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"the grove of sycamore."-When Shakespeare has to deal with descriptions of natural scenery, he almost invariably localizes himself with the utmost distinctness. He never mistakes the sycamore_groves of the south for the birch woods of the north. In such cases he was not required to employ familiar and conventional images, for the sake of presenting an idea more distinctly to his audience than a rigid adherence to the laws of costume (we employ the word in its larger sense of manners) would have allowed. The grove of sycamore

That westward rooteth from this city's side, takes us at once to a scene entirely different from one presented by Shakespeare's own experience. The sycamore is the Oriental plane, (little known in England,) spreading its broad branches-from which its name, plantanus,-to supply the most delightful of shades under the sun of Syria or of Italy. Shakespeare might have found the sycamore in Chaucer's exquisite tale of the Flower and the Leaf, where the hedge that

Closed in alle the green arbere,
With sycamore was set and eglantere.

KNIGHT.

"Pursu'd my humour."--The reading of the two preceding lines in this edition, is that preferred by Collier, being that of all the early editions, except the first. The plain meaning is, that Benvolio, like Romeo, was indisposed for society, and sought to be most where fewest people were to be found, being one too many, even when by himself. The popular text, since Pope's time, has usually been that of the quarto, 1597, viz:

I measuring his affections by my own,

That most are busied when they're most alone,
Pursued my humour.

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"Or dedicate his beauty to the SUN."-The old copies and in this play, here, instead of "to the sun," read "to the same." This prosaic termination of so beautiful a passage was altered at the suggestion of Theobald, as a typographical mistake for "sunne," in the old orthography. Daniel, in his sonnets (1594) has a passage somewhat

similar:

And while thou spread'st unto the rising sun The fairest flower that ever saw the light, Now 'joy thy time, before thy sweet be done. Collier retains "same."

"Enter ROMEO," etc.

If we are right, from the internal evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakespeare's early dramas, it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his insight into the nature of the passions, that Romeo is already love-bewildered. The necessity of loving creates an object for itself in man and woman; and yet there is a difference in this respect between the sexes, though only to be known by a perception of it. It would have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already in love, or as fancying herself so;-but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline (who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination) and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near the heart :

When the devout religion of mine eye

Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!

One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.
COLERIDGE.

"O brawling love! O loving hate!"-This antithetical combination of contraries originated in the Provençal poetry, and was assiduously cultivated by Petrarch. Shakespeare, in this passage, may be distinctly traced to Chaucer's translation of the "Romaunt of

Turn back, dull earth.

"This night I hold an old accustom'd feast."-" The day is hot," says Benvolio. The Friar is up in his garden,

Now ere the sun advance his burning eye. Juliet hears the nightingale sing from the pomegranate tree. During the whole course of the poem, the action appears to move under the "vaulty heaven" of Italy, with a soft moon

KNIGHT.

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops,and "day's pathway" made lustrous by - Titan's fiery wheels. "Earth-treading stars," etc.-Warburton calls this line nonsense, and would read,

Earth-treading stars that make dark even light. Monck Mason would read,

Earth-treading stars that make dark, heaven's light, that is, that make the light of heaven appear dark in comparison with them. It appears unnecessary to alter the original reading, especially as passages in the masquerade scene would indicate that the banquetting-room opened into a garden-as,

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night.

"Which, on more view of many, mine being one." The editions following Stevens's text, retain the reading of the first unrevised quarto, "Such amongst view of many;" the sense of which, most readers will say, with Johnson, "I do not understand." The present text agrees with that of the later editors, Singer and Collier, being from the revised quartos, (with the correction of an obvious error of the press,) reading "on" view of many, for one view, etc. Singer thus states the meaning:

"Hear all, see all, and like her most who has the most merit; her, which, after regarding attentively the many, my daughter being one, may stand unique in merit, though she may be reckoned nothing, or held in no estimation. The allusion, as Malone has shown,

is to the old proverbial expression, 'One is no number,' thus adverted to in Decker's Honest Whore :'

-to fall to one Is to fall to none,

For one no number is.

And in Shakespeare's 136th Sonnet :

Among a number one is reckon'd none,

Then in the number let me pass untold.

It will be unnecessary to inform the reader that which is here used for who, a substitution common with Shakespeare, as in all the writers of his time."

"CRUSH a cup of wine."-This expression is met with in many old plays and tracts of the time.

(Plantain leaf.)

SCENE III.

The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in SHAKESPEARE to a direct borrowing from mere observation; and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the individual in nature is a representative of a class,-just as in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them, so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization is done to the Poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections gives her privileges and rank in the household; and observe the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and the childlike fondness of repetition in a second childhood, and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant resurgence against, the check of her superiors!

Yes, madam!-Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c. COLERIDGE. "Even or odd."-The speeches of the Nurse, from hence, are given as prose in all the early editions. Capell had the great merit of first printing them as verse; and not "erroneously," as Boswell appears to think, for there is not in all SHAKESPEARE a passage in which the rhythm is more happily characteristic.KNIGHT.

"And, pretty fool, it STINTED"-i. e. it stopped crying. To stint is frequently used for to stop in writers of the time.

"Examine every MARRIED lineament”—i. e. Every harmoniously united lineament. This is the reading of the quarto, 1599, the oldest authority for this part of the play: the quarto, 1609, and the folio, 1623, have poorly, "Examine every several lineament."

"The fish lives in the sea"-i. e. Is not yet caught. Fish-skin covers to books anciently were not uncommon. Such is Farmer's explanation of this passage.STEVENS.

SCENE IV.

"Enter ROMEO, MERCUTIO, BENVOLIO," etc.

In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us. O! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that distorts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of its smoothness! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and procreative as an insect, courage,-an easy mind that, without cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of others, and yet to be interested in them,-these and all congenial qualities, melting into the common copula of them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its excellences and all its weaknesses, constitute the character of Mercutio!-COLERIDGE.

In Arthur Brooke's rhyming poem of "Romeus and Juliet," there is mention of Mercutio :

At th' one side of her chair her lover Romeo,

And on the other side there sat one called Mercutio ;

A courtier that eachwhere was highly had in price,

For he was courteous of his speech and pleasant of device:

Even as a lion would among the lambs be bold,

Such was among the bashful maids, Mercutio to behold.
With friendly gripe he seized fair Juliet's snowish hand:

A gift he had that nature gave him in his swathing band,-
That frozen mountain-ice was never half so cold

As were his hands, though ne'er so near the fire he did them hold.
On this slight hint, Shakespeare founded the admira-
ble character bearing the same name.-Illust. Shak.
"We'll have no Cupid hood-wink'd with such a scarf,"
etc.-This "device" was a practice of courtly life,
before and during the time of Shakespeare. The
"Tartar's painted bow of lath" is the bow of the Asi-
atic nations, with a double curve, so as to distinguish
the bow of Cupid from the old English long-bow. The
"crow-keeper," who scares the ladies, had also a bow:
he is the shuffle or mawkin-the scarecrow of rags and
straw, with a bow and arrow in his hand. "That fel-
low handles his bow like a crow-keeper," says Lear.
The "without-book prologue faintly spoke after the
prompter," is supposed by Warton to allude to the boy-
actors that we find noticed in HAMLET.

"Give me a torch."-The character, (says Stevens,) which Romeo declares his resolution to assume, will be best explained by a passage in "Westward Hoe," by Decker and Webster, 1607 :-" He is just like a torchbearer to maskers; he wears good cloathes, and is ranked in good company, but he doth nothing."

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doth QUOTE deformities"-i. e. Note or observe deformities.

"Tickle the senseless RUSHES with their heels"-Alluding to the rushes with which apartments were anciently strewed, before the ordinary use of carpets.

"Tut! dun's the mouse."-We have a string of sayings here which have much puzzled the commentators. When Romeo exclaims, "I am done," Mercutio, playing upon the word, cries "dun's the mouse." This is a proverbial phrase, constantly occurring in the old comedies. It is probably something like the other cant phrase that occurs in LEAR, "the cat is grey." The following line,

If thou art dun, we ll draw thee from the mire, was fully as puzzling, till Gifford gave us a solution :"Dun is in the mire! then, is a Christmas gambol, at which I have often played. A log of wood is brought into the midst of the room: this is dun, (the cart horse,) and a cry is raised, that he is stuck in the mire. Two of the company advance, either with or without ropes, to draw him out. After repeated attempts, they find themselves unable to do it, and call for more assistance. The game continues till all the company take part in it, when dun is extricated of course; and the merriment arises from the awkward and affected efforts

of the rustics to lift the log, and from sundry arch contrivances to let it fall on one another's toes. This will not be thought a very exquisite amusement; and yet I have seen much honest mirth at it, and have been far more entertained with the ludicrous contortions of pretended struggles, than with the writhing, the dark scowl of avarice and envy exhibited by the same description of persons, in the genteeler amusement of cards, now the universal substitute for all our ancient sports."- GIFFORD'S Ben Jonson's Works.

"MER. O! then, I see, queen Mab hath been with you."

This exquisitely fanciful piece of descriptive humour was strangely printed as prose in all the quartos and folio, where it appears with the author's last correction of language. The first quarto, being the first draft, is less perfect as to language, but has the metrical arrangement. We cannot but follow Mr. Knight's example in exhibiting to our readers the first draft of a performance so exquisitely finished as this celebrated description, in which every word is a study. The original quarto of 1597 gives the passage, as follows:

Ah then I see queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and doth come
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the forefinger of a burgomaster,
Drawne with a team of little atomy,
Athwart men's noses when they lie asleep.
Her waggon spokes are made of spinners' webs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces are the moon-shine watery beams,
The collars cricket bones, the lash of films.
Her waggoner is a small gray -coated fly
Not half so big as is a little worm,
Picked from the lazy finger of a maid.
And in this sort she gallops up and down
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love.
O'er courtiers' knees, who strait on courtesies dream;
O'er ladies' lips who dream on kisses strait,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues
Because their breath with sweetmeets tainted are.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a lawyer's lap,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometimes she with a ty the pig's tail
Tickling a parsen's nose that lies asleep
And then dreams he of another benefice.
Sometimes she gallops o'er a soldier's nose,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, countermines,

Of healths five fathom deep, and then anon

Drums in his ears, at which he starts and wakes,

And swears a prayer or two, and sleeps again.
This is that Mab that makes maids lie on their backs,
And proves them women of good carriage.

This is the very Mab,

That plaits the mains of horses in the night,
And plaits the elfe locks in foul sluttish hair,
Which once untangled much misfortune breeds.

"She is the fuiries' midwife”—Warburton supposes this to be an error of the press for "fancy's midwife," a conjecture worth preserving for its ingenuity, though it does not seem wanted. Commentators have differed about the sense of the allusion, and Stevens's explanation has been commonly adopted. I prefer that of T. Warton. The reader may choose for himself:

"The 'fairies' midwife' does not mean the midwife to the fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies, whose department it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men of their dreams, those children of an idle brain. When we say 'the king's judges,' we do not mean persons who are to judge the king, but persons appointed by him to judge his subjects."-STEVENS.

"I apprehend, and with no violence of interpretation, that by the fairies' midwife' the Poet means-the midwife among the fairies, because it was her peculiar employment to steal the new-born babe in the night, and to leave another in its place. The Poet here uses her general appellation and character, which yet have so far a proper reference to the present train of fiction, as that her illusions were practised on persons in bed or asleep; for she not only haunted women in childbed, but was likewise the incubus or nightmare: Shakespeare, by employing her here, alludes at large to her midnight pranks performed on sleepers; but denomin

ates her from the most notorious one, of her personating the drowsy midwife, who was insensibly carried away into some distant water, and substituting a new birth in the bed or cradle. It would clear the appellation to read the fairy midwife. The Poet avails himself of Mab's appropriate province, by giving her this nocturnal agency."-T. WARTON.

"This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night "This alludes to a singular superstition, not yet forgotten in some parts of the continent. It was believed that certain malignant spirits, whose delight was to wander in groves and pleasant places, assumed occasionally the likenesses of women clothed in white; that in this character they sometimes haunted stables in the night-time, carrying in their hands tapers of wax, which they dropped on the horses' manes, thereby plaiting them in inextricable knots, to the great annoyance of the poor animals, and the vexation of their masters. These hags are mentioned in the works of William Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, in the thirteenth century. There is a very uncommon old print by Hans Burgmair, relating to this subject. A witch enters the stable with a lighted torch; and previously to the operation of entangling the horse's mane, practises her enchantment on the groom, who is lying asleep on his back, and apparently influenced by the nightmare. The belemites, or elf-stones, were regarded as charms against the last-mentioned disease, and against evil spirits of all kinds; but the cerauniæ, or botuli, and all perforated flint-stones, were not only used for the same purpose, but more particularly for the protection of horses and other cattle, by suspending them in stables, or tying them round the necks of the animals. "The next line,

And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs, seems to be unconnected with the preceding, and to mark a superstition, which, as Dr. Warburton has observed, may have originated from the plina Polonica, which was supposed to be the operation of the wicked elves, whence the clotted hair was called elf-locks, and elf-knots. Thus Edgar talks of 'elfing all his hair in knots.'"-DOUCE.

"Strike, drum."-Here the folio adds :-" They march about the stage, and serving-men come forth with their napkins." This stage-direction shows that the scene was supposed to be immediately changed to the hall of Capulet's house.

SCENE V.

"remove the COURT-CUPBOARD”—i. e. A sideboard or buffet, for the display of plate, etc., often mentioned by old writers. "Here shall stand my court-cupboard with its furniture of plate."-CHAPMAN'S Monsieur d'Olive, 1606.

"a piece of MARCHPANE."-Marchpanes, says Stevens, were composed of filberts, almonds, pistachios, pine-kernels, and sugar of roses, with a small proportion of flour. It is supposed to be the same that we now call a macaroon.

"A hall! a hall !"-King James, in Scott's "Marmion," has made this antiquated phrase familiar to the modern reader. It was an exclamation used to make room in a crowd, and especially to clear a hall for a dance.

66- good COUSIN Capulet."-M. Mason observes that the word cousin Shakespeare applies to any collateral relation of whatever degree; thus we have in this play "Tybalt, my cousin !-Oh my brother's child!" Richard the Third calls his nephew York, cousin; while the boy calls Richard, uncle. In the same play, York's grandmother calls him, cousin; while he replies, grandam.

"Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night.” All the old copies anterior to the second folio read"It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night." So much is gained in poetic beauty, and the other reading is so tame in expression, and so little in Shakespeare's manner, whose faults of language are never on that side, that it seems quite probable that this was a correction of the Poet's own, obtained from some other manuscript altered during the author's life. It is besides confirmed by the repetition of the word "beauty" in the next line but one. Collier and Singer adhere to the old reading of "It seems," etc., but most other editors agree with the reading in the text.

"This trick may chance to SCATH you"-i. e. To do you injury.

"This holy shrine, the gentle FINE is this."-The old copies read sin for "fine," an easy misprint when sin was written sinne with a long s. "Sin" scarcely affords sense, while "fine" (which Warburton introduced) has a clear meaning.

"Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie."

Our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced, when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for another. His visionary passion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline, forms but the prologue, the threshold to the true-the real sentitiment which succeeds it. The incident which is found in the original story has been retained by Shakespeare with equal feeling and judgment;-and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing us against Romeo, by casting upon him, at the outset of the piece, the stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him "fancy sick, and pale of cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times, every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was selected to be his fancy's queen and the more rigorous the beauty, and the more hopeless the love, the more honourable the slavery. To go about "metamorphosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously expresses it,-to maintain her supremacy in charms at the sword's point; to sigh; to walk with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show "a careless desolation," was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the Bayards, the Herberts of that time-all those who were the mirrors" in which the noble youth did dress themselves," were of this fantastic school of gallantry-the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it was especially prevalent in Italy. Shakespeare has ridiculed it in many places with exquisite humour; but he wished to show us that it has its serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dreaming, fanciful passion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her charms and her coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the day.

We no

But when once he had beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade before the soulabsorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round his heart, burns to that heart's very core. longer find him adorning his lamentations in picked phrases, or making a confidant of his gay companions; he is no longer "for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in;" but all is concentrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling and the expression.

How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first passion is indulged as a waking

dream, a reverie of the fancy: it is depressing, indolent, fantastic; his second elevates him to the third heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes to its object through all impediments, defies all dangers, and seeks at last a triumphant grave, in the arms of her he so loved. Thus Romeo's previous attachment to Rosaline is so contrived as to exhibit to us another variety in that passion which is the subject of the poem, by showing us the distinction between the fancied and the real sentiment. It adds a deeper effect to the beauty of Juliet; it interests us in the commencement for the tender and romantic Romeo; and gives an individual reality to his character, by stamping him like an historical, as well as a dramatic portrait, with the very spirit of the age in which he lived.-MRS. Jameson.

ACT II.-SCENE I.

"Young ADAM Cupid, he that shot so TRIM."-The old copies have "Abraham Cupid," which Upton judiciously altered to Adam, understanding the reference to be to Adam Bell, the famous archer; as in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, "he that hits me, let him be called Adam." "Trim" is from the quarto, the other editions reading true. The passage applies to the ballad of "King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid." The portion particularly in Shakespeare's mind runs thus The blinded boy that shootes so trim From heaven downe so high,

He drew a dart, and shot at him In place where he did lye.

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"the HUMOROUS night"-Dewy-vaporous--as in Chapman's Homer, "the humorous days;" and elsewhere," the humorous fogs."

SCENE II.

Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of Romeo's love with his former fancy; and weigh the skill shown in justifying him from his inconstancy by making us feel the difference of his passion. Yet this, too, is a love in, although not merely of, the imagination.-COLERIDGE.

"That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops."

This happy expression of a beautiful thought has often reappeared in modern poetry. Thus Pope used it to decorate the simpler night-landscape of Homer, by introducing it into his translation of the famous moonlight description at the end of the eighth book of the Illiad :

And tips with silver every mountain top. And again in his imitation of the sixth satire of Horace, where the "jamque tenebat-Nox medium cœli spatium" of the Latin poet is enriched by the Shakespearian imagery

Tell how the moonbeam trembling falls,

And tips with silver all the walls.

Tom Moore has put it to a profane use in the way of parody, when alluding to the rouge with which his dandy sovereign used to disguise the ravages of age, he makes it

- tip his whiskers' tops with red.

"JUL. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night," etc.

PEST.

With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the safety of the object, a disinterestedness, by which it is distinguished from the counterfeits of its name. Compare this scene with act iii. scene 1, of the TEMI do not know a more wonderful instance of Shakespeare's mastery in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same remembered air, than in the transporting love-confessions of Romeo and Juliet, and Ferdinand and Miranda. There seems more passion in the one, and dignity in the other; yet you feel that the sweet girlish lingering and busy movement of

Juliet, and the calmer and more maidenly fondness of Miranda, might easily pass into each other.-COLE

RIDGE.

"To lure this TERCEL-GENTLE back again."-The "tercel" is the male of the goss-hawk. This species of hawk had the epithet of "gentle" annexed to it, from the ease with which it was tamed. It was thought the most beautiful and graceful kind of hawk, and appropriated to the use of princes.

SCENE III.

The reverend character of the Friar, like all Shakespeare's representations of the great professions, is very delightful and tranquillizing, yet it is no digression, but immediately necessary to the carrying on of the plot.COLERIDGE.

"— and Titan's fiery wheels"-This is the reading of the first edition: in the revised copies it reads "burning wheels," evidently a misprint from taking the word "burning" from the line below. But, the four lines beginning "The grey-ey'd morn" are also printed in the folio as part of Romeo's speech just before, as if by some accidental error of a copyist, so that they are inserted twice; and there the reading is"From forth day's pathway made by Titan's wheels," which is preferred by many editors. Both readings are from Shakespeare himself. It seems probable that the reading of the text was the one last preferred, and the later editors have adopted it.

"The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb." Milton, in Paradise Lost, has the same idea,

The womb of nature, and, perhaps, her grave.

The editors of Milton have given a parallel passage in Lucretius,

Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum. Knight asks, "Did Shakespeare and Milton go to the same common source ?"

"O! mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities." Dr. Farmer remarked that "this eulogium on the hidden powers of nature affords a natural introduction to the Friar's furnishing Juliet with the sleeping potion in Act IV." Here is one of the many instances in which the train of thought was suggested by Brooke's

poem :

But not in vain, my child, hath all my wandering been :What force the stones, the plants, and metals have to work, And divers other things that in the bowels of earth do lurk With care I have sought out; with pain I did them prove. "Two such opposed KINGS."-The first edition has "foes," followed in the common modern editions, but all the other old editions read kings-moral chiefs, contending for the rule of man-a thoroughly Shakespearian phrase.

both our remedies

Within thy help and holy physic lies.”

Dr. Percy, who brought to the elucidation of our old

authors, the knowledge of an antiquary and the feeling of a poet, has observed, that "in very old English the third person plural of the present tense endeth in eth as well as the singular, and often familiarly in es:" it has been further explained by Mr. Tollet, that "the third person plural of the Anglo-Saxon present tense endeth in eth, and of the Dano-Saxon in es." Malone's principle upon which such idioms, which appear false concords to us, should be corrected is, "to substitute the modern idiom in all places except where either the metre or rhyme renders it impossible." Knight adds, "but to those who can feel the value of a slight sprinkling of our antique phraseology, it is pleasant to drop upon the instances in which correction is impossisible." Thus :

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic'd flowers that lies.

And again in "Venus and Adonis:"

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She lifts the coffer lids that close his eyes
Where lo! two lamps burnt out, in darkness lies.

SCENE IV.

"the very PIN of his heart cleft."-The "pin" was the peg by which the white mark or clout, at which archers shot, was fastened. To "cleave the pin" was a matter of more difficulty than to hit the clout or white.

"More than prince of cats."-Tybalt or Tybert was the name of a cat; and the cat in the old allegory of "Reynard the Fox" was called Tybert. Nash, in his "Have with you to Saffron Walden," 1596, has, "Tybalt, prince of cats."

"He fights as you sing PRICK-SONG”—Music pricked, or noted down, so as to read according to rule; in contradistinction to music learned by the ear, or sung from

memory.

"—the hay”—All the terms of the modern fencingschool were originally Italian; the rapier, or small thrusting-sword, being first used in Italy. The "hay" is the word hai, "you have it," used when a thrust reaches the antagonist; from which our fencers, on the same occasion, without knowing, I suppose, any reason for it, cry out, ha !-JOHNSON.

"these PARDONNEZ-MOIS"-" Pardonnez-moi" became the language of doubt or hesitation among men of the sword, when the point of honour was grown so delicate that no other mode of contradiction would be endured.-JOHNSON.

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- they cannot sit at ease on the old bench."-It is said that during the ridiculous fashion which prevailed of great "boulstered breeches," it was necessary to cut away hollow places in the benches of the House of Commons, to make room for these monstrous protuberances, without which those "who stood on the new form could not sit at ease on the old bench."-SINGER.

"Thisbe, a GREY EYE or so."-Mercutio means to allow that Thisbe had a very fine eye; for, from various passages, it appears that a gray eye was in our author's time thought eminently beautiful. This may seem strange to those who are not conversant with ancient phraseology; but a gray eye undoubtedly meant what we now denominate a blue eye.-MALONE.

"a French salutation to your French SLOP."Slops were loose breeches or trousers.

"Why, then is my pump well flowered."-It was the custom to wear ribands in the shoes, formed into the shape of roses, or of any other flowers. So in the "Masque of Gray's Inn," (1614,)-" Every masker's pump was fastened with a flower suitable to his cap."STEVENS.

what saucy MERCHANT was this, that was so full of his ROPERY ?"-An aristocratic distinction of the

olden time, when a "merchant" was not a "gentleman." This old retainer of a noble family means to vent her contempt by the phrase. "Ropery" is a word found in "The Three Ladies of London," 1584, in a sense somewhat similar to roguery.

"R is for THEE? no."-The meaning of this passage seems to have been hitherto mistaken, owing to "thee" in the old copies (as was often the case) having been misprinted the; it there runs thus: "R is for the no." The nurse means to ask, "how can R, which is the dog's name, be for thee?" And she answers herself, "no: I know Romeo begins with some other letter." The modern text, at the suggestion of Tyrwhitt, has usually been, "R is for the dog."-COLLIER.

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