HUB. Of the part of England. BAST. Whither doft thou go? HUB. What's that to thee? Why may not I demand Of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine? BAST. Hubert, I think. HUB. Thou haft a perfect thought: 3 I will, upon all hazards, well believe Thou art my friend, that know'ft my tongue fo well: Who art thou? BAST. Who thou wilt: an if thou please, Thou may'st befriend me so much, as to think I come one way of the Plantagenets. HUB. Unkind remembrance! thou, and eyelefs night,' Cymbeline: perfect thought:] i. e. a well-informed one. I am perfe&; "That the Pannonians," &c. STEEVENS. So, in 9—thou, and eyelefs night,] The old copy reads-endless. STEEVENS. We should read eyelefs. So, Pindar calls the moon, the eye of night. WARBURTON. This epithet I find in Jarvis Markham's English Arcadia, 1607: "O eyeless night, the portraiture of death!" Again, in Gower De Confeffione Amantis, Lib. V. fol. 102. b: "The daie made ende, and lofte his fight, "And comen was the darke night, "The whiche all the daies eie blent." STEEVENS. The emendation was made by Mr. Theobald. With Pindar our author had certainly no acquaintance; but, I believe, the correction is right. Shakspeare has, however, twice applied the epithet endless to night, in K. Richard II: Again: "Then thus I turn me from my country's light, "My oil-dry'd-lamp "Shall be extinct with age and endless night." But in the latter of thefe paffages a natural, and in the former, a kind of civil, death, is alluded to. In the prefent paffage the epithet Have done me fhame:-Brave foldier, pardon me, That any accent, breaking from thy tongue, Should 'fcape the true acquaintance of mine ear. BAST. Come, come; fans compliment, what news abroad? HUB. Why, here walk I, in the black brow of night, To find you out. BAST. Brief, then; and what's the news? HUB. O, my fweet fir, news fitting to the night, Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible. BAST. Show me the very wound of this ill news; I am no woman, I'll not fwoon at it. HUB. The king, I fear, is poifon'd by a monk :" I left him almost speechlefs, and broke out To acquaint you with this evil; that you might The better arm you to the fudden time, Than if you had at leifure known of this.* endless is inadmiffible, becaufe, if understood literally, it is falfe. On the other hand eyelefs is peculiarly applicable. The emendation is alfo fupported by our author's Rape of Lucrece: "Poor grooms are fightless night; kings, glorious day." MALONE. 9 The king, I fear, is poifon'd by a monk:] Not one of the hiftorians who wrote within fixty years after the death of King John, mentions this very improbable ftory. The tale is, that a monk, to revenge himself on the king for a faying at which he took offence, poifon'd a cup of ale, and having brought it to his majesty, drank fome of it himself to induce the king to tafte it, and foon afterwards expired. Thomas Wykes is the first who relates it in his Chronicle, as a report. According to the best accounts John died at Newark, of a fever. MALONE. 2 that you might The better arm you to the fudden time, Than if you had at leifure known of this.] That you might be able to prepare inftantly for the fudden revolution in affairs which the king's death will occafion, in a better manner than you could have done, if you had not known of it till the event had actually happened, and the kingdom was reduced to a ftate of compofure and quiet. MALONE. BAST. How did he take it? who did tafte to him? And brought prince Henry in their company; BAST. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven, And tempt us not to bear above our power! I doubt, he will be dead, or ere I come. [Excunt. SCENE VII. The Orchard of Swinstead-Abbey. Enter Prince HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT. P. HEN. It is too late; the life of all his blood Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain 4 3 Why, know you not? the lords, &c.] Perhaps we ought to point thus: Why know you not, the lords are all come back, And brought prince Henry in their company? MALONE. 4 Is touch'd corruptibly;] i. e. corruptively. Such was the phrafeology of Shak fpeare's age. So, in his Rape of Lucrece: "The Romans plaufibly did give confent-." i. e. with acclamations. Here we fhould now fay-plaufively. MALONE. (Which some suppose the foul's frail dwelling houfe,) Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, Enter PEMBROKE. PEMB. His highness yet doth speak; and holds belief, That, being brought into the open air, Of that fell poifon which affaileth him. P. HEN. Let him be brought into the orchard here. Doth he still rage? [Exit BIGOT. PEMB. P. HEN. O vanity of ficknefs! fierce extremes, In their continuance,' will not feel themselves. Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them infenfible; and his fiege is now Against the mind," the which he pricks and wounds 5 In their continuance,] I fufpect our author wrote-In thy continuance. In his Sonnets the two words are frequently confounded. If the text be right, continuance means continuity. Bacon ufes the word in that fenfe. MALONE. 6 Leaves them infenfible; and his fiege is now Against the mind,] The old copy reads-invifible. STEEVENS. As the word invifible has no fenfe in this paffage, I have no doubt but the modern editors are right in reading infenfible, which agrees with the two preceding lines: - fierce extremes, In their continuance, will not feel themselves. Against the mind, &c. The laft lines are evidently intended as a paraphrafe, and confirmation of the two firft. M. MASON. With many legions of strange fantasies; Invifible is here ufed adverbially. Death, having glutted himfelf with the ravage of the almoft wafted body, and knowing that the disease with which he has affailed it is mortal, before its diffolution, proceeds, from mere fatiety, to attack the mind, leaving the body invifibly; that is, in fuch a fecret manner that the eye cannot precifely mark his progress, or fee when his attack on the vital powers has ended, and that on the mind begins; or in other words, at what particular moment reafon ceases to perform its function, and the understanding, in confequence of a corroding and mortal malady, begins to be disturbed. Our poet in his Venus and Adonis calls Death," invifible commander." Henry is here only purfuing the fame train of thought which we find in his first speech in the present scene. Our author has, in many other paffages in his plays used adjectives adverbially. So, in All's well that ends well: "Was it not meant damnable in us," &c. Again, in K. Henry IV. Part I: ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient." See Vol. VI. p. 318, n. 9. and K. Henry IV. A& IV. fc. ii. Mr. Rowe reads her fiege-, an error derived from the corruption of the fecond folio. I fufpect, that this ftrange mistake was Mr. Gray's authority for making Death a female; in which, I believe, he has neither been preceded or followed by any poet: "The painful family of Death, "More hideous than their queen." The old copy, in the paffage before us, reads-Against the wind; an evident error of the prefs, which was corrected by Mr. Pope, and which I should scarcely have mentioned, but that it juftifies an emendation made in Measure for Measure, [Vol. IV. P. 247, n. 9.] where by a fimilar miftake the word flawes appears in the old copy inftead of flames. MALONE. Mr. Malone reads: Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, Leaves them invisible; &c. As often as I am induced to differ from the opinions of a gentleman whose laborious diligence in the cause of Shakspeare is without example, I fubject myself to the moft unwelcome part of editorial duty. Succefs, however, is not in every inftance proportionable to zeal and effort; and he who fhrinks from controverfy, should also have avoided the vestibulum ipsum, primafque fauces of the fchool of Shakspeare. Sir Thomas Hanmer gives us—infenfible, which affords a meaning fufficiently commodious. But as invifible and infenfible are not |