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To truft the opportunity of night,
And the ill counsel of a defert place,
With the rich worth of your virginity.

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HEL. Your virtue is my privilege for that.'
It is not night, when I do fee your face, *
Therefore I think I am not in the night:
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company;
For you, in my refpect, are all the world:
Then how can it be faid, I am alone,

When all the world is here to look on me?
DEM. I'll run from thee, and hide me in the
brakes,

And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

HEL. The wildeft hath not fuch a heart as you." Run when you will, the ftory fhall be chang'd: Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chafe; The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind Makes speed to catch the tiger: Bootless speed! When cowardice purfues, and valour flies.

3 for that.] i. e. For leaving the city, &c. TYRWHITT. 4 It is not night, when I do fee your face, &c.] This paffage is paraphrafed from two lines of an ancient poet [Tibullus]:

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Tu nocte vel atra

"Lumen, in folis tu mihi turba locis." JOHNSON.

As the works of King David might be more familiar to Shakfpeare than Roman poetry, perhaps on the present accafion, the eleventh verfe of the 139th Pfalm, was in his thoughts. the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as

the day." STEEVENS.

"Yea,

Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company;] The fame thought pccurs in K. Henry VI. P. II:

"A wilderness is populous enough,

"So Suffolk had thy heavenly company." MALONE.

The wildeft hath not fuch a heart as you.]

"Mitius inveni quam te genus omne ferarum." OVID.

See Timon of Athens, A& IV. fc. i:

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where he fhall find

The unkindest beafts more kinder than mankind." S. W.

DEM. I will not flay thy queftions; 7 let me go: Or, if thou follow me, do not believe

But I fhall do thee mifchief in the wood.

HEL. Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius! Your wrongs do fet a fcandal on my sex: We cannot fight for love, as men may do;

We fhould be woo'd, and were not made to woo. I'll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell,

To die upon the hand I love fo well.

[Exeunt DEM. and HEL. OBE. Fare thee well, nymph: ere he do leave

this grove,

Thou fhalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.Re-enter PUCK.

Haft thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer. PUCK. Ay, there it is.

ОВЕ. I pray thee, give it me. I know a bank whereon' the wild thyme blows, Where ox-lips and the nodding violet' grows;

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7 I will not flay thy queftions ;] Though Helena certainly puts a few infignificant questions to Demetrius, I cannot but think our author wrote queftion, i. e. difcourfe, conversation. So, in As you like it: “ I met the duke yesterday, and had much question with him." STEEVENS.

To die upon the hand, &c.] To die upon, &c. in our author's language, I believe, means to die by the hand." So, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

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“I'll die on him that says so, but yourself." STEEVINS. .whereon. - The old copy reads where. Mr. Malone fuppofes where to be ufed as a diffyllable; but offers no example of fuch a pronunciation. STEEVENS.

2 Where ox-lips-] The oxlip is the greater cowflip. So, in Drayton's Polyolbion, Song XV:

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"To fort these flowers of showe, with other that were sweet, "The cowlip then they couch, and th' oxlip for her meet.'

STEEVENS.

the nodding violet -] i. e. that declines its head, like a drowsy person. STEEVENS.

Quite over-canopied with lufh woodbine,
With fweet mufk-rofes, and with eglantine:
There fleeps Titania, fome time of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the fnake throws her enamel'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:

And with the juice of this I'll freak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantafies.

Take thou fome of it, and feek through this grove:
A fweet Athenian lady is in love

With a difdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it, when the next thing he efpies
May be the lady: Thou fhalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
Effect it with fome care; that he may prove
More fond on her, than fhe upon her love:
And look thou meet me ere the firft cock crow.
Puck. Fear not my lord, your fervant fhall do fo.
[Exeunt.

• Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, ] All the old editions read lufcious woodbine.

On the margin of one of my folios an unkuown hand has written lush woodbine, which, I think, is right. This hand I have fince difcovered to be Theobald's. JOHNSON.

Lush is clearly preferable in point of fenfe, and abfolutely neceffary in point of metre. Oberon is fpeaking in rhime; but woodbine, as hitherto accented upon the first fyllable, cannot poffibly correfpond with eglantine. The fubftitution of lush will reftore the paffage to its original harmony, and the author's idea. RITSON.

I have inserted lush in the text, as it is a word already used by Shakspeare in The Tempeft, A& II:

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"How lush and lufty the grafs looks? how green?" Both lush and luscious (fays Mr. Henley) are words of the fame origin.

Dr. Farmer, however, would omit the word quite, as a useless expletive, and read

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the man

hath on

on.] I

O'er-canopied with lufcious woodbine." STEEVENS. I defire no furer evidence to prove that the broad Scotch pronunciation. once prevailed in England, than such a rhyme as the first of these words affords to the second.

STEEVENS.

SCENE III.

Another part of the Wood.

Enter TITANIA with her train.

TILA. Come, now a roundel, and a fairy fong;a Then, for the third part of a minute, hence: 3

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-a roundel, and a fairy fong;] Rounds, or roundels, were like the prefent country dances, and are thus defcribed by Sir John Davies, in his Orchestra, 1622 :

"Then firft of all he doth demonftrate plain

"The motions feven that are in nature found,
“ Upward and downward, forth, and back again,
To this fide, and to that, and turning round;
"Whereof a thousand brawls he doth compound,
"Which he doth teach unto the multitude,

And ever with a turn they muft conclude.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Thus when at first love had them marshalled,
"As erft he did the fhapeless mass of things,
He taught them rounds and winding hays to tread,
“And about trees to cast themselves in rings :
"As the two Bears whom the firft mover flings

"With a short turn about heaven's axle-tree,

"In a round dance for ever wheeling be." REED. A roundel, rondill, or roundelay, is fometimes used to fignify a fong beginning or ending with the fame fentence; redit in orbem. Puttenham, in his Art of Poetry, 1589, has a chapter On the roundel, or sphere, and produces what he calls A general resemblance of the roundel to God, the world, and the queen. STEEVENS.

A roundel is, as I fuppofe, a circular dance. Ben Jonfon feems to call the rings which fuch dances are supposed to make in thề grafs, rondels. Vol. V. Tale of a Tub, p. 23:

"I'll have no rondels, I, in the queen's paths."

TYRWHITT.

So, in The Boke of the Governour by Sir Thomas Elyot, 1537: "In ftede of these we have now bafe daunces, bargenettes, pavyons, turgions, and roundes." STEEVENS.

3 Then, for the third part of a minute, hence:] Dr. Warburton

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Some, to kill cankers in the mufk-rofe buds ; *
Some, war with rear-mice' for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats; and fome, keep back
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders
At our quaint fpirits: Sing me now afleep;
Then to your offices, and let me rest.

But the perfons employed are Fairies, to whom the third part of a minute might not be a very fhort time to do fuch work in. The critick might as well have objected to the epithet tall, which the fairy beftows on the cowflip. But Shakspeare, throughout the play, has preferved the proportion of other things in respect of these tiny beings, compared with whofe fize, a cowflip might be tall, and to whofe powers of execution, a minute might be equivalent to an age. STEEVENS.

4 in the mufk-rofe buds; ] What is at prefent called the Muk Rofe, was a flower unknown to English botanists in the time of Shakspeare. About fifty years ago it was brought into this country from Spain. STEEVENS.

with rear-mice -] A rere-moufe is a bat, a mouse that rears itself from the ground by the aid of wings. So, in Albertus Wallenftein, 1640:

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Half-fpirited fouls, who ftrive on rere-mice wings." Again, in Ben Jonfon's New Inn:

I keep no fhades

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"Nor fhelters, I, for either owls or rere-mice. ' Again, in Golding's tranflation of Ovid's Metamorphofis, B. IV. edit. 1587, p. 58. b:

"And we in English language bats or reremice call the fame. Gawin Douglas, in his Prologue to Maphæus's 13th book of the Eneid, alfo applies the epithet leathern to the wings of the Bat: "Up gois the bat with her pelit leddern flicht.” STEEVENS. quaint Spirits:] For this Dr. Warburton reads against all

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authority:

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quaint fports."

But Profpero, in The Tempeft, applies quaint to Ariel. JOHNSON.

"Our quaint Spirits." Dr. Johnfon is right in the word, and Dr. Warburton in the interpretation. A fpirit was fometimes used for a sport. In Decker's play, If it be not good, the Devil is in It, the king of Naples fays to the devil Ruffman, disguised in the character of Shalcan: "Now Shalcan, fome new Spirit? Ruff. A thousand wenches ftark-naked to play at leap-frog. Omnes. O rare fight!" FARMER.

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