In both these passages but can only be the preposition. So where Corin, in his conversation with Touchstone, in As You Like It, iii. 2, says, “You told me you salute not at the court but you kiss your hands,” he does not mean that there is no saluting at court, only kissing of hands, but that people never salute without kissing hands. There ought to be no comma after court. The form of phrase is the same that we have afterwards in iii. 5 : “The common executioner .. Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck But first begs pardon;"that is, without first asking pardon. p. 119: Add to note on And we are governed with :Shakespeare even has (Rich. II., iii. 3) “I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief.” p. 121, 1. 18: For “Stop” r. “Have, receive, take hold of (it).” p. 122: Add to note on Of honourable, dangerous : Shakespeare, however, has apparently several such. Thus:“More active-valiant, or more valiant-young." 1 Hen. IV., v. 1. “But pardon me, I am too sudden-bold." Love's Lab. Lost, ii. 1; “More fertile-fresh than all the field to see." Mer. W. of Wind., v. 5. “So full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high-fantastical.” Twelfth Night, i. 1. p. 122: Add to note on The complexion of the element : -The word in this sense was much in favour with the fine writers or talkers of Shakespeare's day. He has a hit at the affectation in his Twelfth Night, iii. 1, where the Clown, conversing with Viola, says, “Who you are, and what you would, are out of my welkin: I might say, element: but the word is over worn.” Of course, welkin is, and is intended to be, far more absurd. Yet we have element for the sky or the air in other passages besides the present. Thus : : "The element itself, .... Shall not behold her face at ample view." Twelfth Night, i. 1; "I, in the clear sky of fame, o'ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the element, which show like pins' heads to her” (Falstaff, in 2 Hen. IV., iv. 3). It is curious to find writers of the present day who are scrupulous about the more delicate proprieties of expression still echoing Shakespeare's dissatisfaction: "The territorial element, to use that favourite word," says Hallam, Mid. Ages, I. 297 (edit. of 1855), probably without any thought of the remark of the all-observing dramatist two centuries and a half before. p. 125: Add to note on You have right well conceited: -Or as when Gratiano, in The Merchant of Venice, i. 1, speaks of a sort of men who "do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dressed in an opinion that is, deep thought. 66 So, again, when Rosaline, in Love's Labour's Lost, ii. 1, speaking of Biron, describes his fair tongue" as 66 conceit's expositor," all that she means is that speech is the expounder of thought. The scriptural expression, still in familiar use, " wise in his own conceit" means merely wise in his own thought, or in his own eyes, as we are told in the margin the Hebrew literally signifies. In the New Testament, where we have "in their own conceits," the Greek is simply πap' éavroîs (in or with themselves). p. 126: Add to note on Orchard:-In Much Ado About Nothing, ii. 3, although the Scene is headed "Leonato's Garden," Benedick, sending the Boy for a book from his chamber-window, says, "Bring it hither to me in the orchard." p. 128: Add to note on But 'tis a common proof :—A frequent word with Shakespeare for to prove is to approve. Thus, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, v. 4, we have “O, 'tis the curse in love, and still approved, When women cannot love where they're beloved.” So, in Much Ado About Nothing, we have, in iv. 1, "an approved wanton," and afterwards “Is he not approved in the height a villain ?” When Don Pedro in the same Play, ii. 1, describes Benedick as “of approved valour,” the words cannot be understood as conveying any notion of what we now call approval, or approbation ; the meaning is merely, that he had proved his valour by his conduct. This is, no doubt, also, the meaning of the word in the last verse of Sir Thomas Wyat's passionately earnest lines entitled “To his Mistress” (supposed to be Anne Boleyn) : “Forget not, then, thine own approved, Forget not this!" So in Hamlet, i. 1, Marcellus says, speaking of Horatio and the Ghost, I have entreated him along He may approve our eyes, and speak to it ;" that is, prove our eyes true. This sense of the word (which we still retain in the law-term an approver, in Latin probator) occurs repeatedly both in the Bible and in Milton, and in fact is the most common sense which it has in our earlier English. It is strange that it should not be noticed at all by Nares, and that the only reference for it in Boucher is in the following insertion by Stephenson :“ To ring proof of.--Matabrun in likewise endevored her on the other syde to approve the said iniury ... bi hir commised and purpensed.'--Heylas, p. 27." p. 128, 1. 2 from foot r. “ to be called a round.” p. 129, 1. 16; for “ 707" r. “709.” p. 132: Add to note on The Genius and the mortal instruments :-We have, apparently, the word Genius used for the spirit or mind in what the Duke says, in The Comedy of Errors, v. 1, of the two Antipholuses and the two Dromios “One of these men is genius to the other ; And which the spirit ?” The bodily organs, again, seem to be distinctly designated the instruments and agents, in Coriolanus, i. 1, where, first, Menenius Agrippa says, in his apologue of the rebellion of the other members of the body against the belly, “ The other instruments Of the whole body"- “ The former agents, if they did complain, What could the belly answer ?” So again, in Macbeth, i. 7: “I am settled, and bent up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat." p. 132, 1. 6 from foot: After “ abstract,” add :-We have elsewhere, indeed, in Macbeth, i. 3, “ My single state of man;" and Falstaff, in the Second Part of Henry IV., iv. 4, speaks of “This little kingdom, man ;" but in neither of these cases is the reference in the word man to an individual, as here. p. 137: After 1. 10 add :-So in As You Like It, iii. 2: “ The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she," — that is, inexpressible, not to be expressed. p. 137, 1. 17: After base-born add:- Thus, in Lear, i. 2, Edmund soliloquizes,—“Why bastard ? Wherefore base ?" p. 139 : Add to note on Shall and Will :-We have occasionally the same use of shall even in Clarendon :“Whilst there are Courts in the world, emulation and ambition will be inseparable from them; and kings who have nothing to give shall be pressed to promise" (Hist., Book xiii). Sometimes, again, though much more rarely, Shakespeare has will where we should now use shall; as when Portia says, in The Merchant of Venice, iii. 4, “I'll hold thee any wager, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two." p. 139, 1. 3 from foot: After “thanksgiving" add :-We have creature used in this extensive sense even by so late a writer as the Scotch metaphysician Dr. Reid (who died in 1796), in his Inquiry into the Human Mind, ch. 1, first published in 1764:—“Conjectures and theories are the creatures of men, and will always be found very unlike the creatures of God.” p. 144: Add to note on If he improve them :-In Much Ado About Nothing, ii., when Benedick, speaking to himself of Beatrice, says, “They say the lady is fair; ... and virtuous ; 'tis so, I cannot reprove it,” he seems to mean that he cannot disprove it. The manner in which the word improve was used in the middle of the seventeenth century may be seen from the following sentences of Clarendon's :-“This gave opportunity and excuse to many persons of quality ... to lessen their zeal to the King's cause ; ... and those contestations had been lately improved with some sharpness by the Lord Herbert's carriage towards the Lord Marquis of Hertford” (Hist., Book vi.). Though there seemed reasons enough to dissuade her [the Queen] from that inclination [of retiring from Oxford, when it was threatened with a siege, for Exeter], 66 |