editors read garden, but orchard seems anciently to have had the same meaning. STEEVENS. → That these two words were anciently synonymous, appears from a line in this play: "he hath left you all his walks, orchards, and new-planted "On this side Tiber." MALONE. The number of treatises written on the subject of horticulture, even at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, very strongly controvert Mr. Malone's supposition relative to the unfrequency of gardens at so early a period. STEEVENS. Orchard was auciently written hort-yard hence its original meaning is obvious. HENLEY. By the following quotation, it will appear that these words had in the of Shakspeare acquired a distinct meaning, “It shall be good to have understanding of the ground where ye de plant either orchard or garden with fruite." A Booke of the Arte and maner howe to plant and graffe all sortes of trees, &c. 154. 10. And when Justice Shallow invites Falstaff to see his orchard, where they are to eat a last year's pippin of his own graffing, he certainly uses. the word in its present acceptation. Leland also in bis Itinerary distinguishes them. "At Morle in Derbyshire (says he) there is as much pleasure of orchards of great variety of frute, and fair made walks, and gardens, as in any place of Lancashire." HOLT WHITE. P. 22, 1. 25. 1261 The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power:] Remorse, for mercy. WARBURTON. Remorse (says Mr. Heath) signifies the conscious uneasiness arising from a sense of having done wrong; to extinguish which feeling, nothing hath so great a tendency as al absolute uncontrouled I think Warburton right., JOHNSON. power. Remorse is pity, tendernefs; and has twice occurred in that sense in Measure for Measure. The same word occurs in Othello, and several other of our author's dramas, with the same signification. STEEVENS. P. 22, 1.29. But is a common proof,] Common experiment. JOHNSON. Common proof means a matter proved by common experience. With great deference to Johnson, I cannot think that the word experiment will bear that meaning. M. MASON. P. 23, 1. 5. P23, 1. 11. base degrees] Low steps. JOHNSON. as his kind,] According to his nature. JOHNSON, " At his kind does not mean, according to his nature, as Johnson asserts, but like the rest of his species. M. MASON Wendy. Perhaps rather, as all those of his kind, that tisrature. MALONE HIGHTOWED enf Bab23,200 the sides of March 21 Old copy the first of March. We should read ides for we can never suppose the speaker to have lost fourteen days in his account, He is here plainly ruminating on what the soothsayer told Caesar Act. I, sc, ii) in bis presence. [ Beware the ides of March. The boy comes back and says, Sir, March is wasted fourteen days. So that the morrow was the ides of March, as he supposed. For March, May, July, and Oelober, had six nones each, so that the fifteenth of March was the ides of that month. WARBURTON. dod The correction was made by Mr. Theobald. The error must have been that of a transcriber or printer; for our author withont any minute calculation might have found the ides, nones, and kalends, opposite the respective days of the month, in the Almanacks of the time. In Hopton's Concordancie of yeares, 1616, now before me, opposite to the fifteenth of March is printed Idus. MALONE. P. 24, L. 16 - 22. Between the acting of a dreadful thing, And the first motion, all the interim is critic, Dionysiuson.] That nice that of all kind of complains, tin Hom those great strokes conspirators? graces, and which are , are the rarest to be found in the following writers, Amongst our countrymen, it seems to be as much confined to the British Homer. This description of the condition of before the execution of their design, has a pomp and terror in it that perfectly astoThe excellent Mr. Addison, whose moymade him sometimes diffident of his own t whose true judgement always led him to the safest guides (as we may see by those fine strokes in his Cato borrowed from the Philippies of Cicero) has paraphrased this fine description; hut we are no longer to expect those terrible graees which animate his original: t O think, what anxious moments pass be tween "The birth of plots, and their last fatal "Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Cato. I shall make two remarks on this fine imitation. The first is, that the subjects of the two conspiracies being so very different (the fortunes of Caesar and the Roman empire being concerned in the one; and that of a few auxiliary troops only in the other) Mr. Addison could not, with propriety, bring in that magnificent circumstance which gives one of the terrible graces of Shakspeare's description: The genius and the mortal instruments "Are then in council; For kingdoms, in the Pagan Theology, besides their good, had their evil genius's, likewise; represented here, with the most daring stretch of faucy, as sitting in consultation with the conspirators, whom he calls their mortal instruments. But this, as we say, would have been too pompous an apparatus to the rape and desertion of Syphax and Sempronius. The other thing observable is, that Mr. Addison was so struck and affected with these terrible graces in his original, that instead of imitating his author's sentiments, he hath, before he was aware, given us only the copy of his own impressions made by them. For, Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time, are but the affections raised by such forcible ima "Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream. the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then "The nature of an insurrection." 7 Comparing the troubled mind of a conspirator to a state of anarchy, is just and beautiful, but the interim or interval, to an hideous vision,vor a frightful dream, holds something so wonderfully of truth, and lays the soul so open, that one can hardly think it possible for any man, who had not some time or other been engaged in a conspiracy, to give such force of colouring to nature, WARBURTON. I The deivor of the Greek criticks does not, think, meau sentiments which raise fear, more than wonder, or any other of the tumultuous passions; to dɛivov is that which strikes, which astonishes with the idea either of some great subject, or of the author's abilities. Dr. Warburton's pompous criticism might well have been shortened. The genius is not the genius of a kingdom, nor are the instruments, conspirators. Shakspeare is describing what passes in a single bosom, the insurrection which a conspirator feels agitating the little kingdom of his own mind; when the genius, 2 or powerA That watches for his protection, and the mortal instruments, the passions, which excite him to a deed of honour and danger, are in council and debate; when the desire of action, and the care of safety keep the mind in continual fluctuation and disturbauce. JOHNSON. Johnson's explanation of the word instruments is confirmed by the following passage in Macbeth, whose mind was, at the time, in the very state which Brutus is here describing:fre 66 - I am settled, and bend up |