5

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ments, and the guards are but slightly basted on neither ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience; and so I leave you.

[Exit BENEDICK.

guarded with fragments,] Guards were ornamental lace or borders. So, in The Merchant of Venice:

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give him a livery

"More guarded than his fellows."

Again, in Henry IV. Part I:

6

66

velvet guards, and Sunday citizens." STEEVENS. ere you flout old ends &c.] Before you endeavour to distinguish yourself any more by antiquated allusions, examine whether you can fairly claim them for your own. This, I think, is the meaning; or it may be understood in another sense, examine, if your sarcasms do not touch yourself. JOHNSON.

The ridicule here is to the formal conclusions of Epistles dedicatory and Letters. Barnaby Googe thus ends his dedication to the first edition of Palingenius, 12mo. 1560: " And thus committyng your Ladiship with all yours to the tuicion of the moste mercifull God, I ende. From Staple Inne at London, the eighte and twenty of March." The practice had however become obsolete in Shakspeare's time. In A Poste with a Packet of mad Letters, by Nicholas Breton, 4to. 1607, I find a letter ending in this manner, entitled, "A letter to laugh at after the old fashion of love to a Maide." REED.

Dr. Johnson's latter explanation is, I believe, the true one. By old ends the speaker may mean the conclusion of letters commonly used in Shakspeare's time: "From my house this sixth of July," &c. So, in the conclusion of a letter which our author supposes Lucrece to write :

"So I commend me from our house in grief;

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My woes are tedious, though my words are brief." See The Rape of Lucrece, p. 547, edit. 1780, and the note there.

Old ends, however, may refer to the quotation that D. Pedro had made from The Spanish Tragedy: "Ere you attack me on the subject of love, with fragments of old plays, examine whether you are yourself free from its power." So, King Richard: "With odd old ends, stol'n forth of holy writ.'

This kind of conclusion to letters was not obsolete in our author's time, as has been suggested. Michael Drayton concludes one of his letters to Drummond of Hawthornden, in 1619, thus :

CLAUD. My liege, your highness now may do me good.

D. PEDRO. My love is thine to teach; teach it but how,

And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn
Any hard lesson that may do thee good.
CLAUD. Hath Leonato any son, my lord?

D. PEDRO. No child but Hero, she's his only heir: Dost thou affect her, Claudio?

CLAUD.
O my lord,
When you went onward on this ended action,
I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye,
That lik'd, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love:
But now I am return'd, and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires,
All prompting me how fair young Hero is,
Saying, I lik'd her ere I went to wars.

D. PEDRO. Thou wilt be like a lover presently,
And tire the hearer with a book of words:
If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it;
And I will break with her, and with her father,
And thou shalt have her: Was't not to this end,
That thou began'st to twist so fine a story?

CLAUD. How sweetly do you minister to love, That know love's grief by his complexion!

"And so wishing you all happiness, I commend you to God's tuition, and rest your assured friend." So also Lord Salisbury concludes a letter to Sir Ralph Winwood, April 7th, 1610: "And so I commit you to God's protection."

Winwood's Memorials, III. 147. MALONE.

The practice might have become obsolete to the general though retained by certain individuals. An old fashion has sometimes a few solitary adherents, after it has been discarded from common use. REED.

But lest my liking might too sudden seem,
I would have salv'd it with a longer treatise.

D. PEDRO. What need the bridge much broader than the flood?

The fairest grant is the necessity:"

Look, what will serve, is fit: 'tis once, thou lov'st;&
And I will fit thee with the remedy.

I know, we shall have revelling to-night;
I will assume thy part in some disguise,
And tell fair Hero I am Claudio;
And in her bosom I'll unclasp my heart,
And take her hearing prisoner with the force
And strong encounter of my amorous tale:
Then, after, to her father will I break;
And, the conclusion is, she shall be thine:
In practice let us put it presently.

[Exeunt.

"The fairest grant is the necessity :] i. e. no one can have a better reason for granting a request than the necessity of its being granted. WARBURTON.

Mr. Hayley with great acuteness proposes to read:

"The fairest grant is to necessity; i. e. necessitas quod cogit defendit." STEEVENS.

These words cannot imply the sense that Warburton contends for; but if we suppose that grant means concession, the sense is obvious; and that is no uncommon acceptation of that word. M. MASON.

'tis once, thou lov'st ;] This phrase, with concomitant obscurity, appears in other dramas of our author, viz. The Merry Wives of Windsor, and King Henry VIII. In The Comedy of Errors, it stands as follows:

"Once this-Your long experience of her wisdom," &c. Balthasar is speaking to the Ephesian Antipholis.

once for all," "tis enough to

Once has here, I believe, the force of-once for all. So, in Coriolanus: "Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him." MALONE.

SCENE II.

A Room in Leonato's House.

Enter LEONATO and ANTONIO.

LEON. How now, brother? Where is my cousin, your son? Hath he provided this musick?

ANT. He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamed not of.

LEON. Are they good?

ANT. As the event stamps them; but they have a good cover, they show well outward. The prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley1 in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: The prince discovered to Claudio, that he loved my niece your daughter, and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance; and, if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top, and instantly break with you of it.

LEON. Hath the fellow any wit, that told you this?

ANT. A good sharp fellow: I will send for him, and question him yourself.

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strange news] Thus the quarto, 1600. The folio omits the epithet, which indeed is of little value. STEEVENS. a thick-pleached alley-] Thick-pleached is thickly interwoven. So afterwards, Act III. sc. i:

-bid her steal into the pleached bower." Again, in King Henry V :

"her hedges even-pleach'd-". STEEVENS.

LEON. No, no; we will hold it as a dream, till it appear itself:-but I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you, and tell her of it. [Several persons cross the stage. Cousins, you know what you have to do.-Ŏ, I cry you mercy, friend; you go with me, and I will use your skill:-Good cousins, have a care this busy time. [Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Another Room in Leonato's House.

Enter Don JOHN and CONRADE.

CON. What the goujere,3 my lord! why are you thus out of measure sad?

D. JOHN. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds it, therefore the sadness is without limit.

CON. You should hear reason.

D. JOHN. And when I have heard it, what blessing bringeth it?

Cousins, you know--and afterwards,-good cousins.] Cousins were anciently enrolled among the dependants, if not the domesticks, of great families, such as that of Leonato.Petruchio, while intent on the subjection of Katharine, calls out, in terms imperative, for his cousin Ferdinand. STEEVENS.

What the goujere,] i. e. morbus Gallicus. The old copy corruptly reads, "good-year." The same expression occurs again in King Lear, Act V. sc. iii:

"The goujeres shall devour them, flesh and fell." See note on this passage. STEEVENS.