of thou. We have a similar irregularity in Fare (that is, go) thee well.-The marginal "Whispering" at this speech is modern; and so is the "Whispers him" at 765. 771. That it runs over. So that, as in 15.

774. Here in Philippi fields.—A common enough form of expression; as Chelsea Fields, Kensington Gardens. There is no need of an apostrophe to Philippi.

776. Hold thou my sword hilts.—Vid. 726.

66

778. There is no tarrying here.-So in Macbeth, v. 5, "There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here." The expression is from North's Plutarch :-" Volumnius denied his request, and so did many others. And, amongst the rest, one of them said, there was no tarrying for them there, but that they must needs fly."

779. Farewell to you;-etc.-Mr Collier appends the stage direction," Shaking hands severally."

779. Farewell to thee too, Strato.-In all the Folios this stands;—" Farewell to thee, to Strato." The correction is one of the many made by Theobald which have been universally acquiesced in. It appears to have escaped Mr Collier's MS. annotator.

781. Hence; I will follow.—This is the reading of all the old copies. Pope added thee, in order to make a complete line of the two hemistichs.—The “Exeunt Clitus,” etc., is modern.

781. Thou art a fellow of a good respect.-Vid. 48.

781. Thy life hath had some smatch of honour in it.— Smatch is only another form of smack, meaning taste. Smack is the word which Shakespeare commonly uses, both as noun and verb.

In the early editions, the stage direction after the last speech of Brutus (783) is, simply, "Dies;" and in the Entry that follows Antony is placed before Octavius, and "their Army" is "the Army."

788. I will entertain them.-Receive them into my service.

788. Wilt thou bestow thy time with me?-Here is another sense of bestow, in addition to that in 139, which is now lost. Bestow thy time with me means give up thy time to me.

789. If Messala will prefer me to you.-"To prefer," Reed observes, "seems to have been the established phrase for recommending a servant." And he quotes from The Merchant of Venice, ii. 2, what Bassanio says to Launcelot,

"Shylock, thy master, spoke with me this day,
And hath preferred thee."

It

But to prefer was more than merely to recommend. was rather to transfer, or hand over; as might be inferred even from what Octavius here rejoins, "Do so, good Messala." That it had come usually to imply also something of promotion may be seen from what Bassanio goes on to say:

-"if it be preferment

To leave a rich Jew's service, to become
The follower of so poor a gentleman."

The sense of the verb to prefer that we have in Shakespeare continued current down to a considerably later date. Thus, Clarendon writes of Lord Cottington : "His mother was a Stafford, nearly allied to Sir Edward Stafford; ... by whom this gentleman was brought up, ... and by him recommended to Sir Robert Cecil . . . ; who preferred him to Sir Charles Cornwallis, when he went ambassador into Spain; where he remained for the space of eleven or twelve years in the condition of Secretary or Agent, without ever returning into England in all that time" (Hist., Book xiii.).

At an earlier date, again, we have Bacon, in the Dedication of the first edition of his Essays to his brother Anthony, thus writing:-Since they would not stay with their master, but would needs travail abroad, I have pre

ferred them to you, that are next myself, dedicating them, such as they are, to our love," &c.

791. How died my master, Strato?-So the First Folio. The Second, by a misprint, omits master. The Third and Fourth have "my lord."

793. Octavius, then take him, etc.-That is, accept or receive him from me. It is not, I request you to allow him to enter your service; but I give him to you. 789.

Vid.

794. He only, in a generous nonest thought of common good, etc.-We are indebted for this reading to Mr Collier's MS. annotator. It is surely a great improvement upon the old text

"He only in a general honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them."

To act "in a general honest thought" is perhaps intelligible, though barely so; but, besides the tautology which must be admitted on the common interpretation, what is to act in "a common good to all ?"

794. Made one of them.-In this still familiar idiom made is equivalent to formed, constituted, and one must be considered as the accusative governed by it. Fecit unum ex eis, or eorum (by joining himself to them).

Here is the prose of Plutarch, as translated by North, out of which this poetry has been wrought :-" For it was said that Antonius spake it openly divers times, that he thought, that, of all them that had slain Cæsar, there was none but Brutus only that was moved to it as thinking the act commendable of itself; but that all the other conspirators did conspire his death for some private malice or envy that they otherwise did bear unto him.”

794. His life was gentle; and the elements, etc.--This passage is remarkable from its resemblance to a passage in Drayton's poem of The Barons' Wars. Drayton's poem was originally published some years before the close

...

of the sixteenth century (according to Ritson, Bibl. Poet., under the title of “Mortemeriados. Printed by J. R. for Matthew Lownes, 1596," 4to); but there is, it seems, no trace of the passage in question in that edition. The first edition in which it is found is that of 1608, in which it stands thus:

"Such one he was (of him we boldly say)

In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit,

In whom in peace the elements all lay

So mixt, as none could sovereignty impute;

As all did govern, yet all did obey:

His lively temper was so absolute,

That 't seemed, when heaven his model first began,
In him it showed perfection in a man.”

In a subsequent edition published in 1619 it is remodelled as follows:

"He was a man (then boldly dare to say)

In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit;

In whom so mixt the elements all lay
That none to one could sovereignty impute;
As all did govern, so did all obey:
He of a temper was so absolute,

As that it seemed, when nature him began,
She meant to show all that might be in man."

Malone, who holds that Shakespeare's play of Julius Cæsar was probably produced about 1607, is inclined to think that Drayton was the copyist, even as his verses originally stood. "In the altered stanza," he adds, “he certainly was." Steevens, in the mistaken notion that Drayton's stanza as found in the edition of his Barons' Wars published in 1619 had appeared in the original poem, published, as he conceives, in 1598, had supposed that Shakespeare had in this instance deigned to imitate or borrow from his contemporary.

795. To part the glories of this happy day.-That is, to distribute to each man his due share in its glories.— The original stage direction is "Exeunt omnes."