P. 97, 11. 3. —under grievous imposition;] I once thought it should be inquisition, but the present reading is probably right. The crime would be under grievous penalties imposed,

t

P. 97, 1. 5.

Jouer au tric

JOHNSON.

Tick- tack is a game- at tables.

trac," is used in French, in a Wanton sense. MALONE.

P. 97, . 13, 14. Believe not that the dribbling dart of love

Can pierce a complete bosom:

Think not that a breast compleatly armed can be pierced by the dart of love, that comes flutter ing without force. JOHNSON.

P. 97, 1. 20.

the life remov'd;] i. e. a life of retirement, a life remote, or removed, from the bustle of the world. STEEVENS.

P. 97, 1. 22. Bravery, in the present instance, signifies showy dress. STEEVENS.

P. 97. 1. 22. keeps. i, e. dwells, resides. In this sense it is still used at Cambridge, where the students and fellows, referring to their colle giate apartments, always say they keep, i. c. reside there. REED.

P. 97, 1. 24. (A man of stricture, and firm abstinence,)] Stric ture makes no sense in this place. We should read:

A man of strickt ure and firm abstinence, i. e. a man of the exactest conduct, and practised in the subdual of his passions. Ure is an old word for use, practise: so enur'd, habituated to. WARBURTON.

Stricture may easily be used for strictnesss ure is indeed an old word, but, I think, always applied to things, never to persons. JOHNSON.

P. 97, fast 1. (The needful bits and curbs for head-strong steeds,)]

In the copies,

The needful bits and curbs for headstrong weeds. There is no manner of analogy or consonance in the metaphors here: and, though the copies agree,' I do not think the author would have talked of bits and curbs for weeds. On the other hand, nothing can be more proper, than to compare persons of unbridled licentiousness to headstrong steeds and, in this view, bridling the passions has been a phrase adopted by our best poets. THEOBALD.

P. 98, first 1. Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep ;]. For fourteen I have made no scruple to replace nineteen. The reason will be obvious to him who recollects what the Duke [Claudio] has said in a foregoing scene. I have altered the odd phrase of letting the laws slip: " for how does it sort with the comparison that follows, of a lion in his cave that went not out to prey? But letting the laws sleep, adds a particular propriety to the thing represented, and accords too exactly with the simile. It is the metaphor too, that our author seems fond of using upon this occasion, in several other parts of this play. THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald altered fourteen to nineteen, to make the Duke's account correspond with a speech of Claudio's in a former scene, but without necessity. Claudio would naturally represent the period during which the law had not been put in practice, greater than it really was. MALONE.

Theobald's correction is misplaced. If any correction is really necessary, it should have been VOL. II.

19

made where Claudio, in a foregoing scene, I am disposed to take the Duke's

nineteen years. words. WHALLEY.

says

P. 98, 1. 10. The baby beats the nurse, -] This, allusion was borrowed from an ancient print, entitled The World turn'd upside down, where an infant is thus employed. STEEVENS.

P. 98, 1. 17.

WP. 98, I. 27.

Sith - i. e. since. STEEVENS.

To do it slander:] The text stood: So do in slander:

Sir Thomas Hanmer has very well corrected it thus:

To do it slander:

Yet perhaps less alteration might have produced the true reading:

And yet my nature never, in the sight,

So doing slandered:

And yet my nature never suffer slander, by doing any open acts of severity. JOHNSON.

Hanmer's emendation is supported by a passage in King Henry IV. P. I:

"

„Do me no slander, Douglas, I dare fight."

STEEVENS. Fight seems to be countenanced by the words ambush and strike. Sight was introduced by

Mr. Pope. MALONE.

P. 98, 1.31. How I may formally in person

bear me

Like a true friar. —] The sense of the passage (as Mr. Henley observes) is How I may demean myself, so as to support the character I have assumed. STEEVENS.

P. 98, last, but one 1. Stands at a guard with envy;] Stands on

terms of defiance. JOHNSON.

This rather means, to stand cautiously on his defence, than on terms of defiance. M. MASON. P. 100, 1. 12. Sir, make me not your story.] Do not, by deceiving me, make me a subject for a tale. JOHNSON.

1

Perhaps, only, Do not divert yourself with me as you would with a story, do not make me the subject of your drama. Benedick talks of becom ing the argument of his own scorn.

STEEVENS.

Mr. Ritson explains this passage,,,do not make a jest of me. REED.

P. 100, 1. 14. I would not i. e. be assured, I would not mock you. So afterwards: ,,Do not believe it" i. e. Do not suppose that I would mock you. MALONE.

I am satisfied with the sense afforded by the old punctuation. STEEVENS.

P. 100, 1. 15. With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,] The Oxford editor's note on this passage is in these words: The lapwings Ay, with seeming fright and anxiety, far from their nests, to deceive those who seek their young. And do not all

other birds do the same? But what has this to do with the infidelity of a general lover, to whom this bird is compared? It is another quality of the lapwing that is here alluded to, viz. its perpetually flying so low and so near the passenger, that he thinks he has it, and then is suddenly gone again. This made it a proverbial expression to siguify a lover's falshood: and it seems to be a

very old one; for Chaucer, in his Plowman's Tale,

says:

h

And lapwings that well conith lie."

WARBURTON.

The modern editors have not taken in the whole similitude here: they have taken notice of the lightness of a spark's behaviour to his mistress, and compared it to the lapwing's hovering and fluttering as it flics. But the chief, of which no notice is taken, is, ,, and to jest." (See Ray's Proverbs) „The lapwing cries, tongue far from heart." i. e. most farthest from the nest, i.

e. She is, as Shakspeare his it here, Tongue far from heart. ,,The farther she is from her nest, where her heart is with her young ones, she is the louder, or perhaps all tongue."

SMITH.

P. 100, 1. 22. Fewness and truth, i. e. in féw words, and those true ones. In few, is many times thus used by Shakspeare. SEEEVENS. P. 100, 1. 24 his lover i. c. his mistress; lover, in our author's time, being applied to the female as well as the male sex. MALONE.

P. 100, 1. 25-27. As those that feed grow full;

as blossoming time, o That from the seedness the bare fallow

brings

-189 To teeming foison; ] As the sentence now stands, it is apparently ungrammatical. *I read,

At blossoming time, etc. That is, As they that feed grow full, so her womb now at blossoming time, at that time through which the seed time proceeds to the harvest, her womb shows what has been doing. Lucio ludicrously calls pregnancy blossoming time,