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Thus Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, when in prison, in a letter to Cromwell to relieve his want of clothing: "Furthermore, I beseeche you to be gode master unto one in my necessities, for I have neither shirt, nor sute, nor yet other clothes, that are necessary for me WHALLEY.

to wear.

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509. Ok, patience;] That is, Stay a while, be not so

eager.

JOHNSON, 539. Would I were dead, but that, methinks, already—] The sentence completed is :

-but that, methinks, already I converse with the dead.

But there his passion made him break off.

WARBURTON.

535. The fixure of her eye has motion in't,] The meaning is, that her eye, though fixed, as in an earEDWARDS. nest gaze, has motion in it.

The word fixure, which Shakspere has used both in the Merry Wives of Windsor, and Troilus and Cressida, iş likewise employed by Drayton in the first canto of the Barons' Wars:

"Whose glorious fixure in so clear a sky."

STEEVENS. 536. As we are mock'd with art.] As is used by our author here, as in some other places, for "as if," Thus in Cymbeline:

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"He spake of her, as Dian had hot dreams,

"And she alone were cold.'

Again in Macbeth:

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"As

"As they had seen me with these hangman's

hands

"List'ning their fear.”

MALONE. 604. And from your sacred vials pour your graces]· The expression seems to have been taken from the sacred writings: "And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the angels, go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.” Rev. xvi. 1. MALONE.

614. You precious winners all ;— -] You who by this discovery have gained what you desired, may join in festivity, in which I, who have lost what never can be recovered, can have no part.

615.

I, an old turtle,

JOHNSON.

Will wing me to some wither'd bough; and there
My mate, that's never to be found again,

Lament 'till I am lost.] So, Orpheus, in the exclamation which Johannes Secundus has written for him, speaking of his grief for the loss of Euridice, says:

"Sic gemit arenti viduatus ab arbore turtur."

It is observable, that the two poets, in order to heighten the image, have used the very same phrase, having both placed their turtles on a dry and withered bough. I have since discovered the same idea in Lodge's Rosalynd, or Euphues' golden Legacie, 1592, a book which Shakspere is known to have read:

"A turtle sat upon a leaveless tree,

"Mourning her absent pheer

* With sad and sorry cheele,

"And

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"And whilst her plumes she rents,

"And for her love laments," &c.

Chapman seems to have imitated this passage in his Widow's Tears, 1612: "Whether some wandering Æneas should enjoy your reversion, or whether your true turtle would sit mourning on a withered bough till Atropos cut her throat.” MALONE.

THE END.

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