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P. 52, 1. 12. in sad cypress

i. e. in a

shroud of cypress or cyprus. There was both black and white cyprus, as there is still black and white crape; and ancient shrouds were always made of the latter. STEEVENS.

¡P. 32, 1. 17. 18. My part of death no one so true Did share it.] Though death is a part in which every one acts his share, yet of all these actors no one is so true as I, JOHNSON.

.

P. 33, 1. 2. — a very opal!] A precious stone of almost all colours.

POPE.

The opal is a gem which varies its appearance as it is viewed in different lights. STEEVENS.

P. 33, l. 4. that their business might be everything, and their intent every wheres] Both the preservation of the antithesis, and the recovery of the sense, require we should read, and their intent no where. Because a man who suffers himself to run with every wind, and so makes his business every where, cannot be said to have any intent; for that word signifies a determination of the mind to something. Besides, the conclusion of making a good voyage of nothing, dircets to this emendation. WARBURTON.

An intent every where, is much the same as an intent, no where, as it hath no one particular, place more in view than another. HEATH.

The present reading is preferable to Warburton's amendment. We cannot accuse a man of inconstancy who has no intents at all, though we may the man whose, intents are every where; are continually varying. M. MASON.

that is,

Pe 33 15.16. What is that miracle, and Queen of gems? we are not told in this read

ing. Besides, what is meant by naturé pranking
her in a miracle? We should read:

But 'tis that miracle, and Queen of gems,
That nature pranks, her mind,

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i. e. what attracts my soul, is not her fortune, but her mind, that miracle and. Queen of gems that nature pranks, i. e. sets out, adorns.

WARBURTON.

The miracle and Queen of gems is her beau ty, which the commentator might have found without so emphatical an enquiry. As to her mind, he that should be captious would say, that though it may be formed by nature,, is must be pranked by education.

Shakspeare does not say that nature pranks her in a miracle, but in the miracle of gems, that is, in a gem miraculously beautiful.

To prank is to deck out, to adorn. Etymologicon. HEATH.

JOHNSON.
See Lye's

changed
It

was

P. 35, 1. 24. and fol. The Duke has his opinion of women very suddenly. but a few minutes before, that he said they had more constancy in love than men. M. MASON. P. 34, 1. 9. Thought formerly signified melancholy. MALONE.

Mr. Malone says, thought means melancholy. But why wrest from this word its plain and usual acceptation, and make Shakspeare guilty of tautology? for in the very next line he uses ,,Melancholy." Dovce.

P. 34, 1. 10. 11..12. And, with a green and yellow 'melancholy,

She sat like patience on a monuinent, Smiling at grief.] Mr. Theobaid supposes this might possibly be borrowed from Chaucer:

And

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,,Dame pacience ysitting there I fonde ,,With face pale, upon a hill of sonde" And adds:,,If he was indebted, however, for the first rude draught, how amply has he repaid that debt, in heightening the picture! How much does the green and yellow melancholy transcendthe old bard's pale face; the monument his hill of sand." I hope this critic does not imagine Shakspeare meant to give us a picture of the face of patience, by his green and yellow melancholy; because, he says, it transcends the pale face of patience, given us by Chancer. To throw par tience into a fit of melancholy, would be indeed very extraordinary. The green and yellow then belonged not to patience, but to her, who sat like patience. To give patience a pale face was proper: and had Shakspeare described her, he had done it as Chaucer did. But Shakspeare is speak ing of a marble statue of patience; Chaucer of patience herself. And the two representations of her, are in quite different views. Our poet, speak ing of a despairing lover, judiciously compares her to patience exercised on the death of friends and relations; which affords him the beautiful picture of patience on a monument. The old bard, speaking of patience herself, directly, and not by comparison, as judiciously draws her in that circumstance where she is most exercised, and has occasion for all her virtue; that is to say, under the losses-of shipwreck. And now we sce

why she is represented as sitting on a hill of sand, to design the scene to be the sea shore. It is finely imagined; and one of the noble simplicities of that admirable poet. But the critic thought, in good earnest, that Chaucer's invention

VOL. II.

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was so barren, and his imagination so beggarly, that he was not able to be at the charge of a monument for his goddess, but left her, like a stroller, sunning herself upon a heap of sand.

WARBURTON.

This celebrated image was not improbably first sketched out in the old play of Pericles. I think, Shakspeare's hand may be sometimes seen in the latter part of it, and there only. 1

thon [Marina] dost look

,,Like Patience, gazing on Kings' graves, and smiling

,,Extremity out of act." FARMER. So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece: ,,So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes."

In the passage in the text, our author perhaps meant to personify GRIER as well as PATIENCE; for we can scarcely understand,,at grief" to mean ,,in grief," as no statuary could, I imagine, form a countenance in which smiles and grief should be at once expressed. Shakspeare might have borrowed his imagery from some ancient monu ment on which these two figures were represented. MALONE.

I am unwilling to suppose a monumental image of Patience was ever confronted by an emblema. tical figure of Grief, on purpose that one might fit and smile at the other; because such, a repre sentation might be considered as a satire on hu man insensibility. When Patience smiles, it is to express a christian triumph over the common cause of sorrow, a cause, of which the sarcopha gus, near her station, ought very sufficiently to remind her True Patience, when it is her cue to smile over calamity, knows her, office without

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a prompter; knows that stubborn lamentation displays a will most incorrect to heaven; and therefore appears content with one of its severest dispensation, the loss of a relation or a friend. Ancient tombs, indeed (if we must construe grief into grievance, and Shakspeare has certainly used the former word for the latter,) frequently exhibit cumbent figures of the deceased, and over these an image of Patience, without impropriety, might express a smile of complacence:

,,Her meek hands folded on her modest breast, ,,With calm submission lift the adoring eye ,,Even to the storm that wrecks her."

STEEVENS. P. 34, l. 16. 17. Duke. But dy'd thy sister of her love, my boy?

Viol. I am all the daughters of my father's

house, too;

This was the

could be

given. The

that to have

And all the brothers most artful answer that question was of such a nature, declined the appearance of a direct answer, must have raised suspicion. This has the appearance of a direct answer, that the sister died of her love; she (who passed for a man) saying she was all the daughters of her father's house. WARBURTON. Such another equivoque occurs in Lylly's Galathea, 1592:,,- my father had but one daugh ter, and therefore I could have no sister."

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STEEVENS. P. 34, 1. 22. Denay, is denial. To denay is an antiquated verb sometimes used by Holinshed: so, p. 620:,, the state of a cardinal which was naied and dendied him." STEEVENS.

P. 35, 1. 9. my nettle of India? The poct must here mean a zoophite,

called

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