vens should have been led to suppose there was any ambiguity in this passage.-Breath is life, and the prison of life is the body:-it is a common expression to say, While I breathe or while I have breath, for while I live.

451. "I defy all counsel."

Defy, surely, in this and other places, has a stronger meaning than Mr. Steevens ascribes to it, refuse: It is to reject with vehemence, to abjure. See Henry IV. where Hotspur impatiently exclaims,

"All studies here I solemnly defy,

"Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke." 452. "And thou shalt be canoniz'd, cardinal." Canoniz'd seems to have been again misplaced the line might easily be restored

"And cardinal, thou shalt be canoniz'd." 453. "Do glue themselves in socíáble grief." "Sociable," a quadrisyllable.

454. If that be true, I shall see my boy again.”

The metre requires the contraction of shall, or rather of will, which, in our author's time, as well as now in Ireland and Scotland, was commonly used for shall:

"If that be true I'll see my boy again." 455. "He talks to me, that never had a son."

In Romeo and Juliet

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound." 456. "I will not keep this form upon my head."

Form is "composed appearance."-I will de

range the attire of my head to suit the disorder that is within it.

457. "If you have won it, certainly, you had.” This, I conclude, is a typographical error, have for had.

459.

Pick matter of revolt

Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John." Every part of this royal murderer, from head to foot, from the features of his face to his fingers' ends, will become hateful to the people, and excite revolt.

-This hurly."

This violent commotion:-thus in K. Henry IV. Part 2nd.

"That with the hurly death itself awake."

ACT IV. SCENE I.

461. "Heat me these irons hot."

The ellipsis in the beginning of this phrase"heat me for "heat for my use" is not uncommon: "Whip me such fellows," "Knock me here at the gate," we are sufficiently acquainted with the latter part, perhaps, is more objectionable" to heat" is to make hot; yet it is common to say, with similar tautology, "Fill the cup full," though to fill can properly have no other sense than "to make full.”

467. "Being create for comfort."

Milton takes the same licence:

Bright effluence of bright essence increate." The simple verb employed as the passive participle. 464. "The iron of itself though heat red hot." This form of the participle seems to have countenance in the modern colloquial use of beat for beaten, eat for eaten.

-Or with taper light

"To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish."

Akenside had this passage before him when he wrote,

"Who would not prefer the sun's broad light To the faint glimmering of a waxen taper?” 471. "Startles and frights consideration.”

The penultimate vowel here, as well as the last, must be sounded to make up the quantity of the verse a few lines hence, in a similar word, we find them both mute, or used in redundancy:

"Some reasons for this double coronátion.”

472. "If, what in rest you have, in right you hold;

Why then your fears (which as they attend

"The steps of wrong) should move you to

mew-up

"Your tender kindsman,” &c.

Mr. Steevens would read wrest instead of rest;

but Pembroke, at the moment he was soliciting for Arthur, would hardly have thought it prudent to talk to the king of his violence and injustice in seizing on the sovereignty. By rest I understand quiet possession, and then, with the necessary interchange of places proposed by Mr, Henley, of then and should, the passage will be intelligible.

476. "That blood, which ow'd the breadth of all this isle,

"Three foot of it doth hold."

The same reflection is made in King Henry IV. Part 1st:

"When that this body did contain a soul,

"The world did seem too small a bound for it; "And now two paces of the vilest earth Is room enough," &c.

And again in Hamlet, Act 5:

"The very conveyance of his lands would hardly be in that box; and must the inheritor himself have no more!"

477. "Withold thy speed, dreadful occasion.”

"Occasion" a trisyllable.-Occasion is used here as a generic term for all sad accidents, and John invokes it to stay its course, and league with him, and not, by its progress, hasten on his destruction. B. STRUTT.

479.

Make haste, the better foot before."

"Put your best leg foremost" is a familiar phrase, but it means, not expedition, as here, but address.

Spoke like a spriteful, noble gentleman."

Sprite" and spirit are synonimous.

"Come sisters, cheer we up his sprites,

"And shew the best of our delights." Macbeth.

And in Julius Cæsar

"I'll meet thee at Philippi, said the sprite." 481. "A many thousand warlike French."

This expression has been noted very properly by Dr. Lowth, as being only equivalent to a familiar grammatical anomaly-" a great many." 483. "Thou, to be endeared to a king,

"Made it no concience to destroy a prince." This is doubtless an error of the press, made for made'st.

485. Foul, imaginary eyes of blood."

The eyes of an imagination distempered with the scene of blood, that, in the death of Arthur, was before him, the "mind's eye."—It is not uncommon with Shakspeare, and other poets, to use the adjective instead of the active participle.

"Within this bosom never enter'd yet "The dreadful motion of a murderous thought."

From Dr. Warburton's reprehension of this passage the poet, I think, may be defended: see Note 495, Page 242.

SCENE III.

486. "Good ground, be pitiful, and hurt me not.” Somewhat of this thought occurs in Macbeth"Thou sure and firm-set earth hear not my steps