6. "He hath, indeed, better better'd expectation, than you must expect me to tell you how."

He has exceeded expectation in a greater measure than you must expect, &c. Plain sense, in many of these scenes, must yield to the charm of a jingle.

7. "How much better is it to weep at joy, than to joy at weeping?"

This is a very lame antithesis; for we must change the person, to comprehend the meaning. A man's own joy will sometimes extract tears from him; but nobody's sorrow can, in himself, excite gladness.

17. "A bird of my tongue, is better than a beast of yours."

From the words of Benedick's sarcasm-You are a rare parrot-teacher-I think we should expect, in Beatrice's retort, A bird of my teaching, &c.

18. "Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter ?”

Mr. Collins seems to have had the true scent

of this covert joke; it is pity he did not rundown his game. All I can do to come up with it, is this: Do you mean, says Benedick, to amuse us with pleasant paradoxes? to say that a lover is a good sportsman? and a blacksmith an excellent cabinet-maker?

26. "The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it," &c.

29.

Sensible for rational.

"The fairest grant is the necessity.”

I believe the meaning is, the fairest acknowledgment you can make is the necessity which rules you; you are in love, and you cannot help it: or, perhaps, grant implies Premiss, Datum ;if so, the sense is clear enough.

44.

ACT II. SCENE I.

"I am sure he is in the fleet."

--

In the fleet seems to mean, of the company.It is an odd expression.

47. "Re-enter Don Pedro, Hero, and Leonato."

I do not think Hero and Leonato should enter here; I think they should enter afterwards, with Claudio and Beatrice. LORD CHEDWORTH.

49. "With such impossible conveyance,"

Means, I believe, (howsoever licentiously expressed) in such a manner as it is impossible to describe or convey to your understanding.

53. "Thus goes every one to the world but I." &c.

By going to the world, Beatrice, I suppose, means quitting the seclusion or restraint imposed upon unmarried women.

55. "She hath often dreamed of unhappiness,"

&c.

Dr. Warburton says, unhappiness here means a wild, wanton, unlucky trick; but surely this is a wild, wanton, and unlucky explanation. Unhappiness is no other than the reverse of happiness. Leonato observes that his niece has little of the melancholy element in her; that she is never sad, but when she sleeps; and not ever (i. e. always) sad even then; for she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, which yet was so short-liv'd, that presently she was merry again, and waked herself with laughing. This interpretation appears to have support in a passage of Rousseau's Eloisa, Letter the seventh.

"You know I never in my life could weep without laughing; and yet I have not less sensibility than other people."

SCENE II.

62. "I have known when he would have walk'd ten miles a-foot to see a good armour.”

This passage, as it stands, is gross pleonasm : the author probably wrote at first "wou'd have walk'd ten miles to see," &c. and, afterwards, to make the expression stronger, inserted a-foot, neglecting to strike out walk'd, or to alter it to gone. People who walk must necessarily go a-foot.

64. "

SCENE III.

How still the evening is,

"As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony."

A similar reflection occurs in the Merchant of Venice.

"Soft stillness and the night

"Become the touches of sweet harmony."

ACT III. SCENE III.

103. "I tell this tale vilely; I should first tell thee.-"

These words occur, exactly as they are here, in Dr. Hoadly's comedy of The Suspicious Husband, where Ranger says-I tell this tale vilely; I should first tell you, &c.

SCENE IV.

109. "Light of love."

Mr. Gray, in The Progress of Poetry, has purple light of love."

110. "For an H," &c.

It would appear, from this passage, and Haywood's epigram on the letter H, quoted by Mr. Steevens, that ache, which we now pronounce ake, had formerly the sound which is still retained in the plural of that word-aches.

112.

"And now he eats his meat without grudging."

The meaning of proverbial phrases is, certainly,

as Dr. Johnson has remarked, not always to be clearly ascertained; perhaps Margaret would intimate that Benedick, being now in love, finds, like other lovers, his appetite declined, and so eats, without grudging an expence thus moderated."

SCENE V.

116. "An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind."

The note on this passage, (Steevens's edition, 1793) informing us that Shakspeare may have caught this idea from the common seal of the Knights' Templars, the device of which was two riding upon one horse, is truly in the spirit of a man who has lost his own ideas in the pursuit of those of antiquity; for the sense in the text, which seems proverbial, must have arisen to the meanest peasant, from an object almost every day before his eyes. This note is from Heron's Letters of Literature, and the justice of this animadversion I think no sane man can deny.

117.

LORD CHEDWORTH.

Auspicious persons.”

The same mispronunciation is used by Middleton, in A Mad World my Masters, and from a constable too;-" May it please your Worship, here are a couple of auspicious persons."

ACT IV. SCENE I.

119. "The heat of a luxurious bed."

Hamlet calls the royal bed of Denmark a couch