6

Suggefted us to make: Therefore, ladies,
Our love being yours, the error that love makes
Is likewife yours: we to ourselves prove false,
By being once falfe for ever to be true
To thofe that make us both,—fair ladies, you:
And even that falfehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself, and turns to grace.

PRIN. We have receiv'd your letters, full of love;
Your favours, the embaffadors of love;
And, in our maiden council, rated them
At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtéfy,
As bombaft, and as lining to the time :

6 Suggested us] That is, tempted us. JOHNSON. So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

“Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested." STEEVENS. As bombaft, and as lining to the time:] This line is obfcure. Bombaft was a kind of loose texture not unlike what is now called wadding, ufed to give the dreffes of that time bulk and protuberance, without much increafe of weight; whence the fame name is given to a tumour of words unfupported by folid fentiment. The princess, therefore, fays, that they confidered this courtship as but bombaft, as fomething to fill out life, which not being closely united with it, might be thrown away at pleafure. JOHNSON. my fweet creature of bombaft.'

Prince Henry calls Falftaff,

We have receiv'd your letters full of love;
Your favours the ambassadors of love;
And in our maiden council rated them
At courtship, pleafant jef, and courtesy,

As bombaft and as lining to the time:

But more devout than thefe in our refpecs,

Have we not been, and therefore met your loves

In their own fashion, like a merriment.

STERVANS.

The fixth verfe being evidently corrupted, Dr. Warburton pre

pofes to read:

But more devout than this (fave our refpects)

Have we not been;

Dr. Johnson prefers the conjecture of Sir Thomas Hanmer:

But more devout than this, in our respects.

I would read, with less violence, I think, to the text, though with the alteration of two words:

But more devout than thefe are your refpe&s

Have we not feen,

TYRWHITT.

But more devout than this, in our refpects,
Have we not been; and therefore met your loves
In their own fafhion, like a merriment.

DUM. Our letters, madam, fhow'd much more than jeft.

LONG. So did our looks.

Ros.
KING. Now, at the latest minute of the hour,

Grant us your loves.

PRIN.

We did not quote them fo.

A time, methinks, too fhort

To make a world-without-end bargain in: "
No, no, my lord, your grace is perjur'd much,

The difficulty I believe arifes only from Shakspeare's remarkable pofition of his words, which may be thus conftrued. But we have not been more devout, or made a more ferious matter of your letters and favours than these our refpects, or confiderations and reckonings of them, are, and as we have juft before said, we rated them in our maiden council at courtship, pleasant jeft, and courtesy. TOLLET. The quarto, 1598, reads,

But more devout than this our refpe&s.”

There can be no doubt therefore that Sir T. Hanmer's conjecture is right. The word in, which the compofitor inadvertently omitted, completes both the sense and metre. MALONE.

We did not quote them fo.] The old copies read coat.

STEEVENS. We fhould read- quote, efteem, reckon; though our old writers spelling by the ear, probably wrote cole, as it was pronounced.

JOHNSON.

Cote is only the old spelling of quote. So again, in our poet's Rape of Lucrece, 1594:

MALONE.

"Will cote my loathed trespass in my looks We did not quote 'em fo, is, we did not regard them as fuch. So, in Hamlet:

"I'm forry that with better heed and judgement
"I had not quoted him."

See Aa II. fc. i.

SDEEVENS.

To make a world-without-end bargain in:] This fingular phrase, which Shakspeare borrowed probably from our liturgy, occurs again in is 57th Sonnet:

"Nor dare I chide_the_world-without-end hour.'

MALONE.

Full of dear guiltinefs; and, therefore, this,-
If for my love (as there is no fuch caufe)
You will do aught, this fhail you do for me:
Your oath I will not truft; but go with speed
To fome forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleafures of the world;
There flay, until the twelve celeftial figns
Have brought about their annual reckoning:
If this auftere infociable life

Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frotts, and fafts, hard lodging, and thin weeds,*
Nip not the gaudy bloffoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial, and last love;'
Then, at the expiration of the year,

Come challenge, challenge me by thefe deferts,
And, by this virgin palm, now kiffing thine,
I will be thine; and, till that inflant, flut
My woeful felf up in a mourning house;
Raining the tears of lamentation,

For the remembrance of my father's death. 'If this thou do deny, let our hands part; Neither intitled in the other's heart."

2

3

and thin weeds,] i. e. cloathing. MALONE.

laft

and laft love; I fufpect that the compofitor caught this word from the preceding line, and that Shakspeare wrote fill. If the prefent reading be right, it muft mean," if it contiuue ftill to deferve the name of love. MALONE. Laft is a verb. If it last love, means, if it continue to be love.

STEEVENS.

Come challenge, challenge me] The old copies read (probably by the compofitor's eye glancing on a wrong part of the line) Come challenge me, challenge me, &c. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. MALONE. 5 Neither intitled in the other's heart.] The quarto, 1598, reads Neither intiled -; which may be right: neither of us having a dwelling in the heart of the other.

Our author has the fame kind of imagery in many other places. Thus, in The Comedy of Errors:

"Shall love in building grow fo ruinate?" VOL. VII.

Bb

KING. If this, or more than this, I would

deny, To flatter up these powers of mine with reft, The fudden hand of death close up mine eye! Hence ever then my heart is in thy breaft. BIRON. And what to me, my love? and what to me?

Ros. You must be purged too, your fins are
rank; 7

You are attaint with faults and perjury;
Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,

Again, in his Lover's Complaint:

"Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place.”

Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

"O thou, that doft inhabit in my breast,

"Leave not the manfion fo long tenantless,

"Left growing ruinous the building fall.." MALONE.

We may certainly fpeak, in general terms, of building a manfor for Love to dwell in, or, of that manfion when it is become a Ruin, without departure from elegance; but when we defcend to fuch particulars as tiling-in Love, a suspicion will arife, that the technicals of the bricklayer have debafed the imagery of the poet. hope, therefore, that the second in the word intitled was an undefigned omiffion in the quarto, 1598, and, confequently, that intiled was not the original reading. STEEVENS.

6 To flatter up these powers of mine with reft,] Dr. Warburton would read fetter, but flatter or footh is, in my opinion, more appofite to the king's purpose than fetter. Perhaps we may read: To flatter on these hours of time with reft;

That is, I would not deny to live in the hermitage, to make the year of delay pass in quiet. JOHNSON.

7

bent.

are rank;] The folio and quarto, 1598, read-are rack'd.

STEEVENS.

your fins are rack'd,] i. c. extended to the top of their So, in Much ado about nothing:

(c Why, then we rack the value.

"

Mr. Rowe and the fubfequent editors read· -are rank. MALONE. Rowe's emendation is every way juftifiable. Things rank (not those which are racked) need purging. Befides, Shakspeare has used the fame epithet on the fame occafion in Hamlet:

"O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven."

STEEVENS.

I

A twelvemonth fhall you spend, and never reft,
But feek the weary beds of people fick.

8

DUM. But what to me, my love? but what to me?

KATH. A wife!-A beard, fair health, and honefty;

With three-fold love I wish you all these three. DUM. O, fhall I fay, I thank you, gentle wife? KATH. Not fo, my lord;-a twelvemonth and a

day

I'll mark no words that fmooth-fac'd woers fay:
Come when the king doth to my lady come,
Then if I have much love, I'll give you fome.

DUM. I'll ferve thee true and faithfully till then.
KATH. Yet, fwear not, left you be forfworn again.
LONG. What fays Maria?

1

MAR. At the twelvemonth's end, I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. LONG. I'll ftay with patience; but the time is long.

MAR. The liker you; few taller are fo young.

Biron. And what to me, my love? and what to me?

Rof. You must be purged too, your fins are rank;

You are attaint with faults and perjury:

Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,

A twelvemonth fhall you spend, and never reft,

But feek the weary beds of people fick.] Thefe fix verfes both Dr. Thirlby and Mr. Warbuiton concur to think fhould be expunged; and therefore I have put them between crotchets,: not that they were an interpolation, but as the author's draught, which he afterwards rejected, and executed the fame thought a little lower with much more fpirit and elegance. Shakspeare is not to answer for the prefent al furd repetition, but his actor-editors; who, think ing Rofaline's fpeech too long in the fecond plan, had abridg'd it to the lines above quoted; but, in publishing the play, ftupidly printed both the original fpeech of Shakspeare, and their own abridgement of it. THEOBALD.