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a lusty bouncing rampe, somewhat like Gallemetta or maid Marian, yet was she not such a roinish rannel, such a dissolute gillian-flirt," &c.

We are not to suppose the word is literally employed by Shakspeare, but in the same sense that the French still use carogne, a term of which Moliere is not very sparing in some of his pieces. STLEV.

Mr. Steevens has mistake the sense. To royne is to bite. "Roynish," in this place, is consequently satirical, carping. Ronger, mordre, (Médire, reprendre, censurer avec malignité) Dict. And this is the character of Touchstone. B.

Adam. Know you not, master, to some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies?

No more do yours; your virtues, gentie master,
Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.

Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely
Envenoms him that bears it!

"Know you not, master," &c. And is it even so? Alas! the grievous, melancholy truth. But of the "gentle master," (when happily found) how will it be permitted us to speak? Are we to say that "he is unfit for this world:" or to maintain that "this world is unfit for him?" And yet this matter should scarcely be made a question. "Thou simular of virtue!" the problem (if such it must indeed be held) is not resolvable by thee.

B.

Adam. At seventeen years many their fortunes seek ; But at fourscore, it is too late a week.

"But at fourscore it is too late a week." "A week," is printed, and consequently read as though Adam were speaking of a week, [7 days.] In such case, the expression will be extremely poor, if not unmeaning. I read the line thus:

"But at fourscore too late: it is aweak :

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"Aweak"

i. e. at fourscore, man finds himself weak and feeble. must not be condemned, though no example of it should be found. Aweak is nothing more than weak, the a being redundant. Thus, in old language, adown, agone, are simply down, gone, and so of many other words. B.

Clo. I remember the wooing of a peascod instead of her; from whom I took two cods, and giving her them again, said with weeping tears, "Wear these for my sake.

Weeping tears.] A ridiculous expression from a sonnet in Lodge's Rosalynd, the novel on which this comedy is founded. It likewise occurs in the old anonymous play of the Victories of K. Henry V. in Peele's Jests, &c. STEEV.

Weeping tears." Had Mr. Steevens studied human nature, he would have found that the expression here quoted is not so very

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ridiculous as he imagines it to bè. Weeping tears are tears of sorrow. It is meant as more particularly evincing affliction, actual grief; for that there are tears of joy, since ignorant of the matter from his own observations on life, he might have learnt both from Homer and Plato. In the former we find δακρυσεν γελασασα. Π. b. 6. and in the latter χαίροντες κλαίουσι. Plat. in Philet. Thus too, in Ossian : "Tell him I fell in the midst of thousands, and let the joy of his grief be great." B.

Jaq A fool, a fool!I met a fool i' the forest, A motley fool, a miserable world!

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A motley fool!-a miserable world!] What! because he met a motley fool, was it therefore a miserable world! This is sadly blundered; we should read:

"a miserable varle!."

His head is altogether running on this fool, both before and after these words, and here he calls him "a miserable varlet," notwithstanding be "railed on lady Fortune in good terms," &c. Nor is the change we may make so great as appears at first sight. WARB.

I see no need of changing fool to tarlet, nor, if a change were necessary, can I guess how it should certainly be known that marlet is the true word. "A miserable world," is a parenthetical exclamation, frequent among melancholy men, and natural to Jaques at the sight of a fool, or at the hearing of reflections on the fragility of life. JoHN. Some force may be given to the passage, by reading

O miserable world!

Or perhaps it will be better to read

O miserable word!

"A fool! O miserable word!”—That is, O wretched, that I should be under the necessity of calling any man a fool. B.

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Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to bis mistress' eye-brow.

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then the lover;

"Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

"Made to his Mistress' eve brow."

This conceit of a sonnet made to his “mistress' eye-brow," has, by some, been considered as puerile, while others have thought it extravagant. Much beauty, however, has always been acknowledged as belonging to the eye; not only in regard to its brilliancy, but in the formation of its brow, and the texture, color, and length of its lashes. But objections having been generally raised against the expression in the text, I shall cite the authority of Pindar for it ; and that, I hope, will effectually silence the critic of every class.

"Lets his poetic raptures fly,

"To praise Corinna's lip or eye:

"Or will a youthful song bestow,

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Upon his Mistress' conquering brow. B.

Amiens sings.

Blow, blow, thou winter win!,
Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

"Thy tooth is not so keen,

"Because thou art not seen."

This song is designed to suit the duke's exiled condition, who had been ruined by ungrateful flatterers. Now the winter wind, the song says, is to be preferred to man's ingratitude. But why? Because it is not seen. But this was not only an aggravation of the injury, as it was done in secret, not seen, but was the very circumstance that made the keenness of the ingratitude of his faithless courtiers. Without doubt, Shakspeare wrote the line thus:

"Because thou art not sheen,"

i. e. smiling, shining, like an ungrateful court-servant, who flatters while he wounds, which was a very good reason for giving the winter wind the preference. So, in the Midsummer Night's Dream:

"Spangled star-light sheen."

And several other places. Chaucer uses it in this sense: "Your blissful suster Lucina the shene."

And Fairfax :

"The sacred angel took his target she e,

"Aud by the Christian champion stood unseen."

The Oxford editor, who had this emendation communicated to him, takes occasion from thence to alter the whole line thus:

"Thou causest not that teen."

But, in his rage of correction, he forgot to leave the reason, which is now wanting, Why the winter wind was to be preferred to man's ingratıtude. WARB.

I am afraid that no reader is satisfied with Dr. Warburton's emendation, however vigorously enforced; and it is indeed enforced with more art than truth. Sheen, i. e. smiling, shining. That sheen signifies shining, is easily proved, but when or where did it signify smiling? yet smiling gives the sense necessary in this place. Sir T. Hanmer's change is less uncouth, but too remote from the present text. For my part, I question whether the original line is not lost, and this substituted merely to fill. up the measures and the rhyme. Yet even out of this line, by strong agitation may sense be elicited, and sense not unsuitable to the ccasion. "Thou winter wird," says the Duke, "thy rudeness gives the less pain, as thou art not seen, as thou art an enemy that dost not brave us with thy presence, and whose unkindness is therefore not aggravated by insult." JOHN.

The Editors, I think, are wrong. The lines are certainly very unmeaning as they at present stand. A trifling alteration, however, will do away the objection raised against them by Dr. Warburton, and give them the sense and elegance they want. I read

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The meaning of the whole will be-winter wind, thy tooth is not so keen as man's ingratitude; and though thy breath be rude, yet as thou art not seen, thou canst not insult us by thy frowns, by haughty and supercilious looks. B.

Duke.

Well, push him out of doors;

And let my officers of such a nature

Make an extent upon his house and lands:
Do this expediently, and turn him going.

Expediently. That is, expeditiously. Jons.

"Expediently." I do not see how "expediently," can mean ex, peditiously. It should rather be explained by properly, fitly. B,

Clo. God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw.

Make incision in thee !] To make incision was a proverbial expression then in vogue for, to make to understand. So in Beaumont and Fletch er's Humorous Lieutenant :

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-O excellent king,

"Thus he begins, thou lite and light of creatures,
"Angel ey'd king, vouchsafe at length thy favor;
"And so proceeds to incision.”

i. e. to make him understand what he would be at. WARB.

Till I read Dr. Warburton's note, I thought the allusion had been to that common expression, of cutting such a one for the simples; and I must own, after consulting the passage in the Humorous Lieutenant, I have no reason to alter my supposition. The editors of Beaumont and Fletcher declare the phrase to be unintelligible in that as well as in another play where it is introduced. STEEV.

"God make incision in thee." Mr. Steevens is mistaken. He may rest assured that God makes us to understand, but that God never cuts for the simples. In Shakspeare the word should be printed insision, i. e. insertion or ingraftment, to distinguish it from incision, i. e. cutting or lancing, merely. B.

Ros. Let no face be kept in mind,

But the fair of Rosalind.

But the fair of Rosalind.] Thus the old copy. Fair is beauty, complexion. See the notes on a passage in the Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I. Sc. i. and the Comedy of Errors, Act II. Sc. i.

"The fair of Rosalind," is very harsh.

We may surely read:

"But of the fair Rosalind."

i.e. but that of the fair Rosalind. B.

Ros. I was never so be-rhimed since Pythagoras time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.

I was never so be-rhimed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat. Rosalind is a very learned lady. She alludes to the Pythagorean doc

trine, which teaches that souls transmigrate from one animal to another, and relates that in his time she was an Irish rat, and by some metrical charm was rhymed to death. The power of killing rats with rhymes Donne mentions in his Satires, and Temple in his Treatises. Dr. Grey has produced a similar passage from Randolph :

"My poets

"Shall with a satire, steeped in gall and vinegar,
"Rhyme them to death as they do rats in Ireland."

JOHN.

So, in an address to the reader, at the conclusion of Ben Jonson's Poe

taster:

"Rhime them to death, as they do Irish rats

"In drumming tunes."

STEEV.

Again in his Staple of News, 1625: "Or the fine madrigal in rhyme, to have run him out of the country like an Irish rat." MAL.

"I was never so be-rhimed," &c. The conceit respecting metrical charms I have spoken to in a note, Act I. Sc. 1. of Henry VI. As to "killing the rat by means of rhyme," it is necessary to explain the matter. In Henry VI. we are to write rime, and to understand the word as signifying mist or vapour. In the present instance we must admit rhyme, or rather rhythm, and with its ordinary meaning of numerosity or harmony of sounds. The true reading then will be, "kill rate by rhyme." Rate (Fr.) spleen, wrath :--for why, it must be asked, should rats, in particular, be killed by verse?-Wrath is, by the Irish, pronounced wrat, and hence the mistake. This people, it should be observed, are exceeding irascible. The sense of the phrase will therefore be, "Kill Irish wrath by rhyme or song," which song was probably accompanied by some kind of instrument. The expression is highly characteristic of the sister arts, of their great,, their heavenly influence. Thus Dryden in his

ode:

"What passion cannot music raise and quell." And the same must be remarked of poetry; but then it is of that alone in which the mens divinior is found. B.

Ros. Good my complexion! dost thou think, though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition

Good my complexion.] This is a mode of expression, Mr. Theobald says, which he cannot reconcile to common sense. Like enough and so too the Oxford editor. But the meaning is, Hold good my complexion, i. e. let me not blush. WARB.

Dr. Warburton's explanation may be just, but as he gives no example of such a meaning affixed to the words in question, we are still at liberty to suspend our faith till some luckier critic shall decide. All I can add is, that I learn from the glossary to Phil. Holland's translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. that puint for the face was, in Shakspeare's time, called complexions. Shakspeare likewise uses complexion for disposition. So, in the Merchant of Venice:

"It is the complexion of them all to leave their dam." STEEV. I believe we should read, "Good! cry complexion!" Celia says, "wonderful, wonderful, out of all cry;" to this Rosalind makes answer, "then cry complexion," i. e. say it is my temperament, my

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