on you; you must therefore be content to lubber the gloss of your new fortunes, with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition.

Oth. The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the finty and feel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize
A natural and prompt alacrity
I find in hardness; and do undertake
This present war against the Ottomites.
Moft humbly therefore bending to your state,
I crave fit difpofition for my wife,
Due reference of place and exhibition;
With such accommodation and befort
As levels with her breeding.

Duke. Why, at her father's.
Bra. I will not have it fo.
Oih. Nor 1.

Def. Nor would I there reside,
To put my father in impatient thoughts
By being in his eye. Moit gracious Duke, ,
To my unfolding lend your gracious ear,
And let me find a charter in your voice
T'assist my simpleness.

Duke. What would you, Desdemona?

Def. That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My down-right violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world. My heart's subdu'd
Ev'n to the very quality of my Lord;
I saw Othelic's visage in his mind,
And to his honours and his valiant parts
Did I

my

soul and fortunes consecrate.
So that, dear Lords, if I be left behind
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites, for which I love him, are bereft me:
And I a heavy interim fhall support,
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

Oth. Your voices, Lords ; 'beseech you, let her will Have a free way. I therefore beg it not, (17)

то (17)

I therefore beg it not
To plea'e the palate of my appetite,
N'oi to comply with beat ibe young offeets,

To please the palate of my appetite;
Nor to apply with heat, the young affects,
In

my distinct and proper satisfaction ;
But to be free and bounteous to her mind:
And heav'n defend your good fouls, that you think,
I will your serious and great business scant,
For she is with me. -No, when light-wing'd toys
Of feather'd Cupid foil with wanton dulness
My speculative and offic'd instruments,
That my disports corrupt and taint my business ;
Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
And all indign and base adversities
Make head againit my estimation.

In my defunct and proper satisfaction ;

But to be free and bounteous to ber mind.] As this has been all along hitherto printed and stop'd, it seems to me a period of as stuba born nonsense, as the editors have obtruded upon poor Shakespeare throughout his whole works. What a preposterous creature is this Orbelio made, to fall in love with, and marry, a fine young lady, when appetite and beat, and proper satisfaction are dead and defunet in him! (for, defun£t fignifies nothing else, that I know of, either pria mitively or metaphorically:) but if we may take Oibello's own word in the affair, when he speaks for himself, he was not reduc'd to this fatal unperforming itate.

-or, for I am declin'd, Into the vale of years; yet tbat's not much. Again, why should our Poet say, (for so he says, as the passage has been pointed) that the young affect heat? Youth, certainly, bas it, and has no occasion or pretence of affe&ing it, whatever superannuated lovers may have. And, again, after defunct, would he add fo absurd a collateral epithet as roper ? But, I think, I may venture to affirm, that affe&ts was not design’d here as a verb; and that defun£t was not design d here at all. I have, by a night change, rescued the Poet's text from absurdity; and this I take to be the tenour of what he would say; " I do not beg her company with me, “ merely to please myself; nor to indulge the heat and affects (i. e. « affe&iions) of a new married man, in my own diftinct and proo per satisfaction ; but to comply with her in her request, and defire, “ of accompanying me. Affe&ts, for affections, our Author in rea veral other passages uses.

For ev'ry man with his affeEts is born. Love's Labour Loft.
As 'twere to banish their affects with him. Richard II.
Th'affets of sorrow for bis valiant sons, Titus Andronicusa
&c. &c.

M 6

Duke.

Duke. Be it as you shall privately determine,
Or for her stay or going; th' affair cries haste;
And speed must answer. You must hence to-night.

Dl. To-night, my Lord ?
Duke. This night.
Oth. With all my heart.

Duke. At nine i'th' morning here we'll meet again.
Oibello, leave some officer behind,
And he shall our commission bring to you;
And such things else of quality and respect
As doth import you.

Oth. Please your Grace, my Ancient;
(A man he is of honesty and trust,)
'To his conveyance I assign my wife,
With what else needful your good grace shall think
To be sent after me.

Duke, Let it be so ;
Good-night to every one.

And, noble Signior,
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

Sen. Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.

Bra. Adieu, brave Moor, if thou hast eyes to fee, She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee.

[Exit Duke, with Senators. Oth. My life upon her faith.

Honeft lago, My Desdemona muft I leave to thee; I pr’ythee, let thy wife attend on her ; And bring her after in the best advantage. Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour Of love, of worldly matter and direction To speak with thee. We must obey the time. [Exeunt.

Marent Rodorigo and lago. Rod. lagolago. What sayest thou, noble heart? Rod. What will I do, thinkeft thou ? lago. Why, go to bed, and sleep. Rod. I will incontinently drown myself.

lago. Well, if thou doft, I shall never love thee after. Why, thou filly gentleman ! Rod. It is filliness to live, when to live is a torment;

and

and then have we a prescription to die, when death is our physician.

lago. O villainous ! I have look'd upon the world for four times seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say, I would drown myself for the love of a Guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

Rod. What should I do? I confess, it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it.

lago. Virtue ? a fig: 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardners. So that if we will plant nettles, or fow lettice ; fet hyssop, and weed up thyme ; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either have it fteril with idleness, or manured with in. duftry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our will. (18) If the beam of our lives

(18) If the balance of our lives bad not one scale of reason to poise anotber of sensuality.) i. e. If the fcale of our lives had not one scale, &c. which must certainly be wrong. Some of the old quartos have it thus, but the two elder folios read,

If the braine of our lives bad not one scale, &c. This is corrupt; and I make no doubt but Shakespeare wrote, as I have reform'd the text,

If the beame of our lives, &c. And my reason is this; that he generally distinguishes betwixt the beam and balance, using the latter to fignify the scales; and the for. mer, the Ateel-bar to which they are hung, and which poises them. I'll subjoin a few instances of his usage of both terms.

In your lord's scale is nothing but himself,
And some few vanities that make him light,
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke, &c. Ricbard II.
I have in equal balance juftly weigh’d, &c. 2 Henry IV.
Weigb'd between loath ness and obedience, at
Which end the beam should bow,

Tempeft.
We, poizing us in her defective scale,
Shall weigh thee to the beam.

All's Well, &c.
We, poize the cause in Jufice' equal scale,
Whose beam stands sure.

2 Henry VI,
- thy madness shall be paid with weight,
Till our scale turn the beam.

Hamlet In like manner, the French always use les balances to fignify the scales; le fleau, the beam of the balance,

had

had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason, to cool our raging motions, our carnal kings, our unbitted lufts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect, or fyen.

Rod. It cannot be.

lago. It is merely a luft of the blood, and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself? drown cats and blind puppies. I have profest me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness. I could never better steed thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou these wars ; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be, that Difiemona Thould long continue her love to the Moor---put money in thy purse nor he his to her. It was a violent commencement in her, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration, put but money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in their wills ;

-fill thy purse with money. (19) The food, that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall shortly be as bitter as coloquintida. When she is fated with his body, she will find the errors of her choice. She must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.

If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate

eaten,

(19) Tbe food, that to bim now is as lufcious as locufts, Mall foortly be es bitter as coloquintida.] Mr. Warburton has suspected this paffage, and attempted an emendation, which I ought to fubjoin, with his reasoning upon it. “ Tho' some kind of locusts have been sometimes

I think, they cannot be given as an instance of very delicious food. Besides, how comes locuffs, a kind of infect, to be op

pos’d to coloquintida, a medicinal drug? Be assur'd, the true read " ing is not locusts, but locbes, a very pleasant confection, introduced “ into medicine by the Arabian phyficians; and fo is very fitly op** pos’d both to the birterness, and the use of coloquintida.”. have not, however, disturbid the text for two reasons ; because all the printed copies agree in one readings without any variation : and because I am not fure, that by locusts the Poet means the infect, but the fruit of the locuft tree ; which is sweet and luscious in the same ree, as coloquintida, the fruit of the wild gourd, is acerb and bitter.

way