or fore, are really only different forms of the same word, different corruptions or modernizations of the old A. Saxon feor or forth. 45. Be you one. -There are various kinds of being, or of existing. What is here meant is, Be in your belief and assurance; equivalent to Rest assured that you are. 46. I have much mistook your passion.—That is, the feeling under which you are suffering. Patience and passion (both from the Latin patior) equally mean suffering; the notions of quiet and of agitation which they have severally acquired, and which have made the common signification of the one almost the opposite of that of the other, are merely accidental adjuncts. It may be seen, however, from the use of the word passion here and in the preceding speech, that its proper meaning was not so completely obscured and lost sight of in Shakespeare's day as it has come to be in ours, when it retains the notion of suffering only in two or three antique expressions, such as the iliac passion, and the passion of our Saviour (with Passion Week). Though it is no longer accounted correct to say I have mistook, or I have wrote, such forms were in common use even till far on in the last century. Nor has the analogy of the reformed manner of expression been yet completely carried out. In some cases we have even lost the more correct form after having once had it: we no longer, for instance, say I have stricken, as they did in Shakespeare's day, but only I have struck. 47. But by reflection, etc.- The “other things, must apparently, if we interpret the words with reference to their connection, be the reflectors or mirrors spoken of by Cassius. Taken by itself, however, the expression might rather seem to mean that the eye discovers its own existence by its power of seeing other things. The verse in the present speech is thus ingeniously broken up in the original edition : “No, Cassius : It may still be suspected that all is not quite right, * and possibly some words have dropped out. “By reflection, by some other things” is hardly Shakespeare's style. It is not customary with him to employ a word which he finds it necessary thus to attempt immediately to amend or supplement or explain by another. -It is remarkable that in the first line of this speech the three last Folios turn the itself into himself. Mr. Collier, nevertheless, prints itself. Is this a restoration of his MS. annotator ? 48. Many of the best respect.— A lost phrase, no longer permissible even in poetry, although our only modern equivalent is the utterly unpoetical " many persons of the highest respectability.” So, again, in the present play, we have in 780,“ Thou art a fellow of a good respect.” 50. Therefore, good Brutus, etc.—The eager, impatient temper of Cassius, absorbed in his own one idea, is vividly expressed by his thus continuing his argument as if without appearing to have even heard Brutus's interrupting question; for such is the only interpretation which his therefore would seem to admit of. 50. And be not jealous on me.—This is the reading of all the Folios; and it has been restored to the text by Mr. Knight, who does not, however, produce any other example of the same syntax. The other modern editors generally, with the exception of Mr. Collier, have changed the on into of. And every where else, I believe, Shakespeare writes jealous of. But there seems to be no natural reason, independently of usage, why the adjective might not take the one preposition as well as the other. 50. Were I a common laugher.- Pope made this correction, in which he has been followed by all subsequent editors. In all the editions before his the reading is laughter; and the necessity or propriety of the change is perhaps not so unquestionable as it has been generally thought. Neither word seems to be perfectly satisfactory. 50. To stale with ordinary oaths my love.—Johnson, the only commentator who notices this expression, interprets it as meaning, " to invite every new protester to my affection by the stale, or allurement, of customary oaths.” But surely the more common sense of the word stale, both the verb and the noun, involving the notion of insipid or of little worth or estimation, is far more natural here. Who forgets Enobarbus's phrase in his enthusiastic description of Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2); “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety”? So in 498, “Staled by other men.” 50. And after scandal them.— We have lost the verb scandal altogether, and we scarcely use the other form to scandalize, except in the sense of the Hellenistic okavdanítw, to shock, to give offence. Both had formerly also the sense of to defame or traduce. 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 ? 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 i 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 : |