13. that noble vessel. Delius compares Winter's Tale, iii. 3. 21: I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,

So fill'd and so becoming.'

15. list a word. Compare iv. I. 41, and Hamlet, i. 3. 30: If with too credent ear you list his songs.'

23. beat, beaten. So in Coriolanus, i. 6. 40:

'Where is that slave

Which told me they had beat you to your trenches?'

Shakespeare uses both forms of the participle.

26. In Plutarch's narrative Brutus appeals to Volumnius in Greek, 'for the studies sake which brought them acquainted together' (ed. Skeat, p. 150). 28. sword-hilts. See v. 3. 43. The third and fourth folios read 'swords hilt.'

30. One of them said, there was no tarrying for them there, but that they must needs fly.' (Plutarch, ed. Skeat, p. 150.)

31. See Preface.

33. Theobald corrected this line, which stood in the folios,

'Farewell to

35. I found. See note on

40. life's. The folios have

thee, to Strato, Countrymen.'

came,' l. 3.

lives.'

42. have but labour'd to attain, have laboured only to attain. See note on v. 1. 89.

45. of a good respect. See i. 2. 59.

46. some smatch, some smack, some tincture. With the forms smack' for the verb and 'smatch' for the noun, compare 'ake' and 'ache' as used in the first folio of Shakespeare. See note on The Tempest, i. 2. 376 (Clarendon Press ed.). Compare also 'make' and 'match.' In Udal's translation of Erasmus's Paraphrase on the Gospel of S. Luke (1548), fol. 163a, we find, 'There eftesones befell a contencion emōg ye disciples being yet weake, & hauyng yet still in sum behalf a smatche of the fleashe, whiche of them should after the lordes death haue the primacie & suprimitie in ye kingdom of god.' And in Golding's translation of Calvin on the Psalms (1571), Calvin to the Reader, p. 2: Howbeeit for asmuch as it is better too giue some smatch of so greate profit too the Readers be it neuer so little, than to say nothing at all of it: it shalbe lawfull for me to giue a glaunce at that thing, whiche the greatnesse of it wilnot suffer mee to set out to the full.'

50. Runs on his sword. The folios have only a blank in the middle of the line, as in v. 3. 45.

59. See v. 4. 25.

60. I will entertain them, I will take them into my service. Compare Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii.

4. IIO:

'Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.'

The pronoun is apparently redundant, but not really so. We must regard All that served Brutus' as equivalent to 'As for all that served Brutus.' Compare 3 Henry VI, i. 4. 6:

'My sons, God knows what has bechanced them.'

61. bestow, employ, spend. Compare Twelfth Night, i. 3. 97: 'I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting.'

62. prefer, recommend. Compare The Merchant of Venice, ii. 2. 155, where it is used with a play upon its other sense of 'promote':

Shylock thy master spoke with me this day,

And hath preferr'd thee, if it be preferment

To leave a rich Jew's service, to become
The follower of so poor a gentleman.'

68. For it was said that Antonius spake it openly divers times, that he thought, that of all them that had slain Cæsar, there was none but Brutus only that was moved to do it, as thinking the act commendable of itself: but that all the other conspirators did conspire his death for some private malice or envy, that they otherwise did bear unto him.' (Plutarch, ed. Skeat,p. 130.) 69. save only he. See note on iii. 2. 59.

71, 72. in a general honest thought And common good to all, under the influence of a general honest motive and for the common good of all. The construction is loose, as in iv. 3. 150, 151, but there is no necessity to read with Mr. Collier's MS. annotator,' in a generous honest thought of common good to all,' as Professor Craik does.

73. His life was gentle, &c. With this description of Brutus, which has been happily applied to Shakespeare himself, may be compared Ben Jonson's own portrait in the character of Crites, quoted by Malone from Cynthia's Revels, ii. 1: 'A creature of a most perfect and divine temper; one in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met, without emulation of precedency; he is neither too fantastically melancholy, too slowly phlegmatic, too lightly sanguine, or too rashly choleric; but in all so composed and ordered, as it is clear Nature went about some full work, she did more than make a man when she made him.' Cynthia's Revels was acted in 1600, and printed in 1601. The question of the bearing of this fact upon the date of our play will be discussed in the Preface. Drayton appears to have had Shakespeare's character of Brutus in his mind when he described his hero Mortimer in the Barons' Wars, iii. 40, published in 1603:

Such one he was, of whom we boldely say,

In whose rich soule all soueraigne powres did sute,

In whome in peace th' elements all lay

So mixt, as none could soueraignty impute;

As all did gouerne, yet all did obey,

His liuely temper was so absolute,

That t' seemde when heaven his modell first began,

In him it shewd perfection in a man.'

This was entirely added after the first draft of the poem appeared in 1596 under the title Mortimeriados. But the old physiological notion of the four humours which entered into the composition of man, their correspondence to the four elements, and the necessity of an equable mixture of them to produce a properly-balanced temperament, was so familiar to writers of Shakespeare's day that in giving expression to it they could hardly avoid using similar if not identical language.

78. his bones, his dead body. Compare Much Ado about Nothing, v. I. 294:

'Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb

And sing it to her bones, sing it to-night.'

80. the field, the army on the field of battle.

ERRATUM.

In iii. 2. 186 for statue read statuë.

April, 1878.

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