Cleo.

Lord of lords!

O infinite virtue! com'st thou smiling from
The world's great snare uncaught?
4

Ant.

My nightingale,

We have beat them to their beds. What, girl? though gray

Do something mingle with our younger brown; yet have we

A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can

Get goal for goal of youth5. Behold this man;
Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand;-
Kiss it, my warrior: He hath fought to-day,
As if a god, in hate of mankind, had
Destroy'd in such a shape.

Cleo.

I'll give thee, friend, An armour all of gold: it was a king's.

Ant. He has deserv'd it; were it carbuncled Like holy Phoebus' car.-Give me thy hand; Through Alexandria make a jolly march;

Bear our hack'd targets like the men that owe them":
Had our great palace the capacity

To camp this host, we all would sup together;
And drink carouses to the next day's fate,
Which promises royal peril.-Trumpeters,
With brazen din blast you the city's ear;
Make mingle with our rattling tabourines7;
That heaven and earth may strike their sounds to-
gether,

Applauding our approach.

4 i. e. the war. So in the 116th Psalm:

[Exeunt.

The snares of death

compassed me round about.' Thus also Statius ;--

Vallavere plaga.

5 At all plays of barriers the boundary is called a goal; to win a goal is to be a superior in a contest of activity.

6. With spirit and exultation, such as becomes the brave warriors that own them.'

7 Tabourines were small drums.

SCENE IX. Cæsar's Camp.

Sentinels on their Post.

Enter ENOBARBUS.

1 Sold. If we be not reliev'd within this hour, We must return to the court of guard1: The night Is shiny; and, they say, we shall embattle

By the second hour i' the morn.

2 Sold.

A shrewd one to us.

Eno.

This last day was

O, bear me witness, night,

Stand close, and list him.

3 Sold. What man is this?

2 Sold.

Eno. Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon, When men revolted shall upon record

Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did

Before thy face repent!

1 Sold.

3 Sold.

Hark further.

Enobarbus!

Peace;

Eno. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me; That life, a very rebel to my will,

May hang no longer on me: Throw my heart
Against the flint and hardness of my fault3;
Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder,

1 The court of guard is the guard-room, the place where the guard musters. The phrase is used again in Othello.

2 Discharge, as a sponge when squeezed discharges the moisture it had imbibed.

3 It is painful to find the gloomy dignity of this noble scene destroyed by the intrusion of a conceit so far-fetched and unaffecting.'-Johnson.

Steevens has justly observed, that Shakspeare, in most of his conceits, is kept in countenance by his cotemporaries. We have something similar in Daniel's 118th Sonnet, ed. 1594 :—

'Still must I whet my young desires abated,
Upon the flint of such a heart-rebelling.'

And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,
Nobler than my revolt is infamous,
Forgive me in thine own particular;
But let the world rank me in register
A master-leaver, and a fugitive:

O Antony! O Antony!

2 Sold.

To him.

Let's speak

[Dies.

1 Sold. Let's hear him, for the things he speaks May concern Cæsar.

3 Sold.

Let's do so. But he sleeps.

1 Sold. Swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his Was never yet for sleep.

Go we to him.

2 Sold.
3 Sold. Awake, awake, sir;
2 Sold.

1 Sold. The hand of death
Hark, the drums

Demurely 5 wake the sleepers.

To the court of guard; he is of note: our hour

Enter ANTONY and SCARUS, with Forces, marching.

Ant. Their preparation is to-day by sea;

We please them not by land.

Scar.

For both, my lord.

Ant. I would, they'd fight i' the fire, or in the air; We'd fight there too. But this it is; Our foot Upon the hill adjoining to the city,

Shall stay with us: order for sea is given;

4 Raught is the ancient preterite of the verb to reach. 5 Demurely for solemnly.

They have put forth the haven: Let's seek a spot1, Where their appointment we may best discover, And look on their endeavour2.

[Exeunt.

Enter CESAR, and his Forces, marching.

Cæs. But being charg'd, we will be still by land, Which, as I take't, we shall; for his best force Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales, And hold our best advantage.

Re-enter ANTONY and SCARUS.

[Exeunt.

Ant. Yet they're not join'd: Where yonder pine

does stand,

I shall discover all: I'll bring thee word

Straight, how 'tis like to go.

[Exit.

Scar.
Swallows have built
In Cleopatra's sails their nests: the augures1

Say, they know not, they cannot tell;-look grimly,
And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony
Is valiant, and dejected; and, by starts,
His fretted fortunes give him hope, and fear,
Of what he has, and has not.

1 Some words appear to have been accidentally omitted in the old copy, which Malone has supplied by the phrase, 'Let's seek a spot.' Rowe supplied the omission by the words, 'Further on.' 2 Where we may but discover their numbers, and see their motions.'

3 But, in its exceptive sense, for be out, i. e. without. Steevens has adduced a passage from the MS. Romance of Guillaume de Palerne, in the Library of King's Coll. Cambridge, in which the orthography almost explains the word :

6

I sayle now in the see as schip boute mast,
Boute anker, or ore, or any semlych sayle.'

See vol. i. p. 17, note 12.

4 The old copy reads, auguries. Augurs, the plural of augur, was anciently spelled augures, which we should read here, and not augurers, improperly substituted by Malone. See vol. iv. p. 275, note 19,

Alarum afar off, as at a Sea-Fight. Re-enter ANTONY.

Ant.

All is lost;

This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me:

My fleet hath yielded to the foe; and yonder
They cast their caps up, and carouse together
Like friends long lost.-Triple-turn'd whore 5! 'tis
thou

Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart
Makes only wars on thee.-Bid them all fly;
For when I am reveng'd upon my charm,
I have done all:-Bid them all fly, begone.

[Exit SCARUS.

O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more:
Fortune and Antony part here; even here

Do we shake hands.-All come to this?-The hearts
That spaniel'd me at heels, to whom I gave
Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets
On blossoming Cæsar; and this pine is bark'd,
That overtopp'd them all. Betray'd I am:
O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm 7,
Whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them
home;

5 Cleopatra first belonged to Julius Cæsar, then to Antony, and now, as Antony supposes, to Augustus.

6 The old editions read, pannelld. Spaniel'd is the happy emendation of Sir Thomas Hanmer. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena says to Demetrius :

'I am your spaniel,-only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.'

7 This grave charm' probably means this deadly or destruetive piece of witchcraft. In this sense the epithet grave is often used by Chapman in his translation of Homer. Thus in the nineteenth book :

but not far hence the fatal minutes are Of thy grave ruin.’

It seems to be employed in the sense of the Latin word gravis.