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251. "As I did sleep

"I dreamt my master and another fought, "And that my master slew him.”

Mr. Steevens makes a long remark upon this, supposing that Balthazar is honestly reporting, as a dream, what his terrified imagination only had unrealized; this, indeed, might have been the case with Paris's page, who found himself almost afraid to stand alone: but Balthazar, with a steady spirit, resolves to watch his master, and was not of a temper to be so mistaken; his disingenuousness on this occasion is the natural and venial result of his reflecting on the danger he would be exposed to, if he acknowledged himself an unactive spectator of what had passed.

"As I did sleep," &c.

This passage is not in the first quarto. The servant of Romeo must have been a sot indeed, so soon, at such a crisis, and in such a place, to have fallen asleep; and more so, having dreamt that his master had killed a man, that he did not go to the entrance of the monument to be ascertained of the fact. I cannot admit the passage to be genuine, although I allow the comment to be judicious. Mr. Steevens chuses to assert, that this belief of Balthazar's is a touch of nature.-I cannot discern in it any thing that is natural; nor do I see what Rhesus, in Homer, or the applause of Dacier and Eustathius, has to do with the subject -in the first and third quartos, Paris desires the boy to stay under a yew tree; in the latter, particularly, he is desired to lie "all along on the ground, under the yew trees."-If any one slept there it was the boy, and not Romeo's man; yet the boy was placed there to watch the approach of

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any one, and fled at the encounter, to call the watch. B. STRUTT.

Mr. Seymour's interpretation of this passage may derive strong support from a recent fact that occured during the civil horrors that have afflicted Ireland.-A deep-laid plot of assassination was revealed by a servant, in a feigned dream, while he was supposed to be sleeping. CAPEL LOFFT.

363.

I

Never was a story of more woe."

I suppose there are few who read this tragedy, or witness its representation on the stage, that do not lament the fatal 'catastrophe, and wish the poet had not ultimately sacrificed the lovers, whose tenderness, misfortunes, and fidelity deserved a gentler doom; for this purpose, an expedient was at hand, in the Apothecary, who would readily have been pardoned for deceiving Romeo, with some harmless drug, instead of the poison; but, besides that this might be objectionable, in too much resembling the Friar's device, with Juliet, it was impossible, without violating probability and decorum, to dismiss the pair to happiness, as the prince must have condemned Romeo for not only disregarding the decree of banishment, but adding to his former offence the death of Paris. There is, further, in the moral, a three-fold motive for this conduct of the poet, who meant to exhibit, at once, the destructive effects of feudal animosity, the chastisement of filial disobedience, and, above all, I believe, the misery too often produced by parental despotism. There is observeable, in the dialogue of this drama, a striking dissimilarity, which yet I do not regard as the result of corruption. Mr. Malone, in his conjectural Chronologic List,

places Romeo and Juliet pretty high, and I believe he is right: but I think, further, that the play had been sketched out, and only the first act written, long before the time when it was brought upon the stage. The abortive introduction of Rosaline, together with the rhymes, conceits, and clinches occurring in the early scenes, persuade me they were written before our poet had digested his plan, or was possessed of that vigorous and masterly style of composition which he afterwards acquired, and which is abundantly displayed in the sequel and progress of the present tragedy.

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COMEDY OF ERRORS,

352.

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ACT I. SCENE I.

What obscured light the heavens

did grant

"Did but convey unto our fearful minds "A doubtful warrant of immediate death."

Perhaps Milton had a view to this passage, in these lines of Paradise Lost:

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, "As one great furnace flam'd; yet from those flames

"No light, but rather darkness visible,

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Serv'd only to discover sights of woe.'

ACT II. SCENE I.

368. I know not thy mistress; out on thy mis

tress."

A slight transposition would reform the sody:

pro

"I know thy mistress not; out on thy mistress."

SCENE II,

384. "Dromio, thou drone," &c.

The line in the old copy:

"Dromio, thou Dromio! Snail, thou slug, thou

sot!"

Mr. Theobald says is half a foot too long; but he is mistaken, the prosody is correct and unexceptionable. "Dromio" might, indeed, if the measure required it, be extended to three syllables, but here it is only a dissyllable.

ACT IV. SCENE III.

424. "He that sets up his rest," &c.

To" set up his rest," means, I believe, to make up or compose his mind to a fixed resolution; thus, in Romeo and Juliet:

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"Will I set up my everlasting rest."

But here is further meant,-eternal repose.

ACT V. SCENE I.

441. "But moody and dull melancholy." Mr. Heath's emendation, or something equivalent, should be adopted:

"But moody moping and dull melancholy.” "Kinsman to grim and comfortless Despair."

It is strange that Dr. Warburton should reject this line, beautiful and finely associated as it is merely on account of a feminine quality's being called kinsman, an irregularity that has, on various

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