only means, to jeft, and tell them that Cupid is a good bare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter. A man praising a pretty lady in jeft, may fhew the quick fight of Cupid, but what has it to do with the carpentry of Vulcan? Perhaps the thought lies no deeper than this, Do you mean to tell us as new what we all know already?'

We believe our editor has entirely misunderstood his author in this paffage. Benedick's meaning is, Are you not playing at cross-purposes, or imposing upon us by telling us that Cupid (who is blind) is a good hare-finder, which requires the most exquifite eye-fight; and that Vulcan, who is the god of fire, is an excellent carpenter or worker in timber, which fire never fails to destroy?

In Act III. Scene V. of the fame play, Mr. Johnson suffers Dr. Warburton's note to ftand, which fuppofes Shakespeare to mean Samson to be the shaven Hercules mentioned there. We are of opinion he had no fuch meaning, and that he alludes to the well-known ftory of Hercules and Omphale, especially as mention is made in the fame speech of the club of Hercules, which furely was no attribute of Samfon.

In Scene II. of the last Act, Leonato, in challenging Claudio, who declines fignting him, says, " Canft thou so daffe me?" upon which Mr. Johnfon admits the following note from Theobald: This is a country word, Mr. Pope tells us, fignifying, daunt. It may be fo: but that is not the exposition here: to daffe and doffe are fynonymous terms, that mean, to put off ; which is the very fenfe required here, and what Leonato would reply, upon Claudio's faying, he would have nothing to do with him.' We are inclined to believe both critics are miftaken, and that daffe fignifies to Sport or wanton with one's miffortunes. Hence, in the northern counties of England, young frolickfome perfons who act madly or extravagantly are called daft.

In All's Well that Ends Well, Helena says,

heart, too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour!

Upon which Mr. Johnson has the following note:

Trick of his feet favour.] So in King John; He hath a trick of Coeur de Lion's face. Trick feems to be fome peculiarity of look or feature.?

Surely the author of an English Dictionary cannot be ignorant that the word trick is a term in drawing to which the whole of this paffage evidently alludes. If he had looked into the Har leian Catalogue, he would have found at least twenty thousand drawings faid to be tricked with the pen or the pencil.

VOL. XXI, January, 1766.

In the fifth Scene of the first Act of the fame play, the fol lowing note occurs:

•He had the wit, which I can well obferve To day in our young lords: but they may jest Till their own fcorn return to them; unnoted

Ere they can hide their levity in honour.] i. e. Ere their titles can cover the levity of their behaviour, and make it pafs for defert. The Oxford Editor, not understanding this, alters the line to

Ere they can vye their levity with his honour. WARBURTON. I believe honour is not dignity of birth or rank, but acquired reputation: Your father, fays the king, had the fame airy fights of fatirical wit with the young lords of the prefent time, but they do not what he did, hide their unnoted levity in honour, cover peity faults with great merit.

This is an excellent obfervation. Jocofe follies, and flight offences, are only allowed by mankind in him that overpowers them by great qualities.'

The editors and commentators of Shakespeare frequently mistake, as Mr. Johnson does here, the meaning of the word

One of its original fenfes, in the English language, implied an estate granted in capite with a castle, and the whole together was termed an honour. Hence the bonour of Richmond, Ampthill, and the like. In fhort, every barony had an honour annexed to it, of which its knights held; fo that Dr. Warburton's interpretation of this paffage is certainly right. Honour does indeed often fignify acquired reputation, in our author, as in the fucceeding part of this fpeech; but the fenfe here fixes it to a title of dignity.

As we have already extended this article much beyond our ufual limits, we are obliged to confine our future obfervations to paffages only of the utmost consequence to Shakespeare's fenfe and language; and therefore we shall omit many remarks of less importance, though we can by no means perceive the propriety of our editor's tranfcribing fo copiously, from prior editors, long notes, only that he may have the pleasure of rejecting their contents, or treating them as infignificant.

Warburton, Theobald, and our author, are mightily puzzłed, for reasons which are unworthy of being quoted, about the following paffage in King John...

the devil tempts thee here

In likeness of a new untrimmed bride.'

Mr. Johnfon inclines to read with Theobald,

In likeness of a new and trimmed bride.”

Warburton

.

Warburton is for retaining the word untrimmed, which, he fays, is a term taken from navigation, and fignifies unsteady. Mr. Johnfon is uncommonly grave on the fubject, and fays, that the idea of trimming a lady to keep her fteady, would be too rifible for any common power of face." We fhall be ferious likewife, and with equal gravity ask Mr. Johnson, whether á bride is most pleafing to the bridegroom when she is trimmed, or dreft, or when he is untrimmed, or undreft: But these sagacious editors never imagined that an untrimmed woman fignifies one who has laid afide her dress or trim."

In A& III. Scene IV. of the First Part of Henry IV. Mr. Johnson inferts the following very extraordinary note from Warburton.

• In former copies, CARDED bis ftate ;] Richard is here represented as laying afide his royalty, and mixing himself with common jefters. This will lead us to the true reading, which 'I fuppofe is, 'SCARDED his State; i. e. discarded, threw off. WARBURTON."

Neither Mr. Edwards nor any of Shakespeare's commentators feem to have had the leaft idea of this beautiful paffage, as it ftands in the original. Henry IV. in describing the diffolute intemperate court of Richard, fays, that the prince carded his ftate, meaning, that he fuffered those ruffian vagrants who in Shakespeare's time were called cards, or men of fuch a stamp, to mingle with his ftate. The posterity of those cards still subfift in the northern parts of this ifland, and very poffibly ftill live by making and felling that neceffary utenfil. If we are not *mistaken, the Scotch, to this day, have laws against cards and forners, who travel about and infest the country; and the penalty is capital, even tho' they do not rob. As these are matters which depend upon fact, they admit of no difpute. Our great poet might have another allufion to the carding of wool, which requires finer and coarser degrees of that commodity, and are carded into one mixture. The expreflion is clear in either or both the fenfes we have given; and it is plain that when Shakefpeare made use of it, CARD-PLAYING was very distant from his thoughts.

In the fame play Mr. Johnson admits the following note from Mr. Pope:" He made a blushing cital of himself,] Cital for taxation." We are, on the other hand, almoft pofitive that a cital of a man's felf is no more than his mentioning, citing, or quoting himself.

In Henry V. Scene II. A&t I. our editor gives us the following note:

• Mr. Pope reads: Than openly imbrace] But where is the antithefts betwixt hide in the preceding line, and imbrace in this?

The two old Folio's read, Than amply to imbarre-We certainly muft read, as Mr. Warburton advis'd me,-Than amply to imbare-lay open, difplay to view. I am furpriz'd Mr. Pope did not start this conjecture, as Mr. Rowe has led the way to it in his Edition, who reads;

Than amply to make bare their crooked Titles.

THEOBALD.

"Mr. Theobald might have found in the quarto of 1608, this reading,

Than amply to embrace their crooked causes,

out of which line Mr. Pope formed his reading, erroneous indeed, but not merely capricious.'

Perhaps a little knowledge of heraldry would have shewn our editor that the reading of the two old folios was right.—Mr. Johnson, upon Theobald's authority, has in the fame play, when Pistol draws his fword, changed the word bewn, which is in the old copies, for drawn. We apprehend it would be no difficult matter to prove, that in Shakespeare's time, when a man was drunk, he was faid to be bewn.

Were any fresh proof wanting to convict the editors of Shake fpear of ignorance in his language, the following note of Warburton's, which is preferved by Mr. Johnson, must be more than fufficient.

-one, that by fuggeftion ty'd all the kingdom;] i. e. by giving the king pernicious counfel, he ty'd or enflaved the kingdom. He uses the word here with great propriety, and feeming knowledge of the Latin tongue. For the late Roman writers, and their gloffers, agree to give this fenfe to it: SUGGESTIO eft cum magiftratus quilibet principi falubre confilium fuggerit. So that nothing could be feverer than this reflexion, that that wholesome counfel, which it is the minifter's duty to give his prince, was fo empoisoned by him, as to produce flavery to his country. Yet all this fine fenfe vanishes inftantaneously before the touch of the Oxford Editor, by his happy thought of changing Ty'd into Tyth'd. WARBURTON.'

We fhall allow of Mr. Warburton's interpretation of the word fuggeftion (tho', by the bye, we believe Shakespeare had no fuch claffical idea as his commentators here fuggeft): but to imagine that the word tye here fignifies to enflave, is abfurd beyond expreffion. To tye, even to this day, fignifies to equal, and is derived perhaps from the practice of riding and tying. It came afterwards to be applied to gaming; as it is at this time in cricket: for inftance, when the party who is in equals the number of notches gained by that which is out, the former is faid to tye the latter. The fame expreffion prevails at cards, and other diverfions. This fenfe of the word renders the queen's fpeech easy and natural. Wolfey (fays fhe) was one whose fug

fuggeftion was equal to the voice of the whole kingdom." All the reft of the fpeech confirms our vindication of Shakespeare's original expreffion.

Mr. Johnson gives us a long note upon the following paffage.

The fea's a thief, whofe liquid furge refolves

The moon into falt tears.

In this note is crowded the theory of the moon and the fea, and other curious matters; but our editor might have spared all his long difplay of phyfical learning, if he had reflected that the whole of Timon's speech here is no other than a very humorous parody of one of Anacreon's odes, in which he proves all the great bodies of nature to be drunkards, by the fame philofophy that Timon proves them to be thieves. That Shakefpeare had Anacreon's ode before him, is felf-evident; but where he found a translation of it, we are uncertain. It is poffible his friend Ben Johnson, who was himself a toper, might help him to one.

We think the parade of learning in the first note to Macbeth, might have been omitted with great propriety, if our editor had informed his reader of a fimple fact, that Shakespeare hardly deviates, in the plan of his play, from the narrative given by Hector Boyce, a Scotch hiftorian, who wrote before Buchanan, and who took the facts from hiftorians prior to him. Shakespeare, we will venture to affert, had neither Olympiodorus, Photius, Chryfoftom, nor any great name, antient or modern, in his eye. In Macbeth's witches he follows Boyce, as he does Plutarch and other hiftorians in Cæfar's apparition to Brutus. Mr. Johnson's learned differtation would have been more proper to have prefaced the Tempeft, where Shakespeare feems to have followed no hiftory, than Macbeth, a play as strictly historical as any of the tragedies he takes from the Englifh chronicles. We cannot venture to pronounce whether Buchanan's History of Scotland was published at the time this tragedy appeared, but it is certain that elegant writer, tho' in many things he was fufficiently credulous, ridicules the whole ftory of Macbeth's withcraft, and fays it is fitter for a play than a hiftory.-Dr. Warburton's long and learned commentary upon a line in the fame play,

As whence the fun GINS his reflection,

is likewife improper and abfurd, especially as Mr. Johnson, in a fubfequent note, cuts the matter short by telling us," that both the old folios have gins, in contradiction to Warburton, who says that one of these reads it gives." We will venture to say, that Shakespeare never confulted any other author concerning