birth: you may do the part of an honest man in it.

CLAUD. How know you he loves her?

D. JOHN. I heard him swear his affection.

BORA. So did I too; and he swore he would

marry her to-night.

D. JOHN. Come, let us to the banquet.

[Exeunt Don JOHN and BORACHIO.

CLAUD. Thus answer I in name of Benedick, But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.'Tis certain so ;-the prince wooes for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself,

And trust no agent: for beauty is a witch, Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.'

9 Therefore, &c.] Let which is found in the next line, is understood here. MALONE.

1

beauty is a witch,

Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.] i. e. as wax when opposed to the fire kindled by a witch, no longer preserves the figure of the person whom it was designed to represent, but flows into a shapeless lump; so fidelity, when confronted with beauty, dissolves into our ruling passion, and is lost there like a drop of water in the sea.

That blood signifies (as Mr. Malone has also observed) amorous heat, will appear from the following passage in All's well that ends well, Act III. sc. vii:

"Now his important blood will nought deny

"That she'll demand."

Again, in Chapman's version of the third Iliad, Helen, speaking of Agamemnon, says:

"And one that was my brother in law, when I contain'd my blood,

"And was more worthy:-" STEEVENS.

This is an accident of hourly proof,

Which I mistrusted not: Farewell therefore, Hero!

Re-enter BENEDICK.

BENE. Count Claudio?

CLAUD. Yea, the same.

BENE. Come, will you go with me?
CLAUD. Whither?

BENE. Even to the next willow, about your own business, count. What fashion will you wear the garland of? About your neck, like an usurer's chain ?2 or under your arm, like a lieutenant's scarf? You must wear it one way, for the prince hath got your Hero.

CLAUD. I wish him joy of her.

BENE. Why, that's spoken like an honest drover;

- usurer's chain?] Chains of gold, of considerable value, were in our author's time, usually worn by wealthy citizens, and others, in the same manner as they now are, on publick occasions, by the Aldermen of London. See The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling-Street, Act III. sc. iii. Albumazar, Act I. sc. vii. and other pieces. REED.

Usury seems about this time to have been a common topic of invective. I have three or four dialogues, pasquils, and discourses on the subject, printed before the year 1600. From every one of these it appears, that the merchants were the chief usurers of the age. STEEVENS.

So, in The Choice of Change, containing the triplicitie of Divinitie, Philosophie, and Poetrie, by S. R. Gent. 4to. 1598: "Three sortes of people, in respect of use in necessitie, may be accounted good:-Merchantes, for they may play the usurers, instead of the Jewes." Again, ibid: "There is a scarcitie of Jewes, because Christians make an occupation of usurie."

MALONE.

so they sell bullocks. But did you think, the prince would have served you thus?

CLAUD. I pray you, leave me.

BENE. HO! now you strike like the blind man ; 'twas the boy that stole your meat, and you'll beat the post.

CLAUD. If it will not be, I'll leave you. [Exit.

BENE. Alas, poor hurt fowl! Now will he creep into sedges.But, that my lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The prince's fool!— Ha! it may be, I go under that title, because I am merry.-Yea; but so; I am apt to do myself wrong: I am not so reputed: it is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person, and so gives me out. Well, I'll be revenged as I may.

3

Re-enter Don PEDRO, HERO, and LEONATO.

D. PEDRO. Now, signior, where's the count; Did you see him?

BENE. Troth, my lord, I have played the part of lady Fame. I found him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren;" I told him, and, I think, I told

3 it is the base, the bitter disposition of Beatrice, that puts the world into her person,] That is, It is the disposition of Beatrice, who takes upon her to personate the world, and therefore represents the world as saying what she only says herself.

The old copies read-base, though bitter: but I do not understand how base and bitter are inconsistent, or why what is bitter should not be base. I believe, we may safely read,-It is the base, the bitter disposition. JOHNSON.

I have adopted Dr. Johnson's emendation, though I once thought it unnecessary. STEEVENS.

✦ as melancholy as a lodge in a warren;] A parallel thought occurs in the first chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet,

him true, that your grace had got the good will of this young lady;5 and I offered him my company to a willow tree, either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped.

D. PEDRO. To be whipped! What's his fault?

BENE. The flat transgression of a school-boy; who, being overjoy'd with finding a bird's nest, shows it his companion, and he steals it.

D. PEDRO. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is in the stealer.

BENE. Yet it had not been amiss, the rod had been made, and the garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself; and the rod he might have bestow'd on you, who, as I take it, have stol'n his bird's nest.

D. PEDRO. I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner.

BENE. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith, you say honestly.

describing the desolation of Judah, says: "The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers," &c. I am informed, that near Aleppo, these lonely buildings are still made use of, it being necessary, that the fields where water-melons, cucumbers, &c. are raised, should be regularly watched. I learn from Tho. Newton's Herball to the Bible, 8vo. 1587, that "so soone as the cucumbers, &c. be gathered, these lodges are abandoned of the watchmen and keepers, and no more frequented." From these forsaken buildings, it should seem, the prophet takes his comparison. STEEvens.

5

of this young lady;] Benedick speaks of Hero as if she were on the stage. Perhaps, both she and Leonato were meant to make their entrance with Don Pedro. When Beatrice enters, she is spoken of as coming in with only Claudio.

STEEVENS.

I have regulated the entries accordingly. MALOne.

: D. PEDRO. The lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you; the gentleman, that danced with her, told her, she is much wronged by you.

BENE. O, she misused me past the endurance of a block; an oak, but with one green leaf on it, would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life, and scold" with her: She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the prince's jester; that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest, with such impossible conveyance, upon me, that I stood like a man at a mark,

my visor began to assume life, and scold-] 'Tis whimsical, that a similar thought should have been found in the tenth Thebaid of Statius, v. 658:

66

STEEVENS.

ipsa insanire videtur "Sphynx galeæ custos-." 7-such impossible conveyance,] Dr. Warburton reads impassable: Sir Thomas Hanmer impetuous, and Dr. Johnson importable, which, says he, is used by Spenser, in a sense very congruous to this passage, for insupportable, or not to be sustained. Also by the last translators of the Apocrypha; and therefore such a word as Shakspeare may be supposed to have written. Reed.

Importable is very often used by Lidgate, in his Prologue to the translation of The Tragedies gathered by Ihon Bochas, &c.* as well as by Holinshed.

Impossible may be licentiously used for unaccountable. Beatrice has already said, that Benedick invents impossible slanders. So, in The Fair Maid of the Inn, by Beaumont and Fletcher: "You would look for some most impossible antick." Again, in The Roman Actor, by Massinger:

to lose

"Ourselves, by building on impossible hopes.'

STEEVENS.

Impossible may have been what Shakspeare wrote, and be used in the sense of incredible or inconceivable, both here and in the beginning of the scene, where Beatrice speaks of impossible slanders. M. MASON.

I believe the meaning is-with a rapidity equal to that of jugglers, who appear to perform impossibilities. We have the

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