though I do not know that any editor has gone so far as to make this change in Shakespeare's text.

Once for all it may be observed that Shakespeare paid little or no attention to what are called nominatives and accusatives in a language which in reality knows nothing of the distinction. All our nouns-substantive are the same whether they are in what is called the nominative or the objective position in a sentence. So it was with respect to the pronouns. I was nominative and I was accusative also; me was nominative and me was accusative also. He and she were both nominative and accusative, and in some parts of England her if not him also was used as the nominative. It was and continues to be both nominative and accusative.

It is only in modern times that we have lost this freedom. The older mode approaches nearer to what nature dictates. If the question is asked, "Who is there?" a child will answer "Me," and this is a better answer than "I" would be, which, being pronounced with the very tip of the tongue, has not that fullness of sound which the reply to such a question would in the course of nature possess.

IV. 3. TIMON.

Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave:
Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat
Thy grave stone daily.

Stubbs, the Puritan,

against the Queen's some time after in

This is part of the story of Timon. whose hand was struck off for writing marriage with the Duke of Anjou, died France, and was buried on the sea-shore. There have been two or three instances of persons having left similar directions concerning the disposing of their remains; as a Mr. Grenvile, in 1702, and a Mr. Baldwin, who married a daughter of the first Lord Onslow. Both the cases are

related in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. vi. p. 293, and vol. vii. N.S. p. 450.

V. 1. FLAVIUS.

O you gods!

Is yon despis'd and ruinous man, my lord!
Full of decay and failing! O monument
And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow'd!
What an alteration of honour has
Desperate want made!

What viler thing upon the earth than friends
Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!
How rarely does it meet with this time's guise,
When man was wish'd to love his enemies :

Grant I may ever love, and rather woo

Those that would mischief me than those that do.

The beginning of this striking and effective passage should not be marked as interrogative, as is usually the case, but should have the mark of exclamation. "Ruinous" was suggested to the poet's mind by "monument." Rarely" is used in its sense of admirably, not of unfrequently. It is vernacular, and not now in good usage. Perhaps the Poet may have written suit where we have meet. The meaning is evident, that the ancient precept to love our enemies suits admirably the guise of the time when our friends treat us worse than our enemies. The whole of this part is in the spirit of the Spanish proverb, "Save a man from his friends, and leave him to struggle with his enemies ;" a sentiment of a dark and misanthropic hue, but which would not have become proverbial were there not a few instances now and then presenting themselves to justify it or at least to keep it in countenance.

JULIUS CAESAR.

THE three plays founded on Roman history remained unprinted till after the author's death. They first appear in a collection of his dramas in 1623. We are destitute of external evidence respecting the date, except that Anthony and Cleopatra was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company on May 20, 1608. It therefore existed at that time, and, as there is reason to think that the three were produced at nearly the same period, we may assign on grounds sufficiently probable the production of them to the years 1607, 1608, or 1609, in the absence of any evidence that they were of earlier date. The ingenuity of Mr. Malone or Mr. Chalmers has not succeeded in detecting in the plays themselves any notes of time in which much confidence can be placed.

The order in which they were produced seems to have been, 1. Julius Caesar, 2. Anthony and Cleopatra, 3. Coriolanus. For the facts he resorted to North's Translation of Plutarch, as for the facts in his English historical plays he resorted principally to Hollinshead.

I. 3. CASCA.

And the complexion of the element,

IN favour's like the work we have in hand,
Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.

The original text has is, which is manifestly corrupt, but the passage has been restored unskilfully. It ought to have been the word; it favours, a common English phrase, now degraded into the rank of vulgarisms, denoting the same thing as it resembles. In some parts of the country they still say of a child that it favours of some uncle or other

relation, meaning that it resembles him in person. Thus the complexion of the elements resembled the complexion of the business in hand.

II. 1. BRUtus.

Is not to morrow, boy, the IDEs of March?

This is a modern correction of the old copies which every one must approve. "The first of March" can have been only the careless error of some transcriber. Whatever opinion may be formed of Shakespeare's scholarship it cannot be placed so low as that he was not so far acquainted with the Roman calendar; but he had the information before his eyes in the very book which he used, in which this passage occurs :-" Furthermore there was a certain soothsayer that had given Cæsar warning long time afore, to take heed of the Ides of March (which is the fifteenth of the month) for on that day he should be in great danger;" and it is manifest that the passage had attracted his attention by his having given the same explanation which Sir Thomas North had thought it necessary to give in his parenthesis, for he makes Brutus ask the day of the month, and Lucius replies that "March is wasted fifteen days." The modern copies read fourteen, but the old reading might be justified.

II. 1. DECIUS.

Here hes the East. Doth not the day break here?

The dialogue that ensues is a beautiful instance of the intervention of repose; as beautiful as that pointed out by Sir Joshua Reynolds in Macbeth, "The temple-haunting martlet," or as the remarks on the crowing of the cock in Hamlet.

V. 3. BRUTUS.
Titinius' face is upward.

I know not whether it has been observed that this passage

shews that the practice of the stage to represent death by lying with the face upward is as old as the time of Shakespeare.

His life was gentle: and the elements

So mixed in him, that nature might stand up,

And say to all the world "This was a man!"

Shakespeare here again uses one of our forcible vernacular phrases, which when actually used on ordinary occasions is pronounced with the emphasis on the word was.