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51. What means this shouting? etc.-Here is the manner in which this passage is given in the original edition :

"Bru. What meanes this Showting ?

I do feare, the People choose Cæsar
For their King.

Cassi. I, do you feare it ?"

53. If it be aught toward.-All that the prosody demands here is that the word toward be pronounced in. two syllables; the accent may be either on the first or the second. Toward when an adjective has, I believe, always the accent on the first syllable in Shakespeare; but its customary pronunciation may have been otherwise in his day when it was a preposition, as it is here. Milton, however, in the few cases in which he does not run the two syllables into one, always accents the first. And he uses both toward and towards.

53. Set Honour in one eye, etc.-This passage has occasioned some discussion. Johnson's explanation is :--“ When Brutus first names Honour and Death, he calmly declares them indifferent; but, as the image kindles in his mind, he sets Honour above life." It does not seem to be necessary to suppose any such change or growth either of the image or the sentiment. What Brutus means by saying that he will look upon Honour and Death indifferently, if they present themselves together, is merely that, for the sake of the honour, he will not mind the death, or the risk of death, by which it may be accompanied; he will think the honour to be cheaply purchased even by the loss of life; that price will never make him falter or hesitate in clutching at such a prize. He must be understood to set

honour above life from the first; that he should ever have felt otherwise for a moment would have been the height of the unheroic.-The convenient elisions & the and o' the have been almost lost to our modern English verse, at least in composition of the ordinary regularity and dignity. Byron, however, has in a wellknown passage ventured upon "Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee."

54. Your outward favour.-A man's favour is his aspect or appearance. The word is now lost to us in that sense; but we still use favoured with well, ill, and perhaps other qualifying terms, for featured or looking; as in Gen. xli. 4:-"The ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favoured and fat kine." Favour seems to be used for face from the same confusion or natural transference of meaning between the expressions for the feeling in the mind and the outward indication of it in the look that has led to the word countenance, which commonly denotes the latter, being sometimes employed, by a process the reverse of what we have in the case of favour, in the sense of at least one modification of the former; as when we speak of any one giving something his countenance, or countenancing it. In this case, however, it ought to be observed that countenance has the meaning, not simply of favourable feeling or approbation, but of its expression or avowal. The French terms from which we have borrowed our favour and countenance, do not appear to have either of them undergone the transference of meaning which has befallen the English forms. But contenance, which is still also used by the French in the sense of material capacity, has drifted far away from its original import

in coming to signify one's aspect or physiognomy. It is really also the same word with the French and English continence and the Latin continentia.

54. For my single self.-Here is a case in which we are still obliged to adhere to the old way of writing and printing my self. Vid. 56.

54. I had as lief-Lief (sometimes written leef, or leve), in the comparative liefer or lever, in the superlative liefest, is the Anglo-Saxon leof, signifying dear. "No modern author, I believe," says Horne Tooke (D. of P. 261) "would now venture any of these words in a serious passage; and they seem to be cautiously. shunned or ridiculed in common conversation, as a vulgarity. But they are good English words, and more frequently used by our old English writers than any other word of a corresponding signification." The common modern substitute for lief is soon, and for liefer sooner or rather, which last is properly the comparative of rath, or rathe, signifying early, not found in Shakespeare, but used in one expression-" the rathe primrose" (Lycidas, 142)—by Milton, who altogether ignores lief. Lief, liefer, and liefest, are all common in Spenser. Shakespeare has lief pretty frequently, but never liefer; and liefest occurs only in the Second Part of King Henry VI., where, in iii. 1, we have "My liefest liege." In the same play, too, (i. 1) we have "Mine alderliefest sovereign," meaning dearest of all. "This beautiful word," says Mr. Knight, "is a Saxon compound. Alder, of all, is thus frequently joined with an adjective of the superlative degree,-as alderfirst, alderlast." But it cannot be meant that such combinations are frequent in the English of Shakespeare's day. They do occur, indeed,

in a preceding stage of the language. Alder is a corrupted or at least modified form of the A. Saxon genitive plural aller, or allre; it is that strengthened by the interposition of a supporting d (a common expedient). Aller, with the same signification, is still familiar in German compounds.-The ancient effect and construction of lief in English may be seen in the following examples from Chaucer:-" For him was lever. han at his beddes head" (C. T. Pro. 295), that is, To him it was dearer to have (lever a monosyllable, beddes a dissyllable); "Ne, though I say it, I n' am not lefe to gabbe" (C. T. 3510), that is, I am not given to prate; "I hadde lever dien," that is, I should hold it preferable to die. And Chaucer has also "Al be him loth or lefe" (C. T. 1839), that is, Whether it be to him agreeable or disagreeable; and "For lefe ne loth" (C. T. 13062), that is, For love nor loathing.-We may remark the evidently intended connection in sound between the lief and the live, or rather the attraction by which the one word has been naturally produced or evoked by the other.

54. Cæsar said to me, etc.-In the Second Folio it is "Cæsar saies to me." And three lines lower down it is there "Accounted as I was." Other errors of that copy in the same speech are "chasing with her shores," and "He had a Feaher when he was in Spaine."

54. Arrive the point proposed.-Arrive without the now indispensable at or in is found also in the Third Part of King Henry VI. (v. 3) :—

"Those powers that the queen

Hath raised in Gallia have arrived our coast."

And Milton has the same construction (P. L. ii. 409) :

"Ere he arrive

The happy isle."

54. I, as Æneas, etc.-This commencement of the sentence, although necessitating the not strictly grammatical repetition of the first personal pronoun, is in fine rhetorical accordance with the character of the speaker, and vividly expresses his eagerness to give prominence to his own part in the adventure. Even the repetition (of which, by the bye, we have another instance in this same speech) assists the effect. At the same time, it may just be noted that the I here is not printed differently in the original edition from the interjection in "Ay, and that tongue of his," a few lines lower down. Nor are the two words anywhere distinguished.

54. The old Anchises, etc.-This is a line of six feet; but it is quite different in its musical character from what is called an Alexandrine, such as rounds off the Spenserian stanza, and also frequently makes the second line in a rhymed couplet or the third in a triplet. A proper Alexandrine is inadmissible in blank verse. What we have here is only the ordinary heroic line overflowing its bounds,-which, besides that great excitement will excuse such irregularities, or even demand them, admirably pictures the emotion of Cassius, as it were acting his feat over again as he relates it, with the shore the two were making for seeming, in their increasing efforts, to retire before them-and panting with his remembered toil.

54. His coward lips did from their colour fly.There can, I think, be no question that Warburton is

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