240.

I'll grow a talker for this gear.”

"Gear," in this place, is garniture of discourse, the trappings of language. "I will," for "İ shall," is not unusual in these writings, and is an inaccuracy very common at this day in Ireland

and in Scotland.

As anciently, when less precision was observed in orthography, G and J were often used indiscriminately, as having, in many instances, the same power, I would read-" I'll grow a talker for this jeer," (supposing it to have been originally written geer) that is, for this bantering expostulation. I cannot think that gear is the right reading of this conjecture, however, I am not confident. LORD CHEDWORTH.

241. "A more swelling port

"Than my faint means would grant con

tinuance.

The preposition is wanting here :-continuance of. 242.-"

Shot his fellow of the self-same flight."

i. e. According to the exact direction of the first; or, perhaps, in the language of archery, the self-same flight may mean of the same feather, size, and structure.

"To find the other forth."

This is a very uncouth, if not unwarrantable, expression; and as the metre is at the same time disfigured by it, there is reason to suspect corruption. The sense and the measure might agree

thus:

"To find the first, and, by adventuring both,"

243. "

&c.

Sometimes from her eyes "I did receive fair speechless messages."

Dr. Farmer seems to think that "sometimes" stands here, as in other places, for "sometime;" i. e. formerly: but I believe Bassanio means only to say, She has sometimes given me looks of encouragement. The obscurity proceeds from the imperfect tense being used instead of the perfect; I did receive, for I have received.

244. "I have a mind presages me such thrift,

"That I should questionless be fortunate."

As it was not either the quality or the quantity of the thrift that afforded this confidence, but the force of the suggestion in his mind, the sense requires a different construction. We might read

"I have a mind which so presages thrift,
"That I should questionless be fortunate."

"Nor have I money nor commodity
"To raise a present sum."

This passage is often unskilfully uttered, and, perhaps, is not generally, at once, clearly understood:-the sense is, "I have not money at hand, nor any goods that will immediately raise the sum you may require."

SCENE II.

Therefore the lottery that he hath devis'd."

"Lottery" here means prize, the object of lottery.

246. "According to my description, level at my affection."

Take conjectural aim; a phrase taken from the exercise of the gun.

This seems to be an oversight. The Spaniards, I believe, never permitted foreigners to traffick with that rich country.

254. "And when the work of generation was "Between these woolly breeders in the act, The skilful shepherd," &c.

This

passage appears to be so free from obscurity, as to require no comment; but some actors of late have tried to vitiate it by an affected and constrained recitation; thus

"And when the work of generation was "Between these woolly breeders; in the act "The skilful shepherd," &c.

Surely the plain meaning is this:-When the work of generation was going forward, &c. To be in act is to be in the progress of performance.

256. "

Signior Antonio, many a time and oft,
In the Rialto have you rated me.

66

Here again an affectation of ingenuity has, of late, on the stage, sophisticated the plain sense of this passage: Many a time and oft" is a phrase, of such general as well as ancient authority, that instances of its use would be superfluous: but, to serve the purpose of those refiners, the phrase is split, and the passage rendered thus,

-Many a time--and oft,

"In the Rialto," &c.

But it was only in the Rialto that Antonio was likely to encounter Shylock, and there where, of course, he would "rate" him.

My monies and my usances."

The instances produced by Mr. Reed to shew that usance formerly signified usury, will, I believe, be found to prove directly the contrary; and will support Mr. Ritson's remark, that Mr. Steevens was mistaken in that interpretation of the word. The writer quoted by Mr. Reed states, that "a borrower had received a thousand pounds, and that this sum had been enormously augmented by usury," which the lender " termed by a more cleanly name, usance," &c. The gentleman, indeed, here, who was imposed upon, might stigmatise usance as fraud, usury, or robbery, but certainly the lender was better acquainted with the value of the cleanly distinction he had made; and Shylock, speaking of his own practices, would not be very ready to declare that usury was among them.

258. "You spit upon me."

The correct form of the præterimperfect tense of this verb, spat, was beginning in our author's time to grow obsolete: the quarto here has spet, upon which occasion I must beg leave to correct a mistake made by Mr. Steevens, who, following the printed editions of Lysidas, observes that Milton has, in that poem, adopted this mode of spelling the word.

"The dragon womb

"Of Stygian darkness, spets her thickest gloom."

But Milton, in the Cambridge MS. has written not spets, but spits.

"I am as like to spit on thee again," &c.

This was a grossness of insult which it ill became Antonio to have offered much more so to exult in.

"Lend it rather to thine enemy,

"Who, if he break, thou may'st with better face "Exact the penalty."

Here is a nominative case without object of agency: the conjunction that might stand in the place of "who."

262.

ACT II. SCENE I.

By this scimitar,

"That slew the Sophy, and a Persian prince, "That won three fields of Sultan Solyman."