ALB. Bear them from hence.-Our present business Is general woe. Friends of my soul, you twain

[To KENT and EDGAR.

Rule in this realm, and the gor'd state sustain.
KENT. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me,-I must not say, no.

ALB. The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

[Exeunt with a dead march.

"It is no vicious blot, nor other foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour'd stoop,

That hath depriv'd me of your grace and favour."

The original copies read :— "It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness,

No unchaste action or dishonour'd

step."

The corrections are in Mr. Collier's folio. Mr. Collier says that "Cordelia could never contemplate that anybody would suspect her of murder." Step, Mr. Collier considers an insignificant word.

"" nor

ACT I., Sc. 1.
There is great plausibility in the
change of "murther" to
other;" but we hesitate to adopt
it. Without Cordelia supposing
she might be charged with murder,
it would be natural for her to enu-
merate such heinous offences as
would have justified her father's
great severity. The word " mur-
ther" has not presented a difficulty
to any commentator before Mr.
Collier's publication.

"The knave turns fool that runs away,
The fool no knave perdy."-FOLIO OF 1623.
"The fool turns knave that runs away,

The knave no fool perdy."

JOHNSON, AND COLLIER'S FOLIO.

"The fool turns knave that runs away,

The fool no knave perdy."—CAPELL. ACT II., Sc. 4.

There is no doubt that the ori

ginal does not express the meaning

intended.

Capell's correction of one line is quite sufficient to retain the true meaning.

"Ask her forgiveness?

Do you but mark how this becomes the mouth:

Dear daughter, I confess that I am old." ACT II., Sc. 4.

The original has "becomes the house." Mr. Collier's corrected folio has mouth; and Mr. Collier asks, "What has 'the house' to do with it? They are talking outside Gloster's castle, and not in, nor referring to, any habitation."

Capell long ago answered the question which Mr. Collier puts in such a prosaic form: "This is one of the lines that mark Shakspere. The house is an expression worthy of his genius. Fathers are not the heads only of a house or family, but its representatives; they are the house."

GLOSSARY.

ADDITION. Act II., Sc. 2.

"If thou deny'st the least syllable of thy addition." Addition, in a legal document, is the particular description of an individual. The attempts of the commentators to explain the addition bestowed by Kent on the Steward are very unsatisfactory, and several, no doubt, are of the kind we now call slang.

AROINT. Act III., Sc. 4.

"And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!"

Aroint is used here, and in 'Macbeth' (Act I., Sc. 3), by Shakspere, and by no other old writer, nor is it found in any dictionary. Much dispute has arisen as to its exact meaning and derivation. The late Mr. Thomas Rodd enabled us to give the following happy explanation of it in the 'Pictorial Shakspere,' which he there supported by many collateral reasons. He says "it is conjectured that it is a compound of ar or aer, and hynt: the first a very ancient word, common to the Greek and Gothic languages in the sense of to go; the second derived from the Gothic, and still in common use under the same form, and with the same meaning, hint, behind, &c., in English, and hint or hynt in German." Hence the meaning is clearly, "Go or get behind me," as in the New Testament, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

BALLOW. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"Whether your costard or my ballow be the harder."

Grose in his 'Provincial Glossary' gives ballow as the northcountry word for pole. Edgar is speaking in the Somersetshire dialect.

BANS. Act II., Sc. 3.

"Sometime with lunatic bans."

Bans are curses: to be under the ban of the Church was to be excluded from all religious rites.

Block, in Shakspere's time, was the term for a hat. Steevens

.conjectures that Lear takes his hat in his hand when he says, "I will preach to thee;" and, disliking the fashion, exclaims, "This a good block!" and then starts off, from the association, to shoeing the horses with felt.

BOURN. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"From the dread summit of this chalky bourn."

Bourne, from the French borne, is properly a boundary. In a previous passage,—

"Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me,"

it is used for a rivulet, which is also a common meaning, and is the same as the Scottish burn, still in use.

66

The

bosky bourn" in Milton's 'Comus' is well explained by Warton as a deep, winding, and narrow valley, with a rivulet at the bottom. Such a bourn is a boundary, because it is a natural division. But in the 'Winter's Tale' (Act I., Sc. 2), Shakspere uses bourn even more strictly as a boundary

66 One that fixes

No bourn 'twixt his and mine.”

BRACH. Act I., Sc. 4.

"The lady brach may stand by the fire."

And Act III., Sc. 6,—

"Brach or lym."

See Glossary to 'Henry IV., Part II.'

BROWN BILLS. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"Bring up the brown bills."

:

Brown bills-bills for bill-men- -were a class of infantry.
Marlowe, in his 'Edward II.,' has-

"Lo, with a band of bowmen and of pikes,

Brown bills and targetiers."

CHARACTER. Act II., Sc. 1.

"My very character."

Character is handwriting, used thus more than once by Shak-
spere. In 'As You Like It' (Act III., Sc. 2), we have—
"My thoughts I'll character."

CLOTHIER'S YARD. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"Draw me a clothier's yard."

Clothier's yard is the arrow of that length, as in 'Chevy
Chace:'-

COMPACT. Act II., Sc. 2.

"When he, compact, and flattering his displeasure."

Compact is used in the sense of in agreement with, in confederacy with.

CONVEY. Act I., Sc. 2.

"Convey the business as I shall find means."

Convey was frequently used in a bad sense; it here means to manage, to conduct.

CROW-KEEPER. Act IV., Sc. 6.

66

"That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper."

The rustic who kept crows from corn--one unpractised in the right use of the bow-was the crow-keeper.

CURIOSITY. Act I., Sc. 1.

"Curiosity in neither can make choice."

Curiosity is used in the sense of curious inquiry, exact scrutiny. In Scene 2, where Edmund speaks of the "curiosity of nations," the meaning is more that of fastidiousness.

EACH. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"Ten masts at each make not the altitude."

Ten masts at each may mean placed at the end of each other, and in this sense Voss and Schlegel translate it. Some, however, think each a typographical error for reach. We can find no other example of a similar use of at each, but the phrase conveys the meaning.

ENRIDGED. Act IV., Sc. 6.

"And wav'd like the enridged sea."

Enridged, which appears in the quarto, is a more poetical word than enraged, which is given in the folio. In Venus and Adonis,' Shakspere has the same idea :

"Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,
Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend."

ESSAY. Act I., Sc. 2.

"As an essay or taste of my virtue."

Essay, assay, and say, were alike used for such proof as was made by the assayer of coin, or the taster at royal tables. In Act V., Sc. 3, we have say in the same sense :

"And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes." EXHIBITION. Act I., Sc. 2.

"Confin'd to exhibition."

Exhibition is allowance. See Two Gentlemen of Verona.'