— As friend remember'd not.”

i. e. As the condition of a friend remembered not. Mr. Malone says it ought to be as friendship not remembering, which, indeed, would be no friendship at all. The passage quoted from the third act is not, I think, in point: I am remembered," is, mind or remembrance.

"now

clearly, now I am put-in

This use of the active instead of the passive adjective, has been adopted by Milton, in more than one instance:

"And hears the unexpressive nuptial song."

99. Speak sad brow and true maid."

I

Lycidas.

suppose there was something proverbial in

this. Benedick says to Claudio

Speak you this with a sad brow?"

102. "I had as lief have been myself alone."

Have been occupied and engrossed by my own thoughts.

111. "Clean as a sound sheep's heart; so that there shall not be one spot of love

in it."

Why is a sheep, or a sound sheep, peculiarly exempt from love?-Is it that the mutilation which destroys the sexual appetite, prepares the sheep at the same time to become better mutton, or what may be here emphatically sound mutton? Mr. Steevens says, it is an allusion to the practice of washing sheep's hearts; but do not calves' hearts, bullocks' hearts, &c. undergo similar ablution?

SCENE III.

115. "No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beau

ty, is to have honey a sauce to su

gar."

As honey and sugar would mutually confound the quality of each other, so would your beauty betray your honesty, and your honesty your beauty. This sentiment, a little varied, occurs in Hamlet:

"You should admit your honesty to no discourse with your beauty."

Ophelia. "Why, my Lord, can beauty have better commerce than with honesty?"

Hamlet. " Ay marry; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty, from what it is, to a bawd, than the force of beauty," &c.

Capable, here, I believe, is sensible, susceptible, and has exactly the same meaning (and not intelligent or perceptible) in the instance brought by Mr. Malone, from Hamlet:

His form and cause conjoin'd, "Preaching to stones, would make them capable."

66

Beauty,

As, by my faith, I see no more in you, "Than, without candle, may go dark to bed."

i. e. (I suppose) your beauty admits not of hyperbolical praise. I cannot say it illumines darkness.

ACT IV. SCENE I.

137. "In which my often rumination wraps me, in a most humorous sadness."

This certainly requires correction; but though Mr. Steevens's change of in to is affords a meaning and concord, it is not, I believe, exactly that which was intended. Perhaps this may come nearer the mark :-It is a melancholy of my own, &c. and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, on which my often rumination wraps me, &c. i. e. my often rumination on which (my travels) wraps or entrances me, &c. "Often, thus adjectively used, is not without example; as in Warner's Albion's England, chap. 9.

"With often kisses plying him, no sport was overpass'd."

And it is not, perhaps, more anomalous than Semperlenitas.

138. "I had rather have a fool to make me merry, than experience to make me sad." Gray says, in the Ode on a distant Prospect of Eaton College,

Where ignorance is bliss,

""Tis folly to be wise."

Had rather is corrupt idiom, proceeding, as Dr. Lowth has well explained, from confounding the contraction of I would, I'd, with that of I had.

141. "

The foolish chronicles of that age found it was Hero of Cestos."

Sir T. Hanmer's reading, coroners for "chroniclers," is adopted by Mr. Edwards, who thinks it has support in Hamlet :-" The coroner hath sat on her, and finds it Christian burial." Mr. Malone, too, though he prefers the old text, says that "found" is certainly used in a forensic sense, and Mr. M. Mason asserts, that the allusion is evidently to a coroner's inquest on the body of Leander, and that their verdict was, Hero of Cestos was the cause of Leander's death: but, unfortunately for this fair argument, we know that a coroner's inquest upon the body either of Ophelia or Leander, could only declare that the person was drowned; though they might find it accidental, or the effect of lunacy.

142. "

Then love me, Rosalind." Ros. "Yes, faith will I, Fridays and Saturdays, and all."

After the reformation and the abolition of the Romish fasts, political fasts were ordered upon

Fridays and Saturdays, for the purpose of promoting the fisheries upon the coasts of England. Anderson's History of Commerce.

This note is from Lord Chedworth's correspondent, and is signed R. T.

148. "

Sing it; no matter how it be in tune, "So it make noise enough," &c.

Jaques appears to have been, slily, no disrelisher of music: this is the second time he has called for a song.

ACT V. SCENE I.

162. "Grapes were made to eat."

"Made to eat," for made to be eaten, is a corruption of phraseology still in use: the implied ellipsis is too violent; "made (for men) to eat." SCENE II.

164. "Is't possible that, on so little acquaintance, you should like her? that, but seeing, you should love her? and, loving, woo? and wooing, she should grant?"

I cannot help repeating here, what occurs in Warner's Albion's England:

Jove chaunced her to see,

"And seeing liked, liking, lov'd, and loving made it known."

SCENE III.

Though there was no greater matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable.