Caf. My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge.
Fill, Lucius, till the wine o'er-swell the cup;
I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love.

SCENE V. Opportunity to be feiz'd on in all Affairs.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miseries,
On such a full fea are we now a-float:
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lofe our ventures.

ACT V. SCENE III.

The Parting of Brutus and Caffius.

Bru. No, Cassius, no; think not, thou noble Re
man,

That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;
He bears too great a mind. But this same day
• Must end that work, the ides of March began;
And, whether we shall meet again, I know not;
Therefore our everlasting farewel take;
For ever, and for ever, farewel, Caffius!
If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
If not, why, then this parting was well made.

Caf. For ever, and for ever, farewel, Brutus!
If we do meet again, we'll fmile indeed :
If not, 'tis true, this parting was well made.

Bru. Why then, lead on. O, that a man might

know

The end of this day's business ere it come !
But it fufficeth, that the day will end;

And then the end is known.

Melancholy Melancholy, the Parent of Error.

Oh hateful error, melancholy's child !
Why doft thou shew to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not ? error, foon conceiv'd,
Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,
But kill'ft the mother that engender'd thee.

Antony's Character of Brutus.

This was the noblest Roman of them all : * All the conspirators, save only he,

Did, that they did, in envy of great Cæfar :
He, only, in a general honest thought,
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixt in him, that nature might stand up,
* And say to all the world; "This was a man!"

* It may perhaps be needless to inform the reader, that the duke of Buckingham, displeas'd with what the critics esteem so great a fault in this play, the death of Julius Cæfar, in the third Act, hath made two plays of it; but I am afraid the lovers of Shakefpear will be apt to place that nobleman's performance on a level with the rest of those who have attempted to alter, or amend Shakespear.

King

(1)

King LEAR.

ACTI. SCENE III.

L

ET

An alienated Child.

it be so, thy truth then be thy dower: For by the facred radiance of the fun,

The mysteries of Hecate, and the night,
By all the operations of the orbs,

From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,

Propinquity, and property of blood,

And as a stranger to my heart and me,

Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barb'rous Scy

thian,

Or he that makes his generation messes
To-gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and reliev'd,
As thou my sometime daughter.

BASTARDY.

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My fervices are bound; (2) wherefore should I

Stand

(1) Let, &c.] The reader will do well to observe, Shakespear makes his characters in king Lear strictly conformable to the religion of their times: the not attending sufficiently to this, hath accafioned fome Critics greatly to err in their remarks on this play.

(2) Wherefore, &c.] The bastard is here complaining of the tyranny of custom, and produces two instances, to shew the plague and oppreffion of it; the first, in the case of elder brothers; the fecond,

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curtesy of nations to deprive me,

For that I am fome twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as gen'rous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
(3) Who, in the lufty stealth of nature, take

More composition and fierce quality;
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to creating a whole tribe of fops,
(4) Got 'tween asleep and wake?

SCENE

second, of bastards. With regard to the first, we are to fuppofe him speaking of himself only as an objector, making the cafe his own, according to a common manner of arguing : Wherefore, fays he, should I (or any man) stand in [within] the plague [the punishment or scourge of custom, why should I continue in its oppreffive power, and permit the courtesy of nations to deprive me, to take away from, rob, and injure me, because, &c.

(3) Who, &c.] Mr. Warburton quotes a passage here, well worth remarking---- "How much the lines following this are in character, says he, may be feen by that monstrous wish of Vanini, the Italian atheist, in his tract, De admirandis naturæ reginæ deæque mortalium arcanis, printed at Paris 1616, the very year our poet died. O utinam extra legitimum & connubialem thorum efsem procreatus! Ita enim progenitores mei in venerem incaluiffent ardentius, accumulatim affatimq; generofa femina contuliffent, è quibus ego formæ blanditiam, ac elegantiam robustas corporis vires, mentemque innubilam confequutus fuiffem. At quia conjugatorum fum foboles his orbatus fum bonis. Had the book been publish'd but ten or twenty years fooner, who would not have believ'd that Shakespear alluded to this passage? But the divinity of his genius foretold, as it were, what fuch an atheist, as Vanini, would say, when he wrote upon such a subject."

I have forbore giving a translation of the Latin, because ShakeSpear's words are a fine paraphrafe of it, and because it perhaps, is not proper for all ears: but if, fuppofing Vanini had wrote first, we should have imagined, Shakespear alluded to him; why may we not, as it is, believe Vanini alluded to Shakespear?

(4) Got 'tween asleep and wake) This reading runs thro' all the editions, and is indeed very plausible: tho' it seems to me, the paffage

:

SCENE VIII. Astrology ridicul d

(5) This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are fick in fortune, (often the surfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our difafters, the sun the moon and stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools, by heavenly compulfion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by spherical predominance; drunkards, Iyars and adulterers, by an inforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrufting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! my father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Urfa major; fo that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. I should

paffage originally stood, Got atrveen fleep and wake. The a might very eafily have been so transposed, and atween is very common with all the old writers down to, and below our author,

(5) This, &c] Aftrology was in much higher credit in our author's time than in Milton's, who, nevertheless, hath fatirised it in the feverest manner poffible, by making it patronifed even by the devil himself: for in the 4th book of his Paradise Regain'd, the devil thus addresses our faviour.

If I read aught in heaven,

Or heav'n write aught of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous or fingle characters

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
Sorrows and labours, oppofitions, hate,
Attend thee, scorns reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death:
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric, I difcern not,
Nor when: eternal fure, as without end.
Without beginning; for no date prefixt
Directs me in the starry rubric fet,

V. 382.

Where it is to be observ'd, says Mr. Warburton, that the poet thought it not enough to difcredit judicial aftrology, by making it patronised by the devil, without shewing at the fame time, the absurdity of it. He has therefore very judiciously made him blunder, in the expression of portending a kingdom, which was without beginning. This destroys all he wou'd infinuate."

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