His brother, archbishop late of Canterbury, All thefe, well furnish'd by the duke of Bretagne, There cannot, therefore, I think, be the smallest doubt, that a line was omitted in the copy of 1597, by the negligence of the tranfcriber or compofitor, in which not only Thomas Arundel, but his father, was mentioned; for his in a fubfequent line (His brother} muft refer to the old Earl of Arundel. Rather than leave a lacuna, I have inferted fuch words as render the paffage intelligible. In Act V. fc. ii. of the play before us, a line of a rhyming couplet was paffed over by the printer of the first folio: "Ill may'ft thou thrive, if thou grant any grace." It has been recovered from the quarto. So alfo, in K. Henry VI. Part II. the first of the following lines was omitted, as is proved by the old play on which that piece is founded, and (as in the prefent inftance) by the line which followed the omitted line: 66 "[Suf. Jove fometimes went difguis'd, and why not I?] Cap. But Jove was never flain, as thou fhalt be." In Coriolanus, A& II. sc. ult. a line was in like manner omitted, and it has very properly been fupplied. The chriftian name of Sir Thomas Ramfton is changed to John, and the two following perfons are improperly defcribed as knights in all the copies. Thefe perhaps were likewife mistakes of the prefs, but are scarcely worth correcting. MALONE. sarchbishop late of Canterbury,] Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, brother to the Earl of Arundel who was beheaded in this reign, had been banished by the parliament, and was afterwards deprived by the Pope of his fee, at the request of the King; whence he is here called, late of Canterbury. STEEVENS. 6 Imp ext] As this expreffion frequently occurs in our author, Redeem from broking pawn the blemish'd crown, Ross. To horse, to horfe! urge doubts to them that fear. WILLO. Hold out my horfe, and I will first be [Exeunt. there. it may not be amifs to explain the original meaning of it. When the wing-feathers of a hawk were dropped, or forced out by any accident, it was ufual to supply as many as were deficient. This operation was called, to imp a hawk. So, in The Devil's Charter, 1607: "His plumes only imp the mufe's wings." Again, in Albumazar, 1615: -when we defire "Time's hafte, he seems to lofe a match with lobsters; "With feathers plum'd with thought.' Turbervile has a whole chapter on The Way and Manner howe to ympe a Hawke's Feather, how-foever it be broken or broofed. 7 STEEVENS. gilt,] i. e. gilding, fuperficial difplay of gold. So, in Timon of Athens: STEEVENS, SCENE II. The fame. A Room in the Palace. Enter Queen, BUSHY, and BAGOT. BUSHY. Madam, your majefty is too much fad: You promis'd, when you parted with the king, To lay afide life-harming heavinefs,' And entertain a cheerful difpofition. QUEEN. To please the king, I did; to please myfelf, I cannot do it; yet I know no cause "life-harming heaviness,] Thus the quarto, 1597. The quartos 1608, and 1615-halfe-harming; the folio-felf-harming. STEEVENS. 8 With nothing trembles: at fomething it grieves,] The following line requires that this should be read juft the contrary way: With fomething trembles, yet at nothing grieves. WARBURTON. All the old editions read: -my inward foul With nothing trembles; at fomething it grieves. The reading, which Dr. Warburton corrects, is itfelf an innovation. His conjectures give indeed a better sense than that of any copy, but copies muft not be needlefsly forfaken. JOHNSON. I fuppofe it is the unborn forrow which the calls nothing, because it is not yet brought into existence. STEEVENS. Warburton does not appear to have understood this paffage, nor Johnfon either. Through the whole of this fcene, till the arrival BUSHY. Each fubftance of a grief hath twenty fhadows, Which show like grief itself, but are not fo: of Green, the Queen is defcribing to Bufhy, a certain unaccountable defpondency of mind, and a foreboding apprehenfion which fhe felt of fome unforeseen calamity. She fays, that her inward foul trembles without any apparent cause, and grieves at something more than the King's departure, though fhe knows not what." He endeavours to perfuade her that it is merely the confequence of her forrow for the King's abfence. She fays it may be fo, but her foul tells her otherwife. He then tells her it is only conceit; but she is not fatisfied with that way of accounting for it, as she says that conceit is ftill derived from fome fore-father grief, but what fhe feels was begot by nothing; that is, had no preceding cause. Conceit is here used in the fame fenfe that it is in Hamlet, when the King fays that Ophelia's madness was occafioned by "conceit upon her father." M. MASON. 9 Like perspectives, which, rightly gaz'd upon, Show nothing but confufion; ey'd awry, Diftinguifb form:] This is a fine fimilitude, and the thing meant is this. Amongft mathematical recreations, there is one in optics, in which a figure is drawn, wherein all the rules of perspective are inverted: fo that, if held in the fame pofition with those pictures which are drawn according to the rules of perspective, it can prefent nothing but confufion: and to be seen in form, and under a regular appearance, it must be looked upon from a contrary station; or, as Shakspeare fays, ey'd awry. WARBURTON. Dr. Plot's Hiftory of Staffordshire, p. 391, explains this perfpective, or odd kind of " pictures upon an indented board, which, if beheld directly, you only perceive a confufed piece of work; but, if obliquely, you fee the intended perfon's picture;" which, he was told, was made thus: "The board being indented, [or furrowed with a plough-plane,] the print or painting was cut into parallel pieces equal to the depth and number of the indentures on the board, and they were pafted on the flats that ftrike the eye holding it obliquely, fo that the edges of the parallel pieces of the print or painting exactly joining on the edges of the indentures, the work was done." TOLLET. Looking awry upon your lord's departure, The following fhort poem would almoft perfuade one that the words rightly and awry [perhaps originally written aright and wryly] had exchanged places in the text of our author. Lines prefixed to "Melancholike Humours, in Verfes of Diverse Natures, fet down by Nich. Breton, Gent. 1600." In Authorem. "Thou that wouldft finde the habit of true paffion, The fault's not in the object, but their eyes. "So with this author's readers will it thrive: "His proofe their praife will meete, as in this line.” So, in Hentzner, 1598, Royal Palace, Whitehall." Edwardi VI. Angliæ regis effigies, primo intuitu monftrofum quid repræfentans, fed fi quis effigiem rectâ intueatur, tum vera deprehenditur." FARMER. The perspectives here mentioned, were not pictures, but round chryftal glaffes, the convex furface of which was cut into faces, like thofe of the rofe-diamond; the concave left uniformly fmooth, Thefe chryftals-which were fometimes mounted on tortoife-shell box-lids, and fometimes fixed into ivory cafes-if placed as here reprefented, would exhibit the different appearances described by the poet. The word hadows is here ufed, in oppofition to fubftance, for reflected images, and not as the dark forms of bodies, occafioned by their interception of the light that falls upon them. HENLEY. |