spent" for the rhyme; or, if not the poet's reading, it's the scholiast's explanation, and is to be rejected.

P. 161. "We have scotched the snake." So Overbury, " He scotcheth time."-See Characters, The Amorist, p. 89.

On this passage Steevens has all the annotation to himself, and so he criticises his own criticisms, and corrects his own emendations. 1st. rooky is reeky, or damp; 2dly. it is a rookery; 3dly. to rook, or to ruck, is to roost; therefore the line is to stand,

"Makes wing to rook i' th' wood;"

and he calls this reforming the passage, which, like some other reforms in Church and State, leave things much worse than they were before. But it must surely be known to the general reader, that the "crow" is the common appellation of the "rook," the latter word being used only when we would speak with precision, and never by the country people, as the word "crow-keeper" will serve to show, which means the boy who keeps the rooks (not carrion crows) off the seed corn. The carrion crow, which is the crow proper, being almost extinct, the necessity of distinguishing it from the rook has passed away in common usage. The passage therefore simply means, "the rook hastens its evening flight to the wood where its fellows are already assembled ;" and to our minds the term "rooky wood" is a lively and natural picture; the generic term "crow" is used for the specific "rook."

P. 193.-"Spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do,
Lives for his own ends, not for you."

The first line is a foot too long; but spiteful and wrathful are rival readings, and one should be placed as a varia lectio in the notes.

P. 31." But in a sieve I'll thither sail."

See Shirley's St. Patrick, p. 24,

"Sail once a month to Scotland in a sieve;"

and Overbury's Characters (a Pyrate) p. 158-" Give him sea-room in never so small a vessel, and, like a witch in a sieve, you would think he were going to make merry with the devil.”

P. 74.

"No jutty, frieze, buttress,

Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made
His pendent bed and procreant cradle."

See Ovid's Tristia, iii. 12, ver. 10—

P. 80.- Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor."

See Ovid's Tristia, iii. xiv. 6.

"Artibus, artifici quæ nocuere suo."

GENT. MAG. VOL. XXII.

S

P. 82." Pale Hecate's offerings and wither'd murder."

Miss Seward conjectures with her for withered; but the poets in such personifications often make the effect produced, to be the attribute of the power, producing-as lean hunger, pale fear, &c. and wither'd murder.

P. 108. "I have drugg'd their possets." See Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, vol. ii. p. 399. "The Earl after this posset was drawn into a gallery," &c.

P. 115.-"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash the blood
Clean from my hand? No! this, my hand, will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green-one red."

See Claudiani Eutropius, lib. ii. ver. 22. p. 270, ed. Gesneri.—

Oceanus ?"

"Quis vos lustrare valebit

See also Piersoni Verisimilia, p. 148. Pythiæ Orac. apud Dorville ad Charit.

p.

64

« ἄνδρα δὲ φαῦλον

ουδ' ἂν ὁ πᾶς νίψη νάμασιν Ωκεανός.”

P. 140.-"A falcon tow'ring in her pride of place
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed."

See Julius Obsequens (Prodigia), p. 163. ed. Havercampi.—“ Corvi vulturem occiderunt.'

See Longinus de Subl. ii. 2, γύπες ἔμψυχοι τάφοι.

P. 163.-"But in them Nature's copy's not eterne."

This line calls forth the following note:"The allusion is to an estate for lives held by copy of court roll. It is clear, from numberless allusions of this kind, that Shakspere had been an attorney's clerk." Ritson. P. 213, "Take a bond of fate.' In this scene the attorney has more than once degraded the poet, for presently we have the lease of nature.'" Steevens. P. 247, "Is it a fee grief due to some single breast?' It must be allowed that the attorney has been guilty of a flat trespass on the poet." Ditto.-Can_pedantry and folly go further than this? By the same rule Sir William Davenant was an attorney, for in his Song of the Witches, 314, he writes" And becomes worse to make his title good.'"

p.

Malone says, Shakspere is sometimes incorrect, and that the sense requires, "Who can want the thought?" We differ from him altogether, and conceive that it means, "So monstrous is the crime, it should be impossible to imagine it. Who is there who cannot be entirely free from any conception of it? to whose mind could the thought of such a hideous crime present itself?"

P. 248.-"What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows.

See J. Heywood's Epigrams, 4to. p. 26

"What, man! plucke up your hearte, be of good cheere ;"

and Cowley's Love's Riddle, p. 122—

P. 250.—“What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?"

See Whiting's Albino and Bellama, ed. 1637, 12mo. p. 27-
"'Cause some rude Sylvan in a raging fit

Snatch'd her faint chickens from their downy nest."

P. 271.-"Raze out the written troubles of the brain."

So Sylvester's Don Bartas, 2nd day—

"And on the tables of our troubled brain."

P. 271.-" Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff."

So Yarrington, in Two Trag. in One, p. 63—

"These are the stings, when as our consciences

Are stuff'd and clogg'd with close concealed crimes."

And Sir T. More's Life of Richard III., p. 413, 12mo.-"Strake his heart with a sudden fear, but it stuff'd his head and troubled his mind.”

P. 273.-"What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug
Can scour," &c.

In the old copy," cyme;" Rowe conjectured "senna," which has been very properly taken into the text, though it might be remarked that "henbane" is cyamus (cyme); yet we would go no further with the observation, for there is a similar corruption in King John, p. 529-"I am the cygnet ;" old copy, symet," which Pope corrected; and if "symet" was printed when cygnet was certainly meant, so "cyme" might be intended for "senna," which probably was spelt somewhat differently.

tr

"P. 278.-" The time has been my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek," &c.

So Ovid. Amor. Eleg. i. b. 10

"At quondam noctem, simulachraque vana timebam,
Mirabar tenebris siquis iturus erat."

P. 284.-" I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun."

So Sir T. Browne, in Religio Medici, p. 88, ed. 1659. “Methinks I have out-lived myself, and begin to be weary of the sunne."

See Marston's Scourge of Villanie, Proem. lib. 1—

"Thou nursing mother of fair Wisdom's lore,
Ingenuous Melancholy, I implore

Thy grave assistance, take thy gloomy seat,
Inthrone thee in my blood."

And Heywood's Golden Age, p. 11

"The purest blood that runs within my veins

I'll dull with thick and troubled Melancholy."

KING JOHN.

P. 380. K. JOHN.-" Bedlam, have done"... Should not this word be "beldam?" See p. 460—“ Old men and beldams in the street."

P. 413.-"I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,

For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout."

"Stout" is an emendation of Sir T. Hanmer's, approved by Johnson and Monck Mason, and received into the text, which in the old copy is, "and makes its owner stoop." Why "its" should be altered to his we cannot see we also doubt Hanmer's alteration, which is too distant from the original to be at once admitted. We would read-

P. 431.-" A cased lion by the mortal paw."

Mod. ed. "chafed;" but surely caged is the right reading. See the note from Rowley,-" The lion in his cage."

P. 446.-"Then in despite of brooded, watchful day."

This is acknowledged not to be a very satisfactory reading. Steevens infers that brooded means vigilant, and Malone that it is put for brooding. We have thought that the poet wrote "crowded," with the same meaning as in the former part of the speech

Pope's emendation of "broad-eyed" is elegant, and in the same play we have "wall-eyed," and "eyeless night;" yet we should prefer reading "Then in despite of broad and watchful day."

P. 448.-" A whole armado of convicted sail."

Mr. Dyce queries if Shakspere did not write convected, but we think convicted right. Compare Cicero de Legibus, lib. i. 13, "Sed tamen jam fractam et convictam sectam secuti sunt."

P. 472." If what in rest you have in right you hold,

Why then your fears--"'

Steevens's conjecture of wrest seems approved by his fellow commentators; but we prefer "rest," and interpret it undisputed peace and possession. We question whether "what you have in wrest is an allowable construction of language.

P. 524.-"Death having preyed upon the outer parts
Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now
Against the mind.-

The commentators reject invisible as without meaning, and insert insensible, adding five long pages of commentary; notwithstanding which we are not at all convinced that they had any right to turn Shakspere's good steed out of the stall, to put in their own sorry gelding. We have in our copy inserted the following reading as most likely to be true :

"Death, having preyed upon the outward parts,
Leaves them, and his invisible siege is now

Against the mind.

The first rule of a good surgeon is never to amputate when he can reset the limb, and thus restore it to its primitive state; but the editors of Shakspere are too often like those quack dentists who draw a sound natural tooth to insert a false one of their own.

Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling-house."

So Cicero de Naturâ Deorum, c. i. 35, "Magis illa cerebrum, cor-hæc enim sunt domicilia vitæ :" and lib. ii. 56," Sensus autem interpretes et nuntii rerum, in capite, tanquam in arce, conlocati sunt ;" and Lactantius de Op. Dei, c. 8, "Quæ ratione pollens verticem hominis quasi arcem et regiam insedit;" and Tusc. Disput. lib. i. 9, " Alii in cerebro dixerunt animi esse sedem.'

KING RICHARD THE SECOND.-Vol. XI.

P. 65.-B. Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.
Qu. 'Tis nothing less. Conceit is still derived

From some fore-father grief: mine is not so,-
For nothing hath begot my something, grief;
Or something hath the nothing, that I grieve."

The key to the interpretation of this passage is, that the queen feels she has a real cause for grief weighing on her mind, but is not able to tell it, nor fully to understand it. She says,

"In thinking, on no thought I think,"

evincing an "involuntary and unaccountable depression of mind." Her argument then is, "For some cause I know not, i.e. nothing, hath begotten a grief that is real," that is "something;" or else "something" that is real hath begotten this grief without an object-therefore "nothing;" as she before said, " on no thought I think." She feels her nameless woe not to be conceit, yet cannot tell what it is, or how it came; but soon after she discovers what it is.

"So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe,
And Bolingbroke's my sorrow's dismal heir.
Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy i