ISAB. Gentle my lord, turn back.

ANG. I will bethink me:-Come again to-mor

row.

ISAB. Hark, how I'll bribe you: Good my lord, turn back.

ANG. HOW! bribe me?

ISAB. Ay, with fuch gifts, that heaven shall share with you.

LUCIO. You had marr'd all elfe.

8

ISAB. Not with fond fhekels of the tefted gold,' Or ftones, whose rates are either rich, or poor, As fancy values them: but with true prayers, That fhall be up at heaven, and enter there, Ere fun-rife; prayers from preferved fouls,*

The fentence fignifies, Ifabella does not utter barren words, but fpeaks fuch fenfe as breeds or produces a confequence in Angelo's mind. Thus truths which generate no conclufion are often termed barren facts. HOLT WHITE.

I understand the paffage thus:-Her arguments are enforced with fo much good fenfe, as to increase that stock of fense which I already poffefs. DOUCE.

8 fond hekels-] Fond means very frequently in our author, foolish. It fignifies in this place valued or prized by folly. STEEVENS.

9 - tefted gold,] i. e. attefted, or marked with the ftandard ftamp. WARBURTON.

Rather cupelled, brought to the teft, refined. JOHNSON.

All gold that is tefted is not marked with the standard stamp. The verb has a different fenfe, and means tried by the cuppel, which is called by the refiners a teft. Vide Harris's Lex. Tech. Voce CUPPELL. SIR J. HAWKINS.

2 — preferved fouls,] i. e. preferved from the corruption of the world. The metaphor is taken from fruits preserved in fugar. WARBURTON.

So, in The Amorous War, 1648:

"You do not reckon us 'mongst marmalade,

Quinces and apricots ? or take us for

"Ladies preferved?" STEEVENS.

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!

ANG.

Am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers crofs.'

way going to temptation,

Amen: for I

[Afide.

Where prayers crofs.] Which way Angelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers crofs that way, or cross cach 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 bonour: 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 imploreft the prefervation. 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 beft method of illuftrating this paffage will be to quote a fimilar one from The Merchant of Venice, A&t. 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 expreffion clear, we fhould read perhaps Where prayers are crossed. TYRWHITT.

The petition of the Lord's Prayer-" lead us not into temptation" is here confidered as croffing or intercepting the onward way in which Angelo 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.

ISAB.

At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

ANG.

ISAB. Save your honour!

ANG.

At any time 'fore noon.

[Exeunt LuCIO, ISABELLA, and Provost.

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 the; 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 feason. Can it be,
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightnefs? Having waste ground
enough,

Shall we defire to raze the fanctuary,

4-Ha!] This tragedy-Ha! (which clogs the metre) was certainly thrown in by the player editors. STEEVENS,

it is I,

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 those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON.

Can it be,

That modefty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightnefs?] So, in Promos and Caffandra, 1578:

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

maze,

Though the 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 didft 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.

And pitch our evils there?" 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 steal themselves. What? do I love
her,

That I defire to hear her speak again,

And feast 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 ftir my temper; but this virtuous maid

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 allu

fion.

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

One of Sir John Berkenhead's queries confirms the foregoing

obfervation :

"Whether, ever fince the Houfe of Commons has been locked up, the fpeaker's chair has not been a clofe-ftool ?"

"Whether it is not seasonable to stop the nofe of my evil?” Two CENTURIES OF PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, 8vo. no date. MALONE.

No language could more forcibly exprefs the aggravated profigacy 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 eastern method of expreffing contempt. See 2 Kings, x. 27.

HENLEY.

H

Subdues me quite ;-Ever, till now,

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

SCENE III.

A Room in a Prifon.

[Exit.

Enter DUKE, babited like a Friar, and Provost.
DUKE. Hail to you, provoft! 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 blister'd her report: She is with child;

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

8 I come to vifit 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." 1 Pet. iii. 19. WHALLEY.

• Who falling in the flames of her own youth,

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