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23. "Turns insurrection to religion."

"Religion," here, is of equal length with "insurrection;" but the instances are endless of the poet's lengthening or contracting the sound of vowels to suit the metre.

"Doth enlarge his rising.

Doth increase the band of insurgents.

SCENE II.

35. "I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog."

Dr. Johnson says he does not understand the joke; he knows that dogs sometimes lead the blind, but asks, Why should a dog lead the fat? Dr. Farmer answers, "If the fellow's great belly prevented him from seeing his way, he would want a dog as well as the blind man." But, this reply is by no means satisfactory; the definite article repeated in "the" man, and "the" great belly, seems to denote a reference to some wellknown object at that time.

37. "Your wit single."

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Single," perhaps, means unique: I imagine the chief justice designs an emphatic compliment to Falstaff's wit; he depreciates every other quality, and, by saying "your wit is single," means, your wit is the only thing that you can fairly boast of: yet single may mean small, as Mr. Steevens explains.

42. "I will turn diseases to commodity."

"Commodity," as Mr. Steevens says, is gain, profit, sordid advantage: thus Faulconbridge, having dilated this sense of the word in King John, concludes:

"Since kings break faith upon commodity, "Gain be my lord, for I will worship thee."

SCENE III.

43. "Eating the air on promise of supply."

Hamlet says,

"I eat the air, promise-cramm'd."

44. Hast. "

It never yet did hurt "To lay down likelihoods," &c.

Bard. "Yes, in this present quality of war, "Indeed, the instant action (a cause on foot)

"Lives so in hope, as, in an early

spring,

"We see the appearing buds, which,

to prove fruit,

"Hope gives not so much warrant as despair,

"That frosts will bite them."

There is no harm, says Hastings, in taking probabilities into reckoning: yes, cries Bardolph, in the present condition of things, there is; hope, or a flattering calculation, as our cause stands, (in the instant action) is likely to deceive us, and our prospect of success is no more to be relied on than the premature promise of a spring which, to an experienced mind, suggests the likelihood of abortion, rather than of abundance.

Bardolph's speech to "We fortify in paper," is not in the quarto.

46. "And waste for churlish winter's tyranny." In As You Like It, we find:

"And churlish chiding of the winter's wind." 47. "And come against us in full puissance." "Puissance" is occasionally a dissyllable and a trisyllable, as in line 487:

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Upon the power and puissance of the king." And again :

"Have of their puissance made a little taste.” Yet, in these instances, the fluency of the vowels would admit of the distinct sounds.

48. "And being now trimm'd in thine own desires.'

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Upon this line, Mr. Malone says, the last word is a trisyllable; but let us see what sort of metre such a trisyllable would here produce; first of all, being" must become, what certainly it can be, a monosyllable, as thus (if it were necessary so to read):

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"And being now trim'm'd out in thine own desires.'

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But, according to Mr. Malone's arrangement, we must read desi-res or desi-ers:

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And being now trim'm'd in thine own desi-rés."

ACT II. SCENE I.

52. I'll tickle

your catastrophe."

I'll whip your breech, make your latter-end

smart or itch.

SCENE II.

61. "A prince should not be so loosely studied, as to remember so weak a composition." "Studied," in this sense, is a word adopted from the stage; it occurs again in Macbeth: He died like one

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"That had been studied in his death."

68. I will steep his letter in sack, and make him eat it."

The dose with which Poins threatens the knight was actually administered, and without any sack to relish it, in Ireland, where a gentleman, who conceived himself slandered in a newspaper, made the editor swallow one whole copy of the print.

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i. e. At your leisure, when you have nothing else to do King Lear says, to his ungrateful daughter Goneril,

"Mend when thou canst be better at thy leisure." 70.

"This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road."

Poins. "I warrant you, as common as the way between St. Albans and London."

Thus in Cymbeline, a prostitute is described:

With lips as common as the stairs,

"That mount the capitol.

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72.

SCENE III.

He was, indeed, the glass "Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves."

And again:

"In speech, in gait, in diet, and affections,
"He was the mark and glass, copy and book
"That fashion'd others."

The same figure occurs in Hamlet;

"The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword,

"The glass of fashion and the mould of form, "The observ'd of all observers.

"He had no legs that practis'd not his gait." This phraseology is a-kin to

"Steps me a little higher than his word."

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73. Speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,

"Became the accents of the valiant ;

"For those that could speak low, and tardily."

"Thick," in the preceding sentence, must signify something more than "quick," and imply, also, that Hotspur spoke in a high or shrill key, or else for "low," we must merely understand "slow."

"Second to none, unseconded by you."

I wish this line, which seems to have been introduced merely for the sake of a worthless jingle, were omitted.

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