Of evils imminent.—This conjectural emendation appears to be Warburton's; but it is also adopted by Mr. Collier, and possibly may have the sanction of his manuscript annotator. The reading in all the old copies is "And evils."

247. For tinctures, etc.-Tinctures and stains are understood both by Malone and Steevens as carrying an allusion to the practice of persons dipping their handkerchiefs in the blood of those whom they regarded as martyrs. And it must be confessed that the general strain of the passage, and more especially the expression "shall press for tinctures," etc., will not easily allow us to reject this interpretation. Yet does it not make the speaker assign to Cæsar by implication the very kind of death Calphurnia's apprehension of which he professes to regard as visionary? The pressing for tinctures and stains, it is true, would be a confutation of so much of Calphurnia's dream as seemed to imply that the Roman people would be delighted with his death,—

"Many lusty Romans

Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it."

Do we refine too much in supposing that this inconsistency between the purpose and the language of Decius is intended by the poet, and that in this brief dialogue between him and Cæsar, in which the latter suffers himself to be so easily won over,-persuaded and relieved by the very words that ought naturally to have confirmed his fears, we are to feel the presence of an unseen power driving on both the unconscious prophet and the blinded victim? Compare 408.

Johnson takes both tinctures and cognizance in the heraldic sense as meaning distinctive marks of honour and armorial bearings (in part denoted by colours). But the stains and relics are not so easily to be accounted for on this supposition; neither would it be very natural to say that men should press to secure such distinctions. The speech altogether Johnson characterizes as "intentionally pompous" and "somewhat confused."

249. The senate have concluded.-To conclude, for to resolve, is one of numerous expressions, which, although no longer used, are nevertheless almost as universally intelligible as ever. They are the veterans, or emeriti, of the language, whose regular active service is over, but who still exist as a reserve force, or retired list, which may always be called out on special occasions.

249. Apt to be rendered.-Easy and likely to be thrown out in return or retaliation for your refusing

to come.

249. Shall they not whisper ?-We should now say "Will they not?" Vid. 238.

249. To your proceeding.-To your advancement. 249. And reason to my love is liable.-As if he had said, And, if I have acted wrong in telling you, my excuse is, that my reason where you are concerned is subject to and is overborne by my affection. Vid. 67. 250. In the original stage direction the name of Publius stands last, instead of first.

252. Are you stirred.-We have lost this application of stirred (for out of bed). The word now commonly used, astir, does not occur in Shakespeare; and, what is remarkable, it has hitherto, although we have long

been in the habit of applying it freely in various other ways as well as in this sense, escaped all or most of our lexicographers. I do not find it either in Todd's Johnson, or in Webster, or in Richardson, or in Walker, or in Smart. Of course, the emphasis is on you.

253. 'Tis strucken eight.-Shakespeare uses all the three forms, struck, strucken, and stricken, of which the existing language has preserved only the first. Vid. 192. Mr. Collier has here stricken.

254. That revels long o' nights.-Vid. 65. Here again it is a-nights in the original text.

256. Bid them prepare.-The use of prepare thus absolutely (for to make preparation) is hardly now the current language, although it might not seem unnatural in verse, to which some assumption or imitation of the phraseology of the past is not forbidden.

256. I have an hour's talk, etc.-Hour is here a dissyllable, as such words often are.

259. That every like is not the same.- -That to be like a thing is not always to be that thing,said in reference to Cæsar's "We, like friends." So the old Scottish proverb, “Like's an ill mark ;" and the common French saying, as it has been sometimes converted, "Le vraisemblable n'est pas toujours le vrai." The remark is surely to be supposed to be made aside, as well as that of Trebonius, in 257, although neither is so noted in the old copies, and the modern editors, while they retain the direction to that effect inserted by Rowe at 257, have generally struck out the similar one inserted by Pope here. Mr. Collier, I see, gives both; but whether on the authority of his MS. annotator does not appear.

259. The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon.— Yearns is earnes in the original text. It has been generally assumed that yearn and earn are radically the same; the progress of the meaning probably being, it has been supposed, to feel strongly-to desire or long for--to endeavour after-to attain or acquire. But Mr. Wedgwood has lately, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Philological Society, V. 33 (No. 105, read 21 Feb., 1851), stated strong reasons for doubting whether there be really any connexion between earn and either yearn or earnest. The fundamental notion involved in earn, according to the view taken by Mr. Wedgwood, is that of harvest or reaping. The primary and essential meaning of yearn and earnest, again, (which are unquestionably of the same stock,) may be gathered from the modern German gern, willingly, readily, eagerly, which in A. Saxon was georn, and was used as an adjective, signifying desirous, eager, intent. We now commonly employ the verb to yearn only in construction with for or after, and in the sense of to long for or desire strongly. Perhaps the radical meaning may not be more special than to be strongly affected. In the present passage it evidently means to be stung or wrung with sorrow and regret." To think upon that every like is" would not have been said in Shakespeare's day, any more than it would be in ours, except under cover of the inversion.

260. Security gives way to.-In this sense (of leaving a passage open) we should now rather say to make way for. To give way has come to mean to yield and break under pressure. The heading of this scene in the original text is merely, Enter Artemidorus.

66

"One who

260. Thy lover.-As we might still say loves thee." It is nearly equivalent to friend, and was formerly in common use in that sense. Thus in Psalm xxxviii. 11, we have in the old version "My lovers and my neighbours did stand looking upon my trouble," and also in the common version, "My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore."-So afterwards in 375 Brutus begins his address to the people, Romans, countrymen, and lovers." Another change which has been undergone by this and some other words is that they are now usually applied only to men, whereas formerly they were common to both This has happened, for instance, to paramour and villain, as well as to lover. But villain is still a term of reproach for a woman as well as for a man in some of the provincial dialects. And, although we no longer call a woman a lover, we still say of a man and woman that they are lovers, or a pair of lovers. I find the term lover distinctly applied to a woman in so late a work as Smollett's Count Fathom, published in 1754:-"These were alarming symptoms to a lover of her delicacy and pride." Vol. I. ch. 10.

sexes.

260. Out of the teeth of emulation.—As envy (Vid. 187) is commonly used by Shakespeare in the sense of hatred or malice, so emulation, as here, is with him often envy or malicious rivalry. There are instances, however, of his employing the word, and also the cognate terms emulator, emulate, and emulous, not in an unfavourable sense.

260. With traitors do contrive.-The word contrive in the common acceptation is a very irregular derivative from the French controuver, an obsolete compound of trouver (to find). The English word appears