vens supposes, but vindictive, ready to pay in exact measure, any insult or indignity that may be offered.

269. "If you be not mad, begone."

Mr. M. Mason says,, the sense evidently requires that we should read, "if you be mad;" but Olivia must be, evidently, in want of her senses to speak so, to a person whom she thought mad. The second sentence is only a slight correction of the first: "if you be not mad, begone-if you are, indeed, rational, be brief."

272. "Look you, sir, such a one was I this pre

sent."

The meaning is not very clear; but I take it to be this. Olivia, in disclosing her face, says, she exhibits a picture, which, if preserved to future time, would shew what she was at this present moment. Mr. Malone supposes that Olivia had again covered her face, before she spoke these words; but how will this agree with what follows, 'is't not well done?"

274.

Sent hither to praise me."

There can be little doubt, I think, of the justness of Mr. Malone's conjecture that appraise not praise (extol) was the poet's idea; and though the words which immediately introduce it, schedules, inventoried, &c. did not proceed from Viola, they were yet suggested to the speaker by the equivocal term copy, that Viola had uttered.

"With adorations, with fertile tears." Mr. Malone's expedient to prosodise this line,

rejecting the second "with" (Pope's amendment) by making "tears" a dissyllable would require that we should not only read te-árs, but fertile,

276. "Love makes his heart of flint, that you shall love."

i. e. Love hardens to flint the heart of him whom you shall love.

ACT II. SCENE I.

279. "My determinate voyage is mere extravagancy."

The course I have resolved upon, is merely to go a rambling.

282. "Fortune forbid, my outside have not charm'd her.”

This expression seems faulty; the sense is, Fortune grant that my outside, &c. or Fortune forbid that my outside have charmed her; but forbid and command were formerly used indiscriminately thus, in the Comedy of Errors,

"When I to fast expressly am forbid,” where, for forbid, we must understand commanded: and again, in the Merchant of Venice;

"You may as well forbid the mountain pines, "To wag their high tops and to make no noise, "When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven."

We also find, in Chaucer, forbid in these oppo

site senses:

"Moses' law forbode it tho

"That priests should no lordships welde;
"Christ's Gospel biddeth also,

That they should no lordships held."
Plowman. Stanz. 29.

283. "That, sure, methought, her eyes had lost her tongue."

Sure, as Mr. Malone observes, which is not in the old copy, (but was added afterwards to fill up the measure,) is unlike any word that Shakspeare would have used here. Conjecture, indeed, must be vague, yet I cannot suppress a wish that there were authority for a different reading, and that even this might with any confidence be offered.

"She made good view of me; indeed, so much, "Methought her eager eyes had lost her tongue.

Pregnant is prompt, ready, teeming with de

vices.

SCENE II.

285. "And I poor monster!"

Alluding, I suppose, to her equivocal character, man and woman.

Grief here is affliction, suffering. It is strange that Mr. Malone should so misapprehend (as I think he has done) the poet's meaning in this fine passage. Mr. Steevens has very clearly displayed the true image, on which Mr. Mason's lines, -Patience

"Her meek hands folded on her modest breast"In mute submission lifts th' adoring eye "Even to the storm that wrecks her,"

are a direct commentary.

$18. My love can give no place."

i. e. Can yield to nothing else.

SCENE V.

324. "Court'sies to me."

Court'sie here is, surely, to be understood only as a general term for respectful salutation, whether by a man or a woman.

327. "You waste the treasure of your time." Massinger says this in the Roman actor: "Wasting the treasure of his time and fortune.'

ACT III. SCENE I.

337. "The king lies by a beggar."

This lies should, I think, be lives, as it is printed in Johnson and Steevens's edition of 1773.

It is the counterpart of the preceding speech, in which the verbs employed are lives and stands. LORD CHEDWORTH.

345. "Hides my heart, so let me hear you speak."

When Mr. Malone contends, as he frequently does, for the correctness of the metre, in lines like this, allotting two syllables to hear, he seems to pay no regard whatever to sound, or the established modes of pronunciation: it is impossible to endure a line like this,

"Hides my heart, so let me he-ár you speak." Again, this gentleman would have "turn" a dissyllable, and that, too, at the end of a line. "And thanks, and ever thanks; oft good tur-úns, or éns."

Neither Theobald's correction,

"And thanks, and ever thanks, and oft good turns,"

Nor Mr. Steevens's,

"And thanks, and ever thanks; often good túrns,"

appears satisfactory.-May I venture a word, that, in my opinion, accords better with the harmony of the verse, as well as with the sense of the context:

"I can no other answer make but thanks; "And thanks, and ever thanks; too oft good