P. 115, 1. 7. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept :] Dormiunt aliquando leges, moriuntur nunquam, is a maxim in our law. HOLT WHITE. P. 115, 1. 10. If the first man that did the edict infringe,] The word man has been supplied by the modern ediwould rather read tors. If he, the first, etc. TYAWHITT. Man was introduced by Mr. Pope. MALONE. P. 115, 1. 13. and, like a prophet, looks in a glass,] This alludes to the fopperies of the beril, much used at that time by cheats and fortune-tellers to predict by. WARBURTON. The beril, which is a kind of crystal, hath a weak tincture of red in it. Among other tricks of Astrologers, the discovery of past or future events was supposed to be the consequence of looking into it. See Aubrey's Miscellanies, p. 165. edit. 1721. P. 115, 1. 21. REED. For then I pity those one of Hale's memorials. do not know,] This was When I find myself. swayed to mercy, let me remember, that there is a mercy likewise, due to the country. P. 115, 1. 28 JOHNSON. 30. O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous, To use it like a giant.] Isabella alludes to the savage conduct of giants in ancient romances. STEEVENS. P. 116, 1. 3. Gnarre is the old English word for a knot in wood. STEEVENS. P. 116, 1. 9. As make the angels weep ;] The notion of angels weeping for the sins of men is Ob peccatum fientes angelos in rabbinical. - P. 116, l. 9. 10. Grotius ad S. who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.] Mr. Theobald says the meaning of this is, that if they were endowed with our spleens and perishable organs, they would laugh themselves out of immortality : or, as we say in common life, laugh themselves dead; which amounts to this, that if they were mortal, they would not be immortal. Shakspeare meant no such nonsense. By spleens, he meant that peculiar turn of the human mind, that always inclines it to a spiteful, unseasonable mirth. Had the angels that, says Shakspeare, they would laugh themselves out of their immortality, by indulging a passion which does not deserve that prerogative. The ancients thought, that immoderate laughter was caused by the bigness of the spleen. WARBURTON. P. 116, 1. 15. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:] We mortals, proud and foolish, cannot prevail on our passions to weigh or `compare our brother, a being of like nature and like frailty, with ourself. We have different names and different judgements for the same faults committed by persons of diffe rent condition. JOHNSON. P. 116, 1. 33. 34. She speaks, and 'tis Such sense, that my sense breeds with it.] Thus all the folios. Some later editor has changed breeds to bleeds, and Dr. Warburton blames poor Tlaeobald for recalling the old word, which yet is certainly right. My sense breeds with her sense sense, that is, new thoughts are stirring in my mind, new conceptions are hatched in my imagi nation. So we say, to brood over thought JOHNSON, The sentence significa, Isabella, does not miter harren words, but speaks such sense as breeds or produces a consequence in Angelo's mind. Thus truths, which generate no conclusion are often termed barren facts. HOLT WHITE. I understand the passage thus: Her arguments are enforced with so much good sense, as 10 increase that stock of sense which I already possess. P117, 1. 9. Fond means very frequently in our author, foolish. It signifies in this place valued or prized by folly. » STEEVENS. -- P. 117, l. 9. tested gold, i. e. attested, or marked with the standard stamp. WARBURTON. Rather cupelled, brought to the test, refined. JOHNSON. All gold that is tested is not marked with the standard stamp. The verb has a different sense, and means tried by the cuppel, which is called by the refiners a test. Vide Harris's Lex. Tech. Voce CUPPELL. SIR J. HAWKINS, * P-117 1. 13. - preserved souls, i. e. preseryed from the corruption of the world. The me taphor is taken from fruits preserved in sugar, WARBURTON, P, 117, 1. 22. 23. for I Am that way going to temptation, Where prayers cross.] Which way An gelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers cross that way, or cross each, ' other, at that way, more than any other, I do not understand. VOL. II. 20 Isabella prays that his honour may be safe, meaning only to give him his title: his imagination is caught by the word honour: he feels that his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus: I am that way going to temptation, Which your prayers cross. That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou implorest the preservation. The temptation, under which I labour is that which thou hast unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the same mode of language a few lines lower. Isabella, parting, says: Save you honour! Angelo catches the word Save it! From what? From thee; even from thy virtue! ➡i JOHNSON. The best method of illustrating this passage will be to quote of similar one from The Merchant of Venice, Act IIL, sc. i: Sal. I would it might prove the end of his "'. losses! ,,Sola. Let me say Amen betimes, lest the devil cross thy prayer.“ For the same reason Angelo seems to say Amen to Isabella's prayer; but, to make the expression clear, we should read perhaps '. Where prayers are crossed. TYRWHITT. The petition of the Lord's Prayer „lead us not into temptation" is here considered as crossing or intercepting the onward way in which Angelo was going; this appointment of his for the morrow's meeting, being a premeditated exposure of himself to temptation, which it was the general object of prayer to thwart. HENLEY. مجھے P. 117, 1. 53. and fol. Not she; nor doth she tempt: but etc.] I am not corrupted by her, but my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influen ces. that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON. . P. rig, l. 4. And pitch our evils there?] So, in King Henry VIII: ,,Nor build their evils on the graves of great men," Neither of these passages appears to contain a very elegant allusion. ༢། Evils, in the present instance, undoubtedly stand for foricae. Dr. Farmer assures me He has seen the word evil used in this sense by our ancient writers; and it appears from Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, etc. that privies were originally so ill-contrived, even in royal palaces, as to deserve the title of evils or nuisances. aid to 6: STEEVENS. No language could more forcibly express the aggravated profligacy of Angelo's passion, which the purity of Isabella but served the more to inname. The desecration of edifices devoted to religion, by converting them to the most abject purposes of nature, Was an eastern method of expressing contempt. See 2 Kings, x. 27, HENLEY. P. 118, I. 19. As a day must now intervene between this conference of Isabella with Angelo, and the next, the act might more properly end here; and here, in my opinion, it was ended by the poet. JoHNSON. P. 118, 1. 29. 30. I come to visit the afflicted spirits Here in the prison: —] This is a scrip |