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12. "More better."

Mr. Stevens calls this mode of speech ungrammatical, but, I believe, he is mistaken. There appears to have been formerly five degrees of comparison-Good. Better, more better. Best, most best. B. STRUTT.

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15. Thy mother was a piece of virtue."

Piece is pattern, as in Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 3.

"Let not the piece of virtue which is set
"Betwixt us, as the cement of our love-"

And again, ibid. Act 5.

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To imagine

"An Anthony were nature's piece, 'gainst fancy."

19.

Like one

"Who having, unto truth, by telling of it,
"Made such a sinner of his memory,
"To credit his own lie."

Lie is certainly the correlative to which it refers. The use of the pronoun before the noun to which it relates, though a sort of vsepov polepov, and improper, is not very uncommon in conversation: the following is an instance of it in Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, B. 264. "The bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that whilst they remain between them, they do, by an insurmountable force, hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them." The thought is something like the fingebant simul credebantque of Tacitus. An. 5. 10. LORD CHEDWORTH.

20. "So dry he was for sway."

Surely there was no need of a note to tell us that dry meant thirsty, in which sense it is very commonly used: so Gay, in his Shepherd's Week,

"Your herds for want of water stand a-dry." LORD CHEDWORT.

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21. I, not rememb'ring how I cried out then, "Will cry it o'er again."

How I cried out, i. e. how I expressed my trouble.

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"That wrings mine eyes to't."

To what? exclaims Mr. Steevens; who then, with the authority of Dr. Farmer, expunges "to 't;" but the answer to his question is obvious enough. The act of crying. Your tale, says Miranda, is a suggestion that forces me to weep.

23. "When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt."

To deck, I believe, is merely to cover or place uppermost thus in Venice Preserved

Downy pillows, deck'd on leaves of roses."

24. "Some food we had, and some fresh water,

that

"A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,

"Out of his charity (who being then appointed

"Master of this design) did give us," &c.

Mr. Steevens need not have scrupled to insert in the text his clear and obvious emendation of this corrupt passage: He being then appointed,

&c.

25. "Now I arise."

It is very difficult to assign a meaning, or a commodious one, to these words; and I cannot but suspect them to be corrupt. May we suppose arrest, instead of arise? Now I seize Now I seize upon and fix your attention. This I am far from recommending; but I know not what to do with the passage. Mr. Strutt supposes it to be only a marginal note of the player's.

"Now I arise."

I confess I cannot acquiesce in either of the explanations given of these words, though I do not know that I am able to give any very satisfactory account of them. With the regulation proposed by Sir William Blackstone (to which I can hardly believe that many readers will yield assent,) Mr. Steevens seems dissatisfied, from his not adopting it, and proposing an explanation of the words as they now stand; but I cannot think that Mr. S. has given the true meaning; for I do not perceive that Prospero now rises in his narration, which had from the beginning been extremely interesting, as Miranda confesses, (your story would cure deafness.) I am strongly inclined to think the words mean no more than that Prospero rises from his seat; which he does because he was just now concluding his narration; all that remains for him to relate, being, that they arrived in the island in which he had been tutor to his daughter; which account he dis

patches in four lines: what farther he says to Miranda, is in answer to a question put by her, and is no part of his narrative. I do not contend that the words understood in this sense are absolutely necessary; but neither are they so in the sense attributed to them by Mr. Steevens, or by Sir William Blackstone. I confess I think those gentlemen have gone too deep for the meaning. LORD CHEDWORTH.

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29. Yea, his dread trident shake.

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My brave spirit !"

This is defective; we might read,

"That's my brave spirit."

But shake, says Dr. Farmer, is in Warwickshire, &c. a dissyllable; and so, indeed, it is, as well as brave, and many other such words, in London, and every where else, according to the barbarous tone of methodistical elocution; but I believe by no other authority written or oral; the word often occurs in these works with its natural sound and quantity.

30.

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Cooling of the air with sighs, "In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, "His arms in this sad knot."

Thus in Romeo and Juliet:

"His arms folded in sorrow's knot

"The still-vex'd Bermoothes."

Milton uses the same word in a similar sense.

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When, with fierce winds, Orion, arm'd, "Hath ver'd the red sea coast," &c.

Parad. Lost.

35. "Go make thyself like to a nymph o'the sea; "Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible "To every eye-ball else."

I do not perceive the inconsistency that Mr. Steevens complains of here: Ariel is commanded to assume the form of a sea nymph, and not to be known by any other eye than Prospero's, as his ministering agent.

38. "Urchins."

I believe urchin is used as synomymous with elf. I remember having heard children, small of their age, called urchins: so Prior

"Pleas'd Cupid heard, and check'd his mother's pride;

"And who's blind now, Mamma? the urchin LORD CHEDWORTH.

cried."

40. "Cursed be I that did so! All the charms."

I would read, with the second folio,

"Curs'd be I that I did so," &c.

40. "Here you sty me."

LORD CHEDWORTH.

This passage seems a confirmation of the reading in As You Like It. "Sty's me here at home;" not stays.

44. "IVhere shou'd this music be? i'the air, or the earth?

"It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon "Some God of the island."

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