Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

[blocks in formation]

" Th' ambitious ocean fwell, and rage and foam
"To be exalted with the threatening clouds."

Again, in Golding's tranflation of Ovid's Metamorphosis, Book XI:

"The furges mounting up aloft did feeme to mate the skie, " And with their sprinkling for to wet the clouds that hang on hie."

Again, in Ben Jonfon's Masque of Queens, 1609: "when the boisterous sea,

"Without a breath of wind, hath knock'd the ky."

Again, Virg. Æn. III:

"--spumam elifam, & rorantia vidimus aftra."

Drayton's airy shrowds are the airy covertures of heaven; which in plain language are the clouds.

A fimilar image to that before us, occurs in Churchyard's Praise of Poetrie, 1595:

"The poets that can clime the cloudes,

"Like Ship-boy to the top,

" When sharpest stormes do shake the shrowdes, &c.

Lee, in his Mithridates, is the copier of Shakspeare:
"So fleeps the fea-boy on the cloudy maft,
" Safe as a drowsy Triton, rock'd by storms,
"While toffing princes wake on beds of down."

STEEVENS.

The instances produced by Mr. Steevens prove that clouds were fometimes called poetically airy shrouds, or shrouds suspended in air; but they do not appear to me to prove that any writer speaking of a ship, ever called the shrouds of the ship by the name of clouds. I entirely, however, agree with him in thinking that clouds here is the true reading; and the paffage produced from Julius Cæfar, while it fully supports it, shows that the word is to be understood in its ordinary sense. So again, In The Winter's Tale: now the ship boring the moon with her main-mast, and anon fwallowed up with yest and froth." MALONE.

My position appears to have been misunderstood. I meant not to fuggeft that the shrowds of a ship were ever called clouds. What I designed to say was, that the clouds and the shrowds of heaven were anciently synonymous terms, so that by the exchange of the former word for the latter, no fresh idea would, in fact, be afcertained; as the word shrowds might be received in the sense of clouds as well as that of Ship-tackle. STEEVENS.

Can'st thou, O partial fleep! give thy repose
To the wet feaboy in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!4
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Enter WARWICK and SURREY.

WAR. Many good morrows to your majesty! K. HEN. Is it good morrow, lords?

WAR. 'Tis one o'clock, and paft.

K. HEN. Why then, good morrow to you all,

my lords.

5

3 That with the hurly, Hurly is noise, derived from the French hurler to howl, as hurly-burly from Hurluberlu, Fr. STEEVENS.

4

Then, happy low, lie down] Evidently corrupted from happy lowly clown. These two lines making the just conclufion from what preceded. "If fleep will fly a king and confort itself with beggars, then happy the lowly clown, and uneafy the crown'd

head." WARBURTON.

Dr. Warburton has not admitted this emendation into his text: I am glad to do it the justice which its author has neglected.

JOHNSON.

The sense of the old reading seems to be this: "You, who are happy in your humble situations, lay down your heads to rest! the head that wears a crown lies too uneasy to expect fuch a bleffing." Had not Shakspeare thought it necessary to fubject himself to the tyranny of rhime, he would probably have faid:"then happy low, fleep on!"

So, in The Misfortunes of Arthur, a tragedy, 1587:

"Behold the peasant poore with tattered coate,
"Whose eyes a meaner fortune feeds with fleepe,
"How fafe and found the carelesse snudge doth fnore."

Sir W. D'Avenant has the fame thought in his Law for Lovers : "How foundly they fleep whose pillows lie low!"

STEEVENS.

5 Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.] In my regulation VOL, XIII.

I

Have you read o'er the letters that I fent you?
WAR. We have, my liege.

K. HEN. Then you perceive, the body of our

kingdom

How foul it is; what rank diseases grow
And with what danger, near the heart of it.

War. It is but as a body, yet, distemper'd;" Which to his former strength may be restor'd, With good advice, and little medicine:

My lord Northumberland will foon be cool'd."

of this passage I have followed the late editors; but I am now perfuaded the first line should be pointed thus:

Why then good morsow to you all, my lords.

This mode of phraseology, where only two persons are addressed, is not very correct, but there is no ground for reading

Why, then, good-morrow to you. Well, my lords, &c. / as Theobald and all the subsequent editors do; for Shakspeare in King Henry VI. part II. A II. fc. ii. has put the same expreffion into the mouth of York, when he addresses only his two friends, Salisbury and Warwick ; though the author of the original play printed in 1600, on which the Second Part of King Henry VI. was founded, had in the corresponding place employed the word both :

[ocr errors]

Where as all you know,

" Harmless Richard was murder'd traiteroufly."

This is one of the numerous circumftances that contribute to prove that Shakspeare's Henries were formed on the work of a preceding writer. See the Differtation on that fubje& in Vol. XV.

MALONE.

6 It is but as a body, yet, distemper'd;) Distemper, that is, according to the old physick, a disproportionate mixture of humours, or inequality of innate heat and radical humidity, is less than actual disease, being only the state which foreruns or produces diseases. The difference between distemper and disease seems to be much the fame as between difpofition and habit. JOHNSON.

7 My lord Northumberland will foon be coord.) I believe Shakspeare wrote School'd; tutor'd, and brought to fubmiffion.

Cool'd is certainly right. JOHNSON.

WARBURTON.

So, in The Merry Wives of Windfor: " my humour shall not cool." STEEVENS.

1

K. HEN. O heaven! that one might read the book

of fate;

And fee the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent
(Weary of folid firmness,) melt itself
Into the fea! and, other times, to fee

The beachy girdle of the ocean

Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock, And changes fill the cup of alteration

With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,

[blocks in formation]

9

Into the fea! and, other times, to fee &c.] So, in our author's

64th Sonnet:

" When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

"Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

" And the firm foil win of the watry main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

"When I have seen such interchange of ftate," &c.

MALONE.

90, if this were feen, &c.] These four lines are supplied

from the edition of 1600.

WARBURTON.

My copy wants the whole scene, and therefore these lines.
There is fome difficulty in the line,

What perils past, what crosses to ensue,

because it seems to make paft perils equally terrible with ensuing croffes. JOHNSON.

This happy youth who is to foresee the future progress of his life, cannot be supposed at the time of his happiness to have gone through many perils, Both the perils and the croffes that the King alludes to, were yet to come; and what the youth is to foresee is, the many crosses he would have to contend with, even after he has paffed through many perils. M. MASON.

In answer to Dr. Johnson's objection it may be observed, that paft perils are not described as equally terrible with ensuing crosses, but are merely mentioned as an aggravation of the sum of human calamity. He who has already gone through some perils, might hope to have his quietus, and might naturally fink in defpondency, on being informed that" bad begins, and worse remains behind."

The happiest youth, -viewing his progress through,
What perils paft, what croffes to ensue,
Would shut the book, and fit him down and die.
'Tis not ten years gone,

1

Since Richard, and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feaft together, and, in two years after,
Were they at wars: It is but eight years, fince
This Percy was the man nearest my foul;
Who like a brother toil'd in my affairs,
And laid his love and life under my foot;
Yea, for my fake, even to the eyes of Richard,
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by,

2

Even past perils are painful in retrospect, as a man shrinks at the fight of a precipice from which he once fell. To one part of Mr. M. Mafon's obfervation it may be replied, that Shakspeare does not fay, the happy, but the hoppiest, youth, that is, even the happieft of mortals, all of whom are deftined to a certain portion of mifery.

Though what I have now stated may, I think, fairly be urged in fupport of what seems to have been Dr. Johnson's sense of this paffage, yet I own Mr. M. Mafon's interpretation is extremely ingenious, and probably is right. The perils here spoken of may not have been actually paffed by the peruser of the book of fate, though they have been paffed by him in “ viewing his progress through;" or, in other words, though the regifter of them has been perused by him. They may be faid to be paft in one sense only: namely with respect to those which are to ensue; which are presented to his eye subsequently to those which precede. If the spirit and general tendency of the paflage, rather than the grammatical expreffion, be attended to, this may be faid to be the most obvious meaning. The construction is, What perils having been past, what croffes are to ensue." MALONE.

was

by, &c.]

*--But which of you He refers to King Richard II. A& IV. fc. ii. But whether the king's or the author's memory fails him, so it was, that Warwick was not present at that converfation. JOHNSON.

His

Neither was the King himself present, so that he must have received information of what paffed from Northumberland. memory, indeed, is fingularly treacherous, as, at the time of which he is now speaking, he had actually afcended the throne.

RITSON.

« AnteriorContinuar »