THOUGHT as used for anxious, undue care. Add to the example given from Julius Cæsar, the following from Hamlet. Act iv. Sc. v. :—

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,

She turns to favour and to prettiness.

Also Ibid., Act iii. Sc. 1.

In Ezek. xlii. 7 and elsewhere, we have utter court.'

In Shakspeare we find utter darkness,' 1 Henry IV., Act iii. Sc. 3. as in the New Testament; and as the word is still used figuratively in such expressions as utter ruin,' 'utter mad. ness,' &c.

VESSEL =

human body. See also p. 378.

That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour.-1 Thess. iv. 4.

If to preserve this vessel for my lord

Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.

Othello, Act iv. Sc. 2.

Also Julius Casar, Act v. Sc. 5, with play on the word. VEX, VEXATION, used formerly in a stronger sense than now, e.g. :

Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.
Acts xii. I.

Give him deserved vexation.

Coriolanus, Act iii. Sc. 3.

WHILES while occurs Ezek. xliv. 17; Matth. v. 25; and

in Shakspeare, Julius Cæsar, Act i. Sc. 2, who also has the whiles in The Taming of the Shrew, Act iii. Sc. 1.

Take you your instrument; play you the whiles.

WENCH

young woman, generally of low birth, but with

out any contemptuous or disparaging sense.

A wench went and told them.—2 Sam. xvii. 17.

Well demanded, wench.-Tempest, Act i. Sc. 2.

WHIT = point, jot.

Not a whit behind the very chieftest Apostles.—2 Cor. xi. 5; also 1
Sam. iii. 18.

Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear.

Jul. Cas., Act ii. Sc. 1; also K. Rich. II., Act ii. Sc. 1.

PART II., CHAP. I., p. 58. It may be observed upon the words put by our poet into the mouth of Emilia

Let Heaven requite with the serpent's curse

that they present an application of Scripture at once acute and appropriate; because, as we read in the book of Wisdom, ii. 24, it was 'through envy (or jealousy) of the Devil death came into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.' Comp. S. Chrys. Hom. xlviii. in Joann. Evang. sub init.

IBID., p. 76. It is with reference to the observance of an oath that Shakspeare, in 3rd Pt. K. Henry VI., prepares us for the characters he is to draw of the two sons of the Duke of York, who afterwards became Edward IV. and Richard III.; but especially of the latter. When their father had urged that he must wait for the death of Henry before he could hope to reign, as he had given his promise, and taken an oath to that effect, Edward replies:

But for a kingdom any oath may be broken;

I'd break a thousand oaths to reign one year.

But Richard, no less wicked and more subtle, first, in reply

to his brother, appearing to approve of the honourable resolution which his father had expressed, presently proceeds to argue against it, with, as Johnson truly says, 'a very despicable sophistry'-admirably foreshowing the accomplished tempter, hypocrite, and usurper which he proved himself to be. See Act i. Sc. 2 :- An oath is of no moment,' &c., &c. And how thoroughly does the poet himself repudiate the sophistry, when Queen Margaret, in addressing York as a captive, reminds him how he broke his solemn oath,' and exclaims:

O, 'tis a fault too, too unpardonable.—Ibid., Sc. 4.

And again, at the end of the same scene, when Clifford, who had sworn to be avenged on York for killing his father, stabs him to death, with the words :

Here's for my oath; here's for my father's death.

IBID., p. 89. After first paragraph: incidents in Gospel narrative.

In K. Richard III., Elizabeth, the widowed Queen of Edward IV., warning her son, the Duke of Dorset, against the machinations of the usurper, makes use of these words :

O Dorset, speak not to me; get thee gone;

Death and destruction dog thee at thy heels:

Thy mother's name is ominous to children.—Act iv. Sc. 1.

I can find no explanation given of this last line. Does it refer to Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, so precipitately and wantonly beheaded at the command of Herod Antipas ? Matth. xiv. 10, Mark vi. 27.

When Othello, Act iv. Sc. 2, says to Emilia

You, mistress,

That have the office opposite to St. Peter,

And keep the gates of hell

there is evidently a reference to Matth. xvi 19.

And again,

in the same play, not improbably, to the parable of the Unjust Steward, Luke xvi., when to the words of OthelloNay, stay thou shouldst be honest '-Iago replies :

I should be wise for Honesty's a fool.

IBID., p. 89, end of second paragraph. There is another reference to the same words of our Lord-Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do'-in 3rd Pt. of K. Henry VI., when, on the field of battle between Towton and Saxton,' a son, who had killed his father, not knowing who he was, is introduced, and made to say :

Pardon me, God; I knew not what I did.-Act ii. Sc. 2.

Also in the 2nd Pt. of the play just named, our Lord's words in predicting the destruction of Jerusalem-'Thine enemies... shall lay thee even with the ground,' Luke xix. 44-appear to have been remembered in the speech of Lord Talbot to the general of the French before the walls of Bordeaux :

But if you frown upon this proffered peace,
You tempt the fury of my three attendants,
Lean famine, quartering steel, and climbing fire;
Who in a moment even with the earth

Shall lay your stately and air braving towers,

If you forsake the offer of our love.-Act iv. Sc. 2.

PART II., CHAP. II., p. 113. I have ventured to question the justice of Johnson's remark, if generally applied, that Shakspeare by negligence gives his heathens the sentiments and practices of Christianity.' At the same time I have admitted that there is some occasion for it. An additional instance may be found in the last scene of the same play upon which the remark was made, viz., K. Lear :—

Kent.

Is this the promised end?

Edg. Or image of that horror?

Where the reference is, doubtless, to that promise of our Lord

and to those horrors that will attend His last coming, recorded in S. Matth. xxiv.

·

IBID., p. 116. Warburton in his Divine Legation has remarked that the doctrine of what Maimonides calls the chastisements of love was unknown to the Jewish religion till the times of their later prophets,' vol. v., p. 61. But this remark, made by the Bishop to support his argument for placing the authorship of the Book of Job after the Captivity, is very questionable. See Deut. viii. 5, Job. v. 17, Ps. xciv. 12, 13, Prov. iii. 12. And perhaps I was too hasty in supposing that the doctrine was altogether unknown to the heathen, and therefore misplaced in Cymbeline. See Bishop Lightfoot's Dissertation on 'St. Paul and Seneca,' p. 277 sq., where he observes :-'In almost Apostolic language, Seneca describes the trials and sufferings of good men chastisements of a wise and beneficent parent. . . . Hence the "sweet uses of adversity" find in him an eloquent exponent.'

as the

IBID., p. 134. In the parting advice of Polonius to his son, I omitted to quote the latter portion of the lines—

Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,

Bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee—

because such an injunction, however suitable to the character of him who gives it, savours too much of mere worldly wisdom. There is a passage, however, upon the same subject, which quite comes up to the Christian standard, in Much Ado, &c., where Don Pedro and Leonato are speaking of Benedick, Act ii. Sc. 3:

Leon. I take him to be valiant.

D. Pedro. As Hector, I assure you; and in the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise; for either he avoids them with great discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christian-like fear.