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With what encounter so uncurrent have I Strain'd to appear thus? If one Jet beyond. (see 1765, II,276,5)

III.ii.55 (307,8)

[I ne'er heard yet,

That any of those bolder vices wanted

Less impudence to gain—say what they did,

Than to perform it first]

It is apparent that according to the proper, at least according to the present, use of words, less should be more, or wanted should be had. But Shakespeare is very uncertain in his use of negatives. It nay be necessary once to observe, that in our language two negatives did not originally affirm, but strengthen the negation. This mode of speech was in time changed, but as the change was made in opposition to long custom, it proceeded gradually, and uniformity was not obtained but through an intermediate confusion.

III.ii.82 (308,9) [My life stands in the level of your dreams] To be in the level is by a metaphor from archery to be within the reach.

III.ii.85 (308,1) [As you were past all shame, (Those of your fact are so) [so past all truth] I do not remember that fact is used any where absolutely for guilt, which must be its sense in this place. Perhaps we may read,

Those of your pack are so.

Pack is a low coarse word well suited to the rest of this royal invective.

III.ii.107 (309,3) [I have got strength of limit] I know not well how strength of limit can mean strength to pass the limits of the childbed chamber, which yet it must mean in this place, unless we read in a more easy phrase, strength of limb. And now, &c.

III.ii.123 (310,4) [The flatness of my misery] That is, how low, how flat I am laid by my calamity.

III.ii.146 (310,5) [Of the queen's speed] Of the event of the queen's trial: so we still say, he sped well or ill.

III.ii.173 (311,6) [Does my deeds make the blacker!] This vehement retraction of Leontes, accompanied with the confession of more crimes than he was suspected of, is agreeable to our daily experience of the vicissitudes of violent tempers, and the eruptions of minds oppressed with guilt.

III.ii.187 (312,7)

[That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing

That did but shew thee, of a fool, inconstant,

And damnable ungrateful]

[T: of a soul] [W: shew thee off, a fool] Poor Mr. Theobald's courtly remark cannot be thought to deserve much notice. Or. Warburton too might have spared his sagacity if he had remembered, that the present reading, by a mode of speech anciently much used, means only, It shew'd thee first a fool, then inconstant and ungrateful.

III.ii.219 (314,9) [I am sorry for't] This it another instance of the sudden changes incident to vehement and ungovernable minds.

III.iii.1 (315,1) [Thou art perfect then] Perfect is often used by

Shakespeare for certain, well assured, or well informed.

III.iii.56 (317,2) [A savage clamour!—Well may I get aboard—This is the chace] This clamour was the cry of the dogs and hunters; then seeing the bear, he cries, this is the chace. or, the animal pursued.

IV.i.6 (321,9) [and leave the growth untry'd Of that wide gap] [W: gulf untry'd] This emendation is plausible, but the common reading is consistent enough with our author's manner, who attends more to his ideas than to his words. The growth of the wide gap, is some-what irregular; but he means, the growth, or progression of the time which filled up the gap of the story between Perdita's birth and her sixteenth year. To leave this growth untried, is to leave the passages of the intermediate years unnoted and unexamined. Untried is not, perhaps, the word which he would have chosen, but which his rhyme required.

IV.i.7 (321,1)

[since it is in my power

To o'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour

To plant and o'erwhelm custom. Let me pass

The same I am, ere ancient'st order was,

Or what is now receiv'd]

The reasoning of Time is not very clear! he seems to mean, that he who has broke so many laws may now break another; that he who introduced every thing, may introduce Perdita on her sixteenth year; and he intreats that he may pass as of old, before any order or succession of objects, ancient or modern, distinguished his periods.