Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed, Though Rome be therefore angry;) Mulmutius made our laws,b

Who was the first of Britain which did put
His brows within a golden crown, and call'd
Himself a king. 2

Luc.
I am sorry, Cymbeline,
That I am to pronounce Augustus Cæsar
(Cæsar that hath more kings his servants than
Thyself domestic officers) thine enemy:
Receive it from me, then :-War, and confusion,
In Cæsar's name pronounce I 'gainst thee: look

Steevens would leave out from us in this line, as unnecessary words, which only derange the metre. We must again, and again, beg the reader to bear in mind that this mode of corrupting the text is totally at variance with the practice of all the great dramatists of Shakspere's age; it sacrifices force and variety, to produce feebleness and monotony.

b We have another example of a similar corruption, adopted from Hanmer by Steevens, who walks amidst the luxurious growth of Shakspere's versification like a gardener who has predetermined to have no shoot above ten inches long in his whole parterre. This line, in all the modern editions (except Malone's of 1821), stands thus-

"Though Rome be therefore angry;) Mulmutius." His reasons for this merciless lopping are as follows:"The old copy, in contempt of metre, and regardless of the preceding words

SCENE II.-Another Room in the Palace.

Enter PISANIO, reading a Letter.

Pis. How of adultery? Wherefore write
you not

What monster's her accuser?-Leonatus!
O, master! what a strange infection

Is fallen into thy ear! What false Italian
(As poisonous tongued as handed) hath pre-
vail'd

On thy too ready hearing?-Disloyal? No: She's punish'd for her truth; and undergoes, More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults As would take in some virtue.-O, my master! Thy mind to her is now as low as were

Thy fortunes. How! that I should murther her?

Upon the love, and truth, and vows, which I Have made to thy command ?-I, her?-her blood?

If it be so to do good service, nover
Let me be counted serviceable. How look I,
That I should seem to lack humanity
So much as this fact comes to ?-Do't: The
letter

Utterance. To fight at utterance is to fight without quarter-to the death; the French-Combat à outrance, b Perfect-assured. So in The Winter's Tale"Thou art perfect then, our ship hath touch'd upon The deserts of Bohemia."

e The original has, what monsters her accuse? The modern correction, which is Rowe's, appears to be justified by the subsequent passage, what false Italian?

That I have sent her, by her own command
Shall give thee opportunity :-O damn'd paper!
Black as the ink that's on thee! Senseless bauble,
Art thou a foodaryb for this act, and look’st
So virgin-like without? Lo, here she comes.
Enter IMOGEN.

I am ignorant in what I am commanded.
Imo. How now, Pisanio ?

Pis. Madam, here is a letter from my lord. Imo. Who? thy lord? that is my lord? Leonatus?

O, learn'd indeed were that astronomer
That knew the stars as I his characters;
He'd lay the future open.-You good gods,
Let what is here contain'd relish of love,
Of my lord's health, of his content,-—yet not,
That we two are asunder, let that grieve him,—
Some griefs are med'cinable; that is one of
them,

For it doth physic love;-of his content,
All but in that!-Good wax, thy leave:-
Bless'd be

The original stage direction at the commencement of this scene is-Enter Pisanio reading of a letter." The modern editors, when they come to the passage beginning do't, insert another stage direction-reading. Upon this Malone raises up the following curious theory:-"Our poet from negligence sometimes makes words change their form under the eye of the speaker, who in different parts of the same play recites them differently, though he has a paper or letter in his hand, and actually reads from it. ** The words here read by Pisanio from his master's letter (which is afterwards given at length, and in prose) are not found there, though the substance of them is contained in it. This is one of many proofs that Shakspere had no view to the publication of his pieces. There was little danger that such an inaccuracy should be detected by the ear of the spectator, though it could hardly escape an attentive reader." Now, we would ask, what can be more natural-what can be more truly in Shakspere's own manner, which is a reflection of nature-than that a person having been deeply moved by a letter which he has been reading, should comment upon the substance of it without repeating the exact words? The very commencement of Pisanio's soliloquy-"How! of adultery!"—is an example of this. The word adultery is not mentioned in the letter upon which he comments. Malone refers to a similar negligence in the last scene of All's Well that Ends Well, where Helena thus addresses Bertram

"There is your ring,

And, look you, here's your letter: This it says, When from my finger you can get this ring," &c. Malone adds, "she reads the words from Bertram's letter." He has no right to assume this, nor does he even give a stage direction to that effect in his edition; but, because the letter which Helena reads in Act 111. contains these words when thou canst get the ring upon my finger,"-Shakspere has been guilty of negligence, oversight, inattention, &c. &c., in not giving the exact words of the letter, when she offers it to Bertram. Really, a critic, putting on a pair of spectacles, to compare the recollections of deep feeling with the document which has stirred that feeling, as he would compare the copy of an affidavit with the original, is a ludicrous exhibition.

Feodary-feudary. Hanmer says, "A feodary is one who holds his estate under the tenure of suit and service to a superior lord." Malone says, "The feodary was the escheator's associate, and hence Shakspere, with his usual licence, uses the word for a confederate or associate in general." We beg to refer our readers to the Illustrations of Henry IV., Part 1., Act 1., in which we endeavour to show that the feudal vassal and the companion were each meant by the same word-fere-feudary-feodary.

You bees that make these locks of counsel! Lovers,

And men in dangerous bonds, pray not alike; Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet You clasp young Cupid's tables."-Good news, gods! [Reads.

'Justice, and your father's wrath, should he take me in his dominion, could not be so cruel to me, an you, O the dearest of creatures, would even renew me with your eyes.b Take notice that I am in Cambria, at Milford-Haven: What your own love will out of this advise you, follow. So, he wishes you all happiness, that remains loyal to his vow, and your, increasing in love,

But in a fainter kind :-O, not like me;
For mine's beyond beyond,°) say, and speak thick,
(Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing,
To the smothering of the sense,) how far it is
To this same blessed Milford: And, by the way,
Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as
To inherit such a haven: But, first of all,
How we may steal from hence; and, for the gap
That we shall make in time, from our hence-

going

a This address to the bees contains one of Shakspere's legal allusions. The forfeiters (in the first folio forfeytours) had sealed to dangerous bonds; and in that age the seal was as binding as the signature, and rather more so.

b This sentence is very difficult; but it does not appear to us to be mended by the departure from the original reading, which we ordinarily find-"Justice, and your father's wrath, should he take me in his dominion, could not be so cruel to me, as you, O the dearest of creatures, would not even renew me with your eyes." Malone inserted not; and explains the reading thus-Justice, &c., could not be so cruel to me, but that you would be able to renew me, &c. This may be the meaning: but it is scarcely borne out by the construction of Malone's improved sentence. In the original it stands thus -"Justice, and your father's wrath, (should he take me in his dominion,) could not be so cruel to me, as you: (oh the dearest of creatures) would even renew me with your eyes.' It is here evident that the printer has mistaken the sense in his "could not be so cruel to me, as you: " and when printers have a crotchet as to the meaning of a sentence, they seldom scruple to deviate from the copy before them. The so required therefore from them its parallel conjunction as. But if we alter a single letter we have a clear meaning, without any forced construction. An is often used familiarly for if by Shakspere and the other old dramatists, as it was in discourse. and correspondence. We have the word repeatedly in Mea sure for Measure:-for example, "An he should, it were an alms to hang him." Let us therefore read the sentence with the substitution of an for as-"Justice, and your father's wrath, should he take me in his dominion, could not be so cruel to me, an you, (O the dearest of creatures,) would even renew me with your eyes." Even is here used in the old sense of equally, even-so, and is opposed to "so cruel."

c Beyond beyond. The second beyond is used as a substantive, which gives us the meaning of further than beyond. The Scotch have a saying-"at the back of beyont."

Your legs are young; Il tread these flats.
Consider,

When you above perceive me like a crow,
That it is place which lessens and sets off;
And you may then revolve what tales I have
told you

Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war:
This service is not service, so being done,
But being so allow'd: To apprehend thus,
Draws us a profit from all things we see:
And often, to our comfort, shall we find
The sharded beetles in a safer hold
Than is the full-wing'd eagle. O, this life
Is nobler, than attending for a check;
Richer, than doing nothing for a bribe;"

* These lines are ordinarily printed, as in the folio-
"O, this life

Is nobler than attending for a check; Richer than doing nothing for a babe." Conjecture has here exhausted itself, and has fallen back upon the authority of the original text. We shall endeavour to explain the whole passage, and to justify our adoption of Hanmer's alteration of babe to bribe, by referring to the source of the ideas thus briefly expressed, which we think Shakspere had in his mind. We believe that source to have been Spenser's Mother Hubbard's Tale.' Belarius begs his boys to

"revolve what tales I have told you Of courts, of princes;"

and he then goes on to say that their own life
"Is nobler than attending for a check."
Spenser describes, in one of the finest didactic passages of
our language, the condition of the man" whom wicked fate
hath brought to court: "

"Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:

To lose good days that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow; To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her Peers'; To have thy asking, yet wait many years; To fret thy soul with cro ses and with cares; To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone. Unhappy wight, born to disastrous end, That doth his life in so long tendance spend!" Here we have the precise meaning of attending furnished us by tendance; and, we think, the meaning of check, which has been controverted, is supplied us by to be put back to-morrow, The whole passage is, indeed, a description of the alternate progress and check, which the "miserable man" of Spenser receives. Compared with such a life of humiliation, the wild mountain life is nobler. We have next the life described in a line, than which the mountain life is richer. According to the original text it is, "than doing nothing for a babe." If we take it in the common sense of babe, (in which sense it occurs again in the same scene-"I stole these babes,") it is impossible to extract a meaning from it. Warburton reads, therefore, bauble. Steevens bable, which he says was the ancient spelling of bauble. Capell affirms that babe and bable are synonymous. Johnson would read brabe, from brabium, a badge of honcur. Looking at the usual course of typographical errors, we should say, it is the easiest thing possible for babe to be printed for bribe, even if the word were bribe in the manuscript. But, putting aside these considerations, and rejecting altogether the nonsense of George Chalmers, that the word was babee (the Scotch bawbee), what is the meaning of doing nothing for a babe, bable, or bauble? Is it, that the courtier is idle, that he may receive some outward mark of honour-a title, as Capell says! We think not. Spenser has told us distinctly what it is to do nothing for a bribe-to give nothing in return for a bribe: and we believe Shakspere had this in view. His mountain life is certainly richer than riches so corruptly derived.

But there is a more recent conjecture as to the word of the original text. The Corrector of Mr. Collier's folio has bub,

Prouder, than rustling in unpaid-for silk:
Such gains the cap of him that makes him fine,
Yet keeps his book uncross'd :a no life to ours.
Gui. Out of your proof you speak: we, poor
unfledg'd,

Have never wing'd from view o' the nest; nor know not

What air 's from home. Haply, this life is best,
If quiet life be best; sweeter to you,
That have a sharper known; well corresponding
With your stiff age: but unto us it is
A cell of ignorance; travelling abed;
A prison for a debtor, that not dares
To stride a limit.

Are.
What should we speak of,
When we are old as you? when we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how,
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing:
We are beastly; subtle as the fox, for prey;
Like warlike as the wolf, for what we eat:
Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage
We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird,
And sing our bondage freely.

Bel.

How you speak! Did you but know the city's usuries, And felt them knowingly: the art o' the court, As hard to leave, as keep; whose top to climb Is certain falling, or so slippery that

The fear's as bad as falling: the toil of the

war,

A pain that only seems to seek out danger

I' the name of fame and honour: which dies i' the search;

And hath as oft a slanderous epitaph
As record of fair act; nay, many times,
Doth ill deserve by doing well: what's worse,

which Mr. Collier interprets to mean a blow. Shakspere nes bob in two senses. He has beaten, bobbed, and thumped" (Richard 111. Act v. Sc. 11.), where hob has the meaning of a blow. But he also has, "You shall not bob us out of our melody" (Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 1.). Massinger has one of his characters describing a king whispering, the object of which was, he says, "to give me the bob (Maid of Honour). The word in these cases seems to mean to get rid of-to put aside. In this sense bob may be used in the passage before us. But, nevertheles, bribe will not be hastily rejected.

* As we have had the nobler and the richer life, we have now the prouder. The mountain life is compared with that

"Rustling in unpaid-for silk."

The illustrative lines which are added, we take it, mean that uch a one as does rustle in unpaid-for sik receives the Courtesy (gains the cap) of him that makes him fine, yet he, the wearer of silk, keeps his, the creditor's, book uncross'd. T cross the book is, even now, a common expression for obliterating the entry of a debt. It belongs to the rude age of credit. The original reading is,

"Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine;" but the second him is generally altered to them. We have adopted the slighter alteration of gains.

Must court'sy at the censure:-O, boys, this story

The world may read in me: My body's mark'd
With Roman swords; and my report was once
First with the best of note: Cymbeline lov'd me;
And when a soldier was the theme my name
Was not far off: Then was I as a tree
Whose boughs did bend with fruit: but, in one
night,

A storm, or robbery, call it what you will,
Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,
And left me bare to weather.

you oft)

But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail'd
Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline
I was confederate with the Romans: so,
Follow'd my banishment; and, this twenty years,
This rock and these demesnes have been my
world:

Where I have liv'd at honest freedom; paid
More pious debts to heaven, than in all
The fore-end of my time.-But, up to the
mountains;

This is not hunters' language:-He that strikes
The venison first shall be the lord o' the feast;
To him the other two shall minister;
And we will fear no poison, which attends
In place of greater state. I'll meet you in the
valleys. [Exeunt GUI. and ÅRV.
How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!
These boys know little they are sons to the
king;

Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.
They think they are mine: and, though train'd
up thus meanly

I' the cave, wherein they bow," their thoughts do hit

The roofs of palaces; and nature prompts them,
In simple and low things, to prince it much
Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore,―
The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, whom
The king his father call'd Guiderius,—Jove!
When on my three-foot stool I sit, and tell
The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly

out

Into my story say,-'Thus mine enemy fell; And thus I set my foot on his neck '—even then The princely blood flows in his check, he sweats, Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture

The old reading is, whereon the bowe-clearly a misprint. It was corrected by Warburton, with this explanation: "In this very cave, which is so low that they must bend or bow on entering it, yet are their thoughts so exalted," &c.

That acts my words. The younger brother,
Cadwal,

(Once Arviragus,) in as like a figure
Strikes life into my speech, and shows much more
His own conceiving. Hark! the game is rous'd!—
O Cymbeline! heaven, and my conscience, knows
Thou didst unjustly banish me: whereon,

At three, and two years old, I stole these babes;
Thinking to bar thee of succession, as
Thou reft st me of my lands. Euriphile,
Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their
mother,

And every day do honour to her grave:
Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call'd,
They take for natural father. The game is

SCENE IV.-Near Milford-Haven. Enter PISANIO and IMOGEN.

up. [Exit.

Imo. Thou told'st me, when we came from horse, the place

Was near at hand :-Ne'er long'd my mother so
To see me first, as I have now:-Pisanio! Man!
Where is Posthumus ? What is in thy mind
That makes thee stare thus? Wherefore breaks
that sigh

From the inward of thee? One, but painted thus,
Would be interpreted a thing perplex'd
Beyond self-explication: Put thyself
Into a 'haviour of less fear, ere wildness
Vanquish my staider senses. What's the matter?
Why tender'st thou that paper to me, with
A look untender? If it be summer news,b
Smile to 't before: if winterly, thou need'st
But keep that countenance still.-My husband's
hand!

That drug-damn'd Italy hath out-craftied him, And he's at some hard point.-Speak, man; thy tongue

May take off some extremity, which to read
Would be even mortal to me.

Posthumus. "Shakspere's apparent ignorance of quantity is not the least among many proofs of his want of learning." So decides Steevens, but he adds, with great candour, "It may be said that quantity in the age of our author did not appear to have been much regarded." Ritson blunders upon the truth-"Shakspere's ignorance of the quantity of Posthumus is the rather remarkable as he gives it rightly both when the name first occurs and in another place

To his protection; calls him Posthumus''Struck the main-top!-O, Posthumus! alas !'" Both these critics knew perfectly well that all the poets of Shakspere's age were in the habit of changing the accentuation of proper names, to suit their versification; and that learning or no learning had nothing to do with the matter. b Summer-news. Our poet has the same idea in his 98th Sonnet

"Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell."

me.

Imo. [Reads.] Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath played the strumpet in my bed: the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in I speak not out of weak surmises; but from proof as strong as my grief, and as certain as I expect my revenge. That part, thou, Pisanio, must act for me, if thy faith be not tainted with the breach of hers. Let thine own hands take away her life: I shall give thee opportunity at MilfordHaven: she hath my letter for the purpose: Where, if thou fear to strike, and to make me certain it is done, thou art the pandar to her dishonour, and equally to me disloyal.'

Pis. What shall I need to draw my sword? the paper

Hath cut her throat already.-No, 't is slan

Some jay of Italy, &c. The Italian putta has a double meaning. The jay of Italy is the "Roman courtezan," as well as the painted bird. This is one of the many proofs of Shakspere's acquaintance with the Italian. But how shall we explain the original reading, "whose mother was her painting?" Johnson says, "the creature not of nature but of painting. In this sense painting may be not improperly termed her mother." Steevens, in illustration of this, gives a quotation from an old comedy:-"A parcel of conceited feather-caps, whose fathers were their garments." The reading of the original, on the authority of the Corrector of the folio of 1632, has been changed by Mr. Collier to "Some jay of Italy, Who smothers her with painting, hath betray'd him." Mr. Collier, in his admiration of the correction, hazards the assertion, that "genuine passion avoids figures of speech." Certainly Shakspere is not an example of this proposition. Although the original passage may be obscure, it contains a strong poetical image. The correction is prosaic enough to suit any Shakspere made Easy.