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 the loves him with an enraged affection,-it is past the infinite of thought."

D. PEDRO. May be, fhe doth but counterfeit.
CLAUD. 'Faith, like enough.

LEON. O God! counterfeit! There never was

7 but that he loves him with an enraged affection,-it is past 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 fentences are jumbled together and made one. Forbut that he loves him with an enraged affection, is only part of a fentence, which should conclude thus,—is most certain. But a new idea ftriking the speaker, he leaves his fentence unfinished, and turns to another,—It is paft the infinite of thought,—which is likewife left unfinished; for it fhould conclude thus-to say how great that affection is. Those broken disjointed fentences are ufual 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 paft the definite of thought,-i. e. it cannot be defined or con ceived 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 raised only to fhow how eafily they can be removed. The plain fense is, I know not what to think otherwise, but that he loves him with an enraged affection: It (this affection) is paft the infinite of thought. Here are no abrupt ftops, or imperfect fentences. Infinite may well enough ftand; it is used by more careful writers for indefinite: and the fpeaker only means, that thought, though in itself unbounded, cannot reach or estimate 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"

STEEVENS.

counterfeit of paffion came fo near the life of paffion, as the difcovers it.

D. PEDRO. Why, what effects of paffion shows the? CLAUD. Bait the hook well; this fish 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 against Benedick.

BENE. [Afide.] I fhould 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 fhe now when she is beginning to write to him: for fhe'll be up twenty times a night; and there will the fit in her fmock, till fhe have writ a fheet of paper: —my daughter tells us all.

8 This fays the now when he is beginning to write to him: for She'll be up twenty times a night; and there will be fit in her smock, till She have writ a sheet of paper:] Shak fpeare 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

CLAUD. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jeft your daughter told us of.

LEON. O!-When she had writ it, and was reading it over, the found Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?

CLAUD. That.

LEON. O! fhe tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; rail'd at herself, that she should be fo immodeft to write to one that she knew would flout her: I measure him, fays fhe, by my own fpirit; for I fhould flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love bim, I should.

Macbeth; perhaps the paffage here quoted was not lefs grateful to Elizabeth, as it apparently alludes to an extraordinary trait in one of the letters pretended to have been written by the hated Mary to Bothwell:

"I am nakit, and ganging to fleep, and zit I cease not to fcribble all this paper, in fo meikle as reft is thairof." That is, I am naked, and going to fleep, and yet I ceafe not to scribble to the end of my paper, much as there remains of it unwritten on. HENLEY,

Mr. Henley's obfervation muft fall to the ground; the word in every edition of Mary's letter which Shakspeare could poffibly have seen, being irkit, not nakit.

"I am irkit" means, I am uneafy. So, in As you like it:

"And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools," &c.

Again, in K. Henry VI:

"It irks his heart he cannot be reveng'd." STEEVENS. 9 O! he tore the letter into a thousand halfpence ;] i. e. into a thoufand pieces of the fame bignefs. So, in As you Like it :they were all like one another, as halfpence are." THEOBALD. A farthing, and perhaps a halfpenny, was used to fignify any small particle or divifion. So, in the character of the Priorefs in Chaucer: "That in hire cuppe was no ferthing fene

"Of grefe, whan the dronken hadde hire draught." Prol. to the Cant. Tales, Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 135, STEEVENS, See Mortimeriados, by Michael Drayton, 4to. 1596:

"She now begins to write unto her lover,

"Then turning back to read what she had writ,

<< She teyrs the paper, and condemns her wit." MALONE,

CLAUD. Then down upon her knees fhe falls, weeps, fobs, beats her heart, tears her hair, prays, curfes;-O fweet Benedick! God give me patience!

LEON. She doth indeed; my daughter fays fo: and the ecstasy hath fo much overborne her, that my daughter is fometime afraid she will do a defperate outrage to herself; It is very true.

D. PEDRO. It were good, that Benedick knew of it by fome other, if fhe will not discover it.

CLAUD. To what end? He would but make a fport of it, and torment the poor lady worse.

D. PEDRO. An he fhould, it were an alms to hang him: She's an excellent fweet lady; and, out of all fufpicion, she is virtuous.

CLAUD. And she is exceeding wife.

D. PEDRO. In every thing, but in loving Benedick.

LEON. O my lord, wifdom and blood' combating in fo tender a body, we have ten proofs to one, that blood hath the victory. I am forry for her, as I have juft caufe, being her uncle and her guardian.

D. PEDRO. I would, fhe had beftowed this dotage on me; I would have daff'd all other refpects, and

and the ecftafy-] i. e. alienation of mind. So, in The Tempeft, Act III. fc. iii:" Hinder them from what this erftafy may now provoke them to." STEEVENS.

and blood-] I fuppofe blood, in this inftance, to mean nature, or difpofition. So, in The Yorkshire Tragedy: For 'tis our blood to love what we're forbidden."

STEEVENS.

Blood is here as in many other places ufed by our author in the fenfe of paffion, or rather temperament of body. MALONE.

4

have daff'd-] To doff is the fame as to doff, to do off to put afide. So, in Macbeth:

to doff their dire diftreffes."

STEEVENS.

made her half myself: I pray you, tell Benedick of it, and hear what he will say.

LEON. Were it good, think you?

CLAUD. Hero thinks furely, she will die for fhe fays, fhe will die if he love her not; and fhe will die ere she make her love known; and she will die if he woo her, rather than fhe will 'bate one breath of her accuftom'd croffness.

D. PEDRO. She doth well: if the fhould make tender of her love, 'tis very poffible he'll fcorn it; for the man, as you know all, hath a contemptible spirit.'

CLAUD. He is a very proper man.“

D. PEDRO. He hath, indeed, a good outward happiness.

CLAUD. 'Fore God, and in my my mind, very wife. D. PEDRO. He doth, indeed, fhow fome sparks that are like wit.

LEON. And I take him to be valiant,

D. PEDRO. As Hector, I affure you: and in the

5 contemptible spirit.] That is, a temper inclined to scorn and contempt. It has been before remarked, that our author ufes his verbal adjectives with great licence. There is therefore no need of changing the word with Sir Thomas Hanmer to contemptuous. JOHNSON.

In the argument to Darius, a tragedy, by Lord Sterline, 1603, it is faid, that Darius wrote to Alexander " in a proud and contemptible manner." In this place contemptible certainly means contemptuous.

Again, Drayton, in the 24th Song of his Polyolbion, speaking in praise of a hermit, fays, that he,

"The mad tumultuous world contemptibly forfook,
"And to his quiet cell by Crowland him betook.”

6 — a very proper man.] i. e. a very Othello:

STEEVENS.

handsome one. So, in

"This Ludovico is a proper man." STEEVENS,