Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

AMI. I would not change it: Happy is your

grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

DUKE S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,Being native burghers of this desert city,Should, in their own confínes, with forked heads Have their round haunches gor'd.

1 LORD.

Indeed, my lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.

3 Finds tongues in trees, &c.] So, in Sidney's Arcadia, Book I:

"Thus both trees and each thing else, be the bookes to a fancie." STEEvens.

* I would not change it:] Mr. Upton, not without probability, gives these words to the Duke, and makes Amiens beginHappy is your grace. JOHNSON.

5

- native burghers of this desert city,] In Sidney's Arcadia, the deer are called "the wild burgesses of the forest." Again, in the 18th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion:

" Where, fearless of the hunt, the hart securely stood,
" And every where walk'd free, a burgess of the wood."

STEEVENS.

A kindred expression is found in Lodge's Rosalynde, 1592:

" About her wond'ring stood
"The citizens o' the wood."

Our author afterwards uses this very phrase:

6

"Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens." MALONE.

with forked heads-] i. e. with arrows, the points of

which were barbed. So, in A mad World my Masters :
" While the broad arrow with the forked head
"Misses," &c. STEEVENS.

To-day, my lord of Amiens, and myself,
Did steal behind him, as he lay along
Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:"
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE S.

But what said Jaques ?

Did he not moralize this spectacle ?

1 LORD. O, yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping in the needless stream; Poor deer, quoth he, thou mak'st a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

7

8

as he lay along

Under an oak, &c.]

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

"That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
" His listless length at noon-tide would he stretch,

" And pore upon the brook that babbles by."

9

Gray's Elegy. STEEVENS.

-the big round tears &c.] It is said in one of the marginal notes to a similar passage in the 13th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion, that "the harte weepeth at his dying: his tears are held to be precious in medicine." STEEVENS.

9

in the needless stream ;] The stream that wanted not such a supply of moisture. The old copy has into, caught probably by the compositor's eye from the line above. The correction was made by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

To that which had too much: Then, being alone,
Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;
'Tis right, quoth he; this misery doth part
The flux of company: Anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,
And never stays to greet him; Ay, quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,

'To that which had too much :) Old copy-too must. Corrected by the editor of the second folio. MALONE.

Shakspeare has almost the same thought in his Lover's Complaint :

66

in a river

" Upon whose weeping margin she was set,
"Like usury, applying wet to wet."

Again, in King Henry VI. P. III. Act V. sc. iv:
"With tearful eyes add water to the sea,

" And give more strength to that which hath too much." STEEVENS.

2-Then, being alone,] The old copy redundantly reads--Then being there alone. STEEVENS.

3

The body of the country,] The oldest copy omits-the; but it is supplied by the second folio, which has many advantages over the first. Mr. Malone is of a different opinion; but let him speak for himself. STEEVENS.

Country is here used as a trisyllable. So again, in Twelfth Night:

"The like of him. Know'st thou this country?" The editor of the second folio, who appears to have been utterly ignorant of our author's phraseology and metre, readsThe body of the country, &c. which has been followed by all the subsequent editors. MALONE.

Is not country used elsewhere also as a dissyllable? See Coriolanus, Act I. sc. vi:

" And that his country's dearer than himself." Besides, by reading country as a trisyllable, in the middle of a verse, it would become rough and dissonant. STEEVENS.

Yea, and of this our life: swearing, that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse,
To fright the animals, and to kill them up,
In their assign'd and native dwelling place.

DUKE S. And did you leave him in this contemplation?

2 LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and com

menting Upon the sobbing deer.

DUKE S.

Show me the place;

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,
For then he's full of matter.

2 LORD. I'll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

A Room in the Palace.

Enter Duke FREDERICK, Lords, and Attendants.

DUKE F. Can it be possible, that no man saw

them?

It cannot be: some villains of my court
Are of consent and sufferance in this.

1 LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her.
The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,
Saw her a-bed; and, in the morning early,
They found the bed untreasur'd of their mistress.

4

2 LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft

to cope him-] To encounter him; to engage with him. JOHNSON.

5

-the roynish clown,] Roynish, from rogneux, French,

Your grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.
Hesperia, the princess' gentlewoman,
Confesses, that she secretly o'er-heard
Your daughter and her cousin much commend
The parts and graces of the wrestler
That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;
And she believes, wherever they are gone,
That youth is surely in their company.

DUKE F. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant

hither;

If he be absent, bring his brother to me,
I'll make him find him: do this suddenly;
And let not search and inquisition quail

To bring again these foolish runaways. [Exeunt.

mangy, scurvy. The word is used by Chaucer, in The Romaunt of the Rose, 988:

"That knottie was and all roinous.”

Again, ibid. 6190:

" This argument is all roignous-."

Again, by Dr. Gabriel Harvey, in his Pierce's Supererogation, 4to. 1593. Speaking of Long Meg of Westminster, he says"Although she were a lusty bouncing rampe, somewhat like Gallemetta or maid Marian, yet she was not such a roinish rannel, such a dissolute gillian-flirt," &c.

We are not to suppose the word is literally employed by Shakspeare, but in the same sense that the French still use carogne, a term of which Moliere is not very sparing in some of his pieces. STEEVENS.

of the wrestler-] Wrestler, (as Mr. Tyrwhitt has observed in a note on The Two Gentlemen of Verona,) is here to be sounded as a trisyllable. STEEVENS.

7 Send to his brother ;) I believe we should read-brother's. For when the Duke says in the following words: "Fetch that gallant hither;" he certainly means Orlando. M. MASON.

-quail-] To quail is to faint, to sink into dejection. So, in Cymbeline :

"which my false spirits

"Quail to remember." STEEVENS.