Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house; hear all, all see,

8

And like her most, whose merit most shall be: Such, amongst view of many, mine, being one, May stand in number, though in reckoning none." "That al thing ginnith waxin gay, &c.-"Then yong folke entendin aye, "For to ben gaie and amorous, "The time is then so savorous.

Romaunt of the Rose, v. 51, &c.

Again, in The Romaunce of the Sowdon of Babyloyne &c. MS. Penes Dr. Farmer:

"Hit bifelle by twyxte marche and maye,
"Whan kynde corage begynneth to pryke;
"Whan frith and felde wexen gaye,
"And every wight desirith his like;

"When lovers slepen with opyn yee,

znavy As nightingalis on grene tre,

"And sore desire that thai cowde flye

"That thay myghte with there love be" &c. p. 2

STEEVENS.

Our author's 99th Sonnet may also serve to confirm the reading of the text:

"From you I have been absent in the spring, "When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim, "Hath put a spirit of youth in ev'ry thing." Again, in Tancred and Gismund, a tragedy, 1592:

"Tell me not of the date of Nature's days,

"Then in the April of her springing age." MALONE. • Inherit at my house;] To inherit, in the language of Shakspeare's age, is to possess. See Vol. XI. p. 3, n. 7. MALONE.

Such, amongst view of many, mine, being one,

May stand in number, though in reckoning none.] The first of these lines I do not understand. The old folio gives no help; the passage is there, Which one more view. I can offer nothing better than this:

Within your view of many, mine, being one,

May stand in number, &c. JOHNSON.

Such, amongst view of many, &c.] Thus the quarto, 1597. In the subsequent quarto of 1599, that of 1609, and the folio, the line was printed thus:

Which one [on] more view of many, &c. - MALONE.

Come, go with me ;-Go, sirrah, trudge about
Through fair Verona; find those persons out,

A very slight alteration will restore the clearest sense to this passage. Shakspeare might have written the lines thus:

Search among view of many: mine, being one, May stand in number, though in reckoning none. there, search for one that will please you. Choose out of the multitude. actly with what he had already said to him:

i. e. Amongst the many you will vien

Hear all, all see,

This agrees ex

"And like her most, whose merit most shall be." My daughter (he proceeds) will, it is true, be one of the num ber, but her beauty can be of no reckoning (i. e. estimation) among those whom you will see here. Reckoning for estimation, is used before in this very scene:

"Of honourable reckoning are you both." STEEvens. This interpretation is fully supported by a passage in Measure •for Measure:

our compell'd sins

"Stand more for number, than accompt."

i.e. estimation. There is here an allusion to an old proverbial expression, that one is no number. So, in Decker'sHonest Whore, Part II:

to fall to one,

is to fall to none,

"For one no number is.”

Again, in Marlowe's Hero and Leander:

"One is no number."

Again, in Shakspeare's 136th Sonnet:

Among a number one is reckon'd none,

"Then in the number let me pass untold."

The following lines in the poem on which the tragedy is founded, may add some support to Mr. Steevens's conjecture: "To his approved friend a solemn oath he plight,

every where he would resort where ladies wont

to meet;

“Eke should his savage heart like all indifferently,
"For he would view and judge them all with unallured

"No knight or gentleman of high or low renown
"But Capulet himself had bid unto his feast, &c.
"Young damsels thither flock, of bachelors a rout;
"Not so much for the banquet's sake, as beauties to
search out." MALONE.

Whose names are written there,' [Gives a Paper.] and to them say, p

My house and welcome on their pleasure stay. [Exeunt CAPULET and PARIS.

SERV. Find them out, whose names are written here? It is written that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard, and the tailor with his last, the fisher with his pencil, and the painter with his nets; but I am sent to find those persons, whose names are here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath here writ. I must to the learned:-In good time.

This passage is neither intelligible as it stands, nor do I think it will be rendered so by Steevens's amendment.- "To search amongst view of many," is neither sense nor English. The old folio, as Johnson tell us, reads—

Which one more view of many

And this leads us to the right reading, which I should suppose to have been this:

Whilst on more view of many, mine being one, &c.

With this alteration the sense is clear, and the deviation from the folio very trifling. M. MASON.

1

-find those persons out;

Whose names are written there,] Shakspeare has here closely followed the poem already mentioned:

"No lady fair or foul was in Verona town,

"No knight or gentleman of high or low renown,
"But Capilet himself hath bid unto his feast,

"Or by his name, in paper sent, appointed as a guest."

MALONE.

Find them out, whose names are written here?] The quarto, 1597, adds: "And yet I know not who are written here: I must to the learned to learn of them; that's as much as to say, the tailor," &c. STEEVENS.

Enter BENVOLIO and ROMEO.

BEN. Tut, man! one fire burns out another's burning,

One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning One desperate grief cures with another's languish:3

Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.*

with another's languish:] This substantive is again found in Antony and Cleopatra.-It was not of our poet's coinage, occurring also (as I think) in one of Morley's songs, 1595: "Alas, it skills not,

"For thus I will not,
"Now contented,

"Now tormented,

"Live in love and languish." MALONE.

• Tut, man! one fire burns out another's burning,Take thou some new infection to thy eye,

And the rank poison of the old will die.] So, in the poem: "Ere long the townish dames together will resort:

"Some one of beauty, favour, shape, and of so lovely

port,

"With so fast-fixed eye perhaps thou may'st behold,
"That thou shalt quite forget thy love and passions past
of old.

"And as out of a plank a nail a nail doth drive,

"So novel love out of the mind the ancient love doth rive.”

Again, in our author's Coriolanus:

"One fire drives out one fire; one nail one nail.” So, in Lyly's Euphues, 1580: “ a fire divided in twayne burneth slower-one love expelleth another, and the remembrance of the latter quencheth the concupiscence of the first." MALONE.

Veterem amorem novo, quasi clavum clavo repellere, is a morsel of very ancient advice; and Ovid also has assured us, that— "Alterius vires subtrahit alter amor."

Or,

"Successore novo truditur omnis amor.” Priorem flammam novus ignis extrudit, is also a proverbial phrase. STEEVENS.

ROM. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.5 BEN. For what, I pray thee?

For your broken shin.

BEN. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?,

ROM. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is:

Shut up in prison, kept without my food, Whipp'd, and tormented, and-Good-e'en, good fellow.

SERV. God gi' good e'en.-I pray, sir, can you read?

ROM. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery. SERV. Perhaps you have learn'd it without book: But I pray, can you read any thing you see? ROM. Ay,if I know the letters, and the language. SERV. Ye say honestly; Rest you merry! ROM. Stay, fellow; I can read.

[Reads.

Signior Martino, and his wife, and daughters; County Anselme, and his beauteous sisters; The lady widow of Vitruvio; Signior Placentio, and his lovely nieces; Mercutio, and his brother Valentine; Mine

Tackius tells us,

Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.] that a toad, before she engages with a spider, will fortify herself with some of this plant; and that, if she comes off wounded, she cures herself afterwards with it. DR. GREY.

The same thought occurs in Albumazar, in the following lines: "Help, Armellina, help! I'm fall'n i' the cellar: "Bring a fresh plantain leaf, I've broke my shin." Again, in The Case is Alter'd, by Ben Jonson, 1609, a fellow who has had his head broke, says: "'Tis nothing, a fillip, a device: fellow Juniper, prithee get me a plantain."

The plantain leaf is a blood-stauncher, and was formerly applied to green wounds. STEEVENS.