ACT III. SCENE L THE PRISO N. Enter Duke, Claudio, and Provost. DUKE. then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo? Claud. The miferable have no other medicine, But only hope: either death, or life, I have hope to live, and am prepar❜d to die. life; If I do lofe thee, I do lofe a thing, Reason thus with That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Be abfolute for death ; -] Be determined to die, without any hope of life. Horace, -The bour, which exceeds expectation will be welcome. JOHNSON. ] But this reading is 9 That none but foo's would keep :: not only contrary to all fenfe and reafon; but to the drift of this moral difcourfe. The duke, in his affumed character of a friar, is endeavouring to inftil into the condemned prifoner a refignation of mind to his fentence; but the fenfe of the lines in this reading, is a direct perfuafive to fuicide: I make no doubt, but the poet wrote, That none but fools would reck: i. e. care for, be anxious about, regret the lofs of. gedy of Tancred and Gifmunda, a&t iv. fc. 3. Not that he recks this life And Shakespeare, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, So in the traTM Recking as It le what betideth me-- WARBURTON. The meaning feems plainly this, that note but fools would with 10 keep life; or, none but fools would keep it, if choice were allowed. A fenfe, which whether true or not, is certainly innocent. JOHNSON. Servile to all the skiey influences. That do this habitation,' where thou keep'st, And yet runn'ft toward him still. Thou art not noble ; For all the accommodations, that thou bear'st, liant; For thou doft fear the foft and tender fork 1 That do this habitation,-] This reading is substituted by fir Thomas Hanmer, for That doft 2 JOHNSON. -merely thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'ft by thy fight to fhun, And yet runn'ft toward him still.—] In thofe old farces called Moralities, the fol of the piece, in order to fhew the inevitable approaches of death, is made to employ all his ftratagems to avoid him; which, as the matter is ordered, bring the fool at every turn, into his very jaws. So that the reprefentations of thefe fcenes would afford a great deal of good mirth and morals mixed together. And from fuch circumftances, in the genius of our ancestors publick diverfions, I fuppose it was, that the old proverb arose, of being merry and wife. WARBURTON. Such another expreffion, as death's fool, occurs in The boneft Lawyer, a comedy, by S. S. 1616. "Wilt thou be a fool of fate? who can "Prevent the destiny decreed for man?" STEEVENS. 3 As nurs'd by baseness :-], Dr. Warburton is undoubtedly miftaken in fuppofing that by bafenefs is meant felf-love here affigned as the motive of all human actions. Shakespeare only meant to obferve, that a minute analyfis of life at once deftroys that fplendour which dazzles the imagination. Whatever grandeur can difplay, or luxury enjoy, is procured by bafenefs, by offices of which the mind fhrinks from the contemplation. All the delicacies of the table may be traced back to the fhambles and the dunghill, all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry, and all the pomp of ornaments dug from among the damps and darkness of the mine. JOHNSON. Of 6 Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is fleep,' Worm is put for any creeping thing or ferpent. Shakespeare fuppofes falfely, but according to the vulgar notion, that a ferpent wounds with his tongue, and that his tongue is forked. He confounds reality and fiction, a ferpent's tongue is feft but not forked nor hurtful. If it could hurt, it could not be foft. In MidsummerNight's Dream he has the fame notion. With doubler tongue Than thine, O ferpent, never adder ftung. JOHNSON. Shakespeare might have caught this idea from old tapestries or paintings, in which the tongues of ferpents and dragons always appear barbed like the point of an arrow. STEEVENS. 5. -Thy best of rest is fleep, And that thou oft provok'ft; yet grofly fear'ft Evidently from the following paffage of Cicero: Habes fomnum imaginem mortis, eamque quotidie induis, & dubitas quin fenfus in morte nullus fit cum in ejus fimilacro videas effe nullum fenfum. But the Epicurean infinuation is, with great judgment, omitted in the imitation. WARBURTON. Here Dr. Warburton might have found a fentiment worthy of his animadverfion. I cannot without indignation find Shakespeare faying, that death is only fleep, lengthening out his exhortation by a fentence which in the friar is impious, in the reafoner is foolish, and in the poet trite and vulgar. JOHNSON. -Thou art not thyself;] Thou art perpetually repaired and renovated by external affiftance, thou fubfifteft upon foreign matter, and haft no power of producing or continuing thy own being. JOHNSON. 7Arange effects,] For effects read affects; that is, affections, paffions of mind, or diforders of body variously affected. So in Orbello, The young affects. JOHNSON. Thou Thou bear'ft thy heavy riches but a journey, Do curfe the gout, ferpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no fooner. Thou haft nor youth, nor age; 9 But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both for all thy bleffed youth' -Thou haft nor youth, nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner's fleep, Becomes This is exquifitely imagined. When we are young, we bufy ourfelves in forming fchemes for fucceeding time, and mifs the grati fications that are before us; when we are old, we amufe the languor of age with the recollection of youthful pleafures or performances; fo that our life, of which no part is filled with the bufinefs of the prefent time, resembles our dreams after dinner, when the events of the morning are mingled with the defigns of the evening. JOHNSON. I -for all thy bleffed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of paified eld; and when thou'rt old and rich, The drift of this period is to prove, that neither youth nor age can be faid to be really enjoyed, which, in poetical language, is,-W bave neither youth nor age. But how is this made out? That age is not enjoyed he proves, by recapitulating the infirmities of it, which deprive that period of life of all fenfe of pleasure. To prove that youth is not enjoyed, he uses these words, —for all thy bleed youth Becomes as aged, and doch beg the alms Out of which, he that can deduce the conclufion, has a better knack at logic than 1 have. I fuppofe the poet wrote, -For pall'd, thy blazed youth Becomes affuaged; and doth beg the alms Of palfied eld i.e. when thy youthful appetite becomes palled, as it will be in the very enjoyment, the blaze of youth is at once affuaged, and thou immediately contracteft the infirmities of old age; as partiVOL. II. F cularly Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palfied eld, and when thou art old, and rich, What's yet in this, 2 That cularly the palfy and other nervous disorders, confequent on the inordinate ufe of fenfual pleafures. This is to the purpose; and proves youth is not enjoyed, by fhewing the fhort duration of it. WARBURTON. Here again I think Dr. Warburton totally miftaken. Shakefpeare declares that man has neither youth nor age; for in youth, which is the happieft time, or which might be the happiest, he commonly wants means to obtain what he could enjoy; he is de pendent on palfied eld; muft beg alms from the coffers of hoary avarice: and being very niggardly fupplied, becomes as aged, looks, like an old man, on happiness which is beyond his reach. And, when he is old and rich, when he has wealth enough for the purchafe of all that formerly excited his defires, he has no longer the powers of enjoyment, -has neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make his riches pleasant. I have explained this paffage according to the present reading, which may stand without much inconvenience; yet I am willing to perfuade my reader, becaufe I have almoft perfuaded myself, that our author wrote, 2-beat, affection, limb, ner beauty] But how does beauty make riches pleasant? We fhould read bounty, which compleats the fenfe, and is this; thou haft neither the pleasure of enjoying riches thyself, for thou wanteft vigour; nor of feeing it enjoyed by others, for thou wanteft bounty. Where the making the want of bounty as infeparable from old age as the want of health, is extremely fatyrical, tho' not altogether juft. WARBURTON. I am inclined to believe, that neither man nor woman will have much difficulty to tell how beauty makes riches pleasant. Surely this emendation, though it is elegant and ingenious, is not fuch as that an opportunity of inferting it fhould be purchafed by declaring ignorance of what every one knows, by confeffing infenfibility of what every one feels. JOHNSON. 3-more thousand deaths-] For this fir T. Hanmer reads, -a thou |