216. "

SCENE II.

Since we have left our throne "Without a burden."

This may mean, either, since we left our throne, and, thereby, disburthen'd ourself of regal care; or, since we left the throne empty; without our weight upon it :-the latter, I am inclined to think, is the meaning intended; but "Since we have left," is an incorrect expression, since being here a preposition referring to the time when he left the throne; it should be, Since we did leave," &c.

Time as long again

"Would be fill'd up, my brother, with our thanks,

"And yet we should, for perpetuity,

"Go hence in debt."

The same thought occurs in Cymbeline;

"I have been debtor to you for courtesies which I will be ever to pay, and yet pay still."

And Milton introduces it in Paradise Lost:

"O burthensome! still paying; still to owe "The debt immense of endless gratitude."

When you find him there, when you have possession of him there.

"Will you take eggs for money?"

To take eggs for money, seems to mean make a base or unworthy compromise.

232. "Shall's attend you there?"

This ungrammatical expression, which we find again in Cymbeline-" Shall's have a play of this?"-is common now in Gloucestershire.

233. "Her allowing husband."

Allowing," says Mr. Malone, is, in old language, approving; but as Leontes cannot possibly be approving of what gives him vexation and pain, we must resort to some other explanation, and that will be found in enduring, suffering, restraining his just indignation; as in Venice Preserved-when Jaffier, acquainting Belvidera with the treatment he had received from Pierre, says "O! he has us'd me-yet by Heaven I bear it." Just in the same manner, too, did Zanga allow the blow from Alonzo, which he afterwards broods upon:-" While I tell it, do I live." The haughty Moor as little approved of this blow, as Leontes does of the deportment or conduct of Hermione.

To hough or hamstring men, as well as cattle, is still in Ireland a practice as common as it is horrible.

66

If ever fearful

"To do a thing, where I the issue doubted, Whereof the execution did cry out Against the non-performance."

Mr. Heath proposes to read "the now performance," which Mr. Malone considers a good interpretation of the original text; adding, that it is clear the poet should have written either against the performance, or for the non-performance; but Camillo's meaning seems to be directly the contrary of this:-the necessity for execution reproached or cried out against the non-performance. The expression is, certainly, not a good one; but I cannot admit that the author has entangled himself, either here, or in the instance produced by Mr. Malone, from The Merchant of Venice. "Let his years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation," means, Let not this consideration be an impediment sufficient to let him lack a reverend estimation. As to the passage from The Twelfth Night—

"Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed him."

It is to be considered that forbid formerly signified command, as well as interdict-as in Chaucer:

"Moses' law forbode it, tho',

"That priests should no lordship's welde; "Christ's Gospel biddeth also,

"That they should no lordships helde."

Plowman, Stanz. 29.

What the meaning of flax wench is, I cannot discover, unless flax be a corruption of flaccid, and imply, in a moral sense, yielding, pliant, loose.

"Flax wench" I take to mean a wench employed in dressing flax.

LORD CHEDWORTH.

Bohemia: who-if I

"Had servants," &c.

The construction seems embarrassed here: but it is a broken speech, and the drift or order of it is changed at the suggestion-" If I had ser

vants.

252.

As she's rare,

"Must it be great; and, as his person's mighty,

"Must it be violent."

The construction would be better if we were to read

253.

"It must be great-it must be violent."

Let us avoid."

Avoid, a verb neuter, occurs elsewhere, as in Cymbeline:

"Thou basest thing, avoid"

And in K. Henry VI. Second Part:

"False fiend, avoid."

ACT II. SCENE I.

257. "I have drank."

Drank for drunk.

Thing is used to express, sometimes, what is pre-eminently good, and sometimes what is extremely the reverse, as here:-but Coriolanus is accosted

"Thou noble thing!"

261. "With an aspect more favourable.-Good my lords."

Good should be omitted, as unnecessary to the sense, and burthensome to the metre.

"I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
"Commonly are."

This will serve to illustrate a passage that has been disputed in Measure for Measure:

In her youth

"There is a prone and speechless dialect." Good fools."

262. "

Fool, as a term of endearment, occurs elsewhere, as in K. Lear:

I believe Antigonus means, that if Hermione be false, he will renounce all belief in his wife's chastity, and have his bedchamber degraded into a stable for the soiled horse.