plume, properly applied, is capable of answering the purpose. HENLEY. 569. -case,-] For outside, garb, external shew. JOHNSON. 570. Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming?] Here Shakspere judiciously distinguishes the different operations of high place upon different minds. Fools are frighted, and wise men are allured. Those who cannot judge but by the eye, are easily awed by splendour; those who consider men as well as conditions, are easily persuaded to love the appearance of virtue dignified with power. JOHNSON. 571. -Blood, thou art but blood :] But has been introduced by some of the modern editors. It is not in either the first or second folio. MALONE. 572. Let's write good angel on the devil's horn, Tis not the devil's crest.] i. e. Let the most wicked thing have but a virtuous pretence, and it shall pass for innocent. This was his conclusion from his preceding words. WARBURTON. 577. to my heart,] Of this speech there is no other trace in Promos and Cassandra, than the following: "Both hope and dreade, at once my harte doth STEEVENS. tuch." 584. The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,] The general subject seems a harsh expression, but general was, in our author's time, a word for people, so that the general is the people, or multitude, subject to a king. a king. So, in Hamlet: "The play pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the general.” JOHNSON. Mr. Malone observes, that the use of this phrase, "the general" for the people, continued so late as to the time of lord Clarendon,-" as rather to be consented to, than that the general should suffer." Clar. Hist. B. V. p. 530. 8vo. edit. I therefore adhere to the old reading, with only a slight change in the punctuation : The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, i. e. the generality who are subjects, &c. Twice in Hamlet our author uses subject for subjects: "So nightly toils the subject of the land." Act i. SC. 1. Again, act i. sc. 2. "The lists and full proportions, all are made "Out of his subject.' The general subject, however, may mean the subjects in general. So, in As You Like It, act ii. sc. 7. “Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.” STEEVENS. So the duke had before, act i. scene 2. expressed his dislike of popular applause : "I'll privily away. I love the people, "But do not like to stage me to their eyes. "Nor do I think the man of safe discretion, I cannot help thinking that Shakspere, in these two passages, intended to flatter that unkingly weakness of James the First, which made him so impatient of the crowds that flocked to see him, especially upon his first coming, that, as some of our historians say, he restrained them by a proclamation. Sir Symonds D'Ewes, in his Memoirs of his own Life, [a MS. in the British Museum] has a remarkable passage with regard to this humour of James. After taking notice, that the king going to parliament, on the 30th of January 1620-1, "spake lovingly to the people, and said, God bless ye, God bless ye;" he adds these words, "contrary to his former hasty and passionate custom, which often, in his sudden distemper, would bid a pox or a plague on such as flocked to see him." TYRWHITT. Mr. Tyrwhitt's judicious remark might find support, if it needed any, from the following passage in a True Narration of the Entertainment of his Royall Majestie, from the Time of his Departure from Edinbrogh, till his receiving in London, &c. &c. 1603: "—he was faine to publish an inhibition against the inordinate and dayly accesse of peoples comming," &c. STEEVENS. 603. Their sawcy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image In stamps that are forbid: -] We meet with nearly the same words in King Edward III. a tragedy, 1596, certainly prior to this play: And -And will your sacred self "Commit high treason 'gainst the king of heaven, "To stamp his image in forbidden metal ?" These lines are spoken by the countess of Salisbury, whose chastity, like Isabel's, was assailed by her so vereign. 604. light or trifling. MALONE. -'tis all as easy] Easy is here put for WARBURTON. 605. Falsely to take away a life true made,] Falsely is the same with dishonestly, illegally: so false, in the next lines, is illegal, illegitimate. 606. JOHNSON. -in restrained means,] In forbidden moulds. I suspect means not to be the right word, but I cannot find another. I should suspect that the author wrote, -in restrained mints, JOHNSON. as the allusion is still to coining. Sir W. Davenant omits the passage. STEEVENS. On reading this passage, it seemed probable to me that Shakspere, having already illustrated this thought by an allusion to coining, would not give the same image a second time; and that he wrote, As to put mettle in restrained means. On looking into the folio I found my conjecture confirmed, for that is the original reading. It is likewise supported by a similar expression in Timon: "thy father, that poor rag, "Put stuff to some she-beggar, and compounded thee "Poor rogue hereditary." Eiij Again, Again, in The Winter's Tale : "As rank as any flax wench that puts to, The sense is clear, and means may stand without alteration.-'Tis as easy wickedly to deprive a man born in wedlock of life, as to have an unlawful commerce with a maid, in order to give life to an illegitimate child. The thought is simply, that murder is as easy as fornication, and it is as improper to pardon the latter as the former. The words-to make a false one-evidently referring to life, shew that the preceding line is to be understood in a natural and not in a metaphorical sense. Means, I suppose, is here used for medium or object. Moulds, however, if the passage be corrupt (which I do not believe to be the case), is a very likely word to have stood here. So, in Coriolanus: 66 -the honour'd mould "Wherein this trunk was fram'd." Again, in King Richard II. 66 -that bed, that womb, "That mettle, that self-same mould that fashioned thee, "Made him a man.' Again, in King Lear: “ Crack Nature's moulds, all germins spill at once, "That make ingrateful man!" MALONE. 608. 'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.] I would have it considered, whether the train of the discourse does not rather require Isabel to say, |