Then little strength rings out the doleful knell; To pencil'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks doth borrow. She throws her eyes about the painting, round, In him the painter labour'd with his skill That blushing red no guilty instance3 gave, 9 She throws her eyes about the PAINTING, round,] i. e. She throws her eyes round about, &c. The octavo 1616, and all the subsequent copies, read :-about the painted round. MALONE. So mild, that PATIENCE Seem'd to scorn HIS woes.] That is, the woes suffered by Patience. We have nearly the same image in our author's Twelfth Night : "She sat like Patience on a monument, "Smiling at grief." Again, in Pericles: 2 Yet thou dost look “Like Patience, gazing on king's graves, and smiling -the harmless SHOW] The harmless painted figure. MALONE. 3 no guilty INSTANCE -] No example or symptom of guilt. See vol. xi. p. 482, n. 3. MALone. VOL. XX. But, like a constant and confirmed devil, Into so bright a day such black-fac'd storms, The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew Whose words, like wild-fire, burnt the shining glory And little stars shot from their fixed places, When their glass fell, wherein they view'd their faces *. This picture she advisedly perus'd3, And chid the painter for his wond'rous skill; 3 And therein so ENSCONC'D his secret evil,] And by that means so concealed his secret treachery. A sconce was a species of fortification. MALONE. 4 And little STARS SHOT from their FIXED PLACES, When the glass fell, wherein they view'd their faces.] So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream : the rude sea grew civil at her song, "And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, "To hear the sea-maid's musick." Why, Priam's palace, however beautiful or magnificent, should be called the mirrour in which the fixed stars beheld themselves, I do not see. The image is very quaint and far-fetched. MALONE. Lydgate says of Priam's palace "That verely when so the sonne shone, 66 Upon the golde meynt amonge the stone, "They gave a lyght withouten any were, "As doth Apollo in his mid-day sphere." Boswell. 5 This picture she ADVISEDLY perus'd,] Advisedly is attentively; with deliberation. MALONE. Such signs of truth in his plain face she spy'd, It cannot be, quoth she, that so much guile- And turn'd it thus: "It cannot be, I find, For even as subtle Sinon here is painted, With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish, Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes, • So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild, (As if with grief or travail he had fainted,) To me came Tarquin ARMED; so beguil'd With outward honesty,-] "To me came Tarquin with the same armour of hypocrisy that Sinon wore." The old copy reads: "To me came Tarquin armed to beguild "With outward honesty," &c. To must, I think, have been a misprint for so. Beguil'd is beguiling. Our author frequently confounds the active and passive participle. Thus, in Othello, delighted for delighting : "If virtue no delighted beauty lack MALONE. I think the reading proposed is right; and would point thus: "To me came Tarquin armed; so beguil'd "With outward honesty, but yet," &c. So beguil'd is so cover'd, so masked with fraud, i. e. like Sinon. Thus in The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. II.: "Thus ornament is but the guiled shore Those round clear pearls of his, that move thy pity, Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city. Such devils steal effects from lightless hell; Only to flatter fools, and make them bold: So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter, Here, all enrag'd, such passion her assails, Fool! fool! quoth she, his wounds will not be sore. Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow, And they that watch, see time how slow it creeps. Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought, 7 For every tear he FALLS] He lets fall. So, in Othello: "Each tear she falls would prove a crocodile." MALONE. A similar thought occurs in Troilus and Cressida : By deep surmise of other's detriment; It easeth some, though none it ever cur'd, But now the mindful messenger, come back, 8 Which when her sad-beholding husband saw, Her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw". He hath no power to ask her how she fares; At last he takes her by the bloodless hand, And tell thy grief, that we may give redress. The word is STEEVENS. 8 Those WATER-GALLS in her dim element] The watergall is some appearance attendant on the rainbow. current among the shepherds on Salisbury plain. -look'd red and raw,] So, in Hamlet: 'The Danish cicatrice looks red and raw.” 9 66 STEEVENS. Why art thou thus ATTIR'D IN DISCONTENT?] So, in Much Ado About Nothing: "For my part, I am so attir'd in wonder, "I know not what to say." STEEVENS. |