Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

"Which way they walk for fear thy very stones "Prate of my whereabout," &c.

487. "Whose private with me."

We have seen this word before used as a noun.

489. "Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege." We find the same expression in King Lear

[ocr errors]

Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege.”

"Too precious princely."

This I had always considered as a compound, precious-princely; but Mr. Strutt apprehends two distinct words, too valuable and too noble.

490. "All murders past do stand excus'd in this; "And this, so sole, and so unmatchable, "Shall give a holiness, a purity, "To the yet-unbegotten sin of time, "And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, Exampled by this heinous spectacle."

A hyperbole resembling this we find in Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 6

[ocr errors][merged small]

"Who all the abhorred things o' the earth amend, By being worse than they.'

66

494.

[ocr errors]

I'll tell thee what, "Thou art damn'd as black-nay, nothing

is so black.

This figure of language, which is truly dramatic and animated, has been well noted by Addison, in reference to a passage in Lee's Alexander: "Then he would talk-good gods how he would talk."

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

495. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought "Be guilty," &c.

The censure passed by Dr. Warburton in a preceding scene upon Hubert's disingenuousness, would have had a better foundation here: in disclaiming to the king any disposition to commit a murder, Hubert may fairly be considered as adverting to the pure condition of his mind, before he was wrought upon by John's suggestions; but now he utters a palpable falsehood in denying that he was guilty in "consent or sin of thought."

ACT V. SCENE I.

497. "Fore we are inflam'd."

Before the rage of war shall commence, or, perhaps, before the combustion of invasive hostility and intestine revolt shall burst upon us.

"Our people quarrel with obedience,

[ocr errors]

Swearing allegiance and the love of soul." Obedíénce, four syllables; allegiance, three. This mode of expressing an unruly disposition occurs in Macbeth, Act 2, where Duncan's horses are said to have

"Broke their stalls, flung out,

"Contending 'gainst obedience."

66

499. "An empty casket, where the jewel of life By some damn'd hand was robb'd, and ta'en away."

It was surely some damned hand that thus cor

rupted the first of these lines, which I suppose ran thus:

"An empty casket, whence the jewel life."

The life itself was the jewel; and it was not that, but the casket, which had been robbed.

500. "So, on my soul, he did."

How came Faulconbridge so certain of Hubert's innocence, which he himself but a little before suspected?

SCENE II.

503. "Such a sore of time."

Of the time or times.

504.

"That Neptune's arms-
"Would bear-

"And grapple thee unto a Pagan shore!
"And not to-spend it," &c.

This is undoubtedly, as Mr. Malone has remarked, an inaccuracy in the author's expression, and no attempt of Mr. Steevens or any other critic will justify it: the expedient of introducing a hyphen to make one word of to spend, in order to support a fanciful argument, cannot be admitted, and has no authority, except through haste and error, either in Shakspeare or any other writer: not a single instance, among all those produced by Mr. Tyrwhitt and Mr. Steevens, to shew that to pinch, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, is one word, will serve their purpose, or is in point; the particle to, in every passage that they have adduced, belonging not to the verb or participle following it, but to the foregoing particle al or all, with which it is component: alto or allto,

that is, entirely, altogether, as I have shewn in the place referred to. See Note 443, Page 235. "And fairy like to-pinch him."

Merry Wives of Windsor.

505. "Figur'd quite o'er with burning meteors." "Meteors" is not every where thus long: "And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs." Foster'd up at hand.”

506. "

Nursed, and fed by the hand.

SCENE IV.

516. "

If Lewis, by your assistance, win the day."

Lewis is, I believe, every where in this play, to be uttered in the time of a monosyllable. Thus above:

"I say, again, if Lewis do win the day."

And in the third Act:

"Shall Lewis have Blanche? and Blanche those provinces ?"

517.

Right in thine eye."

Right is directly, plainly, without deviation.

I only speak right on."

Julius Cæsar.

I wonder that Mr. Steevens should call this mode of expression obsolete: right forwardright across-right upward-right on-right off, are phrases that every day occur, and are, I suppose, derived from the geometrical postulate, that

a right line is the shortest that can be made from one point to another.

522.

[ocr errors]

SCENE VI.

Who didst thou leave ?"

This, perhaps, is rather an ellipsis, than false grammar. Who (is he whom) thou didst leave.

523. "Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven."

"And tempt us not to bear above our

power.

[ocr errors]

Milton has adopted this pious obsecration in Comus, where the lady says

[ocr errors]

Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
To my proportioned strength."

And Mr. Brook, the author of Gustavus Vasa:

"For heaven still squares our trial to our strength; And thine is of the foremost."

66

SCENE VII.

524. "

Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts,

"Leaves them insensible; and his siege is

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

This emendation of Sir T. Hanmer's, from the first copy, which reads invisible, affords a plain meaning, which nothing but the ingenuity of commentators could misinterpret; yet Mr. Steevens conducts us through five or six pages of debate about it, for the sake, principally, of achiev

« PoprzedniaDalej »