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as a gourmand, who had satiated himself with the King's body, and took his intellectual part by way of change of provision.

metre.

Neither can a complete acquiescence in the same gentleman's examples of adjectives used adverbially, be well expected; as they chiefly occur in light and familiar dialogue, or where the regular full-grown adverb was unfavourable to rhyme or Nor indeed are these docked adverbs (which perform their office, like the witch's rat, without a tail,") discoverable in a solemn narrative like that before us.. A portion of them also might be no other than typographical imperfections; for this part of speech, shorn of its termination, will necessarily take the form of an adjective. I may subjoin, that in the beginning of the present scene, the adjective corruptible is not offered as a locum tenens for the adverb corruptibly, though they were alike adapted to our author's measure.

It must, notwithstanding, be allowed that adjectives employed adverbially are sometimes met with in the language of Shakspeare. Yet, surely, we ought not (as Polonius says) to "crack the wind of the poor phrase," by supposing its existence where it must operate equivocally, and provoke a simile, as on the present occasion.

That Death, therefore, "left the outward parts of the King invisible," could not, in my judge

ment, have been an expression hazarded by

our poet in his most careless moment of composition. It conveys an idea too like the helmet of Orcus, in the fifth Iliad. *) Gadshill's "receipt

*) Λῦν "Αϊδος κυνέην, ΜΗ ΜΙΝ ΙΔΟΙ ὄβρι μος Αρης.

ceipt of fern-seed," Colonel Feignwell's moros musphonon, or the consequences of being bit by a Seps, as was a Roman soldier, of whom says our excellent translator of Lucan,

"" none was left, no least remains were

seen,

"No marks to show that once a man had been." *)

Besides, if the outward part (i. e. the body) of the expiring monarch was, in plain, familiar, and unqualified terms, pronounced to be invisible, how could those who pretended to have just seen it, expect to be believed? and would not an audience, uninitiated in the mystery of adverbial adjectives, on hearing such an account of the royal carcase, have exclaimed, like the Governor of Tilbury Fort in the Critic:

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thou canst not see it,

"Because 'tis not in sight."

But I ought not to dismiss the present subject, without a few words in defence of Mr. Gray, who had authority somewhat more decisive than that of the persecuted second folio of Shakspeare, for representing Death as a Woman. The writer of the Ode on a distant Prospect of Elon College, was sufficiently intimate with Lucretius, Horace, Ovid, Phaedrus, Statius, Petronius, Seneca the dramatist, &c. to know that they all concurred in exhibiting Mors as a Goddess. Mr. Spence in his Polymetis, p. 261, (I refer to a book of easy access,) has produced abundant examples in proof of my assertion, and others may be readily supplied. One comprehensive instance, indeed, will answer my present purpose. Statius, in his eighth Thebaid, describing

*) Rowe; Book IX. 1. 1334. VOL. VIII.

19

a troop of ghastly females who surrounded the throne of Pluto, has the following lines:

Stant Furiae circum, variaeque ex ordine
Mortes.

Saevaque multisonas exercet Poena catenas. From this group of personification, &c. it is evident that not merely Death, as the source or principle of mortality, but each particular kind of Death was represented under a feminine shape. For want, therefore, of a corresponding masculine term, Dobson, in his Latin version of the second Paradise Lost, was obliged to render the terrific offspring of Satan, by the name of Hades; a luckless necessity, because Hades, in the 964th line of the same book, exhibits a character completely discriminated from that of Death.

Were I inclined to be sportive, (a disposition which commentators should studiously repress,) might I not maintain on the strength of the foregoing circumstances, that the editor of the folio 1632 (far from being an ignorant blunderer,) was well instructed in the niceties of Roman mythology? and might not my ingenious fellow-labourer, on the score of his meditated triumph over Mr. Gray, be saluted with such a remark as reached the ear of Cadmus ?

Quid, Agenore nate, peremptum

Serpentum spectas? et tu spectabere serpens: Fashionable as it is to cavil at the productions of our Cambridge Poet, it has not yet been discovered that throughout the fields of classic literature, even in a single instance, he had mistook his way. STEEVENS.

P. 95, 1. 10 —

- in their throng and press to that last hold,] In their

tumult and hurry of resorting to the last tenable part. JOHNSON.

P. 96, 1. 9. and you are so strait,] i. e. narrow, avaricious; an unusual sense of the word. STELVENS.

P. 96, 1. 25. Shakspeare here uses the word shrouds in its true sense, The shrouds are the great ropes, which come from each side of the Inast. In modern poetry the word, frequently signifies the sails of a ship. MALONE.

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shrouds, bas

This latter usage of the word hitherto escaped my notice. STEEVENS.

P. 96, 1. 31. Module and model, it has been already observed, were in our author's time only different modes of spelling the same word. Model signified not an archetype after which something was to be formed, but the thing formed after an archetype: and hence it is used by Shakspeare and his contemporaries for à representation.

MALONE.

P. 97, 1. 1-4. For, in a night, &c. &c.] This untoward accident really happened to King John himself. As he passed from Lynn to Lincolnshire, he lost by an inundation all his treasure, carriages, baggage, and regalia. MALONE.

P. 98. 1. 26 and fol. O, let us pay the time but needful woe, &c.] Let us now indulge in sorrow, since there is abundant cause for it. England has been long in a scene of confusion, and its calamities have anticipated our tears. By those which we now shed, we only pay her what is her due. MALONE. I believe the plain meaning of the passage is this: As previously we have found sufficient cause for lamentation, let us not waste the present time in superfluous sorrow. STEEVENS,

P. 98, last l. If England to itself do rest but true.] This sentiment seems borrowed from the conclusion of the old play : "If England's peers and people join in one, "Nor Pope, nor France, nor Spain, can do them wrong." STEEVENS.

The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The lady's grief very affecting; and the character of the Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit. JOHNSON.

NOTES

ΤΟ

KING RICHARD II.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II.] But this history comprises little more than the two last years of this Prince. The action of the drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the Duke of Norfolk, on an accusation of high trea son, which fell out in the year 1398; and it closes with the murder of King Richard at Pomfretcastle towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the ensuing year, THEOBALD.

It is evident from a passage in Camden's Annals, that there was an old play on the subject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained business of the Earl of Essex, and was hanged for it, with the ingenious

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