2 LORD. If his wit had been like him that broke it, it would have ran all out. [Aside.

CLO. When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers by to curtail his oaths: Ha?

2 LORD. No, my lord; nor [Aside] crop the ears of them.

CLO. Whoreson dog!—I give him satisfaction? 'Would he had been one of my rank!

2 LORD. To have smelt like a fool.

[Aside. CLO. I am not vexed more at any thing in the earth,-A pox on 't! I had rather not be so noble as I am. They dare not fight with me, because of the queen my mother: every jackslave hath his belly-full of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that no body can match.

2 LORD. You are cock and capon too; and you crow, cock, with your comb on. [Aside.

CLO. Sayest thou?

1 LORD. It is not fit your lordship should undertake every companion that you give offence to.

CLO. No, I know that: but it is fit I should commit offence to my inferiors.

2 LORD. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only.

CLO. Why, so I say.

1 LORD. Did you hear of a stranger that 's come to court to-night?

CLO. A stranger! and I not know on 't!

2 LORD. He's a strange fellow himself, and knows it not.

[Aside.

1 LORD. There's an Italian come; and, 't is thought, one of Leonatus' friends. CLO. Leonatus! a banished rascal; and he 's another, whatsoever he be. Who told you of this stranger?

1 LORD. One of your lordship's pages.

CLO. Is it fit I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation in 't?

1 LORD. You cannot derogate, my lord.

CLO. Not easily, I think.

2 LORD. You are a fool granted; therefore your issues, being foolish, do not derogate.

[Aside.

CLO. Come, I'll go see this Italian: What I have lost to-day at bowls I'll win

to-night of him. Come, go.

2 LORD. I'll attend your lordship.

[Exeunt CLOTEN and first Lord.

That such a crafty devil as is his mother
Should yield the world this ass! a woman, that
Bears all down with her brain; and this her son
Cannot take two from twenty for his heart,
And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess,

Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur'st!
Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern'd;
A mother hourly coining plots; a wooer,

a Companion is used here, and in other passages of Shakspere, in the same sense as fellow is at present. Sir Hugh Evans denounces the host of the Garter as a

66

scurvy cogging companion."

More hateful than the foul expulsion is

Of thy dear husband. From that horrid act

Of the divorce he 'd make, the heavens hold firm

The walls of thy dear honoura; keep unshak'd

That temple, thy fair mind; that thou may'st stand,

To enjoy thy banish'd lord, and this great land!

SCENE II.-A Bed-Chamber; in one part of it a trunk.

[Exit.

IMO. I have read three hours then: mine eyes are weak:
Fold down the leaf where I have left: To bed:

Take not away the taper, leave it burning;
And if thou canst awake by four o' the clock,

I prithee, call me. Sleep hath seiz'd me wholly.
To your protection I commend me, gods!
From fairies, and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye!

[Exit Lady.

[Sleeps. IACHIMO, from the trunk.

IACH. The crickets sing, and man's o'er-labour'd sense

Repairs itself by rest: Our Tarquin thus

Did softly press the rushes", ere he waken'd

The chastity he wounded.-Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily!
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!

But kiss; one kiss!-Rubies unparagon'd,

How dearly they do 't-'T is her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: The flame o' the taper

a This passage is usually printed thus:

"A wooer,

More hateful than the foul expulsion is
Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act

Of the divorce he'd make! The heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour!"

The reading of the original is

"A wooer

More hateful than the foul expulsion is

Of thy dear husband. Then that horrid act

Of the divorce heel'd make the heavens hold firm
The walls of thy dear honour."

It appears to us that amidst such manifest incorrectness of typography, a clearer sense is attained by the change of Then to From, than by altering the construction of the sentence. The Lord implores that the honour of Imogen may be held firm, to resist the horrid act of the divorce from her husband which Cloten would make.

Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids,
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tincta.-But my design.
To note the chamber, I will write all down:

Such and such pictures :-There the window: Such
The adornment of her bed:-The arras, figures,
Why, such, and such:-And the contents o' the story.
Ah, but some natural notes about her body
Above ten thousand meaner moveables
Would testify, to enrich mine inventory.
O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!
And be her sense but as a monument,
Thus in a chapel lying!-Come off, come off;
As slippery, as the Gordian knot was hard!
"T is mine; and this will witness outwardly,
As strongly as the conscience does within,

To the madding of her lord. On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip. Here's a voucher,
Stronger than ever law could make this secret

:

[Taking off her bracelet.

This celebrated passage has produced some difference of opinion amongst the commentators. First, Capell says, of the word windows, "the poet's meaning is shutters." Hanmer changed the word to "curtains." The window is the aperture through which light and air are admitted to a room-sometimes closed, at other times opened. It is the wind-door. We have the word in 'Romeo and Juliet' similarly applied

Capell then goes on to say, that the "white and azure" refer to the white skin, generally laced with blue veins. Secondly, Malone thinks that the epithets apply to the "enclosed lights"—the eyes. Lastly, Warburton decides that the eye-lids were intended. We are disposed to agree with him. The eye-lid of an extremely fair young woman is often of a tint that may be properly called "white and azure;" which is produced by the net-work of exceedingly fine veins that runs through and colours that beautiful structure. Shakspere has described this peculiarity in his 'Venus and Adonis'

"Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth."

And in 'The Winter's Tale,' we have

"Violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes."

But in the text before us, the eye-lids are not only of a "white and azure" hue, but they are also "laced with blue of heaven's own tinct"-marked with the deeper blue of the larger veins. The description is here as accurate as it is beautiful. It cannot apply with such propriety to the eye, which certainly is not lac'd with blue; nor to the skin generally, which would not be beautiful as "white and azure." It is, to our minds, one of the many examples of Shakspere's extreme accuracy of observation, and of his transcendant power of making the exact and the poetical blend with, and support, each other.

M. Mason would read "the arras-figures;" but Iachimo subsequently describes, not only the figures of the arras, but its particular quality—

Will force him think I have pick'd the lock, and ta'en
The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?
Why should I write this down, that 's riveted,
Screw'd to my memory? She hath been reading late
The tale of Tereus; here the leaf 's turn'd down
Where Philomel gave up ;-I have enough:
To the trunk again, and shut the spring of it.
Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning
May bare the raven's eyea! I lodge in fear;
Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.
One, two, three,-Time, time!

[Clock strikes.

[Goes into the trunk. The scene closes.

SCENE III.-Without the Palace, under Imogen's Apartment.

Enter CLOTEN and Lords.

1 LORD. Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turned up ace.

CLO. It would make any man cold to lose.

1 LORD. But not every man patient after the noble temper of your lordship. You are most hot and furious when you win.

CLO. Winning will put any man into courage. If I could get this foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough. It's almost morning, is 't not?

1 LORD. Day, my lord.

CLO. I would this music would come: I am advised to give her music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate.

Enter Musicians.

Come on; tune. If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so; we'll try with tongue too: if none will do, let her remain; but I'll never give o'er. First, a very excellent good-conceited thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it,-and then let her consider.

SONG.

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings",

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic'd flowers that lies';

a The original reads, "may beare the raven's eye." Theobald corrected it to bare. We are not quite sure of the propriety of the correction, though we are unwilling to disturb the received text. To bare the raven's eye, is to open the raven's eye-the eye of one of the earliest-waking and the quickest-seeing of birds. The predatory habits of the raven require that he should be up before the shepherd is about with his flocks; and his piercing eye at once leads him where the feeble lamb lies in some hollow a ready victim, or where the leveret has crept abroad in the gray of the morning from the safe form of its mother. The dawning may bare that eye; or the dawning may bear-may sustain, may be distinct enough to endure-the proof of that acute vision.

This apparently false concord is in truth a touch of our antique idiom, which adds to the beauty of this exquisite song. (See Illustrations of Romeo and Juliet,' Act II., Illust. 28.)

And winking Mary-buds begin to ope their golden eyes2;
With everything that pretty is -My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise.

So, get you gone.

If this penetrate, I will consider your music the better: if it do not, it is a voice in her ears, which horse-hairs and calves'-guts d nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to boot, can never amend.

Enter CYMBELINE and QUEEN.

[Exeunt Musicians.

2 LORD. Here comes the king.

CLO. I am glad I was up so late; for that 's the reason I was up so early. He cannot choose but take this service I have done, fatherly. Good morrow to your majesty, and to my gracious mother.

CYM. Attend you here the door of our stern daughter?

Will she not forth?

CLO. I have assailed her with musics, but she vouchsafes no notice.

CYM. The exile of her minion is too new;

She hath not yet forgot him: some more time

Must wear the print of his remembrance out,
And then she 's yours.

QUEEN.

You are most bound to the king,

Who lets go by no vantages that may
Prefer you to his daughter. Frame yourself
To orderly solicits; and, befriended
With aptness of the season, make denials
Increase your services: so seem, as if
You were inspir'd to do those duties which

a In one of Browne's 'Pastorals' is a passage which illustrates this:

"The day is waxen old,

And 'gins to shut up with the marigold."

Hanmer changed this to bin-a pretty word. But is occurs in the folio. We print the lines as they are printed in that edition; by which, in all probability, a different time of the air was indicated-a more rapid movement.

Voice. So the old copies. It has been changed to vice.

Calves'-guts. So the old copy. Rowe changed this to cats'-guts, and he has since been followed. The word cats'-gut-or catgut-is essentially modern. We believe there is not an example of it in any old author. In Bacon's 'Natural History' we have a passage in which gut-a musical string made of an animal substance-is thus spoken of—“ A viol should have a lay of wire-strings below, close to the belly, and the strings of guts mounted upon a bridge.". Why not, then, calves'guts, as well as cats'-guts? We know not how the name catgut arose, for cats have as little to do with the production of such strings as mice have. At any rate, if the text of Shakspere is an authority that such strings were made from calves, we are not called upon to destroy the record by insisting that they ought to have been made from cats.

• This is ordinarily printed,

"And be friended

With aptness of the season: make denials
Increase your services."

We follow a suggestion of Monck Mason.