233. I never stood on ceremonies.

See 194.

233. Recounts most horrid sights.- Who recounts. As in 34 and 214.

233. The noise of battle hurtled in the air.— The three last Folios substitute hurried for hurtled. Hurtle is probably the same word with hurl (of which, again, whirl may be another variation). Chaucer uses it as an active verb, in the sense of to push forcibly and with violence; as in C. T. 2618,

And he him hurtleth with his hors adoun;

and again in C. T. 4717,

O firste moving cruel firmament!

With thy diurnal swegh that croudest ay,
And hurtlest all from est til occident,

That naturally wold hold another way.

Its very sound makes it an expressive word for any kind of rude and crushing, or "insupportably advancing," movement.

233. Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan. This is the reading of the Second and subsequent Folios. The first has "Horses do neigh, and dying men did grone." We may confidently affirm that no degree of mental agitation ever expressed itself in any human being in such a jumble and confusion of tenses as this, not even insanity or drunkenness. The "Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds" [White reads fought], which we have a few lines before, is not a case in point. It is perfectly natural in animated narrative or description to rise occasionally from the past tense to the present; but who ever heard of two facts or circumstances equally past, strung together, as here, with an and, and enunciated in the same breath, being presented the one as now going on, the other as only having taken place?

233. And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets. It is rare to find Shakespeare coming so near upon the same words in two places as he does here and in dealing with the same subject in Hamlet, i. I:

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

This passage, however, is found only in the Quarto editions of Hamlet, and is omitted in all the Folios. 233. Beyond all use. - We might still say "beyond all use and wont."

234. Whose end is purposed, etc. - The end, or completion, of which is designed by the gods.

236. What say the augurers?- See 194. The preceding stage direction is in the original edition, "Enter a Servant."

66

238. In shame of cowardice. For the shame of cowardice, to put cowardice to shame.

238. Cæsar should be a beast. We should now say Cæsar would be a beast. It is the same use of

shall where we now use will that has been noticed at 181. So in Merchant of Venice, i. 2, Nerissa, conversing with her mistress Portia about her German suitor, the nephew of the Duke of Saxony, says, “If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket, you should refuse to perform your father's will, if you should refuse to accept him." Yet the fashion of saying It should appear, or It should seem (instead of It would), which has come up with the revived study of our old literature, is equally at variance with the principle by which our modern einployment of shall and will is regulated.

238. We are two lions. — The old reading, in all

the Folios, is We heare (or hear in the Third and Fourth). Nobody, as far as I am aware, has defended it, or affected to be able to make any sense of it. Theobald proposed We were, which has been generally adopted. But We are, as recommended by Upton, is at once nearer to the original and much more spirited. It is a singularly happy restoration, and one in regard to which, I conceive, there can scarcely be the shadow of a doubt. [Collier, Dyce, and White have are; Hudson, were.]

239. Is consumed in confidence. As anything is consumed in fire.

240. For thy humour. - For the gratification of thy whim or caprice. See 205. Mr. Collier's MS. annotator directs that Cæsar should here raise Calphurnia, as he had that she should deliver the last line of her preceding speech kneeling.

241. Cæsar, all hail! — Hail in this sense is the Saxon hael or hál, meaning hale, whole, or healthy (the modern German heil). It ought rather to be spelled hale. Hail, frozen rain, is from haegl, haegel, otherwise hagol, hagul, or haegol (in modern German hagel).

242. To bear my greeting.-To greet in this sense is the Saxon gretan, to go to meet, to welcome, to salute (the grüssen of the modern German). The greet of the Scotch and other northern dialects, which is found in Spenser, represents quite another Saxon verb, greotan or graetan, to lament.

244. To be afeard. The common Scotch form for afraid is still feared, or feard, from the verb to fear, taken in the sense of to make afraid; in which sense it is sometimes found in Shakespeare; as in Measure for Measure, ii. 1 :—

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,

Setting it up to fear the beasts of prey;

And in Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 6,

Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails. In The Taming of the Shrew, i. 2, we have in a single line (or two hemistichs) both senses of the verb to fear: "Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs," says Petruchio in scorn; to which his servant Grumio rejoins, aside, "For he fears none."

246. That is enough to satisfy the senate. - Not (as the words might in other circumstances mean) enough to insure their being satisfied, but enough for me to do towards that end.

246. She dreamt to-night she saw my statue. It may be mentioned that both Rowe and Pope substitute last night, which would, indeed, seem to be the most natural expression; but it is unsupported by any of the old copies. The word statue is of frequent occurrence in Shakespeare; and in general it is undoubtedly only a dissyllable. In the present Play, for instance, in the very next speech we have Your statue spouting blood in many pipes.

And so likewise in 138, and again in 377. Only in one line, which occurs in Richard III. iii. 7, —

But like dumb statuës or breathing stones,

is it absolutely necessary that it should be regarded as of three syllables, if the received reading be correct. In that passage also, however, as in every other, the word in the First Folio is printed simply statues, exactly as it always is in the English which we now write and speak.

On the other hand, it is certain that statue was frequently written statua in Shakespeare's age; Bacon, for example, always, I believe, so writes it; and

it is not impossible that its full pronunciation may have been always trisyllabic, and that it became a dissyllable only by the two short vowels, as in other cases, being run together so as to count prosodically only for one.

"From authors of the times," says Reed, in a note on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, iv. 4, "it would not be difficult to fill whole pages with instances to prove that statue was at that period a trisyllable." But unfortunately he does not favor us with one such instance. Nor, with the exception of the single line in Richard III., the received reading of which has been suspected for another reason (breathing stones being not improbably, it has been thought, a misprint for unbreathing stones), has any decisive instance been produced either by Steevens, who refers at that passage to what he designates as Reed's "very decisive note," or by any of the other commentators anywhere, or by Nares, who also commences his account of the word in his Glossary by telling us that it "was long used in English as a trisyllable."

The only other lines in Shakespeare in which it has been conceived to be other than a word of two syllables are the one now under examination, and another which also occurs in the present Play, in 425:

Even at the base of Pompey's statue.

These two lines, it will be observed, are similarly constructed in so far as this word is concerned; in both the supposed trisyllable concludes the verse.

Now, we have many verses terminated in exactly the same manner by other words, and yet it is very far from being certain that such verses were intended