136.

his gift is in devising impossible slanders:] Impossible slanders are, I suppose, such slanders as, from their absurdity and impossibility, bring their own confutation with them. JOHNSON.

138. his villany;- -] By which she means his malice and impiety. By his impious jests, she insinuates, he pleased libertines; and by his devising slanders of them, he angred them. WARBURTON. 156. his bearing.] i. e. his carriage, his demeanour. So, in Measure for Measure :

"How I may formally in person bear me.”

STEEVENS.

174. Therefore, &c.] Let, which is found in the next line, is understood here. MALONE.

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.] ¿. e. as wax, when opposed to the fire kindled by a witch, no longer preserves the figure of the person whom it was designed to represent, but flows into a shapeless lump; so fidelity, when confronted with beauty, dissolves into our ruling passion, and is lost there like a drop of water in the sea. STEEVENS.

185. usurer's chain ?] Chains of gold in our author's time, usually worn by wealthy citizens, in the same manner as they now are by the aldermen of London. See The Puritan, or Widow of WatlingStreet, act iii. sc. 3. Albumazar, act i. sc. 7. &c. REED.

Usury seems about this time to have been a common topick of invective. I have three or four dialogtres, pasquils, and discourses on the subject, printed before

the

the year 1600. From every one of these it appears, that the merchants were the chief usurers of the age. STEEVENS.

203.-it is the base, though bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person,] That is, It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself.

Base, though bitter. I do not understand how base and bitter are inconsistent, or why what is bitter should not be base. I believe, we may safely read, It is the base, the bitter disposition. JOHNSON. The base though bitter, may mean the ill-natur'd though witty. STEEVENS. 210. --as melancholy as a lodge in a warren;] A parallel thought occurs in the first chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet, describing the desolation of Judah, says: "The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers," &c. I am informed, that near Aleppo, these lonely buildings are still made use of, it being necessary, that the felds where water-melons, cucumbers, &c. are raised, should be regularly watched. I learn from Thomas Newton's Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587, that "so soone as the cucumbers, &c. be gathered, these lodges are abandoned of the watchmen and keepers, and no more frequented." From these forsaken buildings, it should seem, the prophet takes his comparison. STEEVENS.

Lodges

Lodges were formerly common in our warrens, and in many of them they may still be seen; so that Shakspere need not have gone for this to a cucumber-garden in Judæa. HENLEY. 212. of this young lady ;] Benedick speaks of Hero as if she were on the stage. Perhaps, both she and Leonato, were meant to make their entrance with Don Pedro. When Beatrice enters, she is spoken of as coming in with only Claudio.

241.

STEEVENS.

such impossible conveyance, - Impossi ble may be licentiously used for unaccountable. Beatrice has already said, that Benedick invents impossible slanders.

So, in the Fair maid of the Inn, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

"You would look for some most impossible antick."

Again, in The Roman Ador, by Massinger :

"Ourselves, by building on impossible hopes." I believe the meaning is--with a rapidity equal to that of jugglers, who appear to perform impossibilities. Conveyance was the common term in our author's time for slight of hand. MALONE.

Dr. Warburton reads impassable, and this agrees with what follows-" that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me."

263. bring you the length of prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham's beard ;] i. e. I will under

undertake the hardest task, rather than have any conversation with lady Beatrice. Alluding to the difficulty of access to either of those monarchs, but more particularly to the former.

So Cartwright, in his comedy call'd The Siege, or Love's Convert, 1641:

66 -bid me take the Parthian king by the beard: or draw an eye-tooth from the jaw royal of the Persian monarch." STEEVENS.

270.

1600.

290.

-my lady's Tongue.] Thus the quarto The folio reads- -this lady tongue.

STEEVENS.

-civil as an orange.] This conceit occurs likewise in Nash's four Letters confuted, 1592. "For the order of my life it is as civil as an orange."

STEEVENS.

291. of that jealous complexion] Thus the quarto 1606. The folio reads, of a jealous complexion. STEEVENS.

314. Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd;] What is it, to go to the world? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state; but why is the unmarry'd lady sun-burnt? I believe we should read, Thus goes every one to the wood but I, and I am sun-burnt. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and sun.

The nearest way to the wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the wood, and at last taken a crooked

stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Shakspere, in All's Well that End's Well, uses the phrase, to go to the world, for marriage. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of wood to sun-burnt. JOHNSON. I am sun-burnt, may mean, I have lost my beauty, and am consequently no longer such an object as can tempt a man to marry. STEEVENS.

342.

-she hath often dream'd of unhappiness,] Thus Beaumont and Fletcher, in their comedy of the Maid of the Mill:

66

My dreams are like my thoughts, honest and

innocent:

"Yours are unhappy."

i. e. wild, wanton, unlucky.

WARBURTON.

361. -to bring signior Benedick, and the lady Beatrice, into a mountain of affection, the one with the other.] A mountain of affection with one another is a strange expression, yet I know not well how to change it. Perhaps it was originally written, to bring Benedick and Beatrice into a mooting of affection; to bring them not to any more mootings of contention, but to a mooting or conversation of love. This reading is confirmed by the prepostion with; a mountain with each other, or affection with each other, cannot be used, but a mooting with each other is proper and regular.

JOHNSON. Uncommon as the word proposed by Dr. Johnson may appear, it is used in several of the old plays. So, in Glapthorne's Wit in a Constable, 1639:

"Lone