been in the habit of applying it freely in various other ways as well as in this sense, escaped all or most of our lexicographers. I do not find it either in Todd's Johnson, or in Webster, or in Richardson, or in Walker, or in Smart. Of course, the emphasis is on you.

253. 'Tis strucken eight.-Shakespeare uses all the three forms, struck, strucken, and stricken, of which the existing language has preserved only the first. Vid. 192. Mr. Collier has here stricken.

254. That revels long o' nights.-Vid. 65. Here again it is a-nights in the original text.

256. Bid them prepare.—The use of prepare thus absolutely (for to make preparation) is hardly now the current language, although it might not seem unnatural in verse, to which some assumption or imitation of the phraseology of the past is not forbidden.

256. I have an hour's talk, etc.—Hour is here a dissyllable, as such words often are.

259. That every like is not the same.--That to be like a thing is not always to be that thing ---said in reference to Cæsar's “We, like friends." So the old Scottish proverb,“ Like's an ill mark ;" and the common French saying, as it has been sometimes converted, “ Le vraisemblable n'est pas toujours le vrai.” The remark is surely to be supposed to be made aside, as well as that of Trebonius, in 257, although neither is so noted in the old copies, and the modern editors, while they retain the direction to that effect inserted by Rowe at 257, have generally struck out the similar one inserted by Pope here. Mr. Collier, I see, gives both; but whether on the authority of his MS. annotator does not appear.

259. The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon.Yearns is earnes in the original text. It has been generally assumed that yearn and earn are radically the same; the progress of the meaning probably being, it has been supposed, to feel strongly—to desire or long for--to endeavour after—to attain or acquire. But Mr. Wedgwood has lately, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Philological Society, V. 33 (No. 105, read 21 Feb., 1851), stated strong reasons for doubting whether there be really any connexion between earn and either yearn or earnest. The fundamental notion involved in earn, according to the view taken by Mr. Wedgwood, is that of harvest or reaping. The primary and essential meaning of yearn and earnest, again, (which are unquestionably of the same stock,) may be gathered from the modern German gern, willingly, readily, eagerly, which in A. Saxon was georn, and was used as an adjective, signifying desirous, eager, intent. We now commonly employ the verb to yearn only in construction with for or after, and in the sense of to long for or desire strongly. Perhaps the radical meaning may not be more special than to be strongly affected. In the present passage it evidently means to be stung or wrung with sorrow and regret.-" To think upon that every like is” would not have been said in Shakespeare's day, any more than it would be in ours, except under cover of the inversion.

260. Security gives way to.-In this sense of leaving a passage open) we should now rather say to make way for. To give way has come to mean to yield and break under pressure. The heading of this scene in the original text is merely, Enter Artemidorus.

260. Thy lover.—As we might still say “ One who loves thee.” It is nearly equivalent to friend, and was formerly in common use in that sense. Thus in Psalm xxxviii. 11, we have in the old version "Mylovers and my neighbours did stand looking upon my trouble," and also in the common version, “My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore.”-So afterwards in 375 Brutus begins his address to the people, “ Romans, countrymen, and lovers.” Another change which has been undergone by this and some other words is that they are now usually applied only to men, whereas formerly they were common to both sexes. This has happened, for instance, to paramour and villain, as well as to lover. But villain is still a term of reproach for a woman as well as for a man in some of the provincial dialects. And, although we no longer call a woman a lover, we still

say

of and woman that they are lovers, or a pair of lovers. I find the term lover distinctly applied to a woman in so late a work as Smollett's Count Fathom, published in 1754:—“These were alarming symptoms to a lover of her delicacy and pride." Vol. I. ch. 10.

260. Out of the teeth of emulation.-As envy (Vid. 187) is commonly used by Shakespeare in the sense of hatred or malice, so emulation, as here, is with him often envy or malicious rivalry. There are instances, however, of his employing the word, and also the cognate terms emulator, emulate, and emulous, not in an unfavourable sense.

260. With traitors do contrive.--The word contrive in the common acceptation is a very irregular derivative from the French controuver, an obsolete compound of trouver (to find). The English word appears

a man

to have been anciently written both controve and contreve (Vid. Chaucer's Rom. of the Rose, 4249 and 7547). Spenser, however, has a learned contrive of his own (though somewhat irregularly formed too), meaning to spend, consume, wear out, from the Latin contero, contrivi (from which we have also contrite).

Scene IV.–The heading of this scene in the original text is only “ Enter Portia and Lucius."

261. Get thee gone.-An idiom ; that is to say, a peculiar form of expression the principle of which cannot be carried out beyond the particular instance. Thus we cannot say either Make thee gone, or He got him (or himself) gone. Phraseologies, on the contrary, which are not idiomatic are paradigmatic, or may serve as models or moulds for others to any extent. All expression is divided into these two kinds. And a corresponding division may be made of the inflected parts of speech in any language. Thus, for instance, in Greek or Latin, while certain parts of speech are indeclinable, those that are declined are either paradigmatic (that is exemplary), such as the noun and the verb, or non-exemplary, such as the articles and the pronouns. They might be distinguished as reproductive and non-reproductive. And such an arrangement of them might be found convenient for some purposes.

263. O constancy.-Not exactly our present constancy ; rather what we should now call firmness or resolution. In the same sense afterwards, in 297,

“ Cassius, be constant." The French have another use of constant,—Il est constant (It is certain),—borrowed from the Latin impersonal constat, and not unknown to consto. Vid. 310.

Brutus says,

263. I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.That is, but only a woman's might.

263. How hard it is for women to keep counsel.Counsel in this phrase is what has been imparted in consultation. In the phrases To take counsel and To hold counsel it means simply consultation. The two words Counsel and Council have in some of their applications got a little intermingled and confused, although the Latin Consilium and Concilium, from which they are severally derived, have no connexion.

267. I heard a bustling rumour, like a fray.—Mr. Knight has by mistake “I hear.”-Rumour is - here (though not generally in Shakespeare) only a noise ; a fray is a fight, from the French ; bustle is apparently connected with busy, which is Anglo-Saxon, and may perhaps be the same word with the German böse, wicked. This, if it be so, might lead us to suspect that quick is also wicked. And is weak another variation of the same etymon ?

268. Sooth, madam.--Sooth, when used at all, may still mean either truth or true. We see that in Shakespeare's time it also meant truly. The A. Saxon sóth is in like manner used in all these different

ways.

It may be doubted whether this word has any connexion either with our modern verb to sooth, or with sweet (anciently sot), the süss of the modern German.

269. Come hither, fellow; which way hast thou been? -The line, which stands thus in the original edition, and makes a perfect verse, is commonly cut up into two hemistichs. ".which

way

hast thou been" is not a possible commencement of a verse, unless we were to lay an emphasis on thou, which would be absurd. Our been, it may be noted, is here, and com

But "

N