That, laps'd in time and paffion, let's go by
Th' important acting of your dread command?
O fay!

Ghost. Do not forget: this vifitation

Is but to whet thy almoft blunted purpose.
But, look! amazement on thy mother fits;
O ftep between her and her fighting foul:
Conceit in weakest bodies ftrongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.

Ham. How is it with you, Lady?
Queen. Alas, how is't with

you ?

That thus you bend your eye on vacancy,
And with th' incorporal air do hold difcourfe?
Forth at your eyes your fpirits wildly peep,
And, as the fleeping foldiers in th' alarm,
Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, (53).
Start up, and stand on end. O gentle fon,
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper

(53) Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,

Sprinkle

Start up and ftand on end.] I took notice in my SHAKESPEARE Refter'd, that this expreflion as much wanted an explanation, as any the most antiquated word in our Poet wants a glofs. Mr. Hughes, in his impreffion of this play, has left it out: either because he could make nothing of it, or thought it alluded to an image too naufeous. The Poet's meaning is founded on a phyfical determination, that the hair and nails are excrementitious parts of the body (as indeed they are) without life or fenfation. MACROBIUS, in his Saturnalia, (lib. vii. cap. 9.) not only fpeaks of thofe parts of the human body which have no fenfation; but likewife affigns the reasons, why they can have none. Offa, dentes, cum unguibus & capillis, nimia ficcitate ità denfata funt, ut penetrabilia non fint effectui animæ qui fenfum miniftrat. Therefore the Poet means to fay, fear and furprize had fuch an effect upon Hamlet, that his hairs, as if there were life in those excrementitious parts, started up and stood on end. He has exprefs'd the fame thought more plainly in Macbeth.

and my fell of bair

Would at a difmal treatife rowze, and ftir,
As life were in't.

That our Poet was acquainted with this notion in phyfics, of the hair being without life, we need no ftronger warrant, than that he frequently mentions it as an excrement.

Why is time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful

an excrement.

VOL. VIII,

I

Comedy of Errors.
How

Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?
Ham. On him!on him!--look you, how pale he glares
His form and caufe conjoin'd, preaching to ftones,
Would make them capable. Do not look on me,
Left with this piteous action you convert

My stern effects; then what I have to do,
Will want true colour; tears, perchance, for blood.
Queen. To whom do you speak this?

Ham. Do you fee nothing there? [Pointing to the Gh,
Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is, I fee.
Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.

Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it fteals away!

My father in his habit as he liv'd!

Look, where he goes ev'n now, out at the portal.

Exit Ghof. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain, This bodilefs creation ecstasy Is very cunning in.

Ham. What ecftasy?

My pulfe, as yours, doth temp'rately keep time,
And makes as healthful mufick. 'Tis not madness
That I have utter'd; bring me to the teft,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, from love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your foul,
That not your trefpafs, but my madness, speaks:
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place; (54)

How many cowards, whofe hearts are all as falfe
As ftairs of fand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules, and frowning Mars;
Who, inward fearch'd, have livers white as milk?
And these affume but valour's excrement
To render them redoubted.

For I must tell thee, it will please his grace
time to lean upon my poor fhoulder, and with
dally with my excrement, with my muftachio.
&c. &c.

Whilft

Merchant of Venice.

(by the world!) fomehis royal finger thus Love's Labour Lofte

(54) It will but skin and film the ulcerous place Whilft rank corruption, running all within, Infects unfeen.] So, our Poet elfe where fpeaking of the force of power;

Becaut

Whilft rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unfeen. Confefs yourself to heav'n;
Repent what's past, avoid what is to come;
And do not fpread the compoft on the weeds
To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;
For, in the fatness of these purfy times,
Virtue itself of vice muft pardon beg,

Yea, courb, and wooe, for leave to do it good.

Queen. Oh Hamlet! thou haft cleft my heart in twain. Ham. O, throw away the worfer part of it,

And live the purer with the other half.

Good night; but go not to mine uncle's bed:
Affume a virtue, if he have it not.

That monfter cuftom, who all fense doth eat (55)

Becaufe authority, tho' it err like others,

Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o'th' top.

Meaf. for Meaf.

But why, in the paffage before us, has Mr. Pope given us a reading that is warranted by none of the copies, and degraded one, that has the countenance of all of them?

Whilft rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unfeen.

The Poet defcribes corruption as having a corrofive quality, eating. its fecret way, and undermining the parts that are fkin'd over, and seem sound to exteriour view. He, in another place, uses the fimple verb for the compound.

He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my education.

(55) That monfter custom, who all fense doth eat,

Of babit's devil, is angel yet in this;
That to the use of actions fair and good

He likewife gives a frock, or livery,

As You Like it.

That aptly is put on.] This paffage is left out in the two elder folios: it is certainly corrupt, and the players did the difcreet part to fifle what they did not understand. Habit's devil certainly arose from fome conceited tamperer with the text, who thought it was ne ceffary, in contraft to angel. The emendation of the text I owe to the fagacity of Dr. Thirlby.

That monfter cuftom, who all fenfe doth eat,

Of habits evil, is angel, &c.

i. e. Cuftom, which by inuring us to ill habits, makes us lose the apprehenfion of their being really ill, as cafily will reconcile us to the practice of good actions.

Of

Of habits evil, is angel yet in this;
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewife gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night;
And that shall lend a kind of eafinefs

To the next abftinence; the next, more easy;
For use can almost change the ftamp of Nature,
And mafter e'en the Devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency. Once more, good night!
And when you are defirous to be blest,
I'll Bleffing beg of you.-For this fame Lord,

[Pointing to Polonius.
I do repent: but heav'n hath pleas'd it fo,
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minifter.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him; fo, again, good night!
I must be cruel, only to be kind;

Thus bad begins, and worfe remains behind.
Queen. What shall I do?

do.

Ham. Not this by no means, that I bid you
Let the fond King tempt you again to bed;
Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his moufe ;
And let him, for a pair of reechy kiffes,

Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,

That I effentially am not in madness,

But mad in craft. 'Twere good, you let him know.
For who that's but a Queen, fair, fober, wife,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gibbe,
Such dear concernings hide? who would do fo
No, in defpight of fenfe and fecrecy,

Unpeg the basket on the houses' top,
Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,
To try conclufions, in the basket creep;

And break your own neck down.

Queen. Be thou affur'd, if words be made of breath,

And breath of Life, I have no life to breathe

What thou haft faid to me.

Ham. I must to England, you know that?

Queen

Queen. Alack, I had forgot; 'tis fo concluded on.
Ham. There'sletters feal'd, and my two school-fellows,
A hom I will truft, as I will adders fang'd ;)
They bear the mandate; they muft fweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery: let it work.
For 'tis the sport, to have the engineer

Hoift with his own petard and t fhall go hard,
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon.

O, 'tis moft fweet,

When in one line two crafts directly meet!
This man fhall fet me packing;

I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room;
Mother, good-night.-Indeed, this Counsellor
Is now most ftill, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish prating knave.
Come, Sir, to draw toward an end with you.
Good-night, mother.

[Exit Hamlet, tugging in Polonius.

ACT IV.

SCENE, A Royal Apartment.

Enter King and Queen, with Rofincrantz and
Guildenstern.

KING.

THERE's matter in these fighs; these profound

You must tranflate; 'tis fit we understand them.

Where is your fon?

Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.

[To Rof. and Guild, who go out.

Ah, my good Lord, what have I feen to-night?
King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

Queen, Mad as the feas, and wind, when both contend

I 3

Which