You are so empty of them. Should not our father Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons, Because your speech hath none, that tells him so? TRO. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother Here are your priest, You fur your gloves with reason. reasons: You know, an enemy intends you harm Or like a star dis-orb'd ?3-Nay, if we talk of rea son, Let's shut our gates, and sleep: Manhood and ho nour Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts With this cramm'd reason: reason and respect Make livers pale, and lustihood deject.* The present suspicion of a quibble on the word-reason, is not, in my opinion, sufficiently warranted by the context. And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove, STEEVENS. Or like a star dis-orb'd?] These two lines are misplaced in all the folio editions. POPE. 4 -reason and respect Make livers pale, &c.] Respect is caution, a regard to con sequences. So, in our author's Rape of Lucrece: "Then, childish fear, avaunt! debating die! Again, in Timon of Athens: 66 and never learn'd "The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd HECT. Brother, she is not worth what she doth cost The holding. TRO. What is aught, but as 'tis valued? HECT. But value dwells not in particular will; It holds his estimate and dignity As well wherein 'tis precious of itself TRO. I take to-day a wife, and my election And the will dotes, that is attributive-] So the quarto, The folio reads-inclinable, which Mr. Pope says "is better." MALONE. I think the first reading better; the will dotes that attributes or gives the qualities which it affects; that first causes excellence, and then admires it. JOHNSON. Without some image of the affected merit.] We should read: -the affected's merit. į. e. without some mark of merit in the thing affected. WARBURTON. The present reading is right. The will affects an object for some supposed merit, which Hector says is censurable, unless the merit so affected be really there. JOHNSON. 7-in the conduct of my will;] i. e. under the guidance of my will. MALone. $ blench] See p. 234, n. 6. STEEVENS. 9 We turn not back the silks upon the merchant, When we have soil'd them; nor the remainder viands We do not throw in unrespective sieve,' Because we now are full. It was thought meet, Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks: Your breath with full consent bellied his sails The seas and winds (old wranglers) took a truce, And did him service he touch'd the ports desir'd; And, for an old aunt,3 whom the Greeks held captive, 9 -soil'd them;] So reads the quarto. The folio: 1-unrespective sieve,] That is, unto a common voider. Sieve is in the quarto. The folio reads: -unrespective same; for which the second folio and modern editions have silently printed: ว unrespective place. JOHNSON. It is well known that sieves and half-sieves are baskets to be met with in every quarter of Covent Garden market; and that, in some families, baskets lined with tin are still employed as voiders. With the former of these senses sieve is used in The Wits, by Sir W. D'Avenant: 66 -apple-wives "That wrangle for a sieve.' Dr. Farmer adds, that, in several counties of England, the baskets used for carrying out dirt, &c. are called sieves. The correction, therefore, in the second folio, appears to have been unnecessary. STEEVENS. 2 Your breath with full consent-] Your breaths all blowing together; your unanimous approbation. See Vol. XII. p. 217, n. 5. Thus the quarto. The folio reads-of full consent. 3 MALONE. And, for an old aunt,] Priam's sister, Hesione, whom Hercules, being enraged at Priam's breach of faith, gave to Telamon, who by her had Ajax. MALONE. This circumstance is also found in Lydgate, Book II. where Priam says: He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness Wrinkles Apollo's, and makes pale the morning, "My syster eke, called Exiona "Out of this regyon ye have ladde away" &c. STEEVENS. makes pale the morning.] So the quarto. The folio and modern editors makes stale the morning. JOHNSON. $ And do a deed that fortune never did,] If I understand this passage, the meaning is: "Why do you, by censuring the determination of your own wisdoms, degrade Helen, whom fortune hath not yet deprived of her value, or against whom, as the wife of Paris, fortune has not in this war so declared, as to make us value her less?" This is very harsh, and much strained. JOHNSON The meaning, I believe, is: "Act with more inconstancy and caprice than ever did fortune." HENLEY. Fortune was never so unjust and mutable as to rate a thing on one day above all price, and on the next to set no estimation whatsoever upon it. You are now going to do what fortune never did. Such, I think, is the meaning. MALONE. 6 But, thieves, unworthy of a thing so stolen, CAS. [Within.] Cry, Trojans, cry! PRI. What noise? what shriek is this? TRO. 'Tis our mad sister, I do know her voice. HECT. It is Cassandra. Enter CASSANDRA, raving." CAS. Cry, Trojans, cry! lend me ten thousand eyes, And I will fill them with prophetick tears. CAS. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled elders, 8 6 But, thieves,] Sir T. Hanmer reads-Base thieves,-. That did, in the next line, means-that which did. JOHNSON. MALONE. Enter Cassandra, raving.] This circumstance also is from the third Book of Lydgate's Auncient Historie, &c. 1555: "This was the noise and the pyteous crye "Of Cassandra that so dredefully "She gan to make aboute in euery strete Through ye towne" &c. STEEVENS. wrinkled elders,] So the quarto. Folio-wrinkled old. MALONE. Elders, the erroneous reading of the quarto, would seem to have been properly corrected in the copy whence the first folio was printed; but it is a rule with printers, whenever they meet with a strange word in a manuscript, to give the nearest word to it they are acquainted with; a liberty which has been not very |