original obscurity in the expression, which gave occasion to mistake in repetition or transcription. I therefore suspect that the author wrote thus: -Then no more remains, But that to your sufficiencies your worth is abled, And let them work. Then nothing remains more than to tell you, that your virtue is now invested with power equal to your knowledge and wisdom. Let therefore your knowledge and your virtue now work together. It may easily be con ceived how sufficiencies was, by an inarticulate speaker, or inattentive hearer, confounded with sufficiency as, and how abled, a word very unusual, was changed into able. For abled, however, an authority is not wanting. Lear uses it in the same sense, or nearly the same, with the Duke. As for sufficiencies, D. Hamilton, in his dying speech, prays that Charles II. may exceed both the virtues and sufficiencies of his father. -I do bend my speech JOHNSON. To one that can my part in him advertise ;] This is obscure. The meaning is, I direct my speech to one who is able to teach me how to govern; my part in him, signifying my office, which I have delegated to him. My part in him advertise; i. e. who knows what appertains to the character of deputy or viceroy. Can advertise my part in him; that is, his representation of my person. WARBURTON. What? in metre?] In the primers there are me trical graces, such as, speare's time. I suppose, were used in Shak JOHNSON. 5 pil'd, as thou art pil'd, for a French velvet.] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topic of our author's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakspeare's time, that the cup of an infected person was contagious. JOHNSON.. • —the fault and glimpse of newness ;] Fault and glimpse have so little relation to each other, that both can scarcely be right: we may read flash for fault; or, perhaps we may read, Whether it be the fault or glimpse That is, whether it be the seeming enormity of the action, or the glare of new authority. Yet the same sense follows in the next lines. JOHNSON. 7 So long, that nineteen zodiacks have gone round,] The Duke in the scene immediately following says, Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep. The author could not so disagree with himself. 'Tis necessary to make the two accounts correspond. THEOBALD. 8 There is a prone and speechless dialect,] Prone may stand here for humble, as a prone posture is a posture of supplication. STEEVENS. 9 Which for these fourteen years we have let sleep ;} For fourteen I have made no scruple to replace nine I have altered the odd phrase of letting the laws slip for how does it sort with the comparison that follows, of a lion in his cave that went not out to prey? But letting the laws sleep, adds a particular propriety to the thing represented, and accords exactly too with the simile. It is the metaphor too, that our author seems fond of using upon this occasion, in several other passages of this play. The law hath not been dead, tho' it hath slept; -'Tis now awake. And so, again, -but this new governor Awakes me all th' enrolled penalties; -und for a name, Now puts the drowsy and neglected act Freshly on me. THEOBALD. The query is, whether fourteen should be altered here to nineteen, or whether the nineteen in Claudio's statement is not, in fact, the error. 10 Stands at a guard with envy ;] Stands on terms of defiance. JOHNSON. With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest, Tongue far from heart,-] The lightness of a spark's behaviour to his mistress, is here compared to the lapwing's hovering and fluttering as it flies: besides which, the farther she is from her nest, where her heart is, the louder she is in her cry, to deceive those who seek her young. 12 Bore many gentlemen In hand, and hope of action: To bear in hand is a common phrase for to keep in expectation and dependance, but we should read, -with hope of action. JOHNSON. 13 -the mother] i. e. the abbess, the head of a convent. 14 to fear the birds of prey] To fear is to affright, to terrify; so in The Merchant of Venice, -This aspect of mine Hath fear'd the valiant. 66 STEEVENS. 15 Some run FROM brakes of vice, and answer none;] In some editions, some run through brakes, &c." Mr. Steevens very gravely quotes Drayton and Daniel to prove that a brake signified formerly a bush, or a thicket of bushes. Had he lived in the west of England, he would have known that, at this day, it is not only the common, but the sole appellation of certain thickets. A plat of ground (be its size what it may) covered with furze, with briars, or with thorns, bears there the name of brake, and no other. For my own part, however, I must confess, I agree with him, that this is the brake used here figuratively by our poet, and not brake for a rack or an engine of confession. If we read some run from instruments of torture and answer none,' to what does the word none refer? neither to any thing before, nor to any thing that follows. But if we understand some run through the midst of vices as they would dash through a thicket, and yet, in the end, escape punishment,' the opposition will be a very natural one to the words of the next line, that some are condemned for a fault alone.' There is no one but must entertain the most profound respect for Mr. Henley's critical judgment, and yet I cannot help differing from that gentleman's opinion of the meaning of the verb to answer in the passage before me. He thinks it must signify that confession of guilt which is extorted by the rack. But when we saya man shall answer for his crimes with his life," we mean that death is the punishment due to them; and when we use the expression of our sins being to be answered for at the last day,' the omniscience of Heaven excludes all thoughts of the necessity of confession we understand, by answering, either the trial we are to undergo, or the punishment which is to be the consequence of it. 16 a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd;] This we should now express by saying, he is half-tapster, half-bawd. JOHNSON. 17 she professes a hot-house ;] A hot-house is an English name for a bagnio. Where lately harbour'd many a famous whore, Tells you it is a hot-house, so it may, And still be a whore-house. 18 Hannibal!] for Cannibal. Ben Jonson. JOHNSON. 19 --three pence a bay:] Mr. Theobald found that this was the reading of the old books, and he follows it out of pure reverence for antiquity; for he |