Camden (edit. 1590, p. 564,) thus mentions it: Sub quo fons est in quem ex impendentibus rupibus aquae guttatim, distillant, unde DROPPING WELL Vocant, in quem quicquid ligni immitti tur, lapideo cortice brevi obduci et lapidescere observatum est. REED. P. 108, 1.5-8. so that my arrows, Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind, Would have reverted to my bow again, And not where I had aim'd them.] Thus the folio. The quarto, 1604, reads for so loued arm'd. If these words have any meaning, it should seem to be The instruments of offence I employ, would have proved too weak to injure one who is so loved and arm'd by the affection of the people. Their love, like armour, would revert the arrow to the bow. • STEEVENS. Loued arm'd is as extraordinary a corruption as any that is found in these plays. MALONE. P. 108, 1. 11. If I may praise found no more. P. 108, 1. 17. if praises may go back again,] what has been, but is now to be JOHNSON. That we can let our beard be shook with danger,] It is wonderful that none of the advocates for the learning of Shakspeare have told us that this line is imitated from Persius, Sat. ii "Idcirco stolidam praebet tibi vellere P. 109, 1.23. As checking at his voyage,] The phrase is f from falconry; and may be justified from the following passage in Hinde's Eliosto Libidinoso, 1606: ". -For who knows not, quoth she, that this hawk, which comes now so fair to the fist, may to-morrow check at the lure ?" STEEVENS. P. 110, 1. 3. Of the unworthiest siege.] Of the lowest rank. Siege, for seat, place. JOHNSON. P. 110, 1. 9. Importing health and graveness.] Importing here may be, not inferring by logical Consequence, but producing by physical effect. A young man regards show in his dress, an old man, health. JOHNSON. Importing health, I apprehend, means, denoting an attention to health. MALONE. Importing may only signify noting. implying, de Mr. Malone's explanation, however, may be the true one. STEEVENS. P. 110, 1. 18. 19. I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, Come short of what he did.] I could not contrive so many proofs of dexterity as he could perform. JOHNSON. P. 110, 1. 29. For art and exercise in your the science of defence. P. 110, 1. 32. & fol. fencers. JOHNSON. defence,] That is, in JOHNSON. the scrimers] The From escrimeur, Fr. a fencer. MALONE. This unfavourable description of the French swordsmen is not in the folio. STEEVENS. P. 111, 1. 11. love is begun by time;] This is obscure. The meaning may be, love is not innate in us, and co-essential to our nature, but begins at a certain time from some external cause, and being always subject to the operations of time, suffers chauge and diminution. JOHNSON. The King reasons thus: "I do not suspect that you did not love your father; but I know that time abates the force of affection." I therefore suspect that we ought to read: love is begone by time; I suppose that Shakspeare places the syllabe be hefore gone, as we say be-paint, be-spatter, bethink, &c. M. MASON. P. 111, 1. 17. P. 111, 1. 12. in passages of proof,] In transactions of daily experience. JOHNSON. growing to a plurisy,] I would believe, for the honour of Shakspeare, that he wrote plethory. Bat I observe the dramatick writers of that time frequently call a fullness of blood a plurisy, as if it came, not from nhɛvoà, but from plus, pluris. WARBURTON. I think the word should be spelt-plurisj. This passage is fully explained by one in Mascal's treatise on cattle, 1662, p. 187: "Against the blood, or plurisie of blood. The disease of blood is, some young horses will feed, and being fat will increase blood, and so grow to a plurisie, and die thereof if he have not soon help." TOLLET. We should certainly read plurisy, as Tollet observes. M. MASON. Dr. Warburton is right. The word is spelt plurisy in the quarto, 1604, and is used in the same sense as here, in 'Tis Pity she's a Whore, by Ford, 1633. MALONE. Mr. Pope introduced this simile in the Essay on Criticism, v. 303: For works may have more wit than does them good, † "As bodies perish through excess of blood." Ascham has a thought very similar to Pope's:" "Twenty "Twenty to one, offend more, in writing to much, then to litle: euen as twenty, fall into sicknesse, rather by ouer much fulnes then by any lacke or emptinesse." The Schole-Master, 4to. bl. 1. fol. 43. HOLT WHITE P. 111, 1. 23. And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh, That hurts by easing.] A spendthrift sigh is a sigh that makes an unnecessary waste of the vital flame. It is a notion very prevalent, that sighs impair the strength, and wear out the animal powers. JOHNSON. So, in the Governall of Helthe, &c. printed by Wynkyn de Worde: "And for why whan mau casteth out that noble humour too moche, he is hugely dyscolored, and his body moche febled,, more then he lete four sythes, soo moche blode oute of his body." STEEVENS. Hence they are called, in King Henry VI. blood-consuming sighs. Again, in Pericles, 1609 "Do not consume your blood with sor rowing." The idea is enlarged upon in Fenton's Tragical Discourses, 1579: "( Why staye you not in tye the source of your scorching sighes, that have already drayned your body of his wholesome humoures, appoynted by nature to gyve sucke to the entrals and inward parts of you? The original quarto, as well as the folio, reads, a spendthrift's sigh; but I have no doubt that it was a corruption, arising from the first letter of the following word sigh, being an s. I have there fore, with the other modern editors, printedspendthrift sigh, following a late quarto, (which however is of no authority,) printed in 1611. That a sigh, if it consumes the blood, hurts us by VOL. XVII. 21 easing, or is prejudicial to us on the whole, though it affords a temporary relief, is sufficiently clear: but the former part of the line, and then this should, may require a little explanation. I suppose the King means to say, that if we do not promptly execute what we are convinced we should or ought to do, we shall afterwards in vain repent our not having seized the fortunate moment for action and this opportunity which we have let go by us, and the reflection that we should have done that, which, from supervening accidents, it is no longer in our power to do, is as prejudicial and painful to us as a blood-consuming sigh, that at once hurts and eases us. I apprehend the poet meant to compare such a "conduct, and the consequent reflection, only to the pernicious quality which he supposed to be annexed to sigbing, and not to the temporary ease which it affords. His similes, as I have frequently had occasion to observe, seldom run on four feet. MALone. P. 12, 1. 3. being remiss, ] He being not vigilant or cautious. JONASON. T. 112, 1. 7. A sword unbated, ] i. e. not blunted as foils are. Or, as one edition has it, embait ed or envenomed. POPE. There is no such reading as embaited in any edition. In Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, it is said of one of the Metelli, that "he shewed the people the cruel fight of fencers, at unrebated swords." STEEVENS. # 2 Not blunted, as foils are by a button fixed to the end. MALONE. ** P. 112, 1. 7. in a pass of practice, ] Prac tice is often by Shakspeare, and other writers, taken for an 'insidious stratagem, or privy treason, a sense not incongrtious to this passage, where |