264. "Than when I feel, and see her, no further

trust her."

Mr. Malone supposes that we should read, or understand, Then when, &c. but I believe the comparative particle than, not the adverb of time, was meant; and this sense seems to be supported by a passage in K. Henry IV. where Hotspur says to Lady Percy—

"Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know; "And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate."

66

Not an inch further.

Every dram of woman's flesh is false."

Iachimo conceives the same minute dissection, and ascribes the same depravity:

If you buy ladies' flesh at a million a dram, you cannot keep it from tainting."

"Whose ignorant credulity will not
"Come up to the truth.”

Whose ignorant confidence in the Queen's purity will not suffer him to perceive her true cha

"To bear the matter thus; mere weakness,

The same thought passes in Othello's mind, when he is meditating the death of Desdemona : "It is the cause-it is the cause, my soul." 273. "

More free, than he is jealous.”

Free for blameless; as in Measure for Mea

sure:

"That we were all, as some would seem to be, "Free from all faults as faults from seeming free."

279.

-Lest she suspect

"Her children not her husband's."

As I cannot perceive the peculiar beauty which Mr. Steevens has discovered in this passage, I fully agree with Mr. Malone, in considering the mother's supposed suspicion of her own incontinence to be a slip of the poet's.

"Than history can pattern, tho' devis'd, "And play'd, to take spectators."

Historical dramas.

291. "With what encounter so uncurrent I "Have strain'd, to appear thus."

Encounter, here, from the lips of Hermione, and in application to herself, cannot surely be used in the gross sense that Mr. Steevens and Mr.

Malone suppose it is, as I conceive, more general, and implies only adventurous undertaking; and the meaning of the passage I take to be this:-I offer it to your conscience to determine with what unwarrantable action I have exceeded the rules of propriety and decorum, so as to deserve this dishonour.

I ne'er heard yet,

"That any of these bolder vices wanted Less impudence to gainsay what they did,

"Than to perform it first.".

Dr. Johnson says, this is incorrect, and that, according to the present use of words, less should be more, or wanted should be had; and both Mr. Steevens and Mr. Malone acquiesce in the censure, only observing that the anomaly is not without example. But where, after all, is this anomaly? or that incorrectness, according to the present use of words?

Leontes, upon the confidence with which the Lady asserts her innocence, remarks that such demeanour naturally belongs to such a crime as her's. He never had heard that any of those bold vices (persons committing the vices) required a less degree of impudence to deny their act than they had already displayed in the committing it.

"I ne'er heard yet," &c.

I dissent from Dr. Johnson and Mr. Malone here, and take Mr. Seymour's explanation to be the true one. LORD CHEDWORTH.

-More than Mistress of,

"Which comes to me in name of fault, I must

not

"At all acknowledge."

Which, here, without any antecedent, is very harsh; it should be what, or, emphatically, that (which) comes to me, &c.

297.

"The flatness of my misery.”

i. e. Says Dr. Johnson, how low, how flat am I laid by my calamity and flat is used in a similar sense by Milton, though not, as I apprehend, in the instance quoted by Mr. Malone; where by "flat despair," I understand despair palpable, positive, without change or qualification, and thus Hotspur applies it :-I will that's flat. And the expressions, flat perjury, flat blasphemy, are common but an instance more apposite to the passage before us occurs in Comus.

"Though sun and moon were in the flat sea sunk."

Though a devil

"Would have shed water out of fire, ere don't."

i. e. Says Mr. Steevens, a devil would have shed tears of pity over the damned ere he would have committed such an action, This is certainly a very spirited interpretation; but, in order to establish it, I wish the ingenious commentator had informed us by what rule or licence of construction, shedding water, or tears out of fire can imply shedding tears over the damned? or with what propriety the innocent babe who, in

Paulina's speech is the object of compassion, can be associated in a comparison with the damned? The plain meaning, I believe, is no more than this, a devil out of hell, i. e. emerged from his penal element, would have wept in compunction rather than have committed this deed.

303.

-What's gone, and what's past help, "Should be past grief."

Thus in Macbeth:

-Things without remedy

"Should be without regard; what's done is done."

Dreams are toys:

"Yet for this once, yea, superstitiously, 'I will be squar'd by this.'

"

This is nature: a superstitious man, who would yet persuade himself that he is a reasonable man, will affect to despise a propensity which, at the same time, he is unable to resist.

ACT IV.

TIME AS CHORUS.

$13. "Imagine me," &c.

There is no need of the correction proposed by Dr. Johnson, we may suppose Shakspeare not to be so philosophically accurate as Dr. J. would have him; the poet wished to inform his audience that the scene was now to be laid in Bohemia; and made use of Time as chorus for this and other purposes, without constantly attending