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made Hamlet say just the contrary. That the devil and he would both go into mourning, though his mo ther did not. The true reading is,-Nay, then let the devil wear black, 'fore I'll have a suit of sable. 'Fore, i. e. before. As much as to say, Let the devil wear black for me, I'll have none. The Oxford editor despises an emendation so easy, and reads it thus,-Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of ermine. And you could expect no less, when such a critic had the dressing of him. But the blunder was a pleasant one. The senseless editors had wrote sables, the fur so called, for sable, black. And the critic only changed this fur for that; by a like figure, the common people say, You rejoice the cockles of my heart, for the muscles of my heart; an unlucky mistake of one shell-fish for another.

WARBURTON. :

I know not why our editors should, with such implacable anger, persecute their predecessors. O vexpol μ dánvov, the dead, it is true, can make no resistance-they may be attacked with great security: but since they can neither feel nor mend, the safety of mauling them seems greater than the pleasure; nor perhaps would it much misbeseem us to remember, amidst our triumphs over the nonsensical and senseless, that we likewise are men; that debemur morti, and, as Swift observed to Burnet, shall soon be among the dead ourselves.

I cannot find how the common reading is nonsense, nor why Hamlet, when he laid aside his dress of mourning, in a country where it was bitter cold, and

the air was nipping and eager, should not have a suit of sables. I suppose it is well enough known, that the fur of sables is not black.

JOHNSON.

69-suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse;] Amongst the country may-games there was an hobby-horse, which, when the puritanical humour of those times opposed and discredited these games, was brought by the poets and ballad-makers as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the sectaries: from these bal. lads Hamlet quotes a line or two. WARBURTON.

69 this is miching malicho; it means mischief.] The Oxford editor, imagining that the speaker had here englished his own cant phrase of miching malicho, tells us (by his glossary) that it signifies mischief lying hid, and that malicho is the Spanish malheco; whereas it signifies, Lying in wait for the poisoner. Which, the speaker tells us, was the very purpose of this representation. It should therefore be read malhechor, Spanish, the poisoner. So mich signified, originally, to keep hid and out of sight; and, as such men generally did it for the purposes of lying in wait, it then signified to rob. And in this sense Shakspeare uses the noun, a micher, when speaking of prince Henry amongst a gang of robbers, Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher? Shall the sun of England prove a thief? And in this sense it is used by Chaucer, in his translation of Le Roman de la Rose, where he turns the word lierre (which is larron, voleur) by micher.

WARBURTON.

I think Hanmer's exposition most likely to be right.

Dr. Warburton, to justify his interpretation, must write, miching for malechor, and even then it will be harsh.

JOHNSON.

Dr. Warburton is right in his explanation of the word miching. So, in the Raging Turk, 1631: "-wilt thou, envious dotard,

"Strangle my greatness in a miching hole?" Again, in Stanyhurst's Virgil, 1582:

"-wherefore thus vainely in land Lybye mitche you?" The quarto reads-munching Mallico.

STEEVENS.

Miching, secret, covered, lying hid. In this sense Chapman, our author's cotemporary, uses the word in The Widow's Tears, Dods. Old Pl. vol. iv. p. 291. Lysander, to try his wife's fidelity, elopes from her: his friends report that he is dead, and make a mock funeral for him: his wife, to shew excessive sorrow for the loss of her husband, shuts herself up in his monument; to which he comes in disguise, and obtains her love, notwithstanding he had assured her in the mean time that he was the man who murdered her husband. On which he exclaims,

-Out upon the monster!

Go tell the governour, let me be brought

To die for that most famous villany;

Not for this miching base transgression

Of truant negligence.

And again, p. 301.

-My truant

Was micht, sir, into a blind corner of the tomb.

In this very sense it occurs in the Philaster of Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. 142. "A rascal miching in a meadow." That is, as the ingenious editors (who have happily substituted mitching for milking) remark, "A lean deer, creeping, solitary, and withdrawn from "the herd."

WARTON.

70-Be not you asham'd to shew,] The conversation of Hamlet with Ophelia, which cannot fail to disgust every modern reader, is probably such as was peculiar to the young and fashionable of the age of Shakspeare, which was by no means an age of delicacy. The poet is, however, blameable; for extravagance of thought, not indecency of expression, is the characteristic of madness, at least of such madness as should be represented on the scene.

STEEVENS.

71 An anchor's cheer-] That is, the food of an anchoret, or hermit.

72 -with two Provencial roses on my razed shoes,] He means roses of Provence, a beautiful species of rose, and formerly much cultivated.

WARTON.

When shoe-strings were worn, they were covered, where they met in the middle, by a riband, gathered into the form of a rose. So, in an old song: "Gil-de-Roy was a bonny boy,

"" Had roses tull his shoon.”

Rayed shoes, are shoes braided in lines. JOHNSON. 79 For thou dost know, O Damon dear,

This realm dismantled was

Of Jove himself; and now reigns here

A very, very-peacock.] This alludes to a fable

of the birds choosing a king; instead of the eagle, a peacock.

POPE.

The old copies have it paiock, paicocke, and pajocke. I substitute paddock, as nearest to the traces of the corrupted reading. I have, as Mr. Pope says, been willing to substitute any thing in the place of his peacock. He thinks a fable alluded to, of the birds choosing a king; instead of the eagle, a peacock. I suppose, he must mean the fable of Barlandus, in which it is said, the birds, being weary of their state of anarchy, moved for the setting up of a king; and the peacock was elected, on account of his gay feathers. But, with submission, in this passage of our Shakspeare, there is not the least mention made of the eagle in antithesis to the peacock; and it must be by a very uncommon figure, that Jove himself stands in the place of his bird. I think, Hamlet is setting his father's and uncle's characters in contrast to each other: and means to say, that by his father's death the state was stripp'd of a godlike monarch, and that now in his stead reign'd the most despicable poisonous animal that could be; a mere paddock, or toad. PAD, bufo, rubeta major; a toad. This word I take to be of Hamlet's own substituting. The verses, repeated, seem to be from some old ballad; in which, rhyme being necessary, I doubt not but the last verse ran thus:

A very, very- -ass.

THEOBALD.

A peacock seems proverbial for a fool. Thus Gascoigne in his Weeds:

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