...

allied to Sir Edward Stafford ; . by whom this gentleman was brought up, and by him recommended to Sir Robert Cecil...; who preferred him to Sir Charles Cornwallis, when he went ambassador into Spain; where he remained for the space of eleven or twelve years in the condition of Secretary or Agent, without ever returning into England in all that time" (Hist., Book xiii.).

At an earlier date, again, we have Bacon, in the Dedication of the first edition of his Essays to his brother Anthony, thus writing: "Since they would not stay with their master, but would needs travail abroad, I have preferred them to you, that are next myself, dedicating them, such as they are, to our love," etc.

790. How died my master, Strato? So the First Folio. The Second, by a misprint, omits master. The Third and Fourth have my lord."

66

792. Octavius, then take him, etc. That is, accept or receive him from me. It is not, I request you to allow him to enter your service; but I give him to you. See 788.

793. He only, in a generous honest thought Of common good, etc. We are indebted for this reading to Mr. Collier's MS. annotator. It is surely a great improvement upon the old text,

He only in a general honest thought,

And common good to all, made one of them.

To act in a general honest thought" is perhaps intelligible, though barely so; but, besides the tautology which must be admitted on the common interpretation, what is to act "in a cominon good to all"? [Dyce, Hudson, and White follow the old text, which is hardly so bad as Collier and Craik would make it.]

793. Made one of them. - In this still familiar idiom made is equivalent to formed, constituted, and one must be considered as the accusative governed by it. Fecit unum ex eis, or eorum (by joining himself to them).

Here is the prose of Plutarch, as translated by North, out of which this poetry has been wrought: "For it was said that Antonius spake it openly divers times, that he thought, that, of all them that had slain Cæsar, there was none but Brutus only that was moved to it as thinking the act commendable of itself; but that all the other conspirators did conspire his death for some private malice or envy that they otherwise did bear unto him."

793. His life was gentle; and the clements, etc. - This passage is remarkable from its resemblance to a passage in Drayton's poem of The Barons' Wars. Drayton's poem was originally published some years before the close of the sixteenth century (according to Ritson, Bibl. Poct., under the title of "Morteme riados. . . . Printed by J. R. for Matthew Lownes, 1596," 4to); but there is, it seems, no trace of the passage in question in that edition. The first edition in which it is found is that of 1603, in which it stands thus:

Such one he was (of him we boldly say)

In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit,

In whom in peace the elements all lay

So mixt, as none could sovereignty impute;

As all did govern, yet all did obey:

His lively temper was so absolute,

That 't seemed, when heaven his model first began,

In him it showed perfection in a man.

[And the stanza remained thus in the editions of 1605, 1607, 1608, 1610, and 1613.]

In a subsequent edition published in 1619 it is remodelled as follows:

He was a man (then boldly dare to say)

In whose rich soul the virtues well did suit;

In whom so mixt the elements all lay

That none to one could sovereignty impute;
As all did govern, so did all obey:

He of a temper was so absolute,

As that it seemed, when nature him began,
She meant to show all that might be in man.

❝ In

Malone is inclined to think that Drayton was the copyist, even as his verses originally stood. the altered stanza," he adds, "he certainly was." Steevens, in the mistaken notion that Drayton's stanza as found in the edition of his Barons' Wars published in 1619 had appeared in the original poem, published, as he conceives, in 1598, had supposed that Shakespeare had in this instance deigned to imitate or borrow from his contemporary.

[White remarks, "But this resemblance implies no imitation on either side. For the notion that man was composed of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, and that the well-balanced mixture of these produced the perfection of humanity, was commonly held during the sixteenth, and the first half, at least, of the seventeenth century, the writers of which period worked it up in all manner of forms. Malone himself pointed out the following passage in Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (ii. 3), which was acted in 1600, three years before the publication of the recast Barons' Wars: A creature of a most perfect and divine temper, one in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met, without emulation of precedency. And see the Mirror for Magistrates, Part I., 1575:

If wee consider could the substance of a man How he composed is of Elements by kinde, etc. And The Optick Glass of Humours: Wee must know that all natural bodies have their composition of the mixture of the Elements, fire, aire, water, earth.' See also Nares's Glossary and Richardson's English Dictionary, in v. Elements.' . . . Imitation of one poet by another might have been much more reasonably charged by any editor or commentator who had happened to notice the following similarity between a speech of Antony's and another passage in the Barons' Wars:

-

I tell you that which you yourselves do know;

Shew you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,

Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue

In every wound of Cæsar, etc. (iii. 2.)

That now their wounds (with mouthes euen open'd wide) Lastly inforc'd to call for present death,

That wants but Tongues, your Swords doe giue them breath. (Book ii. st. 38, ed. 1603.)"]

794. To part the glories of this happy day. That is, to distribute to each man his due share in its glories. The original stage direction is "Exeunt omncs."

ADDENDA.

Page 175. Brutus had rather be, etc. - In Merchant of Venice, i. 2, the folio of 1623 has, "I had rather to be married to a death's head," etc.

Page 197. Hold, my hand. I have no doubt that hold is here the interjection, and not the imperative of the transitive verb, with an ellipsis of the object, as Craik explains

it. Cf. Macbeth, ii. 1:

Hold, take my sword;" Richard II., ii. 2: "Hold, take my ring,” etc. Of course this hold was originally the imperative of the intransitive (or reflexive) verb. See Webster's Dict. s. v. It usually retains its force as a verb (= Stop! or Stay!), but sometimes here and in the instance quoted from Macbeth — it appears to be merely equivalent to "Here!"

as

Page 211. The genius and the mortal instruments. — A writer in the Edinburgh Review (Oct. 1869) explains genius here as "spirit, ruling intellectual power, rational soul, as opposed to the irascible nature;" and mortal instruments as "the bodily powers through which it works." Page 254. Commandement.-There is a clear instance of the quadrisyllabic commandement in 1 Henry VI., i. 3, where the folio reads:

"From him I haue expresse commandement." And in The Passionate Pilgrim (in the song, "As it fell upon a day ") we find

"If to women he be bent,

They have at commandement."

In the Merchant of Venice, the folio has—

"Be valued against your wives commandement,"

which would make "commandement" a trisyllable; but the quartos read, "valew'd 'gainst."

Page 305. There is tears, etc.—Shakespeare often uses 'there is" before a plural subject; as in Cymbeline, iii. 1: There is no more such Cæsars;” Id., iv. 2: "There is no more such masters," etc. So in questions we find, "Is there not charms?" (Othello, i. 1), etc. See Rolfe's edition of The Tempest, page 122, note on "There is no more such shapes ;" and Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, § 335.

Page 507. They fall their crests. - This transitive fall occurs often in Shakespeare. Dyce (Glossary, s. v.) quotes fourteen instances, and it is easy to add others; as Tempest, v. 1: "fall fellowly drops." In Troilus and Cressida, i. 1, we have the same expression as here, "make him fall His crest."