O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me If my slight muse do please these curious days, XXXIX. O, how thy worth with manners may I sing, What can mine own praise to mine own self bring? And our dear love lose name of single one; That due to thee, which thou deserv'st alone. 7 (Which time and THOUGHTS So sweetly DOTH deceive,)] Which, viz. entertaining the time with thoughts of love, doth so agreeably beguile the tediousness of absence from those we love, and the melancholy which that absence occasions. So, in Venus and Adonis : "A summer day will seem an hour but short, Thought in ancient language meant melancholy. See vol. xi. p. 410, n. 7, and vol. xii. p. 318, n. 1. The poet, it is observable, has here used the Latin idiom, probably without knowing it: Jam vino quærens, jam somno fallere curam. The old copy reads: "Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive." And that thou teachest how to make one twain, Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all; Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, But there is nothing to which dost can refer. The change being so small, I have placed doth in the text, which affords an easy sense. MALONE. Does would be nearer the original reading; but I rather think it should be do, making of thoughts the nominative case. 8 how to make one twain, BOSWELL. By praising him here, who doth hence remain.] So, in Antony and Cleopatra : 9 "Our separation so abides and flies, "That thou, residing here, go'st yet with me, STEEVENS. FOR my love thou usest ;] For has here the signification of because. MALONE. But yet be blam'd, if thou thyself deceivest-] The quarto reads-if thou this self deceivest. It is evidently corrupt. MALONE. Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, Where thou art forc'd to break a two-fold truth; 2 Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, therefore to be ASSAIL'D;] So, in the first Part of King Henry VI.: "She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona : STEEVENS. "That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man, MALONE. 3- till SHE have prevail'd.] The quarto reads :-till he have prevail'd. But the lady, and not the man, being in this case supposed the wooer, the poet without doubt wrote: 66 till she have prevail'd." The emendation was proposed to me by Mr. Tyrwhitt. MALONE. but yet thou might'st, my swEET, forbear.] The old copy reads-thou might'st my seat forbear. The context proves it to have been a corruption: for the emendation I am responsible. So, in another Sonnet : "Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside." Again, in our author's Lover's Complaint: "But O, my sweet, what labour is't to leave," &c. Again, in Othello: "The sooner, sweet, for you." Again, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona : "Pro. Except my mistress. "Val. Sweet, except not any." Here a man is addressed by a man. Again, in Troilus and Cressida : "Sweet, rouse yourself." Patroclus is the speaker, and Achilles the person addressed. MALONE. XLII. That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, But here's the joy; my friend and I are one; XLIII. When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, How would thy shadow's form form happy show When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade 7 · Mr. Boaden is of opinion that the context shews the original word to be right. Iago, as he observes, uses the word seat with the same meaning, vol. ix. p. 315. BOSWELL. 5 If I lose thee, my loss is my LOVE's gain,] If I lose thee, my mistress gains by my loss. MALONE. 6 things UNRESPECTED] Things unnoticed, unregarded. MALONE. THY fair imperfect shade-] The old copy reads-their. All days are nights to see, till I see thee, XLIV. If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, But heavy tears, badges of either's woe: The two words, it has been already observed, are frequently confounded in these Sonnets. MALONE. * All days are nights to SEE,] We should, perhaps, read: "All days are nights to me." The compositor might have caught the word see from the end of the line. MALONE. As, fair to see (an expression which occurs in a hundred of our old ballads) signifies fair to sight, so,-all days are nights to see, means, all days are gloomy to behold, i. e. look like nights. 9 STEEVENS. do show THEE ME.] That is, do show thee to me. MALONE. can JUMP both sea and land,] Jump has here its common signification. In Shakspeare it often signifies to hazard. This is its meaning in the well known passage in Macbeth : "We'd jump the life to come.' MALONE. 2 so much of EARTH AND WATER WROUGHT,] i. e. being so thoroughly compounded of these two ponderous elements. Thus, in Antony and Cleopatra: I am air and fire, my other elements "I give to baser life." STEEVENS. A gain, in King Henry V.: "He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him." MALONE, |