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POM.

Enjoy thy plainness,

It nothing ill becomes thee.

Aboard my galley I invite you all:

Will you lead, lords?

CES. ANT. LEP. Show us the way, sir.
Ром.

Come.

[Exeunt POMPEY, CESAR, ANTOny, Lepidus, Soldiers and Attendants.

MEN. Thy father, Pompey, would ne'er have made this treaty.-[Aside.]-You and I have known, sir.

ENO. At sea, I think.

MEN. We have, sir.

ENO. You have done well by water.

MEN. And you by land.

ENO. I will praise any man that will praise me': though it cannot be denied what I have done by land.

MEN. Nor what I have done by water.

ENO. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you have been a great thief by sea.

MEN. And you by land.

ENO. There I deny my land service. But give me your hand, Menas: If our eyes had authority, here they might take two thieves kissing.

MEN. All men's faces are true, whatsoe'er their hands are.

6 You and I have known, sir.] i. e. been acquainted. So, in Cymbeline: "Sir, we have known together at Orleans."

STEEVENS.

7 I will praise any man that will praise me :] The poet's art in delivering this humorous sentiment (which gives so very true and natural a picture of the commerce of the world) can never be sufficiently admired. The confession could come from none but a frank and rough character, like the speaker's: and the moral lesson insinuated under it, that flattery can make its way through the most stubborn manners, deserves our serious reflection.

WARBURTON.

ENO. But there is never a fair woman has a true face.

MEN. No slander; they steal hearts.

ENO. We came hither to fight with you.

MEN. For my part, I am sorry it is turned to a drinking. Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.

ENO. If he do, sure, he cannot weep it back again.

MEN. You have said, sir. We looked not for Mark Antony here; Pray you, is he married to Cleopatra ?

ENO. Cæsar's sister is call'd Octavia.

MEN. True, sir; she was the wife of Caius Marcellus.

ENO. But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.

MEN. Pray you, sir?

ENO. 'Tis true.

MEN. Then is Cæsar, and he, for ever knit together.

ENO. If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not prophecy so.

MEN. I think, the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage, than the love of the parties.

ENo. I think so too. But you shall find, the band that seems to tie their friendship together, will be the very strangler of their amity: Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation 8.

MEN. Who would not have his wife so?

ENO. Not he, that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony. He will to his Egyptian dish again : then shall the sighs of Octavia blow the fire up in

8

conversation.] i. e. behaviour, mon life. So, in Psalm xxxvii. 14; " right conversation." STEEVENS.

manner of acting in comto slay such as be of up

Cæsar; and, as I said before, that which is the strength of their amity, shall prove the immediate author of their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is; he married but his occasion here. MEN. And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a health for you.

ENO. I shall take it, sir: we have used our throats in Egypt.

MEN. Come; let's away.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VII.

On Board POMPEY'S Galley, lying near Misenum.

Musick. Enter Two or Three Servants, with a Banquet 9.

1 SERV. Here they'll be, man: Some o' their plants are ill-rooted already, the least wind i' the world will blow them down.

2 SERV. Lepidus is high-coloured.

1 SERV. They have made him drink alms-drink 2.

9 — with a BANQUET.] A banquet, in our author's time, frequently signified what we now call a desert; and from the following dialogue the word must here be understood in that sense. So, in Lord Cromwell, 1602: " Their dinner is our banquet after dinner."

Again, in Heath's Chronicle of the Civil Wars, 1661: " After dinner, he was served with a banquet, in the conclusion whereof he knighted Alderman Viner." MALONE.

Some o' their PLANTS] Plants, besides its common meaning, is here used for the foot, from the Latin. JOHNSON. So, in Thomas Lupton's Thyrd Booke of Notable Things, 4to. bl. 1.: "Grinde mustarde with vineger, and rubbe it well on the plants or soles of the feete," &c.

Again, in Chapman's version of the sixteenth Iliad:

"Even to the low plants of his feete, his forme was altered." STEEVENS.

2 They have made him drink ALMS-DRINK.] A phrase, amongst good fellows, to signify that liquor of another's share which his

2 SERV. As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out, no more; reconciles them to his entreaty, and himself to the drink.

1 SERV. But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.

2 SERV. Why, this it is to have a name in great men's fellowship: I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave.

1 SERV. To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks".

companion drinks to ease him. But it satirically alludes to Cæsar and Antony's admitting him into the triumvirate, in order to take off from themselves the load of envy. WARBURTON.

3 As they pinch one another by the disposition,] A phrase equivalent to that now in use, of "Touching one in a sore place." WARBURTON.

4-a partizan - A pike. JOHNSON. So, in Hamlet:

"Shall I strike at it with my partizan?" STEEVens.

s To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the cheeks.] This speech seems to be mutilated; to supply the deficiencies is impossible, but perhaps the sense was originally approaching to this:

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"To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in it," is a very ignominious state; "great offices" are the holes where eyes should be, which, (if eyes be wanting,) pitifully disaster the cheeks.' JOHNSON.

In the eighth book of The Civil Wars, by Daniel, st. 103, is a passage which resembles this, though it will hardly serve to explain it. The Earl of Warwick says to his confessor:

"I know that I am fix'd unto a sphere

"That is ordain'd to move. It is the place

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My fate appoints me; and the region where "I must, whatever happens there embrace. "Disturbance, travail, labour, hope and fear, "Are of that clime, ingender'd in that place; "And action best, I see, becomes the best: "The stars that have most glory, have no rest." STEEVENS.

The thought, though miserably expressed, appears to be this:

A Sennet sounded. Enter CESAR, ANTONY, POMpey, Lepidus, Agrippa, Mecenas, Enobarbus, MENAS, with other Captains.

ANT. Thus do they, sir: [To CESAR.] They take the flow o' the Nile °

6

That a man called into a high sphere, without being seen to move in it, is a sight as unseemly as the holes where the eyes should be, without the eyes to fill them. M. MASON.

I do not believe a single word has been omitted. The being called into a huge sphere, and not being seen to move in it, these two circumstances, says the speaker, resemble sockets in a face where eyes should be, [but are not,] which empty sockets, or holes without eyes, pitifully disfigure the countenance.

"The sphere in which the eye moves" is an expression which Shakspeare has often used. Thus, in his 119th Sonnet :

"How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted," &c. Again, in Hamlet :

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres."

MALONE. 6They take the flow o' the Nile-] Pliny, speaking of the Nile, says: "How high it riseth, is knowne by markes and measures taken of certain pits. The ordinary height of it is sixteen cubites. Under that gage, the waters overflow not all. Above that stint, there are a let and hindrance, by reason that the later it is ere they bee fallen and downe againe. By these the seedtime is much of it spent, for that the earth is too wet. By the other there is none at all, by reason that the ground is drie and thirstie. The province taketh good keepe and reckoning of both, the one as well as the other. For when it is no higher than 12 cubites, it findeth extreame famine: yea, and at 13 it feeleth hunger still; 14 cubites comforts their hearts, 15 bids them take no care, but 16 affordeth them plentie and delicious dainties. So soone as any part of the land is freed from the water, streight waies it is sowed." Philemon Holland's translation, 1601, b. v. c. ix. REED.

Shakspeare seems rather to have derived his knowledge of this fact from Leo's History of Africa, translated by John Pory, folio, 1600: "Upon another side of the island standeth an house alone by itselfe, in the midst whereof there is a foure-square cesterne or channel of eighteen cubits deep, whereinto the water of Nilus is conveyed by a certaine sluice under ground. And in the midst of the cisterne there is erected a certaine piller, which is marked and divided into so many cubits as the cisterne containeth in depth.

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