360. "The human mortals.' I cannot think that any distinction is meant between men and fairies, but between mankind and the rest of perishable nature: a general and destructive disease is described; the corn is rotted, the cattle are drowned, or die of sickness; the human beings feel the want of the accustomed season. 363. "The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts "Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose; "And on old Hyems chin, and icy crown, "An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds "Is, as in mockery, set: The spring, the summer, "The childing autumn, angry winter, change "Their wonted liveries; and the 'mazed world, "By their increase, now know's not which is which." Lee seems to have made use of this description in his dipus. The seasons "Lie all confus'd; and, by the heavens neglected, Forget themselves; blind Winter meets the Summer "In his mid-way; and, knowing not his livery, "Has driven him headlong back." "The childing autumn," i. e. the teeming, productive, abundant autumn. 369. "Not for thy kingdom.-Faeries, away." Faeries again a trisyllable, but with the accent more commodiously placed. 373. "Love in idleness.' I cannot discover why Mr. Steevens should object to the praise bestowed by Dr. Warburton upon this passage, except on account of the epithet irregular, which certainly is misapplied; the moral being that love, in general, has power only when the mind is unemployed, of which the lines produced by Mr. Steevens, from The Taming of a Shrew, are an illustration. 378. SCENE III. "I'll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, "To die upon the hand I love so well." To die upon the hand, says Mr. Steevens, is to die by the hand; and he brings, in confirmation of this sense, a passage from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, "I'll die on him that says so but yourself:" but surely Proteus, when he says this, does not mean he'll die by him; but either that he will kill him, or contend with him to death, and in this latter sense I am inclined to interpret the present passage. 66 386. Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy." To correct the redundancy of this line, Mr. Steevens omits the repetition of "this," but the verse will still be faulty, unless we make courtesy a dissyllable only, and place the accent on the latter part of it. Pretty soul! she durst not lie Theobald proposed "Near to this kill-courtésy'." hear di dolore, belten And I perceive no better expedient. 389. "Not Hermia, but Helena I love." The quarto reads "But Helena, now, I love." Perhaps it were better "Not Hermia, but Helen, now, I love." ACT III. SCENE II. 412. So should a murderer look; so dead, so grim." Thus in Macbeth "So should he look that seems to speak things strange. 413." Doubler tongue." More forked, I suppose, and so more veno mous. 420. "Thou shalt aby it." To aby, seems to be the same as to abide-to be liable to the consequence. This interpretation I find supported by Mr. Harris's note, Act 3, p. 430. 426. "Hate me! wherefore?" Wherefore, is thus accentuated in other places, as "I'll tell you when, and you'll tell me wherefore." Comedy of Errors. 427. "Now I perceive that she hath made com pare. "Between our statures." Will it be advancing too far upon the conjectural ground of Dr. Warburton, to suppose that this is a reference to the jealous coquettry of Queen Elizabeth, displayed in her recorded conversation with Sir John Melville, about Mary of Scotland? It would doubtless have been a very dangerous allusion. 431. "I should know the man "By the Athenian garments he had on." By this rhyme, which is a repetition of what occurred before in the second Act, page 380, it would seem that man, in the time of our poet, was uttered with the broad sound, which at this day it retains in Scotland, mon. 439. "When thou wak'st "Thou tak'st." The second of these lines is lame; but Mr. Tyrwhit's emendation cannot be admitted: the speech of Puck, in this place, is only declarative; the imperative, therefore, see thou tak'st, will not agree with the context: the second line in the preceding stanza seems to have the same defect. "On the ground, Mr. Malone observes that this should be overflow'd, and, surely, he is right, notwithstanding the authority which Mr. Steevens would bring from Johnson's Dictionary to support the text: flown is the participle passive of to fly; flow'd, of to flow; and so of the compounds, overfly, overflow. 451. "I never heard so musical a discord." Such a pleasing unity of things discordant: the lady means to express, in musical terms, that the harsh voices of the dogs and hunters, joined with the confused echo, was music. B. STRUTT. 464. "And as imagination bodies forth "The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen "Turns them to shapes," &c. i. e. As imagination brings forth from her |