"MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR."

ACT I. sc. 1.—

I

"Shal. The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat." CANNOT understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption both of words and speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects one mistake of Sir Hugh's, namely, "louse" for "luce," a pike, but the honest Welchman falls into another, namely, "cod" (baccalà). Cambrice-" cot" for coat.

"Shal. The luce is the fresh fish

Evans. The salt fish is an old cot."

"Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse;" says Shallow. "Aye, aye," quoth Sir Hugh; "the fresh fish is the luce; it is an old cod that is the salt fish." At all events, as the text stands, there is no sense at all in the words.

Ib. sc. 3.

"Fal. Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband's purse; He hath a legion of angels.

Pist. As many devils entertain; and To her, boy, say I."

Perhaps it is

"As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine; and to her, boy, say I:"

a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakespearian, allusion to the "legion" in St. Luke's "gospel.'

H

"MEASURE FOR MEASURE."

THIS

HIS play, which is Shakespeare's throughout, is to me the most painful-say rather, the only painful-part of his genuine works. The comic and tragic parts equally border on the μισητόν, the one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice-(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakespeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of the same kind in the Night- Walker, in the marriage of Alathe to Algripe. Of the counter-balancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is Shakespeare's throughout,

Act iii. sc. 1.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where," &c.

"This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to death, seems very little varied from that infamous wish of Mæcenas, recorded in the 101st epistle of Seneca:

"Debilem facito manu,

Debilem pede, coxa," &c.-Warburton's note.

I cannot but think this rather a heroic resolve, than an infamous wish. It appears to me to be the grandest symptom of an immortal spirit, when

even that bedimmed and overwhelmed spirit recked not of its own immortality, still to seek to be,-to be a mind, a will.

As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or immediate advantage. The difference is, that the self-love of the former cannot exist but by a complete suppression and habitual supplantation of immediate selfishness. In one point of view, the miser is more estimable than the spendthrift;―only that the miser's present feelings are as much of the present as the spendthrift's. But cæteris paribus, that is, upon the supposition that whatever is good or lovely in the one coexists equally in the other, then, doubtless, the master of the present is less a selfish being, an animal, than he who lives for the moment with no inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade man, is supposed in the latter case; whatever can elevate him, in the former. And as to self;-strange and generous self! that can only be such a self by a complete divestment of all that men call self,-of all that can make it either practically to others, or consciously to the individual himself, different from the human race in its ideal. Such self is but a perpetual religion, an inalienable acknowledgment of God, the sole basis and ground of being. In this sense, how can I love God, and not love myself, as far as it is of God?

Ib. sc. 2.

"Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go."

Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be,

"Grace to stand, virtue to go."

"CYMBELINE."

ACT I. sc. 1.—

"You do not meet a man, but frowns: our bloods
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers'
Still seem, as does the king's."

HERE can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendations of "courtiers" and "king," as to the sense;--only it is not impossible that Shakespeare's dramatic language may allow of the word "brows" or "faces" being understood after the word "courtiers'," which might then remain in the genitive case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear Shakespearian. What, however, is meant by "our bloods no more obey the heavens?"-Dr. Johnson's assertion that "bloods" signify "countenances," is, I think, mistaken both in the thought conveyed-(for it was never a popular belief that the stars governed men's countenances)—and in the usage, which requires an antithesis of the blood, or the temperament of the four humours, choler, melancholy, phlegm, and the red globules, or the sanguine portion, which was supposed not to be in our own power, but to be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies, and the countenances which are in our power really, though from flattery we bring them into a no less apparent dependence on