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I.iii.125 (175,9) larger tether] Tether is that string by which an animal, set to graze in grounds uninclosed, is confined within the proper limits. (1773)

I.iii.132 (176,2) I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,/ Have you so slander any moment's leisure] [The humour of this is fine. WARBURTON.] Here is another fine passage, of which I take the beauty to be only imaginary. Polonius says, in plain terms, that is, not in language less elevated or embellished than before, but in terms that cannot be misunderstood: I would not have you so disgrace your most idle moments, as not to find better employment for them than lord Hamlet's conversation.

I.iv.9 (177,3) the swaggering up-spring] The blustering upstart.

I.iv.17 (177,4) This heavy-headed revel, east and west] I should not have suspected this passage of ambiguity or obscurity, had I not found my opinion of it differing from that of the learned critic [Warburton]. I construe it thus, This heavy-headed revel makes us traduced east and west, and taxed of other nations.

I.iv.22 (178,5) The pith and marrow of our attribute] The best and most valuable part of the praise that would be otherwise attributed to us.

I.iv.32 (178,7) fortune's scar] In the old quarto of 1637, it is

—fortune's star:

But I think scar is proper.

I.iv.34 (178,8) As infinite as man may undergo] As large as can be accumulated upon man.

I.iv.39-57 (179,2) Angels and ministers of grace defend us!] Hamlet's speech to the apparition of his father seems to me to consist of three parts. When first he sees the spectre, he fortifies himself with an invocation.

Angel and ministers of grace defend us!

As the spectre approaches, he deliberates with himself, and determines, that whatever it be he will venture to address it.

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,

That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee, &c.

This he says while his father is advancing; he then, as he had determined, speaks to him, and calls him—Hamlet, King, Father, Royal Dane: oh! answer me. (1773)

I.iv.43 (180,4) questionable shape] [By questionable is meant provoking question. HANMER.] So in Macbeth,

Live you, or are you aught

That man may question?

I.iv.46 (180,5) tell,/Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death,/ Have burst their cearments?] [W: in earth] It were too long to examine this note period by period, though almost every period seems to me to contain something reprehensible. The critic, in his zeal for change, writes with so little consideration, as to say, that Hamlet cannot call his father canonized, because we are told he was murdered with all his sins fresh upon him. He was not then told it, and had so little the power of knowing it, that he was to be told it by an apparition. The long succession of reasons upon reasons prove nothing, but what every reader discovers, that the king had been buried, which is implied by so many adjuncts of burial, that the direct mention of earth is not necessary. Hamlet, amazed at an apparition, which, though in all ages credited, has in all ages been considered as the most wonderful and most dreadful operation of supernatural agency, enquires of the spectre, in the most emphatic terms, why he breaks the order of nature, by returning from the dead; this he asks in a very confused circumlocution, confounding in his fright the soul and body. Why, says he, have thy bones, which with due ceremonies have been intombed in death, in the common state of departed mortals, burst the folds in which they were embalmed? Why has the tomb, in which we saw thee quietly laid, opened his mouth, that mouth which, by its weight and stability, seemed closed for ever? The whole sentence is this: Why dost thou appear, whom we know to be dead?

Had the change of the word removed any obscurity, or added any beauty, it might have been worth a struggle; but