Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite;
That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour
Even till & Lethe'd dulness-

Enter VARRIUS.

How now, Varrius?

VAR. This is most certain that I shall deliver :Mark Antony is every hour in Rome Expected; since he went from Egypt, 'tis

A

space for farther travel.

POM.

I could have given less matter
A better ear.-Menas, I did not think
This amorous surfeiter would have donn'd his helm
For such a petty war: his soldiership

Is twice the other twain: but let us rear
The higher our opinion, that our stirring
Can from the lap of Egypt's widow pluck
The ne'er-lust-wearied Antony.
MEN.

I cannot hopeb
Cæsar and Antony shall well greet together:
His wife that's dead did trespasses to Cæsar;
His brother warr'd* upon him; although, I think,
Not mov'd by Antony.

POM. I know not, Menas, How lesser enmities may give way to greater. Were't not that we stand up against them all, 'Twere pregnant they should square between

themselves;

May it be gently heard: when we debate
Our trivial difference loud, we do commit
Murder in healing wounds: then, noble partners,―
The rather, for I earnestly beseech,-

Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,
Nor curstness grow to the matter.

ANT.

'Tis spoken well.

Were we before our armies, and to fight, I should do thus.

CES. Welcome to Rome.

ANT. Thank you.

CES. Sit.

ANT. Sit, sir.

CES. Nay, then.

ANT. I learn, you take things ill, which are

not so,

Or being, concern you not.

CES.

I must be laugh'd at,

and with you,

If, or for nothing or a little, I
Should say myself offended;
Chiefly i'the world, more laugh'd at, that I should

in the sense of deaden or benumb.

b I cannot hope, &c.] As in our early language, to expect most commonly meant to stay or wait, so to hope on some occasions was used where we should now adopt to expect.

―3

d

square-] Quarrel.

Our existence solely depends, &c., or it is incumbent on us for our lives' sake, &c.

Once name you derogately, when to sound your

name

It not concern'd me.

ANT.

My being in Egypt, Cæsar, What was 't to you?

CES. No more than my residing here at Rome
Might be to you in Egypt: yet, if you there
Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt
Might be my question.

ANT.
How intend you, practis'd?
CES. You may be pleas'd to catch at mine
intent

By what did here befal me. Your wife and brother
Made wars upon me; and their contestation
Was theme for you, you were the word of war."
ANT. You do mistake your business; my
brother never

Did urge me in his act: I did inquire it;
And have my learning from some true reports,
That drew their swords with you. Did he not
rather

Discredit my authority with yours;

And make the wars alike against my stomach,
Having alike your cause? Of this, my letters
Before did satisfy you.
If you 'll patch a

quarrel,

As matter whole you have not to make it with, It must not be with this.

CES.

You praise yourself By laying defects of judgment to me; but You patch'd up your excuses.

ANT.

Not so, not so;
I know you could not lack, I am certain on 't,
Very necessity of this thought, that I,

Your partner in the cause 'gainst which he fought,
Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars
Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,
I would you had her spirit in such another:
The third o' the world is yours; which with a
snaffle

You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

ENO. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to wars with the women!

ANT. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Cæsar,
Made out of her impatience,-which not wanted
Shrewdness of policy too,-I grieving grant
Did you too much disquiet: for that, you must
But gay, I could not help it.

CÆS.
I wrote to you
When rioting in Alexandria; you

The article of your oath; which you shall never
Have tongue to charge me with.
LEP. Soft, Cæsar!
ANT.

No, Lepidus, let him speak;
The honour 's sacred which he talks on now,
Supposing that I lack'd it.-But, on, Cæsar;
The article of my oath,—

CAS. To lend me arms and aid when I requir'd them;

The which you both denied.

ANT. Neglected, rather; And then when poison'd hours had bound me up From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I

As matter whole you have not to make it with,-] The negative was inserted by Rowe, and is clearly indispensable; but, to satisfy the metre, Shakespeare may have adopted the old form n'have instead of have not,

"As matter whole you n'have to make it with." So likewise in " Henry the Fifth," Act V. Sc. 2, where the original has, "for they are all girdled with maiden walls, that war hath entered," we ought probably to read, “ n'hath entered."

Is now a widower.

CES.

*

Say not so, Agrippa; If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof" Were well deserv'd of rashness.

ANT. I am not married, Cæsar; let me hear Agrippa further speak.

AGR. To hold you in perpetual amity,
To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts
With an unslipping knot, take Antony
Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men;
Whose virtue and whose general graces speak
That which none else can utter. By this mar-
riage,

All little jealousies, which now seem great,
And all great fears, which now import their

dangers,

A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother
Did ever love so dearly: let her live
To join our kingdoms and our hearts: and never
Fly off our loves again!

LEP.

Happily, amen!

ANT. I did not think to draw my sword 'gainst

Pompey;

For he hath laid strange courtesies and great
Of late upon me: I must thank him only,
Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;
At heel of that, defy him.

Time calls upon 's:

LEP.
Of us must Pompey presently be sought,
Or else he seeks out us.

ANT.
Where lies he?
CES. About the Mount Misenum.*
ANT. What is his strength by land?
CES. Great and increasing: but by sea
He is an absolute master.

ANT.
So is the fame.
Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it:
Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, despatch we
The business we have talk'd of.

Not lack your company. LEP.

Let us, Lepidus,

Noble Antony, Not sickness should detain me. [Flourish. Exeunt CÆSAR, ANT., and LEPIDUS. MEC. Welcome from Egypt, sir.

ENO. Half the heart of Cæsar, worthy Mecænas! My honourable friend, Agrippa!AGR. Good Enobarbus!

MEC. We have cause to be glad that matters are so well digested. You stayed well by it in Egypt.

ENO. Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night light with drinking.

MEC. Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but twelve persons there! is this true?

ENO. This was but as a fly by an eagle: we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.

MEC. She's a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.

(*) Old text, Mount-Mesena.

The meaning apparently is, The reproof you would receive were well deserved for the rashness of your speech.

d

truths would be tales, Where now half tales be truths:]

Theobald, to perfect the metre, inserted but,

"would be but tales," &c.;

and Steevens, for the same purpose, proposed,-"as tales." Yet the remedy most accordant with the poet's manner is to read,"truths would be half tales,

Where now half tales be truths."

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars
were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, (cloth-of-gold of tissue)"
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see

The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow* the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did."

AGR.
O, rare for Antony!
ENO. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible pérfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron'd i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.(2)

AGR.

Rare Egyptian!

ENO. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her, Invited her to supper: she replied, It should be better he became her guest; Which she entreated: our courteous Antony, Whom ne'er the word of No woman heard speak, Being barber'd ten times o'er, goes to the feast,

a

(*) Old text, glove.

(cloth-of-gold of tissue-] That is, cloth-of-gold on a ground of tissue. The expression so repeatedly occurs in early English books that we cannot imagine how any one familiar with such reading can have missed it. And yet Mr. Collier, adopting the modernization of his annotator.-" cloth of gold and tissue," observes with incredible simplicity that "cloth of gold of tissue,' as it stands in the old copies, is nonsense; it could not be cloth of gold if it were of tissue."!

And, for his ordinary, pays his heart For what his eyes eat only.

AGR. Royal wench! She made great Cæsar lay his sword to bed; He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.

ENO.

I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street;
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and
panted,

That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth.

MEC. Now Antony must leave her utterly.
ENO. Never; he will not;

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies: for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

MEC. If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle
The heart of Antony, Octavia is
A blessed lottery to him.
AGR.
Let us go.-
Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest,
Whilst you abide here.
ENO.

Humbly, sir, I thank you. [Exeunt.

The disputation on this crux in the Variorum extends over six closely printed pages, and though amusing, is not very instructive. For "tended her i' the eyes," which, if it have any sense, must signify waited upon her in her sight,-Mason proposed "tended her i' the guise," that is, the guise of mermaids, understanding "their bends which they made adornings" to mean the caudal appendages which common opinion has always assigned to the descendants of Nereus! This is sufficiently absurd, and has been mercilessly ridiculed by Steevens. Warburton's suggestion to read adorings for "adornings" is of a very different character. By adopting this likely substitution, and supposing the not improbable transposition of "eyes" and "bends," we may at least obtain a meaning:tended her i' the bends, And made their eyes adorings."

It may count for something, though not much, in favour of the transposition we assume, that in "Pericles," Act II. Sc. 4, we find,

"That all those eyes ador'd them."

Where Cæsar's is not; but, near him, thy angel
Becomes a Fear," as being o'erpower'd; therefore
Make space enough between you.

ANT.
Speak this no more.
SOOTH. To none but thee; no more, but when
to thee.

If thou dost play with him at any game,
Thou art sure to lose; and, of that natural luck,
He beats thee 'gainst the odds: thy lustre

thickens

When he shines by: I say again, thy spirit
Is all afraid to govern thee near him;
But, he away, 't is noble.

Get thee gone :

ANT. Say to Ventidius I would speak with him :[Exit Soothsayer.

He shall to Parthia.-Be it art or hap,
He hath spoken true: the very dice obey him;
And, in our sports, my better cunning faints
Under his chance: if we draw lots, he speeds;
His cocks do win the battle still of mine,
When it is all to nought; and his quails ever
Beat mine, inhoop'd, at odds.(3) I will to Egypt:
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
I' the east my pleasure lies.--

(*) Old text, alway.

old text has, "Becomes a feare," whether Upton's conjectural emendation, "Becomes afeard," is not the true reading.