Cre. Hard to feem won; but I was won, my lord, With the first glance that ever-Pardon me ;If I confefs much, you will play the tyrant.

I love you now; but not, 'till now, fo much
But I might mafter it :-in faith, I lye;

My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother: See, we fools!
Why have I blabb'd? who fhall be true to us,
When we are fo unfecret to ourselves?

But, though I lov'd you well, I woo'd you not;
And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man;
Or, that we women had men's privilege

Of fpeaking firft. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue;
For, in this rapture, I fhall furely speak

The thing I fhall repent. See, fee, your filence, Cunning in dumbnefs, from my weakness draws My very foul of counfel: Stop my mouth.

Troi. And fhall, albeit fweet mufick iffues thence. Pan. Pretty, i'faith.

Cre. My lord, I do befeech you, pardon me; 'Twas not my purpofe, thus to beg a kifs:

I am afham'd;-O heaven's! what have I done?For this time will I take my leave, my lord.

Troi. Your leave, fweet Creffid?

Pan. Leave! an you take leave 'till to-morrow morning,

Cre. Pray you, content you.
Troi. What offends you, lady?
Cre. Sir, mine own company.
Troi. You cannot fhun yourself.
Cre. Let me go and try:

5 I have a kind of felf refides with you;
But an unkind felf, that itself will leave,

5 I have a kind of felf refides with you;] So, in our author's 123d Sonnet:

-for I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me."

G4

MALONE.

Τα

To be another's fool. I would be gone :-
Where is my wit? I fpeak I know not what.
Troi. Well know they what they speak, that speak
fo wifely.

Cre. Perchance, my lord, I fhew more craft than

love;

And fell fo roundly to a large confeffion,

6

To angle for your thoughts: But you are wife;
Or else you love not; 7 For to be wife and love,
Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.
Troi. O, that I thought it could be in a woman,
(As, if it can, I will prefume in you)
To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;
To keep her conftancy in plight and youth,
Out-living beauties outward, with a mind
That doth renew fwifter than blood decays!
Or, that perfuafion could but thus convince me,
That my integrity and truth to you

Might be affronted with the match and weight

-But you are wife,

Or else you love not; for to be wife and love,
Exceeds man's might, &c.] I read :

-but we're not wife,

Or elfe que love not; to be wife and love,
Exceeds man's might;

Of

Creffida, in return to the praife given by Troilus to her wisdom, replies: "That lovers are never wife; that it is beyond the power of man to bring love and wifdom to an union." JOHNSON. -to be wife and love,

Exceeds man's might;] This is from Spenfer, Shepberd's Cal. March:

To be wife, and eke to love,

Is granted fcarce to gods above." TYRWHITT. "Amare et fapere vix a Deo conceditur." Pub. Syr. Spenfer, whom Shakspeare followed, feems to have mifunderfood this proverb. Marfton, in the Dutch Courtezan, 1606, has the fame thought, and the line is printed as a quotation : "But raging luft my fate all ftrong doth move, The gods themselves cannot be wife and love."

MALONE.

Might be affronted with the match] I wish my inte

Of fuch a winnow'd purity in love;
How were I then uplifted but, alas,
I am as true as truth's fimplicity,
? And fimpler than the infancy of truth.
Cre. In that I'll war with you.

Troi. O virtuous fight,

When right with right wars who fhall be moft right!
True fwains in love fhall, in the world to come,
Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
Full of proteft, of oath, and big compare,
Want fimilies, truth tir'd with iteration,-

* As true as steel, as 3 plantage to the moon,

As

grity might be met and matched with such equality and force of pure unmingled love." JOHNSON.

And fimpler than the infancy of truth.] This is fine; and means, "Ere truth, to defend itself against deceit in the com merce of the world, had, out of neceffity, learned wordly policy." WARBURTON.

True fwains in love fall, in the world to come,
Approve their truths by Troilus: when their rhymes,
Full of proteft, of oath, and big compare,
Want fimilies: truth, tir'd with iteration,

The metre, as well as the fenfe, of the laft verfe will be im

proved, I think, by reading;

Want fimilies of truth, tir'd with iteration.

So, a little lower in the fame fpeech:

Yet after all comparisons of Truth. TYRWHITT.

"As true as freel It should be remembered that mirrors, in the time of our author, were made of plates of polished steel. So, in The Renegado, by Maffinger

"Take down the looking-glafs ;-here is a mirror
"Steel'd fo exactly, &c."

Again, in The Downfal of Robert Earl of Huntington, by Heywood, 1601:

"For thy feel-glafs wherein thou wont'ft to look, "Thy chryftal eyes gaze in a chryftal brooke." One of Gascoigne's pieces is called the Steel-glass; a title, which, from the fubject of the poem, he appears evidently to have used as fynonymous to mirror.

The fame allufion is found in an old piece entitled The Pleasures of Poetry, no date, but printed in the time of queen Elizabeth:

"Behold

As fun to day, as turtle to her mate,'

"Behold in her the lively glaffe,

"The pattern true as Steel"

As true as feel therefore means—as true as the mirror which, faithfully reprefents every image that is prefented before it.

3

MALONE.

-plantage to the moon,] I formerly made a filly conjecture that the true reading was:

-planets to their moons.

But I did not reflect that it was wrote before Galileo had dif covered the Satellites of Jupiter: fo that plantage to the moon is right, and alludes to the common opinion of the influence the moon has over what is planted or fown, which was therefore done in the increase:

"Rite Latonæ puerum canentes,
"Rite crefcentem face noctilucam,
Profperam frugum".

Hor. lib. iv. od. 6.
WARBURTON.

Plantage is not, I believe, a general term, but the herb which we now call plantain, in Latin, plantago, which was, I suppose, imagined to be under the peculiar influence of the moon.

JOHNSON.

Plantage is the French word for a plantation, a planting, or Jetting. See Boyer's and Cotgrave's Dictionaries. In the French tranflation of Dr. Agricola's Agriculture, Plantage a rebours is frequently used for planting reverse. ToLLET.

Shakspeare fpeaks of plantain by its common appellation in Romeo and Juliet; and yet in Sapho and Phao, 1591, Mandrake is called Mandrage:

"Sow next thy vines mandrage. From a book entitled The profitable Art of Gardening, &c. by Tho. Hill, Londoner, the third edition, printed in 1579, I learn, that neither fowing, planting, nor grafting, were ever undertaken without a fcrupulous attention to the encrease or waning of the moon.- -Dryden does not appear to have understood the paffage, and has therefore altered it thus :

As true as flowing ides are to the moon."

As true as fteel is an ancient proverbial fimile. I find it in Lydgate's Troy Book where he speaks of Troilus, 1. ii. ch. 16: "Thereto in love trewe as any fiele." STEEVENS. True as plantage to the moon.] This may be fully illustrated by a quotation from Scott's Difcoverie of Witchcraft: "The poore husbandman perceiveth that the increase of the moone maketh plants frutefull: fo as in the full moone they are in the best Atrength; decaieing in the wane; and in the conjunction do utterwither and vade." FARMER.

fie

As iron to adamant 4, as earth to the center,-Yet, after all comparisons of truth,

As truth's authentic author to be cited,

As true as Troilus fhall crown up the verfe,
And fanctify the numbers.

"Cre. Prophet may you bel

If I be falfe, or fwerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When water-drops have worn the ftones of Troy,
And blind oblivion fwallow'd cities up,
And mighty states characterlefs are grated
To dufty nothing: yet let memory,

From falfe to falle, among falfe maids in love,
Upbraid my falfehood! when they have faid—as false
As air, as water, wind, or fandy earth,

As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifers calf,
Pard to the hind, or ftep-dame to her fon;
Yea, let them fay, to stick the heart of falfhood,
As falfe as Creffid.

Pan. Go to, a bargain made: feal it, feal it; I'll be the witness.Here I hold your hand; here, my coufin's. If ever you prove false to one another, fince I have taken fuch pains to bring you together, let all pitiful goers-between be called to the world's end after my name, call them all-Pandars; let all inconftant men be Troilus's, all falfe women

1599:

Creffids,

-as iron to adamant- -] So, in Greene's Tu Quoque,

"As true to thee as feel to adamant.”

MALONE.

As truth's authentic author to be cited,] Troilus fhall crown the verfe, as a man to be cited as the authentic author of truth; as one whose protestations were true to a proverb. JOHNSON.

6-inconftant men- -] So Hanmer. In the copies it is conftant. JOHNSON.

Though Hanmer's emendation be plaufible, I believe Shakfpeare wrote conftant. He feems to have been lefs attentive to make Pandar talk confequentially, than to account for the ideas actually annexed to the three names. Now it is certain, that,

in