129. "

SCENE V.

Capable impressure."

Capable, here, I believe, is sensible, susceptible, and has exactly the same meaning (and not intelligent or perceptible) in the instance brought by Mr. Malone, from, Hamlet:

His form and cause conjoin'd, Preaching to stones, would make them capable." Beauty,

131.

"As, by my faith, I see no more in you,
"Than, without candle, may go dark to

bed."

i. e. (I suppose) your beauty admits not of hyperbolical praise. I cannot say it illumines darkness.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

137. "In which my often rumination wraps me, in a most humorous sadness.”

This certainly requires correction; but though Mr. Steevens's change of in to is affords a meaning and concord, it is not, I believe, exactly that which was intended. Perhaps this may come nearer the mark :-It is a melancholy of my own, &c. and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, on which my often rumination wraps me, &c. i. e. my often rumination on which (my travels) wraps or entrances me, &c. "Often," thus adjectively used, is not without example; as in Warner's Albion's England, chap. 9.

"With often kisses plying him, no sport was overpass'd."

And it is not, perhaps, more anomalous than Semperlenitas.

138. "I had rather have a fool to make me merry, than experience to make me sad." Gray says, in the Ode on a distant Prospect of Eaton College,

Where ignorance is bliss,

""Tis folly to be wise."

Had rather is corrupt idiom, proceeding, as Dr. Lowth has well explained, from confounding the contraction of I would, I'd, with that of Ï had.

141. "The foolish chronicles of that age found. it was Hero of Cestos."

Mr.

Sir T. Hanmer's reading, coroners for "chroniclers," is adopted by Mr. Edwards, who thinks it has support in Hamlet:-" The coroner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial." Malone, too, though he prefers the old text, says that "found" is certainly used in a forensic sense, and Mr. M. Mason asserts, that the allusion is evidently to a coroner's inquest on the body of Leander, and that their verdict was, Hero of Cestos was the cause of Leander's death: but, unfortunately for this fair argument, we know that a coroner's inquest upon the body either of Ophelia or Leander, could only declare that the person was drowned; though they might find it accidental, or the effect of lunacy.

142." Then love me, Rosalind."

Ros. " Yes, faith will I, Fridays and Saturdays,

and all."

After the reformation and the abolition of the Romish fasts, political fasts were ordered upon

Fridays and Saturdays, for the purpose of promoting the fisheries upon the coasts of England. Anderson's History of Commerce.

This note is from Lord Chedworth's correspondent, and is signed R. T.

148. "Sing it; no matter how it be in tune, "So it make noise enough," &c.

Jaques appears to have been, slily, no disrelisher of music: this is the second time he has called for a song.

ACT V. SCENE I.

162. "Grapes were made to eat."

"Made to eat," for made to be eaten, is a corruption of phraseology still in use: the implied ellipsis is too violent; "made (for men) to eat." SCENE II.

164. "Is't possible that, on so little acquaintance, you should like her? that, but seeing, you should love her? and, loving, woo? and wooing, she should grant ?"

I cannot help repeating here, what occurs in Warner's Albion's England:

Jove chaunced her to see,

"And seeing liked, liking, lov'd, and loving made it known."

SCENE III.

172. "Though there was no greater matter in the ditty, yet the note was very un

tuneable."

Touchstone would not be so exorbitant as to require music and sense at the same time; but, compounding for the absence of matter, he complains that the grace of harmony was wanting also. This mode of expression occurs elsewhere, as in Act 3 of this play, Scene 4:

What though you have no beauty; "As, by my faith, I see no more in you, Than, without candle, may go dark to bed."

174.

SCENE IV.

"I sometimes do believe, and sometimes do not,

"As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.

Mr. Henley's punctnation appears necessary to obtain sense :·

"As those that fear; they hope, and know they fear."

i. e. They entertain a dubious hope, but a certain perception of danger.

181. "The countercheck quarrelsome; and so to

the lie circumstantial and the lie direct."

I never could understand how the lie circumstantial and the lie direct are to be distinguished from the countercheck quarrelsome.

LORD CHEDWORTH.

THE EPILOGUE.

Much depravation, I think, is discernible amidst the indisputable excellencies of this play; and the epilogue, at last, resembles rather the goodly work of Messieurs Hemings and Condell, the eloquent addressers to The great Variety of Readers, and the first editors of As You Like It, than the writing of our great poet.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

ACT I. SCENE I.

204. "He that so generally is at all times good."

i. e. He that so diffuses his unremitting good

ness.

"He hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process, but only the losing of hope by time."

Time was long persecuted by hope, and hope itself is now destroyed by time. The passage is analogous to the epitaph on a fiddler, named Stephen:

"Stephen and Time are now both even:

66

Stephen beat Time; now Time beats Stephen."

205. "Had it stretch'd so far, would have made Nature immortal."

It seems wanting after far; this was supplied in the edition of 1785. LORD CHEDWORTH.

206. "For where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity."

Where a disposition, not inherently good, is adorned with adventitious graces, there the praise