To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserv'd when Fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robb'd, that smiles, steals something from the thief;
He robs himself, that spends a bootless grief.

Bra. So, let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile,
We lose it not, so long as we can smile;
He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears ;
But he bears both the sentence, and the sorrow,
That, to pay grief, muit of poor patience borrow.
These sentences to fugar, or to gall,
Being strong on both fides, are equivocal.
But words are words ; I never yet did hear, (:o)
That the bruis'd heart was pieced through the ear.
Beseech you, now to the affairs o'th' State.

(10) But Words are Words; I never yet did hear,

Thai the bruis'd Heart was pierced thro' the Ear.] One fuperfiuous Letter has for these hundred Years quite subverted the Sense of this Passage ; and none of the Editors have ever attended to the Reasoning of the Context, by which they might have discover'd the Error. The Duke has by sage Seotences been exhorting Brabantio. to Patience, and to forget the Grief of his Daughter's foln Marriage, to which Brabantio is made very pertinently to reply, to this ef. fect: “ My Lord, I apprehend very well the Wi dom of your • Advice; but tho' you would comfort me, Words are but “ Words; and the Heart, already bruis’d, was never pieri'd, 6 or wounded, thro' the Ear," Well! If we want Argu. ments for a Senator, let him be educared at the feet of our fagacious Editors. It is obvious, I believe, to my better Readers, that the Text must be refor’d, as Mr. Warburton acutely oblery'd to me.

That the bruis’d Heart was pieced thro' the Ear. i, e. That the Wounds of Sorrow were ever cur'd, or a Maa made heart-whole meerly by Words of Consolation. I ought to take notice, this very Emendation was likewise communicated to me by an ingenious, unknown, Correspondent, who Subscribes himself only L. H.

Duke.

Duke. The Turk with a moft mighty preparation makes for Cyprus : Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you.

And though we have there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency; yet opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safe voice on you; you must therefore be content to slubber the gloss of your new fortunes, with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition.

Oth. The tyrant custom, most grave fenators,
Hath made the finty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize
A natural and prompt alacrity
I find in hardness; and do undertake
This present war against the Ottomites.
Moft humbly therefore bending to your State,
I crave fit difpofition for my wife,
Due reference of place and exhibition ;
With such accommodation and besort
As levels with her breeding.

Duke. Why, at her father's.
Bra. I will not have it fo.
Oth. Nor I.

Del. Nor would I there reside,
To put my father in impatient thoughts
By being in his eye. Most gracious Duke,
To my unfolding lend your gracious ear,
And let me find a charter in your voice
Taflift my fimpleness.

Duke. What would you, Desdemona ?

Def. That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My down-right violenee and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world. My heart's fubdu'd
Ev'n to the very quality of my lord;
I saw Othello's visage in his mind,
And to his honours and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.
So that, dear lords, if I be left behind
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites, for which I love him, are bereft me :
And I a heavy interim fhall support,

BY

By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

Oth. Your voices, lords ; beseech you, let her will
Have a free way. I therefore beg it not, -(11)
To please the palate of my appetite;
Nor to comply with heat, the young

Affects,
In my distinct and proper Satisfaction ;
But to be free and bounteous to her mind.
And heav'n defend your good souls, that you think,
I will your serious and great business scant,

(11)

I therefore beg it not
To please the Palate of my appetite,
Nor to comply with Heat the young affe&ts,
In my defun&t and proper Satisfaction;

But to be free and bounteous to her Mind.) As this has been all along hitherto printed and stop'd, it seems to me a Period of as ftubborn Nonsense, as the Editors have obtruded upon poor Shakespeare throughout his whole Works. What a preposterous Creature is this Othello made, to fall in Love with, and marry, a fine young Lady, when Appetite and Heas, and proper Satisfaétion are dead and defun& in him! (For, defund fignifies nothing else, that I know of, either primitive ly or meraphorically: ) But if we may take Othello's own Word in the Affair, when he speaks for himself, he was not reduc'd to this fatal, unperforming, State.

for, for I am declin'd

Into the Vale of Tears; yet That's not much. Again, Why should our Poet say, (for so he says, as the Parfage has been pointed;) that the young affeHeat? Youth, cer. tainly, has it, and has no occasion or Pretence of afecting it, whatever luperannuated Lovers may have. And, again, after defun&t, would he add so absurd a collateral Epithet as proper? But, I think, I may venture to affirm, that affects was not defign'd here as a Veib; and that defun&t was not design'd here at all. I have, by a slight Change, rescued the Poet's Text from Abfurdity; and this I take to be the Tenour of what he would say,

“I do not beg her Company with me, merely to « please myself; nor to indulge the Heat and Affect, (is e. Af.

fections) of a new-married Man, in my own diftin&t and

proper Satisfa&ion; but to comply with her in her Request, " and Delise, of accompanying me. Affets, for Affections, our Author in several other Passages uses.

For

For she is with me. —No, when light-wing'd toys
Of feather'd Cupid foil with wanton dulness
My speculative and offic'd instruments,
That my disports corrupt and taint

my

business ;
Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
And all indign and base adversities
Make head against my estimation.

Duke. Be it as you shall privately determine,
Or for her stay or going; th'affair cries haste ;
And speed must answer. You must hence to night.

Dej. To night, my lord ?
Dúke. This night.
Oth. With all my heart.

Duke. At nine i'th' morning here we'll meet again.
Othello, leave some officer behind,
And he fall our commission bring to you ;
And such things else of quality and respect
As doth import you.

Oth. Please your Grace, my Ancient;
(A man he is of honesty and trust,)
To his conveyance I assign my wife,
With what else needful your good Grace shall think
To be sent after me.

Duke. Let it be so ;
Good night to every one. And, noble Signior,
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

Sen. Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.

Bra. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see,
She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee.

[Exit Duke, with Senators.
Oth. My life upon her faith. Honeft lago,
My Desdemona muft I leave to thee;
I pr’ythee, let thy wife attend on her;
And bring her after in the best advantage.
Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour
Of love, of worldiy matter and direction
To speak with thee. We must obey the time. [Exeunt.

Manens

Manent Rodorigo and Iago.
Rod. lago
lago. What sayest thou, noble heart?
Rod. What will I do, thinkest thou ?
Iago. Why, go to bed, and sleep.
Rod. I will incontinently drown myself.

lago. Well, if thou doft, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou filly gentleman !

Rod. It is filliness to live, when to live is a torment; and then have we a prescription to die, when death is our physician.

Tago. O villainous! I have look'd upon the world for four times seven years, and since I could distinguish be. twixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Fre I would say, I would drown my self for the love of a Guinney-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

Rod. What should I do? I confess, it is my shame to be fo fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

lago. Virtue ? a fig : 'tis in our felves that we are thus orthus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardiners. So that if we will plant nettles, or fow lettuce; set hyffop, and weed up thyme ; supply it with one gerder of herbs, or distract it with many ; either have it fteril with idleness, or manured with induftry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our will. (12) If the beam of our lives had not

one

(12) If the Balance of our Lives had not one Scale of Reason to prise another of Sen 'uality.) i. e. If the Scale of our Lives had not one Scale, &c. which must certainly be wrong. Some of the old Quarto's have it thus, but the two elder for lio's read,

If the Braine of our Lives had not one Scale, &c. This is corrupt; and I make no doubt but Shakespeare wrote, as I have reform'd the Text,

If the Beame of our Lives, &c. And Reason is this, that he generally diftinguishes betwixo

my