thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's apparel fits your thief.] The last speech, which makes part of the Hangman's argument, is, by mistake, as the reader's own sagacity will readily perceive, given to the Clown or Bawd. I suppose, therefore, the poet gave us the whole thus: Abhor. Sir, it is a mistery. Clown. Proof Abhor. Every true man's apparel fits your thief: if it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough: if it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough; so every true man's apparel fits your thief. REVISAL. 127. -fits your thief.] So in Promos and Cas sandra, 1578, the Hangman says: "Here is nyne and twenty sutes of apparell for my share." True man, in the language of ancient times, is gene. rally placed in opposition to thief. STEEVENS. 135. ask forgiveness.] So, in As You Like It. -The common executioner, "Whose heart the accustom'd sight of death makes hard, "Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck, "But first begs pardon.” STEEVENS. 143. -a good turn.] i. e. a turn off the ladder. He quibbles on the phrase according to its common acceptation. FARMER. starkly] Stiffly. These two lines 151. afford a very pleasing image. JOHNSON. 163. They will then, -] Perhaps she will then. Sir J. HAWKINS. -] Stroke is here put 168. Even with the stroke for the stroke of a pen or a line. JOHNSON. 171. To qualify--] To temper, to moderate, as we say wine is qualified with water. So, in Othello: JOHNSON. "I have drank but one cup to-night, and that was craftily qualified too." 171. STEEVENS. were he meal'd] Were he sprinkled; were he defiled. A figure of the same kind our author uses in Macbeth: "The blood-bolter'd Banquo.” JOHNSON. So, in the Philosophers Satires, by Robert Anton: "As if their perriwigs to death they gave "To meale them in some gastly dead man's STEEVENS. grave." Mealed is mingled, compounded from the French BLACKSTONE. mesler. 176. -that spirit's possest with haste, That wounds the unresisting postern with these strokes.] The line is irregular, and the unresisting postern so strange an expression, that want of measure, and want of sense, might justly raise suspicion of an error; yet none of the latter editors seem to have supposed the place faulty, except Sir Thomas Hanmer, who reads: -the unresting postern, The three folios have it: -unsisting postern, out out of which Mr. Rowe made unresisting, and the rest followed him. 188. JOHNSON. siege of justice,] i. e. seat of justice. Prov. And here comes Claudio's pardon.] The Provost has just declared a fixed opinion that the execution will not be countermanded; and yet, upon the first appearance of the Messenger, he immediately guesses that his errand is to bring Claudio's pardon. It is evident, I think, that the names of the speakers are misplaced. If we suppose the Provost to say : This is his lordship's man, it is very natural for the Duke to subjoin, And here comes Claudio's pardon. The Duke might believe, upon very reasonable grounds, that Angelo had now sent the pardon. It appears that he did so, from what he says to himself, while the Provost is reading the letter: This is his pardon; purchas'd by such sin.— TYRWHITT. When, immediately after the Duke had hinted his expectation of a pardon, the Provost sees the Messenger, he supposes the Duke to have known something, and changes his mind. Either reading may serve equally well. JOHNSON.. -one that is a prisoner nine years old.] i. e. 222. So, in That has been confined these nine years. 236. desperately mortal.] This expression is obscure. Sir Thomas Hanmer reads, mortally desperate. Mortally is in low conversation used in this sense, but I know not whether it was ever written. I am inclined to believe, that desperately mortal means desperately mischievous. Or desperately mortal, may mean a man likely to die in a desperate state, without reflection or repentance. JOHNSON. 268. and tie the beard ;- -] The Revisal recommends Mr. Simpson's emendation, DIE the beard; but the present reading may stand. Perhaps it was usual to tie up the beard before decollation. Sir T. More is said to have been ludicrously careful about this ornament of his face. It should, however, be remembered, that it was the custom to die beards. So, in the old comedy of Ram Alley, 1611: "What colour'd beard comes next by the window? "A black man's, I think. "I think, a red; for that is most in fashion." Again, in the Silent Woman: "I have fitted my divine and canonist, dyed their beards and all.” A beard tied would give a very new air to that face, which had never been seen but with the beard loose, long, and squalid. JOHNSON. 269. bar'd. -to be so barb'd] The old copy reads-so STEEVENS. There was no necessity for changing the old reading. On the contrary it agrees better with the context than that by which it is displaced. 270. HENLEY. -you know the course is common.] P. Mathieu, in his Heroyke Life and Deplorable Death of Henry the Fourth of France, says, that Ravilliac, in the midst of his tortures, lifted up his head, and shook a spark of fire from his beard. "This unprofitable care, he adds, to save it being noted, afforded matter to divers to praise the custome in Germany, Swisserland, and divers other places to shave off, and then to burn all the haire from all parts of the bodies of those who are convicted for any notorious crimes." Grimston's Translation, 4to. 1612, p. 181. REED. 296. -nothing of what is writ.] We should read -here writ-the Duke pointing to the letter in his hand. WARBURTON. 297. the unfolding star calls up the shepherd:] Milton's Comus. STEEVENS. "So doth the evening star present itself |