ANT. From Sicyon how the news? Speak there. EARING; serves to plough up the neglected soil, and enable it to produce a profitable crop. When the quick winds lie still, that is, in a mild winter, those weeds which" the tyrannous breathings of the north" would have cut off, will continue to grow and seed, to the no small detriment of the crop to follow. HENLEY. Whether my definition of winds or wind-rows be exact or erroneous, in justice to myself I must inform Mr. Henley, that I received it from an Essex farmer; observing, at the same time, that in different counties the same terms are differently applied. STEEVENS. The words lie still are opposed to earing; quick means pregnant; and the sense of the passage is: "When our pregnant minds lie idle and untilled, they bring forth weeds; but the telling us of our faults is a kind of culture to them." The pronoun our before quick, shows that the substantive to which it refers must be something belonging to us, not merely an external object, as the wind is. To talk of quick winds lying still, is little better than nonsense. M. MASON. The words-lie still, appear to have been technically used by those who borrow their metaphors from husbandry. Thus Ascham, in his Toxophilus, edit. 1589, p. 32: “—as a grounde which is apt for corne, &c. if a man let it lye still, &c. if it be wheate it will turne into rye." STEEVENS. Dr. Johnson thus explains the old reading: "The sense is, that man, not agitated by censure, like soil not ventilated by quick winds, produces more evil than good." This certainly is true of soil, but where did Dr. Johnson find the word soil in this passage? He found only winds, and was forced to substitute soil ventilated by winds in the room of the word in the old copy; as Mr. Steevens, in order to extract a meaning from it, supposes winds to mean fallows, because "the ridges left in lands turned up by the plough, are termed windrows;" though surely the obvious explication of the latter word, rows exposed to the wind, is the true one. Hence the rows of new-mown grass laid in heaps to dry, are also called wind rows. The emendation which I have adopted, [minds,] and which was made by Dr. Warburton, makes all perfectly clear; for if in Dr. Johnson's note we substitute, not cultivated, instead of― "not ventilated by quick winds," we have a true interpretation of Antony's words as now exhibited. Our quick minds, means, 1 ATT. The man from Sicyon.-Is there such an one? 2 ATT. He stays upon your will.+ ANT. Let him appear. These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Enter another Messenger. Or lose myself in dotage.-What are you? 2 MESS. Fulvia thy wife is dead. ANT. Where died she? our lively apprehensive minds. So, in King Henry IV. P. II : "It ascends me into the brain ;-makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive." Again, in this play: "The quick comedians," &c. It is, however, proper to add Dr. Warburton's own interpretation: "While the active principle within us lies immerged in sloth and luxury, we bring forth vices instead of virtues, weeds instead of flowers and fruits; but the laying before us our ill condition plainly and honestly, is, as it were, the first culture of the mind, which gives hope of a future harvest." Being at all times very unwilling to depart from the old copy, I should not have done it in this instance, but that the word winds, in the only sense in which it has yet been proved to be used, affords no meaning; and I had the less scruple on the present occasion, because the same error is found in King John, Act v. sc. vii. where we have, in the only authentick copy: "Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, The observations of six commentators are here exhibited. To offer an additional line on this subject, (as the Messenger says to Lady Macduff,) "were fell cruelty" to the reader. STEEVENS. * He stays upon your will.] We meet with a similar phrase in Macbeth: 66 Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.” STEEVENS. 2 MESS. In Sicyon : Her length of sickness, with what else more serious Importeth thee to know, this bears. ANT. [Gives a Letter. Forbear me. [Exit Messenger. There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it: We wish it ours again;5 the present pleasure, 6 The opposite of itself: she's good, being gone; The hand could pluck her back," that shov'd her on. 5 We wish it ours again;] Thus, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. II: "We mone that lost which had we did bemone." the present pleasure, By revolution lowering, does become STEEVENS. The opposite of itself: The allusion is to the sun's diurnal course; which rising in the east, and by revolution lowering, or setting in the west, becomes the opposite of itself. WARBURTON. This is an obscure passage. The explanation which Dr. Warburton has offered is such, that I can add nothing to it; yet, perhaps, Shakspeare, who was less learned than his commentator, meant only, that our pleasures, as they are revolved in the mind, turn to pain. JOHNSON. I rather understand the passage thus: What we often cast from us in contempt we wish again for, and what is at present our greatest pleasure, lowers in our estimation by the revolution of time; or by a frequent return of possession becomes undesirable and disagreeable. TOLLET. This I believe revolution means change of circumstances. sense appears to remove every difficulty from the passage. The pleasure of to-day, by revolution of events and change of circumstances, often loses all its value to us, and becomes to-morrow a pain. STEEVENS. 7. The hand could pluck her back, &c.] The verb could has a peculiar signification in this place; it does not denote power, but inclination. The sense is, the hand that drove her off would now willingly pluck her back again. HEATH. I must from this enchanting queen break off; Enter ENOBarbus. ENO. What's your pleasure, sir? ANT. I must with haste from hence. ENO. Why, then, we kill all our women: We see how mortal an unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death's the word. ANT. I must be gone. ENO. Under a compelling occasion, let women die: It were pity to cast them away for nothing; though, between them and a great cause, they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment: I do think, there is mettle in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a celerity in dying. 8 ANT. She is cunning past man's thought. ENO. Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love: We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they 9 Could, would, and should, are a thousand times indiscriminately used in the old plays, and yet appear to have been so employed rather by choice than by chance. STEEVENS. tives. · poorer moment :] For less reason; upon meaner moJOHNSON. 9 We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears;] I once idly supposed that Shakspeare wrote "We cannot call her sighs and tears, winds and waters;"-which is certainly the phraseology we should now use. I mention such idle conjec B are greater storms and tempests than almanacks can report this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove. ANT. 'Would I had never seen her! ENO. O, sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work; which not to have been blessed withal, would have discredited your travel. ANT. Fulvia is dead. ENO. Sir? ANT. Fulvia is dead. ENO. Fulvia? ANT. Dead. ENO. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a tures, however plausible, only to put all future commentators on their guard against suspecting a passage to be corrupt, because the diction is different from that of the present day. The arrangement of the text was the phraseology of Shakspeare, and probably of his time. So, in King Henry VIII: 66 You must be well contented, "To make your house our Tower." We should certainly now write-to make our Tower your house. Again, in Coriolanus: "What good condition can a treaty find, "I' the part that is at mercy ?", i. e. how can the party that is at mercy or in the power of another, expect to obtain in a treaty terms favourable to them?See also a similar inversion in Vol. VII. p. 297, n. 7. The passage, however, may be understood without any inversion. "We cannot call the clamorous heavings of her breast, and the copious streams which flow from her eyes, by the ordinary name of sighs and tears; they are greater storms," &c. MALONE. Dr. Young has seriously employed this image, though suggested as a ridiculous one by Enobarbus: "Sighs there are tempests here," says Carlos to Leonora, in The Revenge. STEEVENS. |