What air's from home. Haply, this life is best,
If quiet life be beft; sweeter to you,

That have a fharper known; well correfponding
With your stiff age: but, unto us, it is
A cell of ignorance; travelling abed;
A prifon for a debtor, that not dares
2 To ftride a limit.

Arv. What fhould we speak of,

When we are as old as you? when we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how,
In this our pinching cave, fhall we difcourfe
The freezing hours away? We have feen nothing:
We are beaftly; fubtle as the fox, for prey;
Like warlike as the wolf, for what we eat :
Our valour is, to chace what flies; our cage
We make a quire, as doth the prifon'd bird,
And fing our bondage freely.

4

Bel. How you speak!

Did you but know the city's ufuries,

And felt them knowingly: the art o' the court,
As hard to leave, as keep; whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or fo flippery, that

The fear's as bad as falling: the toil of the war,
A pain that only feems to feek out danger

I' the name of fame, and honour; which dies i' the fearch;

And hath as oft a flanderous epitaph,

As record of fair act; nay, many times,
Doth ill deserve by doing well; what's worse,

2 To ftride a limit.] To overpafs his bound. JOHNSON. 3 What should we speak of] This dread of an old age, unfupplied with matter for difcourfe and meditation, is a fentiment natural and noble. No ftate can be more deftitute than that of him, who, when the delights of fenfe forfake him, has no pleafures of the mind. JOHNSON.

• How you speak !] Otway feems to have taken many hints for the converfation that paffes between Acafto and his fons, from the fcene before us. STEEVENS.

Muft

Must curt'fy at the cenfure:-O, boys, this ftory
The world may read in me: my body's mark'd
With Roman fwords; and my report was once
First with the beft of note: Cymbeline lov'd me;
And when a foldier was the theme, my name
Was not far off; Then was I as a tree,

Whose boughs did bend with fruit: but, in one night,

A ftorm, or robbery, call it what you will,

Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, And left me bare to weather 5.

Guid. Uncertain favour!

Bel. My fault being nothing (as I have told you
oft)

But that two villains, whofe falfe oaths prevail'd
Before my perfect honour, fwore to Cymbeline,
I was confederate with the Romans: fo,

Follow'd my banishment; and, these twenty years,
This rock, and these demefnes, have been my world:
Where I have liv'd at honeft freedom; pay'd
More plous debts to heaven, than in all

The fore-end of my time.-But, up to the mountains;
This is not hunters' language: He, that strikes
The venifon firft, fhall be the lord o' the feast;
To him the other two fhall minifter;

And we will fear no poifon, which attends

leys.

In place of greater ftate. I'll meet you in the val[Exeunt Guid. and Arv. How hard it is to hide the fparks of nature! These boys know little, they are fons to the king; Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive. They think, they are mine: and, though train'd up thus meanly

And left me bare to weather.] So in Timon:
That numberless upon me ftuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush,
Fallen from their boughs, and left me open, bare,
For every form that blows, STEEVENS,

*I' the cave, wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit The roofs of palaces; and nature prompts them, In fimple and low things, to prince it, much

• I' the cave, &c.] Mr. Pope reads:

Here in the cave, wherein their thoughts do hit
The roof of palaces ;·

but the fentence breaks off imperfectly. The old editions read : I' the cave, whereon the bow their thoughts do hit, &c. Mr. Rowe faw this likewife was faulty; and therefore amended it thus:

I' the cave, where, on the bow, their thoughts do hit, &c. I think it should be only with the alteration of one letter, and the addition of another:

I' the cave, there, on the brow,

And fo the grammar and fyntax of the fentence is complete. We call the arching of a cavern, or overhanging of a bill, metaphorically, the brow; and in like manner the Greeks and Latins ufed ippus, and fupercilium. THEOBALD.

-tho' train'd up thus meanly,

I' the cave, there on the brow,

I' the cave whereon the bow ;

-] The old editions read:

which, though very corrupt, will direct us to the true reading; which, when rightly pointed, is thus:

though train'd up thus meanly

I' the cave wherein they bow

i. e. Thus meanly brought up. Yet in this very cave, which is fo low that they must bow or bend in entering it, yet are their thoughts fo exalted, &c. This is the antithefis. Belarius had spoken before of the lowness of his cave:

A goodly day! not to keep house, with fuch
Whofe roof's as low as ours. See, boys! this gate
Inftructs you
how to adore the heavens; and bows you
To morning's holy office. WARBURTON.

Hanmer reads:

I' the cave, here in this brow..

I think the reading is this:

I' the cave, wherein the bow, &c.

That is, they are trained up in the cave, where their thoughts in hitting the bow, or arch of their habitation, hit the roofs of palaces. In other words, though their condition is low, their thoughts are high. The fentence is at laft, as Theobald remarks, abrupt, but perhaps no lefs fuitable to Shakspeare. I know, not whether Dr. Warburton's conjecture be not better than mine.

JOHNSON.

Beyond

Beyond the trick of others. 7 This Polydore,
The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, whom
The king his father call'd Guiderius,—Jove!
When on my three-foot ftool I fit, and tell
The warlike feats I have done, his fpirits fly out
Into my ftory: fay,-Thus mine enemy fell;
And thus I fet my foot on his neck; even then
The princely blood flows in his cheek, he fweats,
Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in pofture
That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal,
(Once, Arviragus) in as like a figure,

Strikes life into my speech, and fhews much more
His own conceiving. Hark! the game is rouz'd!-
O Cymbeline! heaven, and my confcience, knows,
Thou didst unjustly banish me: whereon,
At three, and two years old, 'I ftole these babes;
Thinking

7-This Polydore,] The old copy of the play (except here, where it may be only a blunder of the printer) calls the eldeft fon of Cymbeline Polidore, as often as the name occurs and yet there are fome who may afk whether it is not more likely that the printer should have blundered in the other places, than that he fhould have hit upon fuch an uncommon name as Paladour in this firft inftance. Paladour was the ancient name for Shaftsbury. So, in A Meeting Dialogue-wife between Nature, the Phoenix, and the Turtle-dove, by R. Chester, 1601:

"This noble king builded faire Caerguent,
"Now cleped Winchester of worthie fame;
"And at mount Paladour he built his tent,
"That after-ages Shaftsburie hath to name."

STEEVENS.

& The younger brother Cadwall,] This name is likewife found in an ancient poem, entitled King Arthur, which is printed in the fame collection with the Meeting Dialogue-wife, &c. in which, as Mr. Steevens has obferved, our author might have found the name of Paladour:

-Augifell king of ftout Albania, "And Caduall king of Vinedocia—-”

MALONE.

? I ftole thefe babes;] Shakspeare feems to intend Belarius for a good character, yet he makes him forget the injury which he has done to the young princes, whom he has robbed of a kingdom only to rob their father of heirs.-The latter part of

this

Thinking to bar thee of fucceffion, as

Thou reft'ft me of my lands. Euriphile,

Thou waft their nurse; they took thee for their mother,

And every day do honour to her grave:

Myfelf, Belarius, that am Morgan call'd,
They take for natural father. The game is up. [Exit.

Enter Pifanio, and Imogen.

Imo. Thou told'ft me, when we came from horfe, the place

Was near at hand:-Ne'er long'd my mother fo To fee me first, as I have now:-Pifanio! Man! 'Where is Pofthumus? What is in thy mind,

That

this foliloquy is very inartificial, there being no particular reafon why Belarius fhould now tell to himself what he could not know better by telling it. JOHNSON.

Where is Pofthumus ?-] Shakspeare's apparent ignorance of quantity is not the leaft among many proofs of his want of learning. Throughout this play he calls Pofthumus, Pofthūmus, and Arviragus, Arvirāgus. It may be faid that quantity in the age of our author did not appear to have been much regarded. In the tragedy of Darius, by William Alexander of Menftrie (lord Sterline) 1603, Darius is always called Darius, and Euphrates, Euphrates:

"The diadem that Darius erft had borne

"The famous Euphrates to be your border-" Again, in the 21st Song of Drayton's Polyolbion:

"That gliding go in ftate like fwelling Euphrates." Throughout fir Arthur Gorges' tranflation of Lucan, Euphrates is likewife given inftead of Euphrates. STEEVENS.

In A Meeting Dialogue wife between Nature, The Phænix, and the Turtle-dove, by R. Chefter, 1601, where Shakspeare perhaps

found