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Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land,
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund,
As to th' legitimate; fine word-legitimate.
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
* Shall be th' legitimate. I grow, I profper;
9 Now, Gods, stand up for bastards!

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Glo. Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted! And the King gone to-night! fubfcrib'd his pow'r ! Confin'd to exhibition! 3 all this done

Upon the gad!--Edmund, how now? what news?

8 Shail be th' legitimate.-) Here the Oxfora Editor would show us that he is as good at coining phrases as his Author, and so alters the text thus,

Shall toe th' legitimate. i.e. fays he, stand on even ground with him, as he would do with his author. WAREURTON.

Hanmer's emendation will appear very plausible to him that hall confult the original reading. Butler's quarto reads,

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son? He does not tell us; but the poet alludes to the debaucheries of the Pagan Gods, who made heroes of all their baftards.

WARBURTON. fubfcrib'd his pow'r!] Subscrib'd, for transferred, alienated. WARBURTON.

To fubscribe, is to transfer by signing or subscribing a writing of teftimony. We now use the term, He subscribed forty pounds to the new building.

--Edmund the base Shall tooth' legitimate. The folio, Edmund the base Shall to'th' legitimate. Hanmer, therefore, could hardly be charged with coining a word, though his explanation may be doubted. To toe him, is perhaps, to kick him out, a phrase yet in vulgar use; or, to see, may be literally to supplant. The word be has no authority.

9 Now. Gods, stand up for bastards!] For what rea

2 Exhibition is allowance. The term is yet used in the universities.

3-all this done

Upon the gad!] So the old copies: the later editions read, --all is gone

Upon the gad! which, befides that it is unauthorised, is less proper. To do upon the gad, is, to act by the fudden stimulation of caprice, as cattle run madding when they are stung by the gad-fiy.

Edm.

Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the letter.

Glo, Why so earnestly feek you to put up that letter?

Edm. I know no news, my Lord.

Glo. What paper were you reading ?

Edm. Nothing, my Lord.

Glo. No! what needeth then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not fuch need to hide itself. Let's fee; come. If it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.

Edm. I beseech you, Sir, pardon me, it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er read; and for so much as I have perus'd, I find it not fit for your over-looking.

Glo. Give me the letter, Sir.

Edm. I shall offend, either to detain, or give it. The contents as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Glo. Let's fee, let's fee.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay, or 4 taste of my virtue.

Glo. reads.] This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us, till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an * idle and fond bondage in the oppreffion of aged tyranny; which sways, not as it bath power, but

4 taste of my virtue.) Though tafte may stand in this place, yet I believe we should read, affay or teft of my virtues they are both metallurgical terms, and properly joined. So in Hamlet,

others to old customs, it is now become an established rule, that fathers shall keep all they have till they die. WARBURTON.

All this may be spared. Age, not ages, is the reading of both the copies of authority. Butler's quarto has, this policy of age; the folio, this policy and reverence of age.

Bring me to the test.

5 This policy and reverence of ages] Ages fignifies former times. So the sense of the words is this, what between the policy of fome, and the fuperftitious reverence of

6 idle and fond] Weak and

foolish.

as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep, till I wak'd him, you Should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother Edgar.-Hum-Conspiracy ! fleep, till I wake him-you should enjoy half hisr evenue-My fon Edgar! had he a hand to write this ! a heart and brain to breed it in! when came this to you? who brought it?

Edm. It was not brought me, my Lord; there's the cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the cafement of my closet.

Glo. You know the character to be your brother's? Edm. If the matter were good, my Lord, I durft swear, it were his, but in respect of that, I would fain think it were not.

Glo. It is his.

Edm. It is his hand, my Lord; I hope his heart is not in the contents.

Glo. Has he never before sounded you in this bufinefs?

Edm. Never, my Lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that fons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the fathers should be as a ward to the fon, and the fon manage his revenue.

Glo. O villain! villain! his very opinion in the letter. Abhorred villain! unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, firrah, seek him; I'll apprehend him. Abominable villain! where is he?

Edm. I do not well know, my Lord. If it shall please you to fufpend your indignation against my brother, 'till you can derive from him better teftimony of his intent, you should run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ this to feel

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feel my affection to your honour, and to no other 7 pretence of danger.

Glo. Think you fo?

Edm. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your fatisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very evening. Glo. He cannot be such a monster.

Edm. Nor is not, sure.

Glo. To his Father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him-Heav'n and Earth! Edmund, seek him out; * wind me into him, I pray you. Frame the bu finess after your own wisdom; I would unstate myfelf, to be in a due resolution,

Edm. I will seek him, Sir, presently, 'convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

Glo. These late eclipses in the fun and moon portend no good to us; tho' the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg'd

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Such is this learned man's explanation. I take the meaning to be rather this, Do you frame the business, who can act with lefs emotion; I would unstate myself; it would in me be a departure from the paternal character, to

the wisdom of nature] That is, though natural philofophy can give account of eclipses, yet we feel their consequences.

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by the fequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off,
brothers divide. In cities mutinies, in countries, dif-
cord; in palaces, treafon; and the bond crack'd 'twixt
fon and father. This villain of mine comes under the
prediction, there's fon against father, the King falls
from biass of nature, there's father against child. We
have feen the best of our time. Machinations, hol
lowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us
disquietly to our graves!-Find out this villain, Ed-
mund; it shall lose thee nothing, do it carefully-
and the noble and true-heated Kent banish'd! his of
fence, Honesty. 'Tis strange.
[Exit

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Manet Edmund.

: Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are fick in fortune, (often the furfeits

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3. This is the excellent foppery of the world, &c.] In ShakeSpear's beft plays, befides the vices that arife from the subject, there is generally fome peculiar prevailing folly, principally ridiculed, that runs thro' the whole piece. Thus, in the Tempest, the lying disposition of travellers, and in As you like it, the fantastick humour of courtiers, is exposed and fatirized with infinite pleafantry. In like manner, in this play of Lear, the dotages of judicial astrology are severely ridiculed. I fancy, was the date of its first performance well confrdered, it would be found that something or other happened at that time which gave a more than ordinary run to this deceit, as these words seem to intimate, I am thinking, brother, of a predic

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tion I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses. However this be, an impious cheat, which had so little foundation in nature or reason, so detestable an original, and such fatal.consequences on the manners of the people, who were at that time strangely besotted with it, certainly deserved the severest lash of fatire. It was a fundamental in this noble science, that whatever feeds of good dispositions the infant unborn might be endowed with, either from nature, or traductively from its parents, yet if, at the time of its birth, the delivery was by any cafualty so accelerated or retarded, as to fall in with the predominancy of a malignant conftellation, that momentary influence would entirely change its nature, and

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