hyrd, meaning a keeper or tender (the modern German hirt); our one form for both being now herd.

128. My answer must be made.—I must answer for what I have said.

129. To such a man, That is, etc.-Vid. 57.-To fleer, (or flear, as is the old spelling) is to mock, or laugh at. The word appears to have come to us from the Norse or Scandinavian branch of the Gothic,-one of the roots of our English tongue which recent philology has almost abjured, although, besides all else, we owe to it even forms of such perpetual occurrence as the are of the substantive verb and the ordinary sign of our modern genitive (for such a use of the preposition of, common to us with the Swedish, is unknown to the old Anglo-Saxon, although we have it in full activity in the Semi-Saxon, as it is called, of the twelfth century).

129. Hold, my hand.-That is, Stop, there is my hand. The comma is distinctly marked in the early editions.

129. Be factious for redress of all these griefs.Here factious seems to mean nothing more than active or urgent, although everywhere else, I believe, in Shakespeare the word is used in the same disreputable sense which it has at present. Griefs (the form still used in the French language, and retained in our own with another meaning) is his by far more common word for what we now call grievances, although he has that form too occasionally (which Milton nowhere employs). Vid. 436.

130. To undergo, with me, an enterprise.-We should now rather say to undertake where there is anything to be done.

130. Of honourable, dangerous.-These two words were perhaps intended to make a compound adjective, although the hyphen with which they are connected by most of the modern editors is not in the oldest printed text. The language does not now, at least in serious composition, indulge in compounds of this description.

130. By this they stay for me.-That is, by this time. And it is a mode of expression which, like so many others which the language once possessed, we have now lost. Yet we still say, in the same sense, ere this, before this, after this, the preposition in these phrases being felt to be suggestive of the notion of time in a way that by is not.

130. There is no .. walking.—In another connexion this might mean, that there was no possibility of walking; but here the meaning apparently is that there was no walking going on.

130. The complexion of the element. That is, of the heaven, of the sky. North, in his Plutarch, speaks of "the fires in the element."

130. In favour's like the work.—The reading in all the Folios is "Is favors" (or "favours" for the Third and Fourth). The present reading, which is that generally adopted, was first proposed by Johnson; and it has the support, it seems, of Mr. Collier's MS. annotator. Favour, as we have seen (Vid. 54), means aspect, appearance, features. Another emendation that has been proposed (by Steevens) is "Is favoured." But to say that the complexion of a thing is either featured like, or in feature like, to something else is very like a tautology. I should be strongly inclined to adopt Reed's ingenious conjecture, "Is feverous,"

which he supports by quoting from Macbeth, ii. 3, 66 Some say the earth Was feverous and did shake." So also in Coriolanus, i. 4; "Thou mad'st thine enemies shake, as if the world Were feverous and did tremble." Feverous is exactly the sort of word that, if not very distinctly written, would be apt to puzzle and be mistaken by a compositor. It may perhaps count, too, for something, though not very much, against both "favour's like" and "favoured like" that a very decided comma separates the two words in the original edition.

134. One incorporate to our attempts.-One of our body, one united with us in our enterprise. The expression has probably no more emphatic import.

135. There's two or three.-The contraction there's is still used indifferently with a singular or a plural; though there is scarcely would be.

136. Am I not staid for.-This is the original reading, which has been restored by Mr. Knight. The common modern reading is, "Am I not staid for, Cinna;" the last word being inserted (and that without notice, which is unpardonable) only to satisfy the supposed demands of the prosody.

137. This speech stands thus in the First Folio:"Yes, you are. O Cassius

If you could but winne the Noble Brutus

To our party-.”

The common metrical arrangement is :

You are.

"Yes,

O Cassius, if you could but win

The noble Brutus to our party."

No person either having or believing himself to have

a true feeling of the Shakespearian rhythm can be

lieve this to be right. Nor am I better satisfied with Mr. Knight's distribution of the lines, although it is adopted by Mr. Collier :

"Yes, you are.

O, Cassius, if you could but win the noble Brutus,
To our party;"

which gives us an extended line equally unmusical and undignified whether read rapidly or slowly, followed (to make matters worse which were bad enough already) by what could scarcely make the commencement of any kind of line. I cannot doubt that, whatever we are to do with "Yes, you are,”—whether we make these comparatively unimportant words the completion of the line of which Cassius's question forms the beginning, or take them along with what follows, which would give us a line wanting only the first syllable (and deriving, perhaps, from that mutilation an abruptness suitable to the occasion)-the close of the rhythmic flow must be as I have given. it:

"O, Cassius, if you could

But win the noble Brutus to our party."

138. Where Brutus may but find it.—If but be the true word (and be not a misprint for best), the meaning must be, Be sure you lay it in the prætor's chair, only taking care to place it so that Brutus may be sure

to find it.

138. Upon old Brutus' statue.-Lucius Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins, the reputed ancestor of Marcus Lucius Brutus; also alluded to in 56, "There was a Brutus once," etc.

139. I will hie.-To hie (meaning to hasten) is used reflectively, as well as intransitively, but not other

wise as an active verb. Its root appears to be the A.S. hyge, meaning mind, study, earnest application; whence the various verbal forms hyggan, hygian, hiegan, higgan, higian, hogian, hugian, and perhaps others. Hug is probably another modern derivative from the

same root.

139. And so bestow these papers.-This use of bestow (for to place, or dispose of) is now gone out; though something of it still remains in stow.

140. Pompey's theatre.—The same famous structure of Pompey's, opened with shows and games of unparalleled cost and magnificence some ten or twelve years before the present date, which has been alluded to in 130 and 138.

142. You have right well conceited.-To conceit is another form of our still familiar to conceive. And the noun conceit, which survives with a limited meaning (the conception of a man by himself, which is so apt to be one of over-estimation), is also frequent in Shakespeare with the sense, nearly, of what we now call conception, in general. So in 349. Sometimes it is used in a sense which might almost be said to be the opposite of what it now means; as when Juliet (in Romeo and Juliet, ii. 5) employs it as the term to denote her all-absorbing affection for Romeo :

"Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:

They are but beggars that can count their worth;
But my true love is grown to such excess,
I cannot sum the sum of half my wealth."