirmed by a paffage in The Dutchess of Malfy, by Webfter, (1623) an author who has frequently imitated Shakspeare, and who perhaps followed him in the present inftance:

Of what is't fools make fuch vain keeping? "Sin their conception, their birth weeping; "Their life a general mift of error;

"Their death a hideous ftorm of terror.

See the Gloffary to Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. v. kepe. MALONE.

7 That doft this habitation, where thou keep ft, changed doft to do without neceffity or authority. is not, "the fkicy influences that do,

Sir T. Hanmer The conftru&ion but, "a breath thou art,

that doft, &c. If "Servile to all the fkiey influences" be inclofed in a parenthefis, all the difficulty will vanish.

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merely, thou art death's fool;

For him thou labour'ft by thy flight to fhun,

PORSON.

And yet runt toward him fill:] In thofe old farces called Moralities, the fool of the piece, in order to fhow the inevitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his ftratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fool at every turn, into his very jaws. So that the reprefentations of thefe fcenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. And from fuch circumftances, in the genius of our ancestors' publick diverfions, I fuppofe it was, that the old proverb arofe, of being merry and wife. WARBURTON.

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'For all the accommodations that thou bear'ft, Are nurs'd by bafenefs: Thou art by no means valiant ;

For thou doft fear the foft and tender fork

Such another expreffion as death's fool, ́occurs in The Honeft Lawyer, a comedy, by S. S. 1616 :

"Wilt thou be a fool of fate? who can
"Prevent the destiny decreed for man?"

STEEVENS.

It is obferved by the Editor of The Sad Shepherd, 8vo. 1783. p. 154. that the initial letter of Stow's Survey, contains a reprefentation of a ftruggle between Death and the Fool; the figures of which were molt probably copied from those characters as formerly exhibited on the stage. REED.

There are no fuch characters as Death and the Fool, in any old Morality now extant. They feem to have exifted only in the dumb Shows. The two figures in the initial letter of Stow's Survey, 1603, which have been mistaken for these two perfonages, have no allufion whatever to the ftage, being merely one of the fet known by the name of Death's Dance, and actually copied from the margin of an old Miffal. The scene in the modern pantomime of Harlequin Skeleton, feems to have been fuggefted by fome playhouse tradition of Death and the Fool. RITSON.

9 Are nurs'd by bafenefs:] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly miftaken in fuppofing that by bafeness is meant felf-love, here affigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakspeare only meant to obferve, that a minute analysis of life at once deftroys that fplen'dour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can difplay, or luxury enjoy, is procured by bafeness, by offices of which the mind fhrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the shambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine. JOHNSON.

This is a thought which Shakspeare delights to exprefs. So, in Antony and Cleopatra:

Again:

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our dungy earth alike

"Feeds man as beaft.

Which fleeps, and never palates more the dung,
The beggar's nurse, and Cæfar's." STEEVENS.

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