Made friends of them, jointing their force 'gainst

Cæsar;

Whose better issue in the war, from Italy,

Upon the first encounter, drave them."

ANT.
What worst?

Well,

MESS. The nature of bad news infects the teller. ANT. When it concerns the fool, or coward.-On: Things, that are past, are done, with me.-'Tis thus; Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death, I hear him as he flatter'd.

Labienus

MESS. (This is stiff news1) hath, with his Parthian force, Extended Asia from Euphrates;2

9

drave them.] Drave is the ancient preterite of the verb, to drive, and frequently occurs in the Bible. Thus, in Joshua, xxiv. 12: "-and drave them out from before you." Again, in Chapman's version of the 24th Iliad:

1

to chariot he arose,

"Drave forth,-." STEEVENS.

(This is stiff news)] So, in The Rape of Lucrece:
"Fearing some hard news from the warlike band."

MALONE.

* Extended Asia from Euphrates;] i. e. widened or extended the bounds of the Lesser Asia. WARBURTON.

To extend, is a term used for to seize; I know not whether this be not the sense here. JOHNSON.

I believe Dr. Johnson's explanation is right. So, in Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, 1594:

66

Ay, though on all the world we make extent, "From the south pole unto the northern bear." Again, in Twelfth-Night:

66

this uncivil and unjust extent

"Against thy peace."

Again, in Massinger's New Way to pay old Debts, the Extor

tioner says:

"This manor is extended to my use.”

Mr. Tollet has likewise no doubt but that Dr. Johnson's ex

His conquering banner shook, from Syria
To Lydia, and to Ionia;

Whilst

ANT. Antony, thou would'st say,

MESS.

O, my lord! ANT. Speak to me home, mince not the general tongue;

Name Cleopatra as she's call'd in Rome:
Rail thou in Fulvia's phrase; and taunt my faults
With such full licence, as both truth and malice
Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds,
When our quick winds lie still; and our ills told us,
Is as our earing. Fare thee well a while.

planation is just; "for (says he) Plutarch informs us that Labienus was by the Parthian king made general of his troops, and had over-run Asia from Euphrates and Syria to Lydia and Îonia.” To extend is a law term used for to seize lands and tenements. In support of his assertion he adds the following instance: "Those wasteful companions had neither lands to extend nor goods to be seized." Savile's translation of Tacitus, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. And then observes, that " Shakspeare knew the legal signification of the term, as appears from a pas sage in As like it:

you

"And let my officers of such a nature

"Make an extent upon his house and lands."

See Vol. VIII. p. 82, n. 6.

Our ancient English writers almost always give us Euphrates instead of Euphrates.

Thus, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song 21:

"That gliding go in state, like swelling Euphrates."

See note on Cymbeline, Act III. sc. iii. STEEVENS.

When our quick winds lie still;] The sense is, that man, not agitated by censure, like soil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good. JOHNSON.

An idea, somewhat similar, occurs also in The First Part of King Henry IV: "-the cankers of a calm world and a long peace." Again, in The Puritan: "-hatched and nourished in the idle calms of peace."

MESS. At your noble pleasure.

[Exit.

Again, and yet more appositely, in King Henry VI. P. III : "For what doth cherish weeds, but gentle air?"

Dr. Warburton has proposed to read-minds. It is at least a conjecture that deserves to be mentioned.

Dr. Johnson, however, might, in some degree, have countenanced his explanation by a singular epithet, that occurs twice in the Iliad-aveμorpedès; literally, wind-nourished. In the first instance, L. XI. 256, it is applied to the tree of which a spear had been made; in the second, L. XV. 625, to a wave, impelled upon a ship. STEEVENS.

I suspect that quick winds is, or is a corruption of, some provincial word, signifying either arable lands, or the instruments of husbandry used in tilling them. Earing signifies plowing both here and in page 48. So, in Genesis, c. xlv: "Yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest." BLACKSTONE.

This conjecture is well founded. The ridges left in lands turned up by the plough, that they may sweeten during their fallow state, are still called wind-rows. Quick winds, I suppose to be the same as teeming fallows; for such fallows are always fruitful in weeds.

Wind-rows likewise signify heaps of manure, consisting of dung or lime mixed up with virgin earth, and distributed in long rows under hedges. If these wind-rows are suffered to lie still, in two senses, the farmer must fare the worse for his want of activity. First, if this compost be not frequently turned over, it will bring forth weeds spontaneously; secondly, if it be suffered to continue where it is made, the fields receive no benefit from it, being fit only in their turn to produce a crop of useless and obnoxious herbage. STEEVENS.

Mr. Steevens's description of wind-rows will gain him, I fear, but little reputation with the husbandman; nor, were it more accurate, does it appear to be in point, unless it can be shown that quick winds and wind-rows are synonymous; and, further, that his interpretation will suit with the context. Dr. Johnson hath considered the position as a general one, which indeed it is; but being made by Antony, and applied to himself, he, figuratively, is the idle soil; the MALICE that speaks home, the quick, or cutting winds, whose frosty blasts destroy the profusion of weeds; whilst our ILLS (that is the TRUTH faithfully) told us; a representation of our vices in their naked odiousness is as our

ANT. From Sicyon how the news? Speak there.

EARING; serves to plough up the neglected soil, and enable it to produce a profitable crop.

66

When the quick winds lie still, that is, in a mild winter, those weeds which the tyrannous breathings of the north" would have cut off, will continue to grow and seed, to the no small detriment of the crop to follow. HENley.

Whether my definition of winds or wind-rows be exact or erroneous, in justice to myself I must inform Mr. Henley, that I received it from an Essex farmer; observing, at the same time, that in different counties the same terms are differently applied. STEEVENS.

The words lie still are opposed to earing; quick means pregnant; and the sense of the passage is: "When our pregnant minds lie idle and untilled, they bring forth weeds; but the telling us of our faults is a kind of culture to them." The pronoun our before quick, shows that the substantive to which it refers must be something belonging to us, not merely an external object, as the wind is. To talk of quick winds lying still, is little better than nonsense. M. MASON.

The words-lie still, appear to have been technically used by those who borrow their metaphors from husbandry. Thus Ascham, in his Toxophilus, edit. 1589, p. 32: “—as a grounde which is apt for corne, &c. if a man let it lye still, &c. if it be wheate it will turne into rye." STEEVENS.

Dr. Johnson thus explains the old reading:

"The sense is, that man, not agitated by censure, like soil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good." This certainly is true of soil, but where did Dr. Johnson find the word soil in this passage? He found only winds, and was forced to substitute soil ventilated by winds in the room of the word in the old copy; as Mr. Steevens, in order to extract a meaning from it, supposes winds to mean fallows, because "the ridges left in lands turned up by the plough, are termed windrows;" though surely the obvious explication of the latter word, rows exposed to the wind, is the true one. Hence the rows of new-mown grass laid in heaps to dry, are also called wind

rows.

The emendation which I have adopted, [minds,] and which was made by Dr. Warburton, makes all perfectly clear; for if in Dr. Johnson's note we substitute, not cultivated, instead of"not ventilated by quick winds," we have a true interpretation of Antony's words as now exhibited. Our quick minds, means,

1 ATT. The man from Sicyon.-Is there such an

one?

2 ATT. He stays upon your will.*

ANT.

Let him appear.

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,

Enter another Messenger.

Or lose myself in dotage.-What are you? 2 MESS. Fulvia thy wife is dead.

ANT.

Where died she?

our lively apprehensive minds. So, in King Henry IV. P. II: "It ascends me into the brain ;-makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive."

Again, in this play: "The quick comedians," &c.

It is, however, proper to add Dr. Warburton's own interpretation: "While the active principle within us lies immerged in sloth and luxury, we bring forth vices instead of virtues, weeds instead of flowers and fruits; but the laying before us our ill condition plainly and honestly, is, as it were, the first culture of the mind, which gives hope of a future harvest."

Being at all times very unwilling to depart from the old copy, I should not have done it in this instance, but that the word winds, in the only sense in which it has yet been proved to be used, affords no meaning; and I had the less scruple on the present occasion, because the same error is found in King John, Act v. sc. vii. where we have, in the only authentick copy:

"Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts,
"Leaves them invisible; and his siege is now
"Against the wind." MALONE.

The observations of six commentators are here exhibited. To offer an additional line on this subject, (as the Messenger says to Lady Macduff,)" were fell cruelty" to the reader.

STEEVENS.

* He stays upon your will.] We meet with a similar phrase in Macbeth:

Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure."

STEEVENS.