hours which pass imperceptibly and deceitfully away;" as in another place (As You Like It) we find the "stealing hours of time."

It should be " death," as, a little before,

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You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of death;" yet in the quarto, 1615, it is in both places "life."

31. "I swear," &c.

A foot is wanting to the measure—

Mowb. "

"I swear, my liege,

And I, to keep all this."

32. "Banish'd this frail sepulchre of our flesh.

We find "sepulchre" differently accentuated; the second Act, Scene 1, it is sépulchre:

"As is the sépulchre in stubborn Jewry."

"And I from heávén banish'd as from hence! "But what thou art heav'n, thou, and I do know."

"Heaven," in the first of these lines, a dissyllable, and in the next a monosyllable. The useless preposition before "hence" might be dismissed by extending banished to its full quantity.

" And I from heaven banished, as hence." Or,

35.

"And I from heav'n be banished, as hence." -What presence must not know "From where you do remain, let paper shew."

As we cannot enjoy one another's presence, let us converse by letters.

"What is six winters? they are quickly

gone,

Bol. "To men in joy, but grief makes one hour ten."

A rhyme seems to have been designed here.

"What is six winters? they are quickly

gone,

Bol. "In joy, but grief makes ten hours out of

one."

Or, with less variation,

"To men in joy, but grief makes ten of one." 36. "Journey-man to grief."

The pitiful quibble which Dr. Johnson suspects to be designed here is too palpable.

"All places that the eye of heaven visits "Are to a wise man ports and happy havens." Mr. Davies observes, that these lines are evidently borrowed from Ovid :

"Omne solum forti patria est.”

Which is likewise imitated by Ben Jonson, in the Fox

Sir, to a wise man, all the world's his soil." And Seneca

"Excelso vir animo contristari exilio non debet."

The magnanimous words of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, when his ship was sinking, are extremely remarkable; that gallant officer was seen sitting in the stern of the ship with a book in his hand, and was heard to say, with a loud voice, "Cou

rage, my lads! we are as near heaven at sea as on LORD CHEDWORTH.

land."

There is no virtue like necessity."

There is no virtue so excellent as that which leads us to conform with cheerfulness to the mandates of necessity, to assimilate our inclinations to the decrees of fate, and to embrace that as a benefit which we should in vain resist as a misfortune the same sentiment, dilated, is found in As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity." &c.

"Think not the king did banish thee.”

I do not ave

There is something wanting here—perhaps the line ran thus:

"Thou must not think the king did banish thee.”

I find that Mr. Ritson has proposed a word to fill up the measure; but, as no conclusion is implied in Gaunt's speech, "therefore" will not agree with the context.

37.

38.

Faintly borne."

Borne with feebleness or dejection of mind. -Who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?" &c. A sentiment resembling this occurs in Romeo and Juliet

"He that is stricken blind cannot forget "The precious treasures of his eye-sight lost." The office, indeed, of the imagination in the distinct instances is reversed; in one it is active, in the other passive; here it is required to produce an effect, there to resist a consequence.

SCENE IV.

39. "We did observe.-Cousin Aumerle,” Something has been lost-perhaps the line ran

thus,

"We did observe it well, cousin Aumerle." 40. "

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Farewel:

And, for my heart disdained that my tongue."

We should read, without a fragment

"Farewel, and, for my heart disdain'd, my tongue Should," &c.

Affections, as in Othello

"The young affects, in me defunct." "The revenue whereof shall furnish us." And again, Act 2—

"The plate, coin, révenues, and moveables."

But not always thus-in King Lear we meet with

42.

"The sway, revenue," &c.

Bushy, what news ?”

This fragment is not in the quarto, 1615, and ought not to be here.

"Where does he lie?

At Ely-house, my liege."

"Pray God, we may make haste, and come too late!"

i. e. I hope death will overtake him before we can, even at our utmost speed.

ACT II. SCENE I.

"Unstay'd."

Unbridled, unrestrained.

43. "Lascivious metres."

The old copies read

meeters," which I

take to be, not verses, as Mr. Steevens supposes, but the rhymers themselves.

44. "For violent fires soon burn out themselves."

The particle "do" before "burn" is necessary to the euphony, unless, with Mr. Malone, our ear could admit of the extending "our" to a dissyllable.

45. "This precious stone, set in the silver sea.”

This thought, as Bishop Newton has observed, is imitated by Milton in Comus—

All the sea-girt isles

"That like to rich and various gems inlay "The unadorned bosom of the deep."

But Milton, says Mr. Warton (I think justly), has heightened the comparison, omitting Shakspear's petty conceit, the silver sea, the conception of a jeweller, and substituting another and more striking piece of imagery: this rich inlay, to use an expression in the Paradise Lost,