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Rom. Is the day fo young'?

Ben. But new truck nine.

Rom. Ah me! fad hours feem long.

Was that my father that went hence fo fast?

Ben. It was:-What fadnefs lengthens Romeo's hours?
Rom.Not having that, which, having, makes them short.

Ben. In love?

Rom. Out

Ben. Of love?

Rom. Out of her favour, where I am in love, Ben. Alas, that love, fo gentle in his view, Should be fo tyrannous and rough in proof!

Rom. Alas, that love, whose view is muffled ftill, Should, without eyes, fee path-ways to his will 2 ! Where fhall we dine?-O`me!-What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.

Here's much to do with hate, but more with love:-
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!

O heavy

Is the day fa young?] i. e. is it fo early in the day? The fame expreffion (which might once have been popular) I meet with in AcoJaftus, a comedy, 1540: "It is yet young nygbte, or there is yet much of the nighte to come." STEEVENS.

2-to bis will!] The meaning may be, that love finds out means to pursue his defire. JOHNSON.

It is not unufual for those who are blinded by love to overlook every difficulty that oppofes their purfuit. NICHOLS.

This paffage feems to have been mifapprehended. Benvolio has lamented that the God of love, who appears fo gentle, fhould be a tyrant. It is no lefs to be lamented, adds Romeo, that the blind god fhould yet be able to direct his arrows at thofe whom he wishes to hit, that he should wound whomever he wills, or defires to wound.

The quarto 1597, reads

Should, without laws, give path-ways to our will! This reading is the most intelligible. STEEVENS.

MALONE.

3 Why then, O brawling love! &c] Of thefe lines neither the fenfe nor occafion is very evident. He is not yet in love with an enemy; and to love one and hate another is no fuch uncommon ftate, as can deserve all this toil of antithefis. JOHNSON.

Had Dr. Johnfon attended to the letter of invitation in the next fcene, he would have found that Rofaline was niece to Capulet.

ANONYMUS.

O heavy lightnefs! ferious vanity!

Mif-fhapen chaos of well-feeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, fick health!
Still-waking fleep, that is not what it is!-

This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

Doft thou not laugh?

Ben. No, coz, I rather weep.
Rom. Good heart, at what?

Ben. At thy good heart's oppreffion.

Rom. Why, fuch is love's tranfgreffion *.-
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast;
Which thou wilt propagate, to have it preft
With more of thine: this love, that thou haft shown,
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.

Every fonnetteer characterifes love by contratieties. Watson begins one of his canzonets:

"Love is a fowre delight, a fugred griefe.

"A living death, an ever-dying life," &c.

Turberville makes Reafon harangue against it in the fame manner : "A fieric froft, a flame that frozen is with ife!

"A heavie burden light to beare! a vertue fraught with vice!"

&c.

Immediately from the Romaunt of the Roje:
"Love it is an hatefull pees,

"A free aquitaunce without reles,
"An beavie burthen light to beare,
"A wicked wawe awaie to weare:

"And health full of maladie,
"And charitie full of envie ;-

"A laughter that is weping aie,

"Reft that trauaileth night and daie," &c.

This kind of antithefts was very much the taste of the Provençal and Italian poets; perhaps it might be hinted by the ode of Sappho preferved by Longinus. Petrarch is full of it:

Pace non trovo, e non hó da far guerra,
"E temo, e fpero, e ardo, e fon un ghiaccio,
"E volo fopra'l cielo, e ghiaccio in terra,.

E nulla ftringo, e tutto'l mondo abbraccio," Son. 105.

Sir Tho. Wyat gives a tranflation of this fonnet, without any notice of the original, under the title of "Defeription of the contraricus Paffions in a Louer," amongst the Songes and Sonnettes, by the Earle of Surrey, and others, 1574. FARMER.

4 Why, fuck is love's tranfgreffion. Such is the confequence of unfkilful and miftaken kindness. JOHNSON.

Love is a fmoke rais'd with the fume of fighs;
Being purg'd, a fire fparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a fea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it elfe? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Farewel, my coz.

Ben. Soft, I will go along;

An if you leave me fo, you do me wrong.

Rom. Tut, I have loft myfelf; I am not here;
This is not Romeo, he's fome other where.

Ben. Tell me in sadness', who she is you love.
Rom. What, fhall I groan, and tell thee?
Ben. Groan? why, no;

But fadly tell me, who.

[going

Rom. Bid a fick man in fadness make his will:Ah, word ill urg'd to one that is fo ill!—

In fadnefs, coufin, I do love a woman.

Ben. I aim'd fo near, when I fuppos'd you lov'd.

Rom. A right good marks-man!-And fhe's fair

love.

Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is foonest hit.
Rom. Well, in that hit, you mifs: fhe'll not be hit.
With Cupid's arrow, fhe hath Dian's wit;
And, in ftrong proof of chaflity well arm'd3,

From

5 Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;] The authour may mean being purged of smoke, but it is perhaps a meaning never given to the word in any other place. I would rather read, Being urg'd, a fire fparkling,-.Being excited and inforced. To urge the fire is the technical term. JOHNSON.

6 Being vex'd, &c.] As this line ftands fingle, it is likely that the foregoing or following line that rhymed to it is loft. JOHNSON.

It does not feem neceffary to fuppofe any line loft. In the former fpeech about love's contrarieties, there are feveral lines which have no other to rhime with them; as alfo in the following, about Rofaline's chastity. STEEVENS.

7 Tell me in fadness,] That is, tell me gravely, tell me in ferious*fs. JOHNSON.

See Vol. II. p. 223, n. I. MALONE.

8 And, in ftrong proof of chastity well arm'd, &c.] As this play was written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, I cannot help regarding these fpeeches of Romeo as an oblique compliment to her majefty, who was Vo. X.

not

From love's weak childish bow fhe lives unharm'd.
She will not stay the fiege of loving terms,
Nor bide the encounter of affailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to faint-feducing gold:
O, the is rich in beauty; only poor,

That, when the dies, with beauty dies her store.

Ben. Then the hath fworn, that fhe will still live chafte ?

not liable to be difpleafed at hearing her chastity praised after the was fufpected to have loft it, or her beauty commended in the 67th year of her age, though the never pofletied any when he was young. Her declaration that the would continue unmarried, increases the probability of the prefent fuppofition. STEEVENS.

-in ftrong proof] In chaflity of proof; as we fay in armour of proof. JOHNSON. 9 She will not flay the siege of loving terms,] So, in our authour's Venus and Adonis:

"Remove your fiege from my unyielding heart;

"To love's alarm it will not ope the gate." MALONE.

with beauty dies ber fore.] Mr. Theobald reads, "With her dies beauty's fore;" and is followed by the two fucceeding editors. I have replaced the old reading, because I think it at least as plaufible as the correction. She is rich, fays he, in beauty, and only poor in being fubject to the lot of humanity, that ber ftore, or riches, can be deftroyed by death, who shall, by the same blow, put an end to beauty. JOHNSON.

Words are fometimes fhuffled out of their places at the prefs; but that they should be at once transposed and corrupted, is highly improbable. I have no doubt that the old copies are right. She is rich in beauty; and poor in this circumftance alone, that with her, beauty will expire; her ftore of wealth [which the poet has already faid was the fairness of her perfon,] will not be tranfmitted to pofterity, inafmuch as fhe will lead her graces to the grave, and leave the world ne copy." MALONE.

Theobald's alteration may be countenanced by the following paffage in Swetnam Arraign'd, a comedy, 1620:

"Nature now fhall boaft no more
"Of the riches of her ftore;

"Since, in this her chiefest prize,

"All the stock of beauty dies."

Again, in the 14th Sonnet of Shakspeare:

"Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date."

Again, in Mailinger's Virgin-Martyr:

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with her dies

"The abstract of all sweetness that's in woman."

STEEVENS.

Rom.

Rom. She hath, and in that fparing makes huge

wafte 2;

For beauty, ftarv'd with her feverity,
Cuts beauty off from all pofterity 3.
She is too fair, too wife; wifely too fair4,
To merit blifs by making me despair:
She hath forfworn to love; and, in that vow,
Do I live dead, that live to tell it now.

Ben. Be rul'd by me, forget to think of her.
Rom. O, teach me how I thould forget to think.
Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes;
Examine other beauties.

Rom. 'Tis the way

To call hers, exquifite, in queftion more:
These happy maiks, that kifs fair ladies' brows,

2 She bath, and in that sparing makes bage wafte;] So, in our au thour's First Sonnet :

"And, tender churl, mak'ft wafle in niggarding." MALONE. 3 For beauty, farv'd with her feverity,

Cuts beauty off from all pofterity.] So, in our authour's Third

Sonnet :

"Or who is he fo fond will be the tomb

"Of his felf-love, to flop pofterity ?"

Again, in his Venus and Adonis:

"What is thy body but a fwallowing grave,
"Seeming to bury that pofterity,

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Which by the rights of time thou needs must have -¿"

MALONE.

-wifely too fair, &c.] There is in her too much fanctimonious wifdom united with beauty, which induces her to continue chate with the hopes of attaining heavenly blifs. MALONE.

None of the following fpeeches of this fcene are in the first edition of 1597. POPE.

5 Do I live dead,] So Richard the Third:

"now they kill me with a living death."

See Vol. VI. p. 467, n. 7.

MALONE.

5 in question more.] More into talk; to make her unparalleled beauty more the fubject of thought and converfation. See Vol. III. P. 77, n. 2. MALONE.

7 These bappy masks, &c.] i. e. the masks worn by female spectators of the play. Former editors print thofe instead of thefe, but without authority. STEEVENS.

Thefe happy malks, I believe, means no more than the happy masks. Such is Mr. Tyrwhitt's opinion. See Vol. II. p. 53, n. 5. MALONE, Being

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