the entertainment of the reader. The following is a
specimen of his descriptive talents. Instead of the
line with which this speech of Tamora begins, she is
made to say:

The emperor, with wine and luxury o'ercome,
Is fallen asleep-in's pendent couch he's laid
That hangs in yonder grotto rock'd by winds,
Which rais'd by art do give it gentle motion :
And troops of slaves stand round with fans per-

fum'd,
Made of the feathers pluck'd from Indian birds,
And cool him into golden slumbers-
This time I chose to come to thee, my Moor.

My lovely Aaron, wherefore, &c.-
An emperor who has had too large a dose of love
and wine, and in consequence of satiety in both, falls
asleep on a bed which partakes of the nature of a sailor's
hammock and a child's cradle, is a curiosity which
only Ravenscroft could have ventured to describe on
the stage. I hope I may be excused for transplanting
a few of his flowers into the barren desart of our
comments on this tragedy.

STEEVENS. 185. - La chequer'd shadow- - ] Milton has the same expression :

" many a maid
por “ Dancing in the chequer'd shade."

STEEVENS. 200. though Venus govern your desires,

Saturn is dominator over mine :) The meaning of this passage may be illustrated by the astronomical 3

description

a

description of Saturn, which Venus gives in Greene's Planetomachia, 1585. " The star of Saturs is espe. cially cooling, and somewhat drie," &c. Again, in the Sea Voyage, by Beaumont and Fletcher :

for your aspect “ You're much inclind to melancholy, and that “ Tells me the sullen Saturn had predominance * At your nativity, a malignant planet ! & “ And if not qualified by a sweet conjunction “ Of a soft ruddy wench, born under Venus, a " It may prove fatal."

COLLINS. 234. Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs. The author of tie Revisal suspects that the poet

2

wrote:

Should thrive upon thy new transformed limbs, as the former is an expression that suggests na image to the fancy. But drive, I think, may stand, with this meaning: the hounds should pass with impetuous haste, &c. So, in Hamlet:

Pyrrhus at Priam drives," &c. 13. i. e. flies with impetuosity at him. STEEYENS.

242. -swartk. Cimmerian] Swarth is black. The Moor is called Cimmerian, from the affinity of blackness to darkness,

JOHNSØN. 256. —noted long:] He had yet been niarried but one night.

JOHNSON 266. Here never shines the søn, &c.] Mrs Rowe seems to have thought on this passage in luis Jane Shore :

“ This is the house where the sun never dawns,
• The bird of night sits screaming o'er its roof,
“ Grim spectres sweep along the horrid gloom,
And nought is heard but wailings and lamento
ings."

STEEVENS. 274. Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.] This is said in fabulous physiology, of those that hear the groan of the mandrake tora up. JOHNSON.

The same thought and almost the same expressions occur in Romeo and Juliet,

Sreevens. 296. And with that painted hope she breves your nightiness, ] So, in that exquisite stanza which opens Love in a Village :

Hope, thou nurse of young desire,

- Fairy promiser of joy,
« Painted vapour, glow-worm fire,
• Temperate sweet, that ne'er canst cloy.”

HENLEY. 997. A precious ring,-) There is supposed to

-] be a gem called a carbuncle, which emits not reflected but native light. Mr. Boyle believes the reality of its existence.

JOHNSON. So, in the Gesta Romanorum, history the sixth : " He farther beheld and saw a carbuncle in the hall that lighted all the house."

Again, in Lydgate's Description of King Priam's
Palace, 1. 2.

** And for most chefe all dirkeness to confound,
" A carbuade was set as kyng of stones all,
“ To reconforte and gladden all the hall.
B

“ And it to enlumine in the black night

“ With the freshness of his ruddy light." Again, in the Muse's Elysium, by Drayton:

“ Is that admired, mighty stone,
« The carbuncle that's named;
“ Which from it such a flaming light
" And radiancy ejecteth,
“ That in the very darkest night

“ The eye to it directeth." Chaucer, in the Romaunt of the Rose, attributes the same properties to the carbuncle : “ Soche light ysprang out of the stone."

STEEVENS. 489. If I do dream, 'would all my wealth would make me !] If this be a dream, I would give all my posa sessions to be delivered from it by waking:

JOHNSON.

ACT III.

Line 17. -Two ancient urns,] Oxford editor.Vulg. two ancient ruins.

JOHNSON, .67. in thy father's sight?] We should read spight.

WARBURTON.72. I'll chop off my hands too ;] Perhaps we should read : or chop off, &c.

It is not easy to discover how Titus, when he had chopp'd off one of his hands, would have been able to have chopp'd off the other.

STEEVENS. 91. It was my deer ;---] The play upon deer and dear has been used by Waller, who calls a lady's girdle, “ The pale that held my lovely deer.”

JOHNSON. 169. Writing destrućtion on the enemies' castle?] Thus all the editions. But Mr. Theobald, after ridiculing the sagacity of the former editors at the expence of a great deal of awkward mirth, corrects it to casque; and this, he says, he'll stand by: And the Oxford editor,

taking his security, will stand by it too. But what a slippery ground is critical confidence! Nothing could bid fairer for a right conjecture; yet'tis all imaginary. A close helmet, which covered the whole head, was called a castle, and, I suppose, for that very reason. Don Quixote's barber, at least as good a critick as these editors, says (in Shelton's translation, 1612),

“ I know what is a helmet, and what a morrion, and
what a close castle, and other things touching warfare."
Lib. iv. cap. 18. And the original, celada de encaxe,
has something of the same signification. Shakspere
uses the word again in Troilus and Cressida:

". and Diomede
“ Stand fast, and wear a castle on thy head."

WARBURTON.
“ Dr. Warburton's proof (says the author of the
Revisal) rests wholly on two mistakes, one of a printer,
Bij

the

a