And the issue, there create,
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be:
And the blots of nature's hand
Shall not in their issue stand;
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
Nor mark prodigious, such as are
Despised in nativity,
Shall
upon

their children be,-
With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take bis gait;
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace:
E'er shall it in safety rest,
And the owner of it blest.

Trip away;

Make no stay ;
Meet me all by break of day.

[Ereunt Oleron, Titania, and Train, Puck. If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, (and all is mended)
That you

have but slumber'd here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend;
If you pardon, we will mend,
And, as I'm an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck

Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends, ere long:
Else the Puck a liar call.
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends. [Erit.

ANNOTATIONS

UPON THE

MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM.

1

Long withering out a young man's revenue.) Mr. Warburton would read wintering on for withering out: Dr. Johnson, however, is in the right when he says that as he cannot perceive that the common reading is not good English, therefore he finds no temptation to change it.

2-gawds,] i.e. bawbles, toys, trifles. This word is common to Shakspeare. See King John, Act 3.

Scene 5.

STEEVENS.

Or to her death according to our law.] By a law of Solon, parents had an absolute power of life and death over their children. So it suited the poet's purpose well enough, to suppose the Athenians had it before.—Or perhaps he neither thought nor knew any thing of the matter.

4 To leave the figure, or disfigure it.] The sense is, you owe to your father a being which he may at pleasure continue or destroy.

JOHNSON. 5 Know of your youth.] Reflect on the desires attendant on youth.

WARBURTON.

8

6 spotted—] as spotless is innocent, so spotted is wicked.

JOHNSON 7 Beteem them.] Give them, bestow upon them.

JOHNSON Too bigh to be inthrall’d to low,) enthralled to love was in all the copies till Theobald restored the meaning. The antithesis is exactly the same between high and low as between old and young immediately after.

9 Collied night-) Collied is used for dark or black

as a coal.

II

10 That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth.] Mr. Warburton's interpretation of spleen in this place, appears very just, a sudden, hasty, fit. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona Shakspeare vises, on the contrary, sudden for splenetic.

Your eyes are lode-stars.] This was a compliment not unfrequent among the old poets. The lodestar is the leading or guiding star, i. e. the Pole Star. The magnet is for the same reason called the loadstone, either because it leads iron or guides the sailor.

JOHNSON. -or a part to tear a cat in.] We should read,

A part to tear a cap in. for as a ranting whore was called a tear-sheet, [2d Part of Hen. IVth.] so a ranting bully was called a tearcap. For this reason it is, the poet makes l'ully Bottom, as he is called afterwards, wish for a part to tear a

And in the ancient plays, the bombast and

12

cap in.