Ferdinand had the moment before called Miranda a Goddess; and the words immediately subjoined– "Vouchsafe my prayer," &c. show that he looked up to her as a person of a superior order, and sought her protection and instruction for his conduct, not her love. At this period, therefore, he must have felt too much awe to have flattered himself with the hope of possessing a being that appeared to him celestial; though afterwards, emboldened by what Miranda had said, he exclaims, "O, if a Virgin," &c.

584.

MALONE.

582. And his brave son, being twain.] This is a slight forgetfulness. Nobody was left in the wreck, yet we find no such character as the son of the duke of Milan. THEOBALD. -controul thee,] Confute thee, unanswerably contradict thee. JOHNSON. 588. I fear, you have done yourself some wrong:-) i. e. I fear that, in asserting yourself to be king of Naples, you have uttered a falsehood, which is below your character, and consequently injurious to your honour. So in the Merry Wives of Windsor-" This is not well, master Ford, this wrongs you."

STEEVENS.

619. He's gentle, and not fearful.] Fearful signifies both terrible and timorous. In this place it may mean timorous. She tells her father, that as he is gentle,

rough usage is unnecessary; and as he is brave, it may be dangerous.

Fearful,

Fearful, however, may signify formidable, as in K. Henry IV.

"A mighty and a fearful head they are." And then the meaning of the passage is obvious.

STEEVENS.

The author of THE REMARKS hath thus explained the passage: "Do not rashly determine to treat him with severity, he is mild and harmless, and not in the least terrible or dangerous."

621. My foot my tutor ?

for Magistrates, 1587, p. 163.

REED.

-] So in The Mirror

"What honest heart would not conceive disdayne, "To see the foote surmount above the head."

HENDERSON.

623. —come from thy ward;] Desist from any hope of awing me by that posture of defence. JOHNSON.

ACT II.

Line 3.

OUR hint of woe] Hint is that which

recalls to the memory. The cause that fills our minds

with grief is common.

Dr. Warburton reads stint of

JOHNSON.

STEEVENS.

woe.

Hint seems to mean circumstance.

10. Alon. Pr'ythee, peace.] All that follows from

hence to this speech of the king's,

You cram these words into my ears against
The stomach of my sense,

seems to Mr. Pope to have been an interpolation by the players. For my part, though I allow the matter of the dialogue to be very poor, I cannot be of opinion that it is interpolated. For should we take out this immediate part, what would become of these words of the king,

Would I had never

Married my daughter there!

What daughter? and where married? For it is in this. intermediate part of the scene only that we are told the king had a daughter named Claribel, whom he had married into Tunis. 'Tis true, in a subsequent scene betwixt Anthonio and Sebastian, we again hear her and Tunis mentioned; but in such a manner, that it would be obscure and unintelligible without this previous information. THEOBALD.

12. The visitor-] Gonzalo gives not only advice but comfort, and is therefore properly called The Visitor, like others who visit the sick or distressed to give them consolation. In some of the Protestant churches there is a kind of officers termed consolators for the sick. JOHNSON.

43. and delicate temperance.] Temperance here means temperature. STEEVENS.

45. Temperance was a delicate wench.] In the puritanical times it was usual to christen children from the titles of religious and moral virtues.

So

So Taylor, the water-poet, in his description of a strumpet:

66 Though bad they be, they will not bate an ace, "To be call'd Prudence, Temperance, Faith, or Grace." STEEVENS.

54. How lush and lusty the grass looks?] Lush, i. e. of a dark full colour, the opposite to pale and faint. Sir T. HANMER.

The words, how green? which immediately follow, might have intimated to Sir T. Hanmer, that lush here signified rank of growth, and not a dark full colour. In Arthur Golding's translation of Julius Solinus, printed 1587, a passage occurs, in which the word is explained- "Shrubbes lushe and almost like a grystle." So, in A Midsummer Night's Dream,

"Quite over canopied with luscious woodbine." Dunbar, in The Contemplatioun of Manis Mortalitie, uses lusty in the like sense with Shakspere:

"Thy lustye bewte, and thy youth

"Shall feid as dois the somer flouris."

HENLEY.

57. With an eye of green in't.] An eye is a small shade of colour.

79.

"Red, with an eye of blue, makes a purple."

Boyle. STEEVENS.

-Widow Dido!] The name of a widow brings to their minds their own shipwreck, which they consider as having made many widows in Naples.

Perhaps there is an allusion to some old ballad. In the Pepysian collection is one to the tune of Queen Dido. MALONE.

The ballad itself is in that collection, and it is also printed in Percy's Reliques. It appears at one time to have been a great favourite with the common people. "Oh you ale-wrights," exclaims an ancient writer, "you that devoure the marrow of the mault, and drinke whole ale-tubs into consumptions; that sung QUEEN DIDO over a cupp, and tell strange newes ́over an ale-pot," &c. Jacke of Dover his Quest of Inquirie, or his privy search for the veriest Foole in England, 4to. 1604, sig. F. REMARKS. 87. -the miraculous harp.] Alluding to the wonders of Amphion's musick. STEEVENS.

108. The stomach of my sense:· -] By sense, I believe, is meant both reason and natural affection. So in Measure for Measure:

Which end o' th' beam should bow.

Should, was probably an abbreviation of she would, the mark of elision being inadvertently omitted. Thus he has is constantly in the first folio-h'as. Mr. Pope corrected the passage by omitting o', and his correction has been adopted, I think, improperly; for omission

of