To fee great Hercules whipping a gigg, Where lyes thy grief? O tell me, good Dumain; King. Too bitter is thy jeft. Are we betray'd thus to thy over-view? Biron. Not you by me, but I betray'd by you. I, that am honeft; I, that hold it fin To break the vow I am engaged in. -lay'd his wreathed arms athart His loving bofom so long, i. e. remained fo long in the lover's posture, that he seemed actually transformed into a knot. The word fat is in fome counties pronounced fot. This may account for the feeming want of exact rhime. In the old comedy of Albumazar, the fame thought oc A knott is likewife a Lincolnshire bird of the fnipe kind, is foolith even to a proverb, and is faid to be easily enfnared. Ray in his ornithology obferves, that it took its name from Canute, who was particularly fond of it. The knott is enumerated among other delicacies by fir Epicure Mammon, in Ben Jonfon's Alchemist. "My foot-boy fhall eat pheasants, &c. "Knots, godwits, &c. COLLINS. -critic Timon] ought evidently to be cynic. WARBURTON. There is no need of change. Critic and critical are used by our author in the fame fenfe as cynic and cynical. lago, fpeaking of the fair fex as harshly as is fometimes the practice of Dr. Warbur ton, declares he is nothing, if not critical. STEEVENS. I am betray'd by keeping company With men like men, of ftrange inconftancy. King. Soft; Whither away fo faft? A true man or a thief, that gallops fo? Biron. I poft from love; good lover, let me go. Enter Jaquenetta and Coftard. Jaq. God bless the king! King. What present haft thou there? King. What makes treafon here? Coft. Nay it makes nothing, Sir. King. If it mar nothing neither, The treason, and you, go in peace away together. Jaq. I beseech your grace, let this letter be read; Our parfon mifdoubts it; it was treafon, he said. King. Biron, read it over. Where hadft thou it? Jaq. Of Coftard. King. Where hadft thou it? [He reads the letter. Coft. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio. 2 With men-like men· -] This is a ftrange fenfelefs line, and fhould be read thus, With vane-like men, of frange inconftancy. WARBURTON. This is well imagined, but perhaps the poet may mean, with men like common men. JOHNSON. King. How now, what is in you? why doft thou tear it? Biron. A toy, my liege, a toy: your grace needs not fear it. Long. It did move him to paffion, and therefore let's hear it. Dum. It is Biron's writing, and here is his name. Biron. Ah, you whorefon loggerhead, you were [To Coftard. Guilty my lord, guilty: I confefs, I confefs. King. What? born to do me shame. Biron. That you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess. He, he, and you; and you, my liege, and I Biron. True, true; we are four: Will these turtles be gone? King. Hence, Sirs, away. Coft. Walk afide the true folk, and let the traitors stay. [Exeunt Coftard and Jaquenetta. Biron. Sweet lords, fweet lovers, O, let us em brace ! As true we are, as flesh and blood can be: The fea will ebb and flow, heaven will fhew his face: Young blood doth not obey an old decree. Biron. Did they, quoth you? Who fees the heavenly That (like a rude and favage man of Inde, At the first opening of the gorgeous east) Bows not his vaffal head; and, ftrucken blind, Kiffes the base ground with obedient breast ? What peremptory eagle-fighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majefty? King. What zeal, what fury, hath infpir'd thee My love (her mistress) is a gracious moon! Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek; Where nothing wants, that want itself doth feek. Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues; Fy, painted rhetorick! O, fhe needs it not: To things of fale a seller's praise belongs : She paffes praife; then praife, too fhort doth blot. A wither'd hermit, fivefcore winters worn, Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye : And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy. 3 She (an attending far)] Something like this is a ftanza of fir Henry Wotton, of which the poetical reader will forgive the infertion. -Ye fars, the train of night, That poorly fatisfy our eyes More by your number than your light: Ye common people of the fkies, What are ye when the fun shall rise. JOHNSON. Is ebony like ber? O word divine!] This is the reading of alf the O, who can give an oath? where is a book? That I may fwear, Beauty doth beauty lack, If that she learn not of her eye to look ? No face is fair, that is not full so black? King. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell, s The hue of dungeons, and the fcowl of night; And beauty's creft becomes the heavens well. Biron. Devils fooneft tempt, resembling spirits of light. 0, the editions that I have feen: but both Dr. Thirlby and Mr. Warburton concurr'd in reading, (as I had likewife conjectured,} Black being the School of night, is a piece of mystery above my comprehenfion. I had gueffed, it fhould be, -the ftole of night: but I have preferred the conjecture of my friend Mr. Warburton, who reads, the fcowl of night, as it comes nearer in pronunciation to the corrupted reading, as well as agrees better with the other images. THEOBALD. • And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well.] This is a contention between two lovers about the preference of a black or white beauty. But, in this reading, he who is contending for the white, takes for granted the thing in difpute; by faying, that white is the creft of beauty. His adverfary had just as much reafon to call black fo. The queftion debated between them being which was the crest of beauty, black or white. Shakespeare could never write fo abfurdly nor has the Oxford editor at all mended the matter by fubftituting dress for creft. We fhould read, : And beauty's crete becomes the heavens well. i. e. beauty's white, from creta. In this reading the third line is a proper antithefis to the firft. I fuppofe the blunder of the tranfcriber arofe from hence, the French word creste in that pronunciation and orthography is crete, which he understanding, and know 24 |