"You had the trick in audit time to be sick, A bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger. So, in the second part of the " Mirrour for Knighthood," quarto, 1598-"Not having any more weapons but a poor poynado, which usually he did bear about him, and taking it in his hand, delivered these speeches unto it. Thou, silly bodkin, shalt finish the piece of work,” etc. In the margin of "Stowe's Chronicle," edit. 1614, it is said, that Cæsar was slain with bodkins; and in "The Muses' Looking-Glass," by Randolph, 1638: Apho. A rapier's but a bodkin. Deil. And a bodkin Is a most dang'rous weapon; since I read Again, in "The Custom of the Country," by Beaumont and Fletcher: "out with your bodkin, Your pocket-dagger, your stiletto." Again, in "Sapho and Phao," 1591: "There will be a desperate fray between two, made at all weapons, from the brown bill to the bodkin." Again, in Chaucer, as he is quoted at the end of a pamphlet, called "The Serpent of Division," etc., whereunto is annexed the "Tragedy of Gorboduc," etc., 1591: "With bodkins was Cæsar Julius Murdered at Rome of Brutus Crassus."—Steevens. By "a bare bodkin," does not perhaps mean, "by so little an instrument as a dagger," but "by an unsheathed dagger." "In the account which Mr. Steevens has given of the original meaning of the term quietus, after the words, who personally attended the king on any foreign expedition,' should have been added, and were therefore exempted from the claims of scutage, or a tax on every knight's fee." "Malone. "To GRUNT and sweat. Thus the old copies. It is, undoubtedly, the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears."-Johnson. Stanyhurst, in his translation of Virgil, 1582, for supremum congemuit, gives us, "for sighing it grunts." Again, in Trubervile's translation of Ovid's Epistle from Canace to Macareus: "What might I wiser do? greefe forst me grunt.' Again, in the same translator's Hypermnestra to Lynceus: "round about I heard Of dying men the grunts." The change made by the editors [to groan] is, however, supported by the following line in "Julius Cæsar," Act. 4, sc. 1: "He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold; To groan and sweat under the business, Either led or driven, as we point the way." I apprehend that it is the duty of an editor to exhibit what his author wrote, and not to substitute what may appear to the present age preferable; and Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion. See his note on the word hugger-mugger, Act 4, sc. 5. I have, therefore, though with some reluctance, adhered to the old copies, however unpleasing this word may be to the ear. On the stage, without doubt, an actor is at liberty to substitute a less offensive word. To the ears of our ancestors it probably conveyed no unpleasing sound; for we find it used by Chaucer and others: "But never gront he at no stroke, but on," etc., etc. The Monke's Tale. Again, in "Wily Beguiled," written before 1596: "She's never well, but grunting in a corner."—Malone. "The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn NO TRAVELLER returns."-This has been cavilled at by Lord Orrery and others, but without reason. The idea of a traveller in Shakespeare's time was, of a person who gave an account of his adventures. Every voyage was a discovery. John Taylor has "A Discovery by Sea from London to Salisbury."Farmer. Again, Marston's "Insatiate Countess," 1603: "Wrestled with death, From whose stern cave none tracks a backward path." "Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum, Illuc unde negant redire quemquam."--- Catullus. Again, in Sandford's translation of "Cornelius Agrippa," etc., 1569 (once a book of uncommon popularity): "The countrie of the dead is irremeable, that they cannot retourne. Again, in "Cymbeline," says the Gaoler to Posthumus: "How you shall speed in your journey's end [after execution], I think you'll never return to tell one.”—Steevens. This passage has been objected to by others on a ground which, at first view of it, seems more plausible. Hamlet himself, it is objected, has had ocular demonstration that travellers do sometimes return from this strange country. I formerly thought this an inconsistency. But this objection is also founded on a mistake. Our poet, without doubt, in the passage before us, intended to say, that from the unknown regions of the dead no traveller returns with all his corporeal powers, such as he who goes on a voyage of discovery brings back when he returns to the port from which he sailed. The traveller whom Hamlet had seen, though he appeared in the same habit which he had worn in his lifetime, was nothing but a shadow; "invulnerable as the air," and consequently incorporeal. If, says the objector, the traveller has reached this coast, it is not an undiscovered country. But by undiscovered, Shakespeare meant, not undiscovered by departed spirits, but undiscovered, or unknown to "such fellows as we who crawl between earth and heaven;" superis incognita tellus. In this sense every country, of which the traveller does not return alive to give an account, may be said to be undiscovered. The Ghost has given us no account of the region from whence he came, being, as he himself informed us, "forbid to tell the secrets of his prison-house.” Marlowe, before our poet, had compared death to a journey to an undiscovered country: -"weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, -King Edward II. 1598, (written before 1593) "—Malone. Perhaps this is another instance of Shakespeare's acquaintance with the Bible: "Afore I goe thither, from whence I shall not turne againe, even to the land of darknesse and shadowe of deathe; yea, into that darke, cloudie lande and deadlye shadowe wherein is no order, but terrible feare as in the darknesse." (Job, ch. x.) "The way that I must goe is at hande, but whence I shall not turne againe.' (Job, ch. xvi.) I quote Cramner's Bible."-Douce. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. "I'll not meddle with it; it makes a man a coward." "O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me." "Great PITH."-Thus the folio. The quartos read, "of great pitch.”—Steevens. "Pitch seems to be the better reading. The allu |