Even like an o'er-grown lion in a cave,

That goes not out to prey: Now, as fond fathers
Having bound up the threat'ning twigs of birch,
Only to ftick it in their children's fight,

For terror, not to use; in time the rod

Becomes more mock'd, than feared: fo our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;

And liberty plucks juftice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurfe, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.

Fri. It refted in your grace

To unloofe this ty'd-up juftice, when you pleas'd: And it in you more dreadful would have feem'd, Than in lord Angelo.

Duke. I do fear, too dreadful:

I

Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope,
'Twould be my tyranny to ftrike, and gall them,
For what I bid them do: For we bid this be done,
When evil deeds have their permiffive pafs,

And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father,

I have on Angelo impos'd the office;

Who may, in the ambush of my name, ftrike home, And yet, my nature never in the fight

To do it flander 2: And to behold his sway,

I will, noticed-unobferved;" for fo the fame phrafe is used by Sir Andrew Aguecheek: "Let him let the matter flip, and I'll give him my horfe grey Capulet." Again in Marlow's Doctor Fauftus 1631:

"Shall I let flip fo great an injury."

Again in A Mad World my Mafters, by Middleton, 1640:

"Well, things muft lip and fleep-I will diffemble."

Again, in The Spanish Tragedy, 1605:

"My fimplicity may make them think

"That ignorantly I will let all flip." MALONE.

• Becomes more mock'd than fear'd:

-] Becomes was added

by Mr. Pope to restore sense to the paffage, fome fuch word

having been left out.

STEEVENS.

Sith.] i. e. fince. STEEVENS.

2 To do it Лlander.

-] The text ftood:

So do in flander.

Sir

I will, as 'twere a brother of your order,
Vifit both prince and people: therefore, I pr'ythee,
Supply me with the habit, and inftruct me
How I may formally in perfon bear 3 me
Like a true friar. More reafons for this action,
At our more leifure fhall I render you;
Only, this one:-Lord Angelo is precife;
Stands at a guard 4 with envy; fcarce confeffes
That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than ftone: Hence fhall we fee,
If power change purpose,, what our feemers be."

Sir Thomas Hanmer has very well corrected it thus,
To do it flander.

Yet perhaps less alteration might have produced the true reading,
And yet my nature never, in the fight,

So doing flandered.

And yet my nature never fuffer flander by doing any open acts of feverity. JOHNSON.

The old text ftood,

To do in flander.

in the fight

Hanmer's emendation is in my opinion beft.

So in Hen. IV. p. 1:

"Do me no flander, Douglas, I dare fight." STEEVENS. The words in the preceding line-ambush and strike, fhew that fight is the true reading. MALONE.

3

in perfon bear,] Mr. Pope reads,

-my perfon bear.

Perhaps a word was dropped at the end of the line, which originally ftood thus,

How I may formally in perfon bear me,

Like a true friar.

So in the Tempeft:

66

fome good inftruction give

66 How I may bear me here."

Sir W. Davenant reads, in his alteration of the play :

I may in perfon a true friar feem. STEEVENS. 4 Stands at a guard- -] Stands on terms of defiance.

JOHNSON.

SCENE

SCENE V.

A Nunnery.

Enter Ifabella and Francifca.

Ifab. And have you nuns no farther privileges?
Nun. Are not these large enough?

Ifab. Yes, truly: I fpeak not as defiring more;
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the fifter-hood, the votarifts of faint Clare.
Lucio. [Within] Ho! Peace be in this place!
Ifab. Who's that which calls?

Nun. It is a man's voice: Gentle Isabella,
Turn you the key, and know his bufinefs of him;
You may,
I may not; you are yet unfworn:
When you have vow'd, you must not speak with men,
But in the prefence of the prioress:

Then, if you speak, you must not fhew your face;
Or, if you fhew your face, you must not speak.
He calls again; I pray you, answer him. [Exit Franc.
Ifab. Peace and prosperity! Who is't that calls?

Enter Lucio.

Lucio. Hail, virgin, if you be ; as thofe cheek-rofes
Proclaim you are no lefs! Can you so stead me,
As bring me to the fight of Ifabella,

A novice of this place, and the fair fifter
To her unhappy brother Claudio?

Ifab. Why her unhappy brother? let me afk;
The rather, for I now must make you know
I am that Isabella, and his fifter.

Lucio. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets
you;

Not to be weary with you, he's in prifon.

Ifab. Woe me! For what?

Lucio. For that, which, if myfelf might be his judge, He should receive his punishment in thanks: He hath got his friend with child.

Ifab. Sir, make me not your story .

Lucio. 'Tis true:-I would not (though 'tis my familiar fin

With maids to feem the lapwing, and to jeft,

3 make me not your ftory.] Do not, by deceiving me, make me a fubject for a tale. JOHNSON.[

Benedict

Perhaps only, Do not divert yourself with me, as you would with a ftory, do not make me the fubject of your drama. talks of becoming-the argument of his own fcorn.

Sir W. Davenant reads -fcorn instead of story. STEEVENS. tis my familiar fin

6.

With maids to feem the lapwing,

The Oxford editor's note on this paffage is in these words. The Tapwings fly, with feeming fright and anxiety, far from their nefts, to deceive those who feek their young. And do not all other birds do the fame? But what has this to do with the infidelity of a general lover, to whom this bird is compared? It is another quality of the lapwing, that is here alluded to, viz. its perpetually flying fo low and fo near the paffenger, that he thinks he has it, and then is fuddenly gone again. This made it a proverbial expreffion to fignify a lover's falfhood: and it seems to be a very old one: for Chaucer, in his Plowman's Tale, fays:

:

-And lapwings that well conith lie. WARBURTON.

The modern editors have not taken in the whole fimilitude here they have taken notice of the lightness of a spark's behaviour to his mistress, and compared it to the lapwing's hovering and fluttering as it flies. But the chief, of which no notice is taken, is,

and to jeft.

(See Ray's Proverbs) "The lapwing cries, tongue far from heart." i. e. most farthest from the nest, i. e. She is, as Shakespeare has it here

Tongue far from heart.

"The farther fhe is from her neft, where her heart is with her young ones, fhe is the louder, or perhaps all tongue." SMITH, Shakespeare has an expreffion of the like kind, Com. of Errors, act. iv. fc. 3:

Adr. Far from her neft the lapwing cries away, "My heart prays for him, tho' my tongue do curfe." We meet with the fame thought in John Lilly's comedy, intitled Campafpe (first published in 1591) act ii. fc. 2. from whence Shakespeare might borrow it:

"Alex. Not with Timoleon you mean, wherein you resemble the lapwing, who crieth moft where her neft is not, and so, to lead me from efpying your love for Campafpe, you cry Timoclea." GRAY

Tongue

Tongue far from heart) play with all virgins fo:
I hold you as a thing enfky'd, and fainted;
By your renouncement, an immortal spirit;
And to be talked with in fincerity,

As with a faint.

Ifab. You do blafpheme the good, in mocking me. Lucio. Do not believe it. Fewnefs and truth 7, 'tis

thus:

Your brother and his lover have embrac❜d:

As those that feed grow full; as bloffoming time
That from the feedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foyfon; fo her plenteous womb
Expreffeth his full tilth and husbandry.

Ifab. Some one with child by him?-My cousin
Juliet ?

Lucio. Is the your coufin?

Ifab. Adoptedly; as fchool-maids change their

Lucio. She it is.

Ifab. O, let him marry her?!

Lucio. This is the point.

true ones.

8

Fewnefs and truth, &c.] i. e. in few words, and those
In few, is many times thus used by Shakespeare.

To teeming foyfon; fo

STEEVENS.

As the fentence now ftands, it is apparently ungrammatical. I read,

At bloffoming time, &c.

That is, As they that feed grow full, fo her womb now, at bloffoming time, at that time through which the feed time proceeds to the harveft, her womb shows what has been doing. Lucio ludicrously calls pregnancy blooming time, the time when fruit is promised, though not yet ripe. JOHNSON.

Instead of that, we may read-doth; and, instead of brings, bring. STEEVENS.

O, let him marry her.] O is an insertion of the modern edi-, tors. I cannot relish it. If any word is to be inferted to fill up the metre, I should prefer, Why. TYRWHITT.

The