is the tomb

Of honour'd bones indeed. What, &c.

Ibid. My honour 's at the stake, which to DEFEAT
I must produce my pow'r.

The poor King of France is again made a man of Gotham. They will not allow him a grain of common reasoning. Sure it must be,

which to DEFEND;

or something equivalent to that sense.

P. 124. Par. I shall report it so.

Hel. I pray you come, sirrah.

Another botch in pointing; but we will read :
Hel. I pray you.-Come, Sirrah.

[To Par.]

[To Clown.]

P. 125. Like him that leap'd into the CUSTARD. It has been conjectured to me, that this should be, cow's-T-D; but I do not know for what reason. I fancy I can explain it with more probability. It was a foolery, perhaps, practised at entertainments, when the Fool, or Zany was in vogue, for him to jump into a large deep custard, set for the purpose, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh, as our Poet says. I do not advance this guess without a seeming authority.

Ben Jonson's Devil's an Ass, Act I. Sc. 1:

He ne'er will be admitted there, where Vennor comes.
He may, perchance, in tail of a sheriff's dinner,
Skip with a rhyme o' th' table, from new-nothing,
And take his Almaine LEAP into a CUSTARD,
Shall make my Lady Mayoress, and her sisters,
Laugh all their hoods over their shoulders.

P. 127. Where are my other men? Monsieur, farewell.

What other men? We hear of no retinue appointed to Helena.

I should rather place this to Biron, and point it thus:

Where are my other men, Monsieur? [To Par.] -Farewell. [To his wife, as hastening her away.]

As

As the Second Act ends here, I will be no farther exorbitant at present; but with the compliments appertaining to the season, and all the happiness wished you, that you can wish to yourself, I conclude, dear Sir, your most sincerely affectionate, and obliged humble servant, LEW. THEOBALD.

LETTER XXVII.

To the Rev. Mr. WARBURTON.

DEAR SIR,

Wyan's Court, Dec. 23, 1729. I have received the favour of yours of the 20th instant with great pleasure; I may say, a double one: since I have not only the satisfaction from it of your most ingenious hints and explications, but of finding that I have the good luck so often to satisfy you in my conjectures too. I come entirely into your improvement upon my STOLE of night, as your guess is both nearer to the traces of the letters, and more consonant to the other metaphors: but, I presume, instead of SCROUL, as you in both places write it, you intended scoWL: for that is the word which signifies louring, or looking sullen.

Apropos, while I think of it, we will have a short word upon another passage, where school, through all the editions, has, as I apprehend, been corruptly obtruded upon us, Macbeth, p. 205:

Here,

Here only on this bank and SCHOOL of time. Bank and school! What a monstrous couplement, as Don Armado says, is here of heterogeneous ideas! I venture to read,

on this bank and SHOAL of time.

i. e. this shallow, this narrow ford of human life, opposed to the great abyss of eternity.

So in Hen. VIII. p. 68:

And sounded all the DEPTHS and SHOALS of honour.

A word

A word upon one other passage, and then to order: Love's Labour Lost, p. 271:

And when Love speaks, &c.

You propose a transposition of two lines. I would submit to you whether, without this change, by the addition of a single letter only, the same sense and noble conclusion, which you so justly admire, may not be come at,

And when Love speaks the voice of all the gods,
MARK heaven drowsy with the harmony!

Harmony making the heavens drowsy is the phrase which so much perplexes me. I do not remember any idea similar to it. But, dear Sir, upon the arrival of yours, and consulting the passage, I went back to the lines preceding it, distinguished with commas by Mr. Pope, and started a discovery, till then unobserved by me, that the Poet is shewing how all the senses are refined by Love.

It adds a precious SEEING to the EYE;
A Lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind!
A Lover's EAR will HEAR the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of Theft is stopt.
Love's FEELING is more soft and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
Love's TONGUE proves dainty Bacchus gross in

taste:

For Valour, is not Love a Hercules? &c.

But what has the poor sense of SMELLING done, not to keep its place among its brethren? And Hercules's valour was not in climbing the trees, but in attacking the dragon gardant. Was Hercules allured by the fragrancy of this fine fruit, as well as the golden hue? If so, is it impossible that our Poet might have wrote,

For SAVOUR, is not Love, &c. ?

i. e. for smelling out the sweets, the delicacies (as in Horace, illius quæ spirabat amores) (or, as in Virgil, divinum vertice odorem spiravere) &c. Sed άéxw. You so happily retrieved a lost sense in

Timon for me, that I promise myself the same success from your assistance here.

And now I proceed with All's Well that Ends Well.

P. 128. But like a common and an outward man,
That the great figure of a council frames

From self-unable MOTION, therefore dare not
Say what I think of it?

From the whole context, it is clear to me that we ought to read:

From self-unable NOTION.

i. e. from my own narrow conception, comprehension, &c.

P. 131. Indeed, good lady, the fellow has a deal of that too much, which HOLDS him much to

have.

I do not understand this reading, but guess SOILS, i. e. he has so many bad qualities, that having them is a great soil and disreputation to him.

P. 137.

Yond's that same knave, That leads him to these PLACES. What places? They have not been talking of infamous houses, or any particular locality. I readPACES, i. e. that leads him to take such irregular steps, to debaucheries, to not loving his wife.

P. 139. If you give him not JOHN DRUM's entertain-
ment, your inclining cannot be remov'd.
I read Toм Drum's entertainment. So, p. 175:
Good Toм Drum, lend me a handkerchief.

I should not, dear Sir, have troubled you with so minute and trivial an observation; but that, I flatter myself, you will not be displeased with my explanation of the passage before us, and the odd phrase of Tom Drum's Entertainment.

The Second Lord says to Bertram to this effect:

"My lord, as you have taken this fellow [Parol"les] into so near a confidence, if, upon his being "found a counterfeit, you do not cashier him "from your favour, then your attachment to him "is not to be removed."

For

For confirmation of this meaning, we must make a quotation from Holinshed, of whose books Shakespeare was a most diligent reader. This Chronologer, in his description of Ireland, speaking of Patrick Scarsefield (Mayor of Dublin in the year 1551) and of his extravagant hospitality, subjoins, that no guest had ever a cold or forbidding look from any part of his family; so that "his porter, or any other officer, durst not for both his ears give the simplest man that resorted to his house TOM DRUM'S ENTERTAINMENT, which is, to hale a man in by the head, and thrust him out by both the shoulders."

I

presume, it may be necessary to quote this.

P. 144. I must put you into a butterwoman's mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet's mule. Why of Bajazet's mule, any more than any other mule? I do not take the conceit.

P. 148. Since Frenchmen are so BRAID.

Quid sibi vult braid ?

P. 159. I would I had not known him.

I think this should be,

I would HE had not known him.

i. e. her son known Parolles.

P. 163. But I am now, Sir, muddied in Fortune's MOOD, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure.

Fortune's mood is without question good sense and yet I believe it ought to be:

proper, and

in Fortune's MOAT. Because the Clown in the very next scene says,

I will henceforth eat no FISH of Fortune's buttering.

And again in the next page,

That hath fallen into the unclean FISH-POND of her displeasure, and, as he says, is MUDDIED withal. Pray you, Sir, use the CARP as you may, &c.

P. 167. Which better than the first, O dear heav'n,

bless,

Or, ere they meet, in me, O Nature, cease!