; Can'st thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose pended 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 passage produced from Julius Caesar, 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 swallowed up with yest and froth." MALONE. My position appears to have been misunderstood. I meant not to suggest 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 ascertained; as the word shrouds might be received in the sense of clouds as well as that of ship-tackle. 2 STEEVENS. That, with the hurly,] Hurly is noise, derived from the French hurler to howl, as hurly-burly from Hurluberlu. Fr. 3 STEEVENS. Deny it to a king?] Surely, for the sake of metre, we should read Deny't a king? STEEVENS. Then, happy low, lie down!] Evidently corrupted from happy lowly clown. These two lines making the just conclusion from what preceded. "If sleep will fly a king and consort itself with beggars, then happy the lowly clown, and uneasy the crowned 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 such a blessing." Had not Shakspeare thought it necessary to subject Enter WARWICK and SURREY. WAR. Many good morrows to your majesty! K. HEN. Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords. 5 Have you read o'er the letters that I sent you? WAR. We have, my liege. himself to the tyranny of rhyme, he would probably have said: "then happy low, sleep on!" So, in The Misfortunes of Arthur, a tragedy, 1587: "Behold the peasant poore with tattered coate, "Whose eyes a meaner fortune feeds with sleepe, "How safe and sound the carelesse snudge doth snore." Sir W. D'Avenant has the same thought in his Law against Lovers: 5 "How soundly they sleep, whose pillows lie low!" STEEVENS. Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.] In my regulation of this passage I have followed the late editors; but I am now persuaded the first line should be pointed thus: Why then good morrow 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. Act II. sc. ii. has put the same expression 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: Where as all you know, "Harmless Richard was murder'd traiterously." This is one of the numerous circumstances that contribute to prove that Shakspeare's Henries were formed on the work of a preceding writer. See the Dissertation on that subject, in Vol. XIV. MALONE. K. HEN. Then you perceive, the body of our kingdom How foul it is; what rank diseases grow, WAR. It is but as a body, yet, distemper'd;" And see the revolution of the times 6 8 "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 same as between disposition and habit. JOHNSON. My lord Northumberland will soon be cool'd.] I believe Shakspeare wrote school'd; tutor'd, and brought to submission. Cool'd is certainly right. JOHNSON. So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor : not cool." STEEVENS. 8 WARBURTON. my humour shall "O heaven! that one might read the book of fate; And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent Into the sea! and, other times, to see &c.] So, in our author's 64th Sonnet: "When I have seen the hungry ocean gain "Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, MALONE. 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," 9 O, if this were seen, &c.] These four lines are supplied from the edition of 1600. WARBURTON. My copy wants the whole scene, and therefore these lines. There is some difficulty in the line What perils past, what crosses to ensue, because it seems to make past perils equally terrible with ensuing crosses. 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 crosses 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 passed through many perils. M. MASON. In answer to Dr. Johnson's objection it may be observed, that past 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 sink in despondency, on being informed that "bad begins, and worse remains behind." Even past perils are painful in retrospect, as a man shrinks at the sight of a precipice from which he once fell. To one part of Mr. M. Mason's observation it may be replied, that Shakspeare does not say the happy, but the happiest, youth; that is, even the happiest of mortals, all of whom are destined to a certain portion of misery. Though what I have now stated may, I think, fairly be urged in support of what seems to have been Dr. Johnson's sense of this passage, yet I own Mr. M. Mason's interpretation is extremely ingenious, and probably is right. The perils here spoken of may not have been actually passed by the peruser of the book of fate, though they have been passed by him in "viewing his progress through;" or, in other words, though the register of them has been perused by him. They may be said to be past 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 passage, rather than the grammatical expression, be attended to, this may be said to be the most obvious meaning. The con The happiest youth,-viewing his progress through, Since Richard, and Northumberland, great friends, [TO WARWICK. When Richard, with his eye brimfull of tears, - struction is, "What perils having been past, what crosses are to ensue. MALONE. 1 But which of you was by, &c.] He refers to King Richard II. Act IV. sc. ii. But whether the king's or the author's memory fails him, so it was, that Warwick was not present at that conversation. JOHNSON. Neither was the King himself present, so that he must have received information of what passed from Northumberland. His memory, indeed, is singularly treacherous, as, at the time of which he is now speaking, he had actually ascended the throne. RITSON. cousin Nevil,] Shakspeare has mistaken the name of the present nobleman. The earldom of Warwick was at this time in the family of Beauchamp, and did not come into that of the Nevils till many years after, in the latter end of the reign of King Henry VI. when it descended to Anne Beauchamp, (the daughter of the earl here introduced,) who was married to Richard Nevil, Earl of Salisbury. STEEVENS. Anne Beauchamp was the wife of that Richard Nevil, (in her right,) Earl of Warwick, and son to Richard Earl of Salisbury, who makes so conspicuous a figure in our author's Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. He succeeded to the latter title on his father's death, in 1460, but is never distinguished by it. RITSON. |