when he supposes her dead, the dearest morsel of the earth. But I am now convinced that I was Inistaken. MALONE. LE shou

The inscription alludes to the violent storm which accompanied the birth of Marina, at which time the sea, proudly o'erswelling its bounds, swallowed, cas is usual in such hurricanes, some part of the earth. The poet ascribes the swelling of the seas to the pride which Thetis felt at the birth of Marina in her element; and supposes that the earth, being afraid to be overflowed, bestowed this birth,child of Thetis on the heavens; and that Thetis, in revenge, makes raging battery against the shores. The line, Therefore the earth fearing to be o'erflow'd, proves beyond doubt that the words, some part of the earth, in the line preceding, cannot mean the body of Thaisa, but a portion of the continent, M. MASON.

Our poet has many allusions in his works to the depredations made by the sea on the land. MALONE c stint] i. e. She'll never cease, *.

She'll never..

STEEVENS.

P. 65, 1. 26. — while our scenes display]. The old copies have —

while our steare must player who m

We might read our stage

scene,

or rather, our

It should be remembered, that scene was for merly spelt sceane so there is only a change of two letters, which in the writing of the early part of the last century were easily confounded.

MALONE

P. 66, 1. 19. 20. - she is able to freeze the god Priapus, 1 The present mention of this deity was perhaps suggested by the following passage in

Twine's

Twine's translation: "Then the bawde brought her into a certaine chappell where stoode the idoll of Priapus made of gold," &c. STEEVENS.

P. 67, 1. 10. How a dozen of virginities?] For what a price may a dozen of virginities be had. MALONE.

P. 67, 1. 11. the gods to-bless your Honour! | use of to in composition with verbs (as Mr. tt remarks) is very common in Gower and

Chaucer. STEEVENS.

P. 67, 1. 30. 31. That dignifies the renown of a bawd, no less than it gives a good report to a number to be chaste.] The intended meaning of the passage should seem to be this: "The mask of modesty is no less successfully worn by pro caresses than by wantons. It palliates grossness of profession in the former, while it exempts a multitude of the latter from suspicion of being what they are. 'Tis politick for each to assume the appearance of this quality, though neither of them in reality possess it." I join with Mr. Malone, however, in supposing this sentence to be corrupt. STEEVENS.

P. 68, 1. 22. —she's not paced yet;] ~ She has not yet learned her paces. MALONE.

P. 68, 1, 24. Come, we will leave his honour and her together.] The first quarto adds → Go thy ways. These words, which denote both authority and impatience, I think, belong to Lysimachus. He had before expressed bis desire to be left alone with Marina:"- Well, there's for · leave us," MALONE. These words may signify only and might have been addressed

you;

Go back again; by the Bawd to

Marina, who had offered to quit the room with

her. STEEVENS,

VOL. XVIII.

19

68, last but one I. Were you a gamester at or at seven?] A gamester was formerly used to signify a wanton. MALone.

P. 69, 1. 17. Mar. If you were born to honour show it now; ] In the

Gesta Romanorum, Tharsia (the Marina of the present play) preserves her chastity by the recital of the story. "Miserere me propter Deum, et per Deum te adjuro, ne me violes. Resiste libidini tuae, et andi casus infelicitatis meae, et unde sim diligenter considera. Cui cum universos casus snos exposuisset, princeps confusus et pietate plenus, ait ei, "Habeo et ego filiam tibi similem, de qua similes casus metuo." Haec dicens, dedit ei viginti aureos, dicens, ecce habes amplius pro virginitate quam impositus est. Dic advenientibus sicut mihi dixisti, et liberaberis."

The affecting circumstance which is here said to have struck the mind of Athenagoras, (the danger to which his own daughter was liable,) was prom hably omitted in the translation. It hardly, others wise, would have escaped our author. MALone.

It is preserved in Twine's translation, as follows: Be of good cheere, Tharsia, for surely I rue thy case; and I myselfe have also a daughter at home, to whome 1 doubt that the like chances may befall," &c. STEEVENS.

P. 69, 1. 20. 21. ** Some more; be sage.] Lysimachus says this with a sneer. Proceed with your fine moral discourse. MALONE.

P. 69, last but one 1. Persever still in that clear way thou goest,] Continue in your present virtuous disposition.

MALONE,

P. 70, 1. 22. 23. in the cheapest country under the cope, i. e. under the cope or covering of heaven. The word is thus used in Cymbeline. In Coriolanus we have "under the canopy," with the same meaning. STEEVENS.

P. 71, 1. 7-9. Boult, take her away; use her at thy pleasure crack the glass of her virginity, and make the rest malleable.] So, in the Gesta Romanorum: "Altera die, adhuc eam virginem audiens, iratus [leno] vocans villicum puellarum, dixit, duc eam ad te, et frange nodum virginitis ejus. MALONE.

Here is perhaps some allusion to a fact recorded by Dion Cassius and by Pliny, B. XXXVI. ch. xxvi. but more circumstantially by Petronius. See his Satyricon, Variorum edit. p. 189. A skilful workman who had discovered the art of making glass malleable, carried a specimen of it to Tiberius, who asked him if he alone was in possession of the secret. He replied in the affirmative; on which the tyrant ordered his head to be struck off immediately, lest his invention should have proved injurious to the workers in gold, silver, and other metals. The same story, however, is told in the Gesta Romanorum, chapter 44. STEEVENS.

· P. 71, I. 16. 17. Marry come up. my dish of chastity with rosemary and bay's!] Auciently inany dishes were served up with this garniture, during the season of Christmas. The bawd means to call her a piece of ostentatious virtue. STEEVENS. P. 71, 1. 31. 32. Thou'rt the damn'd doorkeeper to every coystrel That hither comes enquiring for his tib;1 To every mean or drunken fellow that comes to enquire for a girl. Coystrel is properly a wine

vessel. Tib is, I think, a contraction of Tabitha. It was formerly a cant name for a strumpet.

MALONE.

Tib was a common nick-name for a wanton. Coystrel means a paltry fellow. This word seems to be corrupted from kestrel, a bastard kind of hawk. It occurs in Shakspeare's Twelfth Night, Act 1. sc. iii. Spenser, Bacon, and Dryden, also mention the kestrel and Kastril, Ben Jonson's angry boy in The Alchemist, is only a variation of the same term. The word coystrel in short, was employed to characterise any worthless or ridiculous being. STEEVens.

P. 71, last 1.

thy very food is such

As hath been belch'd on by infected lungs.] Marina, who is designed for a character of juvenile innocence, appears much too knowing in the impurities of a brothel; nor are her expressions more chastised than her ideas. STEEVENS.

P. 72

1. 10. 1. For that which thou professest, a baboon,v Could we but speak, would own a name too dear.] That is, a baboon would think his tribe dishonoured by such a profession. Tage says, "Ere I would drown myself, &c. I would change my humanity with a baboon 20W TeTiOG BIK a

Marina's wish to already expressed in almost the

for deliverance from her shameful

situation, same words:

O that the good gods

"Would set me free from this unhallow'd

place!

In this speech I I have made some trifling regula❤

tions.

STEEVENS.