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ticular devotion of yourself to me, as your particular

benefactor.

JOHNSON.

441. As doth a rock against the chiding flood,] "Ille, velut pelagi rupes immota, resistit." Æn. 7. v. 586.

S. W.

477. To Esher house,-] The old copy reads— Asher. It was anciently so called, as appears from Holinshed:

"" and everie man took their horses and rode

strait to Asher." Holinshed, p. 909, Vol. II, WARNER.

484. 'Till I find more than will, or words, to do it (I mean your malice), know,

I dare deny it.]

Wolsey had said;

-Words cannot carry

Authority so mighty.

To which they reply:

Who dare cross 'em? &c.

Wolsey, answering them, continues his own speech, Till I find more than will or words (I mean more than your malicious will and words) to do it; that is, to carry authority so mighty; I will deny to return what the king has given me. JOHNSON.

535. And dare us with his cap, like larks.] It is well known that the hat of a cardinal is scarlet; and the method of daring larks was by small mirrors fastened on scarlet cloth, which engaged the attention of these birds while the fowler drew his net over them.

The

The same thought occurs in Skelton's Why come ye not to Court? i. e. a satire on Wolsey:

"The red hat with his lure,

"Bringeth al thinges under cure."

STEEVENS.

550. Worse than the sacring beli,-] The little bell, which is rung to give notice of the Host approaching when it is carried in procession; as also in other offices of the Romish church, is called the sacring or consecration bell; from the French word, sacrer.

THEOBALD. The abbess in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1626,

says:

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—you shall ring the sacring bell,

"Keep your hours, and toll your knell." Again, in Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584:

"He heard a little sacring bell ring to the eleva

tion of a to-morrow mass."

The now obsolete verb to sacre, is used by P. Hol land in his translation of Pliny's Nat. Hist. B. X. ch.6. STEEVENS.

588.

-to the mere undoing] Mere is absolute.

STEEVENS.

601. of a præmunire] It is almost unnecessary to observe that premunire is a barbarous word used instead of præmonere.

STEEVENS. -] I have ven

604. Castles, and whatsoever, tured to substitute chattels here, as the author's genuine word, because the judgment in a writ of Premunire is, that the defendant shall be out of the king's protec

tion; and his lands and tenements, goods and chattels forfeited to the king; and that his body shall remain in prison at the king's pleasure. This very description of the Premunire is set out by Holinshed in his Life of King Henry VIII. p. 909. THEOBALD.

618.

-nips his root,] So, in A. W's Commendation

of Gascoigne and his Poesies:

"And frosts so nip the rootes of vertuous meaning

minds."

See Gascoigne's Works, 1587.

STEEVENS.

630.- -and our ruin,] The old copy reads,

-their ruin.

STEEVENS.

If by ruin we understand displeasure, producing the downfall and ruin of him on whom it lights, the old reading (their) may stand. MALONE.

632. And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,] In the Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, &c. a poem, by Thomas Storer, student of Christ-Church, in Oxford, 1599, the Cardinal expresses himself in a manner somewhat similar:

"If once we fall, we fall Colossus-like,

"We fall at once like pillars of the sunne," &c. STEEVENS. 667. a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them!] The chancellor is the general guardian of orphans. A tomb of tears is very harsh. JOHNSON. This idea will appear not altogether indefensible to those who recollect the following epigram of Martial:

Flentibus

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Flentibus Heliadum ramis dum vipera serpit,
Fluxit in obstantem succina gemma feram.
Quæ dum miratur pingui se rore teneri,
Concreto riguit vincta repente gelu.
Ne tibi regali placeas Cleopatra sepulchro
Vipera si tumulo nobiliore jacet.

The Heliades certainly wept a tomb of tears over the viper. STEEVENS.

A similar conceit. occurs in Richard II. act iii.

line 431. 714.

HENLEY.

cherish those hearts that hate thee;] Though this be good divinity, and an admirable precept for our conduct in private life; it was never calculated or designed for the magistrate or public minister. Nor could this be the direction of a man experienced in affairs, to his pupil. It would make a good Christian, but a very ill and very unjust statesman. And we have nothing so infamous in tradition, as the supposed advice given to one of our kings, to cherish his enemies, and be in no pain for his friends. I am of opinion the poet wrote,

-cherish those hearts that wait thee; i. e. thy dependants. For the contrary practice had contributed to Wolsey's ruin. He was not careful enough in making dependants by his bounty, while intent in amassing wealth to himself. The following line seems to confirm this correction :

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

i. e. You will never find men won over to your temporary occasions by bribery, so useful to you as friends

made

made by a just and generous munificence.

WARBURTON.

I am unwilling wantonly to contradict so ingenious a remark, but that the reader may not be misled, and believe the emendation proposed to be absolutely necessary, he should remember that this is not a time for Wolsey to speak only as a statesman, but as a Christian. Shakspere would have debased the character, just when he was employing his strongest efforts to raise it, had he drawn it otherwise. Nothing makes the hour of disgrace more irksome, than the reflection, that we have been deaf to offers of reconciliation, and perpetuated that enmity which we might have converted into friendship. STEEVENS.

726. Had I but serv'd my God, &c.] This sentence was really uttered by Wolsey. JOHNSON. When Samrah, the deputy-governor of Basorah, was deposed by Moawiyah the sixth caliph, he is reported to have expressed himself in the same manner: "If I had served God so well as I have served him, he would never have condemned me to all eternity." STEEVENS.

Antonio Perez, the favourite of Philip the Second of Spain, made the same pathetick complaint: "Mon zele étoit si grand vers ces benignes puissances [la cour de Turin,] que si, j'en eusse en autant pour Dieu, je ne doubte point qu'il ne m'eut deja recompensé de son paradis." MALONE.

ACT

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