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And in the Teftament of Creseide. ✯. 78.

"O faire Crefeide the floure and A PER SE "Of Troie and Greece."

Douglass in his preface calls Virgil, The A PER SE. i. e. as the gloffary explains it, an extraordinary or incomparable perfon, like the letter A by itself, which has the first place in the alphabets of almost all languages. I would therefore thus read in Shakespeare,

They say he is a very A PER SE "And ftands alone."

In the Comedy of Errors. Act I.

Ægeon. "Five fummers have I spent in farthest

" Greece,

"Roaming clean thro' the bounds of

"ASIA,

"And coafting homeward, came to Ephefus :

"Hopeless to find, yet loth to leave "unfought,

"Or that, or any place that harbours

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I wonder Mr. Theobald did not fee the nonsense of this place. How could he spend five summers

in Greece, roaming thro' the bounds of Afia? What a voyage too is here mentioned-roaming thro' the bounds of Afia! 'Tis trifling to dwell on refuting fuch abfurdities. The paffage is translated from the Menæchmi of Plautus,

"Hic annus fextus, poftquam rei buic operam damus. Iftros, Hifpanos, Maflylienfes, Illurios, "Mare fuperum omne, Græciamque exoticam, Orafque ITALICAS omnes, quà egreditur mare, "Sumus circumvelti.”

66

Who does not fee therefore that ASIA is the transcriber's or press-corrector's word instead of ITALY?

"Roaming clean thro' the bounds of ITALY."

Thus all is eafy and natural, and agreeable to the original. 'Tis well known Italy was called Gracia Magna: So Ovid,

Itala nam tellus Græcia magna fuit:

Which I mention as a comment on this place of Plautus and our poet.

In King Lear, A& III.

"Edg. Fraterretto calls me and tells me that "Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness."

Nero

235 Nero was a fidler in hell, as Rabelais tells us, B. 2. c. 30. And Trajan was an angler. Shakespeare was a reader of Rabelais, as may be proved from many imitations of him; and here plainly he has that facetious Frenchman in his view. Trajan might have this office given him in hell, not only because he was a perfecutor of the Christians, but as he was a great drinker, and that he might have liquor enough in the next world, he was made a fisherman: Rabelais has as trifling reasons as this, for many of his witticisms but whatever was Rabelais' reason is another question: this however was not Nero's office. But the players and editors, not willing that so good a prince as Trajan fhould have fuch a vile employment, fubftituted Nero in his room, without any fenfe or allufion at all. From Rabelais therefore the paffage should be thus corrected, Trajan is an angler in the lake of darkness. For one cannot fay, I should think, with any propriety,

Nero is a fidler in the lake of darkness.

I cannot pass over a most true correction, printed in the Oxford edition, of a faulty paffage in Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. which was originally corrupted by this change of the first editors,

"Cleop.

Cleop. What fhall we do, Enobarbus ? "Eno. Think, and die."

2

Drink and die; This emendation is undoubtedly true. 'Tis fpoken by Enobarbus, in allufion to the fociety of the ΣΥΝΑΠΟΘΑΝΟΥΜΕΝΟΙ, mention'd in Plutarch, p. 949. D. The hint was taken from a comedy of Diphilus, mention'd by Terence in his prologue to the Adelphi,

« ΣΥΝΑΠΟΘΝΗΣΚΟΝΤΕΣ Diphili comoedia eft: "Eam commorientes Plautus fecit fabulam.”

The fame kind of blunders we have frequent in ancient books: I will mention one in those verfes of Tyrtaeus, which Stobaeus has preferved.

Ξυνὸν δ ̓ ἐσθλὸν τᾶτο πόληΐ τε παιί τε δήμῳ,
Ὅσις ΑΝΗΡ διαβὰς ἐν προμάχοισι μένη.

The old reading, instead of ANHP, was AN ET, which the transcriber changed into ANHP.

Οσις ἂν εὖ διαβὰς ἐν προμάχοισι μένῃ.

2 So in Act I. Where the foothsayer is telling their fortunes, and they are made to speak fomething foreboding their deftinies; Ænobarbus fays,

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"Mine, and most of our fortunes to night shall be to drunk to bed."

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This was an expreffion that Tyrtaeus was fond of, and he repeats it again,

Αλλά τις εὖ διαβὰς μενέτω, ποσὶν ἀμφοτέροισι
Στηριχθεὶς ἐπὶ γῆς, χεῖλος ὀδόσι δακών.

Eu dabas, standing firm, one leg advanced before the other the legs being fevered and fet afunder, each from the other. But he took the expreffion from Homer, II. '. 458.

Στῇ δὲ μάλ ̓ ἐγγὺς ἰων, καὶ ἐρεισάμενος βάλε μέσσας,
Εν διαβάς.

Which the translator renders, firmiter divaricatis cruribus ftans and the scholiaft interprets by ixugas sas. which interpretation Milton follows:

3 Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours."

Notwithstanding Tyrtaeus borrowed this from Homer, yet by laying so much stress on this posture of fighting, and by his often repeating it,

3 Par. L. IV, 873. Milton, in this whole episode, keeps close to his master Homer, who sends out Ulyffes and Diomede into the Trojan camp as fpies. Il. x'. 533. *M píños,

x. T. λ.

Ιππων μὲ ὠκυπόδων ἀμφὶ κλύπος ἔαλα βάλλει.

O friends! I hear the tread of nimble feet, . 866.

Οὔπω πᾶν εἴρηλο ἔπος, ὅτ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἤλυθον αὐτοί. Ι. κ. 540.
He fcarce bad ended when these two approach'd. . 874.

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