Most often do so near the bottom run, By their own fear, or sloth. SEB. Pr'ythee, say on: The setting of thine eye, and cheek, proclaim Which throes thee much to yield. ANT. Thus, sir: Although this lord of weak remembrance, this (Who shall be of as little memory, When he is earth'd,) hath here almost persuaded (For he's a spirit of persuasion only,) The king, his son's alive; 'tis as impossible That he's undrown'd, as he that sleeps here, swims." - this lord of weak remembrance,] This lord, who, being now in his dotage, has outlived his faculty of remembering; and who, once laid in the ground, shall be as little remembered himself, as he can now remember other things. JOHNSON. - hath here almost persuaded, As he, that sleeps here, swims.] Of this entangled sentence I can draw no sense from the present reading, and therefore imagine that the author gave it thus: For he, a spirit of persuasion, only Professes to persuade the king, his son's alive; Of which the meaning may be either, that he alone, who is a spirit of persuasion, professes to persuade the king; or that, He only professes to persuade, that is, without being so persuaded himself, he makes a show of persuading the king. JOHNSON. The meaning may be-He is a mere rhetorician, one who professes the art of persuasion, and nothing else; i. e. he professes to persuade another to believe that of which he himself is not convinced; he is content to be plausible, and has no further aim. So, (as Mr. Malone observes,) in Troilus and Cressida: - why he'll answer nobody, he professes not answering." STEEVENS. The obscurity of this passage arises from a misconception of the word he's, which is not an abbreviation of he is, but of he has; SEB. I have no hope That he's undrown'd. ANT. O, out of that no hope, and partly from the omission of the pronoun who, before the word professes, by a common poetical ellipsis. Supply that deficiency, and the sentence will run thus: "Although this lord of weak remembrance " For he has a spirit of persuasion, who, only " Professes to persuade, the king his son's alive;"— And the meaning is clearly this. This old lord, though a mere dotard, has almost persuaded the king that his son is alive; for he is so willing to believe it, that any man who undertakes to persuade him of it, has the powers of persuasion, and succeeds in the attempt. We find a similar expression in The First Part of Henry IV. When Poins undertakes to engage the Prince to make one of the party to Gads-hill, Falstaff says: "Well! may'st thou have the spirit of persuasion, and he the ears of profiting! that what thou speakest may move, and what he hears may be believed!" M. MASON. The light Mr. M. Mason's conjecture has thrown on this passage, I think, enables me to discover and remedy the defect in it. I cannot help regarding the words " professes to persuade"as a mere gloss or paraphrase on "-he has a spirit of persuasion." This explanatory sentence, being written in the margin of an actor's part, or playhouse copy, was afterwards injudiciously incorporated with our author's text. Read the passage (as it now stands in the text) without these words, and nothing is wanting to its sense or metre. On the contrary, the insertion of the words I have excluded, by lengthening the parenthesis, obscures the meaning of the speaker, and, at the same time, produces redundancy of measure. Irregularity of metre ought always to excite suspicions of omission or interpolation. Where somewhat has been omitted, through chance or design, a line is occasionally formed by the junction of hemistichs previously unfitted to each other. Such a line will naturally exceed the established proportion of feet; and when marginal observations are crept into the text, they will have just such aukward effects as I conceive to have been produced by one of them in the present instance. "Perhaps (says that excellent scholar and perspicacious critic Mr. Porson, in his 6th Letter to Archdeacon Travis) you think What great hope have you! no hope, that way, is Another way so high an hope, that even Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond,3 But doubts discovery there. Will you grant, with ANT. She that is queen of Tunis; she that dwells Ten leagues beyond man's life; she that from Naples Can have no note, unless the sun were post, it an affected and absurd idea that a marginal note can ever creep into the text: yet I hope you are not so ignorant as not to know that this has actually happened, not merely in hundreds or thousands, but in millions of places," &c. &c. "From this known propensity of transcribers to turn every thing into the text which they found written in the margin of their MSS. or between the lines, so many interpolations have proceeded, that at present the surest canon of criticism is, Præferatur lectio brevior." P. 149, 150. Though I once expressed a different opinion, I am now well convinced that the metre of Shakspeare's plays had originally no other irregularity than was occasioned by an accidental use of hemistichs. When we find the smoothest series of lines among our earliest dramatic writers (who could fairly boast of no other requisites for poetry) are we to expect less polished versification from Shakspeare? STEEVENS. 3 a wink beyond,] That this is the utmost extent of the prospect of ambition, the point where the eye can pass no farther, and where objects lose their distinctness, so that what is there discovered is faint, obscure, and doubtful. JOHNSON. 4 beyond man's life;] i. e. at a greater distance than the life of man is long enough to reach. STEEVENS. 5 she that from Naples Can have no note, &c.] Note (as Mr. Malone observes) is notice, or information. (The man i' the moon's too slow,) till new-born chins Be rough and razorable: she, from whom SEB. What stuff is this? How say you? 'Tis true, my brother's daughter's queen of Tunis; So is she heir of Naples; 'twixt which regions There is some space. ANT. A space whose every cubit Seems to cry out, How shall that Claribel Measure us back to Naples?-Keep in Tunis,' Shakspeare's great ignorance of geography is not more conspicuous in any instance than in this, where he supposes Tunis and Naples to have been at such an immeasurable distance from each other. He may, however, be countenanced by Apollonius Rhodius, who says, that both the Rhone and Po meet in one, and discharge themselves into the gulph of Venice; and by Æschylus, who has placed the river Eridanus in Spain. STEEVENS. 6 - she, from whom-] i. e. in coming from whom. The old copy has she that from, &c. which cannot be right. The compositor's eye probably glanced on a preceding line, " she that from Naples-." The emendation was made by Mr. Rowe. 7 MALONE. - though some cast again;] Cast is here used in the same sense as in Macbeth, Act. II. sc. iii: "-though he took my legs from me, I made a shift to cast him." STEEVENS. • And, by that, destin'd - ) It is a common plea of wickedness to call temptation destiny. JOHNSON. The late Dr. Musgrave very reasonably proposed to substitute -destin'd for-destiny. As the construction of the passage is made easier by this slight change, I have adopted it. STEEVENS. • In yours and my discharge.] i. e. depends on what you and I are to perform. STEEVENS. 1 keep in Tunis,] There is in this passage a propriety lost, which a slight alteration will restore: And let Sebastian wake!-Say, this were death That now hath seiz'd them; why, they were no worse Than now they are: There be, that can rule Naples, As this Gonzalo; I myself could make And, look, how well my garments sit upon me; Much feater than before: My brother's servants Were then my fellows, now they are my men. SEB. But, for your conscience ANT. Ay, sir; where lies that? if it were a kybe, 'Twould put me to my slipper; But I feel not This deity in my bosom: twenty consciences, That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they, " Sleep in Tunis, "And let Sebastian wake!" JOHNSON. The old reading is sufficiently explicable. Claribel (says he) keep where thou art, and allow Sebastian time to awaken those senses by the help of which he may perceive the advantage which now presents itself. STEEVENS. * A chough-] Is a bird of the jack-daw kind. So, in Macbeth, Act III. sc. iv: " By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks," &c. STEEVENS. |