MIRA.

My father's of a better nature, sir,

Be of comfort;

Than he appears by speech; this is unwonted,
Which now came from him.

PRO.

Thou shalt be as free

As mountain winds: but then exactly do

All points of my command.

ARI.

To the syllable.

PRO. Come, follow: speak not for him. [Exeunt.

ACT II. SCENE I.

Another part of the Island.

Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and others.

GON. 'Beseech you, sir, be merry: you have cause (So have we all) of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss: Our hint of woe Is common; every day, some sailor's wife,

The masters of some merchant,3 and the merchant,

Our hint of woe-] Hint is that which recalls to the memory. The cause that fills our minds with grief is common. Dr. Warburton reads-stint of woe. JOHNSON.

- Hint seems to mean circumstance. "A danger from which they had escaped (says Mr. M. Mason) might properly be called a hint of woe." STEEVENS.

The masters of some merchant, &c.] Thus the old copy. If the passage be not corrupt (as I suspect it is) we must suppose that by masters our author means the owners of a merchant's ship, or the officers to whom the navigation of it had been trusted.

Have just our theme of woe: but for the miracle,* I mean our preservation, few in millions

Can speak like us: then wisely, good sir, weigh Our sorrow with our comfort.

ALON.

Pr'ythee, peace.

SEB. He receives comfort like cold porridge.
ANT. The visitor will not give him o'er so.

SEB. Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

GON. Sir,

SEB. One:Tell.

GON. When every grief is entertain'd, that's offer'd,

Comes to the entertainer

SEB. A dollar.

GON. Dolour comes to him, indeed; you have spoken truer than you purposed.

I suppose, however, that our author wrote--

"The mistress of some merchant," &c.

Mistress was anciently spelt-maistresse or maistres. Hence, perhaps, arose the present typographical error. See Merchant of Venice, Act IV. sc. i. STEEVENS.

4

* Have just our theme of woe: but for the miracle. The words of woe, appear to me as an idle interpolation. Three lines before we have " our hint of woe-. -" STEEVens.

The visitor Why Dr. Warburton should change visitor to "viser, for adviser, I cannot discover. Gonzalo gives not only advice but comfort, and is therefore properly called The Visitor, like others who visit the sick or distressed to give them consolation. In some of the Protestant churches there is a kind of officers termed consolators for the sick. JoHNSON.

7

946 Gon. Dolour comes to him, indeed;] The same quibble occurs in The Tragedy of Hoffman, 1637:

And his reward be thirteen hundred dollars,

"For he hath driven dolour from our heart." STEEVENS,

1

SEB. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you should.

GON. Therefore, my lord,

ANT. Fye, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue! ALON. I pr'ythee, spare.

GON. Well, I have done: But yet

SEB. He will be talking.

ANT. Which of them, he, or Adrian, for a good wager, first begins to crow?

SEB. The old cock.

ANT. The Cockrel.

SEB. Done: The wager?
ANT. A laughter.

SEB. A match.

ADR. Though this island seem to be desert,SEB. Ha, ha, ha!

ANT. So, you've pay’d.”

ADR. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible, SEB. Yet,

you've pay'd.] Old copy-you'r paid. Corrected by Mr. Steevens. To pay sometimes signified-to beat, but I have never met with it in a metaphorical sense; otherwise I should have thought the reading of the folio right: you are beaten; you have lost. MALONE.

This passage scarcely deserves explanation; but the meaning is this:

Antonio lays a wager with Sebastian, that Adrian would crow before Gonzalo, and the wager was a laughter. Adrian speaks first, so Antonio is the winner. Sebastian laughs at what Adrian had said, and Antonio immediately acknowledges that by his laughing he has paid the bet.

The old copy reads-you'r paid, which will answer as well, if those words be given to Sebastian instead of Antonio.

M. MASON.

ADR. Yet

ANT. He could not miss it.

ADR. It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate temperance.

ANT. Temperance was a delicate wench."

SEB. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly delivered.

ADR. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.
SEB. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.

ANT. Or, as 'twere perfumed by a fen.
GON. Here is every thing advantageous to life.
ANT. True; save means to live.

SEB. Of that there's none, or little.

GON. How lush1 and lusty the green?

grass

looks? how

and delicate temperance.] Temperance here means temperature. STEEVENS.

Temperance was a delicate wench.] In the puritanical times it was usual to christian children from the titles of religious and moral virtues.

1

So Taylor, the water-poet, in his description of a strumpet: Though bad they be, they will not bate an ace,

66

"To be call'd Prudence, Temperance, Faith, or Grace."

STEEVENS.

How lush &c.] Lush, i. e. of a dark full colour, the opposite to pale and faint. SIR T. HANMER.

The words, how green? which immediately follow, might have intimated to Sir T. Hanmer, that lush here signifies rank, and not a dark full colour. In Arthur Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, printed 1587, a passage occurs, in which the word is explained." Shrubbes lushe and almost like a grystle." So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"Quite over-canopied with lushious woodbine."

HENLEY. The word lush has not yet been rightly interpreted. It appears from the following passage in Golding's translation of Ovid, 1587, to have signified juicy, succulent:

ANT. The ground, indeed, is tawny.

SEB. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally. GON. But the rarity of it is (which is indeed almost beyond credit)

SEB. As many vouch'd rarities are.

GON. That our garments, being, as they were, drenched in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness, and glosses; being rather new dy'd, than stain'd with salt water, sus

ANT. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it not say, he lies?

SEB. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report. GON. Methinks, our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Africk, at the

"What? seest thou not, how that the year, as representing plaine "The age of man, departes himself in quarters foure: first, baine "And tender in the spring it is, even like a sucking babe, "Then greene and void of strength, and lush and foggy is the blade;

"And cheers the husbandman with hope." Ovid's lines (Met. XV.) are these:

"Quid? non in species succedere quattuor annum "Aspicis, ætatis peragentem imitamina nostræ? "Nam tener et lactens, puerique simillimus ævo, "Vere novo est. Tunc herba recens, et roboris expers, Turget, et insolida est, et spe delectat agrestem. Spenser in his Shepheard's Calender, (Feb.) applies the epithet lusty to green:

"With leaves engrain'd in lustie green." MALONE. With an eye of green in't.] An eye is a small shade of colour

"Red, with an eye of blue, makes a purple." Boyle. Again, in Fuller's Church History, p. 237, xvii Cent. Book XI: some cole-black (all eye of purple being put out therein Again, in Sandys's Travels, lib. i: "cloth of silver tissued with an eye of green-." STEEVENS.