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His notion seems to be that from this derian we have dearth, meaning properly that sort of injury which is done by the weather, and that, a usual consequence of dearth being to make the produce of the earth highpriced, the adjective dear has thence taken its common meaning of precious. This is not all distinctly asserted; but what of it may not be explicitly set forth is supposed and implied. It is, however, against an explanation which has been generally accepted, that there is no appearance of connexion between derian and the A. Saxon word answering to dear in the sense of high-priced, precious, beloved, which is deore, dúre, or dýre, and is evidently from the same root, not with derian, but with deóran, or dýran, to hold dear, to love. There is no doubt about the existence of an old English verb dere, meaning to hurt, the unquestionable representative of the Anglo-Saxon derian: thus in Chaucer (C. T. 1824) Theseus says to Palamon and Arcite, in the Knight's Tale :

"And ye shul bothe anon unto me swere
That never mo ye shul my contree dere,
Ne maken werre upon me night ne day,
But ben my frendes in alle that ye may."

But perhaps we may get most easily and naturally at the sense which dear sometimes assumes by supposing that the notion properly involved in it of love, having first become generalized into that of a strong affection of any kind, had thence passed on into that of such an emotion the very reverse of love. We seem to have it in the intermediate sense in such instances as the following :

"Some dear cause

Will in concealment wrap me up a while."-Lear, iv. 3.

"A precious ring; a ring that I must use

In dear employment."-Romeo and Juliet, v. 3.

And even when Hamlet speaks of his "dearest foe," or when Celia remarks to Rosalind, in As You Like It, i. 3, "My father hated his [Orlando's] father dearly," the word need not be understood as implying more than strong or passionate emotion.

349. Here wast thou bayed. So afterwards, in 498, "We are at the stake, And bayed about with many enemies." It is not clear, however, in what sense the verb to be bayed is used in these passages. Does it mean to be embayed, or enclosed? or to be barked at? or to be made to stand, as it is phrased, at bay? The bays in these expressions appear to be all different words. According to Horne Tooke, to bay, meaning to enclose, undoubtedly the same with a bay of the sea, is from the A. Saxon bygan, to bend, and is essentially the same with both bow and bough. This is also, of course, the bay which we have in bay-window.-Div. of Purley, 464, 465. To bay, meaning to bark, again, Tooke conceives to be the same element which we have in the Greek Boáw (to call aloud, to roar), as well as in the Italian abbaiare and the French aboyer, and, understood as meaning to cry down, to vilify, to reproach, to express abhorrence, aversion, and defiance, to be the root of bad (quasi bayed), of bane (bayen), of the verb to ban, and of the French bas and its English derivative base.-Id. 357.-As for at bay, it is evidently the French aux abois, meaning in extremity, at the last gasp; and, whatever abois may be, it does not appear how it can have anything to do with aboyer, to bark. There are also to be accounted for the bay, a name for the laurel, and the colour called bay, applied to a horse, to salt, and to woollen thread.

349. Signed in thy spoil, and crimsoned in thy death. -Instead of death the First Folio has Lethee, the others Lethe; and the passage is explained as meaning marked and distinguished by being arrayed in thy spoils (the power in the commonwealth which was thine), and made crimson by being as it were bathed in thy shed blood. But Steevens's note is entirely unsatisfactory: “Lethe,” he "Lethe," he says, "is used by many of the old translators of novels for death;" and then he gives as an example the following sentence from the Second Part of Heywood's Iron Age, printed in 1632:

"The proudest nation that great Asia nursed
Is now extinct in lethe."

Here lethe may plainly be taken in its proper and usual sense of forgetfulness, oblivion. No other example is produced either by the commentators or by Nares. Shakespeare, too, repeatedly uses lethe, and nowhere, unless it be in this passage, in any other than its proper sense. If, however, lethe and lethum (or letum), -which may, or may not, be connected,—were really sometimes confounded by the popular writers of the early part of the seventeenth century, they are kept in countenance by the commentators of the eighteenth. Steevens goes on to notice, as affording another proof that lethe sometimes signified death, the following line from Cupid's Whirligig, printed in 1616 :

"For vengeance' wings bring on thy lethal day;"

and he adds:- -"Dr. Farmer observes, that we meet with lethal for deadly in the Information for Mungo Campbell." It is not easy to understand this. Who ever doubted that deadly was the proper meaning of

lethalis (from lethum)? But what has that to do with the signification of lethe? I do not know what it is that may have led Nares to imagine that, when lethe meant death, it was pronounced as a monosyllable. Seeing, however, that the notion of its ever having that signification appears to be a mere delusion, I have followed Mr. Collier in supposing it to be here a misprint for death, which was the obvious conjecture of several of the editors of the last century, and is possibly sanctioned by the authority of his MS. annotator.

349. Strucken by many princes.—It is stroken in the original edition.-In the preceding line, also, "the heart of thee" is there misprinted "the hart of thee." But the two words are repeatedly thus confounded in the spelling in that edition.—Mr. Collier strangely prefers making this exclamation, "How like a deer," etc., an interrogatory—as if Antony asked the dead body in how far, or to what precise degree, it resembled a deer, lying as it did stretched out before him.

351. The enemies of Cæsar shall say this.—Here again, as in "This shall mark Our purpose necessary" of 187, we have a use of shall, which now only remains with us, if at all, as an imitation of the archaic. Vid. 181. A singular consequence has arisen from the change that has taken place. By "shall say this" in the present passage Shakespeare meant no more than would now be expressed by "will say this;" yet to us the shall elevates the expression beyond its original import, giving it something, if not quite of a prophetic, yet of an impassioned, wrapt, and as it were vision-seeing character.

352. But what compact.-Compact has always, I believe, the accent upon the final syllable in Shake

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speare, whether used as a substantive, as a verb, or as a participle.

352. Will you be pricked in number of our friends? -To prick is to note or mark off. The Sheriffs are still so nominated by a puncture or mark being made at the selected names in the list of qualified persons, and this is the vox signata, or established word, for the operation.

353. Swayed from the point.-Borne away, as by a wave, from the point which I had in view and for which I was making.

353. Friends am I with you all.—“This grammatical impropriety," Henley very well remarks, "is still so prevalent, as that the omission of the anomalous s would give some uncouthness to the sound of an otherwise familiar expression." We could not, indeed, say "Friend am I with you all;" we should have to turn the expression in some other way. Nor does the pluralism of friends depend upon that of you all: "I am friends with you" is equally the phrase in addressing a single person. I with you am is felt to be equivalent to I and you are.

354. Our reasons are so full of good regard.-So full of what is entitled to favourable regard. Compare "many of the best respect" in 48.

354. That, were you, Antony, the son of Cæsar.-By all means to be thus pointed, so as to make Antony the vocative, the name addressed; not, as it sometimes ludicrously is, "were you Antony the son of Cæsar." Son, of course, is emphatic.

355. Produce his body to the market-place.-We now say "produce to" with a person only.

355. Speak in the order of his funeral.-In the order

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