To draw with idle spiders' strings

Most pond'rous and substantial things!"

So this passage is punctuated in all the copies, both ancient and modern. The whole is elliptical in its construction. "Worse metre [says Mr. Coleridge] and better English would be

Grace to stand, virtue to go."

"Pattern in himself to know means "Grace to stand and virtue go," means,

to stand and virtue to go."

"should know," and "should have grace

"More nor less to others paying

Than by self-offences weighing,"

"To weed my So that great

means " Punishing others neither more nor less than he finds due by weighing the offences of his own self." vice' means "the vice of my dominions." poetical allowance must be made as to "English," all through this oracular, or choral kind of "metre."

Now comes a passage which has puzzled all the commentators, and upon which Mr. Collier has the following note:

"Most pond'rous and substantial things!] The passage ending with this line is very difficult. It is possible that the author's brevity rendered it obscure originally, and that it has since been made worse by corruption. Likeness' has been construed' comeliness,' but likeness made in crimes' may refer to the resemblance in vicious inclination between Angelo and Claudio. Steevens gave up the four lines as quite unintelligible, and the other commentators have not extracted much meaning out of them. We have printed the old text, as at least as good as any of the proposed emendations. The sense seems to be, how may persons of similar criminality, by making practice on the times, draw to themselves, as it were

with spiders' webs, the ponderous and substantial benefits of

the world.""

Approving of this interpretation of the word likeness, I would read

"How may likeness, made in crimes,
(Making) practise on the times!"

i.e., "How may the crime-made resemblance of Angelo to Claudio (in so making itself) practise on the times!" and there I would place the note of admiration, and not after "things," and begin a new sentence with

"To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most pond'rous and substantial things,
Craft against vice I must apply.
With Angelo to-night shall lye
His old betrothed but despised:
So disguise shall, by th' disguised,
Pay with falsehood false-exacting,
And perform an old contracting."

i.e., "To draw on important events by slender strings [says the Duke]-with as little a web as this to ensnare so great a fly as Cassio-I will set cunning to work against this vice;" and then he details his plot against Angelo to make him marry his betrothed mistress.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.

ACT I., SCENE 1.

"Duke. To seek thy help by beneficial help.”

This is evidently corrupt. Some of the commentators proposed life for the first help, and Mr. Steevens means for the second. Mr. Collier reads

i.e., to seek what you hope by beneficial help to acquire

This is consistent with

namely, money for your ransom.

Ægeon's exclamation just afterwards :

66

Hopeless and helpless doth Ægeon stand."

Mr. Collier does not often indulge in conjecture, but I consider this a very happy one, and that he should have adopted it in his text.

ACT II., SCENE I.

"Adriana. Patience unmov'd, no marvel tho' she pause. They can be meek, that have no other cause: A wretched soul, bruis'd with adversity,

We bid be quiet, when we hear it cry;
But were we burden'd with like weight of pain,
As much, or more, we should ourselves complain :
So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,
With urging helpless patience would'st relieve me.
But if thou live to see like right hereft,

This fool-begg'd patience in thee will be left."

"She seems [says Johnson] to mean, by fool-begg'd patience, that patience which is so near to idiotical simplicity, that your next relation would take advantage from it to represent you as a fool, and beg the guardianship of your fortune."

This interpretation appears to me to be greatly constrained. May we not more simply understand, "this patience which you so foolishly beg of me will then be discarded by you?" In the second part of "King Henry IV.," v., 5, we have— Reply not to me with a fool-born jest "

ACT IV., SCENE 2.

"Adriana. Tell me, was he arrested on a band?

Dromio of Syracuse. Not on a band, but on a stronger thing; A chain, a chain."

A law-bond was anciently spelt band.

Leonato.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

ACT V., SCENE I.

I prithee cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve. Give not me counsel,

Nor let no comforter delight mine ear,

But such an one whose wrongs do suit with mine :

Bring me a father that so lov'd his child,

Whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine,
And bid him speak of patience;

Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,
And let it answer ev'ry strain for strain;
As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,
In ev'ry lineament, branch, shape, and form.
If such a one will smile, and stroke his beard,
And sorrow, wag, ery hem, when he should groan,
Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk
With candle-wasters, bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,

To be so moral, when he shall endure

The like himself."

It is a pity that such a beautiful passage as this should be interrupted by one difficult line. Mr. Collier merely changes

hem."

the comma for a note of admiration after wag! and then says 66 it may be reconciled to sense." I do not like " cry I should prefer with Mr. Knight—

"And Sorrow, wag! cry-hem, when he should groan."

It appears from the following two passages in "Love's Labour's Lost," that "Set thee down, Sorrow!" which very much resembles "Sorrow, wag!" was a byword :

"Affliction may one day smile again, and till then
Set thee down, Sorrow."-Act i., scene 1.

"Well, Set thee down, Sorrow! for so, they say, the fool said; and so say I and I the fool.”—Act iv., scene 3.

In the eighth line of the above passage I would complete the measure, by reading

"And bid him speak to me of patience,"

which would set off well with the seventeenth

"And I of him will gather patience,"

and I would restrict the twenty-fifth line to

""Tis all men's office to speak patience,"

making "No, no," an odd line by itself.

ACT V., SCENE 1.

"Claudio. If he be angry, he knows how to turn his girdle."

"Large belts," says Mr. Holt White, "were worn with the buckle before; but, for wrestling, the buckle was turned behind, to give the adversary a fairer grasp at the girdle. To turn the buckle behind was therefore a challenge."

In Mr. Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, there is a proof of this custom, But people do not fight by wrestling;