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

The jaws of darkness do devour it up :] Though the word spleen be here employed oddly enough, yet I believe it right. Shakspere, always hurried on by the grandeur and multitude of his ideas, assumes every now and then, an uncommon licence in the use of his words. Particularly in complex moral modes it is usual with him to employ one, only to express a very few ideas of that number of which it is composed. Thus wanting here to express the ideas—of a sudden, or-in a trice, he uses the word spleen; which, partially considered, signifying a hasty sudden fit, is enough for him, and he never troubles himself about the further or fuller signification of the word. Here, he uses the word spleen for a sudden hasty fit; so just the contrary, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he uses sudden for splenetick—sudden quips. And it must be owned this sort of conversation adds a force to the diction. WARBURTON.

Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night,] colly'd, i. e. black, smutted with coal, a word still used in the midland counties.

So, in Ben Jonson's Poetaster:

"Thou hast not collied thy face enough.”

STEEVENS.

159. I have a widow aunt, &c.] These lines perhaps might more properly be regulated thus:

I have a widow aunt, a dowager

of great revenue, and she hath no child,
And she respects me as her only son ;

Her

Her house from Athens is remov'd seven leagues,
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee,

And to that place

JOHNSON. 161. -remote-] Remote is the reading of both STEEVENS.

the quartos.

Remov'd, which is the reading of the folio, was, I believe, the author's word.-He uses it again in Hamlet, for remote:

"He wafts you to a more removed ground.”

MALONE.

176.by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,] Shakspere had forgot that Theseus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and consequently long before the death of Dido. STEEVENS.

186. Your eyes are lode-stars ;- -] This was a compliment not unfrequent among the old poets. The lode-star is the leading or guiding star, that is, the pole-star. The magnet is, for the same reason, called the lode-stone, either because it leads iron, or because it guides the sailor. Milton has the same thought in L'Allegro :

"Tow'rs and battlements he sees

“Bosom'd high in tufted trees,

"Where perhaps some beauty lies,

"The cynosure of neighb'ring eyes.”

JOHNSON.

189.0, were favour so!] Favour, is feature,

countenance. So, in Twelfth Night :

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"Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves."

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190. This emendation is taken from the Oxford edition. The old reading is, Your words I catch.

194.

JOHNSON.

-to be to you translated.] To translate, in our author, sometimes signifies to change, to transform.

So, in Timon:

to present slaves and servants

Translates his rivals.".

STEEVENS.

203. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.] The folio and one of the quartos read, His folly, Helena, is none of mine. JOHNSON. 204. None, but your beauty; would that fault were mine!] I would point this line thus: None.- -But your beauty ;- -Would that fault were

mine!

HENDERSON.

207. Perhaps every reader may not discover the propriety of these lines. Hermia is willing to comfort Helena, and to avoid all appearance of triumph over her. She therefore bids her not to consider the power of pleasing, as an advantage to be much envied or much desired, since Hermia, whom she considers as possessing it in the supreme degree, has found no other effect in it than the loss of happiness. JOHNSON.

219. Emptying our bosoms of their counsels swell'd ;

There my Lysander and myself shall meet :

And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes,

To seek new friends and strange companions.] This whole scene is strictly in rhyme; and that it deviates in these two couplets, I am persuaded, is

owing to the ignorance of the first, and the inaccuracy of the later editors: I have therefore ventured to restore the rhimes, as I make no doubt but the poet first gave them. Sweet was easily corrupted into swell'd, because that made an antithesis to emptying : and strange companions our editors thought was plain English; but stranger companies, a little quaint and unintelligible. Our author very often uses the substantive, Stranger, adjectively; and companies to signify companions as Richard II.

"To tread the stranger paths of banishment.” And Henry V.

"His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow."

THEOBALD. Dr. Warburton retains the old reading, and, perhaps justifiably for a bosom swell'd with secrets does not appear as an expression unlikely to have been used by our author, who speaks of a stuff'd bosom in Macbeth.

In Lylly's Midas, 1592, is a somewhat similar expression: "I am one of those whose tongues are swell'd with silence." Again, in our author's King Richard II.

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"That swells in silence in the tortur'd soul."

In the scenes of K. Richard II. there is likewise a mixture of rhime and blank verse. I have therefore restored the old reading,-strange companions. Mr. Tyrwhitt concurs with Theobald.

Biij

STEEVENS,
I think,

I think, sweet, the reading proposed by Theobald, is right.

Counsels relates in construction to emptying—and not to the last word in the line, as it is now made to do by reading swell'd. A similar phraseology is used by a writer contemporary with Shakspere :

"So ran the poor girls filling the air with shrieks,

"Emptying of all the colour their pale cheeks.”

Heywood's Apology for Altors, Sig: B.4. 1610. The adjective all here added to colour, exactly answers, in construction, to sweet in the text, as regu lated by Theobald. MALONE.

226.

when Phabe doth behold, &c.

-deep midnight.] Shaksperé has a little forgotten himself. It appears from act i. line 7, that to-morrow night would be within three nights of the new moon, when there is no moonshine at all, much less at deep midnight. The same oversight occurs in act ii. BLACKSTONE. 235.no quantity.] Quality seems a word more suitable to the sense than quantity, but either may

serve.

JOHNSON. -in game] Game here signifies not contentious play, but sport, jest. Só, Spenser :

245.

❝ —twixt earnest, and 'twixt game." JOHNSON. 245. -Hermia's éyne,] This plural is common both in Chaucer and Spenser. So, in Chaucer's Character of the Prioresse, late edit. v. 152.

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