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the time when fruit is promised, though not yet ripe. JOHNSON.

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doth; and,

Instead of that, we may read instead of brings, bring. Foizon is plenty. Teeming foizon, is abundant produce. STEEVENS. The passage seems to me to require no amendment; and the meaning of it is this: „As blossom ing time proves the good tillage of the farmer, so the fertility of her womb expresses Claudio's full tilth and husbandry " By blossoming time is meant, the time when the ears of corn are

formed. M. MASON.

P. 101,

1. 4. To bear in hand is a common phrase for to keep in expectation and dependance; but we should read:

with hope of action. JOHNSON. P. 101, 1. 8. with full line ] With full extent, with the whole length. JOHNSON.

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P. 101, 1. 14. to give fear to use ] To intimidate use, that is, practices long countenanced by custom. JOHNSON.

P. 101,

1. 21. Unless you have the grace —] That is, the acceptableness, the power of gaining favour. So, when she makes her suit, the provost says:

,,Heaven give thee moving graces!" JOHNSON. P. 101, 1. 22. - and that's my pith

Of business

-] The inmost part,, the main of my message. JOHNSON.

P. 101, I. 25. Has censur'd him i. e. sentenced him. STEEVENS.

We should read, I think, He has censured him, etc. In the Mss. of our author's time, and frequently in the printed copy of these plays, he has, when intended to be contracted, is written

h'ar. Hence probably the mistake here. MALONE.

P. 102, 1. 1. 2. All their petitions are as freely

theirs

As they themselves would owe them.] All their requests are as freely granted to them, are granted in as full and beneficial a manner, as they themselves could wish. The editor of the second folio arbitrarily reads as truly theirs; which has been followed in all the subsequent copies. MALONE.

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P. 102, 1. 2. To owe, signifies in this place, as in many others, to possess, to have. STEEVENS. P. 102, 1. 6. the mother the abbess, or prioress. JOHNSON.

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P. 102, 1. 15. A Provost martial, Minshieu ex plains,,,Prevost des mareschaux; Praefectus Ferum capitalium, Praetor rerum capitalium." FEED.

A provost is generally the executioner of an army. STEEVENS.

A prison for military offenders is at this day, in some places, called the Prévôt. MALONE.

The Provost here, is not a military officer, but a kind of sheriff or gaoler,, So called in foreign countries. DovCE.

P. 102, 1. 18. To fear is to affright, to terrify. STEEVENS.

P. 102, l. 23. Than fall-] I should rather read fell, i. e. strike down. WARBURTON.

Fall is the old reading, and the true one. Shakspeare has used the same verb active in The Co medy of Errors.

STEEVENS.

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P. 102, 1. 26. To know is here to examine, to lake cognisance. JOHNSON.

P. 105, l. 13. The What know the laws,

That thieves do pass on thieves? -] How can the administrators of the laws take cognizance of what I have just mentioned? How can

they know, whether the jurymen who decide on the life or death of thieves be themselves as criminal as those whom they try? To pass on is a forensick term. MALONE.

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P. 105, 1. 14. 'Tis very pregnant, etc.] "Tis plain that we must act with bad as with good; we punish the faults, as we take the, advantages that lie in our way, and what we do not see we cannot note. JOHNSON.

P. 103, 1. 19. For I have had such faults;] That is, because, by reason that I have had such faults. JOHNSON.

P. 103, 1. 34. and fol. Some rise, etc.] This line is in the first, folio printed in Italics as a quotation, All the folios read in the next line:

Some run from brakes of ice, and answer

none. JOHNSON.

The old reading is, perhaps, the true one, and may mean, some run away from danger, and stay to answer none of their faults, whilst others are condemned only on account of a single frailty.

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If this be the true reading, it should be printed: Some run from breaks [i. e. fractures] of ice, etc.

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Since I suggested this, I have found reason to change my opinion. A brake anciently meift not only a sharp bit, a snaffe, but also the engine with which farriers confined the legs of such unruly horses as would not otherwise submit themselves to be shod, or 19 have a cruel operation performed on them. This, in some places, is,

In this last sense,

still called a smith's bruke. Ben Jonson uses the word in his Underwoods. And, for the former sense, see The Silent Wo man, Act IV..

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I likewise find from Holinshed, p. 670, that the brake was an engine of torture.,,The said Haw kins was cast into the Tower, and at length brought to the brake, called the Duke of Exces ter's daughter, by means of which pain he shewed many things," etc.

,,When the Dukes of Exeter and Suffolk (says Blackstone, in his Commentaries, Vol. IV, chap. XXV. p. 320, 321,) and other ministers of Hen. VI had laid a design to introduce the civil law into this kingdom as the rule of government, for a be ginning thereof they erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the Duke of Exeter's Daughter, and still remains in the Tower of Lon don, where it was occasionally used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once in the reign of Queen Elizabeth." See Coke's Instit. 55. Bar rington, 69, 385. and Fuller's Worthies, p. 317.

A part of this horrid engine still remains in the Tower, and the following is the figure of it:

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It consists of a strong iron frame about six feet long, with three rollers of wood within it. The middle one of these, which has iron teeth at each end, is governed by two stops of iron, and was, probably, that part of the machine which suspended the powers of the rest, when the unhappy sufferer was sufficiently strained by the cords, etc. to begin confession. I cannot conclude this account of it without confessing my obligation to Sir Charles Frederick, who politely condescended to direct my enquiries, while his high com mand rendered every part of the Tower accessible to my researches.

I have since observed that, in Fox's Martyrs, edit. 1596, p. 1843, there is a representation of the same kind. It should not, however, be dissembled, that yet a plainer meaning may be deduced from the same words. By brakes of vice may be meant a collection, a number, a thicket of vices.

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brake of

STEEVENS. The words answer none (that is, make no confession of guilt) evidently shew that vice here means the engine of torture. mode of question is again referred to in Act V:

The same

To the rack with him: we'll touze you joint by joint,

But we will know this purpose."

The name of brake of vice, appears to have been given this machine, from its resemblance to that used to subdue vicious horses. HENLEY.

P. 104. 1. 18. This comes of well;] This is nimbly spoken; this is volubly uttered. JOHNSON.

The same phrase is employed in Timon of Athens, and elsewhere; but in the present instance it is used ironically. The meaning of it, when

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