HEL. What is your pleasure, madam ? I am a mother to you. You know, Helen, HEL. Mine honourable mistress. COUNT. Nay, a mother; Why not a mother? When I said, a mother, That were enwombed mine: "Tis often seen, of faults. Dr. Warburton, without necessity, as it seems to me, reads "O! then we thought them none; "--and the subsequent editors adopted the alteration. MALONE. A native slip to us from foreign seeds :] And our choice furnishes us with a slip propagated to us from foreign seeds, which we educate and treat, as if it were native to us, and sprung from ourselves. HEATH. 8 What's the matter, That this distemper'd messenger of wet, The many-colour'd Iris, rounds thine eye ?] There is something exquisitely beautiful in this representation of that suffusion of colours which glimmers around the sight when the eye-lashes are wet with tears. The poet hath described the same appearance in his Rape of Lucrece: "And round about her tear-distained eye "Blue circles stream'd like rainbows in the sky." HENLEY. I am from humble, he from honour'd name; COUNT. Nor I your mother? HEL. You are my mother, madam; 'Would you were (So that my lord, your son, were not my brother,) Indeed, my mother!-or were you both our mothers, I care no more for, than I do for heaven, But, I your daughter, he must be my brother1? COUNT. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughterin-law; God shield, you mean it not! daughter, and mother, So strive upon your pulse: What, pale again? My fear hath catch'd your fondness: Now I see 9 or were you both our mothers, I CARE NO MORE FOR, than I do for heaven, So I were not his sister:] There is a designed ambiguity: "I care no more for," is, "I care as much for. I wish it equally." FARMER. In Troilus and Cressida we find-"I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus." There the words certainly mean, I should not be sorry or unwilling to be, &c. According to this, then, the meaning of the passage before us should be, "If you were mother to us both, it would not give me more solicitude than heaven gives me,-so I were not his sister." But Helena certainly would not confess an indifference about her future state. However, she may mean, as Dr. Farmer has suggested, "I should not care more than, but equally as, I care for future happiness; I should be as content, and solicit it as much, as I pray for the bliss of heaven." MALONE. But, I your daughter, he must be my ing is obscured by the elliptical diction. Can it be no other way, but if I be your daughter, he must be my brother? JOHNSON. strive-] To strive is to contend. 2 66 So, in Cymbeline: That it did strive in workmanship and value!" STEEVENS. The mystery of your loneliness, and find To say, thou dost not: therefore tell me true; 4 That truth should be suspected: Speak, is't so? HEL. Good madam, pardon me! COUNT. Do you love my son? HEL. 3 Your pardon, noble mistress! -Now I see The mystery of your LONELINESS, and find STEEVENS. The mystery of her loveliness is beyond my comprehension : the old Countess is saying nothing ironical, nothing taunting, or in reproach, that this word should find a place here; which it could not, unless sarcastically employed, and with some spleen. I dare warrant the poet meant his old lady should say no more than this: "I now find the mystery of your creeping into corners, and weeping, and pining in secret." For this reason I have amended the text, loneliness. The Steward, in the foregoing scene, where he gives the Countess intelligence of Helena's behaviour, says "Alone she was, and did communicate to herself, her own words to her own ears." THEOBALD. The late Mr. Hall had corrected this, I believe, rightly,-your lowliness. TYRWHITT. I think Theobald's correction as plausible. To choose solitude is a mark of love. STEEVENS. "Your salt tears' head." tears, the cause of your grief. 4 in their KIND -] STEEVENS. their nature. The source, the fountain of your i. e. in their language, according to COUNT. Love you my son ? HEL. Do not you love him, madam? COUNT. Go not about; my love hath in't a bond, Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose The state of your affection; for your passions HEL. Then, I confess, My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love: That he is lov'd of me: I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him, till I do deserve him; 5 5 CAPTIOUS and INTENIBLE sieve,] The word captious I never found in this sense; yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless carious for rotten, which yet is a word more likely to have been mistaken by the copiers than used by the author. JOHNSON. Dr. Farmer supposes captious to be a contraction of capacious. As violent ones are to be found among our ancient writers, and especially in Churchyard's Poems, with which Shakspeare was not unacquainted. STEEVENS. By captious, I believe Shakspeare only meant recipient, capable of receiving what is put into it; and by intenible, incapable of holding or retaining it. How frequently he and the other writers. of his age confounded the active and passive adjectives, has been already more than once observed. The original copy reads-intemible. The correction was made in the second folio. MALone.' 6 And lack not to LOSE still :] Perhaps we should read"And lack not to love still." TYRWHITT. 66 I believe lose is right. So afterwards, in this speech: whose state is such, that cannot choose "But lend and give, where she is sure to lose." Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, My dearest madam, Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian HEL. Madam, I had. Wherefore? tell true 9. Helena means, I think, to say that, like a person who pours water into a vessel full of holes, and still continues his employment, though he finds the water all lost, and the vessel empty, so, though she finds that the waters of her love are still lost, that her affection is thrown away on an object whom she thinks she never can deserve, she yet is not discouraged, but perseveres in her hopeless endeavour to accomplish her wishes. The poet evidently alludes to the trite story of the daughters of Danaus. MALONE. 7 Whose aged honour CITES a virtuous youth,] i. e. whose respectable conduct in age shows, or proves, that you were no less virtuous when young. As a fact is proved by citing witnesses, or examples from books, our author, with his usual licence, uses to cite, in the same sense of to prove. MALONE. 8 Wish chastly, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and LOVE ;] i. e. Venus. Helena means to say "If ever you wished that the deity who presides over chastity, and the queen of amorous rites, were one and the same person; or, in other words, if ever you wished for the honest and lawful completion of your chaste desires." I believe, however, the words were accidentally transposed at the press, and would read "Love dearly, and wish chastly, that your Dian," &c. MALONE. 9- tell true.] This is an evident interpolation. It is needless, |