man. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakspeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of the same kind in the NightWalker, in the marriage of Alathe to Algripe. Of the counterbalancing beauties of Measure for Measure, I need say nothing; for I have already remarked that the play is Shakspeare'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 can not but think this rather an heroic resolve, than an infa mous wish. It appears to me to be the grandest symptom of ar 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 can not 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.

THERE can be little doubt of Mr. Tyrwhitt's emendations of 'courtiers' and 'king,' as to the sense ;-only it is not impossible that Shakspeare'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 Shaksperian. 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 humors, 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 the sovereign, than the former are in actual dependence on the constellations.

I have sometimes thought that the word 'courtiers' was a misprint for countenances,' arising from an anticipation, by foreglance of the compositor's eye, of the word 'courtier' a few lines below. The written is easily and often confounded with the written n. The compositor read the first syllable court, and -his eye at the same time catching the word courtier lower down-he completed the word without reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakspeare intended first to express, gen

erally, the same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a particular application to the persons meant ;-a common usage of the pronominal 'our,' where the speaker does not really mean to include himself; and the word 'you' is an additional confirmation of the 'our,' being used in this place, for 'men' generally and indefinitely, just as 'you do not meet' is the same as one does not meet.'

Act i. sc. 2. Imogen's speech :

-My dearest husband,

I something fear my fathers wrath; but nothing
(Always reserv'd my holy duty) what

His rage can do on me.

Place the emphasis on 'me;' for 'rage' is a mere repetition of 'wrath.'

Cym. O disloyal thing

That should'st repair my youth, thou heapest

A year's age on me!

How is it that the commentators take no notice of the unShaksperian defect in the metre of the second line, and what in Shakspeare is the same, in the harmony with the sense and feeling? Some word or words must have slipped out after 'youth,' -probably and see:'

That should'st repair my youth!—and see, thou heap'st, &c.

Ib. sc. 4. Pisanio's speech :

-For so long

As he could make me with this eye or ear

Distinguish him from others, &c.

But this eye,' in spite of the supposition of its being used SexTixos, is very awkward. I should think that either 'or''the' was Shakspeare's word :

As he could make me or with eye or ear.

Ib. sc. 7. Iachimo's speech :

Hath nature given them eyes

To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt
The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones
Upon the number'd beach.

I would suggest cope' for crop.' As to twinn'd stones'may it not be a bold catachresis for muscles, cockles, and other empty shells with hinges, which are truly twinned? I would take Dr. Farmer's 'umber'd,' which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been already offered by him: but I do not adopt his interpretation of the word, which I think is not derived from umbra, a shade, but from umber, a dingy yellow-brown soil, which most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on the seashore, and on the banks of tide rivers at low water. One other possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred to me, just barely worth mentioning—that the 'twinn'd stones' are the augrim stones upon the numbered beech, that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood.

Act v. sc. 5.

Sooth. When as a lion's whelp, &c.

It is not easy to conjecture why Shakspeare should have introduced this ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive or explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology. (9)

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

Act i. sc. 1. Theobald's note.

I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakspeare) turned his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the players, and became one of their body.

THAT Shakspeare never 'turned his genius to stage-writing,' as Theobald most Theobaldice phrases it, before he became an actor, is an assertion of about as much authority as the precious story that he left Stratford for deer-stealing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's horses at the doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip, old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus Andronicus being Shakspeare's, worth a score such chronological surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in this play and in Jeronymo, Shakspeare wrote some passages, and that they are the earliest of his compositions.

Act v. sc. 2.

I think it not improbable that the lines from-

were written by Shakspeare in his earliest period. But instead of the text

Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake,

Tit. Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me ?—

the words in italics ought to be omitted.

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the story of Troilus and Cressida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard: but Dryden goes yet further; he declares it to have been written in Latin verse, and that Chaucer translated it.-Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy. Note in Stockdale's edition, 1807.

'LOLLIUS was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.' So af firms the notary, to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed the disfacimento of Ayscough's excellent edition of Shakspeare. Pity that the researchful notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere. The notary speaks of the Troy Boke of Lydgate, printed in 1513. I have never seen it; but I deeply regret that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of Lydgate's works from the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless Gower.

The Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare can scarcely be classed with his dramas of Greek and Roman history; but it forms an intermediate link between the fictitious Greek and Roman histories, which we may call legendary dramas, and the proper ancient histories; that is, between the Pericles or Titus Andronicus, and the Coriolanus, or Julius Cæsar. Cymbeline is a congener with Pericles, and distinguished from Lear by not having any declared prominent object. But where shall we class the Timon of Athens? Perhaps immediately below Lear. It is a Lear of the satirical drama; a Lear of domestic or ordinary life ;—a local eddy of passion on the high road of society, while all around is the week-day goings on of wind and weather; a Lear, therefore, without its soul-searching flashes, its ear-cleaving thunder-claps,