Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes, 3 4 Do we not likewise see our learning there? 9 With ourselves,] This hemistich, which is found both in the first 4to. and first folio, is omitted in all the modern editions. Mr. Capell has gone much further, and has cut out no less than fourteen lines of this speech. BOSWELL. I Our BOOKS ;] i. e. our true books, from which we derive most information ;-the eyes of women. MALONE. 2 In LEADEN Contemplation, have found out Such FIRY NUMBERS,] Numbers are, in this passage, nothing more than poetical measures. Could you, says Biron, by solitary contemplation have attained such poetical fire, such spritely numbers, as have been prompted by the eyes of beauty? JOHNSON. "In leaden contemplation," So in Milton's Il Penseroso: "With a sad, leaden, downward cast." Again, in Gray's Hymn to Adversity: "With leaden eye that loves the ground." STEEVENS. 3 Of BEAUTEOUS tutors-] Old copies-beauty's. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. MALONE. 4 Other slow arts entirely KEEP the brain;] As we say, keep the house, or keep their bed. M. MASON. A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; Than are the tender horns of cockled snails; taste: For valour, is not love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ? ? 5 the suspicious head of THEFT is stopp'd ;] i. e. a lover in pursuit of his mistress has his sense of hearing quicker than a thief (who suspects every sound he hears) in pursuit of his prey. WARBURTON. "The suspicious head of theft is the head suspicious of theft." "He watches like one that fears robbing," says Speed, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. This transposition of the adjective is sometimes met with. Grimme tells us, in Damon and Pythias : "A heavy pouch with golde makes a light hart.” FARMER. The thief is as watchful on his part, as the person who fears to be robbed, and Biron poetically makes theft a person. M. MASON. Mr. M. Mason might have countenanced his explanation, by a passage in The Third Part of King Henry VI. : 66 Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind : "The thief doth fear each bush an officer: and yet my opinion concurs with that of Dr. Farmer; though his explanation is again controverted, by a writer who signs himself Lucius in The Edinburgh Magazine, Nov. 1786: "The suspicious head of theft (says he) is the suspicious head of the thief. There is no man who listens so eagerly as a thief, or whose ears are so acutely upon the stretch." STEEVENS. I rather incline to Dr. Warburton's interpretation. MALONE. 6 cockled-] i. e. inshelled, like the fish called a cockle. STEEVENS. 7 Still climbing trees in the HESPERIDES ?] Our author had heard or read of "the gardens of the Hesperides," and seems to have thought that the latter word was the name of the garden in which the golden apples were kept; as we say; the gardens of the Tuilleries, &c. Our poet's contemporaries, I have lately observed, are chargeable with the same inaccuracy. So, in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, by Robert Greene, 1598: Subtle as sphinx; as sweet, and musical, As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; "Shew thee the tree, leav'd with refined gold, The word may have been used in the same sense in The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, a poem, 1597: 66 And, like the dragon of the Hesperides, "Shutteth the garden's gate MALONE. 8 As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;] This expression, like that other in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, of"Orpheus' harp was strung with poet's sinews," is extremely beautiful, and highly figurative. Apollo, as the sun, is represented with golden hair; so that a lute strung with his hair means no more than strung with gilded wire. WARBURTON. as sweet, and musical, 66 "As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair." The author of the Revisal supposes this expression to be allegorical, p. 138: "Apollo's lute strung with sunbeams, which in poetry are called hair." But what idea is conveyed by Apollo's lute strung with sunbeams? Undoubtedly the words are to be taken in their literal sense; and in the style of Italian imagery, the thought is highly elegant. The very same sort of conception occurs in Lyly's Mydas, a play which most probably preceded Shakspeare's. Act V. Sc. I. Pan tells Apollo: "Had thy lute been of lawrell, and the strings of Daphne's haire, thy tunes might have been compared to my notes," &c. T. WARTON. Lyly's Mydas, quoted by Mr. Warton, was published in 1592. The same thought occurs in How to Chuse a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602: "Hath he not torn those gold wires from thy head, "Wherewith Apollo would have strung his harp, "And kept them to play musick to the gods?" Again, in Storer's Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, a poem, 1599: "With whose hart-strings Amphion's lute is strung, 9 And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with THE harmony.] This nonsense we should read and point thus: 66 "And when love speaks the voice of all the gods, Never durst poet touch a pen to write, Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs; i. e. in the voice of love alone is included the voice of all the gods. Alluding to that ancient theogony, that love was the parent and support of all the gods. Hence, as Suidas tells us, Palæphatus wrote a poem called "Apodians x "Egal wrń jó, The Voice and Speech of Venus and Love, which appears to have been a kind of cosmogony, the harmony of which is so great, that it calms and allays all kinds of disorders: alluding again to the ancient use of music, which was to compose monarchs, when, by reason of the cares of empires, they used to pass whole nights in restless inquietude. WARBURTON. The ancient reading is I cannot find any reason for Dr. Warburton's emendation, nor do I believe the poet to have been at all acquainted with that ancient theogony mentioned by his critick. The former reading, with the slight addition of a single letter, was, perhaps, the true one. When love speaks," says Biron, "the assembled gods reduce the element of the sky to a calm, by their harmonious applauses of this favoured orator.' Mr. Collins observes that the meaning of the passage may be this-That the voice of all the gods united, could inspire only drowsiness, when compared with the cheerful effects of the voice of Love. That sense is sufficiently congruous to the rest of the speech and much the same thought occurs in The Shepherd Arsileus' Reply to Syrenus' Song, by Bar. Yong; published in England's Helicon, 1600 : "Unlesse mild Love possesse your amorous breasts, "If you sing not to him, your songs do wearie." Dr. Warburton has raised the idea of his author, by imputing to him a knowledge, of which, I believe, he was not possessed; but should either of these explanations prove the true one, I shall offer no apology for having made him stoop from the critick's elevation. I would, however, read: "Makes heaven drowsy with its harmony." Though the words mark! and behold! are alike used to bespeak or summon attention, yet the former of them appears so harsh in Dr. Warburton's emendation, that I read the line several times over before I perceived its meaning. To speak the voice of the gods, appears to me as defective in the same way. Dr. Warburton, in a note on All's Well that Ends Well, observes, that to speak a sound is a barbarism. To speak a voice is, I think, no less reprehensible. STEEVENS. The meaning is,-whenever love speaks, all the gods join their voices with his in harmonious concert. HEATH. O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, "Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony." The old copies read make. The alteration was made by Sir T. Hanmer. More correct writers than Shakspeare often fall into this inaccuracy when a noun of multitude has preceded the verb. In a former part of this speech the same errour occurs : 66 -each of you have forsworn So, in Twelfth-Night: in my name." 66 Again, in King Henry V.: - for every one of these letters are "The venom of such looks, we fairly hope, Again, in Julius Cæsar: "The posture of your blows are yet unknown." Again, more appositely, in King John: "How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds So, Marlowe, in his Hero and Leander : 66 The outside of her garments were of lawn." See, also, the sacred writings: "The number of the names together were about an hundred and twenty." Acts i. 15. MALONE. Few passages have been more canvassed than this. I believe, it wants no alteration of the words, but only of the pointing: "And when love speaks (the voice of all) the gods Love, I apprehend, is called the voice of all, as gold, in Timon, is said to speak with every tongue; and the gods (being drowsy themselves with the harmony) are supposed to make heaven drowsy. If one could possibly suspect Shakspeare of having read Pindar, one should say, that the idea of music making the hearers drowsy, was borrowed from the first Pythian. TYRWHITT. Perhaps here is an accidental transposition. We may read, as, I think, some one has proposed before: "The voice makes all the gods 66 Of heaven drowsy with the harmony." FARMER. That harmony had the power to make the hearers drowsy, the present commentator might infer from the effect it usually produces on himself. In Cinthia's Revenge, 1613, however, is an instance which should weigh more with the reader : "Howl forth some ditty, that vast hell may ring Again, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream: music call, and strike more dead, Than common sleep, of all these five the sense." STEEVENS. |