Recking as little what betideth me."

WARBURTON.

The meaning seems plainly this, that none but fools would wish to keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A sense which, whether true or not, is certainly innocent. JOHNSON.

اورة

Keep, in this place, I believe, may not signify

果

preserve, but care for. STEEVENS

P. 127 1. 46. a breath thou art,

(Servile to all the skiey influences,) That dost etc.] Sir T. Hanmer changed dost to do without necessity or authority. The construction is not, „,the skiey influences that do but,,,a breath thou art, that dost," etc. If ,,Servile to all the skicy influences" be inclosed in parenthesis, all the difficulty will vanish.

PORSON.

P. 127, 1. 9. In those old farces called Morali ties, the fool of the piece, in order to show the inévitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his stratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fool, at every turn, into his very jaws. So that the representations of these scenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. And from such circumstances, in the genius of our an cestors' publick diversions, 1 suppose it was, that the old proverb arose, of being merry and wise. WARBURTON.

It is observed by the Editor of The Sad Shep herd, 8vo. 1783, P. 154. that the initial letter of Stowe's Survey, contains a representation A of a struggle between Death and the Fool; the figures of which were most probably copied

from those characters as formerly exhibited the stage. REED.

There are no such characters as Death and the Fool, in any old Morality now extant. They seem, to have existed only in 'the dumb Shows. The two figures in the initial letter of Stowe's Survey, 1603, which have been mistaken for these two personages, have no allusion whatever to the stage, being merely one of the set known by the name of Death's Dance, and actually copied from the margin of an old Missal. The scene in the modern pantomine of Harlequin Skeleton, to have been suggested by some playhouse tradition of Death and the Fool. RITSON.

seems

54 P. 127, 1. 12. — by baseness:] Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly mistaken in supposing that by baseness is meant self-love, here assigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakspeare only meant to observe, that a minute analysis of life at once destroys that splendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can display, Or luxury enjoy, is procured by baseness, by offices of which the mind shrinks from the contempla. tion. All the delicacies of the table may be tra ced back to the shambles and the dunghifl,' all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornament dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine,

JOHNSON.

P. 127, 1. 15. Worm is put for any creeping thing, or serpent, Shakspeare supposes falsely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a serpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction; a ser pent's tongue is soft, but not forked nor hurt ful. If it could hurt, it could not be soft. In

A Midsummer Night's Dream he has the same notion:

With doubler tongue.

Than thine, O serpent, never adder stung." JOHNSON. Shakspeare mentions the „adder's fork" in Macbeth; and might have caught this idea from old tapestries or paintings, in which the tongues of serpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow.

P. 127, 1. 16. 17.

STEEVENS.

yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. -1 Evidently from the following passage of Cicero: ,,Habes somnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, et dubicas quin sensus in morte nullus sit, cum in ejus simulacro videas esse nullum sensum." But the Epicurean insinuation is, with great judgement, omitted in the imitation. WARBURTON.

Here. Dr. Warburton might have found a senti ment worthy of his animadversion. I cannot without indignation find Shakspeare saying, that death is only sleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a sentence which in the friar is impious, (in the reasoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar. JOHNSON.

This was an oversight in Shakspeare; for in the second scene of the fourth act, the Provost speaks of the desperate Barnardine, as one who regards death only as a drunken sleep. STEEVENS.

I apprehend Shakspeare means to say no more, than that the passage from this life to another is as easy as sleep; a position in which there is surely neither folly nor impiety. MALONE.

P. 127, 1. 17.

-

Thou art not thyself;] Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external

assistance, thou subsistest upon foreign matter, and hast no power of producing or continuing they own being. JOHNSON.

P. 127, 1. 24. For effects, read affects; that is, affections, passions of mind, or disorders of body variously affected. JOHNSON,

P. 127, l. 31. The serpigo is a king of tetter. STEEVENS.

35. Thou hast nor youth,

nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's

sleep,

Dreaming on both: -] This is exquisitely imagined. When we are young, we busy ourselves in forming schemes for succeeding time, and miss the gratifications that are before uss when we are old, we amuse the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleasures or performances; so that our life, of which no part is filled with the business of the present time, re sembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the designs of the evening. JOHNSON.

P. 128, first 1. Eld is generally used for old age, decrepitude. It is here put for old people, persons worn with years. STEEVENS

P. 127, 1. 32

36. and P. 128, I. 1-3, Thou hast nor youth, nor age, etc.} The drift of this period is to prove, that neither youth nor age can be said to be really enjoyed which, in poetical language, is, We have nei, ther youth nor age. But how is this made out? That age is not enjoyed, he proves by recapitulat ing the infirmities of it, which deprive that pe riod of life of all sense of pleasure. To prove that youth is not enjoyed, he uses these words:

for all thy blessed youth

· Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld;

Out of which, he that can deduce the conclusion, has a better knack at logic than I have. I suppose the poet wrote,

➡ for pall'd, thy blazed youth

1

Becomes assuaged; and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld;

i. e. when thy youthful appetite becomes palled, as it will be in the very enjoyment, the blaze of youth is at once assuaged, and thou immediately contractest the infirmities of old age; as particularly the palsy and other nervous disorders, con sequent on the inordinate use of sensual pleasu res. This is to the purpose; and proves youth is not enjoyed, by shewing the short duration of it.

1

WARBURTON.

Here again I think Dr. Warburton totally mistaken. Shakspeare declares that man has neither youth nor age; for in youth, which is the hap piest time, or which might be the happiest, he commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is dependent on palsied eld: must beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice; and being very niggardly supplied, becomes as aged, looks, like an old man, on happiness which is beyond his reach. And, when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchase of all that formerly excited his desires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment;

has neither heat, affection, limb, nor

beauty,

To make his riches pleasant.

I have explained this passage according to the present reading, which may stand without much