more than he. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains, but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I'll go about. [Exit.

SCENE II.

A Lawn before the Duke's Palace.

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

CEL. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.

Ros. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier?" Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.

CEL. Herein, I see, thou lovest me not with the full weight that I love thee: if my uncle, thy ba nished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could

of all sorts-] Sorts, in this place, means ranks and degrees of men. RITSON.

6 kindle the boy thither,] A similar phrase occurs in Macbeth, Act I. sc. iii:

enkindle you unto the crown." STEEVENS. "I were merrier?] I, which was inadvertently omitted in the old copy, was inserted by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so would'st thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously temper'd as mine is to thee.

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.

CEL. You know, my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir: for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster: therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports: let me see; What think you of falling in love?

CEL. Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off again.

Ros. What shall be our sport then?

CEL. Let us sit and mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

Ros. I would, we could do so; for her benefits

mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel,] The wheel of Fortune is not the wheel of a housewife. Shakspeare has confounded Fortune, whose wheel only figures uncertainty and vicissitude, with the destiny that spins the thread of life, though not indeed with a wheel. JOHNSON.

Shakspeare is very fond of this idea. He has the same in Antony and Cleopatra:

and rail so high,

"That the false housewife, Fortune, break her wheel.”

STEEVENS.

are mightily misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

CEL. 'Tis true: for those, that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest; and those, that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favour'dly.

Ros. Nay, now thou goest from fortune's office to nature's fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature.

Enter TOUCHSTONE.

CEL. No? When nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire?Though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

Ros. Indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature; when fortune makes nature's natural the cutter off of nature's wit.

CEL. Peradventure, this is not fortune's work neither, but nature's; who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of his wits.-How now, wit? whither wander you?

TOUCH. Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CEL. Were you made the messenger?

TOUCH. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

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who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent &c.] The old copy reads-" perceiveth -." Mr. Malone retains the old reading, but adds"and hath sent," &c. STEEVENS.

VOL. VIII.

C

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCH. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good; and yet was not the knight forsworn. CEL. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

Ros. Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom. TOUCH. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. CEL. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCH. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were: but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away, before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.

CEL. Pr'ythee, who is't that thou mean'st?

TOUCH. One that old Frederick, your father,loves. CEL. My father's love is enough to honour him.'

1 Touch. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

Cel. My father's love is enough to honour him.] This reply to the Clown is in all the books placed to Rosalind; but Frederick was not her father, but Celia's: I have therefore ventured to prefix the name of Celia. There is no countenance from any passage in this play, or from the Dramatis Persona, to imagine, that both the Brother-Dukes were namesakes; and one called the Old, and the other the Younger-Frederick; and without some such authority, it would make confusion to suppose it. THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald seems not to know that the Dramatis Personæ were first enumerated by Rowe. JOHNSON.

Frederick is here clearly a mistake, as appears by the answer of Rosalind, to whom Touchstone addresses himself, though the

Enough! speak no more of him; you'll be whip'd for taxation, one of these days.

TOUCH. The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely, what wise men do foolishly.

CEL. By my troth, thou say'st true: for since the little wit, that fools have, was silenced,3 the little

question was put to him by Celia. I suppose some abbreviation was used in the MS. for the name of the rightful, or old duke, as he is called, [perhaps Fer. for Ferdinand,] which the transcriber or printer converted into Frederick. Fernardyne is one of the persons introduced in the novel on which this comedy is founded. Mr. Theobald solves the difficulty by giving the next speech to Celia, instead of Rosalind; but there is too much of filial warmth in it for Celia :-besides, why should her father be called old Frederick? It appears from the last scene of this play that this was the name of the younger brother. MALONE.

Mr. Malone's remark may be just; and yet I think the speech which is still left in the mouth of Celia, exhibits as much tenderness for the fool, as respect for her own father. She stops Touchstone, who might otherwise have proceeded to say what she could not hear without inflicting punishment on the speaker. Old is an unmeaning term of familiarity. It is still in use, and has no reference to age. The Duke in Measure for Measure is called by Lucio "the old fantastical Duke," &c. STEEVENS. you'll be whip'd for taxation,] This was the discipline usually inflicted upon fools. Brantome informs us that Legar, fool to Elizabeth of France, having offended her with some indelicate speech, "fut bien föuetté à la cuisine pour ces paroles." A representation of this ceremony may be seen in a cut prefixed to B. II. ch. c. of the German Petrarch already mentioned in Vol. IV. p. 359. Douce.

Taxation is censure, or satire. So, in Much Ado about Nothing: "Niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you." Again, in the play before us:

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my taxing like a wildgoose flies-."

MALONE.

since the little wit, that fools have, was silenced,] Shakspeare probably alludes to the use of fools or jesters, who for some ages had been allowed in all courts an unbridled liberty of censure and mockery, and about this time began to be less tolerated. JOHNSON.

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