habits far exceeded any thing he had ever seen before; for their "garments being, as they were, drenched in the sea, held, notwithstanding, their freshness and glosses, being rather new-dyed than stained with salt water;" and he considered them as beings of a superior order to the drunkards with whom he had lately conversed. "O, Setabos! these be brave spirits indeed. "How fine my master is !". It is natural for a savage to be immoderately delighted with novelty, and to overrate that with which he is captivated; and accordingly Caliban, in his first encounter with Stephano and Trinculo, is represented, with great propriety, (I think) as treating his new friends with a superstitious respect. "That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor. "I'll kneel to him.". He had recently, besides, had painful experience of Prospero's power; the further effects of which he still dreaded,-"I fear he will chastise me,” and “I shall be pinch'd to death;" and his extravagant admiration co-operating with his fears, it seems natural for him to promise amendment, and to engage obedience to those whom his astonished imagination conceived to be possessed of transcendant dignity and power. LORD CHEDWORTH. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 180. ACT I. SCENE. I. Give me not the boots." Boot or boots signifies, in language very commonly understood, something in barter, superadded to the principal article-this is called boot or boots. Proteus says-nay, give me not the boots-no, replies Valentine, for it boots thee not, i. e. it is of no advantage to thee. 195. "Poor forlorn Proteus, passíónate Pro Pássíónáte a quadrisyllable. 200. "Sweet love! sweet lines! sweet life!" Something is wanting here: perhaps the verse might have run thus: "Sweet lines! and now, sweet life! and sweeter love." D 3 ACT 214. ACT. II. "I am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and I am the dog: O the dog is me, and I am myself." Perhaps the meaning of Lance's dramatic arrangement is this: "I am the dog;" this suggesting the idea of an unlucky fellow, which he conceives himself to be, he says, directly-no: the dog is as he should be, and I am the dog, i. e. the unlucky fellow-O! to me belongs the name of dog, and I am nothing else. 221. "I'll die on him that says so, but yourself." I'll die on him seems to mean I'll execute death on him; or, perhaps, I will contend with him to death: I will enter the fatal lists with him. ACT. III. SCENE II. 258. “Ay, and perversely she persévers so. This unusual accentuation of persevere or persever, might be avoided thus: "Ay, and perversely does she pérséver so." In other places we find the accent resting on the first syllable. Persever not, but hear me mighty king." And in Hamlet K. John. "To do obsequious sorrow, but to pérsěvěr." 268. ACT IV. SCENE I. " In my mood." Mood, says Mr. Malone, is anger or resentment; but this is not a just definition of the word; mood is any arbitrary or capricious disposition of the mind, and may as well be generosity, sullenness, &c. Fortune is merry, "And in this mood will give us any thing." "Her mood must needs be pitied.” Jul. Cæsar. Hamlet. Unused to the melting mood." Othello. If mood were implicitly anger, Dryden's "ireful mood" would be tautology. SCENE III. 277. "Váliánt, wise, remorseful, well accomplish'd." Valiant a trisyllable. 282. SCENE IV. "A slave, that, still an end, turns me to shame." |