Surely Prospero's meaning is: "I will relate to you the means by which I have been enabled to accomplish these ends; which means, though they now appear strange and improbable, will then appear otherwise." ANONYMOUS.

292. Coragio! This exclamation of encou ragement I find in J. Florio's Translation of Montaigne, 1603:

-You often cried Coragio, and called ça, ça." Again, in the Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598..

STEEVENS.

304. -true: -] That is, honest. A true mån is, in the language of that time, opposed to a thief, The sense is, Mark what these men wear, and say if they are honest. JOHNSON.

305.

1

-and one so strong

That could control the moon] From Medea's speech in Ovid (as translated by. Golding) our author might have learned that this was one of the pretended powers of witchcraft:

316.

MALONE.

I darken oft, though beaten brass abate thy peril soon." And Trinculo is reeling ripe; where should they Find this grand LIQUOR that hath gilded them?] Shakspere, to be sure, wrote-grand 'LIXIR, alluding to the grand Elixir of the alchymists, which they pretend would restore youth, and confer immortality. This, as they said, being a preparation of gold, they called Aurum potabile; which Shakspere alluded to in

the

the word gilded, as he does again in Antony and Cleopatra:

"How much art thou unlike Mark Antony:

"Yet coming from him, that great medicine hath "With his tinct gilded thee."

But the joke here is to insinuate that, notwithstanding all the boasts of the chemists, sack was the only restorer of youth and bestower of immortality. So, Ben Jonson, in his Every Man out of his Humour :"Canarie the very Elixar and spirit of wine." This seems to have been the cant name for sack, of which the English were, at that time, immoderately fond. Randolph, in his Jealous Lovers, speaking of it, says,

A. pottle of Elixar at the Pegasus bravely caroused." So again in Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas, act iii.

-Old reverend sack, which, for ought that I can read yet,

"Was that philosopher's stone the wise king Ptolemeus

"Did all his wonders by."

THE END.

TWO

GENTLEMEN

O F

VERONA,

BY

WILL. SHAKSPERE:

Printed Complete from the TEXT of

SAM. JOHNSON and GEO. STEEVENS,

And revised from the last Editions.

When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
First rear'd the Stage, immortal SHAKSPERE rose;
Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain :
His pow'rful strokes presiding Truth confess'd,
And unresisted Passion storm'd the breast.

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

LONDON:

Printed for, and under the direction of, JOHN BELL, British-Library, STRAND, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the PRINCE of WALES.

MDCCLXXXVI.