Page images
PDF
EPUB

(42)

my grief lies all within;

"And these external manners of lament

"Are merely shadows to the unseen grief,

"That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul." R. II.

with no less nobility of love,

Than that which dearest father bears his son,

MALONE.

Do I impart toward you.] With a degree no less high. Not to be better explained than by reference, as Mr. Steevens observes, to the character of the Ghost's passion for the queen. "To me, whose love was of that dignity."

Impart is dispense, hold out.

66

Impart, I say; give him twenty pieces."

Shak. Marmyon's Fine Companion.

(43) No jocund health, that Denmark drinks to-day] "A lively French traveller being asked what he had seen in Denmark, replied, Rien de singulier, sinon qu'on y chante tous les jours, le roi boit; alluding to the French mode of celebrating Twelfth-day." See De Brieux, Origines de quelques coutûmes, p. 56. Heywood, in his Philocothonista, or The Drunkard opened, dissected, and anatomized, 1635, 4to. speaking of what he calls the vinosity of nations, says of the Danes, that "they have made a profession thereof from antiquity, and are the first upon record that brought their wassell-bowles and elbowe-deep healthes into this land." Douce's Illustrat. 8vo. 1807. II. 219.

"The priest, in like manner, is to be excused, who, having taken his preparatives over evening, when all men cry (as the manner is) The king drinketh, chanting his masse the next morning, fell asleepe in his memento; and when he awoke, added, with a loude voice, The king drinketh.”—R. C.'s H. Stephens's Apology for Herodotus, fo. 1608. p. 189.

(44) And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again] Bruit is spread abroad. See bruited, Macb. V. 6. Macb.

Bailey in his dictionary derives the Fr. carouser, from carausz, Teut. i. e. "fill it all out:" and Minshieu, carouse, from gar, altogether, and ausz, out, Germ.: ut sit quasi exinanitio sive evaporatio poculi: the sense also in which it seems to be used by Greene. "Now time proffers the full cup; and the devill take me, if I carouse it not." Orpharion, 4to. 1599, p. 25. Mr. Douce says, "Though the original word is lost, it remains in the German rausch. The Greeks, too, had their xapwais, nimia ebrietas." Illustr. II. 205. From the following passage in Dekker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609, Mr. Steevens conceives the word rouse may be of Danish extraction: "Teach me, thou sovereigne skinker, how to take the German's upsy freeze, the Danish rousa, the Switzer's stoop of rhenish."

(45)

too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself] "To thaw or resolve that, which is frozen. regelo." Baret's Alv. It has nearly the sense of dissolve; that which resolver and resolution, or analysis in science, yet retain. Our author has the same sentiment in II. H. IV. "And the Continent,

"Weary of solid firmness, melt itself

"Into the sea." III. 1. K. Hen.

This use of the word was very common. Mr. Todd instances Bale's Br. Chron. of Lord Cobham. "He commended his soul into the hands of God; and so departed hence most cristenlye; his body resolved into ashes."

(46) His cannon 'gainst self-slaughter] Cannon is the reading of all the old copies and cannon and canon (xavwv) norma, regula, appear to be the same word. Certainly no different origin has distinctly been assigned them. On the contrary, in modern French the word in each of its senses is written canon. Minshieu spells both cannon; and, speaking of the piece of ordnance, says, "Canna muralis is a warlike engine to batter walls, and so called because cast long after the manner of great reeds; and the terms, applied to it as a rule or line, are so much in common to both, as in some degree to identify them. On Milton's candlelight visiting us,

"With its long levell'd rule of streaming light," Com. V. 340. Dr. Hurd observes, that in Euripides a ray of the sun is called neλ18 xavwy; to which Mr. Warton adds, that in P. Lost, 543, the sun is said to " level his evening rays."

(47) Hyperion to a satyr] In this, as in almost every other character, represented as a model of beauty.

Dr. Farmer says that Spenser uses this word with the same error in quantity. The fact is, not only did our old poets totally disregard it, but the moderns also have in this instance made it altogether subservient to their convenience. Shakespeare accents the same word, Posthumus, differently in the same play, Cymbeline and Mr. Mitford says, "that Spenser has Iōle, Pylādes, Caphǎreus, Rotean: Gascoygne, in his Ultimum Vale: "Kind Erato and wanton Thalia.”

Turberville, in the Ventrous Lover, St. 1.

"If so Leander durst from Abydon to Sest." Lord Sterline in his Third Hour, St. 13,

p. 50.

"Then Pleiades, Arcturus, Orion, all." and, p. 87,
"Which carrying Orion safely on the shore.'

And in Sir P. Sidney's Astrophel and Stella instances
"In cadence to the tunes, which Amphyon's lyre did yield."

Gray's Works, 4to. 1816. I. 36.

Gray has accented Hyperion, as our author, and most of our poets modern and antient, in his Hymn to Ignorance (Ib. I. 163.) and in his Progress of Poetry.

"Hyperion's march and glittering shafts of War."

Though Drummond of Hawthornden, Wand. Muses, (Mitford, Tb.) and an old playwright in Fuimus Troes. 1633. (Dodsley's Plays, VII. 500); and, in modern times, West in his Pindar, Ol. VIII. 22, p. 63. and Dr. Akenside in his Hymn to the Naiads, have done otherwise.

(48) not beteem] Deign to allow.

All the quartos, Mr. Steevens says, give beteeme. According to the mode of spelling in which the largest portion of the words of that day have been delivered down to us (and of which the pages of our author afford abundant evidence) beteene and beteeme may be taken as one and the same word.

As it is found in a contemporary translation, Arthur Golding's Ovid's Metam. the correspondent term in the original, as Mr. Steevens has observed, clearly leads us to the sense.

"Yet could he not beteeme

"The shape of anie other bird then egle for to seeme." 4to. 1587, signat. R. 1, b. In edit. 1567, it is signat. R. IIII. 2, b. b. In 1593, R. III.

[ocr errors]

"Nullâ tamen alite verti

Dignatur, nisi quæ possit sua fulmina ferre." X. 157. And Milton, in his Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's defence against Smectymnuus, seems to use it in the same sense. "The gardener-though he could have well beteemed to have thanked him." Prose Works, I, 160. fo. Amsterdam. 1698. The word occurs in the Fairy Q. II. VIII. 19, and in M. N. Dr. I. 1. Hermia.

Some of the editors have at once relieved themselves from all trouble and difficulties; and, without scruple new modelling the line and displacing this word from the text, have substituted permitted,

"That he permitted not the winds of heaven."

While Theobald, with very slight variation and with nice adaptation of the letters, reads, "That he might not let e'en the winds of heav'n."

But, when an author's genuine text is ascertained ex fide omnium codicum, and no higher objection can be raised than that a word presents itself in an unaccustomed or unknown sense, it is the indispensable duty of an editor to retain it; that, thus continuing to invite further research, it may lead to the discovery of other instances of its use, and by their aid give facilities to critical science in deducing its etymology: which is as well a matter of general philological interest, as an act of justice to his author. An editor incurs no reproach by not being acquainted with every phrase or term that is become obsolete, and "time has thrown away;" but he should be care

ful how he removes landmarks; and just enough not to falsify his trust.

(49)

appetite had grown

By what it fed on] So Enobarb. of Cleopatra. Ant. & Cl. II. 2.; and Pericles, speaking of the charms of his daughter's conversation. V. 1.

(50) good even] To a substitution of morning for even, made by Hanmer and Warburton, Dr. Johnson answered, that "between the first and eighth scene here a natural day must pass, and though much of it is already over, there is nothing that can determine. The king had held a council." And Mr. Tyrwhitt adds, that "good even or den was the usual salutation from noon, the moment that good morrow became improper. Rom. & Jul. II. 4, Nurse & Mercut.; and that from the course of the incidents, precedent and subsequent, the day may here be well supposed to be turned of noon.

(51) the funeral bak'd meats] It was anciently the general custom to give an entertainment to mourners at a funeral. In distant counties this practice is continued among the yeomanry. See The Tragique Historie of the Faire Valeria of London, 1598: "His corpes was with funerall pompe conveyed to the church, and there sollemnly enterred, nothing omitted which necessitie or custom could claime; a sermon, a banquet, and like observations." Again, in the old romance of Syr Degore, bl. 1. no date : "A great feaste would he holde

[ocr errors]

Upon his quenes mornynge day, "That was buryed in an abbay.'

COLLINS.

See Hayward's Life of H. IV. 4to. 1599, p. 135: "Then hee [King Richard II.] was conveyed to Langley Abby in Buckinghamshire,-and there obscurely interred,-without the charge of a dinner for celebrating the funeral." MALONE.

"This usage, certainly derived from the Roman cœna feralis, alluded to in Juv. V. 85. and in the XII. Tables, is not yet quite disused in our northern counties; and is called an arval or arvil supper; and the loaves, sometimes distributed amongst the poor, arval bread." Douce Illustr. II. 202, 3. See "Death's feast."

V. 2.

"When the seconde husband was dede,
"The thyrde husbande dyde she wedde
"In full goodly araye-

"But as the devyll wolde,

"Or the pyes were colde," &c.

The boke of mayd Emlyn that had v husbandes & all kockoldes: she wold make theyr berdes whether they wold or no, and

• «Mani for desire of promocion make their lordes berd. Multi ambitionis studio principi suo fucum faciunt." Hormanni Vulgaria, 4to. 1530, Signat. s. 1, b. & Tyrwhitt's Chauc. note on v. 4094.

gyue them to were a praty hoode full of belles. 4to. Signat. B. II. without date. Imprynted by John Skot in saynt Pulkers parysshe.

(52) my dearest foe] Throughout Shakespeare and all the poets of his and a much later day, we find this epithet applied to that person or thing, which, for or against us, excites the liveliest and strongest interest. It is used variously, indefinitely and metaphorically to express the warmest feelings of the soul; its nearest, most intimate, home and heartfelt emotions: and here no doubt, though, as every where else, more directly interpreted signifying "veriest, extremest," must by consequence and figuratively import "bitterest, deadliest, most mortal." As extremes are said in a certain sense to approximate, and are in many respects alike or the same, so this word is made in a certain sense to carry with it an union of the fiercest opposites: it is made to signify the extremes of love and hatred.

But to suppose, with Mr. Tooke, (Divers. of Purl. II. 409.) that in all cases it must at that time have meant "injurious," as being derived from the Saxon verb dere, to hurt, is perfectly absurd. Dr. Johnson's derivation of the word, as used in this place, from the Latin dirus, is doubtless ridiculous enough: but Mr. Tooke has not produced a single instance of the use of it, i. e. of the adjective, in the sense upon which he insists; except, as he pretends, from our author. In the instance cited in this place by Mr. Steevens, in support of the extraordinary interpretation ("most consequential, important,") he has here and elsewhere put upon the word, " A ring, that I must use in deere employment." (Rom. & Jul. sc. last), although the word is spelt after the fashion of the Saxon verb, it is impossible to interpret it" injurious;" its meaning being most clearly," anxious, deeply interesting." "Deere to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart." Jul. Cæs. II. 2. Bru. cannot admit of interpretation in any other sense than that in which Gray's Bard understood it.

"Dear as the ruddy drops, that warm my heart."

In Tr. & Cr. V. 3, Andromache says,

"Consort with me in loud and deere petition." And in Hector's answer the word occurs thrice so spelt: "Life every man holds deere; but the deere man

"Holds honour far more precious, deere, than life." And it is no less than impossible, in either of these instances, to put the sense of "injurious" upon this word. With his mind possessed by the Saxon verb, to hurt, Mr. Tooke seems altogether to have forgotten the existence of the epithet, which answers to the Latin word charus. In the same sense it is used by Puttenham: "The lacke of life is the dearest detriment of any other." Arte of Engl. Poesie, 4to. 1589, p. 182. See “dearly," IV. 3. King; As you, &c. I. 3, Celia; and L. L. L. II. 1, Boyet; and "dear guiltiness," Ib. V. 2, Princess. We

« PreviousContinue »