Trebles thee o'er.8 SEB. Well; I am standing water, ANT. I'll teach you how to flow. SEB. Hereditary floth instructs me. ANT. Do fo: to ebb, O, If you but knew, how you the purpose cherish, my cuftom: : you 8 I am more ferious than Trebles thee o'er.] This paffage is reprefented to me as an obfcure one. The meaning of it feems to be-You must put on more than your ufual seriousness, if you are difpofed to pay a proper attention to my propofal; which attention if you bestow, it will in the end make you thrice what you are. Sebaftian is already brother to the throne; but, being made a king by Antonio's contrivance, would be (according to our author's idea of greatnefs) thrice the man he was before. In this sense he would be trebled o'er. So, in Pericles, 1609: -the mafter calls, "And trebles the confufion." Again, in The Two Noble Kinfmen, 1634: thirds his own worth." STEEVENS. Again, in the Merchant of Venice: -Yet, for you, "I would be trebled twenty times myfelf." MALONE. If you but knew, how you the purpose cherish, Whiles thus you mock it! how, in ftripping it, You more inveft it!] A judicious critic in The Edinburgh Magazine for Nov. 1786, offers the following illuftration of this obfcure paffage. "Sebaftian-introduces the fimile of water. It is taken up by Antonio, who says he will teach his stagnant water to flow. It has already learned to ebb,' fays Sebaftian. To which Antonio replies, O if you but knew how much even that metaphor, which you use in jeft, encourages to the defign which I hint at; how in ftripping the words of their common meaning, and using them figuratively, you adapt them to your own fituation!" STEEVENS. Moft often do fo near the bottom run, SEB. Pr'ythee, fay on: The fetting of thine eye, and cheek, proclaim ANT. Thus, fir: Although this lord of weak remembrance,' this (Who fhall be of as little memory, When he is earth'd,), hath here almost persuaded (For he's a spirit of perfuafion only,) The king, his fon's alive; 'tis as impoffible That he's undrown'd, as he that fleeps here, fwims.2 I this lord of weak remembrance,] This lord, who, being now in his dotage, has outlived his faculty of remembering; and who, once laid in the ground, fhall be as little remembered himself, as he can now remember other things. JOHNSON. 2 hath here almofi perfuaded, (For he's a fpirit of perfuafion, only Profeffes to perfuade) the king his fon's alive; As he, that fleeps here, fwims.] Of this entangled fentence I can draw no fenfe from the present reading, and therefore imagine that the author gave it thus: For he, a fpirit of perfuafion, only Profeffes to perfuade the king, his fon's alive; Of which the meaning may be either, that he alone, who is a Spirit of perfuafion, profeffes to perfuade the king; or that, He only profees to perfuade, that is, without being fo perfuaded himfelf, he makes a fhow of perfuading the king. JoHNSON. The meaning may be-He is a mere rhetorician, one who profeffes the art of perfuafion, and nothing elfe; i. e. he profeffes to perfuade another to believe that of which he himself is not convinced; he is content to be plaufible, and has no further aim. So, (as Mr. Malone obferves,) in Troilus and Creffida: -why he'll anfwer nobody, he professes not answering." STEEVENS. The obfcurity of this paffage arifes from a mifconception of the word he's, which is not an abbreviation of he is, but of he has ; SEB. I have no hope That he's undrown'd. ANT. O, out of that no hope, and partly from the omiffion of the pronoun who, before the word profeffes, by a common poetical ellipfis. Supply that deficiency, and the fentence will run thus: 66 66 Although this lord of weak remembrance -hath here almost persuaded "For he has a spirit of perfuafion, who, only "Profeffes to perfuade, the king his fon's alive;"And the meaning is clearly this.-This old lord, though a mere dotard, has almoft perfuaded the king that his fon is alive; for he is fo willing to believe it, that any man who undertakes to persuade him of it, has the powers of perfuafion, and succeeds in the attempt. We find a fimilar expreffion in The First Part of Henry IV. When Poins undertakes to engage the Prince to make one of the party to Gads-hill, Falftaff fays: "Well! may'ft thou have the Spirit of perfuafion, and he the ears of profiting! that what thou speakeft may move, and what he hears may be believed!" M. MASON. The light Mr. M. Mafon's conjecture has thrown on this paffage, I think, enables me to discover and remedy the defect in it. I cannot help regarding the words" profeffes to persuade"as a mere glofs or paraphrafe on "-he has a spirit of perfuafion." This explanatory fentence, being written in the margin of an actor's part, or playhouse copy, was afterwards injudiciously incorporated with our author's text. Read the paffage (as it now ftands in the text) without these words, and nothing is wanting to its sense or metre. On the contrary, the infertion of the words I have excluded, by lengthening the parenthefis, obfcures the meaning of the speaker, and, at the fame time, produces redundancy of measure. Irregularity of metre ought always to excite fufpicions of omiffion or interpolation. Where fomewhat has been omitted, through chance or defign, a line is occafionally formed by the junction of hemiftichs previously unfitted to each other. Such a line will naturally exceed the established proportion of feet; and when marginal obfervations are crept into the text, they will have juft fuch aukward effects as I conceive to have been produced by one of them in the present inftance. "Perhaps (fays that excellent scholar and perfpicacious critic Mr. Porfon, in his 6th Letter to Archdeacon Travis) you think What great hope have you! no hope, that way, is But doubts discovery there. Will you grant, with ANT. She that is queen of Tunis; the that dwells Ten leagues beyond man's life; 4 fhe that from Naples Can have no note,5 unless the fun were poft, it an affected and abfurd idea that a marginal note can ever creep into the text: yet I hope you are not fo ignorant as not to know that this has actually happened, not merely in hundreds or thoufands, but in millions of places," &c. &c.— "From this known propenfity of transcribers to turn every thing into the text which they found written in the margin of their MSS. or between the lines, fo many interpolations have proceeded, that at present the fureft canon of criticism is, Præferatur lectio brevior." P. 149, 150. Though I once expreffed a different opinion, I am now well convinced that the metre of Shakspeare's plays had originally no other irregularity than was occafioned by an accidental ufe of hemiftichs. When we find the smootheft series of lines among our earliest dramatic writers (who could fairly boast of no other requifites for poetry) are we to expect lefs polished verfification from Shakspeare? STEEVENS. 3—a wink beyond,] That this is the utmost extent of the profpect of ambition, the point where the eye can pass no farther, and where objects lose their diftinctness, so that what is there dif covered is faint, obfcure, and doubtful. JOHNSON. beyond man's life;] i. e. at a greater distance than the life of man is long enough to reach. STEEVENS. 5fhe that from Naples Can have no note, &c.] Note (as Mr. Malone obferves) is notice, or information. The man i' the moon's too flow,) till new-born chins Be rough and razorable: fhe, from whom We were all fea-fwallow'd, though some cast again;" Whereof what's paft is prologue; what to come, SEB. What stuff is this?-How fay you? "Tis true, my brother's daughter's queen of Tunis; So is the heir of Naples; 'twixt which regions There is fome space. ANT. A space whofe every cubit Seems to cry out, How fhall that Claribel Meafure us back to Naples ?-Keep in Tunis,' Shakspeare's great ignorance of geography is not more confpicuous in any inftance than in this, where he fuppofes Tunis and Naples to have been at such an immeasurable diftance from each other. He may, however, be countenanced by Apollonius Rhodius, who fays, that both the Rhone and Po meet in one, and discharge themselves into the gulph of Venice; and by Æschylus, who has placed the river Eridanus in Spain. STEEVENS. 6fhe, from whom-] i. e. in coming from whom. The old copy has he that from, &c. which cannot be right. The compofitor's eye probably glanced on a preceding line, "The that from Naples." The emendation was made by Mr. Rowe. MALONE. 7though fome caft again;] Caft is here ufed in the fame fenfe as in Macbeth, Act II. fc. iii: " though he took my legs from me, I made a fhift to caft him." STEEVENS. And, by that, deftin'd-] It is a common plea of wickednefs to call temptation deftiny. JOHNSON. The late Dr. Mufgrave very reasonably propofed to fubftitutedeftin'd for-deftiny. As the construction of the passage is made eafier by this flight change, I have adopted it. STEEVENS. In yours and my difcharge.] i. e. depends on what you and I are to perform. STEEVENS. I 1- keep in Tunis,] There is in this paffage a propriety loft, which a flight alteration will restore : |