Great men may jest with saints: 'tis wit in them; But, in the less, foul profanation.

LUCIO. Thou'rt in the right, girl; more o' that. ISAB. That in the captain's but a cholerick word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

LUCIO. Art advis'd o' that? more on't.

ANG. Why do you put these sayings upon me? ISAB. Because authority, though it err like others, Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,

That skins the vice o' the top 8: Go to your bosom ;
Knock there; and ask your heart, what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault if it confess
A natural guiltiness, such as is his,

Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.

ANG.
She speaks, and 'tis
Such sense, that my sense breeds with it o.-

Fare you well.

self. We have different names and different judgements for the same faults committed by persons of different condition. JOHNSON. The reading of the old copy, ourself, which Dr. Warburton changed to yourself, is supported by a passage in the fifth Act: If he had so offended,

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"He would have weigh'd thy brother by himself,
"And not have cut him him off."

MALONE.

8 That SKINS the vice o' the top:] Shakspeare is fond of this indelicate metaphor. So, in Hamlet :

9

"It will but skin and film the ulcerous place." STEEVENS. that my sense BREEDS with it.] Thus all the folios. Some later editor has changed breeds to bleeds, and Dr. Warburton blames poor Theobald for recalling the old word, which yet is certainly right. My sense breeds with her sense, that is, new thoughts are stirring in my mind, new conceptions are hatched in my imagination. So we say, to brood over thought. JOHNSON.. Sir William D'Avenant's alteration favours the sense of the old reading-breeds, which Mr. Pope had changed to bleeds.

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She speaks such sense

"As with my reason breeds such images

"As she has excellently form'd-." STEEVENS.

I rather think the meaning is-She delivers her sentiments with such propriety, force, and elegance, that my sensual desires

ISAB. Gentle my lord, turn back.

ANG. I will bethink me :-Come again to-mor

row.

ISAB. Hark, how I'll bribe you: Good my lord, turn back.

ANG. HOW! bribe me?

ISAB. Ay, with such gifts, that heaven shall share with you.

LUCIO. You had marr'd all else.

ISAB. Not with fond shekels1 of the tested gold", Or stones, whose rates are either rich, or poor, As fancy values them: but with true prayers, That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,

are inflamed by what she says. Sense has been already used in this play with the same signification :

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one who never feels

"The wanton stings and motions of the sense."

So, also, in Angelo's speech at the conclusion of this scene:

"That modesty may more betray our sense

"Than woman's lightness?

The word breeds is used in The Tempest, in nearly the same sense as here:

66 - Fair encounter

"Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace

"On that which breeds between them!" MALONE.

The sentence signifies, Isabella does not utter barren words, but speaks such sense as breeds or produces a consequence in Angelo's mind. Truths which generate no conclusion are often termed barren facts. HOLT WHITE.

I understand the passage thus:-Her arguments are enforced with so much good sense, as to increase that stock of sense which I already possess. DOUCE.

I-FOND shekels-] Fond means very frequently in our author, foolish. It signifies in this place valued or prized by folly. STEEVENS.

2

TESTED gold,] i. e. attested, or marked with the standard stamp. WARBurton.

Rather cupelled, brought to the test, refined. JOHNSON. All gold that is tested is not marked with the standard stamp. The verb has a different sense, and means tried by the cuppel, which is called by the refiners a test. Vide Harris's Lex. Tech.

voce Cuppell. SIR J. HAWKINS.

Ere sun-rise; prayers from preserved souls 3.
From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.

ANG.

To-morrow.

Well: come to me

Lucio. Go to; it is well; away. [Aside to ISABEL. ISAB. Heaven keep your honour safe!

ANG.

For I am that way going to temptation,
Where prayers cross *.

3

Amen :

[Aside.

PRESERVED Souls,] i. e. preserved from the corruption of the world. The metaphor is taken from fruits preserved in sugar.

So, in The Amorous War, 1648:

WARBURTON.

"You do not reckon us 'mongst marmalade,

Quinces and apricots ? or take us for

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Ladies preserved?' STEEVENS.

Surely our author had "so such stuff in his thoughts."

4 I am that way going to temptation,

BOSWELL.

WHERE PRAYERS CROSS.] Which way Angelo is going to temptation, we begin to perceive; but how prayers cross that way, or cross each other, at that way more than any other, I do not understand.

Isabella prays that his honour may be safe, meaning only to give him his title: his imagination is caught by the word honour: he feels that his honour is in danger, and therefore, I believe, answers thus :

"I am that way going to temptation,

"Which your prayers cross."

That is, I am tempted to lose that honour of which thou implorest the preservation. The temptation under which I labour is that which thou hast unknowingly thwarted with thy prayer. He uses the same mode of language a few lines lower. Isabella, parting, says:

"Save your honour!

Angelo catches the word-Save it! From what?

"From thee! even from thy virtue!" JOHNSON. The best method of illustrating this passage will be to quote a similar one from The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. I.: "Sal. I would it might prove the end of his losses!

Sola. Let me say Amen betimes, lest the devil cross thy prayer."

For the same reason Angelo seems to say Amen to Isabella's

ISAB.

At what hour to-morrow

Shall I attend your lordship?

ANG.

ISAB. Save your honour!

ANG.

At any time 'fore noon.

[Exeunt LuciO, ISABELLA, and Provost.
From thee; even from thy virtue !—
What's this? what's this? Is this her fault, or mine?
The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most? Ha'!
Not she; nor doth she tempt: but it is I,
That lying by the violet, in the sun,

Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be,
That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,

prayer; but, to make the expression clear, we should read perhaps-Where prayers are crossed. TYRWHITT.

The petition of the Lord's Prayer-" lead us not into temptation" is here considered as crossing or intercepting the onward way in which Angelo was going; this appointment of his for the morrow's meeting, being a premeditated exposure of himself to temptation, which it was the general object of prayer to thwart. HENLEY.

5 Ha!] This tragedy-Ha! (which clogs the metre) was certainly thrown in by the player editors. STEEVENS. This "tragedy-Ha!" as Mr. Steevens contemptuously calls it, occurs again in a speech of Angelo's in a subsequent scene: "Ha! Fye these filthy vices." MALONE.

6

it is I,

That lying by the violet, in the sun, &c.] I am not corrupted by her, but my own heart, which excites foul desires under the same benign influences that exalt her purity, as the carrion grows putrid by those beams which increase the fragrance of the violet. JOHNSON.

That modesty may more betray our SENSE

Than woman's lightness ?] So, in Promos and Cassandra, 1578:

I do protest her modest wordes hath wrought in me a maze,
Though she be faire, she is not deackt with garish shewes

for gaze.

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,

And pitch our evils there? O, fy, fy, fy!
What dost thou ? or what art thou, Angelo ?
Dost thou desire her foully, for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority,

When judges steal themselves. What? do I love her,

That I desire to hear her speak again,

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"Hir bewtie lures, her lookes cut off fond suits with chast disdain.

'O God, I feele a sodaine change, that doth my freedome

chayne.

"What didst thou say? fie, Promos fie," &c. STEEVENS. Sense has in this passage the same signification as in that above, that my sense breeds with it." MALONE.

8 And pitch our EVILS there?] So, in King Henry VIII. :

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Nor build their evils on the graves of great men." Neither of these passages appears to contain a very elegant allusion.

Evils, in the present instance, [as Dr. Grey has remarked] undoubtedly stands for forica. Dr. Farmer assures me he has seen the word evil used in this sense by our ancient writers; and it appears from Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, &c. that privies were originally so ill-contrived, even in royal palaces, as to deserve the title of evils or nuisances. STEEVENS.

One of Sir John Berkenhead's queries confirms the foregoing observation:

Whether, ever since the House of Commons has been locked up, the speaker's chair has not been a close-stool?

"Whether it is not seasonable to stop the nose of my evil?" Two Centuries of Paul's Church-Yard, 8vo. no date. MALONE. No language could more forcibly express the aggravated profligacy of Angelo's passion, which the purity of Isabella but served the more to inflame.-The desecration of edifices devoted to religion, by converting them to the most abject purposes of nature, was an eastern method of expressing contempt. See 2 Kings, x. 27. HENLEY.

A Brahman is forbid to drop his fæces even on "the ruins of a temple." See Sir W. Jones's translation of Institutes of the Hindu Law, or the Ordinances of Menu, London edit. p. 95.

STEEVENS.