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

For thou doft fear the soft 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 deftiny 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 struggle between Death and the Fool; the figures of which were moft 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 stage, 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 murs'd by bafenefs:] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly miftaken in fuppofing that by bafenefs is meant felf-love, here affigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakspeare only meant to obferve, that a minute analyfis of life at once destroys that fplendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can difplay, or luxury enjoy, is procured by bafenefs, 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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Of a poor worm: Thy beft of reft is fleep,
And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofsly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more.' Thou art not thyfelf;*
For thou exift'ft on many a thousand grains
That iffue out of duft: Happy thou art not:
For what thou haft not, ftill thou ftriv'ft to get;
And what thou haft, forget'ft: Thou art not certain;

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Of a poor worm:] Worm is put for any creeping thing or ferpent. Shakspeare fuppofes falfely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a ferpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction; a ferpent's tongue is foft, but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be foft. In A Midsummer Night's Dream he has the fame notion:

With doubler tongue

"Than thine, O ferpent, never adder ftung." JOHNSON. Shakspeare mentions the "adder's fork" in Macbeth; and might have caught this idea from old tapestries or paintings, in which the tongues of ferpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow. STEEVENS,

3 Thy best of reft is fleep,

And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofsly fearf

Thy death, which is no more.] Evidently from the following paffage of Cicero: "Habes fomnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, & dubitas quin fenfus in morte nullus fit, cum in ejus fimulacro videas effe nullum fenfum." But the Epicurean infinuation is, with great judgement, omitted in the imitation. WARBURTON.

Here Dr. Warburton might have found a fentiment worthy of his animadverfion. I cannot without indignation find Shakspeare faying, that death is only fleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a fentence which in the friar is impious, in the reafoner is foolith, and in the poet trite and vulgar. JOHNSON.

This was an overfight in Shakspeare; for in the fecond scene of the fourth act, the Provoft fpeaks of the defperate Barnardine, as one who regards death only as a drunken fleep. STEEVENS.

I apprehend Shak speare means to fay no more, than that the paflage from this life to another is as eafy as fleep; a position in which there is furely neither folly nor impiety. MALONE.

4 Thou art not thyfelf;] Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external affiftance, thou fubfifteft upon foreign matter, and haft no power of producing or continuing thy own being.

JOHNSON.

For thy complexion fhifts to ftrange effects,"
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an afs, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'ft thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee: Friend haft thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee fire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curfe the gout, ferpigo,' and the rheum,
For ending thee no fooner: Thou haft nor youth,
nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's fleep,

Dreaming on both: for all thy bleffed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palfied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,

5 -frange effects,] For effects read affects; that is, affections. paffions of mind, or diforders of body variously affected. So, in Othello:

"The young affects." JOHNSON.

6 like an afs, whfe back with ingots bows,] This fimile is far more ancient than Shakspeare's play. It occurs in T. Churchyard's Difcourfe of Rebellion, &c. 1570:

"Rebellion thus, with paynted vizage brave,

"Leads out poore foules (that knowes not gold from glas) "Who beares the packe and burthen like the affe."

STEEVENS, 7 -ferpigo,] The ferpigo is a kind of tetter. STEEVENS, Thou haft nor youth, nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's fleep,

Dreaming on both :] This is exquifitely imagined. When we are young, we bufy ourselves in forming schemes for fucceeding time, and mifs the gratifications that are before us; when we are old, we amufe the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; fo that our life, of which no part is filled with the bufinefs of the present time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the defigns of the evening. JOHNSON.

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-palfied eld;] Eld is generally used for old age, decrepitude It is here put for old people, perfons worn with years.

So, in Marston's Dutch Courtefan, 1604:

"Let colder eld their ftrong objections move."

Thou haft neither heat,' affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this,

Again, in our author's Merry Wives of Windfor: "The fuperftitious idle-headed eld." Gower ufes it for age as opposed to youth:

"His elde had turned into youth."

De Confeffione Amantis, Lib. V. fol. 106. STEEVENS. for all thy bleffed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palfied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,

Thou haft neither heat, &c.] The drift of this period is to prove, that neither youth nor age can be faid to be really enjoyed, which, in poetical language, is,-We have neither youth nor age. But how is this made out? That age is not enjoyed, he proves by recapitulating the infirmities of it, which deprive that period of life of all fenfe of pleasure. To prove that youth is not enjoyed, he ufes these words:

-for all thy bleffed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palfied eld;

Out of which, he that can deduce the conclufion, has a better knack at logic than I have. I fuppofe the poet wrote,

For pall'd, thy blazed youth

Becomes affuaged; and doth beg the alms

Of palfied eld;

i. e. when thy youthful appetite becomes palled, as it will be in the very enjoyment, the blaze of youth is at once affuaged, and thou immediately contracteft the infirmities of old age; as particularly the palfy and other nervous diforders, confequent on the inordinate use of fenfual pleasures. This is to the purpose; and proves youth is not enjoyed, by fhewing the fhort duration of it. WARBURTON.

Here again I think Dr. Warburton totally mistaken. Shakspeare declares that man has neither youth nor age; for in youth, which is the happiest time, or which might be the happieft, he commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is dependent on palfied eld: muft beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice; and being very niggardly fupplied, becomes as aged, looks, like an old man, on happiness which is beyond his reach. And, when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchafe of all that formerly excited his defires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment;

- has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make his riches leafant.-

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes thefe odds all even.

CLAUD.

I humbly thank you. To fue to live, I find, I seek to die; And, feeking death, find life: Let it come on.

I have explained this paffage according to the prefent reading, which may stand without much inconvenience; yet I am willing to perfuade my reader, because I have almoft perfuaded myself, that our author wrote,

— for all thy blafted youth

Becomes as aged- JOHNSON.

The fentiment contained in thefe lines, which Dr. Johnfon has explained with his ufual precifion, occurs again in the forged letter that Edmund delivers to his father, as written by Edgar; K. Lear, A& I. fc. ii: "This policy, and reverence of age, makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them." The words above, printed in Italicks, fupport, I think, the reading of the old copy," bleed youth," and fhew that any emendation is unnecellary.

MALONE.

3 beat, affection, limb, nor beauty,] But how does beauty make riches pleajant? We should read bounty, which completes the fenfe, and is this; thou haft neither the pleasure of enjoying riches thyfelf, for thou wanteft vigour; nor of feeing it enjoyed by others, for thou wanteft bounty. Where the making the want of bounty as inseparable from old age as the want of health, is extremely satirical, though not altogether juft. WARBURTON.

I am inclined to believe, that neither man nor woman will have much difficulty to tell how beauty makes riches pleafant. Surely this emendation, though it is elegant and ingenious, is not fuch as that an opportunity of inferting it should be purchased by declaring ignorance of what every one knows, by confeffing infenfibility of what every one feels. JOHNSON.

By "heat" and "affection" the poet meant to express appetite, and by “limb” and "beauty" ftrength. EDWARDS.

more thousand deaths:] For this Sir T. Hanmer reads:

a thousand deaths:

The meaning is, not only a thousand deaths, but a thousand deaths befides what have been mentioned. JOHNSON.

5 To fue to live, I find, I feek to die;

And, feeking death, find life:] Had the Friar, in reconciling

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