with that of John Holland, Duke of Exeter, who was married to Elizabeth the King's aunt. He was executed at Plashey in 1400 but with this circumstance our author might have been unacquinted. STEEVENS.

P. 9, first 1. Here began the old play. POPE. P. 9, 1. 6. That task i. e. keep busied with scruples and laborious disquisitions. JOHNSON. P. 9, 1. 20. Or nicely charge your understanding soul &c.] Take heed lest by nice and subtle sophistry you burthen your knowing soul, or knowingly burthen your soul, with the guilt of advancing a false title, or of maintaining, by specious fallacies, a claim which, if shown in its native and true colours, would appear to be false. JOHNSON.

P. 9, 1. 21. miscreate, i. e. ill-begotten, illegitimate, spurious. JOHNSON.

P. 9, 1. 24. 25. Shall drop their blood in approbation &c.] i. e. in proving and supporting that title which shall be now set up. MALONE.

P. 9, 1. 26. Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,] The whole drift of the King is to impress upon the Archbishop a due sense of the caution with which he is to speak. He tells him that the crime of unjust war, if the war be unjust, shall rest

upon him:

Therefore take heed how you impawn your'

person.

So, I think, it should be read, Take heed how you pledge yourself, your honour, your happiness in support of bad advice.

Dr. Warburton explains impawn by engage, and so escapes the difficulty. JoHNSON.

VOL. X.

16

The allusion here is to the game of chess, and the disposition of the pawns with respect to the King, at the commencement of this mimetic contest. HENLEY.

I

To engage and to pawn were in our author's time synonymous. See Minshew's DICTIONARY in v. engage. But the word pawn had not, believe, at that time, its present signification. To impawn seems here to have the same meaning as the French phrase se commettre. MALONE.

P. 10, 1. 14. — gloze, i. e. expound, explain, and sometimes comment upon. REED.

P.11, 1. 11. To fine his title with some show of truth, This is the reading of the quarto of 1608; that of the folio To find his title. I would read:

is

To line his title with some shew of truth. To line may signify at once to decorate and to strengthen. So, in Macbeth:

did line the rebel

"With hidden help and vantage;

Dr. Warburton says, that to fine his title, is to refine or improve it. The reader is to judge.

I now believe that find is right; the jury finds for the plaintiff, or finds for the defendant; to find his title is, to determine in favour of his title with some show of truth. JOHNSON.

To fine his title, is to make it showy or specious by some appearance of justice. STEEVENS.

I believe that fine is the right reading, and that the metaphor is taken from the fining of liquors. In the next line, that speaker says: "Though in pure truth it was corrupt and

naught.

It is the jury that finds a verdict, not the plaint

iff or defendant, and therefore a find his own title. M. MASON.

man cannot

P. 11, 1. 14. Convey'd himself] i, e. Derived his title. MALONE.

P. 11, l. 17. By Charles the Great is meant the Emperor Charlemagne, sou of Pepin; Charlemain is Charlechauve, or Charles the Bald, who, as well as Charles le Gros, assumed the title of Magnus. See Goldasti Animadversiones in Rinhardi praefationem. Edit. 1711, p. 157. But then Charlechauve had only one daughter, named Judith, married, or, as some say, only betrothed, to our King Ethelwulf, and carried off, after his death, by Baldwin the forester, 'afterward Earl of Flanders, whom, it is very certain, Hugh Capet was neither heir to nor any way descended from. This Judith, indeed, had a great-grand-daughter called Luitgarde: married to a Count Wichman, of whom nothing further is known. It was likewise the name of Charlemagne's fifth wife; but no such female as Lingare is to be met with in any French historian. In fact, these fictitious personages and digrees seem to have been devised by the English heralds, to "fine a title with some shew of truth," which, "in pure truth was corrupt and naught." It was manifestly impossible that Henry, who hat no hereditary title to his own dominions, could derive one, by the same colour, to another person's. He merely proposes the invasion and conquest of France, in prosecution of the dying advice of his father:

:

་་

to busy giddy minds

pe

"In foreign quarrels, that action, thence borne out,

'Might waste the memory of former days:"

that his subjects might have sufficient employment to mislead their attention from the nakedness of his title to the crown. The zeal and eloquence of the Archbishop are owing to similar motives. RITSON.

P. 11, 1. 18. King Lewis the tenth,] The word ninth has been inserted by some of the modern editors. The old copies read tenth. Ninth is certainly wrong, and tenth certainly right. Isabel was the wife, of Philip the second, father of Lewis the ninth, and grandfather of Lewis the tenth. RITSON.

This is a mistake, (as is observed in the Gen'tleman's Magazine, Vol. LIH. P. H. p. 588.,) into which Shakspeare was led by Holiushed, whom he copied. St. Lewis, (for he is the person here described,) the grandson of Queen Isabel, the wife of Philip II. King of France, was Lewis the Ninth. He was the son of Lewis VIII. by the Lady Bianch of Castile. MALONE.

P. 11, 1.30. King Lewis his satisfaction,] He had told us just above, that Lewis could not wear the crown with a safe conscience, "till satisfy'd," &c. THEOBALD.

P. 12, first 1. Than amply to

Pope reads:

imbare their

crooked titles ]

Mr.

Than openly imbrace,

But where is the antithesis betwixt hide in the preceding line, and imbrace in this?

old folios read:

Than amply to imbarre

The two

We certainly must read, as Mr. Warburton advised ine:

Than amply to imbare

lay open, display to view. am surprized Mr.

Pope did not start this conjecture, as Mr. Rowe had led the way to it in his edition; who reads: Than amply. to make bare their crooked titles. THEOBALD.

Mr. Theobald might have found, in the 4to. of 1608, this reading:

Than amply to embrace their crooked causes: out of which line Mr. Pope formed his reading, erroneous indeed, but not merely capricious. JOHNSON.

The quarto, 1600, reads imbace.

I have met with no example of the word imbare. To unbar is to open, and might have been the word set down by the poet, in opposition to bar.

To embar, however, seems, from the following passage in the first book of Stanyhurst's. translation of Virgil, 1583, to signify to break or cut off abruptly:

"Heere Venus embarring his tale," " &c. Yet, as to bar, in Much Ado about Nothing is to-strengthen,

that is stronger made,

"Which was before barr'd up with, ribs of

iron,"

so, amply to unbar, may mean to weaken by an open display of invalidity.

As imbare, however, is not unintelligible, and is defended by the following able criticks, 1 have left it in the text. STEEVENS.

I have not doubt but imbare is the right reading. Though the editor who has adopted it, seems to argue against. it, it makes the senso more clear than any of the other readings proposed. Imbare, in the last line, is, naturally. opposed to hide, in that which precedes, and it