or the ear; for, admitting "your" to be a dissyllable, you-ar, or you-er, what sort of a line will this be?

"Go to then; you-ar considerate stone."

Though, indeed, if one word is to be tortured in this manner, another may endure a little; and we might read:

"Go to then; you-ar consi-derate stone.”

I would propose, if Enobarbus must speak in metre,

"Go to then; now I'm your considerate stone." 77. "All great fears, which now import their dangers."

I believe, for "fears," we are to understand apprehensions; and for "dangers," evils.

80. "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd

In this magnificent description, it is painful to find fault; but I cannot suppress a wish that the ear had been unassailed by the displeasing sameness of sounds in "burnish'd" and "burn'd ;" and though I dare not presume to mend the expression, I would rather the poet had written flam'd," or "blaz'd," on the water.

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81.

Fans, whose wind did seem "To glow the delicate cheeks which they did

Dr. Johnson, when he suggested his transposition, "and what they did, undid," seems not to have considered the passage with his usual perspicacity: the wind agitated by the fans, or (as it is expressed) the wind of the fans, appeared to inflame the cheeks which they were cooling, and to produce that effect which they were really counteracting.

"Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
"So many mermaids, tended her i'the eyes,
"And made their bends adornings."

The brief meaning of this belaboured passage I take to be this:-Her gentlewomen, personating Nereides, watchfully devoted themselves to the commands of her looks, and by their obsequious gestures improved the gracefulness of the general picture.

86. "A strange invisible pérfume hits the

sense.

Until the commentators, who appear, in this place, as in many others, to overrate the sagacity of the general readers of these works, shall condescend to explain "invisible perfume," or tell us how a perfume is ever visible, or what sense, except that which is placed in the nose, can at all be hit" by it, I must consign this passage to Mr. Bayes. Perhaps the meaning intended was, that the cause or source of the perfume was unperceived.

89. "Which she entreated: Our courteous Antony."

"Our," which burthens the line, might well

be omitted.

"And, for his ordinary, pays his heart,
"For what his eyes eat only."

I suppose we should read:

"And at his ordinary, pays his heart,
"For what his eyes," &c.

“She made great Cæsar lay his sword to bed.*

There is wonderful boldness and animation in

this expression.

She cropp'd."

Crop," a verb neuter; she became fruitful, produced a crop.

90. "Never; he will not."

This is miserably defective, Words have been lost; perhaps, like these:

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Be assured of it."

She makes hungry,

"Where most she satisfies.

We meet with the same thought in Hamlet:

She would hang on him,

"As if increase of appetite had grown

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By what it fed on.

Vilest things

"Become themselves in her."

Look amiable in her. Antony had before exclaimed:

"Fy, wrangling queen, whom every thing be

comes."

Octavia is

"A blessed lottery to him."

29.

In Coriolanus, "lots" is explained "prizes ;" and of that explanation, this passage appears to be a support.

92. "

SCENE III.

Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers.'

Mr. Steevens here says, the same construction is found in Coriolanus, "shouting their emulation;" and in King Lear, "smile you my speeches?" But surely these references are inapplicable. "Shouting their emulation," is signifying their emulation by shouts-and "smile you my speeches" is merely elliptical; do you smile at my speeches? or do you make my speeches a subject to smile at? The present is a bold poetic figure:-The action of my knee shall teach or command the humility of my prayers for

the gods.

you to

The superfluous preposition ought certainly here to be dismissed, as it only encumbers the verse: "Would he had never come thence, nor you thither."

Mr. M. Mason's emendation is very plausible, nor you hither," and the measure might proceed :

"If you can, sir, your reason ?"

— I see't in," &c.

94. "Cæsar's."

This word might be brought into the metre, by a commodious and slight alteration:

"Cæsar's; so, Antony, stay not by his side.'

"Thy damon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is."

Instead of " spirit," here, we might, for smoothness, read, as in other places,

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Therefore

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sprite."

"Make space enough between you."
Speak this no more.

I do not know whether a rhyme were intended here, or not; but the hypermeter should at all events be removed:

"Make space enough between you."

98. "

Of this no more."

SCENE V.

Musick, moody food."

I believe Mr. Steevens is not accurate, in saying that "moody" is melancholy: it is rather, I think, fitful, suiting any particular gust or strain of passion. Dryden mentions "ireful mood,' and Gray, "moody madness laughing wild, amid severest woe;" and our poet, in the Third Part of King Henry VI. "moody, discontented fury."

99. "Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed."

"Drunk" should be altered to "drank." She gave him his sleeping draught.

"Tires," perhaps, means no more than "robes, general dress,"-an abridgment of "attire."