This mode of speech, which I take to be a Gallicism, is very prevalent in the compositions of our modern novelists and play-wrights.

143.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

Make prepare for war."

Prepare, a substantive.

Abodements, for bodements, omens. In Macbeth we meet with "sweet bodements."

ACT V. SCENE II.

181. "My parks, my walks," &c.

Dr. Johnson, who censures this passage as diminishing the pathos of the foregoing lines, seemed once to believe it not improbable that dying men should think on such things; when, on Mr. Garrick shewing him his elegant villa and splendid furniture at Hampton, he observed, Ah! David, these are the things that make a death-bed LORD CHEDWORTH.

terrible.

I cannot help regarding these celebrated words of Dr. Johnson as a striking instance of that capriciousness of sentiment, for the indulgence of which the solidity of his judgment is often sacrificed to the playfulness of his imagination, and a

brilliant expression is imposed for a sound argument; indeed, the doctor, at intervals, appears to be, like Voltaire, regardless what he says, provided he can but say it well. It is not true that a death-bed derives its terrors from our meditating on the refinements and elegancies, any more than on the humbler comforts and accommodations which it may have been our lot to enjoy; they issue from a very different source, from the retrospect of a mispent life, operating on a mind, (perhaps not originally robust,) enfeebled by disease and perplexed by superstition, with just enough of religion to raise up frightful pictures of a future state, and without the fortitude and salutary habits of reflection that would have armed and prepared him for an event which he knew was inevitable: to such an unhappy mortal, indeed,

"The weariest and most loathed worldly life "That ache, age, penury, imprisonment "Can lay on nature, were a paradise

"To what he fears of death."

Of all my lands,

"Is nothing left me but my body's length!" This is a favourite sentiment with the poet : "Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, "Shrunk to this little measure!" Jul. Cæsar. "When that this body did contain a spirit, "A kingdom for it was too small a bound; "And now two paces of the vilest earth "Is room enough."

K. Henry IV.

"The very conveyance of his lands will hardly

lie in that box.

Hamlet.

SCENE III.

185. "I mean, my lords, those powers, that the

queen

"Hath rais'd in Gallia, have arriv'd our coast."

"Arrive" has the same office assigned to it in Julius Cæsar:

"But ere we could arrive the point propos'd." "Powers" a trisyllable.

SCENE IV.

189. "Methinks, a woman of this valiant spirit Should, if a coward heard her speak these words,

Infuse his breast with magnanimity.”

Infuse, in this neuter sense, we find introduced in Julius Cæsar:

"-Heaven hath infus'd them with these spirits, "To be the instruments," &c.

66

-Did I but suspect a fearful man, "He should have leave to go away betimes."

If any such be here, as God forbid, "Let him depart."

The same magnanimous policy, a little extended, is displayed by Henry V.

Wish not a man from England;

"Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through

out my host,

"That he who has no stomach to this fight,

May straight depart; his passport shall be made, "And crowns for convoy put into his purse."

SCENE VI.

201. "And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown'd."

Fool, in this line, should be, I apprehend, fowl, according to the quarto, or perhaps a jingle may be intended, if those two words, in our author's time, were, as they are at present in Scotland and some northern parts of England, pronounced alike-the quarto reads:

Why what a foole was that of Crete,

"That taught his sonne the office of a bira, "And yet, for all that, the poore fowle was drown'd."

202. "The night-crow."

I take to be the screech-owl.

203. "The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top."

"Rook'd," I believe, means "perch'd gloomily;" "rooky" we meet with in Macbeth, where I am persuaded the sense is dark, lowering, overcast:-the word "rooky," as applied to the day, or the appearance of the heavens, is well understood in Norfolk, and means "a dark or gloomy day."

There has been much contention about the genuineness of the three Parts of Henry the Sixth, in which those compositions have not always been duly distinguished: Theobald says, generally,

"Though there are several master-strokes in these three plays, which incontestibly betray the workmanship of Shakspeare, yet I am almost doubtful whether they were entirely of his writing." Dr. Warburton more decidedly condemns them, but unluckily omits to give his reasons at full. Dr. Farmer, indeed, proceeds further; and Mr. Malone is ingenious, argumentative, and perspicuous on the same side. I have only to add, though I believe, with Mr. Malone, that Shakspeare was not the original author of The Contention of the Two Famous Houses, &c. any more than of The First Part of Henry the Sixth, yet there appears to me a very material difference between the compositions in question.-Upon the play of Henry the Sixth, called by Hemings and Condel The First Part, I have already offered my opinion, that there is none of it Shakspeare's. The Quarto Plays, The Contention, &c. I estimate otherwise; they have unquestionably been altered, and materially improved in the folio; but the hand of Shakspeare is, I think, indelibly impressed upon many passages in The Contention, &c. I here I here agree thus far with Mr. Malone, that these two plays, as well as the first, were the work, originally, of some other author; of Green, Lodge, Peele, or Marlow, and that, by accident or device, some of the improvements of Shakspeare were introduced into the copy published by Millington. I believe, there is hardly any where to be found, in the versification of our poet, a line so constructed as this:

"And waste his subjects for to conquer France."

Yet the writer of these plays was so charmed with the grace of it, that he repeats it without end:

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