but as Chatillon is to be the lightning to the thunder of invasion, and as the thunder cannot precede the lightning, the sense, as I conceive it, demands the expunction of a letter at the beginning of the second line :

"Or, ere thou can'st report," i. e. if you be not as quick as lightning, " my thunder will be there before you."

346. "Upon the right and party of her son?"

Upon the title, claim, the question of right.

This mode of expression is common in the county of Somerset, and in parts of Yorkshire.

"But whe'r I be as true begot, or no.”

Whe'r, for whether, occurs in other places, and was anciently printed without a mark of contraction.

350. He hath a trick of Caur-de-Lion's face."

Trick, here, is a peculiar habit of the features. Thus in King Henry IV.

'A villainous trick of thine eye, and foolish hanging of thy nether lip."

358. "Well won is still well shot."

What has been effectually obtained, will always justify the means of obtension. We question not the skill of the fowler who brings home plenty of game.

359. "And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter;

For new-made honour doth forget men's

names."

No satire was ever more true than this:

Too sociable

"For your conversion."

By "your conversion," I think the author means, according to a practice not uncommon with him, the person converted;" as he would have said, in the preceding line, had the metre required it, " your new-made honour," for " your new

made man of honour."

362. "

He is but a bastard to the time, "That doth not smack of observation ;"And not alone in habit and device, "Exterior form, outward accoutrement, "But from the inward motion to deliver "Sweet, sweet, sweet poison to the age's tooth;

"Which, tho' I will not practice to deceive,

"Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn.”

He is not the legitimate offspring of these times who has not a knowledge of the world, and does not evince that knowledge, not only by outward conformity to the usages of life, but in the artful disposition to sooth the vices of the age with sweet but poisoned flattery. "Tooth" is in familiar use for a lickerish appetite. Dr. Johnson's proposed emendation, "this," for "which," is hardly necessary; the dependant word is not wholly alienated from its principal, and we shall find in these works many genitural nouns standing more proudly aloof from their humble relatives.

365. "There's toys abroad."

Vain speculations, idle fancies. Thus in King Richard III.

"He hearkens after prophecies and dreams, "And, for my name of George begins with G, "It follows in his thought that I am he:

These, as I learn, and such like toys as these, "Have mov'd his highness," &c.

And in this precise sense, I believe, the word is used, in the instances quoted by Mr. Steevens, to support his interpretation-rumours, idle reports.

371.

ACT II. SCENE I.

So indirectly shed."

Indirectly" is out of due course, out of the fair and equitable order of proceeding; as in Julius Cæsar :

I would rather coin my heart, &c. than to wring

"From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash,

"By any indirection.".

"We coldly pause for thee."

Coldly means temperately, with stayed atten

tion.

372. "Fiery voluntaries."

Voluntaries for volunteers.

Fierce dragons' spleens."

Spleen here, as in other places, means of fury, impetuosity;" as in Richard III.

Inspire me with the spleen of dragons."

4

We shall find in other poets an equal abuse of the verb. Milton makes" uplift" a participle:

"With head uplift above the waves."

Paradise Lost,

"For courage mounteth with occasion.”

Words ending thus in sion-tion, and others in which a junction of vowels will admit of the variety, as "conscience, egregious," &c. Shakspeare applies without any apparent preference, sometimes with the prolonged and sometimes with the contracted sound, as it may suit the quantity of his line. Thus in Hamlet we find " occasion" only a trisyllable.

"How all occasions do inform against me.” This brief."

374.

This is a smack of the attorney.

"England was Geffrey's right,
"And this is Geffrey's."

This is not conclusive; the argument isGeffrey was your elder brother, and this is his son; England belonged to Geffrey, and consequently must now belong to his son. I would propose to read, with the dismissal only of one letter, thus:

England was Geffrey's right,

"And Geffrey is his, in the name of God.”

This, to be sure, may seem a recourse to Mr. Malone's art of extending the quantity of a word beyond its real capacity; but if " Geffrey" can

not be admitted as a trisyllable, which its place here would require, we might read

"And Geffrey's right is his, in the name of God." 375. “And, by whose help, I mean to chastise it."

Chastise, I think, is always in these works accentuated on the first syllable, as in Macbeth: "And chastise with the valour of my tongue."

And in the third part of King Henry VI. "If I not chástise this high-minded strumpet." 379. "Do, child, go to it grandam, child— "Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam

will

"Give it a plum.”

This is still the language of nurses to children. I did not imagine it had been of such antiquity. 380." I have but this to say."

Mr. Henley has admirably explained this difficult passage.

386. "

Be pleased, then,

"To pay that duty, which you truly owe "To him that owes it."

In these works there is no occasion missed of playing upon a word that has different meanings.

398. "

SCENE II.

If not complete, O say he is not she, "And she, again, wants nothing, to name want,

"If want it be not, that she is not he.”