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have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

SCENE XV. Ingratitude in a Child.

(6) Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou shew'st thee in a child, Than the fea-monster.

ACT II. SCENE VI.

Flattering Sycophants.

That such a flave as this should wear a fword, Who wears no honesty: (7) such smiling rogues [as

thefe,]

Like

(6) Ingratitude &c.] Ingratitude a marble hearted-fiend is more hideous and dreadful, when shewing itself in a child, than even that fea-monster, which is the emblem itself of impiety and ingratitude: by which monfter he means the Hippopotamus, or river-horse, "which, fays Sandys, in his travels, p. 105. fignify'd, Murder, Impudence, Violence and Injustice: for they say, that he killeth his fire, and ravisheth his own dam." Mr. Upton's al

teration of, Than ith fea-monster, seems unneceffary: for the poet makes ingratitude, a fiend, a monster itself, and one more odious than even this hieroglyphical symbol of impiety. See Obfervations on Shakespear, p. 203.

(7) such, &c.) The words as these, may be safely omitted without injuring the sense; they are flat and spoil the metre. The next lines are read thus in the old editions ;

Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwaine,
Which are t' intrince t' unloose.

Atwaine is doubtless the genuine word, which was commonly used, fignifying, in two, afunder, in twain. And Mr. Upton, observing, that Shakespear sometimes strikes off a Syllable or more from the latter part of a word, would preferve intrince in the text, which he explains by intrinficate. 'Tis certain the author uses intrinficate, but I don't rememember ever to have met with intrince: See vol. I. p. 169. "This shortening of words is indeed too much the genius of our language;" and as the reader knows the fenfe of the word, and what the criticks would read, I have kept to the old editions, notwithstanding the quotation made by

me

Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwain
Which are too intrince t'unloose; footh ev'ry paffion,
That in the nature of their lords rebels:

Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With ev'ry gale and vary of their masters;
As knowing naught, like dogs, but following.

Plain, blunt Men.

This is some fellow,

Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness; and constrains the garb,
Quite from his nature. He can't flatter, he, --
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth;
And they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbour more craft, and more corrupter ends,
Than twenty (8) filly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duties nicely.

SCENE VII. Description of Bedlam Beggars,

While I may 'scape,

I will preferve my self: and am bethought
To take the basest and the poorest shape,
That ever penury in contempt of man

Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;
Blanket my loins; elfe all my hair in knots;
And with presented nakedness out-face
The winds, and perfecutions of the sky.

me from Mr. Edwards, in the place just referr'd too. I forbear quoting any fimilar passages here: Horace and Juvenal abound with them, and Shakespear himself hath excellently painted the character in Polonius. See particularly Hamlet, Act 4. Sc 7.

(8) Si ly] Some read filky: filly is not always taken in a bad fenfe amongst the old writers.

The country gives me proof and president
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms,
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, fprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, theep-coats and mills,
Sometimes with lunatick bans, sometimes with pray'rs,
Inforce their charity.

SCENE X. The faults of Infirmity, pardonable.
Fiery? the fiery duke? tell the hot duke, that-
No, but not yet; may be, he is not well;
Infirmity doth still neglect all office,
Whereto our health is bound; we're not ourselves,
When nature, being oppreft, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. I'll forbear;
And am fall'n out with my more headier will
To take the indispos'd and fickly fit
For the found man.

SCENE XI. UNKINDNESS.

Thy fifter's naught; oh Regan, she hath tied

Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture here.

:

[Points to his heart.

SCENE XII. Offences mistaken.

All's not offence that indifcretion (9) finds,

And dotage terms so.

VOL. II.

G

Rifing

(9) Finds Finds is an allufion to a jury's verdict: and the word fo relates to that as well as to terms. We meet with the

very fame expreffion in

Hamlet, Act 5. Sc. I.

Why, 'tis found fo.

Shakespear uses the word in this sense in other places;

The coroner hath fat on her, and finds it chriftian burial. Ib.

As

Rifing Paffion,

I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad,
I will not trouble thee, my child. Farewel;
We'll no more meet, no more fee one another;
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,
Or rather a disease that's in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine; thou art a bile,
A plague-fore, or imbossed carbuncle,
In my corrupted blood; but I'll not chide thee.
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it;
I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,

Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove.

The Neceffaries of Life, few.

(10) O, reafon not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest things fuperfluous; Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man's life is cheap as beafts.

Lear

As you like it. A. 4. S. 2. Leander was drown'd, and the foolish chroniclers [perhaps coroners] of that age found it was----Hero of Sestos." Edwards.

(10) O reason, &c. The poets abound with sentiments similar to this: take the two following passages from Lucretius and

Lucan.

O wretched man, in what a mift of life,
Inclos'd with dangers, and befet with strife,
He spends his little span, and over-feeds
His cram'd defires with more than nature needs.
For nature wisely stints our appetite,
And craves no more than undisturb'd delight.
Which minds unmixt with cares and fears obtain
A foul ferene, a body void of pain.
So little this corporeal frame requires,
30 bounded are our natural defires,
That wanting all and setting pain afide,
With bare privation sense is fatisfy'd.

See LUCRET. В. 2.

Behold

Lear on the Ingratitude of his Daughters.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you, that ftir these daughters hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; (11) touch me with noble anger:
O let not womens weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man's cheeks. No, you unnat'ral hags,
I will have fuch revenges on you both,
(12) That all the world shall-- I will do such things;
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth: you think, I'll weep :

Behold, ye fons of luxury, behold,
Who scatter in excess your lavith gold;
For whom all earth all ocean are explor'd,
To spread the various proud voluptuous board:
Behold how little thrifty nature craves.

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See Lucan, B. 4. Rorve's tranfl.

(11) Touch me, &c.] If you, ye gods have stirred my daughters hearts against me at lest let me not bear it with any unworthy tameness; but touch the with noble anger; let me refent it with such resolution as becomes a man.''---And "let not woman's weapons, water-drops, stain my man's cheeks."

Canons of Crit. p. 78.

See

(12) That, &c.] See vol. 1. p. 110. This feems to have been imitated from the one or the other of these passages following:

Haud quid fit fcio

Sed grande quiddam eft.

What it is I know not

But fomething terrible it is --

Nefcio quid ferox

Senec. Thyeft. Α. 2.

Decrevit animus intus, & nondum fibi audet fateri. Medea.

1 know not what, my furious mind

Hath inwardly determin'd, and still dares not

Even to itself reveal.

Magnum eft quodcunque paravi:

Quid fit adhuc dubito.

'Tis fomething great I've inly meditated--

What it is, yet I'm doubtful.

Ovid, Met. 6.

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