Lyf. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends:
Her. O hell! to choose love by another's eye!
Lyf. Or, if there were a fympathy in choice,
War, death, or ficknefs did lay fiege to it;
Making it momentany9 as a found,
Swift as a fhadow, fhort as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night',
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to fay,-Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confufion.

Her. If then true lovers have been ever cross'd, It stands as an edict in destiny:

Then let us teach our trial patience,

Because it is a customary cross;

As due to love, as thoughts, and dreams, and fighs,
Wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers 2.

Lyf. A good perfuafion; therefore, hear me, Hermia I have a widow aunt, a dowager

Of

great revenue, and she hath no child:

From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;

9 Making it momentany-] Thus the quartos. The folio reads

momentary.

MALONE.

Momentany is the old and proper word. JOHNSON.

1 Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night,

That, in a fpleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,] Though the word Spleen be here employed oddly enough, yet I believe it right. Shakspeare, always hurried on by the grandeur and multitude of his ideas, affumes every now and then, an uncommon licence in the use of his words. Particularly in complex moral modes it is ufual with him to employ one, only to exprefs a very few ideas of that number of which it is compofed. Thus wanting here to express the ideas of a fudden, or -in a trice, he ufes the word pleen; which, partially confidered, fignifying a hafty fudden fit, is enough for him, and he never troubles himfelf about the further or fuller fignification of the word. Here, he uses the word fplen for a fudden bafly fit; fo just the contrary, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he ufes fudden for fplenetick :-" fudden quips." And it must be owned this fort of converfation adds a force to the diction. WARBURTON.

the colly'd night,] colly'd, i. e. black, fmutted with coal, a word ftill ufed in the midland counties. STEEVENS.

2

- poor fancy's followers.] Fancy here and in many other places in thefe plays, fignifies love. MALONE.

And

And the refpects me as her only fon.

There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the fharp Athenian law
Cannot purfue us: If thou lov'ft me then,
Steal forth thy father's houfe to-morrow-night:
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
'To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I ftay for thee.

Her. My good Lyfander!

I fwear to thee, by Cupid's ftrongest bow;
By his best arrow with the golden head;
By the fimplicity of Venus' doves;

By that which knitteth fouls, and profpers loves;
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,
When the falfe Trojan under fail was seen;
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke ;—
In that fame place thou haft appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.

Lyf. Keep promife, love: Look, here comes Helena,
Enter HELENA.

Her. God fpeed, fair Helena! Whither away? Hel. Call you me fair? that fair again unfay. Demetrius loves your fair 4: O happy fair!

Your eyes are lode-ftars and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to fhepherd's ear,

When wheat is green, when haw-thorn buds appear.

3

Sickness

by that fire that burn'd the Carthage queen,]_Shakspeare had forgot that Thefeus performed his exploits before the Trojan war, and confequently long before the death of Dido. STEEVENS.

4 - -your fair :] Fair is ufed again as a fubftantive in the Comedy of Errors:

My decayed fair,

"A funny look of his would foon repair." See p. 148, n. 6. STEEVENS.

5 Your eyes are lode-ftars; This was a complement not unfrequent among the old poets. The lode-ftar is the leading or guiding ftar, that is, the pole-ftar. The magnet is, for the fame reafon, called the lodefore, either because it leads iron, or because it guides the failor. Milton has the fame thought in L'Allegro:

Tow'rs

Sickness is catching; O, were favour fo!
Your words I'd catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue fhould catch your tongue's fweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The reft I'll give to be to you tranflated.
O, teach me how you look; and with what art
You fway the motion of Demetrius' heart.

Her. I frown upon him, yet he loves me ftill.

Hel. O, that your frowns would teach my fmiles fuch fkill!

Her. I give him curfes, yet he gives me love.

Hel. O, that my prayers could fuch affection move!
Her. The more I hate, the more he follows me.
Hel. The more I love, the more he hateth me.
Her. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.

Hel. None, but your beauty; 'Would that fault were
mine!

Her. Take comfort; he no more fhall fee my face; Lyfander and myfelf will fly this place.

Before the time I did Lyfander fee,

Seem'd Athens as a paradife to me:

"Tow'rs and battlements be fees
"Bofem'd bigb in tufted trees,
"Where perhaps fome beauty lies,

"The cynofure of neighb'ring eyes."

O then,

Davies calls Elizabeth," lode-fone to hearts and lede-ftone to all eyes." JOHNSON.

6

O, were favour fo!] Favour is feature, countenance. So, in Twelfth Night, Act II. fc. iv :

66- -thine eye

"Hath ftay'd upon fome favour that it loves." STEEVENS. 7 Your words I'd catch-] The old copies read-I catch. The emendation was made by the editor of the fecond folio. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads Yours would I catch; in which he has been followed by the fubfequent editors. As the old reading (words) is intelligible, I have adhered to the ancient copies. MALONE.

to be to you tranflated.] To tranflate, in our author, fometimes fignifies to change, to transform. So, in Timon:

66 -to prefent flaves and fervants
"Tranflates his rivals." STEEVENS.

9 Perhaps every reader may not difcover the propriety of thefe lines. Hermia is willing to comfort Helena, and to avoid all appearance of VOL. II.

Gg

triumph

O then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!

Lyf. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
To-morrow night when Phoebe doth behold
Her filver vifage in the watry glafs,

Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
(A time that lovers' flights doth ftill conceal,)
Through Athens' gates have we devis'd to steal.
Her. And in the wood, where often you and Į
Upon faint primrofe-beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bofoms of their counsel sweet';
There my Lyfander and myself shall meet:
And thence, from Athens, turn away our eyes,
To feek new friends and ftranger companies.
Farewel, fweet playfellow; pray thou for us,
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius !-
Keep word, Lylander: we must starve our fight

triumph over her. She therefore bids her not to confider the power of pleafing, as an advantage to be much envied or much defired, fince Hermia, whom the confiders as poffeffing it in the fupreme degree, has found no other effect of it than the lofs of happinefs. JOHNSON.

Emptying our bofoms of their counfel fweet;] That is, emptying our bofoms of thofe fecrets upon which we were wont to confult each other with fo fweet a fatisfaction. HEATH.

The old copies read-fwell'd; and in the line next but one frange companions. Both emendations were made by Mr. Theobald, who fupports them by obferving that "this whole fcene is in rhime. Sweet was easily corrupted into fwell'd, because that made an antithefis to emptying; and "ftrange companions" our editors thought was plain English, but "franger companies" a little quaint and unintelligible." Our author very often uses the fubftantive, firanger, adjectively, and com panies, to fignify companions. So, in K. Richard II. A&t I:

"To tread the franger paths of banishment."

and in K. Henry V:

"His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow."

The latter of Mr. Theobald's emendations is likewife supported by Stowe's Annales, p. 991, edit. 1615: The prince himself was faine to get upon the high altar, to girt his aforefaid companies with the order of knighthood." Mr. Heath obferves, that our author feems to have had the following paffage in the 55th Pfalm, (v. 14, 15.) in his thoughts:

But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine own familiar friend. We took fweet counfel together, and walked in the houfe of God as friends." MALONE.

From

From lovers' food, 'till morrow deep midnight 2.

[Exit HERMIA.

Lyf. I will, my Hermia.-Helena, adieu: As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

[Exit Lys.

Hel. How happy fome, o'er other fome, can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as fhe.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not fo;
He will not know what all but he do know.
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.

Things bafe and vile, holding no quantity3,
Love can tranfpofe to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind :
Nor hath love's mind of any judgment tafte;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is love faid to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.
As waggish boys in game themselves forfwear,
So the boy love is perjur'd every where :
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eynes,
He hail'd down oaths, that he was only mine;
And when this hail fome heat from Hermia felt,
So he diffolv'd, and fhowers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he, to-morrow-night,
Purfue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expence :
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his fight thither, and back again.

when Phoebe doth bebold &c.

[Exit.

deep midnight.] Shakspeare has a little forgotten himself. It appears from page 441, that to-morrow night would be within three nights of the new moon, when there is no moonshine at all, much lefs at deep midnight. The fame overfight occurs in Act. III. fc. i. BLACKSTONE.

3-no quantity, Quality feems a word more fuitable to the sense than quantity, but either may ferve. JOHNSON.

4

-

in game] Game here fignifies not contentious play, but sport, jeft. So Spenfer: 'twixt earnest and 'twixt game." JOHNSON. Hermia's eyne,] This plural is common both in Chaucer and Spenfer. STEEVENS.

SCENE