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Such inftigations have been often dropp'd
Where I have took them up.

Shall Rome &c. Thus muft I piece it out;

Shall Rome ftand under one man's awe? What! Rome?

My ancestors did from the streets of Rome

The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king.
Speak, frike, redrefs !-Am I entreated then "
To speak, and strike? O Rome! I make thee pro-
mife,

If the redress will follow, thou receivest
Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus !

Re-enter LUCIUS.

Luc. Sir, March is wafted fourteen days."

[Knock within.

[Exit LUCIUS.

BRU. 'Tis good. Go to the gate; fomebody

knocks.

Since Caffius first did whet me against Cæfar,

I have not flept.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

8

And the first motion, all the interim is

6 Am I entreated then-] The adverb then, which enforces the queftion, and is neceffary to the metre, was judiciously supplied by Sir Thomas Hanmer. So, in King Richard III :

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"Spurn at his edict?" STEEVENS.

March is wafted fourteen days.] In former editions,
Sir, March is wafted fifteen days.

The editors are flightly mistaken: it was wafted but fourteen days: this was the dawn of the 15th, when the boy makes his report. THEOBALD.

8 Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, &c.] That nice critic, Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, complains, that of all kind of beauties, those great ftrokes which he calls the terrible graces, and which are so frequent in Homer, are the rareft to be found in the following writers.

Like a phantafma, or a hideous dream:
The genius, and the mortal instruments,

Amongst our countrymen, it feems to be as much confined to the British Homer. This defeription of the condition of confpirators, before the execution of their defign, has a pomp and terror in it that perfectly aftonishes. The excellent Mr. Addifon, whofe modefty made him fometimes diffident of his own genius, but whose true judgement always led him to the fafeft guides (as we may fee by thofe fine ftrokes in his Cato borrowed from the Philippics of Cicero) has paraphrafed this fine defcription; but we are no longer to expect thofe terrible graces which animate his original:

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O think, what anxious moments pass between "The birth of plots, and their last fatal periods.

66

Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time,

"Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death." Cato.

I fhall make two remarks on this fine imitation. The first is, that the fubjects of the two confpiracies being fo very different (the fortunes of Cæfar and the Roman empire being concerned in the one; and that of a few auxiliary troops only in the other) Mr. Addifon could not, with propriety, bring in that magnificent circumftance which gives one of the terrible graces of Shakspeare's description:

"The genius and the mortal inftruments

"Are then in council;

For kingdoms, in the Pagan Theology, befides their good, had their evil genius's, likewife; represented here, with the most daring ftretch of fancy, as fitting in confultation with the confpirators, whom he calls their mortal inftruments. But this, as we fay, would have been too pompous an apparatus to the rape and defertion of Syphax and Sempronius. The other thing obfervable is, that Mr. Addison was fo ftruck and affected with these terrible graces in his original, that inftead of imitating his author's fentiments, he hath, before he was aware, given us only the copy of his own impreffions made by them. For,

"Oh, 'tis a dreadful interval of time,

"Fill'd up with horror all, and big with death." are but the affections raised by fuch forcible images as these : All the interim is

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"Like to a little kingdom, fuffers then

"The nature of an infurrection."

Comparing the troubled mind of a confpirator to a state of anarchy, is juft and beautiful; but the interim or interval, to an hideous

Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, fuffers then
The nature of an infurrection.

vifion, or a frightful dream, holds fomething fo wonderfully of truth, and lays the foul fo open, that one can hardly think it poffible for any man, who had not fome time or other been engaged in a confpiracy, to give fuch force of colouring to nature.

WARBURTON.

The davor of the Greek criticks does not, I think, mean fentiments which raife fear, more than wonder, or any other of the tumultuous paffions; To devov is that which strikes, which aftouishes with the idea either of fome great fubject, or of the author's abilities.

Dr. Warburton's pompous criticifm might well have been shortened. The genius is not the genius of a kingdom, nor are the inftruments, confpirators. Shakspeare is defcribing what paffes in a fingle bofom, the infurrection which a confpirator feels agitating the little kingdom of his own mind; when the genius, or power that watches for his protection, and the mortal inftruments, the paffions, which excite him to a deed of honour and danger, are in council and debate; when the defire of action, and the care of fafety, keep the mind in continual fluctuation and disturbance. JOHNSON.

The foregoing was perhaps among the earliest notes written by Dr. Warburton on Shakspeare. Though it was not inferted by him in Theobald's editions, 1732 and 1740, (but was reserved for his own in 1747) yet he had previously communicated it, with little variation, in a letter to Matthew Concanen in the year 1726. See a note on Dr. Akenfide's Ode to Mr. Edwards, at the end of this play. STEEVENS.

There is a paffage in Troilus and Creffida, which bears some refemblance to this:

Imagin'd worth

"Holds in his blood fuch fwoln and hot discourse,

"That, 'twixt his mortal, and his active parts,

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Johnson is right in afferting that by the Genius is meant, not the Genius of a Kingdom, but the power that watches over an individual for his protection.-So in the fame play Troilus fays to Creffida,

"Hark! you are call'd. Some fay, the Genius fo
"Cries, Come, to him that inftantly muft die."

Johnfon's explanation of the word inftruments, is alfo confirmed by the following paffage in Macbeth, whofe mind was, at the time, in the very state which Brutus is here defcribing:

Re-enter LUCIUS.

Luc. Sir, 'tis your brother Caffius at the door, Who doth defire to fee you.

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"Each corporal agent to this terrible feat." M. MASON. The word genius in our author's time, meant either" a good angel or a familiar evil fpirit," and is fo defined by Bullokar in his English Expofitor, 1616. So, in Macbeth:

66 and, under him,

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My genius is rebuk'd; as, it is faid,

"Mark Antony's was by Cæfar's.”

Again, in Antony and Cleopatra:

"Thy dæmon, that thy fpirit which keeps thee, is," &c. The more ufual fignification now affixed to this word was not known till feveral years afterwards. I have not found it in the common modern fenfe in any book earlier than the Dictionary published by Edward Phillips, in 1657.

Mortal is certainly ufed here, as in many other places, for deadly. So, in Othello:

"And you, ye mortal engines," &c.

The mortal inftruments then are, the deadly paffions, or as they are called in Macbeth, the “mortal thoughts," which excite each corporal agent" to the performance of fome arduous deed.

The little kingdom of man is a notion that Shakspeare seems to have been fond of. So, K. Richard II. fpeaking of himself: "And these fame thoughts people this little world." Again, in King Lear:

"Strives in his little world of man to outscorn
"The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.”

Again, in King John:

"in the body of this fleshly land,

"This kingdom,-.

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I have adhered to the old copy, which reads the state of a man. Shakspeare is here speaking of the individual in whofe mind the genius and the mortal inftruments hold a council, not of man, or mankind, in general. The paffage above quoted from King Lear does not militate against the old copy here. There the individual is marked out by the word his, and "the little world of man" is thus circumfcribed, and appropriated to Lear. The editor of the fecond folio omitted the article, probably from a mistaken notion concerning the metre; and all the fubfequent editors have adopted his

BRU.

Is he alone?

Luc. No, fir, there are more with him.

BRU.

Do you know them? Luc. No, fir; their hats are pluck'd about their

ears,

And half their faces buried in their cloaks,

alteration. Many words of two fyllables are ufed by Shakspeare as taking up the time of only one; as whether, either, brother, lover, gentle, Spirit; &c. and I fuppofe council is fo ufed here.

The reading of the old authentick copy, to which I have adhered, is fupported by a paffage in Hamlet: "What a piece of work is

a man."

As council is here used as a monofyllable, fo is noble in Titus Andronicus:

"Lose not fo noble a friend on vain fuppofe." MALONE. Influenced by the conduct of our great predeceffors, Rowe, Pope, Warburton and Johnson; and for reafons fimilar to those advanced in the next note, I perfift in following the fecond folio, as our author, on this occafion, meant to write verfe inftead of profe.The inftance from Hamlet can have little weight; the article-a, which is injurious to the metre in queftion, being quite innocent in a fpeech decidedly profaick: and as for the line adduced from Titus Andronicus, the fecond fyllable of the word-noble, may be melted down into the fucceding vowel, an advantage which cannot be obtained in favour of the prefent restoration offered from the first folio. STEEVENS.

Neither our author, nor any other author in the world, ever used fuch words as either, brother, lover, gentle, &c. as monofyllables; and though whether is fometimes fo contracted, the old copies on that occafion ufually print-where. It is, in fhort, morally impoffible that two fyllables should be no more than one. RITSON.

8 Like a phantafma,]" Suidas maketh a difference between phantafma and phantafia, faying that phantafma is an imagination, or appearance, or fight of a thing which is not, as are thofe fightes whiche men in their fleepe do thinke they fee: but that phantafia is the feeing of that only which is in very deeds. Lavaterus, 1572. HENDERSON.

"A phantafme, fays Bullokar, in his English Expofitor, 1616, is a vifion, or imagined appearance." MALONE. 9your brother Caffius] Caffius married Junia, Brutus fifter. STEEVENS.

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