Pérsever not, but hear me mighty king."

And in Hamlet

K. John.

"To do obsequious sorrow, but to pérsěvěr."

Mood, says Mr. Malone, is anger or resentment; but this is not a just definition of the word; mood is any arbitrary or capricious disposition of the mind, and may as well be generosity, sullenness, &c.

"Fortune is merry, "And in this mood will give us any thing."

"Her mood must needs be pitied."

Jul. Cæsar.

Hamlet.

Unused to the melting mood."

Othello.

If mood were implicitly anger, Dryden's "ireful mood" would be tautology.

SCENE III.

277. "Váliánt, wise, remorseful, well accom

plish'd."

Valiant a trisyllable.

SCENE IV.

282. "A slave, that, still an end, turns me to

shame."

Still an end is, without deviation-perpetually onward.

Sir Th. Hanmer's proposed emendation, his Mistress' Love, is needless; Julia evidently alludes to the part she has been acting; upon which the following line is a direct comment.

"Alas! how love can trifle with itself.”

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

317.

ACT I. SCENE I.

She lingers my desires."

Lingers, a verb active.

Long withering out a young man's révenue."

Revenue has not always this accentuation: in Hamlet we find it

"That no revénue hast, but thy good spirits." 322. "But earthlier happy is the rose," &c.

This anomalous comparison of an adverb is not singular. See the Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1.

"You have taken it wiselier than I meant."

And Milton, more than once, uses the same licence.

"Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord." Paradise Lost. B. 12.

"For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd."

The poet was very good to make a christian of Theseus.

324. "I must employ you in some business." Business a trisyllable.

326. "And ere a man hath power to say,-Behold!

"The jaws of darkness do devour it up.”

This thought, a little varied, occurs in Romeo and Juliet.

Too sudden,

"Too like the lightning, that doth cease to be "Ere one can say-it lightens !"

327. "Then let us teach our trial patience."

Patience a trisyllable.

"To make all split."

Thus in Hamlet, "To split the ears of the groundlings."

SCENE II.

335. "And so grow to a point.”

To support Mr. Warner's conjecture, we must not only read to appoint for to a point, but alter grow to go, and so go to appoint; but, I believe, no change is necessary, and that the sense is only, and so proceed to a point or conclusion.

$38. "Ercles' vein."

A corruption, I suppose, of Hercules.

ACT II. SCENE I.

351. "A roasted crab."

It is really too much for patience to observe Mr. Steevens, explaining and bringing instances to confirm his remark, that a crab is a wild apple.

SCENE II.

352. "The wisest aunt," &c.

Mr. Steeven's note on this passage, informing us that "wisest aunt" means the most sentimental bawd, is truly Warburtonian, as the expression taken in its direct sense is much more humorous; such notes make me sick: we shall by and by be informed when Hamlet says mother, he means capital bawd, because mother Needham's character is well known.

Heron's Letters of Literature.

Mr. Steevens's note seems to merit the severity of this reprehension. LORD CHEDWORTH.

353. "But room, Faery, here comes Oberon."

Fairie or Faerie is, certainly, as Dr. Johnson observes, sometimes a trisyllable with our old writers; but never, I believe, with the accent as here placed on the second syllable Fǎery: perhaps we should read—

355. "

"But Fairy, room, for here comes Oberon." Knowing I know thy love to Theséús." Theseus a trisyllable.