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"Summer's Last Will and Testament," we have the verb

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SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV.

ACT IV., SCENE 1.

Archbishop. My brother general, the commonwealth, To brother born an household cruelty

I make my quarrel in particular."

Mr. Collier says, "The second line of this speech is omitted in the folio, and is restored from the quarto. The whole is obscure; but Malone, following Monck Mason, thus explains the probable intention of the author: My brother-general, who is joined here with me in command, makes the commonwealth his quarrel, i.e., has taken up arms on account of public grievances: a particular injury done to my own brother is my ground of quarrel.”

I am not at all satisfied with this explanation. Although the Archbishop had placed himself at the head of a rebellion, he would never have called himself a general officer. I would read: "My general brother being the commonwealth, I make my particular quarrel a household cruelty done to my born brother." The word general is used in the same sense as it is in the phrase "caviare to the general," in "Hamlet," act ii., scene 2, &c.

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ACT IV., SCENE 1.

Archbishop. Then take, my lord of Westmoreland,

this schedule,

For this contains our general grievances :

1 Dodsley's Old Plays, ix., 37.

Each sev'ral article herein redress'd;

All members of our cause, both here and hence,
That are insinew'd to this action
Acquitted by a true substantial form;
And present execution of our wills,
To us and to our purposes confind;
We come within our awful banks again,

And knit our powers to the arm of peace."

Mr. Collier says:-" So both the quarto and folio editions; and there is no need of alteration, though Johnson proposed consign'd; and it has found its way into all the modern editions: the meaning is, the execution of our wills being confined, or restricted, to us and to our purposes."

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"A very modest kind of restriction, truly !" says Warburton; "only as extensive as their appetites and passions ;" and he proposes to change the word purposes to properties.

I would, without any alteration, understand-" Acquitted by a true substantial form, and present execution thereof, we of our free wills (confined to ourselves and our own purposes) will come within our terrible [or perhaps lawful] banks again."

ACT V., SCENE 2.

"Chief Justice. Sweet princes, what I did I did in honour, Led by th' impartial conduct of my soul,

And never shall you see that I will beg

A ragged and forestall'd remission."

Mr. Collier says:-" Both ragged and forestalled are rather puzzling epithets, as applied to "remission," which of course is pardon. By ragged Johnson understands poor and base, and forestall'd perhaps means anticipated by the King before it is asked."

I believe that it was a custom in those times for courtiers to

beg of the King a pardon for an offence, political or moral, before the offender should be impeached or arraigned; and this may very well be called "a forestall'd remission."

KING HENRY THE FIFTH.

ACT IV., SCENE 7.

"King Henry. How now? what means this, Herald? know'st thou not

That I have fin'd these bones of mine for ransom?

Com'st thou again for ransom?"

Lord Chedworth says:-" This expression of fining the bones for ransom I do not understand. None of the commentators attempt to explain it, probably because they thought it too plain to need explanation."

I think the expression fin'd is so peculiar, that the commentators who have written subsequently to Lord Chedworth's publication should have condescended to refer to the following previous speech of the King:

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"Bid them atchieve me, and then sell my bones. * Herald! save thy labour:

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Come thou no more for ransom, gentle Herald !

They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints, Which, if they have, as I will leave 'em them, [i.e., fin'd] Shall yield them little."

ACT V., SCENE 2.

Dr. Johnson objects to the part the King plays throughout this scene, as inconsistent with Shakespeare's representation of his princely accomplishments, and with the Dauphin's opinion of him in this play; and he adds that "the poet's matter failed him in the fifth act, and he was glad to fill it up with whatever he could get, and not even Shakespeare can write well without a proper subject." So far in natural English. Now to say

the same thing upon the high horse of style: "It is a vain endeavour for the most skilful hand to cultivate barrenness, or to paint upon vacuity."

I cannot write like this; but I am humbly of opinion that Shakespeare thus represented King Harry advisedly. The King thought it necessary to prove his reformation, by reversing his former character, (as convertites are apt to do) and to act the rough and blunt English soldier to the extreme. See his speech before the gates of Harfleur, act iii., scene 3 :

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A name that, in my thoughts, becomes me best,"

and then he imputes (doubtless for the purpose of intimidating the French) the most savage wantonness to that best-becoming name. So, too, his extravagant abuse of his own person and accomplishment, in this scene, is purposely over-acted. There is a genuine English nature about the monarch; and the French parents of his bride are made to enter into it very heartily. "We have here" (says the great classical critic) "but a mean dialogue for princes: the merriment is very gross, and the sentiments are very worthless." I suspect that princes and princesses make love much like other people; and I cannot admit that scene to be barren or vacuous, which contains such a touch of nature as, "I know thou lovest me, and at night, when you come into your closet, you'll question this gentlewoman about me; and, I know, Kate, you will, to her, dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart;" and such a touch of poetry as

"O, Kate! nice customs curt'sy to great kings."

The only falsity of this scene is making the royal bride speak French to her bridegroom through an interpreter, while all the rest of her family speak English; but that was doubtless done to heighten, with the audience, the anti-gallican character of the popular monarch.

BARRON FIELD.

ART. XVI.-Shakespeare's " Venus and Adonis," and Lodge's "Scilla's Metamorphosis."

In Mr. Collier's "Life of Shakespeare," prefixed to his edition, 8 vols., 8vo., 1844, I find this passage in reference to "Venus and Adonis."-" The poem was quite new in its class, being founded upon no model, either ancient or modern: nothing like it had been attempted before, and nothing comparable to it was produced afterwards. Thus in 1593 he (Shakespeare) might call it, in the dedication to Lord Southampton, 'the first heir of his invention' in a double sense, not merely because it was the first printed, but because it was the first written of his productions."

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In this view I entirely concur, as well as in the observations and facts contained in the note appended to the passage. If "Venus and Adonis" were composed, as we may well imagine, before Shakespeare quitted Stratford-upon-Avon in 1586 or 1587, it preceded the various works of the same class, written by contemporaries. I take it, that, like his "sugred sonnets mentioned by Meres in 1598, "Venus and Adonis" had been handed about in manuscript among his friends; and the great probability is that Thomas Lodge had seen it before he wrote his "Scillae's Metamorphosis, interlaced with the unfortunate love of Glaucus," which was published in 1589. Lodge's poem is written in the same stanza, and in various other points seems to adopt "Venus and Adonis" as a model: nay, near the commencement of it, the author actually adverts to the same incidents, and in terms which read exactly as if he had endeavoured to adopt the same style: e. g.

"Hee that hath seene the sweete Arcadian boy
Wiping the purple from his forced wound,

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