And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A feeming mermaid fteers; the filken tackle

planation. Shakspeare has a phrafe as uncommon, in another play:

"Sweats in the eye of Phoebus".

After all, I believe that "tended her in th' eyes" only fignifies waited before her, in her prefence, in her fight. So, in Hamlet, Act IV. fc. iv:

"If that his majesty would aught with us,

"We shall exprefs our duty in his eye."

i. e. in our perfonal attendance on him, by giving him ocular proof of our refpect. See note on this paffage. Mr. Henley explains it thus: obeyed her looks without waiting for her words.

So, Spenfer, Faery Queen, B. I. c. iii:

he wayted diligent,

"With humble fervice to her will prepar'd;
"From her fayre eyes he tooke commandement,
"And by her looks conceited her intent.”

Again, in our author's 149th Sonnet,

"Commanded by the motion of thine eyes."

STEEVENS.

The words of the text may, however, only mean, they performed their duty in the fight of their miftrefs. MALONE.

3 And made their bends adornings:] This is fenfe indeed, and may be understood thus; her maids bowed with fo good an air, that it added new graces to them. But this is not what Shakspeare would fay. Cleopatra, in this famous fcene, perfonated Venus juft rifing from the waves; at which time the mythologifts tell us, the fea-deities furrounded the goddefs to adore, and pay her homage. Agreeably to this fable, Cleopatra had dreffed her maids, the poet tells us, like Nereids. To make the whole therefore conformable to the ftory reprefented, we may be affured, Shakfpeare wrote:

And made their bends adorings.

They did her obfervance in the posture of adoration, as if the had been Venus. WARBURTON.

The old

That Cleopatra perfonated Venus, we know; but that Shakfpeare was acquainted with the circumftance of homage being paid her by the Deities of the fea, is by no means as certain. term will probably appear the more elegant of the two to modern readers, who have heard fo much about the line of beauty. The whole paffage is taken from the following in Sir Thomas North's tranflation of Plutarch: "She difdained to fet forward otherwise, but to take her barge in the riuer of Cydnus, the poope whereof

Swell with the touches of thofe flower-foft hands,

was of golde, the failes of purple, and the owers of filuer, whiche kept ftroke in rowing after the founde of the muficke of flutes, howboyes, citherns, violls, and fuch other inftruments as they played vpon in the barge. And now for the perfon of her felfe: The was layed under a pauillion of cloth of gold of tiffue, apparelled and attired like the Goddeffe Venus, commonly drawn in picture; and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretie faire boyes appa relled as painters do fet forth God Cupide, with little fannes in their hands, with the which they fanned wind vpon her. Her ladies and gentlewomen alfo, the fairest of them were apparelled like the nymphes Nereides (which are the mermaides of the waters} and like the Graces, fome ftearing the helme, others tending the tackle and ropes of the barge, out of the which there came a wonderfull paffing fweete fauor of perfumes, that perfumed the wharfes fide, pestered with innumerable multitudes of people. Some of them followed the barge all alongft the riuer's fide: others alfo ranne out of the citie to fee her coming in. So that in thend, there ranne fuch multitudes of people one after another to fee her, that Antonius was left poft alone in the market place, in his imperiall feate to geve audience:" &c. STEEVENS.

There are few paffages in these plays more puzzling than this; but the commentators feem to me to have neglected entirely the difficult part of it, and to have confined all their learning and conjectures to that which requires but little, if any explanation: for if their interpretation of the words, tended her i' the eyes, be juft, the obvious meaning of the fucceeding line will be, that in paying their obeifance to Cleopatra, the humble inclination of their bodies was fo graceful, that it added to their beauty.

Warburton's amendment, the reading adorings, instead of adornings, would render the paffage lefs poetical, and it cannot exprefs the fenfe he wishes for, without an alteration; for although, as Steevens juftly obferves, the verb adore is frequently used by the ancient dramatic writers in the fenfe of to adorn, I do not find that to adorn was reciprocally used in the sense of to adore. Tollet's explanation is ill imagined; for though the word band might formerly have been spelled with an e, and a troop of beautiful attendants would add to the general magnificence of the scene, they would be more likely to eclipfe than to encrease the charms of their miftrefs. And as for Malone's conjecture, though rather more ingenious, it is juft as ill founded. That a particular bend of the eye may add luftre to the charms of a beautiful woman, every man must have felt; and it must be acknowledged that the words, their bends, may refer to the eyes of Cleopatra; but the word made muft neceffarily refer to her gentlewomen: and it would

That yarely frame the office. From the barge

be abfurd to fay that they made the bends of her eyes, adornings. But all these explanations, from the firft to the laft, are equally erroneous, and are founded on a fuppofition that the paffage is correct, and that the words, tended her i' the eyes, must mean that her attendants watched her eyes and from them received her commands. How thofe words can, by any poffible construction, imply that meaning, the editors have not shown, nor can I conceive. Of this I am certain, that if fuch arbitrary and fanciful interpretations be admitted, we shall be able to extort what sense we please from any combination of words.-The paffage, as it ftands, appears to me to be wholly unintelligible; but it may be amended by a very flight deviation from the text, by reading the guife, instead of the eyes, and then it will run thus:

Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the guife,
And made their bends, adornings.

In the guife, means in the form of mermaids, who were supposed to have the head and body of a beautiful woman, concluding in a fish's tail and by the bends which they made adornings, Enobarbus means the flexure of the fictitious fifhes' tails, in which the limbs of the women were neceffarily involved, in order to carry on the deception, and which it seems they adapted with fo much art as to make them an ornament, inftead of a deformity. This conjecture is fupported by the very next fentence, where Enobarbus, proceeding in his description, fays,

66

at the helm

"A feeming mermaid fteers." M. MASON.

In many of the remarks of Mr. M. Mafon I perfectly concur, though they are fubverfive of opinions I had formerly hazarded. On the prefent occafion I have the misfortune wholly to disagree with him.

His deviation from the text cannot be received; for who ever employed the phrafe he recommends, without adding fomewhat immediately after it, that would determine its precife meaning? We may properly fay-in the guife of a shepherd, of a friar, or of a Nereid. But to tell us that Cleopatra's women attended her " in the guife," without fubfequently informing us what that guife was, is phrafeology unauthorized by the practice of any writer I have met with. If the word the commentator would introduce, had been genuine, and had referred to the antecedent, Nereides, Shakfpeare would moft probably have faid—“ tended her in that guise: VOL. XII.

I i

A ftrange invisible pérfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast

-at least he would have employed fome expreffion to connect his fupplement with the foregoing claufe of his description. But"in the guife" seems unreducible to fenfe, and unjustifiable on every principle of grammar.-Befides, when our poet had once abfolutely declared thefe women were like Nereides or Mermaids, would it have been neceffary for him to fubjoin that they appeared in the form, or with the accoutrements of fuch beings? for how elfe could they have been distinguished?

Yet, whatever grace the tails of legitimate mermaids might boaft of in their native element, they muft have produced but aukward effects when taken out of it, and exhibited on the deck of a galley. Nor can I conceive that our fair reprefentatives of these nymphs of the fea, were much more adroit and picturesque in their motions; for when their legs were cramped within the fictitious tails the commentator has made for them, I do not discover how they could have undulated their hinder parts in a lucky imitation of femi-fishes. Like poor Elkanah Settle, in his dragon of green leather, they could only wag the remigium caude without cafe, variety, or even a chance of labouring into a graceful curve. I will undertake, in fhort, the expence of providing characteristick tails for any fet of mimick Nereids, if my opponent will engage to teach them the exercise of these adfcititious terminations, fo" as to render them a grace inftead of a deformity." In fuch an attempt a party of British chambermaids would prove as docile as an equal number of Egyptian maids of honour.

It may be added alfo, that the Sirens and defcendants of Nereus, are understood to have been complete and beautiful women, whose breed was uncroffed by the falmon or dolphin tribes; and as fuch they are uniformly defcribed by Greek and Roman poets. Antony, in a future scene (though perhaps with reference to this adventure on the Cydnus) has ftyled Cleopatra his Thetis, a goddess whofe train of Nereids is circumftantially depicted by Homer, though without a hint that the vertebræ of their backs were lengthened into tails. Extravagance of shape is only met with in the loweft orders of oceanick and terreftrial deities. Tritons are furnished with fins and tails, and Satyrs have horns and hoofs. But a Nereid's tail is an unclaffical image adopted from modern fign-pofts, and happily expofed to ridicule by Hogarth in his Print of Strolling Actreffes dreffing in a barn. What Horace too has reprobated as a difgufting combination, can never hope to be received as a pattern of the graceful:

Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron'd in the market-place, did fit alone,

ut turpiter atrum

Definat in pifcem mulier formofa fuperne.

I allow that the figure at the helm of the veffel, was likewise a Mermaid or Nereid; but all mention of a tail is wanting there, as in every other paffage throughout the dramas of our author, in which a Mermaid is introduced.

For reafons like thefe (notwithstanding in fupport of our commentator's appendages, and the prefent female fashion of bolster'd hips and cork rumps, we might read, omitting only a fingle letter,

made their ends adornings;"-and though I have not forgotten Bayes's advice to an actrefs-" Always, madam, up with your end") I fhould unwillingly confine the graces of Cleopatra's Nereids, to the flexibility of their pantomimick tails. For thefe, however ornamentally wreathed like Virgil's fnake, or refpectfully lowered like a lictor's fafces, must have afforded lefs decoration than the charms diffused over their unfophifticated parts, I mean, the bending of their necks and arms, the rife and fall of their bofoms, and the general elegance of fubmiffion paid by them to the vanity of their royal mistress.

The plain fenfe of the contefted paffage feems to be that these Ladies rendered that homage which their affumed characters obliged them to pay their Queen, a circumftance ornamental to themfelves. Each inclined her perfon fo gracefully, that the very act of humiliation was an improvement of her own beauty.

The foregoing notes fupply a very powerful inftance of the uncertainty of verbal criticifm; for here we meet with the fame phrafe explained with reference to four different images.-BOWS, GROUPS, EYES, and TAILS. STEEVENS.

A paffage in Drayton's Mortimeriados, quarto, no date, may ferve to illuftrate that before us:

"The naked nymphes, fome up, fome downe defcending, "Small fcattering flowres one at another flung,

"With pretty turns their lymber bodies bending,”

I once thought, their bends referred to Cleopatra's eyes, and not to her gentlewomen. Her attendants, in order to learn their mistress's will, watched the motion of her eyes, the bends or movements of which added new luftre to her beauty. See the quotation from Shakspeare's 149th Sonnet, p• 479.

In our author we frequently find the word bend applied to the eye. Thus, in the first act of this play:

thofe his goodly eyes
now bend, now turn," &c.