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With keels of every kind: Many hot inroads
They make in Italy; the borders maritime
Lack blood to think on't', and flush youth 2 revolt:
No vessel can peep forth, but 'tis as soon

Taken as seen; for Pompey's name strikes more,
Than could his war resisted.

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Leave thy lascivious wassals 3. When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer: Thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did
deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;

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Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps

To ear, is not, however, at this time, a common word. I meet with it again in Turbervile's Falconry, 1575 :

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because I have a larger field to ear."

See p. 182. MALONE.

Lack blood to think on't,] Turn pale at the thought of it.
JOHNSON.

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2 and FLUSH youth-] Flush youth is youth ripened to manhood; youth whose blood is at the flow. So, in Timon of Athens:

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"Now the time is flush-." STEEVENS. - thy lascivious wASSELS,]

Wassel is here put for intemperance in general. For a more particular account of the word, see Macbeth, vol. xi. p. 85. The old copy, however, readsvaissailes. STEEVENS.

Vassals is, without question, the true reading. HENLEY.

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Thou didst drink

The stale of horses,] All these circumstances of Antony's distress, are taken literally from Plutarch. STEEVENS.

5- gilded puddle-] There is frequently observable on the surface of stagnant pools that have remained long undisturbed, a reddish gold coloured slime: to this appearance the poet here refers. HENLEY.

It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: And all this
(It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,)
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.

LEP.

'Tis pity of him.

CES. Let his shames quickly

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Drive him to Rome : "Tis time we twain "

Did show ourselves i' the field; and, to that end, Assemble we immediate council': Pompey Thrives in our idleness.

LEP.

To-morrow, Cæsar,

I shall be furnish'd to inform you rightly
Both what by sea and land I can be able,
To 'front this present time.
CES.

Till which encounter,

It is my business too.
business too. Farewell.

6 Drive him to Rome: 'Tis time we twain, &c.] The defect of the metre induces me to believe that some word has been inadvertently omitted. Perhaps our author wrote:

"Drive him to Rome disgrac'd: 'Tis time we twain," &c. So, in Act III. Sc. XI. :

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"From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend." Malone. I had rather perfect this defective line, by the insertion of an adverb which is frequently used by our author, and only enforces what he apparently designed to say, than by the introduction of an epithet which he might not have chosen. I would therefore read:

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'Tis time indeed we twain

Did show ourselves," &c. STEEVENS.

7 Assemble we immediate council:] [Old copy-assemble me.] Shakspeare frequently uses this kind of phraseology, but I do not recollect any instance where he has introduced it in solemn dialogue, where one equal is speaking to another. Perhaps therefore the correction made by the editor of the second folio is right: "Assemble we," &c. So, afterwards:

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Haste we for it: "

MALONE.

I adhere to the reading of the second folio. Thus, in King Henry IV. Part II. King Henry V. says:

"Now call we our high court of parliament." STEEVENS.

LEP. Farewell, my lord: What you shall know

mean time

Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,

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Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN.

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8 I knew it for my BOND.] That is, to be my bounden duty. M. MASON.

9 — mandragora.] A plant of which the infusion was supposed to procure sleep. Shakspeare mentions it in Othello:

"Not poppy, nor mandragora,

"Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

"Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep—.”

So, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfy, 1623:

"Come violent death,

JOHNSON.

"Serve for mandragora, and make me sleep."

STEEVENS.

Gerard, in his Herbal, says of the mandragoras: "Dioscorides doth particularly set downe many faculties hereof, of which notwithstanding there be none proper unto it, save those that depend upon the drowsie and sleeping power thereof."

In Adlington's Apuleius (of which the epistle is dated 1566) reprinted 1639, 4to. bl. 1. p. 187, lib. x.: "I gave him no poyson, but a doling drink of mandragoras, which is of such force, that it will cause any man to sleepe, as though he were dead." PERCY. See also Pliny's Natural History, by Holland, 1601, and Plutarch's Morals, 1602, p. 19. RITSON.

CHAR.

Why, madam?

CLEO. That I might sleep out this great gap of

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MAR.

What's your highness' pleasure ?

CLEO. Not now to hear thee sing; I take no pleasure

In aught an eunuch has: 'Tis well for thee,
That, being unseminar'd, thy freer thoughts
May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?
MAR. Yes, gracious madam.

CLEO. Indeed ?

MAR. Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing But what in deed is honest to be done :

Yet have I fierce affections, and think,
What Venus did with Mars.

CLEO.

O Charmian,

Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or

sits he?

Or does he walk? or is he on his horse ?

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!
Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou
mov'st?

The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm
And burgonet of men 2.-He's speaking now,

O, treason!] Old copy, coldly and unmetrically—

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O, 'tis treason!" STEEVENS.

2 And BURGONET of men.] A burgonet is a kind of helmet. So,

in King Henry VI.:

"This day I'll wear aloft my burgonet."

Again, in The Birth of Merlin, 1662:

"This, by the gods and my good sword, I'll set
"In bloody lines upon thy burgonet." STEEVENS.

Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile?
For so he calls me; Now I feed myself
With most delicious poison 3:-Think on me,
That am with Phoebus' amorous pinches black,
And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Cæsar*,
When thou wast here above the ground, I was
A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey
Would stand, and make his eyes grow in my brow;
There would he anchor his aspéct3, and die
With looking on his life.

ALEX.

Enter ALEXAS.

Sovereign of Egypt, hail!

CLEO. How much unlike art thou Mark Antony! Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath With his tinct gilded thee.

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delicious poison :] Hence, perhaps, Pope's Eloisa: "Still drink delicious poison from thine eye." STEEVENS. Broad-fronted Cæsar,] Mr. Seward is of opinion, that the poet wrote " bald-fronted Cæsar." The compound epithet "broad-fronted," occurs however in the tenth book of Chapman's version of the Iliad :

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"That never yet was tam'd with yoke, broad-fronted, one year old." STEEVENS.

-Broad-fronted," in allusion to Cæsar's baldness.

HENLEY.

ANCHOR his aspéct,] So, in Measure for Measure:
"Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,

"Anchors on Isabel."

that great medicine hath

STEEVENS.

With his tinct gilded thee.] Alluding to the philosopher's stone, which, by its touch, converts base metal into gold. The Alchemists call the matter, whatever it be, by which they perform transmutation, a medicine. JOHNSON.

"The philoso

Thus Chapman, in his Shadow of Night, 1594: "O then, thou great elixir of all treasures." And on this passage he has the following note: pher's stone, or philosophica medicina, is called the great® Elixir, to which he here alludes." Thus, in The Chanones Yemannes Tale of Chaucer, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 16,330:

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