Antigonus found with it, which they knew to be his character." 346. A savage clamour! STEEVENS. -] This cla mour was the cry of the dogs and hunters; then seeing the bear, he cries, this is the chace, or, the animal pursued. JOHNSON. -a barne! a very pretty barne!- -] i. e. child. So, in R. Broome's Northern Lass, 1633: "Peace wayward barne; O cease thy moan, "Thy far more wayward daddy's gone." It is a north-country word. Barnes for borns, things born; seeming to answer to the Latin nati. STEEVENS. 398. Shep. 'Would, I had been by to have help'd the old man.] Though all the printed copies concur in this reading, I am persuaded, we ought to restore, nobleman. The Shepherd knew nothing of Antigonus's age; besides, the clown had just told his father, that he said his name was Antigonus, a nobleman, and no less than three times in this short scene, the Clown, speaking of him, calls him the gentleman. THEOBALD. I suppose the Shepherd infers the age of Antigonus E from his inability to defend himself; or, perhaps, Shakspere, who was conscious that he himself designed Antigonus for an old man, has inadvertently given this knowledge to the Shepherd, who had never seen him. STEEVENS. 406. a bearing-cloth] A bearing-cloth is the fine mantle or cloth with which a child is usually covered, covered, when it is carried to the church to be bap tized. 411. PERCY. You're a made old man ;- -] In former copies :-You're a mad old man; if the sins of your youth are forgiven you, you're well to live. Gold! all gold!— This the Clown says upon his opening his fardel, and discovering the wealth in it. But this is no reason why he should call his father a mad old man. I have ventured to correct in the text- -You're a made old man: i. e. your fortune's made by this adventitious So our poet, in a number of other passages. treasure. THEOBALD. Dr. Warburton did not accept this emendation, but it is certainly right. The word is borrowed from the novel: "The good man desired his wife to be quiet: if she would hold peace, they were made for ever" Line 2. FARMER. ACT IV. THAT make, and unfold error— -] Departed time renders many facts obscure, and in that sense is the cause of error. Time to come brings dis coveries with it. 5. STEEVENS. that I slide O'er sixteen years,— -] This trespass, in re spect spect of dramatick unity, will appear venial to those who have read the once famous Lilly's Endymion, or (as he himself calls it in the Prologue) his Man in the Moon. The author was applauded and very liberally paid by Queen Elizabeth. Two acts of his piece comprize the space of forty years, Endymion lying down to sleep at the end of the second, and waking in the first scene of the fifth, after a nap of that unconscionable length. Lilly has likewise been guilty of much greater absurdities than ever Shakspere committed; for he supposes that Endymion's hair, features, and person, were changed by age during his sleep, while all the other personages of the drama remained without alteration. George Whetstone, in the epistle dedicatory, before his Promos and Cassandra, 1578 (on the plan of which Measure for Measure is formed), had pointed out many of these absurdities and offences against the laws of the drama. It must be owned, therefore, that Shakspere has not fallen into them through ignorance of what they were. "For at this daye, the Italian is so lascivious in his comedies, that honest hearts are grieved at his actions. The Frenchman and Spaniard follow the Italian's humour. The German is too holy; for he presents on everye common stage, what preachers should pronounce in pulpits. The Englishman in this qualitie is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order. He first grounds his worke on impossibilities: then in three houres ronnes he throwe the worlde: marryes, gets children, makes children children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth goddes from heaven, and fetcheth devils from hell," &c.This quotation will serve to shew that our poet might have enjoyed the benefit of literary laws; but, like Achilles, denied that laws were designed to operate on beings confident of their own powers, and secure of graces beyond the reach of art. STEEVENS. 6. -and leave the growth untry'd Of that wide gap;] The growth of the wide gap, is somewhat irregular; but he means, the growth, or progression of the time which filled up the gap of the story between Perdita's birth and her sixteenth year. To leave this growth untried, is to leave the passages of the intermediate years unnoted and unexamined. Untried is not, perhaps, the word which he would have chosen, but which his rhyme required. JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson's explanation of growth is confirmed by a subsequent passage: “I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing, "As you had slept between." So, in Pericles, 1609:1 "Now to Marina bend your mind, "Whom our fast-growing scene must find.” MALONE. 7. -since it is in my power, &c.] The reasoning of Time is not very clear; he seems to mean, that he who has broke so many laws, may now break another; that he who introduced every thing, may introduce Perdita on her sixteenth year; and he entreats that he may pass as of old, before any order or succession of objects, ancient or modern, distinguished his periods. JOHNSON. 19. -imagine me, Gentle spectators, that I now may be In fair Bohemia ;- -] Time is every where alike. I know not whether both sense and grammar may not dictate, -imagine we, Gentle spectators, that you now may be, &c. Let us imagine that you, who behold these scenes, are now in Bohemia. JOHNSON. 29. Is the argument of time :- -] Argument is the Again, act v. sc. 8. "Which lets go by some six teen years." Again, ibid: " blow away." Which sixteen winters cannot STEEVENS. 51. and my profit therein, the heaping friendships. -] This is nonsense. We should read,reaping friendships. WARBURTON. I see not that the present reading is nonsense: the sense of heaping friendships, though like many other of our author's, unusual, at least unusual to modern |