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I think we may safely retain the old reading in the last hemistich.

-What is yet to come,

In yours and my discharge,

i e. depends on what you and I are to perform.

STEEVENS.

283. destiny,] I should prefer destin'd.

293.

MUSGRAVE.

-Keep in Tunis.] There is in this passage a propriety lost, which a slight alteration will

restore :

-Sleep in Tunis,

And let Sebastian wake!

JOHNSON.

The old reading is sufficiently explicable. Claribel (says he), keep where thou art, and allow Sebastian time to awaken those senses, by the help of which he may perceive the advantage which now presents itself. STEEVENS. 300. A chough is a bird of the jack-daw kind.

-317. And melt, ere they molest.

read,

Would melt ere they molest.

STEEVENS.

-] I had rather

i. e. Twenty consciences, such as stand between me and my hopes, though they were congealed, would melt before they could molest one, or prevent the execution of my purposes. JOHNSON.

Or melt ere they molest. The old copy reads And melt, which is as intelligible as or, which was substituted in its place.-Let twenty consciences be first congealed, and then dissolved, ere, &c. MALONE.

In the later editions, these lines are thus arranged:
Ay, sir, where lyes that?

If 'twere a kybe, 'twould put me to my slipper:
But I feel not this deity in my bosom.

Ten consciences, that stand twixt me and Milan,
Candy'd be they, and melt, e'er they molest!

Here lies your brother

This modern reading was quite arbitrary, as appears by the necessity of changing twenty to ten. STEEVENS. that's dead ;] that is, id est.

319.

322. Lear.

for ay] i. e. for ever.

I am come

STEEVENS.
So in King

To bid my king and master aye good night.

STEEVENS.

-] For morsel Dr. War

323. This ancient morsel,burton reads ancient moral, very elegantly and judiciously, yet I know not whether the author might not write morsel, as we say a piece of a man.

So, in Measure for Measure:

JOHNSON.

"How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress?"

STEEVENS.

JOHNSON.

325. hint of villany. They'll take suggestion, as a cat laps milk.] That is, will adopt, and bear witness to, any tale you shall invent; you may suborn them as evidences to clear you from all suspicion of having murdered the king. A similar signification occurs in The Two Gentlemen of Verona :

take suggestion,-] i. e. Receive any

"Love bad me swear, and love bids me for

swear:

"O sweet suggesting love, if thou hast sinn'd,
"Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it."
HENLEY.

339. to keep them living.] i. e. Alonso and Anthonio; for it was on their lives that his project depended. Yet the Oxford Editor alters them to you, because in the verse before, it is said—you his friend as if, because, Ariel was sent forth to save his friend, he could not have another purpose in sending him, viz. to save his project too. WARBURTON.

I think Dr. Warburton and the Oxford Editor both mistaken. The sense of the passage, as it now stands, is this: He sees your danger, and will therefore save them. Dr. Warburton has mistaken Anthonio for Gonzalo. Ariel would certainly not tell Gonzalo, that his master saved him only for his project. He speaks to himself as he approaches,

My master through his heart foresees the danger
That these his friends are in.

These written with a y, according to the old practice, did not much differ from you.

JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson objects very justly to this passage.

The confusion has, I think, arisen from the omission of a single letter. Our author, I believe, wrote

-and sends me forth,

For else his projects dies, to keep them living. .e. he has sent me forth, to keep his projects alive,

which else would be destroyed by the murder of Gonzalo. The opposition between the life and death of a project appears to me much in Shakspere's manner. The plural noun joined to a verb in the singular is to be met with in almost every page of the first folio. Thus, to confine myself to the play before us, edit. 1623:

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"Lies at my mercy

Again, ibid.

"What cares the roarers for the name of the king." It was the common language of the time; and ought to be corrected, as indeed it generally has been in the modern editions of our author, by changing the number of the verb. Thus, in the present instance, we should read-) -For else his projects die, &c.

MALONE.

By THEM, are meant Sebastian and Anthonio. The project of Prospero which depended upon Ariel's keeping them living, may be seen, act iii. 1. 340, &c. HENLEY.

348.

-drawn?] Having your swords drawn.

So in Romeo and Juliet :

"What, art thou drawn among these heartless

hinds?"

364. That's verity:

JOHNSON.

-] The old copy reads,

that's verily; the emendation by Mr. Pope.

STEEVENS.

381.

that moe, &c.] i. e. Make mouths.

So in the old version of the Psalms :

❝making moes at me.”

Again, in the old mystery of Candlemas-Day, 1512: "And make them to lye and mowe like an ape."

385.

STEEVENS.

-wound,] Enwrapped by adders

wound or twisted about me.

JOHNSON.

393. -looks like a foul bumbard-] This term again occurs in The first Part of Henry IV.- "That swoln parcel of dropsies that huge bumbard of sack ;” -and again in Henry VIII. "And here you lie baiting of bumbards, when ye should do service.” By these several passages, 'tis plain, the word meant a large vessel for holding drink, as well as the piece of ordnance so called. THEOBALD.

Ben Jonson, in his Masque of Augurs, confirms the conjecture of Theobald"The poor cattle yonder are passing away the time with a cheat loaf, and a bumbard of broken beer."

401. -this fish painted,

STEEVENS.

-] To exhibit fishes,

either real or imaginary, was very common about the time of our author. So in Maine's comedy of the City Match:

"Enter Bright, &c. hanging out the picture of a strange fish."

66 -This is the fifth fish now

"That he hath shewn thus."

It appears, from the books at Stationers-Hall, that in 1604 was published, "A strange reporte of a

monstrous

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