ANNOTATIONS UPON TWELFTH NIGHT. Line 4 ACT I. THAT strain again;—it had a dying fall: Stealing, and giving odour.] Among the beauties of this charming similitude, its exact propriety is not the least. For, as a south wind, while blowing over a violet-bank, wafts away the odour of the flowers, it, at the same time, communicates its own sweetness to it; so the soft affecting musick, here described, though it takes away the natural, sweet tranquillity of the mind, yet, at the same time, it communicates a new pleasure to it. Or, it may allude to another A ij another property of musick, where the same strains have a power to excite pain or pleasure, as the state is in which it finds the hearer. WARBURTON. Milton, in his Paradise Lost, b.iv. has very successfully introduced the image: -now gentle gales, "Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense stole "Those balmy spoils." STEEVENS. 6. -That breathes upon a bank of violets→] Here Shakspere makes the south steal odour from the violet. In his 99th Sonnet the violet is made the thief: "The forward violet thus did I chide : "Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, "If not from my love's breath?" MALONE. -the sweet south,] The old copy reads sweet sound, which Mr. Rowe changed into wind, and Mr. Pope into south. STEEVENS. 12. Of what validity and pitch soever,] Validity is here used for value. 14. -so full of shapes is fancy, MALONE. That it alone is high-fantastical.] High fantas tical, means fantastical to the height. So, in All's Well that ends Well: "Dear sovereign, pardon me.” STEEVENS. 22. That instant was I turn'd into a hart;] This image evidently alludes to the story of Acteon, by which Shakspere seems to think men cautioned against too great familiarity with forbidden beauty. Acteon, who saw Diana naked, and was torn in pieces by his hounds, represents a man, who indulging his eyes, or his imagination, with the view of a woman that he cannot gain, has his heart torn with incessant longing: an interpretation far more elegant and natural than that of Sir Francis Bacon, who, in his Wisdom of the Ancients, supposes this story to warn us against enquiring into the secrets of princes, by shewing, that those who know that which for reasons of state is to be concealed, will be detected and destroyed by their own servants. JOHNSON. Thus, S. Daniel, Sonnet V. edit. 1623 : "Whilst youth and error led my wandring mind, "And set my thoughts in heedless ways to range; "All unawares, a Goddesse chaste I finde, "" (Diana like) to work my sudden change. "For her no sooner had mine eyes bewray'd, "But with disdainne to see me in that place, "With fairest hand, the sweet unkindest maid "Cast water-cold disdaine upon my face; "Which turn'd my sport into a hart's despaire, "That still is chac'd, while I have any breath, "By my own thoughts, set on me by my faire : My thoughts (like hounds) pursue me to my "Those that I fostered of mine own accord, death. "Are made by her to murther thus their lord." ANONYMOUS, of Christ Church, Oxford. 27. The element itself, till seven years hence,] This is the reading of some modern editor. All the old copies read: The element itself, till seven years heat. Might not our author have used heat for heated? The air, till it shall have been warmed by seven revolutions of the sun, shall not, &c. So, in King John: "The iron of itself, though heat red hot -And this report "Hath so exasperate the king 34. 0, she that hath a heart of that fine frame, Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else That live in her! -] Dr. Hurd observes, that Simo, in the Adrian of Terence, reasons on his son's concern for Chrysis in the same manner: "Nonnunquam conlacrymabat: placuit tum id "Sic cogitabam: hic parvæ consuetudinis -the flock of all affections So, in Sidney's Arcadia: "—has the flock of unspeak able virtues." 39. These sovereign thrones, STEEVENS. -] We should read-three sovereign thrones. This is exactly in the manner |