Confin'd to exhibition! all is gone

Upon the gad!-Edmund, how now? what news?
Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the Letter. Glo. Why fo earneftly feek you to put up that

letter ?

Edm. I know no news, my lord.

Glo. What paper were you reading?
Edm. Nothing, my lord.

Glo. No! what needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not fuch need to hide itself. Let's fee; come, if it be nothing, I fhall not need fpectacles.

Edm. I beseech you, Sir, pardon me, it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; and for fo much as I have perus'd, I find it not fit for your overlooking.

Glo. Give me the letter, Sir.

Edm. I shall offend, either to detain, or give it; the contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. Glo. Let's fee, let's fee.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's juftification, he wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my virtue.

Glo. [reads.] 5 This policy and reverence of ages makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us, 'till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppreffion of aged tyranny; which feways, not as it hath power, but as it is fuffered. Come to me, that of this I may Speak more. If our father would fleep, 'till I wak'd bim, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother Edgar.-Hum-Confpiracy!

fleep, 'till I wake him- -you should enjoy half his revenue-My fon Edgar! had he a hand to write this! a heart and brain to breed it in! When came this to you? who brought it?

5 This policy and reverence of ages.] Ages fignifies former times. So the fenfe of the words is this; what between the policy of fome, and the fuperftitious reverence of others to old cuftoms, it is now become an established rule, that fathers fhall keep all they have till they die..

Edm

Edm. It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the cafement of my closet.

Glo. You know the character to be your brother's?

Edm. If the matter were good, my lord, I durit fwear, it were his; but in refpect of that, I would fain think, it were not.

Glo. It is his.

Edm. It is his hand, my lord; I hope, his heart is not in the contents.

Glo. Has he never before founded you in this bufinefs?

Edm. Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that fons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as a ward to the fon, and the son manage his revenue,

Glo. O villain, villain! his very opinion in the letter. Abhorred villain! unnatural, detefted, brutifh villain! worfe than brutish! Go, firrah, feek him; I'll apprehend him. Abominable villain, where is he?

Edm. I do not well know, my lord; if it fhall please you to fufpend your indignation against my brother, 'till you can derive from him better teftimony of his intent, you should run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed againft him, miftaking his purpofe, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your Honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

Glo. Think you fo?

6

Edm. If your Honour judge it meet, I will place you where you fhall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular affurance have your fatisfaction: and that, without any further delay than this very evening. Glo. He cannot be fuch a monster.

Edm. Nor is not, sure.

6 pretence of danger:] Pretence, for purpofe, Danger, for wicked

Glo

Glo. To his Father, that fo tenderly and entirely loves him. Heav'n and Earth! Edmund, feek him out; wind me into him, I pray you; frame the bufinefs after your own wisdom. I would unftate myfelf, to be in a due refolution.

:

Edm. I will feek him, Sir, presently convey the business as I fhall find means, and acquaint you withal. → Glo. Thefe late eclipses in the fun and moon portend no good to us; tho' the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg'd by the fequent effects."Love cools, friendship falls off, bro"thers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, dif"cord; in Palaces, treafon; and the bond crack'd " 'twixt fon and father." This villain of mine comes under the prediction, there's fon against father; the King falls from biafs of nature; there's father against child. "We have feen the beft of our time. "Machinations, hollownefs, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us difquietly to our graves ! Find out this villain, Edmund; it fhall lofe thee nothing, do it carefully and the noble and true-hearted Kent banish'd! his offence, Honefty. "Tis ftrange.

66

SCENE VIII.

Manet Edmund.

[Exit.

Edm. "9This is the excellent foppery of the world, "that, when we are fick in fortune, (often the fur... feits

7 I would unftate myself, to be in a due refolution.] i. e. I will throw afide all confideration of my relation to him, that I may act as juftice requires.

8 convey the bufinefs.] Convey, for introduce: but convey is a fine word, as alluding to the practice of clandeftine conveying goods fo as not to be found upon the felon.

9 This is the excellent foppery of the world, &c.] In Shakespear's beft plays, befides the vices that arife from the fubject, there is generally fome peculiar prevailing Folly, principaily ridiculed, that runs through the whole piece. Thus, in the Tempeft, the lying difpofition of travellers, and in As you like it, the fantastick humour of courtiers, is expofed and fatirized with infinite pleasantry. In like manner, in this play of Lear, the dotages of judicial aftrology are feverely ridiculed. I fancy, was the date of its first performance

well

"feits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our difafters, the fun, the moon, and ftars, as if we

"were

well confidered, it would be found that fomething or other happened
at that time which gave a more than ordinary run to this deceit, as
thefe words feem to intimate. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction
read this other day, what should follow thefe eclipfes. However
this be, an impious cheat, which had fo little foundation in nature
or reafon, fo deteftable an original, and fuch fatal confequences on
the manners of the people, who were at that time strangely befotted
with it, certainly deferved the fevereft 1h of fatire. It was a fun-
damental in this noble fcience, that whatever feeds of good difpofi-
tions the infant unborn might be endowed with, either from nature,
or traductively from its parents, yet if, at the time of its birth, the
delivery was by any cafualty fo accelerated or retarded, as to fall in
with the predominancy of a malignant conftellation, that moment-
ary influence would entirely change its nature, and biafs it to all the
contrary ill qualities. So wretched and monftrous an opinion did it.
fet out with. But the Italians, to whom we owe this, as well as
moft other unnatural crimes and follies of these latter ages, fomented
its original impiety to the most deteftable height of extravagance.
Petrus Aponenfis, an Italian phyfician of the XIIIth century, affures
Bs, that thofe prayers which are made to God when the moon is in
Conjunction with Jupiter in the Dragon's tail, are infallibly heard.
But after him Cardan, with the boldnefs and impiety of an atheift
and a madman, both of which he was, caft the nativity of Jefus
Cbrift, and found by the great and illuftrious concourfe of ftars at
his birth, that he muft needs have the fortune which befel him,
and become the author of a Religion which fhould fpread itself far
and near for many ages. The great Milton, with a juft indignation
of this impiety, hath, in his Paradife Regain'd, fatirized it in a
very beautiful manner, by putting these reveries into the mouth of
the Devil, where he addreffes Jefus Chrift in the following manner.
If I read aught in beav'n,

Or heav'n write aught of fate, by what the ftars
Voluminous or fingle characters,

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
Sorrows and labours, oppofition, bate
Attends thee, fcorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and ftripes, and laftly cruel death:
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric, I difcern not.

lib. iv. ver. 382.

Nor when; eternal fure, as without end, Without beginning; for no date prefixt Directs me in the ftarry rubric fet. Where it is to be obferved, that the Poet thought it not enough to difcredit judicial Aftrology by making it patronifed by the Devil, without fhewing at the fame time the abfurdity of it. He has therefore very judicioufly made him blunder in the expreffion, of

portending

66

"were villains on neceffity; fools, by heavenly com"pulfion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by fphe"rical predominance; drunkards, lyars, and adulterers, by an inforc'd obedience of planetary influence; "and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. 'An admirable evasion of whore-mafter Man, to lay "his goatih disposition on the change of a star! my portending a kingdom which was without beginning. This deftroys all he would infinuate. The poet's conduct is fine and ingenious. Nor could the licentious Rabelais himself for bear to ridicule this impius dotage, which he does with exquifite addrefs and humour, where in the fable which he fo agreeably tells from fop, of the man who applied to Jupiter for the lofs of his hatchet, he makes thofe, who, on the poor man's good fuccefs, had projected to trick Jupiter by the fame petition, a kind of aftrologick atheists, who afcribed this good fortune, that they imagined they were now all going to partake of, to the influence of fome rare conjunction and configuration of the ftars. Hen, ben, difent ils Et doncques, telle of au temps prefent la Revolution des Cieulx, la conftellation des Aftres, & afpect des Planetes, que quiconque Coignée perdra, foubdain deviendra ainfi riche ?

Nou. Prol. du IV. Livre.

But to return to Shakespear. So blafphemous a delufion, therefore, it became the honefty of our Poet to expofe. But it was a tender point, and required managing. For this impious juggle had in his time a kind of religious reverence paid to it. It was therefore to be done obliquely; and the circumftances of the scene furnished him with as good an opportunity as he could with. The perfons in the drama are all pagans, fo that as, in compliance to cuftom, his good characters were not to speak ill of judicial Aftrology, they could on account of their religion give no reputation to it. But in order to expofe it the more, he, with great judgment, makes these pagans Fatalifts; as appears by these words of Lear,

By all the operations of the orbs,

From whom we do exift, and ceafe to be.

For the doctrine of fate is the true foundation of judicial Aftrology. Having thus difcredited it by the very commendations given to it, he was in no danger of having his direct fatire against it mistaken, by its being put (as he was obliged, both in paying regard to custom, and in following nature) into the mouth of the villain and atheist, efpecially when he has added fuch force of reafon to his ridicule, in the words referred to in the beginning of the note.

1 An admirable evafion - to lay bis - difpofition on the CHARGE of a far!] We should read, CHANGE of a far! which both the fense and grammar require. It was the opinion of Aftrologers, (fee what is faid juft above) that the momentary influence did all; and we do not fay, Lay a thing on the charge, but to the charge. Befides, change answering to evasion just above, gives additional elegance to the expreffion.

"father