Malone quotes this proverb in full from Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, 1578,

66

Whylst grass doth growe, oft sterves the seely steede;"

and from The Paradise of Daintie Devises, 1578,—

"While grasse doth growe, the silly horse he starves."

I find it, with a variation, in Whitney's Emblemes, 1586; 66 While grasse doth growe, the courser faire doth sterue."

p. 26.

Act iii. sc. 2.

"Now could I drink hot blood,

And do such business as the bitter day

Would quake to look on."

So Malone, adhering to the quartos; while Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight adopt the reading of the folios,—

"And do such bitter business as the day," &c.

All this is marvellous! Can any thing be plainer than that, in the quartos, "bitter" is a misprint for "better" (as it often is; e.g.;

"Here comes my bitter Genius, whose advice," &c.

A pleasant conceited Comedy, how to choose a good Wife from a bad, 1634, sig. & 4);

that the editor or printer of the folio, not perceiving that it was a misprint, made his stupid transposition; and that the genuine lection is,

"And do such business as the better day

Would quake to look on"?

Did the modern editors never read in Milton,

“Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven," &c. ?

Act iii. sc. 3.

"O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven!"

So Petrarch;

"Or vivi sì che a Dio ne venga il lezzo."

Sonetto civ.

And see also Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, c. xviii. st. 23.

Act iii. sc. 4.

"A station like the herald Mercury," &c.

To shew that "station" means here the act of standing [or manner of standing, attitude], Theobald and Steevens quote our author's Antony and Cleopatra, act iii. sc. 3.— Other writers have employed the word in the same sense: so Fletcher;

"What a strange scene of sorrow is express'd

In different postures, in their looks and station!
A common painter, eyeing these, to help
His dull invention, might draw to the life," &c.

Lovers' Progress, act iv. sc. 3.

Act iii. sc. 4.

"Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end."

In the Variorum Shakespeare, on the word "excrements," there is a note by Whalley, which is more to the purpose than much of the annotation in that omnium gatherum. still it may not be useless to cite here a passage from Chapman's Justification of a strange action of Nero, &c., 1629; "And albeit hayre were of it selfe the most abiect excrement that were, yet should Poppaas hayre be reputed honourable. I am not ignorant that hayre is noted by many as an excrement, a fleeting commodity An excrement it is, I deny not," &c. Sig. B 2.

Act iii. sc. 4.

"His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones
Would make them capable."

For examples of the word "capable," Malone, it would seem, was obliged to confine himself to the works of Shakespeare. Compare Euerie Woman in her Humor, 1609;

"Ser. We voide of hostile armes

Hostis. I, if they had had horses, they had sau'd their armes. Ser. Be capable [i. e. be intelligent,-understand me]. I meane, voide of armorie." Sig. d 4.

Act v. sc. 1.

"A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade,

For-and a shrouding sheet," &c.

In my Remarks on Collier's and Knight's eds. of Shakespeare, p. 218, I adduced several passages to prove that

the modern editors were wrong in putting a break after "For." I subjoin another;

"The boyle was vp, we had good lucke,

In frost for and in snow."

Canting Song in Dekker's English Villanies, &c.

sig. o 2, ed. 1632.

66

Act v. sc. 1.

Imperious Cæsar, dead, and turn'd to clay," &c.

So the quartos. The folio, "imperial;" which Mr. Collier and Mr. Knight adopt. Malone observes; "The editor of the folio substituted imperial, not knowing that imperious was used in the same sense. There are other instances in the folio of a familiar term being substituted in the room of a more ancient word."

The right reading, whether the passage be or be not a quotation (see Collier's Notes and Emendations, &c. p. 430), is, in all probability, "imperious;" which in Shakespeare's time was the usual form of the word. So in the Countess of Pembroke's Tragedie of Antonie (translated from the French), 1595,—

"The scepters promis'd of imperious Rome."

Sig. G 3.

Even in Fletcher's Prophetess, written long after Ham

let, we have,

"'tis imperious Rome,

Rome, the great mistress of the conquer'd world."

Act ii. sc. 3.

Act v. sc. 1.

"Anon, as patient as the female dove

When that her golden couplets are disclos'd," &c.

Disclos'd means-hatched. But I only notice the passage for the sake of pointing out to those who are curious in poetical phraseology the strange use of this word by Waller. In some lines To the Queen-mother of France upon her Landing, he addresses her as if she had been a second Leda;

"Great Queen of Europe! where thy offspring wears
All the chief crowns; where princes are thy heirs;
As welcome thou to sea-girt Britain's shore,

As erst Latona, who fair Cynthia bore,

To Delos was: here shines a nymph as bright,
By thee disclos'd, with like increase of light."

T