MOTH. Since, Jupiter, our son is good,
Take off his miseries.

SICI. Peep through thy marble mansion; help!

Or we poor ghofts will cry

To the shining synod of the rest,

Againft thy deity.

2 BRO. Help, Jupiter; or we appeal,
And from thy justice fly.

JUPITER defcends in Thunder and Lightning, fitting upon an Eagle: he throws a Thunder-bolt. The Ghosts fall on their Knees.

JUP. No more, you petty spirits of region low,
Offend our hearing; hush!-How dare you ghofts,
Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt you know,
Sky-planted, batters all rebelling coafts ?
Poor fhadows of Elyfium, hence; and reft
Upon your never-withering banks of flowers :
Be not with mortal accidents oppreft;

No care of yours it is; you know, 'tis ours,
Whom best I love, I cross; to make my gift,
The more delay'd, delighted. Be content;
Your low-laid fon our godhead will uplift :
His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent.

8

Jupiter defcends -) It appears from Acolastus, a comedy by T. Palsgrave, chaplain to King Henry VIII. bl. 1. 1540, that the descent of deities was common to our stage in its earliest state : "Of whyche the lyke thyng is used to be shewed now a days in stage-plaies, when some God or fome Saynt is made to appere forth of a cloude, and fuccoureth the parties which seemed to be towardes fome great danger, through the Soudan's crueltie." The author, for fear this description should not be supposed to extend itself to our theatres, adds in a marginal note, "the lyke maner used nowe at our days in stage playes." STEEVENS.

The more delay'd, delighted.] That is, the more delightful

Our Jovial star reign'd at his birth, and in
Our temple was he married.-Rise, and fade!一

He shall be lord of lady Imogen,

And happier much by his affliction made.
This tablet lay upon his breast; wherein
Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine;
And fo, away: no further with your din
Express impatience, left you ftir up mine.-
Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.

[Afcends.

Sicr. He came in thunder; his celestial breath

Was fulphurous to smell: the holy eagle

for being delayed. It is scarcely necessary to observe, in the eighteenth volume, that Shakspeare uses indiscriminately the active and paffive participles. M. MASON.

Delighted is here either used for delighted in, or for delighting. So, in Othello:

" If virtue no delighted beauty lack-." MALONE. Though it be hardly worth while to waste a conjecture on the wretched stuff before us, perhaps the author of it, instead of delighted wrote dilated, i. e, expanded, rendered more copious. This participle occurs in King Henry V. and the verb in Othello.

I

STEEVENS.

my palace crystalline.] Milton has transplanted this

idea into his verses In Obitum Præfulis Elienfis :

"Ventum eft Olympi & regiam chrystallinam."

• He came in thunder; his celestial breath

STEEVENS.

Was fulphurous to smell :) A passage like this one may suppose to have been ridiculed by Ben Jonfon, when in Every Man in his Humour he puts the following ftrain of poetry into the mouth of Justice Clement:

teftify,

"How Saturn fitting in an ebon cloud,

"Difrob'd his podex white as ivory,

"

" And through the welkin thunder'd all aloud If, however, the dates of Jonson's play and Chapman's tranflation of the eleventh Book of Homer's Iliad, are at all reconcileable, one might be tempted to regard the passage last quoted as a ridicule on the following:

Stoop'd, as to foot us :3 his afcenfion is
More sweet than our bless'd fields: his royal bird
Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak,5

As when his god is pleas'd.

3

ALL.

Thanks, Jupiter !

SICI. The marble pavement closes, he is enter'd

bert:

on a fable cloud

(To bring them furious to the field) fat thundring out
aloud." Fol. edit. p. 143.

STEEVENS.

to foot us:] i, e. to grasp us in his pounces. So, Her-

"And till they foot and clutch their prey." STEEVENS.
4 Prunes the immortal wing,] A bird is faid to prune himself
when he clears his feathers from fuperfluities. So, in Drayton's
Polyolbion, Song I:

"Some fitting on the beach, to prune their painted

breafts."

See Vol. VII. p. 115, n. 7; and Vol. XI. p. 189, n. 2.

5

-cloys his beak,] Perhaps we should read:
-claws his beak.

TYRWHITT.

STEEVENS.

A cley is the fame with a claw in old language. FARMER.

So in Gower, De Confeffione Amantis, Lib. IV. fol. 69:
"And as a catte would ete fishes

"Without wetyng of his clees."

Again, in Ben Jonson's Underwoods :

from the seize

"Of vulture death and those relentless cleys."

Barrett, in his Alvearie, 1580, speaks " of a disease in cat-
tell betwixt the clees of their feete." And in The Book of Hawk-
ing, &c. bl. l. no date, under the article Pounces, it is faid,
"The cleis within the fote ye shall call aright her pounces." Το
claw their beaks, is an accustomed action with hawks and eagles.
STEEVENS.

The marble pavement closes,] So, in T. Heywood's Troia

Britannica, Cant. xii. ft. 77,1609:

"A general shout is given,

" And strikes against the marble floors of heaven."

HOLT WHITE,

His radiant roof: -Away! and, to be blest,
Let us with care perform his great beheft.

[Ghosts vanish

POST. [Waking.] Sleep, thou hast been a grand

fire, and begot

A father to me: and thou hast created
A mother, and two brothers: But (O scorn!)
Gone! they went hence so soon as they were born.
And fo I am awake.-Poor wretches that depend
On greatness' favour, dream as I have done;
Wake, and find nothing. But, alas, I swerve:
Many dream not to find, neither deserve,
And yet are steep'd in favours; so am I,
That have this golden chance, and know not why.
What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O, rare

one!

Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers: let thy effects
So follow, to be most unlike our courtiers,
As good as promife.

[Reads.] When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself known, without feeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miferies, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.

'Tis still a dream; or else such stuff as madmen Tongue, and brain not: 7 either both, or nothing: Or fenfeless speaking, or a speaking such

Tongue, and brain not :) To perfect the line we may
Do tongue, and brain not :-. STEEVENT,

As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,
The action of my life is like it, which
I'll keep, if but for sympathy.

Re-enter Gaolers.

GAOL. Come, fir, are you ready for death?

Post. Over-roafted rather : ready long ago, GAOL. Hanging is the word, fir; if you be ready for that, you are well cooked.

Post. So, if I prove a good repast to the spectators, the dish pays the fhot.

GAOL. A heavy reckoning for you, fir: But the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills; which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth: you come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink; forry that you have paid too much, and forry that you are paid too much; purse and

* 'Tis Aill a dream; or elfe fuch stuff as madmen Tongue, and brain not: either both, or nothing: Or fenfeless speaking, or a speaking fuch

As fense cannot untie.) The meaning, which is too thin to be easily caught, I take to be this: This is a dream or madness, or both, or nothing, but whether it be a speech without confciousness, as in a dream, or a speech unintelligible, as in madness, be it as it is, it is like my course of life. We might perhaps read:

Whether both, or nothing,-. JOHNSON.

forry that you have paid too much, and forry that you are paid too much;] i. e. forry that you have paid too much out of your pocket, and forry that you are paid, or fubdued, too much by the liquor. So, Falstaff: " - -feven of the eleven I paid." Again, in the fifth scene of the fourth Act of The Merry Wives of Windfor. STEEVENS.

The word has already occurred in this sense, in a former scene :