In Egypt with his joy: but between both: So does it no man else.-Met'st thou my posts? CLEO. Who's born that day When I forget to send to Antony, Shall die a beggar.—Ink and paper, Charmian.Welcome, my good Alexas.-Did I, Charmian, Ever love Cæsar so? CHAR. O that brave Cæsar! CLEO. Be chok'd with such another emphasis! Say, the brave Antony. CHAR. The valiant Cæsar! CLEO. By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth, If thou with Cæsar paragon again My man of men. CHAR. By your most gracious pardon, I sing but after you. My sallad days; CLEO. When I was green in judgment:-Cold in blood, To say, as I said then!'-But, come, away: Get me ink and paper: he shall have every day A several greeting, or I'll unpeople Egypt.2 9 Macbeth: 66 [Exeunt. so thick?] i. e. in such quick succession. So, in As thick as tale, See Vol. X. p. 44, n. 3. STEEvens. 1 My sallad days; When I was green in judgment:-Cold in blood, To say, as I said then!] Cold in blood, is an upbraiding ACT II. SCENE I. Messina. A Room in Pompey's House. Enter POMPEY, MENECRATES, and MENAS.3 POм. If the great gods be just, they shall assist The deeds of justest men. MENE. Know, worthy Pompey, That what they do delay, they not deny. POM. Whiles we are suitors to their throne, de cays The thing we sue for.+ MENE. We, ignorant of ourselves, expostulation to her maid. Those, says she, were my sallad days, when I was green in judgment; but your blood is as cold as my judgment, if you have the same opinion of things now as I had then. WARBURTON. -unpeople Egypt.] By sending out messengers. JOHNSON. 3 The persons are so named in the first edition; but I know not why Menecrates appears: Menas can do all without him. JOHNSON. All the speeches in this scene that are not spoken by Pompey and Varrius, are marked in the old copy, Mene, which must stand for Menecrates. The course of the dialogue shows that some of them at least belong to Menas; and accordingly they are to him attributed in the modern editions; or rather, a syllable [Men.] has been prefixed, that will serve equally to denote the one or the other of these personages. I have given the first two speeches to Menecrates, and the rest to Menas. It is a matter of little consequence. MALONE. Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays The thing we sue for.] The meaning is, While we are praying, the thing for which we pray is losing its value. JOHNSON. Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers Deny us for our good; so find we profit, By losing of our prayers. Ром. 5 I shall do well: The people love me, and the sea is mine; No wars without doors: Cæsar gets money, where Of both is flatter'd : but he neither loves, Nor either cares for him. MEN. Cæsar and Lepidus Are in the field; a mighty strength they carry. POм. Where have you this? 'tis false. MEN. From Silvius, sir. POм. He dreams; I know, they are in Rome. together, Looking for Antony: But all charms of love 5 My power's a crescent, &c.] In old editions: What does the relative it belong to? It cannot in sense relate to hope, nor in concord to powers. The poet's allusion is to the moon; and Pompey would say, he is yet but a half moon, or crescent; but his hopes tell him, that crescent will come to a full orb. THEobald. 6 charms-] Old copy-the charms. The article is here omitted, on account of metre. STEEVENS. thy wand lip! In the old edition it is Perhaps, for fond lip, or warm lip, says Dr. Johnson. Wand, if it stand, is either a corruption of wan, the adjective, or a contraction of wanned, or made wan, a participle. So, in Hamlet: "That, from her working, all his visage wan'd." Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both! Keep his brain fuming; Epicurean cooks, That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Queen of Corinth : "Now you look wan and pale; lips' ghosts you are." Again, in Marston's Antonio and Mellida: "Not as yet wan'd." Or perhaps waned lip, i. e. decreased, like the moon, in its beauty. So, in The Tragedy of Mariam, 1613: "And Cleopatra then to seek had been "So firm a lover of her wained face." Again, in The Skynner's Play, among the Chester collection of Mysteries, MS. Harl. 1013, p. 152: "O blessed be thou ever and aye; "Now wayned is all my woe." Yet this expression of Pompey's, perhaps, after all, implies a wish only, that every charm of love may confer additional softness on the lips of Cleopatra: i. e. that her beauty may improve to the ruin of her lover: or, as Mr. Ritson expresses the same idea, that "her lip, which was become pale and dry with age, may recover the colour and softness of her sallad days." The epithet wan might indeed have been added, only to show the speaker's private contempt of it. It may be remarked, that the lips of Africans and Asiaticks are paler than those of European nations. STEEVENS. Shakspeare's orthography [or that of his ignorant publishers] often adds a d at the end of a word. Thus, vile is (in the old editions) every where spelt vild. Laund is given instead of lawn why not therefore wan'd for wan here? If this however should not be accepted, suppose we read with the addition only of an apostrophe, wan'd; i. e. waned, declined, gone off from its perfection; comparing Cleopatra's beauty to the moon past the full. PERCY. • That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, Enter VARRIUS. VAR. This is most certain that I shall deliver: Mark Antony is every hour in Rome Expected; since he went from Egypt, 'tis Ром. So, in Timon of Athens: 66 I could have given' less matter let not that part of nature, "Which my lord paid for, be of any power "To expel sickness, but prolong his hour." The words honour and hour have been more than once confounded in these plays. What Pompey seems to wish is, that Antony should still remain with Cleopatra, totally forgetful of every other object. "To prorogue his honour," does not convey to me at least any precise notion. If, however, there be no corruption, I suppose Pompey means to wish, that sleep and feasting may prorogue to so distant a day all thoughts of fame and military achievement, that they may totally slide from Antony's mind. MALONE. Even till a Lethe'd dulness.] i. e. to a Lethe'd dulness. That till was sometimes used instead of to, may be ascertained from the following passage in Chapman's version of the eighteenth Iliad: "They all ascended, two and two; and trod the honor'd shore "Till where the fleete of myrmidons, drawn up in heaps, it bore." Again, in Candlemas Day, 1512, p. 13: "Thu lurdeyn, take hed what I sey the tyll." To prorogue his honour, &c. undoubtedly means, to delay his sense of honour from exerting itself till he is become habitually sluggish. STEEvens. 9 since he went from Egypt, 'tis A space for further travel. i. e. since he quitted Egypt, a space of time has elapsed in which a longer journey might have been performed than from Egypt to Rome. STEevens. 1 I could have given &c.] I cannot help supposing, on account of the present irregularity of metre, that the name of |