(113) Unpeg the basket on the house's top,

Let the birds fly] i. e. " make a full disclosure, although you draw down ruin upon yourself." Of the popular story, to which allusion must here have been made, we find no satisfactory account.

"He had

(114) To try conclusions] i. e. try experiments. too much folowed the allurements and entisements of Sathan, and fondly practised his conclusions by conjuring, witchcraft, enchantment, socerie, and such like." Newes from Scotland, of Doctor Fian, register to the devill, &c. 4to. 1591, sign. C 2, b. See M. of V. Launce. II. 2. & Cymb. I. 6. Queen.

(115) adders fang'd] sonous teeth, undrawn.

Johnson says, with their fangs or poiIt has been the practice of mountebanks to boast the efficacy of their antidotes by playing with vipers, but they first disabled their fangs. Yet it may be, that Hamlet meant that he extended his distrust of them, even after this precaution had been taken.

(116) they must sweep my way, &c.]

some friends, that will

Sweep your way for you." Ant. and Cl. III. 9. Ant.

(117) When in one line two crafts directly meet] Still alluding to a countermine. MALONE.

"Now powers from home and discontents at home,
"Meet in one line."

K. John. IV. 3. Bast. Steevens.

(118) I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room] There is a coarseness and want of feeling in this part of the conduct, if not in the language, of Hamlet, an excuse for which we seek in vain at this time, in the peculiarity or necessities of his situation. He had now fully opened himself to his mother: there was no other person upon the stage; and there could not, therefore, be the least occasion for his assuming or affecting a character or feeling, which was not real, and his genuine sentiment.

For a violation of decorum, which cannot appear other than gross to modern ears, and may be considered as such in just conception and feeling, we can no otherwise account, than by supposing, that it must have been a compliance with the rude taste of the age; and not merely in modern phrase, as addressed to the galleries; a part of the audience frequently necessary to be conciliated, and which cannot, at any time, be altogether overlooked.

At the same time we must be careful not to conceive a higher degree of offence, than the expression used would, at the time, actually convey. The term " guts," which occurs again in Hamlet's conversation with the King, IV. 1. was a term generally used in grave compositions, where we now use" entrails ;' and even by one, who, as Steevens says, " made the first attempt

to polish the language," by Lyly, in Mydas, 1592: "Could not the treasure of Phrygia, nor the tributes of Greece, nor mountains in the East, whose guts are gold, satisfy thy mind?" He adds, Stanyhurst often has it in his translation of Virgil, 1582:

Pectoribus inhians spirantia consulit exta.

"She weenes her fortune by guts hoate smoakye to conster."

(1) Act IV] This division is modern and arbitrary; and is here not very happy, for the pause is made at a time when there is more continuity of action than in almost any other of the scenes. JOHNSON.

It had been better, perhaps, at the end of Sc. 3.

(2) Mad as the sea, and wind, when both contend, &c.]

"As mad as the VEX'D sea." Lear, IV. 4. Cord.

(3) Like some ore, among a mineral of metals base

Shows itself pure]

MALONE.

Minerals are mines. See The Golden Remains of Hales of Eton, 1693, p. 34: "Controversies of the times, like spirits in the minerals, with all their labour, nothing is done." And Hall's Virgidemiarum, Lib. VI. :

"Shall it not be a wild fig in a wall,
"Or fired brimstone in a minerall ?"

STEEVENS.

A mineral is then here used for a mass or compound mine of metals, and is a word of plurality; and the sense is " among mixed beds or strata of base, a vein of precious metal," called ore by Shakespeare, shows itself: though he seems not to have been aware, says Johnson, that " base metals have ore no less than precious."

(4) Whose whisper, &c.] i. e. the rumour of our further intention, and of what has been unreasonably, or inconsiderately done.

(5) cannon to his blank] i. e. pointed without any elevation, but direct, horizontally and level with the white mark in the centre of the object. Steevens cites :

let me still remain

"The true blank of thine eye." Lear.

(6) Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin] i. e. " dust to dust"-mixed, made one, with mother earth; interred in its more literal sense in decent and due form and order set out, or, more technically, laid out.

The Latin word, compono, seems to have answered each of these senses. "Componens (i. e. committens, commingling) manibus manus." En. VIII. 486. "Omnes composui." I have buried them all. Hor. I. Sat. IX. 28. So, composuere, Taciti Histor. I. 47. and " paucioribus tamen lachrymis compositus es." Vita Agricola. 45. See Persium Delph. Sat. III. 104. Malone

cites :

"Only compound me with forgotten dust." II. H. IV. "When I perhaps compounded am with clay." Sonn. 71.

(7) Keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw] i. e. as an ape keeps food. So " your chamber-lie breeds fleas, like a loach; i. e. as fast as a loach breeds, I. H. IV. “They flatter me, like a dog;" i. e. as a dog fawns upon his master. Lear. MALONE.

"It is the way of monkeys in eating, to throw that part of their food, which they take up first, into a pouch they are provided with on each side of their jaw, and there they keep it, till they have done with the rest." HANMER.

Ritson observes, that apple, the reading of the quartos instead of ape, is a mere typographical error; though the meaning is clearly, as an ape does an apple."

(8) and, sponge, you shall be dry again]

"He's but a spunge, and shortly needs must leese

"His wrong-got juice, when greatnes' fits shall squeese "His liquor out." Marst. Sat. 7. STEEVENS.

"When princes (as the toy takes them in the head) have used courtiers as sponges to drinke what juice they can from the poore people, they take pleasure afterwards to wring them out into their owne cisternes." R. C.'s Henr. Steph. Apology for Herodotus, Fo. 1608. p. 81.

Vespasian, when reproached for bestowing high office upon persons most rapacious, answered, "that he served his turne with such officers as with spunges, which, when they had drunke their fill, were then fittest to be pressed." Barnabe Rich's Faultes, faults and nothing else but faults, 4to. 1606, p. 44, b. See Suetonius, Vespas. c. 16.

(9) Of nothing] Presumptuously interrupted, he fills up his sentence with the tag of an old proverb. That it was such, the commentators shew:

"In troth, my lord, it is a thing of nothing."

66

Spanish Tragedy.

a silly bug-beare, a sorry

And in one of Harvey's Letters, puffe of winde, a thing of nothing." FARMER.

So, in Decker's Match me in London, 1631: "At what dost thou laugh?

"At a thing of nothing, at thee."

STEEVENS.

Steevens has given [i. e. edit. 1778] many parallelisms; but the origin of all is to be looked for, I believe, in the 144th Psalm, ver. 5: "Man is like a thing of nought." Steevens must have observed, that the Book of Common Prayer, and the translation of the Bible into English, furnished our old writers with many forms of expression, some of which are still in use.

WHALLEY.

(10) Hide fox, &c.] Our unhandsome faced poet does play at bo-peep with your grace, and cries—All hid, as boys do.” Decker's Satiromastix. "All hid, all hid," as in L. L. L. IV. 3. Bir. is the children's cry at hide and seek.

(11) go a progress through the guts] Alluding to the royal journeys of state, always styled progresses; a familiar idea to those who, like our author, lived during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. STEEVENS.

:

Nicholls, the printer, has published several of them and the journeys of business made by colleges and public bodies are still so denominated. For the use of the term guts, see III. 4. Haml.

(12) the wind at help] i. e. fair, ready at hand. "Here's help at hand" is a familiar phrase. Steevens notices a similar phraseology in Pericles.

I'll leave it

"At careful nursing."

(13) and thy free awe] Under a singular combination, free here must mean ready, or prompt. The use of this word throughout our author is uncommon, and its meaning of course frequently not obvious. We have

The free maids, that weave their thread with bones."
Tw. N. II. 4. Duke.

"We have thought it good

"From our free person she should be confined.”

Wint. T. II. 1. Leon.

Macb. III. 6. Lord.

"Do faithful service, and receive free honors."

(14) By letters conjuring to that effect] In V. 2. we have "Wilt thou know the effect of what I wrote ?

"An earnest conjuration from the king." Haml.

And in this sense of earnest solicitation or entreaty this word was used in the original quarto of Ro. and Jul. 1597.

"I do defy thy conjurations." V. 3. Par. The word conjúre, in the sense of " entreat, implore, or supplicate," is not known to the dictionary writers of our author's day; nor throughout our author is the word conjure any where, as we recollect, used in that sense, with the accentuation, plainly and clearly, as is the modern use, thrown upon the last syllable. In its original accentuation and sense, in numberless pages of our author, and in Baret's Alvearie, 1580, and Minshieu, 1617, a year after our author's death, to conjure is interpreted to adjure, obtest, join together in calling upon heaven in the exercise of magical rites, to exorcise and so only and in Dr. Pryce's Cornish Vocabulary, 4to. 1790, we find "Conjor, to adjure, conjure."

In Miege's Great English and French Orthographical Dict. fo. 1688, the noun is rendered "enchantement" and the verb in its different senses "exorcise and supplicate." And see Ro. and Jul. II. 1. Merc.

"I cònjure thee" and "conjùr'd it down"

where the word in the same sense is differently accentuated, the only instance in which such a thing has occurred. In Skinner fo. 1671 the word does not occur at all: for conjuring the quartos read congruing.

(16) We shall express our duty in his eye] i. e. " before him, in his presence." A familiar phrase of the day. See the Establishment of the Household of Prince Henry, A. D. 1610: "Also the gentlemen-ushers shall be carefull to see and informe all such as doe service in the Prince's eye, that they perform their dutyes" &c. Again, in The Regulations for the Government of the Queen's Household, 1627: all such as doe service in the Queen's eye." STEEVENS.

(17) large discourse] i. e. such latitude of comprehension, such power of reviewing the past, and anticipating the future. JOHNSON.

Discursus. Lat. running hither and thither; applying (as in the case of desultory) a bodily action to what passes in the mind, and to what is communicated by conversation. Spenser has once discourse in its literal acceptation of running about. F. Q. VII. viii. 14. Glanville has thus explained the word: "The