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For then I pity those I do not know,] This was one of Hale's memorials. When I find myself swayed to mercy, let me remember, that there is a mercy likewise due to the country. JOHNSON. Line 441. -pelting,] i. e. Paltry.

446. -gnarled oak,] Gnarre is the old English word STEEVENS.

for a knot in wood.

Line 452. As make the angels weep;] The notion of angels weeping for the sins of men is rabbinical.-Ob peccatum flentes angelos inducunt Hebræorum magistri.-Grotius ad Lucam.

Line 452.

who, with our spleens,

WARBURTON.

Would all themselves laugh mortal.] Shakspeare meant by spleens, that peculiar turn of the human mind, that always inclines it to a spiteful, unseasonable mirth. Had the angels that, says Shakspeare, they would laugh themselves out of their immortality, by indulging a passion which does not deserve that prerogative. The ancients thought, that immoderate laughter was caused by the bigness of the spleen. WARBURTON,

Line 457. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself:] We mortals proud and foolish cannot prevail on our passions to weigh or compare our brother, a being of like nature and like frailty, with ourself. We have different names and different judgments for the same faults committed by persons of different condition.

JOHNSON,

Line 467. That skins the vice o' the top:] So in Hamlet: "It will but skin and film the ulcerous place."

474. -that my sense breeds with it.] My sense breeds with her sense, that is, new thoughts are stirring in my mind, new conceptions are hatched in my imagination. So we say to brood over thought. JOHNSON.

Perhaps Angelo means, "she speaks so elegantly, and forcibly, "that my sense (i. e. sensual desires) begins to hold unlawful "sway."

Line 485. temptible.

Line 485.

-fond shekels- -] Fond, i, e. foolish, or con

-tested gold,] i. e. Attested, or marked with the

standard stamp.

Rather cupelled, brought to the test, refined.

WARBURTON,

JOHNSON.

Line 489. ruption of the world. The metaphor is taken from fruits preserved

-preserved souls,] i. e. Preserved from the cor

in sugar. Line 497.

WARBURTON.

-I am that way going to temptation, Where prayers cross.] Isabella prays that his honour may be safe, meaning only to give him his title: his imagination is caught by the word honour: he feels that his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus :

I am that way going to temptation,
Which your prayers cross.

That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou implorest the preservation. The temptation under which I labour is that which thou hast unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the same mode of language a few lines lower. Isabella, parting, says,

Save your honour!

Angelo catches the word-Save it! From what?

Line 506.

From thee; even from thy virtue !

-it is I,

JOHNSON.

That lying, by the violet, in the sun, &c.] I am not corrupted by her, but by my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON.

Line 509. Can it be,

That modesty may more betray our sense, &c.] Sense, here, evidently bears the same meaning as that above stated. Line 530. I smil'd and wonder'd how.] As a day must now intervene between this conference of Isabella with Angelo and the next, the act might more properly end here; and here, in my opinion, it was ended by the poet. JOHNSON.

ACT II. SCENE III.

Line 543. Who falling in the flames of her own youth,
Hath blister'd her report:] Who doth not see that

the integrity of the metaphor requires we should read,

-flames of her own youth,

as is now read, instead of flaws?

WARBURTON.

Line 567.

-But lest you do repent,] But lest you do repent

is only a kind of negative comparative-Ne te pæniteat,-and

means, repent not on this account.

STEEVENS.

Line 576. There rest.] Keep yourself in this temper.

580.

JOHNSON.

-Oh, injurious love,] Sir Thomas Hanmer reads, Oh, injurious law, a much more natural and proper exclamation than love, since it is the sentence of that law condemning Claudio, and not herself, that she conceives injurious.

Line 588.

ACT II. SCENE IV.

Anchors on Isabel:] So in Cymbeline: "Posthumus anchors upon Imogen."

593. Grown fear'd and tedious;] We should read scar'd: i. c. old. So Shakspeare uses in the sear, to signify old age.

WARBURTON.

JOHNSON.

I think fear'd may stand. What we go to with reluctance may be said to be fear'd. Line 595. with boot,] i. e. With profit or advantage. -] For outside; garb; external shew. JOHNSON.

597.

-case

598.

Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

To thy false seeming ?] Here Shakspeare judiciously distinguishes the different operations of high place upon different minds. Fools are frighted, and wise men are allured. Those who cannot judge but by the eye, are easily awed by splendour; those who consider men as well as conditions, are easily persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dignified with power. JOHNSON. Line 600. Let's write good angel on the devil's horn;

'Tis not the devil's crest.] i. e. Let the most wicked thing have but a virtuous pretence, and it shall pass for innocent. This was his conclusion from his preceding words,

-oh form!

How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,

Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls

To thy false seeming ?

WARBURTON.

Line 614. The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,] The general subject seems a harsh expression, but general subjects has

no sense at all; and general was, in our author's time, a word for people, so that the general is the people, or multitude, subject to a king. So in Hamlet: "The play pleased not the million; 'twas "caviare to the general." JOHNSON.

Line 634.

-sawcy sweetness,] Sweetness, i. e. lewdness.

636. Falsely to take away a life true made,] Falsely is the same with dishonestly, illegally: so false, in the next lines, is illegal, illegitimate. JOHNSON. Line 637. —mettle in restrained means,] In forbidden moulds. I suspect means not to be the right word, but I cannot find another.

I should suspect that the author wrote,

-in restrained mints,

as the allusion is to coining.

JOHNSON.

STEEVENS.

Line 639. Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.] When she has said this, Then, says Angelo, I shall poze you quickly. Would you, who, for the present purpose, declare your brother's crime to be less in the sight of heaven, than the law has made it; would you commit that crime, light as it is, to save your brother's life? To this she answers,

I had rather give my body than my soul.

JOHNSON.

Line 646. I had rather give my body than my soul.] Meaning, she would die, rather than thus run the risque of her soul's perdition.

Line 659. Pleas'd you to do it at peril, &c.] The reasoning is thus: Angelo asks, whether there might not be a charity in sin to save this brother. Isabella answers, that if Angelo will save him, she will stake her soul that it were charity, not sin. Angelo replies, that if Isabella would save him at the hazard of her soul, it would be not indeed no sin, but a sin to which the charity would be equivalent. JOHNSON. Line 665. And nothing of your, answer.] Means, and make no part of those which you shall be called to answer for.

STEEVENS.

Line 674. Proclaim an enshield beauty-] An enshield beauty means, a beauty covered as with a shield.

STEEVENS.

Line 680. Accountant to the law upon that pain.] Pain is here

for penalty, punishment.

JOHNSON.

Line 683. (As I subscribe not that,] To subscribe means, to agree to. Milton uses the word in the same sense. STEEVENS. Line 684. But in the loss of question,] But by loss of question. This expression I believe means, but in idle supposition, or conversation that tends to nothing, which may therefore, in our author's language, be called the loss of question. Question, in Shakspeare, often bears this meaning. STEEVENS.

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Line 718. If not a feodary, but only he, &c.] A feodary was one that in the times of vassallage held lands of the chief lord, under the tenure of paying rent and service: which tenures were called feuda amongst the Goths. Now, says Angelo, we are "all frail; yes, replies Isabella; if all mankind were not feodaries, "who owe what they are to this tenure of imbecillity, and who "succeed each other by the same tenure, as well as my brother, "I would give him up." The comparing mankind, lying under the weight of original sin, to a feodary, who owes suit and service to his lord, is, I think, not ill imagined. WARBURTON.

Shakspeare has the same allusion in Cymbeline.

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senseless bauble,

"Art thou a feodarie for this act?"

STEEVENS.

JOHNSON.

Line 719. Owe,] To owe is, in this place, to own, to hold, to have possession. Line 724. In profiting by them.] In imitating them, in taking them for examples.

JOHNSON.

Line 726. And credulous to false prints.] i. e. Take any impression.

Line 737.

WARBURTON.

-speak the former language.] Isabella an

swers to his circumlocutory courtship, that she has but one tongue, she does not understand this new phrase, and desires him to talk his former language, that is, to talk as he talked before.

Line 748.

counterfeit virtue.

-Seeming, seeming !] Hypocrisy, hypocrisy ;

JOHNSON.

Line 756. My vouch against you,] Vouch is the testimony one man bears for another. So that, by this, he insinuates his au

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