(1) L King LEAR. АСТ І. SCENE III. An alienated Child. ET it be fo, thy truth then be thy dower: From whom we do exist, and cease to be; The barb'rous Scy Or he that makes his generation meffes To (1) Let, &c.] The Reader will do well to obferve, Shakefpear makes his characters in King Lear strictly conformable to the religion of their times: the not attending fufficiently to this, hath occafioned fome critics greatly to err in their remarks on this play. To gorge his appetite, fhall to my bofom Baftardy. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law For that I am fome twelve or fourteen moon-fhines More (2) Wherefore, &c.] The baftard is here complaining of the tyranny of cuftom, and produces two inftances, to fhew the plague and oppreffion of it; the firft, in the cafe of elder brothers; the fecond, of bastards. With regard to the firft, we are to fuppofe him fpeaking of himself only as an objector, making the cafe his own, according to a common manner of arguing: "Wherefore, fays he, fhould I (or any man) stand in [within] the plague [the punishment or fcourge] of custom, why fhould I continue in its oppreffive power, and permit the courtesy of nations to deprive me, to take away from, rob, and injure me, because, &c. (3) Who, &c.]. Mr. Warburton quotes a paffage here, well worth remarking-"How much the lines following this are in character, fays he, may be feen by that monftrous with of Vanini, the Italian atheift, in his tract, De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis, printed at Paris 1616, the very year our poet died. O utinam extra legitimum & connubialem thorum effem procreatus! Ita enim progenitores mei in venerem incaleffent ardentius, accumulatim affatimq; generola femina contuliffent, é quibus ego formæ blanditiam, ac elegantiam, robuftas corporis vires, mentemque innubilam confequutus fuiffem. At quia conjugatorum fim fabbs his orbatus fum bonis. Had the book been publihed but ten or twenty years fooner, who would not have believ'd that Shakespear alluded to this paffage? But the More compofition and fierce quality; SCENE VIII. Aftrology ridicul'd. (5) This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are fick in fortune, (often the furfeits of our the divinity of his genius foretold, as it were, what fuch an atheist as Vanini would fay, when he wrote upon such a subject." I have forbore giving a tranflation of the Latin, because Shakespear's words are a fine paraphrafe of it, and because it perhaps is not proper for all ears: but if, fuppofing Vanini had wrote first, we should have imagined, Shakespear alluded to him; why may we not, as it is, believe Vanini alluded to Shakespear (4) Got 'tween fleep and wake.] This reading runs thro' all the editions, and is indeed very plaufible: tho' it seems to me, the paffage originally ftood, Got atween fleep and wake. The a might very easily have been fo tranfpofed, and atween is very common with all the old writers down to, and below our author. (5) This, &c.] Aftrology was in much higher credit in our author's time than in Milton's, who, nevertheless, hath fatirised it in the feverest manner poffible, by making it patronised even by the devil himself: for in the 4th book of luis Paradife Regain'd, the devil thus addreffes our Saviour. -If I read aught in heaven, Or heav'n write aught of fate, by what the ftars In their conjunction met, give me to fpell, A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, Nor when: eternal fure, as without end, Without own behaviour) we make guilty of our difafters, the fun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on neceffity, fools, by heavenly compulfion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by fpherical predominance: drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an inforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evafion of whoremafter man, to lay his goatifh difpofition on the charge of a star! my father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Urfa major; fo that it follows, I am rough and letcherous. I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. SCENE XV. A Father curfing his Child. Hear nature! Dear goddess, hear; and if thou dost intend A babe to honour her; but if fhe must bring forth, Without beginning; for no date prefixt How V. 382. "Where it is to be obferv'd, (fays Mr. Warburton,) that the poet thought it not enough to difcredit judicial aftrology, by making it patronised by the devil, without fhewing at the fame time, the abfurdity of it. He has therefore very judiciously made him blunder, in the expreffion of portending a kingdom, which was without beginning. This destroys all he would infinuate." How sharper than a ferpent's tooth it is Ingratitude in a Child. (6) Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou fhew'ft thee in a child, Than the fea-monster. ACT II. SCENE VI. Flattering Sycophants. That fuch a flave as this fhould wear a sword, Who wears no honefty: (7) fuch fmiling rogues [as thefe,] Like (6) Ingratitude, &c.] Ingratitude, a marble-hearted fiend, is more hideous and dreadful when shewing itself in a child, than even that fea-monfter, which is the emblem itself of impiety and ingratitude: by which monfter he means the Hippotamus, or river-horse," which, fays Sandys, in his travels, p. 105. fignify'd murder, impudence, violence, and injuftice: for they fay, that he killeth his fire, and ravishes his own dam." Mr. Upton's alteration of, Than 'th' fea-monster, feems unnecessary : for the poet makes ingratitude, a fiend, a monfter itself, and one more odious than even this hieroglyphical fymbol of impiety. See Obfervations on Shakespear, p. 203. (7) Such, &c.] The words, as thefe, may be fafely omitted without injuring the fenfe; they are flat and fpoil the metre. The next lines are read thus in the old editions; Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwaine, Atwaine is doubtlefs the genuine word, which was commonly ufed, fignifying, in two, afunder, in twain. And Mr. Upton obferving that Shakespear fometimes trikes off a fyllable or more from the latter part of a word, would preferve intrince in the text, which he explains by intrinficate. 'Tis certain the author ufes intrinficate, but I don't remember ever to have met with intrince: "This fhortening of words, is indeed too much the genius of our language;" and as the Reader knows the fenfe of the |