phrase in the guise cannot be properly used, without adding somewhat to it, to determine precisely the meaning, and this, as a general observation, is perfectly just, but it does not apply to the present case; for the preceding lines, Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, and the subsequent line, A seeming mermaid steers, very clearly point out the meaning of the word guise; If you ask in what guise? I answer in the guise of mermaids, and the connection is sufficiently clear even for prose, without claiming any allowance for poetical licence; but this objection may be entirely done away, by reading that guise instead of the guise, which I should have adopted, if it had not departed fomewhat farther from the text. With respect to my explanation of the words, and make their bends adornings, I do not think that Mr. Steevens's objections are equally well founded. He says that a mermaid's tail is an unclassical image, adopted from modern sign-posts:—that such a being as a mermaid did never actually exist, I will readily acknowledge; but the idea is not of modern invention; in the oldest books of heraldry you will find mermaids delineated in the same form that they are at this day; the crest of my own family for some centuries. has been a mermaid; and the Earl of Howth, of a family much more ancient, which came into England with the Conqueror, has a mermaid for one of his supporters. Boyse tells us in his Pantheon, on what authority I cannot say, that the Syrens were the daughters of Achelous, that their lower parts were like fishes, and their upper parts like women; and Virgil's description of Seylla, in his third Æniad, corresponds exactly with our idea of a mermaid, Primá hominis facies, et pulchro pectore Virgo, I have, therefore, no doubt but this was Shakespeare's idea also. Mr. Steevens's observations on the aukward and ludicrous situation of Cleopatra's attendants, when involved in their fishes' tails, is very jocular and well imagined; but his jocularity proceeds from his not distinguishing between reality and deception. If a modern fine lady were to represent a mermaid at a masquerade, she would contrive, I have no doubt, to dress in that character, yet preserve the free use of all her limbs, and that with ease, for the mermaid is not described as resting on the extremity of her tail, but on one of the bends of it, fufficiently broad to conceal the feet. Notwithstanding the arguments of Malone and Steevens, and the deference I have for their opinions, I can find no sense in the passage as they have printed it. ACT III.-Sc. 2. ENABARBUS- Speak you of Cæsar? how? the nonpareil! AGRIPPA....Oh, Antony, Oh, thou Arabian bird! We should read, of Antony? Oh, thou Arabian bird! Speak you of Cæsar, he is the nonpareil; speak you of Antony, he is the Arabian bird. What willingly he did confound he wail'd, I should certainly adopt Theobald's amendment, and read, Believe it, till I wept too, and the meaning will be, believe me, he wailed the death of Brutus so bitterly, that I was affected by it, and wept also. Mr. Steevens's explanation of the present reading is so forced, that I cannot clearly com prehend it. TIMON OF ATHENS. ACT III.-Sc. 6. TIMON....The rest of your fees, O Gods! The senators of Athens, &c. We must surely read foes, with Warburton, instead of fees, I find no sense in the present reading. ACT IV.-Sc. 3. TIMON...To such as may the passive drugs of it Though all the modern editors agree in this reading, it appears to me corrupt; the epithet passive is seldom applied, except in a metaphorical sense, to inanimate objects; and I cannot well conceive what Timon can mean by the passive drugs of the world, unless he means every thing that the world affords. But in the first folio the words are not passive drugs, but passive drugges; this leads us to the true reading drudges, which improves the sense, and is nearer to the old reading in the trace of the letters. Dr. Johnson says in his dictionary that a drug means a drudge, and cites this passage as an instance of it; but he is surely mistaken; and I think it is better to consider the passage as erroneous, than to acknowledge on such slight. authority that a drug signifies a drudge. TIMON...The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves The moon into salt tears, Savary, in his 57th letter from Egypt, informs us, on the authority of Pausanias, that the ancient Egyptians were perfuaded, that the tears of Isis, that is of the moon, had the virtue to augment the waters of the Nile, and make it rise up into the country, and he says that the Copti are not yet cured of that superstition. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. ACT I.-Sc. 5. CRESSIDA....Yet I hold off.-Women are angels wooing: things won are done: Joy's soul lies in the doing. This is the reading of all the editions; yet it must be erroneous; for the last six words of the passage are totally inconsistent with the rest of Cressida's speech, and the very reverse of the doctrine she professes to teach. I have, therefore, no doubt that we ought to read, Joy's soul dies in the doing, |